PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence

1. PO377 Ethnic Conflict and Political Violence Week 3: Northern Ireland

2. Pop Quiz • Is the conflict in Northern Ireland fundamentally about religious divisions between Protestants and Roman Catholics? • Yes • No

4. Lecture Outline • Overview • Who’s to Blame? • Ireland Before Partition • Colonisation of Ireland • After 1801 Act of Union • Partitioning the island • Northern Ireland After Partition • Consolidation of unionist control • Catholic mobilisation and the civil rights movement • Civil War • Direct Rule • The ‘long war’ • Good Friday Agreement On • Good Friday Agreement • Post-GFA • Conclusion

5. Overview • Population: about 1.8 million (2011 census). • 53.13% Protestant/descended from, 43.76% Catholic/descended from. Tiny non-Christian communities. (2001 census.) • Religious categories today largely signify ethnic descent groups (religious background, not belief). • Around 3,400 people dead and over 20,000 injured as a result of the war 1969-1994 (‘the Troubles’), over the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. • Ceasefires since 1994 (on and off); Good Friday/Belfast Agreement 1998.

6. Who’s to Blame? ‘The conflict is variously held to be fundamentally theological, cultural, economic, or ethnic. Some declare it is caused by the Irish Republic, others by the Roman Catholic Church, and yet others by the political culture of Irish nationalism; and various permutations hold all three to be causal agents. Then there are those who blame the British state, or British imperialism in Ireland, or British colonial settlement in Ireland, or the Protestant religion(s), or some permutation of these causal agents. Finally, some argue for a plague on all the houses of Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, holding all the peoples of these islands (or their religions, or economies, or institutions) culpable for failing to manage their differences’ (McGarry and O’Leary, 1995, pp. 1-2).

7. Who’s to Blame? (2) • External (exogenous) explanations: • The British state: colonialism and partition • The British state: neglect of Northern Ireland • The Irish state: irredentist nationalism • Internal (endogenous) explanations: • Religion • Cultural differences • Socio-economic inequalities

8. Ireland before Partition Colonisation of Ireland • Colonised from 12th-13th centuries then intermittent plantation and conquest. James I’s plantation of Ulster in early 1600s. • Parts of Ireland reconquered in 17th century: Oliver Cromwell (1649-52) and William of Orange (Siege of Derry 1689; Battle of the Boyne 12 July 1690.) • 1690s more settlers to Ulster and more land confiscation. • 1690s-1829, penal laws in Ireland.

9. Ireland before Partition (2) Colonisation of Ireland • 1690s-1800 English then British (from 1707) Crown ruled Ireland indirectly through Anglo-Irish Protestant élite in Dublin parliament. • 1790s: Britain at war with revolutionary France; Catholic Relief Act 1793. • 1798 failed uprising of United Irishmen led to 1801 Act of Union.

10. Ireland before Partition (3) After 1801 Act of Union • From 1801 Britain controlled Ireland directly through the Union yet Ireland ‘was still governed differently from the rest of the kingdom, and marked off as a semi-colonial dependency’ (O’Leary and McGarry, 1996). • Irish nationalism and unionism as 19th century products; earlier religious and ethnic picture much more complicated (see Ruane and Todd, 1996). • ‘Repeal of the Union’ movement 1830s-1840s and Home Rule movement after 1870s. • Violent challenges to the Union: small-scale nationalist/republican insurrections.

11. Ireland before Partition (4) After 1801 Act of Union • 1886 and 1893: failed attempts to pass Home Rule bills. 3rd bill due to become law in 1914 – unionists threatened civil war and formed Ulster Volunteer Force. • Interruption of World War delayed implementation of Home Rule. WWI increased Irish nationalist bargaining power and decreased unionist bargaining power.

12. Ireland before Partition (5) Partitioning the island • 1916 Easter Rising; rise of Sinn Féin and its 1918 Westminster electoral victory in Irish constituencies; Irish War of Independence all changed pre-WWI political settlement. • Post-WWI settlement: 26-county Irish Free State with dominion status and 6-county Northern Ireland province of UK with devolved Belfast parliament (Government of Ireland Act 1920 partitions the island). • Aftermath: Irish Civil War; communal violence in Northern Ireland; IRA activism; Ulster Special Constabulary established.

13. Northern Ireland after Partition Consolidation of unionist control • Large minorities on each side of new border. • Sectarian speeches by unionist leadership. • Northern Ireland: sovereignty contested by British and Irish states; political institutions lacked cross-community support; disgruntled Catholic-nationalists. • Irish Free State state- and nation-building project: its ‘Gaelicisation… began a process of alienation by Ulster Unionists from their sense of Irishness and a greater reliance on their sense of Britishness…. Ulster Unionists… saw “Pro-Gaelic” as “Anti-British”’(Hennessey, 1997). • 1948 Irish Government severed ties with British Commonwealth – completely independent Republic of Ireland.

14. Northern Ireland after Partition (2) Catholic mobilisation and the civil rights movement • 1960s NI Prime Minister O’Neill attempted economic and political reforms. • Changes in Catholic community: working-class Catholic relative position worsened 1920s to 1960s. Expanding middle-class. • Continued exclusion and discrimination against Catholics politically, economically and socially. • Organised civil rights movement from around 1964, stemming from nationalist movement.

15. Northern Ireland after Partition (3) Catholic mobilisation and the civil rights movement • From mid-1968 civil rights movement demonstrations and loyalist counter-demonstrations. Violent clashes incl. assault and battery by police. • 1969: political crisis, dissolution of parliament, resignation of O’Neill. Violent communal riots in summer. 1969-1972 est. 30,000 to 60,000 people displaced from homes. • All this led to community vigilantes forming; ultimately led to resurgence of paramilitarism.

16. Civil War Direct Rule • Sectarian violence summer 1969 led to arrival of the British army. • New waves of Provisional IRA recruits due to: internment introduced 1971; Bloody Sunday Jan. 1972; ceasefire of Official IRA May 1972. • Major political realignments of unionist and nationalist politics and political parties at start of 1970s; concurrent violent republican and loyalist paramilitary activity. • Situation worsening; British PM Heath imposed Direct Rule from London March 1972. • Brief attempt at power-sharing Assembly 1974 (Sunningdale talks) then back to Direct Rule.

17. Civil War (2) The ‘long war’ • Collapse of power-sharing Assembly led to long political stalemate and long-term armed conflict. • From 1975 British policy of criminalisation and counter-insurgency: non-jury ‘Diplock courts’; RUC interrogations; undercover operations and use of informers; 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act; 1981/82 ‘supergrass trials’. • 1976 withdrawal of ‘special category’ status from paramilitary prisoners: republican ‘blanket protest’, then ‘no-wash’ protest, then hunger strikes 1980/81. • From 1981 new Sinn Féin ‘ballot box and Armalite’ strategy.

18. Good Friday Agreement On Good Friday Agreement • Principle of consent. • Consociational model: cross-community executive power-sharing; proportionality rules in governmental and public sectors; community autonomy and cultural equality; veto rights for minorities. (See O’Leary, 2001 and Bew, 2005, both on the week 13 reading list.) • ‘Double protection model’ to withstand demographic and electoral change. • Strand 1: internal arrangements. Strand 2: north-south. Strand 3: east-west (British-Irish).

19. Good Friday Agreement On (2) Post-GFA • Symbolic emotional issues: decommissioning, prisoners, policing. • Changing patterns of violence. • Political/electoral changes in both unionism and nationalism (towards the margins). • Deadlock: Oct. 2002 suspension of Assembly. • Sep. 2005 IRA final act of decommissioning. • St Andrews meeting Oct. 2006 betw. parties + British and Irish govts. • 2007 Sinn Fein accepts policing and NI Assembly is restored (policing and justice powers finally devolved to NI Assembly in 2010). • Ongoing problem of dissident republican paramilitaries.

20. Conclusion • The two overarching contemporary polarised identities at the heart of the conflict, Catholic-Irish-Nationalist and Protestant-British-Unionist, are fairly recent historical formations (19th/20th century). • The violent conflict in Northern Ireland in part stems from a long history of English/British colonialism in the island of Ireland and an incomplete decolonisation process (with partition), as well as irredentism of the Irish state.

21. Conclusion (2) • The conflict also stems from 20th century experiences of discrimination and repression within Northern Ireland, communal resistance to this, and violent state response. • Like Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland can be viewed as a ‘double minority’ model of ethno-national conflict (or double majority). Accordingly the ‘double protection model’ of the Good Friday Agreement would arguably be necessary in any such agreement in Northern Ireland if it is believed that consent of a majority of ‘both’ communities is required.

22. Pop Quiz • Has Northern Ireland achieved peace? • Yes • No • It’s complicated…