L'histoire de l'Irlande

IRISH HISTORY

HI 1115

Subject: Give two reasons why the Nothern Ireland conflict began in 1969, and two reasons why the conflict ended in 1993

Ireland is a country which knew violent conflict throughout it history.

Thus the second half of the 20th century is marked by the North-Irish conflict known as the period of The Troubles. This war does not really have a well defined period because the dates are still prone to debates between the historians but they all agree on the brutality and the violence of this war of approximately 40 years. However it seems that the conflict started in 1969 and “finished” in 1993, to justify this period I will emphasize two reasons for each one of these dates.

First of all it is important to recall that the British government after various incidents like the war of independence of 1918, started to examine a certain shape of separation of Ireland between Loyal supporters (in the majority protesting) and nationalists (mainly catholic). Thus the South was going to become the Free State while the part mainly occupied by Loyal supporters would be called the “Nothern Ireland” (Britannica Encyclopaedia, article in Ireland). In spite of this precaution of bulk-heading in order to decrease the path of conflicts, there were still many Irish catholics in the regions of the North( what nourished their feeling of abandonment and discrimination).

The conflict really started in 1969 because of civic, social(ecoomic) and religious reasons. While IRA was geting weaker could not prevent the rise of violence and the confrontations between the two communities which reached at such an important level that the British army has to intervene.

It is true that tensions between the two communities always existed and this conflict primarily takes its sources in the Sixties where the catholics of the north of Ireland continued to see themselves refusing essential civic rights that one granted to the Protestants naturally. In addition as recalled by Andrew Sanders “Irish Political Studies, 1993” of the economic problems are added to the political tensions which leads to a stiffening of the extremists mobilized by Pasteur Paisley and an increasing mobilization of the young people and representatives of the new catholic middle class which profited from the widening of Welfare state after the war. (Beckett, A shorts story of Ireland). Thus founded in 1967, Nothern Ireland Civil Rights Association organizes non-violent walk while taking as a starting point the peaceful campaigns worked out by Matin Luther King against racial discrimination in the United States (Titine Kriesi, tests “peace in Ireland after 40 years of war”). These walks often ran up against the contingents of police and the demonstrator loyal supporters as at the time of walk with Londonderry in 1968 resulting in 77 deaths. This event starts the hostilities between the community in Londonderry and Belfast.

Political instability, the slowness of the civic reforms and the intervention of the special forces (primarily constituted of Irish Protestants) under the order of Chichester Clark to solve the conflicts lead to violent confrontations the most well- known being the battle of Bogside (ghetto catholic in Londonderry) and the attacks of Belfast (surroundings 150 burned catholic houses, six deaths and three hundred casualties). This intolerable climate obliged Harold Wilson to give the order to the English army to intervene and defined a governement largely inspired on the English model.



In 1972, things changed. The IRA killed about 4 British soldiers in 1971 and the Northern Irish Government decided to take a hard line and decided you could imprison people without trial. The Republicans started thinking that they could use their political power to achieve their means. There was a peace settlement. People were tired and wanted peace : there was a willingness to compromise from both the Catholics and the British government.

At the end of 1974, IRA proposed a Christmas truce but this one was not to last because the conflict restarted again in 1975. However, at the same time IRA negotiated secretly with the British Government in order to find a compromise. The Anglo-Irish agreement , signed on the 15th of November 1985 at Hillsborough by Margaret Thatcher and her irish counterpart Fitzgerald, confers to Dublin a right to watch in the business of North. This agreement also reaffirms that the statute of the island could not be changed without the assent of the majority of the Irish population. This concession of the two moderate camps runs up against the violent hostility of the extremists and the talks sink all while maintaining a contact between the parts.

The conflict really end in 1993 when the peace process starts to be set up. Thus in 1993, Dublin opens a new Forum for the peace which led in December to the publication by the British Prime Minister and the Irish Prime Minister of a declaration (known as “of Downing Street”). The Ulster Unionists, the British Government and the IRA

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