TEORÍA DEL DESARROLLO HUMANO: ROSE MARIE RIZZO

The conflict in Northern Ireland dates back to the sixteenth century. It began following the decision by Queen Elizabeth I to begin the ―settlement of Ulster‖ with Protestant English, Welsh and Scottish settlers in northeastern regions of Ireland, so as to ensure the presence of a British stronghold on the island of Ireland to prevent a staging ground for attacks by Britain‘s

Catholic adversaries in mainland Europe. Given its long and pronounced history, it would be well beyond the scope this paper to discuss the entirety of the history of this conflict, even in brief. Still, in needing to provide an adequate explanation for the roots of the current conflict, it is perhaps best to start in the early Twentieth Century. After a hard fought guerrilla war led by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) lasting from January 1919 until July 1921, Republican leader Michael Collins negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty with British Prime Minister Lloyd George. The result was the securing of dominion status for the new Irish Free State. This treaty was far from perfect from a Republican standpoint, however, as it possessed a number of shortcomings, the most important of which was that it resulted in the partition of the six counties of Ulster. These counties would come to be known as ―Northern Ireland,‖ and with their Protestant Unionist majority, would remain a part of the United Kingdom.

The Irish, represented at the time through the Dáil Éireann, were never consulted about the partition of Northern Ireland, and regarded the 1920 Government of Ireland Act that enabled it to be illegitimate, not least since it broke up the province of Ulster by omitting the three counties with the largest Catholic majorities in order to ensure the maintenance of a Protestant majority.1 Meanwhile, for Catholics trapped in the new statelet, an equal future free from discrimination was not to be. James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, was determined to ensure one-party rule (that is by Protestant Unionists) indefinitely, and in so doing abolished proportional representation and gerrymandered the constituencies. All judges were to be Unionists, appointed by the Northern Ireland Stormont government. The heavily armed auxiliary police force, the Ulster Special Constabulary—known as the B Specials—were all Protestant, and the police force itself—the Royal Ulster Constabulary or RUC—was 90%

1

Jonathan Powell, Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, London: The Bodley Head, 2008, 42.

Michael Andrew Berger 83 Protestant. Meanwhile the jobs in the civil service, engineering works and the shipyards were all overwhelmingly kept for Protestants, with Catholics being twice as likely to be unemployed. 2

For the next forty years, the IRA attempted in various instances to wage campaigns aimed at bringing down the Stormont government in Northern Ireland and expelling British control. The attempts were largely unsuccessful, however. Meanwhile the Protestant Unionists managed to maintain, unhindered, a religious and political one-party state up until the late 1960s. The source of change in the 1960s came from a civil rights movement, which campaigned for one man one vote, changes to electoral boundaries, anti-discrimination in the provision of social housing, the repeal of special powers and the disbanding of the B Specials.3

While the civil rights movement would help to bring about changes, in conjunction with a progressive Unionist Prime Minister in the form of Terence O‘Neill, it would also serve to stir up sectarian tensions through the bitterness of the reaction it provoked in Unionist circles.4 This tension gave way to Loyalist (militant Unionists) aggression and violence, which played a major part in creating the post-1960s ―Troubles‖. As Richard English explains, ―Just as the IRA felt that the illegitimacy and injustice of the north legitimated their own military existence, so loyalists for their part considered the republican and nationalist threat to their state a sufficient justification for carrying out appalling actions.‖5

The situation finally came to a head in August 1969, when the Unionist Apprentice Boys staged their traditional march in Derry and triggered a flare up in violence as skirmishes between Catholics and Protestants escalated into something close to a full-scale uprising.6 In wake of the violence, the authorities lost control over a substantial part of Derry city, and rather than abating,

2

Richard Ashmore, Lee Jussim and David Wilder, Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 153.

3

Powell, 43.

4

Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA, London: Pan Books, 2004, 99.

5

English.

6

David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland, Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2002, 54.

violence then continued to spread to other parts of Northern Ireland. Violence engulfed large numbers of Protestants and Catholics in the Falls and Ardoyne-Crulim Road areas of north Belfast. As a result of the violence in Northern Ireland, 1,800 families fled their homes—with over 1,500 of them being Catholic. Moreover, over 80% of the premises damaged were occupied by Catholics, and six of eight people killed in August were Catholics.7 Since one of the primary roles of the IRA was supposed to be the defense of Catholic areas against the security forces and loyalists, the IRA came under heavy criticism for its evident ineffectiveness.8 The consensus that emerged in the back streets of the Catholic ghetto was that the current IRA had failed them, and that a new defense force was needed. The result was the emergence of the Provisional IRA, which in separating from the Official IRA (then largely committed to nonviolent nationalism) returned to traditional physical force republicanism9, with terrorist violence soon coming to be their primary mode of attack.