Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland

by David McKittrick

President Clinton took many risks in facilitating and encouraging republicans’ move from violence into the political arena, at some points jeopardising America’s relations with Great Britain.

Both of the authors are acutely aware of this last, since we helped write Lost Lives, the 1999 book which gives an account of every death.

Catholics, the second major element of the equation, made up the other one-third of the population and in the main viewed themselves not as British but as Irish. Most of them regarded Northern Ireland as an unsatisfactory and even illegitimate state, believing that an independent united Ireland was the natural political unit for the island. The heart of the Northern Ireland problem lies in this clash between two competing national aspirations. This basic competition is complicated by issues of power, territory and justice.

The third and fourth elements involved were the British and Irish governments.

Unionists feared Home Rule as a threat to the Union with Britain, and as a prelude to complete Irish independence and the ending of Protestant and British domination of Irish affairs.

In the spring of 1914 Unionist leaders organised the smuggling in of 25,000 rifles and 3 million rounds of ammunition from Germany. These were used to arm an unofficial Protestant militia, the Ulster Volunteer Force.

Unionism openly proclaimed its readiness to act outside the law.

By the time World War One ended in 1918, the Irish desire for Home Rule had been swept away and replaced by the demand for an independent Irish republic. The newly formed Irish Republican Army, known as the IRA, began a violent campaign against Britain which is today referred to in the south as the War of Independence.

six north-eastern counties.

Irish nationalists rejected the plan and their war for independence continued until a treaty in 1921 created a twenty-six-county Irish Free State.

Those Catholics considered themselves trapped in this new state, denied their Irish identity, cut off from their co-religionists in the Free State and politically powerless. To this was quickly added another complaint: that the Unionist establishment, which was to run the state on the

basis of Protestant majority rule for the following half-century, actively discriminated against Catholics in the allocation of jobs and housing, over political rights and in other areas.

In 1922 the voting system known as proportional representation (PR) was abolished.

were manipulated out of control in a number of councils where they had a majority of electors. This is one of the clearest areas of discrimination in the whole field of controversy.’

7,500 Unionist voters returned twelve councillors while 10,000 nationalist voters returned only eight. Nationalists branded this boundary manipulation as ‘gerrymandering’, a term which was to have a prominent place in the political lexicon for many decades.

Another senior Unionist was to write to the Unionist cabinet in 1968, against the background of the civil rights campaign, saying:

It was most clearly understood that the arrangement was to be a temporary measure – five years was mentioned.

As a result the Unionist party won the election before a vote was cast.

The British government of the day disapproved of the abolition of PR in local government and asked Craig not to proceed, but when he and his cabinet threatened to resign, British ministers backed down.

‘I don’t know whether you would care at any time to discuss the matter with me; of course I am always at your disposal. But beyond that “I know my place”, and don’t propose to interfere.’

The Ulster Special Constabulary, the heavily armed auxiliary force later known more often as the B Specials, was exclusively Protestant.

one community governed, judged and policed the other.

Special Powers Act, a sweeping piece of legislation which allowed arrests without warrant, internment without trial, unlimited search powers and bans on meetings and publications, as well as providing far-reaching catch-all clauses.

Catholic unemployment was generally more than double Protestant unemployment,

Part of this picture was the result of apparently innocuous practices such as recruitment of staff by word of mouth or on the recommendation of a friend or a relative.

in western

This might be why Irish Catholic birthrates are so high

‘one man – one vote’.

‘The council will decide what wards the houses are to be built in. We are not going to build houses in the South Ward and cut a rod to beat ourselves later on. We are going to see that the right people are put in these houses, and we are not going to apologise for it.’

‘I have always said I am an Orangeman first and a politician and member of this parliament afterwards. All I boast is that we are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state.’ Down the years this, slightly misquoted, entered political folklore as ‘a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’.

‘to remind one party of the triumph of their ancestors over those of the other, and to inculcate the feelings of Protestant superiority over their Roman Catholic neighbours’.

‘The Orange Order ensures that the majority of the majority maintain a rigid stance.

Between 1921 and 1969 only three of fifty-four Unionist cabinet ministers were not members of the Order.

The fact that the man had a distinguished war record and a personal reference from the Prince of Wales himself was not enough to overcome the Orange objection to his religion.

Catholics were not actively persecuted by the authorities; they were not deported to the south; only a comparatively small number, nearly all active republicans, ever experienced internment without trial. The Catholic Church was free to go about its business, and to run its own schools and hospital facilities, though there was much wrangling about whether the Unionist government was adequately contributing to their upkeep. Nationalist newspapers, in particular the Belfast-based Irish News, were generally free to criticise the government and unceasingly did so.

‘the Six County State’.)

third-level education

In contrast to the highly effective communication skills which it would develop during the troubles, the Catholic community was able to attract little attention or sympathy from outsiders.

It was because of the pointlessness of their political programme: they had none, except to say that in an ideal world this state wouldn’t exist. But they had no programme to bring about this ideal world, no function other than to protest. There was nothing the Nationalists could do.

was crushed by the use of internment without trial on both sides of the border,

major 1960s opinion poll found, in fact, that more Protestants than Catholics indicated they were ready to condone violence in support of political ends.

Dublin tended to regard them as an unwelcome nuisance.

Irish nationalism became even fuzzier when the future of Unionists was concerned.

suggested that many Protestants would withdraw with the British, returning to the English and Scottish homelands vacated centuries earlier by their ancestors.

‘I never thought of myself as being part of Northern Ireland. When you went across the border, you felt you were in a different atmosphere, relaxed, at home.’

Captain James Lenox-Conyngham Chichester-Clark,

The seat was thus contested only twice in twelve elections over forty years.

This meant that no polling took place there in Stormont elections between 1929 and 1965.

This occurred in 1940 when the Churchill government approached the Dublin Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, with an offer to explore the option of declaring in favour of Irish unity in return for Irish wartime assistance.

The 1949 cabinet minutes record Labour’s conclusion: ‘Unless the people of Northern Ireland felt reasonably assured of the support of the people of this country, there might be a revival of the Ulster Volunteers

and of other bodies intending to meet any threat of force by force; and this would bring nearer the danger of an outbreak of violence in Ireland.’