Northern Ireland

From Partition to Civil Rights

 How to Speak “Belfast”
(Beware: They Curse – A LOT!)
 At the end of an episode entitled “Bay of Married Pigs” in Season One, one of the
main characters, Carrie Bradshaw played by Sarah Jessica Parker is lamenting
about love.
 Her voice over narration says: "As I sifted through the rubble of my marriage
skirmish, I had a thought. Maybe the fight between marrieds and singles is like the
war in Northern Ireland.
 "We're all basically the same, but somehow we wound up on
different sides. Sure, it'd be great to have that one special
person to walk home with, but sometimes there's nothing
better than meeting your single girlfriends for a night at the
movies."
• Sir, what’s that Fenian cross doing on our wall?
• It’s not a Fenian cross, it’s the type of cross the Irish erected when
there was no such thing as Fenians or Prods.
• What do you mean no such thing as Fenians and Prods?
• Everybody in those days was a member of the Irish Church.
• The Church of Ireland (Anglican), sir?
• No actually it was the Catholic church.
• You mean the Catholics ruled Ulster?
• No. In fact the English ruled Ulster.
• And they were Protestant?
• No, everybody was Catholic in those days.
• So the Fenians ruled Ulster?
• Geoffrey Bell, The Protestants of Ulster, 62
 Updates
• Mistakes in my book
• P. 15
• Kindle Location 921
• P. 26
• Kindle Location 678
• P. 107
• Kindle Location 1138
• Timeline for you – as Appendix 1 at the end of this
PowerPoint.
 General Questions
• Questions on why Protestants are British.
• Watch Noel Large Video (It is online) (4:33)
• Listen to Gusty Spence’s interview
• Clarifications?
• Conditional Loyalty?
• Definitions
• McKittrick and McVea
• Glossary
• Deaths – 329
• Catholic Attitudes on Unification in 1969
 Questions for Today

• McGuinness and Paisley

• Outdoor Relief
• “Radical” Protestants?
• Catholic Free State – ‘Blue Shirts’
Interpretations and
Memory
Construction of Memory
“The Irish want their History like they want a Chinese carryout.
They want it fast, hot and to their taste.” Harry Donaghy – 2008
 Memory

• In the land where memory, or more

precisely, what we choose to
remember, rules everything.
• In Northern Ireland, the past is. . .
Indivisible from the present and so
there is one other major practice
which relates to the here and now:
commemoration.
• Connal Parr.
Tony Catney
 “Commemoration therefore has everything to do
with politics, perhaps less to do with memory, and
(almost) nothing to do with History.”
 Evershed, Jonathan, Ghosts of the Somme, 24.
 Section 1
The Origins of the Modern Conflict
1969-1994
 Northern Attitudes 1965

• Across the Border 1965

• Northern Attitudes -1969
Who/What Led to the Violence of 1969?
Politicians? Paramilitaries?

The British?
 Questions
 Was it the “unfinished” business of 1916?
 What role, if any, did the commemorations of 1916 play in the
outbreak of violence in 1966?
 What role did the battle within Unionism play in the violence of the
late 60s?
 Why did the Civil Rights movement occur when it did in the 1960s?
 Why did some Catholics come to a point where they didn’t believe
they had any future in a NI state and that they could only get justice
in a United Ireland?
 Why did the Protestant working class, the Loyalists, respond the way
they did?
 Did the Provisional IRA deliberately start a war in 1970?
 Origins of the Conflict
Loyalist Perspective
• Tom Roberts (Director of EPIC): “We [paramilitaries]
were the cutting edge of the violence. But we didn’t cause
the violence.”
• Gusty Spence: “The POLITICAL prisoners and the
paramilitaries cannot be made the scapegoats for our
society’s ills because ours was a sick society long before the
fighting men came on the scene.”
• Billy Mitchell: ”We didn’t go to bed one night as ordinary
family men and wake up the next morning as killers.
Conditions were created in the country whereby people did
things they shouldn’t have done.”
• David Ervine: “Did stinking polluted politics come before
paramilitarism? I think the answer to that is “Yes.”
Origins of Violence - Mitchell
Origins of Violence - Ervine
 Origins of the Conflict:
Republican View
• “That the weight of English influence in the Government of
this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all
the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is
essential to the preservation of our liberties and the extension
of our commerce.”
• United Irishmen
• “Ireland unfree shall never be at Peace.”
• Patrick Pearse
• “The fundamental fact that partition and all that it implied, divided
the working class and that this must be removed to achieve the unity
of the working class” (Ta Power Document)
• Martina Anderson and Sinn Fein
• ‘"IRA did not start the war, the war came to us.“’
‘Stinking Polluted Politics’
The Road to the Troubles
A Protestant Parliament for a
Protestant State

Consolidation of the Unionist State

 “Stinking Polluted Politics”

• Consolidation of Unionist Power in Northern Ireland

• Nature of Unionist State
• Voting
• 1922- Abolished PR for local voting
• 1929 – Abolished PR for national elections
• Gerrymandering in Derry
• Gerrymandered districts
• Housing
• Jobs
• Law and Order
• One police officer for every 6 people.
• Special Powers Act - 1922
 Consolidation of Unionism

• 1931 – de Valera
• “There was an Irish solution that had no reference to any other
country; a solution that came from our traditional attitude to life that
was Irish and Catholic. That was the solution they were going to stand
for so long as they were Catholic"
• 1934 – Craig:
• “We are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.”
• 1935 – DeValera
• “Ireland has been a Christian and a Catholic nation" and, he
concluded, "she will remain a Catholic nation".
Maintaining Control
Divide and Conquer
 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots

• Level of unemployment
• Level of poverty
• Poor Law Guardians
• Calvinist
• Poverty was a moral failing
• They were the “moral guardians”
 Poor Law Guardians

• “They felt endowed with a mission: destitute or

unemployed paupers were being punished by God
for some sin they had committed. . . They, the
Guardians, were part of the Wrath of God.”
(Struggle or Starve, 30)
• Lily Coleman told a worker that if the poor worked
as hard looking for work as they did under the
blankets, there would be less unemployment.
(Struggle or Starve, 63)
 Consolidation of Unionism
• 1935 Sectarian Riots in Belfast
• Buck Alec
• 1937 De Valera Constitution and declaration of Eire
• 1938 Progressive Unionist Party
• 1939-1945 World War 2
• Belfast Blitz
• 1949 Ireland becomes a Republic
• 1949 Act of Union
• Only the Parliament of Northern Ireland could end partition.
Consolidation of
the Free State
The ‘Confessional State’
 The Confessional State and Women
• Catholic Church and the State by 1924
• The role of women
• Plough and the Stars – 4:20 mark
• “Not the birth of a nation, but the miscarriage of a nation.’
• What happened?
• Why?
• Who led it?
• What was the goal?
• Ramifications
 De Valera’s Vision for Ireland

• De Valera Constitution
• What was it?
• Who wrote it?
• What was the nature of de Valera’s Irish State?
• Catholic
• Autarky
• Rural
Historical Setting
The 1960s and Civil Rights
 International Situation
• The Events of this period did not happen in a vacuum.
• We will locate the start of the “Troubles’ in 1968-1969 within the
wider context of world politics and events. (THE
GENERATION OF 1968)
• Tied to the post-war Labour Reforms
• Unemployment
• Economic change in the period
Civil Rights
1944 to the 1960s
 Domestic Situation

• Beveridge Report
• The beginning of the Welfare State
• 1944 Butler Act
• “Generation of 1968”
• Failure of Border Campaign
• IRA shift away from Armed struggle for unification.
• The ascension of Captain Terence O’Neill
• The election of Labour led by Harold Wilson
 Road to Civil Rights
• The Second World War
• Impact of British Social Reforms
• Education Act (Butler 1944) Northern Ireland 1947
• Social Reforms: 1945-1951
• What have the British ever done for us?
• Failure of the ‘Border Campaign’ (Operation Harvest) 1956-1962
• Lessons for the IRA
• American Civil Rights Movement
• World Historical Situation in 1960s
• What was happening in the world at this time?
 Civil Rights Movement
• Th NICRA campaigned for a Northern Ireland that was “fair”
and “just” and where everyone was equal.
• IRA and NICRA
• PD
• Student Radicals
Review

■ Unionism/Loyalism:
– The “siege mentality” of Unionism
– Recreated the “Western Front” in Northern
Ireland
– The fear of a Catholic State
– Working class second class citizens
■ Conditioned
■ Spence at 4:40 mark
– Created “Cold House for Catholics”
 Review
■ Unionism
– Fear of a Catholic State
– Maintain the Unionist state
– Keep working class Protestants “loyal” and in their place.”
– Keep Catholics “in their place.”
■ Nationalism
– Reform within the Northern Ireland state
■ Republican Attitudes:
– To solve problem
■ Britain would have to leave
■ Protestants would realize they were Irish
– i.e. “deluded Irishmen”
■ Southern Irish Attitudes
– North was a nuisance
■ Catholic Church
– Reinforced segregation
– Opposed integrated education
Appendix
Timeline
Timeline: Partition to Civil Rights 1921-1967

• Partition
• Consolidation of Unionist Power in Northern Ireland
• Consolidation of a Catholic state, in particular, under De Valera and virtual
independence from Britain: 1932-1948
• The Second World War
• British Social Reforms
• Education Act (Butler 1944) Northern Ireland 1947
• Social Reforms: 1945-1951
• The Border Campaign: 1956-1962
 • After Partition
• Gerrymandering
• Voting
• Housing
• Policing
• Jobs
• 1944 Butler Act
• “Generation of 1968”
Timeline • Beveridge Report
• The beginning of the Welfare State
• 1956-1962 -Failure of Border Campaign
• 1962-1969 - IRA shift away from Armed struggle for
unification.
• 1963 - The ascension of Captain Terence O’Neill
• 1964 - The election of Labour led by Harold Wilson
 • Civil Rights to Civil War 1967-
1970
• Founding of NICRA 1967
• First Civil Rights Marches:
• August 1968
• 5 October 1968
Timeline • PD March to Derry January 1969
• UVF/UPV bombings March-April
1969
• Battle of the Bogside August 1969
• Sectarian conflict in Belfast: August
1969
 • Civil War to Cease Fires 1970-
1994
• Internment 1971
• Bloody Sunday 1972
• Proroguing of Stormont March
1972
• Special Category Status
• Bloody Friday 1972
Timeline • Sunningdale and the UWC Strike
1974
• Dublin-Monahan Bombings May
1974
• IRA Truce 1975
• Criminalization 1976
 • Civil War to Cease Fires 1970-
1994
• Blanket and Dirty Protests 1976-
1981
• Hunger Strikes 1981
• Sinn Fein becomes a political force
1981
• Anglo-Irish Accord 1985
• Eskund captured 1987
Timeline • Gibraltar and Milltown 1988
• Loughall Massacre 1988
• Humes-Adams Talks 1988-1993
• Brooke statement on British Self-
Interest
 • Civil War to Cease Fires 1970-1994
• UVF Kitchen Cabinet 1989-1994
• UDA coup and increase of sectarian
killing 1989-1994
• CLMC Ceasefire 1991
• Jim Gibney’s Bodenstown Speech June
1992
• Shankill Bomb and Greysteel Massacre
Oct. 1993
Timeline • Downing Street Declaration December
1993
• Trevor King Killing and Ballynahinch –
1994
• PIRA Ceasefire August 1994
• CLMC Ceasefire October 1994
 1969 Survey

• 33% of Catholics accepted Northern Ireland’s place

in the UK.
• 80% against the use of force to unify Ireland
• Source: R. Rose Governing Without Consensus: An Irish
Perspective

backQuestions
 Conditional Loyalty

• Americans, I think, sometimes get puzzled by people in

Ireland who call themselves loyalists yet would apparently
up arms against the forces of the crown.
• But a loyalist arrangement is a dynamic accord. It doesn’t
mean we will be blindly loyal to you. It means we will be
loyal to you if you are loyal to us. If you act the way we
think a king should act, you can be our king.
• — - Terry Pratchett, “Straight from the Heart, via the
Groin,” A Slip of the Keyboard
 Conditional Loyalty

• But a loyalist arrangement is a dynamic accord. It doesn’t

mean we will be blindly loyal to you. It means we will be
loyal to you if you are loyal to us. If you act the way we
think a king should act, you can be our king.
• “If you are the God we think you are, you will
understand. And if you are not the God we think you are,
to Hell with you.” So much of Discworld has come from
odd serendipitous discoveries like that.
• Terry Pratchett, “Straight from the Heart, via the Groin,” A
Slip of the Keyboard
BACK
 Conditional Loyalty
• Erin Hinson
• Conditional loyalty is a term that is crucial to understanding the loyalist ethos.
The PUL community viewed the 1912 Home Rule crisis as a threat to their
identity and a threat to the union with Britain. Consequently, even though it
meant organizing mass and potentially violent resistance against the British
government to which they pledged their loyalty, they felt justified in forming the
UVF because that loyalty was dependent on the maintenance of the union. The
perceived threat to the union was coming from the British state, and therefore,
that state would have been seen as a legitimate target. The previous incarnations
of Home Rule saw unionists determined to keep the whole of Ireland within the
rule of the United Kingdom, however, the third Bill marked a shift in this
interest, and unionists were now content to fight only for Ulster. Because of this
resistance from 1912-1914, loyalist paramilitaries were able to justify armed
resistance against state forces (police and army) in Northern Ireland, though they
professed loyalty to the union which supported those state forces.
 Impact of “Conditional Loyalty”

• They [protestant workers] are not bitter at the

slaughter of their own people in one of the most
pointless military battles the world has ever seen, a
battle judged necessary at the time by those not of
their class, not of their country. They are not angry,
they are not bitter, they do not protest; they are
proud….That is their tragedy
• (Bell, 1976: p. 144.)
 IRA and CLMC Ceasefires

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