UNDERSTANDING ULSTER
So here goes, my potted history of Ulster in twenty-one chapters that, almost four years after its inspiration, has finally caught up with the present day. I fully expect to be adding to it in the not too distant future.
What is the BACKSTOP all about, Gilberto, an Italian friend working in Germany, and Vicky, an American friend working in Switzerland, asked me? As said, like the eponymous film ‘It’s Complicated’, but, as luck would have it, there is a faction - small, possibly unknown - in those north eastern counties of Ireland causing the complication that actually seeks independence, from Britain, but not in order to unite with the southern Republic – no, to be an autonomous entity – and since these self-same counties are in the historical province of Ulster (which by the way also includes two counties in the Republic) and my reviews of ‘raisons d’autonomie’ have not yet dealt with a region beginning with U...
I. CELTS, PICTS, ROMANS, DANES & SAXONS
II. CHRISTIANITY
III. ALLIES & TRIBAL CONFLICTS
IV. TUDOR REFORMATION
V. PLANTATIONS
VI. SCOTLAND
VII. CHICHESTER
VIII. CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT VS. CROMWELL
IX. WILLIAM OF ORANGE
X. HOUSE OF HANOVER
XI. PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY
XII. UNITED IRISHMEN & THE ACT OF UNION
XIII. THE GREAT FAMINE
XIV. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL
XV. PARTITION
XVI. CIVIL WAR
XVII. THE TROUBLES
XVIII. EUROPEAN UNION
XIX. GOOD FRIDAY
XX. THE BACKSTOP
XXI. BORDER IN THE IRISH SEA
I. CELTS, PICTS, ROMANS, DANES & SAXONS
Legends and earliest records in Britain and Ireland substantially begin with the Celts, an amalgam of tribal societies from different corners of Europe (including Switzerland and northern Italy) that settle the British Isles midway through the first millennium BC. Of course, there are already people living in this north western European archipelago, but time has mostly forgotten them, save for the Picts who lived in the far north of Britain, today’s Scotland.
These Celtic tribes are generally not related, but just share a similar culture. In Ireland, these are, inter alia, the Iverni living in today’s West Cork, and the Darini, living in today’s south Antrim and nor o Down. There are many more; several, such as the Brigantes, the Coriondi and the Gangani, having the same name as British tribes, but no conclusions can be drawn from this, as all these names are just ‘given’ names by the writings of the earliest historians, Ptolemy in particular.
Whilst the south of Britain is successively invaded – first by the Romans, then by the Angles (whence the modern country's current name), Jutes and Saxons, and then by the Vikings – Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Ireland do not experience these waves of immigrants intermingling with and then overpowering their Celtic culture and traditions to the same extent, except for the Isle of Man and natural, sheltered landings around the coast of Ireland like Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick which actually begin life as Viking settlements over the course of the second half of the 9th century – a little Danelaw in Ireland, well Norelaw (Danelaw was the eastern half of England in the 9th century ruled by the Danish Vikings, whereas the Dublin Vikings come from Norway).
However, well before the Vikings arrive on the shores of Britain and Ireland, the coastal Celts of the north east of Ireland (the Darini or, in Gaelic, the Dal Riada) invade the Scottish Western Isles and Highlands, establishing an Irish Gaelic kingdom centered on the island of Argyll. Thus, by the start of the 7th century, Scotland is not one people but four, with different cultures speaking different languages and owing fealty to different kings – the Gaels in the North West and the Picts in the North East, but also the Bretons (Celto-Romans) trapped between the remnants of their Antonine (turf) Wall stretching from the Clyde to the Forth, and the Saxons advancing from their strongholds along Hadrian's Wall from the mouth of the Tyne to the Firth of Solway.
The Scottish Gaels and Picts intermarry and slowly become one, and the Bretons in the south gradually disappear, some of their leaders reinventing themselves in Celtic northern Wales, leaving the lowlands nowadays known as The Scottish Borders to the Saxons.
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II. CHRISTIANITY
Christianity, in the form of just another minority religious sect, comes to England first. It is the start of the 2nd century AD and Roman culture and fads are taking hold. Often persecuted by Rome, the Christian faith triumphs when it is adopted by Roman Emperor Constantine in 313. The Church in England quickly becomes more established and a year later sends three bishops – Restitutus and Adelfius, both of London, and Eborius of York – to the Council of Arles, where the first major schism, Donatism, that the now emerging Roman Catholic faith is confronted with, is outlawed.
However, when the Romans leave England and the Saxons and their Teutonic allies invade, Christianity is forced out to the western periphery of Roman Britain, and it is there (perhaps in Cumbria) we read that Patrick the son of a Celto-Roman church deacon decides to return to the north of Ireland (allegedly in 432 AD), after having escaped from enslavement by pirates there, to preach The Gospel. Towards the end of his life, Patrick is recognized as Bishop of Armagh, which see has remained that of the primate of all Ireland (north and south) to this day.
Thus, Christianity comes to Ireland late, finding a safe and relatively tranquil haven from the heretic Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, and Patrick’s successors, men and women like Finbarr, Finian, Brigit, Ita, Brendan, Columba, Aidan and Columbanus (the list is endless) continue his mission to preach the gospel and convert the heathen, first in Ireland, and later across the rest of the British Isles, founding famous monasteries such as Iona on an island off the west coast of Scotland and Lindisfarne off the east coast of Northumbria.
Some monks travel further afield again; Brendan mythically to North America, but Columbanus more productively to Europe, founding dozens of monasteries across France and northern Italy. And so, the new Europe of Frankish and Ostrogothic kings and dukes is returned to the true faith of Rome, and the knowledge and traditions of the Roman Empire are saved for posterity in the scriptoria of busy monasteries, in Ireland and elsewhere.
But then, at the end of the 9th century, the Vikings arrive to initially plunder the coast, then further inland, and then later to settle in Dublin and other coastal locations. These raids inland – where the Celtic clans (tuath, several hundred) and their chieftains (rí) herd their cows and skirmish with each other – lead to much destruction of the wealth created and accumulated by the abbots and bishops (aes dána) in the form of decorative liturgical artifacts, illuminated manuscripts and the like, over the long and comparatively peaceful period of “The Island of Saints and Scholars”.
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III. ALLIES & TRIBAL CONFLICTS
At the start of the 11th century, the Irish Celtic tribes having quasi-consolidated into five kingdoms (Munster in the south, Leinster in the east, Connaught in the west, O’Neill in the north, and Meath in the middle, but that’s a simplification), the King of Munster, Brian Boru (Brian O’Brien really), through force of arms manages to unite Ireland and in particular to usurp the incumbent self-styled High King of Ireland, Malachy McDonnell, an O’Neill.
Defending his high kingship, Brian Boru’s army in 1014 AD wins a major victory at the Battle of Clontarf against a combined force of the King of Leinster and the Dublin Vikings. However, Brian himself loses his life, and in consequence Malachy McDonnell (of the O’Neills) regains the high kingship, but, contrary to popular belief, the independence of Dublin and the other Viking settlements continues on for another thirty odd years until a new High King in-opposition (i.e. the other Kings didn’t agree), Dermot MacMaelnamough (loosely translated: Son of the Cattle Thief), the King of Leinster, drives the foreigners out of Wexford and Waterford entirely and takes over control of Viking Dublin.
The kings of the five provinces continue to vie for the High Kingship, and a further 100 years on, another King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough, exiled by the High King of the day, the King of Connaught Rory O’Connor, decides to invite a minor Norman baron with lands on the south coast of Wales to help him regain his kingdom across the Irish Sea. Normans were Vikings who had been ‘permitted’ to settle in north western France. Dermot offers the minor baron, Richard deClere a.k.a. Strongbow, his daughter Aoife’s hand in marriage. History has been inclined to paint this act as high treason; however, there was in fact considerable precedent.
Back in 43 AD, it had been the Celtic queen Verica of the Atrebates tribe, who had been ousted from power by Caratacus, king of the Catuvellauni, who invited Roman Emperor Claudius to invade England. And again, in 449, it was Vortigern, leader of the post-Roman Britons who invited the Jutes to help him fight the Pictish incursions coming down from Scotland. The Jutes came and together with their northern European allies the Angles and the Saxons took over. And finally, it was the Anglo-Saxon king of England, Edward the Confessor, who in 1052 promised his distant cousin William of Brittany, later The Conqueror, (who had sheltered Edward in exile in Normandy during the years of Danish rule in England) the succession to the English throne, as Edward himself was childless.
In Ireland, Strongbow proves to be quite as successful as his English liege Henry II's ancestor, the aforementioned William The Conqueror, a century earlier had been invading England, and he recaptures Leinster. Dermot is reinstated as King of Leinster, and Aoife and Richard are married in Christchurch Cathedral in the year 1070. A year later, when Dermot dies, Strongbow becomes King of Leinster. Ah yes, by now, most everyone is Christian and there is only one variety: Roman Catholicism. Had it stayed like that, history would certainly have been different.
Anyway, the other provincial Kings of Ireland are not best pleased with the arrival of this new blood, and neither is his king, the mighty Henry II of England and Aquitaine (through marriage), who fears the establishment of a rival Norman state across the water. Henry invades Ireland, supported by a papal bull, since the Pope, Adrian IV, uniquely an Englishman, is somewhat at loggerheads with the schismatic overly-scholarly know-it-all Irish priesthood. The Celtic provincial Kings and lords are quick to submit to Henry, and Henry and Strongbow reach a compromise in which Strongbow and his senior men are allowed territory as vassals. In short, Henry II is now in charge.
Pope Adrian’s successor, Alexander III, duly rubber-stamps Henry II's rule and Henry appoints his youngest legitimate son with Eleanor of Aquitaine, John Lackland (no land) to be Lord of Ireland. When in 1199 John’s older brother, Richard the Lionheart, who has spent most of his life fighting Saracens in the Holy Land and various rebellions in Aquitaine, dies at the age of 42 from a gangrenous wound, John becomes King of England and Lord of Ireland.
In practice, however, John’s suzerainty in Ireland extends only 30 or so miles out from Dublin, across a territory known as The Pale. Elsewhere, the Celtic kinglets and new Norman barons rule and battle autonomously, with the Normans slowly getting the upper hand so that by the end of the 13th century, much of Ireland is under Norman rule. These new rulers go by names such as FitzGerald, Burke, Barry, Prendergast, Fleury, Marshall, Petit, Henry, de Cogan and le Poer, all well-known family names in the modern Ireland of today. Except in Ulster in the north, O’Neill continues to hold sway and is less inclined than the new Norman peers to recognise the overlordship of the King of England, and similarly elsewhere, Celtic lords (like the O’Brien and MacCarthy clans in the south west) also hold on to power.
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IV. TUDOR REFORMATION
As the Normans settle in and progressively take over, events external to Ireland – the 100 Year War between England and France, the Black Death, the English Succession Wars of the Roses – make centralised control of Ireland a low priority for their successive lieges, the English sovereigns, thus preventing what briefly might have become a homogeneous all-islands Norman united kingdom (excepting Scotland, that's another story) actually happening. Instead, the Irish Norman barons, seeing an opportunity for independence from the rule of the English king, become ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’, and the Celtic leaders simultaneously regain some ground.
A new English dynasty, still descendants of William The Conqueror, comes to power after the War of the Roses – the Tudors. The second Tudor King of England, Henry VIII, like many a king in his day, has a great appetite for power, is not averse to violence, likes women and wants to pass it all on to a male heir, and, as time marches on, ever more desperately so. When Pope Clement VII, understandably won’t grant Henry a divorce from his Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V of the House of Habsburg, King of Spain, Archduke of Austria, Lord of the Netherlands, Duke of Burgundy, King of Sicily and Naples, and Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Germans, in order to wed another woman, who is younger and prettier and Henry hopes will give him a son, Henry takes the law into his own hands.
Borrowing from Martin Luther, whose princely adherents in northern Germany to his religious reformatory ideas are giving Charles and Clement headaches, he disputes the authority of the Pope over religious matters and then goes on to make himself head of the Church in England, and to ask his bishops for their opinion on the validity of his marriage to Catherine (who had been married to Henry’s older brother Arthur for five months when she was sixteen before Arthur died). The year is 1534 and England’s bishops agree with Henry that the Bible says that if a man marries his brother’s wife, that union will be cursed, and hence that his marriage to Catherine can legally be annulled.
Henry then marries the lust of his eyes, whose name is Anne Boleyn, whose paternal grandmother is Margaret Butler, a scion of an Irish earl of Norman descent, and a co-heiress of the family's lands in Kilkenny and Tipperary. Thus the first Protestant Royal Court is founded in a Habsburg-dominated Europe that genuinely, if perhaps also expediently, holds the belief the right to rule comes from God and that the Pope is God’s representative on Earth, said representative having just lost a shed load of wealth and power with Henry’s annexation of his clergy and estates in England.
Obviously, the Pope throws the book at Henry and he is excommunicated and basically declared free game – anything to bring the heretic to heel. Simultaneously Henry sets about ‘converting’ his own barons to his Church of England through Parliamentary Act, coercion and corruption. For most, it is a simple enough matter of accepting Henry instead of the Pope as head of the Church, and that Henry’s will in the appointment of the religious hierarchy is now absolute, rather than just very influential; creed (Nicaean), prayers and liturgy all staying the same.
Alas for Henry, the more distant from his court his barons rule, the less inclined they are to join his new church. These refuseniks are branded ‘recusant’ and actually include other adherents to emerging, more genuine Protestant sects. They, and obviously this includes all the Irish barons, Norman and Celtic, are all persecuted. After all, they and the Irish in paticular, in supporting the Pope, are therefore potential allies of the Habsburgs and/or Valois-ruled France who have been given ‘carte blanche’ by the Pope to invade England, and Ireland could be a strategic stepping stone in any such expedition.
When an uprising (unsupported by Spain or France) against the heretic King, by Lord Offaly, ‘Silken’ Thomas Fitzgerald, the Xth Earl of Kildare (i.e. also of Norman stock and incidentally from a long line of supporters of the House of York, the losing side against the Tudors in the Wars of the Roses), in the form of a ‘Catholic Crusade’, is quashed by Henry, the Irish Parliament (expediently loyal to Henry) in 1541 declare Henry King of Ireland.
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V. PLANTATIONS
Despite Henry VIII’s best efforts, Ireland remains stubbornly Catholic and from time to time, a Catholic monarch regains the throne of England to give them hope, to begin with and almost immediately, Mary I, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon. But, although Mary becomes infamous for her Marian persecutions which copy the methods of her husband Philip of Spain, burning some 250 English Protestants at the stake, she actually continues the new practice of plantations in Ireland, initiated during the short-lived regency of her half-brother Edward, Henry’s last-born and only male heir.
Generally under the pretext of educating the cattle-herding Irish pastoralists in the ways of mixed agriculture, plantations involve the evicting of troublesome landowners, both Irish and Norman, and their kinsmen (in the case of Irish chieftains) and sometimes their serfs and tenants (in the case of Norman barons), and contractually handing the land to new settlers from England. The new settlers are always Protestant, the evicted people always Catholic.
Thus, Catholic Mary evicts the cattle-raiding O’Moores and O’Connors from today’s counties Laois and Offaly replacing them with Protestant farmers. And when Mary passes away, young and childless, her protestant half-sister Elizabeth I continues with the plantation politics, initiating a first ‘mass’ plantation, by confiscating the lands of the rebellious Norman Earl of Desmond in Munster and much of the lands of his allies the McCarthys and other clans.
But the resistance against the English Protestant monarchy never flags, and distant mutual kinsmen Hugh O’Neill of Ulster and Hugh Roe O’Donnell of Tyrconnell, together rulers of the North (where the Normans never settled), at war with Elizabeth’s regime for almost a decade, next offer their allegiance (i.e. the throne of Ireland) to Philip II of Spain. Spain eventually sends an expeditionary force to Ireland in 1601, which comes to grief after landing at Kinsale, in a famous battle between the Spanish and O’Neill and O’Donnell on the one side and the English army under Sir Charles Blount on the other.
Six year later these earls flee Ireland forever, and their arch enemy Sir Arthur Chichester, the English Governor of Carrickfergus (an imposing castle at the mouth of Belfast Lough) gains the ascendancy permanently when he is appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland by Elizabeth’s successor, James I, a Scot!
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VI. SCOTLAND
James I, who ascends the English throne in 1603, is also James VI of Scotland, where, unlike in Ireland, there has been a royal hegemony since Kenneth McAlpin of the Dal Riada (from Ulster) unites the Gaels and the Picts under one throne in 843 AD, which royal control is extended to include some of the lands south of the Clyde (Glasgow) and the Firth of Forth (Edinburgh) by Kenneth’s grandson Constantine II, the succession to which, mind you, takes another 200 years of strife between different branches of Kenneth’s descendants to sort out, before becoming legally based on the rules of male primogeniture in 1152 when Malcolm IV inherits from his grandfather David I.
In control though this long lineage of kings is north of the line from the mouth of the Clyde (Glasgow today) to the Firth of Forth (Edinburgh), let’s call it Alba, south of this line and north of Hadrian’s Wall, the earls and barons of Anglian and Breton descent, intermarried with Danes from Northumbria, look to the English crown as their natural overlord. The monarchs of England’s and Scotland’s response to this never-ending source of trouble is a series of marital unions punctuated by intermittent war.
The first of these marital ties occurs as early as 1070 when King Malcolm III of the House of Dunkeld, great grandson of Malcolm II, the last of the House of Alpin, and successor (though rather differently to how portrayed in W. Shakespeare’s play) of Macbeth, marries Margaret, daughter of King Edmund II of the House of Wessex. As William the Conqueror of course has invaded England in 1066, this is rather backing the wrong horse. However, amends are made when Malcolm and Margaret’s daughter Matilda marries Henry I, son of William the Conqueror. Next, Alexander II, great great grandson of Malcolm III marries Joan of England, daughter of King John Lackland, and finally Alexander III, Alexander II’s son by his second wife, marries Margaret of England, daughter of Henry III.
When Alexander III dies, Margaret, his infant granddaughter and daughter of the King of Norway, succeeds and Scotland is reigned by guardians for six years until Margaret’s premature death aged 7 in 1290. A war of succession ensues between John Baliol and Robert the Bruce, both descendants of Malcolm III via Prince Henry, a junior grandson of Malcolm, and Henry’s son David of Huntingdon. As great grandfather David’s title suggests, both aspirants have grown up in an English milieu, as both Henry and David married English noblewomen.
John Baliol, with the support of England’s Edward I, initially is crowned King, but the Scottish lords turn against him as he simply rules as a vassal of Edward. John is deposed and abdicates in 1296 and after many years of war, his cousin Robert is recognized as King by his nobles after his victory over Edward II at Bannockburn, which kingship is recognized by Pope John XXII in 1320.
When things settle down, Robert’s son, David II marries Joan, daughter of Edward II, but David dies childless, and thus the son of his sister married to Scottish nobleman Walter Stewart, Robert II succeeds to the throne, founding the House of Stewart.
A few generations on, James I, Robert II’s grandson marries Joan Beaufort, a granddaughter of John of Gaunt, the father of Henry IV, first English king from the victorious House of Lancaster post the Wars of the Roses. A further few generations on, the Scottish royal house of Stewart and the new English House of Tudor, unite once more when James IV marries Margaret, sister of Henry VIII and daughter of Henry VII, who has re-united the English dynasty by marrying his cousin Elizabeth of York.
A union of the two crowns is now nigh, and religious persuasions, just like elsewhere in Europe, are at the heart of the unfolding of events. In 1542, Mary, only living legitimate child of James IV’s successor James V, is six days old when her father dies and she accedes to the throne. Scotland is ruled by regents while she grows up and is educated at the Valois royal court of France.
France is a Catholic country and an enemy of England, and Mary marries their Dauphin, that is the French Crown Prince, who briefly reigns France as Francois II. When Francois dies in 1560, Mary returns to Scotland to take over control from her regents.
Things have changed much in Scotland while Mary has been away. As elsewhere in northern Europe, a strong disillusionment with the Catholic Church as run by the Rome-based popes from very afar has set in, and many of her nobles, including her erstwhile regents are inclined towards reform, the more as the people want it, encouraged by a fervent disciple of Geneva’s reformer Calvin, John Knox.
Mary, however, is a staunch Catholic, and, although she tolerates the growth of the new Presbyterian protestant faith in Scotland, she chooses a powerful Catholic English nobleman, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, like Mary a great grandchild of Henry VII, as her second husband.
Mary’s marriage to Henry Stuart is not well received in either Scotland, or, more importantly England, since, if, as is beginning to seem likely, Elizabeth I dies childless, Mary will be first-in-line to succeed, as the only surviving descendant of Henry VII. A complicated series of events, now, perhaps almost inevitably, lead to Mary's abdication and subsequent house arrest by Elizabeth, and ultimately her execution.
Mary’s infant son succeeds to the Scottish throne as James VI on Mary’s abdication, and the running of the affairs of state pass to Mary’s illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, who has been a politically astute religious reformer and council to Mary during her reign. James is brought up at Stirling Castle in the noble Protestant Mar family.
Things get complicated for James as well and he briefly ends up in prison, but by 1584 he is the absolute monarch of Scotland, and when in 1603 Elizabeth I dies, he accedes to the English throne as James I of England (and Ireland), styling himself King of Great Britain and Ireland, and under one monarch these kingdoms remain until in 1922 the people of southern Ireland, after many more centuries of agitation are granted independence, leaving a rump behind known to this day as the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (UKOGBNI, it could be in Africa!).
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VII. CHICHESTER
Arthur Chichester is the second scion of a loyal (to Elizabeth, James and Protestantism) family from Devon to take charge at Carrickfergus, England's stronghold in the troublesome north, succeeding (by meritorious appointment, not birth) his brother John who has been killed in a heavy defeat in 1597 at the (first) Battle of Carrickfergus against O’Neill’s and O’Donnell’s Scots Gaelic ally, Sorley Boy McDonnell from Kintyre.
Arthur Chichester is an immensely wily, competent and ruthless man, and under his authority, the planting of colonists in Ulster gets a new lease of life. An earlier attempt in 1570 had actually been called-off by Elizabeth when it degenerated into too much death and violence within the indigenous population. Initially, Chichester’s intentions are to grant the forfeited O’Neill and O’Donnell lands (they've left; Flight of the Earls) to Gaelic lords who have supported the Crown during O’Neill's and O’Donnell's 9 Years War with the Crown. However, O’Doherty of Donegal is unhappy with his share and rebels, only to be defeated and killed.
In response, Chichester now expropriates all the landowners of the province (known rebels or otherwise) and redistributes the land to British (Scottish and English) settlers and also rewards loyal servicemen (servitors) including himself with estates, and in his own case also the eel fishing rights on the Bann and Lough Neagh, generally vastly aggrandizing himself and his friends during the course of his tenure.
The new planters are explicitly banned from taking on Irish tenants or selling their new land to any Irishman, and bring their own womenfolk. This latter aspect is in sharp contrast to similar movements of the time elsewhere (e.g. the settlement of America by the Spanish and the English) and indeed to earlier Irish plantations. New towns (markets and garrisons) are built, and the evicted indigenous population is relocated to these strongholds to work as servants and tradesmen. All Catholic church properties are transferred to the Protestant Church of England. In short, it is a thorough affair, but over time, the poorer land passes back to the Irish and the Irish remain stubbornly Catholic.
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VIII. CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT VS. CROMWELL
As the 17th century progresses, smaller plantations continue to be founded, inter alia in Wexford and coastal Cork, a second time in Laois and Offaly, and in Kilkenny, Wicklow, Tipperary, Leitrim and Longford – everywhere really. Foreign nationals are also encouraged to purchase land from The Crown and English Catholics equally are permitted to relocate, which proves popular among them as their persecution in England is fierce.
But by 1641, Irish Catholic landowners have had enough and Phelim O’Neill (a third generation relative of Hugh) instigates a rebellion in Ulster, and up to 5,000 of the recently arrived Scottish and English planters are killed. The rebellion becomes countrywide and by 1642 a confederate Irish government with a parliament in Kilkenny is established. Protestant landowners, naturally enough supported by the King’s Irish parliament in Dublin, form militias there where they have strength in numbers to defend themselves and retaliate, in turn killing many Catholic civilians. It is a proper sectarian civil war.
By mid-1643, the Confederacy controls the whole of Ireland, bar Ulster, where its rebellion started, Dublin, England’s bastion in Ireland, and Cork. With Great Britain itself immersed in its own civil war between the Royalist supporters of Charles I, who has inherited the throne from his father James I, and the forces of Parliament rebelling against Charles’ uncompromising absolutist rule and his support of a very ‘high church’ (i.e. Roman Catholic) form of Church of England Protestantism, the situation in Ireland remains ‘as is’ until Charles is defeated, convicted and beheaded by the newly coined Commonwealth in 1649.
The leader of the new Commonwealth's Parliament and its successful general in the English civil war, Oliver Cromwell, now known as Lord Protector, immediately turns his attention and that of his New Model Army to Ireland, where the situation from the Parliamentarian perspective has worsened considerably as the Roman Catholic Anglo-Norman Royalist Ulick Burke, the 5th Earl of Clanricarde, has persuaded many Royalist Protestant landowners to join him and the Confederates in arms against the new Lord Protector. Charles may have been executed, but several young sons have survived him, ready to succeed him.
Oliver Cromwell is a Puritan; so, not alone does he think the reformation within the Church of England has not gone far enough, but also, just like the Scottish Presbyterians, he abhors the corrupt Roman Catholic church and its denial of the primacy of The Bible in favor of their own papal interpretations. In short, he is a man of strong and inflexible views, and an exceptionally focused, decisive and organized general; a man to turn to when the chips are down, much like his later-day admirer, Winston Churchill.
On arrival in Ireland, the New Model Army immediately sets an example, investing the garrisoned town of Drogheda and slaughtering its inhabitants after the town refuses to surrender. The New Model Army marches on to Wexford, where two weeks later the same thing happens. Other besieged towns now surrender in rapid succession, but Limerick and Galway, well-fortified, hold out into the winter of 1651-52, but are eventually forced to surrender after long blockades.
However, the conquest of the cities and towns does not end the organized resistance to the Parliamentarians, with some 30,000 men continuing to fight a guerilla-style war against the English enemy. With Cromwell back in England, his commander Ireton proceeds to destroy all foodstocks in the countryside, and declares hilly Wicklow, where many of the rebels are ensconced, a ‘fire-free’ zone. Famine and new outbreaks of plague ensue and by the end of 1652, up to half a million people have died, 80% of them Catholics, with perhaps 150,000 killed in battle or butchered, and the rest by hunger and disease, reducing the population on the island by a third.
Back in Parliament, Cromwell draws up the “Act of Settlement” identifying all the Irish Catholic landowners that are to have their lands confiscated, and the act is duly passed. The confiscated lands are mostly awarded to the soldiers and officers of the victorious Model Army, a regular form of paying armies for services rendered across all of Europe at the time. Many soldiers in turn sell their pay to their officers and other English investors, who thus acquire great estates by legal contract.
The dispossessed landowners are either executed if implicated in the rebellion or invited to relocate to the under-populated and underdeveloped poorer lands west of the river Shannon, Ireland's equivalent of the Dnipro running most of the length of the country from the north to the south – “To Hell or to Connaught”. Some 50,000 prisoners-of-war are also deported to the West Indies as indentured labourers (slaves). The practice of Catholicism is banned, and bounty is offered for the capture of priests, who are executed when found.
Harsh, bigoted measures indeed, but again par for the course in those days, during which, for example, at the beginning of the Thirty Years War for religious freedom across the chequerboard of princedoms that is Germany at the time, the Habsburgs Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, in 1620 confiscates the lands of the Moravian and Bohemian Protestant nobility and embarks on a policy of religious persecution of Protestant (Hussite and Calivinist) preachers and congregations.
Despite it all, the resistance carries stubbornly on, and it is not until surrender terms are drawn up allowing Irish soldiers to go abroad to serve in foreign armies not at war with England, that some form of peace returns, save for in Ulster, where up to 10,000 men maintain hostilities into the Spring of 1653, to finally surrender at Cloughoughter in Co. Cavan. However, low-level guerrilla warfare continues on for at least a further decade.
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IX. WILLIAM OF ORANGE
Cromwell’s measures decimate the old Irish and Anglo-Norman families east of the Shannon, but the lives of the ordinary people change little; there are just a quarter less of them (similar to Europe after the contemporaneous Thirty Years War). Happy to be able to farm and work in peace, and pay rents to new landlords, a stability of sorts returns.
However, across on the other island, when Cromwell dies in 1658, his son and elected successor, Richard, proves incapable of uniting Parliament and the Army behind him. The regime comes to an end when Parliament’s Governor of Scotland, career general George Monck, after long and due consideration, and perhaps inspired by various promises from Charles I’s son, Charles II, King in exile in The Dutch Republic, marches his loyal troops into England and effectively takes over Parliament.
Monck next permits Scottish Presbyterian members to return to their seats in the house, which right had been taken away from them in 1648 by way of an event known as Pride’s Purge, in which all members of Parliament inclined to pardon and trust Charles’ father had been barred from entering parliament. This barring had included all the Scottish MPs, who naturally enough felt some loyalty to their Scottish Stuart king, and thus the remaining “Rump Parliament” a year later had been able to vote to have Charles I beheaded.
Monck’s restored “Long Parliament” now dissolves itself and a new “Convention Parliament” is voted in by the land-owning electorate. Charles in the Declaration of Breda next promises a pardon of all crimes committed during the civil war, the retention of all property lawfully purchased during the same period, religious freedom (Charles II like his father is a tolerant Protestant), and to pay arrears due to the army in full and to recommission its men in service under the crown, if he is restored, and he duly is.
What Charles does not promise, but does anyway, is to return lands, confiscated by Cromwell, to the Irish Protestants who have been loyal to his father, as best he can. However, the disposed Catholic landowners are not so fortunate; nevertheless, Catholic clergy return from Italy, France and Spain, and Catholicism re-establishes itself.
Father of at least fifteen illegitimate children by different mistresses, but no legitimate heirs, Charles is succeeded in 1685 by his younger brother James II (and VII of Scotland), who, although baptized in the Anglican Church, in 1668, enamored with the Roman liturgy and ceremony, has counter-reformed to the original faith of his ancestors.
In Ireland, James restores public office to Catholics, and appoints Richard Talbot, an Irish Roman Catholic comrade-in-arms during his time in military service for the Spanish Crown in its defense of the Spanish Netherlands coast against an alliance between France and the English Commonwealth, to the position of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Three years after Talbot's appointment, a now Catholic-dominated Irish parliament revokes the rest of the Cromwellian land settlement. Protestants in Britain and Ireland are alarmed.
However, James’ eldest daughter, Mary, by his first wife, Anne Hyde, in 1677 has entered into wedlock with the Dutch State-holder (Stadhouder) William III of Orange-Nassau, a Protestant. William is in fact a cousin of Mary’s, via their mutual grandfather, the hapless Charles I, and the fifth from the House of Orange and tenth from the House of Nassau of German princes from the Middle Rhine to be invited by the United Provinces of the Netherlands to head its armed forces and take on the de facto leadership of their republic. William and Mary’s marriage is against James’ wishes, who wants his daughter to wed the French and Catholic Dauphin, but Parliament overrules this.
As James has no male heir, Parliament indulges James’ Catholic leanings, albeit through gritted teeth, as his actions are forced on Parliament by decree. However, in 1688, his second wife, Mary of Modena, a Roman Catholic princess from Italy, gives birth to a firstborn male heir. Immediately and probably maliciously, some charge that the boy is “suppositious” (i.e. not his) and within a few months, seven leading noble members of Parliament have written William, asking him to force James, by military intervention, to make Mary his recognized heir, alleging that the newborn is indeed an impostor.
William does not need asking twice, as he had been contemplating such a move for some time already. It is the Golden Age in The Netherlands and vast wealth has been accumulated through the East India trade and slavery. With Spain, their former sovereign and beligerent southern neighbour in the Spanish Netherlands, and France. with whom (and at times with England) the Dutch are at war, being quite enough to contend with for the religiously tolerant Dutch Republic, preventing the re-emergence of a pro-Catholic absolute monarchy across the North Sea, is imperative and seems within the young nation's means.
In November, William lands at Brixham with a large army, to instigate what becomes known as the Glorious Revolution. James is deposed and William and Mary become joint monarchs. James now seeks support in Ireland, both from the Protestant royalists and the reinstated Roman Catholic landholders, and also asks France, the Dutch Republic’s mortal enemy, for help.
Richard Talbot instantly responds to his old friend’s request, raises a Jacobite army and installs Catholic loyalist garrisons across the towns and cities of Ireland, save Londonderry where 13 apprentice boys lock the gates, before troops under the command of Alexander MacDonnell, 3rd Earl of Antrim can enter. A long siege ensues, and two attempts by William's fleet to relieve the city fail. Thousands die of starvation and disease, before 10,000 non-combatants are let out, but the city never falls.
‘No Surrender!’ has been the watchword of the Apprentice Boys of Derry Association – male, Protestants only – every year ever since when they march to celebrate their closing of the gates and the city's relief, and burn an effigy of ‘Lundy, the Traitor’ who would have left the Jacobite army enter Derry unopposed.
Meanwhile, William’s army of English, Scottish, Dutch and Danish troops under Schomberg (a French Huguenot career general) land at Ballyholme (just north of Belfast) and slowly work their way south as far as Dundalk, loosing numbers throughout the winter to disease and in harassing skirmishes with Jacobite troops.
Irritated with the lack of progress, William himself arrives with major reinforcements in early summer, and the combined army is finally engaged on the 12th of July, 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne by the Jacobites under the command of James himself who, after having fled England, has landed in Kinsale (again!) with additional French troops. The Franco-Irish army is defeated. Casualties are not high.
And since 1798 (a century on from the event), every year, the lodges of the Orange Order – male, Protestants only – organize parades throughout the cities and towns of Northern Ireland, to commemorate William’s victory at the Boyne.
James deserts back to France, leaving his army to carry on as best they can, which retreats to Limerick, and William enters Dublin unopposed. By the end of the year, Cork and Kinsale have fallen to William as well, but Limerick withstands a long siege and Ireland west of the Shannon is still Jacobite territory. With aid from France, the tables may yet turn. This hope proves forlorn and Patrick Sarsfield, the Catholics' commander, after a second, long siege of Limerick, surrenders under terms a year later.
The Treaty of Limerick supposedly ensures some tolerance for Catholics, but this turns out to be a deception. Instead harsh new regulations to curb Catholicism are implemented. These Penal Laws deny Catholics the right to vote, buy land, be a lawyer, join the forces or hold any office of state. The position of bishop is banned.
Furthermore, it is determined that a Catholic landlord must bequeath his inheritance equally to his children unless one turns Protestant, in which case the reformant(s) get(s) the lot. By 1695, the amount of land held by Catholics has fallen further from an already low 22% to 14%.
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X. HOUSE OF HANOVER
The Williamite victory and the imposition of the Penal Laws brings another peace of sorts to Ireland, but in Scotland, the Jacobites fight on, and when William and Mary are gone without leaving an heir, the Jacobites support the claim to the Sottish and English (and Irish) thrones of James Francis Edward Stuart, James II’s Catholic-educated son by his second wife, Mary of Modena, first in line on the basis of male primogeniture.
However, as Parliament in 1701 has passed the Act of Settlement which excluded Catholics from the British throne, James Francis’ half-sister and Mary’s younger sister, Anne has got the gig. Since the Act of Settlement is an act of the English Parliament and does not apply to the Scottish throne, Anne immediately seeks an Act of Union, which after much negotiation between Parliament and the Estates (the Scottish house of representatives) is agreed in 1707 and passed by both houses, thus creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain, but not (yet) Ireland which remains a kingdom apart, simply, or quaintly or unusually, sharing a monarch with Britain.
Anne manages to bear 17 children, many stillborn and the rest all short-lived, and these and general ill-health take their toll on her. Parliament anticipates there could be a problem when she passes, and therefore Sofia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I via his daughter Elizabeth, is recognized as Heir Presumptive before Anne dies. There are more than fifty candidates who have a better hereditary claim, the most obvious one still being James Francis Stuart; but he and all the others are Catholic.
Sofia, who is in fact Anne’s senior by 35 years, predeceases Anne and thus her son George ascends to the throne of the new United Kingdom as George I. George’s domains in Germany correspond roughly with today’s state of Lower Saxony, so not entirely inappropriately, the new king is a Saxon with Norman, Gaelic and Pictish blood in his veins as well; not that anybody cares.
Britain by now is well on its way to becoming the constitutional monarchy it is today, with the real administrative power resting with Parliament. However, in Europe, most countries are still ruled by absolute monarchs, as is George’s Hanover (in turn as a nominal vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor), and thus international politics are very much the domain of the monarch. Britain is well-served by George in this regard, and through his diplomacy a Quadruple Alliance prevents the claims of Spain to the throne of France ever becoming reality.
Two-party politics has by now also become a feature of English parliament. On the one side, there are the Tories, the conservative land-owning old nobility; on the other, there are the Whigs, the party of the wealthy merchants and the emerging class of industrialists. The Tories, mostly old-style ‘high church’ Church of England members, with their given name (by others) being a Gaelic slang word for ‘papist outlaw’, had voted against the Act of Settlement.
Tories continue (to be suspected of) supporting Stuart claims to the throne for some considerable time, the last being that of the James Francis’ son, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. Their support and his claims only come to an end after a last and major Jacobite insurgency is defeated at Culloden in 1749.
Unsurprisingly, George and his successors (three more Georges) favor the Whigs, and the Whigs remain the party of power for all of the 18th century as the British Empire expands to become the most powerful and far-flung the world has ever seen. The capitalist Whigs have no time for the more paternalistic ‘noblesse oblige’ politics of the Tories and are not good news for Ireland, but whether the Tories might have been better is debatable.
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XI. PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY
At the start of the 18th cwntury, Ireland, south and north, has a similar population density to that of England of about 30 per sq.km, equating to c 2.5 million inhabitants. As everywhere in Europe, populations are growing steadily, and in Ireland numbers are destined to treble over the next 150 years.
Most people live on the land, working as peasants or tenants of powerful Church of England landlords – a mix of English planters and Norman and Gaelic families who have converted to the new religion – and also of the Church itself. In the south, those working the land are all Catholic; in the north, the tenants are mostly Scottish Presbyterians.
The so-called land-owning (more than 90%) Protestant Ascendancy is Anglophile to a man. Many live in England, at least part of the year, in particular in London, as indeed do many of the landowners in England and Scotland also. They intermarry and all send their children to schools in England.
Unlike Scotland, Ireland is not part of a United Kingdom; it is a separate kingdom that just happens to share its monarchs with the United Kingdom. The King is rarely if ever seen in Ireland, which is ruled by his viceroy (sub-king) based in Dublin Castle, and, in theory, an Irish Parliament of Protestant-only members, which from 1729 on assembles in a fine newly-built Parliament House, opposite the entrance to Trinity College, Ireland's Protestant university.
With a population of c 50,000, Dublin is the second largest city of a burgeoning British Empire growing in strength through trade with its colonies, on course to overtake France whose wealth is based primarily on agriculture, Spain and Portugal for whom the plunder from South America is done, and the Dutch Republic which is simply too small to keep up.
A new class of Dublin nouveau-riche merchants thrives on the export of textiles, grain, meat and butter and the import of manufactured goods. The new wealth is applied to building the Georgian Dublin streetscape, as known and loved today.
As in England, the Irish Parliament consists of Whigs (the city merchants and professional classes) and Tories (the Ascendancy land-owners). Unlike in England, the merchants’ whiggery is not harshly anti-Catholic; contrariwise, the Tories, fearful of further insurrections and the loss of property that could go with it, are. However, all must swear an oath denying Catholic beliefs in order to take their seat.
The Irish Parliament has inferior constitutional status to England. All legislation it originates must first be adopted by London, before it can become law. This lack of autonomy is generally resented, even though it does not prevent further Penal Laws being passed. Catholic freeholders are denied the vote, Catholics may not bear arms and Catholics may not own a horse worth more than £5, but Dissenters (i.e. Presbyterians) are also discriminated against, being barred from public office, from carrying arms and from attending Trinity College university. And Parliament is not discouraged from increasing taxation in order to fund standing armies garrisoned across the country and in coastal towns so that the peace can remain assured.
In 1719, the subordination to London is formalized further through George I’s Declaratory Act, and when Britain enacts laws to restrict Ireland’s wool exports, the resentment leads to the formation of a Patriots movement. The Patriots initially consist mostly of Whigs, since control of trade affects them far more than it does the land-owning Ascendancy whose income consists primarily of rent. However, over time, it becomes a Parliament-wide movement, and, unlike their American namesakes who fifty years later fight for and win their independence, the Irish Patriots only seek a greater devolution of power, and not a break from the empire to which they belong.
As the century progresses and Britain prospers, development in Ireland is uneven. In Ulster, a vibrant linen industry emerges bringing more prosperity with it, and in the south, some farmers, either landowners farming their own lands or larger tenants, improve their methods and their yields. Overall, the economy remains an agricultural one, feeding a growing population of mostly small farmers and cottiers with two basic staples, pork and potatoes, whilst exporting its surpluses to Britain and its overseas territories.
But when in 1775, the American War of Independence breaks out, this febrile tranquility is disturbed. Britain draws heavily on its garrisons in the Irish towns to meet its military needs in America. In consequence, private militias known as Volunteers grow in number and size; England is also at war with France, and Irish Protestants are apprehensive of invasion once again, and there has been another unsuccessful French landing at Carrickfergus in 1760 during Europe’s 7 Years War (WW0!).
Within a short period of time, there are more than 300 corps of Volunteers across the island, but with a predominance in Ulster. The Volunteers are politically liberally inclined and allow Presbyterians and Catholics into their ranks, in contravention of the Penal Laws which permit only Anglicans to bear arms. They share the views of the Patriots re more empowerment of Parliament, the freeing-up of trade with England (which charges import duties on Irish goods), and no transfers of surplus tax revenues to England.
Concurrently, the Patriots find a charismatic leader in a man named Henry Grattan. Grattan has impeccable Ascendancy credentials. Anglican of independent means, he has enjoyed an outstanding education which has included Trinity College Dublin and the Middle Temple (law school) in London. His father is a sitting MP in Dublin, and his maternal grandfather the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Grattan takes a seat in the Irish House in 1775, and within a year has superseded his friend Henry Flood, as leader of The Patriots. Greatly encouraged by the clamour for greater independence at the National Volunteers Convention in Dungannon (in Northern Ireland) that year, the Patriot’s goal is achieved in 1783 with the passing in London of the Renunciation Act, which states, inter alia:
“Be it enacted that the right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom, in all cases whatever shall be, and is hereby declared to be established and ascertained forever, and shall at no time be questioned or questionable.”
Grattan’s Parliament favours Catholic emancipation, not to a man but in sufficient numbers to have Britain’s Catholic Relief Act of 1791 adopted by the Irish Parliament two years later. The Act re-allows Catholics to practice law, run their own faith-based schools and attend Trinity College. However, a year later, Grattan is unsuccessful when he seeks to pass an act re-allowing Catholics (landowners, obviously) join the Irish Parliament.
The Relief Act’s passing is almost concurrent with that of the Edict of Versailles in France, whereby non-Catholic French subjects for the first time are given full legal status. It is the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, but in Ireland, enlightenment only goes so far.
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XII. UNITED IRISHMEN & THE ACT OF UNION
The various parliamentary victories and disappointments of Grattan and The Patriots lead to increasing tensions across the country. Catholics are disappointed further progress isn’t achieved. Anglicans are worried that things could go from bad to worse.
In northern Co. Armagh, the Volunteer movement splits into two factions; Presbyterian gangs (the Peep o’ Boys) who are against further Catholic emancipation and their infiltration of “their” linen industry; and Catholic gangs (the Defenders) who hold the opposite view. A sectarian civil war is the result – presage to much violence in centuries to come.
However, elsewhere in the North, there where the Catholics are in the minority and are not perceived as a threat, the Volunteers remain liberally-minded, and in 1783 the Belfast 1st Volunteer Company becomes the first company of Volunteers on the island to defiantly admit Catholics to their ranks.
In Dublin, eight years later, Wolfe Tone, a young lawyer of French Protestant immigrant stock educated (again) at Trinity College, and Napper Tandy, a craggy Whig Dublin MP and member of the Dublin Volunteers, found the Society of United Irishmen. The United Irishmen feel that Grattan’s Parliament has not gone far enough. Full religious tolerance is required, and full independence as a nation. It is an egalitarian movement with Anglican (some), Presbyterian, Methodist and Catholic membership.
When the French Revolution breaks out in 1792, the United Irishmen identify themselves with the policies of the revolutionary Legislative Assembly that have deposed (and beheaded) King Louis XVI. Britain and the rest of Europe have declared war on the new Republic and its anti-monarchist ideals and anti-clerical authority policies (e.g. marriage, divorce, births and deaths become civil matters), and the United Irishmen are outlawed. They also lose the support of the Roman Catholic church, affecting membership.
In Ulster, the Belfast 1st Volunteer Company reorganizes itself as the Green Company, a more radical organisation that elects Wolfe Tone as an honorary member, and not being outlawed, provides him with a public platform for his politics. Around the same time, Henry McCracken, a Presbyterian linen tycoon founds a United Irish society (i.e. a branch/company of the United Irishmen) in Belfast.
Elsewhere also, Volunteers and Defenders morph into/combine with United Irishmen, but in Ulster, the split between Presbyterians and Catholics grows, with the Presbyterian Volunteers taking the opportunity provided by new laws to regularize themselves as Yeomanry.
The loss of the support of the Catholic hierarchy in the south and the schism in the north are major set-backs for Wolfe Tone’s movement, and Tone looks to his inspiration, the French Republic, for support, ironically the same country the United Irishmen’s predecessors, the Volunteers, had feared might have invaded Ireland 30 year earlier.
In 1796, storms prevent Wolfe Tone landing at Bantry Bay with an Expédition d'Irlande counting 14,000 veteran French troops. The expedition returns to France and the men are deployed elsewhere to fight France’s Revolutionary Wars, and when the French return two years later to finally land at Killala Bay, and then again at Lough Swilly they number just 1,000 and 3,000 respectively.
Both invasions are quickly repulsed by Ireland’s new Lord Lieutenant, Charles Cornwallis, Britain’s losing general of the American Civil War, but also Britain’s ex-Governor General of India who has very successfully consolidated the Empire’s rule in that sub-continent. Britain is taking the threat seriously.
On defeat, the French troops are returned to France in exchange for British POWs, but their captured rebel Irish allies, including Wolfe Tone himself who accompanied the second expedition, are all found guilty of treason. The punishment for treason is hanging (not a firing squad), but Wolfe Tone takes his own life before suffering this ignominy.
In between the failed Bantry Bay landing and the defeats after Killala and Lough Swilly, the parliamentarian Patriots achieve perhaps the most important goal of their aims – free trade – when the British government removes all tariffs on imports from Ireland. Fifty year later, this will turn out to be far from a good thing.
A few months later, however, Parliament perturbed by the growing public disorder being incited by the United Irishmen, imposes martial law, and armed forces are employed to repress the movement by whatever means necessary: house burnings, torture, pitchcapping, murder. In Ulster in particular, the Presbyterian Volunteers, which by now are calling themselves Orangemen are granted recognition and encouraged to fight their erstwhile comrades. To this day, this fomented sectarian division has stood the test of time.
At the start of 1798 intelligence from informants cause the government to sweep up most of the United Irish leadership in Dublin. A planned rebellion to commence with a coup d’état in the capital is betrayed, and confronted by the military at their planned gathering points on the day, the rebels quickly disperse, dumping their weapons as they go.
Elsewhere, the rebels rise as planned, generally to be defeated in quick order, after which wholesale executions always and indiscriminate reprisals sometimes follow, with the rebels themselves also being guilty of atrocities, executing prisoners-of-war and murdering non-combatants. The rebels are the most successful in Wexford, there where Strongbow first landed, and they seize control of the county. 20,000 British troops are eventually deployed to suppress the rebellion, which ends in a bloody last stand at Vinegar Hill.
Some rebels get away and briefly fight on, and some of these manage to join up with the remnants of McCracken’s forces in Co. Antrim in the North where the violence, particularly against Presbyterians fighting for or suspected of backing the United Irish cause has been particularly brutal. However, with McCracken having already been arrested and found guilty of treason and sentenced to be hanged, further organized resistance is of short duration.
With the rebellion, bar odd intermittent occurrences of guerilla actions, put down, the Act of Union 1800 is enforced on Irish parliamentarians and their house is merged with the House of Commons in London. Grattan and most of his Patriots take up their seats in their new home, and soon become indistinguishable from the Whigs, an offshoot of which party they had of course always been.
In the meantime, the population has continued to grow and is approaching 5 million.
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XIII. THE GREAT FAMINE
Authoritative English Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his weighty trilogy “History of the 19th Century”, begins his first book “The Age of Revolution” in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. He briefly refers back to the American Revolution and its role in showing the French revolutionary leaders what might be possible, but sees it as just that – a prelude. For Hobsbawn, the important other revolution is the Industrial Revolution, led of course by Britain’s bourgeoisie.
Both political revolutions – the French and the American – as we have seen, impact on Ireland and ultimately not in a good way. However, the Industrial Revolution mostly passes Ireland by, save for in Ulster, where the linen industry benefits from evolving mechanisation, and shipbuilding is given an impulse in order to get the Presbyterians further onside. The founding by Harland & Wolff (a German) of the yard that built The Titanic has to wait another century, mind you.
Although Great Britain and Ireland’s House of Commons is more minded to abolish all religious discrimination against the Catholic majority in Ireland, than the old Protestant Ascendancy-dominated Irish parliament has been despite Grattan’s best intentions, there is little they can or feel they can do against economic discrimination. The land is the means of production and it is in the hands of the Ascendancy. Thus, southern Ireland very much remains an agricultural province exporting cattle, beef, butter, wool and grain to England.
The Protestant landowners are now even more absent than they were in the 18th century. The population is continuing to grow, but the means to support them is not. Poverty is everywhere and there is much more joy to be had in England. Ever more people on the land means ever more demand for land to rent. Unscrupulous agents, leasing large tracts of land from the absent Ascendancy, up rents to cottiers and other tenants ”at will“ accordingly.
Cottiers pay for their smallholdings by working the agents' other lands, or, putting it the other way round, are paid for working the land with a small holding. ”At will“ means they can be evicted from their smallholding at any stage, or, putting it the other way round, their pay can be cut as the competing supply of work increases. So, as working lives move from one generation to the next, agents and their landowners expediently divide the holdings of deceased or ‘retired’ tenants up amongst their sons.
In Ulster, however, things are slightly different, and tenants, many Presbyterians of Scottish descent, have ”tenant rights“. This means they can not simply be terminated ”at will“ and more importantly that any improvements they make to their holding must receive compensation. In addition, of course, there is the on-going process of industrialisation of the linen manufacturies in the towns and shipbuilding and other industry in Belfast providing alternative employment for tenants’ sons.
In the rest of Ireland, by 1840, 50% of all tenant holdings are less than 10 acres (4 ha) in size and more than 1 million in number, feeding more than five million dependents. Mind you, the State Religion, Anglicism, also takes its tithe (1/10th) of the smallholders produce, a Tithe War of (semi-)peaceful disobedience notwithstanding.
The Tithe War and other demands for political reform are led by a man named Daniel O’Connell, who in later years, Ghandi cites as an example to him in his revolt against the British Empire in India. However, in Ireland, in the first half of the 19th century, the peaceful approach proves to be entirely ineffective, and in the end the tithe simply becomes a collectable of the landlord to be passed on to the Church.
The only staple providing (in)sufficient hydrocarbons to feed the peasant population is the potato, of which there is essentially just one variety, the Lumper, originally introduced to Ireland as a cattle fodder crop. In 1845, the potato harvest fails. More than a third is lost to “blight” (phytophthora infestans, a parasitic algae). Blight was a new disease, and although the loss was severe, potato crop failures were an accepted fact of life. Shortages of the peasants' food staple through bad weather, “taint” or “curl” had become a regular occurrence from about the turn of the century onward.
But blight returns in 1846 and this time three quarters of the crop is lost. The Great Famine (i.e. by no means the first) is now inevitable. With seed potatoes obviously scarce in 1847, yields, although not blighted, are still no more than half, and even in 1848 yields are still down by a third of what they used to be.
The British government initially stands idly-by, but in time relief work is organized, soup kitchens are established and poor houses staffed-up. The relief projects at one stage employ several hundred thousand men, building the myriad of minor roads that still lace Ireland to this day, and the piers and jetties of its scenic little harbours. However, the administration of these works as they increase in number begins to break down and the relief work peters out.
Private individuals and organizations, in Ireland and abroad, also fund and organize direct aid, but government itself only funds its infrastructure relief projects and seeks to obtain the funding of food from tenants’ landlords, which, in turn, causes landlords and their agents to evict significant numbers, as they are not fit enough to work anyway.
There is of course plenty of farm produce in Ireland; quality product, much the same as the country’s agri-industry is renowned for today, and the export of it to England continues unabated. It is of course the age of Queen Victoria; Britain’s mercantile colonial empire rules the waves, and the last thing the Whig liberal parliament is wont to do is interfere, believing thoroughly in Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” and their “laissez-faire” politics.
Apologists have later argued that the grain, butter and beef that left Irish ports during those dark years would never have been enough to feed the people when the potato failed, and that anyway far more relief imports came into Ireland, than product was sold abroad. However, those imports weren’t enough either and took their time in coming. And the exports contributed significantly to the high standard of living enjoyed by the Victorians.
By the end of 1850, the worst is over, but by then more than a million people have died of starvation, and a further million have emigrated, most of them to North America (a perilous journey; 30% expiring before arriving – similar/worse stats to those of the 18th century slave trade; slaves were healthier on embarcation), but also large numbers to England, where many already had long-time seasonal work experience (to support their families at home).
Having peaked at 8 million, the population falls back to 6 million, but the emptying of the land is uneven, with more than twice as many people (as a %) leaving the south and west than the north and east; and in the major ports (Dublin, Cork and Belfast) the population actually continues to increase.
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XIV. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL
Early in the 1870s, the Great Famine is followed up by the World’s first global contraction – the so-called Long Depression. The causes are complex, but like all financial reversals, unforeseen effects are at the heart of it; in this case in the USA, where decoupling the dollar from silver leads to a drop in the demand and price of silver and the failure of numerous mines.
Whether or not it is a true depression has remained a raging debate between economist historians, as outputs both on the land and in the factories continued to increase driven by innovation. However, worldwide, prices for commodities – food and raw materials – began a rapid decline. The World economy at this stage has become connected and so export prices for Irish agricultural production follow suit dropping by one third to one half, and two things happen in Ireland.
Firstly, smallholder tenants (most of the cottiers are gone) can no longer generate sufficient income to pay their rent, and a second wave of evictions and emigration follows. The (absentee) Irish landlords proceed to mortgage their estates, in order to continue to live the lifestyle they feel is expected of them. The same thing actually happens to many of the English estates of English earls and dukes as well. The “Invisible Hand” doing its best, you might say.
Secondly, over time there are political consequences also. Charles Stewart Parnell is returned to the House of Commons as a member of the Irish Home Rule Party in 1875. Parnell, like Grattan before him, has impeccable Ascendancy credentials. He is an Anglican landowner, has numerous illustrious ancestors, and via the House of Tudor is even a (very very distant) relative of Queen Victoria. However, Parnell is no absentee landlord and very much has the plight and rights of his tenants at heart.
The Home Rule or Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) stands for what it says on the tin, the same ambition as before: Home Rule for Ireland. And, as before, home rule is not seen as a full secession from Great Britain, but simply an independent Parliament in Dublin free to legislate as it would see fit. High on the party’s agenda is Land Reform.
Some reforms have already been enacted by way of Liberal PM William Gladstone’s Landlord and Tenant Act of 1870, which provides in security of tenure, compensation for improvements (to be assessed) on a tenant terminating his lease, and state loans of 2/3rd of the asked price at 5% repayable over 35 years to enable tenants to buy out landlords who care to sell. However, in practice little changes, as rents remain uncontrolled.
Also, as before in the late 18th century, when Grattan’s Patriots Party, holding the majority in the Irish Parliament (wound up in 1800 by the Act of Union) enjoyed the support of a ‘para-military wing’ in the form of The United Irishmen, the Home Rule Party’s goals benefit from the establishment of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
The IRB is different to what has gone before, in that it is international. With two million Irish now emigrated and living in the USA and Britain, and many doing well, and with young memories of how and why they left home, this new movement is truly international and better organized and financed. It is also a truly revolutionary movement, with its aim to “establish a democratic republic in Ireland; that is, a republic for the weal of the toiler”.
Much like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) one hundred years later, the IRB pursues its aims through violence against authority, if less indiscriminately. Michael Davitt is a typical leading member, having left Ireland as a young boy with his evicted peasant parents to settle and be educated in England. A failed arms raid on Chester Castle in 1867 leads to his arrest and imprisonment three years later. Having served seven years of his fifteen years sentence, he is released from Dartmoor Prison after much agitation in The Commons by the IPP regarding his and others’ harsh sentences and unjust treatment, on the proviso that he leaves England.
Davitt is glad to oblige and returns to Ireland, where he rejoins the IRB and then travels to and through the USA (where his mother and sisters have moved to) to drum up support from the IRB’s sister organization there, the Fenian Brotherhood. Back in Ireland a year later, he founds the Irish National Land League, with Charles Stewart Parnell as president.
In 1879 there is a serious return of potato blight, and, despite the 1870 Land Act, the plight of the small tenant farmer is as bad as ever. The aims of the Land League are therefore simple: the so-called “Three Fs” (nothing to do with Craggy Island’s Father Jack!) – Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure & Free Sale), and its methods primarily civil disobedience, i.e. encouraging non-payment. But violence against landlords and their agents does erupt from time to time, as evictions increase.
Under Parnell’s leadership, the Home Rule IPP has grown from strength to strength and in the 1880 General Elections wins 63 seats in The Commons. This potentially provides them with the balance of power between Gladstone’s Whigs and Disraeli’s Tories. In addition, Parnell has appointed a first ever ‘party whip’ tasked with ensuring a party (their party) votes as one in the Commons at ‘division’.
As the Whigs have won the election and Gladstone is reform-inclined, a second Land Act is passed in 1881. This second Act establishes the principle of landlord and tenant dual ownership, a Land Commission to set fair rents and a Land Court to settle disputes. But for Parnell and the Land League, change is not rapid enough and Parnell attacks the new Act via his newspaper United Ireland, inciting a farmers’ rent strike. Parnell ends up in jail, but within a year he is released, and the new Land Commission is empowered to cancel arrears of less than £30. Two million in arrears are estimated to have been written off!
A radical breakaway of the IRB, the Irish National Invincibles now assassinate Ireland’s newly appointed Chief Secretary, Lod Cavendish and the permanent Under Secretary, Henry Burke, in the Phoenix Park. There is outrage across both England and Ireland, resulting in the IRB losing much of its support and putting Parnell’s politics in total control of the path back to Home Rule.
In 1889, the IPP’s numbers in parliament have increased to 85 (i.e. c 80% of all the representatives from Irish constituencies), and Gladstone is known to be in favour of granting Home Rule. But now a huge personal scandal explodes around Parnell. He is named as a co-respondent in a divorce trial against one Katharine O’Shea.
Katharine O’Shea, nee Wood, an Englishwoman of aristocratic background, has lived estranged from her husband, Capt. William O’Shea, a colleague of Parnell in the IPP, since 1875. Five years after separating from O’Shea, she and Parnell become lovers. O’Shea knows of it, is jealous and ultimately sues for divorce several years later, citing Catherine’s liaison with Parnell as grounds. The Victorian world in England is shocked at least as much as the Catholic world in Ireland. Divorce is granted. Parnell marries Catherine. He loses his political control, the IPP falls apart into anti- and pro-Parnell factions, Home Rule never happens, and the couple retire to the English south coast, where Parnell dies of cancer aged 45.
What might have been will never be known, but under Parnell’s guiding hand change was clearly on its way, and by the end of the century, the politics of Land Reform in combination with the old Ascendancy living beyond their means, has led to almost half the land being transferred to (mostly Catholic) former tenants.
But equally the country remains impoverished. A further two million have left since the Great Famine, and the population, having exceeded 8 million in the early 1840s, has come back down to the c 4 million people of a hundred years earlier, at which level it stays until the end of the 20th century – high birth rates and continuous emigration in a desperate equilibrium.
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XV. PARTITION
When the 20th century dawns, little has changed in Ireland since the demise of Parnell, excepting that the Irish Parliamentary Party has become predominantly Catholic in its membership. The right to vote is still limited to men (only) of property and these are now mainly Roman Catholic in number.
Home Rule is still on the agenda, and is starting to look more likely, as the IPP holds the balance of power once again in The Commons, and Asquith, yet another Liberal PM, is inclined to grant it. A third Home Rule Bill is drafted and debated. As the House of Lords, which previously blocked an earlier Second Bill, has lost its ability to hold up legislation indefinitely, after incensing The Commons and public opinion by blocking the 1909 ‘People’s Budget’, the view is that the new Bill will pass into law sooner rather than later.
In reaction to the prospect of Home Rule by a Dublin Parliament, in 1912, Edward Carson, a Dublin man and one of the most gifted lawyers of his day, has half a million people in the north of Ireland, but also from the south, sign the Ulster Covenant, which threatens to use ‘all means necessary’ to resist Home Rule.
With overt support from the British Conservative Party, the foundations of the Ulster Unionist Party are laid, and the Ulster Volunteers Force is simultaneously established, drawing in the main from the never-gone-away Orange Order fraternity (and still with us today).
When the Home Rule Bill passes by a majority of 77 votes, the British government orders the Army barracked at The Curragh to prepare for military action against the UVF, but officers refuse to mobilise. The Army wins the argument, and, instead of court-martialling the rebellious officers, the government forces its War Secretary and the Chief of General Staff to resign.
Immediately thereafter, a large cache of arms arrives in the north from Germany, increasing the prospect of civil war were the Bill to be enforced, and when WWI breaks out later in 1914, implementation of Home Rule is postponed.
Around the same time, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which has lost most of its potency from the heydays of Parnell, re-emerges as a force to be reckoned with in the form of the Irish Volunteers. Separately, the Gaelic League, founded in 1892, grows in strength. Conceived as an a-political organization promoting a renewed interest in the Gaelic language and Celtic culture, it has gradually become a prime recruitment ground for the Volunteers, as has a Gaelic youth organization known as Na Fianna.
The postponement of Home Rule strengthens the hand of the Volunteers enormously and leads directly to the failed but ever-celebrated Easter Rising of 1916. The insurgents capture various strategic points in the capital city including the main post office (GPO), but their cause is hopeless and within a week they surrender to the army, which does not have the same qualms about mobilising this time. The Volunteers rise elsewhere in the country as well, but a lack of arms (the rebels’ own shipment from Germany has been intercepted) and of coordination sees all of these revolts fizzle out within a matter of 48 hours.
The Volunteers’ leaders are numerous and all of Catholic background. Almost all (15) are summarily executed by order of court martial; this time by firing squad (remember: in the past, rebels were simply hanged). All are honoured to this day in the names of streets and public buildings in Dublin and elsewhere.
Two months later, Sir Roger Casement, the organizer of the failed shipment to arm the rebels, is also executed. Casement has enjoyed a distinguished international career for the British Colonial Service in Africa and alone of all the rebels is of Anglican stock. However, over the course of his life, he has grown to distrust Imperialism; hence his support of The Rising.
Two leading rebels escape the death sentence, Edward De Valera and Michael Collins; Collins fortuitously finding himself extradited to an internment camp in Wales due to a mix-up, and De Valera’s sentence being commuted to life imprisonment perhaps because he is a US citizen with a Spanish father.
The Rising is generally considered to be a very extremist action by the Dublin population, if less so elsewhere, but the draconian violent response by the British military makes the rebels more popular. Sinn Féin (SF), a new, thoroughly Republican political party, gains massively in popular support, and in the 1918 general elections immediately post WWI, when all men over the age of 21 for the first time (and all women over 30) are eligible to vote, the IPP are decimated. Of the 105 seats available in Irish constituencies, Sinn Féin win 73, the IPP 6, and the Irish Unionist Party 23. The % of the votes is not nearly as skewed (SF 47%, IPP 22%, IUP 25%), but Britain’s simple majority electoral system aids SF significantly.
Interesting, SF are the only party in the entire election to return a female candidate: the firebrand Countess Markievicz, who, because of her gender, has also been spared execution after The Rising. Interesting also, 47 of SF’s returned candidates are in jail at the time, having been arrested earlier that year with others and shipped to England on suspicion of ‘treasonable communication with Germany’.
Edward de Valera, now known as Eoman or Dev for short, also in jail, has been SF president since 1917, and he instructs his MPs not to attend The House of Commons, and instead invites all MPs (SF, IPP and IUP) to assemble in a new Dáil Éireann, Gaelic for Parliament of Ireland. Reviving the Irish language to foster and enhance a national identity is a fundamental part of de Valera’s policies.
Just 27 deputies attend the Dáil’s first meeting, at which it declares itself the parliament of a new state, the Irish Republic. The Unionists naturally do not recognize the Dáil’s legitimacy, and many of the SF candidates are still in jail.
On the same day, the Volunteers, who have continued to fight a guerrilla war against English authority, kill two policemen (IRC, Irish Royal Constabulary) to capture a cache of gelignite they are guarding. Britain responds with a heavier hand.
When de Valera is finally released from jail, he has the Dáil issue its “Appel aux Nations”, asking all free countries of the World to recognize Ireland’s independence, and stating Britain’s forces in the country are a military occupation and that thus a state of war exists between Britain and Ireland. Implied and condoned, but not stated, is that the Volunteers are now the new nation’s army, the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
Michael Collins, who de Valera has appointed the Dáil’s Minister for Finance, becomes the de facto leader of the Volunteers in the role of Adjutant General. Collins sets up a vast intelligence network and continues the guerrilla tactics of ambushes by ‘flying columns’ on the British forces of law and order, and organizes the assassinations of British secret service agents and Irish informers by ‘The Squad’.
Britain, where a young Winston Churchill has become Minister for War, first send in the Auxiliaries, and then The Black and Tans. Both are recruited from the soldiery returning from WWI.
The Auxiliaries, tasked with fighting the IRA at their own game of intelligence, assassinations and ambushes, come primarily from the officer class. They are not ineffective.
The Black and Tans, or more correctly the Royal Irish Constabulary Special Reserve, are to simply act as police reinforcements. They are recruited from the rank-and-file that have survived WWI. Some are pardoned convicts. Frightened for their lives, they often resort to violence against the non-combatant population.
Also, in 1920, a year into the war, the British government, recognizing the will of the people in the north (as expressed in Carson’s Ulster Covenant) to be different to that in the south, passes a Fourth Home Rule Bill, establishing separate parliaments for the northern six counties and the southern twenty-six counties, but both obviously sub-parliaments within a single United Kingdom (similar to the Scottish parliament).
As there was already a clandestine Dáil Éireann in Dublin, this new southern parliament never assembles. However, in Belfast, fifty-two candidates are elected in early 1921 to the new devolved northern House of Commons; forty Unionist, six from Sinn Féin (incl. de Valera) and six from the IPP, renamed the Nationalist party.
Naturally, this new compliant/complicit-with-Britain parliament has an escalating effect on the war of independence in the north. Some of the partitioned six counties only barely count a Unionist majority and the resistance to government by a Belfast Presbyterian elite is fierce. In response, IRC and Army reinforcements are drawn from regiments of the UVF, and thus the conflict becomes a sectarian civil war as well as a war of independence. Atrocities are committed on both sides and mutual hatred grows.
By the end of 1921, in the south, rural Ireland has effectively become independent. The IRC have vacated most of the local police stations and day-to-day civil order is being maintained by members of the Sinn Féin organization. Abroad, international public opinion, stoked up by de Valera, particularly in the USA, where he has also raised more than $5 million in financial support, is pressurizing Britain to find a solution. Something has to be done and the British Government invite the president of the (not recognized) Dáil to travel to London for peace talks. Dev delegates the negotiations to a team under the leadership of Michael Collins. The team includes Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin and the Dáil's Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Collins returns with an agreement that establishes an Irish Free State that however does remain a dominion within the British Commonwealth. It is the same status, gradually modified over the last 100 years, that Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy to this day. Britain insists the agreement is debated and passed (or not) by the new ‘Home Rule’ parliaments, north and south.
As expected Stormont opts out, but in Dublin the bill is passed but only by a narrow majority in Dáil Éireann; de Valera and others wanting nothing less than an Irish Republic. However, as the Dáil is not a recognized institution, the Bill goes before a once-off assembly of the 1921 Irish Parliament, where it passes by a large majority, as many of those against stay away.
And thus the Irish Free State is born, and Ireland is partitioned.
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XVI. CIVIL WAR
With de Valera against the treaty, objecting to Partition, the Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown, and key strategic ports remaining in the hands of the Royal Navy, the army (i.e. the Volunteers) divides in two, the new Irish Army or Óglaigh na hÉireann of the Free State under the command of Collins, and the IRA or Irregulars under the command of Liam Lynch, the old IRA’s Southern Division commander during the War of Independence.
Civil war breaks out when the new IRA occupies the Four Courts (i.e. the seat of the old regime’s and the new nation’s Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, and Dublin Circuit Court) and are immediately ousted and arrested by the army. Lynch, who is present at the occupation, is released, as he undertakes to talk sense to his Irregular colleagues. However, he does nothing of the sort, and instead declares an independent Republic of Munster with military headquarters in Limerick.
Apart obviously from Republicans in Ulster who are unhappy remaining subjects of the British Empire on foot of the Treaty, it is the southern province of Munster where there is greatest antipathy towards the Treaty. The southern, now irregular, IRA, like their northern confrères, thus also continue their guerilla-style war, but now against the new southern government, utilizing the same tactics that proved successful in the past – ambushes, assassinations, house burnings. Savage stuff, but equally the Irish Army executes all captured Irregulars for being traitors.
In the long run, the Irregulars stand no chance against the Army who are aided by material supplies (armoured vehicles and ordinance) from Britain, and the war ends in April 1923 when Lynch’s headquarters, now ensconced in the Knockmealdown Mountains, are rumbled, and Lynch gets shot and killed, but not before Michael Collins has met a similar fate in an ambush at Béal na Bláth in Co. Cork.
Meanwhile at the start of 1922, the first general elections of the Irish Free State have returned 94 members of the Sinn Féin party to the new Dáil of 128 seats. Despite the fact that Sinn Féin is bitterly divided on the issue of the Treaty, party president de Valera has persuaded Collins they should run as one party, so that in most constituencies, whether the SF candidate is pro- or anti-Treaty is not a practical consideration for voters. Thus, the fact that 2/3rd of Sinn Féin's successful candidates are pro-Treaty is forever arguably no endorsement of the Treaty.
The anti-Treaty TDs (Teachta Dála, assembly delegates) now refuse to take their seats. Whether or not this is an endorsement of the Irregulars’ methods, it certainly is of their aims, and of course avoids any obligation to show colour in debate about the war in the new assembly.
At the next general elections, immediately after the end of the Civil War, in 1923 the pro-treaty members of Sinn Féin stand as a new party, Cumann na nGaedheal, and again take a significant majority of the available seats. And again, de Valera’s Sinn Féin refuse to take their seats, which for de Valera, in jail again now along with more than 10,000 other internees post the ceasefire in a crackdown on future insurgency, would have been a practical impossibility anyway.
Internment stymies the resentment against the treaty, the lackeys of the British in power in the Free State, and the continuing unlawful occupation of the northern six counties, not one iota. de Valera, released from prison, abandons Sinn Féin's abstentionist policy in 1926, which causes a further split into de Valera’s new Fianna Fáil party and a decimated Sinn Féin.
Fianna Fáil proves to be electorally much more successful than its abstentionist predecessor. The fact that delegates are now prepared to participate in parliamentary rule undoubtedly had something to do with this, but also an ennui with cautious Cumann na nGaedheal and a despair at the great lack of economic progress help Fianna Fáil gain ground.
In 1932, another election sees a big swing to Fianna Fáil. A coalition with the Labour Party allows de Valera be appointed President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State by Britain’s Governor-General in Ireland. The losers in the Civil War are now in power, but despite the worst fears of many, the changing to this guard proceeds entirely peacefully; opposition party, army and police all accepting their insurgent former enemies as democratically elected representatives of the people.
De Valera immediately sets about releasing all IRA internees, but this laissez-faire attitude quickly backfires. Extremism in the forms of Communism and Fascism are in the ascendancy everywhere in Europe, and the IRA leadership seeks to align itself with support from Russia. Ex Irish Army general Eoin O’Duffy counters with the formation of the fascist Blue Shirts. Clashes between the two paramilitary organizations are violent and both are outlawed – the IRA again, and also on foot of their assassinations of first a landlord’s agent and then a Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy resident in West Cork, which of course is nothing new, being the sort of violence that internment tried to prevent in the first place.
In the north of the country, the IRA is more subdued. There is not much interaction with their former comrades in the south, and they primarily busy themselves defending northern Catholics against sectarian violence, there being a significant fraction of the population who sorely wish their province to be exclusively Protestant.
When WWII breaks out, cooperation between the northern and southern commands increases, and the focus turns to freedom for the north through military action. Fascist Germany, England’s enemy, rather than communist Russia, becomes the IRA’s go-to ally. Internment is re-instated, and Britain and Ireland cooperate in suppressing the movement.
Since coming into power, de Valera has been relentless in modifying the original Constitution of the Free State. By 1948 the work is complete. All allegiances and deferences to the Crown have been eliminated and Ireland ceases to be a member of the Commonwealth, and although Fianna Fáil loses power to a multi-party coalition led by Fine Gael (the rebranded pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal), parliament declares the new nation a Republic anyway.
But in 1948 also, the IRA decide they require a political presence as well in pursuit of their unchanging aim of a united 32-county Ireland, and take over (by joining en masse) a somnambulant Sinn Féin. The party, although outlawed like the IRA, never goes away, and today, 100 years after independence and despite its history of supporting violence (see The Troubles), it is the strongest party in the Republic and is only kept out of power through the unlikely coalition of erstwhile Civil War enemies, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
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XVII. THE TROUBLES
De Valera’s new Constitution of Ireland inter alia also states it:
‘recognizes the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of its citizens’,
and that:
‘the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas’.
Understandably these facets of the new constitution make Unionists in the north more determined than ever to remain part of the United Kingdom, and more inclined than ever to socially and economically discriminate in favour of their own (clan mentality, common the World over).
However, the new constitution, plus a major world tour embarked on by de Valera to lobby for international support for a United Ireland, does largely satisfy the IRA in the south, so that all of the IRA’s focus turns to the north, and post their failed WWII intrigues, the organization regroups, and by the mid 1950s a para-military campaign targeting border posts and police (RUC, Royal Ulster Constabulary) barracks is under way.
By 1962, this campaign has run its course. Many IRA leaders have been interned, and 18 people (50:50 IRA/RUC) have been killed. In reaction perhaps to the failed expediency of looking to Nazism to support their aims during WWII, the organization now begins to revert to Socialism for overseas support and for its political philosophy.
It is the end of the 60s and in California Flower Power rules, but in Northern Ireland, organized protests in the form of marches and demonstrations by a marginalized Catholic community grow and are countered by violence from various loyalist paramilitary groups, chiefly members of the newly formed UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force – founded in 1966 and borrowing the name from the Volunteers of the turn of the century). The RUC does little to intervene.
The IRA looks to the south for support in protecting the Catholic people from the loyalist excesses and a plan is hatched to import a large catchment of arms with funds organized by a number of senior Fianna Fáil (back in government) ministers, including allegedly the Taoiseach (prime minister) of the day, Jack Lynch. The plan is discovered and thwarted. The government ministers concerned, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, lose office, several others resign, but Jack Lynch remains unscathed and no prosecutions follow.
A provisional wing now splits away from the ‘Official IRA’. Unhappy with the idealistic socialist agenda of united workers (Catholic and Protestant) vs capitalism, the P-IRA intend to operate primarily as a defense force for the Catholic nationalist population. It isn’t long before they are joined in this endeavor by a new rival organization, the INLA (Irish Nationalist Liberation Army).
Civil unrest grows and in 1969, British Army troops are deployed in the province to keep the peace, which in the first instance is to prevent violent interaction between the traditional annual commemorative marches of Unionist clubs and orders, and antagonized Nationalists.
The Army, being British, is obviously more popular with Unionists than with Nationalists, making it hard for them to remain or be perceived to be wholly neutral. With the UVF and its sister organization UDF as intent on defending the Protestant loyalist population, as the P-IRA and INLA are the Nationalist, 30 years of mayhem ensue, funded on both paramilitary sides mostly by the proceeds of organized crime (bank robberies, smuggling, narcotics).
One of the first actions embarked upon by the British Army when they take on their peace-keeping role in 1971 is Operation Demetrius. Over a four-year period, some 1500 suspected paramilitaries, including one Gerry Adams destined to ultimately become a broker of peace, are arrested and interned at a place called Long Kesh. 90% of these arrests are of Nationalists, and internee interrogation is fierce.
The resultant heightened Nationalists’ animosity towards the British Army boils over into unadulterated hatred in 1972 when British paratroopers indiscriminately shoot and kill thirteen protestors at a major civil rights demonstration in Londonderry, forever afterwards known as Bloody Sunday, marking the start proper of the 30-odd years of Troubles.
When, at the death of the 20th century, it is all (more or less) over, more than 3600 people have been killed – twice as many as during the War of Independence and Civil War combined – mostly civilians, victims of bombings of public places, typically by placing a timed device in a parked car, predominantly in Northern Ireland, but also in Britain and in the Republic.
Well after it is (more or less) over, and post both a long-running Enquiry (Widgery) and a long-running Tribunal (Saville) into the events of Bloody Sunday, the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland, the successors of the RUC) charge two paratroopers (Soldiers B & F) with one and two counts of murder respectively back in the day.
The cases however are dismissed in 2021 on the grounds that there is insufficient admissible evidence to allow a reasonable prospect of conviction. Although the dismissal is controversial, so has been the prospect of the trial, and it is a decision in harmony with an earlier one of 2005, after peace has reigned for almost a decade, to convict but not sentence all murders and other crimes over the duration of the Troubles i.e. up to 1998.
Gerry Adams continues to be suspected of having been an active member of the P-IRA pre and post his arrest, and probably the organization’s Chief of Staff. In 1999 he too is to be tried, in his case for the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, an alleged informer to the British Army, but the case is dismissed pre-trial.
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XVIII. EUROPEAN UNION
Almost immediately post-WWII also, French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposes the formation of a European Coal and Steel Community to regulate industrial production under a centralised authority. Regulation he argues will reduce the risk of any future wars. France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries agree and the ECSC is established on April 18, 1951.
By 1954 the new agency has removed all tariff barriers to trade in coal, coke, steel, pig iron, and scrap iron. Common rules to control cartels and regulate mergers are established, prices are fixed and quotas set, the latter becoming particularly important as oil and then gas takes over as the primary fuel for industry during the 60s, and low-cost steel from the Far East makes European steelmaking increasingly uncompetitive during the 70s.
Quotas forcing output reduction go hand-in-hand with redeployment aid and unemployment benefits for redundant workers, investment in plant modernization and workers’ housing, and investment in replacement industry. All in all, the agency is a success, managing a transition (which it hasn’t foreseen) well, improving workers lives generally, and preventing a re-awakening of international tensions, as one country’s industry does well and another’s perhaps disappears.
In 1957, the first Treaty of Rome establishes two additional European communities: the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Economic Community (EEC). All three entities rely on a “High Authority” (now the European Commission) to draft and implement approved directives and regulations, a “Common Assembly” (now the European Parliament) of elected representatives to debate and approve directives and regulations, and a European Court of Justice to rule over alleged breaches of all its legislation, in as far as it has been ratified by national parliaments.
Euratom, EEC and ESCS quickly blend into a single EC (European Community). The EC busies itself with further quota’s and prices on other commodities (primarily farm output – grain, dairy, beef), standardization of minimum product specifications, removal of import duties, and with competition legislation, in particular forcing all national government agencies to seek tender proposals Europe-wide and to award contracts without prejudice. All good stuff; good for economic growth and good for peace through integration.
In 1961, Ireland and Britain both apply for membership of the EEC; Britain having declined to join when the ESCS had been established. France vetoes Britain’s application, and the members consider Ireland to be too economically underdeveloped and too reliant on agriculture and UK exports to join alone. Ireland instead in 1965 negotiates a free trade agreement with Britain.
The new FTA removes the 20% duties on imports and exports to/from both entities, that have been in force in a tit-for-tat ‘economic war’ ever since Ireland refused to continue to repay loans made by Britain to Irish farmers to assist them buying out their landlords pre-Independence. The FTA is a big boon for Irish agriculture; independence not having changed the role of the Irish farmland as the bread (or should that be beef?) basket for Britain.
In 1972, Britain and Ireland, independently, re-apply for membership of the EC, and both are now admitted, Denmark also joining at the same time. Given that the Anglo-Irish FTA has been in place for 7 years, and a separate ‘freedom of movement of people’ agreement known as the CTA (Common Travel Area) has been in place since independence, it is a moot point whether either Britain or Ireland could have acceded without the other.
‘Freedom of movement’, as alread enshrined between Britain and Ireland since Independence, is by now also integral to the EC, but only ‘for workers’ in accordance with the 1612/68 Regulation of 1968. Later, in 2004, this right is further clarified to include ‘dependents’.
1972 of course is also the year of Bloody Sunday and the start of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and, paradoxically, it is Britain’s and the Republic’s accession to the EC in that same year, that, as time runs its course, provides the key mechanism for peace in Ireland. But first, decades of never-ending haphazard violence are needed to teach both sides its futility, and the EC has to progress further.
Although the EC already operates the principles of a customs union (no tariffs between members, and the same tariffs on all imports from outside the EU for all members), when the new joiners join border crossings of goods still require much paperwork and delay, but in 1987 the Single Administrative Document is introduced, replacing hundreds of national customs declaration forms. Next, the Community Customs Code of 1992 integrates all previous and multi-various Community regulations into a simplified, standardized set applying by now to a 12-member (Greece, Spain and Portugal having also joined) and soon to be 25-member (through the addition first of Sweden, Finland and Austria in 1995, and later Europe’s eastern bloc, once freed of communist Russian control, plus Malta and Cyprus) European Union (EU).
With this Customs Union, the unencumbered movement of goods between the EU members becomes a new reality. But things do not stop there, internet and IT simplifying and tightening controls further as the 21st century approaches. At the border between Ireland and the North too, customs controls disappear, but border checks do not, as British Army posts keep guard at the main crossings, and the Army makes the 400-odd other crossings impassable, in order to hinder cross-border support and refuge for the P-IRA and other paramilitary insurgents.
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XIX. GOOD FRIDAY
Almost immediately after the events of 1972’s Bloody Sunday have inaugurated an escalation of the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, the British and Irish prime ministers of the day, Edward Heath, who has brought the UK into the EC, and newly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, initiate a multi-party peace conference at Sunningdale Park in England’s leafy Berkshire to review and debate the content of a White Paper issued by the British government which envisages a power-sharing devolved government for Northern Ireland.
Since partition, the government of Northern Ireland has always been devolved, but power has not been shared, since the traditional first-past-the-post single seat constituency model, still in operation in the UK today, has ensured that government has always been in the hands of a large protestant Unionist parliamentary majority.
The Northern Ireland Assembly Bill that emerges from the Sunningdale conference becomes law in May 1973 and requires a Northern Irish Parliament be elected by proportional representation and a power-sharing Executive be formed. The moderate nationalist SDLP (Social & Democratic Liberal) and unionist UUP (Ulster Unionist) parties who attended the conference are in favour of the agreement, as is a majority of the electorate, as reflected by the subsequent election to the new 77-member Assembly – 31 seats for the UUP, 19 for the SDLP, 8 for Alliance, and 1 for NI Labour, representing a comfortable majority for the pro-Treaty parties over the anti-treaty DUP (of Iain Paisley), Vanguard and West Belfast parties who together win 18 seats.
The new Executive, comprising a unionist prime minister (Brian Faulkner of the UUP) and nationalist deputy (Gerry Fitt of the SDLP), five other unionist, four nationalist and one nominally non-Sectarian (but Protestant) Alliance Party ministers, duly convenes for the Assembly’s first (and only) meeting in January 1974.
The Assembly Bill also provides for the establishment of a Council of Ireland, as in fact already described in the Ireland Act 1920 that paved the way to Partition. This ‘All-Ireland’ Council is to have “advisory and review functions” only and will comprise an assembly of 60 members (30 drawn from Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, and 30 from the new Northern Ireland Assembly) and an executive (7 from the Dáil and 7 from the Assembly).
What exactly the 14-man executive will do, given the role of the Council is to only advise, is unclear, but nevertheless the thought of any direction ‘from Dublin’ is anathema to the DUP, led by the charismatic and very vocal Iain Paisley, which party of course has been against the ideas of the White Paper from the start and has not been involved in the Sunningdale talks, as of course neither has Sinn Féin, the political wing of the P-IRA (much – but more so – like the DUP of the UDA), for whom nothing else will do than a single united Ireland. A significant minority (20% or more) of Faulkner’s UUP are in agreement with Paisley.
More sectarian violence rather than less is the result, and Faulkner’s UUP, seeing that their popularity with their electorate is at stake, vote against continued participation in the assembly. Faulkner resigns, and as it happens, a UK general election follows, in which a newly formed coalition of convenience, the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) runs agreed single anti-Sunningdale candidate, against the various competing candidates of the SDLP, the Alliance, the NI Labour Party and the pro-Assembly Unionists of Faulkner’s remaining supporters. The UUUC succeeds in returning 11 anti-Sunningdale parliamentarians to Westminster from the 12 Northern Irish constituencies.
The Northern Ireland Assembly is dissolved and ‘direct rule’ by Britain, via a House of Commons appointed Northern Ireland Secretary and his/her London-based civil service replaces it.
Margaret Thatcher succeeds Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative Party of the UK and in 1979 regains the prime-ministration for the Conservatives after a brief Harold-Wilson-led Labour interregnum. Thatcher continues with Britain’s efforts towards creating peace, but little progress is made during the tenures of the next two Fianna Fáil Taoisigh, Jack Lynch and Charles Haughey.
With the P-IRA's campaign focusing ever more on the mainland (main island), in 1984 Thatcher herself is the target of the Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party Conference. Although her natural inclination might have been to ‘fight fire with fire’, MI5 persuade a political solution can be the only way out of “The Troubles”, and Thatcher continues her dialogue with Garret FitzGerald, the new Fine Gael Taoiseach, and John Hume, the new leader of the SDLP, and other peace-minded northern Irish Nationalists, via the New Ireland Forum founded in May 1983.
Despite continuing pressure from the United States (Ronald Reagan, Edward Kennedy, Tip O’Neill all had Irish roots), the New Ireland talks go nowhere, until finally at the start of 1985, John Hume persuades Thatcher, in a private conference at the prime-ministerial Chequers retreat, that an “Irish dimension“, stipulating that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom so long as this has majority support, is needed, or in other words, anticipating ahead, that a majority vote in a “border poll“ could ultimately lead to a united Ireland.
The resultant Anglo-Irish Agreement is passed by the British and Irish parliaments in November 1985 and does just that: recognizes the “Irish dimension“. More prosaically, it also legislates that all Army patrols (the British Army were de facto ‘at war’ with the P-IRA) had to be accompanied by a police (RUC) presence, and that an All-Ireland advisory assembly, now called the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, is resurrected, complete with permanent secretariat.
As before, the new agreement requires the province is governed by a power-sharing executive, but once again no power-sharing develops, as now nearly all Unionists, and a large fraction of Nationalists now dominated by Gerry Adams’ newly revived Sinn Féin, are against the agreement. Unionists continue to rail against the very idea of an All-Ireland assembly, whilst Nationalists see the agreement as putting unification on the long finger.
A further decade of sectarian violence and ‘direct rule’ passes before a third and as it turns out final attempt at peace is embarked upon. In the UK, ‘terrific’ Tony Blair and New Labour are about to take over from John Major’s fading Conservative regime, and in Ireland, the jovial but selectively incoherent Teflon Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fáil ditto from the rather more dour John Bruton and his cautious Fine Gael. Both men and their parties are set to ride a great wave of deregulation and ‘money-creation’ initiated by the gradual implementation by the G-10 Central Banks of the 1988 Basel Accord, concerning the capital ratio’s to be maintained by the banking industry. But that’s a different matter.
However, it is another charismatic chancer of that time, Bill Clinton, already in office as president of the USA (and set fair to ride the same financial wave of good fortune that Blair and Ahern will enjoy), who perhaps can best be credited with rebooting the search for peace. Having made ‘Peace in Ireland’ part of his manifesto prior to his election in 1993, Clinton follows up on this by permitting visa’s to be issued to Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin (and the P-IRA) for visits to the USA to meet with Irish American interests who persuade Adams that peace is the only viable if long term route to Sinn Féin’s goals and also seriously replenish the coffers of his party. Thus well-armed, on 31 August 1994, the P-IRA call a ‘permanent’ ceasefire. Six weeks later, the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commandos follow suit. But the ceasefires are sporadic.
In 1995 Clinton appoints the vastly experienced Senate Majority Leader, professional lawyer George Mitchell, to the new post of US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, on his retirement from the US Senate. Mitchell immediately sets up the IICD (Independent International Commission on Decommissioning) and the Commission drafts the Mitchell Principles, which basically require all paramilitary organizations to decommission and to desists from all forms of violence. Sinn Féin say they will abide by the Mitchell Principles, provided others do as well.
In June 1996, multi-party talks begin again with George Mitchell, together with the EU nominee Harri Holkiri, ex-premier of Finland, and Canadian retired General John de Chastelain, presiding. All the moderate parties attend but Sinn Féin and the DUP do not, since the IRA, UVF, UDA and others are as yet, notwithstanding their rhetoric, not abiding by the Mitchell Principles.
It takes another year to bring the P-IRA to heel, but in June 1997 Sinn Féin are invited by Tony Blair’s Northern Ireland Secretary, Marjorie (Mo) Mowlam to attend the peace talks, as are the DUP. The changing of the guard in Ireland also brings Fianna Fáil’s David Andrews, son of Todd Andrews, an IRA soldier in both the War of Independence and the Civil War thereafter, to the table. Both Mowlan and Andrews turn out to be inspired nominations. Sinn Féin engage, but the DUP are in and out of the talks, unhappy that the P-IRA are not really gone away, are still armed, and that low-level violence has continued.
Nine months of intense negotiations follow whilst the ceasefires hold (more or less), and on April 10, 1998, a comprehensive agreement is in place and is signed off by Blair, Mowlam, Andrews and Ahern. However, the agreement still needs the majority approval by referendum of the people of Northern Ireland, and also of the Republic since part of the agreement required an amendment to two articles of the Irish Constitution, which read:
2. The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas.
3. Pending the re-integration of the national territory, and without prejudice to the right of the Parliament and government established by this Constitution to exercise jurisdiction over the whole of that territory, the laws enacted by that Parliament shall have the like area and extent of application as the laws of the Irish Free State and the like extra-territorial effect.
Substantial majorities vote for the agreement in both the North (despite the DUP campaigning against it) and in the Republic, where Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution are duly changed to read:
2. It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish nation. That is also the entitlement of all persons otherwise qualified in accordance with law to be citizens of Ireland. Furthermore, the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.
3. It is the firm will of the Irish nation, in harmony and friendship, to unite all the people who share the territory of the island of Ireland, in all the diversity of their identities and traditions, recognising that a united Ireland shall be brought about only by peaceful means with the consent of a majority of the people, democratically expressed, in both jurisdictions in the island.
The succinct brevity of Dev’s original text is gone, and the above is not complete, but the salient point is clear: the Irish Constitution no longer claims to apply to the whole island of Ireland.
Signed on a Friday, the Belfast Agreement, or Comhaontú Bhéal Feirste or Bilfawst Greeance in the different vernaculars, enters folklore as the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). To many it is no more than ‘Sunningdale for Slow Learners’ as the GFA too envisages a power-sharing devolved parliament (90 delegates) and executive (12 ministers) for Northern Ireland and an All-Ireland Council of varying size depending on the topics to be coordinated.
And like Sunningdale, decommissioning of the paramilitaries and restructuring of the security forces is agreed, but this time action is taken. A new three-man (again from Canada, Finland and the USA) Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) is convened to facilitate and inspect disarmament progress, and an eight-man (also international, headed up by Chris Patten, last Governor of Hong Kong) Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland (ICPNI) is set up to review policing structure and practice.
Decommissioning progresses in fits-and-starts, but in line with its progress, the British Army withdraws its troops until by the end of 2006, independent inspectors attest that the P-IRA is fully disarmed and its weapons destroyed, and the British Army in their turn has reduced its presence to normal peace-time training levels. A few years later, inspectors confirm that the last loyalist arms caches are also destroyed.
The ICPNI makes quicker progress and in 1999 publishes the ‘Patten Report’. The report’s recommendations are immediately implemented. The name RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) is dropped and the police force is rebranded PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland). More substantively a 50/50 affirmative Catholic/ Protestant recruitment policy is adopted; as a result the Catholic/Protestant ratio of the force steadily shifts from 8/92 in 1996 to 33/67 in 2021. A host of other ‘soft’ measures are implemented and by-and-by the Catholic community’s confidence in the force improves to reach the same level as that of the Protestant community – around 80%.
More fundamentally and as a quid-pro-quo to Ireland’s constitutional amendments, the British parliament repeals the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (which had partitioned Ireland and asserts a territorial claim over all of Ireland). In its place comes the Good Friday Agreement, which is duly passed into law and thus becomes “a core constitutional text of the UK, of more everyday importance than hallowed instruments such as, say, the Magna Carta of 1215 or the 1689 Bill of Rights” as legal commentator David Allen Green puts it. So, power-sharing devolved government, an all-Ireland council, demilitarization, police reform, and no ‘a priori’ claim to territory (by either country) – instead both national identities are recognized and the principle of self-determination applies which means that in the future, if so voted by a majority (in the north and in the south) unification will be.
The GFA further “recognizes the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish, or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.“
And finally the GFA commits the signatories “to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between these islands.“
The total document is 35 pages long, but nowhere does it mention maintaining an ‘open border’, a situation that has of course existed ever since the EU’s Customs Union has come into effect in 1992, save for British Army checks which now become a thing of the past.
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XX. THE BACKSTOP
Tony Blair leads the Labour Party to a repeat victory in the UK General Elections of 2005. However, because in his first term from 1997 to 2004, Blair has engaged the country in five international conflicts – Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and finally Iraq again in 2003 in order to close down the purported production and caches of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in that country – his popularity has much waned and a 160-seat majority had reduced to 60 (still 10%). No WMDs are ever found in Iraq and the cost in terms of British lives in particular of the unrelenting campaign in Afghanistan eats away at his leadership.
In 2006, Blair’s party force him to resign and he is succeeded by his life-long political ally and Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown. The surplus of charisma that Blair possesses is wholly matched by Brown’s deficit of same. Unelected (by the country) and unpopular, Brown has the misfortune to be in power when in 2008 the World’s financial system implodes, after more than a decade of unprecedented growth in prosperity. It goes beyond this essay to review what causes this worldwide calamity; suffice to say nearly nobody saw it coming, least of all the world’s political leaders. But Brown is on watch, and has been in charge of the pennies when things seemed to be going so well, but, obviously now, are no longer.
The Conservative Party, who, ever since Blair’s victory in 1997, have been swapping leaders faster than American movie stars swap sexual partners, at the end of 2005 have given that gig to David Cameron – another young man, like Blair was at the height of his success, and Dave to his friends and the press. Dave is good at scoring points of Gordon, but various mini-scandals (a jolly to South Africa, mortgage expense claims) hound him. Nevertheless, at the next general election in 2010, the Conservatives win the most seats, but not a majority. A coalition government is negotiated with the Liberal Democrats, which over time erodes the Lib Dems’ appeal to voters almost entirely.
Despite, like Blair, engaging the UK in various foreign conflicts – Libya and Syria, although not with troops on the ground – and continuing to maintain the campaign in Afghanistan, and despite continuing with an obviously unpopular regime of austerity in response to the 2008 Crash, at the next general elections in 2015 Cameron unexpectedly wins a small overall majority, whilst the Lib Dems are decimated. Surprisingly Labour also loses seats, and enough to prevent Scotland, en-masse for the first time returning almost only SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) delegates, winning a ‘balance of power’ in the Commons. If only…
Cameron’s election manifesto includes that if elected, he will hold a “a straight in-out referendum on membership of the European Union”. Cameron himself, together with his nominees (in-waiting) for ministerial office, are against Britain exiting the EU (Brexit for short), and believe a referendum will back their views. However, a growing anti-Europe faction within the Conservative Party (collectivized in the so-called European Research Group, ERG) is a concern to him, as is the small but growing popularity of UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party) led by the loud and ebullient Nigel Farage. In 2010, UKIP had increased their share of votes from 2% to 3%. Not enough to win any first-past-the-post seats, but two resignations by sitting Conservative MPs who then successfully re-stand for UKIP in by-elections in 2014 have been enough for Cameron to seek electoral compromise by way of his Brexit pledge.
The referendum does not work out as Cameron anticipates; 52% of a 72% turnout (i.e. 36% of the electorate) vote to leave the European Union. Cameron resigns and Theresa May succeeds him – like Gordon Brown before her, not the people’s electoral choice and even less charming. Moreover, her “Brexit means Brexit” slogan notwithstanding, what Brexit can or should be is not at all clear, as there are numerous arrangements between members of the European Union, some of which not all participate in and others of which non-EU members also participate in.
For example and pertinently, all EU members are members of the EEA (European Economic Area) but so are Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein, none of whom are in the EU. As members of the EEA, these latter three countries have the right (and the obligation) to unencumbered trade with all the other members, which right includes the right to work (free movement of people), in short they enjoy the “four freedoms” of the EU – the free movement of goods, services, persons, and capital. As a quid pro quo, the goods and services they sell and their factory and office working practices must comply with EU regulations, in order to keep a ‘level playing field’. Obviously, as non-members, they have no input into the actual drawing up of these regulations.
Remaining in the EEA would have been a ‘soft’ Brexit, but politically within her own party this is not a tenable option for May – “Brexit means Brexit” and thus the deal May negotiates requires the re-introduction of border controls between the UK and the EU; border controls to check for what purpose people are crossing borders, to assure VAT and duties are levied on goods, to assure imported goods comply with relevant standards, etc.
The EU, in support of its member, the Republic Ireland, argues that checks and controls on the border between the Republic and the UK’s Northern Ireland would be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement. As stated, there is no ‘black-and-white’ text in the GFA that actually says this, partly because back in 1992, the border had already been ‘open’ for more than a decade, and partly because the Republic, ever since independence in 1922 has been and has remained part of the Common Travel Area (CTA), which gives everybody in England, Wales, Scotland and (all of) Ireland the right to travel, work and settle throughout the British Isles wherever they wish.
To assure the border remains uncontrolled, Theresa May’s deal includes a clause which becomes known as the Backstop, which states, that, no matter what, in the future there shall be no border controls between Ireland and the North. Towards the end of 2018, Parliament votes on and rejects the deal, several times; the opposition (Labour) because they are the opposition, and up to a third of Conservative MPs because they fear that the Backstop will ultimately lead to the UK having to join Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein in an expanded EEA, since the ideas of borderless controls using IT being expounded by May and her team seem fanciful, which indeed they are.
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XXI. BORDER IN THE IRISH SEA
In June 2019, Theresa May resigns from her leadership of the Conservative party. The Conservatives elect Boris Johnson as their new leader, and in July a small majority in the House of Commons elect Johnson as new Prime Minister. As a result of a ‘snap’ general election called by Theresa May back in 2017, the Conservative Party, in exchange for an extra £1 billion funding for Northern Ireland, relies on the support of Northern Ireland’s DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) for a working majority to back Johnson, since the ‘snap’ election has backfired on her by returning less (13) rather than more Conservative MPs to the house, and more (30) rather than less Labour MPs.
Boris Johnson is a very different politician to Theresa May. Much has already been written about him, and indeed much has also been written by him, as magazine editor, newspaper columnist, author, novelist and as biographer of Winston Churchill (one of fifty in the English language alone). Suffice to say here is that, like Churchill perhaps, Johnson is a big-picture man, but unlike Churchill, he is the ultimate political pragmatist and happy to give his party and the people whatever they want, by hook or by crook – in short “To get Brexit done”.
As soon as he is instated, Johnson threatens the EU with a “No Deal” Brexit, by which the UK would from one day to the next become simply a.n.other foreign country with no agreements on trade, tariffs or whatever with the EU, unless the Backstop is withdrawn. “No Deal” all agree will not be good for anybody, Brit or European. The EU, however, refuses to budge, and Parliament prevents “No Deal”.
By now it is September 2019 and, Theresa May having set the Brexit clock ticking on 31 January 2018 by triggering the EU’s Article 50, the 2-year transition period stipulated by the Article is coming to an end, and if there is no deal, then the UK will Brexit without a deal, whether they like it or not. Johnson calls for a general election, and his gung-ho charisma, combined with many promises and a general irritation or at least ennui amongst the electorate, wins the Conservatives their biggest majority (80 seats) since their halcyon days of Margaret Thatcher.
Almost simultaneously, following bilateral talks with Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Johnson also manages to negotiate a revised deal with the EU – basically the same deal as Theresa May’s, but with the Backstop now replaced by a new Northern Ireland Protocol (or Fullstop as The Guardian newspaper succinctly calls it). Parliament approves the deal, and the DUP powerlessly fumes, since the Fullstop prevents the necessity of a border on the island of Ireland by imposing a Border in the Irish Sea instead, clearly disuniting Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom to a certain extent – anathema to all Unionists, and to them quite as much in breach of the GFA as re-introducing a controlled border in Ireland is to the Nationalists.
The protocol does provide a mechanism for review. After four years, the devolved government of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Executive, is entitled to decide on behalf of the people on an alternative arrangements that will ensure the integrity of the EU. That could be technology, but the more obvious alternative is a border on the island, which, however, would be deemed to be a breach of the GFA. Moreover, demographics and politics are continuously eroding the Unionist presence in the Assembly. Given also that 58% of voters in Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU at the time of the Referendum, other than by way of the UK reneging on their agreement or alternatively rejoining the EU, the removal of the Border in the Irish Sea will therefore prove to be impossible.
It is difficult to control a border in the sea; practically, it must be done on land – at a country’s seaports and airports. Coastal patrol boats also help. Therefore, customs controls have been put in place on all sea- and airfreight entering into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. Paperwork takes time, learning how to deal with new paperwork takes even more time, and the North’s frustration with the EU’s requirements on goods coming from their united kingdom’s main island grows and grows.
Boris Johnson having recently agreed to resign in the wake of various but totally predictable careless acts and lies, what will happen next is hard to tell. Will Johnson’s successor tear up the protocol, protected though it is by international law? Will he or she appeal to Article 16 of the protocol by claiming it is unworkable (although it manifestly isn’t and surely learning by doing works in Northern Ireland too)? Will Ireland then refuse to set up controls on the Northern Irish border, citing the GFA and the risk of Troubles? Don’t forget, there are no UK controls either, despite Ireland being a foreign country as far as trade goes. Will the EU man the Irish border instead? After all, there are EU officials seconded to Northern Irish ports of entry right now.
Alternatively, will the present situation persist, till in two and a half years time the Northern Ireland Assembly by a significant majority votes to continue with the protocol as is? Presumably, as long as Unionists refuse to take their seats in the Assembly until such time as the Protocol is disapplied, this can’t happen! But if it does, will Unionist civil disobedience and worse result?
Or perhaps, the powers that be in the United Kingdom (the Northern Irish Secretary of State, not the Assembly) and the Republic of Ireland (Dáil Éireann) will deem the time right to launch concurrent Border Polls in North and South as agreed on in the GFA? But if this leads to reunification, again, will Unionist civil disobedience and worse result?
The island was partitioned once, so more radically, perhaps that should be tried again – a re-partition to create an independent from the UK and Ireland Singapore-of-the-North; much less hot, a little less wet, basically Co Antrim plus the NE corner of Co’s Tyrone, Armagh and Down. This new Dal Riada wouldn’t meet all the aspirations of the Unionists, but in the end perhaps they’d welcome being rid of perfidious Albion and secure in their new independent bastion. The relatively recently founded, non-religiously alligned, centrist Alliance party is making strong electoral gains and would not be against an independent solution. Splinter political parties like the Ulster Third Way and the Ulster Independence Movement would also be well-pleased, as presumably would be the predominantly Irish Nationalist-minded population of the rest of the province on being reunited with their southern brethren once again.
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