Belfast in 2019 is a divided city, much like Berlin had been from 1961 to 1989. Britain likes to think this is because the Irish are violent. But what Britain likes to ignore is that it is at the heart of the division.
A thread on causality.
A thread on causality.
From the early 17th century, in order to make the "wild Irish" more governable from London, James I and VI began the Plantation of Ulster. Gaelic Catholic Irish people were dispossessed of their land to make way for Protestant 'planters' from Scotland, England, and Wales.
From the time of the Plantation of Ulster until the present day, the British media has consistently presented the Irish people as savage, animalistic, and uncivilised. This has made it possible for Britain to treat Ireland with increasing indifference and brutality.
In 1690 the English Protestant King, William III, defeated the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. Harsh 'penal laws' were introduced to disempower Irish Catholics. The 'Ascendancy' begins, a period of great privilege of the minority over the majority.
Inspired by the French revolution, in 1798 the United Irishmen under the leadership of Theobald Wolfe Tone - a Dublin-born Protestant - revolted against British rule. The Republicans were defeated and the 'croppies' suffered severe reprisals.
As a consequence of rebellion, the Irish parliament was dissolved in 1801 with the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland. From now on Ireland would be ruled directly from London. Another 'union of equals.'
Robert Emmet, another Irish Protestant Republican leader, who tried to rekindle rebellion after 1798 was hanged, drawn, and quartered in Dublin on 20 September 1803. He was only 25 years old.
"Must Irishmen look idly on, while England assassinates at will."
"Must Irishmen look idly on, while England assassinates at will."
As a consequence of increasing rural agitation from dispossessed Irish Catholics, and to counter growing Republicanism among the Protestants of Ulster, the Orange Order was established in 1795 to further divide Ireland and rob the Republicanism of its educated Protestant leaders.
Before London assumed direct control of Ireland in 1801 the country had thriving industries in Dublin, Belfast, and Cork. Trade and Economic decisions made in Westminster for Britain's benefit rapidly drove Ireland into economic collapse and chronic, grinding poverty.
Without any power over its own economy and with disgusting racially supremacist attitudes in England, Ireland was left wholly vulnerable to the potato blight of 1845-49. One million Irish people were left to starve or die of hunger related diseases. Britain stopped foreign aid.
In the years after the so-called 'Famine' (there was never a shortage of food in Ireland) the poorer Catholic Irish, unable to pay rack rents to large Protestant landowners, were evicted all over the country. Mass emigration continued well into the 20th century.
In response to the evictions, the rural Irish formed the Land League. Priests like Fr. Eugene Sheehy chained themselves to poor people's doors to stop the British police ransacking them. Britain responded with great violence.
Men like Daniel O'Connell (the 'Emancipator') and Charles Stewart Parnell tried through the British parliament to free Irish people from the British-imposed anti-Catholic penal laws and gain Home Rule.
Realising that the only way Ireland could deal with the serious problems Britain had caused in Ireland, the Fenian Brotherhood was established in the United States in 1858 by Irish migrants John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny to raise money and build support for Irish resistance.
"...nowhere was this trend more evident than in Dublin, the slums of which were frequently compared to those of Calcutta..." By 1914, thanks to British policy, the childhood mortality rate in Dublin was being described as a "holocaust."
At about the same time as schoolteacher John Maclean was fighting for similar improvements in Scotland, James Larkin was fighting for better pay and conditions for the poorest workers in Ireland. The British authorities cracked down.
Many thinking they might win Britain's support for Home Rule, 210,000 Irishmen signed up to 'defend' King and Country in the imperial war of 1914-18. Some 35,000 paid with their lives. While their families were left to rot in overcrowded tenements, London 'delayed' Home Rule.
Seeing no end in sight to British oppression and cruelty in Ireland, and asserting their legitimate right to expel a foreign occupier from their country, the Irish rose during Easter week 1916. The Irish Republic was born.
In characteristic fashion, the British responded to the Easter Rising of 1916 with ferocity and sheer bloody barbarism. 16 leaders of the rising were shot and the city of Dublin was razed to the ground. But the fight had just begun.
At the 1919 general election, Sinn Féin won the overwhelming majority of Ireland's Westminster seats. They didn't go to London. They didn't take the oath to the king of England. They convened a parliament in Dublin - the First Dáil Éireann - and declared independence.
Britain's 'civilised' response to Ireland's democratic declaration of independence in 1919 was to send in the Black and Tans, demobilised British soldiers from the Western Front, to terrorise and murder innocent Irish civilians. The War of Independence (1919 to 1921) started.
Unable to defeat the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence, Britain was forced to sign the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (a long story for another time). On 3 May 1921 Britain divided Ireland, keeping "Northern Ireland" with a loyalist Protestant majority for itself.
In relative peace, "Northern Ireland" was constructed as a "Protestant state for a Protestant people" by the British administration. Catholics were deliberately under-represented, excluded from industry, and treated as third-class citizens. jstor.org/stable/179099?…
By the late 1950s and early 60s, Catholics in "Northern Ireland" began demanding civil rights, rights denied to them by Belfast and London. Loyalists - encouraged by their political leaders - began burning Catholic homes, sending many families fleeing to the Republic as refugees.
British soldiers were sent to "Northern Ireland" to 'keep the peace.' But when the British paratroop regiment began going door to door murdering civilians in Belfast and shooting civil rights demonstrators in Derry, their true purpose became all too clear to the Irish people.
As a means of self-defence against British military attacks on innocent civilians the Provisional IRA was formed out of the Old IRA in "Northern Ireland." Against the backdrop of a terrorist British state, they were labelled "terrorists." Yes, the P-IRA committed war crimes too.
For over 30 years the British security services and the police - the RUC - colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to murder Republican activists, journalists, and volunteers. During this time the IRA waged a horrific bombing campaign in England - almost killing Margaret Thatcher.
Rather than turn to diplomacy, terrorist-in-chief Margaret Thatcher - who would "not negotiate with terrorists" - let Bobby Sands MP and nine other "blanket-men" starve to death on hunger strike in 1981 in Long Kesh prison (H-Block).
"Northern Ireland" was never about Protestants vs. Catholics. This was never a religious conflict. Britain created and stoked sectarian division in Ireland to maintain political control.
After more than three centuries of British rule in Ireland - not just 30 years - the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. It was the result of the dedication and commitment of a whole nation to peace. Right now Britain is working overtime to undo this achievement.
Belfast is a divided city. Peace in Ireland is fragile. Britain, and not Ireland, has created this situation - it installed the hardware of the Troubles. Britain has always been the cause of Ireland's political difficulties. It is time for this to end.
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