Northern Ireland: From Imperial Asset to International Encumbrance

Tommy Mckearney

doi:10.5195/jwsr.2016.636

Abstract

The Northern Ireland story is more complex than the trite tale of orange versus green or two warring tribes. Current inhabitants are not settling ancient scores. Northern Ireland is the product of colonialism, the plantation of Ulster, machinations of a British state determined to retain a strategic outpost, 50 years of one party discriminatory government and the recent conflict. The Good Friday Agreement facilitated an end to armed conflict but is inherently flawed. Compounding the Stormont Assembly’s very limited ability to steer the economy is reluctance by the political parties to accept the rationale of the Agreement. Republicans are unhappy that Northern Ireland will remain British while unionists dislike the fact that republicans are partners in administration. Northern Ireland’s two leading parties, The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin (SF,) do not have the power (even if they wanted to use it) to address the social and economic issues affecting constituents’ lives. Northern Ireland is changing demographically while also facing economic challenges at a time when both England and Scotland are reassessing the nature of the Union.

Highlights

Contemporary Northern Ireland is the product of English-led colonialism, a seventeenth century migration of English and Scottish settlers into Ulster, sectarian machinations by a British state determined until recently to retain a strategically important outpost, one party discriminatory government between 1920 and 1972 and a prolonged violent/bloody conflict through the final years of the twentieth century
The process became known as the Plantation of Ulster
When the British government decided, in the mid-1970s, to give priority to the use of these locally recruited forces, it became inevitable that the conflict in Northern Ireland would assume a different character, with unavoidable sectarian consequences, pitting as it did one community against the other rather than conducting a battle strictly between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the regular forces of the British state

Summary

Introduction

Contemporary Northern Ireland is the product of English-led colonialism, a seventeenth century migration of English and Scottish settlers into Ulster, sectarian machinations by a British state determined until recently to retain a strategically important outpost, one party discriminatory government between 1920 and 1972 and a prolonged violent/bloody conflict through the final years of the twentieth century.2 History can rarely be used to justify current actions but it certainly offers an insight into how the northern part of Ireland finds itself in its present situation. When the British government decided, in the mid-1970s, to give priority to the use of these locally recruited forces, it became inevitable that the conflict in Northern Ireland would assume a different character, with unavoidable sectarian consequences, pitting as it did one community against the other rather than conducting a battle strictly between the IRA and the regular forces of the British state.

Results

Conclusion