War and Peace 1969–2005

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the Northern Ireland Troubles which arose in the 1960s and which persisted into the twenty-first century. Those Troubles involved the transition from a civil rights movement, through inter-communal polarization and somewhat heavy-handed state response, into a civil war which lasted for decades and which cost nearly 4,000 lives. Anti-state terrorists such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) sought to defend their communities from loyalist attack, and to resist, subvert, and destroy a Northern Ireland polity which they considered both illegitimate and systemically unfair. Pro-state terrorists such as the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) sought to bring pressure to bear, both on their Irish nationalist neighbours and on the UK state, to prevent the ending of UK sovereignty over Northern Ireland. There was also violence from state forces in efforts to contain, combat, and thwart non-state terrorisms. The decades-long conflict was largely brought to an end through a peace process which reached its apotheosis in the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, but which also involved important subsequent amendments and developments in attempts to sustain peace in Northern Ireland.