The Colonial Venture of Ireland, Part 1
Irish history has been likened to the cry of wind through a ruined house because so much of it deals with destruction and the breaking of a whole into parts. Centuries of conflict between Catholic and Protestant, Irish rebel and British authority offer a dramatic narrative of the pitfalls that accompany colonization by conquest. They provide a cautionary tale of how events put into motion can became a defining aspect not only of the conquered but of the conquerors for centuries into the future ... whether anyone wants that burden of history or not.
The island of Ireland lies at the extreme western edge of Europe, separated from England by the narrow Irish Sea. Today, it is divided into two parts: 6 northern counties called Northern Ireland are a part of the United Kingdom; 26 other counties form a self-governing republic that has been known by different names but is commonly referred to as Ireland.
Ireland was not always divided. In the early centuries A.D., a race known as the Gaels inhabited the island. Ireland’s basic social unit was the extended family. Her basic political unit was the tribe, with each tribe having its own king who was, in turn, secondary to provincial kings. Although the northern province of Ulster tended to dominate this loose federation, the basic bond between the sometimes-warring tribes was a common conception of society, politics, and culture.
In the fifth century, the Gaels stole a 16-year-old Roman named Patricius and held him as a slave until he escaped years later. Patricius eventually returned to Ireland as the Christian bishop now known as St. Patrick, intent upon converting his former masters. The Gaels were Druids, which might be described as a college of wise men who worshipped nature and were versed in such arts as prophecy. When St. Patrick “drove the snakes out of Ireland” — the snake being a symbol of paganism — a unique form of Christianity was forged, one that drew upon Gaelic traditions.
Invasions of Ireland
In the ninth century, barbarians swept across mainland Europe, destroying civilization and ushering in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, some monasteries in remote Ireland lay relatively untouched and served as storehouses for manuscripts destroyed elsewhere. In time, Ireland became the teaching center of Europe, earning the nickname “the isle of saints and scholars.”
The first successful conquerors of Ireland — the Normans from France — arrived in the 12th century and stood in sharp contrast to the Gaels. The French scholar Roger Chauvire observes,
There was nothing which could bring together the two races ... neither language, since the one spoke French, and the other Gaelic; nor institutions, since on the one side there was the carefully worked out scale of feudalism, on the other the vaguely federal patriarchal tribes; nor judicial conception, with primogeniture on the one hand and limited election on the other. Nor indeed did they have any common interest.
The Norman earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, had landed in Ireland at the behest of an Irish king defeated in tribal warfare. Irish warriors, without helmet or armor, fell quickly before Strongbow’s horsemen, who were clad in mail and armed with quick-firing bows. As Strongbow advanced, he secured his conquests by building stone castles. But in a cycle that would repeat itself to this day, Ireland became a source of worry to English authorities.
Fearing that a rival state would arise, King Henry II landed with troops and was officially installed as ruler. His rule was a formality. The English controlled only about 20 square miles around the southern coast-city of Dublin. Over time, the English maintained control only by installing ditches and staked fences, or palisades, called collectively “the Pale.” On pain of death, the Irish were to remain “outside the Pale” in territory that had not been properly conquered, as there was no one leader to subdue and no center of government to overwhelm.
Over the next few centuries, Ireland was mildly plundered but largely left alone and a balance or blending emerged. The Gaels began to use armor and build stone castles; the English adopted aspects of Gaelic lifestyle such as the poetry, the small harp, and riding bareback; the two bloodlines mingled through marriage.
Religious tensions and warIn the first half of the 16th century, however, the Tudor king Henry VIII complicated foreign affairs. Failing to get a papal annulment for his first marriage, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Church was established as the state church in both England and Ireland but, since the average Irishman could still attend Catholic mass, the change did not stir revolt.
The reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, was different. England was threatened by Catholic France, and the great families of Ireland had a history of forming foreign alliances. To slam shut a back door for invasion, Elizabeth devastated the island, burning crops and slaughtering herds. As the Irish starved, their land was reassigned to prominent Englishmen &# 151; such as Sir Walter Raleigh — who established a form of feudalism by which the Irish lived as tenants on land they had formerly owned. The estates were known as “plantations.&# 148; The “wild Irish” — so named because of their reputed savagery — rebelled and were brutally crushed.
The experience of the English landowners in Ireland greatly influenced their later treatment of Indians in America. Many of the British who became prominent in the American colonies had been connected with the Irish experience. For example, the first Indian reservation agent — Gookin of Massachusetts — had seen military service in Ireland, as had many of the leaders of the original Virginia Company. Thus, the Irish “plantation” experience was transported onto American soil.
In 1603, James I, a Catholic, became king of England but his first concern was not religion; it was to preserve his throne. He declared Ulster, Ireland’s northern province, to be Crown Domain and divided it into six British counties. Land titles were granted to English Protestant nobles; the Catholic Irish were ordered to leave or to lease. For the Irish, the distinction between defending their land and defending their faith was being blurred.
The Catholics of Ulster finally revolted, killing as many as 10,000 colonists. The English response was motivated partly by political unrest at home. A new king, Charles I, had been executed and a Parliament — called the Long Parliament — ruled in his stead. Parliament was eager to send a restless and unpaid army out of the country. Eventually, Ireland was invaded under the leadership of the Puritan commander Oliver Cromwell.
One-fourth of the Catholic population — about one million people — died by the sword or starvation; tens of thousands were deported to fever-ridden colonies or the West Indies as slaves. Before Cromwell, Catholics held two-thirds of Irish land: afterward, only one-fourth. The Protestant conquest was complete by 1660, when the English monarchy was restored under Charles II. In 1685, James II, another Catholic, succeeded him. When a Catholic heir was born, James was deposed and retreated to Ireland, whence he planned a conquest of England with the encouragement of the French king, Louis XIV. James’s plans dissolved on July 12, 1690, when his forces were defeated on the banks of the Boyne River. Thereafter, Irish Protestants would celebrate that date much as Americans celebrate July the Fourth.
The British now passed a series of penal laws that stripped Catholics of civil liberties and barred their access to land, public office, and education. A culture built on deceiving the British emerged. For example, the only legal form of education taught children to be good Protestants. Hedge schools sprang up, so named after the Gaelic practice of teaching under the sunny side of a hedge. A class would meet in a different location each day, with one pupil serving as lookout. A popular rhyme explained,
Crouching ‘neath the sheltering
hedge
Or stretch’d on mountain fern,
The teacher and his pupils meet
Feloniously to learn.
Ulster — once the most rebellious area of Ireland — became the most loyal and Protestant. The issue that would spark open revolt between Catholic and Protestant was a familiar one: land. The first general tenants’ rights movement arose in the 1760s; participants were called the Oakboys or Greenboys.
Revolution in America and France
Meanwhile, the American colonies had also become restless under British rule. The Revolution of 1776 had many friends in Ireland who sympathized with Benjamin Franklin’s appeal for their support against a common enemy: England. Connections between America and Ireland ran deep. By 1770, an estimated one in ten ships leaving major American ports sailed for Ireland. At least one American in six living south of New England was of Irish origin.
When French and Spanish fleets — also sympathetic to American rebellion — began to cruise the English Channel, the anxious British asked loyal Irishmen to organize against an invasion. There was an obstacle to cooperation. As commerce flourished, merchants and manufacturers began to resent British mercantilism under which Northern Ireland would produce raw materials and goods, many of which could be shipped only to England. In turn, England enjoyed a monopoly on selling many goods back to them, and industries that threatened English interests were outlawed. The supposedly loyal Ulstermen paraded two cannon with placards that read, “ ;Free Trade or This.” The British Parliament loosened trade restrictions.
In 1789, the French Revolution stunned and threatened all of Europe. In Dublin, it became fashionable for Catholics to address each other as citizen, after the custom of French revolutionaries. The legal obstacles for Catholics were also loosened but revolution could not appeased. A society called the United Irishmen was formed to push for parliamentary reform that would establish the rights of man as advocated by Thomas Paine. During 1791 and 1792, Paine’ ;s Rights of Man went into at least seven Irish editions.
The British reversed their policies and clamped down on both peasant and radical movements. Hundreds were hanged. Wolfe Tone — an Irish Protestant who argued for Catholic rights — convinced French generals that an invasion of Ireland would spark a general uprising. But bad weather made the 43 French ships en route turn around for home. (Eventually, Tone would be captured and sentenced to hang but, instead, he was found in his jail cell with his throat mysteriously slit.) Nevertheless, a peasant rebellion broke out in Wexford and was met with severe violence; in one battle alone, called Vinegar Hill, estimates of the Irish dead range from 25,000 to 50,000. A reign of Protestant terror ensued.
Soon a second French force landed, this time in the company of Napper Tandy — a co-founder of the United Irishmen. To rouse revolution, Tandy posted a proclamation calling upon Irishmen to “strike on their blood cemented thrones the murderers of your friends!” Unfortunately for Tandy, the target audience could not read the proclamation because it was written in English rather than Gaelic. Tandy got drunk and was carried back to the ship, which returned to France.
The Act of Union
The British now determined to guard against another French invasion by bringing Ireland firmly into the United Kingdom. On January 1, 1801, an Act of Union joined Ireland and England under a single Parliament in London. The Union would last 120 years.
The Act affected Ireland in several ways. Some Irish became committed to repealing the Act. With parliamentary reform at home blocked, others became committed to violence. Robert Emmet’s rebellion of 1803 embodied this latter spirit even though the rebellion degenerated into a Dublin street brawl and the rebels were arrested. Just before receiving a death penalty, Emmet delivered an impassioned speech from the docket. By calling on future generations to fight for Irish freedom, Emmet converted his failure into legend. His words were repeated from father to son over generations. A third effect was a flood of emigration from Ireland, especially to North America. These Irish abroad provided much of the money that financed the Irish nationalist cause.
A fourth effect was to divide Protestants more deeply from Catholics. Dublin — in the Catholic south — was no longer the seat of Irish government. An unofficial capital emerged in Belfast — an industrial city with a busy port and booming trade. In the agrarian South, the peasants bowed under heavy rents. Any increase in the land’s output was followed by an immediate hike in rent. Thus, they could not acquire capital upon which to build. Catholics poured north to work. By the mid 1800s, one-third of Belfast, and its poorest part, was Catholic. The Protestants jealously guarded their privileged status from the newcomers.
In 1795, the Orange Society was founded and became the most visible expression of what was called “the Protestant ascendancy”: the Protestant ruling class. Named in honor of King William III of Orange, who triumphed in the Battle of Boyne, the Orangemen declared the Act of Union to be an unbreakable tie between their religion and the constitution of the United Kingdom. In 1805, the Irish Protestant politician John Foster reminded the British House of Commons of the obligation it had acquired through colonizing Ulster:
We claim as our inheritance all the blessings of that glorious Constitution which our ancestors and yours have fought and bled for — a Protestant king, with Protestant councillors, Protestant Lord and Protestant commons. That is what I call Protestant Ascendancy.
Meanwhile, Daniel O’Connell, a Catholic, became the most outspoken opponent of Union. Influenced by William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham, O’Connell declared, “My political creed is short and simple. It consists in believing that all men are entitled, as of right and justice, to religious and civil liberty.” But O’Connell opposed open rebellion. Instead, in 1823, he co-founded the immensely popular Catholic Association, which became an unofficial native parliament to discuss Irish grievances. O’ ;Connell became known as “the Liberator” when the British Parliament granted Catholic Emancipation in 1829, by which Catholics could assume virtually any political office.
In a balancing act that would be repeated through many decades, the British soothed Protestants’ fears by passing anti-Catholic Acts: the Catholic Association was suppressed; and, the franchise was based on property ownership, reducing the Catholic electorate to about 16 ,000.
Poor Irish Catholics were disfranchised. Agrarian societies sprang up to address the needs of poor tenants, especially to protest the payment of tithes and rent to absentee British landlords. The official crime figures for 1832 included 242 murders and 568 arsons. The British responded with the Coercion Bill of 1833 which temporarily suspended habeas corpus, prohibited meetings, and replaced civil courts with military ones. One result: O’Connell and many others abandoned their attempt to reform Ireland through appeals to Britain. Reform would come from within.
Part 1 | Part 2 (To be posted 9/15)
Part 3 (To be posted 9/17) | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998).
The island of Ireland lies at the extreme western edge of Europe, separated from England by the narrow Irish Sea. Today, it is divided into two parts: 6 northern counties called Northern Ireland are a part of the United Kingdom; 26 other counties form a self-governing republic that has been known by different names but is commonly referred to as Ireland.
Ireland was not always divided. In the early centuries A.D., a race known as the Gaels inhabited the island. Ireland’s basic social unit was the extended family. Her basic political unit was the tribe, with each tribe having its own king who was, in turn, secondary to provincial kings. Although the northern province of Ulster tended to dominate this loose federation, the basic bond between the sometimes-warring tribes was a common conception of society, politics, and culture.
In the fifth century, the Gaels stole a 16-year-old Roman named Patricius and held him as a slave until he escaped years later. Patricius eventually returned to Ireland as the Christian bishop now known as St. Patrick, intent upon converting his former masters. The Gaels were Druids, which might be described as a college of wise men who worshipped nature and were versed in such arts as prophecy. When St. Patrick “drove the snakes out of Ireland” — the snake being a symbol of paganism — a unique form of Christianity was forged, one that drew upon Gaelic traditions.
Invasions of Ireland
In the ninth century, barbarians swept across mainland Europe, destroying civilization and ushering in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, some monasteries in remote Ireland lay relatively untouched and served as storehouses for manuscripts destroyed elsewhere. In time, Ireland became the teaching center of Europe, earning the nickname “the isle of saints and scholars.”
The first successful conquerors of Ireland — the Normans from France — arrived in the 12th century and stood in sharp contrast to the Gaels. The French scholar Roger Chauvire observes,
There was nothing which could bring together the two races ... neither language, since the one spoke French, and the other Gaelic; nor institutions, since on the one side there was the carefully worked out scale of feudalism, on the other the vaguely federal patriarchal tribes; nor judicial conception, with primogeniture on the one hand and limited election on the other. Nor indeed did they have any common interest.
The Norman earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, had landed in Ireland at the behest of an Irish king defeated in tribal warfare. Irish warriors, without helmet or armor, fell quickly before Strongbow’s horsemen, who were clad in mail and armed with quick-firing bows. As Strongbow advanced, he secured his conquests by building stone castles. But in a cycle that would repeat itself to this day, Ireland became a source of worry to English authorities.
Fearing that a rival state would arise, King Henry II landed with troops and was officially installed as ruler. His rule was a formality. The English controlled only about 20 square miles around the southern coast-city of Dublin. Over time, the English maintained control only by installing ditches and staked fences, or palisades, called collectively “the Pale.” On pain of death, the Irish were to remain “outside the Pale” in territory that had not been properly conquered, as there was no one leader to subdue and no center of government to overwhelm.
Over the next few centuries, Ireland was mildly plundered but largely left alone and a balance or blending emerged. The Gaels began to use armor and build stone castles; the English adopted aspects of Gaelic lifestyle such as the poetry, the small harp, and riding bareback; the two bloodlines mingled through marriage.
Religious tensions and warIn the first half of the 16th century, however, the Tudor king Henry VIII complicated foreign affairs. Failing to get a papal annulment for his first marriage, Henry broke with the Roman Catholic Church. The Anglican Church was established as the state church in both England and Ireland but, since the average Irishman could still attend Catholic mass, the change did not stir revolt.
The reign of Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, was different. England was threatened by Catholic France, and the great families of Ireland had a history of forming foreign alliances. To slam shut a back door for invasion, Elizabeth devastated the island, burning crops and slaughtering herds. As the Irish starved, their land was reassigned to prominent Englishmen &# 151; such as Sir Walter Raleigh — who established a form of feudalism by which the Irish lived as tenants on land they had formerly owned. The estates were known as “plantations.&# 148; The “wild Irish” — so named because of their reputed savagery — rebelled and were brutally crushed.
The experience of the English landowners in Ireland greatly influenced their later treatment of Indians in America. Many of the British who became prominent in the American colonies had been connected with the Irish experience. For example, the first Indian reservation agent — Gookin of Massachusetts — had seen military service in Ireland, as had many of the leaders of the original Virginia Company. Thus, the Irish “plantation” experience was transported onto American soil.
In 1603, James I, a Catholic, became king of England but his first concern was not religion; it was to preserve his throne. He declared Ulster, Ireland’s northern province, to be Crown Domain and divided it into six British counties. Land titles were granted to English Protestant nobles; the Catholic Irish were ordered to leave or to lease. For the Irish, the distinction between defending their land and defending their faith was being blurred.
The Catholics of Ulster finally revolted, killing as many as 10,000 colonists. The English response was motivated partly by political unrest at home. A new king, Charles I, had been executed and a Parliament — called the Long Parliament — ruled in his stead. Parliament was eager to send a restless and unpaid army out of the country. Eventually, Ireland was invaded under the leadership of the Puritan commander Oliver Cromwell.
One-fourth of the Catholic population — about one million people — died by the sword or starvation; tens of thousands were deported to fever-ridden colonies or the West Indies as slaves. Before Cromwell, Catholics held two-thirds of Irish land: afterward, only one-fourth. The Protestant conquest was complete by 1660, when the English monarchy was restored under Charles II. In 1685, James II, another Catholic, succeeded him. When a Catholic heir was born, James was deposed and retreated to Ireland, whence he planned a conquest of England with the encouragement of the French king, Louis XIV. James’s plans dissolved on July 12, 1690, when his forces were defeated on the banks of the Boyne River. Thereafter, Irish Protestants would celebrate that date much as Americans celebrate July the Fourth.
The British now passed a series of penal laws that stripped Catholics of civil liberties and barred their access to land, public office, and education. A culture built on deceiving the British emerged. For example, the only legal form of education taught children to be good Protestants. Hedge schools sprang up, so named after the Gaelic practice of teaching under the sunny side of a hedge. A class would meet in a different location each day, with one pupil serving as lookout. A popular rhyme explained,
Crouching ‘neath the sheltering
hedge
Or stretch’d on mountain fern,
The teacher and his pupils meet
Feloniously to learn.
Ulster — once the most rebellious area of Ireland — became the most loyal and Protestant. The issue that would spark open revolt between Catholic and Protestant was a familiar one: land. The first general tenants’ rights movement arose in the 1760s; participants were called the Oakboys or Greenboys.
Revolution in America and France
Meanwhile, the American colonies had also become restless under British rule. The Revolution of 1776 had many friends in Ireland who sympathized with Benjamin Franklin’s appeal for their support against a common enemy: England. Connections between America and Ireland ran deep. By 1770, an estimated one in ten ships leaving major American ports sailed for Ireland. At least one American in six living south of New England was of Irish origin.
When French and Spanish fleets — also sympathetic to American rebellion — began to cruise the English Channel, the anxious British asked loyal Irishmen to organize against an invasion. There was an obstacle to cooperation. As commerce flourished, merchants and manufacturers began to resent British mercantilism under which Northern Ireland would produce raw materials and goods, many of which could be shipped only to England. In turn, England enjoyed a monopoly on selling many goods back to them, and industries that threatened English interests were outlawed. The supposedly loyal Ulstermen paraded two cannon with placards that read, “ ;Free Trade or This.” The British Parliament loosened trade restrictions.
In 1789, the French Revolution stunned and threatened all of Europe. In Dublin, it became fashionable for Catholics to address each other as citizen, after the custom of French revolutionaries. The legal obstacles for Catholics were also loosened but revolution could not appeased. A society called the United Irishmen was formed to push for parliamentary reform that would establish the rights of man as advocated by Thomas Paine. During 1791 and 1792, Paine’ ;s Rights of Man went into at least seven Irish editions.
The British reversed their policies and clamped down on both peasant and radical movements. Hundreds were hanged. Wolfe Tone — an Irish Protestant who argued for Catholic rights — convinced French generals that an invasion of Ireland would spark a general uprising. But bad weather made the 43 French ships en route turn around for home. (Eventually, Tone would be captured and sentenced to hang but, instead, he was found in his jail cell with his throat mysteriously slit.) Nevertheless, a peasant rebellion broke out in Wexford and was met with severe violence; in one battle alone, called Vinegar Hill, estimates of the Irish dead range from 25,000 to 50,000. A reign of Protestant terror ensued.
Soon a second French force landed, this time in the company of Napper Tandy — a co-founder of the United Irishmen. To rouse revolution, Tandy posted a proclamation calling upon Irishmen to “strike on their blood cemented thrones the murderers of your friends!” Unfortunately for Tandy, the target audience could not read the proclamation because it was written in English rather than Gaelic. Tandy got drunk and was carried back to the ship, which returned to France.
The Act of Union
The British now determined to guard against another French invasion by bringing Ireland firmly into the United Kingdom. On January 1, 1801, an Act of Union joined Ireland and England under a single Parliament in London. The Union would last 120 years.
The Act affected Ireland in several ways. Some Irish became committed to repealing the Act. With parliamentary reform at home blocked, others became committed to violence. Robert Emmet’s rebellion of 1803 embodied this latter spirit even though the rebellion degenerated into a Dublin street brawl and the rebels were arrested. Just before receiving a death penalty, Emmet delivered an impassioned speech from the docket. By calling on future generations to fight for Irish freedom, Emmet converted his failure into legend. His words were repeated from father to son over generations. A third effect was a flood of emigration from Ireland, especially to North America. These Irish abroad provided much of the money that financed the Irish nationalist cause.
A fourth effect was to divide Protestants more deeply from Catholics. Dublin — in the Catholic south — was no longer the seat of Irish government. An unofficial capital emerged in Belfast — an industrial city with a busy port and booming trade. In the agrarian South, the peasants bowed under heavy rents. Any increase in the land’s output was followed by an immediate hike in rent. Thus, they could not acquire capital upon which to build. Catholics poured north to work. By the mid 1800s, one-third of Belfast, and its poorest part, was Catholic. The Protestants jealously guarded their privileged status from the newcomers.
In 1795, the Orange Society was founded and became the most visible expression of what was called “the Protestant ascendancy”: the Protestant ruling class. Named in honor of King William III of Orange, who triumphed in the Battle of Boyne, the Orangemen declared the Act of Union to be an unbreakable tie between their religion and the constitution of the United Kingdom. In 1805, the Irish Protestant politician John Foster reminded the British House of Commons of the obligation it had acquired through colonizing Ulster:
We claim as our inheritance all the blessings of that glorious Constitution which our ancestors and yours have fought and bled for — a Protestant king, with Protestant councillors, Protestant Lord and Protestant commons. That is what I call Protestant Ascendancy.
Meanwhile, Daniel O’Connell, a Catholic, became the most outspoken opponent of Union. Influenced by William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, and Jeremy Bentham, O’Connell declared, “My political creed is short and simple. It consists in believing that all men are entitled, as of right and justice, to religious and civil liberty.” But O’Connell opposed open rebellion. Instead, in 1823, he co-founded the immensely popular Catholic Association, which became an unofficial native parliament to discuss Irish grievances. O’ ;Connell became known as “the Liberator” when the British Parliament granted Catholic Emancipation in 1829, by which Catholics could assume virtually any political office.
In a balancing act that would be repeated through many decades, the British soothed Protestants’ fears by passing anti-Catholic Acts: the Catholic Association was suppressed; and, the franchise was based on property ownership, reducing the Catholic electorate to about 16 ,000.
Poor Irish Catholics were disfranchised. Agrarian societies sprang up to address the needs of poor tenants, especially to protest the payment of tithes and rent to absentee British landlords. The official crime figures for 1832 included 242 murders and 568 arsons. The British responded with the Coercion Bill of 1833 which temporarily suspended habeas corpus, prohibited meetings, and replaced civil courts with military ones. One result: O’Connell and many others abandoned their attempt to reform Ireland through appeals to Britain. Reform would come from within.
Part 1 | Part 2 (To be posted 9/15)
Part 3 (To be posted 9/17) | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998).
posted by R7 | 9/14/2004 11:04:00 AM
3 Comments:
The Colonial Venture of Ireland, Part 2
by Wendy McElroy, September 15, 2004
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (To be posted 9/17) | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
In the 1840s, a new voice would be heard in Ireland: the Young Irelanders, who urged the Catholic peasantry to return to their Gaelic roots. Literary and political radicals, the Young Irelanders sprinkled Gaelic terms throughout their writings long before the language was revived in order to redeem the Irish soul by de-Anglicizing it. They urged the Irish to learn their own history. Soon Daniel O’Connell, now mayor of Dublin, would become the voice of Old Ireland, but not before he declared 1843 to be Repeal Year: repeal of the Act of Union.
For the British, Catholic emancipation was different from granting repeal. Emancipation had been a concession to save the Union; repeal would destroy it. British troops poured into Ireland and O’Connell was convicted of sedition — a conviction that was reversed, causing a day of national celebration. But O’Connell was nearly 70 and no longer able to lead effectively.
Soon, Ireland would be shaken to its core. By 1841, Ireland had a population of more than eight million. The potato had become the basis of the Irish diet because it was cheap, easy to cultivate, and nutritious. In 1845, “The Great Hunger” came when a potato blight severely damaged that crop. During the famine years of 1845 to 1851, more than a million people died of starvation or of opportunistic diseases. In the ten years after 1845, two million Irish — a quarter of the population — emigrated in overcrowded ships to America or Canada. Often, a third or more of the passengers would be buried at sea, having died from illness.
The famine hardened Irish hatred for Britain whose mercantilist policies they blamed for starvation. During the famine, Ireland had produced bumper crops. Ships to England were laden with Irish wheat, barley, oats, rye, cows, sheep, and pigs, which Irish tenants had to sell to pay rent while their own families starved. For this reason, the famine was also called “The Great Starvation.” The British Corn Laws also increased Irish suffering. These duties on non-English grain guaranteed English farmers a minimum price for their crops. But, without competition, the British grain was so expensive that the Irish could not substitute imported grain for potatoes. Sir Robert Peel, prime minister of Britain, stated of the famine, “The remedy is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food.” Protectionists within his own party, the Tories, cried out in opposition and Peel tendered his resignation to Queen Victoria. She refused to accept it.
The Corn Laws were repealed but, in another balancing act, a tough Coercion Bill was also introduced to repress a hunger-provoked crime wave in Ireland. When Liberals joined with pro-Irish delegates to defeat the Coercion Bill, Peel was forced to resign.
Famine had devastated Ireland, defeated a British prime minister, and hardened the hearts of the Irish and English against each other. It had another important effect; Ireland became devoutly religious. Before the famine, an estimated 40 percent of Catholics attended church; after the famine, estimates rose to 90 percent. The Irish archbishop Paul Cullen defined the burning question for Ireland: should God or the British rule? Just as land and religion had become intimately entwined centuries before, now patriotism became a religious concept. Ireland earned a reputation as the world’s most devoutly Catholic country and, as it became more Catholic, it became more anti-British.
The Irish in America
Immigrants to North America carried their hatred of Britain with them. In the Irish ghettos of America, children listened to recitations of Emmet’s call for freedom; they learned Irish history and songs. Almost every Irish-American community had a Repeal Club that sent dollars to Dublin and pressured American politicians to support a free Ireland. On St. Patrick’s Day 1858, a new movement was born simultaneously in Dublin and New York City. In Ireland, the movement was known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood or the IRB. In America, it was known as the Fenian Brotherhood after the Fianna of Irish legend who loosely resembled the knights of the Round Table. Soon members of both organizations were called Fenians. Both embraced violence as the way to overthrow English rule.
During the American Civil War, at least 150,000 Union and 40,000 Confederate soldiers had been born in Ireland. Second- and third-generation Irish-Americans greatly swelled those numbers. After the Civil War, combat-trained Fenians arrived in Ireland to teach soldiering to the IRB. Nevertheless, Fenian attempts at insurrection were dismal failures.
Meanwhile, a feud splintered the movement in America. Some members wished to invade Canada — a British colony — to apply pressure on British policy toward Ireland. In 1866, about 600 Fenians crossed the Canadian border but retreated upon hearing that a company of British was advancing. When President Grant finally announced that an Irish government-in-exile violating the frontiers of a friendly neighbor would not be tolerated, American Fenianism declined. But the seeds of a secret, violent society had been successfully resown in Ireland.
The basic Irish demands had remained the same through centuries: religious tolerance, a just land system, and adequate education.
The land issue
In England, William Gladstone — the dominant personality of the Liberal Party — pushed for a solution to all three. The British parliamentary session of 1869 was largely and successfully devoted to Irish disestablishment: that is, to removing the Anglican Church as the state church in Ireland. But a Land Act in 1870 and a University Act of 1873 did not satisfy Irish Catholics; it did, however, outrage the British and the Irish Protestants. In 1874 elections, Gladstone’s Liberal Party lost decisively — another political victim of the “Irish Question.”
Disenchanted Liberals created a political coalition aimed at home rule, in which cause they were joined by Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish Protestant in the British House of Commons. Parnell believed that the only way to persuade British politicians to give Ireland a home legislature was to persuade them of one thing: as long as Ireland was denied sovereignty, Britain would have neither peace nor security.
By 1879, the land issue again galvanized Ireland. After the Great Hunger, rents had increased by as much as 30 percent. Many tenants refused to pay the new assessments, saying the British had no right to charge any rent. Michael Davitt founded the Land League under the slogan “the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland.” It quickly became a mass movement aimed at breaking “landlordism” by refusing to pay rent and through militant acts — the most famous of which was directed against Capt. Charles C. Boycott.
Captain Boycott was an estate agent who ordered evictions. In protest, all farmhands and servants refused to labor on the Boycott estate. Shopkeepers refused to supply his household. Policemen had to deliver his mail. In despair, Boycott resigned and retired to England. Thus, a new word was added to the English language: “boycott.” Parnell, who became president of the Land League, explained the meaning of that word:
When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must show him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in the streets of the town, you must show him at the shop counter, you must show him in the fair and the marketplace, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him severely alone — putting him into a kind of moral Coventry — isolating him from his kind like the leper of old — you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.
Not all protests were nonviolent. In 1879, an unofficial land war broke out between tenants and landlords. Some landlords were murdered and, in a panicked reaction, the British government declared the Land League to be illegal and arrested thousands, including Parnell. In the surge of violence that ensued, the British reconsidered. Parnell was released in exchange for his pledge to support the Liberal government and an Arrears Act was introduced with the intention of restoring 130,000 evicted tenants to their farms.
Home rule
But, as in 1846, the British government introduced a Coercion Bill. Then, to quiet the backlash of Irish Catholic outrage, it passed the Land Act of 1881, which went a long way toward achieving the Land League’s demands. Nevertheless, the Coercion Bill enraged militants. When two British officials arrived in Ireland, they were stabbed to death by a splinter group of the IRB. In retaliation, the British passed an even harsher Coercion Act. In short, British policy continued to swing wildly between liberalization and repression, between pacifying and trying to suppress the Catholics.
Believing the cycle had to be broken, Gladstone — once more prime minister — announced his conversion to home rule for Ireland. Horrified, many Liberals withdrew their support from him, and the Liberal government was once again discredited by the Irish Question.
The two communities of Ireland — North and South — were moving in opposite directions. The South cried Home Rule while the North cleaved to Britain. Religious differences became entangled with political ones. Ulstermen cried, “Home Rule Means Rome Rule” and, in the name of religion, there were riots in Belfast. Meanwhile, the home-rule movement deteriorated with a sex scandal that discredited its leader, Parnell.
In 1902, Arthur J. Balfour became Britain’s prime minister and adamantly rejected home rule in the belief that the Irish were incapable of self-government. Indeed, the British associated their own urban problems with the wild Irish who emigrated to work. The British upper class viewed the Irish as menials. The middle class saw drunks, criminals, and prostitutes. The lower class knew they were competition.
The new evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin were used as an apology for open racism against the Irish. Distinguished scientists correlated the shape of a man’s skull with his race and the likelihood of criminal behavior; the British skull was ranked among the best. The Irish one did not compare well. In reaction, Irish nationalists cried that British culture contaminated the purity of the Irish soul. A new Ireland arose from the seeds that Young Irelanders had sown decades before: an Ireland demanding not merely home rule but also the restoration of its lost traditions.
Gaelic language and tradition
In 1893, the Gaelic League had grown around the slogan, “A country without a language is a country without a soul.” Members traveled the country without pay to teach Gaelic language and culture. A literary movement of great distinction was sparked, with writers such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Russell, John M. Synge, James Stephens, James Joyce, and Sean O’Casey making Dublin one of the world’s literary capitals. The nationalist and poet Padraig Pearse enthused,
The Gaelic League will be recognized in history as the most revolutionary influence that has ever come into Ireland. The Irish Revolution really began when the Gaelic Leaguers met in O’Connell Street. The germ of all future Irish History was in that back room.
In a more violent arena, in the first weeks of 1903, the IRB conducted a campaign of dynamite throughout England — taking terrorism to English soil. Its main accomplishment was to further alienate the English public.
A less violent group also emerged under the guidance of Arthur Griffith: Sinn Fein, or “Ourselves Alone,” emphasized self-reliance. Its essence was a refusal to recognize British authority. Griffith called for Irish representatives to withdraw from the British Parliament and form a separate Council to set up an Irish Civil Service, an Irish stock exchange, an Irish bank, and a court system. But the focus on the Gaelic tradition only drove Catholics farther from Protestants, South farther from North. For example, the influential Gaelic Athletic Association declared the games traditionally played by Catholics to be “national.” Thus, the more British sports favored by Ulster Protestants were “foreign.” As well, the revival of the Gaelic language was more likely to appeal to Catholics who had heard it from grandparents than to Ulster Protestants who knew only English.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the costs of the Boer War in South Africa and a declining economy made the Tories unpopular and brought the Liberals to power in 1906. When the Liberals created the foundation of a welfare state, the British budget was strained. Taxes on inheritance, land profits, and high incomes were increased but the Tories used the House of Lords to veto such measures. To break the stalemate, the Liberals needed support from the Irish delegates in the House of Commons. The House of Lords had routinely vetoed any home-rule bill so the Irish delegates in the Commons refused to vote for the Liberal budget unless that situation was rectified. Thus, the Parliament Act of 1911 limited the House of Lords’ veto power to three consecutive sessions. When the Lords threatened to veto that Act as well, King George V threatened to pack the peerage with Liberals in order to secure passage. The Act passed.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (To be posted 9/17) | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998).
This article was originally published in the June 2004 edition of Freedom Daily.
The Colonial Venture of Ireland, Part 3
by Wendy McElroy, September 17, 2004
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
In 1912, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith introduced a “Government of Ireland Bill” that attempted to establish an Irish parliament with a popularly elected lower house and an appointed senate. A small delegation of Irish was to remain at Westminster to represent Ireland’s interest in the Empire. Although the bill was temporarily blocked by the House of Lords, alarmed Orangemen organized, with Sir Edward Carson, a wealthy lawyer, becoming their leading spokesman. The Irish-born playwright George Bernard Shaw summed up the feelings of those in Ulster:
Political opinion in Ulster is not a matter of talk and bluff as it is in England. No English Home Ruler has the faintest intention ... of throwing actual paving stones at any English Unionist. The Ulsterman is not like that. He is inured to violence. He has thrown stones and been hit by them. He has battered his political opponent with fist and stick and been battered himself in the same manner.
Carson created an Ulster provisional government that would go into operation should home rule be instituted. He became the first to sign an Ulster Solemn League and Covenant by which signatories pledged
to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.
Well over half of Ulster’s Protestant population signed the Covenant, some using their own blood. In England, two million people signed a British Solemn League and Covenant in support of Ulster Protestants. Threatening revolt if home rule was imposed, Ulster raised a body of 80,000 volunteers. Nationalists in the South created their own army.
The British feared civil war in Ireland, and so banned the importation of arms. But when Ulster Volunteers defied this ban, there were no penalties. When the South also imported arms, British troops intervened — or they attempted to do so. The unsuccessful British soldiers marched back from the seacoast to Dublin, where they were pelted with stones in the street. Opening fire, the soldiers killed 3 and injured more than 30. A cry for open rebellion gripped the South.
By 1914, Asquith and a majority of his cabinet wanted a solution through a formal partition of Ireland. In the North, Carson said he would accept partition if all nine Ulster counties remained under the jurisdiction of Westminster; five of the counties, however, had Catholic majorities. In the South, partition was rejected.
Ireland and World War I
The issue of partition was soon overshadowed by World War I. On August 3, 1914, Sir Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, informed the House of Commons that Britain would enter the war. John Redmond — a spokesman for Southern Ireland — rose to declare that the South would join with Ulster to defend a common homeland: Britain. The House of Commons cheered and placed home rule on the statute books. But, to please the Ulstermen, a suspensory bill was added to postpone home rule for the duration of the war.
Irishmen in the South did not all cheer Redmond; they split on the issue of war. Arthur Griffith wrote,
Ireland is not at war with Germany. England is at war with Germany. We are Irish nationalists and the only duty we can have is to stand for Ireland’s interests.... If Irishmen are to defend Ireland they must defend it for Ireland, under Ireland’s flag, and under Irish officers. Otherwise they will only help to perpetuate the enslavement of their country.
Some saw the war as an opportunity. Padraig Pearse developed a view of revolution as redemption through which the Irish soul could be cleansed by blood. His fellow revolutionary, the Scottish-born socialist James Connolly, believed that an uprising in Dublin would spark the whole of Ireland. At the same time, nationalists tried to dissuade Irishmen from enlisting in the British army. The British ignored the revolutionary rhetoric but they jailed or deported leaders of the anti-recruiting campaign. British jails and internment camps became schoolrooms of radical Irish politics.
Meanwhile, the high death toll from war made the British public wonder why conscription was applied to Britain and not to Ireland. The new prime minister, David Lloyd George, answered,
What would be the result? Scenes in the House of Commons, possible rupture with America, which is hanging in the balance, and serious disaffection in Canada, Australia and South Africa. They would say, you are fighting for the freedom of nationalities. What right have you to take this nation by the ear and drag it into the war against its will?
Rebellion and revolution
Even without conscription, revolution in Ireland was inevitable. In 1915, the body of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa — a prominent nationalist who died in exile in America — was brought home for burial. Pearse delivered a grave-side oration:
They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.
Easter Sunday 1916 became the date for revolution. The Germans agreed to provide arms to the anti-British rebels. But when a German ship arrived offshore, the Irish failed to meet it. On the eve of the Easter rebellion, confusion split the IRB. At the last minute, the order for mobilization was countermanded; nevertheless, on Easter Monday, more than 1,500 rebels marched through Dublin and seized the General Post Office. The battle raged for six days, with an estimated 508 dead and 2,520 injured. The rebels surrendered on April 29.
As they were led off to jail, Dubliners cursed the rebels for causing violence, calling them “German dupes.” But the behavior of British troops turned public opinion. The British indiscriminately assaulted Dubliners and killed a prominent pacifist who had no connection to the uprising. Over a ten-day period, 15 rebel leaders were executed, including Connolly and Pearse. More than 2,000 nationalists were transported to British prisons, often without trial.
As the Irish claimed the rebels as martyrs, an Irish conscription bill passed the British House of Commons. The Irish MPs walked out of Parliament in protest; an anti-conscription pledge circulated throughout Ireland, backed by the Catholic Church, which collected protest signatures after mass. A general strike paralyzed Ireland, with the exception of Protestant Belfast. Conscription could not be enforced.
In the Irish general election of 1918 (which was part of the United Kingdom’s general election), Sinn Féin won 73 of 105 seats; 36 of the elected were in jail at the time. This was a defining moment in modern Ireland’s history. For one thing, America had been assured that the Sinn Féiners were a small group of radicals. Now, with a popular Sinn Féin victory, Irish-Americans deluged Democratic President Wilson with demands for justice in Ireland. But Wilson was negotiating a postwar settlement with the British and did not wish to complicate the delicate bartering. The Democrats lost most of their Irish-American support.
The newly elected Sinn Féiners formed the Dáil Éireann — the Irish Assembly — and held their first parliament on January 21, 1919 in Dublin. The Dáil, with its own courts and using its own funds, was declared to be Ireland’s rightful government, deriving its authority from the Easter Rebellion. The British raided the Dáil and arrested its democratically elected leadership. One leader, Éamon de Valera, was deported to England and prison but he returned to Ireland. In the following election, de Valera was declared president. The Irish election of 1920 was a public vote of confidence for the suppressed Irish government, with Belfast being virtually the only dissenting voice. Officials swore allegiance to the Dáil and, in turn, were often arrested. During January 1920 alone, more than 1,000 raids by the British forces were reported by the Daily Press.
In Ulster, there was an anti-Catholic drive and a predictable backlash. When the Catholic lord mayor of Cork was shot dead in his own bedroom, the coroner’s jury — handpicked by the police — returned a remarkable verdict of willful murder against the British prime minister, David Lloyd George. In August, the new mayor of Cork was arrested and went on a hunger strike. Seventy-four days later, he died. Irish prisoners throughout the penal system also went on hunger strikes to protest their arrest and demand treatment as political prisoners.
The Irish Republican Army
Meanwhile, Michael Collins emerged as a strong leader of the IRB. The Irish Republican Brotherhood had split from the Dáil and soon became known as the Irish Republican Army, or IRA. Committed to direct violence, the IRA began a campaign of terror, to which the Northern Protestants responded by attacking Catholics. The British met IRA terror with terror. The newly recruited forces for Ireland wore dark caps and khaki pants, earning them the name “Black and Tans.” It became commonplace for IRA prisoners to be tortured and sometimes killed, but the Black and Tans did not confine their attacks to the IRA. For example, in retaliation for the killing of 17 of their own, they burned down the center of the city of Cork. Afterward, the Black and Tans carried a half-burnt cork dangling from the ring of their revolvers: this made a silent statement — “We burned down Cork, we could burn this city as well.”
But world opinion gave Britain pause. Ireland was seen as a gallant little nation standing up to a big bully. Eager to please America in particular, Britain passed a Better Government of Ireland Bill which created a home-rule parliament for six Ulster counties and another parliament for the remaining 26 Southern counties; both governments would send MPs to Westminster. Ireland was to be officially partitioned. Ulster accepted; the South rejected the proposal. Southern elections returned 124 Sinn Féin candidates and when the British-sanctioned parliament opened on June 28, only four elected representatives and the Crown-nominated senators showed up; the sanctioned parliament sat for 15 minutes, then adjourned.
The next day, the suppressed Dáil met and authorized Irish Republican courts. The British responded harshly in the hope of imposing swift order; after all, British troops were needed in India, which was also in rebellion. In August 1920, the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act was passed, relieving British forces in Ireland of almost all legal restraint. They tortured prisoners, sabotaged industries, killed family members of rebels, and shot civilians, including children. In the late summer and autumn of 1920, no part of Ireland escaped the violence of what was called the Anglo-Irish War, or the Irish War of Independence. Again, world opinion forced the British to seek resolution.
Britain concluded a truce as a preliminary move toward treaty negotiations to be held in London. Returning from the negotiations, the Irish envoys presented the British offer to the Dáil. There were two stumbling blocks: official partition and an oath of allegiance to the Crown. The envoys brought a counterproposal back to Lloyd George, who bluntly replied,
I have here two answers, one enclosing the treaty, the other declaring a rupture, and, if it be a rupture, you shall have immediate war.
Exhausted, the envoys signed the treaty on December 6, 1921, without consulting President de Valera. In theory, all of Ireland was to be a united dominion — the Irish Free State or Saorstát Éireann — with the same status as other members of the British Empire, such as Canada. But Northern Ireland had the option to remain part of the United Kingdom, which it exercised. Ireland was now partitioned. Twenty-six counties became the Irish Free State — a dominion, not a republic — with a governor-general, a bicameral parliament, and a prime minister. The six northern counties of Ulster retained ties with Britain, with separate self-determination. In two of the six counties, Catholics formed a slight majority.
De Valera resigned as president and was replaced by Arthur Griffith. The Dáil ratified the treaty by a vote of 64 to 57, with opponents leaving in protest. Among the defectors were delegates from the IRA, which split into two factions: those who rejected the treaty and those who reluctantly accepted it as granting “the freedom to achieve freedom.” The British began to depart from their oldest colony, which they had occupied for almost 800 years.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (To be posted 9/20)
Wendy McElroy
The Colonial Venture of Ireland, Part 4
by Wendy McElroy, September 80, 2004
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
In the North, treatment of Catholics deteriorated as one of the most infamous measures in Irish history was passed — the Special Powers Act of 1922. Catholic-rights advocate Bernadette Devlin explained,
It gave the authorities power to arrest people without a warrant on suspicion “of acting or of having acted or being about to act” in a manner prejudicial to the state — and to hold them for indefinite periods without charge or trial. Under the act, the police had the right to search persons and premises without a judicial warrant, to close roads or bridges, to declare curfews, to prohibit meetings, to arrest any individual who “by word of mouth” spreads false reports or makes false statements, to suppress the circulation of any newspaper, film or gramophone record and to arrest and hold without trial, habeas corpus or the right to consult a lawyer — anyone doing anything calculated to be “prejudicial to the preservation of the peace or maintenance of order” in Northern Ireland. One of its most relevant provisions is the clause denying an inquest to any prisoner who died while in custody.
In April 1922, the IRA seized the “Four Courts” in Dublin — the center of the Irish judicial system — and held them for three months, even against shelling. As the IRA ran out of ammunition, de Valera pleaded with them to negotiate, which they did. The brief civil war ceased but the cost was high: more than 600 dead, more than 3,000 wounded. President Griffith died of a heart attack shortly thereafter. Days later, his successor Michael Collins was killed in an ambush. As for the rebels, the Irish government executed 78 — more executions than occurred under the British during the Anglo-Irish War.
For Britain, a major cost was — once again — world opinion. The London Times declared,
It is the plain fact that it is Irish discontent, which now more than anything else blocks and must block a close understanding between American and British democracies. If it is true, as seems incontrovertible, that for the future welfare of the world nothing is so essential as the maintenance of harmony between Great Britain and the United States — then it is purely lamentable that the Irish sore should be suffered to continue running.
But all would not be well. In the North, self-government led to a de facto second-class citizenship for Catholics. Moreover, by the spring of 1924, most of the nationalist prisoners had been released from English jails and returned to Ireland, which many refused to accept as divided. Upon de Valera’s return, he addressed a welcoming crowd with the words, “As I was saying when I was interrupted ...” De Valera organized a new political party, Fianna Fáil — the Warriors of Destiny — that rejected the legitimacy of the Free State Dáil. Nevertheless, he took the controversial “Oath of Allegiance” in order to become a member and so use that agency against itself.
An upswing in violence
The next years saw a tremendous upswing in IRA violence, with government outlawing the organization. A public safety act was passed, giving a five-man tribunal the power to intern or execute political criminals, but juries and witnesses were usually too frightened of IRA reprisals to serve or give testimony.
The 1932 election brought de Valera back to power as president. He repealed the Public Safety Act, abolished the “Oath,” and released his old comrades from prison. Soon, a constitutional crisis in Britain would present him with an opportunity: King Edward abdicated his throne and was succeeded by George VI. De Valera successfully pressed a demand: the full independence of the 26 counties, now to be called Éire. In 1937, de Valera introduced a new Irish constitution that officially recognized the “Roman Church as the Guardian of the Faith.” The North protested. Where, they asked, was the non-sectarian state promised? Article 2 of the Constitution, which maintained that the Southern government had authority in the North, was a particular sore point.
Much of the subsequent history of the divided island revolves around attempts to unite North and South, resistance to that union, religious intolerance, and an enduring hostility towards Britain. During this process, the North and South — Protestants and Catholics — continued to develop along different paths.
In September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany, thus entering World War II. The South was generally sympathetic to the Allied cause but de Valera maintained official neutrality. (The more radical IRA, however, worked rather ineffectively to sabotage the British war effort.) On the occasion of Hitler’s death, Éire was one of the few governments to express official condolences to the German ambassador.
World War II further defined the separate identities of the North and South and cemented Ulster’s ties to Britain. Neutrality by the South had been a statement of sovereignty, which was cemented on April 1, 1949, when the Republic of Ireland Act declared Éire to be a republic. In 1955, the Republic of Ireland joined the United Nations and its diplomats began to speak out as Third World victims of colonialism.
The IRA “spoke out” in a different manner. In 1954, they had successfully raided the Armagh Barracks and captured most of the arms of Southern Ireland. Between 1956 and 1962, an IRA border campaign — called The Border War — was directed against authorities in the North. But by 1962 the IRA appeared to be giving up the ghost when its publicity bureau announced,
The Leadership of the Resistance Movement has ordered the termination of “The Campaign of Resistance to British Occupation.” All arms and other materials have been dumped and all full-time active service volunteers have been withdrawn.
Years of calm
To the British, Northern Ireland ceased to be a burning issue. One historian estimated that, in 1964 and 1965, the House of Commons devoted less that one-fifth of 1 percent of its time to discussing Ulster. One reason: Northern Ireland was stable. These were “the Brookeborough years”, named after the Ulster leader Lord Brookeborough. There was a relative, if uneasy, calm between Protestant and Catholic. The two groups lived in different parts of town; the former attended public school, the latter parochial school. They did not even meet on the sports field: Catholics played Gaelic ball, and Protestants played soccer. Mixed marriages were rare. Local government allocated housing, jobs, and social welfare, and they made sure that Protestants were at the top of the list.
The resurgence of violence
In the late 1960s, the relative calm shattered. Terence O’Neill — a former captain in the British army — succeeded Brookeborough and during an economic recovery an influential Catholic middle class had emerged, with many Catholics going to Queen’s University in Belfast where they drank deep of the civil rights movement in America. Using the tactics of that movement — even down to singing “We Shall Overcome” — Catholics demanded civil rights in Ulster.
A march on the city of Derry was planned. Here, the depth of feeling that separated Catholic from Protestant could be judged by a semantic dispute. Protestants called Ulster’s second largest city by the name “Londonderry,” while Catholics used the older name of “Derry,” even though the city had been renamed while Shakespeare lived. On October 5, 1968, the Derry police broke up the civil rights march in full view of the world’s cameras. Seventy civilians and 11 policemen were wounded. TV viewers were shocked by police beatings and the use of water cannon. The march and the civil rights movement’s most prominent leader was Devlin, who described the impact on world reaction:
I think the impact on the public opinion was something like what happened after Dr. King’s people were beaten up by Bull Connor’s policemen on that bridge in Alabama. Suddenly, fair people everywhere could see us being treated like animals.... In retrospect, I realize the police had actually done us a great favor. The civil rights movement had started out as a small middle-class pressure group, but it took only one day of police violence to transform it into a mass movement.
Soon, the movement born in civil rights would lose ground to more violent forces.
On August 12, 1969, a group of Protestants assembled in Derry to commemorate almost three centuries of Protestant rule. Attacked by Catholics, they retaliated. When the police made baton charges to separate the groups, the angered crowd torched a police vehicle and, by nightfall, full-scale rioting had broken out. In the end, there were at least six dead and hundreds wounded.
Two days later, 300 British soldiers in full battle dress arrived in Derry and 600 more followed on the streets of Belfast. At first, the Catholic population accepted the troops, offering them cups of tea. Devlin recalled the turning point in their attitude:
A minor incident between soldiers and a few taunting children erupted into a major riot. The military commander promptly slapped a curfew on the [Catholic] area and ordered a house-to-house search for concealed weapons. While people choked and wept from the huge amounts of tear gas poured into the area, the troops kicked in doors; they smashed and looted many of the houses they searched, roughing up anyone who protested. Residents poured into the streets to demonstrate against their behavior and the troops opened fire: three Catholics were shot dead and another was crushed to death under an armored car. After that, Catholics understandably began viewing the army as a hostile occupying force.
Within months, the familiar pattern had returned to Ireland: bombing, shooting, assassination, reprisal, and counterreprisal.
After the 1921 partition of Ireland, the IRA had rebelled. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the IRA had launched a bombing campaign against England. Twenty years later, it had started a futile guerilla campaign in the rural and border areas of Northern Ireland. Now, in 1969, the IRA was revived as a Catholic defense force, financed by Irish who lived in America and England. As it revived, the IRA split into two sections: the Official and the Provisional wings. (Today, the term “IRA” commonly refers to the latter, which is widely considered a terrorist organization.)
The Officials interpreted Northern Ireland within a Marxist framework and had as their ultimate goal an all-Ireland republic. They directed violence against British authority and avoided attacking Northern Protestants. The Provisionals were a socialist paramilitary group which was less discriminating in its violence.
The new Northern leader Brian Faulkner took a hard line toward the IRA and Catholic unrest. In 1971, the Loyalist Ulster Defense Association was formed from a number of smaller organizations, and attacks on Catholics increased. In retaliation, the IRA transported their bombing to England, where they declared a guerilla war.
Eddie McAteer of the Catholic Nationalist Party expressed the futility many must have felt at this turn of affairs:
You have this cyclical appearance of the Irish struggle for freedom. At times there is a constitutional movement; then they weary of it because you cannot accomplish very much by talking peacefully. When they weary of constitutionalism, then there is an outbreak of violence. At times we wander about in such matters as civil rights, civil liberties, and so on. But all of these I insist are side issues, really. You have the old racial colonial struggle going on, and this is the key to the whole problem.
With the reemergence of the IRA, the major forces that would play out those cycles within Ireland for the coming decades were in place.
Many observers contend that if the British were to leave Northern Ireland, blood would flow in Northern streets and the South might erupt in civil war. They argue that centuries of differing development have made the North and South into truly separate entities. Others contend the opposite, arguing that the complete withdrawal of the British from the North is the only hope for Ireland. These two positions — and those in-between — constitute the ongoing debate and dilemma that is Ireland.
As for the British, Eddie McAteer declared in the spring of 1972,
I am not anti-British, but I do complain that the British mind seems incapable of realizing that other countries would wish to deprive themselves of the services of British rule. If we had been allowed to develop normally, it is possible that we would have married the two bloodstreams, the two religions, and the two cultures here in the north of Ireland, but we have not succeeded because Britain wished to retain her foothold here. And now we are sadly the last imperial aspidistra in the British window and it looks as if she is determined to hang onto us.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Wendy McElroy is the author of The Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998). For additional articles on current events by Ms. McElroy, please visit the Commentary section of our website.
This article was originally published in the August 2004 edition of Freedom Daily.
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