Peace in Ireland

Great Debates
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You can’t do justice to the subject by summarizing it in the space we have here, Sake. If you can find time to read a book, one I would recommend is Belfast Diary by John Conroy - it’s a great primer on the subject because it’s basically aimed at Americans who want to know more about the subject, but without being at all patronizing. There is something of a nationalist bias to it (Conroy lived in a Catholic part of Belfast), but he does try to be as even-handed as possible.

It’s also a bit out of date (1987) but I haven’t read anything since then that I would recommend as highly for beginners.

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Yes, Uppity, it was a tad cold but we did have a few real great days of warmth and sunshine.

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin

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This is just an opinion, but the Troubles have their roots many centuries before the British occupation.
6,000 BCE is what most scientific types give as a ballpark figure for the first inhabitants of Ireland. These were folks that moved over from mainland Europe.
400 BCE is when the Celts move in and conquer Ireland. They come from Britain and the European mainland. They set up many smaller kingdoms, and have one high king. They were constantly fighting between kingdoms over boundaries. There was really no central authority. Unification was nearly impossible for the many small kingdoms. Too darn independent, or too bull headed.
400 CE towards the middle to the end of this century the monasteries start to become popular centers for learning. This may be a result of the Celts druidic traditions of knowledge, their desire to understand their world, both spiritually, and physically.
795 CE Neighbors come from across the sea to visit. They are tall and blonde, and Arnet trying to borrow sugar. The era of Viking raids begins and will last until the Celts can learn to work together, well at least some of them anyway.
1014 Brian Boru manages to unify some of the various Celtic kingdoms and the era of the Viking raids is put to an end with the battle of Clontarf. The Vikings are defeated, but are allowed to maintain the villages that they had established over the centuries. Those that stay adopt the Celtic ways. The Celts, the Vikings together are the beginning of the Irish.
1160s High King O’Connor takes leinster away from its King Dermot. Dermot asks Henry the II of England for aid. Henry int English, he is a Norman, England has been ruled by the Norman’s for less than a hundred years at this time.
Henry II allows Dermot to recruit aid from Norman nobles. They agree to help in return for land and titles in Ireland.In 1170 Dermot is restored to his throne. He dies the next year.
1171 A Norman baron named Strongbow claims Dermot’s throne. Other Norman barons seize land and titles as well. Henry goes to Ireland and is recognized by his vassals as Lord of Ireland.
From here on out the Normans pretty much wander along under their own rule, and start to become more like their subjects, and less like Normans. They are becoming Irish.
Now we have the Celts, the Vikings, and the Normans each invader becoming Irish.The rulers from England notice the changes in attitude from Ireland and start to assert control again. By replacing Lords that are going native with ones more favorable to the throne, England hopes to regain its hold. But the new appointments fall into the same trap, and become Irish after a while.This continues to happen until Henry the VIII takes the English throne.
With Henry VIII a new variable is added to the equation, religion rears its head.
1541 Henry forces the Irish to accept him as King. After Henry is gone, Mary I establishes the plantation system in Ireland, supplanting the Irish with English on the farms and holdings. Elizabeth I follows her fathers footsteps and tries to force Protestantism onto the Irish. She outlaws Roman Catholic church services. This only serves to draw the Irish together and unify resistance.
The Celts, Vikings and Normans have blended together to become Irish. They have kept the traits of the original kingdoms, small groups of fiercely independent folk, that seek knowledge of the physical and spiritual world. The English are now trying to intrude on that physical and spiritual world.Although they are overpowered by the armies of England they have managed to fight on for centuries.Those that have gotten too close to them, have become more Irish than the Irish.
There is more, but this is a start. I hope it shed some light on the origins of the troubles and makes it clear that it is more than some riots and a few bombs from the 1970s til now.
This is just an opinion, but the Troubles have their roots many centuries before the British occupation.
6,000 BCE is what most scientific types give as a ballpark figure for the first inhabitants of Ireland. These were folks that moved over from mainland Europe.
400 BCE is when the Celts move in and conquer Ireland. They come from Britain and the European mainland. They set up many smaller kingdoms, and have one high king. They were constantly fighting between kingdoms over boundaries. There was really no central authority. Unification was nearly impossible for the many small kingdoms. Too darn independent, or too bull headed.
400 CE towards the middle to the end of this century the monasteries start to become popular centers for learning. This may be a result of the Celts druidic traditions of knowledge, their desire to understand their world, both spiritually, and physically.
795 CE Neighbors come from across the sea to visit. They are tall and blonde, and Arnet trying to borrow sugar. The era of Viking raids begins and will last until the Celts can learn to work together, well at least some of them anyway.
1014 Brian Boru manages to unify some of the various Celtic kingdoms and the era of the Viking raids is put to an end with the battle of Clontarf. The Vikings are defeated, but are allowed to maintain the villages that they had established over the centuries. Those that stay adopt the Celtic ways. The Celts, the Vikings together are the beginning of the Irish.
1160s High King O’Connor takes leinster away from its King Dermot. Dermot asks Henry the II of England for aid. Henry int English, he is a Norman, England has been ruled by the Norman’s for less than a hundred years at this time.
Henry II allows Dermot to recruit aid from Norman nobles. They agree to help in return for land and titles in Ireland.In 1170 Dermot is restored to his throne. He dies the next year.
1171 A Norman baron named Strongbow claims Dermot’s throne. Other Norman barons seize land and titles as well. Henry goes to Ireland and is recognized by his vassals as Lord of Ireland.
From here on out the Normans pretty much wander along under their own rule, and start to become more like their subjects, and less like Normans. They are becoming Irish.
Now we have the Celts, the Vikings, and the Normans each invader becoming Irish.The rulers from England notice the changes in attitude from Ireland and start to assert control again. By replacing Lords that are going native with ones more favorable to the throne, England hopes to regain its hold. But the new appointments fall into the same trap, and become Irish after a while.This continues to happen until Henry the VIII takes the English throne.
With Henry VIII a new variable is added to the equation, religion rears its head.
1541 Henry forces the Irish to accept him as King. After Henry is gone, Mary I establishes the plantation system in Ireland, supplanting the Irish with English on the farms and holdings. Elizabeth I follows her fathers footsteps and tries to force Protestantism onto the Irish. She outlaws Roman Catholic church services. This only serves to draw the Irish together and unify resistance.
The Celts, Vikings and Normans have blended together to become Irish. They have kept the traits of the original kingdoms, small groups of fiercely independent folk, that seek knowledge of the physical and spiritual world. The English are now trying to intrude on that physical and spiritual world.Although they are overpowered by the armies of England they have managed to fight on for centuries.Those that have gotten too close to them, have become more Irish than the Irish.
There is more, but this is a start. I hope it shed some light on the origins of the troubles and makes it clear that it is more than some riots and a few bombs from the 1970s til now.
This is just an opinion, but the Troubles have their roots many centuries before the British occupation.
6,000 BCE is what most scientific types give as a ballpark figure for the first inhabitants of Ireland. These were folks that moved over from mainland E

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[hijack]

I love this Board. :slight_smile:

[/hijack]

Jodi

Fiat Justitia

26

John John,

I was interested in your account of the situation in Ireland. Given that:

(a) you do not seem to understand the difference between England and Britain (or, for that matter, Scotland);

(b) you cannot remember the name of the British Prime Minister; and

© you cannot spell Ian Paisley’s name,

your claims to

might be given a little more credibilty if you could answer any of the following questions:

(1) In what sense is Britain (or “England” if you must) “the INVADERS” of Ireland?

(2) When did it it happen and who was the ruler of all Ireland at the time? For how long had Ireland been a unitary, sovereign nation before the invasion? Bonus points: to what extent are the RoI and UK independent sovereign states now?

(3) Can you cite another example of an “invasion” in which the people of the invaded country have been afforded exactly the same, an in some senses superior,* civil rights to the citizens of the “invading” country, including the right to elect members of the “invading” country’s parliament?

But I think the most important question is this:

(4) Just how many innocent people have to die in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain before ignorant people like you living on the opposite side of the world begin to see it as anything more than an excuse for a bit of political posturing

[*I am thinking particularly of protection from discrimination on religious grounds, which we do not have in GB]

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Tom H., perhaps someone with a lot more patience than me can summarize things for you. One would think that a person who purports to be from London might have a clue, but then again you might think the Celts invited them over for a spot of tea.

Ahem, HOW do you claim the Anglo Saxon came to be in Ireland?

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin

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Tom H

You can’t imagine how that pains me. I cannot spell that porkers name. Ah, the shame of it all.

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin

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TomH…
Unless I’m mistaken, the Civil Rights movement in the late sixties was caused by the lack of equal rights for Catholics in the north. It was very hard for them to elect anyone to represent them, due to the gerrymandering of the then Government.

Matters came to a head with the shooting of 17 people in Derry in January 1969. They were on a peaceful march in support of Civil rights when they were fired upon by British Soldiers. This became known as Bloody Sunday.

After this, the IRA stepped up its Campaign.
TomH

in the sense that they forced all the irish people off their land and gave their land to English subjects and Lords. Sounds like an invasion to me.
Not just once, but on 4 seperate occasions.
The Plantation of Laois and Offaly
the Plantation of Munster
the plantation of Ireland (Led the the Murderous Oliver Cromwell)
and the Plantation of Ulster
these happened in the 15th and 16th century.
from then until the first rebellion in 1798,
Britain ruled all Ireland. the 1798 rebellion was quoshed, but gave hope. In 1916, a rebellion started again in Dublin.
this was also quoshed.
The leaders of the 1916 rebellion were executed, and provided inspiration for the events to come. The IRB gained immense popularity and the war of independence followed, ending in 1921 with the signing of the Sunningdale agreement. It was here that the Irish Free State (26 counties) was created. the remaining 6 counties in Ulster were kept. The Irish Civil war then occured between factions opposed to and for the Agreement.

the modern IRA was born from this. they remained fairly inactive until 1969 when the Modern troubles started.

this is an abridged version of the events, and as I wrote it mostly from the top of my head, there will be some errors.

J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”

Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey

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Thanks John and LunTha for helping to educate Tom H, no small task, to be sure.

I say, Tom H, old bean, how, pray tell, did your ancestors come to be in Ireland and have that land, those farms etc.? I think the Celts should retake England from the Anglo Saxons.

Tom H., you are on Celtic land and YOU owe them rent for the last 2000 years. Anyone have an exact date?

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow. Janis Joplin

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Thank you for your response, JohnLarrigan. My understanding of Irish history accords entirely with yours.

I am sorry that JohnJohn was unable to respond directly, as my principal intention was to expose his ignorance. Although he seems to be doing a reasonably good job of that without my assistance.

The main point I was getting at was that to talk about “England” invading “Ireland” as if it were a straightforward invasion of one independent, sovereign state by another (like, for example, Germany’s invasion of France in the middle of this century) is an over-simplification. As LunTha correctly points out, the Normans had a lot to do with it, and that muddies the waters considerably. You could just as well argue that England and Ireland were both invaded by the French at about the same time.

LunTha,

Oh, but I do. Any dispute about whether Northern Ireland should be “Irish” or “British” has to be seen in the light of the fact that both countries are part of a bigger, supra-national organisation that has assumed many of the traditional functions of the nation state. That is, if you are genuinely interested in the future of the region as well as its past.

Question (3) was not an attempt to deny that the Catholics in Northern Ireland have, in the past, been treated abominably. I now realise that it could have been read that way, and I apologise for any misunderstanding. John John described the “English” as “the INVADERS of their country”. What I was getting at was that a citizen of Northern Ireland has exactly the same civil rights as a citizen of any other part of the UK. Under the circumstances it is very difficult to characterise the British presence in Northern Ireland as “INVADERS”. You would not, for example, describe the US presence in Hawaii as “an invasion”, would you? It doesn’t make sense: Hawaii is part of the US.

Your earlier post (the triplicate one) is broadly speaking accurate but contains a number of significant errors:

They were mostly not English, but Scottish. Hence, when the Protestants were looking for an alternative language to use in the Northern Ireland Assembly (because the Catholics have Gaelic), they settled on something they called “Ulster Scots”, essentially an dialect of English, rather than a separate language.

This is true, but she also tried to force Protestantism on the English, the Welsh and the Scots. Roman Catholic services were banned everywhere. Given that the whole of what is now the UK has been predominantly Roman Catholic, the Irish were not being singled out for special treatment.

This is, I think, the key point, though you seem to be selective as to who is allowed to “blend” to become Irish and who is not. The inhabitants of the British Isles are not a group of ethnically “pure” Celts, Anglo-Saxons, etc. It ain’t so. We’re all a mish-mash.

Err… Whatever you say. Far be it from me to suggest that Ireland is a modern, post-industrial democracy like any other.

JohnJohn,

I was not picking on your spelling of his name, I was suggesting that, along with the other gaps in your knowledge, it was further evidence of your lack of familiarity with the situation in NI.

I imagine that my Irish ancestors came to be there in the same way that any other Irish people came to be there. They came over here (to England) as cheap labour in the late 19th century when the railways were being built. As far as I know, my English ancestors never went to Ireland.

I’m not sure how London is “Celtic land”. But you, my friend, are certainly on Native American land. By the same token, you would owe them rent.

I am sorry that nobody has seen fit to answer my fourth question, as it is the most important one. ** LunTha** thinks it deserves no comment, by which I assume she means that the right of Americans to use other people’s suffering as a pretext for political posturing is so self-evident that it cannot be questioned.

As you may have gathered, I disagree. I think that John John and his like are one of the biggest obstacles to peace in Northern Ireland. Ignorant “Irish”-Americans (many of whom are no more Irish than I am) talking about the “glorious struggle” in the “old country” as if they had any more experience of Ireland than some limited tourism, giving money to NORAID which is used to buy Semtex to blow up innocent people, British and Irish, Catholic and Protestant, supporting terrorism as long as it is happening on the other side of the Atlantic and it doesn’t affect them. Does it make you feel important? Does it make you feel powerful? Is your own culture really so impoverished that you need to cleave to a third-generation Irish ancestor for a sense of cultural identity?

The paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland, like terrorist organisations around the world, seem to attract these sorry inadequates like John John who get some kind of vicarious thrill from their violence.

Well if you really want the “kudos” and the “cachet” of associating with a terrorist “struggle”, you can do it much more effectively in your own country: go to Oklahoma City and walk round holding up a placard saying “I support the glorious struggle of the freedom-fighter, Timothy McVeigh”. That should make you feel important.

[No, I am not condoning Protestant terrorism, I am condemning all terrorism (including state terrorism).]

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Thats a very hard question to answer. there will always be these people. I have learned to accept this. it is not ignorance, it is in their character. However, I do not believe that John John is one. he is Just using the “rent” arguement as a means of creating a precedent of sorts. I can understand his arguements, but I dont use them.
Time for me to state the obvious…
as I can see, there will not be peace in Ireland until an agreement can be reached where the Paramilitaries can be disarmed and a proper powersharing scheme and a police force that everyone can rely on.

even then, there will still be the begrudgers on both sides.

The biggest threat to peace dosent come from the Paramilitaries, it comes from the people like Ian Paisley and Bernadette Sands

J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”

Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey

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Well said, John Larrigan. I wasn’t suggesting that his behaviour was motivated by ignorance so much as accompanied by it.

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LunTha, thank you very much for the Irish history lesson! It is indeed a complicated issue, not unlike the history of many Central and South American peoples who have weathered numerous invasions and warring empires for several thousand years. It will be a long time before these areas are stable and prosperous.

I’m going to further show my ignorance here by asking why the Hell Ireland doesn’t demand her land back or threaten to wage war with Britain? As a citizen of the United States, I must admit I have a slight grudge when it comes to armed British occupation. And while we’re at it why doesn’t Scotland declare independence (I know several Scots who desire this)?

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

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Aside from the obvious fact that Britain’s population and armed forces are 10 times the size of the Irish there’s this:

Look at the kind of hastle Britain is having with a provence whose majority favors continued association with Britain. Think of the problems Ireland would have with a province whose majority feels they have been ripped from their mother country. It wouldn’t be IRA bomb attacks in London anymore. It would be Orangemen bomb attacks in Dublin! Frankly, I don’t think the Irish Republic wants the Northern counties, at least not while Catholics and republicans are still a minority there.

Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by TomH:

I am sorry that nobody has seen fit to answer my fourth question, as it is the most important one. ** LunTha** thinks it deserves no comment, by which I assume she means that the right of Americans to use other people’s suffering as a pretext for political posturing is so self-evident that it cannot be questioned.
Your assumptions are inaccurate. While there are Americans that presume they understand the Troubles ( most dont have a clue ) they have little or no ability to posture anything politically. If you refer to the misled souls that send funds over to support the IRA, and give British tourists a hard time in Boston, they are the minority. All of them may be Americans of Irish descent, but that hardly makes them representative of Americans regarding Ireland.< LunTha

TomH>As you may have gathered, I disagree. I think that John John and his like are one of the biggest obstacles to peace in Northern Ireland. Ignorant “Irish”-Americans (many of whom are no more Irish than I am) talking about the “glorious struggle” in the “old country” as if they had any more experience of Ireland than some limited tourism, giving money to NORAID which is used to buy Semtex to blow up innocent people, British and Irish, Catholic and Protestant, supporting terrorism as long as it is happening on the other side of the Atlantic and it doesn’t affect them. Does it make you feel important? Does it make you feel powerful? Is your own culture really so impoverished that you need to cleave to a third-generation Irish ancestor for a sense of cultural identity?

LunTha>Those Ignorant Irish Americans probably are just as ill informed as some arrogant Brits. Reading a book or paper makes a person no more informed about the problem if he is on the island next door or three thousand miles away. Support of terrorism is wrong . Those that support it are wrong. The delusions of Irish Americans is hardly the focus of this discussion.

To elaborate a bit on the present situation , the RoI would like to have a unified Ireland regardless of the EU. Northern Ireland would also like to see one Ireland. In the past the fear of religious persecution was a large factor in the North wishing to remain with the UK. Now however with the population nearing parity, and the Catholic Church losing its hold on the RoI government this issue is fading.
In the past you had an industrial North and an agrarian RoI. This also is changing rapidly. The two are much more alike now . This makes union much more possible.
I wish to clarify one point, the North stayed with UK during the partition of its own accord. They did not want to be part of the Free State for obvious reasons. The Free State persecuted the Protestants that stayed there. They discriminated against them so much as to force most of them to move North. From a 10% Protestant population in 1916 to a 3% population now, and 0% in a few decades if trends continue, which isnt likely, but it is the trend now.
The IRAs goals may sound patriotic at the start. But when you look at motives, an industrialized North for the taking. Force the Brits out and you can take all the possessions from the Protestants. All this time the IRA has gotten millions of dollars, the cant have spent it all on weapons, where did it all go? Who’s pockets did it fill? Do they want to lose that power and authority?
Outsiders can never understand all of the underlying threads in the Troubles,
not Irish Americans, and not Brits, not anyone who hasnt lived it.Saying its Catholics and Protestants doesnt begin to scratch the surface.Nor does saying its Brits versus the Irish. Would that it were that simple.

I am a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to keep up!!!

38

Invasion - of course.

But no different from British imperial policy to the non-nations of say India or Kenya. Indeed what kept the sun shining on the British empire for so long were the lessons learned in Ireland.

I’m not Irish but I am part Scotch-Irish, which is to say that I am descended from Scotch Prebyterians who were placed in the Irish province of Ulster by the United Kingdom in the 17th and 18th centuries.

They were placed there to provide a loyal contingent against the rebellious tendencies of the native population. The creation of these “plantations” in Ulster was analagous to the plantations established in the American colonies and served the additional purpose of removing a surplus population of small farmers from Scotland and England.

It was essentially ethnic cleaning and was accelerated by Irish support for rebellions against the United Kingdom.

The native Irish were from the start of the plantation system subject to punitive laws, expropriation of their land, and constant discrimination. Some of these “laws” were lessened in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly outside of the main core of colonization in Ulster.

Within Ulster, however, discrimation and punitive laws remained in force, combined with the official approval of armed paramilitary groups which developed totalitarian ideologies combining loyalty to Protestantism and the United Kingdom.

These groups, which were and are analgous to the Ku Klux Klan, were like the Klan, a response to “rebelliousness” of the “other” and were often led by officials of the police and local government.

Nonetheless, favored as loyal Britons, and through their own industry, Protestant Ulster prospered in contrast to the agrarian Catholic south. Their prosperity required even further discrimination as Catholics from the south sought work in Ulster’s shipyards and factories only to be denied access to well-paying positions.

In the early part of the 20th century, the Irish outside of Ulster were using their voting rights (and block in Parliament) to obtain a separate Parliament in Dublin. Ulster Scotch Irish were further alarmed that the main Catholic parties were in a close alliance with the Catholic church and were increasingly accepting of a revived Gaelic culture that pre-dated the establishment of the Ulster plantations.

The Ulster Scotch-Irish threatened rebellion against the United Kingdom fearing at least an end to their “rights” in Ulster and at worst discrimination from the Catholic majority in the south. By 1914, the United Kingdom discovered that large amounts of weapons and ammunition had been “transferred” to the Protestant paramilitary groups. Their motto IIRC was “Ulster Will Fight and Ulster Will Be Right!”

But World War I intervened with both Irish and Scotch-Irish fighting loyally for the Crown.

When the Easter rebellion led by Sinn Fein occurred in 1916, Catholics in south not only refused to support them but cheered British troops rushed from France to re-establish “order”.

Order meant the imposition of the Ulster mentality of Protestant supremacy throughout Ireland. A very nasty civil war ensued, which within Ulster cemented the totalitarian views of the Protestant majority.

As part of a peace settlement (temporary from the Irish view, permanent from the British/Ulster view), the northern part of Ireland was allowed to remain within the United Kingdom. To allow a contigous land mass between the two key cities, Derry (Londonderry) and Belfast, majority Catholic areas were included in what we call “northern Ireland”.

As would be seen later with the partition of India and Pakistan, vigorous ethnic cleansing occurred in the border areas of Ulster, driving Catholics south. Protestants also fled north (or to Britain) as the Irish Catholics initiated a new civil war over the “peace” agreement.

Though nominally British citizens, Catholics in Ulster remained subject to unofficial and official discrimination, enshrined in local laws cemented though a peculiar system of gerrymandered elections that saw overwhelming Scotch-Irish governments even in overwhelmingly Catholic areas. The Scotch-Irish were able to achieve this by holding their votes in the British Parliament as a solid block.

Catholics in Ulster were also subject to annual reminders of their second-class status, the commenerative marches that resembled (then and now) the Nazis Nuremberg rallies.

Inspired by the civil rights movement in the United States, during the 1960’s Catholics in Ulster attempted to achieve the very same things that African-Americans struggled for - an end to discrimination, equal voting rights, and an end to the concept of Scotch-Irish supremacy. They did so as loyal British subjects, not as IRA “bombers” not even as supporters of a re-united Ireland.

Of course, they were crushed by the police and Protetstant paramilitaries and in the ensuing violence, Britain imposed the essential martial law that exists to this day.

Of course, the centuries of hatred and totalitarian ethos remains quite strong.

(whew!)

39

Because they’re in the minority, though it does seem to be a growing minority. Of course, the example provided by Northern Ireland is enough to discourage many independence-minded Scots from pressing their desires too firmly. (There was, during the sixties and seventies, a violent Scottish nationalist movement, but it was extremely small and never had a significant amount of support nor did a significant amount of damage.)

Oh, and this is really a minor point, but Bloody Sunday was in 1972, not 1969 as stated earlier.

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Nixon, what a excellent post. Read it, Tom H., and weep with shame.

Thanks Nix