The death toll was high indeed but could well have been higher had it ever become an open conflict a la the former Yugoslavia. Interestingly the wikipedia stats on murder rates indicates that it was only in a four year period, 1972-1976 that Northern Ireland’s murder rate was higher than the United States’.
British perspective, though you didn’t ask for it. I am the same age as the Troubles.
Before I actually learned anything of the Troubles’ history, the prevailing attitude was one of a) deep and almost total ignorance (I never learned a thing about Ireland when I was at school), and b) fear of the IRA.
English people in pubs would say “I don’t know, put them all in a field and bomb the bastards” because they had no idea that a significant chunk of the cause was British in origin.
And then there were the bombs in London - the one in Oxford Street nearly got me on a family outing, but at the last minute my dad and I decided to eat lunch near the Science Museum instead of the McDonald’s that got blown up.
Mystification and fear, and the assumptions that arise from those two emotions: that the IRA “just enjoy killing and maiming”, and significant anti-Irishism because of it.
From a personal perspective, over the years I started to meet Irish people from both sides of the fence in NI, heard their prejudices and experiences, and people from the Republic and got their perspective, and did a lot of reading, and then I ended up settling in Dublin for ten years. Blimey did that alter my outlook. I still abhor terrorism of any kind, but I now “get” why it happens, given certain circumstances.
Britain remains woefully ignorant of the intertwined history of our two countries, but these days it’s getting so it doesn’t matter any more. Being Irish is trendy over here (“Now everybody wants to be fuckin’ Irish - because people expect you to be drunk.” - Tommy Tiernan) and raking over the appalling wounds of the past seems just counterproductive.
I’ve always thought of it as a parallel and companion to our own struggle for independence from apartheid here in South Africa.
Like Ireland, we had a component of the populace who were not “original”, but certainly weren’t really “foreigners” anymore either, and the whole thing was about coming to some sort of accomodation that was more equitable than what went before.
I’m sure both sides were also ridden with criminals and the like, and I don’t favour terrorist attacks as a tactic of liberation myself, but you can see also how the British and “their” Irish were utter bastards too.
I think theoriginal partitioning stunk to high heaven, and while I can kinda-sorta see why Orangemen might not want it, I do hope that sometime in the not too distant future, all Ireland might be one country again.
Religion had little to nothing to do with it. That’s just a easy way to ID the two sides. It was Unionism and Nationalism that really defined The Troubles.
A civil rights movement based on the black civil rights movement in the States grew in the north, then the shit started hitting the fan.
My perspective is that the IRA are flat out terrorists. Criminals who killed a bunch of people yet accomplished nothing worthwhile. Their strategy seemed to be:
- Set off bombs.
- ???
- Profit!
It would be one thing if step one allowed them to accomplish step two which would then allow them to unify Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Except how does setting off bombs in random locations accomplish that?
And of course, they functioned as a straight-up mafia organization as well–selling drugs, collecting protection money, whacking snitches, and so on.
Now, whether the partition of Ireland was a good idea or not is irrelevant to the above. If you want to advocate for Irish unification, go right ahead. Sure, it would have made a lot more sense if the British hadn’t tried to hold on to NI when the rest of Ireland kicked them out. What use is Northern Ireland to the British Empire, anyway? And it’s not like this was in the 1930s where every square inch of the British Empire was sacred. The Union Jack had been lowered in colony after colony after colony. And if catholics are second class citizens in NI, then that’s unacceptable. But did setting off bombs help end anti-catholic bias? No, it strengthened it.
And my feeling is, that was part of the plan. The IRA was operating on a “the worse the better” strategy…they WANTED the British troops to be more anti-catholic, they WANTED the Protestant groups to be more bigoted, because the worse the catholics had it, the more they’d depend on the IRA. Classic warlordism, commit atrocities to get the authorities to crack down on the oppressed group, which makes the oppressed group hate the authorities and support the terrorists.
That’s a fairly loaded proposition given how rigged and artificial the North is as a political entity.
It sounds so simple, when you sum it up in such simplistic terms. The partition took place amid political violence and civil conflict, and simply abandoning the island to its own devices would not have resulted in a miraculous outbreak of peace and prosperity.
I’m American (west coast) and have both Irish and Scots-Irish in my background, not that any of my family ever made anything of either one.
Here is my grasp of that history:
England conquered Ireland before Elizabeth I’s time, for whatever reason. She supposedly wanted to let it go but was afraid that Spain would take it and use it as a base against England (cf Elizabeth and Essex).
Over the centuries the English treated the Irish like a conquered people. The English established various large estates on which the Irish worked as peasants. There were absentee landlords who imposed ruinous rents on the locals.
During this time, the English imported a bunch of Scots to Northern Ireland to strengthen their hold on the country. Scots are generally Protestant and are historically fiercely anti-papist (cf assorted novels of Sir Walter Scott).
The Irish have agitated for their freedom as a country periodically. This finally came to a head early in the 20th century and finally succeeded in the 20’s, I think. Except for Northern Ireland, which was now majority Protestant due to the descendants of those imported Scots. So Northern Ireland stayed with England.
The IRA was the military organization chiefly responsible for the success of the Irish rebellion. Once independence was achieved, I supposed that they set their sights on Northern Ireland (better that than disbanding, I suppose).
After that I don’t know why the Troubles seemed so relatively quiet for so long. And I don’t remember reading any reason why they started to heat up when they did. Suddenly (it seemed) it was all bombs and marching and violence. On review, it appears that most of my “knowledge” of these issues comes from novels and movies. Apparently I didn’t pay much attention to them as current events.
Anyway, I’m very glad that phase is over, it seems like one of the very few bright spots in this dim old world.
Roddy.
Yankee here, born in '69. I was almost completely unaware of what was going on in Ireland until my late 20s, when they were coming to a close. I think I’d probably heard about it before then, but it just didn’t compute – and for sure I never heard about it in school. I didn’t live anywhere with an active Irish-heritage community, which might explain that. Now that I’ve got involved in Celtic folk music (primarily for social reasons, long story) I’m getting quite an education.
I really don’t understand the “our ancestors were assholes to each other, so we’ll be assholes to each other too” part of it. Now that I’ve actually been to Ireland, I understand more about the sort of situation **Leaffan **wrote about above, in that “the Troubles” weren’t all motivated by abstract and historical events but also by personal and daily ones. Still. I was raised a Unitarian Universalist, and the #1 Sin for a UU is religious intolerance. I was an adult before I grasped that regular people like me, who grew up in a society not all that unlike my own, might be intolerant on a scale like the Troubles, and not without reason; that political events and power imbalances mixed with religious conviction can equal a very serious mess – even when everyone involved thinks they’re doing the best they can do.
I do realize now that I’m naive.
As an American of Northern Irish heritage, my perception of the Troubles is that I need to keep my yap shut about it and my opinion to myself 100% of the $%^&ing time. My religious preference? Jewish, or Buddhist, or something.
Sure, of course it’s simplistic. But its not like partitioning Ireland prevented political violence and civil conflict either. And while protestants were a minority in the RoI, they weren’t anything like the second-class citizens that catholics were in NI. The partition was overall a bad idea, and while unification wouldn’t have been any sort of panacea it still beats what actually happened. Or so I imagine.
And anyway, the IRA bombings were completely counterproductive, assuming we pretend that the IRA goals were fair treatment for catholics and unification with the RoI. If that’s your goal, it makes sense to do things to help accomplish that goal. Yet the bombings made things worse for catholics and increased resistance to unification from protestants. And so my belief that the IRA wanted the bombings to accomplish those things, since once unification was accomplished the RoI government would destroy the IRA mafia. Or rather, that was the goal of the IRA leadership, to maintain the mafia. The motivation for the foot-level people was the fun of blowing stuff up and playing secret agent and feeling like a tough guy.
Speaking as an AngloScot and having spent a fair amount of time in N.I. during the troubles can I just say that relatives of mine were killed by the security forces while they were serving in the Provos and that the Provos murdered another relative of mine who was serving in the R.U.C.
Many of the fanatics who spout off about Ireland for the Irish and who want to ethnic cleanse descendants of Brits who live on the island of Ireland are themselves those very descendants that they so despise.
I knew a bloke in the R.O.I.who totally hated Brits and anything British whos party piece was to spout off about hundreds of years of oppression by the evil English of "His "people.
Five minutes checking up on his surname at the local library revealed that he was himself descended from Anglo Normans who most likely came over with “Strongbows” expedition to conquer Irish territory back in the middle ages.
Just thought that I’d indicate that the problem isn’t a case of a proud,brave people fighting against the depridations of the invading spawn of the devil as some people try to make out.
I don’t have much of a recollection of the Troubles although I do remember some of the individual bombings in the UK and the Omagh bombing. I also remember seeing news reports on the Orange Marches. I never thought anything about it in terms of who was right or wrong, I just thought it was a lot of senseless tragedy. Some of the things I’ve read later on, however, including Leon Uris’s ‘Trinity’, have shaped an impression that underlying the religious division are deep social and economic divides. I’m not sure how true that still is or if it ever was true, or how accurate Uris’s book is.
With all due respect L4L the North was a sectarian state, with an armed Protestant overclass that instituted an Apartheid-light system that was kept in place for over fifty years. The talk of history frames, and some would say legitimises the bloodshed but if the North had had a more equal society from the outset there would have been less impetus to hate ones neighbours.
Talk of people being descended from British or Anglo-Norman etc. is bunk because all identities are constructed anyway.
Henry Kissinger once famously said of the Iran-Iraq War, shortly after it started, “It’s a shame they can’t both lose.” Ironically, in a way, they both did.
The conflict between the IRA and the Unionist extremists was always that way for me. The IRA were criminal thugs, scum all around, and deserved nothing more or less than a five-foot rope and a nine-foot drop. The Unionist fools were every bit as malicious in their hearts, though - they didn’t have to resort to terrorism as often because they held all the cards, but Ian Paisley and his minions had hearts every bit as cold and black as the worst IRA bomber. As evidence of the fact that many unionists were nothing more than scum-sucking animals I present to you the September 7, 2001 incident where little girls walking to their Catholic school were screamed at and had rocks thrown at them.
If there is a Hell, which I don’t believe but admit I can’t prove, I’m guessing its Northern Irish faction will be equally divided between Catholic and Protestant, and the goddamned fools will probably still be throwing rocks at eash other.
Caught in the middle of all thise were two other groups:
-
The MAJORITY of people living in Northern Ireland, ordinary decent folk caught on one side or the other of a stupid war, and
-
The British government, which inherited a terrible mess (created by previous British governments) and which alternately bounced from pillar to post in an effort to solve a problem that, of course, they could not solve, making a variety of stupid and often deadly errors along the way, which is what governments do, since they’re big and stupid.
Casualties from The Troubles.
< Tom Lehrer >
Oh the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Protestants hate the Catholics.
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Protestants hate the Catholics.
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Protestants hate the Catholics.
(Repeat until the Earth crashes into the Sun.)
< /Tom Lehrer >