# Why Was Northern Ireland So Violent **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 9, 2010, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654 "2010-08-09T01:13:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/21 "2010-08-09T08:20:44Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Terming the conflict Protestant vs. Catholic misses a significant ethnic point. From the time of Henry II on, Ireland’s native Gael populace were dominated by an Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. (That’s the historically standard term for it, and emphasizes the aristocracy vs. peasantry sort of dominance it was. And that’s a big part of the key - this goes back a long time. Consider the Irish Potato Famine. Everyone’s heard of that. But the potato blight wasn’t limited to Ireland; potato crops failed throughout Northwestern Europe during those years. Why do we only hear about Ireland? Because only in Ireland did it lead to widespread famine. Why did Ireland fare so much worse than other countries? Politics, politics, politics. And those politics came from London. Not coincidentally, much of the food that _did_ grow in Ireland in those years was _going_ to London. There’s no point in getting into arguments about whether Group A was oppressed more or less than Group B, but the fact is the native Irish were the low man on the totem pole for centuries before the Royal Ulster Constabulary was even dreamt of. Describing the two groups now as the Catholics and the Protestants is convenient, but it shouldn’t be misinterpretted to mean that the cause of this fight is religious - that just makes it easier to keep score. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/22 "2010-08-09T11:40:29Z")
> [@flodnak](#): > > > [@Polycarp](#): > > > > And that’s a big part of the key - this goes back a long time. Consider the Irish Potato Famine. Everyone’s heard of that. But the potato blight wasn’t limited to Ireland; potato crops failed throughout Northwestern Europe during those years. Why do we only hear about Ireland? Because only in Ireland did it lead to widespread famine. Why did Ireland fare so much worse than other countries? Politics, politics, politics. And those politics came from London. > > Not coincidentally, much of the food that _did_ grow in Ireland in those years was _going_ to London. > > . The reason that the potato crop failure turned into a famine in Ireland and not the rest of N.W. Europe had absaloutly nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the Gaels farming practices. The "Scotch"Irish grew multiple crops though this meant more work, time and effort for them but made them a lot less vulnerable to crop failure. The Gaels practiced mono culture or "lazy man "farming. They relied on a single crop, the horse potato, which required a lot less effort in manpower(though there was no shortage of that) but it required that all growing conditions had to be right every single time, every single year. If weather conditions for example were wrong then the crop could and would fail with predictable results. The Scotch Irish did indeed ship wheat to England rather then give it to their Gael neighbours for financial gain and probably because they thought that the famine was self inflicted but thats just a guess. ---
**Author:** ![Sablicious](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Sablicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sablicious)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/23 "2010-08-09T12:04:36Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Why Was Northern Ireland So Violent Same reason most all other violence occurs or can be traced back to - religion. Some petty crap about the Queen/King being the closest to God verses the Pope being the closest to God discrepancy in their respective fictitious belief systems. :rolleyes: ‘_ **Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.** _’ -Albert Einstein. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/24 "2010-08-09T13:31:56Z")
I’m of the considered opinion that the main issue in Ireland was control of the land, and religion was simply a convenient way of determining who was in your in-group and out-group. Most of the bloodiest conflicts seem to be about control of land. The IRA wanted all the contiguous island, including the part called “Northern Ireland,” under control of their in-group. The other side wanted to hold onto that dirt. The rest is window dressing. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/25 "2010-08-09T13:58:53Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Couldn’t you also say that a lot of the tensions there goes back centuries – I mean, that’s not what they’re fighting over, but that’s when it began, and it really hasn’t stopped since? (It only got worse since the partition.) Prior to partition, it wasn’t inter-ethnic conflict so much as anti-occupation conflict. > [@Lust4Life](#): > > > [@flodnak](#): > > > > And that’s a big part of the key - this goes back a long time. Consider the Irish Potato Famine. Everyone’s heard of that. But the potato blight wasn’t limited to Ireland; potato crops failed throughout Northwestern Europe during those years. Why do we only hear about Ireland? Because only in Ireland did it lead to widespread famine. Why did Ireland fare so much worse than other countries? Politics, politics, politics. And those politics came from London. > > > > Not coincidentally, much of the food that _did_ grow in Ireland in those years was _going_ to London. > > > > . > > The reason that the potato crop failure turned into a famine in Ireland and not the rest of N.W. Europe had absaloutly nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the Gaels farming practices. > > The "Scotch"Irish grew multiple crops though this meant more work, time and effort for them but made them a lot less vulnerable to crop failure. > > The Gaels practiced mono culture or "lazy man "farming. > > They relied on a single crop, the horse potato, which required a lot less effort in manpower(though there was no shortage of that) but it required that all growing conditions had to be right every single time, every single year. > > If weather conditions for example were wrong then the crop could and would fail with predictable results. > > The Scotch Irish did indeed ship wheat to England rather then give it to their Gael neighbours for financial gain and probably because they thought that the famine was self inflicted but thats just a guess. Most Irish farmers didn’t own their farms and didn’t have the authority to make decisions about production. The farms were controlled by English and Anglo-Irish landlords. The overlords were in the process of converting production to majority livestock, which required less manpower, and farmers were being evicted on a large scale from their farms with no other means of making a living. Irish farms _were_ producing a lot of food, but the majority of it was being exported to England. These ideas about “lazy man” farming are nonsense and ignore basic facts about economics. All people turn to the kind of work that brings them the most benefit for the least effort. When conditions change, that can leave them in a lurch, but it has nothing to do with being lazy. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/26 "2010-08-09T14:02:01Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Prior to partition, it wasn’t inter-ethnic conflict so much as anti-occupation conflict. To _one_ side it was anti-occupation conflict. The other side, however, had been there for generations/centuries too, and to them it was very much inter-ethnic. My ancient Protestant northern Irish great aunt, who left as a child during the Civil War, still refers to “the bloody Irish” messing everything up for her and our family. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/27 "2010-08-09T14:18:23Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > “Was”? There are still riots every July. > > [Last month](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkMhZaFJNus). (Check out the bike at 1:22.) > [2009](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAgv6OAPBoY). > Etc. The rioters need to join the [SCA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T29JlzeveIY) and learn how to fight sword and board, or polearm. The bike did the best DPS. Actually, there are a number of [small units](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7U1G_b7PW8) in the SCA that would probably kick the respected arses of those cops in fairly short order. Bloodguard used to be made up of a fair number of military guys. Not sure who all is in it now, though it was funny being camp mom to them about 10 pennsics ago. When they get told to dig a hole, it tends to be 6 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet, a standard marine hole =) I had no issue with my sump overflowing that year! ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/28 "2010-08-09T14:29:32Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Yes. Remember the IRA was heir to a long-standing tradition of pursuing national independence through armed force – a tradition, furthermore, which had succeeded in establishing the southern state. It made little sense to view the political situation in Northern Ireland through that particular lens, as they eventually came to realise, but that background did provide them with a framework for military organisation and action which black Americans lacked, in pursuit of a political objective which black Americans didn’t share. Indeed. The IRA from their perspective were carrying on the same fight as Emmet, Tone and the 1916 rebels. From the Irish Proclamation of Independence > [@](#): > > We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. **In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the last three hundred years they have asserted it to arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades-in-arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.** > **[Roundcube Webmail :: Welcome to Roundcube Webmail](https://webmail.email.hosting/)** ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/29 "2010-08-09T14:36:44Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > > [@acsenray](#): > > > > Prior to partition, it wasn’t inter-ethnic conflict so much as anti-occupation conflict. > > To _one_ side it was anti-occupation conflict. The other side, however, had been there for generations/centuries too, and to them it was very much inter-ethnic. My ancient Protestant northern Irish great aunt, who left as a child during the Civil War, still refers to “the bloody Irish” messing everything up for her and our family. My understanding, which may be faulty, was that before partition, the majority of the violence was against the government, and for the most part in Dublin and other areas in which a handful of Anglo-Irish or English administrators ruled over a Catholic populace. It was only after partition that Ulster became a center for conflict between ground-level Catholics and Protestants. The Civil War was subsequent to partition, wasn’t it? That would jibe with this. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/30 "2010-08-09T14:37:55Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Irish farms _were_ producing a lot of food, but the majority of it was being exported to England. Ireland was and is an agriculturally _rich_ country. That Irish people could be starving, in staggering numbers, amid such plenty is perhaps the starkest and saddest fact of the whole Irish-English relationship, and the most telling about the essential nature of it. ---
**Author:** ![Cheshire\_Human](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Cheshire\_Human](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheshire_Human)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/31 "2010-08-09T14:45:08Z")
> [@lawoot](#): > > Stupidity over who’s worshiping Jesus right. Not true. Most of them weren’t very religious, so they were fighting over which set of priests were in charge of the building they missed going to on sundays. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/32 "2010-08-09T14:52:10Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > Ireland was and is an agriculturally _rich_ country. That Irish people could be starving, in staggering numbers, amid such plenty is perhaps the starkest and saddest fact of the whole Irish-English relationship, and the most telling about the essential nature of it. While not wanting to get into a famine debate, the famine can’t be ignored when it comes to Irish Republicanism. It cemented in a lot of Irish minds the absolute need for Irish self determination. At the very least a Irish government in Dublin could be petitioned or marched on. When the decisions were being made in London by people with the interests of their own in mind nothing much could be done. As a popular phrase went: God brought the blight but the English brought the famine. If this is true or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that most Irish people believed it. NI Ireland was pretty dormant for decades after partition. The British basically devolved power to Stormont and the Republic was more interested in itself. There was a gradual increase in actions in the North. Very simplistic view of escalation Civil Rights marches attacked / [Battle of the Bogside](http://www.museumoffreederry.org/history-battle01.html) =\> Bombing of business =\> Attacks on Army and Police =\> Attacks on civilians in NI =\> Attacks on the Island of Britain. At every step things got uglier and both sides ramped up their attacks and reprisals. Both sides found excuses for further carnage in the actions of their enemies. Repeat to fade. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/33 "2010-08-09T14:53:01Z")
> [@Cheshire\_Human](#): > > > [@lawoot](#): > > > > Stupidity over who’s worshiping Jesus right. > > Not true. Most of them weren’t very religious, so they were fighting over which set of priests were in charge of the building they missed going to on sundays. 😃 Also not true. The issues at stake in the conflict were (and are) not religious at all. While it may be true to say that most Nationalists and Catholic and that most Unionists are Protestant, the issues are political and communal, but not particularly religious. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_of\_Lucan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dbc845/32.png) [@Michael\_of\_Lucan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_of_Lucan)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/34 "2010-08-09T14:57:41Z")
The conflict in Northern Ireland is essentially cultural, not religious. It is an ethnic dispute between two distinct groups, similar to the conflicts seen in the break up of the former Yugoslavia. One group has a British background, largely descendants of Scottish settlers planted in Ireland several hundred years ago. They and their ancestors are Irish by birth, but they defend their British ancestry for cultural reasons, and also for the sake of self protection - since they are surrounded by a majority of a different background. Historically most of them have a non-Roman Catholic Christian background. The other ethnic group is largely native Irish, with cultural roots in Ireland. Many of their ancestors lost the land that the settlers were given. Historically, most of them have a Roman Catholic Christian background. In the past, being Roman Catholic in the United Kingdom meant having a lower social status, and that has a major influence on their view of history. The two groups use “Catholic” and “Protestant” as a shorthand for the cultural background that they come from, but the dispute betwen them is not about religion itself. Their religion is a characteristic of their ethnic background, not the cause of the conflict. You see the same type of conflict in the Balkans or the Caucasus. Warring groups there have different religions (such as Muslim or Christian), but “religious” disputes are not the source of conflict, but a symptom of an underlying ethnic dispute. The two Northern Ireland tribes each have a distorted mythology of history. Most people are low-key about it, but each group contains highly irrational people who do not accept any deviation from their holy view of history. The danger for an outsider is that you will be persuaded by the force of their blazing belief, and will not understand that you are only hearing a very limited viewpoint. In particular, be aware that most “historical facts” that people honestly believe are likely to be untrue. They are based on the propaganda of the past, and have little basis in real fact. Of course that applies to every country in the world, including the USA. Luckily, most of these myths don’t kill many people. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/35 "2010-08-09T15:01:11Z")
I just want to add my voice to those trying to quell the untruth that this is a religious conflict. Sure, religion comes into the rhetoric and is a cultural artefact of the differing sides, but at heart it’s a political conflict. > [@acsenray](#): > > My understanding, which may be faulty, was that before partition, the majority of the violence was against the government, and for the most part in Dublin and other areas in which a handful of Anglo-Irish or English administrators ruled over a Catholic populace. It was only after partition that Ulster became a center for conflict between ground-level Catholics and Protestants. The Civil War was subsequent to partition, wasn’t it? That would jibe with this. It was, of course. And I’m sure you’re right about the majority being anti-ruling party. But there _was_ Protestant-on-Catholic violence, albeit in the minority. One of my ancestors set up a violent Orange order in the late 18th century as self-defence against the 1798 Rebellion, and I have read several contemporary records of Orangemen attacking Catholics in a sectarian manner in the 19th century. The point I was trying to make, however, is that the majority of the “occupiers” didn’t feel that they were occupiers - most families felt they had “always” been there - meaning for hundreds of years. They would view themselves as non-native Americans would, with every right to the land on which they lived, or at the most they perceived themselves as colonial administrators. From my reading it appears that the Anglo-Irish, British and Scots-Irish felt that the native Irish were “defective Brits” (my terminology) who needed to be brought into line by more superior peoples, and would be fine if they weren’t racially inferior, and if they’d only give up their savage Fenian ways. ---
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/36 "2010-08-09T15:04:45Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > Also not true. The issues at stake in the conflict were (and are) not religious at all. While it may be true to say that most Nationalists and Catholic and that most Unionists are Protestant, the issues are political and communal, but not particularly religious. Robert Emmet Wolfe Tone Thomas Davis Roger Casement Sam Maguire Erskine Childers Douglas Hyde Parnell Just a few of the many giants of Irish History who were protestant. One of the big players in the NI civil rights movement was protestant [Ivan Cooper](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Cooper) ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/37 "2010-08-09T15:39:24Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Most Irish farmers didn’t own their farms and didn’t have the authority to make decisions about production. The farms were controlled by English and Anglo-Irish landlords. The overlords were in the process of converting production to majority livestock, which required less manpower, and farmers were being evicted on a large scale from their farms with no other means of making a living. Irish farms _were_ producing a lot of food, but the majority of it was being exported to England. Most farms were “controlled” by English and Ango-Irish landlords, in a sense, but most of the farmers weren’t tenants of those landlords, but instead subtenants. The landlords would lease large amounts of land to Catholic tenants, who would then subdivide the land and sublet the land. Here’s one example, I found. > [@](#): > > In 1843 there were 12,529 tenants on the Trinity College estate, but only 1% of these paid their rent to the college; 45% were sub-tenants of this small number and over 52% were sub-tenants of the sub-tenants. ---
**Author:** ![lexi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lexi/32/6806_2.png) [@lexi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lexi)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/38 "2010-08-09T15:42:34Z")
One thing people forget, is that the “Scotch Irish”, weren’t newly arrived wealthy protestants. They had no living memory of Scotland, and their families had been there for 200 or more years. Many consider themselves to be Irish not British and not Scottish. Just as many protestants were poor as the catholics - and there were very poor protestant neighbourhoods in Belfast and Portadown. My grandfather was born & raised in Northern Ireland, in a poor protestant family. My dad once told me that my grandfather hated the English, but he hated the Irish Catholics more - and much of that had to do with the possibility of Irish Catholics running the government - because of possible religious imposition in the form of government & laws, British rule was far more acceptable than Home Rule. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/39 "2010-08-09T15:44:26Z")
> [@yojimbo](#): > > Roger Casement . . . > > Just a few of the many giants of Irish History who were protestant. More trivia than anything else, but Casement converted to Catholicism while waiting execution. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654/40 "2010-08-09T15:45:47Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Most farms were “controlled” by English and Ango-Irish landlords, in a sense, but most of the farmers weren’t tenants of those landlords, but instead subtenants. The landlords would lease large amounts of land to Catholic tenants, who would then subdivide the land and sublet the land. Here’s one example, I found. It doesn’t really change the equation, though. People weren’t starving because they were “lazy man” farmers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-northern-ireland-so-violent/549654.md?page=3)