News- Ireland

Peace at Last?

A tour through Irish history makes it clear that today's negotiations offer a unique chance to break with a long legacy of violence.

By Kieron Wood

While Irish people ate grass and starved to death by the thousands, English landlords continued to export grain from Irish ports.

But the picture of Protestant vs. Catholic wasn’t quite true. Many of the founders of Republicanism, such as Wolfe Tone, were Protestants.

For the first time, the British recognized the right of the Dublin government to make representations to Britain about the northern Catholic minority.

September 9, 1997 was a historic day in Irish history. For the first time in three quarters of a century, Republicans and Unionists were sitting down together to discuss the future of the island of Ireland.

Both sides knew that, by engaging in the talks in Belfast, they were agreeing to compromise. For Republicans it meant the talks would achieve something less than total and immediate British withdrawal from Ireland. For Unionists, it meant Northern Ireland would eventually loosen its links with the British mainland.

For better or worse, those links had existed for centuries. For 800 years, Ireland’s relationship with its larger island neighbor to the east has been turbulent. Often, that turbulence has spilled over into bloodshed and revolution.

In 1172, the Pope had granted Ireland to England’s King Henry II. But the natural hospitality of the Irish was such that by the 14th century, the English invaders had become almost indistinguishable from their hosts. They intermarried, adopted Irish customs and laws, and even spoke the Irish language.

But the Irish remained stubbornly independent of the English monarch--so much so that, in the mid-16th century, King Henry VIII inaugurated his policy of "surrender and regrant" in relation to Irish lands. The intention was that Irish chiefs should surrender their land to King Henry, who would grant it back to them on a pledge of loyalty. But this time, another factor came into play: religion.

Henry had broken with the Pope over Rome’s refusal to grant the king a divorce. Henry set himself up as the head of the Catholic Church in England, and demanded that everyone recognize his newly claimed authority. Those who refused--like most of the Irish--had their lands confiscated. The battle became a conflict, not just between English and Irish, but between Catholic and Protestant.

By the beginning of the 17th century, the English were confiscating huge tracts of land--much of it in the northeastern province of Ulster--and giving it to loyal Presbyterians from Scotland, just 12 miles away across the Irish Sea. At the end of the 17th century, the English Parliament passed the notorious penal laws, further restricting the religious and civil rights of Catholics in Ireland.

For two centuries, Irish Catholics were third-class citizens in their own country. Their language, culture and religion were suppressed. Many emigrated; others plotted revolution. The egalitarian ideals of the American and French revolutions fired imaginations throughout the British empire and--gradually and reluctantly--Britain began to ease the restrictions on its Irish citizens.

But absentee English landlords still held much of the land in Ireland, and the poverty and hunger of many Catholics came to a catastrophic head with the Great Famine in the middle of the 19th century. The staple crop of the Irish, the potato, was wiped out by blight. While Irish people ate grass and starved to death by the thousands, English landlords continued to export grain from Irish ports.

Soup kitchens were set up by Protestants, but the soup was only given to Protestants. Many converted from Catholicism, rather than see their families starve. Others preferred to emigrate, building up the Irish communities in Britain, the USA and Australia. In just a few years, Ireland’s population halved, from eight million to four million. It has never recovered.

Nationalists in Ireland and abroad renewed the pressure on Britain to withdraw. By the end of the 19th century, Britain’s Liberal government had accepted that there should be a measure of Home Rule for Ireland, but the Bill was opposed by the Conservative Party and the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament.

Eventually, in 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the British Parliament passed the Home Rule Bill, but suspended its operation for the duration of the war. Irish nationalists could not wait. On Easter Monday 1916, they proclaimed a Republic and seized key buildings in Dublin. British forces ruthlessly put down the Easter Rising within days. Most Irish people--including the Catholic Church authorities--regarded the Republicans as extremists whose actions had undermined the sacrifices of those Irishmen fighting for Britain in the Great War.

But then the English made a fatal mistake. The leaders of the Rising were executed, and Catholic opinion swung inexorably behind the Republican ideal. Bitter fighting broke out between Irish and British forces throughout Ireland.

Many in Britain would willingly have rid themselves of the Irish problem, but those Protestants who had been "planted" on the island three centuries earlier demanded that the link with Britain remain.

Eventually, in 1922, the British offered a solution. Nationalists would be granted a measure of independence in 26 of the island’s 32 counties. Six of the nine counties of the northern province of Ulster would remain British. At the time 57 per cent of the 1.5 million people in those six counties were Protestant; the remaining 43 per cent were Catholic. The intention was that the state should remain Protestant, and part of the United Kingdom.

The Irish Free State government, worn out by years of fighting agreed. But the Irish Republican Army--dedicated to a sovereign, united, and free Ireland--refused to accept the treaty, and for a period Ireland was again plunged into violence--this time a bitter civil war between Irishman and Irishman.

Finally, the IRA was defeated--temporarily. Its leaders formed a political party, Fianna Fail, and entered the Dáil, the parliament of the Free State. By 1949, the Republic of Ireland was totally independent from Britain.

The Constitution of the new state, which retained a notional claim to authority over the whole island, gave a special position to the Catholic Church, as the religion of more than 95 per cent of its people. Contraception, abortion, divorce, and homosexuality were forbidden. Many Protestants left the new state, moving to Northern Ireland or Britain.

In the north, the majority Protestant community eyed developments in the south with disquiet. They believed that Home Rule meant Rome Rule. By means of gerrymandering--the careful re-drawing of internal political boundaries--they concentrated all power in the hands of Unionists. Catholics were discriminated against in employment and housing. The police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was almost exclusively Protestant. Politicians proclaimed Northern Ireland a "Protestant State for a Protestant people."

But the picture of Protestant vs. Catholic wasn’t quite true. Many of the founders of Republicanism, such as Wolfe Tone, were Protestants. In the south, the first President of the Republic was a Protestant. Dublin, the capital city of the new Republic, had two Protestant Cathedrals and no Catholic Cathedral--as is still the case today.

In the North, meanwhile, there was an emerging Catholic middle class. Many Catholics believed that the economic link with Britain provided a better standard of living than that of the fledgling Republic.

The Irish Republican Army sporadically continued its campaign of violence to destabilize the northern state, but those efforts had no great effect until the 1960s. At that time oppressed nationalists looked to the United States, which now had its first Irish Catholic President. By the late 1960s, there was a well organized civil-rights movement in Northern Ireland--a movement which Unionists were determined to resist.

Violence became more frequent. The RUC clashed with peaceful nationalist marchers. Republican miltants--but not their Loyalist counterparts--were interned without trial. Eventually in 1972, on a day that has become known as Bloody Sunday, British paratroopers opened fire on a peaceful civil rights parade in Derry, killing 13 unarmed civilians. This was the turning point.

Britain realized that the situation in Northern Ireland was spiralling out of control. The Protestant-ruled Northern Irish Parliament at Stormont was prorogued and direct rule introduced from the British Parliament at Westminster.

But Britain’s Conservative and Unionist government was still determined to withstand Republican pressure for a united Ireland. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher the withdrew "political status" which Republican and Loyalist prisoners had hitherto enjoyed. She insisted that "a criminal is a criminal is a criminal"--even though many of those in prison had been sentenced by non-jury courts on the basis of what they claimed were forced confessions.

Following a standoff for more than a year, Republicans in the Maze Prison went on hunger strike. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected a Member of the British Parliament on his deathbed. The British changed the law, so prisoners could no longer stand for Parliament.

Ten hunger strikers died and the violence grew worse. The Irish Republican Army intensified its "armed struggle." Its political wing, Sinn Fein, became a significant political force, along with the more moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party.

In the Republic, things were changing too. The electorate voted to remove the special position of the Catholic Church from the Constitution, with the support of Catholic Church leaders.

With Ireland’s accession to the European Economic Community, the previously impoverished economy began to grow. The power and authority of the Catholic Church waned. Mass attendance dropped from more than 90 per cent to under 10 per cent in some city parishes. Social and political attitudes became increasingly liberal. Contraception, divorce, and homosexuality were legalized. Abortion was permitted in restricted circumstances.

In 1985, the governments of Britain and Ireland signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement. The significance of the agreement was not lost on either side. For the first time, the British recognized the right of the Dublin government to make representations to Britain about the northern Catholic minority.

Political developments continued apace. In 1993, under the Downing Street Declaration, the British Government accepted the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination. That meant that the people of northern Ireland could vote for union with the Republic--although the demographic breakdown of Catholics and Protestants in the six counties made such an eventuality unlikely for the foreseeable future.

The political pressure grew for a peaceful settlement and in 1994 the IRA declared a ceasefire, with a view to Sinn Fein being included in political talks on the future of northern Ireland.

But Britain’s Conservative government--struggling to hold onto power in Parliament, and seeking to ensure the support of Unionist members--insisted that the IRA should hand over its weapons before Sinn Fein would be allowed into talks.

In February 1996, the ceasefire broke down in the face of the British government’s intransigence. IRA bombs exploded in Britain and the campaign of violence--particularly aimed against British soldiers and police--resumed in northern Ireland.

Then, in the British general election of May 1997, the Conservatives were routed. The new Labor government, led by a man who is married to a Catholic, had no need of the political support of Unionists. Efforts were renewed to seek a political settlement and the IRA announced the resumption of its ceasefire.

The British prime minister announced that Sinn Fein would be allowed to take part in the talks if the ceasefire appeared "unequivoca.". President Clinton expressed US support for the multi-party talks. An international commission, under the chairmanship of former US Senate leader George Mitchell, proposed that decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons--Republican and Loyalist--should not be a prerequisite to the political talks, but should take place in parallel with the talks.

The negotiations were to be "three-stranded"--conducted simultaneously between the British and Irish Governments, between political parties in the north, and between the two parts of Ireland. In August, the Democratic Unionists and the UK Unionists walked out of the talks, saying they would not sit down with Sinn Fein leaders, whom they described as IRA murderers. The majority Unionist Party took a more pragmatic approach and, after failing to have Sinn Fein expelled from the talks, agreed to take part in limited discussions.

Meanwhile, in Scotland and Wales, voters had decided in a referendum to approve devolved Scottish and Welsh parliaments with limited powers to make laws. The decision raised hopes of an end to the link between Britain and Northern Ireland.

The British and Irish governments say they want the northern peace talks to end by May next year. But what they will achieve is anybody’s guess.

Extreme Loyalists and Republicans have both rejected the talks process. A fringe Republican group, the Continuity Army, accuses Sinn Fein of compromising its principles, and insists that the armed struggle must continue. On the other wing, extreme Unionists like the Reverend Ian Paisley have raised the specter of renewed Loyalist terror if the talks move towards a united Ireland.

"The true Unionists of this province of Ulster will do what their fathers did and will oppose and oppose and oppose this vilest of treacheries," warned Paisley. "We will light again the fire of determined Ulster unionist resistance."

Republic of Ireland: an independent country comprising 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland.

Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connaught: the four traditional provinces of Ireland.

Northern Ireland: the artificial state comprising six of the nine counties of Ulster.

Great Britain: England, Scotland, and Wales.

United Kingdom: Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Presidential Race

October 30 saw Irish voters go to the polls in a unique election.

"That basically is my vision of Ireland: a nation united under God."

The balloting of October 30 was for a new president of the Irish Republic, but this election was sifferent. For a start, there were more candidates than ever before--and most of them were women.

Since the first President of Ireland took office in 1938, six of the seven office holders have been men. The first woman to be elected to the office was the outgoing President Mary Robinson, who resigned in September to take up a position as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The left-wing feminist lawyer had been president since her surprise victory in 1990. Her opponents then had been Brian Lenihan, a former deputy prime minister and experienced member of the country's largest political party, Fianna Fail, and Austin Currie, a northern Irish nationalist and member of the Irish parliament.

Before that election, pundits predicted that the inexperienced Robinson had no chance of winning the race--until Lenihan inexplicably lied on television about a telephone call to the former president. The crudeness of the falsehood swung the electorate behind the minority candidate, who--although she lost to Lenihan on first preferences--won on the strength of transfer votes from Currie under the unusual Irish voting system, in which a voter's second preference is tallied if his first preference is eliminated from contention.

The new president made no secret of her support for marginalized groups and left-wing causes, inviting "Mna na hEireann" (the women of Ireland) to "come dance with me" and entertaining avowed homosexuals to dinner in the presidential mansion. Her style endeared her to many, but alienated conservatives.

As soon as Robinson announced that she would not run for a second term, the jostling started for nominations for the October 1997 race. In order to apepar on the ballot paper, a candidate had to have the support of 20 members of Parliament. An alternative method of nomination--never used before--was to win the backing of four county councils.

The first declared candidate into the field was Dana, a broadcaster and singer from Derry in Northern Ireland. Born Rosemary Scallon in 1951, Dana sprang to fame in 1970 when she won the Eurovision Song Contest with her song "All Kinds Of Everything."

Since 1991, Dana has lived in the United States, in Alabama, where she presents the program "Say Yes" on Mother Angelica's EWTN network. Married with four children, Dana is well known for her pro-family, pro-Catholic views. Pro-life activists in Ireland, concerned at the gradual encroachment ofabortion into Irish life, approached her and asked her to stand for the presidency.

The Irish media ridiculed the candidacy, claiming Dana was a "right-wing fundamentalist". She told one newspaper: "Yes I am absolutely pro-life and I make no apologies for that. I have always believed that abortion kills the child, wounds the mother, and can kill the soul of a nation. If we ca'ít teach our young people that to deliberately take the life of another person is wrong, then God help us."

With the introduction of divorce in Ireland last February, traditional Catholic voters were expected to support Dana's candidacy on that issue too. She added: "Yes, I am also opposed to divorce, though obviously neither God nor man expects anyone to stay in a marriage that is, say, abusive. But we have to tilt the law to preserve marriage wherever possible, because the family is the fundamental unit in society.

Dana continued:

Experts said Dana could not obtain the necessary political backing to be put on the ballot, and the liberal Irish Times sneered: "When she threw her hat into the ring, the sound of raucous laughter reverberated throughout the country." The laughter was stilled in mid-September, when, in an unprecedented move, Dana won the support of five county councils--Donegal, Wicklow, Longford, Tipperary North Riding and Kerry--to become the first official candidate for the presidency.

The government was thrown into panic. Conservatives were beginning to marshal behind the only declared pro-family candidate. The predicted Fianna Fail candidate was to be former prime minister Albert Reynolds. But, in a political bombshell, the party's parliamentary party rejected the experienced politician in favor of a candidate who was, like President Robinson, a woman, a lawyer, and a feminist, but who was, unlike President Robinson, avowedly anti-abortion.

Professor Mary McAleese, 46, had an impressive pedigree. The first woman (and first Catholic) Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast, she had been appointed a professor of criminal law at the age of 24. Born in Northern Ireland and the eldest of nine children, she is married with three children of her own.

McAleese was a member of several commissions of the Irish Catholic bishops--although her views on feminism and her support for gay rights and women priests alienated many more conservative Catholics. But the opinion polls showed she was a popular choice. Dana suffered from a negative media image and poorly-organized campaign. McAleese had the enormous organisational machine of the Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrats parties behind her.

Other candidates seemed to be left on the fringes of the election process. The Fine Gael party's Mary Banotti, 58, played on the fact that she was a grandniece of Civil War hero Michael Collins. But even though the divorced nurse had a wealth of political experience as a member of the European Parliament, her showing in the opinion polls still put her behind McAleese.

The left-wing Labor Party candidate Adi Roche--the youngest candidate at 42--was known for her work with the Chernobyl Childrenís Project, taking children from the irradiated area around Chernobyl for holidays in Ireland and the US. But her ratings plummeted when former colleagues accused her of having a dictatorial management style.

The last, oldest and only male candidate was 60-year-old former police officer Derek Nally, who fought the election on a platform of support for the rule of law and for the victims of crime.

But as the campaign drew to a close, the odds-on favorite for the eighth President of Ireland was Professor Mary McAleese.

600 BC: First Celts arrive

432 AD: Arrival of St Patrick and Christianity

550 onwards: Irish monks Christianise Europe

1066: Normans defeat Saxons in England

1169: Normans land in Wexford, beginning 800-year struggle between Irish and English

1172: Ireland granted to England's King Henry II by Pope

1366: Statutes of Kilkenny forbid English to intermarry with Irish

1541: King Henry VIII begins Protestant Reformation; becomes King (instead of "Lord") of Ireland

1601: Protestant English army defeats Irish and Spanish Catholic allies at Kinsale

1608: Irish lands confiscated and given to Scottish Presbyterian"planters"--the forefathers of today's Northern Ireland Unionists

1641: Irish rebellion crushed by Oliver Cromwell; famine, plague, and butchery reduce population to 500,000

1690: Protestant King William III of Orange defeats Catholic King James II at Battle of the Boyne (commemorated every year by Protestant marches in Northern Ireland)

1695: Anti-Catholic Penal Laws introduced

1782: Protestant Parliament in Dublin granted virtual independence by Britain

1791: Protestant Wolfe Tone founds United Irishmen, dedicated to break the link with Britain and to "unite Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter"

1798: Uprising; Irish and French Catholic allies defeated

1800: Irish Parliament votes itself out of existence; Ireland and Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) become the United Kingdom

1829: United Kingdom parliament at Westminster abolishes Penal Laws

1845-51: Great Famine reduces population from 8 million to 6.5 million

1858: Fenian Brotherhood founded in Dublin with American aid; forerunner of Irish Republic Brotherhood and Irish Republican Army (IRA)

1905: Sinn Fein ("We ourselves") party founded to promote Irish independence ("Home Rule")

1913: Ulster Volunteer Force established in north-eastern Ireland to fight against Home Rule

1914: UK Parliament promises Home Rule for Ireland after World War 1

1916: IRAís Easter Rising in Dublin put down by British; leaders executed

1919-1921: Irish War of Independence against Britain

1922: Britain and Ireland sign treaty establishing 26-county Free State; six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster (with Protestant majorities) remain in the UK as "Northern Ireland" with its own government

1922: Civil war between Free State army and IRA

1926: Sinn Fein splits; US-born Eamonn deValera forms Fianna Fail party

1937: New Irish Constitution retains claim to united 32-county Ireland

1939-45: Free State remains neutral during World War II

1949: Declaration of 26-county Irish Republic ("Eire")

1956: IRA resumes military campaign

1971: Unionist government of Northern Ireland introduces internment without trial for suspected Republicans

1972: British paratroopers shoot dead 13 civilians during civil-rights march in Derry

1973: Britain abolishes Northern Ireland Parliament and introduces direct rule from Westminster

1974: Loyalists bomb Dublin and Monaghan, killing 30

1981-82: Ten Republicans die on hunger strike in Maze Prison, Northern Ireland; dying hunger striker Bobby Sands elected to British Parliament

1985: Anglo-Irish agreement signed, allowing Dublin government to make representations to Britain about Northern Catholic minority

1993: Downing Street Declaration; British Government accepts the right of the people of Ireland to self-determination

1994: IRA declares ceasefire

1996: Ceasefire breaks down after Britain's Conservative government refuses to allow Sinn Fein to join all-party talks on Northern Ireland

1997: IRA ceasefire resumes; talks begin in Belfast between government of Irish Republic, Britain;s new Labour government, and representatives of all Northern Ireland's political parties