Thread: The Troubles

The Troubles always baffled me completely. I always thought that British rule in any part of Ireland was a bit odd, and I'm pretty sure that the catholics got a load of shit they didn't deserve, so I always thought we should get out of the place and take our economic subsidies with us. But I used to work with a bunch of pretty good guys with (catholic) Irish blood in them and whenever we got on topic, red mist would come down and there was nothing you could talk to them about.

My best mate at the time - just after that bomb in one of the London pubs near Covent Garden - told me I was a legitimate target. Why am I a legitimate target? I asked. His answer began Well you've got to remember that 400 years ago...

The full history of the troubles and what led up to them is complex but there are three main events or threads which count for the increasing resistance to the British presence in Ireland over the last 200 years or so. These are firstly The Penal Laws, secondly The Famine, and last the Civil Rights demands made by Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 60's and the 70's resulting in the formation of the Provisional IRA and the beginning of what's now known as the Troubles.

This is going to be a long one so I'm going to write about this in several parts, the first part covers some of the history up to the mid 19th Century and is as short and us unbiased as I can make. Bear in mind that I was brought up as an Irish Catholic in a Repubican family so will have certain biases that I may not even be aware of. I'm also from the south of Ireland, not the North, and our history and experiences of the last 80 years or so have been quite different. Nevertheless I'll give it a go

Ireland in the 12th and 13th Centuries was composed of several different "Kingdoms", the idea of Irish nationhood in a political sense didn't exist at that time and "Irishness" was a matter of culture, language, and religion, rather than nationality. The one unifying force was the High King, a ceremonial position, who acted as arbiter in disputes between lesser Kings but controlled no Kingdom of his own. After the death, in war with the vikings, of the High King Brian Boru the other Kings fought each other for the position of High King, this fighting lasted nearly two centuries with no King able to maintain the High-Kingship for long. In the 12th Century the King of Leinster (the Easternmost part of Ireland, centered on Dublin) in an attempt to claim the High-Kingship for himself requested the aid of Henry II of England against the other claimants. Henry sent an army led by a Norman Knoght, Strongbow, to aid Dermot with the ultimate intention of adding the land of Ireland to his own possessions. Strongbow succeeded in this task, but, to the horror of the Engish King and his successors, the Norman soldiery assimilated with the Irish, spoke their language, used their customs, and became "more Irish than the Irish themselves". Henry II, at this time styled himself "Lord of Ireland" using the authority of a Papal Bull which has since been shown to be a forgery.

This situation lasted for several hundred years, until the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Henry believed that it was time to bring what were now known as the Anglo-Irish to heel and, abolishing the title "Lord of Ireland" syled himself King of Ireland and initiated a reconquest. This conquest was not completed until the time of James I. The final defeat came in the 17th Century when the Irish armies, aided by the Spanish, were defeated by the English at the battle of Kinsale. This led to the first wave of Irish Emigration, to Spain, with much of the native Irish aristocracy, with their followers, leaving the country to start new lives on the continent. The wars of the 16th and 17th were bloody with many atrocities commited on both sides. Elizabeth I, in an attempt to displace the Irish with more loyal subjects initiated a campaign to settle Scottish presbyterians on land taken from Catholic Irish in northern Ireland. This is the origin of the Northern Irish protestants and the ultimate origin, in the disposession of their land and the turning out of the native population on to the roads and fields, of the troubles in Northern Ireland. This series of colonisations were known as "plantations" and even today many Catholics will refer to Northern Irish Protestants as "Planters".

The English then attempted to impose the protestant reformation on the Irish but failed. Most Irish at this time, tired of war, were not opposed to the country being ruled by the English Monarch but were opposed to changing their religion. They expressed their loyalty to the Crown but the Crown responded by imposing penalties on those who practiced the Catholic religion. The Irish appealed to James I and Charles I to alleviate those penalties but, while promises were made, the penalties stayed in force.

Then came the English Civil War and Cromwell. The name of Cromwell is still rarely uttered by a Catholic Irish without adding a curse on his memory.

In 1641 the Irish, alienated from England by the penalities imposed on them for their religion rebelled against the crown and brutally massacred many Protestant settlers. After the creation of the Commonwealth and his appointment as Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell turned his gaze towards Ireland and began a campaingn to subdue the rebellious Irish. This campaign was bloody and brutal, the Cromwellian soldiers massacred the populations of entire cities, deported tens of thousands to the West Indies, burnt most of Irelands agricultural land, and confined the remaining Catholic population to the stony and barren westernmost province of Ireland. One third of the Irish population died as a result of this campaign, either killed by the soldiery or starved in the subsequent famine.

After the restoration of the English Monarchy there was a period that could be best be described as an uneasy truce, then came the ascension of the Catholic James II nd another English civil war. The Catholic Irish declared for James and were, eventually, defeated by William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This event is commemorated every year on the 12th of July by the Orange Order, the Orangemen.

After the defeat of James a system of harsh repression was imposed on the Catholic Irish. The main instrument of this repression became known as The Penal Laws. These declared (from Wiki):

• Ban on intermarriage with Protestants; repealed 1778
• Presbyterian marriages were not legally recognised by the state
• Catholics barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces (rescinded by Militia Act of 1793)
• Bar from membership in either the Parliament of Ireland or the Parliament of Great Britain from 1652; rescinded 1662-1691; renewed 1691-1829.
• Disenfranchising Act 1728, exclusion from voting until 1793;
• Exclusion from the legal professions and the judiciary; repealed (respectively) 1793 and 1829.
• Education Act 1695 - ban on foreign education; repealed 1782.
• Bar to Catholics entering Trinity College Dublin; repealed 1793.
• On a death by a Catholic, a legatee could benefit by conversion to the Church of Ireland;
• Popery Act- Catholic inheritances of land were to be equally subdivided between all an owner's sons.
• Ban on converting from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism
• Ban on Catholics buying land under a lease of more than 31 years; repealed 1778.
• Ban on custody of orphans being granted to Catholics
• Ban on Catholics inheriting Protestant land
• Prohibition on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5 (in order to keep horses suitable for military activity out of the majority's hands)
• Roman Catholic lay priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704, but seminary priests and Bishops were not able to do so until the 1770s.
• When allowed, new Catholic churches were to be built from wood, not stone, and away from main roads.
• 'No person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm'. Repealed in 1782. [2]

After this it would be fair to say that Ireland was thoroughly colonised. The Catholic landowners had been thoroughly disposessed, education for Catholics abolished, and the native ruling classes dispersed. The new rulers, Protestant gentlemen from England, established lands and estates in Ireland, and consolidated their rule. These new rulers became known as the "Ascendancy". The dispossed catholics began to form underground groups whose intention was to fight these landowners. These groups, now that Irish society had broken down and native social structures dissolved, were the only resistance to English occuptaion. Their main technique was assassination and, other than killing members of the Ascendancy, they had no workable goals.

By the end of the 18th Century the infection of revolution began to spread from America to Europe. A group was formed, led by a Protestant, Theobald Wolfe Tone, and inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, with the intention of gaining independence for Ireland and establishing a secular state where Protestants and Catholics would not be separated by religion but united by their nationality. This group was known as "The United Irishmen". With the aid of French revolutionary forces the United Irishmen staged a nationwide rebellion in 1798. They were defeated. Retaliation from England was swift and ferocious, many were tortured or killed. During this rebellion many sectarian atrocities were committed on both sides and people became convinced that there was little hope of a united non-sectarian Ireland. Irish Protestants who had suffered from sectarian violence now believed that their only security lay in full union with Britain, from which they got the name Unionists. The British government sympathised with the Unionists but also believed that the rebellion had been caused by the ineptitude and misrule of the Ascendancy classes. In 1801 the British government responded with the promulgation of the act of Union and the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (the first use of the name "United Kingdom") and decreed that in future Ireland would be governed directly from Westminster.

There followed a period of relative peace until the mid 19th Century.