Northern Ireland Conflict Analysis

The conflict in Northern Ireland has been driven by conflict over political status of the region and competing claims and aspirations of the two main communities. The protestant community generally favors the political union with Great Britain, regard themselves as British citizensand define themselves politically as Unionists. The Catholic community generally favors the creation of a single united Irish State. They regard themselves politically as Nationalists, they strive for a united Irish Republic. The Troubles, as they are known to the populace, did not erupt on any specific date, but emerged as the result of several years of escalating incidents between Catholics and Protestants. This latest episode of the long-standing conflict between

Catholic Ireland was ruled by Great Britain for a considerable portion of its history, from the twelfth century to 1920. During that time, there were numerous revolts by the Catholics against their Protestant landlords. The historic province of Ulster, a stronghold of Gaelic culture in the north of Ireland, successfully resisted British encroachments until the Plantation of 1609. Darby, 1976 argued that the earlier waves of colonisation had supplanted the Irish gentry with Protestant British landlords, leaving the bulk of the population Catholic and Irish. The settlement of Ulster in 1609, by contrast, was massive in scale and resulted in the intrusion of a Protestant culture that was completely alien to its Catholic inhabitants. Massacres of both Protestants and Catholics took place throughout the 1600s, as the two sides battled for supremacy and the right to occupy the land each now called home. The most important of these to the folklore of Ulster was the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, in which the Protestants scored a massive victory over the

In the case of the Protestants in Northern Ireland, historical incidents of violence and massacre have been mythologised and used as the template for understanding modern Protestant-Catholic relations. One event that has coloured perceptions of Protestant / Catholic relations was the massacres of Protestants that took place during the Catholic uprising of 1641. During this uprising Irish rebels in Ulster killed and expelled several thousand Protestant settlers argued Bardon 1992. This event, particularly the massacre of eighty Protestant men, women and children at Portadown, has repeatedly been used by Protestants (most notably the Reverend Ian Paisley) in making comparisons between Catholic behavior at that time and the contemporary actions of the IRA as stated by Crighton and Mac