Part II - The Historical Argument for a United Ireland

Published: 12 August, 2005

II.  The Historical Argument for a United Ireland

The “Plantation” of Ireland

There were invasions and settlements [or plantations] in Ireland long before the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland from 1652 through 1660, but none was more effective or pietiless.  Earlier attempts failed because the invaders or settlers were by and large incorporated into the Irish nation, adopting Irish laws and Irish ways.  They became, in other words, “More Irish than the Irish.”

Oliver Cromwell’s plan was devastating.  All Catholics, rich of poor, were to be transported to the barely habitable Province of Connaught and the County Clare.  All other lands were to belong to Cromwell’s New Model Army soldiers who fought without pay for Irish lands.  Investors in Cromwell’s Irish wars were also to receive vast estates.  English lords involved with the organization of the transportation became fabulously wealthy.  Other land was reserved for the English government.  

The native Irish could expect to move to the west, or if they were unlucky, to be deportation to the colonies as indentured servants, where they were to be treated worse than the African slaves because the slaves were at least considered “property.” 

The Penal Laws were in force and priests were often hanged if caught.  If the Catholic population would convert to Protestantism, things would be different.   But, they didn’t.    The Jesuit Father Quinn, writing to the Vatican from his hiding place in the mountains, lamented:

“Wound follows wound that nothing be wanting to fill up the cup of sufferings.  The few Catholic families that remain were lately deprived by Cromwell of all their immovable property, and are all compelled to abandon their native estates, and retire into the province of Connaught.  The design, obviously, is to extripate gradually the whole nation, since no plan can succeed in shaking the attachment to the Roman Catholic faith.”

Sean O’Conaill, whose father had been active in the wars against the English in 1641 and died on the journey to County Clare, wrote bitterly in Irish to God:

“Are you deaf, or whither are you looking?

Was it not you who overthrew the monsters with your nod?

What little to you the time that you are patient?

Our faith is gone…there is not living but a spark.”

When Charles II was restored to the crown, ending the Cromwellian Parliament, the native Irish expected things to change.  Nothing changed for the native people.

Nevertheless, over the centuries, the only place in Ireland where the Cromwell’s platation took hold was in the north, and there only incompletely.  Of the nine counties of Ulster [partitioned N. Ireland is only 6 counties], only North Derry, Antrim, and North Down have a Protestant majority.

A people who survived the wrath of Oliver Cromwell, surely proved themselves a nation.

Divide and Conquer

In the eighteenth century, both the Roman Catholic and Presbyterians became interested in the democratic republican ideas that inspired the American and French revolutions.  Catholics suffered terribly under English rule and the Presbyterians wanted a more democratic society.  In 1775, the English Lord Lieutenant commented:  “The Presbyterians in the north, who in their hearts are Americans, are gaining strength every day.”  In 1779 the Presbyterians were described in the Stopford-Sackville papers as “violently attached to republican principles.”

In 1791, the Society of United Irishmen, made up of Presbyterians, Catholics and Protestants, was formed with the objective of breaking the ties with England and establishing an Irish Republic. 

The English opposed the United Irishmen is several ways.  They crushed with great severity the republican insurrection of 1798 in which Ulster Presbyterians, led by men like Henry Joy McCracken and Henry Munroe, took up arms to strike for an Irish Republic and were joined by Irishmen of all denominations.  They were assisted by a number of French expeditionary forces.

The English propaganda represented the insurrection as an attack by Catholic France and a “popish plot”.  Nothing was further from the truth. 

Most effective of all, the English promoted the establishment of the Orange order in 1795, a sectarian and exclusively Protestant society which soon instituted widespread terror.  This was imperial “divide and conquer” at its worst.  General Knox, commandeer of English forces in Ulster, wrote, “If I am permitted to encourage the Orangemen, I think I shall be able to put down the United Irishmen.”  In reply, the English Chief Secretary, Thomas Pelham, approved the plan to increase the animosity between the Orangemen and the United Irishmen.”  Later, Sir Robert Peel, Pelhem’s successor, endorsed the view, “I hope they may always be disunited.”

Britain has done in Ireland what it did everywhere it has been, divide in order to conquor.

The Great Famine

Another attempt to eradicate the native population of Ireland occurred when in the autumn of 1845, a potato disease reach Ireland from America.  One half of the people of Ireland were totally reliant upon the crop.  The situation worsened when the blight spread during the wet spring and summer of 1846, causing an almost total failure of that year’s crop.  In 1947, known as “Black 47”, many people had of necessity eaten their seed potatoes and the overall crop was almost totally destroyed.  In 1848 and 1849, the blight was a bit less severe.

During the famine of 1845 – 1851, it is estimated that over one million to one people died in Ireland of starvation and the diseases that followed in its wake.  About one and one half million immigrated to Canada, Australia, the US, and England.  The catastrophe was almost entirely born by the laborer and small farmers who, because of their circumstances under the heels of the English landlords, had nothing but the meager potato crop that they planted to sustain life.  Everything went to rent and the barest necessities

During the height of the genocide, only one crop had failed out of the many that were unaffected and, of course, livestock thrived in Ireland.  Relief efforts were stymied by the English government least the devastation should fall short of the desired expectations – the more Irish peasantry dead the better.  They could make more money with sheep on the land than Irish people.

As hundreds of thousands of Irish people were dying of starvation and disease, crops and livestock were actually exported out of the country to England.  Even foreign relief was routed through English ports where they were taxed before they could reach Ireland.  Humanitarian aid that civilized societies normally provide their own [one might speculate what would have transpired if an equivalent famine struck England] was denied the Irish on the grounds that it would spoil them in the future.

Landlords wasted no time in legally evicting Irish tenants from their homes, even though there was no possibility to make rent payments.  Eviction was likely to mean certain death with absolutely nowhere to go except to live in ditches or with already suffering family members.

Emigration was the only option for the lucky, but they were prone to die of typhus or cholera as human cargo on the ghastly “coffin ships.”

Between starvation, disease, and death on the voyage to American and elsewhere, it is estimated that one and a half million Irish died.

The scale of suffering endured during this nightmare is difficult to imagine.  The following account of a visit to Skibbereen in County Cork was written by Nicholas Cummins, a British magistrate, on Christmas Eve 1846:

“On reaching the spot I was surprised to find the wretched hamlet apparently deserted.  I entered some of the hovels to ascertain the cause, and the scenes which presented themselves were such as no tongue or pen can convey the slightest idea of.  In the first, six famished and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering which seemed a ragged horsecloth, their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning they were alive – they were in fever, four children, a woman, and what had been a man.  It is impossible to go through the detail.  Suffice it to say that in a few minutes I was surrounded by at least 200 such phantoms, such frightful specters as no words can describe, either from famine or fever.  The demonic yells are still in my ears, and their horrible images are fixed in my brain.

“The same morning the police opened a house on the adjourning lands and two corpses were found, lying upon the mud floor, having been devoured by rats.

“A mother, herself in fever, was seen the same day to drag the corpse of her child, a girl about twelve, perfectly naked, and leave it half covered with stones.  In another house, within 500 yards of the cavalry station at Skibbereen, the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying unable to move, under one clock.  One had been dead many hours, but the others were unable to move either themselves of the corpse.”

During the years of the famine, a decline of the population of Ireland set in, one which has continued almost to the present.  In 1841, the population was 8.2 million; just ten years later, it had declined by nearly two million to 6.5 million.  In 1976, the population of Ireland was 4.7 million.

How could this mass evacuation from a beautiful, bountiful and beloved land, by a people who would almost rather die than to leave, be by chance?

There is no greater argument for an independent, united Ireland than the way the British government treated the Irish people during the famine years.

 Map depicting the precipitous decline in population during the famine years which would continue until nearly the present day.  [Source:  CAIN, University of Ulster]

The Fenians, the Land War, Labor, and the Gaelic Revival

In the wake of the famine, the Finians, or the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were formed in the late 1850’s.  They pledged complete separation from England.  Thousands of young men joined the movement.  Although it was a failure militarily, it established a new desire for freedom.  It put hundreds of people behind bars, where they would endure with increasing bitterness towards their captors.

There was much Fenian agitation and work being done in the United States as well.  There was a fateful charge on British Canada in the name of the Fenians by elements of the Union Army shortly after the civil war and a Fenian submarine was made in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

Most importantly, they were thinking about and working towards the independent Irish Republic.  In Chicago, November 1863, the follow resolution was passed by the Fenian Congress:

“Be it resolved –

“That we, the centres and delegates of the Fenian Brotherhood, assembled in this convention, do herely proclaim the Republic of Ireland to be virtually established, and moreover that we pledge ourselves to use all in our influence, and every legitimate privilege within our reach, to promote the full acknowledgement of its independence by every free government in the world.”

After the famine, English landlords reigned supreme.  In 1879, Michael Davitt founded the Irish National Land League with Charles Parnell as its president.  In 1881, under unrelenting pressure, a land act guaranteed the three “Fs”:  fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure.  The land war changed the face of rural Ireland by putting an end to the old system of landlordism; however, British political rule remained as imperious as ever.

During the last decade of the 19th and the first two of the 20th, the workers of Ireland were organized by James Connolly and James Larkin.  Conditions in Dublin and Belfast were the worst in Europe.  In Dublin, 21,000 families lived in only one room.  In 1913, Larkin directed a tramworkers’ strike which resulted in three people being killed.  Then a federation of 400 Dublin employers refused employment to members of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.  British and continental trade unions and groups sent funds to relieve the distress of the 24,000 workers unemployed.

While the strike ended in failure, a workers’ militia, the Irish Citizen Army, was formed by Connolly which was to play an historic role in the struggle for Irish freedom.

The cultural organizations which were to have to have an impact in the coming revolutionary struggle were the Gaelic Athletic Association [GAA] and the Gaelic League to promote the Irish language which had declined after the Great Famine.  In 1841, Ireland had over 8,175,000 people; most of whom spoke Irish.  Irish sports and the language had declines precipitously after the famine.  The Gaelic League championed the literary revival of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The outpouring of nationalist literature reached an emotional crescendo with the presentation of W. B. Yeats’ play Cathleen Ni Houlihan [a.k.a., “Mother Ireland”].  These organizations cannot be underestimated as catalysts of the struggle for independence

The Irish Volunteers

In 1913, the Ulster Volunteer Force, a quasi-legal army, was heavily armed with no resistance from the British government. When ordered to break up the illegal and provocative activities of the Ulster Volunteers, the British army refused, its officers threatening to mutiny.

That’s why it is no surprise when the British army goes into the north of Ireland today to protect the nationalist community under attack, that it turns it’s guns on nationalists and ignores unionist violence.

Later in the year, the Irish Volunteers were formed by Eoin MacNeill in reaction “to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland without distinction of creed, class or politics.”

This time the British didn’t look passively by.  However, some arms, inadequate and antiquated at best, with the help of Irish American supporters and others, were procured and the Irish Volunteers began to train and organize.

Soon WW1 was raging on the continent and the ordinary people of  Ireland were divided and confused.

The IRB and Sinn Fein

As John Redmond was pulling together the constitutional Irish Party of John Parnell, the Irish Republican Brotherhood were regrouping and arming in secret for armed struggle.

Republican political activists were also being organized by Arthur Griffiths, who founded the newspaper, The United Irishman.  In 1905, disenchanted with Redmond’s party and totally distrusting the British home rule promises, Griffiths founded Sinn Fein and began to push his party into the political vacuum.

 “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

In 1915, the body of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rosa, an unrepentant Fenian who had emerged unbroken from nearly insufferable torments of years in British prisons, was returned to Ireland for burial.  A massive, martyrs funeral was held.

Padraig Pearse, poet, schoolmaster, and leader in both the Irish Volunteers and the IRB, gave a speech that today is seared in Irish minds:

“…Life spring from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations… The Defenders of this Realm think they have pacified Ireland…The fools, the fools, the fools!  They have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

The speech and the reaction to it was a turning point.

The Easter Rising is the seminal point in the struggle for Irish sovereignty and is the focus to this day of yearly commemorations and re-commitment to the Irish Republic sought by Pearse and Connolly.  The poster above invites people to one of the scores of rallies throughout the country.  [Source:  CAIN, University of Ulster]

The Rising of Easter Monday, 1916

It was a leisurely Easter Monday, a bank holiday, and the people paid little notice as scantily armed units of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army deployed to take on a the British Empire.  Only 1,500 men turned out due to the countermanding order from the Volunteer leader MacNeill.  Only half were armed.  The rest of the country were willing but effectively demobilized.

Pearse and Connolly, with full knowledge they were engaged in a suicide mission, marched up Sackville Street to the General Post Office.  They raised a flag that had never been seen before, a tricolored flag of green, white and orange, as Pearse read a proclamation that began: 

“Irish men and Irish women.  In the name of God and of the dead generations  from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summands her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom… We declare the right of the people to Ireland, to the ownership of Ireland …” 

Amazingly, the flag flew over the GPO for nearly a week under a fierce attack from immensely superior British forces.  There was a terrible cost.  Over 3,000 people were killed on all sides, including innocent civilians.  The Irish Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army and British soldiers fought bravely.  Dublin was in flames.  With the GPO burning around them, Pearse issued a surrender order to save further civilian suffering and deaths.

The leaders were given quick, military trials.  Beginning Wednesday, May 3rd, and continuing through Friday, May 13th, the leaders were shot dead at a rate of four a day in Kilmainham Jail.  Nearly all were educated by the Christian Brothers, some were poets, some painters, some educators – hardly a military man among them.  Pearse said of himself, Thomas MacDonagh, and Joseph Plunket at the start, “If we do nothing else we shall rid Ireland of three bad poets.”

James Connolly, severely wounded at the GPO, was the last of the 16 to be executed.  He was carried out to be shot, tied to a chair.  The British imposed martial law and hundreds of captured rebels were imprisoned in England.  Roger Casement, who was captured trying to smuggle arms into Ireland for the rising, was hanged in England on August 3rd.

Through these brutal executions, the British had accomplished what the rebels could not;  they enraged a lethargic Irish people against their oppressors.  A great fire rose up that would carry the Irish people through the coming years of widespread suffering and open rebellion.

The Election of 1918 and  Dail Eireann

The Irish Republic was endorsed by the Irish people -- north, south, east and west -- in 1918.  In the British general election held in December, Sinn Fein won 73 out of the 105 Irish seats.  Sinn Fein candidates pledged not to participate in the Westminster Parliament, but to convene an Independent Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann, which they did on January 21st, 1919.

The democratically elected representatives of the Irish people ratified the Irish Republic that was proclaimed in arms on Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916 in Dublin, and declared the Independence of the nation.

Irish Declaration of Independence  [Enacted 21st January 1919 by First Dail Eireann]

'Whereas the Irish People is by right a free people:

'And whereas for seven hundred years the Irish People has never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly protested in arms against foreign usurpation:

'And whereas English rule in this country is, and always has been, based upon force and fraud and maintained by military occupation against the declared will of the people:

'And whereas the Irish Republic was proclaimed in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916, by the Irish Republican Army, acting on behalf of the Irish People:

'And whereas the Irish People is resolved to secure and maintain its complete independence in order to promote the common weal, to re-establish justice, to provide for future defense, to ensure peace at home and good will with all nations, and to constitute a national policy based upon the people's will with equal right and equal opportunity for every citizen:

'And whereas at the threshold of a new era in history the Irish electorate has in the General Election of December, 1918, seized the first occasion to declare by an overwhelming majority its firm allegiance to the Irish Republic:

'Now, therefore, we, the elected Representatives of the ancient Irish People in National Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the Irish Nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effective by every means at our command:

'We ordain that the elected Representatives of the Irish People alone have power to make laws binding on the people of Ireland, and that the Irish Parliament is the only Parliament to which that people will give its allegiance:

'We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate, and we demand the evacuation of our country by the English Garrison:

'We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter:

'In the name of the Irish People we humbly commit our destiny to Almighty God Who gave our fathers the courage and determination to persevere through long centuries of a ruthless tyranny, and strong in the justice of the cause which they have handed down to us, we ask His Divine blessing on this the last stage of the struggle we have pledged ourselves to carry through to freedom.'

Dail Eireann also established a democratic program in which they declared to have Ireland “ruled in accordance with the principles of liberty, equality and justice for all.”  A cabinet was appointed, courts established and the Irish Republican Army was brought under the control of the Minister of Defense.

British Suppression and Irish Resistance   

In September 1919, a British military proclamation declared Dail Eireann “illegal”.  All republican newspapers were suppressed.  Both went underground.  The British military unleashed a reign of terror which continued until the signing of a truce in July of 1921.   A British Labour Party commission reported in December 1920 that “the atmosphere of terrorism which has been created and the provocative behavior of the armed servants of the Crown, quite apart from specific reprisals, are sufficient in themselves to arouse in our hearts feelings of the deepest horror and shame.”

The IRA fought back against British military terror using primarily guerilla tactics and a highly sophisticated intelligence system that stretched into the inner workings of Dublin Castle, the epicenter of British Raj in Ireland.  Authorized by Dail Eireann, republicans and nationalists in several county areas, particularly in the south of the country, co-opted the operations of the state from the British occupiers, for example, running their own republican courts, providing police services, etc.  This was accomplished under extremely adverse, hostile military conditions.  

The General Elections of 1920:  the Last All Ireland Election

On 15 January 1920, with most of the Province of Munster under Marshall Law, Ireland wide municipal elections took place under the authority of Dublin Castle.   Sinn Fein had another resounding electoral victory.  Even in the unionist controlled north, Sinn Fein returned majorities in Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone.  Even Derry City returned a Catholic mayor.  Throughout Ireland, Sinn Fein won 172 councils out of 206.

The general election of 1920 confirmed the people’s will for independence.  It was to be the last national election the Irish people as a whole were allowed to participate in to this day, and again they voted for national sovereignty and independence from Britain. 

Black and Tans and Britain’s War Machine

Britain’s answer was to flood the country with murderous Black and Tans, Auxiliaries, and other criminal elements from their forces returning from Europe after W.W.I  looking for a payday and mayhem.   They also deployed tens of thousands British military personnel and modern equipment and weapons of war into Ireland to terrorize the people into submission.  

American Investigating Team Reports [1921] British guilty of “Terrorism”

A group of prominent Americans and elected officials, including two US Senators, most with very Anglo sounding names, went to Ireland and reported their findings.

Report of the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, New York, 1921: L. Hollingsworth Wood, Chairman; Frederick Howe, Vice Chairman; Jane Addams, James Maurer, Maj. Oliver Newman; Norman Thomas; Senator George Norris; Senator David Walsh, members.

Conclusions

We find that the Irish people are deprived of the protection of British law, to which they have they would be entitled as subjects of the British King.  They are likewise deprived of the moral protection granted by international law, to which they would be entitled to as belligerents.  They are at the mercy of imperial British forces which, acting contrary both to all law and to all standards of human conduct, have instituted in Ireland a “terror,” the evidence regarding which seems to prove that:

1.  The imperial British Government has created and introduced into Ireland a force of at least 78,000 men, many of them youthful and inexperienced and some of them convicts, and has incited that force to unbridled violence.
2. The imperial British forces in Ireland have indiscriminately killed innocent men, women and children;  have discriminately assassinated person suspected of being Republicans;  have tortured and shot prisoners while in custody, adopting the subterfuges of “refusing to halt” and “attempting to escape”;  and have attributed to alleged “Sinn Fein extremists” the British assignation of prominent Irish Republicans.
3. House burning and wanton destruction of villages and cities by imperial British forces under British officers have been countenanced and ordered by officials of the British Government;  and elaborate provision by gasoline sprays and bombs has been made in a number of instances for systematic incendiarism as part of the plan of terrorism.
4. A campaign for the destruction of the means of existence of the Irish people has been conducted by the burning of factories, creameries, crops and farm implements and the shooting of farm animals.  This campaign is carried out regardless of the political views of their owners, and results in widespread and acute suffering among women and children.
5. Acting under a series of proclamations issued by the competent military authorities of the imperial British forces, hostages are carried by forces exposed to the fire of the Republican Army;  fines are levied upon towns and villages as punishment for alleged offenses of individuals; private property is destroyed in reprisals for acts with which the owners have no connection;  and the civilian population is subjected to an inquisition upon the theory that individuals are in possession if information valuable to the military forces of Great Britain.  These acts of the imperial British forces are contrary to the laws of peace or war among modern civilized nations.
6. This “terror” has failed to reestablish imperial British civil government in Ireland.  Throughout the greater part of Ireland British courts have ceased to function; local, county and city governments refuse to recognize British authority;  and British civil officials fulfill no functions of service to the Irish People.
7. In spite of the British “terror” the majority of the Irish people have sanctioned by ballot the Irish Republic, give their allegiance to it, pay taxes to it, and respect the decisions of its courts and civil official.

The Government of Ireland Act and an Undemocratic Treaty

In December 1920, Westminster passed the Government of Ireland Act setting up two separate parliaments in Ireland, both subservient to Britain.  In the northeastern Six Counties, 80% of the powers of government were to reside with Britain and it would remain a part of the UK.   The Twenty-six Counties were to receive colonial, dominion status, with Britain in charge of permanent military outposts at strategic locations, including the major Irish ports.

No Irish person from any part of Ireland voted for this imposition of British parliamentary will.  Unionists, who obviously approved of union with Britain [most of whom lived within 35 miles of Belfast], did not want the partition of Ireland.  Irish unity under British rule was Unionism’s first choice.  Legendary unionist leader Edward Carson at the time declared, “I know Ulster does not want this parliament.”  But, it was finally accepted.  And why not?  They were not only provided every political, judicial, economic, social, and military/police advantage they would need to contain the huge Catholic minority, but with all the concomitant advantages of power:  whatever decent jobs there were to be had and nearly total control of everything else.

A partitionist government was also put to Dail Eireann representatives at talks during the IRA/British truce in London in December 1921.  Under threat from British PM Lloyd George of “immediate and terrible war,” the Irish delegation signed a treaty which was not voted on by any of the people it would affect.  The southern dominion state was imposed upon the Irish people by force of British arms.  The Twenty-six County state was then established after a bloody, fratricidal civil war against Irish republicans, who have never accepted to this day the partition of their country.

Both partitioned sections of Ireland suffered and suffer still from the British imposition of an unwanted Border.

The Twenty-six counties, despite the current economic spike provided by the Celtic Tiger phenomenon for a very limited sector of the population, had little chance to thrive as it could have as a  sovereign nation with the resources of the island of Ireland organized in the best interests of its people.   Its economy and politics are still dominated by British institutions and ways of thinking and unemployment and emigration has been a plague upon its people.

The Six-county area of north eastern Ireland [incorrectly termed Northern Ireland], cut off from the rest of Ireland by an international border, had never historically existed as an entity of any sort: political, religious, geographic, or economic.  Sliced out of the nine counties of Irish Ulster, it was an artificial area designed to ensure a Unionist majority in a majority nationalist country.  Even Lloyd George, the British PM responsible, called it “a frontier based neither upon natural features nor broad geographical considerations.”

The inclusion of the other three Ulster counties of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan would have, according to Sir James Craig, the first PM of the Six-counties, “Reduced our majority to such a level that no sane man would undertake to carry on parliament with it.”

In four and one half counties of the six, there was and still is a majority of the people for national independence.  The numerical strength of Unionists in the remaining one and one half counties and the gerrymandering of the rest enabled them to permanently out vote the nationalist majority in the rest of the north east statelet.

 What was it like for Nationalist captured in the north?

Sir Basil Brooke, northern PM, made a policy statement in 1933, a little over a decade after partition:   “I appreciate the great difficulty experienced by some in procuring suitable Protestant labour but I would point out that Roman Catholics are endeavoring to get in everywhere.  I appeal to loyalists, therefore, whenever possible, to employ good Protestant lads and lassies.”

In 1934, Lord Craigavon famously expressed the unionist creed:  “We are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state.  I am an Orangeman first and a member of this parliament afterwards.”

Between 1945 and 1970, 1,589 local authority housing were built, but only 35% went to the desperately needy Catholic community and these were substandard and located for political advantage.  Ghetto housing schemes were built everywhere.  One unionist council member declared:  “We are not going to build houses in the South Ward and cut a rod to beat ourselves later on.  We are going to see that the right people are put into these houses, and we are not making any apologies for it.”

In 1948, E.C. Ferguson, MP for Enniskillen, stated, “The nationalist majority in county Fermanagh stands at 3,604.  I would ask the meeting to authorize their executive to take whatever steps, however drastic, to liquidate this nationalist majority.”

In April 1969, figures of the Fermanagh County Council showed that, despite a Catholic majority, only 32 Catholics were employed in a force of 370 workers.  In 1971, there were 74 school busmen employed by Fermanagh Education Commission, 3 were Catholics. 

Catholic disadvantage and discrimination was standard in every northern county whether there was a Catholic or Protestant majority or not.  A Catholic male, head of a household was 2 and 1/2 times more likely to be unemployed than his Protestant neighbor regardless of what county either lived in.  It was that systemic.

Catholic families were also gerrymandered into political catchments to diminish their collective votes.  Only property owners could vote in any case.  The majority of Catholics did not own the home or flat they lived in, while a good number of Protestant business people owned several properties and votes.  This would never be tolerated in any other part of the “United Kingdom” or any other so called democracy.

Irish Civil Rights Movement and Violent Suppression

In the late 1960s, a civil rights movement, very much inspired by the US civil rights struggle, gained popular support among disadvantaged Catholics, but also among university students of all religions and progressive thinking Protestants.  Their demands were simple, equality in employment, housing and at the ballot box.

No one was seriously thinking about a revolutionary movement for national sovereignty, but it was soon became a matter of physical and logical necessity.

The civil rights movement was hammered into submission from the church pulpit to the political bully pulpit. 

Radical Unionism responded with violence and bloody pogroms against their Catholic neighbors. Eight thousand refugees streamed into West Belfast and other Catholic districts, their houses in flames and under gunfire, to double up with families they hardly knew.  Other vulnerable, mixed or predominantly Catholic areas came under fire in east and north Belfast and elsewhere.

The map above is revealing is several ways.  The first map shows the severe lost of Catholic population from starvation, disease and immigration during the famine years.  Over one hundred and thirty years, the Catholic population consolidated and grew.  Only TWO COUNTIES in Ireland have a Protestant majority:  the Counties Antrim and Down.  Partition was achieved through a cynical numbers game and it is held through a system of inequality.  The partition of Ireland was wrong eighty five years ago and it is wrong today.

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Defense, War, and the Equivalent of 55 Viet Nams 

When an undermanned and very under armed IRA scrambled to defend nationalist neighborhoods under siege, the British army was called in to the Six Counties.   Rather than defend the besieged nationalist districts as it first appeared, the nature of the British army intervention became obvious, to defend the status quo -- and that was Unionism.  British army guns soon were trained on Nationalist communities and they were not silent.

Following a change of government in Westminster, the British army launched a punitive military action against the people of the Lower Falls areas of  Belfast on the 3rd through the 5th of July 1970.  An illegal curfew was imposed and four innocent men were shot dead by British troops.  From July 4th onwards, all confidence in the British army as “peace keepers” evaporated.  The troops were now identified as military agents of the pro-British Stormont regime, period.

Between July 1970 and July 1971, the British army, in defense of or supported by armed Loyalist paramilitaries, made brutal attacks on nationalist area, shooting and killing scores of  innocent Nationalist civilians.  Defense of the nationalist areas was now being more successfully organized by the IRA, which also began to take retaliatory action against the British army.  Sinn Fein began to organize the people around a program of political action.

On August 9th, 1971, almost 300 men were arrested in dawn raids and interned without trial under the Special Powers Act.  The men, most uninvolved in republican activism until then, were tortured and terrorized. Some never recovered. Not one Unionist extremist was interned.  These men became known internationally, particularly in America, as “the men behind the wire.”  Sectarian attacks against nationalist communities continued unabated.

In 1971, Irish Northern Aid was founded in America to support the families of the internees and refugees burned out of their homes.

The IRA and Irish Republicans now understood that nationalists in the north could niether be effectively defended nor achieve equality in a partitioned statelet under pro-British Unionist rule and British occupation.  They commenced an aggressive struggle for national independence on a scale exceeding even that of 1919 through 1922.