Act of Union

England first invaded Ireland in the 12th century, and English settlers maintained a presence on the island over the following centuries. In the 16th century, matters became more complicated because the English king, Henry VIII, broke with the Roman Catholic church, thus instituting a religious difference between England and Ireland (which remained Catholic). Various Irish rebellions against English control were put down in the 17th century, and the English continued to confiscate land from Irish landowners and distribute the lands to settlers, who formed Protestant enclaves within largely Catholic Ireland. The passage of penal laws by the British Parliament restricted Catholic rights to own property and to practice their religion. England wanted to control Ireland because it feared that Spain might otherwise use it as a springboard to invade England. These fears continued into the 18th century and focused not only on Spain, but also France.

In the aftermath of an Irish rebellion in 1798, the British parliament passed the Act of Union in 1801, which united Great Britain and Ireland in the United Kingdom. The Irish parliament was abolished and Irish members of parliament took their seats in the House of Commons in London. In spite of this, during the 19th century, Irish nationalism and the desire for independence steadily grew. Various Irish Home Rule bills were introduced into parliament, but none of them passed.

Irish independence was finally achieved in the early 20th century. The Easter Rising of 1916 ignited Irish resistance to British rule and in 1922, the Irish Free State, consisting of 26 counties, was formed. The remaining six counties, in Ulster in the northern part of the island, remained part of Great Britain. These counties contained a strong Protestant majority.

As the 20th century progressed, Catholics suffered discrimination in employment and housing in Northern Ireland. In the 1960s, a civil rights movement began and tensions between Protestants and Catholics rose. Protestants fervently desired to remain part of Great Britain while many Catholics desired to be part of a united, Catholic-majority Ireland. In October 1968, there were two days of rioting in Derry between nationalist Catholics and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) after the RUC broke up a banned civil rights march.

The Troubles were about to begin. In August 1969, there were again two days of rioting in Derry, in which nationalists battled the RUC during a march by the loyalist Apprentice Boys. Riots broke out in many Northern Ireland cities. In Belfast, there were violent clashes between Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists. The British government sent the British Army to keep the peace between the two sides. Soon, however, Catholics perceived the army as deployed in support of the status quo, which was the dominance of the Protestants.

The situation rapidly deteriorated over the next few years, with bombings and shootings becoming commonplace on both sides. A terrorist group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), took up the nationalist cause and endeavored to force the British to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The British position was that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom because a large majority (about two-thirds) of the population wished to remain British. In January 1972, a notorious incident took place in Derry that became known as Bloody Sunday: The British Army murdered 13 unarmed civilians during a civil rights march. There were widespread protests and the British Embassy in Dublin was burned to the ground.

In “The Road to Derry,” a poem not published until 1997, Heaney wrote with deep feeling about the incident. Of the 13 dead, he wrote:

My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger.

I walked among their old haunts.

The home ground where they bled;

And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter (Heaney, Seamus. “The Road to Derry.” Counterfire, 30 Jan 2022).

During that year, the Provisional IRA began a bombing campaign in England, which grew in intensity over the next few years. In 1974, targets included the Houses of Parliament in London (June); a pub in Guildford, Surrey, resulting in five dead, including four British soldiers (October); and in November, two pubs in Birmingham. The latter was the most serious incident, resulting in the deaths of 21 civilians.

While the violence persisted, there were occasional ceasefires between the paramilitary groups and discussions between different factions. Proposals for peace agreements included power-sharing between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and increased cross-border cooperation between Britain and the Irish Republic. One such proposal became the Sunningdale Agreement in 1973, but this was derailed the following year by a massive strike by Protestant loyalist workers. It would take another quarter of a century before the Troubles finally ended with the Good Friday agreement of 1998, to which almost all political parties in Northern Ireland gave their assent. The agreement involved power-sharing, a commitment to civil rights, police reform, and disarmament of paramilitary forces.