Unit 2:  Northern Ireland after Partition

James Craig, Northern Ireland’s first prime minister and successor to Edward Carson, the founder of the Northern Ireland State and resistance to Home Rule in 1912, told the House of Commons: “We are a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state.” What this meant for those Catholics, i.e. Nationalists, who found themselves within the borders of this new State, was that they really now lived in a very, very cold house. The new state viewed every Nationalist as a potential traitor and Republican who wanted to destroy the Northern Ireland state and create a United Ireland. Armed with that mentality the Unionist ruling class, from the very beginning of the Northern Ireland state, excluded Nationalists from jobs, excluded them from the political system by gerrymandering electoral districts and by changing the voting system to insure a Unionist majority in Stormont for 50 years.  At the same time it kept the support of the Protestant working class by the “social contract” which guaranteed them the industrial jobs and a “superior” position within the state to the Catholic poor and working class.  This system held for nearly 50 years until the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement began and the fairness and eventually the legitimacy of the State was called into question.

In the readings in this section you will come to understand how this State used the law and the institutions of the State to maintain itself for so long with little or no conflict.  You will also then come to a very strong understanding of why the Civil Rights Movement would eventually develop within the confines of this “static state.”

1.      Required Readings

• Chapter 1 in Provos

• Chapter 1 in Making Sense of the Troubles

• Chapter 1 in Loyalists

•  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/conflict/  and click on and read the "Role of History."

• Edwards and McGrattan pp. 9-13 on the Welfare State

Watch:

• Go to Courseweb - go to Videos and then watch the videos under The Nature of Northern Ireland after Partition

• Go to Courseweb- go to Videos and then watch the videos under British Labour Reforms

• Go to Courseweb - go to Videos and then watch the videos under Gerrymandering and Discrimination.

• Go to Courseweb- Audio- and listen to the Interview with Gusty Spence up to minute 10:50.

2.   Strongly recommended: read and listen to historical excerpts in Real Audio Format.  These are very helpful and will give you a good  background before you get into the required readings.

• Go to BBC - History - The Road to Northern Ireland, 1167 to 1921

•  Special Powers Act – This is the act that gave the Northern Ireland State (Stormont Government) the ability to carry out repressive action with little or no accountability against any threat to the Northern Ireland State.

• Prevention of Terrorism Act - 1974

Study Questions:

1. Explain how partition, a solution no one really wanted, happened.
2. Explain how and why partition became permanent. 
3. Explain how Unionism was able to hold power for fifty years in Northern Ireland and the role of the Special Powers Act in maintaining that power.
4. Explain why Unionists saw themselves as a people “under siege” and how that conditioned how they acted.
5. Explain how and why the Nationalists were discriminated against by the Northern Ireland State.
6. Explain the role of the British welfare, (Health, housing, education, and employment) reforms after WW II in the competition for resources that led to the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland.
7. Explain the impact the victory of the Labour Party in 1964 had on reform in Northern Ireland.