Northern Ireland Through the Ages

Northern Ireland Through the Ages

Ireland's ancient history truly began in the north, when settlers came to the banks of the River Bann 9,000 years ago.

Five thousand years later Bronze Age settlers built the great stone circles idiomatic to Counties Down and Tyrone, and later the Iron Age brought the Celts.

St. Patrick, the son of a Roman official who was forced into slavery in County Antrim, returned to spread Christianity in the 5th century.

Starting with the first Norman incursions in the 12th century, however, the English made greater and greater inroads into Ireland, endeavoring to subdue what they believed was a potential enemy.

Ulster proved the hardest to conquer, but in 1607, in the great exodus known as the Flight of the Earls, many of Ulster's beaten-down Irish nobility fled to France and Spain, never to return to their homeland.

Their abandoned lands were distributed by the English to "the Planters" -- staunch Protestants from England and Scotland.

After three centuries of smoldering tensions and religious strife, 1916 saw the Easter Uprising and then, in the parliamentary elections of 1918, an overwhelming Nationalist vote across Ireland for Sinn Féin ("Ourselves Alone"), the party that believed in independence for all of Ireland.

In the five northeastern counties of Ulster, however, only seven seats went to the Nationalists, and 22 to the Unionists, whose objective was to remain an integral part of the United Kingdom.

At 2:10 AM on December 6, 1921, in the British prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street, Michael Collins -- the Republican leader and controversial hero -- signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

This designated a six-county North to remain in British hands in exchange for complete independence, as the Irish Free State, for Ireland's 26 counties.

Fast-forward to 1968, when, in the spirit of student uprisings occurring in Paris and Washington, and after 40 years of living with an apparently permanent and sectarian Unionist majority, students in Belfast's Queen's University launched a civil rights protest, claiming equal rights in jobs, housing, and opportunity.

The brutality with which these marches were suppressed, triggering riots and counter-riots, led to worldwide revulsion.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had been dormant for decades, took over what was left of the shattered civil rights movement, which once had a smattering of Protestant students among its ranks.

Armed British troops, who had at first been welcomed in the Catholic ghettos as protectors from Protestant paramilitaries, now found themselves shunned by both sides. Britain imposed Direct Rule.

January 30, 1972, came to be known as Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers opened fire on people participating in a nonviolent protest in Derry against the British policy of internment without trial.

When the smoke cleared, 13 people, all Catholic and unarmed, had been killed. Many rallied in support of the victims, who were accused by the British Army of handling weapons.

In an event known as the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign, the supporters attained some success when the British government finally admitted the victims were "innocent."

Derry is filled with murals and memorials that serve as constant reminders of the struggle for justice, including one monument carved with the inscription, "Their epitaph is the continuing struggle for democracy."

Decades of guerrilla conflict ensued between the IRA, the UDA/UVF (Protestant/Loyalist paramilitaries), and the British government and continued in a mix of lulls and terrors -- apart from the IRA's annual Christmas "truce" -- until the summer of 1994, when the "Provos," as they are colloquially known, called for an ongoing cease-fire, confirmed in July 1997.

After two years of intensive and complex talks, an agreement was finally reached between Northern Ireland's political parties in April 1998.

The Good Friday Agreement (so called because it was secured on the Friday before Easter Sunday), also known as the Belfast Agreement, gave the province limited powers and its own parliament.

Put to the people of both the north and south of Ireland in separate referenda, it was endorsed by an overwhelming majority and elections to the parliament were held in June 1998.

But a mere two months later, the province's fragile peace was shattered when a massive car-bomb exploded in the quiet market town of Omagh, County Tyrone.

On August 15, dissident Republicans -- a minority within the movement who were, and still are, opposed to the Good Friday Agreement -- succeeded in killing 31 people, including unborn twins. It was the single worst atrocity in the history of the Troubles.

Despite this appalling act, the peace process continued and Unionists eventually entered government proceedings with Sinn Féin at the end of 1999.

Since then, the assembly -- the first democratically elected in the history of Northern Ireland -- has been suspended three times.

Political parties are divided into pro-agreement and anti-agreement camps and when fresh elections to the assembly were held in November 2003, it was the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party that profited.

Despite these numerous setbacks, Northern Ireland is today enjoying the longest period of peace and stability in its history.