Northern Ireland

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Power-Sharing Experiment

In late 1973, after extensive debate between unionists, nationalists, and the governments of Britain and Ireland, unionist politicians reluctantly accepted a system in which unionists and nationalists shared power in a coalition government. However, many unionists bristled at the system’s “Irish dimension,” meaning the plans for joint institutions with the Republic of Ireland. A grassroots Protestant general strike (most crucially, of electrical power plant workers) and widespread intimidation forced unionist members of the government to resign. The power-sharing coalition collapsed after five months, and direct rule from London was reinstated in May 1974.

Many experts believe that the power-sharing settlement scheme failed because it sought agreement among Northern Ireland’s different political parties but excluded the Irish Republican Army and the rival Protestant paramilitaries. Without bringing these paramilitary groups to the bargaining table, internal agreements were unable to offer any short-term prospect of peace. After the collapse of the power-sharing government and a further failure in the following year, the British government gave up serious hope of achieving an internal settlement between the two groups within Northern Ireland.

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Violent 1970s

The early 1970s were the bloodiest period in Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence, with a peak of 467 violent deaths in 1972. That year saw two of the most notorious incidents of the troubles. In January a regiment of British troops shot and killed 13 apparently unarmed demonstrators who had been taking part in a civil rights march in Londonderry/Derry. The shooting came to be known as Bloody Sunday, and it inspired numerous reprisal bombings. On a single July day, which in turn came to be known as Bloody Friday, the IRA detonated more than 20 bombs in Belfast, killing 9 civilians and injuring more than 100 others.

Terrorism was by no means limited to the IRA and other republican paramilitary groups, such as the Irish National Liberation Army. Terror campaigns were also carried out by the two rival loyalist organizations, the UDA and the UVF. During the Protestant general strike of 1974, groups associated with the UDA set off several car bombs in Dublin, killing dozens of people. Later that year, following the collapse of the coalition government and the return of direct rule, the IRA initiated a bombing campaign against Britain, and dozens more were killed in the bombings of several pubs in England.

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The intensity of the conflict diminished somewhat in the late 1970s, but bombings continued and the number of violent deaths remained at around 100 per year, with many times that number of injuries. A stalemate appeared to have been reached between the security forces and the rival paramilitary forces, while at the same time the division between the communities of Northern Ireland remained as sharp as ever.

In 1979 the IRA murdered the uncle of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, British naval hero Lord Louis Mountbatten, and, on the same day ambushed a party of British soldiers, killing 18 of them. Lord Mountbatten’s murder was roundly condemned. However, the IRA soon gained sympathy using a new tactic. A number of imprisoned IRA members went on hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981. Ten of them starved themselves to death, and each death set off a new cycle of violence. The hunger strikes were accompanied by a vigorous anti-British political campaign by Sinn Fein. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands, had only a short time before been elected to the British Parliament from a district in Northern Ireland. Popular sympathy in the Catholic community for the IRA hunger strikers who died in prison provided a platform that elevated Sinn Fein within the Northern Irish political arena, and the party began winning parliamentary and local council seats.

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Negotiations

In the 1980s the British government, having abandoned hope for a purely internal settlement to the troubles, began a new political strategy based on direct links between the governments of Britain and Ireland. In 1985 British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, under which the two governments agreed to consult regularly on major aspects of Northern Irish policy. A small secretariat (administrative department) of British and Irish civil servants was also established.

In the early 1990s the collaboration between Britain and Ireland resulted in a blueprint for a settlement. Based partly on power-sharing between the major political parties of Northern Ireland, it included an “Irish dimension” of cross-border cooperation sufficient to give full recognition to the sense of Irish identity felt by most northern Catholics, while retaining the British citizenship valued by Protestants. The plan’s prospects for success were raised by indications from the IRA, first in 1988 and then more strongly in 1993, that it was ready to end the war.

The possibility of drawing the IRA and other paramilitary groups into the political process, rather than isolating them from it, meant that lasting peace might be delivered as part of a political settlement. This was seen as a way of making concessions potentially more attractive to the unionist side. The IRA was more inclined to take this direction because its associated political movement, Sinn Fein, had become a significant political force since the early 1980s.

The IRA announced a cease-fire in August 1994, and detailed peace negotiations began. Political deadlocks in the British Parliament hindered government progress on the peace process, and in early 1996 the IRA resumed a bombing campaign against targets in Britain. An uneasy peace was maintained in Northern Ireland itself, however.

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Good Friday Agreement

In May 1997 Sinn Fein had its best showing ever in British elections. Both Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams and his deputy, Martin McGuinness, were elected to represent Northern Ireland in the British Parliament. Their quest for office was primarily a symbolic one; both men declined to take their seats as they refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British queen. Across the United Kingdom, voters gave a landslide victory to Tony Blair and the Labour Party, bringing a new government to power in London and revitalizing the peace negotiations. After taking office, Blair declared the talks a top priority, and in June he announced that new negotiations would begin in September 1997.

The IRA renewed its cease-fire in July, and the British government dropped its demands that the IRA completely disarm before allowing Sinn Fein to participate in the talks. Sinn Fein then joined the negotiations, but progress was limited. The talks were chaired by former United States senator George Mitchell, who set April 9, 1998, as the deadline for an agreement. Although many feared the process would fall apart once again, Mitchell kept the talks on track. After an all-night negotiating session, and slightly past the deadline, the talks culminated in a historic agreement on April 10. All parties signed the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement except the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The DUP, led by Free Presbyterian cleric Ian Paisley, claimed that too many concessions were made to nationalists. In May the Good Friday Agreement won overwhelming public endorsement in referendums in Northern Ireland and Ireland. In Northern Ireland, 71 percent of voters approved of the agreement, and in Ireland, 96 percent approved.

The agreement required all participating paramilitary groups to declare an end to violence. In return, a program was drawn up for the release, in phases, of all convicted prisoners who belonged to groups that had declared cease-fires. The agreement effectively retained the partition of Ireland for the foreseeable future and required the government of the Republic of Ireland to remove from its constitution territorial claims to the north. The agreement received overwhelming support from Catholics and nationalists in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but a much narrower majority from Protestants. Many Protestants, particularly members of the DUP, were uneasy about the cross-border links in the agreement, the prisoner releases, and the potential inclusion of Sinn Fein in the government.

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Northern Ireland Assembly

The agreement established a new parliamentary chamber for sharing power, the 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly, to be led by an executive cabinet. This assembly was authorized to take the responsibility of running most governmental departments from the British government. In elections to the assembly, held in June 1998, the UUP won the largest number of seats, followed by the SDLP. The DUP and Sinn Fein placed third and fourth, respectively. Each party was allotted seats in the executive cabinet. As head of the largest party in the assembly, UUP leader David Trimble became the new provincial government’s first minister. SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon, a Catholic moderate, was elected Trimble's deputy first minister. In October 1998 Trimble and SDLP leader John Hume were awarded the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize for their work on the Northern Ireland peace agreement. See also Northern Ireland Conflict.