800 Years Of Conflict And Resolution
in The Emerald Isle
On Good Friday, April 23, 1014, Ireland’s High King, Brian Boru defeated the Viking armies at Clontarf near Dublin. In Ireland, the battle came to be seen as an event that freed the Irish from foreign domination, and Brian was hailed as a national hero. This view was especially popular during 800 years of English rule in Ireland.
In 1066, Norman French forces under William the Conqueror invaded England, defeating the English army under King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, solicits the assistance of King Henry II of England and Norman Lord Richard de Clare (Strongbow) in regaining his land from Rory O’Connor, High King of Ireland
King Henry II of England divides and attacks Irish Kingdoms with the aid of Norman French Lords
King Henry II claims Ireland for the Crown when he lands at Waterford in 1171
Harold’s sons Godwin and Edmund escaped to Ireland after the Battle of Hastings where they were hosted by the King of Leinster Diarmaid mac Máel na mBó. In 1068 and 1069 Diarmaid lent them the fleet of Dublin for their attempted invasions of England, both of which failed.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, founded in 1191 on the site of a holy well dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint.
Beneath its folds assemble now,
and fight with might and main,
That grand old fight to make our land ‘A nation once again’,
And falter not till alien rule in dark oblivion falls,
We’ll stand as freemen yet, beneath those old Liscarroll walls.
Normans rule East and South and all major towns.
Native Irish are pushed West and North.
Normans become “more Irish than the Irish themselves.”
Statutes of Kilkenny (1367) ban those of English descent from speaking the Irish language, wearing Irish clothes or inter-marrying with the Irish.
The English control the Pale around Dublin, but the Irish dominate everywhere else.
“Blarney is something more than mere flattery. It is flattery sweetened by humour and flavoured by wit. Those who mix with Irish folk have many examples of it in their everyday experience.”
John O’Connor Power (1890)
King Henry VIII broke with Papal authority in 1536, starting the English Reformation. The English became Protestant while the Irish remained Catholic.
Irish landowners either submitted to the Crown or had their lands confiscated through a policy of “surrender and regrant.”
Irish and Spanish forces under the command of Ulster chieftains Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell are defeated by the English.
The Irish leaders surrender and later flee to Europe in 1607 (the “Flight of the Earls”), eliminating the last of the Gaelic aristocratic opposition to British dominion over Ireland.
Scottish and English Protestants were sent as colonists to the provinces of Munster, Ulster and the counties of Laois and Offaly.
The largest of these projects, the Plantation of Ulster, had settled up to 80,000 English and Scots in the north of Ireland by 1641.
Irish Catholics rebelled in 1641. As punishment, British forces under Oliver Cromwell slaughtered or starved up to onethird of Ireland’s Catholic population and deported prisoners to the West Indies.
“To Hell or to Connaught!”
Cromwell gave the native Irish a choice: be killed or move west of the River Shannon.
Irish Catholic lands were confiscated and given to British settlers.
Penal laws restricting Catholic inheritance of property were also introduced.
Protestant forces under Dutch Prince William of Orange defeated the army of deposed Catholic King James II of England, on July 1, 1690. The battle took place across the Boyne River near Drogheda.
Every July, the victory is celebrated during “marching season” by the Orange Order in Northern Ireland.
Known as The Liberator, Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell campaigned for Catholic emancipation in the first half of the 19th century, holding mass meetings demanding the repeal of the Act of Union. O’Connell visited the United States to raise money for the movement, but its momentum was overtaken by famine in Ireland.
Following the example of the French Revolution of 1789, the United Irishmen under the leadership of Theobald Wolfe Tone (a Protestant) rebelled against British oppression in Ireland. Tone sought to “break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils”. The months-long insurrection was suppressed, resulting in 30,000 deaths, including Wolfe Tone’s
The Act of Union created the United Kingdom in 1801, including England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. British military and economic expansion around the would dominate much of the century, nowhere more so than in Ireland.
Millions of people left Ireland in the wake of the famine, cutting the population in half from eight million in 1840 to four million by 1900.
Following the Act of Union (1801), Irish Catholics lost further rights and were marginalized, with many leading a life of nearservitude as small tenant farmers.
The main subsistence crop was the potato.
Unfortunately, the potato crop repeatedly failed due to blight in the 1840s, unleashing a devastating famine.
The repeated failure of the potato crop in 1845- 50 resulted in widespread starvation and death, killing one million and forcing a million more to emigrate.
The British refused to address the famine as a humanitarian crisis and instead purged the land of starving tenants who could not pay rent.
Appalled by the effects of the Famine and injustice to Catholics, a youthful rebel group broke from Daniel O’Connell’s largely peaceful reform movement. These Young Irelanders, led by Thomas Francis Meagher, staged an unsuccessful rebellion in 1848, with its leaders being deported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) by the British.
The Irish People of the World
We have suffered centuries of outrage, enforced poverty, and bitter misery. Our rights and liberties have been trampled on by an alien aristocracy, who treating us as foes, usurped our lands, and drew away from our unfortunate country all material riches…
Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic.
The 1890s featured a revival of interest in Celtic language, arts and culture, helping to provide a focus for Irish identity at the dawn of the 20th century.
William Butler Yeats was a leader of this movement and earned the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.
Kissing the Blarney Stone in 1897, before modern safeguards were installed.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
Led by Padraig Pearce, Irish nationalists declared Ireland an independent republic and took up arms against the British Crown. The rebellion was a military failure, but set the stage for Ireland’s independence movement.
The fighting was short-lived, and devastated Dublin’s city center, but was not universally supported among the people of Ireland.
In response to the uprising, the British captured and quickly tried the rebel leaders for treason. Their execution helped turn public opinion in favor of the nationalist movement.
As W.B. Yeats wrote in his poem Easter 1916
“Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”
The Republican Sinn Féin party formed a breakaway government (Dáil Éireann) and declared independence from Britain in January 1919.
The Irish War of Independence resolved in December 1922 with a treaty negotiated between Michael Collins and British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.
The Treaty resulted in the partition of Ireland. The southern 26 counties formed the Irish Free State, while the six northern counties remained under British rule.
The Constitution of The Free State of Ireland was largely drafted by Michael Collins, who was later killed in the Irish Civil War.
Irish nationalists divided into Pro- and Anti-Treaty factions after the formation of the Irish Free State, pitting former comrades against one another, including at Dublin’s Four Courts.
Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, with varying degrees of self-governance in the decades after the Republic of Ireland was established. However, Catholics remained in the minority and were subject to the will of the Protestant majority.
Pro-Treaty forces prevailed in a bloody internecine conflict that ended in 1923, leaving scars that lasted through generations of Irish politics. The Civil War also helped ensure that the partition of Ireland would continue long into the future.
Having remained neutral during World War II, the Irish Free State severed all ties to Britain in 1948 and renamed itself the Republic of Ireland, joining the United Nations in 1955.
Beginning in 1967, the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland began to agitate more forcefully for civil rights, seeking equal access to employment, better housing and voting rights.
Civil rights protesters were increasingly subject to violent suppression, and Catholic communities were often attacked by Loyalists. The government instituted internment without trial in 1971.
The British Army shot and killed 13 unarmed civilians at a civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1971, hardening nationalist attitudes toward British Rule.
In response to Bloody Sunday and to internment, the IRA (Irish Republican Army) begins a years-long bombing campaign
Warnings of impending bombings were usually, but not always, given. Innocent civilians were often killed or injured.
Protestant communities were militarized too, including through the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force).
The IRA also carried out bombings in England, including this London bombing in 1973.
Nationalist prisoners went on hunger strike in 1981 to protest prison conditions and Britain’s refusal to recognize them as political prisoners. Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament while on hunger strike and then died in office, creating an international outcry.
The IRA claimed responsibility for bombing Margaret Thatcher’s ruling Conservative Party conference at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England in 1984.
Beginning in the 1980s, the IRA’s political wing Sinn Féin seeks a negotiated end to the conflict under the leadership of Gerry Adams.
Gerry Adams joins with John Hume of the Catholic Social Democratic Labor Party to begin yearslong negotiations about resolving the conflict with the Unionists. Hume is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
U.S. President Bill Clinton sends former U.S. Senator George Mitchell to chair the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
On Good Friday 1998, after decades of bloodshed and years of negotiation, the opposing parties, along with the governments of the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, reached a peace agreement to resolve the conflict and establish democratic norms in Northern Ireland.
800 Years Of Conflict And Resolution
in The Emerald Isle
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“The courts of this country should not be the places where resolution of disputes begins. They should be the places where the disputes end after alternative methods of resolving disputes have been considered and tried.”
United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
