The Troubles

This is going to be a long post, but then, it's a complex issue. First, a very brief historical perspective. In the U.S., we tend to consider anything that happened before our lifetime as more-or-less irrelevant to any issue. That’s not the case here (nor, really, is it the case in the U.S. either). History matters. Events as far back as the 1600s have contributed to the problems of today. Northern Ireland was colonized by Scottish and English lords, all Protestants, in the early 1600s. Around 1700, the Penal Laws were introduced in Ireland, where they stood for about a hundred years. These prohibited virtually any religious activity outside the confines of the Anglican Church of Ireland. Home Rule was passed through Parliament in 1912. This would allow Ireland to govern itself while remaining part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), all Protestant Unionists, quickly formed and prepared to take power in northern Ireland if Home Rule actually happened. Then war broke out on the continent, many UVF fighters volunteered for the British army, and Home Rule sat on the back burner in Parliament. UVF regiments took very heavy losses in World War I. People today point back at these sacrifices, made for the Crown of England, as proof of their right to stay under British rule. Radical Irish nationalists, desiring independence from Britain, took control of a few government buildings in Dublin on Easter, 1916. The insurrection was very quickly defeated. When the British publically executed those responsible, Irish republicans had martyrs to rally around, and they developed a military mentality. In 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty partitioned the island into Ireland and Northern Ireland. Ireland would be self-governing, but still a part of the British Empire, while Northern Ireland remained under direct British control. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) organized to undermine the government in Northern Ireland. The southern part of the island eventually became the Republic of Ireland in 1949, leaving the British Commonwealth. In the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement arrived on the scene. Police violence surrounding Catholic civil rights marches escalated into rioting, bombings, and shootings. Both sides saw the other as only respecting violence, and replied in kind. Several Protestant paramilitary groups came to the forefront. Violence rose and fell over the next thirty years. A ceasefire is currently in effect. The IRA has publicly destroyed most of its weaponry, although the Protestant Loyalist paramilitaries have yet to follow suit. Technically, no paramilitary groups exist, but everyone knows that’s not actually the case. Large murals depicting gunmen, flags, and paramilitary symbols are still prominent throughout the city, although some of these have been painted over. The church I’m working with is in an area which once had a very strong Loyalist paramilitary influence. The Clerk of Session told us that the church has been vandalized in the past few years, after the ceasefire was declared. When they called the police, the police gave them a mobile phone number and said, “call this number. He’ll take care of it.” The number belonged to the leader of a paramilitary group. (They didn’t call the number.) The murals, the sectarianism, and the predominance of young, uneducated men in paramilitary activity, remind me of gang violence. These boys are staking their territory, finding their identity by banding together in opposition to an enemy. One of the easiest ways to define “who I am” is to define “who I’m not.” It’s also one of the least secure ways to define oneself. Cross-community work at Kilmakee Presbyterian Church, where I’m working, deals heavily with finding one’s own identity before going out to engage others. Northern Ireland as a whole is in identity crisis – Irish or British? – but so are the individuals embroiled in conflict.