Like his predecessor, Lynch exchanged visits with Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O'Neill in December 1967 and January 1968. Few anticipated that they were on the eve of a societal breakdown in Northern Ireland that would dominate the history and politics of Ireland for the remainder of the century. Ever since the cancellation of the Boundary Commission Report in December 1925 and the acceptance of the status quo boundary, whereby six of the counties of Ulster remained linked to the United Kingdom as the locally governed province of Northern Ireland, Britain and the world seemed to regard the Irish national question as resolved. Even the Irish seemed to give a de facto acceptance to the situation, although formally, as in the second and third articles of their 1937 constitution, they continued to express an aspirational claim to the unification of the island. However, aside from the actions of violent irredentists in the IRA, who waged sporadic campaigns in 1939 and 1940 and again in the 1950s, both of which met with disapproval and severe legal reprobation from the Irish government, little was done to challenge the border. The one exception was the international antipartition campaign started in 1949 by the first coalition government, which soon found that world interest was minimal and was then dropped.
On the other hand, few in Ireland would acknowledge what seemed obvious, namely, that Northern Ireland constituted a separate entity, the majority of whose citizens had a distinct identity from the rest of the inhabitants of the island. Many in the republic felt their pious, but futile, condemnations of partition were sufficient to meet their nationalist obligations, but such expressions did little to meet the numerous and legitimate grievances of the substantial population of nationalists—or Catholics—in Northern Ireland. No doubt those grievances may have appeared relatively minor in a world that had experienced the Second World War, the Holocaust, the imposition of the Iron Curtain across Europe, and the cold war, and they were largely forgotten by a world that was witnessing an end to the colonialist era with the rise of nationalist causes in Asia and Africa from the late 1940s through the 1960s.
This should not been interpreted to mean that the grievances of the nationalist-Catholic minority in Northern Ireland should be trivialized. The grievances had originated with the beginning of Northern Ireland as an entity in 1921, while the war of independence was in its last stages. The Northern Irish government looked on the IRA, then the Army of Bail fiireann, as its armed enemy, and those in the nationalist community who supported it as subversive. When the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed and the Irish Provisional Government came into being, the attitude of the Free State toward the Northern Irish government and toward the IRA was murky. To some degree it cooperated with the IRA, even with anti-treaty element in it, against the Northern government, at least up until the outbreak of the civil war, when the IRA became illegitimate throughout Ireland. The Northern government set out to establish both a police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was essentially the old RIC in Northern Ireland, and a variety of auxiliary forces. The RUC had hoped to recruit a proportionate amount of its members from the Catholic population, an objective that failed largely because of Catholic reluctance to participate in the service of a state they anticipated would not last very long after the boundary commission had finished its work. However, the Auxiliary or "Special" forces, were recruited virtually exclusively from unionist circles, like from the old Ulster Defence Force or the Orange lodges, and became from the start blatantly sectarian. During disorders in 1922, they either participated in or tolerated the murder of and eviction of great numbers of Catholics, especially in sections of Belfast. These forces continued to exist in Northern Ireland up to the 1960s and during times of social confrontation would be called into action "to preserve law and order" usually in a very sectarian manner. In addition, the Northern Ireland minister for home affairs wielded powers under Special Powers legislation to declare states of emergency, which enabled him to employ internment without trial and to suspend the need for a coroner's report in the case of certain deaths. In essence, the police forces of the government, especially its auxiliaries, either indirectly or deliberately regarded the Catholic population as a subject people.
In the matter of politics and elections, Northern Ireland was a democracy, which elected originally 12 members to the Westminster parliament from generally equitably established constituencies. Most of those elected were unionists, but some nationalists of various sort were also elected and, aside from those in Sinn Fein, would take their seats in the House of Commons. The 52-member parliament of Northern Ireland was also elected from equitably drawn constituencies and originally according to the Single Transferable Voting system of proportional representation that the Government of Ireland Act had established in both parts of Ireland. The usual pattern of election results was for between 33 to 39 Unionists to be returned, with the rest divided among nationalists, republicans, northern Irish Labour, or independents. The STV system was abandoned in 1929 and Northern Ireland returned to the British and American first-past-the-post system in single-member constituencies. But this change was implemented not so much to lessen nationalist representation in the house, which remained much the same, but to rein in independent unionists. Nationalists fueled unionist suspicions in the first few years of the state by not taking their seats in what they thought was a body that did not have prospects for a long existence, but, with the 1925 acceptance of the status quo border, they began to attend, although occasionally withdrawing, and they did not formally accept the position of being the formal opposition party until after the first Lemass-O'Neill meetings in 1965.
A crisis with regard to the undemocratic nature of local government arose in 1922, when several local government bodies, whether county councils or other bodies that were under the control of nationalists and/or Sinn Fein, who refused to recognize the Northern Ireland government, were suspended by that government. Then the Single Transferable Vote system, which had allowed nationalists to gain control of these bodies, was ended in Northern Ireland and blatant gerrymandering was applied to facilitate unionist domination of most of the local governments in Northern Ireland, except in areas so overwhelmingly nationalist or Catholic as to make it impossible. Such control subsequently allowed all kinds of discriminatory treatment in hiring for public employment, in the awarding of various public benefits, especially public housing, and in the granting of contracts. A further undemocratic feature of local government elections was the continuance in Northern Ireland, long after it had been dropped in Ireland and in Britain, of a restricted franchise, which was limited to householders and their spouses and which meant that adult children living at home, other relatives living in the house, live-in domestic servants, or roomers could not vote. These restrictions were not based on religion, but, in point of fact, they worked to disenfranchise many more Catholics than Protestants, as did another practice, which allowed owners of businesses to have votes in more than one constituency.
The education system presented another difficulty. The local schools in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the island, were usually under the direction of a local clergyman, and the religious character of the schools was determined by the religion of that clergyman. With the commencement of the Northern Ireland state, a new education system was established, which sought to bring all schools within state direction and make them nondenominational. The Catholic schools refused to be incorporated in such a system whereby they would lose their identity. Furthermore, many of them at first received direct support from the Free State. Northern Ireland Protestants were also not enthusiastic about a secular educational system. Soon a system was established whereby the state system, which most of the Protestant schools joined, would be 100 percent financed, in terms of capital expenses, regular expenses, and teachers salaries, by the state, but religion could be taught on a voluntary basis. This arrangement satisfied most Protestants, and clergy would often serve on the education boards supervising the schools. An alternative system of voluntary education, which covered the Catholic schools, would also received substantial state support in terms of payment of regular expenses and teachers salaries, but only a fraction of its capital expenses. Over a period of time, the position of the voluntary schools became more equitable, as increasing proportions of expenses were met by the state, until by the 1960s they were virtually entirely supported by the state. Both systems had separate teacher training institutions as well. Many view the existence of the separate systems, regardless of the equitable treatment, as intensifying and reinforcing sectarian distrust within the province.
Much of the difficulty in terms of community relations in Northern Ireland grew out of the stagnant character its economy had developed in the 1920s and 1930s. From having been a jewel in the industrial ascendancy of Britain in the 19th century, standing in striking contrast to the agrarian character of virtually the rest of Ireland, Northern Ireland found itself being bypassed in the wake of industrialization in other parts of the world. Large-scale unemployment became endemic. According to the rationale of the Home Rule established by the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, Northern Ireland was expected to be self-supporting, although most revenues, including income and excise taxes, were collected by the British exchequer. However, after taking the proportionate share of "imperial expenses," those funds were to be returned to the province for use in meeting its expenses, along with locally raised revenues such as real estate taxes and licensing fees. In point of fact, it was soon discovered that the revenue raised could barely meet the expected imperial contribution. A commission was established to make recommendation to deal with the situation and, based on its findings, a formula was devised that called for the imperial contribution to be the last taken after local expenses were met, which eventually resulted in the imperial contribution being negative.
Despite the sufferings brought by the war, especially the bombing of Belfast and the imposition of rationing, hostilities proved to be an economic boon to the province as evidenced by heightened demand for its agricultural produce and increased need for its industrial contributions to the war effort. By the end of the war, the introduction of agricultural machinery and innovation in techniques put the province far ahead of the rest of Ireland. After the war the welfare state introduced by the Labour government guaranteed that the citizenry of Northern Ireland were to receive social welfare benefits on a level with the rest of the United Kingdom, irrespective of the revenue raised in the province. Henceforth, budget making by the government of Northern Ireland became more and more a matter of negotiating for grants from the British exchequer to insure sufficient receipt of funds to enable it to provide comparable levels of public benefits and services for its population. Among the benefits available were universal secondary education and increased opportunities for higher education. In such a situation, the disinterest displayed by the Northern Ireland Catholic community, regardless of professed statements of belief in the ultimate political unity of the island, in the IRA campaign of the 1950s was comprehensible.
But the increasing educational levels attained by Catholics in Northern Ireland raised awareness of the discriminatory treatment they continued to receive in both the public and the private sectors of the economy, not to mention the continuing questionable relationship with law enforcement agencies. However, in the 1960s they were less inclined to raise the national unification issue as much as the question of their rights as citizens. They had become aware of the success of the civil rights campaign by blacks in the United States against discriminatory treatment much worse than that experienced by the Catholics of Northern Ireland. Blacks in the southern United States had to deal with state-imposed segregation in education and in public facilities, including transportation and hospitals, and actual denial of the right to vote for the overwhelming majority, never mind inequities in the private sector. It was believed that with much less ground to cover, a similar campaign of marches, protests, and sit-ins would produce a sympathetic response from a tolerant, open-minded United Kingdom. In such a spirit a Northern Irish Civil Rights Association, with a certain degree of cross community support, was formed in early 1967.
Most among the public and in official circles in the United Kingdom had virtually forgotten about Northern Ireland, assuming that, with the award of selfgovernance and then outright independence to the rest of Ireland, the Irish problem was solved. The dominant Unionist Party still maintained a formal relationship with the Conservative Party, which governed the United Kingdom for the entire time Northern Ireland had existed, aside from Labour Governments in 1924, 1929 to 1931, and 1945 to 1951. The return to power by Labour in 1964 suggested the prospects of greater response to civil rights protests, especially if couched in civil rights rather than nationalist terms. The presence of a new prime minister in Northern Ireland, Terence O'Neill, prompted hope that civil rights grievances would receive a favorable hearing. In 1963 he had succeed Basil Brooke, who had served in the office since 1943. The first prime minister, James Craig, who had been the leader of Ulster Unionism from the beginning of the crisis surrounding the third Home Rule Bill in 1912, had served until 1940. Both Craig and Brooke were molded by the siege mentality that characterized Unionism in those days, but O'Neill, who had been educated in England and who had served in the British forces during the war, gave indications of approaching matters with a broader perspective. His exchange of visits with Lemass and Lynch, and his reaching out to the Catholic community, were regarded positively.
Unfortunately, events in the next few years would lead to a deterioration in conditions and ultimately to confrontation amounting almost to outright warfare, which would plague the province, the rest of Ireland, and Britain for the remainder of the century. One of the opening episodes involved a sit-in by civil rights protesters at public housing units in Tyrone that were being allocated in a discriminatory manner, mainly for the purpose of preserving the electoral domination of an area by unionists. Within a few months civil rights marches began to take place in various locations in the province, which were soon restricted by the authorities. Refusal to accept restrictions resulted in confrontations with the police and, more especially, with the auxiliary police. Unlike such confrontations in earlier decades, the world was watching closely as international television reports followed events. While many in the unionist community regarded the marchers as troublemakers and a front for the IRA, the general impression was that the police response in preventing marchers from proceeding along designated routes (usually into the center of cities or even near predominantly Protestant areas) was heavy handed and even brutal. So outraged was the nationalist community that their political representatives in the Northern Ireland parliament ceased to act as an official opposition.
O'Neill was aware of the need for reform and he proposed a program to allocate public housing fairly, abolish the gerrymandered Derry municipal council, end the extra vote for owners of businesses in local government elections, establish an ombudsman to hear complaints against the government, and consider revision of the special powers legislation that allowed many of the alleged police abuses. In January 1969 a student group called "People's Democracy," no doubt fueled by the example of the radical student protests on the Continent, especially in Paris, the previous summer that nearly brought down the French government, held a march from Belfast to Derry. The march brought the inevitable counter protests along the way. Then a few miles from the goal, at Burntollet, the marchers were assailed by the auxiliary police and by others, with the regular police looking on, further exacerbating community tensions. In the next month, a Northern Ireland general election was held with Unionists obtaining their usual overwhelming majority, this time 36 of the 52 seats, together with election of three others who called themselves independent unionists. However, 12 of the 36 Unionist Party members were opposed to O'Neill, whose gestures at reform were considered soft and capitulatory. While he held a majority of the votes in the party caucus, he was forced to resign within several months when other figures in the party, one of whom was his own cousin, James Chichester-Clark, challenged him. Chichester-Clark then succeeded as leader of the party and prime minister. In the same month, in a by-election to fill the mid-Ulster seat in the Westminster parliament, Bernadette Devlin, a radical student, who had emerged as the unity candidate of the various nonunionist organizations, ranging from republican through nationalist through civil rights, was elected.
Seemingly unaffected by the troubling developments in Northern Ireland, Lynch's Fianna Fail government in the Republic won an absolute majority of seats in the Irish general election in June. The number of independents elected continued to decline. The Labour Party did not run as part of an anti-Fianna Fail coalition, but, inspired by increasing radicalism on the Continent, in anticipation of a popular leftward swing by the electorate and even a potential Labour majority in the near future, ran an independent campaign. However,
They were rudely disappointed, receiving fewer votes and so an absolute decline in the number of seats, a defeat some members attributed to "red-baiting" rhetoric and techniques by Fianna Fail. The Fianna Fail victory was remarkable in view of the failure the previous year of a constitutional amendment campaign to end proportional representation in Dail elections, a measure that would have further strengthened the party. This second rejection of such a proposal was a tribute to the independence of the Irish electorate.
That summer saw an intensification of trouble in Northern Ireland during the marching season, the period leading up to the celebration of the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne on July 12. Tensions mounted further in August at the time of the Apprentice Boys Parade in Derry on August 12. Rioting and disorder in Derry and Belfast resulted in large numbers of Catholics having to flee their homes, which came under assault and were burned down. Other areas erected barricades to protect themselves from marauding loyalist mobs and also to prevent police intrusion. The situation reached a point at which the government in London directed the British military to assume peacekeeping responsibilities in the province.
The rapid issuance of a number of commission reports on the situation, such as the Cameron Commission on the overall disturbances, and the Hunt Commission on the police, both of which acknowledged the legitimacy of grievances and the need for major reforms brought hope for positive change. Some reforms followed quickly, including the abolition of the notoriously sectarian "B Specials," and their replacement by what was hoped could be a nonsectarian Ulster Defense Regiment that would be under the control of the British army. In addition, legislation lowered the franchise age requirement to 18 and ended other restrictions, such as householder requirements, in local government elections, thereby achieving the civil rights aspiration of "one man, one vote."
However, the very presence of the British army in the province, a presence warmly welcomed by most in a beleaguered Catholic community, acted to breath new life into an IRA in Northern Ireland that had been dormant for years and impotent in its response to loyalist assaults. That revitalization would bring about a split within the all Ireland Sinn Fein and IRA the following January, with those, especially from the North, adhering to the more traditional irredentist aspirations and less taken up with the social agenda of the organization's leadership, forming a "Provisional" wing. It was not long before that wing became the major wing in contrast to the "Official" wing. Not insignificant in its emergence was the greater support it received from groups in the Irish-American community, as well as from important figures in the Fianna Fail Party, who were able to funnel public monies for the purchase of weapons for the movement. It would not be long before world attention would be diverted from the question of civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland to that of the presence of British troops in Ireland.
World History
