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Studying in Northern Ireland
Culture Rich Northern Ireland
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Geography |
Location: Northern Ireland is composed of 26
districts, derived from the boroughs of Belfast and
Londonderry and the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down,
Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone. Together they are
commonly called Ulster, though the territory does not
include the entire ancient province of Ulster.
Predominantly Protestant, it forms the northern part of
the island of Ireland, westernmost of the British Isles.
It is slightly larger than Connecticut.
Status: Part of United Kingdom
Area: 5,452 sq. mi. (14,121 sq. km)
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Background:
Northern Ireland isn't just a great place to study - it's a
great place to live, now that the Peace Process is underway. A
largely rural society with a rich historical heritage, it joins
the United Kingdom with a population of over 1.5 million, and
holds a culture rich in music, visual arts, theatre and sport.
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People |
Population (1998 est.): 1,688,600
Capital and largest city (1992): Belfast, 287,500
Monetary unit: British pound sterling (£)
Language: English
Religions: Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Roman
Catholic, Methodist.
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Governement |
Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United
Kingdom (it has 12 representatives in the British House
of Commons), but under the terms of the Government of
Ireland Act in 1920, it had a semiautonomous government.
In 1972, however, after three years of sectarian
violence between Protestants and Catholics that resulted
in more than 400 dead and thousands injured, Britain
suspended the Ulster Parliament. The Ulster counties
became governed directly from London after an attempt to
return certain powers to an elected assembly in Belfast.
As a result of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a
coalition government was to be formed by July 16, 1999,
after which the transfer of legislative powers from the
British Parliament to the assembly was to take place on
the 17th, thereby ending three decades of direct rule
from London. Peace talks broke down once again just
before the government was to be formed. David Trimble,
Protestant leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and
winner of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, was to have been
first minister.
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History |
Ulster was part of Catholic Ireland until the reign of
Elizabeth I (1558-1603) when, after suppressing three
Irish rebellions, the crown confiscated lands in Ireland
and settled the Scots Presbyterians in Ulster. Another
rebellion in 1641-51, brutally crushed by Oliver
Cromwell, resulted in the settlement of Anglican
Englishmen in Ulster. Subsequent political policy
favoring Protestants and disadvantaging Catholics
encouraged further Protestant settlement in Northern
Ireland.
Northern Ireland did not separate from the South until
William Gladstone presented, in 1886, his proposal for
home rule in Ireland. The Protestants in the North
feared domination by the Catholic majority. Industry,
moreover, was concentrated in the North and dependent on
the British market. When World War I began, civil war
threatened between the regions. Northern Ireland,
however, did not become a political entity until the six
counties accepted the Home Rule Bill of 1920. This set
up a semiautonomous Parliament in Belfast and a
crown-appointed governor advised by a cabinet of the
prime minister and eight ministers, as well as a
12-member representation in the House of Commons in
London.
When the Republic of Ireland gained sovereignty in 1922,
relations improved between North and South, although the
Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.), outlawed in recent
years, continued the struggle to end the partition of
Ireland. In 1966-69, rioting and street fighting between
Protestants and Catholics occurred in Londonderry,
fomented by extremist nationalist Protestants, who
feared the Catholics might attain a local majority, and
by Catholics demonstrating for civil rights. These
confrontations became known as "the Troubles."
The religious communities, Catholic and Protestant,
became hostile armed camps. British troops were brought
in to separate them, but themselves became a target of
Catholics, particularly by the I.R.A., which by this
time had turned into a full-fledged terrorist movement.
The goal of the I.R.A. was to eject the British and
unify Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic to the
south. The Protestants remained tenaciously loyal to the
United Kingdom, and various Protestant terrorist
organizations pursued the Unionist cause through
violence. Various attempts at representational
government and power-sharing foundered during the 1970s,
and both sides were further polarized. Direct rule from
London and the presence of British troops failed to stop
the violence.
In Oct. 1977, the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to
Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, founders of the
Community of Peace People, a nonsectarian organization
dedicated to creating peace in Northern Ireland.
Intermittent violence continued, however, and on Aug.
27, 1979, an I.R.A. bomb killed Lord Mountbatten as he
was sailing off southern Ireland, heightening tensions.
Catholic protests over the death of I.R.A. hunger
striker Bobby Sands in 1981 fueled more violence. Riots,
sniper fire, and terrorist attacks killed more than
3,200 people between 1969 and 1998. Among the attempts
at reconciliation undertaken during the 1980s was the
Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), which, to the dismay of
Unionists, marked the first time the Republic of Ireland
had been given an official consultative role in the
affairs of the province.
In 1997, Northern Ireland made a significant step in the
direction of stemming sectarian strife. The first formal
peace talks began on Oct. 6 with representatives of
eight major Northern Irish political parties
participating, a feat that in itself required three
years of negotiations. Two smaller Protestant parties,
including hard-liner Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists,
boycotted the talks. For the first time, Sinn Fein, the
political wing of the I.R.A., won two seats in the
British Parliament, which went to Sinn Fein president
Gerry Adams and second-in-command Martin McGuinness.
Although the election strengthened the I.R.A.'s
political legitimacy, it was the I.R.A.'s resumption of
the 17-month ceasefire, which had collapsed in Feb.
1996, that gained them a place at the negotiating table.
A landmark settlement, the Good Friday Agreement of
April 10, 1998, came after 19 months of intensive
negotiations that involved eight of the ten Northern
Irish political parties. Chaired by former U.S. senator
George Mitchell, the talks were advanced by a
high-profile set of mediators, including British prime
minister Tony Blair, Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern,
and U.S. president Bill Clinton. Two participating
groups, the Protestant Ulster Democratic Party and Sinn
Fein, were temporarily suspended from the talks because
of continued paramilitary activities. The accord called
for Protestants to share political power with the
minority Catholics, and gave the Republic of Ireland a
voice in Northern Irish affairs. In turn, Catholics were
to suspend the goal of a united Ireland-a territorial
claim that was the raison d'être of the I.R.A. and was
written into the Irish Republic's constitution-unless
the largely
Protestant North voted in favor of such an arrangement,
an unlikely occurrence.
The resounding commitment to the settlement was
demonstrated in a dual referendum on May 22, 1998: the
North approved the accord by a vote of 71% to 29%, and
in the Irish Republic 94% favored it. But the deaths of
three Catholic boys in July 1998 during the traditional
Protestant marches through Catholic neighborhoods was an
appalling reminder of the fragility of peace. In
October, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to John Hume
and David Trimble, leaders of the largest Catholic and
Protestant political parties, an incentive for all sides
to ensure that this time the peace would last.
In
Dec. 1998 the rival Northern Ireland politicians agreed
on the organization and contents of the new coalition
government, but in June 1999 the peace process again hit
an impasse when the I.R.A. refused to disarm prior to
the assembly of Northern Ireland's new provincial
cabinet. Sinn Fein insisted the I.R.A. would only begin
giving up its illegal weapons after the formation of the
new government; Unionists demanded disarmament first. As
a result, the Ulster Unionists boycotted the assembly
session that would have nominated the cabinet to run the
new coalition government. The nascent Northern Irish
government was stillborn in July 1999.
Subsequent talks on the agreement, which would have
ended three decades of direct rule from London, seemed
to go nowhere, despite the last-ditch intervention of
George Mitchell, who helped engineer the Good Friday
Agreement. Finally, at the end of November, David
Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, abandoned the
seemingly sacrosanct "no guns, no government" position,
and took a difficult leap of faith in agreeing to form a
government prior to Sinn Fein's disarmament. If the IRA
did not begin the destruction of their weapons by Jan.
31, 2000, however, the Ulster Unionists threatened they
would withdraw from the Northern Irish Parliament,
shutting down the new government. With this compromise
in place, the new government was quickly formed, and on
Dec. 2, 1999, the British government formally
transferred governing power to the Northern Irish
parliament. Two leaders of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams and
Martin McGuinness, received seats in the four party,
12-member parliament. By the deadline, Sinn Fein had
made little progress toward disarmament, and claimed it
had not made any such commitment. As a result, the
British government suspended parliament on Feb. 12,
2000, and once again imposed direct rule. On May 30,
2000, Sinn Fein again pledged to put the IRA's weapons
"beyond use," and Britain restored parliamentary powers.
While the IRA did allow for the inspection of some of
its arms dumps, the months limped by without real
progress, and Sinn Fein's commitment to disarmament once
again appeared strikingly disingenuous. Trimble, caught
in the middle, appeared to many of his Protestant
compatriots as a pawn of the Republicans, and was nearly
ousted by his own party on Oct. 28. Had he been forced
to step down, there is little doubt that the Good Friday
Agreement would have toppled with him. But Trimble
survived, pledging to get tough by imposing sanctions on
Sinn Fein.
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