The issue of the relations between Ireland and Great Britain is a current topic today as the peace process in Northern Ireland seems to be achieving a successful conclusion. I will look at the relations by examining the historical relations between both islands. After this, in other articles, I will deal with two of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers: the playwright Sean O’Casey and the short story writer and novelist James Joyce.
In order to explain the relations between Ireland and Great Britain, I will do it by establishing 3 sections, each one corresponding to a different historical period. Therefore, the first section corresponds to the period between 1171 to 1500, the second second section corresponds to the second historical period between 1500 and 1800 and the third period correponds to the third historical period from 1800 to 1921. After that, I will examine the relations between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland (Eire) and the United Kingdom.
Let’s begin with the first section of this topic. Ireland was never invaded by the Romans or the Anglo-Saxons unlike Britain. In fact, Ireland was inhabited by the Celts whose political administration of the island consisted of five different kingdoms. When the Vikings from the North invaded Ireland in the 9th century, they forced the Celts the five kingdoms to have a high king who controlled the five kings of those Celtic five kingdoms. In the 12th century one of those kings wanted to rebel against his king so he decided to invite the Norman Barons of England to help him. The Norman barons willingly agreed to invade the Ireland as they saw that as new way to increase their lands and possessions so they did that and in 1169 they occupied Ireland. The English King of the time Henry II saw that the Norman barons were taking too much power so he went to Ireland himself to make the Irish chiefs and the Barons to accept his authority and they agreed. For the rest of the century and for the 13th century, the Irish chiefs, established in Western Ireland and the Anglo-Norman barons in the east quietly avoided the English rule and the English kings after Henry II did not care about the Ireland and they left them to do whatever they wanted. By the end of the 15th century, the English Crown only controlled Dublin and a small are around it known as “The Pale”.
From 1500 Henry VIII wanted to change the situation of Ireland where the English were losing possessions in favour of the nobles so he proposed the Irish Parliament to accept him as King of Ireland in order to have a direct control of the island. The Irish Parliament refused to accept him as King of Ireland because Ireland was Catholic and they did not accept the English Church Reformation after the divorce of Henry VIII which had introduced Protestant ideas in England. Henry VIII brought Catholicism and nationalism together and it was not easy for the Tudor king and the rest of the Tudors to control the island. It took four wars to bring Ireland under the English authority but at the end the English achieved that objective. As the Catholics were rebelling against the English power, the Tudors began the politics of plantations which consisted of selling territories of Northern Ireland to rich Scottish and English Protestant merchants who were the new owners by Royal Decree of the good lands of the North, source of conflict in the 20th century as well, and those Catholics were obliged to work for the new Protestant merchants.
However, the Irish Catholics never accepted that unfair situation and they continued rebelling and fighting for their rights. For example, in 1641 the Irish Catholics rebelled against the Protestant merchants and they took again their stolen lands. In London the king Charles I and the Parliament quarrelled over who should send an army to defeat the Irish Catholics. It was not until England became a Republic that the Puritan Oliver Cromwell sent an army to revenge the rebellion of 1641 and he sent an army and with that army he captured the cities of Drogheda and Wexford which were symbols of English cruelty against the Irish Catholics.
In 1685 James II, a Catholic king of England, was replaced by William of Orange and James decided to exile in Ireland because he was supported by Catholics and James II took Ireland the ideal place to recover his lost throne in England. The Irish Parliament, a Catholic institution, decided to take their lands back but the situation was not easy and the Protestants locked themselves in the city of Londonderry, at least 30,000 people, waiting for the help of England and William of Orange. After 15 weeks of resistance, the English army arrived in Londonderry and defeated James II’s army at river Boyne. England established once more its rule on Ireland. Then, from 1695 a period of repression against Catholics began, the Penal Code, which established that Catholics could attend religious services, Catholics could not teach their children in Catholicism, they could not have any position in public life and they could not possess any wealth. This period of repression lasted for almost 50 years from 1895 until 1727 but as time went by, the repression was not so stronger.
After this, another rebellion of Catholics took place in 1798 and England was forced to take action again. So this time they joined Ireland in the United Kingdom of England and Scotland in 1800 so the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was born in order to increase British control over the island.
Now I will begin with the third section of my topic from 1800 to 1921 from the United Kingdom of Ireland until the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 which recognised the independence of Southern Ireland. Some British politicians had promised the Irish that they could vote when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom but George III, king of England, refused to that. Also, the Protestant parliament in Dublin was dissolved as well. Now, the Irish began fighting and in 1829, the first Catholic was allowed to sit in Parliament. This was the first won battle after a long period of time and the spark to the Irish independence. However, in the middle of the 19th century Ireland lived its worst years, 3 years, when the potato crop, the basic food for the poor people, was affected by an illness and famine began in Ireland. More than 1,000,000 people died in three years and some others went to the USA. Those who went to the USA supported the Irish Nationalist Movements from 1880 and they brought a lot of money to Irish question.
By the end of the 18th century, Charles Parnell, a Protestant MP, demanded fuller rights for the Irish and he especially demanded the right to Home Rule. The Irish realized that there were more ways than fighting in the streets for Irish Home Rule and they realized that by sitting in Parliament, they could achieve the same results so there was a rise of a political nationalist movement known as Fenianism. Charles Parnell demanded a Home Rule and even though in 1885 many Irish were allowed to vote they continued fighting for Home Rule. The Liberal Prime Minister of the time, Gladstone, was in favour of giving Ireland its Home Rule but that caused great opposition in Britain and even in its own party.
Again, in 1910 the Liberals won the elections in Britain but the Irish nationalists votes to achieve the majority so Irish nationalist and the Liberal goverment reached an agreement. The nationalists supported the Liberal government as an exchange for a promise for Home Rule in Ireland. As the Liberal goverment was afraid of a civil war in Ireland and afraid of the Protestant reaction to that Home Rule, they did not carry that promise out they used the excuse of the beginning of the I World War in 1914 and the situation continued the same. In 1916 Irish nationalists who wanted more than a Home Rule, wanted full independence rebelled at Easter but they were violently repressed and sentenced to death which caused controvery in Ireland and shocked public opinion. In 1918, an election took place and Irish Nationalists won in the whole of Ireland except for Ulster and those who won never sit in the London Parliament and they created the Dail in Dublin and the created an Army in which young people joined the Army and they began guerrilla clashes against the British forces so in 1920 the British government passed the Government of Ireland Act by which Ireland was given two parliaments one for Southern Ireland and another one for Northern Ireland. By the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 the English gave independence to Southern Ireland but it insisted that Northern Ireland was a British province, that the English Crown was sovereign in Southern Ireland and the use of certain ports in Southern Ireland. The Anglo-Irish Treaty led to a civil war in which the pro-Treaty forces won the war in 1923 and those conditions were established. Now, in 1932 the Fianna Fail won the elections in Southern Ireland and the prime minister, Eamon de Valera, began to undo the Treaty so in 1937 Southrern Ireland was independent as it did not have any connection with the British Crown.
Now, I will begin by dealing with the relations between Southern and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland had its own Parliament since 1921 being a province of the United Kingdom. However, this Parliament was controlled by Protestants and Catholics could not do anything about that. In 1969 Catholics and Protestants gathered on the streets and began to protest against this unfair system. As the British police could not control the situation, the government in London sent the Army which was seen by the Catholics as a sign of foreign occupation. In 1972 the parliament in Northern Ireland was suspended until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 by which the Parliament was re-established and the UK promised to amend its claims on Northern Ireland as exchange for the Republic not to claim its rights on the six British counties in Ireland. ( Northern Ireland is formed by six Irish counties in the North). In 1998 the IRA declared a ceasefire and in 2005 the decommission of what it is thought to be all its arsenal began watched by the International Decommissioning Body and two church witnesses according to the Belfast agreement in 1998. However, the Protestants remain skeptikal.
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Posted by David Valle Cazorla
P.D James was born in Oxford the 3rd of August 1920. When she was 11, she moved to Cambridge to study at the Cambridge High School for Girls. After that, she began to work as an administrator for the NHS (National Health Service) and there she worked for almost 20 years from 1949 to 1968. Working in the NHS helped P.D. James to get acquainted with the UK’s vast bureaucracies and helped her to establish the arenas and background of these novels. Shroud for a Nightingale, The Black Tower, A Mind to Murder, novels that take place having the NHS as a background. When she finished working for NHS, she began to work for the Home Office as a principal first for the Police and then for the Criminal Law Department until she retired in 1979 to devote herself to full time writing. Although she was retired she continued her “professional career”. She was Governor of the BBC, Chairman of the President Advisory Panel and President of the Society of Authors. She received the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 1983 and she was appointed life peer in 1991 and she was known from that moment Baroness James of Holland Park. Until now she has written 19 novels that we are going to comment in the following paragraph. 