Until the beginning of the decade of 1920, Ireland and Great Britain were the same country.
But not all Irish were happy with the union and many waged a long and bloody struggle to gain independence from London.
A century later, the island is divided into two nations: Northern Ireland , part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, in the south.
The partition was finalized in 1921, but tensions in the north lasted for many decades and worsened with the start of the Northern Irish conflict in 1968, what unleashed a wave of violence and lasted for 30 years.
After thousands of Irish and British casualties, the Vie rnes Santo in 1998 ended the conflict.
But, how and why did the island end up split in two?
The complicated and turbulent history between London and Dublin began with the first Cambrian-Norman intervention in Ireland which occurred in 1167 and was consolidated when the then King Henry II of England landed with a large army in 1171.
Consequently, much of the island became a manor ruled by the British monarchy and later a Kingdom that was basically a client state of London.
Finally in 1800 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , after the approval of the Ac Union meeting by the Irish Parliament, in Dublin.
But from its inception and throughout the 19th century, there was strong opposition in Ireland that little by little turned into a violent insurrection.
There were even sterile attempts to reestablish the Kingdom of Ireland.
The struggle for more autonomy
In this context, at the end of the century, the “Home Rule” movement ( self-government ) was born, which advocated more autonomy and the creation of an Irish parliament within of the United Kingdom, for internal affairs, while imperial affairs would continue to be dealt with in Westminster, London.
Niamh Gallagher, professor of modern British and Irish history at the University of Cambridge, highlights that leaders of the mov The “Home Rule” process did not ask for independence.
“They asked for a degree of devolution (of powers) within the United Kingdom. A bit like what Scotland or Wales have today ”, he tells BBC Mundo
But there were also Irish nationalists, mainly Catholics , who wanted secede completely from the UK.
On the other side of the political spectrum were the unionists , mostly Protestants, living mainly in the Northeast Ireland.
They were loyal to the British crown and feared becoming a minority in an independent Ireland.
In the decade of 1870, more and more British politicians believed that Ireland should have a greater voice in its internal affairs.
And leaders, such as former British Prime Minister William Gladstone, supported the creation of a “ autonomous government ” in Ireland and tried, unsuccessfully, to pass laws to give it more autonomy.
Militia formation
However, the general election d e 1912 changed the political landscape: Irish nationalists won most of Ireland’s seats.
It was a vote that served to exert more pressure on London and demand that they return some powers.
This is how the then Prime Minister Herbert Asquith presented the third draft of the autonomy law of 1912 , whose signature was delayed until 1914 and was later suspended after the outbreak of the First World War.
Horrified at the bill that would alienate them from London, the unionists immediately signed a petition in protest and founded the Ulster Volunteers, a militia whose goal was to block national self-government in Ireland.
By January 1913, the Ulster Volunteers already had about 100. 000 members and had managed to smuggle tens of thousands of rifles from Germany to Ulster, a historic province in Northern Ireland.
Observing what was happening in Ulster, a group of Nationalists prepared to defend self-government and founded that same year the paramilitary organization Irish Volunteers, which was also armed .
Tensions rose between Nationalists and Unionists to such an extent that Ireland was on the brink of civil war.
Two defining events
To try to ease tensions, in the House of Lords, in London, a temporary partition plan was suggested, in which six counties in the province of Úlster would continue to be governed by the United Kingdom.
The outbreak of the First World War had reduced tensions; Both the Nationalists and the Unionists had taken up arms against the Germans.
But two years after the start of the war, the 24 April 1916 a rebellion occurred in Dublin that transcended as the Easter Rising , whose objective was put an end to British rule in Ireland and establish an independent republic.
The British army managed in five days to control the insurrection that left 116 dead, 368 wounded and nine missing.
Historian Niamh Gallagher assures that 1916 Y 1918 were determining years in the future of Ireland.
And, despite its military failure, the Easter Rising can be considered as an important point in the eventual creation of the Republic of Ireland.
While in the Irish general election in December 1918 the nationalist party Sinn Féin won 73 seats of 105.
After that victory , its MPs refused to sit in London and instead founded early in 1919 the Dáil Éireann: its own parliament in Dublin.
The war of independence
In its first parliamentary session, the 21 of January of 1919, Sinn Féin declared the independence of Ireland, ratifying the Proclamation of the Irish Republic of 1916.
But the British government opposed and their refusal to accept the declaration triggered the Irish War of Independence that same day.
Sinn Féin transformed the Irish Volunteers organization into the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who started a guerrilla war .
The violent confrontations made n that the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, created a committee to find a solution.
Only in June 1920, twenty people died in the city of Londonderry, in the north of the island.
But the focus of the bloodshed was Belfast , the capital of Northern Ireland.
More than 450 people died in that city between June of 1920 and July 1922.
The “quick” solution
Niamh Gallagher, University of Cambr idge explains that, in that context, London needed to find a quick solution to the conflict.
From 1910, the British government considered a wide variety of options for Ireland, one of them was to divide the island.
“In 1919 – 1919, partition became the preferred solution for the so-called ‘Irish question’ , although it had not been agreed where exactly the border would be. ”
The recommendations of the committee, commissioned by the British government and chaired by the unionist Walter Long, formed the basis of the Irish Government Act of 1920 , with which the island would continue to be united with Great Britain, but would return certain powers.
With this law it was achieved The longed-for autonomy in Ireland was granted.
But, according to the same act, the island would be divided into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland , which it would later become the Irish Free State.
A controversial solution
The Irish Government Act from 1920 did not satisfy either the nationalists or all the unionists.
“ The people or the different groups were not consulted. It was done effectively behind closed doors, ”Gallagher emphasizes.
Many Ulster unionists supported the law, but not all: some wanted nine counties instead of six.
Northern Catholics did not support it at all, they became a minority within the new Northern Ireland and were viewed by the new Unionist government as more of a problem in the decades that followed.
For Gallagher, partition was a solution designed for homogeneous peoples, but on the island there was no such homogeneity.
“A large part of the nationalists, who were the majority in Ireland, did not support the act and neither did did most of the Protestants living in the south of the island and in the three southern counties of Ulster, which were not included in Northern Ireland, because they would stay outside the United Kingdom “, Says the historian.
” The Irish republicans, from the north and from the south, have never accepted (partition). If there was one group that came out satisfied it was the Unionists of Ulster, who weren’t completely convinced, but were prepared to make it work. ”
Irish Free State
The cost of war and destruction were rising rapidly, in a period when the British government needed to deal with multiple social problems and the economic depression who had left the First World War.
So both the king and The main religious leaders called for an end to the violence.
After months of negotiations, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 marked the end of the war, allow after the creation of the Irish Free State, which would have its own government, parliament, army, but would continue to be part of the British Empire.
Many nationalists did not support the treaty, but felt that it was a step further towards independence and the parliament ended up approving it by a narrow majority.
For their part, the Unionists of Úlster felt that the treaty violated the Act of the Government of Ireland of and separated from the Irish Free State a few days later of its creation, in December of 1923.
A partition “marked by two ends ”
But on the eve of the entry into force of the controversial pact, a bloody war broke out civilian that faced the forces of the provisional government, which supported the treaty, and the IRA, which rejected it.
The clashes lasted until 1923 and left thousands of deaths and deep wounds in societies on both sides of the Northern Irish border.
Finally in 1937 the Constitution of Ireland was drawn up which founded the Republic
BBC Northern Ireland journalist Catherine Morrison believes that the partition of Ireland and the creation of Northern Ireland makes 100 years was marked by two extremes.
“On the one hand, 1921 was a year of great political scenes, speeches, pomp and ceremony. Far from all that, ordinary people in the new state of Northern Ireland lived their lives in a context of latent violence, ”he explains.
And from 1922, that violence turned into “an uneasy peace.”
“But sectarian unrest would be a dangerous feature of Northern Ireland for decades to come ”, He adds.
A United Ireland?
In fact, that sectarian unrest intensified throughout Over the years and community tensions increased in Northern Ireland with campaigns of civil disobedience that gave rise to “The Troubles” (the problems), a bloody and traumatic conflict between unionists and nationalists, which lasted 30 years and ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
The historian Niamh Gallagher believes it is important to highlight that after the signing of the minutes of there was still the possibility to review the border between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland.
“On 1923 – 1925 was commissioned to a committee to review the border. In the end his findings were suppressed and the boundary that had been decided in the minutes of stayed there ”.
One hundred years after the partition of Ireland, many people on both sides of the border believe that in the future it could disappear, giving way to a United Ireland.
According to a survey commissioned by the BBC’s Spotlight program, a small majority in Northern Ireland believe the region will have separated from the UK by 25 years .
The 30% of respondents said they would vote to stay in the UK if there was a border poll today, while % would support a united Ireland and 8% don’t know.
But when asked if they thought that in 25 years Northern Ireland would continue to be part of the United Kingdom, the 51% of people in the region said not.
“In reality, no political party has made a convincing case for attracting voters from the ‘other side,’” says Gallagher.
“Decades without communication between the North and South, “The Troubles” (…), in addition to the considerable levels of mistrust of the ‘other side’, have meant that the parties have never worked hard to go beyond their voter base, ”he continues.
“But the next few years will show us how successful the parties are selling a Union (of the island) or a new Ireland “.
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