8000 BC |
Around
this time the first men arrived in Scotland.
Ireland was not originally
Celtic but Neolithic.
The Celts
were to arrive during the second half of the millennium
BC, and absorbed much of Neolithic
culture. Estimates as to when the Gaels
arrived range from 4000 BC to the first few centuries BC.
|
3000 BC |
Tombs
from this period have been found in passage-graves
in the Boyne
valley.
At this time, Ireland was a simple agricultural society. Irish art had begun to develop. The people had come as invaders, and more invaders followed from Britain, France and Spain. Ornaments, coins and weaponry from the Bronze and Iron Age have been uncovered by archaeologists. The Romans
never conquered Ireland, although it is a matter
of controversy
whether they actually set foot on the island. Ireland was
a society of independent tribal
kingdoms
who lived by agriculture, raiding and fighting with
continuous shifts
in
alliances. The
early pagan
Gaels’ High
Kings have left behind raths (ring
forts) on the Hill
of Tara. They claimed to be rulers of all Ireland Despite
tribal groupings, the people shared the Brehon
Law, a common history, oral
poetry, music and language.
They referred to themselves as
‘men of Ireland |
4th Century | Rome
influenced Ireland more in the fourth century and after. As
the Romans
lost their grip on Britain, the Irish and Picts began to invade. |
The Irish,
Picts
and Saxons launched a concerted
raid on Britain. |
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Late
4th / Early 5th C |
Christian missionaries
arrived,
probably from Gaul. Irish settlements began in the west of Britain. |
431 AD | Palladius
went as bishop
to
‘the
Irish who believe in Christ’. This was to oppose the Pelagian
heresy. |
St
Patrick arrived to convert
the kings.
Conversion was slow, although St
Patrick was not
the only missionary. A Gaelic-Christian
golden age
was to follow. St Patrick was a Romano-Briton who had been enslaved by Irish raiders, before escaping and turning to religion. He drove out traditional pagan rites, leading to a fusion of Gaelic culture with Christianity. Irish Christianity ‘shone like a beacon in Europe’ after the fall of Rome. |
|
500s | Christianity
matured
slowly in a
stable society. The king of
Tara Irish schools in the late sixth and seventh centuries achieved great scholarship, and many poets and lawyers were also clerics. Laws were created for church and secular society. The problem of inherited non-Christian customs, ‘fenechas’, was resolved by regarding it as the Old Testament of their race, cleansed by St Patrick. New laws were influenced by the Biblical Old Testament.
|
600s | During
this time, the cult
of St Patrick spread. A prehistory
of the
Irish race was written
to unite all the people of Ireland.
|
The arts
(metal-work, illumination,
calligraphy) flowered in the monasteries. Iona
and Armagh The
church’s power structure was complex,
with individual churches being highly independent. Some were free while
others
were owned by aristocrats or monasteries. Churches
could be tiny or vast monasteries. Bishops were
appointed to
oversee the clergy. The relationship between church and people was a
contract
with mutual obligations. The church supplied religious services while
the people
paid dues. Three social
classes existed
during this age – kings, lords and
commoners. Lords were wealthy and
had clients
(bondsmen). Commoners were freemen with full legal rights and their own
land.
Some were well off (the bóaire).
There were also landless
men and hereditary
serfs. Status was important in the legal system
– rights and
legal
compensations depended on it. Under clientship, lords granted the
client a
fief (goods) and protection; the client made payments to the lord.
There was
free and base clientship – free clients were often nobles,
and took a share in
their lord’s plunder. Base clientship was like a loan, from
which the lord
came out best. Slavery was extensive. The
family, not the
individual, was the legal unit – extended family, not
conjugal family, which meant the
male-line descendants of a great-grandfather. Divorce
and polygamy were
common, going back to the pre-Augustinian attitudes to marriage.
Polygamy
remained
until the end of the Middle Ages. With nobles having many children,
these
slipped socially downwards and displaced the commoners. The
population was
between half and one million. Much of the land was wilderness and
uninhabited.
The more powerful – any farmers with land – owned ringforts
to protect their
farms. Land was farmed in strips; milk and dairy was important. The
upper
classes ate a lot of meat,
which formed a normal part of
clients’ payments.
Grain was also vital – oat for porridge, barley for ale and
bread. Vegetables
were grown on a small scale and wild fruit and nuts were important in
people’s diet.
Famine was common, coupled with disease, social disorder and
internal
migration. Epidemics occurred repeatedly. Kings played a key role. In their sagas, they are semi-sacred. There were three grades of king. The lowest grade were on their way out in the 700s. The church backed the kings of provinces in their dynastic struggles, and the kings defended the church. The churchmen developed the idea of the ordained and consecrated king; they wrote that the king should be obeyed and respected, but should not tax too much. |
793 | Lindisfarne
attacked
by Vikings. |
795 |
The first
Vikings arrived
in Ireland,
pirates
led by aristocrats. Their
first targets included Rathlin
and Iona.
They
harassed
Irish homesteads
and monasteries
for more than a century, meeting no organised national
resistance.
|
798 | St
Patrick’s Island
monastery was smashed. |
800s | By the middle of this century,
the Dál
Riata had control of all Pictland,
uniting Scotland Viking traders brought slaves into Ireland from now until the 1000s.
|
802 | Burning of Iona. |
806 | Another
massacre at Iona,
in which 68 monks died.
More attacks
followed. The Irish had some successes in striking back. |
830s | Viking
raids became more
intense. |
836 | The
first
known inland
raid took place. |
840 | Vikings began
setting
up defended
bases and their attacks became so intense that it seemed the
country
was about to be conquered. The Irish kings and abbots counter-attacked
with
growing success. |
842 | First
Viking-Irish alliance.
These alliances became common. |
Mid 9th C | Dublin
became the most important Viking
city. |
860s | The
Vikings
turned to England. |
914 – 930s | Second
Viking period. After beating the Uí
Neílls, the
Dublin Vikings were powerful
for a while. No great monasteries were ever destroyed, even in |
928 | Viking
massacre at Dunmore
Cave, Kilkenny. |
940s – 960s | The Uí Neíll clan was locked in an internal power struggle during this time.
|
956 - 980 | Domnall
ua Néill was King of Tara, High
King of Ireland. |
976 | Brian
Boru became
king of the Dal
Cais, becoming a serious
rival to the
Uí Neílls.
Supported by the Ostmen, he conquered
|
1002 | Boru
demanded
that Mael
Sechnaill recognise him as King of Ireland. |
1005 | Brian
Boru was declared Emperor
of the Irish at |
Brian
Boru
defeated
the Vikings
at Clontarf.
The army
he fought
contained both Norsemen from |
|
Gradually
the Norsemen became
part of |
|
11th/12th C | The Irish
church
was beginning to look old-fashioned.
The abbots, usually laymen, were too powerful. The laity
attitude to marriage was also criticised. A general reorganisation
took
place,
giving the church its current diocesan organisation. A national church
under |
1014 – 1022 | Mael
Sechnaill II acted as ‘high
king’ of |
Ireland's most powerful king was Muirchertach
O’Brien. |
|
Trade
began to focus on Anglo-Norman
Britain and on |
|
1140 | Turlough
O’Connor
(Toirdelbach Ua Conchobair),
king of |
1152 |
![]() |
1156 | Rory
O’Connor, son of Turlough
O'Connor, succeeded to high king of Ireland. |
1161 | King
Dermot’s brother-in-law, Lawrence
O'Tool
or Lorcán
Ó Tuathail, was appointed archbishop. The
Dubliners themselves had killed
Dermot’s father and preferred O’Connor to
MacMurrough.
O’Connor joined
forces with Tiernan
O’Rourke and MacMurrough was dethroned. |
The
English had occasionally considered invading |
|
Rory
O’Connor had himself inaugurated king at |
|
1169 – 71 | The Cambro-Normans re-conquered
all |
1170 | (May
1st) A small party of |
Strongbow captured Dublin, married MacMurrough’s
daughter and ultimately became king
of Leinster. Henry
II then arrived
to subdue
Strongbow, which
soon meant conquering
the Irish as well. |
|
The Norman
adventurers who followed Strongbow into |
|
1171 | (17th
Oct). Henry II went over to stifle this new
Norman
kingdom. Strongbow submitted
and was allowed to keep |
1171/2 | A great
national synod
of the Irish church was convened, intended to bring the Irish church into
step with
the English. After Henry was reconciled with the new pope, the Irish
prelates
inundated the pope with letters commending Henry. The Irish kings and
bishops
hoped for Henry’s protection against Strongbow; they saw it
as exchanging the
rule of O’Connor for a more prestigious king. |
1175 | By
now Strongbow and Hugh de Lacy – a follower of
Henry’s – had subdued their vast
territories. The Treaty
of Windsor was signed between Rory
O’Connor and Henry
II. Rory was recognised
as high-king of |
1176 | Rebellions
took place
against both O’Connor and the English. |
Strongbow
died, transferring |
|
1177 | John
de Courcy exceeded instructions by conquering
Ulaid (Ulster). |
Henry
gave his rights as Lord of Ireland to his son, John.
|
|
1183 | O’Connor
retired to an abbey; Henry petitioned the pope to crown John king of |
1185 | Prince
John mocked
Irish chieftains who greeted him in |
The Prince was suspicious of
men like De
Lacy. He handed
out smaller grants to a
greater number of tenants-in-chief, resulting in important Anglo-Irish
dynasties being founded. Some English lords expanded
their territory by
marrying Irish aristocrats. They also fought amongst themselves. |
|
1186 | De
Lacy was assassinated,
and Meath
passed to
administrators. The English strategy was gradually changing to
colonisation. A
European population explosion had begun, meaning land in |
1200 | By
now, new citizens were immigrating from |
The English
language began to take root, while Norman French
became the
upper class
literary language. Architecture changed with churches built in Early
English
Gothic style, using English stone. The east changed from a subsistence
to a
market economy. |
|
1200s | Irish bardic
poets viewed themselves
as part of the European cultural community, but the French and English
didn’t
see them as such. Gerald
of Wales argued that the marcher
lords of
Ireland
were part of this culture, but the native Irish were not. |
In
the eleventh century most clergy still supported marriage, concubinage,
hereditary office-holding etc. This lent credibility to colonial
legislation
against Irish clergy. Franciscan
and Dominican
friars were responsible
for more
preaching and pastoral work. |
|
Popular
opinion was more strongly against the invasion than that of the
chieftains, and
prophecies circulated against the |
|
Bands
of mercenaries fought for both the Irish kings and English barons,
swapping
sides for money. Scottish warriors (gallowglass)
began to come over.
Within the
Gaelic territories, power began to centre on every minor chief who
could
command a war-band. Elsewhere in |
|
1210 | King
John intervened to take back lands from his nobles, and
twenty Irish
kings did
homage to him. He expanded
his King’s Council in |
1216 | King
John was succeeded
by his young son Henry
III. |
1217 | First
Treasurer of Ireland promoted. The government in England issued an order
that no Irishman should be promoted to high ecclesiastical office. Henry de Londres, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Justice of Ireland, convened a synod at which canonical singing was discussed. |
1226 | Until
the mid thirteenth century, the provincial Irish kings co-operated with
the English and so retained their lands. However, these were not given
security
of succession; |
1248 | King’s
Bench in |
The
liberties were gradually phased out and an elaborate system of
government came
in. Administrators from the English church were brought in. There was a
campaign
to ensure that all dioceses under royal control had
Anglo-Norman
bishops. |
|
1254 | Edward
I was granted lordship of Ireland. He used the country to
provision his
campaigns in Scotland,
France and Wales.
Edward
II was to continue this
policy. Local rule by Irish chieftains was cheaper. |
1260 | Brian
O'Neill,
who declared himself king of Ireland, was killed
in battle
by
colonists. There was a series of revolts which has been seen as the
beginning of a Gaelic recovery, but the colony was still expanding.
Soon Irish
kings had to co-operate with the barons themselves. |
1277 | First
salaried barons of the exchequer. A separate royal
seal for |
Late 13th C | Those settlers in the east expanded into the west. English peasantry were not introduced to the west; the tenants were almost all Irish, governed by native rulers who answered to the English. |
Click here for web links about Ireland in the Middle Ages
14th Century | By
the beginning of this century,
all native rulers were legally subject
to some
Anglo-Norman baron or earl, or the English king. The expansion of the colonisers
continued. The
Anglo-Norman
magnates often fought
one another. |
1303 | The Armagh
succession passed to a series of Anglo-Irish prelates. |
1315 – 18 | Edward
and Robert
Bruce attempted
to gain Irish
support
for the Scottish
war,
but alienated
the colonists. Their three
year campaign
devastated
much
land, while the population were also affected by the famine
sweeping
Europe. There
were rebellions.
Edward was killed
in 1318. |
1327 | The
agricultural boom in Europe
was levelling off and the barons had become
more
interested in their more profitable English holdings. By this year,
almost half
of colonised land belonged to absentees. The resident Anglo-Irish
nobility
accused them of endangering the colonies through neglect. |
1348/49 | The Black
Death struck
Europe
during this
time. This
and bad harvests led to the migration of colonists
of all
classes back to England. |
1366 | Statutes
of Kilkenny, aimed
at preventing
settlers becoming too
Irish. The
‘English
born
in Ireland’ were forbidden to adopt Irish clothing and
customs. The Statutes
also forbade intermarriage and the use of March/Brehon
law.
They proved ineffective,
leading to the Anglo-Irish
becoming known as the ‘degenerate
English’. Even the Norman-Irish barons acting as
deputies for
the English king
became independent. Royal government grew feeble and
beleaguered. |
Edward
III and then Richard
II
attempted to restore the colony’s
prosperity. Initially Edward
announced that the Irish administrators would be replaced by
Englishmen,
but this caused such outrage that he decided to reinforce royal control
and
invest men and money. The colonists were genuinely fearful
for their
survival.
They feared a reoccupation by the Irish, and there was a perception
that
uncolonised areas were in the hands of the ‘wild
Irish’.
Native rulers were
gradually gaining liberty from the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. There was
fighting
between Irish chieftains because the magnates had previously followed a
policy
of ‘divide and rule’. Meanwhile, a cultural
revival
was
taking place. Bardic
verse was intended to increase the prestige of patrons, and it came
back into
fashion despite Irish minstrels being banned
in 1366 until the seventeenth
century. The scribes and traditional historians also
enjoyed enthusiastic
patronage, and great manuscripts were written which recalled pre-Norman
lineages, borders and culture. |
|
The
colonists were unwilling to make large contributions towards
reconquest, and
absentee landlords preferred to sell their estates to residents of
Ireland
rather than return. The
Irish meanwhile hoped to accumulate sufficient power to challenge the
earls by recreating
provincial kingships. Various chiefs were styling themselves as the
kings of
provinces. The Great O’Neill father and son declared
themselves Prince and
Governor of Ulster despite the earl
of Ulster Roger
Mortimer. Richard
II
offered to arbitrate, but made Mortimer governor of Ireland, and war
followed. |
|
1394/5 | Richard
came
over to resolve the newly recognised ‘Irish
problem’. This meant that
government in Ireland was once again centralised, but
England’s attention was
caught by the Hundred
Year’s War. Ireland had become a
financial drain. |
1399 | Second
visit
by Richard.
War
broke out as soon as he departed, and his viceroy was murdered. |
15th C | The
Anglo-Irish
magnates were more successful during this
period than the Irish or the Crown, whose control shrank
to four counties including Dublin.
This was enclosed by an
earthen
rampart known as the Pale. |
The
Irish, particularly those of Ulster,
began to unite and attack the
colonists,
and some of the colonists began paying black-rent
or protection money
to the
Irish chieftains. However, the Anglo-Irish lords held sway over the
more
profitable and populous areas.
These lords tried to gain control of
royal lands
for themselves. After Edward
IV
made an ill-judged attempt to recover
control,
the earls
of Kildare were left the only surviving Anglo-Irish magnates
still
eligible for high office; and Kildare imposed its will on the Pale. A
period of
relative stability and economic growth followed. Many new religious
houses went
up, almost all founded by Gaelic patrons. Monastic houses in the Pale
were
decaying while Gaelic Ireland was influenced by a more dynamic European
spirituality. |
|
A growing similarity developed between the Irish chieftains and the Anglo-Irish lords. The lords employed Irish historians to justify their status, based on the idea that they were the last in a long line of invaders, and that they had some Irish blood through intermarriage. |
Click here for web links about Ireland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
1459 | Richard,
Duke
of York, was convicted of treason
against King Henry
VI and lost
his title
of Lieutenant of Ireland.
Even so, the Anglo-Irish parliament confirmed
him as
leader and declared Ireland independent
of English law. There had long
been
tension between the English of Ireland and of England. It was more the
magnates
than the commons who were interested in autonomy. |
1494 | The Tudors
reinstated
English
royal dominance.
An attempt
was made to dismiss the Great
Earl
of Kildare from his title of Lord Deputy, but he was
reinstated after
raids by
his Irish allies. |
1496 | By
this time the line
of ‘the Pale’ was at Clongowes.
The boundary was
continuing to shrink. |
1500 | The
Dublin government was feeble
by this
time, but 200
years later it would
be
all-embracing. Its landowners were descendants of the Anglo-Normans,
the ‘Old
English’. They were firmly attached to English law
and its
Crown. There was
always still a threat of Gaelic assault. The chieftains continued to
attack the
settlers, convincing the Old English that they were defending civil
standards
against barbarism. Fear of attack caused the Old English community to
militarise, and their primary allegiance was to their lords rather than
the
king; some lords maintained castles and armies. The two great
families were
the Fitzgeralds
and Butlers,
who became
rivals;
the English kings made
the
Fitzgeralds their representatives. They were not interested in Ireland. |
By
this time most of Ireland was ruled by Gaelic
or Gaelicised lords, who
rejected
the English Crown. The church in these areas was very different to the
English
one. |
|
1515 | Sixty
counties were ‘inhabited by the King’s Irish
enemies’. There were 60
Irish
chieftains who gave themselves various titles and 30 English
doing the
same,
all warring against one another without input from the King. |
There
was criticism that the aristocracy were becoming Gaelic
and 'degenerating from
English civility'. Irish society was fragmenting into lordships, some
lords
being Anglo-Norman and others Gaelic. They sought to monopolise their
power.
The grip of the Crown grew weaker. |
|
Through
this
century, the hiring of soldiers and manufacture of weapons
became
more
costly. The farming population bore the cost. Pastoral
(rather than
arable)
farming dominated. Agricultural
practice was more advanced where the
Old
English population was predominant. Meanwhile, political disruption
kept the
population down while the number of people in the rest of Europe
doubled throughout the century. |
|
Minor
overseas
trade was conducted by the Old English, but merchants found
themselves
being forestalled in Old English lords’ territories. |
|
Priesthood
had become hereditary in the Gaelic lordships, and priests were clients
of the
local lord, with bishops often being part of the ruling family. The
same trend
(appointing aristocrats to important church positions) was followed in
anglicised areas. |
|
1534 | Kildare
rebellion took place against Henry
VIII.
The earls of Kildare, the
House of Fitzgerald,
who were meant to represent royal authority, rebelled against the
Crown. Thomas,
Lord
Offaly, son of the ninth
earl of Kildare, led a
symbolic revolt
to show that the power of the Kildares must remain. Henry
VIII
sent an
army of 2300 and had all male members of the FitzGerald family
executed. This harshness may have been because FitzGerald backed the
pope, and because
Henry
needed to draw up an Irish parliament to confirm him head of the
church. Henry
ordered that all Irish lands were to be surrendered to the Crown and
then
regranted. To the Old English this was a reinforcement of their
relationship to
the King, but for the Gaelic chieftains the change was huge. They once
held
their land according to Gaelic law and tradition; now it was according
to the
King’s goodwill. This was the end of Gaelic Ireland. |
The
submitted lords were expected to exact revenues, assist the extension
of
English legal administration and have their heirs raised in English
households.
In enforcing this, the cost of governing Ireland shot up, but the
profits from
rent and confiscated lands were being filched by the Pale. |
|
1536/7 | After
the parliament of these years, monastic
property was declared forfeit
to the Crown
and some
of it given to the secular landowners in anglicised
Ireland.
However, there was no major drive to convert the population of
anglicised
Ireland because the English governors, officials and clergy were
distracted by
political crises. With the FitzGeralds gone, the Gaelic lords under
their
control began to attack the Pale, forcing the government to send in
military
expeditions. As this was expensive, the surviving FitzGerald heir was
reinstated and the discontented Gaelic lords dispossessed until they
submitted. |
English monarchs
were styled kings
of Ireland. |
|
English intervention
in Ireland was reluctant, deriving from a concern to
honour their
obligation to defend their inheritance and to prevent foreign intruders
invading Ireland. The English also took counsel from both Irish and Old
English
noblemen who gave conflicting advice, leaving the English paralysed. This lack of intervention
meant that the
Catholic reformers were able to mould Irish society. The first
reformers were
the Observant
friars. These became opponents of the Crown after the
English Reformation
began. When the FitzGeralds of Kildare revolted against the Crown, it
was
depicted as a religious
crusade and received extensive support from the
Gaelic
lords. Meanwhile, many Old English officials and lawyers took their
sons out of
English universities to stop them being corrupted by Protestantism,
sending
them to European universities where they learnt Counter-Reformation
Catholicism. |
|
1556-1579 | Opposing
aristocrats, Sussex
and Sir
Henry Sidney, competed for the position of
governor
of Ireland. Both devised schemes for Irish government, but their
experience was
so bad that senior politicians were subsequently reluctant to accept
service in
Ireland. Sussex
supported military settlement
in the Gaelic midland
area, and
continuing with the surrender
and regrant policy. Councils
would be set
up in
Anglo-Norman lordships that had 'lapsed' from English civility. He was
however
side-tracked by the lord of Tyrone, Shane
O’Neill, who ignored
the surrender
and regrant arrangement. Sussex
decided to oust him and raised money
from the
Pale, but the campaign dragged for four years without result until the
Palesmen complained to Elizabeth and Sussex was withdrawn. |
Elizabethan
wars took place in Ireland. The English
believed that the Irish
were barbarians.
There was
a sense of missionary
licence to civilise.
It was believed that the
Irish could
only be civilised
by force; Elizabeth I sanctioned shedding blood as a
last
resort. Her deputies were Englishmen
and the Crown’s army was
composed of
English soldiers. Force was used against both the Old English and
Gaelic Irish.
The Old English themselves rebelled six times against the new order.
Gaelic
chieftains fought on either side. The ordinary Gaelic Irish population
suffered. One deputy, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, displayed
the heads of his
victims
at his camp. Some of Elizabeth’s officials condemned his
cruelty and the murder
of civilians. However most, including Leicester, believed it the only
way to
deal with savages. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, Ireland
was for the first
time under effective English control; but the foundations of Irish
hatred for
governing Englishmen had been laid. Meanwhile the Old English and
Gaelic Irish
moved closer together. |
|
The Reformation
of the Church
in England failed
to take effect in Ireland.
This was
mainly because communication was extremely difficult in Ireland; it had
a
scattered population of a million and almost no roads. The Irish
Church,
meanwhile, used the Irish language and was uninterested in Lutheran
ideas. The
only place where Protestantism was found was Dublin. Elizabeth was
afraid that
Irish Catholics might make a religious appeal to Catholic powers like
Spain. |
|
Once
the Reformation
was established in Ireland, all churches were given to
the
Protestants. |
|
1565 | Sidney
became governor. His policy was to dispossess those who attacked the
Crown or
occupied its land. English settlers would be brought in to live on
these
dispossessed areas, introducing English law and civility. Ancient
titles were
revived and bestowed on English adventurers. |
1569 | James
Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald launched a rebellion
against the English, to be defeated by the combined forces of Thomas
Butler (the Earl of Ormonde) and the English under Henry
Sidney and Humphrey
Gilbert. |
1570s/80s | Some
of the generation of students who had been trained up in the Counter
Reformation
were now suggesting withdrawing allegiance from the Crown, while others
proposed only refusing to attend the state church. This meant that they
could
no longer fill positions in the Dublin administration,
and were
replaced by
English-born Protestants. Meanwhile lawyers within the Old English
community
advised acknowledging supremacy of the Crown in temporal but not in spiritual
matters. Even so, most English rulers bar Cromwell
received delegations
from
the Old English community. These delegations usually criticised the
English
Protestant officials. Some of those officials wanted punitive
measures
against
Catholics; the officials argued that they wanted to stir up revolt for
their
own ends. Consequently, successive monarchs (Tudor and Stuart)
put
restraints
on Irish reform programmes. |
The
influx of adventurers aroused hostility from the Irish, especially when
some
adventurers brought in private armies. Sidney
welcomed the subsequent
insurrections as a pretext to extend his plantation schemes, although
Elizabeth
did not approve, and forced Sidney
to become more moderate. The scheme
of
private colonization (by adventurers) ended, but the English Protestant
officials continued to cause tension by criticising Irish society. |
|
1579 | James
FitzMaurice FitzGerald returned from the Continent preaching
a crusade.
He
received such support from Munster and even the Pale that Elizabeth
was
forced
to put up an army of 8000. Retribution was harsh – such
destruction of property
and systematic slaughter had never been witnessed before. The Crown
attempted
to introduce a settlement of 20,000 people on the lands of the earl of
Desmond.
This resulted in a massive transfer of property from Irish to English
ownership. |
1585 | Hugh
O’Neill became Earl Of
Tyrone. |
1588-94 | Sir
William Fitzwilliam was the governor at this time. He
approved some
piecemeal settlements. It was
planned that the province of the O’Neill
family should be
broken up, with some
going to English settlers and some going to Hugh O’Neill, an
experienced client
of various English adventurers and claimant to the earldom of Tyrone. |
1590s | Catholic
reformers had succeeded in securing the allegiance of even the most
remote Old
English outposts. |
By
the mid 1590s, 4000
people had been settled
at Munster.
By then, the
Protestant
officials were attempting to impose penalties on Catholic landowners,
but Elizabeth
was reluctant to stir up the Irish situation while engaged in
war
with Spain. Her officials in the Irish provinces meanwhile attempted to
possess
more property, some hoping to force an insurrection that would push the
government into another plantation scheme. |
|
1593 | Hugh
Roe O'Donnell began his rebellion
against the English. |
1594 – 1603 | Nine
Years War. |
1595 | Rebellion
of Hugh
O’Neill, earl of Tyrone. Tyrone had been helped for
years by Elizabeth
in his disputes with other branches of the Ulster O’Neills.
He had spent eight
years in England. However, he also felt himself to be descended form
the Ui
Nialls who had been High Kings of Ireland for centuries. He
wanted Elizabeth’s
favour, but also independence. Eventually he decided to rebel and
joined with
his Ulster neighbour, Hugh
O’Donnell. Once he had fought for
Elizabeth at
Munster; now he opposed
her at Ulster. |
Hugh
O’Neill wished to reclaim the entire lordship. A
conflict of
wills with minor
officials ended in a clash with the Lord Deputy. His army was
successful at
first, and he solicited aid from other lords and promoted himself as a champion
of the Counter-Reformation. |
|
1598 | Victory
for O’Neill
at Yellow
Ford, Ulster. |
Elizabeth
made reference to ‘vile
rebels’ oppressing
her subjects. |
|
1601 | (Sept). A great Spanish fleet set sail for Ireland to help Tyrone, 4000 men sent by Philip III, but O’Neill and O’Donnell were miles away in Ulster. The British deputy Mountjoy, leading 2000 men, besieged the Spaniards, but Tyrone and O’Donnell marched south and besieged Mountjoy. This was the final battle for Gaelic Ireland. Tyrone lost against Mountjoy at Kinsale. He managed to obtain pardon after submitting humbly to him. The fact that the most serious threat to date had been narrowly averted pushed on the process of settlement. |
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1603 |
James
I enforced
English law, especially in Ulster. James
agreed with the repossession
of property belonging to the Crown and intolerance towards
rebellious landowners. Only loyal landowners with a
legitimate
claim to their lands could keep them. These were mostly Old English.
From then
on plantations
were set up, particularly in the Ulster region, largely opposed by the
Old English. The presence of the settlements strengthened the position
of
Protestant officials. |
1606 | Scottish
Protestants Montgomery
and Hamilton
founded
a private settlement
in
Ulster,
which was to prosper rapidly. For a century it attracted flocks of
Scottish
settlers. They spread outward and into Belfast, over the whole of
Antrim and
Down and right across Ulster. The pattern of Protestants and Catholics
in
Ulster today still reflects the two separate settlements. |
1607 | (14th Sept)
Rathmullan:
O’Neill
and O’Donnell fled
– the
‘flight
of
the earls’.
The settlement
of Derry began. Since
submitting to
the Crown in 1603
Tyrone had kept possession of his lands, despite the resentment of
those who
had fought him. He had been harassed
by English officials who had fined
him for
practising Catholicism
and were asserting English law.
Some were making
claims that he was involved in a plot with Spain.
After the Flight,
the territory
of the earls – Donegal, Tyrone, Derry and Armagh
– was subject to a systematic
attempt to settle in strangers from England and Scotland. |
Officials
argued that potential rebels should no longer have control over large
numbers
of people. English common law was made universal and Jesuits
legislated
against. The expropriation
of land belonging to all Catholic landowners was also
recommended. |
|
1608 – 1610 | The
English Government planned a 'Plantation
of Ulster'. Queen Mary
had already tried it
in the 1550s, it had been attempted in Munster
in the 1560s and 1580s
and in Ulster
in the 1570s. These colonies had either collapsed due to a lack
of
resources or wiped out by rebellion. The 1610
plantation in Ulster
was
on a
grander scale and was funded by City
of London companies. The
‘Irish
Society’
composed functionaries of the City of London who were responsible for
‘civilising’ (colonising) Derry.
The companies
(drapers, salters etc) divided
the land. This land was supposed to go to Scottish and English settlers
who
would not be allowed Irish
tenants. The native Irish were pushed out in
the
less fertile lands, making up only 10% of the new population, and would
pay
double rent. Only former soldiers were allowed Irish tenants. In
practice, more
Irish stayed on as labourers or rent-paying tenants. |
English
and Scottish
newcomers
were obliged to construct defensible buildings
and
introduce ten British Protestant families. Land was also allocated
to
loyal
natives. ‘Servitors’,
English who had served the
Crown, were given most of the
land. In fact, most land went to servitors and natives rather than
English and Scottish
grantees. The servitors had native
tenants because this gave
them an
immediate income, but later they evicted those tenants and took on
settlers at
low rents. There were also great profits to be had from timber and
cattle. The
settlers introduced advanced cultivation methods to Ireland. These settlers,
especially the English, acquired further Irish property by claiming
Crown title
or showing weaknesses in the titles of the natives.
The most progress
was made
in Munster. Meanwhile the natives tried to prove loyalty to the Crown
by
adopting the English language, modifying their houses in the English
style and supporting
the spread of English law. They also displayed their
‘Englishness’ with their
tombs, funerals and carriages. To meet the cost of all this, they took
in
British tenants at low rents; all such tenants were obliged to improve
their
properties. They also paid high fines for entry. At least 100,000
people migrated
before 1641.
The settlers headed for fertile areas, places
with access
to the sea of near natural resources. The arrival of so many people
– including farmers
and craftworkers – massively boosted the
country’s productivity.
However, the Protestant
religion failed to spread. James
I and Charles
I didn’t
want to damage relations with foreign governments by too much religious
zeal in
Ireland. Laws against Catholics were relaxed. The Catholic Church was
tacitly
tolerated. The clergy focused on missionary work, which annoyed the
Protestant
officials who were themselves ready to begin missionary work. The
Protestants
were forced to realise that they would not be able to start a reform
yet, and
the small size of their churches reflected that. |
|
1622 | By
now there were 13,000 settlers, but they did not totally colonise
the
forfeited
counties. The Protestants felt insecure and the Catholic Gaelic Irish
were
resentful. The settlers were afraid,
not only of the original
inhabitants but
also of the 5000 former swordsmen of the earls. |
The
vast majority of Ulster settlers were Scots.
They were Presbyterian,
not
Anglican, which brought them into conflict with English law. This
fostered an
independence of spirit which has continued to this day. |
|
1628 | Having
succeeded James I in 1625,
Charles
I introduced 'the
Graces', a scheme by which Catholics could obtain religious
concessions in return for monetary payment. |
1633-41 | Thomas
Wentworth was governor
of Ireland
during this
time. He
caused different religions to unite
against
him in his efforts to extract money. Wentworth
began a wave of confiscation. |
1641 | (23rd
Sept) Great
Catholic-Gaelic rebellion.
The rebels
declared
their loyalty
to the Crown
but assaulted
the settlers. Terrible atrocities were reported. On Portadown
Bridge, 100 Protestants
were stripped, thrown into the water and murdered.
The
rebels were reported to be horribly injuring women and children and
leaving
them to die slowly. Some people were buried alive. It seems the
atrocities were
the result of wild indiscipline, not
policy. In total there were around
12,000
deaths. The effect on the Northern Protestant subconscious was profound. |
The rebellion
had been led by Ulster Catholic landowners under Phelim
O'Neill
who had resorted to arms, possibly in imitation of the Scottish
Covenanters who achieved special recognition for Presbyterianism
in
Scotland. Their inferiors however were overcome with bitterness and
they turned
on the Protestants, killing 2000 and driving tens of thousands away,
stripped
of everything. Beginning at Ulster, the revolt spread. The atrocities
were
exaggerated back on the mainland, and the people there demanded
revenge. The English
Civil War might have given the Irish Catholics chance to
press
their
advantage, but they were divided.
The Old English hoped
for mercy by
the king and
would not concede leadership
to Owen
Roe, the nephew
of Hugh
O’Neill. They did
not support him in his confrontations
with the Scottish
Covenanter army
at
Ulster. The Leinster lords meanwhile were unable to get government
forces out
of Leinster. In the period from 1641 until the Cromwellian invasion of 1649, two thirds of Ireland were ruled by the Irish Catholic Confedaration, (the 'Confederation of Kilkenny'), while Protestant areas of Ulster remained variously under the control of royalists, Scottish Covenanters and parliamentarians. |
|
Between
now and 1688,
the amount of land held by Catholics would drop from 59%
to 22%. The
Old English and Gaelic Irish were Catholic, but the English
parliament
was
becoming more puritan
and anti-Catholic.
All Irish Catholics became
anxious
that their religion would prejudice their rights to land. The interests
of the
Irish and Old English were increasingly coinciding. Atrocities on both
sides
were slowly hammering the people into two camps – Catholic
and Protestant. |
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1649 | Oliver
Cromwell had defeated King
Charles I in England, but there were still
strong
Royalist armies allied with Irish Catholic rebels in Ireland. In 1649 Cromwell
came
to Ireland, striking
first at Drogheda. Drogheda
is seen in Irish
nationalist legend as anti-Irish
racism, but the garrison there was
commanded
by an English Catholic and largely under English officers,
Royalists.
Inflamed by an initial setback, Cromwell
showed little
mercy to the
soldiers
and priests, killing
2000 of them and having more shipped
to Barbados.
Cromwell
may have believed he was taking revenge for 1641,
although Drogheda had
not
been involved – it was within the English Pale. |
Government
policy was to crush
the Catholic people. Cromwell
marched south. Some
surrendering
garrisons were treated well, but Wexford
suffered 2000 casualties
including 200
women and children in the marketplace.
Cromwell dispossessed
landowning
Irish
Catholics and shared their land amongst his soldiers and financiers.
The
transportation of those landowners to a barren province was known
as
‘the
curse
of Cromwell’. Those left behind, tenants and
labourers, still
felt humiliated. |
|
(August).
Cromwell
launched a programme
aimed at evangelisation, the removal of
rebellious priests and landowners and the crushing
of resistance. These
ideas
had been mooted before, but 1641 showed their urgency. Cromwell
brought
20,000
fighters to Ireland, the best army in Europe, and resistance was
crushed with
much brutality.
Such religious
zeal was involved that the Catholic
church was
swept aside. All Catholic estates were confiscated and their
owners relocated,
if they could prove they had not rebelled. William
Petty carried out a
detailed land
survey of Ireland.
Vacated estates were given to
Cromwell’s soldiers and
financiers, while the former proprietors were left to scramble
for land
west of
the Shannon. Protestant clergymen and schoolmasters were sent over, and
there
were strenuous efforts to get the Irish into Protestant churches,
although language
was a barrier. However, many Protestant churchmen already in Ireland
were
reluctant to work within Cromwell’s framework.
Cromwell’s regime did
not last
long, and more moderate people (including his son Henry)
came to the
fore. |
|
Protestants
who had been in Ireland pre 1641 bought land from the Cromwellian
grantees. The
settlers pre and post 1649 bonded together with the concern of
maintaining a
political order. |
|
1660 | Charles
II was restored
to the throne but did not want to upset the Protestants
who had helped
him regain power. His faithful followers were rewarded by having their
Irish
lands returned;
however, the disposed Catholic landowners, including
Old
English, were to be generally disappointed. |
Religious
persecution faded. Catholic clergy returned from the Continent. The
government
didn’t officially tolerate Catholicism but was focusing on
re-establishing an
Episcopal Protestant church. There were occasional acts of persecution
like the execution
of Archbishop
Oliver
Plunkett of Armagh, but the breathing
space from
1660 to 1690 helped Catholicism re-establish itself. The Catholics
themselves
however felt defeated. |
|
1685 | James
II became a Catholic
king of England and this created temporary joy. Richard
Talbot, a favourite
of James II, became Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland. He
began
restoring public office to Catholics and to mobilise a Catholic army.
He
planned a primarily Catholic parliament at Dublin. Protestants in
Britain and
Ireland were alarmed. |
1687 | At this
time, the
Irish population was around 1,300,000. |
1688 | Charles’
Catholic brother James
determined
to support the Irish Catholics. A
Catholic-dominated Irish
parliament revoked the Cromwellian land
settlement,
but the succession
of William
of Orange, who usurped
the crown from James
together with his wife Mary,
was to trigger a split
in Ireland. |
James
sought support from the Irish; the French
came to Ireland to help.
Catholics in
Ireland responded to the call, frightening the Protestants. Derry
and Enniskillen,
Protestant towns, denied James’ authority. |
|
Late
in the autumn of 1688, rumours
began to spread that Irish Catholics
loyal to James
II were massacring Protestants.
News came that a Catholic
regiment was to
be sent to Londonderry to relieve the old garrison. The people of
Londonderry
thought it unwise to have Catholic troops protect them. However,
establishment
figures demanded that the troops be let in, but thirteen
apprentice
boys locked
the
door against King James’ troops on 7th
December 1688. |
|
1689 | (April).
The siege
began, reaching its full intensity for six weeks in the
summer. The
Protestant soldier in command of the garrison, Robert Lundy
(‘Lundy’
now means
a weak Protestant), wanted to surrender, but the citizens opposed him
and he
was forced to flee. William of Orange’s ships arrived to
relieve the city but
withdrew. |
(May).
William’s
ships reappeared. James’
men had put a
wooden boom across the river
Foyle and the relief ships decided not to proceed. 30,000 Protestants
were stuck
in Derry, starving and plagued by mortar fire. Thousands
died
of
starvation and disease. The besieging army were ill-trained and badly
equipped;
there was only one attempt to breach the walls. Eventually 10,000
non-combatants were let out. Once, the besieging commander tried to
break the
siege by rounding up local Protestants and threatening to let them
starve to
death in the open. The Derry citizens erected gallows and threatened to
execute
Catholic prisoners, forcing the release of the Protestant prisoners.
The inhabitants of Derry responded to
a demand to surrender with ‘No
Surrender!’ which
has been their watchword since. |
|
(28th
July).
British ships in the Foyle broke
the boom and relieved
Derry. Their
previous hesitation had left the northern Protestants with the
awareness that they were on
their own. |
|
By 1695, the amount of land held by
Catholics was to drop from 22% to 14%. |
|
1690 | William
of Orange landed in Ireland and defeated James
II
at the Boyne
on July 1st. The
Battle
of the Boyne is now marked
by Protestants on July 12th every year. |
(July).
William's
army moved towards Dublin, pushing James'
forces
onto
the defensive. There was stern resistance to the Williamite
army, but
it ended in in defeat at Aughrim
on 12th July. |
|
All
Catholic armies surrendered
at Limerick
under Patrick
Sarsfield. His
troops were exiled
to serve Louis
XIV and were known as ‘Wild
Geese’. William
III is still
a hero to the Northern Irish Protestants, who refer to their enemies
as
‘Papists’. |
|
After Catholic surrender there was
more confiscation of their
property and a rigid
anti-Catholic
penal
code was introduced. |
|
Following William III’s victory, the ‘penal laws’ regulated against Catholics, denying them the right to vote, buy land, be a lawyer, join the army or navy or hold any office of state. A Catholic landlord had to bequeath his inheritance equally to his children unless one turned Protestant, in which case he got the lot. Parish priests could still practise, but friars, bishops and archbishops could not. However, the laws were applied loosely enough to allow bishops etc to exist furtively, and so new priests could be ordained. This laxness was because the vast majority were Catholic; it was easier not to suppress them. Sometimes, as in Galway, the friars would bribe the authorities who had been ordered to crack down on them. |
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1700 | By
the end
of the seventeenth century, all land that could be put to
profitable use had been
converted into farms. Ireland
entered the eighteenth
century
with
a European structure. It was relatively populous,
with
most people
living on the land. The principle
exports were textiles
and meat. Powerful landlords and the church owned most of the land.
Huge homes
were built. |
From
the 1690s, the fundamental question over the Irish
parliament was
whether the Dublin
assembly could originate legislation without it being adapted
in
London.
This was sharpened by British attempts
to restrict the Irish
wool
trade. The
‘Patriots’, who were nonetheless Protestants and
committed to the British
connection, didn’t want their parliament to be subordinate to
London. The
‘Protestant
Ascendancy’, who had been established by
seventeenth
century land
redistributions, came to dominate. They were insecure, having survived
a threat
to the property
settlement in 1689. Protestants looked back in
bitterness to 1641
and 1685-89;
the Catholics to the Treaty
of Limerick. |
|
The Church
of Ireland at this time was undermanned but backed by huge
reserves of landed
property. |
|
From
the 1690s, Irish MPs took an oath denying
Catholic beliefs. |
|
Dublin
(the Castle)
became the political
centre and grew in importance. By
1700 Dublin had a population of 50,000. It boasted two ancient cathedrals and
various learned
societies. There was an affluent
leisured class and a wide
trading
network. The country was being integrated into a single coherent unit
with
interrelated local
economies and a common law. There was also a chain
of
garrison towns for maintaining a standing army. The principle landed
families frequently intermarried. |
|
Dublin
had a viceroy
– most English rulers
never visited it. It had
inferior constitutional
status to England. Although members of the Irish
political nation were not content with this, they were still
swayed by English fashion, having
their
sons educated in England when they could afford it. The wealthiest
married into
English families, but Ireland as a whole was dogged by comparative poverty
and a lack of cultural development. Landowners relied on rent alone
instead of
diversifying into commerce. Income from rent depended on exports, and
these
were
unreliable. There was a growing dependence on British overseas markets.
Ireland
was becoming more of a subsistence
economy with its growing population. While
continuous economic
expansion created
prosperity in England, Europe as a whole was blighted
by a general recession
which led to poverty. All
classes suffered. Ireland's striking difference to the rest of Europe lay in the fact that most landowners and senior officials were of a different race and religion to the general population. Around 1700, most of the social elite were first generation English settlers or descendants of English people who had come over in the last couple of centuries. There were also many landowners of Old English or Gaelic origin. They were all Protestants and all believed in the advantages of the English way of life. However, there was no strategy for converting the Catholic, mainly Gaelic population to Protestantism. The most extreme divisions were to be seen in Connacht, where the land was less fertile. In more fertile lands, landlords took on tenants similar to themselves. The Irish language continued; many natives were becoming bilingual. There was a strong consciousness of being wrongfully dispossessed, although in fact the land had never actually belonged to the peasants but to ruling kinship groups. It was the previously privileged groups like priests and poets who had lost status, and who now fostered a myth of a lost golden age. The sharp loss of continuity with Ireland’s past was what set it apart from other European societies. |
|
1703-4 | The Popery
Bills were passed on inheritance rights and leases. |
1709 | More restrictions
came into force, such as that Catholics could
not bear
arms or own a horse worth
more than £5. |
1714 | George
I
ascended to the throne. By this time, only 7% of land in Ireland was
held by Catholics, despite the fact that Catholics constituted 75% of
the population. |
Votes
were determined by land ownership. A comparatively small number of
landowners could
control
many seats. The College Green Parliament reflected their needs, except
briefly
under Queen
Anne. |
|
After
1714 family connections became the cement of politics. The
‘undertaker’ system
involved Ascendancy families managing parliamentary factions. |
|
1720 | The Sixth
of George I Act declared the constitutional status of Irish
legislature to be subordinate. Poynings
Law already limited parliament’s rights.
Both
officials and polemicists resented this. |
Irish
Toryism differed from English; it was hard-line Protestant and
anti-English.
Irish Whiggery was seen as too pro-English and soft on Catholics. The
‘Patriot’
tradition was expressed by Charles
Lucas, a radical, Jonathan
Swift
and William
Molyneux.
Patriots supported the priorities of landed
Protestants which included placing constraints on
Catholics and
implementing cheap government. Protestant insecurity was such that they
kept a huge army for their protection against foreign invasion and
native insurrection, especially through the agrarian secret societies.
They often resented the English influence. |
|
1729 | Catholic
freeholders formally lost the vote. Anti-Catholic
legislation was being pushed
more by
Irish Protestants than by the English, although some Protestants did
aid
Catholic gentry to retain their lands. Catholics continued
to practise
their
faith and their rights were gradually returned to them. |
1720s-30s | Bad
harvests saw rural
destitution, but afterwards both the population and
economy
expanded. The east and south
became more Anglicised and commercialised.
A
prosperous farming class developed. Modern historians do not agree on
the extent of poverty during this time. |
Despite the English tariff on Irish
woollens after the boom of the 1690s, the
industry diversified and the Ulster linen
industry was born.
Colonial
restrictions caused few problems. Trading
networks expanded as transport
improved. Many towns
prospered; the cattle-market was an important
source of
prosperity. Textiles and agricultural exports mainly went to England. Linen
became
a huge domestic industry, dominated by Protestants. Cotton
villages began
to
appear. Where there was no varied local economy, small farmers and
cottiers
became dependent on pigs and potatoes. Holdings tended to be let out
and
multiplied rather than farmed in large units. |
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(Second half 18th C) | In the absence
of political rights,
a network of agrarian secret
societies emerged, known as the ‘Whiteboys’.
The
Whiteboys were frequently violent,
often in reaction to taxes or the spread of the dairy economy. They protected
the
peasants from rack-renting landlords. They were only
interested in
local
affairs, not national politics. The Irish people lived in extreme
poverty
but
reserved their loyalties for the church and secret societies.
Middle-class
Catholics, who were still allowed to trade, emphasized their loyalty to
the
Crown. There
was much violence between Protestant small farmers and upwardly mobile Catholics,
particularly as incomes began to level off at the end of the
century. |
The
first people to talk of an Irish nation were recent Protestant settlers
and converts
to Protestantism. They were known as the Protestant
Ascendancy and they
were
highly aspirational. Their culture included the literature of Swift,
Sheridan,
Burke
and others. They wanted
to be treated by Britain as an equal
nation. Jonathan
Swift, Protestant
dean of St Patrick’s in Dublin,
argued that the
English parliament had no right to legislate for Ireland. However, the
Irish parliament
had little significance. English restrictions on Irish trade stirred
up the Irish colonists’ political restlessness, and
they were
inspired by the
example of colonists in America, whose 1770s rebellion
was an important
event
for Ireland. At that time, the Protestant nation formed companies of
armed
‘Volunteers’
under the pretext of defending Ireland
in the absence of British
regiments. |
|
1760 | George
III ascended
to the throne and the tempo of Patriotism
increased. |
1770s | Unrest
in America focused ‘Patriotic’ Irish
politicians
on their
own position. Whigs
at Westminster
opportunistically made the same links. There were also
strong connections between Ulster
and America
forged from generations
of emigration. |
1778 | From
this year there was a powerful campaign to allow Ireland unrestricted
access to
world trade. ‘Patriotic’ and other discontents
joined a military volunteering
movement, which the government reluctantly recognised. Pressure
from
these
Volunteers and ‘patriot’ rhetoricians
as well as
threats of non-cooperation
from the Irish House of Commons helped repeal commerce restrictions and
then
make constitutional concessions in 1782. The British government relaxed penal laws against Catholics in order to secure the support of the majority and allow Catholics to join the army |
1780 | (June). Lord George
Gordon led riots
in England against
Catholic emancipation. |
1782 | Henry
Grattan’s ‘Patriot Party’ won a
Declaration of [Legislative] Independence
for
the Irish Parliament. Britain and Ireland were to be two sovereign independent
kingdoms linked by a common Crown. The Sixth
of George I was repealed.
The new
empowered parliament
was called ‘Grattan’s
Parliament’. But
its authority was still inconclusive, with
the Privy Council having power over Irish legislation. Ascendancy
figures still wielded
much influence. John
Fitzgibbon of Clare, for example, blocked
concessions to Catholics as he feared sectarian tension. Political
reform and
emancipation of the Catholics were needed to make Ireland a
‘Nation’, and the
Protestant Irish weren’t unanimous on this. |
1789 | The French
Revolution took place, overthrowing
the ruling powers in France. This conveyed the message that the will of
the
people was enough to effect
change. Belfast Presbyterians formed the Society
of United
Irishmen,
which promoted unifying the Catholic and Protestant nations into one. Wolfe
Tone, a Dublin Protestant, was a member. They had limited
success. |
1790s | This
decade was prosperous
and began in apparently stability. Architecture,
artefacts
like
jewellery and furniture and decorative art bear witness to this. Dublin
represented the apex of architectural achievement. Belfast was shaping
up to
become an industrial boom city, becoming the chief export centre for
textiles.
There was slight tension between Dublin and Belfast. |
1791 | The
United Irishmen had
begun as a debating society, French-influenced,
middle
class and Presbyterian. William
Drennan, an ‘aristocratic
democrat’, wrote
their prospectus.
The most famous United Irishman was Kildare
Protestant Theobald
Wolfe Tone, a pro-Catholic campaigner. It was he who steered
the
United Irishmen into a ‘French Revolutionary’
movement with links to the
Defenders. |
1793 | Catholics
gained the vote and civil rights. The liberalisation of land laws only
heightened tensions with the secretive ‘Defenders’
becoming more openly
political. Politicians split on Catholic emancipation (their right to
sit in
parliament or hold high office). |
1794 | (May). The
government tried to crack down on radical activity but only succeeded
in exacerbating the situation. Farmers
and the lower
middle/skilled working class joined, although the leadership continued
as
middle class. Sectarianism was rife lower down in the movement.
Protestant
morale sank following a succession of Catholic Relief Acts. |
1795 | The Orange
Society was founded,
taking its name from William
of Orange.
They were a
reorganisation of an agrarian/working class secret
society called the
‘Peep
O’Day Boys’, who terrorised
Catholics. The first Orange
lodges appeared; their
role was to oppose the Defenders.
Defender
ideology spread,
encouraged
by
resistance to tax. |
Earl
Fitzwilliam as viceroy attempted
to offer total Catholic emancipation
and was repudiated
by the government. The British government were however
becoming worried. |
|
Maynooth
seminary for Catholics
opened. It was hoped that this would
encourage
an Anglicised
Catholic church. It meant priests would
not be trained
abroad or
drawn from the peasantry. |
|
Catholic
merchants were still important, despite their exclusion
from guilds. Dissenters
(non-conformists)
were also discriminated against, helping to form the
Presbyterian political culture of Ulster. |
|
France
provided a revolutionary
spur, particularly amongst the Presbyterian
bourgeoisie in Belfast. Rumours of rebellions abounded even before
Britain and
France went to war. |
|
1796 | The
United
Irishmen had become a secret society who preached violence. Wolfe
Tone
persuaded the French
to send
a fleet to Ireland in December
to help
found an
Irish Republic. The fleet was battered
by harsh
weather. There was a
handful of
militia waiting to oppose them and a local landlord organised the
yeomanry, but
it was the weather that drove the ships away. A further fleet was
prepared, but
by now the government was awake to the threat and cracked down
effectively on
the secret society. Another factor in ruining the society
was the
formation of
the sectarian Orange Society which attracted Protestants. |
1797-8 | With
the United
Irishmen around, the authorities saw the usefulness of the
Orangemen
in exploiting sectarian
prejudice. |
1798 | A
Dublin aristocrat, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, tried to organise a national
rebellion led by the United Irishmen and incorporating the
peasant
agrarian
secret society network, particularly the Defenders who had their own
vague
nationalist politics. However, informers
betrayed the United
Irish Society. Alarmed by the scale of
events, the
government unleashed repression
on the Midland
counties,
including
brutal floggings
to elicit information. Other brutal
torture methods
like
pitch-capping were carried out. Thousands of arrests were made and arms
were
uncovered. The eventual rebellion was confused, and the peasants were
slaughtered. |
In Wexford,
the Protestants – who were sectarian-minded
– were given the job of
searching for arms and information after the port of Wexford was named
as a
possible site for French landing. The local population were terrified,
and to
make things worse the North Cork militia turned up and began flogging
people. The
Wexford rebellion seems to have been a panicky response to the torture.
Father
John Murphy became a peasants’ leader in the
revolt. This was
not really a
nationalist rebellion; the North Cork militia prisoners begged for
mercy in
Irish but the peasants didn’t understand it. The events in
Wexford were
probably driven more by land hunger, economic crisis and anger at taxes
than by
nationalism. After a victory at Oulart
Hill, the rebels camped on Vinegar
Hill.
This was more a bundle of refugees from the troops than a military
camp. They
had no strategy, except revenge; they began by murdering Protestant
prisoners.
A barn containing Protestant men, women and children was set on fire at
Scullabogue,
with any survivors being brutally
killed – 200
in all. This did
the rebel cause no good. A Protestant
landlord, Bagenal
Harvey, a member of the UIS, took command of the campaign. He
was
ineffective in curbing the lust for revenge, or defining a strategy.
The rebels
had gone south, capturing Wexford but forgoing the chance to join with
other
rebel groups. This gave the government time, and they began to suffer
defeats.
They were eventually viciously slaughtered on Vinegar
Hill. 50,000
people died
in the rebellion. |
|
An
uprising in Ulster
failed. Rumours of southern atrocities were fuelling
sectarianism. By the time the French landed in Ireland it was too late.
Wolfe
Tone was captured and committed suicide.
Consequently, Protestants
began to
think in terms of an Irish ascendancy class whose interests would be
protected
by the English. Meanwhile, the rebellion proved to Catholics that they
needed
political leadership. |
|
The reality
of 1798 has become distorted into an expression of the
‘separatist
idea’, tainted by British treachery. |
|
1799 | William
Pitt accused
the Irish of ignorance and
bigotry. |
By now barely 5% of Irish land was owned by Catholics. |
Click here for web links about the Act of Union and Robert Emmet Rebellion
1800 | (2nd
July) the Act
of Union passed,
abolishing
the Irish Parliament. It became law on the 1st January 1801.
Initially the Protestants opposed
it on
Irish patriotic
grounds while the Catholics favoured it because the
English
would protect their interests better than the Protestant Ascendancy
would.
These opinions were soon reversed.
Irish
Catholics came to adopt Irish
nationalism. Some individual Protestants, who still believed
in common
Irish
patriotism between the two nations, supported them. Despite this, it
quickly
became a Catholic cause. |
The
passing of the Act
of Union occurred with the usual patronage
and bribery.
Nationalist mythology tends to put the blame on the British for this,
forgetting that it was typical of Ascendancy
politics. Although Prime
Minister William
Pitt had promised Catholic emancipation along with the Union,
King
George
III opposed it on the grounds that his Coronation
Oath committed him to uphold the Anglican Church. Pitt
subsequently resigned. |
|
With
the Act of Union, the Ascendancy declined.
Many went
to Westminster and began to support the Union in the
face
of
growing Catholic pressure for democratic
rights. Only the more liberal
country gentry still opposed the Union. Agrarian
societies continued, often along sectarian lines (demanding
justice for
Catholics and the extirpation of Protestants).
After 1800 the Dublin castle system continued.
Ireland had 100
seats out
of 658 in the Commons. The Union brought free
trade with Britain,
giving it
some support from the Catholic bourgeoisie. However, British
industrialisation meant that free trade was not to
Ireland’s
advantage. Nationalist rhetoric denounced the
exploitation of Ireland, calling the Union a failed marriage. Anglophobia became
part of
opposition to the Union. |
|
By
1800
the population had doubled
to 5 million, with most growth amongst
the
poorer classes. Many farmers re-let tenanted land to make money. Some
old
Gaelic landowning families continued as prosperous subtenants. These
were often
the ‘middlemen’
who let and re-let land. |
|
1801 | (1st
Jan). The two kingdoms were united
‘forever’. The Act of Union abolished
the
Irish parliament, which had met at the grand Parliament
House
at College
Green - still a potent image of Irish achievements. However,
its
powers
were always uncertain. The
Irish
administration could not compete with the presence of British barracks
and
police. Protestant monopolies continued blatantly in law,
government
and the
civil service. |
1803 | (July
23rd). Robert
Emmet’s Rising.
His plan
had been to seize Dublin
Castle to
encourage the rest
of the country to rebel. His followers murdered
the Chief
Justice, Lord
Kilwarden, and Emmet
fled. He is famous for his speech
in the dock
after his
capture, in which he said his epitaph should not be written until
Ireland was a
free nation. He was executed
on September 20th. |
During
the next years, Belfast
industrialised rapidly. Linen and brewing prospered, while other trades
struggled in the free market. Belfast's expansion lead to the influx
of a Catholic proletariat, stimulating debate amongst the Ulster
Presbyterians – pro-emancipation liberals versus
fundamentalists, who
were led by Henry
Cooke. The
Ulster
Protestants were egalitarian in some ways but believed in their
political and
religious rightness. Catholicism
meanwhile had its own political dimension because of its informal
power, its Gaelic strain, its Roman
links and its role in symbolising Irish identity. Catholic
churches began to spring up after the Union even while architecture in
general was declining. In the North East, the population
was divided into
Church
of Ireland, Presbyterian and Catholic. Orange
lodges were founded. There was
also
Protestant political activity in towns like Cork.
|
|
1815 | Agricultural
prices
collapsed and with the population expanding, rural
tensions grew
and
violence was common.
Landlords complained that the population were
uncivilised
and habituated to being kept down by force. Agrarian
societies were
anti-modern
and often anti-Protestant, but more localised than nationalist. The Ribbonmen
were Catholic with connections to Defenderism,
who drew from both rural
and
working class neighbourhoods. |
1817 | A severe famine
took place. |
![]() |
1823 | The
Catholic
Association was
formed by Daniel
O’Connell. It was financed
by the ‘Catholic
Rent’.
The proposed government veto on appointing priests helped create a
split with
the aristocratic leadership, but it was O’Connell
and his
elite of Catholic
lawyers who mobilised mass politics. They wanted rights, not
concessions. There
were mass demonstrations and an ‘alternative
parliament’ in Dublin. |
1826 | A Protestant Catholic
Association candidate beat the local aristocrat’s
choice in the Waterford
election. The
tenants voted
in droves against their landlords. |
1828 | Daniel
O’Connell stood at Clare.
He was to become known as the Liberator
because he
liberated the Irish majority from their political obscurity. His
achievements
were to allow Catholics to sit in Parliament and to campaign
against
the Union.
As part of his first campaign for Catholic
Emancipation he built up a
mass
organisation including Catholic clergy and middle-class supporters.
People
could join his Catholic
Association for a penny a month, and it soon
attracted
large sums. O’Connell
had a horror of popular violence, but
he stressed the
physical power that lay in the mass support behind him. |
O’Connell
won at Clare
but was not
allowed to take his seat until he scored a
second
victory. The government were worried by the menacing discipline of his
followers, who marched in columns. For the first time, Irish popular
opinion
was a force in British politics. |
|
1829 | Catholic
Emancipation passed. Catholics
were allowed to sit in
parliament and hold most
high offices, but the franchise was raised
to £10, losing
them many voters. |
1831 - 1836 | Violent
resistance to the collection of church tithes. |
1830s | The
Orange
Society was banned over a political
plot
to put the Duke
of
Cumberland on
the throne. Respectable Irish opinion towards the Orangemen was
ambivalent. |
The Young
Ireland movement of this decade was led by
Protestant nationalists who
were often anti-English. The Young
Irelanders published an extreme
Repealer
newspaper, The
Nation, which used
Irish history to argue that Ireland could become ‘a
nation
once again’. A cult
of ‘dying for Ireland’ emerged, with an emphasis on
rebellion. The Protestant
establishment as well as the British government were threatened. |
|
O’Connell
spent this decade
at Westminster allying with Whigs and Radicals,
during which
time he got tithes to the Church of Ireland abolished and improvements
in Irish
government, education and health care. Elective
councils were introduced in urban areas, and a Poor
Law Act
was passed.
The Ascendancy felt itself under attack. |
|
The
British state attempted some modernising initiatives. O’Connell
backed some and
opposed others, such as secular primary education. He supported
policies to
whittle down the powers of local gentry. |
|
1836 | The police
force was centralised and professionalized as the Royal
Irish
Constabulary. They were largely Protestant but fairly
impartial. |
1838 | A
Temperance
movement
began. |
1839 | (Jan) The Night
of the Big Wind. |
1841 | Daniel
O’Connell of the Catholic
Association held Monster Meetings
for the Repeal of
the Union and the restoration of the Irish Parliament which would be
dominated
by the Catholic majority. The two kingdoms would be close partners but
with independent
legislations, sharing a monarch. O’Connell
hoped to convert English
opinion by
arguing that recognition of Ireland’s claim to be a nation
would undermine all
call for separation. His Monster Meetings attracted huge,
well-disciplined
crowds. He began his Repeal campaign after the fall of the White
government in
1841. |
1842 | By
now, 5 million people had pledged
abstinence. The church was trying
to
stamp
out more subversive pastimes like ‘patterns’
and wakes.
The movement was marked
by an atmosphere of ‘improvement’. |
Peel’s
government made legislation to favour the Catholic church
– the Charitable Bequests Act
and Maynooth
Grant. The Church was rationalising its structure
and
broadening its social control. There were too many clergy in comparison
to populace. |
|
1843 | (15th
Aug) The greatest
Monster
Meeting, on the Royal Hill of Tara,
involving at
least 750,000 people. In O’Connell’s speech he
said the size of the crowd
would inspire pride and fear, and they were approaching Repeal with the
strides
of a giant. However, the government
banned one meeting at Clontarf
and
sentenced O’Connell
to jail for conspiracy, although the
Lords reversed this. Clontarf
had been chosen because of its association with Brian
Boru’s confrontation
with
the Norsemen in 1014.
By this time, the eighteenth century
Ascendancy
fashion for antiquities and history had become bound up with politics.
Ideas of
national
character and the ‘folk’ were growing in Europe.
Many histories intended either
to validate or invalidate the Union were written. Thomas
Moore and Lady
Morgan
were nationalist writers, and the harp was adopted as a symbol
of
nationalism.
There was an idea of an apostolic succession of national martyrs. |
O’Connell’s
great achievement
was to build up a store of national strength. He
successfully
channelled the Church’s bond with the people into politics.
Catholicism and
Irish consciousness were firmly linked. |
|
Around this time, the Orange Order was reconstituted when O’Connell’s campaign for Repeal of the Union became a threat. A royal commission at the time commented that they were emotional and uneducated, and regarded the Catholics as inferior. |
![]() |
1845 – 49 | The years of the
Irish
famine. The famine
has deeply
affected
Irish consciousness
and it has
been
thought that
the English
were deliberately
committing genocide.
The exact race of Ireland's rulers however was not clear-cut; they
consisted of a mixture of both English and Gaelic. Britain and Ireland
had been connected so long politically and
administratively that they were no longer clearly two separate
countries. Even so, because of the geographical and cultural gulf (half
of the population
spoke Irish before English) the British government cared
less about the
Irish people
than the English and Welsh or Scots. Most Irish, apart from those in the north east, were dependent for survival on the potato crop. The poorest peasants were forced to sell most of their cereal crops to pay rent. As the population exploded, going from 4.5 million in 1800 to 8 million in 1841, the situation grew precarious. Land was being subdivided in ever smaller plots and more people were dependent on potatoes. The crop had already failed a couple of times, with a severe famine in 1817. The government knew disaster was looming. |
Agricultural
problems and subsistence
standards in the west climaxed in the famine.
The
economy was largely unindustrialised but was supplying the
industrialised
British market. A rapidly expanding population caused huge strain. When
the potato
crop failed, the free
market economists of the time,
like Lord
John Russell, tried to place
the burden on Irish property and did very
little
to help. Some landlords
bankrupted themselves to help their tenants,
while
others were harsh. Many people died or emigrated. |
|
1845 | (11th
Sept) First report of disease
in the potato
crop. It was
caused by a fungus.
England was also affected, but people were not dependent on potatoes
there. |
(First
week of Oct). The situation was beginning to look
desparate. The worst threat at first
was in County
Mayo, where 90% survived off potatoes. Sir
Robert Peel,
the Prime Minister,
remarked that the Irish tended
to exaggerate, but he appointed a
commission of
enquiry. This recommended some worthless measures for protecting the
potatoes. |
|
(Nov). Special mass
was held in all Catholic churches. |
|
1846 | (Feb).
Every county was now affected and ¾ of
the
country’s potato crop had been destroyed.
Typhus was soon registered in 25 counties out of 32. Peel
ordered American
maize to be shipped to Ireland. He organised a relief
commission in
Dublin which would organise committees
of the wealthier people to supply
cheap
food and employment through public works. The Board
of Works
collaborated on
this. Meanwhile,
all protectionist
duties on
grain imported into the UK were removed
– the so-called ‘Corn
Laws’. The price of bread
fell, but about a third of the Irish couldn’t afford bread
anyway. ‘Political
economy’ ruled – the market should not be
interfered
with. Therefore people
could not be given food as this would undermine market prices and might
make merchants
withhold food from the market. Charles
Trevelyan was chief official in
charge
of relief measures, and a strong believer in political economy. The
corn from
America was not to be handed out immediately, but to be used as an
economic
lever; when food prices rose too much, it could be sold. |
(May).
General opening of grain
depots. By this time the poor were desperate. Crimes
were being committed for food. Respectable British opinion sometimes
seemed
more concerned with the threat to property than of starvation, and a
‘Coercion
Bill'
was brought before Commons proposing a curfew and tough
punishments. Unfortunately the relief
commission’s subsidizing of local committees was proceeding
slowly, and the lack of
employment only encouraged crime. Sir Robert Peel complained that there
was violence, including murder, being inflicted on the supporters of
the Queen. At this time, plenty of food
was
available, both leaving
and entering the country; it was just not given
to the
hungry. Trevelyan decided to close down the grain depots because they
could not
cope with demand. |
|
The
government expected a good harvest in 1846. Trevelyan
began to wind up
the
scheme of public works. In June,
he rejected a cargo of Indian corn. Even
as signs
began appearing that the new harvest was blighted,
Trevelyan
ceased
all relief operations. He believed that this was the only way to
prevent habitual dependency. He was concerned that private enterprise
would be paralysed and Ireland
would be ‘on’ Britain. The potato
failures because
obvious, but Russell
announced that food provision would be left
to market forces. Trevelyan
decided
to reorganise the public
works scheme, compelling landlords to share
the
burden; the government would loan them money, giving grants only in the
most
desperate areas. The public works projects, which included road
construction,
lowering hills and filling in holes, took weeks to organise, and
parties of
hundreds of men were going around pleading for work. There were food
riots, and
workhouses were mobbed. By this time many were too weak to work.
Trevelyan
began to purchase cheap ‘Indian’ (American) corn,
but the first starvation
deaths were being reported.
|
|
(July). Lord
John Russell became Prime Minister. |
|
(Aug).By
this time 140,000 were employed on public works. This fed in total
700,000
people. The workhouses,
with a capacity of 100,000, were filling
rapidly. 1.5 million were still starving. The government felt that the
Irish landlords
should be responsible for the people. Some of them were active,
cancelling
rents, starting employment schemes, even distributing food. Some
however were
cruel, even evicting tenants. |
|
Trevelyan
ordered that no landlord should profit from the public works schemes,
and so no
agricultural improvements or cultivation of other crops occurred. The
work done
was often worthless, even destructive. Wages on public works had to be
lower
than those on the ordinary labour market so as not to undercut it,
despite the
fact that ordinary labour was almost extinct. Wages were often not paid
for
long periods because of bureaucracy. Some men starved to death at work. |
|
The Times
newspaper accused the Irish of indolence and thoughtlessness
for
complaining. |
|
(Oct)
5000 people attacked the workhouse at Listowel
shouting
‘bread or blood’. |
|
(Late
Dec). By this time 400,000 people were employed
on public
works, but there were
many left unemployed. Even those who had work had a long wait for the
corn to
arrive. Some relief officers, who had been selling last
year’s corn, were
reprimanded for undermining market
forces. There was an official
feeling that
people weren’t making enough effort to get food. Some people
in England
maintained that the Irish were exaggerating. Meanwhile, the death
rate
soared.
There were not enough coffins; some of the poor
were buried in pits. |
|
1847 | Death of Daniel
O’Connell. |
An
epidemic of typhus
and relapsing
fever raged
across Ireland,
even in
relatively
well-fed towns like Belfast
and Dublin.
It was carried by people
fleeing from
the west.
Priests
and doctors began to die
of the fever. |
|
British
consciences were disturbed, and two major charitable
projects began
dispensing
free food from soup kitchens and funding local committees. The Quakers
and the
British Association were involved,
the Association attracting large
donations.
The
government was less
compassionate. Much
support was also received from America. |
|
(March)
By this time, 728,000 were employed on public works. Thousands of
people died
on them, especially the old. The harshness of winter killed many. The
government finally decided to distribute free food. A Soup
Kitchen Act
allocated public funds. The relief works were wound up rapidly while
the Soup
Kitchens were slow in appearing. There was a sharp rise in deaths. |
|
(May)
By this time, about 100,000 Irish had emigrated
to Liverpool. |
|
(Mid-July).
By
now 3 million Irish adults and children were receiving
relief. The
Treasury
accused the Poor
Law Unions of supporting those who didn’t
need it. |
|
The
potato harvest was good, but small, and the Soup Kitchen Act was
discontinued.
New Poor Law legislation was to be enacted, allowing workhouses to
provide outdoor
relief. New Poor Law rates would cover this. Anyone who owned
more than
a quarter of an acre of land was not eligible, forcing many to give up
their
land. |
|
(End
Sept). By now, two million of those who had been on relief
were now reliant on workhouses
and local rates. The Irish papers predicted that the rate
payers
would not be able to support the influx of rural poor, and they were
right.
Despite this, the British government provided
no more help. Many
landlords were
bankrupted, farmers were ruined. Trevelyan said Ireland must be left to
‘the operation
of natural causes’. He believed too much had been
done for the people
and it had made them worse. |
|
In
1847, a quarter
of a million of Irish emigrated.
The rate continued at
that
level for four more years. Most, 75%, went to America.
Conditions
on
board the emigrant
ships
were sometimes appalling
– they were unsanitary and overcrowded,
with little food and water available and fever rampant. The worst
conditions were experienced on
route to
Canada.
Many died on the ship, or left it with fever. At Quebec,
immigrants were thrown
onto the beach where they crawled to dry land. |
|
By
1847, ¼ million were emigrating
annually, often the young
people. Agricultural
labourers began to disappear.
The Irish
language waned.
Smaller
holdings
declined and many huge estates collapsed. |
|
1847/8 (winter) Evictions increased and corpses lay unburied. |
![]() |
1848 | Ballingarry,
County Tipperary: beginning of violent
action with the Battle
of the
Widow
MacCormack’s Cabbage Garden. It was led by William
Smith
O’Brien, a
Harrow-educated Protestant, descended from the great Gaelic High King Brian
Boru. He
had
originally been a member of O’Connell’s
peaceful campaign for the Repeal of the
Union, but during the
famine he had gravitated towards a sub-group known as ‘Young
Ireland’. They preached
a common nationality embracing Catholics and Protestants. The
members
of O’Connell’s movement grew wilder as the famine
went on. John
Mitchel, the
son of an Ulster Presbyterian Minister, founded a newspaper called
‘The United
Irishmen’, preaching republicanism and rebellion. After Mitchel’s
arrest,
Smith
O’Brien became the militant leader despite his
unsuitability.
He began inciting Tipperary to revolt. A warrant was issued for his
arrest. A party
of the
Irish constabulary moved on Ballingarry but found barricades and many
people,
some armed. The constables took refuge in Widow MacCormack’s
house – her five
children were at home. The police started smashing furniture to make a
barricade and, after shots from the mob, fired out of the house killing
two
people before more police arrived. This was known as ‘the
battle of Widow
MacCormack’s cabbage garden’, but in 1916 Patrick
Pearse was to list it amongst
the six rebellions. |
James
Stephens, a lieutenant of O’Brien,
escaped to France where he
took part in
resistance to Louis Napoleon. With his experience, Stephens was to
begin
thinking of forming a new professional modern secret
society to help
establish
an Irish Republic. |
|
The
Young
Ireland movement faded after the failed Rising,
but its ideas
remained,
exported to America. Future Irish politics would owe more to the church
and
agrarian secret societies than to the class-oriented politics of more
industrialised societies. |
|
(Autumn).
The new potato crop was blighted again. |
|
1849 | The
most terrible famine
year of all. Yet at the same time good
food was
being
exported from Ireland. The wealthy were still holding dances. |
(May)
Despite being informed of the continuing tragedy, John
Russell
announced that
the state was incapable of helping. He didn’t feel justified
in asking the
house for the £100,000 necessary to prevent starvation. Trevelyan
was busy
writing a history
of the Famine, which he claimed ended in August 1847. |
|
For
decades afterwards the Irish were plagued with the question
of why the
British
government hadn’t done more. Their conclusion was that
Ireland should run its
own affairs. The population
had shrunk from 8,175,124 in 1841 to
6,552,385 in
1851. 1.5 had emigrated; 800,000 had died. |
|
(Mid 19th C) | By this time, Catholic churches were being built again. Until then, Catholics had had to celebrate mass in the open or in ruined churches. |
Click here for web links about Fenianism
1850s |
In this
decade, the
word ‘Fenian’
was first used for an Irish
Republican organisation. It came from
‘Fianna’,
legendary
warrior
heroes.
|
The
Reform
Act of 1832 had increased the electorate
and based the franchise on
occupation rather than property-owning. It helped
create a new political nation, Catholic and
rural,
which admitted the church to political leadership. Archbishop Paul
Cullen was
ready to comment on any political question with a bearing on faith and
morals.
|
|
The
1850s saw a wave of evangelical Protestant revivalism,
especially in Ulster.
Belfast became more organised on
sectarian lines. Although officially
dissolved
in 1836, the Orange
Order lodges still had their potency.
The
‘Unionist’
culture was beginning to appear. |
|
Fenianism
also emerged. ‘Fenian’
was the name for the Irish
Republican Brotherhood, a secret
society emerging in the late 1850s. It had many
strands,
including Irish-American
exiles and agrarian secret societies. It represented
clerks and
journalists of the new lower middle class. It was conspiratorial,
Anglophobic
and keen to make sacrificial gestures. Young
Irelander John
Mitchel had written
an Irish history based on 800 years of national struggle, culminating
in
deliberate genocide. The church was uneasy towards this brand
of
nationalism,
which resembled a secular religion.
|
|
From
the late 1840s
tenant societies had formed,
representing well-off
farmers; this
managed briefly to form a national
organisation in the 1850s.
|
|
1856 |
James
Stephens made a 3000 mile tour
of Ireland, mostly on foot, to gauge
the
potential for revolution. He found plenty of dissatisfaction but little
evidence of planned revolt.
|
1858 |
(17th
March). James
Stephens formed
what would become the Irish
Republican Brotherhood. He
and his fellow conspirators swore an oath
to fight for Ireland as an
Independent Democratic Republic.
|
Stephens
received encouragement from America – embittered emigrants
promised to provide
material help. A comrade from 1848, John
O’Mahony, went to
America where he and
Stephens formed the Fenian
Brotherhood. Strong precautions were taken
against
informers. The society
was divided into closed
‘circles’ with limited contact.
When one circle was caught in Dublin, they passed themselves off as a
small
bunch of foolish young nationalists, the ‘Phoenix
Society’. They were led by Jeremiah
O’Donovan Rossa.
|
|
Stephens
organised a spectacular funeral
in Ireland for the American
Fenian Terence
Bellew MacManus. The Church officially disapproved of
Fenianism, but
they employed a dissident radical priest. Stephens then exploited the
publicity
to tour Ireland and start a newspaper. The Irish
People reminded people about the Fenian Brotherhood.
Stephens felt that the
American Fenians were too jolly, (‘Irish tinsel
patriots’), and in fact their
contribution had been limited. The Irish emigrants were settling into
America
and although bitter, felt no practical need to support nationalism.
|
|
1865 |
John
Devoy, Stephens’ aid in
Ireland,
had been undermining British
soldiers with a
new secret oath and by drilling civilians in secrecy. He had 85,000 men
in
Ireland, and trained soldiers were beginning to return from America.
After a
betrayal by a spy, the staff of the Irish
People were arrested, Stephens two months after the rest.
People relaxed
after the fear of rebellion, but with insider help Stephens
escaped.
Tension
rose again, but in reality Stephens’ 85,000 men were not well
armed or
controlled. Stephens persuaded his Irish-American comrades to postpone
the
rebellion.
|
1866 |
Stephens
declared that this was ‘the
year’ before postponing
again, possibly because his
arrest had shaken him. He was deposed by the American Fenians and
replaced by Colonel
Kelly. A French
soldier named Cluseret
took over the military
side.
Their headquarters were in London. The rebellion was to involve cutting
rail
and telegraph communications and attacking police until aid could come
from
America. There was no plan for pitched battles.
On June 2nd, American Fenians clashed with Canadian militia at Ridgeway. |
1867 |
(11th
Feb). An attempted attack
on Chester
Castle had
to be called off when an informer betrayed it
– not before many
armed Irishmen had arrived in Chester.
|
(5th
March). A second
attempt on Chester
was betrayed by the
same informer. In Ireland itself, the Fenians
scored a
couple of successes, taking the police barracks at Ballyknockane
and the coastguard station at Knockadown, but
eventually the Fenians
were
forced to flee for the hills. The entire rising
was a disaster, but it
has
still been celebrated since as heroism.
|
|
(Sept) Colonel
Thomas Kelly and another man, Captain Timothy Deasy, were
arrested; thirty Fenians
surrounded
the prison
van, killing a police officer and rescuing
Kelly and Keasy. Three
men
were
executed for the attack, later known as the ‘Manchester
Martyrs’.
|
|
At this time a Fenian
leader, Richard
O’Sullivan Burke, was being
held at Clerkenwell. His comrades tried to rescue him by blowing
up the
wall,
but they flattened several houses, killing twelve people. This atrocity
brought the
Irish quest to public attention. Gladstone
was induced to start reforming
the
Irish land system which was the main grievance of the Irish. He eventually
committed himself to Home
Rule. The promise of Home Rule meant that
Ireland
quietened down.
|
|
The failed rising convinced many ‘physical-force men’ of the benefits of parliamentary agitation. |
1869 | The
Protestant
Church in Ireland was disestablished.
Protestants
responded by
splitting
between moderates and extremists. The vitality of the movement to
defend
Protestant interests came from the Orange
Lodges. One Grand Master was
jailed
for leading a 20,000 strong Orange march. |
Charles
Stewart Parnell, a Protestant landowner from County Meath,
became
active in politics.
He came
from the tradition of pre-Union Protestant independence. His
great-grandfather had opposed the Union.
His maternal grandfather had
fought
the British in 1812; his grandmother was American. At Cambridge he had
been fined
and expelled for fighting, and he developed a reputation for aggressiveness
when he entered the Commons. He was soon known as an extremist amongst
the
otherwise gentlemanly supporters of Home
Rule. Davitt
described him as
‘an
Englishman of the strongest sort moulded for an Irish
purpose’. |
|
Novelist William
Carleton predicted a land war. By the late 1860s, threats
were
being
made against landsharks who took the property of evicted tenants, and
landlords
who evicted tenants over grazing. People wanted land, expecting a new
Land Act.
The landlords themselves, who identified the Tenant
Right Movement
as
‘socialistic’, were from a wide strata of society.
Landlords still had
influence at local elections but were challenged by farmers and
clerics. In
1860s Mayo,
the dominant class were strong farmers, shop keepers,
merchants and
traders. |
|
1870 | A Land
Act gave evicted tenants compensation
for expenditure on their
holdings. This
symbolically implied the end of the Protestant Ascendancy. The land
market had
virtually closed after the Famine. In the new
system, tenants and
leaseholders
chose their own successors. The Land Act gave this strength. |
By
now, Ireland
had economic, social and political
stability. The Poor Law
system
was coping, unemployment was ameliorated by emigration and the rural
population
were prosperous. The Catholic church and middle class had attained new
respectability; Ulster Protestants were enjoying Victorian
‘progress’. Many
looked forward to Ireland becoming a modern industrialised society. The
uprising
of 1867 was ignored. However, this stability depended on emigration.
Nearly half as many Irish natives lived overseas as at home. All
classes
emigrated, but especially the poor. Some migration was seasonal. The American
recession of the 1870s resulted in
population
congestion as would the First World War, contributing to social unrest.
The average family had six
children,
reared for emigration in the hope that they would support their
families from
abroad. Property control became smoother, with the acquisition of
spouse and farm
being almost inseparable. Urbanisation and agricultural modernisation
were
slow. Industrial expansion was concentrated around Belfast.
The linen
industry
did not begin to decline until World War One, and the shipbuilding
industry was strong.
Dublin did not markedly industrialise. Most people worked on the land.
Ireland
didn’t attract investors as it was seen as lawless. |
|
Pasturage
was more attractive than tillage due to diversification of diet and
depopulation. New technology was slow to come in, partly due to the
indebtedness
of tenant farmers and reluctance of landlords to invest. |
|
Isaac
Butt, a Protestant, had initiated the Home
Government Association. By
now, the
nationalists were allied with the Liberals, but this alienated the
Protestants.
The ‘Ascendancy’ campaigned against land reform, Home Rule
and church
disestablishment. The Ulster Protestants put up the most resistance.
The
workers of Belfast promoted their interests through factional
conflict.
The unionists were to
oppose the Home Rule
initiatives of 1886,
1893
and 1912.
Protestant and Catholic Ulstermen
formed
their own fraternities. Some evangelist Protestant crusades militated
against
Home Rule. |
|
1871 – 1911 | During
this time, Protestant
workers helped edge Catholics out of the better jobs. |
1873 | Isaac
Butt
initiated the Home Rule League. |
The
IRB’s constitution
bound Fenians
to peaceful
protest. War
against Britain would
only be justified by majority vote. Parnell
accommodated ex-Fenians. He
also
mobilised the Catholic church for Home Rule. Paul
Cullen’s church
had not been
helpful, but Parnell
was so successful in getting united popular
support that
the church could either withdraw from politics or co-operate. |
|
1876 | Parnell
stated in Parliament that he believed there was no murder
in Manchester. |
Competitive
exams were introduced for the civil
service. |
|
1879 | Famine
loomed, but a massive charitable operation staved it off. Since the beginning of the first
famine, two
million
people had emigrated.
This in some ways improved the agricultural
situation,
but many peasants were still dependent on potatoes. The 1870s had been
relatively prosperous, but the later part of the decade saw cheap grain
flooding in from
America, hitting farm prices, and the potato crop began to fail. There
were
evictions. |
Michael
Davitt, an ex-Fenian newly released from prison, campaigned
for a
reduction in
rates, an end to evictions and an eventual transfer of ownership from
landlord
to tenant. He created the Land League,
and Parnell
became its
president. It
consisted of Fenian and radical elements together with tenant
associations,
and aimed to protect tenants from eviction. The League lost support
when it
radicalised. The land
campaign involved violence not just against
landlords but
also tenants who disobeyed Land League orders, such as by taking land
cleared by
eviction. The League’s leaders publicly disapproved of this,
but the rank and
file included both former Fenians at the top level and members of
agrarian
secret societies. The ex-Fenians believed they were laying foundations
for positive
Irish national thinking amongst farmers and peasants. Parnell
was
careful not
to get
involved in the violent, extremist side, although he knew
about
it.
Instead, he invented the idea of ‘boycotting’,
named after its first
victim.
The victim would be ignored. |
|
Parnell
became leader of the Irish
Party after the death of the more moderate Isaac
Butt. Gladstone
was sympathetic to Irish problems, but brought in a
Coercion
Bill to halt the land
war, giving the police and army special powers
and
suspending some civil liberties such as Habeas Corpus. Parnell
forced
the
Commons into a continuous 41 hour session in resistance, after which Parnell
and 35 of his MPs were escorted out. Gladstone
introduced a bill to
reform the
Irish land system, but Parnell
was temporarily a prisoner of his more
extreme
supporters and felt obliged to oppose the bill for being too moderate.
The bill
included Land Courts to set fair rents and guaranteed rent payers
fixity of
tenure, as well as granting tenants the right to sell their holdings.
The bill
became law but Parnell
grew increasingly belligerent. In his speeches
in
Ireland, he denounced the British
government. |
|
1880 | Parnell
visited America and gave speeches about Irish nationalism. In the same
year, he
began an adulterous affair with Katherine
O’Shea, wife of an
Irish member of
parliament. |
By
now the Land
League
had taken on a Home Rule aspect. Until then, the
Home Rule
body had been very loosely organised. |
|
1881 | Parnell
declared he wanted the Crown to be the only link to Ireland. Gladstone
began to
attack Parnell
in his speeches; he accused him of ambivalence to the
Crown. Parnell
responded with harsh words. He was arrested and lodged at Kilmainham
jail. It meant he was a martyr for the extremists while not
having to
take
responsibility for their actions. The new Land
Act
was actually working
well,
and Parnell
could afford to turn to a more nationalist
campaign. The
activists
were trying to get the tenants to pay no rent, but the tenants were
happy with
the land courts’ decisions. Parnell,
still in jail, felt the
need to make a deal
with Gladstone.
He offered to calm the Irish situation if Gladstone
would look
at Ireland’s national aspirations. The O’Sheas
represented him while he was in
jail. |
1882 | (May).
Parnell was released under the unwritten Kilmainham
Treaty, under which
he agreed
to co-operate with Gladstone. |
The
new Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord
Frederick Cavendish, was murdered
along
with his Under-Secretary
in Phoenix
Park, Dublin. Their murderers were
former IRB
members now called the ‘Invincibles’.
They had
acted with the support of
the Land League of Great Britain. The murder was disastrous
for
Parnell.
Distrust amongst the Liberals about whether Home Rule could mean
increased. |
|
1884 | Gaelic
Athletic Association
formed. |
1885 | Parnell’s
party increased in the General
Election as agricultural labourers had
the vote.
He gained 80% of Irish representation. The Irish Party now had the
balance
between Liberals and Conservatives. Gladstone eventually came round to
endorsing Home
Rule. |
1886 | The First
Home Rule bill failed to pass through Commons. Parnell had
made a speech
appearing to
sincerely accept the Home Rule Bill as the final settlement of the
Irish
Question. Strongest opposition
to the bill came from the Protestants
of
Northern Ireland. In the Commons, the Conservatives
‘played
the Orange card’. Both
moderates and extremist Protestants were united against Home Rule.
Everyone
knew the bill would not get through the Lords. Gladstone
was not
sympathetic to Ulster,
pointing out that they were in the minority. Parnell was more
placatory, saying that the Protestants would exercise a
‘moderating influence’
on making laws and welcoming all creeds and classes to Ireland. The
bill was
ultimately defeated due to Liberal defection, but the fact that it had
been
raised at all was a triumph. At this time, Parnell’s party
held the balance of
power in the Commons by helping the Tories eradicate
Gladstone’s majority. |
There
were threats of civil war from Ulster
even before the Home Rule Bill
was
introduced. Men were arming themselves and drilling. After the Bill was
defeated, there were celebratory riots in Belfast
and people were
killed. |
|
The
Catholic
church endorsed Home Rule. In return, Parnell
supported such
issues as
denominational education. This alliance between the church and nationalism
alienated Protestants. |
|
Meanwhile,
Mr O’Shea was trying to get his wife
back from Parnell. He
would not divorce
her because she was due to come in for a large inheritance. |
|
1886-9 | ‘Plan
of Campaign’ took place – Land
League agitations. |
1887 | Parnell
was falsely
accused of writing letters
that appeared
to justify and
even instigate
the Phoenix Park murders. He was sensationally cleared and won sympathy
from
the British public. |
1889 | Mrs
O’Shea came into her inheritance, and her husband
filed for divorce. The
divorce case was to ruin Parnell’s
reputation. He and Mrs O’Shea did not defend
themselves in court, and
embarrassing charges were made. Catholic Ireland and English
Nonconformists –
the backbone of Liberal support – were shocked.
Gladstone was
amongst those
calling for his resignation. He threatened to resign unless Parnell
did. The
need for Gladstone’s support contributed to the
Party’s eventual decision to get
rid of Parnell. Parnell had also been a brutal disciplinarian
and
had
ignored local issues. |
1890 | (Dec). A stormy
meeting of the Party took place, after which the
party
voted to depose Parnell.
It then split into those who were for and who against Parnell. The
Church was against him. Parnell became
desperate, turning to the Fenians
for support. He
lost three by-elections in a row, campaigning furiously despite
deteriorating
health. He was to die of a heart attack aged 45. |
The
Conservatives, needing an effective identity, decided to oppose Home
Rule on
behalf of the Ulster Protestants. The Liberal-Nationalist alliance
survived
even despite non-conformist hostility to Catholic causes and the
splintering of
the Irish Party in this year. |
|
It
was Conservatives who brought in the most lasting initiatives. They
helped
create a ‘peasant proprietary’ and to modernise
agriculture. The nationalists
however preferred a rhetorical alliance with Liberalism to the more
substantive
reforms of ‘constructive
unionism’. Reform could
have made Irish Catholics
uninterested in national freedom. The Tories were ‘killing
Home Rule by
kindness’. |
|
1891 | (Oct). Death
of Parnell.
The Irish Party split into warring fragments. Parnellism
attracted those who were worried by clerical interference in politics.
Fenians
formed a cult around Parnell, including many intellectuals and cultural
revivalists. Yeats
was one of these. This new cult was heavily
faction-ridden. |
1892 | Liberals carried a Home Rule Bill through the Commons. The Ulster Unionists had already held a convention with 12,000 delegates where violence was urged to save the country. The idea of a Dublin parliament was denounced. They also spoke of spilling blood when in Parliament. The Irish nationalists and their Liberal supporters dismissed this as a bluff. There was a truth in this in the sense that the Lords would have vetoed the bill so violence would not have been necessary. |
See also The Gaelic Revival, Is the Irish Nation Dying and Politics, Nationality and Snobs by D.P. Moran.
Click here for web links about the Gaelic Revival1893 | Second
Home Rule Bill passed Commons but rejected
by
the Lords. |
Gladstone called the Irish
question ‘the curse
of this House’. |
|
A
‘Gaelic
League’ was founded
to encourage
every
aspect of Gaelic culture that
would
distinguish Irishness from Englishness. There was a Gaelic
Athletic
Association
for Irish games. Yeats
became
part of the Irish literary
movement. The
Gaelic
movement was largely middle-class and a certain Irish
snobbishness
developed.
Some political nationalists took part in the movement in the awareness
that it
might one day achieve political force. The League was factionalised,
and most
of its Protestant leaders (including ‘George
Birmingham’) were forced out of
office. |
|
The
main impact of the Irish-Ireland movement was the training and ideology
it gave
to a small knot of enthusiasts. Militant labour
distrusted cultural
nationalism. |
|
1894 | Irish
Trades Union Congress formed. |
1898 | The franchise
was widened, making possible nationalist control of local
government. |
The United
Irish League was formed. |
|
1900 | Queen
Victoria visited
Ireland and was greeted with enthusiasm by the crowds,
although nationalists such as Maud Gonne were infuriated. |
Parnellite
John
Redmond reunited the Irish
Party. Parliamentary selection was
localised
(de-centralised). The United Irish League became its chief instrument.
Labour,
Irish-Ireland bodies and nationalist fraternities got involved.
Sectarian
conflict intensified, resulting in the Catholic Ancient
Order of
Hibernians
becoming the Party’s vehicle for popular mobilisation. The
vagueness of ‘Home
Rule’ attracted groups with disparate aims. |
|
1903 | King
Edward visited
Ireland. |
Land
Purchase Act (Wyndham’s
Act) became law, aimed
at forcing
landlords to sell land and allow tenants
to buy it at low prices. Security of tenure prevented the consolidation
of
uneconomic farms, increased indebtedness and discouraged innovation. |
|
1904 | Sinn
Féin was formed
by Arthur
Griffith, an ex-Fenian, in order to exploit
local authorities (ignoring other state institutions) rather than seek
revolution or legislative reform. Before the First World War
it
failed to win any seats. Griffith,
contributor to the
newspapers The
United Irishmen and Sinn
Féin (‘Ourselves
Alone’), had
previously encouraged
the
setting up of an Irish Parliament. |
1905 | Ulster
Unionist Council was formed. |
1906 | Liberals
won the election
with a big majority, leaving them no motive to offer
Home Rule to Irish Party. |
1906 – 10 | The United
Irish League targeted graziers
(‘ranchers’). |
1907-16 | Augustine
Birrell acted as Chief Secretary.
He carried out wide reforms and
directed much
state funding to Ireland. |
1908 | Sinn
Féin lost a by-election and it lacked
support until 1917. |
Old
Age Pensions
Act. |
|
The
Irish
Universities Act gave university
status to Queen’s, Belfast
and colleges under
the Catholic National
University of Ireland. |
|
Patrick
Pearse, a poet and teacher,
founded St
Enda’s school at Rathfarnham
to teach the Irish-Ireland spirit. Many of its pupils were
to join
the IRB.
|
|
1909 | Second
Land Purchase Act. These
Acts made the national question seem
less
important. |
The Irish
Transport and General Workers’ Union was formed,
led by Jim
Larkin and James
Connolly. |
|
1910 | The Irish Party
held the balance between Liberals
and Conservatives.
Asquith
depended on the Irish
Parliamentary Party to retain power. |
William
O’Brien formed the anti-sectarian All-For-Ireland
League to
win over Protestant
support. The Home Rule Party disguised its internal conflicts in order
to
present itself as representative of
all
Catholics. |
|
Tom
Clarke, who had been imprisoned for
Fenianism, reopened
the Irish
Republican Brotherhood. |
1911 | The
Lords were denied
their veto and the Third
Home Rule Bill passed
Commons. |
(Sept).
The leader
of the Ulster Unionist Council, Sir Edward
Carson, addressed
a meeting
of 50,000 Orangemen and Unionists, saying that if Home Rule
were to
pass they must set
up their own government in Ulster. |
|
National
Insurance Act. Employers, workers and the state were to
contribute
towards
sickness and unemployment benefits. |
|
By
this year, 25%
of 50 year olds had never married. |
|
1912 | Asquith
introduced a Government of Ireland bill against intense opposition from
the
unionists. It allowed for Home Rule and did not permit control of the
Royal
Irish Constabulary
for six years. In the face of marching and drilling by Unionists in
Ulster, the alternative of having an exemption for Ulster emerged.
Both the Irish
Party and the Unionists discussed this in private. Partition
was
not
discussed. |
(6th
April). 100, 000 men marched at Balmoral,
Belfast, in
front of a giant Union
Jack. Bonar
Law, head of the English Conservatives, pledged assistance
in
‘battle’. |
|
(28th Sept). Nearly
half a million Protestants
signed
the Ulster
Covenant in opposition
to the Home Rule Bill. It was believed that many people had signed in blood,
although the only provable instance of this was Major
Fred Crawford. They accepted they that
couldn't block Home Rule for most of Ireland, but they wanted to retain
Ulster within the Union. The minimum
demand included the exclusion of six
counties. An Ulster Volunteer Force of 100,000 men was formed through the Orange Lodges. A former English General of the Indian Army took charge of it; there was no doubt on whose side the English Establishment was. The police assisted them to import arms. Liberal nerve began to fail. Asquith looked at the exclusion of the Ulster counties as a compromise. The Irish Nationalist Party became alarmed, and announced that Ireland was a single unit. Home Rulers in the south flocked to join a counter-movement in to the UVF, the ‘Irish National Volunteers’, which had been formed by IRB members. The majority of Irish Volunteers however were only interested in Home Rule without the Ulster clause. |
|
1913 | The Irish
Transport Union launched
a six-month strike
which ended
without
gain for
the workers.
At this time, the slums
in Dublin were the worst
in
Europe. The
slum owners and the major employer, William Martin
Murphy, were supporters of
Home
Rule, which implied that this Home Rule was insufficient for the
workers. |
1914 | Between
this year and 1881, a social
revolution had taken place. The British
presence in Ireland came to be
tolerated as a source of material benefit. |
Redmond
was prepared to offer Ulster six years of independence. At the last
moment he
made a further concession, dropping the time limit. The Conservatives
and
Ulster Unionist Council demanded the permanent exclusion of six
counties –
Down, Derry, Antrim, Tyrone, north Fermanagh, and north Armagh
– but Tyrone had a
substantial nationalist population. (March 20th). Fifty-seven officers announced that they would not move against the UVF – this was the ‘Curragh Mutiny’. |
|
(June) John Redmond
assumed control of the Irish
Volunteers. He
had been surprised by
the depth of feeling. By this time the UVF
were formidable
and much
better
armed, as a result of gun-running.
40,000 rifles were made
available. |
|
(July).
More of an effort was made to prevent arms being smuggled in to the
Volunteers
than to the UVF, but in this month they imported some successfully.
Three
civilians were killed on the day the Volunteers received arms at Howth
near
Dublin. |
|
Around this time, an
‘Ulster
Provisional Government’ was formed.
Meanwhile the Director
of Military Operations at the War Office, Sir
Henry Wilson, opposed
Irish
nationalism and intrigued
to stop
the government using the army to
enforce Home
Rule. |
|
(Aug
4th) Outbreak
of World
War One
– most of the Irish
supported Britain. |
|
(Sept).
With the outbreak of war, Home Rule was postponed.
An Amending Bill was
to be
introduced for Ulster. Redmond
encouraged the Volunteers to join the
war effort
in the hope of being rewarded with Home Rule. The Volunteers split; the
extremists keeping the name ‘Irish Volunteers’
while the majority, 167,000,
became the ‘Nationalist Volunteers’. Many
nationalists offered to serve in the war to prove their
fitness
and conciliate the unionists. However, they weren’t allowed
their own
divisions, while the Unionists
were. |
|
There
were plans, with American support, to get Irish POWs from Germany and
transport
German arms to Ireland. In October,
Roger
Casement sailed
for Germany via the United States in order to recruit the
Germans as allies. However, military recruitment and prosperity
had
strengthened Irish ties to Britain. Despite popular contempt, a small
minority
of activists continued to plot revolt. This was the Irish Republican
Brotherhood. Birrell’s
Irish administration used ridicule
rather than coercion
to undermine the conspiracy. Dublin Castle acted as a caretaker
administration
pending Home Rule. Birrell’s relations with the Unionists
were less good. |
|
The
Irish Trades Union Congress nominally converted into a Labour Party.
Unity was
difficult when Catholics and Protestants formed conflicting
affiliations. Many
trades unionists were also attached to British-based bodies. Most
workers gave
allegiance to nationalist or unionist bodies. Militant
labour’s significance
was grossly inflated by Connolly’s
involvement in 1916. |
|
By this year, the Home Rule party was huge. It was respected by the church and the Liberals. |
Click here for web links about the Easter Rising
1915 | Death
of Jeremiah
O’Donovan Rossa. His body was returned to Ireland
by neo-Fenians and
given a great funeral
to awaken public memories of the Fenians. Pearse
said
of
him, ‘they
have left us our Fenian dead’. Few would
have viewed this as
anything more than a celebration of a historic patriot; even the
rank-and-file
Volunteers didn’t know what was planned. |
The
founder
of the Gaelic
League Douglas
Hyde was forced out by Fenians. Fenians
also
controlled the GAA. |
|
1916 | Before
this year, the Irish made up 3.7% of total recruitment in the UK, a low
number
because of the high agricultural population. Conscription was never
introduced
in Ireland. Protestants were overrepresented amongst volunteers,
because of the
recruitment of unemployed Ulster workers. At home, unemployment
fell; but
while
farmers profited, the proletariat had to endure inflation. |
(March
17th). The minority Volunteers
and the Irish
Citizen Army paraded
around Dublin. |
|
The
plan for the Rising
was to take over strong-points in Dublin centre in
order to
command the site of army barracks and approach routes into the city.
Arms were
being shipped from Germany,
accompanied by Sir
Roger Casement, former British
Consulate figure and Irish
Nationalist. He was immediately arrested (April 21st). |
|
Eoin
MacNeill, head of the Irish Volunteers
and co-founder of the Gaelic
League, was
not in favour of armed action except in defence and had not been told
until the
last moment about the rebellion.
He was appalled, but reluctantly
agreed at
first; when the arms ship was intercepted, he attempted to cancel the
rebellions with a newspaper notice. MacNeill
cancelled exercises of the
(nationalist) Irish Volunteers and rebellion seemed inconceivable.
However, the
rebels went ahead despite the certainty of defeat, believing bloodshed
was a
‘cleansing
and a sanctifying thing’. Connolly
and Pearse
hastily rescheduled,
but the number who turned out (1,000, later joined by 800) was lower
than it
would have been. The British had discovered that a rebellion was on the
cards,
and issued orders to disarm the Volunteers and Citizen Army and arrest
their
leaders. After MacNeill’s newspaper announcement, the
authorities postponed the
arrests until after Easter
Monday. But that morning, April
24th,
the rebels began to
gather at the rallying points. One group hijacked a tram. Youths
(the Fianna)
and a women’s organisation, Cumann
na Mban, were amongst
those who gathered at Liberty
Hall. Some of the boys were armed only with pikes. Some of
those
involved were taken by surprise; they had not expected to be taking
part in a
rebellion. |
|
The General
Post Office was chosen as the Rising’s
headquarters.
The public were
turned out, and Patrick Pearse proclaimed
the Republic. The first
casualties
were a party of Lancers, taken wholly by surprise; four were killed. Jacob’s
Biscuit Factory was also taken over, but a jeering crowd
heckled and
swore at
them; one got shot in the leg. The policeman guarding Dublin
Castle was shot
dead, but the Volunteers didn’t
press home the attack. A
group of elderly part
time soldiers were massacred as they marched back unarmed from the
mountains.
In central Dublin, there was mass
looting by civilians. |
|
The
2500 British troops in Dublin were not
prepared; many had gone to the
races.
Once they woke up to the threat, the few hundred left in barracks that
day were
sent to secure the Castle and reinforcements were called for. The
centre of
Dublin was cordoned off. A well-known
pacifist writer, Sheehy
Skeffington, was arrested
alongside two civilians and executed
by a
‘mad’
British
officer. This
day saw the heaviest fighting. Arriving British troops were showered
with gifts
of food and drinks from friendly Irish women. One column of the Sherwood
Foresters were shot
at by snipers from a house at Mount
Street Bridge. British
casualties there amounted to more than half the casualties of
the
entire
Rising. In Dublin, troops faced sniping and barricades. They killed
twelve
civilians in their houses. Some rebel garrisons saw little action; most
of the
rebels’ time was spent listening to rumours. There was
temporary elation when
they believed the Germans
had landed, and there were rumours of a
general
uprising, although very little happened outside Dublin. The British
were using
clumsy armoured
cars and slowly tightening the cordon round the rebels. Heavy
artillery fire pounded the city centre. By Friday evening the Post
Office was
uncontrollably on fire. The rebels
were forced to flee it. Pearse, Connolly
and Clarke
broke into houses to form new headquarters, while Michael
O’Rahilly –
who had originally opposed the Rising, but as a founder of the
Volunteers felt
obliged to join in – made a counter-charge and was killed.
Pearse
surrendered
because he was appalled by the slaughter of civilians. The garrisons
began
reluctantly to surrender. Eamon
de Valera, a little-known maths
teacher, had
been leading the garrison at Boland’s
Mill. Many prisoners
were taken to open
ground outside Rotunda
Hospital, where they were rudely treated by a
British
Captain, Lee Wilson, who was consequently
murdered by the IRA in 1920.
When the
prisoners were marched through the streets, they were abused
by
Dublin
citizens
and needed the protection of their escorts. The boy prisoners were
treated
leniently and sent home. In fact, only a small number were court-martialled;
the majority were interned in Britain. |
|
Casualties
included 318 civilians, 60 rebels and 130 British troops. 2217 people
were injured. The rebellion
had
lasted nearly a week. Despite popular contempt, people looked back on
the long
history of Irish rebellion and began to feel
some pride. |
|
Pearse,
Clarke and a poet, Thomas
MacDonagh, were executed. If these had been
the only
executions, matters might have been different, but they carried
on. The
Irish
Home Rule Party condemned both the Rising
and the executions. As the executions
continued, public sympathy turned towards the rebels, as some had
warned it
would. James
Connolly was the last
to die,
sitting in a chair because
he was
wounded. The newspapers and public called it the Sinn
Féin rebellion
because
nothing was known of the real organisers. Pearse had seen the rebellion
as an
almost Christ-like blood sacrifice; Easter was chosen for a reason. Tom
Clarke
said they had struck the first blow
for Ireland’s freedom. |
|
The
location of the buildings taken (parks, factories, public buildings and
the
GPO) served for maximum casualties and were difficult to defend.
Popular
response was fury and disgust. However, Asquith’s
government
overreacted;
there
was martial law, and 3500 people were arrested. This overreaction was a
result
of the war
– dissidents became traitors. Although it
didn’t last long, the
effect on public opinion was severe. Jailed republicans
discovered
common cause,
learnt Irish and played Gaelic games. A cult of veneration for the
rebels
developed. Asquith gave Lloyd
George the task of putting through an
amended Home
Rule settlement. Lloyd George almost managed to negotiate a
compromise
under which six Ulster counties would be excluded until the end of the
war. The
nationalists and unionists accepted this, but it was sabotaged by
southern
unionist magnates. The Irish Party were execrated for acquiescing in
‘partition’. The rebels themselves wanted more
bloodshed to bring on more
repression and inflame popular spirit. Eamon
de Valera encouraged mass
political participation in republicanism and argued against another
rising. |
|
Michael
Collins, born
in 1890,
had been working
for the Post Office in London.
As a member
of the IRB
he returned to Ireland to
participate in the Rising. Afterwards he was interned
at Frongoch
in
Wales. There, he set up an
IRB network and organised classes, some in guerrilla warfare. He
obtained
information about friendly members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and
made
contacts from all over Ireland. A skeleton network of Volunteers had
survived
under bogus branches of the Gaelic League,
and when the British
released the
internees at Christmas as a gesture of goodwill, they were able to take
over
this network. Their first task was to work on public opinion. There was
already
growing sympathy after the executions and the failure of the government
to
implement Home Rule without excluding Ulster. |
|
1917 – 1919 | The
rebels’ plan was to get popular support for republicanism in
order to win
American backing for Irish representation at the peace conference.
Electoral
contests were to be used to demonstrate republican popularity, although
candidates would ‘abstain’ from taking up their
seats. They had most success
in
the south. |
1917 | The Parliamentary
Party under John
Redmond and John Dillon
was still
dominant. Collins
formed a group with the non-violent
pre-war Sinn
Féin of Arthur
Griffith and put up the father
of Rising martyr Joseph
Plunkett in a
by-election, to a resounding victory. Then, using his effective
campaigning
machine, he scored another victory. Public mood was changing; when the
final
political prisoners were released in July, they were greeted as heroes.
Eamon
de Valera was one of these, and Collin’s
organisation, helped
by new support
from the church, got him elected. De Valera became the leader of the
new Sinn Féin. They demanded a Republic, but how
they would go about
this was
not clear.
There was talk of appealing to the International Peace Conference or
the
Americans. |
(Sept). A Volunteer
died
through force-feeding
while
on hungerstrike.
Collins
organised a grandiose military funeral. |
|
(Oct).
Until this month there was no unified nationalist party. Sinn
Féin
claimed
100,000 members. The republican elite regrouped itself into the IRB,
Irish
volunteers and the Cumann
na mBan for women. Michael Collins, a London
clerk,
came to lead the IRB.
The Volunteers exuded menace, claiming political
status
in prisons, ‘protecting’ republican politicians and
drilling in public. |
|
Many
constitutional nationalists remained loyal to Redmond because they
feared
violence and were put off by the imprecision of Sinn
Féin’s policy.
Redmond’s
son beat
a Sinn Féin candidate in a by-election in which he wore the
British
army uniform. |
|
When
the British government began to consider conscription,
the nationalists resisted
with vast meetings and an anti-conscription
pledge. Plans for
a draft
were dropped. |
|
The Sinn
Féin leaders were arrested
after the British believed they were
plotting
with the Germans; Collins,
who had caught advanced wind of this,
avoided arrest
and consequently had more power over the movement. |
|
1918 | (18th
April). The various republican parties met and won the
support of the Catholic
church in opposing conscription. Peaceful protest followed,
although
there were
plans for ‘ruthless warfare’. However, the draft
was avoided, and consequently
support for the republican parties grew. The case for direct military
action
weakened. |
By
now, the election register had trebled
since 1910. The Parliamentary
Party was struggling
and losing members to Sinn
Féin. Meanwhile, their core
voters –
Irish soldiers in the British army - never received ballot papers. Sinn
Féin
were aided both by the vagueness of their agenda and by vote-rigging.
They also
denounced violence during the election. Consequently, they won
the 1918 election
overwhelmingly,
gaining nearly three quarters of seats or 48% of the
vote. Unionists obtained 29% and constitutionalists 23%. Many
elected
were still in jail. The rest met as the Dáil
Eireann, the Irish
Parliament, and
declared a Republic. The British let them, calling their bluff. The
nationalists’ hopes rested with America; but in fact Woodrow
Wilson had no
desire to quarrel with Lloyd
George. |
|
The
unionist-dominated post-war coalition did not follow up Asquith’s
promise of Home
Rule. |
|
1918-20 | Class conflict became a problem. Low unemployment was a boost for collective action, and there were strikes everywhere. |
Click here for web links about the War of Independence
1919 | (Jan).
Young Volunteers Dan
Breen and Sean
Treacy murdered
two police men without
orders from anyone at Tipperary.
Soon afterwards, Collins
announced
to Sinn Féin that fighting
and disorder were required. He was efficient and
single-minded
in pursuing this. He selected fourteen Irish police to be murdered. The
British
reacted by bringing in strict military regimes. |
Collins
led a double life, as Minister of Finance in the Dail,
but also a
coordinator
of the Volunteers, soon renamed the IRA.
Collins was both charming and
enthusiastic, and ruthless
– he never gave anyone a second
chance. Despite
being ‘on the run’ from late 1919, he appeared on
his bike in Dublin and once
had himself smuggled into a police station to get details on detectives
involved in political work. These detectives were warned to change job
and
murdered if they did not. |
|
Chances
of a hearing at the peace conference dissipated, so republican policy
shifted towards mobilising the Irish abroad to support them. De Valera
went to New
York as ‘president of the Irish Republic’
to
get American
support, but
although welcomed by the people he failed to get official recognition
of an
Irish Republic. |
|
Irish
Protestants split over Partition. Southern unionists tried to
conciliate the
Catholic majority. An Irish Unionist Anti-Partition
League was set up.
Meanwhile the Ulster Unionist party fought for Protestant
Ulster’s right to
self-determination. |
|
This
year saw 18 deaths. Most activity was arson, intimidation and
so
on.
Increasingly brutal repression forced armed Volunteers to band together
for
protection. |
|
1920 | 7000
English came over, dressed
in khaki because
of a lack of uniforms, giving them the nickname ‘Black
and
Tans’. Soon after,
the RIC was also to incorporate the Auxiliaries, English former
officers known
for their courage and aggressiveness.
Crown
reprisals against rebels included beatings, murders, the wreckage of
towns and
mass damage of property. Reprisals were always more vicious
than the
incident
provoking them. Popular outrage was increased by the suspicion of
government
involvement. In Ulster,
the Catholics were menaced by the Protestant
‘B
Specials’. |
(Feb).
The British government put forward a Home Rule bill for two parliaments
in
Belfast and Dublin, but this was too late. The bill became the Government
of
Ireland Act 1920, but the British ‘Southern
Parliament’ was shunned in favour
of the all-Ireland Dail. The Ulster Unionist Council accepted
the bill,
while
the new Castle administration continued to contemplate dominion Home
Rule for
all of Ireland. Southern Ireland was to become a Crown colony if its
parliament
was not functioning by July 1921. Killings and outrages ceased. The
Volunteers
reorganised themselves into the IRA. Lloyd George met de Valera and
offered
Ireland dominion status, not Home Rule, while de Valera offered to be
externally associated with the Commonwealth. |
|
(15th
March). The Mayor
of Cork was murdered
by a gang of disguised
police from the RIC,
actually Black
and Tans. |
|
(June).
The UVF
was revived, concentrated in the six counties in the north.
There were riots
in Derry. Over the next two years, 400 people were to die in
sectarian
conflicts in the North, twice as many Catholics as Protestants. The B
Specials
were often responsible, with the IRA unable to confront them
effectively. |
|
Later
in the year, guerrilla warfare reigned between the Tans
and Auxies and
the IRA. Collins
had calculated that the toughness of the Tans and Auxiliaries
would
drive the Irish people towards the idea of a Republic. The IRA were
also
brutal, but if forced to choose a side the Irish would choose them. The
IRA
murdered police and civilian informers, dug holes in roads, destroyed
bridges
and messed up communications. When caught by the Tans, they were
brutally
interrogated. Reprisals
were harsh. The police promised to shot two Sinn
Féiners for every man on their side shot. They burnt houses
and
creameries to
punish civilians. The Irish people began to see this as a war between England
and Ireland. The army were still respected but the Tans were not. |
|
(August).
The Restoration
of Order in Ireland Act brought massive internment. In
response,
the Volunteers carried out ambushes in Munster. Many organisers were
demoralised by this descent into violence. |
|
In
Dublin, suspects were rounded up, areas were cordoned off and gun
battles
raged. Sean Tracey, one of the original police-killers, was killed. Terence
MacSwiney, Mayor
of Cork, died
on hunger
strike. His funeral attracted
international attention. An 18-year-old IRA man, Kevin
Barry, was
hanged
despite massive protests that he was a prisoner of
war. 24 IRA men were executed
in total. |
|
(21st
Nov). Bloody
Sunday. Collins had 14 undercover
British
intelligence officers murdered
in one
day. That
afternoon during a Dublin-Tipperary football
match at Croke Park, British
forces shot
into the grounds, killing 12 people. Further, two senior
IRA men
and an innocent Sinn Féin supporter were killed at Dublin
Castle. Their
funeral
was a mass political demonstration which Collins attended despite being
the
most wanted man in Ireland. |
|
(Dec).
Largest reprisal by Crown Forces – the burning
of Cork
centre after an ambush
led by Tom Barry, which claimed seventeen Auxiliary
casualties. It was extreme enough to cause
embarrassment
and disgust in England. Pressure mounted for a settlement. |
|
By
now, 11 million acres had changed hands under the Land
Purchase Acts. |
|
Civilian
unemployment exceeded its pre-war proportions, wages fell and trade
unionism
declined, and ‘soviets’
were set up. Workers unions
were still divided along
Catholic and Protestant lines. In this year, Catholic workers were
violently
expelled from shipyards and factories. |
|
Meanwhile
local government, the police and courts were breaking down, and local
republican organisers set up their own parallel organisations. Lloyd
George
later said that the Irish Republican Organisation had all the realities
of
government. |
|
This
year (1920) saw 282 deaths plus another 82 in Ulster. |
|
1921 | (May)
The IRA burned
the Dublin Custom
House, the key centre of British
administration.
120 IRA men were arrested; it was their biggest disaster.
After this,
the IRA were
still well-organised in the countryside but they were low on ammunition
and had
lost their Dublin wing. |
(May). Elections
in Northern Ireland. Transfer
of powers initiated. Sinn Féin
won big
in the southern elections. |
|
(9th
July). De Valera and other Sinn Féin and IRA
men met
British representatives
and two days later a truce
was signed. De Valera, who was determined to
get a
Republic (possibly with ‘external
association’ with
the British Empire) and the
less dogmatic Arthur
Griffith went to London. |
|
(6th
Dec). Anglo-Irish
Treaty between Lloyd
George and Michael Collins
(Griffith also present). It
divided
Ireland into the Free State and the remaining six counties,
‘Northern Ireland’.
Northern Ireland had its own devolved Parliament but its sovereign was
the British
government
at Westminster. The Free State had dominion status within the
Commonwealth –
they’d have their own army and navy but had to swear loyalty
to
the King. This
wasn’t a neat solution – the most northern part of
Ireland, Malin
Head, was in
the South. Collins said he’d signed his death
warrant.
However,
the delegates
had represented ‘Ireland’, not Ireland excluding
Ulster.
The Treaty technically
gave the Irish Free State power over
the
whole of Ireland, although
this was suspended a month later. Northern
Ireland opted out of the
Irish Free State. The
Treaty stipulated that a Boundary
Commission would set up a border
between
north and south in tune with the wishes of their inhabitants. Collins
believed
this would put Tyrone and Fermanagh in the Free State, and the
remaining four
counties would not be viable. At the time, the oath
to the King seemed
more
important. Collins argued that it was a mere symbol that could later be
abolished. |
|
Northern
Ireland, which already had a functioning parliament and rapidly
evolving state,
repudiated the agreement. The south asserted their ‘supreme
authority’ over
Northern Ireland, and most southerners were confident that Northern
Ireland could not survive
alone. Collins
supplied arms to Catholics and sought to destabilise the
North. |
|
Most
people were relieved that the last two and a half years of violence had
ended. However,
the IRA split over it. Collins promoted his own stance through the IRB,
which
he still controlled. De Valera meanwhile opposed the Treaty. He had
remained in
Dublin, preparing to use his political skills to deal with the backlash
to the Treaty;
but the Treaty was signed
without his permission. He therefore
dissociated himself from it. The Dail ratified the Treaty by a small
majority. |
|
This year saw 1086 deaths. Nearly half the victims were soldiers and policemen. |
![]() |
1922-24 | During the period of the Civil
War,
twelve thousand opponents of the Treaty were to be interned. Civil
liberties were restricted more in the Free State than in the North at
this time. |
1922 | At
the beginning of this year Ireland was under the control of the Provisional
Government, which shared its authority with the Second
Dáil. They had no worthwhile army, police
or courts.
Some
local military leaders in Cork, Tipperary and Dublin wanted to continue
the
struggle. The IRB
was too fragmented for the state to use it. |
(April).
The anti-Treaty
IRA occupied the Four
Courts. Rory
O’Connor and Liam Mellows,
both
Republican leaders, were involved, and also paramilitaries like Liam
Lynch, Tom
Barry and Ernie
O’Malley. |
|
James
Craig, Prime Minister of Northern
Ireland, saw the Boundary
Commission as a threat
and
refused to recognise it. He was an Orangeman first and a politician
second, once describing Northern Ireland as ‘a
Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State’. Northern Protestants, afraid that
the Boundary
Commission would undermine them, rioted and many Catholics were killed.
In the
first six months there were 264 dead, two thirds of them Catholics.
Catholic refugees
fled south. The A
& B Specials, paramilitary police, asserted the law
in often
illegal ways.
The newly
organised RUC
with its ‘B Special’
reserves marched under the Union
Jack wearing war medals and were referred to as
‘Ulster’s Guardians of Peace’.
The enemy was clear; the IRA, who were fighting against the Treaty in
the South
and also causing trouble in the North. After the riots, the IRA had
become a
permanent menace. A Civil Authorities (Special Powers)
Act was passed
which
could punish possessing a firearm with death. It
provided the basis for coercion until 1972. |
|
The
Catholic minority refused
to co-operate with the new state. Catholic school managers
refused state grants
and nationalist politicians would not take seats in Parliament. There
was
always the sense that Catholic Nationalists wanted to abolish the state. |
|
The
government in the North came to rely on Protestant fraternities like
the Orange
Order. Meanwhile the Catholics were not entering the new
state
institutions,
like the RUC.
What with both northern nationalists and republicans
boycotting
parliament, it was simple for unionists to gerrymander
constituencies
and abolish
proportional representation. PR had been introduced
as part of the Government
of Ireland Act. The Act had also forbidden
religious
discrimination and given power to Westminster over Stormont, but these
things
were not observed. Over the next 50
years, the British were to be indifferent to
Northern
Ireland and
allowed it to continue as it wanted. |
|
(June).
Although de
Valera and Collins
had attempted to stop voters overwhelmingly
supporting
the Treaty,
Collins
allied himself with Churchill
and advised people to
vote
against anti-Treaty Sinn Féiners. Consequently support for
the new
constitution
increased, while republicans abstained from the provisional
parliament.
The
June General
Election gave a pro-Treaty majority. Many
Irishmen who had been in the British army
now joined the Free
State army, making the anti-Treaty side view the
whole affair as continued British rule. Collins
himself was miserable. (22nd June). The security advisor of Northern Ireland, Sir Henry Wilson, was murdered by IRA members Joe O'Sullivan and Reggie Dunne. Collins had ordered the killers to do the deed before the truce, and he now campaigned to save them from the death sentence. The British government assumed that the order to murder Wilson had come from the Four Courts, and they demanded that Collins take action or lose the Treaty. |
|
After
a few days, Collins, provoked by the kidnapping of one of his own
generals, J.J. O'Connell, shelled
the Four Courts. Churchill
had provided him with arms and
helped
recapture the Four Courts from the dissident army council. Other
anti-Treaty
republicans took over other buildings on the street, and the Irish
Civil War
began. The fighting
lasted eight days on O’Connell
Street, but
elsewhere,
particularly in the south and west, the anti-Treaty IRA were strong.
They held Cork.
Aided by the British both in guns and soldiers, Collins pressed
into
action against his former comrades. The anti-Treaty IRA could
no longer
rely on
popular support. |
|
(Aug).
Cork was retaken. A week later, Arthur
Griffith died of a heart attack.
After
attending his funeral, Collins
went to Cork to tour the newly won
positions. |
|
(Aug
22nd). Death
of Michael
Collins in an ambush.
Some nationalists who had
supported him fervently the year before now rejoiced at his death. |
|
Republicans
began to resort to ‘irregular’
methods such as bank
robberies, destroying
bridges and individual killings. |
|
Free
State leadership passed to William
Cosgrave, a veteran of 1916. His
cabinet
were all committed nationalists. An Emergency Powers Bill was
introduced which
would allow the shooting of any republicans taken in arms. 27 people
were
executed during the next 7 months. |
|
(24th
Nov). Republican Erskine
Childers was shot
for possessing a small
revolver Collins had given him. The anti-Treaty Republican Command
decreed that any
Dail member who had voted for the Emergency Powers Bill could be
shot on sight.
Four of their leaders were then shot without trial. |
|
Seventy-seven untried prisoners
were executed. |
|
1923 | (Jan).
Thirty-four more Republicans were executed.
The bodies of those executed were
not admitted to
any churches, and wakes had to take place in theatres. |
(24th
May). De
Valera, who had assumed more significance now the military
wing had
collapsed, told the IRA (the 'Legion
of the Rearguard') to dump arms. By
this time 800 troops and
thousands of ‘irregulars’ and civilians had been
killed. Irish nationalists
were bitterly split. There were 13,000 Republicans in jail,
many on hunger
strike. De
Valera refused to take the oath which would have allowed his
party
to sit in the Dail, leaving the Free State able to concentrate on
consolidating
its position. The issue of partition subsided. |
|
In
an election
at this time, 30% of the vote went to the Republicans, but
they
would not take their seats in the Dail. De Valera was imprisoned
for a year, continuing afterwards to
campaign for a Republic. |
|
Sectarian
conflict had been avoided because Protestants were less than 10% of the
population; the Cumann
na nGaedheal administration came to rely on
Protestant
support and the constitution
avoided mentioning the Catholic church.
The
‘Seanad
Éireann’ chamber was designed to
represent minority interests.
Protestant bankers and businessmen helped to guide the economy. |
|
1924 | The
British attempted to set up the Boundary
Commission, despite the
resistance of Northern Irish
PM James
Craig. They had to appoint their own Ulster representative. Eoin
MacNeill
of the Gaelic League represented the Free State. Due to his lack of
fierce
campaigning, a simple border was set; some parts of NI that would
rather have
joined the South, including large areas of Tyrone and Fermanagh, were
retained
by the North, while some southern areas that would have wished to join
the
North like Easter Donegal and North Monaghan were kept within the Free
State. MacNeill
resigned. |
1925 | (Dec).
The Free State accepted
the new border arrangement.
Consequently, the Ulster
Protestant attitude hardened further. They had seen the Free State
consumed by
violence. Free State Minister for Home Affairs Kevin
O’Higgins called the Civil
War ‘worse
indignities than the British had practised on us
since Cromwell’.
The goals of the IRA campaign 1920-21 were a united and independent
Ireland,
but neither was achieved. With the Irish people accepting the new
order, the
IRA was irrelevant, ‘sad and bitter’ until 1969.
They were reduced to
destroying symbols of British Imperialism and disrupting armistice day
crowds.
They later demolished a statue
of William III on College Green. |
Nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland consented to take seats in Parliament. |
1926 | De
Valera founded Fianna
Fáil
(‘warriors
of Ireland’)
from the ashes of Sinn Féin.
The Republicans had split into violent and non-violent factions. De
Valera
believed their purposes could be achieved through democracy. |
The
old Civil War Republican Executive (the IRA)
attacked twelve police
barracks, killing
two Civic Guards. Some IRA leaders were trying to give the movement a
new,
socialist political
outlook, but its members were too focused on the
mythical
goal of the Republic. One group, when ordered to support a bus strike,
blew up
a bus. Some IRA fought
in Spain on the Republican side to try and
reassert
their contemporary relevance. |
|
1927 | Fianna
Fáil won
almost as many seats
as Cosgrave’s
party but refused
to sit in the Dáil; this lost them votes. De
Valera went to the Dáil but refused to
take the
oath; rejected, he went out and gave a speech to the crowd. |
(10th
July). Kevin
O’Higgins murdered
by the IRA. The
government introduced a severe Public
Safety Act and Electoral
Amendment Bill which would force all
elected
candidates to take the oath. This time de
Valera complied, although he
removed
the Bible from the table first. At last there were two parties in the Dáil. |
|
The
Cosgrave government, Cumann
na Gaedheal, was becoming unpopular as it
had been
so long in power. Fianna Fáil began to seem more accepting
of the IRA.
Its
members made positive comments about the Republic, describing
themselves as
‘slightly constitutional, but before anything
Republican’. The Cosgrave
government viewed the IRA as heinous and set up a military tribunal
to
deal
with it. It accused Fianna Fáil of being anti-Catholic
revolutionaries. |
|
1932 | Fianna Fáil electoral
victory. By this time, Fianna Fáil and the IRA were
almost in
tandem. The IRA’s intimidatory
tactics and vote-rigging
helped Fianna Fáil in
their narrow victory. When
first
elected, Fianna Fáil were nervous that Cosgrave’s
party might
remove them by
force. The Commander of the Free State troops was approached to see
whether he
would accept Fianna Fáil. He said he would. Fianna
Fáil were the men
who in
1922 had ‘assumed the right to determine for themselves the
will of the people,
regardless of what the people had decided’. Now they set
about altering the
constitution. The oath
was removed; the role of Governor-General
made
meaningless; and the Land Annuities (payments to the British Exchequer
under
the Land
Purchase Act) were suspended, resulting in an economic
war
with the
British government. The Republic was brought into being with the
exception of
the inclusion of Northern Ireland. |
The
ban on the IRA was lifted,
and IRA
prisoners who had committed crimes under the orders of the IRA
executive were released,
while those who had acted independently were not. Speeches given on the
release
of these prisoners made it clear how close
Fianna Fáil and the IRA
were. |
|
A
new
Parliament was built at Stormont.
Until it was suspended in 1972,
it was
dominated by Protestant Unionists at four to one over the Catholic
Nationalists. |
|
Any
economic and social
problems were less important to the Protestants
than their
security. There were riots
in 1932, but generally despite high
unemployment
state security came before all else. The state tended to appease its
Protestant
majority by favouring them in jobs and housing. |
|
1933 | Another election,
in which IRA intimidation was less necessary. Fianna Fáil won
a
comfortable majority, remaining in power for 16 years. |
De
Valera said he wanted Ireland
to be self-supporting
and its language
and culture
to be Gaelic. In practice, he was conservative
in social and
economic
outlook and paid little attention to addressing social problems.
Emigration
continued. Strict literary censorship was in place banning the best
modern
writers and some classics. It wasn’t the kind of State the
Northern Protestants
would want to join. In the North, Basil Brooke, who would later become Prime Minister, boasted of not employing Catholics and said Catholics were out to destroy Ulster. |
|
1934 | Members
of the IRA who had fought in the Civil
War were awarded military
pensions,
persuading many republicans of the validity of Fianna Fáil.
A special
auxiliary
group for the police, the Broy
Harriers, recruited from the IRA. The IRA
began
to recruit openly. They were publicly bearing arms parading and
drilling. Eoin
O’Duffy, Commissioner of the Civic Guard under Cosgrave,
had
formed the
‘National
Guard’ to counteract the IRA and its
‘communistic’ elements. O’Duffy
emulated Mussolini
to some extent and his organisation
were known as
the ‘Blueshirts’.
The movement petered out, with some members going to fight for France. |
1935 | Riots
in Belfast
of a more sectarian character. De
Valera’s victory
in the south had
made the Protestants aware of their anxieties. |
Real
government in Northern Ireland was carried out by local authorities
rather than
Stormont.
This was a disadvantaged
society; income per head was less than 60%
what it was
in Britain. Housing was inadequate. |
|
1936 | (June). De
Valera had asked the IRA to hand in their arms, but they
refused.
After
three vicious IRA killings
of civilians
which shocked the public, De
Valera
made the IRA illegal. |
1937 | Constitution
of Eire. This
recognised
the Catholic Church as the main
church/majority
religion, although it wasn’t
‘established’. This was a compromise after great
pressure from the Catholic church; de
Valera was deeply opposed to
establishing
the church. Irish nationalism, despite the creed
laid out by Wolfe
Tone, is in
practice tied in with Catholicism. The state was named
‘Eire’
and claimed
sovereignty over the whole island.
The
only reason Eire was not referred to as a Republic in the constitution
was
because this would have made the Northern Ireland problem harder to
resolve. The
British
Crown was now only a ‘symbol
of co-operation’
between Britain, Ireland, Canada,
New Zealand etc. The British government accepted this. |
1938 | Britain
gave up rights to Treaty
ports and ended the ‘economic
war’. The loss of these
ports made south-west Britain
more vulnerable
during the Second World
War and
seriously affected the Battle
of the Atlantic. |
In Northern
Ireland, 87% of rural houses had no running water. 45% of
deaths in
the 15 – 25 age range were down to TB.
There was discrimination
against
Catholics, although the Unionist politicians denied it. Londonderry
was
the
worst. Its population was 60% Catholic/Nationalist, but the Corporation
of
Londonderry was only 40% Catholic/Nationalist. This effect was got by
‘gerrymandering’
– concentrating large
numbers of people with majority views in
overlarge electoral districts and their opponents in smaller ones,
allowing the
minority to win more seats. So 87% of Catholics were in one ward
returning eight
seats while the Protestants were in two wards with twelve seats, giving
them the
majority. Also in local elections, only resident occupiers –
owners and tenants
of a house – were allowed to vote. This meant that some had
no vote while others
had up to six, depending on the value of their property. On average,
Protestants had more votes per head. The Protestant mayor of
Londonderry had
power over allocating houses, and he treated Protestants
preferentially. Jobs
were also allocated unfairly. |
|
1939 | There was still some sentimental ambivalence felt by some Fianna Fáil members to the IRA; but after the IRA raided the State’s main ammunition store in Phoenix Park, the government’s attitude hardened and proved as ‘coercionist’ as Cosgrave and the British. The IRA continued their campaign of violence; four were executed in Dublin. These were hard times for the IRA. The radical leftists had abandoned them because of their lack of social policies; the militants split between those who wanted to attack the North and those who wanted to attack the English. |
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1939 | (September 3rd). Britain
declared war on Nazi Germany. The Republic
of Ireland, remaining
neutral, declared an Emergency. During this year, an IRA bombing campaign hit Britain. Bombs were put in letter boxes and public lavatories, and one in a Coventry street on the 25th of August killed five people. The campaign was organised by Sean Russell. Russell arranged a collaboration with Germany but it was to no advantage for either side. He was to die on a German submarine. |
1940 | (May)
The Germans dropped an agent, Hermann
Goertz, into
Ireland. The IRA failed
to offer him effective support, and he was arrested.
During the
war, the IRA’s
Chief of Staff had to take protection from De
Valera’s Civic Guard against
his own organisation. Meanwhile, Northern Ireland was an important ally to Britain, providing a base for protection of Atlantic convoys. Belfast and Derry both suffered from German bombing, incurring 900 casualties.
|
1945 | De
Valera visited the German Ambassador in Dublin to offer
condolences on
Hitler’s
death. |
After
the war, Churchill and de Valera exchanged hostile radio
broadcasts in
which
Churchill criticised de Valera for ‘frolicking with the
German and later with
the Japanese representatives’. Churchill said it was tempting
and would have
been easy to have invaded Ireland. De Valera’s response was
restrained, accusing
Britain of turning its necessity into a moral code. |
|
1947 | Ireland
became one of many
countries to benefit from the Marshall
Plan. |
1948 | Fine
Gael under John
Costello, the inheritors of Cosgrave’s
party,
and Clann
na
Poblachta, Sean
MacBride’s radical
republican party,
took
power. Ireland was declared
a Republic, all
Ireland in theory. No widespread social
changes like
those in Britain were introduced, however; Noel
Browne’s Mother
and Child
scheme was dropped after pressure from the Church. |
1949 | The Republic of Ireland became official. Britain accepted it but guaranteed support for Northern Ireland until the Northern Irish parliament decided differently. |
![]() |
1950 |
(May 12th). Nationalists in the North of Ireland asked the government of the Republic to give Northern–elected representatives seats in the Dáil and Seanad. |
(Aug 11th). In a |
|
1951 |
(April 11th) Dr Noel Browne, Minister for Health, resigned and his Mother and Child scheme was overturned. |
(April 19th) Northern
Irish Attorney General
John Edward Warnock, referring to Noel Browne, said that “ |
|
(May 24th) Gardaí
exchanged shots with two men who had
thrown a bomb at the British embassy in |
|
(June 13th) Eamon
de Valera became
Taoiseach with one of the
smallest majorities on record: 74 – 69. |
|
(July 18th) The Abbey
Theatre in |
|
1952 |
(Jan 10th) An Aer
Lingus aircraft crashed
in |
(April 30th) The Adoption Bill made provision for the adoption of orphans and children aged between six months and seven years born outside wedlock. |
|
(May 30th) Minister for Education Seán Moylan announced longer summer holidays for national school children. |
|
(Sept
– Dec) Taoiseach De
Valera spent three months in an eye
clinic in |
|
1953 |
(Jan 18th) Sinn
Féin decided to
contest all twelve constituencies in the next (Jan 31st). The Princess Victoria ferry sank on its journey from Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland, with the loss of 133 lives. |
(March 15th) 10,000 civil
servants marched down |
|
(March 16th) Franklin
Delano |
|
(June 3rd) 500
unemployed men marched on |
|
(July 6th) 1,000 unemployed people stayed a 15-minute sit-down protest on O’Connell Bridge. |
|
(Aug 29th) Kilmainham
Gaol became a national monument. |
|
(Oct 28th) Three of Dáil Éireann’s Independent TDs became members of Fianna Fáil. |
|
(Dec 18th) The Censorship
Board banned
almost 100
publications for being indecent or obscene. |
|
1954 |
(Jan 11th) The Irish
Council of the European
Movement was formed in |
(April 20th) Michael Manning, aged 25, was executed at Mountjoy Prison, becoming the last person to be judicially executed by the state. |
|
(May 16th) 30,000
marched through |
|
(May 18th) Fianna Fáil lost four seats in the general election, and the second inter-party government under John A. Costello came into power. |
|
(July 5th) The
Dublin Corporation decided that Nelson’s
Pillar on |
|
(Sept 5th) 27
people died when KLM
Flight
633 crashed
two minutes after leaving |
|
1955 |
(Jan 6th) 1200
people met in |
(Dec 12th) |
|
(Dec 14th) |
|
1956 - 62 | The IRA
carried out its Border
Campaign. Nineteen
people
died, but Britain remained indifferent. Internment
was introduced
in
both the North and the Republic of Ireland. The campaign
ended on 26th
February 1962 due to a lack of support. |
1956 |
(Feb 15th) Senator Owen Sheehy-Skeffington introduced a motion calling for the prohibition of all corporal punishment for girls in Irish national schools. |
(May 1st) The
Minister for Education Richard
Mulcahy
introduced the debate on a separate government department for the Gaeltacht. |
|
(May 21st) First Cork International Film Festival opened by President Seán T O’Kelly. |
|
(Nov 30th) Petrol rationing to be introduced from January 1st due to the Suez Crisis. |
|
1957 |
(Jan 1st) Seán
South and Fergal O'Hanlon were
killed in an IRA assault on an
RUC barracks in Brookeborough, The
government announced that the
new |
(March 3rd) Eamon de Valera told a crowd in Cork that a United Ireland can be achieved with time and popular support. |
|
(March 7th) Fianna Fáil returned
to power winning 78 seats in the Sixteenth
Dáil. |
|
(March 11th) Prize Bonds were introduced, with the Bank of Ireland operating the scheme on behalf of the Minister of Finance. |
|
(July 4th) The Dáil debated the Fethard-on-Sea Ne Temere boycott. |
|
(July 22nd) The |
|
(Aug 7th) A
20-foot high war memorial, commemorating |
|
(Oct 2nd) The Minister for Health, Seán MacEntee, launched the Voluntary Health Insurance Board. |
|
(Oct 10th) A fire
occurred
at the Windscale
Nuclear Power station in |
|
1958 |
(March 18th) Eamon de Valera said he would be willing to talk
with the government of |
|
|
(May 22nd) Minister for Education Jack Lynch told the Dáil that the ruling requiring women teachers to retire on marriage would be revoked. |
|
(July 28th) The |
|
(Sept 8th) Pan Am's Boeing 707 became the first Trans-Atlantic jetliner to land in Ireland at Shannon Airport. | |
(Oct 29th) The
government announced that proportional
representation would be put to referendum. |
|
(Nov 4th) De Valera attended the coronation of Pope John XXIII. |
|
(Nov 12th) The Censorship of Publications Board banned Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy. |
|
1959 |
(Jan 7th) Dáil Éireann debated whether De Valera could carry out the roles of controlling director of the Irish Press and Taoiseach simultaneously. |
(Jan 23rd) A Pay-As-You-Earn system of income tax was considered. |
|
(Feb 10th) Unions voted to end the fifteen year split in the Irish trade union. The TUC and CIU merged to form the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. |
|
(April 8th) James Dillon of Fine Gael announced that compulsory Irish should be abolished as it was counter-productive. |
|
(June 25th) De
Valera was inaugurated
at |
|
(July 9th) The first twelve female recruits were selected to join An Garda Síochána. They passed out of the training depot on December 4th. |
|
(July 29th) The
new Department of
Transport and Power was established. |
|
(Sept 22nd) The Irish Congress of Trade Unions held its
inaugural congress,
attacking the government of |
|
1960 |
(Jan 13th) The
Broadcasting
Authority Bill proposed to
establish an authority to provide the new national television service.
The Television
Bill passed its last stage on February
17th. |
(Feb 16th) The
Irish candidate Frederick Henry Boland
received the support
of the |
|
(May 27th) The last
barge on the |
|
(Nov 8th) Nine
Irish soldiers serving
with
the United Nations were killed in the |
|
1961 |
(Jan 6th) Lieutenant-General
Seán
Mac Eoin left |
(June 10th) Eamon
de Valera and his wife greeted
Prince
Rainier and Princess Grace at Áras an Uachtaráin. |
|
(Dec 20th) The last
legal
execution in |
|
(Dec 31st) Teilifís
Éireann went on air as
President de Valera inaugurated the new service. Its first
broadcast was a New
Year countdown with celebrations at the Gresham Hotel and |
|
1962 |
(March 17th) De
Valera and his wife had a
private audience with Pope John XIII in |
(May 8th) Irish
troops left for a peace-keeping
mission in the |
|
(July 6th) First
airing of the Late
Late Show, compered by Gay
Byrne. |
|
(July 13th) U Thant,
Secretary General of the United
Nations, arrived in |
|
(Aug 21st) Former
US President Dwight D.
Eisenhower arrived in |
|
1963 |
(Jan 24th) Minister for Justice Charles Haughey announced that the government proposed to abolish the death penalty. |
(May 20th) Minister
for Education Dr
Patrick Hillery
announced plans
for comprehensive
schools and regional technical colleges. |
|
(June 27th) US
President John
F. Kennedy visited
his ancestral
home at New
Ross, |
|
(Oct 16th) Taoiseach Seán Lemass was greeted at the White House by John F Kennedy. |
|
(Nov 22nd) President
de Valera addressed the
nation on the death
of U.S. President John
F. Kennedy. |
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This website tries to represent a range of political views. We do not accept responsibility for the content of external websites. |
1963 | Captain Terence
O’Neill, an Orangeman,
became Prime Minister of NI.
He
carried out the
first meeting with the PM of the Dublin government (Sean Lemass)
and made
gestures such as visiting Catholic schools. Reverend Ian
Paisley, a
mob orator, led protests against him and formed a Protestant
Unionist
party to
oppose him. |
1964 | Campaign
for Social Justice founded in Belfast. |
1966 | Maghera,
County Londonderry: a decision was made to form a Civil
Rights Movement
analogous to
the blacks’ rights movement in America. At this time the
Catholic community had
rejected the IRA. (March 8th). The IRA blew up Nelson's pillar in Dublin. |
1967 | Northern
Ireland Civil Rights Association was founded. The IRA were
not
involved. The leadership
of
the NICRA were middle class and middle aged. |
1968 | Civil
Rights marches began, and were banned by William
Craig, Minister for
Home Affairs. |
(5th
Oct) A civil
rights march was brutally broken up by the
RUC. O’Neill announced changes
were to be made, but progress
was too slow. |
|
1969 | (1st
Jan). An offshoot of the Civil Rights Movement, People’s
Democracy, marched
for
jobs, houses and ‘one man, one vote’. They were attacked
by Protestants,
including uniformed RUC. No attackers were arrested, but eighty
marchers were. Then
the police
stirred trouble (including assault,
damage of property) on Bogside.
The same
pattern was to continue throughout the year. |
(May).
Denis
Healey, British Minister of Defence, objected
to British
involvement in
Northern Ireland because they were not sufficiently in touch with Northern Irish internal affairs. Even before the IRA began to take effect, Wilson’s government felt discouraged. |
|
O’Neill
called a General
Election but was forced to resign and was replaced by
the
well-meaning but ineffectual Orangeman, Major James
Chichester Clark.
There
were riots,
the worst ones in Derry
and Belfast that August in
which the
B Special Reserves ferociously attacked Catholics, killing six people
and burning
300 houses. British
troops were deployed in Derry and Belfast to save
law and
order from the police. People in the Republic were appalled
at the
sight of
Nationalists under attack, and their Prime Minister Jack Lynch said his
government could not ‘stand
idly by’. Arms
were
sent to the northern Catholics.
Young Catholics began to look
to the IRA for defence, but it was
ill-equipped.
Recently the IRA
had turned to more social revolutionary paths, but now
it
became patriotic and republican again. It was irrelevant to them that
the
Catholics were temporarily
welcoming British troops; to them, the
situation had
echoes of 1920-21. |
|
After
August, the Civil
Rights Movement became Nationalist. The IRA seemed
more
relevant than the young socialist radicals like Bernadette
Devlin. |
|
Reforms
were introduced giving one
man one vote. The RUC were disarmed and the B
Specials disbanded. |
|
(Winter).
The IRA split into the Marxist-inclined ‘Officials’
and traditional
‘Provisionals’,
named after the
‘Provisional’ government of Ireland declared in
1916. |
|
1970 | In
Northern Ireland, clumsiness
on the part of British
forces soon antagonised the population. The IRA,
who
were asserting a rigid control over the Catholic areas, turned this
discontent
into patriotism. They provided the only leadership available. They
orchestrated riots,
especially in Belfast, hijacked buses and encouraged throwing
stones and
grenades at police. Assassinations of RUC
men began. Off-duty RUC men
and their
families were attacked. |
25
people were killed in this year. (10th Jan). Anti-apartheid demonstrations were held in the Republic. (April 3rd). Garda Richard Fallon was killed by an organisation known as Saor Éire. (May 4th). Resignation of Micheál Ó Móráin as a result of the Arms Crisis. (May 6th). The Arms Crisis escalated in the Republic, with the Taoiseach Jack Lynch asking Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney to resign from the government. They were accused of attemping to import arms for use by the PIRA. The Minister for Local Government Kevin Boland resigned in sympathy. (May 27th). Captain James Kelly, Albert Luykx and John Kelly were arrested, charged wth conspiracy to import arms. (May 28th). Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney appeared in Dublin's Bridewell Court charged with conspiracy to import arms, along with Luykx and Capt. Kelly. (June 25th). Bishops met at Maynooth to lift a ban on Catholics attending Trinity College. (26th June). Riots broke out over the arrest of Bernadette Devlin. On the same day, the premature explosion of an IRA bomb in a house in Derry led the deaths of two children. (2nd July). Neil Blaney was cleared on arms conspiracy charges. (21st August). The Social Democratic and Labour Party formed by Gerry Fitt. (3rd Oct). Richard Nixon visited Jack Lynch in Dublin. His presence in Ireland was greeted by protests over the Vietnam war. (23rd Oct). Charles Haughey, James Kelly, Albert Luykx and John Kelly were acquitted in the Arms Conspiracy Trial. |
|
1971 | (March).
Three Scottish
soldiers were murdered.
Chicester
Clark was
criticised; Protestants
wanted the B Specials back. Clark resigned
under criticism from the
Ulster
Unionist Council to be replaced by the Unionist Brian
Faulkner. (3rd April). Eurovision Song Contest held in Dublin. (11th April). The GAA lifted its ban on members playing 'foreign games' like soccer, rugby and cricket. (22nd May). Members of the Irish Women's Liberation movement took a train from Belfast to Dublin bringing back contraceptives that were banned from import into the Republic. |
(Aug).
Faulkner decided ordinary law could no longer deal with the IRA, and he
introduced
internment
without trial. He said they were ‘at
war
with the
terrorist and in a state of war many sacrifices will be
made’.
Around 300 republicans were detained,
more than any at one time since
1921. Few were members
of the Provisional IRA. The IRA wanted people to think they
were at
war, as in 1919-21. Many Catholic nationalists were reluctant to
accept its
violence, preferring
democracy. Later, 1576 people were to be arrested.
The
British government believed that the IRA could be contained with force,
but
they were wrong. The SDLP argued that there could be no military answer
– a
political solution was needed. (19th Nov). Jack Lynch had talks with Harold Wilson in Dublin. |
|
174
people were killed in this year. Unionist paramilitaries
murdered 15
people in a
bar on
December 4th
to take revenge on the IRA. |
|
1972 | (22nd Jan). Taoiseach
Jack Lynch and the Minister for External Affairs, Patrick
Hillery, signed the Treaty
of Accession to the European Communities. (30th Jan). Bloody Sunday. Thirteen civilians were killed by British soldiers in Derry. The Republic of Ireland declared a national day of mourning for the following day; and the day after, 20,000 people attacked the British Embassy in Dublin and burned it down; the Republic of Ireland Foreign Minister declared it his aim to get the British out of Ireland. Direct Rule was consequently declared. |
The
IRA killed
five women and a priest at an Aldershot
barracks, two people in the Abercorn
restaurant and six on a shopping street (Lower Donegall
Street) in revenge for Bloody Sunday. |
|
As
late as this year in Dungannon, the 50/50 Catholic/Protestant
population were
represented 70/30 in their council;
roughly likewise County Fermanagh.
East
County Down was even worse |
|
(19th Feb). The
anti-EEC
Committee organised a march along O'Connell Street, Dublin. (20th March). Edward Heath’s government ended Stormont and took Northern Ireland’s powers of law and order, despite protests from Faulkner and the Unionists. Westminster now ruled directly. Heath saw direct rule as an opportunity to sort out the Northern Ireland problem. How to do this was not clear; he and his government were not familiar with the situation. The common view of his government was that a united Ireland was the only feasible solution, which had to be borne in mind without antagonising the Unionists. This principle had been part of the 1921 Treaty. The leaders of the PIRA, including Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, saw the taking of control by the British as a sign that the ‘war’ must go on. Car bombs were used. In one day alone, 30 bombs went off. However, the Catholic minority in the North, and the government of the Republic, welcomed direct rule. It made the Unionists anxious. Over the next twenty years they were to withdraw into traditional attitudes, and the more extreme Unionist groupings such as Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party grew in popularity. At this time, however, the British weren’t aware of this anxiety. |
|
Labour,
who in Opposition were considering withdrawal from Northern Ireland,
gave it the codename ‘Algeria’. |
|
(2nd April). Raidió na Gaeltachta
went on the air. (17th April). The Irish Government launched its European Economic Community Referendum campaign. (May). Highest death toll yet. Protestant paramilitaries retaliated by attacking Catholics. The British ‘Operation Motorman’ tried to crack down on the IRA but still 476 died in 1972. (10th May). A referendum was held on Ireland's membership of the EEC. The poll came out almost five to one in favour. (30th May). The Official IRA declared a ceasefire. |
|
(July). Bloody
Friday. 26 IRA
bombs killed
nine civilians. The 100th
British
soldier was killed. On July
31st nine civilians including three children died during
bomb attacks on the village of Claudy.
Catholic priest Father
James Chesney was named in a report in 2010 as having
masterminded those attacks. (13th Dec). President De Valera signed the documents which ensured Ireland's entry into the EEC. |
|
1973 | (1st Jan). Ireland
joined the European community alongside Britain
and Denmark. (6th Jan). Patrick Hillery was appointed Social Affairs Commissioner in the European Economic Community. (28th Feb). The National Coalition of Fine Gael and the Labour Party won a general election in the Republic, ending sixteen years of Fianna Fáil government. (March). A White Paper released which stated that any new arrangements should be acceptable to the Republic of Ireland. The British government had reassured the Unionists that any decision on NI’s status would go with the majority, but this paper alarmed Unionists, as Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic’s Constitution stated that NI was part of ‘the national territory’ whose ‘reintegration’ was ‘pending’. A ‘Council of Ireland’ to represent both North and South was proposed. Such a Council had been part of the Treaty but was abandoned in the 1920s. |
Brian
Faulkner, PM-in-waiting for the next NI government, was ready in
principle to
accept British proposals. At a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council
he won a
vote against rejecting the White Paper, but it revealed a serious split
in the
party. Some of the losers left the party. William
Craig formed the
‘Vanguard’
party which was related to the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence
Association. The UDA saw itself opposing the White Paper as Carson had opposed
Home Rule in 1914. (14th March). The new Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave received his seal of office from President Éamon de Valera. (May). In the presidential election, voters went to the poll to find a successor to President de Valera. Erskine Hamilton Childers was the victor, defeating Tom O'Higgins. |
|
(June).
The British introduced a bill to create a Northern
Ireland
Assembly, and elections
were held this month. ‘Official Unionists’
supported the paper, ‘Unionists’ did
not. Although there was a majority vote for the White Paper, the
Unionists
generally were against it. The NI Assembly was given Royal Assent as
the Northern
Ireland Constitution Act 1973. The importance of the majority
wish in
Northern Ireland’s future was reiterated. Faulkner now had to
find an executive
widely acceptable to the community. (24th June). De Valera retired from office at the age of ninety. He was to spend his retirement at Talbot Lodge in Blackrock. Childers was inaugurated as the fourth President of Ireland. |
|
(6th
Dec). The British and Irish governments and the
power-sharing executive met at Sunningdale
in Surrey. It was the first such meeting since 1925, and
the
anniversary of the 1921 Treaty. Britain was distracted by an oil
crisis
and a
miners’ strike
at the time. Consequently, a new man who knew
little of Ireland, Francis
Pym, became the Northern Ireland Officer. Unionist extremists
like Craig and
Paisley
were not allowed to participate in the Conference. On the day of the
Conference
there was a large meeting of Unionists in Belfast. Although the
Conference
itself was successful,
it was clear it couldn’t work given
Faulkner’s minority
in power. The Conference
proposed
a consultative Assembly for all
Ireland with
30 members from each side. There would also be a 50/50 Council of
Ministers
with 14 members. Attempts to create a joint police authority failed.
The Fine
Gael Irish
government agreed to reinforce the pledge about the majority
wish in
NI, although the clauses in the Irish constitution stating dominion
over the
whole of Ireland remained. To remove them would have required a
referendum,
which was risky. It appeared the mood was against removing them.
Meanwhile the
British government’s position was contradictory. They felt a
united Ireland was
desirable but were also stuck to their pledge to the Unionists. They
failed to
appreciate the strength
of Unionist opinion. In fact, most Unionists
rejected
the idea of a Council of Ireland. Protestant paramilitaries formed an Ulster
Army Council to back all Unionist politicians who opposed the
Council
of
Ireland. |
|
(Jan
1st). Power-sharing
executive took
office. |
|
(Jan
4th). The Ulster
Unionist Council rejected the Council of Ireland,
forcing Faulkner to resign from the Unionist Party. |
|
Heath
held an election to sort out the miners’ strike. In Northern
Ireland the election
was fought
about Sunningdale.
The anti-Faulkner unionists won overwhelmingly. But
Faulkner
still had a majority in the Assembly – just not a Unionist
one – and the
Council of Ireland was maintained. A new Unionist grouping, the Ulster
Workers
Council, immediately called
a strike.
‘Tartan
youths’ and members of the
paramilitary Ulster
Defence Association spread intimidation. This was
necessary
because although Protestants were sympathetic, they didn’t
want the cost of a
strike. Electricity blackouts and roadblocks were set up. There was
panic-buying of food and petrol pumps were guarded by the army. A
fortnight
later, the whole electricity supply was on the brink of failure. |
|
Britain
had a new Labour government under Harold
Wilson. It had its own
problems, and
all Wilson did in support of Faulkner was to condemn
the strikers as spongers.
He was unsure of how
to deal with Northern Ireland (which had 17,000
British
troops at that time). |
|
(27th
May). Faulkner resigned because his executive was not
likely to be widely
accepted. The executive and Assembly were dissolved.
Rather than trying
again,
the Wilson government considered complete withdrawal.
There was a temporary
truce with the IRA while this pullout was considered, but it
didn’t happen
because of Unionist resistance. His government is often criticised for
not
forcing an end to the Ulster
Workers’ strike, but this would
have meant
humiliation for the majority Unionists. Also, it wasn’t
certain that the
military could have ended the strike – the UDA had a policy
of pacifist
resistance worked out. (14th June). Anatoli Kaplin, first Soviet Ambassador to Ireland, visited President Childers at Áras an Uachtaráin. (17th July). The National Coalition's Contraceptive Bill was defeated in a vote in Dáil Éireann. Liam Cosgrave, the Taoiseach, was one of the seven Fine Gael TDs to vote against their own Bill. (1st Sept). Transition Year was introduced on a pilot basis in three schools. (21st Sept). Jack Lynch announced that Fianna Fáil would not support any proposal to repeal Articles Two and Three of the Constitution. (17th Nov). Sudden death of President Childers aged 69. |
|
(21st
Nov). IRA
killed
21
in Birmingham
pubs. (10th Dec). Seán MacBride, former Minister for External Affairs, was presented with the Nobel Prize for Peace. (19th Dec). Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh sworn in as the fifth President of Ireland. |
|
1975 | (30th Jan). Charles
Haughey was brought back to the Fianna Fáil front
bench. (17th April). Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and Our Lady of Mercy College in Carysfort became recognised colleges of the National University of Ireland. (May). Elections tried to discover the policies that would have most widespread acceptance. The majority were against power-sharing and the Irish dimension. They wanted majority rule, Stormont-style. The government fell back to the military solution. The new Northern Ireland Secretary, Roy Mason, toughened up security and for a while the IRA were weakened. (18th June). Dr Danny O'Hare became acting director of the National Institute for Higher Education. (29th Aug). Éamon de Valera died at the age of 92. His wife had passed away on Jan 7th 1975. (5th Sept). The IRA bombed the Hilton hotel in London, killing two people. (Oct). The IRA kidnapped Dutch businessman Tiede Herrema, who was eventually rescued unharmed. |
1976 | (5th
Jan). The SARAF,
allegedly a unit of the IRA,
murdered 10
Protestant workmen at Kings
Mill. This was in response to the killings
of six Catholic civilians
by Loyalists. (15th March) After an IRA bomb exploded prematurely on a London tube train, the gunman shot dead the tube driver who pursued him. (18th March). Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave met President Ford at the White House. (31st March). The IRA carried out the Sallins Train Robbery. (17th May). Tim Severin set off from Dingle to America in his boat 'Brendan' to trace the route taken by the sixth century monk Brendan. (29th June). The highest temperature record for the twentieth century was set in Boora at 32.5C. (21st July). Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the UK ambassador, and a civil servant, Judith Cooke, were killed by an IRA landmine at Sandford, County Dublin. (23rd Sept). The President, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, consulted with the Council of State for four hours on whether to refer the Emergency Powers legislation to the Supreme Court. (22nd Oct). The President resigned after being called a 'thundering disgrace' by the Minister for Defence Paddy Donegan. (3rd Dec). Dr Patrick Hillery was inaugurated as the sixth President of Ireland. |
1977 | (21st
Feb). A crater
on Mercury was named after the Irish poet W. B. Yeats. (April/May). Roy Mason saw off a strike organised by Paisley. He ignored political conflicts. (15th June). Fianna Fáil won the general election in the Republic. (5th July). The 21st Dáil elected Jack Lynch as Taoiseach. (10th Oct). The founders of the peace movement, Mairéad Corrigan and Betty Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize. |
1978 |
(18th Jan). The
European Court of Human Rights found Britain guilty
of 'inhuman and degrading treatment' of republican internees in
Northern Ireland.
(19th Jan). The Fianna Fáil government dismissed Garda Commissioner Edmund Garvey without explanation. (Feb 17th). IRA
firebomb killed twelve
people at the La
Mon restaurant.
(31st March). 6,000 people marched through Dublin to the Wood Quay site to protest the building of civic offices on the Viking site. (19th Aug). Over 5,000 people took part in a rally against a nuclear power station at Carnsore Point, County Wexford. (1st Sept). The Dublin Institute of Technology was created on an ad-hoc basis by the City of Dublin VEC. (2nd Nov). Ireland's second national television channel, RTÉ 2, opened. |
1979 | (2nd
Jan). The lowest temperature of the twentieth century was
recorded at Lullymore, County Kildare, at -18.8C. (8th Jan). Fifty died when an explosion destroyed the French oil tanker Betelgeuse off Whiddy Island. (9th March). PAYE workers across the country took to the streets in protest against the tax system. On March 20th, a huge anti-PAYE demonstration was held in Dublin. Violence erupted again. Airey Neave, Thatcher’s friend who was earmarked to become her Northern Ireland Secretary, was murdered by the Irish National Liberation Army on 30th March. Thatcher had her Northern Ireland Secretary organise a constitutional conference to see what progress was possible; he found the situation stuck. The British then turned to the Irish dimension - the Republic’s claim to authority over all Ireland. In the Republic, Fianna Fáil, who regarded the Treaty of 1921 as a betrayal, were in power. The Taoiseach was Charles Haughey, whose father was involved in the IRA during the Civil War. He represented the republican tradition at its most realistic. (2nd June). Protesters opposed to the building of civic offices at the site of Viking excavations in Wood Quay occupied the area. (9th Aug). The first group of Vietnamese boat people arrived. |
(27th
Aug). 18
soldiers
and Mountbatten
and his family killed
by IRA. (29th Sept). Pope John Paul II arrived in Ireland for a three day visit. On the first day he appealed to the IRA for peace. (29th Nov). The Taoiseach Jack Lynch greeted European Economic Community heads of government who had come to Dublin Castle for a summit meeting. On the 5th Dec he announced his resignation as Taoiseach, and was succeeded by Charles Haughey on Dec 11th. |
|
1980 | (Feb). Derrynaflan
Chalice found at Killenaule. (April). Ireland won the Eurovision Song Contest. (Aug). 18 people died in the Buttevant Rail Disaster. In the same month, ten people perished in a fire at the Bundoran Hotel in County Donegal. (Oct). Mella Carroll became the Republic of Ireland's first female high court judge. (Nov). 1979 Family Planning Act came into operation. (Dec). Jack Lynch was given Freedom of the City of Cork. (Dec). Although Thatcher reassured the Unionists that the Northern Irish majority came first, a meeting at Dublin between her and Haughey appeared to lay guidelines for a closer relationship between North and South in the future. |
John
Hume of the SDLP said that traditional republicanism was
wrong to put
forward a
narrow sectional view of Ireland, ignoring differences and advocating
violence.
Republicanism should mean unity for all. By this time, nationalism in
the north
and of the majority in the Republic now meant a different thing. In the
North
it was defensive. In the South it was nostalgic, but unrelated to daily
life. Hume
wanted to direct nationalist opinion that way in the North. |
|
1981 | (Feb 14th). The
Stardust
fire in Dublin killed 48 people. (Feb). Paisley organised a military parade and signed an ‘Ulster Declaration’ on the model of the 1912 Ulster Declaration. Most Unionists found the implications of the Dec 1980 conference disturbing. In the local government elections, the DUP achieved more votes than before. |
Haughey
wanted British military and political presence out of Ireland. Unlike
the IRA,
he stressed peaceful means. His approaches to the Unionists cut no ice.
Paisley
promised ‘no surrender’. |
|
The
weakness in the IRA’s position was that despite their
violence they hadn’t
driven the British out. The Unionists were determined to hold what they
had.
The SDLP were the most
flexible. |
|
Hunger
strikes began
for the political
status of IRA prisoners. Bobby
Sands
and nine
others died.
Bobby
Sands was elected for parliament while on his
strike. The
IRA called them martyrs. There was rioting after every death. The
Americans
gained respect for the IRA cause. Thatcher refused to make concessions
and her relationship
with Haughey
deteriorated. Opinion in the South gradually became
uneasy. The
supporters of the hunger-strikers
were involved in intimidation and
there was a
sense of impending anarchy. Eventually a demonstration, organised from
the
North, attacked Irish police around the British
Embassy. This lost the
IRA
support. People in the Republic saw the IRA as aliens, imported thugs
from
another state. (April). Ireland hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. (May). Lawrence Downey hijacked an Aer Lingus flight in the hope of finding out the third secret of Fatima. (June). A general election in the Republic of Ireland saw Fianna Fáil's worst performance in twenty years. |
|
Thatcher,
pressed by the Falklands
War and the miners’
strike, lost
interest in Ireland. |
|
(Sept). Jim Prior
became NI Secretary. Paisley blamed him for IRA deaths. MP Robert
Bradford was killed. In such a climate it was hard to be
creative.
Meanwhile
Thatcher made a speech saying Northern Ireland was as much a part of
the UK as her own
constituency. Prior worked on an idea for a new elected Assembly that
would
develop executive powers at its own pace. |
|
1982 | (Jan). Charlie
McCreevy was expelled from Fianna Fáil. (Feb). Corporal punishment was banned in Irish schools. (May). The Republic of Ireland affirmed its neutrality in the Falklands Conflict and opposed European sanctions against Argentina. On May 24th, 20,000 people marched against income tax and PRSI changes. |
(July). Bill to set
up an elected Assembly
passed. |
|
(20th July). IRA killed
eight soldiers
and civilians in London
parks. (Aug). Malcolm MacArthur murdered two people, forcing the resignation of Attorney General Patrick Connolly whose house guest he was. |
|
(Oct). Elections
for Assembly. Provisional
Sinn Féin won 5 of 78 seats. However, the Assembly
refused to
budge from preconceived
positions. The majority of Unionists wouldn’t discuss
power-sharing and the
SDLP wouldn’t sit down with them. The Irish dimension
wasn’t considered; in the meantime, relations between
Thatcher and Haughey had chilled after Ireland
was
neutral over the Falklands. In the Republic, Charles Haughey survived a vote of no confidence by Charlie McCreevy. (Nov). General Election. Garret Fitzgerald of Fine Gael became the Taoiseach. He wanted to see a united Ireland but recognised Protestant fears. He was more moderate than Haughey. |
|
(6th Dec). INLA
bomb
killed
17 people at the Droppin' Well disco and bar. |
|
1983 | (Jan). A
government bugging scandal forced the resignation of Ray
MacSharry. (Feb) The racehorse Shergar was kidnapped and eventually killed by the IRA. A motion to remove Charles Haughey from power failed after a twelve hour meeting by Fianna Fáil. A general election in the Republic saw victory for Fianna Fáil. (June) Gerry Adams won West Belfast from the SDLP. (Sept). Thirty-eight prisoners escaped from Long Kesh prison. A referendum in the Republic led to the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, concerning abortion. This was to prevent abortion, which was already illegal, from being legalised. (Nov). Businessman Don Tidey kidnapped by the IRA. He was rescued three weeks later. (Dec). Patrick Hillery was elected unopposed in the Irish Presidential election. |
1984 | (Jan). A
15-year-old girl, Ann Lovett,
died after giving birth in a religious grotto. (March). Gerry Adams shot and wounded in Belfast. (May). The final report of the Dublin forum, which had run for more than a year, came out. Its aim was to ‘abandon rhetoric’. However, it was crippled by the absence of traditional Unionists. The report blamed Britain for partition and ‘refusing to accept the democratically expressed wishes of the Irish people’ (in 1918). It proposed a united Ireland by consent, or a federal state, or a joint authority for NI. Thatcher rejected this. Even so, the climate was still set for negotiation. (June). A visit to Ireland by US President Ronald Reagon was met by protests in Dublin. European parliamentary elections were held. (12th Oct). The IRA bombed a hotel in Brighton where the British cabinet were staying, killing five people. |
1985 | (26th Feb). Desmond
O'Malley was expelled from Fianna Fáil. (28th Feb). IRA killed nine RUC officers at Newry. Sinn Féin, who still acknowledged their ties to violence, gained more than 10% of seats in district council elections. The Government were concerned that they would become more powerful. The republican vote in NI was nearly 30%. Government attention turned to the Irish dimension. (July). Ballinspittle became a place of pilgrimage after two women claim to have seen a statue of the Virgin Mary move. |
(15th
Nov). Anglo-Irish
Agreement at Hillsborough Castle. It established
a structure
of involvement of the Republic in Northern Ireland. The consent of the
Northern Irish majority would be
needed for change. In the meantime, an Intergovernmental Conference was
set up
to deal with Northern Ireland and British/Irish relations. Eventual
devolved government was
the shared
aim. Even moderate Unionists felt betrayed. All 15 Unionist
MPs
resigned from Parliament and fought by-elections with the slogan
‘Ulster
Says
No’. They gained 400,000 votes. The Belfast
Newsletter called
the Agreement a
‘recipe for bloodshed’, and there were attacks and
riots by Unionists. Mary Harney was expelled from Fianna Fáil for supporting the Anglo-Irish Agreement. |
|
(Dec).
First meeting of the Anglo-Irish Conference at Stormont saw riots. Progressive Democrats founded by Desmond O'Malley. |
|
1986 | (3rd
March). Unionist
Day of Action. Roads were blocked and the
RUC attacked.
Loyalists assaulted the RUC when they halted a banned Apprentice
Boys
march in
Portadown, and the RUC accidentally killed a Protestant. The homes of
RUC
members were fire-bombed. Some Unionist MPs were appearing at menacing
midnight
shows of strength with masked men carrying cudgels. (June). Referendum on removing the prohibition on divorce returned a no vote. (Dec). Sharp rise in Visa applications for emigration to America noted in the Republic. |
1987 | (Feb). General
election in Ireland brought Fianna Fáil back in as
a minority government. Molyneaux’s Official Unionists presented a petition to the Queen with 400,000 signatures asking for a referendum on the Agreement. 200,000 people had attended a protest on the Agreement’s first anniversary, and there was looting. |
Protestant
paramilitary groups became more radicalised and over the
coming years
they grew
as active as the IRA. Despite all this, the Intergovernmental
Conference
continued. The Unionists had to realise that they could only remove it
through
negotiation. (March). Irish National Lottery launched. |
|
(8th May). British killed
eight IRA and one
civilian at Loughgall. (9th May). Johnny Logan won Eurovision with 'Hold Me Now'. (26th May). A referendum approved the Single European Act. (1st Nov). Libyan arms bound for the IRA were seized. (8th Nov). IRA bomb killed eleven civilians at a memorial service in Enniskillen. |
|
1988 | (6th
March). Three IRA
who had allegedly
been planning to bomb a
military ceremony were killed
by the SAS. |
(16th
March). Michael
Stone attacked
the funeral
of Rock of
Gibraltar IRA, killing three people. The IRA
consequently murdered
two
British soldiers who strayed
into the funeral
of these
casualties. (19th March). Major anti-Apartheid demonstration in Dublin. Nelson Mandela was awarded the freedom of Dublin in July. |
|
(15th
May). Loyalists murdered three
Catholics in the Avenue Bar. (June). IRA attacked British soldiers who had just taken part in the Lisburn Marathon, killing six. |
|
(11th Aug). Sharp
rise in AIDs cases induces the Department of Health to launch an
information booklet. (30th Aug). Eight soldiers killed by the IRA in Tyrone. |
|
The
Official Unionists made contact with the government, and talks took
place with
the new NI Secretary Peter Brooke.
Brooke suggested that Sinn Féin
could enter
the talks if it renounced support for the IRA. Brooke was the first NI
Secretary to admit that the IRA couldn’t be defeated by
military means and another
approach was needed. |
|
John
Hume (SDLP) and Gerry
Adams (Sinn Féin) made contact. Hume aimed to
persuade
Adams away from Republican violence. Adams modelled himself on the
anti-Free
State republicans of the Civil
War. Having long advocated violence, he
would
have found it tricky to persuade his supporters otherwise. However at
this
time, all parties save the the DUP
were considering eventual compromise. |
|
The
number of conflict deaths
were down but a higher proportion of
civilians
were being killed, most by Loyalists.
The British
government were under
pressure to sort
the problem out. The Irish government
weren’t too anxious to
press their claim, despite their rhetoric. The reality was that a new,
26-county nationalism had emerged in the Republic. This included
sympathy but
little else for the North nationalists. In the North, nationalism meant
defensiveness against the Protestants. Their need to remove the British
seemed
irrelevant to people in the Republic, especially with the
Intergovernmental
Conference in place. The major concession they were likely to be
pressed to
make was to amend Articles
2 and 3 of the Constitution which laid claim
to Northern Ireland.
Many, such as Fitzgerald, considered a referendum on this. Meanwhile
the
Unionists were technically the most secure, but their fears caused by
being a
minority on the island made them intransigent. The events of 1912- 20
still
haunted them, and the actions of the IRA strengthened their resolve.
They were
extremely sensitive to the ‘Irish dimension’.
Brooke’s negotiations with
Molyneaux’s Unionists came to little, but at least they were
flexible on cross-border
harmonization regarding matters like tourism, and they were prepared to
accept
a power-sharing assembly. |
|
1989 | (12th
Feb). Belfast lawyer Pat
Finucane was shot
dead by Loyalists. British
involvement
has been suspected. (March). Three Irish soldiers with the United Nations were killed in South Lebanon. (June). General election in Ireland. Fianna Fáil formed a coalition with the young Progressive Democrats party. (22nd Sept). The IRA bombed a recreational centre at Deal Barracks in Kent, killing eleven people. |
1990 | |
Mary
Robinson became the first woman president of Ireland. |
|
1991 |
Ireland
signed the Treaty
on European Union at Maastricht.
It received a guarantee that its
strict abortion
law would not be affected. |
1992 | (17th Jan). Eight
Protestant workmen
were murdered
at Tyrone
by the IRA. (5th Feb). Loyalists carried out bookmakers’ shop massacre. |
Peace
was needed for progress to be made, which meant getting Sinn
Féin to rein in the IRA. Hume
talked
with Adams
again in the early
‘90s. They
agreed that a united Ireland should come about as a result of
Irish self-determination,
but there was no chance of
Unionists going for it. |
|
In the
Republic, Irish voters approved a loosening
of the abortion
law. Access to information was guaranteed and
travel abroad to have an abortion was permitted. |
|
1993 | (20th
March). An IRA
bomb in Warrington,
England, killed
Tim
Parry and Johnathan Ball. |
(23rd
Oct). The IRA
killed ten
Protestants in a chip
shop on the Shankill. (30th Oct). Greysteel massacre of seven Catholics by Loyalists. |
|
(15th
Dec). The Downing
Street Declaration began a peace process
to end in a political
settlement. John
Major signed for Britain and Albert
Reynolds for the
Republic.
Reynolds was Taoiseach of a coalition dominated by Fianna
Fáil. This
meant that
the Irish party with the strongest national and republican tradition
had
guaranteed Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. The Downing
Street Declaration once
again referred to the majority in Northern Ireland. Its
main difference from Sunningdale
and the Anglo-Irish
Agreement was its
recognition of the key significance of Unionist
opinion. The
Taoiseach
promised to
investigate any potential threats to the Unionist way of life in the
Republic.
He also promised a change to articles 2 and 3 as a gesture to Northern
Unionists. The Official
Unionists
gave it a guarded but sympathetic reaction. |
|
By
this time there had been 3168 killed
in the last 25 years, including
648
soldiers and 294 RUC officers. |
|
1994 | (18th June)
Loughlin Island massacre
by Loyalists. |
(31st
Aug). IRA
ceasefire. It was met with enthusiasm in
republican areas of NI, but
the Unionists had reservations
because it looked like the republicans
had
achieved something. Paisley saw it as the worst crisis for Ulster since
1922.
John Major expressed disappointment that the IRA were not giving up
their arms
nor promising a permanent ceasefire. The
Times urged caution but also saw the high significance of
the ceasefire. Major
was convinced that Sinn Féin could not be involved until a
permanent
ceasefire was called. Hume and Reynolds told him this was unimportant. |
|
(13th
Oct) Loyalist
Ceasefire. The
UDA
and UVF’s ceasefire gave the situation
a boost,
and the UDA
announced its ‘abject
and true
remorse’ for its innocent
victims. Major
announced this government had a ‘working
assumption’ that the
IRA ceasefire would be permanent. He had to be cautious in coming
together with Sinn Féin. |
|
(Dec).
Martin
McGuinness headed a Sinn Féin delegation at
Stormont. This was
ground-breaking contact between Sinn Féin and the British
government. |
|
1995 | (May).
Gerry Adams met Patrick
Mayhew, the NI Secretary. The British
reiterated that
there could be no progress without some decommissioning.
Adams and McGuinness
were aware that IRA hardliners would be impatient. It seemed as though
the gap
between the British government and Sinn
Féin was too great. There was
the
awkward question of Sinn Féin’s relationship
with the IRA. |
The
Irish government’s participation formed a link between Sinn
Féin and the British
government. Reynolds was gone by then. Before his resignation, he had
told
Major that the old anti-Free State IRA had never officially surrendered
their
arms, and this would affect the later IRA. John Bruton
of Fine Gael had
became
Taoiseach in December 1994. Fine Gael, the Civil War victors, felt less
instinctive
understanding for the IRA than Fianna Fáil. Bruton
mistrusted the IRA
and Sinn Féin, but even so he was too republican for Major. |
|
(Aug).
David
Trimble became head of the Unionists. He had recently taken a
tough
stance over the traditional Drumcree
march and had opposed Sunningdale.
But
with Sinn Féin renouncing violence, the Unionists also
needed to change. |
|
(Nov).Bill
Clinton met
Adams and shook hands with him. His
involvement
was partly
down to personal conviction and partly due to the fact that there were
forty million Americans of Irish descent. US senator George
Mitchell
was
tasked with reporting on possibilities for progress. Many IRA
republicans remained stuck in the past and regarded decommissioning as
humiliation. George Mitchell recognised
that they would not decommission and recommended immediate multi-party
political talks. |
|
1996 | (Feb).
The IRA
ended
its ceasefire and attacked
Canary Wharf. Gerry
Adams
blamed the British
government and the Unionists. |
(May).
Sinn Féin gained 15.5% of the vote
for the multi-party forum, but they were
excluded
from talks because of the cessation of the ceasefire. June
15th saw the Manchester
bomb, and there were other attacks on soldiers during the
year. This
all made things more difficult for Adams. John Major said that in the
future,
there would be an interval after an IRA ceasefire so the
IRA’s commitment could
be proven. Talks went on with the Unionists, SDLP, and Alliance Party;
some
said Major was more concerned with maintaining his majority in the
Commons with
Unionist support. |
|
1997 | (May).
Tony
Blair came to power in the UK. The new NI
Secretary was Mo
Mowlam. |
(June). Fianna
Fáil took
power in the Republic, headed by Bertie
Ahern. Blair
reassured Unionists and asked Sinn Féin for negotiation
rather than
violence. He and
Ahern agreed that decommissioning need not be a precondition to talks.
The
talks had struggled on for two years without Sinn Féin, but
Sinn Féin was
still
excluded because of continuing IRA violence. |
|
(July).
New IRA
ceasefire. |
|
(Sept). Sinn
Féin was readmitted
to peace talks. The DUP
promptly withdrew. The talks were highly
tense, with many regarding IRA
violence
as unforgivable. Sinn Féin was suspended once because of IRA
activity.
A deadline of 9th
April 1998 was set for a final settlement. |
|
Despite
opposition
from the Catholic
church, divorce
became
legal in
the Republic under certain circumstances. (Oct). Mary McAleese became President of Ireland. |
|
1998 | (1st
April). Disagreements dragged on between the British and
Irish governments over the
North/South body that was to associate NI with the Republic of
Ireland. The next eight days
were to be a ‘nightmare’,
with Ahern’s
mother dying and Trimble’s Unionists
rejecting the settlement blueprint, on the grounds that it was too
pro-Sinn Féin. |
(8th
April). Blair flew to Belfast, followed by Ahern despite
his mother’s death. The
next 72 hours were full of frantic negotiation,
including phone calls
from
Clinton. Sinn
Féin raised 78 new points of issue.
Decommissioning was
still an
issue; Sinn Féin said they couldn’t be responsible
for it.
Agreement was not finally reached,
with acceptance from Trimble, until late Good Friday
afternoon. Everyone
was optimistic; the Unionists believed that the Union was
strengthened. Adams thought most nationalists would be hopeful. George
Mitchell, however, pointed out the continued lack of trust
between
Unionists
and nationalists. The Good Friday document stated its regret for the
past and
hope for peace and mutual respect in the future. However, Trimble and
Adams
still would not speak directly to one another for five months. The Agreement
also said
that both parts of
the island of Ireland and a majority in NI should agree to unification
and if
they did, the British and Irish governments were bound to grant it. The
status
of NI would not change. An impression was almost given that the process
would
work itself out. The
Irish government
positively committed itself to withdrawing articles
2 and 3 from the
constitution. In a sense the Agreement
had just produced a summary of
the
current situation. Feelings still ran deep on either side. Both sides
were
‘idealists’ – the Unionists were already
in possession of their idea while the
northern nationalist ideal was an aspiration. |
|
A
new Northern
Ireland Assembly was set up with 108 members representing
the 18
Northern Irish constituencies.
It would have the same authority as that held by the
British
government’s NI departments under direct rule. The d’Hondt
voting system held
that the majority vote should comprise a majority of all Unionists and
all
nationalists – a problem for Trimble who thus needed DUP and
nationalist
support. Three bodies were set up to improve Northern Ireland/Republic
and UK/Ireland
co-operation:
» The North/South Council for cross-border negotiation on education, agriculture, social security, health, transport, environment.
»
A British-Irish
Inter-Governmental Conference to bring
the governments together. » A British-Irish Council to continue contacts with the British government and devolved institutions.
|
A
new police force was discussed as the RUC were not
believed to
represent the
whole community. The RUC name
would be changed to the PSNI,
the Police
Service of
Northern Ireland. It would no longer fly the Union flag. All members
were to
be
schooled in laws on human
rights. The release of paramilitary prisoners
was
also discussed and some were released before serving their full time. Decommissioning
of (primarily IRA)
arms was an issue. They had not
‘won’ but
they did not want to appear defeated. The Unionists pointed out that
the
Agreement was not safe while Sinn Féin was still allied with
a violent
organisation.
The Decommissioning
Act extended the deadline to 2007; weapons could
either be
handed to an independent commission or destroyed by the paramilitaries
themselves. Sinn Féin, as part of the Agreement, was
committed to
decommissioning. Public
referendums
expressed endorsement for decommissioning. 94% in the Republic and 74%
in NI.
|
|
(June).
Assembly
elections. The SDLP and Sinn Féin did well but
Trimble’s Ulster
Unionists were only slightly ahead of the DUP. Trimble was elected
First
Minister. However, he refused any power-sharing government
with Sinn Féin
without proof that they were active in decommissioning. The Unionists
talked of
Sinn Féin and the IRA as being the same.
|
|
(Aug).
Dissident
splinter groups of the IRA disagreed with
co-operation with other
groups. The Real
IRA murdered
29 people
in Omagh. |
|
1999 | (Nov).
George
Mitchell returned and after weeks of talks, persuaded
Trimble
to
take
office with Sinn Féin in return for evidence that the IRA
would
consider
decommissioning. |
(29th
Nov). The first executive created by the Good Friday
Agreement was formed. |
|
(2nd
Dec). The requisite powers were devolved
in NI. (17th Dec). Inaugural summit meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. |
2000 – 2002 | During
this time, devolution
was continually suspended and restored. With no progress
on decommissioning,
the
new NI secretary Peter
Mandelson suspended
devolution, in order to stop
Trimble withdrawing
from the Assembly and causing its collapse. |
|
2000 |
(Feb 3rd). John
Gilligan extradited from the |
|
(Feb 11th). Devolution
suspended
over decommissioning dispute.
|
||
(March 25th). David
Trimble narrowly won a leadership
challenge for the Ulster Unionist party. |
||
(May 6th). The IRA stated
that it would put its weapons beyond use. |
||
(May 15th). The
Republic was named as a top tourist
destination. |
||
(May 17th). Dispute
on which flags should fly from public buildings reached the British
parliament. |
||
(May 29th). Devolution restored two days after David Trimble won his party’s backing to re-enter the Assembly despite a lack of IRA decommissioning. |
||
(June 26th). IRA
weapons dump inspected. |
||
(Sept). Bertie
Ahern came under pressure to cut taxes in order to combat inflation. |
||
(Oct 18th). Trimble
banned Sinn
Féin from North-South councils. |
||
(Dec 12th). Bill
Clinton came to Dublin
as part of his peace mission for Northern Ireland. |
||
2001 | (Jan 6th). Decapitated
body of George
Legge recovered; he had been killed during Loyalist feuding. (Jan 17th). Huge bomb found and defused near Armagh. (Jan 23rd). Republicans carried out a mortar attack on a British army base at Derry. (Feb 21st). David Trimble met Tony Blair in London to discuss the peace process. (March 4th). Real IRA set off a bomb outside the BBC's main news centre in London. (March 8th). Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern met for talks with the major political parties in Belfast. (March 31st). Loyalists murdered Protestant Trevor Thomas Lowry, apparently believing he was a Catholic. (April 13th). A small explosion at a post office depot in London was blamed on the RIRA. (April 21st). Catholic civilian Christopher O'Kane shot dead, apparently by republican paramilitaries. (May 3rd). Martin McGuinness confirmed that he had been the IRA's second-in-command at the time of Bloody Sunday. (May 4th). Drug dealer Paul Daly shot dead. (May 6th). The RIRA set off another no-warning bomb at the post office depot in Hendon, London. (June 7th). Westminster election. Sinn Féin and the DUP both made major gains, with SF overtaking the SDLP as the major Nationalist party. |
|
(June 7th). Irish
voters rejected the Nice
Treaty
in a referendum.
The treaty had to be approved by all 15 EU
member-states before the EU could expand to include a dozen applicant
countries from eastern Europe. (June 18th). Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern met with representatives from the SDLP, the UUP and Sinn Féin to discuss the peace process. (June 19th). Loyalists began to protest outside the Catholic girls' primary school, Holy Cross. The blockade was to continue until June 29th and recommence in September. (June 23rd). John Henry McCormick, a Catholic civilian, was killed in his home by Loyalists. (July 4th). Catholic teenager Ciaran Cummings was murdered by Loyalists. (July 9th). Weston Park talks began between Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair. (July 12th). Twelfth of July celebrations in Belfast were accompanied by the worst rioting in years. (July 19th). The first of a series of Loyalist attacks on GAA clubs. (July 29th). Loyalists killed Protestant teenager Gavin Brett in a drive-by shooting. Secretary of State John Reid warned that he was reviewing the UDA ceasefire. (Aug 1st) Bomb hoax at Belfast airport. On the same day, the British and Irish governments published their implementation plan for the Good Friday Agreement. (Aug 2nd). A bomb in London caused several injuries. (Aug 10th). The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended for one day. This had the affect of postponing the election of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister for six weeks. (Aug 13th). Three IRA men were arrested in Colombia where they were believed to have been training FARC militants. (Aug 14th). The IRA withdrew its decommissioning proposals in response to the suspension of the Assembly and the UUP's rejection of an earlier disarmament proposal on August 7th. (Aug 17th). A policing implementation plan for Northern Ireland was published. (Aug 20th). The SDLP spoke out in support of the policing plan. (Sept 3rd). Holy Cross protest began again. RUC and British soldiers had to clear protesters away as Loyalists threw bottles and stones at the children, some as young as four. On the 5th of Sept a petrol bomb was thrown at the children. The 7th of Sept saw a silent protest as a mark of respect for the death of a Protestant 16 year old, Thomas McDonald. Protests continued throughout September, some silent when the children were passing, but on 26th Sept fireworks were thrown at both children and parents. On Oct 1st balloons filled with urine were thrown. The following day Quentin Davies, Conservative Shadow Secretary of State, accompanied the parents and children in a show of solidarity. The protest stretched into October, despite condemnations from the government, proposed legal action and an alleged threat from the Catholic Reaction Force. On 17th Oct Loyalist paramilitaries exploded a bomb nearby, damaging a house. On the 7th of Nov, the mother of one of the children launched a legal action against John Reid for failing to protect her child. That same day, Archbishop Desmond Tutu met both victims and protestors. The protest finally ended on 26th Nov. (Sept 12th). Republicans carried out a bomb attack on a security patrol in Derry. (Sept 14th). The Republic of Ireland held a day of mourning to commemorate the September 11th attacks on America. (Sept 22nd). The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended for one day. (Sept 28th). Loyalist paramilitaries killed the journalist Martin O'Hagan. John Reid said he would give the Loyalists a final chance to renounce violence. On the same day, a concrete block was thrown at children being taken to Hazelwood Integrated College, injuring six of them. (Sept 29th). At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Gerry Adams said that terrorism was 'ethically indefensible' but drew the line between terrorism and freedom fighting. (Oct 8th). The Northern Ireland Assembly debated a motion to exclude Sinn Féin from the Executive. (Oct 9th). Adams and McGuinness met Tony Blair at Downing Street to discuss the impasse in the peace process. (Oct 12th). Secretary of State John Reid specified the UDA, ending recognition of their ceasefire. David Trimble, who was in (Oct 14th). The Irish government held a funeral for eighty IRA men who had been killed during the Irish War of Independence, and were being reburied at Glasnevin Cemetry. (Oct 18th). Three Unionist ministers formally resigned from the Executive. The UUP no longer wanted to share power with SF in the absence of decommissioning. (Oct 22nd). Gerry Adams publicly called on the IRA to decommission. John Reid responded that the British government would not be 'grudging or ungenerous'. The IRA began decommissioning on the 23rd; the International Commission on Decommissioning confirmed that this had occurred. (Oct 29th). A Catholic civilian, Colin Foy, and a Protestant civilian, Charles Folliard, were killed in separate incidents; Foy by a RIR soldier and Folliard allegedly by the INLA. (Nov 6th). David Trimble was elected First Minister of Northern Ireland, with Mark Durkan as the Deputy First Minister. (Nov 8th). Taoiseach Bertie Ahern met George Bush in Washington. Bush reiterated his support for the peace process. (Nov 4th). A RIRA car bomb went off in Birmingham, England, with no casualties. (Nov 11th). Ulster Young Militant Glen Hugh Branagh was killed when a pipe bomb he was holding during a riot exploded. (Dec 12th). William Stobie, who had been implicated in the murder of Pat Finucane, was himself murdered by Loyalists. The trial against him had collapsed on Nov 26th. |
||
2002 | (Jan). The Euro
replaced
the punt
in the Republic of Ireland. |
|
(9th
Jan). Mikhail
Gorbachev
received the Freedom
of
Dublin. |
||
(March). An attempt
by the Irish government to tighten already strict anti-abortion
laws
was defeated
by a small majority in a constitutional referendum
in the
Republic. |
||
(2nd
April). In
the Republic, Brendan
Comiskey, Catholic Bishop of Ferns, resigned
over
criticism of his handling of abuse cases in the diocese. |
||
(5th
April). The first
recruits of the new Police Service of
Northern Ireland graduated. |
||
(8th
April). The IRA stated
that it had put a second tranche
of arms beyond use. |
||
(17th
May). Voters in the Republic re-elected
Fianna Fáil's Bertie Ahern as taoiseach
in a continuing
coalition with the Progressive Democrats. The main opposition party
Fine Gael lost over a third of its seats in parliament. |
||
(21st
July). On
the 30th anniversary of Bloody Friday, the IRA offered its 'sincere
apologies and condolences' to victims who had been
'non-combatants'. |
||
(Oct). The Ulster
Unionists and DUP members were on the
verge of
pulling out of the Assembly
because of the IRA’s continued activity (punishment
beatings, Colombia,
spying
etc). |
||
(14th
Oct). Devolution was suspended
again by NI Secretary John
Reid. In response, the IRA broke off contact with de
Chastelain’s independent
decommissioning body.
But there was hope in that the Assembly had achieved some things, like abolishing
the eleven-plus,
establishing a Racial
Equality Unit and
resurfacing
roads. The foot-and-mouth
crisis was also handled well. |
||
(19th
Oct). Irish voters endorsed
the Nice
Treaty by a
comfortable margin in a second referendum. |
||
(30th
Oct). The IRA announced
it was suspending talks with the
decommissioning body. |
||
2003 | (9th
Jan). In a statement,
the IRA described
the Northern Ireland peace process as 'under threat'. |
|
(21st
Jan). The Spire of
Dublin on O'Connell Street was
officially completed. |
||
(16th
Feb). 100,000 people in Dublin
and 30,000 in Belfast marched
against the impending invasion
of Iraq. |
||
(7th
April). US President George
W Bush arrived in Northern
Ireland for discussions
with Tony Blair, and also met Taoiseach Bertie
Ahern. |
||
(10th
April). The British and Irish governments suspended a blueprint
for devolution in Northern Ireland at the last minute. |
||
(1st
May). British PM Tony Blair postponed
assembly elections
until the autumn because the IRA's position was unclear. Blair
accused
the IRA of refusing to rule out all paramilitary-related
behaviour. |
||
(6th
May). The IRA released a statement
on the peace
process. |
||
(17th
May). David
Trimble narrowly won the backing of his party
(the UUP) for London and Dublin's proposals. |
||
(31st
Aug). The remains
of Belfast mother Jean
McConville were
found 31 years after her murder
by the PIRA. |
||
(4th
Sept). Richard
Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA,
joined the four-strong Independent
Monitoring Commission. Its other
members included John Grieve, a former Metropolitan officer, Lord
Alderdice, the first Presiding Officer of the NI Assembly and
Joseph
Brosnan, former Secretary General of the Department of Justice in
Ireland. |
||
(19th
Oct). Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionists and
British and
Irish officials met behind the scenes. |
||
(21st
Oct). The IRA endorsed
a statement by Gerry Adams on
republican commitment to disarmament. Arms chief John de Chastelain
said that a third act of IRA decommissioning had
been witnessed, but
Ulster Unionist leader David
Trimble stated that this was not enough. |
||
(22nd
Oct). Talks resumed to try and break the impasse. |
||
(26th
Nov). The Assembly
election took place. The DUP and Sinn Féin emerged
as the largest parties. |
||
(18th
Dec). Rebel Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey
Donaldson quit
the
party along with two newly elected assembly members. Four days later, David
Trimble announced his intention to remain leader of the party. |
||
2004 | (1st
Jan). Ireland took
over as the President
of the European Commission. |
|
(5th
Jan). Lagan
MP Jeffrey
Donaldson joined the DUP with the two other assembly members
who had resigned. |
||
(3rd
Feb). A review
of the Good Friday Agreement began at
Stormont. |
||
(20th
Feb). Dissident republican Bobby
Tohill was snatched from
a Belfast bar in what Chief Constable Hugh Orde described as an
abduction attempt by the PIRA. Secretary of State Paul Murphy described
this as a 'serious
breach' [of the peace process]. |
||
(2nd
March). The UUP
leader pulled his team from the review
because Sinn Féin had not been excluded over the Tohill
incident. |
||
(23rd
March). Tony Blair
and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern met the parties in Belfast. |
||
(27th
March). David
Trimble was re-elected
as Ulster Unionist Party leader. |
||
(29th
March). A smoking
ban came
into effect in all pubs,
restaurants and workplaces in the Republic. |
||
(8th
April). The IRA announced
that its guns remain silent despite loyalist
violence
and
'bad faith' on the part of both the British and Irish governments. |
||
(20th
April). The IMC
backed the chief constable over the
Tohill affair and recommended financial
sanctions against both Sinn
Féin and the PUP over continuing IRA and loyalist
violence. |
||
(1st
May). Ireland, as holder of the EU presidency,
hosted
ceremonies to welcome the EU's ten new member states. |
||
(11th
June). The European
election. Sinn Féin's Bairbe de Brun
took over from the SDLP's Martin Morgan, while the UUP and DUP held one
seat each.m |
||
(25th
June). US President George
W Bush arrived at Shannon
Airport for an EU-US summit. |
||
(30th
June). French President Jacques Chirac said that
Ireland's
presidency of the EU was 'the best presidency ever'. |
||
(22nd
July). DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said unionists would guarantee
political stability if republicans would give up
paramilitarism. |
||
(8th
Sept). Former Taoiseach John
Bruton was appointed the EU
Ambassador to Washington. |
||
(10th
Sept). Tony
Blair said that talks at Leeds Castle would
show if there was the will to end violence and share power. |
||
(18th
Sept). Three days of negotiations at Leeds Castle ended
without agreement. However, the mood was cautiously
optimistic. |
||
(1st
Oct). Mary
McAleese was elected
unopposed for a second
term as President of Ireland. She was inaugurated on
Nov 11th. |
||
(4th
Oct). DUP leader Ian Paisley had a landmark
meeting in
Dublin with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. |
||
(16th
Oct). Taoiseach Bertie Ahern held talks with
United Nations Secretary General Kofi
Annan in Dublin. |
||
(23rd
Oct). Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin
claimed the
DUP were trying
to humiliate the IRA over its demand for visible
decommissioning. DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said his party had
been 'clear and consistent' on IRA decommissioning. |
||
(28th
Oct). The IMC
reported that the IRA showed signs of
winding down its capability. The UDA remained involved in organised
crime and the UVF
were a 'ruthless organisation retaining a capacity
for more widespread violence'. Paramilitary violence had 'considerably
reduced' but remained 'at a disturbingly high level'. |
||
(12th
Nov). The British government officially recognised the UDA's
ceasefire in order to bring loyalists more fully into the
political process. |
||
(17th
Nov). The two governments put their proposals
to the DUP
and Sinn Féin. The DUP responded a week later. No direct
negotiations
could take place because the DUP refused
to talk to Sinn Féin. Both
parties backed a £1bn peace fund. |
||
(26/28
Nov). US president George W Bush telephoned
Ian Paisley
and Gerry Adams to offer his support. |
||
(29th
Nov). Gerry Adams held a groundbreaking
first meeting
with the head of Northern Ireland's police force. |
||
(30th
Nov). Ian Paisley informed the IRA that a deal to restore
devolution would be 'now or never', but the IRA should 'wear
sackcloth
and ashes' and repent. Gerry Adams responded that this was
'offensive'. |
||
(1st
Dec). Gerry Adams stated
that current talks could go no
further. |
||
(4th
Dec). Ian
Paisley met the decommissioning body chief
General John de Chastelain for the second time in a week. His opinion
was that it was unrealistic to set deadlines for a political deal when
the IRA hadn't
discussed decommissioning with de Chastelain. Meanwhile
Adams appealed to republicans not to be provoked by Paisley's
'unacceptable language'. |
||
(7th
Dec). Gerry
Adams recommended that his party accept the
British-Irish proposals. |
||
(8th
Dec). Blair and Ahern came to Belfast to make
their
proposals public. Part of the plan was for the IRA to allow
photographs
to be taken of its weapons being put beyond use. |
||
(9th
Dec). The IRA rejected
Ian Paisley's demands for a
photographic record of its decommissioning. |
||
(13th
Dec). The British and Irish prime ministers held separate
meetings with Sinn Féin leaders Gerry Adams and Martin
McGuinness.
Bertie Ahern said
afterwards that the demand for photographs
was not workable. |
||
(16th
Dec). In Bogatá,
Colombia, Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan (the
'Colombia
Three') were given
lengthy jail sentences for training
Marxist rebels. Two days later they were said to have fled
the region. |
||
(21st
Dec). Armed
robbers stole £26.5m from the Northern
Bank in Belfast, provoking speculation of IRA involvement. |
||
2005 | (1st Jan). Cork
officially became the European Capital of Culture. |
|
(7th
Jan). Chief Constable
Hugh Orde claimed
that the IRA had carried out the Northern Bank
robbery. Ahern said
that confidence in the peace process had been
damaged. |
||
(24th
Jan). Former Minister for Justice in the Republic Ray
Burke was jailed
for tax evasion as a result of legislation he
introduced. |
||
(30th January). Belfast
Catholic Robert
McCartney was killed in a brawl with IRA members in a city
centre
bar. Over the next year, his sisters were to head a high-profile
campaign to see his killers brought to justice. |
||
(2nd Feb). An IRA statement
announced that they were withdrawing their offer on arms
decommissioning. |
||
(3rd Feb). The IRA
issued a warning
about the peace process. |
||
(7th Feb). Irish
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern laid
the foundation stone of a new town in the
Republic, Adamstown. |
||
(16th Feb). The IRA
denied
any involvement in the killing of Robert McCartney. |
||
(17th Feb). Seven
people were detained
in the Republic over suspected involvement in the
Belfast bank heist. |
||
(25th Feb). The IRA
released their initial
report into the Robert McCartney murder. |
||
(4th March). The
100th Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis
opened in Dublin. |
||
(8th March). The
IRA released a five-page document detailing
their investigation into
the Robert McCartney murder, declaring their readiness to shoot those
responsible. |
||
(17th March). US
President George
W Bush met
Robert
McCartney's sisters and partner at
the White House. Unlike previous years, Northern Ireland's politicians
were not invited to the White House St Patrick's Day celebrations. |
||
(21st March). Police
seized money in Dublin and Cork which they believed was
linked to the Northern Bank robbery. |
||
(23rd March). The
IRA
reiterated their condemnation of the Robert McCartney murder in their Easter
message. |
||
(6th April). Gerry
Adams appealed
to the IRA to help rebuild the political process. The IRA responded
positively on 26th April. |
||
(16th April). The
Gaelic Athletic Association voted to open
up Croke Park for soccer and
rugby. |
||
(6th May). The DUP
won nine constituencies in the general
election. David Trimble was
defeated and later stepped down, to be replaced by Sir Reg Empey.
Only
one MP remained to the UUP. Sinn Féin became the largest
nationalist
party at Westminster. Peter
Hain took over from Paul Murphy as Northern
Ireland Secretary. |
||
(13th June). The
Irish language was officially
recognised as a working language by the
European Union. |
||
(28th July). The
IRA announced a formal
end to their armed campaign. Tony Blair called
this a 'step
of unparalleled magnitude', but Ian Paisley was sceptical. |
||
(1st Aug). The
British government set out a two-year plan to scale
down the army's
presence in Northern Ireland and change policing. It also
announced its
intention to repeal
counter terrorist legislation particular to
Northern Ireland. |
||
(19th Aug). Former
Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam
died
aged 55. She had overseen the
talks leading to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. |
||
(15th Sept). The
population of Ireland reached
its highest since 1861. The increase was
caused by returning Irish people and newcomers from Europe and Asia. |
||
(25th Sept). An
IRA
statement verified that all arms had been put beyond use.
This was confirmed
by General John de Chasterlain next day. Further confirmation came from
independent
witnesses Reverend Harold Good and Father Alec Reid. |
||
(22nd Nov). Peter
Hain unveiled
major changes in Northern
Ireland's local government,
reducing the number of district councils from 26 to seven. |
||
(8th Dec). Stormontgate
charges
were dropped.
The three accused - Ciaran Kearney, William Mackessy and
Sinn Féin's Denis
Donaldson - whose arrests had led to
the collapse
of the power-sharing executive in 2002, claimed the case
against them had been politically
motivated. President Mary McAleese met Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle. It was the first time the two heads of state had met in Ireland. A car bomb heading to Blanchardstown was intercepted by the Gardai and members of Special Branch. The individual arrested was believed to be connected to the Continuity IRA. |
||
(16th Dec). Sinn
Féin member Denis
Donaldson admitted
to having been a British agent for
two
decades. He had headed
the party's administration office at Stormont
before being arrested in October 2002 over an alleged spy
ring. He
claimed there was no
republican spy ring at Stormont. |
||
2006 | (11th Jan). The
government dropped
controversial proposals to allow paramilitary fugitives to
return home without prosecution. Sinn
Féin's rejection of it meant it was unworkable.
The
legislation had been widely
opposed. |
|
(25th
Feb). Rioting
took place in Dublin as Republican protestors
attacked
a Unionist 'Love
Ulster'
parade. |
||
(17th
March). More than 400,000 people took part in the world's
largest St
Patrick's Day Festival in Dublin. |
||
(4th April). Former
Sinn Féin member Denis
Donaldson was found shot dead in his Donegal
cottage. The PIRA claimed
they had 'no
involvement whatsoever' in his
death. Three
years later the RIRA claimed
responsibility. |
||
(6th April). Tony
Blair and Bertie Ahern arrived in Northern Ireland to unveil a blueprint
for restoring devolution. |
||
(16th April). Up to
120,000 people lined the streets of Dublin to mark the 90th
anniversary
of the Easter Rising. |
||
(26th April). Prince
Philip of Britain met McAleese and Ahern in Dublin. |
||
(10th
May). Gerry Adams said his party would not participate in
discussions on issues such as education and water charges
because 'that would be pointless'. He promised to nominate
Ian Paisley
for first minister when the assembly returned, but Paisley asserted
that
there would be no first or deputy minister until Sinn Féin
'met its
obligations'. |
||
(15th
May). The Northern Ireland Assembly was recalled
with the
view to electing an executive. |
||
(21st
May). Armed
Gardai forcibly
removed thirty Afghan refugees who had sought
sanctuary in St Patrick's cathedral and carried out a
week-long hunger
strike. |
||
(22nd
May). Belfast
City airport was renamed
the George
Best Belfast City Airport on what
would have been George Best's 60th
birthday. Best, an internationally
famous footballer from Belfast, had died the previous year. |
||
(June). Death of
former Taoiseach Charles
J Haughey. He was given
a state
funeral. |
||
(1st
July). Leading members of all political parties in
Ireland, North and South, marked the 90th
anniversary of the Battle of
the Somme. |
||
Dublin
airport was evacuated
twice in a week over bomb
scares. |
||
(19th
July). Preliminary census
findings for the Republic of Ireland reported a population of
4,234,925 million, an increase of 8.6% since 2002. |
||
(24th
Nov). Loyalist Michael
Stone, who had previously
attacked an IRA funeral in 1988, attempted
to bomb the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont on the day
nominations for the first and deputy minister were due to be made. His intention
was to kill Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. |
||
2007 | (22nd
Jan). Police ombudsman report in Northern
Ireland confirmed that police colluded with Loyalists in over a dozen murders
during the Troubles. |
|
(28th Jan). Sinn
Féin voted to support
the police of Northern Ireland for the first time in the
party's history. |
||
(7th March). Elections
held for the Northern
Ireland Assembly. |
||
(13th March). Record
of interview
released in which Peter Mandelson, former Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland, criticised Tony Blair's policy towards Sinn
Féin. |
||
(26th March). Ian
Paisley of the DUP and Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin held their first
face-to-face talks,
agreeing a target date of May 8th for returning to power sharing. |
||
(3rd May). The UVF
and Red Hand Commando announced
an end
to all paramilitary activity. |
||
(8th May). New power-sharing
government formed in Northern Ireland headed by Ian
Paisley and Martin
McGuinness. |
||
(22nd May). Roisin
McAliskey rearrested
on the request of the German authorities. |
||
(24th May). Election
in the Republic won
by Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fáil. |
||
(31st May). Fianna
Fáil opened negotiations
with the Green Party. |
||
(14th June). Coalition
between Fianna Fail and the Greens announced. |
||
(25th June). Charges dropped
against soldiers and police in the Pat
Finucane case. |
||
(20th July). Shoot-to-kill
case re-opened. |
||
(31st July). The
British army's military
operation officially came
to an end at midnight, passing responsibility for security
onto the police force. |
||
(22nd Oct). The
PIRA were blamed
for the murder of Paul
Quinn. They would later be cleared
by the IMC. |
||
(11th Nov). The UDA
announced
that the Ulster Freedom Fighters were to be stood
down at midnight. |
||
(20th Dec). Sean
Hoey found not
guilty of the Omagh
bombing. |
||
2008 | (Feb 1st) Bertie
Ahern visited Ian
Paisley's constituency. |
|
(Feb 7th) Threats
from dissidents
forced the return of checkpoints
to Ulster. |
||
(Feb 14th) Real IRA
member Andrew
Burns shot
dead. |
||
(Feb 16th) Ian
Paisley's son
Ian Paisley Junior resigned
as a minister. |
||
(Feb 24th) Two
Polish workers were murdered
in Dublin. |
||
(March 4th) Ian
Paisley stepped
down as First Minister of Northern Ireland. |
||
(March 18th) The
extent of secret
links between the
IRA and the British were made public. |
||
(March 19th) Queen
Elizabeth came to Belfast. |
||
(March 30th) Mass
loyalist attack
on a pub in Derry. |
||
(April 2nd) Taoiseach
Bertie
Ahern announced his resignation. |
||
(April 11th) A
taser
was used for the first time during an arrest in Ireland. |
||
(May 6th) Bertie
Ahern stepped
down as Taoiseach. Brian
Cowen was
confirmed as the new Taoiseach next day. |
||
(May 11th) Firebomb
found in Cookstown toystore. |
||
(May 13th) Officer hurt
by booby-trap bomb in Tyrone. |
||
(May
20th) A man was arrested
over the 1977 murder of British army officer Robert
Nairac. |
||
(May 27th) Drug
dealer hurt
in a punishment
shooting in Armagh. |
||
(June 1st) Ian
Paisley resigned as First Minister of Northern Ireland. Sinn
Féin, antagonised
by the use of the Unionist veto on matters such as education and
policing, suggested that they might disrupt
the handover to Peter
Robinson by not nominating Martin
McGuinness as deputy First Minister. However, both he and
Peter Robinson were confirmed
in their roles on June
5th. |
||
(June 12th) Ireland
voted
on the Lisbon
Treaty, the only
country in the European Union to do so. The result, declared
on June 13th,
was 'no'. |
||
(June 16th) American
President George Bush visited
Northern Ireland. |
||
(June 27th) Terence
Davidson was cleared
in court of the murder
of Belfast man Robert
McCartney. |
||
(July 1st) A massive
goldmine was found
in County Monaghan. |
||
(July 10th) Northern
Ireland's policing board concluded that there was no
chance of
a prosecution over the Omagh
bombing. |
||
(August 20th) Ian
Paisley Junior defended
his call for lethal
force against dissident republicans. |
||
(Sept 3rd) The IMC declared
the IRA Army Council 'no
longer operational'. |
||
(Sept
30th) The Irish
government guaranteed
its banks in the face of the 'credit
crunch'. |
||
(Oct 9th) Chris Ward
was found
not
guilty of the Northern Bank Robbery. |
||
(Oct) Abortion rights
in Northern Ireland was discussed
in Parliament. |
||
(Oct 29th) 12,000 parents
and teachers protested
over education cuts announced in the Budget. |
||
(Nov 9th). The murder
of rugby player Shane Geoghegan by Limerick gangsters sent shockwaves
throughout Ireland.
|
||
(Nov 18th). A deal
was reached
over the deadlock at Stormont, which had arisen over differences
between the DUP and Sinn Féin about policing
and justice. |
||
(Dec 6th). David
Cameron of the Conservative Party announced closer
ties with the Ulster Unionists. On the same day, the Irish Republic recalled all pork over fears that pigs had eaten contaminated food. |
||
2009 | (Jan 15th). The Irish government announced
it was to nationalise
the Anglo-Irish
Bank. |
|
(Jan 23rd). A proposed scheme
to recompense the families of paramilitary dead on an equal footing
with civilian victims in Northern Ireland met
with controversy.
It was rejected
by the British government on Feb
25th. |
||
(Jan 31st). A 300lb
car bomb
was defused in Castlewellan, County Down. It was believed
to have been
left by dissident republicans who were targetting the Ballykinler army
base. |
||
(Feb 3rd). Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced
a €2
billion cut
in public
services and public sector pensions. |
||
(Feb 11th). Dissident
republicans were believed
to have been involved in a 'drugs-related' murder
in Derry. |
||
(Feb 12th). The Irish government announced
plans
to rescue
the Allied Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland. |
||
(Feb 21st). Massive
protest
in Dublin about the government's handling of the recession. |
||
(Feb 26th). Civil
servants staged a protest
against planned pension cuts. |
||
(Feb 27th). The largest
bank
robbery in the Republic of Ireland's history targetted
the Bank of Ireland in Dublin. Seven suspects were arrested
and €4
million was recovered
the next day. |
||
(March
4th). The
threat
level from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland was raised
from substantial to severe. |
||
(March 5th). It was announced that British
army officers would go
back undercover in Northern Ireland, a move
criticised by Sinn
Féin. |
||
(March 7th). Two British
soldiers were shot
dead and four people were wounded
during a pizza delivery at Massereene
army base. The following day, Gordon Brown condemned
the attacks while Gerry Adams called
them 'an attack on the peace process'. Responsibility was claimed
by the Real
IRA. Gordon Brown travelled to Belfast on March 9th to
discuss
the security
situation. |
||
(March 9th). A police
officer was shot
dead in Craigavon
after responding to a call from a woman who said her house was being
attacked. The Continuity
IRA admitted
responsibility. Two
men were arrested
on March 10th
and more
arrests followed, including that of top Republican Colin
Duffy. |
||
(March 11th). Peace
protests were
held in Northern
Ireland as the Pope
spoke out to condemn the violence. |
||
(March 17th). Taoiseach Brian
Cowen and Northern
Irish leaders met
US President Barack
Obama in the White House. |
||
(March 21st). Ireland won
the Grand
Slam for the first time in 61 years. |
||
(March 24th). Amid reports
that at least two of those arrested,
including Colin
Duffy, had gone on hunger-strike,
a 17-year-old
youth and a 37-year-old
man, former Sinn Féin councillor Brendan
McConville, were charged
with the murder of policeman Stephen
Carroll. The following day, six detainees won a legal
challenge to their detention, but Colin Duffy was promptly
re-arrested.
On March 26th, a
third
man was remanded
on a charge of withholding information. Republican Sinn Féin
claimed
in a statement that the shootings had been regrettable but necessary acts
of war. On March 27th,
Colin
Duffy was charged
with the murder
of the soldiers. On April
2nd a 19-year-old
was arrested
over the soldier deaths. |
||
(March 27th). Financial advisor Ted
Cunningham became the first person to be successfully
prosecuted
for the Northern
Bank Robbery. He was sentenced
to ten years jail on April
24th. |
||
(March
30th). Republicans
opposed to the peace process organised a day
of chaos.
Next day a school
was shut
down by a further
bomb scare, and a convicted
rapist was shot
in a paramilitary-style
attack. On April
1st, an
alleged drug dealer was injured
in another punishment
shooting and another
man was also shot.
By April 5th, it
emerged
that the PIRA had warned the Irish government that they had lost
control of Ardoyne. On April
27th, Martin McGuinness, who had
received
death
threats, accused dissident republicans of turning the Bogside
into a 'ghetto'. |
||
(April 2nd). The day after unemployment in
the Republic reached
fresh heights,
Bombardier
announced mass
redundancies, meaning that 2%
of Northern
Ireland's manufacturing workforce
had been laid off in four days. |
||
(April 7th). A severe
budget
was announced
in the Republic. |
||
(April 27th). Businessman Geoff
Kerr was shot
dead in Antrim by a criminal
gang posing as delivery
men. The man charged
over the murder on May
3rd was a member of a Loyalist criminal gang led by a British
agent. |
||
(April 30th). The Republic reported
its first
case of swine
flu. The North followed
suit on May
13th. |
||
(May 7th). The IMC
reported
that republicans opposed to the peace process posed a serious
threat but were not capable of a sustained campaign.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun
Woodward vowed
that dissident republicans would
not derail the peace process, and also called
on Loyalists
to disarm. |
||
(May 20th). A major report
on child abuse within
Catholic
institutions was released. |
||
(May 22nd). Ireland's
first
sextuplets
were born
in Belfast. |
||
(May 24th). Catholic
youth
worker Kevin
McDaid was beaten
to death
by a Loyalist
mob in an unprovoked attack following a Celtic/Rangers football
match. |
||
(June 8th). A civil
case brought by the families
of the victims of the 1998 Omagh
bomb found four
members of the RIRA
- Michael
McKevitt, Liam
Campbell, Seamus Daly
and Colm
Murphy - responsible for the murders. |
||
(June 17th). In the early hours of the
morning, twenty Romanian families fled
their homes in Belfast after suffering
racist
attacks.
On June 23rd
it was reported
that the families would leave
Northern
Ireland. |
||
(June 18th). The British government was informed
that the UVF
had disbanded their weapons.
On June 27th,
the UVF
and Red
Hand Commandos announced that they had completed
decommissioning,
while the UDA confirmed that it had begun to decommission
its arsenal. |
||
(June
25th). The International
Monetary Fund said Ireland
was suffering the worst
recession
of any advanced economy. |
||
(July 13th). 'Twelfth'
celebrations in Belfast led to battles
between republicans and police, which Sinn
Féin blamed on the Real
IRA. Rioting continued
in Belfast
for another two nights. |
||
(August 7th). A young
woman, Darina
Calpin, became the first
person in the Republic to die of swine flu. Her
death followed that of Lee
Porter, a soldier
from Coleraine, who died on July
31st in England.
The first
swine flu victim to die in the North,
Caroline
Hoy, passed away on August
20th. |
||
(August 21st). A
passenger
train travelling from Balbriggan to Dublin narrowly
escaped disaster
when the rail
track collapsed immediately after the train had passed over
it. |
||
(August 22nd). Long Kesh escapee
Pól
Brennan, who had been arrested in America
after his work permit had expired, was deported
from the US to the Republic of Ireland. |
||
(Sept 6th). British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown was criticised
after it emerged
that he had declined to put pressure on Libya
regarding compensation
for IRA
victims. The following day, in the face
of resistance
from Colonel Gadaffi's son,
Downing Street denied
any 'U-turn' on compensation. |
||
(Sept 8th). The British Army defused
a 600lb
bomb found on the border. |
||
(Sept 17th). The jailing
of three CIRA members for a planned mortar attack in 2007
led to three
nights
of rioting
in Lurgan. |
||
(Oct 2nd). People in the Irish Republic voted
in favour
of the Lisbon
Treaty. |
||
(Oct 11th). The INLA
announced
an end
to their armed struggle. |
||
(Nov 6th). Thousands of people across the
Republic marched
against cuts in public service spending. |
||
(Nov 23rd). After a week of severe
floods across Ireland, Environment Minister John Gormley
claimed that the weather conditions had been the worst
'in 800 years'. |
||
(Nov 24th). A quarter
of a million public
sector workers went on strike in the Republic to protest
against budget cuts. |
||
(Nov 26th). A report
by the Commission of Investigation said that the church had deliberately
covered
up clerical child abuse. |
||
(Dec). Three women
challenged
the Republic's abortion law at the European Court of Human Rights. |
||
(Dec 17th). The Republic officially came
out of recession
after GDP rose
by 0.3% in the third quarter. |
||
2010 | (Jan
1st). The blasphemy law came into force, making
certain opinions punishable by a heavy fine. It was immediately
challenged
by a coalition of atheists. |
|
(Jan 6th). The UDA
confirmed
that they had decommissioned their arsenal. |
||
(Jan 9th). Iris
Robinson, politician and wife of NI First Minister Peter
Robinson, was forced
to resign from the DUP after it was revealed
that she had failed to declare £50,000 she had received from
two property developers to help her 19-year-old
lover start a business. Two days later, Peter Robinson stepped down as First Minister for a period of six weeks. He returned as First Minister during policing and justice talks on Feb 3rd. |
||
(Jan 23rd). Sinn Féin warned
of a crisis for Stormont after talks on policing and devolution
faltered, mainly due to disagreements on the policing of Unionist parades
and to differences
over when devolution should occur. Taoiseach Brian Cowen and British PM
Gordon Brown met
on the 25th
to discuss
the crisis. The talks ended without
resolution on the 27th. |
||
(Feb 5th). A deal
was reached
regarding the devolution
of policing and justice. |
||
(Feb 15th-16th). The Pope met
Irish bishops and condemned
child abuse. |
||
(Feb 22nd). A car
bomb exploded in Newry, the first such bomb in around a
decade. Police described it as a 'miracle'
that no one had been killed or injured. Dissident
republicans were blamed. |
||
(March 9th). The NI Assembly voted
in favour
of devolving policing and justice. |
||
(March 20th). The Pope
apologised for clerical sexual abuse in
Ireland. |
||
(March 30th). It was announced that the Irish
government was to provide
the Anglo
Irish Bank with a bailout of €8.3bn. Next day, the Anglo
Irish reported a €12.7bn loss. |
||
(April 12th). On the day that policing
and justice were devolved,
the RIRA
forced a taxi driver to take a bomb
to an army base. A passing civilian suffered minor injuries in the
explosion. |
||
(April 22nd). A bomb
exploded
outside Newtownhamilton police station in County Armagh. Two people
were injured. (April/May) An ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano caused Irish airspace and other European airports to be closed intermittently, stranding passengers and costing the air industry millions. |
||
(April 30th). Top RTÉ broadcaster Gerry Ryan
was found
dead at his home, apparently after taking cocaine. |
||
(May 28th). Loyalist paramilitary Bobby
Moffett was shot
dead in broad daylight by rival
Loyalists. (June 5th). Irish ship the Rachel Corrie was seized by Israeli authorities after trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. (June 15th). The Saville Report into Bloody Sunday was published. It found that none of the victims had been carrying guns, although it did not accept that the nail bombs found in the pocket of Gerald Donaghey had been planted by the British. The British soldiers had been out of control and had been the first to fire, after which republican paramilitaries returned fire. People had been shot running away, lying injured and going to help the injured. British Prime Minister David Cameron apologised on behalf of the British Government. Six of the British soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday criticised the Report, claiming Lt Col Derek Wilford was being used as a scapegoat. According to the Report, he had ignored orders by his superior, Brigadier Pat McClellan, and should never have sent the Paratroopers into an unfamiliar area where it was impossible to distinguish rioter from marcher. (July 11th/12th) Eight men died in the Republic's most disastrous car accident on record. Violence flared in the North around the Twelfth, with 27 police injured during riots on the night of the 11th, and around 100 police involved in containing an anti-Orange Order protest in Ardoyne on the 12th, during which baton rounds were fired. Meanwhile police described rioting in Derry as some of the worst in a decade. Rioting continued on the nights of the 13th and 14th. (July 15th). Derry was named the UK's inaugural City of Culture. (Aug 14th). On the day of the Apprentice Boys' March, a bomb went off in a bin in Lurgan, injuring three children. The bomb was the latest in a string of incidents (more detailed timeline here). (Aug 24th). A report was published into the Claudy bombing of 1972, naming Catholic priest Father James Chesney as the mastermind of the attacks that killed nine people including children. He had not been prosecuted at the time to avoid stirring up further sectarian animosity. (Sept 14th) A public inquiry found no evidence of state collusion in the killing of LVF leader Billy Wright by republicans at Long Kesh in 1997. (Sept 21st) The National Treasury Management Agency raised €1.5bn of fresh loans by selling Irish government bonds. Two days later, the announcement that Irish national output had dropped by 1.2% in the second quarter of 2010 sparked speculation of a double-dip recession, which Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan denied. On Sept 30th, the Governor of the Central Bank revealed that the bail-out of the Anglo Irish Bank could cost €34bn. The total cost of bailing out the banks could be as high as €45bn. On the same day, the Allied Irish Bank was nationalised. (Oct 23rd) Thousands of people protested in Belfast against government spending cuts. (Nov 3rd). A student protest in Dublin against increased registration fees led to violence. (Nov 4th). The government announced record cuts to the budget, including €6bn worth of cuts in 2011. (Nov 12th/13th). It was reported that the Irish government was in preliminary talks with the EU over a financial bailout. On Nov 15th, Taoiseach Brian Cowen said that Ireland would make no application to the EU or the IMF for funding. The European Central Bank vice president had said that money would be available for Ireland if necessary. The following day, British chancellor George Osbourne said it was in Britain's interest to support Ireland. On Nov 18th, the Irish government accepted the idea of receiving financial assistance, with Finance Minister Brian Lenihan saying he felt 'no sense of shame about fighting hard for this country'. The government ruled out changing Ireland's low corporation tax. On Nov 21st, the Irish government confirmed that Ireland would be making a formal application for a bailout and the deal was affirmed that evening. A tough budget was unveiled on Nov 24th. Nov 27th saw a major demonstration in Dublin against the government's handling of the financial crisis. The following day, it was announced that an €85bn bailout had been agreed. (Dec 7th). The Irish government produced an austerity budget. (Dec 16th). The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland had failed to implement the constitutional right to abortion when a woman's life was at risk. (Dec) Ireland suffered a second heavy winter. In Northern Ireland, an unprecedented number of leaks in the water system caused around 40,000 people to lose access to water. |
||
2011 | (Jan
18th). Taoiseach Brian
Cowen survived a Fianna Fáil confidence
vote.
However, on the 22nd
he announced he would be stepping
down
as leader of Fianna Fáil, but would continue running the
government until the next election. The following day, the Green Party announced
that it would no
longer be part of the coalition with Fianna Fáil. Micheál
Martin was elected
leader of Fianna
Fáil
on the 26th. (Feb 10th). Six people died when a commuter flight from Belfast crashed while landing in Cork. (Feb 25th). A general election was held in the Republic of Ireland. Fine Gael emerged the clear victors with Sinn Féin's vote increasing and Gerry Adams winning Louth. (March 31st). Stress tests by the Central Bank revealed that Irish banks needed a further €24 billion capital. (April 2nd). Ronan Kerr, a young Catholic who had recently joined the PSNI, was killed when a bomb exploded under his car. (April 17th). The rating agency Moody's downgraded Ireland's bank bonds to junk. (Late April/Early May). 'Unprecedented' gorse fires hit both the Republic and Northern Ireland. (May 16th). Streets in London were closed off after the first bomb warning from republicans in a decade. The threat was in response to the Queen's imminent visit to the Republic of Ireland. (May 17th - 20th). On May 17th, the British Queen began a four-day visit to the Republic of Ireland, the first visit by a reigning British monarch in a century. Dublin was under lockdown and security was extremely tight. One of the Queen's first acts was to lay a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance. On the second day, she visited Croke Park, the scene of the first Bloody Sunday in 1920. She also laid a wreath for soldiers killed in the First World War. At Dublin Castle that evening she expressed regret that Anglo-Irish relations had not always been 'entirely benign'. On May 19th she visited the Kildare stud and the following day she finished her tour at Cork. (May 23rd). US President Barack Obama visited the Republic. His visit was cut short by a renewed threat from volcanic ash. (June 20th/21st). East Belfast suffered two nights of rioting, apparently orchestrated by the UVF, during which both republicans and loyalists fired shots and a press photographer was injured. (July 12th). While the North suffered riots, the credit rating agency Moody's cut Ireland's bonds to junk status and warned of further possible downgrades. The Irish government warned that this would damage Ireland's economic recovery and the EU criticised the behaviour of the credit rating agencies. (July 13th). The Cloyne Report into abuse in the Co Cork diocese was published. It condemned the failure to report all cases of abuse to the police. On the 20th, Taoiseach Enda Kenny criticised the Catholic church for downplaying abuse. Five days later, the Vatican confirmed that its ambassador to Ireland, Giuseppe Leanza, had been recalled to Rome. (July 18th). A protest against austerity measures took place in Dublin. (Aug 2nd). Senator David Norris withdrew from the Irish presidential race after a scandal involving his former lover Ezra Nawi. Two weeks later Gay Bryne also announced his decision not to run for president, apparently 'taken aback by the intensity of the media campaign against him.' (Aug 14th). Around thirty people were injured after a bus overturned in Belfast. (Aug 18th). Two women from Northern Ireland, Elizabeth Graham and Kathy Dinsmore, were murdered in Turkey by the boyfriend of Ms Graham's daughter. (Sept 3rd). The International Monetary Fund announced it would release €1.5bn to Ireland. (Sept 18th). Martin McGuinness was officially announced as Sinn Féin's candidate for the Irish presidency. Other nominees included the industrialist Seán Gallagher, social activist Mary Davis, Labour's Michael Higgins and Gay Mitchell of Fine Gael. David Norris re-entered the race along with former pop star Dana Rosemary Scallon on the 27th. (Sept 23rd). The 'first Irish case' of death by spontaneous combustion was recorded. (Oct 22nd). Two thousand people took part in an anti-austerity march in Dublin. (Oct 24th). Flooding in Dublin caused the City Council to declare a major alert. That night, Garda Ciaran Jones was swept away by the River Liffey after stopping to warn motorists of the danger. Northern Ireland was also hit by floods. (Oct 29th). Michael D. Higgins emerged as the next President of Ireland. (Nov 25th). A PSNI Gaelic football team played for the first time at Croke Park, Dublin. (Nov 26th). Thousands of people marched against austerity measures in Dublin. (Dec 13th). The highest known wave to hit Irish shores was recorded off the coast of Donegal. (Dec 15th). The International Monetary Fund released €3.9 billion in loans to Ireland. |
|
2012 | (Jan).
Three babies died from a bacterial infection at
Belfast's Royal Jubilee Hospital. (Jan 19th). Derry was hit by two bombs, with no injuries reported. Next day, Brian Shivers was convicted of the Massereene killings of March 2009, while Colin Duffy walked free. (Feb 22nd). The UVF 'supergrass' trial over the killing of Tommy English collapsed, with nine men acquitted of all charges. (March 3rd). The preserved heart of St Laurence O'Toole was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral. (March 13th). Fourteen people were held in Northern Ireland's largest ever anti-fraud operation. (March 15th). Providence Resources announced they had opened Ireland's first oil well. (March 24th). Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced that he would resign from Fianna Fáil in the wake of the Mahon Tribunal's final report. The tribunal found that Ahern had failed to account 'truthfully' for a number of financial transactions, but it did not accuse him of corruption. (March 31st). Around 4,000 people protested in Dublin against the Household Charge. (April 26th). The sixth Troika review found that Ireland was meeting its bailout targets. (May 31st). The Republic held a referendum on the EU fiscal treaty. The referendum passed by a large margin. (June 12th). Minister for Defence Alan Shatter told the Dáil that the Government apologised for the way in which men who deserted the Defence Forces to join the Allied Forces during World War II had been treated after the war. (June 26th). The Queen of England began a tour of Northern Ireland. On June 27th, she attended a charity event where she met Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin and shook hands with him. That afternoon, a huge Jubilee party was held at Stormont. (July 26th). The Guardian reported that some of the main republican groups opposed to the peace process had united to form a new IRA. (Aug). Ireland celebrated its most successful Olympic Games since 1956. (Sept 2nd). Rioting took hold for three nights in north Belfast. (Sept 15th). Three men from the same family died after falling into a slurry pit in Hillsborough. One was named as Ulster Rugby star Nevin Spence. (Oct 18th). The first private clinic to offer abortions opened in Belfast amid protests. (Oct 28th). Savita Halappanavar died at a hospital in Galway after being refused an abortion. The case came to international attention a couple of weeks afterwards. (Nov 1st). Prison officer David Black was shot dead by the new IRA in Northern Ireland, the first prison officer to be killed in nearly twenty years. (Dec 3rd). A decision to limit the number of days on which the Union flag was flown from Belfast town hall sparked weeks of protests, rioting and harassment of Alliance party members. (Dec 21st). Fine Gael TD Shane McEntee committed suicide. Cyber-bullying was blamed in part for his death. |
|
2013 | (Jan 1st). Ireland took on a six-month presidency of the EU; Derry became the UK City of Culture; and tourism initiative 'The Gathering' began. (Jan). The Unionist flag protests continued and became more violent, making international headlines. (Jan). The Food Safety Authority of Ireland revealed that horse meat had been found in some burgers on sale in Ireland and the UK. ABP Food Group temporarily stopped production. (Jan 19th). Around 25,000 attended an anti-abortion 'vigil for life' in Dublin. (Jan 25th). Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe became the first member of the force to be fatally shot on duty since 1996. (Jan 29th). Tycoon Kevin McGeever was found barefoot, emaciated and scarred after having been kidnapped eight months previously. (Feb 5th). A report into the Magdalene Laundries was published. The Taoiseach Enda Kenny said they were the 'product of a harsh Ireland'. (March 22nd). After heavy snow, the whole of Belfast was affected by a power cut. Severe weather continued to pummel the North for days, with a military helicopter flying food to animals in remote areas. (April 5th). After an emotional debate, the Irish Medical Organisation rejected a motion supporting the regulation of abortion. During this month, the inquiry into Savita Halappanavar's death continued. Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he did not intend to hold another referendum on abortion rights. (April 13th). Thousands of people attended an anti-austerity march in Dublin. (May 3rd). Brian Shivers, originally found guilty of the Massereene killings, was found not guilty in a retrial. (May 7th). Irish soldiers who had fought for the Allies during World War Two and had subsequently been accused of desertion were granted an official amnesty and apology. (May). Controversy raged over whether Ireland was a 'tax haven' for companies like Apple. Meanwhile, the 'Croke Park' talks took place regarding public sector pay. (June). The G8 summit was held in Enniskillen amid massive security. A large protest was held on June 17th, but the summit passed off without serious incident. (July). The controversy over abortion continued, with a large pro-life march taking place in Dublin on the 6th. (August). An Irish woman, Michaela McCollum, was arrested in Peru with another woman on drugs smuggling charges. They would later be sentenced to prison. (August 30th). Nobel prize winning poet and playwright Seamus Heaney died. (Sept). The Church of Ireland appointed its first female bishop. (Oct 6th). Voters in the Republic rejected a government proposal to abolish Seanad Éireann. (Oct 9th/10th). Republicans shot dead Kevin Kearney and Barry McCrory. (Dec). Ireland successfully exited its bailout, the first eurozone member state to do so. (Dec). Police in the North mounted a large security operation in the run-up to Christmas. (Dec). The Haass talks in Belfast ended without agreement after weeks of debate, after the main unionist parties rejected them. |
|
2014 |
(Jan 2nd). Cork centre flooded. (Jan 13th). An inquiry began into abuse in Northern Ireland's children's homes and borstals. (Jan 17th). The chairman of the National Asset Management Agency said he believed the property crash was over. (Jan 31st). Two Irish students died in a fire at a hall of residence in Belgium. (Feb 1st). People were evacuated in Limerick following flooding. (Feb 1st). 19-year-old Jonny Byrne died while playing 'NekNomination'. (Feb 5th). Death of student Patrick Halpen in London. (Feb 15th). Thousands of people marched in Dublin calling for greater recognition of the Irish language. (Feb 17th). Kingsmill survivor Alan Black told a coroner's court that state agents had been involved. (Feb 21st). The case against John Downey over the Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings collapsed because of a letter the PSNI had sent to Downey assuring him he would not face criminal prosecution. This sparked an inquiry into 'On the Runs' letters. (Feb). Graham Norton criticised RTÉ's decision to pay the opponents of gay marriage €85,000. (Feb). Workers at Allsop Space in Dublin held a sit-in protest. (March 13th). Three people including NI peer Lord Ballyedmond died in a helicopter crash in Norfolk. (March). German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the Irish bailout programme had been a 'tremendous success story'. (March). Mayor of Boston Marty Walsh refused to march in the city's St Patrick's day parade because of the organiser's refusal to allow a LGBT presence. (April). A goat-sheep hybrid was born in Kildare. (April 30th). Gerry Adams was arrested over the murder of Jean McConville and held for four days. (May 8th). Five-year-old Oscar Knox died after a long battle with cancer. (May). Anna Lo of the Alliance Party announced her retirement from Northern Irish politics, which came about partly because of racist abuse from loyalists. (June). A mass grave containing nearly 800 children's bodies in Tuam came to international attention. (June). A study by the European Union showed that Ireland had the highest number of young cannabis users. (June 16th). Protesters in east Belfast turned a Nigerian immigrant away from his new home. Earlier in the month, two Pakistanis said they would leave Northern Ireland after a racist attack. (July 1st). Nine people were jailed for the murder of Catholic community worker Kevin McDaid. (July). A row erupted over a series of cancelled Garth Brooks concerts in Dublin. (July). Two divers drowned off the Cork coast. (July 21st). An anti-fracking protest took place in Co. Fermanagh. (July). The UN called Ireland's abortion laws 'restrictive'. Around the same time, Belfast Magistrates Court heard testimony from Bernadette Smyth of the Marie Stopes clinic who said she had been harassed by an anti-abortion campaigner. (Aug 10th). Clashes between loyalists and republicans broke out in Belfast during a republican parade marking the anniversary of internment without trial. (Aug 21st). Death of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. (Aug 23rd). Thousands of people attended a protest about the pensions issue involving former Waterford Crystal workers. (Sept). The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry investigated the treatment of children sent to Australia, and also abuse at Kincora and Rubane. (Sept). Two men went on trial for burning to death a family's pet dog. They were later found guilty. (Sept 11th). After the DUP and Sinn Féin clashed over Stormont, Gerry Adams said the political process was in serious difficulty. (Sept 12th). Death of former DUP leader and First Minister Ian Paisley. (Oct). The remains of 'Disappeared' victim Brendan Megraw were found in County Meath. (Oct). Water charges protests took place across the country. (Oct). Maíria Cahill claimed that the IRA had covered up sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager. (Nov). The DUP's Gregory Campbell caused controversy by mocking the Irish language at Stormont. (Nov 15th). Guns and bomb parts were seized during a raid on republican paramilitaries in Dublin. (Dec). During a court case in which Ian Bailey attempted to sue the state over his wrongful arrest for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, Marie Farrell walked out of the witness box. (Dec 3rd). A pregnant woman was declared dead in hospital. Despite this, her body was kept connected to a life support machine in order to save the foetus. Judges eventually ruled that the machine should be shut down. (Dec 10th). Around 100,000 people protested against new water charges. (Dec 28th). President Michael Higgins signed the Water Services Bill into law. |
|
2015 |
(Jan). Irishman Barry Lyttle punched his brother Patrick in the head, causing him to go into a coma, while the pair were in Sydney. Patrick recovered and supported his brother. (Jan 8th). Following the killings of journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris following the magazine's publication of Mohammed cartoons, Dr Ali Selim of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland condemned the attack while advising Irish publications to 'avoid things that might cause problems like that'. (Jan). The DUP was told it would not be allowed to take part in UK General Election debates, despite the presence of the SNP and Plaid Cymru. (Jan). Industrial action by NI Water meant that more than 1,600 homes in Northern Ireland were temporarily without water. (Feb 10th). A bill allowing the termination of abnormal foeteses was defeated in the Dáil. (Feb 10th). A tribunal in the North ruled that obese individuals could have disability rights. (March 27th). Graham Dwyer was found guilty of the murder of Elaine O'Hara in a highly unusual case. (March). Property billionaire Brian O’Donnell became involved in a battle to save his home from repossession. (April). Irish student Karen Buckley was murdered in Glasgow. Alexander Pacteau later pleaded guilty to the killing. (April 1st). The Irish government announced that it was planning to pardon Harry Gleeson, hanged for murder in 1941. (April 18th). Thousands of people protested against water charges in Dublin. (April). It was reported that hate crime figures in Belfast had risen by 43% in eight months. (May 5th). Ex-IRA man Gerard 'Jock' Davison was shot dead. Fellow DAAD founder Kevin McGuigan was later named as a prime suspect in the killing. (May 22nd). A referendum was held on same-sex marriage in the Republic. A majority voted in favour. (June 1st). Paying for sex became a crime in the North. (June 3rd). The Irish tricolour was flown briefly over Stormont, causing unionist outrage. (June 6th). Paul McCauley, who had been left in a coma after being attacked by loyalists in 2006, passed away. (June 13th). Thousands marched in Belfast in support of gay marriage. (June 16th). Five Irish students and one Irish-American died when a balcony collapsed at Berkeley University. (July 5th). Thousands marched against abortion in Dublin. (July 6th). The oldest Irish-born woman, Kathleen Snavely, died aged 113 in New York. (July). A proposed Frankie Boyle gig in Belfast caused controversy among disability groups. (Aug 12th). Former IRA man Kevin McGuigan was murdered in Belfast. His killing led to a political crisis at Stormont after the PSNI said they believed the IRA was still active. (Aug). The family of Limerick man Jason Corbett, who had died in the US, tried to get custody of his children. His widow, a person of interest in his killing but not the mother of the children, announced that she would fight for custody. (Sept 10th). First Minister Peter Robison stepped down from his role and withdrew most of the DUP MLAs in protest at the ongoing crisis over the existence of the IRA. (Sept). Students from Queen's University Belfast built a bridge out of Meccano across Clarendon Dock. (Oct 2nd). Playwright Brian Friel died aged 86. (Oct). Homeless families occupied a show home in Blanchardstown to protest the ongoing housing crisis. (Oct 10th). Ten travellers, including a baby, died in a fire at Carrickmines. (Oct 11th). Adrian Crevan Mackin, who was due to face trial for IRA membership in Dublin, shot dead garda Tony Golden who had gone to his home to investigate a domestic disturbance, before killing himself. (Oct). Former Anglo Irish Bank CEO David Drumm hired top American lawyers to prevent his extradition to Ireland. (Nov). A report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons in England and Wales called Maghaberry Prison in Northern Ireland the most dangerous ever inspected. (Nov 21st). The LÉ Aoife left Cork harbour to help deal with the refugee crisis in Malta. (Nov 30th). The High Court in Belfast ruled that Northern Ireland's abortion legislation was in breach of human rights law. (Dec). Pastor James McConnell went on trial in Belfast over 'grossly offensive' remarks about Islam. He was found not guilty the following month. (Dec 17th). Arlene Foster became the first woman to lead the Democratic Unionist Party. | |
2016 |
(Jan 2nd). Prominent Loyalist Mark Harbinson appeared in court charged with firearm offences. He had initially fled to England after weapons were found at his home. (Jan 31st). Death of TV personality Terry Wogan. (Feb 2nd). Fianna Fáil activist Brian Mohan lost his legal case against female-only quotas. (Feb 5th). Gangster David Byrne was shot dead during a boxing weigh-in in Dublin. The CIRA claimed responsibility. (March 1st). The case against Seamus Daly, accused of involvement in the Omagh bombing, collapsed. (March 14th). Former Anglo Irish Bank David Drumm was extradited from the US to face fraud changes. (March). Events commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising took place. (April 1st). Northern Irish 'drugs mule' Michaella McCollum was released from custody in Peru. (April 3rd). A 'Remembrance Wall' for the 1916 Rising was unveiled at Glasnevin Cemetery. It caused controversy by commemorating British as well as Irish casualties. (Oct 16th). Munster rugby coach Anthony Foley died suddenly in Paris. (Oct 24th). The Ashers bakery lost their court case over their refusal, as Christians, to bake a cake decorated with a pro-gay marriage slogan. (Nov 5th). Islamic State claimed that an Irishman, Terence Kelly, had blown himself up in a suicide attack in Mosul, Iraq. (Dec). A 103-year-old woman was reported to have spent 15 hours on a trolley at Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore. (Dec 3rd). Northern Irish Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness pulled out of a trip to China on medical grounds. (Dec). Gerry Adams was involved in a dispute with the son of Brian Stack, a prison officer from the Republic of Ireland killed by the IRA. |
|
2017 |
(Jan 9th). Martin McGuinness resigned from his position as Deputy First Minister, ostensibly over the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme scandal. (Jan 10th). With the threat of avian flu rising, the birds at Dublin Zoo were taken indoors for their own protection. (Jan 22nd). The New IRA shot and wounded a police officer on the Crumlin Road in Belfast. (March 1st). Irish travellers were granted recognition as an ethnic minority. (March 21st). Death of Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness from a rare heart condition. (June 9th). After the Conservatives won the UK election with a narrow majority, they sought a deal with the DUP. (June 14th). Leo Varadkar of Fine Gael became Taoiseach. He was the youngest person ever to do so. He was also the first gay and ethnic minority person to take the role. (June 29th). The British government announced that abortion would be available for Northern Irish women on the English NHS. (Sept). Former Royal Marine Ciaran Maxwell was found guilty of storing weapons for republicans and preparing for an attack. (Oct). Bombardier, one of Northern Ireland's largest employers, faced a proposed 300% duty on its exports on planes to the US amid an international trade dispute. (Oct 8th). A rally was heard in Athenry in favour of an Apple centre there. (Oct 11th). The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment heard that the online demand for abortion pills had trebled since 2010. (Oct 16th). Storm Ophelia struck Ireland, resulting in three deaths. |
Other
Timelines Available on the Internet