Religious and Political Tension and Conflict in Northern Ireland

          While Northern Ireland is primarily Protestant (60%), Northern Irish Catholics have long wanted to rejoin their brothers to the South. Throughout the Post-War Era, they have felt discriminated against, as if they were second-class citizens. In the 1960s, these frustrated feelings led the Catholics to form the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), in order to peacefully demonstrate for equal rights for Catholics. Their actions were successful, forcing the hand of Northern Irish Prime Minister, Terence O’Neill, to institute measures making life more bearable for the members of NICRA and other Northern Irish Catholics. However, these measures were not enough for the Catholics. On the other hand, the Protestants were furious. Soon tensions rose to a boiling point and fighting broke out on the streets of prominent Northern Irish cities such as Belfast and Londonderry; Britain sent in troops to quell the violence.
          These rising tensions, coupled with a desire to reunite the two Irelands, led Catholics in Northern Ireland to adopt more extreme measures to gain equal rights, and possibly freedom from Britain. In an act of desperation they reformed the Irish Republican Army (IRA), an incarnation of the fighting force that had gained The Republic of Ireland its freedom in the early 20th century.
          Late in the 1960s and early in the 1970s violence concerning religion continued to escalate. One of the most infamous events concerning this conflict occurred on January 30, 1972. At the time, a couple hundred Republican Catholics were being held in the city of Derry without trial. In protest, NICRA planned to march on the city in a non-violent demonstration. The government denounced this act, but NICRA went ahead with its plans anyway. In response, British soldiers open fired into the crowd, killing 13 and wounding 14 of the demonstrators. This event came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” and was a rallying point for Northern Irish extremists.
          In a counterattack to “Bloody Sunday” and a half-century of mistreatment, the IRA began to exact revenge on the British and other Northern Irish Protestants by executing terrorist attacks. They planted bombs across England for the next twenty years, killing thousands and wounding many more. At the same time, the British maintained a military presence in Northern Ireland hoping to suppress any possible violence. The British stayed in Northern Ireland until the late 1980s, and peace was finally reached in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement, which created Northern Ireland's own assembly and began to restore its international relations.