What A Bloody Awful Country: Northern Ireland's century of division
What A Bloody Awful Country: Northern Ireland's century of division
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Overview
As a long and bloody guerrilla war staggered to a close on the island of Ireland, Britain beat a retreat from all but a small portion of the country – and thus, in 1921, Northern Ireland was born.
That partition, says Kevin Meagher, has been an unmitigated disaster for Nationalists and Unionists alike. Following the fraught history of British rule in Ireland, a better future was there for the taking but was lost amid political paralysis, while the resulting fifty years of devolution succeeded only in creating a brooding sectarian stalemate that exploded into the Troubles.
In a stark but reasoned critique, Meagher traces the landmark events in Northern Ireland’s century of existence, exploring the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland has been governed over the past 100 years.
Thoughtful and sometimes provocative, What a Bloody Awful Country reflects on how both Loyalists and Republicans might have played their cards differently and, ultimately, how the actions of successive British governments have amounted to a masterclass in failed statecraft.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781785907593 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Biteback Publishing, Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2023 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
There are already lots of books about Northern Ireland and, I dare say, a few more will be published about its centenary to add to the groaning bookshelves. Historians, political scientists, journalists, activists and even participants in the country’s thirty-year ‘Troubles’ have all had their say. For a place where political dialogue has often been lacking, there is no shortage of brilliant and insightful writing already out there, covering every twist and turn of the past century. Rather than re-tread the footsteps of so many eminent chroniclers of Northern Ire land’s past, what I have attempted to do in this book is highlight some of the significant events as I see them, particularly from the British point of view. I will explore the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that, at various stages, should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland was governed over the past 100 years.
As I see it, there are three key viewpoints that are worthy of examination. First, the Unionists. They oversaw Northern Ire land, uninterrupted, for fifty years, from 1921 until 1972; at which point, Northern Ireland’s idiosyncratic experiment with devolution was curtailed. The place was created in their image to lock in a Protestant–Unionist hegemony. They circled the waggons early on and froze the Catholic minority out. But what might they have done differently, in, say, responding more imaginatively to the civil rights movement of the mid- to late 1960s, which was trying to get a fair deal for Catholics? Why have Unionists failed time after time to initiate a dialogue – to stretch out the hand to Catholic–Nationalists – and by doing so, try to create a level playing field that might have helped head off demands for Irish unity and thus secure the long-term future of the Union? What more could mainstream Unionism have done in facing down the threat from within – namely the rank sectarianism of Loyalists – whipped up by Ian Paisley during that time?
I am also interested in the tactics used by Nationalists and Republicans. How might they have played their cards differently? Could they have been more adept at navigating Unionist politics in the 1960s, better utilising the window of opportunity represented by Prime Minister Terence O’Neill and his attempt to steer the Unionist state in a more moderate direction? Might peaceful, direct action have ultimately been more fruitful than armed resistance and shortened the Troubles, or avoided them altogether? Could Nationalists have channelled their initial advantage, in terms of occupying the moral high ground in the face of Stormont’s aggression towards them, into real political influence, rather than allowing the civil rights effort to dissipate, superseded, as it was, by violence?
Ultimately, however, I am concerned with the approach taken by successive British governments, particularly during the three decades of conflict from the late 1960s until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. History did not end there, but it is a useful bookmark in approaching British policy, as it rep resented a clear switch of emphasis away from majoring on security considerations, in favour of developing a lasting political settlement. As a student of British policy in Northern Ireland, I remain frustrated and even appalled at many of the decisions taken by ministers over the years. Indeed, it is an area of politics that has escaped forensic examination by British journalists and academics. Why was Westminster content to allow Northern Ireland to be run ‘off the books’ for half a century, facilitating majority Unionist rule and the creation of a manifestly unfair and discriminatory society? Why did the British government not react faster and more decisively in supporting the demand for civil rights and ensuring Stormont acceded to them? Why did ministers allow themselves to be dragged into political quicksand by trying to defeat Irish Republicanism by military means? How did they end up sponsoring Loyalist terror gangs as they waged a relentless campaign of sectarian murder against Catholic civilians? Governments always bear culpability – both for what they do and for what they fail to do.
There are sins of commission and omission in later chapters of the country’s story that bear far greater public debate than they have so far received. The affairs of Northern Ireland, visceral though they are, largely remain poorly understood and have barely registered in British politics. The Troubles may have stretched across nine parliaments and six premierships, encompassing twenty-two Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, along with innumerable junior ministers and their shadows (not to mention the 300,000 British servicemen and women who served there), but, throughout, the country remained a place apart, remote both in proximity to the rest of the United Kingdom and the affections of the British public.
There was a long period after partition had bedded in when little happened, only for dramatic events to suddenly flash across front pages from the mid-1960s onwards. Irish history abides by Lenin’s maxim that in politics there can be decades where nothing happens and then weeks where decades happen. Between 1798 and 1803, for instance, there were two attempts at ending British rule in Ireland by force. First, by the United Irishmen, and five years later by a young nobleman, Robert Emmet. The leaders of both rebellions were executed for their trouble (what makes these events doubly significant is that they were led by Protestants). Again, between 1916 and 1921 Ireland went from the Easter Rising, through the War of Independence, to a point which saw Britain forced to retreat from twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties and eventually negotiate a deal which created the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.
History just seems to matter more to the Irish than the British (perhaps this is a result of the subjugated having a keener recollection than that of the subjugator). Both Nationalists and Unionists draw strength from the tales of their forebears.
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Built to Fail 21
Chapter 2 We Shall Overcome 53
Chapter 3 The Point of No Return 83
Chapter 4 And on It Goes 117
Chapter 5 The End Is in Sight 165
Chapter 6 Making the Best of Things 215
Chapter 7 Century of Division 235
Acknowledgements 279
Notes 281
Index 287