Assessment 9 out of 10
The Troubles lasted 30 years from 1968 to 1998 with 3,720 deaths, This compares with the Rhodesian Bush War when 30,000 died in the 15 years between 1964 and 1979, perhaps 1,000 on the Rhodesian side, (10 times more) and the Ukraine war, which has recorded so far 2022-5 more than 300,000 deaths Russian deaths perhaps 3 times Ukrainian ( 100 times more).
I also read Diarmaid Ferriter’s The Border and listened to 6 hour long podcasts from Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook’s website, The Rest is History, on the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War which together saw the emergence of guerilla warfare.
2,300 died in the War of Independence 1919-21, 1,500 in the Civil War. This compares with 38,000 (so again 10 times more) in the Finnish Civil War of 1918, another civil conflict in a small European territory, as Empires dissolved at the end of the First World War. Germany before the 1918 Armistice in WWI helped the Finish Whites, The British helped the pro-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War.
Following WWI there were a number of Plebiscites over territory including in Silesia & Schleswig. In Northern Ireland there was a Border Commission. Tom Jones, Lloyd George’s No 2 said this was much the same thing. It wasn’t. The border follows the old county boundaries. The Commission recommended a number of small changes but these were not made, it was suggested in consideration of reducing the share of UK debt taken on by the Free State. However the real differences are not in territories and borders but in Peoples’ Hearts.
Why do the Troubles matter? Brought up on Merseyside it was close. We had fellow pupils, whose families had fled the Troubles, I went to Birkenhead School, whose most famous old boy was FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, who became Lord Chancellor, He was a committed Unionist but apparently in the negotiations for Irish independence got on well with Michael Collins.
I was reminded of events, names & places I remember but didn’t understand the significance of. On leaving school I hitchhiked with a school friend to the Irish West. After the end of Lockdown Anne & I cycled around Northern Ireland crossing & recrossing the border. it was the easiest place with cycling possibilities we could get to.
There are similarities between Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, Participation in local government was more restricted than to Stormont. Similarly participation in Parishes in Jersey & Guernsey was more restricted than the general electorate. In both Ireland & Jersey there was opposition to conscription
“Ulster for northern Protestants was more than a province, less than a State, it constituted at least a people”. However, Northern Ireland continues to send representatives to Westminster. Jersey never has. Following Partition there has been a clear lack of British interest in Northern Ireland exemplified by Brexit.
Like Israelis and Rhodesians. Ulster Protestants felt themselves a threatened frontier people.
Pre WWI 6 counties opted out of Home Rule for 6 years. “A sentence of death with stay of execution.” Carson. With the 9 Counties (of Ulster) there would have been a bare Protestant majority with a 6 county Ulster there was a 2/3rds Protestant majority .
PR was replaced in Northern Ireland first tor local government elections then for Stormont. Local government boundaries & Stormont constituencies were manipulated to favour Unionists.
The real disaster was for Southern Unionists, with Protestants south of the border declining by a third between 1911 and 1926. & some 300 “ Big Houses” of the Anglo-Irish destroyed. The Free State under De Velera became the theocracy, Unionists had feared, only recovering recently.
History repeated itself, There were Bloody Sunday killings by British soldiers and mirroring the Famine Hunger Strikes both during the War of Independence & Troubles.
I would thoroughly recommend Making Sense of the Troubles & found the Rest of History Podcasts complementary & worth listening too. The Border was OK but I had hoped for more on the geography of the Border.
Of Books, Bikes & Islands 