Conflict and Cleavage in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The ethnic strife in Northern Ireland is more than a repetition of ancient native-Catholic/Protestant-settler conflicts. One of the major contemporary issues, partition, dates back to 1921 and is the basis of the declaration of war by the Irish Republican Army on Great Britain. The other conflict is of more recent origin and involves the inclusion of the Catholic third of the population in the government and an end to institutionalized discrimination against the minority. Protestants have uniformly opposed any unification with the Irish Republic, but intense internal disagreements characterize the Protestant reaction to the other conflict. Moderate Protestant elites have been unable to bind their loyalist constituents to a compromise with the Catholic politicians, but neither Protestant nor Catholic paramilitary groups have been able to impose a military solution on the province. The roots of the first conflict are traced primarily to the historical ethnic cleavage separat ing the two communities while the second conflict is best explained by the volatile mixture of ethnicity and the strains of modernization. Any solution to the current troubles will have to be addressed to the nature and causes of each conflict.