There was a glimmer of hope in 1985, when the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland tried to break through the deadlock of violence by clearing up their own interests in Northern Ireland. Prime Minister Thatcher and Garrett Fitzgerald, the taoiseach (Irish prime minister) signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which stated that “any change in the status of Northern Ireland would only come about with the consent of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland.” It was a historic statement, making clear that Ulster’s fate would be determined by democratic processes within Ulster, and only by those processes. The agreement also established an intergovernmental conference that gave the Republic an official consultative role in the affairs of Northern Ireland.
While the Anglo-Irish Agreement laid the grounds for peace as far as England and the Republic were concerned, it was not well received in Northern Ireland. Unionist MPs resigned in protest, and Unionist workers called a province-wide strike. The IRA wasn’t impressed either; later that year, it issued a threat of violence against all civilians, Catholic or Protestant, who worked with the RUC. The following year, a massive IRA bomb killed eleven people at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen. Peace was not at hand.
For decades, it seemed that the best anyone could hope for was a contained level of violence. But a spark of hope appeared in the early 1990s when Gerry Adams, head of the IRA’s political arm Sinn Féin, revealed that he’d been in peace talks with John Hume, head of the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP), the moderate Catholic party.
If the IRA was ready to talk, perhaps there was a chance for peace.
In January 1994, President Bill Clinton granted Gerry Adams a visa to visit the United States for the first time; previous administrations had always banned Adams because of his associations with terrorists. Adams’s visit was historic for two reasons. First, it allowed him to gather the political support of Irish-Americans, which increased Sinn Féin’s status in later negotiations. Second, it forced him to act as a politician, rather than as a spokesman for terrorists. He knew that if he wanted to keep the support of the United States, he needed to exchange the rifle for the negotiating table.
The IRA declared a unilateral cease-fire on August 31, 1994. In October the Unionist paramilitaries followed suit. In 1995, representatives of the United Kingdom and Ireland met to iron out a framework for a peace settlement. The document they came up with called for points similar to the Sunningdale Agreement:
Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, but only so long as the majority still desired it.
Northern Ireland would return to a form of independent government.
The parties would create a “north-south” body that (hopefully) would lead to stronger ties between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
The framework was not an actual settlement, nor was it popular with either Republicans or Unionists. Efforts to turn the framework into an actual settlement were slow. British Prime Minister John Major insisted that the peace process could move forward only if the IRA agreed to decommission their arms. Gerry Adams refused; he viewed Major’s position as a trick to break the IRA’s power without granting any concessions.
On February 9, 1996, the IRA announced its dissatisfaction with the process by exploding an immense bomb at Canary Wharf in London. The resumption of violence was met with appalled condemnation on all sides. The British government attacked the IRA and scored a number of successes. It appeared that the nasty conflict of the 1980s and early 1990s was back again.
Fortunately, two political changes in 1997 got the peace process back on track. First, Sinn Féin won its largest percentage of the vote ever, which many interpreted as popular support for a resolution of the conflict through peaceful means. Second, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair swept into power with a crushing victory over the Conservatives. Blair immediately put out feelers to Sinn Féin to get the peace process started again.
After a touch-and-go period, Prime Minister Blair brought all the major parties together in 1998. Extremists on both sides threatened to scuttle the talks, but last-minute heroics by Blair, U.S. Senator George Mitchell, and President Bill Clinton kept the negotiators at the table. The Good Friday Agreement of April 10, 1998, laid the groundwork for what many hope will be a lasting peace.
The Good Friday Agreement adopted many of the provisions of previous peace attempts, such as the Sunningdale Agreement. One of the unfortunate ironies of the situation is that it took so long to reach essentially the same solution as was rejected in 1974. But maybe it took years of violence to make people accept the necessary compromises:
Home rule returned to Northern Ireland, with a representative assembly sharing power between Catholics and Protestants.
The RUC was reorganized and renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The IRA and UDA agreed to maintain the cease-fire.
Assuming the cease-fire held, the IRA and UDA agreed to a gradual process of decommissioning their weapons.
Political prisoners were released.
The Republic of Ireland amended its constitution to remove its territorial claim to Northern Ireland until the people of Northern Ireland agreed to rejoin.
To go into effect, the agreement required the approval of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland and the Republic. In a May 1998 referendum, it drew the support of 94.4 percent of voters in the Republic and 71.1 percent of people in Northern Ireland. While this result gave a great boost to the peace process, one element of the vote still gave people pause — while 96 percent of Catholic voters in Northern Ireland supported the Good Friday Agreement, only 52 percent of Protestants voted in favor.
Today, the peace process continues to move forward. Catholics and Protestants share power, the RUC has been reorganized and renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and the paramilitary groups have demonstrated a commitment, however reluctant, to put their weapons away for good. But it’s been a rocky path, and the road ahead does not look much smoother.
Thirteen weeks after the Good Friday Agreement was reached, disaster struck. A Republican splinter group calling itself the Real IRA detonated a massive bomb in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh. Its death toll of twenty-eight was the largest single loss of life in the entire conflict.
If the bomb had gone off five years earlier, it would most likely have launched a wave of attacks and counterattacks — this is almost certainly what the Real IRA intended. But this time, the UDA and the IRA both kept the cease-fire. Gerry Adams released a statement condemning the attack, saying that “violence must be a thing of the past.” The peace had passed its first major test.
Sadly, it wasn’t the last test. Although the leaders have decided to move forward, there is still a great deal of anger left in the people of Northern Ireland. Every summer the peace gets tested in the Marching Season, when the Orange Order and Apprentice Boy parades antagonize Catholic neighborhoods. These are Unionist groups that march through Catholic neighborhoods on dates significant to their history, such as the Protestant victory in the Battle of the Boyne.
92 { Ireland’s Celtic Tiger
Historically, Ireland has been poor. In the Middle Ages, visitors were often shocked at the almost Stone Age poverty of many Irish farmers. In Victorian times, English visitors were appalled to learn that conditions had not improved much since medieval days. Even in the 1950s, the per-capita income of rural Irish citizens was less than one-third of the average for Europe. To many observers, it seemed that poverty was Ireland’s natural state.
If those observers could have jumped ahead to the year 2003, they would have been stunned by the transformation. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Ireland experienced a series of economic growth spurts, which kicked into high gear in the mid-1990s. After several consecutive years of leading Europe in economic growth, Ireland now has one of the better standards of living in the world. This extraordinary development has earned Ireland the name “Celtic Tiger.”
As with all macroeconomic questions, the answer
is multifaceted and ambiguous, but a few key factors stand out. The first is Irish participation in the European Economic Community (EEC) and its successor organization, the European Union (EU). Since Ireland joined the EEC in 1972, it has been the single largest net recipient of EEC and EU funds — over £20 billion to date. The EU follows a policy of supporting less prosperous member nations to help them reach the economic levels of wealthier members. Ireland used this money to build roads, update utilities, build up a tourism infrastructure, and subsidize agriculture. Ireland is small and the money was generally well spent, so the investments have made a noticeable impact on many people’s lives.
International business investment was the next major reason for Ireland’s success. The Irish government has gone out of its way to lure American and European businesses with tax breaks and incentive packages. The Republic of Ireland (which excludes Northern Ireland) is now an extremely safe place with very little crime, essentially no chance of war, and a stable government. The Republic has few large businesses of its own, so it is unlikely to initiate costly tariffs to protect native industry. Finally, the Republic of Ireland is an excellent place to locate an operation that does business in both Europe and North America, both because of its physical location and because it has a large percentage of bilingual English speakers.
93 { Ireland and the European Union
Participation in the EU has had extraordinary consequences for the Republic of Ireland. It led to the economic boom that the Irish have enjoyed, but those economic changes haven’t made everyone happy. EU membership opens up to Irish businesses the giant market of European consumers, but it also means that the Republic of Ireland’s weaker industries are now exposed to international competition. Traditional dairy farms, for example, simply can’t compete with industrialized factory farms. Europe and the Republic of Ireland have so far supported these farmers with subsidies, but there is substantial pressure for the Irish agricultural industry to modernize itself to compete on the free market.
Another major impact of Europe has been on social issues. Traditionally, the Republic of Ireland has been a very conservative country, with close ties to the Catholic Church. Prevailing attitudes on the Continent have taken a much more liberal direction on issues like women’s rights, abortion, and divorce. Although the Irish government has dragged its heels, international pressure and the will of the Irish people have forced it to liberalize many laws.
One of the more controversial issues for the Republic of Ireland is how its traditional stance of neutrality figures into EU membership. While the EU is not primarily a military organization, it does require a form of military alliance from its members. Concerns over possible future military entanglements led a majority of Irish voters to reject the EU Nice Treaty in 2001 (the Treaty opens EU membership to ten Eastern European countries that are possibly less stable than the current Western European members). After the Republic of Ireland’s politicians spent a year promoting the treaty and wrangled some legal concessions out of EU bureaucrats, voters passed the treaty in a second referendum in 2002.
94 { Modern Irish Politics
The last forty years have been a tumultuous time for Irish politics. A series of governments in the 1970s and 1980s fell because they couldn’t end the violence in the North or fix the Republic of Ireland’s persistent unemployment. In addition, thorny social problems and an abundance of scandals made a rocky path for Irish politicians. Fortunately, matters seem to have improved in the 1990s.
No political issue in Ireland has aroused as much emotion as the question of the North. The Fianna Fáil Party, Ireland’s dominant political party throughout the century, was founded on the premise that Ireland should never have been divided. After the issue nearly tore the country apart in the 1920s, politicians placed it on the backburner as a continuing source of grievance. De Valera’s constitution of 1937 even laid claim to the territory as part of the Republic. In the following three decades, however, most people accepted that the North belongs to the United Kingdom.
When the Troubles erupted in the North, many people in the Republic had deeply conflicting feelings. On the one hand, they wanted to side with their Catholic brethren in Ulster, but on the other, they didn’t want to disrupt their own country or their peaceful relationship with the United Kingdom. A crisis broke out in 1971 when two Cabinet ministers, including the future taoiseach Charles Haughey, were implicated in a scheme to smuggle weapons to Northern Catholics. The ministers resigned, but the question remained of how far the Republic should involve itself in the crisis.
In the end, the Republic wound up siding with Britain — both nations agreed that they would rather see an end to the violence than press their respective territorial claims. In 1985, they signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, a framework for a peace settlement. Unfortunately, combatants in the North refused to give up the fight.
Irish leaders continued to try to end the violence. In 1998 Bertie Ahern, the leader of Fianna Fáil and the Irish taoiseach, took part in the Good Friday Peace Talks that finally brought a lasting peace agreement. Ahern brought back a referendum for the Irish people to approve the agreement, specifically the Republic of Ireland’s rejection of its historical claim to Northern Ireland. The referendum passed by a wide margin. The question of the North is by no means answered for good, but for the first time in many years people believe that it’s moving in the right direction.
In recent decades, a series of political scandals has significantly reduced the faith of the Irish in their leaders. Many of these scandals took place during the administration of Charlie Haughey, son-in-law to the legendary Fianna Fáil leader Sean Lemass, who had dominated Irish politics in the 1950s. Haughey had already been implicated in a smuggling scandal in 1971, but he somehow managed to clear his name and rise up to lead Fianna Fáil from 1979 to 1992, serving as taoiseach for several of those years.
The voters liked Haughey, but a shadow of corruption always seemed to follow his administration. The police force had a series of scandals under the Haughey regime. Several government departments experienced financial scandals, which somehow never implicated Haughey himself. The worst crisis came when it was discovered that Haughey’s supporters had been wire-tapping journalists hostile to his administration; it was an Irish form of Watergate. Somehow, Haughey’s popularity with the Fianna Fáil faithful kept him in charge of the party until 1992, when a biting investigation into corruption in the beef industry finally did him in.
Shadows of corruption still haunt the Irish political system, but there have been relatively few major crises in the last decade. It seems that current politicians are either more honest or more discreet.
The Irish political structure continues to be something of an anomaly, since the two dominant parties are divided less by ideology than by historical associations. Fianna Fáil, the party founded by Éamon de Valera and the forces who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, has been the dominant party throughout the century. Fine Gael, the organization that emerged from the Free State politicians who supported the treaty, has managed to take control of the government on a number of occasions with the help of third parties. The major political parties in Ireland today are:
Fianna Fáil — the original anti-treaty party
Fine Gael — the original pro-treaty party
Labour — a liberal workers’ party
Progressive Democrats — an offshoot of Fianna Fáil that is economically conservative and socially liberal; it has allied with Fine Gael at times
Democratic Left — the modern incarnation of the original Sinn Féin; leftist but no longer socialist
Greens — an environmental party
95 { The Liberalization of Ireland
Throughout the twentieth century, Ireland was known for its conservative social policies. When the rest of Europe was adopting liberal measures, Ireland held a firm stance against contraception, abortion, and divorce. These stances were inextricably linked to the close connection between the Roman Catholic Chur
ch and the Irish government. The early leaders of the Irish Free State wanted it that way; they consciously sought connections with the Catholic hierarchy in order to help establish the legitimacy of their government with the Irish people.
Ireland held firm to its traditional values for most of the century, but the winds of change blew in with the 1960s. When Ireland began to establish closer ties with the EEC and EU, many Irish people began to think their laws should be more in line with the general trends of European progressive values. The rise of feminist thought provided counterpoints to many of the patriarchal values of the Irish government.
Catholics are taught that sexual intercourse should take place only for the purpose of procreation; the use of contraceptives to prevent conception is an immoral act. For decades, the government of Ireland made it illegal to import or sell contraceptives. In 1966, however, the United Nations declared it a basic human right for an individual to control his or her own fertility. Although the government resisted this idea, many Irish people — particularly women — agreed.
There were numerous cases of Irish families who had been reduced to poverty by having more children than they could support, or of women whose health was wrecked by having ten or even twenty children. Public opinion decided that if family planning could improve people’s lives, then it wasn’t immoral. In the late 1960s doctors began prescribing birth control pills to married women, ostensibly for health reasons. In the early 1970s it became legal for married couples to buy condoms, provided they had a prescription. Over the next two decades the laws were relaxed to the point where people can now purchase condoms in vending machines.
The struggle over abortion has been one of the most acrimonious issues in contemporary Irish politics. Abortion has never been legal in Ireland (except in cases where the mother’s life is at risk), and that does not appear likely to change in the near future. The controversy has been over whether women should be allowed to travel abroad for abortions, and whether they should be able receive information about it from medical professionals. Although it is difficult to get exact statistics, it is thought that a few thousand women every year travel to England to get abortions. For the most part, the Irish government has been willing to ignore this practice.
The Myths, Legends, and Lore of Ireland Page 17