Sinn Fein and the Orangemen of Ireland

In 1888, a divorce proceeding revealed Charles Parnell´s liaison with a colleague's wife; he was condemned by Protestant England and Catholic Ireland, his followers dropped away, and he died in disgrace 3 years later at the age of 45. Nationalist leadership passed to the Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone), a party founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, who favoured an independent Irish Parliament.

Despite the resistance of Ulster's Orangemen, a society formed to protect the privileges and liberties of Protestants, and the organization of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers, a Home Rule Bill was finally enacted in 1914. But the Orange militants had succeeded in amending the bill to give Ulster's six counties, with their Protestant majority, the option of seceding from Ireland and remaining in the Union. The outbreak of World War I fatally delayed implementation of the bill, and Ireland, on the eve of its independence, stood divided against itself.

Ireland and the Easter uprising

The Easter Rebels of 1916, also known as the Irish Volunteers, looked to England's enemy, the Germans, for aid as Hugh O'Neill had looked to the Spanish and Wolfe Tone to the French. On Good Friday, 1916, their emissary to Berlin, Roger Casement, was captured by the British while returning to warn that German support would not be forthcoming. (Casement was convicted before a military court and hanged.) The Volunteers canceled what was to have been a national insurgence, but the Dublin contingent, hopeless of success, rose to martyrdom on Easter Monday.

The 1,200 Volunteers seized strategic buildings around the city; on the steps of the General Post Office, leader Patrick Pearse read the proclamation of an Irish Republic. British troops, ordered to dislodge the rebels, left central Dublin in ruins. Seventeen rebel leaders including Pearse, Thomas McDonough, John McBride, Joseph Plunkett, and James Connolly died before a firing squad. Public outrage at the executions persuaded the British to commute the sentences of William Cosgrave, later president of the Free State, and Eamon de Valera, later president of the provisional government of the Republic.

Irish martyrs and Sinn Fein victory

The martyrs, none of them important figures before death, became national heroes afterward. In the elections of 1919, Sinn Fein scored a landslide victory in parliamentary elections, but the deputies refused to take their seats, convening instead the Dail Eireann (Assembly of Ireland) under de Valera's presidency and proclaiming the Republic once again. England implemented Home Rule, exempting from it the six counties of Ulster, but the Dail would accept nothing short of total independence.

The IRA and Michael Collins

Ireland burst into violence: The Irish Republican Army (IRA) under Sinn Fein leader Michael Collins waged a bloody guerilla war with the Black and Tans, England's paramilitary police force to whom countless atrocities were attributed; British police fired on the crowds at a sporting event in Dublin's Croke Park; army barracks came under regular attack. The ordinary functions of government dissolved in subversion. In 1921 Collins negotiated a treaty with Britain by which a new state was created as a dominion in the commonwealth and under the crown.

Griffith became the Free State's first president, and Collins, fearing a civil war, made overtures to de Valera assuring him privately there would be no oath of allegiance to the crown in an Irish constitution. But de Valera remained adamant and organized an underground Republic with himself as president, Sinn Fein as its party and the IRA as its militia; it would acknowledge neither the crown nor the; partition of Ireland.

In 1922 encouraged by a Free State constitution that embodied the terms of the treaty IRA troops occupied the Four Courts, the building in Dublin that house the superior courts of lreland. Under enormous pressure from Britain, the Free State sent troops and gunboats and a few days later commenced a series of raids on Republican headquarters in Dublin hotels. Republicans and Free State were at war.

Political unity in Ireland

Political unity once again escaped the Irish, and the country quaked with assassinations and skirmishes. Griffith died in August and Collins a few days later in an ambush near Cork. In 1923, de Valera declared a ceasefire. He agreed to enter the Dail in 1927, whereupon Sinn Fein drew from him to the leftist frontier of Republican intransigence, De Valera formed a new party, Fianna Fail, whose members he urged to take the oath of alliance to the crown as he had done with some reservations.

Fiann Fail Ireland

Fiann Fail acquired a majority in 1932 and a new government, headed by de valera, was formed. A new constitution was promulgated in 1937, declarinng the nation the Republic of Eire and abolishing the oath of allegiance to the crown. In 1949, Eire withdrew from the commonwealth; at the same time Britain, to establish a legal basis for partition, referred the question to the heavily Protestant Ulster Parliament seated at Stormont, which put the issue of union before a popular referendum whose outcome was never in doubt. Since the late 1920s, the industrialized cities of Northern Ireland Belfast and Derry - and many of the larger towns have been divided into sectarian camps.

Catholic Civil Rights Movement Ireland

In the 1960s, a Catholic civil rights movement agitated for Catholic representation at Stormont in proportion to the Catholic population, which brought a violent response from the Protestants, to whom the cause seemed synonymous with reunification with the Republic.

The IRA, now an extra legal militia out-led even the Republic, and came to the defence of the Catholic constituency. Confronted by vIrtual civil war, whIch Stormont was powerless to stop since it represented only one side, Britain suspended the Northern Ireland legislature in 1972. Stepping between the warring factions, the British army became a target of IRA hostility along with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Force. But now, bound by the legal precedent of the 1949 referendum, Britain has no way of withdrawing from Ulster without a majority mandate, and Ulster had no way of forming a government to which both sides could consent and thereby impose law and order without British intervention.

Airport car hire in Ireland

Since the troubles subsided in Ireland, visitors have increased, and the easiest and most economical way to explore Ireland is to pre-book a hire a car from the airport at Dublin, Belfast or Knock.

Ulster Protestants and Ireland

Ulster Protestants are proud of their heritage and fearful of losing not only property but some of their rights and liberties as British subjects under the Irish Republican constitution, which embodies the moral doctrines of the Catholic church. Efforts within the Republic to conciliate Northern Ireland by expunging from the constitution certain clauses such as the one against divorce offensive to Protestants have proven futile. Further, the Republic's economy is weak and agricultural, plagued by unemployment and inadequate social services, while Northern Ireland is industrial and shares the benefits of the British welfare system.

The Republicans, however, have never acknowledged Britain's authority over any portion of Ireland, and regard partition as an act of gerrymandering by an illegitimate power. The intransigence of both sides makes reconciliation seem unlikely, despite recent agreements and attempts at rapprochement between the British and Irish prime ministers.