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Irish Tricolor featuring Eamon De Valera

The war in Ireland attracted the attention of many countries. The Irish community in the United States was very helpful in raising money to support the IRA and other countries were very critical of British tactics throughout the conflict. That being said, the IRA realized they were fighting from an inferior position and did not hesitate to resort to assassination to eliminate key British officials. Another point of contention was those Irishmen who were captured by the British. Since Britain did not recognize the Republic of Ireland, they treated the men as criminals guilty of treason. The Irish, on the other hand, demanded that they be treated as prisoners of war. The conflict degenerated into a horrifying pattern of Irish raids followed by British retaliation. With more and more people coming to the conclusion that Britain could no longer force Ireland to remain subject to her while other countries within the empire were granted full autonomy, leaders in Britain began to come to terms with the fact that Ireland could not be held. However, they were still determined to shore up their Protestant base of support in Ulster.

In 1920 the British Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act which separated what became known as Northern Ireland from the rest of the island. The six counties in Ulster which made up Northern Ireland would remain under British rule while the 26 other counties were granted limited independence within the British Empire. The act was introduced by David Lloyd George after the Irish elected 73 representatives of the Sinn Fein party which refused to sit in the Westminster Parliament. Neither side was very happy with the arrangement. Unionists outside of Ulster felt abandoned by the British government and were naturally unhappy with suddenly being under mostly Irish Catholic rule. Likewise the Catholics of Northern Ireland were unhappy with being forced to remain under Protestant rule and none of the Irish nationalists, Catholic or Protestant, were happy about their country being divided. In the decades to come, not only was Irish independence to remain a rallying cry so long as the Irish remained within the British Commonwealth, but more and more the ultimate goal of the Irish nationalists was for a united Ireland.

The war quickly reached a stalemate. The IRA lacked the strength to ever defeat the British army, yet their guerilla tactics meant that the IRA was also impossible to totally destroy and British strong-arm tactics were causing an international uproar against Britain. By the middle of the following year both sides came together to talk peace, which was only possible now that Great Britain had recognized the Irish leadership as a legitimate government under the British Crown. Speaking for Ireland was Arthur Griffith, former head of Sinn Fein, and Michael Collins, organizer of the IRA. A truce was worked out and in December of 1921 both sides agreed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty which legitimized the 26 southern counties as the Irish Free State with dominion status within the British Empire. However, as often happens, this effort to please everyone ultimately pleased no one.

Northern Ireland, though originally part of the Irish Free State, was allowed to secede and rejoin Great Britain, which it promptly did, fueled by Protestant radicals insisting that there would be a wave of Catholic oppression against them if they remained under Irish rule. Both governments agreed to the treaty, but only barely. Eamon De Valera denounced the agreement and refused to settle for anything less than a united Republic of Ireland. Griffith and Collins were accused of signing an agreement that subtly continued British rule, a feeling reaffirmed when British army units were incorporated into the army of the Free State alongside former republican fighters. The IRA soon split into two factions and plunged Ireland into civil war between those who followed Collins in accepting the treaty and those who followed De Valera in opposing it. Michael Collins was placed in the unenviable position of sending weapons to the Catholics in Northern Ireland who were being harassed by Protestant radicals and in fighting against his old comrades in the IRA who opposed the new treaty. Those who opposed the treaty were eventually defeated and Collins tried to convince more of his countrymen to accept the Free State until he himself was assassinated in August of 1922. The IRA returned to her guerilla tactics and was only suppressed when the Free State government adopted the Emergency Powers Bill which allowed them to ruthlessly suppress opposition and execute the leaders of the anti-Treaty fighters.

Flag of the Blueshirts

The Irish Free State had won, but divisions remained. Eamon De Valera, who opposed the treaty, resigned from Sinn Fein and formed the Fianna Fail political party which viewed the Anglo-Irish Treaty as merely a stepping stone rather than a lasting solution. Meanwhile, the Irish Free State tried to gain its footing as an autonomous member of the British Commonwealth. Ireland also had to deal with a new political openness. One group which became famous to some and infamous to others was the Army Comrades Association, better known as the Blueshirts, led by General Eoin O'Duffy. There were the inevitable comparisons with the Fascist Italian black shirts and the Nazi German brown shirts, though O'Duffy maintained there was nothing more sinister about his uniforms than social club blazers. O'Duffy had fought in the IRA and become a general of the pro-treaty forces during the civil war and later became commander of the Free State police from 1922 until 1933. When Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932 it prompted him to found his organization and O'Duffy was soon dismissed.

O'Duffy did attend an international meeting of fascist groups in Switzerland, though there were other groups represented there as well who were not only very dissimilar to the hated Nazis, but even their enemies such as with the Patriotic Front of Austria. However, it was enough to rally the IRA, the Irish Communist Party and other liberal elements against him. The Blueshirts were bigger on style than substance but preached a basic doctrine of Irish nationalism, Catholicism, corporatism and anti-communism as well as insisting that they stood for the preservation of democracy and free speech though this was doubted by many who judged them guilty by association with other fascist parties on the continent. In 1933 there was a threatened march on Dublin, which some feared would imitate the fascist march on Rome which brought Mussolini to power. The government outlawed the organization, though not their primary opponents the IRA, and so O'Duffy founded a new political party out of the movement. Known as the National Corporate Party, O'Duffy led the organization until leading a group of Irish volunteers to fight for General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The Corporate Party never had much support and O'Duffy retired after returning from Spain, though he did negotiate with German officials during World War II as to the possibility of using IRA forces in guerilla attacks on Britain. He died in 1944 and was buried with state honors by his old enemy De Valera. The Fine Gael party he helped found continues to this day as the most conservative mainstream Irish political party.

In the end, efforts such as the National Corporate Party never managed to become a major force in Ireland and Eamon de Valera was never threatened by them. This was accomplished by effectively putting a conservative blanket over what was essentially a liberal movement. The Free State was accepted in name by De Valera, though his ultimate goal was the removal of Ireland from the British Commonwealth and all connection with the Crown. His base of support in the IRA and the dominant parties, his own Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein, were essentially liberal revolutionary. However, Ireland was still Catholic enough that the Church had to be respected and Catholic principles were enough maintained in the De Valera administration for most Catholics to go along with it. Most schools and hospitals were run by the Catholic Church, the Church was recognized in law as the religion of the majority, divorce, birth control, abortion and pornography were all illegal in Ireland and decency laws were much more strict than in most other countries. The Church played a part in every stage of the independence of Ireland, though the bishops were often very critical of the methods used and the ideology preached by the IRA and liberal, revolutionary parties.

1937 saw the creation of a new constitution for the Irish Free State, which renamed the country Eire or Ireland in the native Gaelic language. When World War II broke out in Europe the British Empire and Commonwealth rallied together to fight Germany, but Ireland controversially decided to remain neutral. This was not so much out of any sympathy for Germany or German actions, but the result of lingering resentment over British actions in World War I and the War for Independence and a reluctance to be allied with Great Britain, odd as it may seem considering that Ireland was still a member of the British Commonwealth and that the King of Great Britain, who was being bombed by the German air force, was also the King of Ireland. However, on a practical level, Ireland was a militarily weak country and could not have contributed a great deal of support anyway and many Irish troops fought alongside the Allies in the British army voluntarily. The Irish government referred to the war as the Emergency and took strict control of the press to prevent any information slipping out which might cause bias among the populace.

There was talk of course about IRA agents being used against Britain, and Nazi dreams of Germany and Ireland crushing Britain between them, but on the whole there was no love lost between the two powers. Hitler had planned to invade Ireland if his scheme to invade Britain had been carried out and whenever Irish patrols spotted any German air or naval forces they immediately reported them with full knowledge that they would be overheard by the British who could then intercept them. Hitler was somewhat surprised that when the German air force bombed Belfast, which was at war with Germany as part of the United Kingdom, that De Valera sharply protested. Knowing the influence of the large number of Irish Americans across the pond, Hitler ordered the air attacks all but stopped for fear of arousing the anger of the United States. However, it must also be said that the outrage of De Valera was not at bombing civilians specifically, as British civilians were bombed throughout the war, but because he considered Northern Ireland to be Irish and not British though he had not yet succeeded in making it so.

There were threats to Irish neutrality though and these involved some diehard members of the IRA who still rejected the government of Eire, just as they had the Irish Free State that preceded it and were bound to reject any government which accepted, however temporarily in sentiment, the division of Ireland and the shared Crown with Great Britain. IRA guerillas carried out raids on government posts and German agents did operate in Ireland with one hoped for goal being an invasion of Northern Ireland by the IRA with German support. Those who took part saw this as being no different from the Irish who accepted Spanish help in fighting Elizabeth I or French help during the Napoleonic Wars. However, most Irish saw this as foolish and likely to bring about British retaliation worse than any they had seen during the aftermath of the Easter Uprising or the War for Independence. Eventually most of the IRA leadership was caught, locked up or executed and though they had received some support from Irish Americans, this ended abruptly in 1941 when Germany declared war on the United States and the enemy of Britain became the enemy of America.

President Eamon de Valera

Recently declassified information also reveals that the British tried to end Irish neutrality as well and that De Valera had been approached by a member of MI6 to talk about the reunification of Ireland if the government of Eire declared war on Germany. The idea was rejected as being nothing but a trick to obtain an Irish declaration of war, after which any knowledge of the agreement could have been disavowed and no reunification happen anyway. The government of Eire continued to walk a fine line. In 1944 the weather information used to schedule the Allied invasion of Normandy was supplied by the Irish and the plans of German agents in Ireland, taken by Eire, were given to the British authorities in Ulster to help in suppressing German and IRA plans for an attack. Eire also turned down several German offers of support in fighting the British if they would join the war alongside Germany. However, in spite of all this, it still came as a great shock in 1945 when Eamon de Valera sent his condolences to the German people upon the death of Hitler. Much of the Irish support for the Allies was very discreet, and it won the Irish no friends in Britain that, not only was Ireland the only neutral country in the Commonwealth, but their leader had sympathized with their enemies upon the death of their dictator who had bombed and starved and caused immeasurable harm to the British people.

Relations were not improved when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill remarked that Britain could have easily invaded and conquered Ireland during the war but showed considerable restraint by not doing so and also implied that the Irish government had been less than neutral with the Germans. De Valera responded with indignation and used the comments as proof that Ireland could never be independent alongside Great Britain. De Valera received one of the things he had long waited and planned for when this relationship ended in 1949. Ireland withdrew from the British Commonwealth, cut their last ties with the Crown and declared themselves the Republic of Ireland. The announcement had been made a year earlier at a meeting in Ottawa, Canada by John Costello. There had been an effort to hold off taking this step until Ireland was reunited with Northern Ireland, but ultimately no one seems to have done a great deal to accomplish it. When the republic was declared without the restoration of the north it was a hard blow for Fianna Fail as it would now appear that by declaring a republic and leaving the Commonwealth as they were, Ireland had abandoned Ulster to the British. To the surprise of the Irish government however, Britain strengthened ties with Northern Ireland and made it illegal for Northern Ireland to ever leave the United Kingdom except by the consent of their own parliament. The battle lines had been drawn for decades of sporadic conflict between Catholics and Protestants over Northern Ireland.

Official flag of the Republic of Ireland

As Ireland entered the 1950?s as a new republic there was as many reasons to worry as to hope. Overwhelmingly Catholic, with Christian ethics enshrined in the law, farsighted Churchmen could still point to some bad signs. It is worth noting that when an official national flag was chosen for Ireland, it was in the style of the revolutionary tricolor of France. A third was green to symbolize the native Irish Catholics, a third was orange to symbolize the Protestants who adopted the color of their Dutch champion, Prince William of Orange, and the middle third was white to symbolize peace between these two factions. However, such peace was to be sorely lacking in the future of Ireland. It may have been an effort at political pandering or it may have been simple naivety; however, after all that the Irish Catholics had been subjected to at the hands of their Protestant overlords for so many centuries, one would think that a clean and total break would have been the obvious way to go. Time would tell that the Protestant community had no interest in cooperating with an independent Ireland.

For the moment, De Valera had the Ireland he had always dreamed of; Catholic, rural, republican and totally separate from Britain other than the counties that had been clawed out of the north. The Church was very strong in the new republic and society reflected that. However, though the Irish constitution has to be one of the most Catholic republican constitutions in history, it did not declare Catholicism the official religion of Ireland but rather recognized it as the religion of the majority. Some Irish Catholics at the time urged the government to correct this and make Ireland more emphatic in her Catholic identity, but de Valera refused to go that far. For the Protestants though, especially the unionists in Northern Ireland, the republic was far too Catholic as it was and it seemed to many that the old scare phrase of ?Home Rule means Rome rule? had come to pass. The struggle over Irish identity would be a while in coming, but the immediate problem of the division of Ireland could not be put off.

The devout faith of Catholic Ireland played a part in this. Protestant fear mongers were eager to spread panic among the people of Northern Ireland. In an era that was becoming increasingly secular and permissive, Catholic Ireland, where divorce, birth control, abortion and pornography were all illegal, was portrayed as being backward, reactionary and something like a Celtic version of the Spanish regime of General Franco. Loyalist groups in Northern Ireland such as the old Orange Order began to become more radical in their anti-Catholic bigotry and their fanatical opposition to accepting a united Ireland. As time went on the situation in Northern Ireland became impossible to ignore. Due to the long history of power and wealth being concentrated in the hands of the Ulster Protestants, and with support from industrial Great Britain, Northern Ireland became very prosperous, at least for the Protestants. Catholics were discriminated against in every way, by law as well as by the intimidation of Protestant paramilitary groups and the militaristic police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

In 1967 Catholic organizers founded the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to demand an end to discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland. Their grievances were many such as the fact that voting districts were laid out to purposely break up Catholic communities so that the Protestants could always out-vote them and deny them representation. Catholics were denied housing, denied jobs and often refused services. The NICRA opposed all of these unfair measures as well as the B Specials which was a reserve police force made up of anti-Catholic Protestants. It was also during this time that the most notorious unionist in all of Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley, first became a force to be reckoned with. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants soon reached new, terrible heights.

Paisley was a leader in the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and the Democratic Unionist Party, both of which he held found. A rabid anti-Catholic bigot, Paisley vehemently opposed any sort of improvement in relations between Ireland and Northern Ireland and often referred to the Catholic Church as the "whore of Babylon" and to the Pope as "the anti-Christ". Although, as a unionist, he wrapped himself in loyalist slogans, he could be just as hateful toward the British, even the Queen and Royal Family if ever any of them showed the slightest cordiality toward the Pope, Catholics or the Republic of Ireland. As the struggle for civil rights waged and with Paisley spewing anti-Catholic hatred, the pot began to boil over. The RUC and more so independent Protestant paramilitary groups began to harass the Catholics of Northern Ireland, urged on by men like Paisley and the Orange Order. Aggravated to the point of desperation, 1969 saw the birth of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

The IRA had been marginalized for decades and the illegal activities of even the legitimate forces had lowered their reputation. Among these were the diehards who would accept no peace with Britain and no compromise which did not include a united Ireland. With the Catholics of Northern Ireland coming under increasing Protestant attack in addition to the usual discrimination they endured, many IRA members saw this as an opportunity to make their group legitimate again and launch military action against Britain. Not everyone agreed though, feeling that such guerilla attacks, which were their only recourse, would hurt rather than help the cause. So, in 1969 the so-called Provisional Irish Republican Army broke away from the old, official IRA with the intent of attacking the British. The sitting government in London, led by Harold Wilson and his Labour Party, sent in British troops to Northern Ireland, albeit hesitantly. It was also precisely the wrong move to make.

The initial reluctance of the Labour government to respond to the Provisional IRA was taken as a sign by many members that Britain lacked resolve and could be made to crack under sufficient pressure. When action was taken, the presence of British troops in Northern Ireland helped the IRA rally supporters by portraying themselves as fighting against British military occupation. Likewise, the ruthless retaliation of Protestant paramilitary forces pushed many Irish Catholics into the arms of the IRA who saw no one else willing to come to their defense against the British and Unionists. Violence increased over time. Protestant groups like the Orange Order would hold parades, specifically through Catholic areas, to intimidate Irish Catholics. Inevitable skirmished would occur, the IRA would make an attack and the RUC or Protestant paramilitary groups would retaliate.

One of the most major events in the unfolding struggle came on January 30, 1972, now known as Bloody Sunday. It started out as a demonstration in Derry County for Catholic civil rights. Officials had tried to stop the demonstration, but with no effect. It was stopped, however, when troops of an airborne regiment opened fire on the crowd. There were 13 killed instantly with one more dying later and many were wounded. Six of those killed were teenagers, no one in the group was armed and 5 of the victims had been shot in the back. The Irish Catholic community was stunned and only further infuriated when the government commission set up to investigate the matter tried to cover it up. When wild claims were made that the soldiers had been responding to sniper fire many Irish Catholics saw it as a clumsy attempt to smear the reputations of their murdered loved ones. Because of Bloody Sunday, the ranks of the IRA swelled with outraged, young Catholics. The IRA made full use of the tragedy and referred to it oftentimes as the day innocence died. The images from that day were frozen in the minds of the Irish, especially the dead bodies of the teens, those killed while trying to aid the wounded and the priest Father Edward Daly desperately waving a white tissue as he led a party of wounded men to safety.

Mural in Northern Ireland supportive of the IRA

Probably no other single event caused such an outcry of anger against Britain in Ireland than the events of Bloody Sunday. The British embassy in Dublin was burned down, American support for the IRA increased among the Irish community and there was widespread disapproval of the official position of the British army that they had been responding to an attack. No British troops were killed or injured, none reporting even so much as a sprained ankle and there were no bullets or evidence of nail bombs ever recovered. Most Irish Catholics saw this as a standard excuse. The previous year nail bombs had been thrown during a riot at a group of British soldiers who responded by firing into a crowd of mostly schoolgirls, killing one 14-year-old named Annette McGavigan. The escalation these events caused has been lumped together in a forty year period of terrorism and guerilla warfare known simply as The Troubles. As time went on, both sides were guilty of atrocities and both sides blamed the other for being the cause of it all, so a fresh look at the basic facts is necessary.

The Troubles had already been going on for a while before Bloody Sunday, usually involving the IRA and the numerous official and unofficial Protestant paramilitary forces such as the RUC, the British army, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force. When Terence O'Neill became prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1963 as a moderate Unionist, only to be civil and engaging with the Republic of Ireland, many Protestants considered it a betrayal. In October of 1968 a Catholic civil rights march in Derry was broken up by the RUC and the following year another group of marchers was attacked by a Protestant mob only to have the RUC respond by arresting several of the Catholics. These actions caused protests to degenerate into riots such as at Dungannon, Derry and Belfast in 1969. The RUC fought back with tear gas and machine guns, causing several deaths and hundreds of injuries. The IRA began to take a leading role in organizing nationalist forces and when British troops moved in, often using brutal tactics, arbitrary searches and harassment, The Troubles reached the point of a guerilla war. Hatred was lead to cruelty on both sides, but in bringing about the confrontation between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland there is no doubt that it was the Protestants who initiated the violence.

The increasing violence was labeled as a war for liberation by the IRA and a campaign against terrorism by Great Britain and Northern Ireland. From 1970 onward the IRA made it policy to kill any member of the RUC whenever possible, whether or not they were on duty, whether or not they were armed and whether or not they were with their comrades or with their families. British troops in Northern Ireland were soon given the same treatment. For their part, the Ulster authorities took repressive measures such as internment without trial, arbitrary arrests and releases and summary searches of private property. These initial efforts were rather clumsy and more often then not it was innocent people who were thrown in jail, the veteran IRA members being very good at evading capture and maintaining secrecy. The arrest and harassment of these innocent people encouraged more to join the IRA as the only group fighting against such action. Soon, The Troubles became a campaign of revenge on both sides. Many Catholics were driven by Protestant brutality into the IRA, but their guerilla tactics made the Catholic hierarchy reluctant to embrace them as defenders of the Church. In the past, such attacks did not usually improve conditions for Irish Catholics but only made them worse.

The IRA certainly proved they could answer violence with violence and cruelty with cruelty. In July of 1972 the IRA carried out what became known as the Belfast Bomb Blitz in which 21 bombs were exploded throughout the city of Belfast. Nine people were killed though the IRA gave warnings ahead of time so that people could be evacuated. British authorities and the RUC inexplicably did not always act upon these warnings. The British government restored direct rule over Northern Ireland and the Unionists dug their heels in deeper, fearful that the elite position of the Protestants would be lost in a united Ireland. They made a holiday out of the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne when the Protestant William of Orange had defeated the Catholic King James II and the UDA struck back at the Catholic community with a campaign of terrorism as bad or worse than the IRA they opposed. By 1972 100 British soldiers had been killed by the IRA, others, including civilians, were often killed as well in bomb attacks. The Unionists likewise killed many innocent Catholics in bombings inside the Republic of Ireland. This meant that each side often killed their own, even children. Innocent Protestants were sometimes killed by the UDA and innocent Catholics by the IRA when planted bombs exploded when they were not supposed to, or when some poor youngster simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is sadly ironic that at the same time that violence between Protestant Unionists and Irish Catholics was increasing, that which they claimed to be fighting for and against was fading away. The British Empire, by this time, had become a fading memory and Catholicism was losing strength in Ireland in the face of economic changes and increasing secularization. In 1973, the same year as Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community; the forerunner of the European Union which Ireland also enthusiastically embraced. Over time, the Catholic society which existed at the founding of the republic began to crumble. Divorce was made legal, the ban on homosexual behavior was lifted and even abortion was allowed in certain cases, though thankfully Ireland is still one of the few European nations where abortion on demand remains illegal. Added to this was the fact that in the decades following the Second Vatican Council there was a considerable decline in religious vocations as well as in weekly mass attendance. Changes such as these were happening all over the world, but it still came as a shock since they were slower in coming to Ireland and because Ireland for so long had been one of the foremost countries in producing priests, religious and missionaries and had a culture which for so long had defined itself based on the Catholic faith.

Pope John Paul II in Ireland

The Catholic Church in Ireland was naturally outspoken in her opposition to the mistreatment and persecution of Catholics in Northern Ireland, but was also just as vocal in condemning the killings and bombings carried out by the IRA in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Ireland itself suffered as well. In 1976 the IRA assassinated the new British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland in a bomb blast. The Irish government declared a state of emergency which was answered by the IRA with threats to kidnap or assassinate the Irish President and Irish cabinet ministers. Events of great historical significance also occurred in 1979 when the IRA used a bomb to assassinate Earl Mountbatten of Burma along with members of his family and a local Irish child off the Irish coast. That same year, His Holiness Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Ireland. In front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands the Pontiff begged the Irish people to renounce acts of violence and embrace peace. This statement, directed at the IRA, was largely ignored. His statement that peace would be impossible without justice was directed at the Protestant radicals who also took as little interest in it.

It was also during this time that the Sinn Fein party began to take on a more revolutionary tone. Supportive of the IRA, Sinn Fein put the conflict in Northern Ireland in terms of a liberation movement against the British Empire. Of course, the ironic thing was that the British Empire by this time had ceased to exist. Likewise, the Unionists who railed about the dangers of Catholicism such as Ian Paisley, sounded ever more out of touch with reality given the increasing secularization of Ireland. In short, the extremes on both sides seemed more and more to be fighting an enemy that no longer existed. Sinn Fein, which had already moved from being a moderate party to a revolutionary one, began to adopt surprisingly Marxist language. Naturally, this did nothing to encourage good feelings with the Unionists or even many Catholics. The struggle seemed to take on a shape very familiar to past conflicts in Ireland. The IRA, as a guerilla group was never strong enough to openly challenge the British military, but likewise since they operated as small cells they were almost impossible to wipe out. Both sides could hurt each other, but since their methods only encouraged further opposition they swelled the ranks of their enemy with each attack or act of retaliation. In short, it was becoming a long, bloody stalemate.

However, the British were gaining some ground. By 1980 MI5 had managed to infiltrate the IRA, identify key leaders and stop an arms deal the IRA had made with the terrorist state of Libya. The situation was also helped by the fact that the leadership of the IRA began to take more of an interest in political rather than military action, and their adherence to liberal, socialist ideologies alienated some of their more Catholic supporters. Yet, there was still a great deal of sympathy for the plight of Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular. This was shown in a dramatic way when a group of Irish republican prisoners held in Belfast started a hunger strike in 1981 to demand better living conditions. Led by Bobby Sands, the strike was actually a battle of wills between the British and the republicans. Directly, they were ineffectual. The Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was not about to give in and take any action of any kind based on outside pressure. Sands and nine other Irish prisoners starved to death before the strike ended. However, indirectly, they had a considerable impact. A great deal of public sympathy was generated which translated into votes and this sent the message to Sinn Fein that the electoral process could work.

To many observers around the world, Britain seemed cold and brutal after the hunger strikes. However, the actions of the IRA and their political allies in Sinn Fein were also viewed by many people as terrorists. With these attitudes, it was somewhat surprising when a breakthrough finally occurred during the watch of Prime Minister Thatcher, a woman who sometimes acted as though the British Empire had never really gone away. In 1985 Thatcher and the Irish Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald of the Fine Gael Party signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Fitzgerald is often viewed as a lackluster politician, but his moderate policies and admiration for Protestant republicans like Wolfe Tone made him someone the British felt they could deal with, which was no small thing considering the staunchly unionist position of Margaret Thatcher and her determination to defend British territory, be it an invented state in Ireland or a collection of islands in the South Atlantic. The agreement itself did not accomplish a great deal, but it was extremely significant. It undermined Sinn Fein in the hope that cooler heads would prevail and demonstrated how disunited and ineffective the unionists of Northern Ireland were becoming. They regarded the agreement as a total betrayal, but with so many factions among their own tiny group, from sincere British loyalists to hate-spewing anti-Catholics like Ian Paisley, they had only themselves to blame if Great Britain decided to be friendly with Ireland. It was not much, but it was at least a start to working out the problems between the two countries.

The need for some resolution was economic as well as humanitarian. Despite all the support of the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland suffered from high unemployment, though the economic situation there remained better than in the rest of Ireland, certainly until the advent of the so-called Gaelic Tiger economic upturn. The hard times and continuing violence also meant that Northern Ireland saw a decline in the Protestant population. It is rather ironic considering that Northern Ireland had been carved out of Ireland specifically so Protestants could have a majority there that by the end of the 20th Century more than 40% of the population of Northern Ireland was Roman Catholic. This had the effect of making Ulster unionists all the more paranoid, but it also meant that those in London with a less passionate view could see that something would have to be worked out and there were months of backroom negotiations over Northern Ireland by British and Irish officials.

On December 15, 1993 another step in the process was made with the signing of the Downing Street Declaration by Tory Prime Minister John Major and Fianna Fail Taoiseach Albert Reynolds. The agreement was rather ambiguous but it did give assurances to the Catholics that Britain had no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland while also assuring the Protestants that union with Britain would not change without their consent. Sinn Fein saw this as an opportunity to become politically viable again. The declaration seemed to try to have things both ways and by trying to please everyone, please no one. Northern Ireland was still British and would remain so, which anyone favoring a united Ireland would find unacceptable, and yet Britain had also distanced itself from Northern Ireland, especially the more radical unionists which greatly alarmed them. However, despite how ineffective the declaration seemed and how vague it certainly was, things did improve.

The IRA was slowly losing support to their political wing Sinn Fein who saw better chances of success using voting booths rather than bombs. In 1994 a ceasefire was declared between the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries, which was soon broken but just as quickly reinstated. A more substantial peace agreement came on April 10, 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement which allowed all parties representation in the government of Northern Ireland. Many were apprehensive as to how things would work out with so many bitter enemies being elected to the same assembly and given the fact that many unionists did not believe the IRA was being sincere in its promises to ceasefire. In the elections that followed the staunch unionist David Trimble became chief minister while the education minister was Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, a former IRA commander. The good news has been that relations between the UK and Ireland have improved, the bad news is that Northern Ireland has been reluctant to let go of old grudges. Moderates on both sides in government have lately been replaced by more hard-line groups such as the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, resulting finally in the end of the power sharing that began with the Good Friday Agreement in 2002.

In 2005 the Provisional Irish Republican Army officially renounced violence and in the fall allowed international observers to supervise the disarmament of the Provisional IRA. However, many Protestant unionists remain skeptical as to the sincerity of the IRA. Deep religious divisions remain in Northern Ireland to this day and likely will remain so long as Protestant parents continue to raise their children to hate Catholics and Catholic resentment of Protestants will also likely continue so long as they are treated as second class citizens. The IRA, however, seems to have come almost full circle from its earliest origins. Their radical liberalism has meant that they now have very little support from devout Catholics, especially since outrages against Catholics, at least those like the worst killings and persecutions, have stopped. In short, the stalemate remains between those committed to a united Ireland and those staunch unionists who remain wary of Catholics and republicans in particular. What makes this lingering hatred all the more tragic is that both sides seem to still be fighting over spoils of war that have already been taken and in defense of traditions and ideals that no longer exist as they did when the conflict began. Today, there is not a great deal of unity left in the United Kingdom with Scotland ever more determined to go its own way and Wales even starting to move in that direction. With the creation of a separate Scottish parliament, some have called for the creation of a separate English parliament as well. On the religious side, Britain is a Protestant kingdom in name only these days. In fact, while Protestant radicals in Northern Ireland hurl hateful insults at the Catholic Church they seem to have missed the fact that there are now more practicing Catholics in Britain than Protestants.

Likewise, the IRA, which always seems to have had trouble defining their agenda other than driving the British out of the six separated counties, has totally abandoned much of what formerly defined them. After so many years of fighting for an independent, truly Irish and freely Catholic Ireland, the Irish government seems determined to give up all of them. The Republic of Ireland is now an enthusiastic member of the European Union and the country once dictated to from London is now being dictated to from Brussels. Likewise, it seems rather odd that after so many centuries of fighting against the intrusions of foreign forces and the struggle to keep their Gaelic Irish nationality alive, Ireland is now allowing in more foreign immigrants than ever before from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, Likewise, on the religious front, the number of devout Catholics in Ireland, though still very strong compared to the rest of Europe, has been shrinking. A scandal involving child abuse by priests did extensive damage to the moral authority of the Church with more and more people becoming indifferent to her teachings. Secularism was slow to hit Ireland, but when it did, it hit hard. Things like abortion and contraception which would have been unthinkable not so long ago in Ireland are now being openly promoted and campaigned for. A referendum on abortion in 2002, though narrowly defeated, showed how much religious apathy there is in Ireland and outlined a growing division between the more liberal urban centers and the conservative, Catholic countryside.

Looking back on Irish history, we can perhaps conclude that in Ireland, faith was strengthened by adversity. Ireland has seen some great saints and was one of the major forces in keeping the faith alive during the Dark Ages. Irish missionaries have spread Catholicism all around the world and through so many hard times, Ireland has seen some great heroes and some infamous villains. It is also clear that even when looking at Irish history from a purely Catholic perspective, few things are simple. The Donation of Hadrian was done in good faith though it ultimately had more negative than positive results. The groups which championed Irish independence were often inspired by Jacobin sentiments though most Irish had previously been Jacobite. Union with Britain was certainly painful at times, but it is also true that willingly or not, Britain and Ireland have been close ethnically, politically and geographically as long as either have existed. During the expansion of the British Empire Irish troops fought in the British army and sailed in the Royal Navy. The Irish, on the other hand, were also an essential part of the revival of Catholicism in England and were championed by the famous English convert Cardinal Manning. Ireland has known great suffering at British hands, often being treated worse than many other conquered peoples far more alien to Britain than the Irish. However, everything seemed to work against Ireland. At roughly the same time that conditions in Ireland became the worst, when England became Protestant and the religious persecution began, is also when Britain became extremely xenophobic and all the more infuriated that the Irish would enlist the help of Spain, France and the Pope to fight against them.

The earliest efforts towards Irish independence were certainly the most praiseworthy. Fighting for the restoration of King James II was a totally just thing to do. Not only would his restoration have meant independence for Ireland and the end of Catholic persecution, but he was also the legitimate hereditary monarch whose right to the throne could not be questioned. From a Catholic perspective it is also easy to cheer the likes of Red Hugh in his rebellion against an oppressive and heretical monarch like Elizabeth I, who being of illegitimate birth was opposed enough even in England and in later uprisings it is easy to sympathize with the Irish because of the harsh persecutions they were subject to. They also had the effect of creating vibrant Irish communities around the world and the people clung all the more fiercely to the faith. However, cracks in the righteous cause began to appear when politics first entered the equation.

Looking at the problems Catholic Ireland faces today, one can lay a great deal of the blame on the liberal, revolutionary elements that hijacked the nationalist cause as well as British harshness. These groups were political, usually organized by Protestants, and inspired by radical, anti-clerical movements on the continent. They rarely accomplished much, whereas truly Catholic leaders like Daniel O'Connell did accomplish something, and their actions only encouraged brutal treatment by the British through their alliances or at least dealings with such wicked regimes as the revolutionary French, Nazi Germany and even the Islamic terrorist state of Libya. Certainly no one but the most fanatic could support any organization that would accept any help whatsoever from such evil characters. Yet, at times, British cruelty drove even decent Irish Catholics into the arms of the IRA because no one else was standing up to them. It is tantalizing to imagine how much better things could have been with more men like Dan O'Connell or if Britain had given Ireland something like the Quebec Act which allowed freedom and equality for Catholics and respect for local institutions. As Catholics believe in free will, it is important to consider these possibilities and remember that what did happen is not what had to happen and nothing is set in stone.

However, though the tragedy of Northern Ireland remains unresolved, there is still more than enough honor and glory in Irish history throughout so many hardships. Ireland is the country of Saints Patrick and Bridget, of High King Brian Boru vanquishing the Vikings and uniting Ireland, of the heroes of the Nine Years War, the Confederation and the courageous siege of Limerick. The story of the Irish people is also the story of monks and missionaries who kept the faith alive and carried it around the world. It is the story of the Wild Geese who fought in the armies of Europe, the United States, Mexico, the Papal States and others. The history of the Irish in the United States could fill volumes by itself, but is perhaps best represented by the hard working Irish priests who traveled across vast distances to administer the sacraments in rural areas or those in the city who taught Irish youngsters how to defend themselves against the prejudice of bullies. Ireland remains one of the most firm and constant Catholic countries and have proven themselves a tough and tenacious people as well as one that knows how to laugh and have fun even in the face of adversity. As many used to say, there was never an Irishman who did not love God, a good drink and a good fight -in that order. Ireland has seen triumph and many tragedies, but so long as the Church remains strong to unite and guide there is every reason to hope that Ireland can achieve peace and unity in the future.