For an island of its size, Ireland has had an outsized and often tragic history — a land of Celtic kings and early Christian scholars, of centuries of English and British rule, of a famine that halved its population and scattered the Irish across the world, and of a hard-won independence that left the island itself divided. This course traces that long and dramatic story. (It deepens our European and world-history library.)You'll begin with the making of Ireland — its Celtic, Viking and Norman layers and the long English conquest — then confront the Great Famine of the 1840s, one of the deadliest catastrophes of 19th-century Europe. You'll follow Ireland's fight for independence and the painful partition that split off Northern Ireland, and finish with the Troubles, the decades of conflict that scarred the North. Honest note: this is a heavy history. The Famine killed around a million people and drove millions more to emigrate, worsened by the British government's inadequate response; and the Troubles (roughly 1968-1998) killed some 3,500 people and are still remembered very differently by different communities. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought a fragile peace. These are popular-history videos offering an introductory, multi-sided overview.
[Music] A giant wall cuts through an ordinary neighborhood in Belfast, 25 ft high. On one side, a Catholic population, on the other, a Protestant one. But this wall isn't just here because of religious differences. It's here because people on this side of it want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. And people on this side want it to be part of a united island. It's called a peace war. And there are many like it carving Belfast up, separating neighborhoods that were once at war with each other. Because from 1968 to 1998, this was home to some of the most dangerous armed paramilitaries in the world. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland itself, the bombings were setting new records in horror, and an IRA explosives expert received a life sentence for murder. One you might have heard of, the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, which spent 30 years fighting for a United Ireland. The conflict was called the Troubles and would see over 3,700 people killed and almost 50,000 injured. We spoke to two men who fought on opposing sides. Michael, who joined the IRA in the 70s, and Billy, who joined the Ster Volunteer Force, or UVF, to fight against the IRA. I'm Michael Clobert. I was in prison for almost 16 years. I was a life sentence prisoner. I was charged with various um IRA related activities, including killing members of British forces. My name's Billy Hutcherson. I'm a former loyalist prisoner. I was in prison from 1974 to 1990. Um, I was in for murder. But before we get into that, you need to know about two groups that populate Northern Ireland. Irish nationalists or Republicans are those who want the unification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They tend to be Catholics. British Unionists or loyalists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK and they tend to be Protestants. So what's behind this divide? How does it link to religion and why is Northern Ireland part of the UK? To find that out, we'll need to cover a bit of history. From the 1100s, Britain was attempting to colonize Ireland, and it faced some of the strongest resistance in the northeast in an area called Olter. So, the British decided they needed to angllicize the region, basically make it more English. And in6009, they began confiscating land from native Irish residents to give to loyal settlers who were mostly Protestants from Scotland and Northern England. If settlers owned the land, they'd have more control over Olter. This period was called the Plantation of Olter. Fast forward to the 1900s, long after Britain had colonized Ireland. The vast majority of people here were Irish Catholics and were heavily discriminated against by Protestant British rulers. [Music] In a rejection of British rule in Ireland, the 1918 elections saw an Irish nationalist party that was pushing for independence called Shinfane win 91% of the seats outside of Olter. But in Olter, all those settlers that were given land hundreds of years ago had had families. And over the centuries, their population grew. It was now the only region of Ireland where Protestant Unionists in favor of British rule were in the majority, winning four out of nine of the counties there. After those elections, rather than taking their seats in parliament, Shinfane decided to form their own separate government and proclaim a new Irish Republic. And they had formed their own army. This was the birth of the original IRA. So when Britain tried to step in, they fought a war for independence against the UK. To try and put a stop to the fighting, Britain passed the Home Rule Act, which partitioned Ireland into Northern and Southern Ireland. The goal was to keep Ireland in the UK, but create two Irish governments. One Unionist one in the north and an Irish nationalist one in the south. But this division was rejected by most Irish citizens and the fighting only stopped when a ceasefire was agreed and the AngloIrish Treaty was signed. This agreement created a new country, the Irish Free State, but kept it as part of the British Empire. But this treaty had an opt- out clause for Northern Ireland. And with its unionist majority, within two days of the treaty coming into effect, Northern Ireland had declared it would separate from the Irish Free State and rejoin the UK. All this created a huge divide in Irish society and within the IRA between those that were pro- treaty and willing to let Northern Ireland go in return for what they saw as a stepping stone towards total independence from Britain and those against it that wanted a united Ireland independent from the UK. So there was a civil war immediately after the war for independence. This time between those two groups, the IRA fought against the treaty, but the pro-treaty side supported by the British won. And so Ireland remained partitioned as it is today. But that left a region that was still home to a lot of Catholic Irish nationalists inside the UK living alongside Protestant British Unionists. And so the problems were far from solved. You have no concept of the awfulness of what Ireland went through. I mean we had this thing called the plantation and the settlers in Ireland and the planters in Ireland. That's code talk for theft for affliction of people from their homes. How do people live? They starve to death. So I mean we were subject to quite horrendous treatment by the big island. I think rule one country should be enough for any country. British government has set up a false state here in the north of Ireland. So I don't use the term the UK cuz the UK would mean legitimizing the existence of the northern state. If I was talking about the big island, I would talk about Britain cuz I I I see this part of Ireland as being Ireland. But the actual use of the word in the UK acknowledges the existence of this state and to a degree to a republican. That's what the conflict was about. By the way, do not think for one minute that people like me are wanting the north of Ireland to join with the south of Ireland. We want a new Ireland cuz we see the southern state has been quite corrupt. Do I want to get into a state where you have the same two ruling parties that has ruled corruptly under the opaces of the Catholic Church for 100 years? I don't think so. I don't think so. That's not what I spent 16 years in prison for or was engaged in military activity about. Oh no. We want a new start for the people on the end of Ireland. We're politically and culturally British. You know, I've lived here all my life. We can talk about 600 years. We can talk about 300 years. But this is 100 years. Like if there was United Iron here, people here would be persecuted. People would be murdered. So if you think it's bad in Iraq or Iran, it'll be a thousand times worse here. It may not throw LGBT people off the roof, but they'll certainly shoot and kill and persecute loss and Republicans would be behind that. How did you actually come to be involved in the RA in the in the first place? Look, I was a young man in the 1960s. England was getting thrown out of their colonies all over the world. Our struggle was an anti-colonial struggle. So the tactics which they use in Africa or the Middle East, India, it's no different. To understand why someone would join a group like the IRA or UVF and be willing to commit acts of violence in their name, you have to know a bit about Northern Ireland in the 1960s and '7s. [Music] Discrimination against Irish Catholics was rampant. Most large businesses were run by Protestant unionists who gave preference to Protestant employees or simply refused to hire Catholics. The courts and police forces were overwhelmingly Protestant and treated Protestants more favorably. And then there was the housing, but this was more than just a place to live. You only had the right to vote in local elections here if you or your spouse owned property. Not only were the wealthier Protestants more likely to own property than Catholics, but council homes were often allocated by Protestant local counselors to Protestant families who would then vote to keep them in power. Allocation of a vote depended on you having a house. And having a house depended on who got elected cuz the councils allocated housing. There there's a circle here and you had to break the circle. So what we were pushing for was the one person one vote. You had some people if they were big property owners they could own 10 houses the 10 votes whereas you could have two families living in the house with a couple of adults in each family and there's no vote. Even though the civil war had ended decades ago the IRA hadn't actually gone and against the backdrop of a growing civil rights movement it was recruiting again. So the British government to try and weaken the IRA introduced a new law giving them the ability to imprison people without trial. That process was called internment. There are now something like 12,000 people held in camps like this throughout Northern Ireland since the British government began its controversial policy of internment 3 months ago. The internment was brought in in August 1971. I mean what do you say about a government which has to bring in a tournament there's something wrong somewhere cuz the vast majority of the people they in turn were people who they perceived as being anti-state but they were wrong or they were anti-state but not violently anti-state as the tension simmered there were two camps so what you had was a totally reformed movement for electoral changes with the civil rights movement and to always the little Bernie bit which was revolution. There is a history of rebellion against British rule. It's always there and nearly every about 20 30 years there's an attempted revolt. The IRA had tried to lift their military campaign in the late 1960s. It wasn't overly working. While the IRA was trying to make a comeback, initially most people supported the peaceful reformists, but then came a protest on the 30th of January 1972. On the last Sunday in January, Catholic civil rights marchers defied a government ban on parades and came into violent conflict with British troops in the center of Londereerry. 15,000 Irish people defied a ban on public gatherings and marched against the internment law. Soldiers made arrests, used tear gas and rubber bullets while protesters threw stones. [Applause] And at 4:10 p.m., British soldiers began firing live rounds at the crowd on what would come to be known as Bloody Sunday. 1972 at a civil rights march in Gary, which I'm sure you've heard of, Bloody Sunday, where 13 people were shot dead. Reform, reform had to be put in the bin, had to be put aside, and to a degree revolution took over. and I would have been one of the thousands of young men, men and women who decided, "Nah, I'm not going to take any more of this." And so I ask our people at this difficult and trying time to remain calm. Within the space of half an hour, in the middle of the afternoon, no fewer than 20 large bombs exploded in various parts of the city. This was a tipping point. After Bloody Sunday, support for armed revolution surged. The IRA was back with a vengeance and would undertake a 30-year fight against British and Unionist forces, becoming one of the most feared and infamous paramilitaries in the world. that the British government during the 1970s, it did make an effort to bring about major reform here, but the ball was already then rolling down the hill. Right? The IRA campaign was underway. Thousands of people had joined into the IRA, so it was too late. Eventually, Belfast particularly became this gated uh community. You weren't able to approach the city center except you had to go through gates and be searched because of the IRA bombings. At this stage, the forces they faced were the 8,500 strong Royal Olter Constabularary or RU, which was the mostly Protestant police force in Northern Ireland, and the 21,000 British troops deployed to Northern Ireland to support the RU under Operation Banner. That operation would last 38 years, making it the longest continuous military deployment in British history. In areas like this, there was a lot of British forces killed. It was the the conflict was mostly contained within workingass nationalist stroke republican areas. What they then had then was the growth of reactionary forces then being formulated. uh those reactionary forces would have been on the pro- union side who got their logic from um attacking nationalist stroke republican communities with this vague concept of well if we kill enough people in that that area those people will be telling republicans to stop attacking forces. I made the choices in the organization but there were reasons why I joined it. 100 yards from here. Um, there was a place called the bomb or a showroom and it was blown up. There was an 18-month old baby killed in it. There was a boy killed in it. I didn't know at the time of the bomb, but I knew afterwards and I knew the father. There was a a pub that was blowing up. I called the forstep in and two pensioners who everybody in the shadow knew cuz they were characters and everybody knew them, but the RA blew that up. Those are the two things that would impacted me most because they were very local and I knew people. The IRA were attacking these communities and murdering people and planting bombs and nobody was doing anything about it. You know, British bomb wasn't doing anything. The police's hands were tied and you know, you had to make a decision then. Um I probably made a decision when I was 15 that we needed to do something about it. Uh and that's how I got involved. In all the fighting, there were over 10,000 bombings and almost 37,000 shootings. Over 3,700 people were killed and almost 50,000 injured. In Britain, the conflict came to be called the Troubles. But some of those who were involved in it push back on that name. The troubles is such a it's a weak term. Uh we call it the conflict, right? Which is a a softish term. Others friends of mine will call it the war. Uh because it was a gorilla war uh guerrilla war in the streets in the countryside. In England, we were also active in England. We act different than uh Europe. There was actually a British military mom shot dead in Australia by the IRA. So I mean we considered it a war. This troubles gives it an inference of being a an internal sort of civilian throwing stones at each other. So no if you' have seen this area back you would not believe with armored cars and the military personnel on it. Just wouldn't believe it. [Music] Do you regret involvement with the violence? No. Not the slightest. No, I've been asked that quite a few times by especially Americans and I go to them, what would you have done in the 1980s if the Russians had landed? Uh, do I regret? Absolutely not. I think I've been very instrumental in bringing about major societal change. We considered it a war, a nicolonial war. So, no, no regrets. I regret being in prison. I regret the loss of life. I regret the hurt, all that type of stuff. I'm not an insane maniacal whatever killer or whatever it is. We were sentenced under terrorism legislation. I didn't consider myself a terrorist. It might sound a bit I don't know cheeky me to say to you, but what would your views be to the French who resisted the German occupation? What would mine be? Yeah, they would I mean I would obviously say yeah that it's you'd be fighting and occupying. Oh, would you then say to the French in 1946, "Do you regret killing those Germans?" I mean, that's and sounds aggressive in me to say it, but that's the way I feel. No, absolutely justified. Why should I have a foreign soldier in my country if you think other people aren't paid to get rid of them? What what's your your your nationality again? Uh, well, I'm English. Yeah, you're English. I mean, you know, you didn't let the Germans come over. Oh, Church Hill held them back on the beaches. To me, it's it's a no-brainer. But I understand you asking the questions. My regrets are that life had to be taken cuz I'm a father, grandfather, husband, brother. I'm just I'm an okay fella. Just was a member of the IRA. Uh I don't regret it. You know, I don't regret being involved in the violence, but I regret every life that was taken and my action I took and I don't regret it and uh you know, I was denied ever. You know, as far as I'm concerned, I had to take it. But I don't make excuses about it. I try to try to find reasons. But what I don't want to do is to condemn another generation of young people in this society till any type of war. I don't think circumstances are the circumstances that I was growing up in. And I think that people need to allow us to try to find a political solution. The first of those political solutions and the transition from violence to politics came on the 10th of April 1998 in the form of the Good Friday Agreement. After 2 years of talks and after a generation of bloodshed, an agreement that unites loyalist and Republican Unionist and nationalist leaders. Those who believe in a united island can make that case now by persuasion, not violence or threats. Well, I look forward equally to a new era of friendship and reconciliation between unionists and nationalists. The agreement outlined over 30 pages of terms that would put an end to the fighting in Northern Ireland. It acknowledged that the majority of people here wanted to remain part of the UK, but that a substantial portion of the population wanted a united Ireland. It was put to two referendums, one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic. Turnout in Northern Ireland was 81% and this is the moment the people of Northern Ireland learned the results. Yes. 71.12%. [Applause] In the Republic, turnout was lower, but 94% voted in favor of the agreement. So, after 30 years of fighting and over 3,500 deaths, peace at last. [Music] No more car bombs, no more pub shootings, no more sectarian killings. And the paramilitaries agreed to give up a lot of their weapons. 9 years later, Operation Banner came to an end and British forces were withdrawn from Northern Ireland. But a lot of people outside of Northern Ireland seem to think that this solved the issue entirely. But what it really did was secure peace for now and leave the question of Northern Ireland's place in the UK open-ended. It stated that Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK until a majority of people in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland wanted unification. If unification ever does have majority support, it says there should be a referendum. It wasn't the United Ireland that Republicans wanted, and it wasn't a guarantee that Northern Ireland would be part of the UK forever. But the majority of people were okay with this middle ground if it meant the violence would stop. This political solution was much easier when the UK was in the EU. The land borders were invisible and that meant things were flexible. People could act as though there was or wasn't a border depending on their identity. But then [Music] when the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016, it changed everything because this is the UK's only land border with an EU country. and Brexit risked creating a hard border here with customs checks and security posts anywhere else. And that might be acceptable, but here it threatens the agreement that put an end to three decades of bloodshed because it puts a barrier between Northern Ireland and the Republic, something thousands of Irish Republicans fought against. So to try and get around that, initially the UK and EU agreed on the Northern Ireland Protocol, which moved this border, basically creating a customs barrier in the sea between Northern Ireland and Britain and leaving Northern Ireland inside the EU single market. For loyalists though, this threatened their place in the UK and was likely to draw Northern Ireland and the Republic closer together while distancing it from Britain. From the Unionist loyalist perspective, they see their connection with Britain definitely definitely winning the the the protest about the Brexit. They wanted Brexit. they supported this very English nationalist perspective to leave Europe which I think is very very dangerous. So we got the protocols now. You know the people call an Irish sea border. I believe that it it abuses my rights. We need unfettered access between here and the rest of the United Kingdom. There you the border is a clean probably went through it. You know it's been there for 100 years. The Irish government and all of the nationalist and republican parties all said there's a border there that there would be Republican attacks on it. So they moved it. We can't live under threat from republicans. But since then, British politics has been kind of chaotic. Boris Johnson is going to step down. My friends, in politics, no one is remotely indispensable. I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. Liz Truss has been elected leader of Britain's Conservative Party and will become the UK's next prime minister. For the second time this year, our prime minister has resigned. I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected. I am resigning as leader of the Conservative Party. Rishi Sunnak is set to become prime minister of the United Kingdom. I am humbled and honored to be elected as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party. Three prime ministers in one year obviously leads to some changes. And so out with the Northern Ireland protocol, in with the Windsor framework. 27 pages, 13,000 words. Now it's a deal that Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, or even Theresa May could not strike. The new plan is to create two separate customs lanes. a green lane for goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and a red lane for those moving between the UK and EU. Goods in the green lane aren't subject to EU checks, which should make the Irish sea border much less noticeable, meaning unionists can breathe a sigh of relief. But it's worth keeping in mind that the Windsor framework hasn't actually been implemented yet. And how well it'll actually work in practice is an open question. So while peace has been achieved and bullets are no longer whizzing overhead, the tension is still very much there and was one of the biggest sticking points in EU UK Brexit negotiations. On the ground though today that tension is most visible in Northern Ireland segregated neighborhoods where Protestants live on one side of a peace wall and Catholics on another. [Music] Within moments of entering any of these areas, it's obvious which side of the divide the people that live there are on. In Belfast, Catholic Republican strongholds like Falls Road and Protestant Unionist ones like the Shankill are home to countless murals expressing loyalist or Republican allegiance that cover the sides of buildings. and Irish or British flags dot the streets along with memorials marking either IRA or British Unionist attacks. The Northern Irish government aimed to remove all peace walls here by 2023, but they've missed that target. There's still 20 miles of the structures left in Northern Ireland, mostly in Belfast, and many people have them running straight through their back gardens. What is it like having a peace line in your back garden? Barkens the house down terrifyingly. Um, but I suppose we feel safe at the same time. Well, I think everybody's glad that they're here, but I suppose it would be a we bit better if we get a we bit more natural light in. You know, have sort of corrugated shields the whole way down rather than the big green things in the end. So, the whole back of my house be completely dark. I'm old enough, right, to remember when there was no peacefuls. But when I walk down street and I crossed the road, right away I knew where I was. I was in a caf area. I mean, you don't drive through a village or a town in Northern Ireland without knowing what it is. So from that point of view, we've always had peace walls in our heads. And when you go to a peace wall, you know, you're going all these people in the north side must be bad. That's why they've got that wall there. So you've got two factions in each side. And one thinks all the all the prods are bad and one thinks all the Catholics are bad. you know, it's in people's heads and we've never got rid of it, you know, so you can't take them down until people's got a piece of mind and we don't have that. Still quite segregated, but that's what people are used to in their living. It'd be nice. It'd be nice to have people living in a broadly mixed society, but we have maybe several hundred years of separated living. It's customary, but that tends to be in the workingass areas. You don't get major issues in middle class or upper class areas. But you're right, in workingass areas, there's still major segregation. Belfast is the most starkly divided city I've ever visited. For one side, this is a fight for Irish freedom. For the other, it's the risk of being dragged into a country they don't want to be a part of. There isn't really much room for compromise beyond what's already been achieved, and both sides have taken up arms for their respective causes before. But regardless of the cause, civilians were often the victims. 54% of those killed in the conflict and 68% of those injured were civilians, sometimes targeted just for being Catholic or Protestant. Republican paramilitaries killed 257 people. And over a third of their victims were civilians. Loyalist paramilitaries killed fewer people, 1,027, but 85% of their victims were civilians. The British army also killed 188 civilians, mostly Catholics, and the RU killed 28. So, while it's important to listen to those who were directly involved in the conflict to make sure history doesn't repeat itself, we also need to remember the people that suffered as a result of their actions. Michael and Billy didn't go into much detail on the specific charges they were sentenced for, but Billy's case is a little easier to find online. He was sentenced to life for his role in the murder of two civilian Catholic men, Michael Luren and Edward Morgan, who were not involved with the paramilitaries. I didn't find much about Michael's case, but he was involved in the killings of members of the British forces, and a book called Anatomy of a Killing suggests that he gave the order to kill Miller Mallister, a police photographer for the RU, who was shot in front of his children. With so many dead and injured, the bitterness here runs deep. And the trauma left in the wake of the conflict will be felt for decades to come. As things stand today, occasionally violence does flare up. There are still clashes between Protestant groups like the Orange Order and Irish Republicans and Catholics [Music] and some splinter groups of the paramilitaries like the Continuity IRA are still armed. Unfortunately, there's a small core within our nationalist areas who claim to be Republican activists that don't attack the state but do have weaponry and say that they're against the peace process. That's up to the police to do the job and uh our communities will be better off without those people. But there's an awful lot of people within loyalist areas who claim their labels as loyalist activists who are gangsters, criminals, drug dealers, etc. So a lot of them have a lot of negative sway in their areas. Despite those groups, the majority of people who are actually involved in the conflict have committed to the peace process and turned to dialogue. Michael now runs Costa, an organization that provides assistance to Republican ex-prisoners, while Billy is the leader of the Progressive Unionist Party. But even so, it's difficult to know exactly what the future holds in Northern Ireland, especially now that Brexit has shaken the foundations of the Good Friday Agreement. Whatever the outcome, one side is bound to feel like they're losing. And hopefully now you'll understand why [Music]