Category:Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland, consisting of the six most North Easterly counties of the island of Ireland, was created by the partition of Ireland in 1921. This was the culmination of a process which began with the organisation in 1912, of the armed Ulster Volunteer Force, whose opposition to the constitutional movement for Irish Home Rule was supported by a section of the British ruling class. The subsequent development of an armed volunteer movement among Irish nationalists led to the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence.

The boundaries of Northern Ireland (six counties instead of the nine counties of the historic province of 'Ulster') were drawn specifically to ensure that it would contain a majority of Protestants in perpetuity. The Northern Ireland Parliament, created in 1921, was dominated by unionists until it was prorogued in 1972, three years after the outbreak of the conflict known as the Northern Ireland Troubles.

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provided that that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish governments are under "a binding obligation" to implement that choice. The Agreement created a new Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland Executive based on power-sharing between unionists and nationalists.

Resources

• Conflict Archive on the Internet, University of Ulster.
• Victoria Hales Britain’s Forgotten Colony? New Histories VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3 - COLONIALISM, January 19, 2010.