The Protestant State of Northern Ireland
A political entity lacking in international or domestic legitimacy
This is the fourth in a series of commentaries on Ireland, the native land of my grandparents, and a land militarily conquered, politically colonized, and economically peripheralized by England from the twelfth century to our times. In the three previous commentaries, I review the history of English colonialism in Ireland, showing that the process of colonialism in Ireland is and remains in conformity with the general pattern that has characterized European colonialism and imperialism with respect to the Americas, Asia, and Africa. I analyze the fateful partition of the island in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922 and the acceptance of the partition by a majority of the Irish, a historic error that was rooted in the limited understanding in the world of that time with respect to the economic pitfalls of post-colonial independence. I review the economic nationalist program of the Irish Free State, doomed to failure by partition and by the structural weaknesses of its peripheralized economy. And I discuss the entrance of Ireland in the European Union in the age of neoliberalism, which resulted in a level of economic growth, but not sustainable, as a result of the absence of the necessary structural foundations for sustained economic growth and prosperity.
Today, I discuss the failed state of Northern Ireland, which failed because its rulers attempted to impose a society characterized by ethnic segregation and discrimination, thereby undermining its legitimacy in its own territory and in the world, thus blocking its possibilities for sustainable economic development. In today’s commentary, as in the previous three, I draw upon Ireland, Colonialism, and the Unfinished Revolution by Robbie McVeigh and Bill Rolston, published by Haymarket Books in 2023 and by Beyond the Pale Books, Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2021.
The partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State was a strategy by the United Kingdom to block the Irish nationalist and republican revolution. The partition kept within the UK a good part of the northeastern province of Ulster, which had been included in the territory declared independent by the Irish republican revolution in 1919. And the partition weakened the Irish state that was now formed as a dominion in the British Empire, in that the newly formed Irish state was deprived of its most important industrial and commercial center, thereby undermining its capacity for economic development and deepening its economic dependence on the UK.
The historic Irish province of Ulster consisted of nine counties. In the partition of Ireland, six of the Ulster counties (Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone) were carved out to form Northern Ireland, while three of them (Monaghan, Cavan and Donegal) were handed over to the newly created Irish Free State. The creation of a six-county state of Northern Ireland was included in the UK Government of Ireland Act of 1920, enacted in response to the Irish declaration of independence of 1919; and it was ratified in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 2021.
The creation of a six-county state (as against a nine-county state) reflected the interests of the Unionist party (those who favored Union with the UK rather than the independence of Ireland), in that the separation of the six counties ensured Unionist control of the territory. Unionists reckoned that a nine-county parliament would consist of 64 Members, with a Unionist majority of three or four; but a six-county parliament would have 52 Members, with a Unionist majority of ten. A nine-county state would have had a population that was 56% Protestant, while the six-county state was 66% Protestant, which implies a greater Unionist majority, since the overwhelming majority of Catholics were opposed to Union.
The boundaries of the partition were inconsistent with the interests of Catholics, nationalists, and republicans in the six-counties, who were now reduced to perpetual minority status in the newly created state in the north. And they were inconsistent with the interests of Unionists in the three Ulster countries not included in the new State of Northern Ireland, inasmuch as they had small representation in the Irish Free State.
McVeigh and Rolston maintain that the six-county state had no organic or ethnic reason for being. It was a product of the sectarianism and short-term interests of the Unionists in the six-counties, lacking in inherent legitimation. “It carved a new border across both Ireland and Ulster which had no historical or cultural legitimacy – its only logic was that this was the largest area following existing county boundaries that might be secured on a basis of Protestant majoritarianism.”
In 1934, the sectarian character of the state in Northern Ireland was made explicit by Northern Ireland Prime Minister Viscount Craigavon, who declared that Northern Ireland is a Protestant State with a Protestant Parliament. He made the commentary in the context of a comparison with the Irish Free State, which was a Catholic State.
However, Ireland was not a Catholic State in the same way that Northern Ireland was a Protestant State. Although the 1937 Constitution of Ireland recognized the “special position” of the Catholic Church, it also recognized a number of Protestant denominations. Moreover, it guaranteed to every citizen the free practice and profession of religion; and it guaranteed full citizenship rights for all, without discrimination, regardless of religion. The Irish Free State broke with the religious sectarianism that had been developed during English colonialism as a mechanism for colonial rule.
In contrast, Northern Ireland used religious sectarianism as a mechanism for dividing the people and protecting commercial interests aligned with British imperialism. But what was at stake was not really religion. The Northern elite gave emphasis to its historic roots as a settler society, drawing a social and political boundary between those who were descendants of Protestant settlers and those who were natives of Ireland, overwhelmingly Catholic. The difference between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland was, as McVeigh and Rolston write, an ethnic boundary that “can be seen in cultural displays and social attitudes, in patterns of land ownership and the distribution of resources, and above all in the political choices and aspirations of different sections of the population.”
In the Protestant State of Northern Ireland, repression was the norm. Police organizations were well armed, and they possessed special emergency powers. As commonly occurs in repressive societies, there was a close affinity between the security forces of the State and paramilitary groups. To be sure, the Irish Republican Army was responsible for violence. But this fact testifies to the lack of legitimacy of the State in the eyes of the population.
The armed struggle of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland was unable to make headway. Its last sustained campaign, from 1956 to 1962, collapsed due to (1) the military strength of the government of Northern Ireland; (2) the increasing lack of support from the government of the Republic of Ireland, accommodated to the partition; and (3) the lack of popular support in Northern Ireland, as it became evident that the campaign was destined to failure.
A political campaign of non-violent direct action, which emerged in the 1960s, led to the disintegration of the state of Northern Ireland. A number of political parties and organizations of civil society participated in the campaign, which focused on the end of anti-Catholic discrimination. McVeigh and Rolston maintain that the campaign had popular appeal because it broke with the nationalist/republican versus Unionist rhetoric that had dominated public discourse for five decades. In attaining consensual support, the civil rights campaign left aside the fundamental political question of union versus partition, unresolved since the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922. The activists did not present an image of militants seeking to take control of the state through armed struggle; they were constructing a movement for non-violent social change. The civil rights movement in the United States was their model.
According to McVeigh and Rolston, the reformist demands of the civil rights movement split the Unionist camp. Professionals among the Unionists and those more connected to international capital were oriented to accepting the reformist proposals, whereas the traditionalists were led by representatives of local capital. But the state apparatus of repression remained in the hands of the traditionalists.
On January 30, 1972, which came to be known as Bloody Sunday, British troops gunned down fourteen peaceful demonstrators in Derry. This event led to the widespread view that the state of Northern Ireland had lost control. The British government took over the government of Northern Ireland in 1972, initiating a period of Direct Rule in Northern Ireland that lasted until 1999. The five-decade long Protestant State thus came to an end in 1972, a consequence of its incapacity to forge political and social stability.
Prior to the 1990s, Northern Ireland was not able to develop a vibrant economy, and its peculiar political condition and economic peripheralization ensured that this would be so. Northern Ireland had been the industrial and commercial center of Ireland at the time of the partition, with the largest shipbuilding yard in the world and one of the global centers for the manufacturing of linen. But shipbuilding declined, and linen manufacturing fell spectacularly from 226 million square yards of production in 1912 to sixty million square yards in 1961.
The economy of Northern Ireland lacked diversity in production, and it was overly dependent on trade with the UK, consequences of the peripheralization of the economy of Ireland by England. In the 1960s, the government of Northern Ireland adopted policies to attract direct foreign investment through the assumption of some construction costs as well as generous tax deduction schemes. The policy was successful in attracting new investments, but they were concentrated in synthetic fibers. Moreover, local capitalists were reduced to local managers of international capitalist enterprises, which had no organic connection to the locality. Attracted by lower wages and enticing incentives, they would relocate when a more enticing offer was made elsewhere. Disaster struck in the 1980s, when the big synthetic fiber producers closed operations, which particularly impacted the Protestant working class.
During the 1990s, the economy of Northern Ireland grew significantly, with the emergence of the peace process, and aided by the rapid growth of the economy of the Republic of Ireland during the period, which was taking advantage of new access to the markets of the European Union. However, the growth was not balanced. Services account for nearly 70% of economic output and 78% of employment in Northern Ireland. Agricultural production accounts for less than three percent of economic output, so that rural areas have high poverty rates. The economy remains characterized by low investment, low productivity, low employment, and low incomes.
The decline of manufacturing relative to service employment is illustrated by the story of the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, which at the time of the establishment of the state of Northern Ireland was the largest shipyard in the world. It declined rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of international competition. During the 1990s, the company diversified, moving into such areas as the manufacturing of bridges and oil platforms and the construction of offshore power generating equipment. Harland and Wolff sold much of the land where the ships were constructed, including the slipway where the Titanic was built. The company has not constructed a ship since 2003.
Moy Park, a poultry processor, is today Northern Ireland’s largest company, by some measures. It is owned by the U.S. corporation Pilgrim’s Pride, which bought it from a Brazilian company. The workforce is mostly low-wage and low-skilled employment. Fifty percent of the workforce is Catholic; thirty percent is migrant/other; and twenty percent is Protestant.
It seems to me that these are tendencies that are typical of nations in which the State, responding to the short-term interests of big capitalists, is not capable of taking steps to promote the development of the productivity of the national economy, in the context of a long-term development plan that seeks a balance of the manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors; with benefits distributed to all regions of the nation. It also seems to me that the possibilities for sustained development of the national economy would be enhanced by the reunification of Ireland combined with the political will to seek mutually beneficial trade with the emerging nations of the Global South.
British Direct Rule was characterized by a combination of, first, military action directed against persons and organizations that defied the authority of the State; and secondly, concessions to the demands of the civil rights movement. International tendencies favored the latter, such that the premises of the sectarian state were replaced piecemeal with the social democratic model that had been developed in Britain. These dynamics culminated in the peace process of the 1990s and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
The Good Friday Agreement, signed on April 10, 1998, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, consists of two interrelated documents: an agreement among eight political parties in Northern Ireland, known as the Multi-Party Agreement or the Belfast Agreement; and an agreement between the governments of Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, called the British-Irish Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement commits the government of Ireland and the nationalist parties in Northern Ireland to accept the current status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, which required an amendment in the Constitution of Ireland. Secondly, it committed the British government to neutrality with respect to any future change in the position of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. Thirdly, it committed all parties in Northern Ireland to non-violent means of political change. Fourth, it recognized that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom for as long as the citizens of Northern Ireland desire to remain in the UK. Fifth, it restored self-government to Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, on the basis of respect for the civil, political, economic, and social rights of all citizens, without discrimination; and with a power-sharing executive. And sixth, the Good Friday Agreement established a North-South Ministerial Council, made up of ministers from the Northern Ireland executive and the government of Ireland, which has the mission of consultation and cooperation with respect to areas of mutual interest.
Therefore, the agreement permits citizens of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to advocate and agitate for the elimination of the partition and the reunification of Ireland, as long as they accept the inclusion of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom as the current legal and constitutional condition; and as long as they seek change through non-violent means. Moreover, it commits the governments of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland to accept reunification, if the majority of the people of Northern Ireland desire it.
The Good Friday Agreement was approved in two referendums on May 22, 1998. In Northern Ireland, 71% voted in favor of the Agreement, with a voter turnout of 81%. In the Republic of Ireland, 94% voted in favor of amending the Constitution in accordance with the terms of the Agreement, with a turnout of 56%.
The reunification of Ireland?
It seems to me that the conditions are favorable for the reunification of Ireland, taking into account various factors. First, demographic change in Northern Ireland has created a situation in which Catholics now outnumber Protestants. Secondly, the UK Brexit vote complicates relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland, thereby providing further economic and political reasons for a reunified Ireland that is a member of the European Union. A reunified Ireland would strengthen the productive and commercial capacity of the nation, thereby increasing its capacity to benefit from access to the markets of Europe. It should be noted that 55.8% of Northern Ireland voters in the Brexit referendum voted in favor of remaining in the European Union. Thirdly, the current multidimensional crisis of the world-system and the emergence of a worldwide movement for multipolarity and South-South cooperation creates economic opportunities for a reunited Republic of Ireland, if it were to possess the political will to create economic policies based in cooperation and mutually beneficial trade with the emerging economies of the Global South.
In my four commentaries on Ireland, I have been moving toward the unavoidable conclusion of the economic necessity for the reunification of the island and the development by a reunited Ireland of mutually beneficial trade with the nations of the world, including the UK and the nations of the European Union, but especially the nations of the Global South. It is the nations of the Global South, led by China, which are showing the necessary road for humanity. With a legacy of being made underdeveloped by European colonialism and being kept in conditions of economic weakness and poverty by American imperialism, the nations of the Global South today are developing the productivity of their economies through South-South cooperation, heralding a future post-colonial stage of prosperity; and they are doing so in a time in which the political-economic systems of the Western powers are falling into crisis and decadence.
See previous commentary, “A more just world under construction,” April 28, 2023.
All the nations of the West are included in the call by the nations of the Global South for participation in the construction of an alternative, more just world-system. But this is especially true for Ireland, whose history of colonialism is known to the peoples of the world.
The Good Friday Agreement and Brexit perhaps signal the last moment of British colonialism and imperialism in Ireland. Perhaps they point to the culmination of the Irish nationalist and republican project of decolonization.
A free subscription option is available, with capacity to read, send, and share all posts. A paid subscription ($5 per month or $40 per year) enables you to make comments and to support the costs of the column; paid subscribers also receive a free PDF copy of my book on Cuba and the world-system. Ten percent of income generated through subscriptions to the column is donated to the Cuban Society for Philosophical Investigation.
Follow me on Twitter: Charles McKelvey@CharlesMcKelv14