Early Years of Home Rule
Northern Ireland having received self-government within the United Kingdom, under the Government of Ireland Act was in some respects left to its own devices.
The first years of the new autonomous region were marked by bitter violence, particularly in Belfast. The IRA was determined to oppose the partition of Ireland and the authorities created the (mainly ex-UVF) Ulster Special Constabulary to aid the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and introduced emergency powers to put down the IRA. Many died in political violence from 1920, which petered out after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922 and through 1923.
The continuing violence created a climate of fear in the new region, and there was migration across the new border. As well as movement of Protestants from the Free State into Northern Ireland, some Catholics fled south, leaving some of those who remained feeling isolated. Despite the mixed religious affiliation of the old Royal Irish Constabulary and the transfer of many Catholic RIC police officers to the newly formed Royal Ulster Constabulary (1922), northern Catholics did not join the new force in great numbers. Many nationalists then came to view the new police force as sectarian, adding to their sense of alienation from the state.
Read more about this topic: History Of Northern Ireland
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, home and/or rule:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“... the girls who came at dawn
To pay a visit to the young child, and how, when he grew up to be a man
The same restive ceremony replaced the limited years between,
Only now he was old, and forced to begin the journey to the sun.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“In another year I’ll have enough money saved. Then I’m gonna go back to my hometown in Oregon and I’m gonna build a house for my mother and myself. And join the country club and take up golf. And I’ll meet the proper man with the proper position. And I’ll make a proper wife who can run a proper home and raise proper children. And I’ll be happy, because when you’re proper, you’re safe.”
—Daniel Taradash (b. 1913)
“As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.”
—Judith Lewis Herman (b. 1942)