The conflict in Northern Ireland dates back to the British conquest of Ireland in the 12th century. The current troubles have their roots in the nationalist uprising in 1916, which was brutally suppressed by the British Army. Six years later, in 1922, after a guerrilla war, most of Ireland won its independence. The six North-Eastern counties, sometimes called Ulster, with a Protestant majority, remained to the United Kingdom and had a Protestant-dominated parliament, called the Stormont. There is a central constitutional problem, the "Northern Irish problemâ€", which is not only one problem, but also a tangle of interrelated problems. What should be the political context for the people of Northern Ireland? Should it be integrated within Britain or a united Ireland or independent? There are problems of cultural identity and of religious difference. These may be the dominating ones because the Northern Irish parties are founded on the bases of such divisions. The polarisation of the main political groupings takes place around two competing ideologies, namely unionism and nationalism. Unionists support Northern Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom, while Nationalists are in favor of its union with the rest of Ireland. This political cleavage is also expressed in the religious division, Protestants being unionists and Catholics nationalists.
             The main unionist parties are the Official Unionist Party (OUP), which formed all governments till 1972, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). Both parties are unwilling to share power with non-unionist parties and are rather confession based than class-based, but as political scientists point out, they stand for two varieties of unionism, which can be distinguished in an extreme and moderate liberal unionism. The DUP tends to take a more extreme view than the OUP because they have a close identification with fundamentalist Protestant sects and are less willing to compromise with the...