Conflict in Northern Ireland
"A bloody phenomenon cannot be explained by a bloodless theory."The conflict in Northern Ireland is a battle between two religiously and culturally differentiated groups, Protestant Unionists and Catholic Republicans, over the fate of Ireland. Unionists are the Protestant descendants of British immigrants, who began coming to the island as early as the 12th century to farm and conduct business. Their sphere of influence, economically and politically, remained centralized in the area which is now Northern Ireland. Unionists see themselves as having a dual nationality, Irish and British, and so want to remain citizens of Great Britain. Republicans are the Catholic natives of the island that want Ireland united and completely free of British political and military influence. They see the existence of Northern Ireland as a vestige of British colonialism. Catholics in Northern Ireland began a civil rights movement in the 1960's to end the discrimination they have faced under Protestant rule. To this extent it is easy to sympathize with the impoverished, pitifully depicted Catholic contingent in John Conroy's harrowing and realistic account of the 'troubles', Belfast Diary - War as a Way of Life (1987).
This analogy can shed some light on Britain's connection to Northern Ireland - a rather intricate situation. Northern Catholics crave national sovereignty with such potent desire that blood has been shed for hundreds of years in the name of national identity. It is this dichotomy; inherently characteristic of Anglo-Irish conflict that stands most steadfastly in the path of resolution and peace. These issues become conflated with arguments about land and power, but can't be reconciled solely through political compromise. They sought to lay blame for the conflict in order to justify their antagonisms towards their perceived enemies. president recently said that our nation no longer had a strategic or economic interest in Texas (perhaps some other state would be a better example given the origin of our present president). The grass-roots work of peace activists in Northern Ireland, the goal of which is to create understanding between the two groups, offers a crucial complement to the peace negotiations between political leaders towards building a lasting peace in Northern IrelandThe traditional nationalist and unionist approaches to explaining this perpetual strife were not so much seeking explanations of the conflict as they were seeking rationalizations for particular policies - justification for the use of violence (Conroy 214). Evaluating my own opinion in the realistic, disheartening light of Conroy's work, I have come to see this process as one characteristic of decolonizing rebellion against the oppressor - logistically and psychologically comparable to any other process of decolonization. took it by force? To complicate matters, some people in Texas feel that they should be part of the U. This has materialized through a political process which, while contingent upon political action, has been played out within an ideological field in which exclusivist forms held a massive predominance.
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Acceptance Essays
