ABSTRACT
The conflict in the North of Ireland – or Northern Ireland – during the period 1968–98, euphemistically known as “the Troubles”, witnessed the acute ideological and physical confrontation of three principal sets of actors: Irish Nationalists/Republicans, Unionists/Loyalists and the forces of the British State. The immediate cause of the conflict relates to the partition of Ireland in 1921 into Northern Ireland, which became a constituent part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Free State (renamed Ireland in 1937 and described since 1949 as the Republic of Ireland), which gained independence from Britain. Religious and political affiliations were largely fixed within this northern Irish state: an inbuilt Protestant majority (i.e. Unionists/Loyalists) wished to uphold a relationship with the United Kingdom, and a Catholic minority (i.e. Nationalists/Republicans) sought the reversal of partition and the reunification of Ireland. The northern Irish state was essentially a one-party state for the period 1920–68, a “Protestant Government for a Protestant People” (Bardon, 2005, pp.538–9) in which Catholic Nationalists/Republicans suffered political, sociocultural and religious discrimination. During this period, the Irish language, as one of the main symbolic embodiments of Irish Nationalist/Republican culture, became politically contentious as a threat to the state’s “Britishness” and was actively divested and sidelined by the Unionist government as a result.
