Matt Richards

3-20-2008

What does peace mean to Ireland?

            At the beginning of the year in 2007, Ireland had finally been granted peace and given full authority to govern the country on their own without British rule telling them how to run the emerald isle.  I had heard that a new leader had been appointed to Northern Ireland and that peace was declared shortly after that but I didn’t know if it would work because this type of freedom has been sought after for more than five hundred years.  After I had heard that the British did leave and peace was in the works, I heard nothing about it for almost a year.  On March 11^th of this year I was at a Flogging Molly show in Houston and the singer for Flogging Molly, Dave King, told the crowd that peace had been established in Ireland for almost a year and that a future with a united Ireland was something that he was proud to have seen in his lifetime.  Then he dedicated a song of their newly released album and the crowd went into a dance of joy and happiness.  It was definitely a sight to see and it brought tears to my eyes.  My people are finally free of the British oppression that has been dividing us for centuries.   My question is why do the Irish hate their British oppressors so much and what did the British put them through that the idea of peace seemed like a miracle from God?

            Well, I really wanted to know so I began to search in any manner I could.  I started with looking up the history of what happen during the five centuries that the British ruled Ireland.  The International Humanist and Ethical Union website mentions that Ireland’s history with the British certainly isn’t a happy one.  They say,

The problems in Northern Ireland have deep roots. For example, England and Ireland were at war in the 1500s and there were great massacres of both Protestants by Catholics and Catholics by Protestants in the 1600s. But such battles were being fought all over Europe at that time we call them the Wars of Religion, and they involved Holland, France, Italy, Spain and England. The tragedy for N. Ireland is that the problem was never resolved here as it was elsewhere in Europe. We are a museum of ancient conflict.

            Given the history of war and division, it is no big surprise that Ireland is quite different than some of the other countries that the British colonized.  For one, I don’t think that the Irish were a people that were colonized.  They seemed to have had more done to them than simply being made into a colony.  They were oppressed.  When the British came over in the 1500s, they found a Celtic tribe living on the Emerald Isle but they quickly did everything they could to change those people into subjects of the British crown.  The Irish were told by Queen Victoria that they couldn’t be Catholic anymore and that speaking Gaelic was forbidden and could be cause for punishment.  After learning all of that I can understand why the Irish hated their British oppressors.  The situation however is sort of like what happens in “Train to Pakistan” because the country is divided by the British into two areas based on language and religion.  The only major difference is that the British ruled Northern Ireland until 2007 instead of dividing the nation and leaving it to the colony to run on its own. (Wikipedia)

            John O'Sullivan writes in the article “Dawn of peace in Northern Ireland” that the process of peace began in 2007.  He says,

Has peace finally broken out in Northern Ireland? Recently, a conference of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, voted to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and to join its governing authority by a lopsided majority of 9-1.  It sounds an odd sort of achievement. But it was in fact the final step needed before Sinn Fein could be admitted to the "power-sharing" government of Northern Ireland under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Elections will be held on March 7 for the Northern Ireland Assembly. If all goes as expected, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness will be sworn in as the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland in a government headed by First Minister Ian Paisley on or around the 26th of March.

            I do believe that peace in Northern Ireland did seem like it was too good to be true but Martin McGuinness was sworn in and he has been the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland for almost a year now.  The British did put the Irish through a long, difficult oppressive past and now they have to try and put that past behind them.  I think it will be a struggle mainly because there is still the whole Protestant versus Catholic issue that the country will have to figure out how to deal with to become a united Ireland.  It will not be easy but something that started out as a dream and that now seems like a miracle has the hope to continue so that one day there will be a united Irish nation. 

            I think the next question would be how do the people in Northern Ireland move on from a once British ruled past and how do they prevent fighting between the Protestants and Catholics.

Works Cited

King, Dave from Flogging Molly

March 11, 2008

O'Sullivan, John “Dawn of peace in Northern Ireland”

archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/02/01/10100940.html March 17, 2008

Reid, Les “Peace in Ireland by the International Humanist and Ethical Union”

www.reids24.freeserve.co.uk   March 17, 2008

Wikipedia  “the History of Northern Ireland” 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Northern_Ireland  March 17, 2008