Caroline Kennedy-Pipe - The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland

ORIGINS OF MODERN WARS
General editor: Harry Hearder

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THE ORIGINS OF THE PRESENT TROUBLES IN NORTHERN IRELAND
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe

The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland

CAROLINE KENNEDY-PIPE

First published 1997 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited
Fourth impression 1998

Published 2013 by Routledge
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Copyright 1997, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Caroline Kennedy-Pipe to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-10073-2 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline, 1961

The origins of the present troubles in Northern Ireland / Caroline Kennedy-Pipe.

p. cm. (Origins of modern wars)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-582-21712-1. ISBN 0-582-10073-9 (pbk.)

1. Northern IrelandHistory1969-1994. 2. Political violence--Northern IrelandHistory20th century. 3. NationalismNorthern IrelandHistory20th century. 4. Northern IrelandHistory, Military. 5. Irish unification question. I. Title. II. Series.

Set by 7 in 10/12 New Baskerville

To give a fair account and show a deep understanding of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and their origins requires historical interpretation and imagination of a high order. Dr Kennedy-Pipe has shown precisely that kind of interpretation and imagination in the writing of this book. She has managed to expound the ideas and the motives of the various parties involved in the dispute, and to show how these have changed with changing circumstances.

The book is the sixteenth in the series, and marks a departure in that it is concerned with neither an international, nor in the strict sense a civil war. To include it in a series of volumes on the origins of wars may be considered to make a statement of a political nature. Only the IRA and one small extreme section of the Loyalists would claim that the Troubles constitute a war. In International Law we are certainly not dealing with a war, and the editor, by including the volume in the series, equally certainly does not wish to make a statement of a political nature. The Troubles have been a war only in the general sense, as one might speak of a war against the drug traffic, or a war to defend the environment. Yet some of the characteristics of a war have been present, even if two organized armies have not been consistently facing each other, as in the case of the American Civil War or the Spanish Civil War. Recently, for example, the term cease-fire has been used. The term has in the past been used mainly with reference to international war. A cease-fire is followed by an armistice and, ultimately, by a peace treaty. It is unusual perhaps unique for two forces like those facing each other in Northern Ireland to be asked to grant a cease-fire, as though they both had armies permanently visible in the field.

If the scale of the conflict is to be considered an element in deciding whether we are dealing with a war or not, some statistics provided by Dr Kennedy-Pipe are relevant. From 1969 to 1972 the percentage of the population of Northern Ireland killed in the Troubles was twice that of Britain during the Boer War, and twice that of the USA in either Korea or Vietnam. For so small a country as Northern Ireland this was, indeed, a war. The argument was not purely an academic one; it had practical consequences. If it was a war paramilitary prisoners would be treated as prisoners of war, rather than common criminals, though, of course, they would not be protected by the Geneva Convention, which relates only to international war. But even if it was not a war, paramilitary prisoners could be treated as political offenders, rather than common criminals. In the nineteenth century political offenders were usually treated better than ordinary criminals, not only in Britain, but, for example, in the Habsburg Monarchy and united Italy. But Dr Kennedy-Pipe reminds us that the Gardiner Committee reported, in 1975, that the distinction was a misapplied one in Northern Ireland, since it gave a certain prestige to Republican prisoners.

The general point emerging from Caroline Kennedy-Pipe's book is the immense complexity of the whole Irish question and the conflict in Northern Ireland in particular. For example, a point which may well be unfamiliar to English readers concerns Sinn Fein's attitude to the Republic, which it regarded as an illegal institution until the 1980s, but which it then decided to recognize, so that its members could stand for elections to the Irish Parliament. On the other hand, if Dr Kennedy-Pipe shows great familiarity with the history of Ireland as a whole, she is especially enlightening on the changing role of the British Army in Northern Ireland.