The Troubles (Irish: Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although centred in Northern Ireland, violence at times spilled into the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe. The conflict arose from political and nationalistic disputes with a strong ethnic and sectarian dimension. Unionists and loyalists, mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom, while Irish nationalists and republicans, mostly Irish Catholics, wanted it to join a united Ireland. Despite the division between Protestants and Catholics, it was not a religious war.
Tensions escalated during a campaign by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association to end discrimination against the Catholic‑nationalist minority. The government attempted to suppress the protests, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was criticised for sectarianism and police brutality. Loyalists opposed the campaign, believing it was a front for republican activity. The August 1969 riots led to the deployment of British troops, in what became the British Army's longest operation. "Peace walls" were built to separate communities, and Catholic support for the Army declined after Bloody Sunday in 1972. The main participants included republican paramilitaries such as the Provisional IRA and INLA, loyalist paramilitaries such as the UVF and UDA, British state forces including the British Army and RUC, and political activists. The conflict involved guerrilla and bombing campaigns, sectarian tit‑for‑tat violence, feuds within and between paramilitary groups, counterinsurgency operations, incidents of collusion, riots, mass protests, civil disobedience, and the creation of temporary no‑go areas.
More than 3,500 people were killed, of whom 52% were civilians, 32% were members of the British security forces, and 16% were members of paramilitary groups. Republican paramilitaries were responsible for 60% of total deaths, loyalist paramilitaries for 30%, and security forces for 10%. Loyalists were responsible for 48% of civilian deaths, republicans for 39%, and security forces for 10%. The Northern Ireland peace process led to paramilitary ceasefires and talks between the main political parties, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. It restored self‑governance on the basis of "power‑sharing" and included the principle of consent, civil and political rights, parity of esteem, police reform, paramilitary disarmament, and early release of prisoners. Sporadic violence has continued, including punishment attacks, loyalist gangs' control of organised crime, and violent crime linked to dissident republican groups.
Name
The word "troubles" has been used as a synonym for violent conflict for centuries. It was used to describe the 17th-century Wars of the Three Kingdoms by all three national parliaments. For example, after the Restoration in 1660, the English Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660 starts with "The King's most excellent Majesty, taking into his gracious and serious consideration the long and great troubles ..."; as does the similar act in Scotland: "The king's most excellent majesty, considering that by the late troubles diverse of his subjects ..." (Scottish Parliament 1662); and by the Irish Parliament in the Act of Explanation (1665) "our royal father of blessed memory had been forced, during the late troubles, to make with the Irish subjects of that our kingdom" (Irish Parliament 1665, § 2). The term was used to describe the Irish revolutionary period in the early twentieth century. It was subsequently adopted to refer to the escalating violence in Northern Ireland after 1969.
Background
1609–1791
In 1609, Scottish and English settlers, known as planters, were given land escheated from the native Irish in the Plantation of Ulster. Coupled with Protestant immigration to "unplanted" areas of Ulster, particularly Antrim and Down, this resulted in conflict between the native Catholics and the "planters", leading in turn to two bloody religious conflicts known as the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653) and the Williamite War in Ireland (1689–1691), both of which resulted in Protestant victories.
Anglican dominance in Ireland was ensured by the passage of the Penal Laws that curtailed the religious, legal, and political rights of anyone (including both Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, such as Presbyterians) who did not conform to the state church, the Anglican Church of Ireland. As the Penal Laws started to be phased out in the latter part of the 18th century, there was more competition for land, as restrictions were lifted on the Irish Catholic ability to rent. With Irish Catholics allowed to buy land and enter trades from which they had formerly been banned, tensions arose resulting in the Protestant "Peep o' Day Boys" and Catholic "Defenders". This created polarisation between the communities and a dramatic reduction in reformers among Protestants, many of whom had been growing more receptive to democratic reform.
1791–1912
Following the foundation of the republican Society of the United Irishmen by Presbyterians, Catholics, and liberal Anglicans, and the resulting failed Irish Rebellion of 1798, sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants continued. The Orange Order (founded 1795), with its stated goal of upholding the Protestant faith and loyalty to the heirs of William of Orange, dates from this period and remains active to this day.
With the Acts of Union 1800 (which came into force on 1 January 1801), a new political framework was formed with the abolition of the Irish Parliament and incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The result was a closer tie between Anglicans and the formerly republican Presbyterians as part of a "loyal" Protestant community. Although Catholic emancipation was achieved in 1829, largely eliminating official discrimination against Roman Catholics (then around 75% of Ireland's population), Dissenters, and Jews, the Repeal Association's campaign to repeal the 1801 Union failed.
In the late 19th century, the Home Rule movement was created and served to define the divide between most nationalists (usually Catholics) who sought the restoration of an Irish Parliament, and most unionists (usually Protestants) who were afraid of being a minority under a Catholic-dominated Irish Parliament and who tended to support continuing union with Great Britain.
Unionists and Home Rule advocates were the main political factions in late 19th- and early 20th-century Ireland.
1912–1922
By the second decade of the 20th century, Home Rule, or limited Irish self-government, was on the brink of being conceded due to the agitation of the Irish Parliamentary Party. In response to the campaign for Home Rule which started in the 1870s, unionists, mostly Protestant and largely concentrated in Ulster, had resisted both self-government and independence for Ireland, fearing for their future in an overwhelmingly Catholic country dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1912, unionists led by Edward Carson signed the Ulster Covenant and pledged to resist Home Rule by force if necessary. To this end, they formed the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
In response, nationalists led by Eoin MacNeill formed the Irish Volunteers in 1913, whose goal was to oppose the UVF and ensure enactment of the Third Home Rule Bill in the event of British or unionist refusal. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and Ireland's involvement in the war, temporarily averted possible civil war in Ireland and delayed the resolution of the question of Irish independence. Home Rule, although passed in the British Parliament with Royal Assent, was suspended for the duration of the war.
The Irish Volunteers split, with a majority, known as the National Volunteers, supporting the war effort, and some of them joining Irish regiments of the New British Army. Many of those who stayed were radical nationalists, among them Irish Republican Brotherhood infiltrators. From these ranks came those who launched the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly. Two-and-a-half years after the executions of sixteen of the Rising's leaders, the separatist Sinn Féin party won the December 1918 general election in Ireland with 47% of the vote and a majority of seats, and set up the 1919 First Dáil (Irish Parliament) in Dublin. Their victory was aided by the threat of conscription for First World War service. The Irish War for Independence followed, leading to eventual independence in 1922 for the Irish Free State, which comprised 26 of the 32 Irish counties. In Ulster, particularly in the six counties which became Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin fared relatively poorly in the 1918 election, and unionists won a majority.
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 partitioned the island of Ireland into two separate jurisdictions, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland, both devolved regions of the United Kingdom. This partition of Ireland was confirmed when the Parliament of Northern Ireland exercised its right in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 to opt out of the newly established Irish Free State. A part of the treaty signed in 1922 mandated that a boundary commission would sit to decide where the frontier of the northern state would be in relation to its southern neighbour. After the Irish Civil War of 1922–1923, this part of the treaty was given less priority by the new Dublin government led by W. T. Cosgrave, and was quietly dropped. As counties Fermanagh and Tyrone and border areas of Londonderry, Armagh, and Down were mainly nationalist, the Irish Boundary Commission could reduce Northern Ireland to four counties or fewer. In October 1922, the Irish Free State government established the North-Eastern Boundary Bureau, a government office which by 1925 had prepared 56 boxes of files to argue its case for large areas of Northern Ireland to be transferred to the Free State.
Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom, albeit under a separate system of government whereby it was given its own parliament and devolved government. While this arrangement met the desires of unionists to remain part of the United Kingdom, nationalists largely viewed the partition of Ireland as an illegal and arbitrary division of the island against the will of the majority of its people. They argued that the Northern Ireland state was neither legitimate nor democratic, but created with a deliberately gerrymandered unionist majority. Catholics initially composed about 35% of its population. A total of 557 people, mostly Catholics, were killed in political or sectarian violence from 1920 to 1922 in the six counties that would become Northern Ireland, both during and after the Irish War of Independence. The result was communal strife between Catholics and Protestants, with some historians describing this violence, especially that in Belfast, as a pogrom, although historian Peter Hart argues that the term is not appropriate given the reciprocity of violence in Northern Ireland.
1922–1966
A marginalised remnant of the Irish Republican Army survived the Irish Civil War. This would come to have a major impact on Northern Ireland. Although the IRA was proscribed on both sides of the new Irish border, it remained ideologically committed to overthrowing both the Northern Ireland and the Free State governments by force of arms to unify Ireland. The government of Northern Ireland passed the Special Powers Act in 1922, giving sweeping powers to the government and police to intern suspects without trial and to administer corporal punishment such as flogging to re-establish or preserve law and order. The Act continued to be used against nationalists long after the violence of this period had come to an end. Various unionist militias were also incorporated into state structures, including the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), which Allen Feldman argues "emulated the state's fusion of repressive and ideological apparatuses".
In 1920, in local elections held under proportional representation, nationalists had won control over many local governments, including the County Councils of Fermanagh and Tyrone, and the Londonderry Borough Council governing Derry City. In response, in 1922, the new unionist government re-drew the electoral boundaries to give its supporters a disproportionate majority and abolished proportional representation in favour of first past the post voting. This resulted in control by unionists of areas such as Derry City, Fermanagh, and Tyrone, where they were actually a minority of voters.
The two sides' positions became strictly defined following this period. From a unionist perspective, Northern Ireland's nationalists were inherently disloyal and determined to force unionists into a united Ireland. This threat was seen as justifying preferential treatment of unionists in housing, employment, and other fields. The prevalence of larger families and thus the potential for a more rapid population growth among Catholics was seen as a threat. Unionist governments ignored Edward Carson's warning in 1921 that alienating Catholics would make Northern Ireland inherently unstable. After the early 1920s, there were occasional incidents of sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland. These included severe rioting in Belfast in the 1930s and 1950s, and the IRA's brief Northern Campaign in the 1940s and Border Campaign between 1956 and 1962, which did not enjoy broad popular support among nationalists. After the IRA called off its campaign in 1962, Northern Ireland became relatively stable for a few years.
Late 1960s
There is little agreement on the exact date of the start of the Troubles. Different writers have suggested different dates. These include the formation of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force in 1966, the civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968, the beginning of the 'Battle of the Bogside' on 12 August 1969, or the deployment of British troops on 14 August 1969. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, defined the start of the Troubles as 1 January 1966 for the purposes of the act.