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For those of us isolationists that don't understand "The Troubles", what is the deal?

The easy questions first, eh?

I'm not a historian, and wouldn't know where to start, so resorting to Wikipedia seems like a good idea.

It would probably take all night to answer your specific questions, and since I'm speaking from an admittedly unionist viewpoint, I could end up inadvertantly starting another argument.

Putting it fairly directly, when what is now the Republic of Ireland gained independence from the UK, there was a sizeable population in the northern part of the island who considered themselves British and almost half a million men and women signed the Ulster Covenant and a parallel Declaration (for the women!) and pledged to oppose any attempt to break the link with Britain.

The reason for the greater pro-British population in this part of Ireland was that they were largely descendants of the English and Scottish settlers who were granted land in the 16th & 17th centuries and encouraged to move there in what was called the Plantation of Ulster. My own home village is still named after the settler who was granted land in the area and the fortified house that he built back in about 1619.

There was an Irish Rebellion in 1641, and there is still a stone tablet in my local church with musket holes where some of these protestant settlers were lined up and murdered, there are long memories on both sides.

A lot of the present trouble still hinges on this long-standing distrust between the Protestants (who mostly consider themselves to be British) and Roman Catholics (who mostly consider themselves to be Irish) The Protestants do not wish to be part of what they perceive to be a Roman Catholic state ("Home Rule is Rome Rule" was an old slogan in the late 19th & early 20th centuries) and the Roman Catholics do not wish to be part of the United Kingdom and so pursue independence for the whole island. Ironically, the only time Ireland was ever actually united as one political entity was under British rule.

I suspect that in many cases, you are correct, and we now just distrust each other because that's how it's always been. There was an earlier IRA campaign between 1956 & 1962, and the recent 35 years of terrorism from both sides hasn't helped, and has just given each community a longer and longer list of injustices.

The two positions are so opposite that there is no easy way to reconcile them without one side or the other thinking that they are losing and resisting the change.

In case it wasn't obvious, I'm firmly in the protestant/unionist camp and as determined to remain British as anyone who came before me, so that will probably colour my interpretation of events. The Wikipedia articles looked fairly well-written and balanced though, so they might give a better impression of the issues involved.
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Geoff
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