Northern Ireland-An Anti-Imperialist Struggle

Abstract

Much analysis of the Northern Ireland problem has tended to treat it in isolation and as a unique phenomenon. This results in distortion and caricature. The Northern situation is undoubtedly complex and has many unique features but to understand it correctly I believe it must be set against the background of events in the whole of Ireland in the last hundred years and seen within the context of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial revolutions in general. The essential dynamic in Irish history in the later 19th and early 20th century was the struggle for self-government or national independence. The Ulster Unionist movement was formed in opposition to that struggle and campaigned against the granting of even a very limited form of self-government to any part of Ireland. They only limited themselves to the demand for Partition when it became clear that self-government for the rest of the country was inevitable. From the very beginning the Ulster Unionists upheld imperialist rule in Ireland and opposed the Irish national revolution. They were a consciously counter-revolutionary force.