BELFAST, Northern Ireland — It was meant to be a year of celebration.
But Northern Ireland, created in 1921 when Britain carved six counties out of Ireland’s northeast, is not enjoying its centenary. Its most ardent upholders, the unionists who believe that the place they call “our wee country” is and must forever remain an intrinsic part of the United Kingdom, are in utter disarray. Their largest party has ousted two leaders within a matter of weeks, while an angry minority has taken to the streets waving flags and threatening violence. And the British government, in resolving Brexit, placed a new border in the Irish Sea.
It’s harsh reward for what Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, James Craig, called “the most loyal part of Great Britain.” But the Protestant statelet is not what it was. Well on its way to having a Catholic majority, the country’s once dominant political force — unionism — now finds itself out of step with the community that traditionally gave it uncritical support. And for all his talk of the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made clear his government would cheerfully ditch this last little fragment of Britain’s empire if it continues to complicate Brexit.
The writing is on the wall. While the process by which Ireland could become unified is complicated and fraught, one thing seems certain: There isn’t going to be a second centenary for Northern Ireland. It might not even last another decade.
A hundred years ago, the mood among unionists was jubilant. When the king and queen of England came to Belfast to mark the opening of the new Northern Ireland Parliament, the streets were decked out with red, white and blue bunting. “The people could not contain themselves,” according to Cecil Craig, the wife of the new prime minister. “All Irishmen,” King George V said, should “join in making for the land which they love a new era of peace, contentment and good will.”
The Catholic minority, known as nationalists because they aspired to be reunited with the rest of Ireland, had no such expectations. For 50 years, unionism dominated the state, instituting a comprehensive system of discrimination in housing, education, employment and voting. Sectarianism was state policy — Protestants were instructed by their leaders to distrust and exclude Catholics, who were outnumbered two to one — and the police force was armed. Britain turned a blind eye, as did the Republic of Ireland.
But discontent among nationalists inevitably built, finding form in the late 1960s in a civil rights campaign that aimed to secure basic rights for the Catholic minority. Outraged, the unionist state reacted by attempting to beat peaceful protesters off the streets. The British Army, whose intervention quickly showed itself to be on the side of unionism, was confronted by the Irish Republican Army, which responded with its own brutal and sectarian campaign. In 1972 the British government suspended the regime in Belfast and placed Northern Ireland under its direct rule.
For almost three decades, the conflict raged. Around 4,000 people, out of a population of fewer than 2 million, were killed; communities were torn apart. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the violence and inaugurated a power-sharing executive, in which parties representing the two main communities operate in mandatory coalition. It was ratified by 70 percent of people in a referendum. The war was over.
The arrangement stumbled along for close to two decades, never fully working yet crucially keeping the peace. But Britain’s vote in 2016 to leave the European Union threatened the state’s always fragile constitutional relationships. And when the Conservative government settled Brexit with a protocol that established a border for goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, it effectively acknowledged the province as a place apart.