Northern Ireland's Flags Crisis and the Enduring Legacy of the Settler-Native Divide

Abstract

The upsurge of unrest in Northern Ireland in December 2012 was unexpected as it ran counter to the prevailing assumption that the settlement of the conflict embodied in the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 had finally taken root. Prior to the Belfast City Council's decision to limit the flying of the Union flag to designated days, Northern Ireland's political dispensation seemed completely secure. Indeed, arrangements for Northern Ireland's governance were being widely touted as a model for the resolution of ethnonational conflicts. The crisis has given resonance to an older interpretation of the problem in terms of settlers and natives.

Notes

1. Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report: Number Two (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 2013), 160.

2. See Pamela Clayton, Enemies and Passing Friends: Settler Ideologies in Twentieth Century (London: Pluto Press, 1996); Michael McDonald, “The Dominant Communities and the Cost of Legitimacy,” in Hermann Giliomee and Jannie Gagiano, eds., The Elusive Search for Peace: South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1990); and Thomas G. Mitchell, Native vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland and South Africa (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000).

3. Frank Wright, Two Lands on One Soil: Ulster Politics before Home Rule (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1996).

4. See, for example, Neil Southern, “Britishness, ‘Ulsterness’ and Unionist Identity in Northern Ireland,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 13(1): 71–102 (2007); and James Loughlin, Ulster Unionism and British National Identity Since 1885 (London: Pinter, 1995).

5. John Coakley, “Ethnic Conflict and Its Resolution: The Northern Ireland Model,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 9(3): 26–27 (2003).

6. See, for example, Andrew Boyd, Holy War in Belfast, 3rd ed. (Belfast: Pretani Press, 1987), 9.

7. See Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, 2nd ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 21–36.

8. See http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/dd/report7/report7.htm (accessed 25 June 2013). This dates the use of parity of esteem as a political buzzword in Northern Ireland to 1992–93.

9. Coakley, “Ethnic Conflict and Its Resolution,” 27.

10. See, for example, Ian Adamson, The Identity of Ulster: The Land, the Language and the People, 2nd ed. (Belfast: Pretani Press, 1987).

11. See Adrian Guelke and Frank Wright, “On a ‘British Withdrawal’ from Northern Ireland,” in Peter Stringer and Gillian Robinson, eds., Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland: The Second Report 1991–1992 (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1992), 44.

12. See, for example, the surveys in Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, 172.

13. Ibid., 5.

14. Peter Robinson's speech to the DUP annual conference can be found on the CAIN Web site http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/dup/pr241112.htm (accessed 25 June 2013).

15. Figures given in Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, 163.

16. See http://allianceparty.org/article/2013/006959/alliance-response-to-unionist-flag-leaflet (accessed 25 June 2013).

17. See Pamela Duncan, “Religious Gap in NI Down to 3%,” The Irish Times, 11 Dec. 2012, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/religious-gap-in-ni-down-to-3-1.754055 (accessed 25 June 2013).

18. Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, 7.

19. Twenty-Fourth Report of the Independent Monitoring Commission (HC 443) (London: The Stationary Office, Sept. 2010).

20. See “Robinson and McGuinness outline shared future plans,” 9 May 2013, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-22469237 (accessed 25 June 2013).

21. The full text of Cameron's speech of 9 June 2011 can be found at http://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/address-to-northern-ireland-assembly (accessed 25 June 2013).

22. Wright, Two Lands on One Soil, 1.

23. Ibid., 3.

24. Frank Wright, Northern Ireland: A Comparative Analysis (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987).

25. See, for example, the images on the Web site http://extramuralactivity.com/2013/03/24/under-siege/ (accessed 25 June 2013).

26. See Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report, 8.

27. See Paul Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report: Number One (Belfast: Community Relations Council, 2012), 107.

28. See the analysis in Eric Kaufmann, “Demographic Change and Conflict in Northern Ireland: Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence,” Ethnopolitics 10(3–4): 369–89 (2011).