Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland shares a border to the South and west with the Republic of Ireland.

History:

Northern Ireland was created in 1921 when Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by and act of the British Parliament.  Unlike Southern Ireland, which would become the Irish Free State in 1922, the Majority of Northern Ireland's population were unionists or loyalists, who wanted to remain within the United Kingdom.

People in Northern Ireland has faced several battles in the attempt of deffending their communities, discrimination, laws and religions; also in an attempt to quell sectarianism and force the removal of discriminatory laws (and to prevent the spread of French-style republicanism  to Ireland), the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain pushed for the two kingdoms to be merged.  The new state, formed in 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was governed from a single government and parliament based in London.

During the 19th century, legal reforms started in the late 18th century removed statutory discrimination against Catholics and progressive programmes enabled tenant farmers to buy land from landlords.  By the close of the century, autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom, known as Home Rule, was regarded as higly likely.  In 1912, it became a certainty.  The House of Lords veto had been the unionists' main guarantee that Home Rule would not be enacted, because the majority of members of the House of Lords were unionists.

Signing of the Ulster Covenant in 1912 in opposition to Home Rule.

Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland in 1921 under the terms of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Act 1920 dudring the war of independence between Ireland and British forces.  At the conclusion of that war on 6 December 1922, under the terms of the resulting treaty, Northern Ireland provisionally became an autonomous part of the newly independent Irish Free State, with the right to opt out of it.

Politics: