1932 - 1945: The Economic War and the Second World War

In the 1932 General Election Fianna Fail swept to power in the Irish Free State and Eamonn de Valera, the leader of Fianna Fail, became Prime Minister. Despite gloomy predictions, the country did not erupt into civil war and Cosgrave gave up power without a fight. de Valera immediately adopted policies designed to cut all ties with the UK. He abolished the "land annuities" in 1932 and the Dail's Oath to the King of England in 1933. Also in 1933, he reduced the powers of the British governmental representative in Ireland (and in fact abolished the post in 1937).

The "land annuities" caused the most contention in Britain. The annuties were money that the British government had loaned to Irish farmers before the Government of Ireland Act of 1921 and which the farmers had agreed to repay. Part of the Anglo-Irish treaty was that the Free State government would collect these debts and return the money to Britain. Britain was so furious with the Irish for keeping the money, that they imposed a 20% tariff on trade with the Free State. The Irish found that they could no longer sell their beef to Britain or Northern Ireland and so they retaliated by imposing a tariff in the opposite direction. This prevented Britain selling coal to Ireland. However, Britain did not depend on Ireland as much as Ireland did on Britain, and this seriously crippled the Irish economy. After 5 years, in 1938, the two countries signed an agreement to end the trade war. Under this settlement the Free State give Britian ?10,000,000 to pay off the annuities and in return Britian pulled out of her naval bases in Ireland. Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany in 1933 and, since then, British relations with Germany had deteriorated. Therefore pulling out of the naval bases was a hard choice for Britain, considering that war was looking increasingly possible.

In 1936, de Valera abolished the King's right to interfere in Free State affairs, although he was still recognised as the Head of Commonwealth. This abolition, imposed via the External Relations Act, coincided with the abdication of King Edward 8th so that Britain did not have time to object to it. In 1937 de Valera introduced a new constitution, replacing the one agreed after the formation of the Free State. It included a number of issues: (a) The Irish Free State was to be renamed "Eire" (b) the Prime Minister was to be renamed the Taoiseach (c) the head of state would be an elected President, not the King (d) [article 2] declared that Eire's boundary consisted of the whole island of Ireland (e) [article 3] declared that the Eire government had the right to pass laws for the whole island although only enforcing them in the 26 counties. The new constitution was put to a referendum and was narrowly accepted by the people.

In September 1939, the UK went to war with Germany when it invaded Poland ignoring British and French demands for it not to. Northern Ireland, as part of the UK, found itself at war too. Eire, being a small country with few military resources, immediately declared neutrality. The return of the naval ports had come just in time, since Eire would have had to oust the British to remain neutral. The Eire government looked with increasing anxiousness as Hitler invaded and took over 8 neutral European countries in 1940, since they knew that the Irish army wouldn't have a hope against the Germans in an invasion. (In fact documents found after the war showed that Hitler had genuine plans to invade Ireland. The operation, called "Operation Green", would have provided a springboard for invading mainland Britain through its unprotected west coast. The invasion never happened due to German distractions in the USSR.) Nevertheless, de Valera refused to join the war. When the IRA began collaborating with the Germans in 1940, the Eire government cracked down hard in order not to anger the British and provoke a strategic invasion.

Despite the government's official line, however, the Irish people sympathised with the British and 40,000 Irish joined the British army and over 150,000 worked for the war effort. Nevertheless, the Irish declaration of neutrality brought resentment in Northern Ireland where times had got hard with rationing and blackouts while Eire could still trade freely.

In mid 1940, Britain looked to be in an impossible situation. With most of Europe in NAZI hands, and the USA refusing to join the war, they were desperate for any help. In June a British minister, Malcolm MacDonald came to Dublin and more or less offered to give Northern Ireland to Eire in return for military help. He told de Valera that he believed that Stormont would agree to this idea. De Valera, however, was sceptical and did not think that Stormont would be that easy to persuade. He also feared the consequences of a large Unionist population being pushed into Eire against their will. So he refused the offer.

In April and May 1941, the Germans began bombing cities in the UK nightly in a tactic known as the 'Blitz'. Stormont was complacent, believing that the Germans would not attack a part of the UK as far away as Northern Ireland, and did not install many air-raid shelters. However they were wrong: in German eyes Northern Ireland was contributing to the war effort and was therefore as much a target as the rest of the UK. On several nights, but mainly on the night of 15-16 April 1941, German bombers pounded both Belfast and Derry with hundreds of tonnes of explosives, killing 900 people, destroying thousands of buildings and making 10,000 people homeless. Largely due to the lack of air-raid shelters Belfast suffered more casualties than any UK city except London. Despite Irish neutrality, the fire brigades from Dundalk, Drogheda and Dublin assisted in the Blitz. Many people, united across their politics by fear, fled into the country. Some wealthier people lived in hotels in Eire during the Blitz. Eire did not get off totally scot-free. One set of lost German bombers mistook Cork for Cardiff and bombed it. Dublin was also lightly bombed on a number of occasions. On each occasion, the Eire government swallowed hard and let it pass.

Again, Eire viewed its policy of neutrality with some artistic license. For example it permitted British and US planes to overfly county Donegal on their way to bases in Fermanagh and when British airmen crashed in Eire they were quietly escorted to the border, while German pilots were interned. All told, aside from the loss of life and property, the war was good for both Eire and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's flagging ship and cloth industries boomed. And a new industry, aircraft manufacture, was set up in Belfast which still exists today. Eire benefitted with many of its citizens employed in the war effort. It also enjoyed trade with Britain for scarce goods that Eire could get as a neutral country, such as butter.

The only things to mar the good relations between the two states were (a) de Valera condemning the siting of US bases in Northern Ireland (b) de Valera expressing his condolences to the German ambassador when Hitler died (c) Britain's public, verbal, attack on Eire when the war was over for not joining the 'crusade against fascism'.

1945 - 1963: The birth of the Irish Republic and Economic Development

In the 1948 General Election de Valera's party was defeated by a coalition led by John Costello. Costello announced his intention to steer Eire out of the British Commonwealth thus making it a fully independent Republic. The UK, which was now ruled by a Labour (a left wing party) government, was greatly troubled by this, as it didn't want to see the Commonwealth collapse. The Commonwealth did not collapse, but at the time it was feared that it could start a domino effect. Within Northern Ireland, the Stormont government was concerned that Eire might be thinking about an active campaign for a united Ireland. Their fears grew when a group of Northern Ireland nationalists, who had banded together under the banner "Anti-Partition League" in 1945, grew rapidly and received support from Eire. The Eire government told Stormont that it would give Unionists "any reasonable constitutuional guarantees" if they would agree to a united Ireland. However the NI Prime Minister, Basil Brooke dismissed the offer saying "Ulster is not for sale." Brooke then appealed to the UK government that gave him a guarantee that the status of Northern Ireland would not change without Stormont's approval.

To back up his claim that the people of Northern Ireland still wanted the union to stay, Brooke called an election in February 1949. The Unionists were greatly angered when the Eire government gave money to the Anti-Partition League to fight the election. Despite winning 40 of the 52 seats, the Unionist politicians were still unnerved by the attempt on the part of Eire to interfere in Northern Ireland affairs.

On Easter Monday 1949 Costello brought Eire out of the British Commonwealth and proclaimed that it was now a fully independent republic. Eire was then renamed the Republic of Ireland. Costello was sure that this formation of a Republic would satisfy Irish Republicans and would finally stop the violence in Ireland. He did not, however, realise that many Republicans were still not satisfied - their ideal Republic would be the entire island. The British responded in June by passing the Ireland Act which both recognised the existance of the Republic of Ireland and gave Stormont the final say in any attempt to re-unify Ireland. The Anti-Partition League was disbanded in 1951 in the face of apathy from both sides of the border.

The 1950's were a time of quiet prosperity in Northern Ireland. The Welfare State had been introduced by the Labour government after the war and many poor people in Northern Ireland saw their standard of living rise dramatically. The Stormont government also took advantage of the war damage in Belfast to build better council housing. In 1946 the Health Service was made completely free and unemployment allowances were introduced in 1948. The Labour government also rapidly nationalised most of British infrastructure but Stormont was unhappy about the changes in Northern Ireland. The Unionists were generally right wing and did not like socialist policies. They even proposed forming an independent Northern Irish country until the Labour government agreed to fund the welfare state in Northern Ireland. However this increased Northern Ireland's economic dependance on Britain.

In 1951 the Conservatives regained power in Britain, and generally left Stormont to manage Northern Ireland. Problems existed in Northern Ireland at this time - 94% of the top 740 civil servant posts were held by Protestants (if equal opportunities were in force it should have been nearer 65%) and favouritism was often given to Protestants when council housing was given out. This policy persisted all through the 1950s and 1960s.

Times were harsher in the Republic. Jobs were few and far between and a general depression hung over the Irish economy. In 1959 de Valera became President and the new Taoiseach was Sean Lemass. He began a series of plans to rebuild the Irish economy, the first of which was designed to reconstruct the agricultural industry. Another plan gave foreign companies subsidies up to 2/3 of the cost to set up factories in the Republic. He also brought the Republic into the European Economic Community (EEC - which later expanded to become today's European Union) at the same time as the UK joined. The Irish economy grew faster than any predictions and exports had risen by 50% in the period from 1960 to 1966. Therefore Ireland entered the 1960s quite prosperous.

In 1956 the IRA regrouped and began a terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland. They blew up border posts and electricity installations. However the IRA did not have enough weapons, and they met nationalist apathy and even opposition in Northern Ireland and their campaign went out with a whimper in 1962. In the early 1960s it seemed as if nobody in either part of Ireland was really interested in reunification.

1963 - 1969: O'Neill and the Civil Rights Movement

In 1963, Ulster Unionist leader Terence O'Neill became the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. He had high hopes for Northern Ireland and wanted to build the economy and to build bridges between the two communities in the province. He attempted to improve the attitudes of each side of the divide to the other, declared the UVF illegal in 1966 and set up a new non-sectarian university, the University of Ulster, in Coleraine. An important part of this process was to improve relations with the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, in 1965, he invited the Irish Republic's Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, to Stormont for talks on trade relations. It was closely followed by a visit of O'Neill to Dublin, and the 2 states agreed to co-operate on the issues of tourism and electricity. In 1967 Polls were showing support for O'Neill's leadership from both sides of the community.

However, not all people in Northern Ireland supported O'Neill. Many Unionists had grave reservations about the Republic of Ireland. In particular, they objected to (1) articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution which claimed jurisdiction over the whole island (2) the Irish constitution's declaration of the 'special position' of the Catholic church and (3) the Catholic church's policies, such as banning members who married Protestants from bringing up their children as Protestants. Many felt that a Northern Ireland Prime Minister should not associate with the Irish government. They were also suspicious of the decline in the numbers of Protestants in the Republic, although this has since been shown to be a result of social factors, rather than 'Popification'.

In 1966, a Unionist named Ian Paisley, who had also founded the Free Presbyterian Church, set up the Protestant Unionist Party and began to strongly oppose O'Neill. When the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising passed in 1966, sectarian tensions rose further. When the Irish Taoiseach, now Jack Lynch, met O'Neill in 1967, Paisley's supporters held mass demonstrations branding O'Neill the 'Ally of Popery' and demanding that he 'keep Ulster Protestant'. This caused sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland to rise even more and the relationship with the Republic deteriorated as a result. At the same time, some Catholics in the west of Northern Ireland criticised O'Neill for siting the new University of Ulster in Coleraine instead of Derry, the 2nd largest city. As part of a UK-wide "new town" scheme, O'Neill also founded a new town and named it Craigavon, after the first Unionist Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. This name did not go down well in some quarters and criticism began to mount up. The town of Craigavon was designed to ease population pressure on Belfast. It was supposed to merge Lurgan and Portadown into a single town. However, it was a failure and today large areas of the new town lie derelict and crime-ridden.

In 1967, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was set up. Its members were drawn from both communities, although mainly from Nationalist Catholics who were more at a disadvantage under the Stormont government. The NICRA's demands were for a fair voting system ('one man one vote'), an end to gerrymandering, and end to religious discrimination, disbandment of the B-Specials and general equality for all the people of Northern Ireland. As the first Civil Rights marches took place in August 1968, Stormont began banning them because they were illegal (i.e. the police had not been notified of the intention to march). The marchers ignored the ban and, on various marches, were attacked and beaten by the police with battons. Stormont received condemnation from around the world. Eventually O'Neill relented and agreed to some of the demands. The NICRA then called off its campaign.

However, another group of people refused to accept the concessions, saying they were too little. Stormont had still not introduced 'one man one vote'. Led by Northern Ireland students, such as Bernadette Devlin (today Bernadette McAliskey) the People's Democracy movement ignored pleas for calm from the NICRA and organised a march from Derry to Belfast for January 1969. Near Derry, at the crossing over the river Burntollet, it was ambushed by loyalists and some off-duty policemen and B-specials. The marchers were stoned and beaten and the on-duty police did not make much effort to stop them. O'Neill was appalled by the scenes and announced an inquiry, despite opposition from his own party. O'Neill's Deputy Prime Minister resigned in protest saying the inquiry could only make matters worse. Soon the tensions had risen so much that the NICRA recommenced their Civil Rights marches.

In February 1969 a general election was called in Northern Ireland. Although O'Neill's party won most votes they no longer had enough to form a strong government. O'Neill then decided to introduce 'one man one vote' for the next election, but this caused so much chaos and anger from his own party that he was forced to resign. The new Prime Minister was James Chichester-Clark. Meanwhile Civil Rights marches began to get violent, fuelled by the anger at the violence that had met their earlier marches. As marchers clashed with police and loyalists, riots sprang up. In the summer of 1969 Clark called in the B-specials to help the police keep order. However, this only increased Catholic resentment and the situation began to get out of control.