Northern Ireland

Six counties

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Britain tried three times to give Ireland Home Rule, a parliament of its own inside the United Kingdom. Protestants in the north, where most of them lived, feared being governed by Ireland’s Catholic majority and resisted; this “unionism” meant keeping the union with Great Britain.^[3] In 1912–14 Ulster unionists led by Edward Carson signed the Solemn League and Covenant and armed paramilitary forces, and the Home Rule Act that finally passed in 1914 was postponed when the First World War began.^[3]

By 1919 most of Ireland rejected the union and most of Ulster rejected anything else. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 answered with two parliaments, one for “Northern Ireland” and one for “Southern Ireland”.^[3][2] Northern Ireland was six of Ulster’s nine counties, and its parliament began work in June 1921. The south rejected Home Rule as too little.^[3][2]

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921 made the rest of Ireland the Irish Free State, but let Northern Ireland opt out, which it did.^[3] A boundary commission proposed small swaps of land in 1925, but both governments opposed them, and an agreement of 3 December 1925 kept the six counties’ borders instead.^[3]

Stormont, 1921–72

The parliament in Belfast had real powers, including housing, education and policing, but little control over its own money. London kept the crown, war and peace, the armed forces, foreign affairs, trade and coinage.^[4] When the south formally left the British Empire as an independent state in 1949, Britain passed a law saying Northern Ireland would stay in the United Kingdom.^[4]

For 50 years a Protestant unionist majority governed, with James Craig as prime minister until 1940. Britannica writes that Catholics suffered discrimination in jobs, housing, education and social services, and that electoral boundaries were drawn to limit their seats, though how far discrimination went remained hotly debated.^[3][6]

In the late 1960s a civil rights movement grew and so did communal violence, and British troops were sent in. The violence known as the Troubles followed.^[6] In March 1972 Prime Minister Edward Heath suspended the Northern Ireland parliament and began ruling directly from London.^[6][4]

Governing together

Several attempts to bring back self-government failed, including a power-sharing executive in 1973–74 that collapsed within months.^[6] The Good Friday Agreement, also called the Belfast Agreement, was signed on 10 April 1998. On 22 May 1998 it was approved by 71 percent of voters in Northern Ireland and 94 percent in the Republic of Ireland.^[6]

The agreement set up an elected Assembly at Stormont that must work by power sharing. The first minister and deputy first minister are chosen together, and both need the backing of a majority of unionist and of nationalist members. Some laws need support from both sides too.^[4] A UK law of 1998 also settled the biggest question: Northern Ireland stays in the United Kingdom unless a majority votes otherwise in a poll.^[5]

“Northern Ireland in its entirety remains part of the United Kingdom and shall not cease to be so without the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll held for the purposes of this section”^[5]

Stopping and starting

Because the government needs both sides, one large party walking out can stop it. Devolution was suspended several times before 2002, then for almost five years from October 2002, until the Democratic Unionist Party’s Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness took office together on 8 May 2007.^[6] Policing and justice were handed to the Assembly in 2010.^[6]

McGuinness resigned in January 2017 over a scandal about a renewable heating subsidy, and by September 2018 Northern Ireland had gone 589 days without a government, a peacetime record. A deal restored it in January 2020.^[6] Brexit brought a new dispute: the arrangement that kept goods crossing the Irish land border free of checks created a customs border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain instead.^[6]

The DUP left the government over that in February 2022. In the May 2022 election Sinn Féin, a nationalist party, won the most seats for the first time.^[6] After changes to the trade rules, the government returned on 3 February 2024 with Michelle O’Neill as the first Sinn Féin member ever to be first minister, and the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly as deputy.^[6]