DAVE MANS6LL component in their decision the Unionist alliance ought to have broken down decisively when the Ulster economic « miracle » turned into a slump, along with the rest of the world economy in the early 1930s. That this did not happen (in fact the Unionist alliance did not fragment until the middle 1970s, after the downfall of the Stormont administration) is due to two factors: the development of a separate Protestant « identity» over the 350 years since Protestant communities were deliberately introduced into Ireland by an English government to « stabilise » the island (mirrored by the development of a Catholic « identity » in the nineteenth century, in a sort of mutual racism); and the particular nature of the state set up by the Protestant ruling class in Northern Ireland after Partition in 1922. It is, unfortunately, necessary to chart the historical development of Ulster in its relation with the rest of Ireland before we can understand Protestant and Catholic « separateness »; and the reasons why, although neither the Home Rulers nor the Unionists wanted it, the island was divided into two hostile communities in 1922. Mythologized versions of «history» still play an unwarranted role in contemporary Irish politics, North and South, and are used by politicians on all sides to maintain their power bases. THE ROOTSOF THE ULSTERPROBLEM Ireland is a large island close to the west coast of Britain and fairly easily accessible from the continent of Europe by sea. It has been constantly subject to foreign contact and invasion. There are traces of trading and settlement by Phoenicians from the heart of the Mediterranean basin, but the first invasion significant to the current situation was that of a Celtic race, the Gaels, from Roman-occupied Western Europe in the 1st century B.C.. The Gaelic ruling families achieved economic and political hegemony over the native inhabitants, imposed their own language and legal structure, and so assimilate the previous cultures of the island that over a period of five or six hundred years (and particularly slowly in the north of the island which eventually became Ulster) these cultures virtually disappeared. The Gaelic civilization achieved in this manner is the point of reference for those who wish to emphasize the unity of Ireland and its differentation from the rest of the surface of the globe. But this unity was never a political one. There was no centralized state: the people were organized into tribes or 52
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