The controversy over Brexit has had groups and militias in Northern Ireland traditionally loyal to Britain up in arms. Protestant unionists vehemently reject any Brexit arrangement like the one proposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that would take Britain out of the European Union but leave Northern Ireland in the bloc’s single market in order not to disrupt its economic links with the Republic of Ireland. This disagreement brings to mind the centuries of chequered history of British colonialism in Ireland that ended with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 as a Dominion that eventually became the Irish Republic in 1949.
Dividing the island
While terminating its colonial rule over most of Ireland, London divided the island into two on the basis of religious majorities. Six Protestant-majority northern counties remained part of the U.K. The division of Ireland on the basis of religion foreshadowed the division of British India later based on the same logic. However, just as the partition of India did not bring peace to the Indian subcontinent, the partition of Ireland did not resolve the problem of religious and political animosity between Catholics and Protestants. This is because over 40% of Northern Ireland’s population is Catholic with most Catholics preferring integration with the Republic of Ireland.
The partition of India transformed inter-communal tension into inter-state conflict between India and Pakistan. In the case of Ireland, Northern Ireland descended into a combination of civil war between Protestant and Catholic militias as well as a state of rebellion by Catholics against British rule. The Irish Republican Army, the armed wing of the Catholic insurgency, engaged in acts of terror both in Northern Ireland and the British mainland to force Britain to leave Northern Ireland. It was not until the Good Friday agreement of 1998 that assured the large Catholic minority a share in power that the insurgency ended. However, relations between the two communities, with their contradictory political objectives, continue to be tense with periodic outbursts of violence between them and the threat of resurgent terrorism on the part of extremist Catholic militias.
A variant of the same story was repeated in Palestine, which became a British colony in the guise of a League of Nations Mandate after the end of World War I. Conflict between Arabs, who had inhabited Palestine for centuries, and Jews, overwhelmingly recent migrants from Europe, was primarily a creation of British policies. London’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 and Britain’s unceremonious departure from Palestine in 1948 form the two bookends of the Palestine tragedy. The Balfour Declaration, which stated that it was Britain’s policy to create a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine by facilitating the migration of European Jews to the area, set the stage for the partition of Palestine. This policy was consummated in May 1948 with Britain’s undignified withdrawal without designating a successor authority and its decision to dump the problem in the UN’s lap. It paved the way for the partition of Palestine by a UN General Assembly resolution, the first Arab-Israeli war, and the Zionist control of 77% of Mandated Palestine that became the state of Israel.
Again, no peace
However, as in the case of Ireland and India, the partition of Palestine did not resolve the conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. It merely internationalised the problem and led to the eventual occupation of all of Mandated Palestine by Israel in 1967. The partition of Palestine did not bring peace to the region but perpetual conflict instead. The British policy of partitioning colonised countries on the basis of religious and/or ethnic grounds at the time of decolonisation has left records of war and misery in all three cases. It demonstrates London’s lack of concern about the impact of its divide and quit policy on its former colonies.
Mohammed Ayoob is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Michigan State University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Center for Global Policy, Washington, DC
