
Northern Ireland is one of four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Ireland, where it shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, the only part of the United Kingdom with an international land border. It was created by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. It covers 1 E10 m%B2 square kilometres (5,459 square miles) in the north-east of the Ireland, about a sixth of the total area of the island, and has a population of 1,685,000 (April as of 2001) — between a quarter and a third of the island's total population. A slight majority of the present-day population are unionist (Ireland) and wish to remain part of the United Kingdom, but a significant minority, known as Irish nationalisms, want to see a united Ireland. These two views are linked to deeper cultural divisions. Unionists are predominantly Protestant and often descendants of Scottish and English (mainly Scottish) settlement in previous centuries, while nationalists are predominantly Catholic and usually descend from the population predating such settlement. Discrimination against nationalists under the Parliament Building of Northern Ireland government (1920–1972) gave rise to the nationalist "Civil Rights Movement" in the 1960s, and eventually to a long-running conflict known as The Troubles. Political unrest has gone through its most violent phase in recent times between 1968–1994. The main actors have been paramilitaries representing minorities from both sides of the divide and the RUC and British army representing the British authorities and the Northern Ireland state. As a consequence of the worsening security situation, self-government for Northern Ireland was suspended in 1972. Since the mid-1990s, the main paramilitary group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army has observed an uneasy ceasefire. Following negotiations, the Belfast Agreement of 1998 provides for an elected Northern Ireland Assembly, and a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive comprising representatives of all the main parties. These institutions have been suspended since 2002 because of PSNI allegations of spying by people working for Sinn Fein at the Assembly, although nobody was convicted after a high-profile operation. ==Symbols== [[Image:Northern_Ireland_flag.gif|thumb|200px|Flag of Northern Ireland from 1953 till 1972, used unofficially in sporting and international contexts.]] Today, Northern Ireland comprises a diverse patchwork of community rivalries, represented in some areas by whole communities where lamp posts and some homes fly the Irish national flag, the tricolour, or the Union Flag, the symbol of British identity, while even the kerbstones in less affluent areas get painted green-white-orange or red-white-blue, depending on whether a local community expresses nationalist/republican or unionist/loyalist sympathies. According to the United Nations, the only ''official'' Flag of Northern Ireland is the Union Flag of the United Kingdom. The 'Northern Ireland Flag' (or 'Red Hand Flag') is no longer official due to the abolition of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972. Unionists tend to use the Union Jack and sometimes the Northern Ireland Flag, while nationalists typically use the Flag of Ireland. Some unionists also occasionally use the flags of secular and religious organizations they belong to. The Northern Ireland flag is based on the Ulster flag.[http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/images/symbols/flags.htm] Some groups, including the Irish Rugby Football Union have used the Flag_of_St._Patrick#Saint_Patrick.27s_Flag as a symbol of Ireland which lacks the same nationalist or unionist connotations, but even this is felt by some to be a loyalist flag, as it was designed by the British and is used by some British army regiments. No universally acceptable symbol has yet been found. Similarly, there is no longer an official national anthem. At most events requiring a Northern Irish national anthem, ''God Save The Queen'' is played, although sometimes the old anthem ''A Londonderry Air'', perhaps better known outside Northern Ireland as the tune of ''Danny Boy'', is used. ==Geography and climate== :''Main article:'' Geography of Ireland, Geography of the United Kingdom Northern Ireland was covered by an ice sheet for most of the last ice age and on numerous previous occasions, the legacy of which can be seen in the extensive coverage of drumlins in Counties Fermanagh, Armagh, Antrim and particularly Down. The centrepiece of Northern Ireland's geography is Lough Neagh, at 1 E8 m%B2 km² the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles. A second extensive lake system is centred on Lower and Upper Lough Erne in Fermanagh. There are substantial uplands in the Sperrin Mountains (an extension of the Caledonian fold mountains) with extensive gold deposits, granite Mourne Mountains and basalt Antrim Plateau, as well as smaller ranges in South Armagh and along the Fermanagh–Tyrone border. None of the hills is especially high, with Slieve Donard in the dramatic Mournes reaching 1 E2 m, Northern Ireland's highest point. The volcanic activity which created the Antrim Plateau also formed the eerily geometric pillars of the Giant's Causeway. The Lower and Upper River Bann, River Foyle and River Blackwater (Northern Ireland) form extensive fertile lowlands, with excellent arable land also found in North and East Down, although much of the hill country is marginal and suitable largely for animal husbandry. The valley of the River Lagan is dominated by Belfast, whose metropolitan area includes over a third of the population of Northern Ireland, with heavy urbanisation and industrialisation along the Lagan Valley and both shores of Belfast Lough. The whole of Northern Ireland has a Maritime climate, rather wetter in the west than the east, although cloud cover is persistent across the region. The weather is unpredictable at all times of the year, and although the seasons are distinct, they are considerably less pronounced than in interior Europe or the eastern seaboard of North America. Average daytime maximums in Belfast are 6.5°C (43.7°F) in January and 17.5°C (63.5°F) in July. The damp climate and extensive deforestation in the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in much of the region being covered in rich green grassland. ===The Counties in Northern Ireland=== Northern Ireland consists of six Counties_of_Ireland: * County Antrim * County Armagh * County Down * County Fermanagh * County Londonderry * County Tyrone These counties are no longer used for local government purposes; instead there are twenty-six districts of Northern Ireland which have different geographical extents, even in the case those named after the counties from which they derive their name. Fermanagh District Council most closely follows the borders of the county it takes its name from. ===Towns and villages=== ''Main article: List of towns in Northern Ireland'' ''See also the list of places in Northern Ireland for all villages, towns and cities'' *Ahoghill, Armagh, Antrim *Ballycastle, Ballyclare, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Banbridge, Bangor, Northern Ireland, Belfast, Bushmills *Carnmoney, Carrickfergus,Comber, Coleraine, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Craigavon *Donaghadee, Downpatrick, Dundonald, Dungannon, Dungiven *Enniskillen *Glengormley *Hillsborough, County Down, Holywood *Larne, Limavady, Lisburn, Londonderry, Lurgan *Magherafelt *Newcastle, Northern Ireland, Newry, Newtownards, Newtownstewart *Omagh *Portrush, Portstewart, Portadown, Portaferry *Strabane *Warrenpoint ===Places of interest=== *The Mountains of Mourne *Lough Neagh, the biggest lake in the British Isles, 153 square miles *Lough Erne *Strangford Lough *Carlingford Lough *The Giant's Causeway *The Glens of Antrim *Fermanagh Lakeland *The Sperrins Mountains *National parks of Northern Ireland *National Trust Properties in Northern Ireland ===Variations in Geographic nomenclature=== Many people inside and outside Northern Ireland use other names for the entity, as part of a linguistic agenda to define the nature of the state from their historic, cultural or political viewpoint. The most common names used are ====Unionist==== * ''Ulster'' - to suggest that Northern Ireland has an older ancestry that predates its founding in 1921, dating back both to the Plantation of Ulster in the late middle ages and to the millennium-old province of Ulster, one of four provinces on the island of Ireland. The island's province of Ulster covers a greater landmass than Northern Ireland: 6 of its counties are in Northern Ireland, 3 in the Republic of Ireland. * ''The Province'' - to again link to the historic Irish province of Ulster, with its mythology. ====Nationalist==== * ''North of Ireland'' - to link Northern Ireland to the island of Ireland, by describing, as is geographically accurate , the state as the 'north ''of'' Ireland' and so by implication playing down Northern Ireland's links with Britain. ====Pro-Belfast Agreement Republican==== * ''The Six Counties'' - language which avoids using the name given to the state by the British-enacted ''Government of Ireland Act, 1920''. (The Republic is similarly described as the ''Twenty-Six Counties''.) Some of the users of this term fear using the official name of the region would imply acceptance of the legitimacy of the ''Government of Ireland Act''. ====Anti-Belfast Agreement Republicans==== * ''The Occupied Six Counties''. The Republic, whose existence is also opposed by such groups, is described as being "The Free State'', referring to the Irish Free State, the Republic's old name. ====The use of language for Northern Irish geography==== Disagreement on nomenclature, and the reading of political symbolism into the use or non-use of a word, also attaches to some urban centres. The most famous example is whether Northern Ireland's second city should be called ''Derry'' or ''Londonderry (name)''. Choice of language and nomenclature in Northern Ireland often reveals the cultural, ethnic and religious identity of the speaker. The first Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Seamus Mallon was criticised by unionists for always calling the state the "North of Ireland" while Sinn Féin has been criticised in some newspapers in the Republic for continuing to refer to the "Six Counties". Nationalists have in turn criticised unionist leaders, for constantly referring to the state as "Ulster". Those who do not belong to any group but lean towards one side often tend to use the language of that group. Supporters of unionism in the British media (notably the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express) regularly call Northern Ireland "Ulster" while nationalist and republican-leaning media outlets in Ireland (such as Daily Ireland) almost always use "North of Ireland" or the "Six Counties". State institutions and cultural organisations in Northern Ireland, particularly those pre-dating the 1980s, often used the word "Ulster" in their title; for example, the ''University of Ulster'', the ''Ulster Orchestra'', ''Ulster Hall'' and ''Ulster Television'', which changed its name to simply ''UTV'' so not to offend anyone. Many news bulletins since the 1990s have opted avoid all contentious terms and use either the official name, ''Northern Ireland'', or the shorter term, "the North". For the North's second city, broadcasting outlets which are unaligned to either community and broadcasts to both, use both names interchangably, often starting a report with "Londonderry" and then using "Derry" in the rest of the report. However within Northern Ireland, print media which are aligned to either community (the Belfast Newsletter is aligned to the Unionist Community while the Irish News is aligned to the Nationalist Community) generally use their community's preferred term. British newspapers with Unionist leanings, such as the Daily Telegraph[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F06%2F16%2Fnblud16.xml], usually use the language of the Unionist Community, while others, such as The Guardian use the terms interchangably [http://www.guardian.co.uk/bloodysunday/article/0,2763,184915,00.html] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/bloodysunday/article/0,2763,1394346,00.html] The media in the Republic of Ireland use the nomenclature preferred by Nationalists, eg [http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0609/northviolence.html RTÉ News]. The division in nomenclature is seen particularly in sports and religions associated with one of the communities. Gaelic Athletic Association and soccer use ''Derry'' in club names for example. However, to complicate matters both the largely Unionist Church of Ireland and the largely Nationalist Roman Catholic Church each calls their local bishop ''Bishop of Derry and Raphoe''. Nor is there clear agreement on how to decide on a name. When the Nationalist-dominated local council voted to name the city ''Derry'' Unionists objected, stating that as it owed its city status to a Royal Charter, only a charter issued by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom could change the name. Queen Elizabeth refused to intervene on the matter. Overall the use of nomenclature exclusive to one community by one community is a notable feature of Northern Ireland. At times of high communal tension, each side regularly complains of the use of the nomenclature associated with the other community by a third party such as a media organisation, claiming such usage indicates evident "bias" against their community. == History == ''Main article: History of Northern Ireland; for events before 1900 see History of Ireland.'' The area now known as Northern Ireland has had a diverse history. From serving as the bedrock of Irish resistance in the era of the Plantations of Irelands of Elizabeth I of England and James I of England in other parts of Ireland, it became itself the subject of major planting of Scotland and English settlers after the Flight of the Earls in 1607 (when the native Gaelic aristocracy left ''en masse'' for Catholic Europe). The all-island Kingdom of Ireland (1541-1801) was incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801 under the terms of the Act of Union, 1800, under which the kingdoms of Kingdom of Ireland and Kingdom of Great Britain merged under a central parliament, government and monarchy based in London. In the early 20th century Unionists (Ireland), led by Edward Carson, opposed the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland. Unionists (Ireland) were in a minority on the island of Ireland as a whole, but formed a majority in the northern province of Ulster. An example of the Unionists sheer determination not to have Home Rule forced upon them they resorted to the Larne Gun Running in 1912. Therefore, after the First World War, Ireland was partitioned in 1921 under the terms of the ''Government of Ireland Act 1920'' between six of the nine Ulster counties in the northeast (forming Northern Ireland) and the remaining twenty-six counties of the south and west (forming the Irish Free State in 1922). When the latter achieved dominion status, the six Northern Ireland counties — under the procedures laid out in the ''Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1921'' — opted out, and so remain as part of the United Kingdom. The ''Ireland Act 1949'' gave the first legal guarantee to the Parliament of Northern Ireland and Government of Northern Ireland that Northern Ireland would not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without consent of the majority of its citizens, and this was most recently reaffirmed by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. This status was echoed in the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, which was signed by the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Bunreacht na hÉireann, the constitution of the Republic, was amended in 1999 to remove a claim to sovereignty over the whole of Ireland (in Article 2), a claim qualified by an acknowledgement of British rule in the northeast. The new Articles 2 & 3, added to the Bunreacht to replace the earlier articles. implicitly acknowledge that the status of Northern Ireland, and its relationships with the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, would only be changed with the agreement of a majority of voters in the six counties. An acknowledgement that a decision on whether to remain in the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland rests with the people of Northern Ireland was also central to the Belfast Agreement, which was signed in 1998 and ratified by plebiscites held simultanously in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. However, many unionist leaders equivocate when asked if they would peacefully accept a reunited Ireland if a majority in Northern Ireland sought it. A plebiscite within Northern Ireland on whether it should remain in the United Kingdom, or join the Republic, was held in 1973. The vote went heavily in favour of maintaining the status quo, in part because many nationalists boycotted it. Though legal provision remains for holding another plebiscite, and Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble some years ago advocated the holding of such a vote, no plans for such a vote have been adopted as of 2005. ==Demographics and politics== The vast majority of the population of Northern Ireland identifies with one of two different groups, Unionists (Ireland) and Irish nationalist . Both sides of the community are often described by their predominant religious attachments. Unionists are predominantly Protestant most of whom belong to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the second in terms of size is the Church of Ireland), while nationalists are predominantly Catholic. However, contrary to widespread belief, not all Catholics necessarily support nationalism, and not all Protestants necessarily support unionism. It is also important to note that, in parallel with other parts of Europe, the proportion of the population practising their religious beliefs has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among Catholics and adherents of mainstream Protestant denominations. This has not necessarily resulted in a weakening of communal feeling. Once established under the ''Government of Ireland Act 1920'', Northern Ireland was structured geographically (see gerrymander) so as to provide unionist majorities in its local government system, with significantly nationalist areas producing unionist majorities through the granting of voting rights exclusively to property owners (where most Catholics were renting and most Protestants were owners). Anger of local government control by Protestants, and the awarding of housing to Protestants to ensure Unionist majorities in areas with large Catholic populations, played a significant part in creating the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, with a sit-in by nationalist politician Austin Currie in a house granted to an unmarried Protestant woman ahead of a large homeless Catholic family triggering off the movement. [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/whyte.htm#chap1] In recent decades the Catholic population has increased in percentage terms within Northern Ireland, while the Presbyterian and Church of Ireland population percentages have decreased. However the decreasing size of Catholic families and the increasing use of birth control among the Catholic community has led to a slowing down in the growth of the Catholic population. Statisticians predict both communities will achieve close to parity in size, with Protestants dominant primarily to the east and north of Northern Ireland and Catholics dominant to the west and south. However as of 2005 most statisticians predict that Protestants will continue to slightly outnumber Catholics in Northern Ireland as a whole. The religious affiliations, based on census returns, have changed as follows between 1961 and 2002: {| border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="350px" align="center" style="border-collapse: collapse;" |+ Religious Affiliations in Northern Ireland 1961–2001 |- !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Religions !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|1961 !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|1991 !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|2001 |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Roman Catholic |align="center"|34.9% |align="center"|38.4% |align="center"|40.3% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Presbyterian (Protestant) |align="center"|29.0% |align="center"|21.4% |align="center"|20.7% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Church of Ireland (Protestant) |align="center"|24.2% |align="center"|17.7% |align="center"|15.3% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Other Religions |align="center"|9.3% |align="center"|11.5% |align="center"|9.9% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Not Stated |align="center"|2.0% |align="center"|7.3% |align="center"|9.0% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|None |align="center"|0.0% |align="center"|3.8% |align="center"|5.0% |} {| border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="350px" align="center" style="border-collapse: collapse;" |+ Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 2003 [http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2003/Political_Attitudes/UNINATID.html] |- !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Religion !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Affiliation !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|2003 |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;" rowspan=3 | Protestant |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 68% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 1% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 29% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;" rowspan=3 | Catholic |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 0% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 60% |- style="border-bottom: double 5px #aaa;" |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 36% |- style="border-top: double 5px #aaa; background: #f0f0f0;" ! style="background:#ccc;" rowspan=3 | Total | align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 38% |- style="background: #f0f0f0;" | align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 24% |- style="background: #f0f0f0;" | align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 35% |} Most Northern Irish Catholics support United Ireland, although opinion polls have shown a minority who support remaining part of the UK, usually while continuing to support nationalist political parties. This proportion has slowly but steadily declined over the course of the Troubles. The proportion of Protestants who wish to join the Republic is smaller. There are also considerable numbers of people who give ambiguous answers to questions about the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland. While elections in Northern Ireland are often characterised as mini-referendum on the constitutional question, this is too simplistic an analysis. Voters may also perceive voting to be about strengthening the hand of their section of the community within Northern Ireland, or about gaining advantage for their social class. ===Representation=== Northern Ireland currently has 18 seats in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The Northern Ireland Assembly has 108 Member of the Legislative Assemblys, although this is currently in suspension. It is also represented in the European Parliament with 3 seats, and at local level by 26 district councils. Sinn Féin, currently the biggest of the nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, has campaigned for a broadening of the franchise of Northern Ireland voters to allow them to vote in elections to choose the President of Ireland. It has also demanded that Northern Ireland MEPs and MPs be allowed speaking rights in the lower house of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, Dáil Éireann. The Irish government has accepted this, but has not yet moved to enable it. ===Political parties=== Political parties in Northern Ireland can be divided into three distinct categories: unionist parties, such as the Democratic Unionist Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, and other smaller parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party and the United Kingdom Unionist Party; nationalist parties, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP); and cross-community parties such as the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. The Ulster Unionists were historically a cross-class ''massenpartei'' who ran a one-party Northern Ireland from its creation until 1972, although since the rise of the DUP in the 1970s their support has been more middle-class. Until 1972 the UUP's members of the House of Commons took the Conservative Party (UK) whip, although for the past 32 years they have sat as a party in their own right. The UUP's member of the European Parliament belongs to the European Peoples Party group, along with Fine Gael. The DUP are a more complex mixture than the other major parties — combining support from rural evangelicals and from urban, secular, working-class voters. The party is firmly to the right on issues such as abortion, capital punishment, European integration and equal opportunities, although the party seems to be moderating its stance on gay rights since the "Ulster says No to Sodomy" campaign of the '80s. Conversely, the DUP often support social programmes which benefit their working class or agricultural base, for example, free public transport for the elderly and European Union agricultural subsidies. The DUP have grown in recent years as they are the only major party to oppose the Good Friday Agreement. Their Member of the European Parliament, Jim Allister, sits as an Independent in the European Parliament, but is perceived to be close to the Independence and Democracy group. The smaller Progressive Unionist Party and New Ulster Political Research Group are linked with the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association respectively. The UK Unionist Party is essentially a one-man show led by Robert McCartney MLA for North Down. Similarly, on the nationalist side of the political spectrum, Sinn Féin has overtaken the traditionally dominant SDLP in recent elections. Sinn Féin is a radical socialist revolutionary party, theoretically committed to espousing an all-Ireland Socialist Republic, and linked with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Sinn Féin is often described as the political wing of the IRA - the exact relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA is not clear, with many people believing them to be one and the same, referring to them as "Sinn Féin/IRA" - it is however widely accepted that they have an overlapping leadership. Traditionally the party of the urban Catholic working-class and a number of republican rural areas, since the IRA ceasefires of the mid-1990s it has expanded its base considerably, and has overtaken the long-dominant SDLP in terms of vote share. Many of their opponents, especially more hardline republicans, contend that its experience of government has blunted the edge of the party's revolutionary enthusiasm. The SDLP are a nominally social democratic party and a full member of the Party of European Socialists and Socialist International. However, as the Northern Irish party system is not based on socio-economic divisions, it inevitably attracts a wider spectrum of opinion and has a middle-class support base. The SDLP nominally support Irish United Ireland, but reject utterly the use of violence as a means to that end. The SDLP has lost considerable support in the past decade, with the retirement of key figures such as former leader John Hume and deputy leader Seamus Mallon and the Irish_Republican_Army's cessation of violence. The party has been torn between members who wish to follow a post-nationalist agenda focusing primarily on "bread and butter issues" (taxation, employment, education, health, etc) and those who wish to follow a more traditionalist nationalist campaign to challenge the more republican Sinn Féin. In March 2005 the party launched a major policy programme on working to a united Ireland, suggesting that it has opted to focus on traditional issues of identity (Irish or British, unionist or nationalist) than on economic or social issues. Among the cross-community parties, the Alliance Party draws its support mainly from middle-class professionals in the suburbs of Belfast. It professes to be the only significant party which does not base its political stance around the constitutional question, and is a member of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party and Liberal International. Other parties who contest elections in Northern Ireland include the Green Party in Northern Ireland, the Workers Party (Ireland) and the Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party . The feminist Northern Ireland Women's Coalition briefly held seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but have now lost both those and their only local Councillor and seem to be in jeapordy. Fianna Fáil, the dominant party in the Republic, has opened a cumann (branch) in Derry. The leadership however as of 2005 has decided not to take part in electoral politics in Northern Ireland. Others both within Fianna Fáil and the SDLP (including former SDLP European Elections candidate Martin Morgan) have advocated an alliance, or even a merger, between both parties. However others in both parties are hostile to the idea, with some in the SDLP pointing out to the shared left wing links between the party and the Irish Labour Party. Others in the SDLP are also closer to the Republic's second biggest party, Fine Gael and oppose a merger with that party's rival, Fianna Fáil. There are also two tiny parties seeking independence for Northern Ireland, although this is often perceived to be an ethnically Protestant or Unionist ideal with little real support. Some commentators believe there are indications that the religious and ethnic basis of the party system may start to disintegrate. For example, in the 1998–2003 Assembly, there was a Catholic Member of the Legislative Assembly sitting for the Ulster Unionist Party. The SDLP have had a number of Protestant representatives in the past. A Protestant SDLP councillor recently defected to Sinn Féin. However, these tend to be one-off events, which have occurred periodically throughout Northern Ireland's history without setting a trend — ''cf'' Sir Denis Henry in the early part of the 20th century. In any event, social class is an important part of competition within the main ethnic political blocs, and class-based party structures in other established democracies have weakened since the end of the Cold War. Since the beginning of the Northern Ireland peace process, the non-ethnic parties have declined, while the more radical Sinn Féin and DUP have prospered. While many Protestants are Sinn Féin members (more so in the Republic), the DUP has no Catholics in its ranks. Optimists counter that, in the long-term, as the constitutional question may become less relevant due to the emergence of the European Union, and therefore a less sectarian political system may develop. ==Culture== :''See Culture of Northern Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Culture of the United Kingdom'' With its improved international reputation, Northern Ireland has recently witnessed rising numbers of tourists who come to appreciate the area's unique heritage. Attractions include cultural festivals, musical and artistic traditions, countryside and geographical sites of interest, pubs, welcoming hospitality and sports (especially golf and fishing). In 1987, pubs were allowed to open on Sundays. ===Languages=== The Mid Ulster English dialect of English language spoken in Northern Ireland shows influence from both the West Midlands (region) and Scotland, thereby giving it a distinct accent compared to Hiberno-English, along with the use of such Scots language words as ''wee'' for 'little' and ''aye'' for 'yes'. Some jocularly call this dialect phonetically by the name ''Norn Iron''. There are supposedly some minute differences in pronunciation between Protestants and Catholics, the best known of which is the name of the letter ''h'', which Protestants tend to pronounce as "aitch", as in British English, and Catholics tend to pronounce as "haitch", as in Hiberno-English. However, geography is a much more important determinant of dialect than ethnic background. English is by far the most widely spoken language in Northern Ireland. Under the Belfast Agreement, Irish language and Ulster Scots language have official recognition on a par with that of English. Often the use of the Irish language#Northern Ireland has met with the considerable suspicion of Unionists, who have associated it with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland, and more recently, with the Irish republicanism in Northern Ireland itself Ulster Scots language comprises varieties of the Scots language spoken in Northern Ireland. Many claim it has become a separate language, descended from Scots in Scotland, whereas others question whether Scots is a separate language from English at all, or simply a collection of local dialects of Scottish and Northern Ireland Hiberno-English. Chinese language and Urdu are also spoken by Northern Ireland's Asian communities. According to the most recent census returns, Chinese is now the second most widely spoken language, though the 8000-strong Chinese community — while often referred to as the "third largest" community in Northern Ireland — is tiny by international standards. == See also == * List of Ireland-related topics * List of United Kingdom-related topics == Further reading == * Jonathan Bardon, ''A History of Ulster'' (Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1996) * Robert Kee, ''The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism'' (Penguin, 1972–2000), ISBN 0140291652 ==External links== * [http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/ Discover Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Tourist Board] * [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ University of Ulster: Northern Ireland Conflict Archive] * [http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections Elections in Northern Ireland] * [http://www.onlineni.net Online NI] * [http://www.whiteimage.com Art gallery featuring Northern Irish artists and scenes] * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/nations/ BBC Nations] History of Ireland * [http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/britishisles/ The British Isles] Independent view of Ireland and the UK * [http://www.walkingtree.com/ Mercator Atlas of Europe] Map of Ireland ("Irlandia") circa 1564 * [http://www.RecruitmentNI.com Jobs in Northern Ireland] * [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/ Sutton Index of Deaths] Disputed territories Northern Ireland Home Rule in the United Kingdom History of Ireland ga:Tuaisceart Éireann ka:ჩრდილოეთი ირლანდია kw:Kledhbarth Iwerdhon simple:Northern Ireland
''This is a selected entry on Template:March 24 selected anniversaries (may be in HTML comment)'' ----- ==Disputed Status?== I don't think we can really say that its status is disputed in a real sense, such as Palestine. Not a single country in the world recognizes Northern Ireland a part of the rest of the country politically, however much they might wish it. With the vote accepting the Belfast Agreement the claim in the Constitution of Ireland to ''the whole island of Ireland'' was changed to a declaration of aspiration. While groups such as Republican Sinn Féin might not have accepted this, or indeed any election north or south since 1922, the page shou'd be neutral, and showing the views of an extreme minority is not. The government of the Second Dáil accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which paved the way for the situation we have at the moment. I don't however see that any change I make will be accepted; we will probably continue an unstoppable reverting battle. --User:Henry Williams Jan 10, 2004, 0950 (UTC) Henry, be careful with phrases such as "Not a single country in the world recognizes Northern Ireland a part of the rest of the country politically ..." What country are you refering to? Do you mean the UK or the Republic of Ireland? User:Fergananim I think it is fairly obvious that he is stating that not a single country in the world doesn't recognise that NI is part of the UK. -Fobo == Stroke City == Quote: ''Derry, not Londonderry, is the formal name of the city, as passed by its local council and given the force of law in recent years.'' I'm pretty sure that no new Royal Charter has been issued for the City, and that therefore any name change does not have the force ''of law'', whatever the wishes of the Council. --User:paul ---- == Numbers == Firstly, get the terms right. The British didn't colonise Ireland because when the colonisation occured there was no 'Britain'. Britain as a state was formally created only with the merger of the English and Scottish kingdoms in the eighteenth century. It was the english colonisation of Ireland, albeit freuqently with Scottish colonisers. Number 2: The colonisation WAS brutal. All colonial powers of the period were brutal. The english colonisation of my country was no-more brutal than occured elsewhere, and had Ireland been in a position to colonise England, the odds are that we would have been as brutal as they were to us. Those were the times, unfortunately, regrettably but that was the reality, with each colonising state (and the United States of America was no exception in how it treated other states!) believing that it was 'civilised', 'morally superior' and doing 'God's will' to the native savages. In fact, as someone whose family fought British (yes British. We are talking after the 1707 Act of Union) rule, and as a historian, I have to observe that British rule, though frequently abusive, incompetent and rascist, was technically quite moderate by the nineteenth century by the prevailing standards of the time! A proper historian does not use loaded prejorative phrases to assess a time when the standards by which behaviour as judged were different, however wrong he in retrospect may think that behaviour was. User:Jtdirl :Certainly, colonisation becgan before 1707 when Great Britain was created, but the plantations were by no means exclusively or for that matter predominantly English as the Scots were a large part of these settlements. "British" would therefore seem a fair adjective being that of those from Britain in general whether or not it was politically unified at the time, but an alternative might be "English and Scottish", but then someone is bound to pull a Welshman out of the Hat. User:Dainamo 19:04, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC) Okay, but Ireland was not a country at the time of any of these raids or invasions. User:Fergananim ----- Tridesch the historian, what is "Holocost"? Did you mean Holocaust? I also didn't find the word "brutal" there. Why should it be here? --User:Maveric149 ----- Tridesch says: , touche on the spelling so you think the holocaust wasnt brutal? slavery was brutal, the holocaust was brutal, the colonization of northern ireland byt he british was brutal too. :IMO the Holocaust was brutal and so were many aspects of slavery. My POV aserts that the British also accomplished some fairly brutal acts too - but which country hasn't. But the IRA blowing up a bus with school children is also brutal, IMO. So to be fair we would have to say both side were brutal but this word is POV-charged. How about we stick to the facts at hand and let the reader make a decision on their own? Again, have you read our NPOV policy? --User:Maveric149 ------------ == Province == Removed ''the Province'' from the opening sentence, which read ''The Province of Northern Ireland''. Northern Ireland is not a province. There are four provinces in Ireland - Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. Northern Ireland consists of six of the nine counties of the Province of Ulster. The term ''province'' is often used colloquially by one community, interchangably with the word ''Ulster''. But we cannot use it because # It reflects one community's use of language. This article needs to be NPOV and so should avoid using terms that are exclusive to one community. So we cannot call this article, ''Ulster'', ''the North of Ireland'' or ''the Province'' because all are agenda-driven terms. # As explained above, it is factually incorrect. User:Jtdirl 01:27 4 Jun 2003 (UTC) : So Northern Ireland, poltically, has no formal status (e.g., "province", "territory", "state") at all? It is just "a part" formally? --User:Menchi 02:22, Aug 5, 2003 (UTC) yup. Some critics of its existence used to call it a ''statelet'' but that too is POV. User:Jtdirl 04:53, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::Northern Ireland is a province in the sense of it being politically a part of the UK, but not a country. How else can it be defined? The four traditional provinces of Ireland in their current shape have no polictical meaning and even the cultural division is a bit blurry now. Northern Ireland, irrespective of views on this, is at this time a disttinct entity and may be correctly defined as a province. ---- I understand the combination of the Presbyterians with the Church of Ireland in the final column of the table, but where did the extra three percent of Catholics come from? -User:Smack 00:57 22 Jul 2003 (UTC) ---- == Population == The Page gives the impression that the Republic of Ireland has a population of 1.6 million when that population is Northern Ireland's :Good point. I've corrected that. User:Jtdirl 23:51, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- == Religious affiliation table == Something is wrong with the religious affiliation table. The third and fourth column are contradictory. Are Catholics 40.3% in 2001 or 43.8%? And why are the 9.9% "other religions" (are those only "other Protestant religions"?) and the 9% "not stated" (does this mean "Protestant, but not stated which Protestant"?) added to the Protestant total in the fourth column? --User:Wik 19:34, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC) :From what I can remember of the census returns, ''other religions'' are ''all'' other religions, not just christian religions, but are primarily christian. ''Not stated'' means those that refused to give a categorisation and left page blank, whether deliberately or accidentially, but the categorisation in most cases was easy to work out; many names in Northern Ireland indicate their community; ''Patrick O'Leary'' in West Belfast, for example, is 99% certain to be from the catholic community, ''Seymour Crawford'' in Lisburn 99% certain to be from the protestant community. Other questions also gave information that could clarify from which community a person who neglected to declare their categorisation belonged. There also was, if I remember correctly, a problem with the categorisation of 'Catholic' as 'catholic' can be interpreted in the Northern Ireland case as a political or religious designation, causing conflicting numbers at different parts of the census. But other questions could clarify ambiguities and work out where a non-designated person belonged. User:Jtdirl 21:05, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC) :: The differences are caused by the difference between 'religion' and 'community background'. An unbaptised atheist is a Catholic if he's called Seamus and lives up the Falls! User:Gerry Lynch 17:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---- The table design is very awkward. The ''All Protestant'' summation should just be a separate row in the table, highlighted differently, rather than the current way which is very strange. User:Daniel Quinlan 19:25, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC) ---- == Area == [http://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/keystatistics.html NISRA] state the land area as 14,160 sq km, not 13,843 as it currently says on Wikipedia. --User:Scronide 18:38, 2004 Apr 4 (UTC) == Norlin Airlann == Please, Norlin Airlann (as the Ullans name) appears on many governmental and quango web pages (search for it, please). Don't keep changing it to Scottish Scots or removing it. See [http://www.dcalni.gov.uk/allpages.asp?pname=leid] [http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/us_theagency.asp] [http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/news/files/consult-us.doc] [http://www.policeombudsman.org/Publicationsuploads/ulsterscots1.pdf] etc. -- User:Kaihsu 21:36, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC) :Norlin Airland is made up nonsense. It may well be made up by quangos or whoever but Scots-speakers have never used it anywhere at any time. :Try finding it in both the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and the Scottish National Dictionary (Which includes Scots in Ulster - read the Intro.) [http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/]. :Scots in Scotland and Ulster are the same language. Unfortunately certain circles can't be bothered learning the real language and make up gibberish. :See:[http://ww2.eblul.org:8080/eblul/Public/member_state_committ/british_committee/uk2/view] :The european charter from the Council of Europe[http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ListeDeclarations.asp?NT=148&CV=1&NA=&PO=999&CN=999&VL=1&CM=9&CL=ENG] :"b) The United Kingdom declares, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Charter that it recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language for the purposes of Part II of the Charter." :NOTE: _a_ regional or minority _language_ not two separate ones. :The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 defines Ullans as: "the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland." :The Good Friday Agreement simply refers to Ulster Scots without the qualifier 'language'.[http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm] :"3. All participants recognise the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language, Ulster-Scots and the languages of the various ethnic communities, all of which are part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland." : [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=217.225.26.59 User:217.225.26.59] 01:04, Aug 22, 2004 :: See also my comments on Talk:United Kingdom#\"Official languages\" and User talk:217.225.26.59 — User:OwenBlacker 00:27, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC) : I have added Norlin Airlann back, with a note. It appears in the documents – even if some thinks it made-up nonsense. — User:Kaihsu 17:58, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC) ::Norlin Airlann is perfectly acceptable. The official Ulster Scots name for Waterways Ireland is ''Watterweys Airlann'', as is always shown in their logo [http://www.waterwaysireland.org/images/logo.gif]. The other North-South institutions also use this spelling. I am removing the explanatory note. --User:Kwekubo 15:33, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Just to make the point (i am not taking sides as i know little on the official spellings and status), but any versions of a states name used should have official status (within that state) if used over the data table. The data table is not the place for placing a states name in every language currently documented, if it is not official but common then consider using a footnote - keep wikipedia professional looking. User:Djegan See also Talk:United_Kingdom/Archive_1#Scots_language_name == Overly political? == While undoubtedly many readers will come to this page for its political content, there are many other worthy sides to Northern Ireland which could be mentionned. The page, to me, feels quite dark and threatening. I wouldn't choose to holiday in NI after reading it! Would anyone care to mention some of the more positive things NI has to offer e.g. cultural festivals, musical and artistic tradition, tourist attractions (Bushmills, giant's causeway...), countryside, pubs and hospitality. I know a couple of these have been relegated to a list at the bottom. Maybe a separate page for NI's political history is needed? : If you don't like the way it's written, get on there and change it. You have a very good point, but the point of Wikipedia is that users can edit things themselves. User:Gerry Lynch 17:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Re-NPOVing - Hun Nats/Taig Unionists=== This is a controversial page, so am giving warning! The phrase:''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 00:31, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)User:Pollywolly 16:25, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Re the 'sneaking around' bit - it is a bit suspicious how a series of 'new' users keep cropping on the same pages and make the same edits to the page and make the same contributions to the talk page. When a host of named users then point out the blatent POV in this mysterious gang of users' identical edits, the latest 'version' disappears and promptly re-appears yet again under yet another name, does the same edits and makes the same points. And hey presto, now we have Pollywolly echoing the edits of Alec, who echoed the . . . etc.
As has been pointed out numerous times by numerous users on numerous pages, the edits are every bit as POV now as the first time, the second time, the third time etc that they were made. Regarding your claims that
''the Good Friday “agreement” was 8 years ago and from the current situation it is doubtful that there ever was any real agreement back in 1998 in the first place''.
* You can believe that if you want. But it is a POV and wikipedia cannot use POVs. The Belfast Agreement was signed by its participants. We cannot second judge their motivation, merely state that it happened.
''I object to including “occupied six counties” as a term in an article in an encyclopedia – the term “six counties” is already mentioned which is sufficient - adding the word “occupied” has a very rare occurrence and is simply spreading extreme republican propaganda.''
* You can object all you want to, but it is a fact that (a) that term is used, (b) it is used in a different way by different people to refer to NI. As such under NPOV rules it has to be included. It may to you be a "very rare occurance" but there are tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland who do use it. Whether you hear it being used or not is irrelevant. We cannot censor things out to keep unionists happy, any more than we can censor things out to keep nationalists or republicans happy. If it exists, we must cover it.
As to your claim about me being ''in the company of some extreme Republicans'' in Northern Ireland, I was actually in the company of my then boyfriend, who is a member of the DUP. One close friend of mine was a young RUC officer who had his head blown off by republicans. I have friends who are loyalist, republican, unionist, nationalist. I spend a lot of time in Northern Ireland dealing with ''both communities''. Your writings here as elsewhere suggest that, as is so often found in Northern Ireland, you hold the views of side of the community, think your side is right and immediately dismiss anything that doesn't reflect your community's perspective as wrong, just because ''you'', in ''your'' life, haven't experienced it. Wikipedia is not in the business of reflecting either community's views but of being factually NPOV (which is why I have ended up reverting pro-IRA edits on some articles, no-loyalist edits on others, anti-unionist diatribes on some pages, anti-republican diatribes on others. Fear''ÉIREANN''">User:Jtdirl 18:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
== List of people killed ==
I was trying to find a list of people killed during the Troubles and came across the CAIN listing for Malcolm Sutton's 1994 book "Bear in mind these dead ... An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland 1969-1993" (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications
ISBN 0-9514229-4-4) (Out of print) ... so I added an external link to it. The listing is from "14 July 1969 and 31 December 2001" but was updated as recently as March 2004 http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/updates.html
== Lower/Upper Case ==
Why revert the U in Unionist to lower case? User:Gerry Lynch 19:16, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
==Northern Ireland/Tuaisceart Éireann/Northren Ireland/Norlin Airlann==
So this is English/Irish Gaelic/Ulster Scots and what? --User:Audiovideo 13:31, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
: English/Irish/Typo?/Ulster Scots --User:Ryano 15:56, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
:: At least one of the last two variations should be struck down, use a footnote if excessive (or alternate) translations are to be provided, infoboxes should only incorporate official names. User:Djegan 16:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
::: The United Kingdom infobox gives ''Unitit Kinrick o Great Breetain an Northren Ireland'' as the Scots language version, but a Google search [http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%27%27Unitit+Kinrick+o+Great+Breetain+an+Northren+Ireland%22+-wikipedia+-encyclopedia&hl=en&lr=&filter=0] suggests that wikipedia is the only source for this. A search for [http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22Norlin+Airlann%22+-wikipedia+-encyclopedia&btnG=Search&meta= Norlin Airlann] shows this to be the version to go for. I will remove "Northren Ireland" --User:Audiovideo 01:54, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
{| style="margin:0 auto;" align=center width=75% class="toccolours" |align=center| United Kingdom | Ireland | Northern Ireland | Districts of Northern Ireland |- |align=center| Antrim Borough Council | Ards Borough Council | Armagh City and District Council | Ballymena Borough Council | Ballymoney | Banbridge District Council | Belfast City Council | Carrickfergus Borough Council | Castlereagh Borough Council | Coleraine Borough Council | Cookstown District Council | Craigavon Borough Council | Derry City Council | Down District Council | Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council | Fermanagh District Council | Larne Borough Council | Limavady Borough Council | Lisburn City Council | Magherafelt District Council | Moyle District Council | Newry and Mourne District Council | Newtownabbey Borough Council | North Down Borough Council | Omagh District Council | Strabane District Council |- |align=right| |}
#redirect Template:Northern Ireland
Ireland United Kingdom
The article in the Category: "Northern Ireland" entitled "Districts of Northern Ireland" should be deleted and replaced with "Local Councils in Northern Ireland". These districts are properly Local Council areas. See the definite (?) NI Government website OnlineNI[1] (http://www.onlineni.net/index/about_ni_gov/local_councils.htm) User:Ardfern 16:38, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
Words begining with Northern_Ireland:
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland_(European_Parliament_constituency)
Northern_Ireland_Act
Northern_Ireland_Act_(1998)
Northern_Ireland_Act_1998
Northern_Ireland_Assembley
Northern_Ireland_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Election,_1998
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Election,_2003
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_election,_2003
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Elections,_2003
Northern_Ireland_coast_and_countryside
Northern_Ireland_Electricity
Northern_Ireland_Embroidery_Guild
Northern_Ireland_Executive
Northern_Ireland_football_team
Northern_Ireland_general_election,_1921
Northern_Ireland_geography_stubs
Northern_Ireland_infobox
Northern_Ireland_Labour_Party
Northern_Ireland_Legislative_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_media
Northern_Ireland_MPs
Northern_Ireland_MPs
Northern_Ireland_national_football_team
Northern_Ireland_national_football_team
Northern_Ireland_Office
Northern_Ireland_Parliament
Northern_Ireland_parliament
Northern_Ireland_Parliament_building
Northern_Ireland_peace_process
Northern_Ireland_people
Northern_Ireland_Police
Northern_Ireland_Policing_Board
Northern_Ireland_political_parties
Northern_Ireland_politicians
Northern_Ireland_politicians
Northern_Ireland_politics
Northern_Ireland_Pound
Northern_Ireland_Pound
Northern_Ireland_Railways
Northern_Ireland_Railway_locomotives
Northern_Ireland_referendum,_1973
Northern_Ireland_referendum,_1998
Northern_Ireland_Secretary
Northern_Ireland_Sign_Language
Northern_Ireland_Transport_Holding_Company
Northern_Ireland_Unionist_Party
Northern_Ireland_Women's_Coalition
Northern_Ireland_Women’s_Coalition
Northern_Ireland_Womens_Coalition
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Ireland, where it shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland, the only part of the United Kingdom with an international land border. It was created by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. It covers 1 E10 m%B2 square kilometres (5,459 square miles) in the north-east of the Ireland, about a sixth of the total area of the island, and has a population of 1,685,000 (April as of 2001) — between a quarter and a third of the island's total population. A slight majority of the present-day population are unionist (Ireland) and wish to remain part of the United Kingdom, but a significant minority, known as Irish nationalisms, want to see a united Ireland. These two views are linked to deeper cultural divisions. Unionists are predominantly Protestant and often descendants of Scottish and English (mainly Scottish) settlement in previous centuries, while nationalists are predominantly Catholic and usually descend from the population predating such settlement. Discrimination against nationalists under the Parliament Building of Northern Ireland government (1920–1972) gave rise to the nationalist "Civil Rights Movement" in the 1960s, and eventually to a long-running conflict known as The Troubles. Political unrest has gone through its most violent phase in recent times between 1968–1994. The main actors have been paramilitaries representing minorities from both sides of the divide and the RUC and British army representing the British authorities and the Northern Ireland state. As a consequence of the worsening security situation, self-government for Northern Ireland was suspended in 1972. Since the mid-1990s, the main paramilitary group, the Provisional Irish Republican Army has observed an uneasy ceasefire. Following negotiations, the Belfast Agreement of 1998 provides for an elected Northern Ireland Assembly, and a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive comprising representatives of all the main parties. These institutions have been suspended since 2002 because of PSNI allegations of spying by people working for Sinn Fein at the Assembly, although nobody was convicted after a high-profile operation. ==Symbols== [[Image:Northern_Ireland_flag.gif|thumb|200px|Flag of Northern Ireland from 1953 till 1972, used unofficially in sporting and international contexts.]] Today, Northern Ireland comprises a diverse patchwork of community rivalries, represented in some areas by whole communities where lamp posts and some homes fly the Irish national flag, the tricolour, or the Union Flag, the symbol of British identity, while even the kerbstones in less affluent areas get painted green-white-orange or red-white-blue, depending on whether a local community expresses nationalist/republican or unionist/loyalist sympathies. According to the United Nations, the only ''official'' Flag of Northern Ireland is the Union Flag of the United Kingdom. The 'Northern Ireland Flag' (or 'Red Hand Flag') is no longer official due to the abolition of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972. Unionists tend to use the Union Jack and sometimes the Northern Ireland Flag, while nationalists typically use the Flag of Ireland. Some unionists also occasionally use the flags of secular and religious organizations they belong to. The Northern Ireland flag is based on the Ulster flag.[http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/images/symbols/flags.htm] Some groups, including the Irish Rugby Football Union have used the Flag_of_St._Patrick#Saint_Patrick.27s_Flag as a symbol of Ireland which lacks the same nationalist or unionist connotations, but even this is felt by some to be a loyalist flag, as it was designed by the British and is used by some British army regiments. No universally acceptable symbol has yet been found. Similarly, there is no longer an official national anthem. At most events requiring a Northern Irish national anthem, ''God Save The Queen'' is played, although sometimes the old anthem ''A Londonderry Air'', perhaps better known outside Northern Ireland as the tune of ''Danny Boy'', is used. ==Geography and climate== :''Main article:'' Geography of Ireland, Geography of the United Kingdom Northern Ireland was covered by an ice sheet for most of the last ice age and on numerous previous occasions, the legacy of which can be seen in the extensive coverage of drumlins in Counties Fermanagh, Armagh, Antrim and particularly Down. The centrepiece of Northern Ireland's geography is Lough Neagh, at 1 E8 m%B2 km² the largest freshwater lake in the British Isles. A second extensive lake system is centred on Lower and Upper Lough Erne in Fermanagh. There are substantial uplands in the Sperrin Mountains (an extension of the Caledonian fold mountains) with extensive gold deposits, granite Mourne Mountains and basalt Antrim Plateau, as well as smaller ranges in South Armagh and along the Fermanagh–Tyrone border. None of the hills is especially high, with Slieve Donard in the dramatic Mournes reaching 1 E2 m, Northern Ireland's highest point. The volcanic activity which created the Antrim Plateau also formed the eerily geometric pillars of the Giant's Causeway. The Lower and Upper River Bann, River Foyle and River Blackwater (Northern Ireland) form extensive fertile lowlands, with excellent arable land also found in North and East Down, although much of the hill country is marginal and suitable largely for animal husbandry. The valley of the River Lagan is dominated by Belfast, whose metropolitan area includes over a third of the population of Northern Ireland, with heavy urbanisation and industrialisation along the Lagan Valley and both shores of Belfast Lough. The whole of Northern Ireland has a Maritime climate, rather wetter in the west than the east, although cloud cover is persistent across the region. The weather is unpredictable at all times of the year, and although the seasons are distinct, they are considerably less pronounced than in interior Europe or the eastern seaboard of North America. Average daytime maximums in Belfast are 6.5°C (43.7°F) in January and 17.5°C (63.5°F) in July. The damp climate and extensive deforestation in the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in much of the region being covered in rich green grassland. ===The Counties in Northern Ireland=== Northern Ireland consists of six Counties_of_Ireland: * County Antrim * County Armagh * County Down * County Fermanagh * County Londonderry * County Tyrone These counties are no longer used for local government purposes; instead there are twenty-six districts of Northern Ireland which have different geographical extents, even in the case those named after the counties from which they derive their name. Fermanagh District Council most closely follows the borders of the county it takes its name from. ===Towns and villages=== ''Main article: List of towns in Northern Ireland'' ''See also the list of places in Northern Ireland for all villages, towns and cities'' *Ahoghill, Armagh, Antrim *Ballycastle, Ballyclare, Ballymena, Ballymoney, Banbridge, Bangor, Northern Ireland, Belfast, Bushmills *Carnmoney, Carrickfergus,Comber, Coleraine, Cookstown, County Tyrone, Craigavon *Donaghadee, Downpatrick, Dundonald, Dungannon, Dungiven *Enniskillen *Glengormley *Hillsborough, County Down, Holywood *Larne, Limavady, Lisburn, Londonderry, Lurgan *Magherafelt *Newcastle, Northern Ireland, Newry, Newtownards, Newtownstewart *Omagh *Portrush, Portstewart, Portadown, Portaferry *Strabane *Warrenpoint ===Places of interest=== *The Mountains of Mourne *Lough Neagh, the biggest lake in the British Isles, 153 square miles *Lough Erne *Strangford Lough *Carlingford Lough *The Giant's Causeway *The Glens of Antrim *Fermanagh Lakeland *The Sperrins Mountains *National parks of Northern Ireland *National Trust Properties in Northern Ireland ===Variations in Geographic nomenclature=== Many people inside and outside Northern Ireland use other names for the entity, as part of a linguistic agenda to define the nature of the state from their historic, cultural or political viewpoint. The most common names used are ====Unionist==== * ''Ulster'' - to suggest that Northern Ireland has an older ancestry that predates its founding in 1921, dating back both to the Plantation of Ulster in the late middle ages and to the millennium-old province of Ulster, one of four provinces on the island of Ireland. The island's province of Ulster covers a greater landmass than Northern Ireland: 6 of its counties are in Northern Ireland, 3 in the Republic of Ireland. * ''The Province'' - to again link to the historic Irish province of Ulster, with its mythology. ====Nationalist==== * ''North of Ireland'' - to link Northern Ireland to the island of Ireland, by describing, as is geographically accurate , the state as the 'north ''of'' Ireland' and so by implication playing down Northern Ireland's links with Britain. ====Pro-Belfast Agreement Republican==== * ''The Six Counties'' - language which avoids using the name given to the state by the British-enacted ''Government of Ireland Act, 1920''. (The Republic is similarly described as the ''Twenty-Six Counties''.) Some of the users of this term fear using the official name of the region would imply acceptance of the legitimacy of the ''Government of Ireland Act''. ====Anti-Belfast Agreement Republicans==== * ''The Occupied Six Counties''. The Republic, whose existence is also opposed by such groups, is described as being "The Free State'', referring to the Irish Free State, the Republic's old name. ====The use of language for Northern Irish geography==== Disagreement on nomenclature, and the reading of political symbolism into the use or non-use of a word, also attaches to some urban centres. The most famous example is whether Northern Ireland's second city should be called ''Derry'' or ''Londonderry (name)''. Choice of language and nomenclature in Northern Ireland often reveals the cultural, ethnic and religious identity of the speaker. The first Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Seamus Mallon was criticised by unionists for always calling the state the "North of Ireland" while Sinn Féin has been criticised in some newspapers in the Republic for continuing to refer to the "Six Counties". Nationalists have in turn criticised unionist leaders, for constantly referring to the state as "Ulster". Those who do not belong to any group but lean towards one side often tend to use the language of that group. Supporters of unionism in the British media (notably the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express) regularly call Northern Ireland "Ulster" while nationalist and republican-leaning media outlets in Ireland (such as Daily Ireland) almost always use "North of Ireland" or the "Six Counties". State institutions and cultural organisations in Northern Ireland, particularly those pre-dating the 1980s, often used the word "Ulster" in their title; for example, the ''University of Ulster'', the ''Ulster Orchestra'', ''Ulster Hall'' and ''Ulster Television'', which changed its name to simply ''UTV'' so not to offend anyone. Many news bulletins since the 1990s have opted avoid all contentious terms and use either the official name, ''Northern Ireland'', or the shorter term, "the North". For the North's second city, broadcasting outlets which are unaligned to either community and broadcasts to both, use both names interchangably, often starting a report with "Londonderry" and then using "Derry" in the rest of the report. However within Northern Ireland, print media which are aligned to either community (the Belfast Newsletter is aligned to the Unionist Community while the Irish News is aligned to the Nationalist Community) generally use their community's preferred term. British newspapers with Unionist leanings, such as the Daily Telegraph[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F06%2F16%2Fnblud16.xml], usually use the language of the Unionist Community, while others, such as The Guardian use the terms interchangably [http://www.guardian.co.uk/bloodysunday/article/0,2763,184915,00.html] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/bloodysunday/article/0,2763,1394346,00.html] The media in the Republic of Ireland use the nomenclature preferred by Nationalists, eg [http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0609/northviolence.html RTÉ News]. The division in nomenclature is seen particularly in sports and religions associated with one of the communities. Gaelic Athletic Association and soccer use ''Derry'' in club names for example. However, to complicate matters both the largely Unionist Church of Ireland and the largely Nationalist Roman Catholic Church each calls their local bishop ''Bishop of Derry and Raphoe''. Nor is there clear agreement on how to decide on a name. When the Nationalist-dominated local council voted to name the city ''Derry'' Unionists objected, stating that as it owed its city status to a Royal Charter, only a charter issued by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom could change the name. Queen Elizabeth refused to intervene on the matter. Overall the use of nomenclature exclusive to one community by one community is a notable feature of Northern Ireland. At times of high communal tension, each side regularly complains of the use of the nomenclature associated with the other community by a third party such as a media organisation, claiming such usage indicates evident "bias" against their community. == History == ''Main article: History of Northern Ireland; for events before 1900 see History of Ireland.'' The area now known as Northern Ireland has had a diverse history. From serving as the bedrock of Irish resistance in the era of the Plantations of Irelands of Elizabeth I of England and James I of England in other parts of Ireland, it became itself the subject of major planting of Scotland and English settlers after the Flight of the Earls in 1607 (when the native Gaelic aristocracy left ''en masse'' for Catholic Europe). The all-island Kingdom of Ireland (1541-1801) was incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801 under the terms of the Act of Union, 1800, under which the kingdoms of Kingdom of Ireland and Kingdom of Great Britain merged under a central parliament, government and monarchy based in London. In the early 20th century Unionists (Ireland), led by Edward Carson, opposed the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland. Unionists (Ireland) were in a minority on the island of Ireland as a whole, but formed a majority in the northern province of Ulster. An example of the Unionists sheer determination not to have Home Rule forced upon them they resorted to the Larne Gun Running in 1912. Therefore, after the First World War, Ireland was partitioned in 1921 under the terms of the ''Government of Ireland Act 1920'' between six of the nine Ulster counties in the northeast (forming Northern Ireland) and the remaining twenty-six counties of the south and west (forming the Irish Free State in 1922). When the latter achieved dominion status, the six Northern Ireland counties — under the procedures laid out in the ''Anglo-Irish Treaty, 1921'' — opted out, and so remain as part of the United Kingdom. The ''Ireland Act 1949'' gave the first legal guarantee to the Parliament of Northern Ireland and Government of Northern Ireland that Northern Ireland would not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without consent of the majority of its citizens, and this was most recently reaffirmed by the Northern Ireland Act 1998. This status was echoed in the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, which was signed by the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Bunreacht na hÉireann, the constitution of the Republic, was amended in 1999 to remove a claim to sovereignty over the whole of Ireland (in Article 2), a claim qualified by an acknowledgement of British rule in the northeast. The new Articles 2 & 3, added to the Bunreacht to replace the earlier articles. implicitly acknowledge that the status of Northern Ireland, and its relationships with the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, would only be changed with the agreement of a majority of voters in the six counties. An acknowledgement that a decision on whether to remain in the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland rests with the people of Northern Ireland was also central to the Belfast Agreement, which was signed in 1998 and ratified by plebiscites held simultanously in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. However, many unionist leaders equivocate when asked if they would peacefully accept a reunited Ireland if a majority in Northern Ireland sought it. A plebiscite within Northern Ireland on whether it should remain in the United Kingdom, or join the Republic, was held in 1973. The vote went heavily in favour of maintaining the status quo, in part because many nationalists boycotted it. Though legal provision remains for holding another plebiscite, and Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble some years ago advocated the holding of such a vote, no plans for such a vote have been adopted as of 2005. ==Demographics and politics== The vast majority of the population of Northern Ireland identifies with one of two different groups, Unionists (Ireland) and Irish nationalist . Both sides of the community are often described by their predominant religious attachments. Unionists are predominantly Protestant most of whom belong to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the second in terms of size is the Church of Ireland), while nationalists are predominantly Catholic. However, contrary to widespread belief, not all Catholics necessarily support nationalism, and not all Protestants necessarily support unionism. It is also important to note that, in parallel with other parts of Europe, the proportion of the population practising their religious beliefs has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among Catholics and adherents of mainstream Protestant denominations. This has not necessarily resulted in a weakening of communal feeling. Once established under the ''Government of Ireland Act 1920'', Northern Ireland was structured geographically (see gerrymander) so as to provide unionist majorities in its local government system, with significantly nationalist areas producing unionist majorities through the granting of voting rights exclusively to property owners (where most Catholics were renting and most Protestants were owners). Anger of local government control by Protestants, and the awarding of housing to Protestants to ensure Unionist majorities in areas with large Catholic populations, played a significant part in creating the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, with a sit-in by nationalist politician Austin Currie in a house granted to an unmarried Protestant woman ahead of a large homeless Catholic family triggering off the movement. [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/whyte.htm#chap1] In recent decades the Catholic population has increased in percentage terms within Northern Ireland, while the Presbyterian and Church of Ireland population percentages have decreased. However the decreasing size of Catholic families and the increasing use of birth control among the Catholic community has led to a slowing down in the growth of the Catholic population. Statisticians predict both communities will achieve close to parity in size, with Protestants dominant primarily to the east and north of Northern Ireland and Catholics dominant to the west and south. However as of 2005 most statisticians predict that Protestants will continue to slightly outnumber Catholics in Northern Ireland as a whole. The religious affiliations, based on census returns, have changed as follows between 1961 and 2002: {| border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="350px" align="center" style="border-collapse: collapse;" |+ Religious Affiliations in Northern Ireland 1961–2001 |- !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Religions !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|1961 !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|1991 !colspan="1" style="background:#f0f0f0;"|2001 |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Roman Catholic |align="center"|34.9% |align="center"|38.4% |align="center"|40.3% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Presbyterian (Protestant) |align="center"|29.0% |align="center"|21.4% |align="center"|20.7% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Church of Ireland (Protestant) |align="center"|24.2% |align="center"|17.7% |align="center"|15.3% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Other Religions |align="center"|9.3% |align="center"|11.5% |align="center"|9.9% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Not Stated |align="center"|2.0% |align="center"|7.3% |align="center"|9.0% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;"|None |align="center"|0.0% |align="center"|3.8% |align="center"|5.0% |} {| border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" width="350px" align="center" style="border-collapse: collapse;" |+ Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey 2003 [http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/2003/Political_Attitudes/UNINATID.html] |- !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Religion !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|Affiliation !colspan="1" style="background:#ccc;"|2003 |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;" rowspan=3 | Protestant |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 68% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 1% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 29% |- !style="background:#f0f0f0;" rowspan=3 | Catholic |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 0% |- |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 60% |- style="border-bottom: double 5px #aaa;" |style="background:#f0f0f0;" align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 36% |- style="border-top: double 5px #aaa; background: #f0f0f0;" ! style="background:#ccc;" rowspan=3 | Total | align="center" | Unionist || align="center" | 38% |- style="background: #f0f0f0;" | align="center" | Nationalist || align="center" | 24% |- style="background: #f0f0f0;" | align="center" | Neither || align="center" | 35% |} Most Northern Irish Catholics support United Ireland, although opinion polls have shown a minority who support remaining part of the UK, usually while continuing to support nationalist political parties. This proportion has slowly but steadily declined over the course of the Troubles. The proportion of Protestants who wish to join the Republic is smaller. There are also considerable numbers of people who give ambiguous answers to questions about the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland. While elections in Northern Ireland are often characterised as mini-referendum on the constitutional question, this is too simplistic an analysis. Voters may also perceive voting to be about strengthening the hand of their section of the community within Northern Ireland, or about gaining advantage for their social class. ===Representation=== Northern Ireland currently has 18 seats in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The Northern Ireland Assembly has 108 Member of the Legislative Assemblys, although this is currently in suspension. It is also represented in the European Parliament with 3 seats, and at local level by 26 district councils. Sinn Féin, currently the biggest of the nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, has campaigned for a broadening of the franchise of Northern Ireland voters to allow them to vote in elections to choose the President of Ireland. It has also demanded that Northern Ireland MEPs and MPs be allowed speaking rights in the lower house of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, Dáil Éireann. The Irish government has accepted this, but has not yet moved to enable it. ===Political parties=== Political parties in Northern Ireland can be divided into three distinct categories: unionist parties, such as the Democratic Unionist Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, and other smaller parties such as the Progressive Unionist Party and the United Kingdom Unionist Party; nationalist parties, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP); and cross-community parties such as the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition. The Ulster Unionists were historically a cross-class ''massenpartei'' who ran a one-party Northern Ireland from its creation until 1972, although since the rise of the DUP in the 1970s their support has been more middle-class. Until 1972 the UUP's members of the House of Commons took the Conservative Party (UK) whip, although for the past 32 years they have sat as a party in their own right. The UUP's member of the European Parliament belongs to the European Peoples Party group, along with Fine Gael. The DUP are a more complex mixture than the other major parties — combining support from rural evangelicals and from urban, secular, working-class voters. The party is firmly to the right on issues such as abortion, capital punishment, European integration and equal opportunities, although the party seems to be moderating its stance on gay rights since the "Ulster says No to Sodomy" campaign of the '80s. Conversely, the DUP often support social programmes which benefit their working class or agricultural base, for example, free public transport for the elderly and European Union agricultural subsidies. The DUP have grown in recent years as they are the only major party to oppose the Good Friday Agreement. Their Member of the European Parliament, Jim Allister, sits as an Independent in the European Parliament, but is perceived to be close to the Independence and Democracy group. The smaller Progressive Unionist Party and New Ulster Political Research Group are linked with the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association respectively. The UK Unionist Party is essentially a one-man show led by Robert McCartney MLA for North Down. Similarly, on the nationalist side of the political spectrum, Sinn Féin has overtaken the traditionally dominant SDLP in recent elections. Sinn Féin is a radical socialist revolutionary party, theoretically committed to espousing an all-Ireland Socialist Republic, and linked with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Sinn Féin is often described as the political wing of the IRA - the exact relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA is not clear, with many people believing them to be one and the same, referring to them as "Sinn Féin/IRA" - it is however widely accepted that they have an overlapping leadership. Traditionally the party of the urban Catholic working-class and a number of republican rural areas, since the IRA ceasefires of the mid-1990s it has expanded its base considerably, and has overtaken the long-dominant SDLP in terms of vote share. Many of their opponents, especially more hardline republicans, contend that its experience of government has blunted the edge of the party's revolutionary enthusiasm. The SDLP are a nominally social democratic party and a full member of the Party of European Socialists and Socialist International. However, as the Northern Irish party system is not based on socio-economic divisions, it inevitably attracts a wider spectrum of opinion and has a middle-class support base. The SDLP nominally support Irish United Ireland, but reject utterly the use of violence as a means to that end. The SDLP has lost considerable support in the past decade, with the retirement of key figures such as former leader John Hume and deputy leader Seamus Mallon and the Irish_Republican_Army's cessation of violence. The party has been torn between members who wish to follow a post-nationalist agenda focusing primarily on "bread and butter issues" (taxation, employment, education, health, etc) and those who wish to follow a more traditionalist nationalist campaign to challenge the more republican Sinn Féin. In March 2005 the party launched a major policy programme on working to a united Ireland, suggesting that it has opted to focus on traditional issues of identity (Irish or British, unionist or nationalist) than on economic or social issues. Among the cross-community parties, the Alliance Party draws its support mainly from middle-class professionals in the suburbs of Belfast. It professes to be the only significant party which does not base its political stance around the constitutional question, and is a member of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party and Liberal International. Other parties who contest elections in Northern Ireland include the Green Party in Northern Ireland, the Workers Party (Ireland) and the Northern Ireland branch of the Conservative Party . The feminist Northern Ireland Women's Coalition briefly held seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but have now lost both those and their only local Councillor and seem to be in jeapordy. Fianna Fáil, the dominant party in the Republic, has opened a cumann (branch) in Derry. The leadership however as of 2005 has decided not to take part in electoral politics in Northern Ireland. Others both within Fianna Fáil and the SDLP (including former SDLP European Elections candidate Martin Morgan) have advocated an alliance, or even a merger, between both parties. However others in both parties are hostile to the idea, with some in the SDLP pointing out to the shared left wing links between the party and the Irish Labour Party. Others in the SDLP are also closer to the Republic's second biggest party, Fine Gael and oppose a merger with that party's rival, Fianna Fáil. There are also two tiny parties seeking independence for Northern Ireland, although this is often perceived to be an ethnically Protestant or Unionist ideal with little real support. Some commentators believe there are indications that the religious and ethnic basis of the party system may start to disintegrate. For example, in the 1998–2003 Assembly, there was a Catholic Member of the Legislative Assembly sitting for the Ulster Unionist Party. The SDLP have had a number of Protestant representatives in the past. A Protestant SDLP councillor recently defected to Sinn Féin. However, these tend to be one-off events, which have occurred periodically throughout Northern Ireland's history without setting a trend — ''cf'' Sir Denis Henry in the early part of the 20th century. In any event, social class is an important part of competition within the main ethnic political blocs, and class-based party structures in other established democracies have weakened since the end of the Cold War. Since the beginning of the Northern Ireland peace process, the non-ethnic parties have declined, while the more radical Sinn Féin and DUP have prospered. While many Protestants are Sinn Féin members (more so in the Republic), the DUP has no Catholics in its ranks. Optimists counter that, in the long-term, as the constitutional question may become less relevant due to the emergence of the European Union, and therefore a less sectarian political system may develop. ==Culture== :''See Culture of Northern Ireland, Culture of Ireland, Culture of the United Kingdom'' With its improved international reputation, Northern Ireland has recently witnessed rising numbers of tourists who come to appreciate the area's unique heritage. Attractions include cultural festivals, musical and artistic traditions, countryside and geographical sites of interest, pubs, welcoming hospitality and sports (especially golf and fishing). In 1987, pubs were allowed to open on Sundays. ===Languages=== The Mid Ulster English dialect of English language spoken in Northern Ireland shows influence from both the West Midlands (region) and Scotland, thereby giving it a distinct accent compared to Hiberno-English, along with the use of such Scots language words as ''wee'' for 'little' and ''aye'' for 'yes'. Some jocularly call this dialect phonetically by the name ''Norn Iron''. There are supposedly some minute differences in pronunciation between Protestants and Catholics, the best known of which is the name of the letter ''h'', which Protestants tend to pronounce as "aitch", as in British English, and Catholics tend to pronounce as "haitch", as in Hiberno-English. However, geography is a much more important determinant of dialect than ethnic background. English is by far the most widely spoken language in Northern Ireland. Under the Belfast Agreement, Irish language and Ulster Scots language have official recognition on a par with that of English. Often the use of the Irish language#Northern Ireland has met with the considerable suspicion of Unionists, who have associated it with the largely Catholic Republic of Ireland, and more recently, with the Irish republicanism in Northern Ireland itself Ulster Scots language comprises varieties of the Scots language spoken in Northern Ireland. Many claim it has become a separate language, descended from Scots in Scotland, whereas others question whether Scots is a separate language from English at all, or simply a collection of local dialects of Scottish and Northern Ireland Hiberno-English. Chinese language and Urdu are also spoken by Northern Ireland's Asian communities. According to the most recent census returns, Chinese is now the second most widely spoken language, though the 8000-strong Chinese community — while often referred to as the "third largest" community in Northern Ireland — is tiny by international standards. == See also == * List of Ireland-related topics * List of United Kingdom-related topics == Further reading == * Jonathan Bardon, ''A History of Ulster'' (Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1996) * Robert Kee, ''The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism'' (Penguin, 1972–2000), ISBN 0140291652 ==External links== * [http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/ Discover Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Tourist Board] * [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/ University of Ulster: Northern Ireland Conflict Archive] * [http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections Elections in Northern Ireland] * [http://www.onlineni.net Online NI] * [http://www.whiteimage.com Art gallery featuring Northern Irish artists and scenes] * [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/state/nations/ BBC Nations] History of Ireland * [http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/britishisles/ The British Isles] Independent view of Ireland and the UK * [http://www.walkingtree.com/ Mercator Atlas of Europe] Map of Ireland ("Irlandia") circa 1564 * [http://www.RecruitmentNI.com Jobs in Northern Ireland] * [http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/ Sutton Index of Deaths] Disputed territories Northern Ireland Home Rule in the United Kingdom History of Ireland ga:Tuaisceart Éireann ka:ჩრდილოეთი ირლანდია kw:Kledhbarth Iwerdhon simple:Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
''This is a selected entry on Template:March 24 selected anniversaries (may be in HTML comment)'' ----- ==Disputed Status?== I don't think we can really say that its status is disputed in a real sense, such as Palestine. Not a single country in the world recognizes Northern Ireland a part of the rest of the country politically, however much they might wish it. With the vote accepting the Belfast Agreement the claim in the Constitution of Ireland to ''the whole island of Ireland'' was changed to a declaration of aspiration. While groups such as Republican Sinn Féin might not have accepted this, or indeed any election north or south since 1922, the page shou'd be neutral, and showing the views of an extreme minority is not. The government of the Second Dáil accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which paved the way for the situation we have at the moment. I don't however see that any change I make will be accepted; we will probably continue an unstoppable reverting battle. --User:Henry Williams Jan 10, 2004, 0950 (UTC) Henry, be careful with phrases such as "Not a single country in the world recognizes Northern Ireland a part of the rest of the country politically ..." What country are you refering to? Do you mean the UK or the Republic of Ireland? User:Fergananim I think it is fairly obvious that he is stating that not a single country in the world doesn't recognise that NI is part of the UK. -Fobo == Stroke City == Quote: ''Derry, not Londonderry, is the formal name of the city, as passed by its local council and given the force of law in recent years.'' I'm pretty sure that no new Royal Charter has been issued for the City, and that therefore any name change does not have the force ''of law'', whatever the wishes of the Council. --User:paul ---- == Numbers == Firstly, get the terms right. The British didn't colonise Ireland because when the colonisation occured there was no 'Britain'. Britain as a state was formally created only with the merger of the English and Scottish kingdoms in the eighteenth century. It was the english colonisation of Ireland, albeit freuqently with Scottish colonisers. Number 2: The colonisation WAS brutal. All colonial powers of the period were brutal. The english colonisation of my country was no-more brutal than occured elsewhere, and had Ireland been in a position to colonise England, the odds are that we would have been as brutal as they were to us. Those were the times, unfortunately, regrettably but that was the reality, with each colonising state (and the United States of America was no exception in how it treated other states!) believing that it was 'civilised', 'morally superior' and doing 'God's will' to the native savages. In fact, as someone whose family fought British (yes British. We are talking after the 1707 Act of Union) rule, and as a historian, I have to observe that British rule, though frequently abusive, incompetent and rascist, was technically quite moderate by the nineteenth century by the prevailing standards of the time! A proper historian does not use loaded prejorative phrases to assess a time when the standards by which behaviour as judged were different, however wrong he in retrospect may think that behaviour was. User:Jtdirl :Certainly, colonisation becgan before 1707 when Great Britain was created, but the plantations were by no means exclusively or for that matter predominantly English as the Scots were a large part of these settlements. "British" would therefore seem a fair adjective being that of those from Britain in general whether or not it was politically unified at the time, but an alternative might be "English and Scottish", but then someone is bound to pull a Welshman out of the Hat. User:Dainamo 19:04, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC) Okay, but Ireland was not a country at the time of any of these raids or invasions. User:Fergananim ----- Tridesch the historian, what is "Holocost"? Did you mean Holocaust? I also didn't find the word "brutal" there. Why should it be here? --User:Maveric149 ----- Tridesch says: , touche on the spelling so you think the holocaust wasnt brutal? slavery was brutal, the holocaust was brutal, the colonization of northern ireland byt he british was brutal too. :IMO the Holocaust was brutal and so were many aspects of slavery. My POV aserts that the British also accomplished some fairly brutal acts too - but which country hasn't. But the IRA blowing up a bus with school children is also brutal, IMO. So to be fair we would have to say both side were brutal but this word is POV-charged. How about we stick to the facts at hand and let the reader make a decision on their own? Again, have you read our NPOV policy? --User:Maveric149 ------------ == Province == Removed ''the Province'' from the opening sentence, which read ''The Province of Northern Ireland''. Northern Ireland is not a province. There are four provinces in Ireland - Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht. Northern Ireland consists of six of the nine counties of the Province of Ulster. The term ''province'' is often used colloquially by one community, interchangably with the word ''Ulster''. But we cannot use it because # It reflects one community's use of language. This article needs to be NPOV and so should avoid using terms that are exclusive to one community. So we cannot call this article, ''Ulster'', ''the North of Ireland'' or ''the Province'' because all are agenda-driven terms. # As explained above, it is factually incorrect. User:Jtdirl 01:27 4 Jun 2003 (UTC) : So Northern Ireland, poltically, has no formal status (e.g., "province", "territory", "state") at all? It is just "a part" formally? --User:Menchi 02:22, Aug 5, 2003 (UTC) yup. Some critics of its existence used to call it a ''statelet'' but that too is POV. User:Jtdirl 04:53, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::Northern Ireland is a province in the sense of it being politically a part of the UK, but not a country. How else can it be defined? The four traditional provinces of Ireland in their current shape have no polictical meaning and even the cultural division is a bit blurry now. Northern Ireland, irrespective of views on this, is at this time a disttinct entity and may be correctly defined as a province. ---- I understand the combination of the Presbyterians with the Church of Ireland in the final column of the table, but where did the extra three percent of Catholics come from? -User:Smack 00:57 22 Jul 2003 (UTC) ---- == Population == The Page gives the impression that the Republic of Ireland has a population of 1.6 million when that population is Northern Ireland's :Good point. I've corrected that. User:Jtdirl 23:51, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC) ---- == Religious affiliation table == Something is wrong with the religious affiliation table. The third and fourth column are contradictory. Are Catholics 40.3% in 2001 or 43.8%? And why are the 9.9% "other religions" (are those only "other Protestant religions"?) and the 9% "not stated" (does this mean "Protestant, but not stated which Protestant"?) added to the Protestant total in the fourth column? --User:Wik 19:34, Nov 2, 2003 (UTC) :From what I can remember of the census returns, ''other religions'' are ''all'' other religions, not just christian religions, but are primarily christian. ''Not stated'' means those that refused to give a categorisation and left page blank, whether deliberately or accidentially, but the categorisation in most cases was easy to work out; many names in Northern Ireland indicate their community; ''Patrick O'Leary'' in West Belfast, for example, is 99% certain to be from the catholic community, ''Seymour Crawford'' in Lisburn 99% certain to be from the protestant community. Other questions also gave information that could clarify from which community a person who neglected to declare their categorisation belonged. There also was, if I remember correctly, a problem with the categorisation of 'Catholic' as 'catholic' can be interpreted in the Northern Ireland case as a political or religious designation, causing conflicting numbers at different parts of the census. But other questions could clarify ambiguities and work out where a non-designated person belonged. User:Jtdirl 21:05, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC) :: The differences are caused by the difference between 'religion' and 'community background'. An unbaptised atheist is a Catholic if he's called Seamus and lives up the Falls! User:Gerry Lynch 17:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) ---- The table design is very awkward. The ''All Protestant'' summation should just be a separate row in the table, highlighted differently, rather than the current way which is very strange. User:Daniel Quinlan 19:25, Dec 4, 2003 (UTC) ---- == Area == [http://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/keystatistics.html NISRA] state the land area as 14,160 sq km, not 13,843 as it currently says on Wikipedia. --User:Scronide 18:38, 2004 Apr 4 (UTC) == Norlin Airlann == Please, Norlin Airlann (as the Ullans name) appears on many governmental and quango web pages (search for it, please). Don't keep changing it to Scottish Scots or removing it. See [http://www.dcalni.gov.uk/allpages.asp?pname=leid] [http://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/us_theagency.asp] [http://www.artscouncil-ni.org/news/files/consult-us.doc] [http://www.policeombudsman.org/Publicationsuploads/ulsterscots1.pdf] etc. -- User:Kaihsu 21:36, 2004 Jun 29 (UTC) :Norlin Airland is made up nonsense. It may well be made up by quangos or whoever but Scots-speakers have never used it anywhere at any time. :Try finding it in both the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue and the Scottish National Dictionary (Which includes Scots in Ulster - read the Intro.) [http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/]. :Scots in Scotland and Ulster are the same language. Unfortunately certain circles can't be bothered learning the real language and make up gibberish. :See:[http://ww2.eblul.org:8080/eblul/Public/member_state_committ/british_committee/uk2/view] :The european charter from the Council of Europe[http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ListeDeclarations.asp?NT=148&CV=1&NA=&PO=999&CN=999&VL=1&CM=9&CL=ENG] :"b) The United Kingdom declares, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Charter that it recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language for the purposes of Part II of the Charter." :NOTE: _a_ regional or minority _language_ not two separate ones. :The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 defines Ullans as: "the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland." :The Good Friday Agreement simply refers to Ulster Scots without the qualifier 'language'.[http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.htm] :"3. All participants recognise the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity, including in Northern Ireland, the Irish language, Ulster-Scots and the languages of the various ethnic communities, all of which are part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland." : [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=217.225.26.59 User:217.225.26.59] 01:04, Aug 22, 2004 :: See also my comments on Talk:United Kingdom#\"Official languages\" and User talk:217.225.26.59 — User:OwenBlacker 00:27, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC) : I have added Norlin Airlann back, with a note. It appears in the documents – even if some thinks it made-up nonsense. — User:Kaihsu 17:58, 2004 Sep 19 (UTC) ::Norlin Airlann is perfectly acceptable. The official Ulster Scots name for Waterways Ireland is ''Watterweys Airlann'', as is always shown in their logo [http://www.waterwaysireland.org/images/logo.gif]. The other North-South institutions also use this spelling. I am removing the explanatory note. --User:Kwekubo 15:33, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC) :Just to make the point (i am not taking sides as i know little on the official spellings and status), but any versions of a states name used should have official status (within that state) if used over the data table. The data table is not the place for placing a states name in every language currently documented, if it is not official but common then consider using a footnote - keep wikipedia professional looking. User:Djegan See also Talk:United_Kingdom/Archive_1#Scots_language_name == Overly political? == While undoubtedly many readers will come to this page for its political content, there are many other worthy sides to Northern Ireland which could be mentionned. The page, to me, feels quite dark and threatening. I wouldn't choose to holiday in NI after reading it! Would anyone care to mention some of the more positive things NI has to offer e.g. cultural festivals, musical and artistic tradition, tourist attractions (Bushmills, giant's causeway...), countryside, pubs and hospitality. I know a couple of these have been relegated to a list at the bottom. Maybe a separate page for NI's political history is needed? : If you don't like the way it's written, get on there and change it. You have a very good point, but the point of Wikipedia is that users can edit things themselves. User:Gerry Lynch 17:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Re-NPOVing - Hun Nats/Taig Unionists=== This is a controversial page, so am giving warning! The phrase:
''Most Irish Catholics (of both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman origin) still support reunification, while strong studies have shown that many from the Protestant community (especially the Scotch-Irish Presbyeterian community which produced many famous Irish nationalist rebels in the pastlike Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy and Robert Emmett) are beginning to move over to the nationalist/republican side again. ''Is extremely POV - most surveys indicate that there are considerably more Catholics who wish to remain part of the UK than Protestants who want to join a United Ireland, and although the proportion of the latter has fallen dramatically in the past 10 years, the proportion of the former hasn't changed and remains tiny. (see just about every opinion poll produced in the history of NI, the annual NI Life and Times Surveys, etc.) Not to mention the fact that most Southerners couldn't care less if Belfast got nuked as long as the fallout stopped at Ravensdale! Also the point about Gaelic and Anglo-Norman Catholics is spurious and irrelevant. Any conscious difference between the Old English and the Gaelic Irish passed away about 250 years ago. It wouldn't enter into anyone's head to even think about it. User:Gerry Lynch 17:20, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) A further note: "''Most Irish Catholics (of both Gaelic and Anglo-Norman origin) still support reunification''". For once and for all, would someone please tell me when the hell the island of Ireland was united politically? Correct me if I am wrong but this never in fact occoured. I am from the south, and as far as I am concerned the Republic of Ireland is the only political entity that can be called Ireland; we no longer have a claim on the territory of Northern Ireland which is in the UK. IF someday the north wants to join the south, fine (just as long as we can vote on letting you in!) but don't dress this up as ''reunification''. Ireland has being a nation, never a united political country consisting of the entire island. And the distinction about Gaelic and Anglo-Normans ceased to apply hundreds of years ago. The overwhelming majority of Irish people are of both the Gael and Gall. Only an idiot would make a big deal out of it these days, as it simply does not apply. I am happy to be an utter mongrel descended from Gael, Gall, Sen-Gall, Vikings, Prods, Taigs, Dissenters, as well as Welsh, Scots, French, Norman and even ENGLISH!!! Mix them all up and you end up with an Irish person.User:Fergananim == Northern Ireland Flag == Someone on a talk page or in an edit comment (I think it was Morwen) said there is no flag for Northern Ireland. Well there is. It's the Cross of St George with the Hand of Ulster placed in the centre. Can we have it back please, at the head of the article? :Morwen is actually correct. The flag you are thinking of was the flag of the Parliament of Northern Ireland (i.e. the one that was got rid of in '72). It has no official status although many Unionists have adopted it as an unofficial flag. And it certainly has no cross-community consent.User:Gerry Lynch 12:36, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) So how about a section on NI flags - there's lots of them. :There is already an article - Flag of Northern Ireland, which just needs linking to. User:80.229.39.194 13:56, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) :Great idea. You know what to do! User:Gerry Lynch 14:15, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==OK, I've done it== Sorry to be so brutal but I had to do it as: * Gaels/Anglo-Normans – nobody even notices this sort of stuff. Really. Let’s not get too into racial purity ideas. * Sinn Féin supporters – an encyclopaedia is no the place to boast about how many votes you have. Save it for the talk boards and try and be a little bit more impartial. * Wolfe Tone was an Anglican of English background, not Ulster-Scots, and the Presbyterians (and especially offshoots like the Free Ps and Brethren) will be last people on Earth to support a United Ireland. Hell will freeze over first! Wishful thinking seriously at work here. * Six Counties – POV term, sorry. * Paisley isn’t a Presbyterian, he’s a Free Presbyterian. It makes a whole wide world of difference. * ‘free elections’ to be held soon – when was our last ‘unfree’ election? * ‘There is a small, usually silent, middle class minority of Irish Catholics who support union with Britain.’ – that’s almost certainly true, but they almost all vote SDLP/SF or Alliance. They don’t vote UUP and that’s something that’s worth pointing out. * ‘with Catholics beginning to use contraceptives, reunification will most likely only occur with consent from the Anglo-Saxon and Scotch-Irish Protestant community’- Hmmm, this comes from one of the sort of Prod who really thinks Catholics take direct instructions from the Pope. A bit smutty and not really fit for an encyclopaedia. The point is probably correct in macro terms, although the cause of the collapse in birth rates all over Europe (including among Ulster Protestants) is more complex than contraception). * Party structures in GB may well have their roots in social class – but the class basis of politics is weakening in just about every major democracy. There’s no evidence that NI is going down that road, and certainly arguable whether class based politics are a good thing. * Catholic UUP Assembly members – oul’ John Gorman didn’t stand for re-election, and the one off Catholic Unionist (e.g. Sir Denis Henry, first Attorney General of NI) and Prod Nats are nothing new. But they tend to be one offs. * The British Conservative do contest elections in NI – they might not win any, but that’s a different story. And the UUP have no formal links with the Tories, either.User:Gerry Lynch 12:35, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==Kilometres or not== Picking up on the Kilometres versus miles point (edits and reversions on 20th July): Kilometres are obviously the preferred unit for tabular data of the sort in this article. Use of standard units enables comparisons between countries and the like. Their use in a scientific or geographical context is clearly beneficial. However, I suggest there is little or no benefit to their use - or preference - in less formal text of the sort that introduces this article. Despite so-called metrication in the UK kilometres, and by extension sq. kilometres, have not been adopted by the man in the street. They should not, therefore be preferred in written, less formal text, in the British context. One would not expect the text of an article on Northern Ireland to be written in American English, so why should non-British units of measure, especially the little used kilometre, be given priority over the extensively used mile? If ever Kilometres come to be used on British (and Northern Irish) roads then I'll perhaps revise my point-of-view. I don't see what the border with RoI has got to do with it, even if they do use kilometres on the roads in the South. See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style and Wikipedia:Measurements_Debate for lots more on this. User:Arcturus 18:49, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) :Arcturus, to quote from the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29.
Areas of land should be given in km², which is entered as km². This form is preferable to km2, which adds extra line leading. Smaller areas in m² etc. Volumes in m³, cm³ etc. Note that the compact superscript style works only for 1, 2 and 3 (unless you use numeric UTF-8 codes &8304; for superscript zero and &8308; to &8313; for superscript 4 to 9). This means that the style has to be used when general superscripts are required, as in the examples below.:Citing in km² also means you can link to the area comparisons meaningfully, which you have just reminded me to do. :As for whether the man in the street uses metric or imperial units - we all know these things are a bit of a mess in the UK and people can be fluent in metric in one area and entirely ignorant in another. The article cites both measures and I didn't see any reason to change it. '''(You didn't, someone else did).''' User:Arcturus 19:44, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) :The border does matter - the average person in Northern Ireland is more likely to deal with kilometres on roads on a regular basis than the average person in Great Britain.User:Gerry Lynch 19:23, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) Gerry, Yes I noticed the quote in the style manual but I was wondering whether it actually meant '...if you use square kilometres then use this format...' The bullet points which preceded the quote perhaps support this, especially the fourth one: *In scientific contexts, such as physics and chemistry, use SI units. Unless for any historic reference or other particular reason, it is not necessary to state American or Imperial units in parentheses. *If using American or Imperial units, give the metric equivalent as a courtesy. *If using metric units, remember that many readers will not know what you mean and will be aided by the equivalent in American or Imperial units. *Equivalents should be given to the same level of precision as the original measurement, for example, "the moon is 250,000 miles (400,000 km) from Earth", not "402,336 km". *If the quantity is always given in one form, you need not perform any conversion at all. The style guide does state that you should use units appropriate to the locality and gives alternatives for distance, but as you point out, not explicity for area, which seems a little strange. Good point about the average person from NI having greater exposure to Km than someone from the rest of the UK. Anyway, I suppose this particular issue is not the most important one to dwell on in the overall Northern Ireland debate. User:Arcturus 19:44, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) :No more or less important than anything else! We don't spend all our time talking about the troubles! While I was cycling home from work (don't ask - yes I am a wikipediholic!) it hit me than the man in the street neither uses ''square'' miles nor ''square'' km very much. To most people (me included except for some reason I've always known NI was abt 14,000 km²) these things are meaningless without a comparison table. I know what a square mile or a square kilometre is but 100,000 don't make much sense unless I sit down and work it out. User:Gerry Lynch 21:31, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==To user 62.253.226.1== If you're going to make major changes on the political tone of an article, you may find it best to discuss them here, and get consent from other users, first. That way it's less likely your edits will be reverted. User:Gerry Lynch 16:03, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC) == National Anthem == Quote: "Similarly, there is no longer a national anthem; A Londonderry Air was the national anthem." Is this accurate? I was under the impression that this was never the official national anthem. == Government of NI == The opening paragraphs referred to the suspension in 1972, the troubles and the ceasfires. The sidebar mentioned 'First Minister. The NI-Assembly is mentioned only in reference to the Womens Coalition, and the the 1998 Agreement only under Languages. Since the agreement was a major event in the history of NI and defines how the current Govt is to be operated, any reader of the encylopedia would expect it to be mentioned. Therefore I have added one sentence to the opening paragraphs. User:Rye1967 03:39, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC) == Anthem == Is the anthem really Das Lied der Deutschen? I don't recall hearing Deutschland Uber Alles in NI. User:62.49.5.21 16:57, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC) :It isn't- nor is the top level domain .de - why can't the info box be amended? The [http://www.sdlp.ie SDLP] uses a '.ie' address, but I can't see anyone using '.de', unless they want Anschluss! :: You mean, why can't you edit Template:Northern Ireland infobox? I don't know. Maybe your browser is broken? :: User:Jdforrester User_talk:Jdforrester 03:21, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC) == NPOV == I have inserted the NPOV tag because I think this page goes too far on the Unionist/Loyalist idea that "Northern Ireland" is a legitimate legal entity. The last democratic vote in Ireland was for the Second Dail, the military occupation of the six counties is illegitimate, Ireland is one, united country, with its own army, the Irish Republican Army, who have been fighting the British occupation for decades (with other republican organizations fighting before that). User:Ruy Lopez 20:55, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC) : ''Your'' POV is not one shared by the majority of people in Ireland, irrespective of what side of the border they live on, only by Republican Sinn Fein, which refuses to recognise the Republic of Ireland, whose Constitution was amended to allow for Irish unity through consent, and was approved by a referendum in 1998. The so-called "Irish Republican Army" is banned in the Republic as well as the North, and many of its leaders were sent to the gallows by the government of Eamon De Valera in the 1940s. User:Quiensabe 17:59, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC) Hey Ruy! Does that mean that every vote and election result held in the Irish Free State and the Republic of Ireland since 1922 is illigitimate??? Say it ain't so! Specking as an Irishman and a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, my county is united, all twenty-six countys of it. We have no claims on any other territorys (except maybe Rockall). The so-called army you refer do are outlawed in my country, and very few of my fellow citizens see them as anything other than the criminal scum they are. If that were not the case, the part of the UK called Northern Ireland would have become part of the (United) Republic of Ireland in the south a long time ago. It ain't, and guns and bombs are not gonna change that, so get used to it. What you are supporting is an organisation that wants nothing less than the complete and utter overthrow of my country, her institutions and government. That sounds like terrorism to me. User:Fergananim :Ireland is Ireland, an island by the Atlantic Ocean, and one of the nations of the British Isles. Politically, part of that country has remained within the United Kingdom, as Northern Ireland. Another part left, and is now the Republic of Ireland. What is the problem with recognising this? It doesn't mean someone from Northern Ireland need be any less Irish (not in the sense of being of the Republic of Ireland, but in an apolitical sense of being from Ireland), regardless of their British citizenship. Anyone in Northern Ireland is in the same situation that anyone from Ireland was in prior to partition (i.e. from the United Kingdom, but from Ireland within that). Are all those born in the 800 years before partition not Irish despite having been within the United Kingdom (or subject to the monarch)? :Unfortunately because of the ROI acting as "Ireland", some people from NI may not be happy with being called Irish, in the sense that a Canadian may be unhappy with being called "American" (technically correct, but not in the citizenship sense). It could also be mistaken as someone from NI that has citizenship of the Republic of Ireland (also called Irish citizenship). :If it wasn't for politicians screwing up, it would be entirely of no consequence whether someone from the island of Ireland (i.e. an Irish person) was from the United Kingdom or not. :User:Zoney ♣ User talk:Zoney 10:17, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Flag== Northern Ireland is the only country/territory that does not have a flag image. While it may be a disputed point on what is the flag, at the very least, the Union Flag should be shown. What do NI football team use? User:Astrotrain 20:44, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC) For information on the official status of the Union Flag, please see my submission on the "Flag of Northern Ireland" page. I hope it's clear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Northern_Ireland - User:JimJim ==Reinstated paragraph== The following paragraph was removed. ''Once established under the ''Government of Ireland Act 1920'', Northern Ireland was structured geographically (see gerrymander) so as to provide a permanent unionist majority in key geographic areas, with predominantly nationalist areas producing unionist majorities through the granting of voting rights exclusively to property owners (where most Catholics were renting and most Protestants were owners). Local government wards (local government constituencies) also had boundaries constructed to ensure Protestants won most seats and so controlled local government in areas like Derry. Anger of local government control by Protestants, and the awarding of housing to Protestants to ensure Unionist majorities in areas with large Catholic populations, played a significant part in creating the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, with a sit-in by nationalist politician Austin Currie in a house granted to an unmarried protestant woman ahead of a large homeless Catholic family triggering off the movement. '' I have reinstated it. It is factually correct. (BTW, lest anyone think otherwise, I am not a Sinn Féin-style Irish republican, nor am I anti-unionist. I have been accused on wikipedia of being "pro-British" - once a "British apologist", for refusing to write nationalist/republican propaganda into articles!) Studies by Paul Bew and in particular the universally acclaimed the late Professor John H. Whyte (Queens University Belfast and University College Dublin), whose books, notably ''Interpreting Northern Ireland'' (1990) are regarded across the political divide as the most authoritative on Northern Ireland, state categorically that local government gerrymandering did exist. It was also condemned by British politicians. Its existence has also subsequently been admitted to by leading unionists, including David Trimble, whose "cold house for Catholics" comment describing Northern Ireland, was partly in reference to the infamous gerrymandering. Indeed so blatent was the gerrymandering that one British Home Secretary called it "astonishing". What happened was simple. In places where large nationalist majorities exist, wards were constructed to keep all the nationalists together. Some wards would be 95% nationalist, but massive nationalist wards would only produce a minimal number of seats (the maximum available for a ward). Had boundaries been drawn neutrally, that population would have been broken up into several wards because of geography, with each ward having nationalist majorities, producing far more nationalist councillors than could exist when nationalists were crammed into a couple of massive wards. Elsewhere, nationalist and unionist areas were put together in wards where it was arranged that unionists would outnumber nationalists. Derry/Londonderry was a notorious example of this gerrymander. In addition, the awarding of housing was arranged to give unionists houses in 50:50 nationalist/unionist wards, again producing over time unionist majorities. Finally voting in local government was by means of property ownership, with in some cases the owners of properties having multiple votes and the tenants of properties none. As economic wealth in Northern Ireland was until recently years more associated with unionists than nationalists (ie, there were more middle class property-owning unionists per proportion of the population, and more working class nationalists without property per proportion of the population) a voting register based on property rights unduly favoured one class, and so the group with most members of that class, unionists. If I remember Whyte's lectures correctly (and a leading Ulster Unionist made the same point to me a couple of months ago, as did someone in the Northern Ireland Office when my group of students met senior officials on a visit to Northern Ireland - we also met the SDLP, UUP, Sinn Féin, Alliance and DUP, etc) Northern Ireland was the last part of the UK still to have a property based electoral register, such a voting regulation having been abolished in the recent of the UK in or around 1945. It was re-introduced in the North for local government by the Stormont government, against the advice of Lord Carson, who correctly predicted that any institutionalised discrimination would destabilise Northern Ireland and prove a mistake. Sir James Craig, to Carson's horror, thought otherwise. Voters by property (ie, votes for rate-payers) was one of the first things abolished by Britain when it took running Northern Ireland. The entire Northern Ireland local government system was re-organised in the 1970s, on the excuse that local government was being reorganised in England and Wales by Heath's government. Leading unionists today regard the gerrymandering of local government has perhaps the biggest mistake ever committed by the Stormont government. They say that the whole civil rights campaign owed its origins to that mistake. Had local government not been gerrymandered so blatently Stormont could have survived. But that the entire edifice of government had been completely discredited by what was effectively rigged local elections. The gerrymandering provided the spark that brought the old Northern Ireland down. And we have all had to live, for good or ill, with the consequences. User:Jtdirl 23:31, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) Below is a section of ''How much discrimination was there under the unionist regime, 1921-68?'' by John H Whyte. ''The fate of Londonderry County Borough aroused the most bitterness. It had a substantial, and growing, Catholic majority - by 1961 Catholics were more than 60 per cent even among the adult population (Hewitt, 1981: 366). Yet unionists won back control under the ward division imposed in 1923, and when, after some years, it looked as if the nationalists might capture one of the unionist wards, the boundaries were redrawn so as to perpetuate unionist rule (Buckland, 1979: 243-6). '' ''The stock unionist defence for the post-1922 arrangements (Walmsley, 1959: 9-10; UUP, 1969: 12) is that local government electoral boundaries were drawn so as to take account not only of population but of ratable value. This was justified on the ground that those who paid the most rates were entitled to the biggest say in the conduct of local government. Thus unionists, who were on average richer than nationalists, could legitimately find themselves more favourably represented. This, however, is a dubious defence. Democratic theory does not in general permit that the rich should be more strongly represented than the poor; the unionists themselves did not make such a provision in parliamentary elections. Furthermore, as time went by, it became less and less true that large ratepayers contributed the bulk of local government finance. Grants from the Northern Ireland government became increasingly important, until by 1969 they provided three-quarters of the revenue of local authorities (Cameron, 1969: para. 141). Thus, as the Cameron commission concluded (ibid.), 'such validity as this argument ever possessed is one which is rapidly losing any force which it mighthave had'. If electoral boundaries were drawn so as to over-represent the rich, this was not a refutation of the charge of gerrymandering: it was a description of how the gerrymandering was achieved. '' ''In any case, attempts to defend the post-1922 arrangements crumble before Buckland's (1979) discoveries in official papers. He shows that the Northern Ireland government did not even attempt to be fair. The 'sole concern' of the Ministry of Home Affairs was 'how to give effect to the views of the Unionist rank and file' (ibid.: 233), and the reorganisation in controversial districts was 'virtually dictated by local Unionists' (ibid.: 239). The Derry redistribution of 1936 was designed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, who did the job better than the Derry unionists had been able to do it for themselves. 'Throughout the discussions between ministry officials and Londonderry Unionists there was never any question that the government should not assist the latter' (ibid.: 245). Buckland's conclusions are particularly weighty because his previous writings (on unionism in the period 1886-1921) had shown him as sympathetic to the unionist cause. '' ''To sum up on electoral arrangements. Charges that parliamentary constituencies were gerrymandered against the nationalists have only slight validity, whatever other criticisms might be made of the effects of abolishing PR. The peculiarities of local government franchise were also of little effect. But when it comes to gerrymandering of local government boundaries, criticism is much more firmly based. Nationalists were manipulated out of control in a number of councils where they had a majority of electors. This is one of the clearest areas of discrimination in the whole field of controversy. '' Overall, Whyte challenges many nationalist claims of widespread institutional discrimination against them. However in the area of the gerrymandering of local government wards (the specific focus of the paragraph I have re-inserted) he finds nationalist criticism "much more firmly based." And for those who do not who of Whyte's credentials, the late John H. Whyte was universally regarded as one of the most neutral, most independent, and most fact-based writers on the Northern Ireland problem. Unfortunately John died in 1990, so we lost the chance of experiencing his thorough objective analysis of the peace process and of the Good Friday Agreement. User:Jtdirl 23:31, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==Removed lines== A couple of lines in this article were irrelevant, or to detailed in this context and belonged elsewhere. * Going into detail on the allegation that Adams and McGuinness are on the Army Council is irrelevant here. That has to be in wikipedia articles, but is too detailed a fact in this type of article. (In here, it is really a footnote.) All that needs to be said is that some people believe there is a shared leadership between SF and the IRA. The ''detail'' of who is allegedly on what belongs in articles on the IRA, Sinn Féin, the Peace Process, etc. * The stuff about Sinn Féin's electoral achievements in the Republic is completely irrelevant here, let alone details of who was elected and the numbers. All that needs to be said is that SF also runs for election in the Republic and so unlike other parties is a 32 county party. Any more detail than that belongs in an article on Sinn Féin and the Republic of Ireland, not here. Apart from that, the opening of the article was somewhat weakly written and needed tidying up. (It is rather a basic requirement to point out that Northern Ireland is located on the island of Ireland. How the heck did was that elementary fact missed?) Also talking about Ireland being ruled from Westminster post 1801 is misleading. Westminster was the location of the lawmaking. Government was carried out from Whitehall and ceremonial functions from the Palace. If you are going to be specific about mentioning Westminster, you can't leave out Whitehall. (It is a bit like mentioning Congress but forgetting the White House.) This article doesn't need those specifics. All you need to say is London. User:Jtdirl 23:57, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC) :As regards the intro: ::''It is rather a basic requirement to point out that Northern Ireland is located on the island of Ireland. How the heck did was that elementary fact missed?'' :I doubt that it was. No doubt it was removed at some page. Some would like to forget that apart from the political situation, Northern Ireland is nearly exactly that (or rather, the region is Northeastern Ireland). :User:Zoney ♣ User talk:Zoney 17:40, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC) Is it not obvious that Northern Ireland, from the name, is in the North of Ireland? Is there a need to state the obvious? User:Astrotrain 13:48, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC) Unfortunately yes there is a need. A shame really, but there you are. User:Ben W Bell 14:07, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==stamp?== I don't suppose anyone can find a picture of a NI postage stamp - one of the little definitives which differ from the English ones by the emblem in the corner? --User:Doric Loon 16:11, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) :There's a difference? I never noticed a difference between them I must admit. A standard first class stamp in England is the same as one in Northern Ireland. Unless something has changed, I admit it's been 10 years since I bought stamps in Northern Ireland. User:Ben W Bell 16:30, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Sneaked back edits== The same user has been editing this and other pages under various numbers and names, and when he is challenged disappears only to reappear as a new person and re-enter the same stuff. It looks like he has done it again. One of the things he does on all Irish articles is call Irish provinces Irish "traditional/historic'' provinces, as if to apply they don't exist, when anyone who has ever consulted a map can see they still do. He does that to claim that the province of Ulster (9 countries) doesn't exist, therefore implying the unionist tendency to call Northern Ireland 'Ulster' is de facto the modern correct meaning. It is a highly controversial claim. Keep an eye out for his next visit. I also re-inserted the section about disputed geographic nomenclature. Whomever recategorised them as ''slightly nationalist'' and ''slightly unionist'' is seriously misunderstanding the strength of feeling the usage of the various terms arose. I once saw a fight break out in a Northern bar in Belfast when some loyalists over from Scotland for the twelfth went into it and began to talk loudly about "Ulster" in a pub mainly full of people who call it the "Six Counties". Some years ago when meeting members of the youth wings of the various political parties, the meeting broke up when a southerner innocently talked of the 'six counties'. The Unionist delegates walked out in protest. The next day, when meeting a Sinn Féin delegation, they made a big rumpus when some of the southern delegation talked about "Northern Ireland", hissing back at us the words "Occupied Six Counties" everytime ''NI'' was mentioned. During their presentation, they made a big point of saying "six counties" very loudly everytime they mentioned the Northern state, as if to say 'its the six counties, and don't any of you free staters forget it!" The whole trip became a linguistic nightmare, with everyone reminded not to say 'six counties' at the meeting in Stormont Castle and in UUP HQ, not to say 'Northern Ireland' in SInn Féin HQ, to use 'North of Ireland' with the SDLP, and what to say and what not to say when brought by the various delegations to loyalist, republican, nationalist and unionist areas. (It got so bad when staying one area we were warned to go to the chipper at one end of the street - nationalist/catholic - rather than the other - loyalist/protestant - because southerners with southern accents would not be welcome in the loyalist one. "But I'm a southern protestant!" one of the women announced. "They'll presume you are a papist" she was told. "Pretend to be a catholic for the weekend and you'll be safe" she was advised!!! Fear
Northern Ireland
{| style="margin:0 auto;" align=center width=75% class="toccolours" |align=center| United Kingdom | Ireland | Northern Ireland | Districts of Northern Ireland |- |align=center| Antrim Borough Council | Ards Borough Council | Armagh City and District Council | Ballymena Borough Council | Ballymoney | Banbridge District Council | Belfast City Council | Carrickfergus Borough Council | Castlereagh Borough Council | Coleraine Borough Council | Cookstown District Council | Craigavon Borough Council | Derry City Council | Down District Council | Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council | Fermanagh District Council | Larne Borough Council | Limavady Borough Council | Lisburn City Council | Magherafelt District Council | Moyle District Council | Newry and Mourne District Council | Newtownabbey Borough Council | North Down Borough Council | Omagh District Council | Strabane District Council |- |align=right| |}
Northern Ireland
#redirect Template:Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Ireland United Kingdom
Northern Ireland
The article in the Category: "Northern Ireland" entitled "Districts of Northern Ireland" should be deleted and replaced with "Local Councils in Northern Ireland". These districts are properly Local Council areas. See the definite (?) NI Government website OnlineNI[1] (http://www.onlineni.net/index/about_ni_gov/local_councils.htm) User:Ardfern 16:38, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)
See other meanings of words starting from letter:
N
NA | NB | NC | ND | NE | NF | NG | NH | NI | NJ | NK | NL | NM | NO | NP | NR | NS | NT | NU | NW | NX | NY | NZ |Words begining with Northern_Ireland:
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland
Northern_Ireland_(European_Parliament_constituency)
Northern_Ireland_Act
Northern_Ireland_Act_(1998)
Northern_Ireland_Act_1998
Northern_Ireland_Assembley
Northern_Ireland_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Election,_1998
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Election,_2003
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_election,_2003
Northern_Ireland_Assembly_Elections,_2003
Northern_Ireland_coast_and_countryside
Northern_Ireland_Electricity
Northern_Ireland_Embroidery_Guild
Northern_Ireland_Executive
Northern_Ireland_football_team
Northern_Ireland_general_election,_1921
Northern_Ireland_geography_stubs
Northern_Ireland_infobox
Northern_Ireland_Labour_Party
Northern_Ireland_Legislative_Assembly
Northern_Ireland_media
Northern_Ireland_MPs
Northern_Ireland_MPs
Northern_Ireland_national_football_team
Northern_Ireland_national_football_team
Northern_Ireland_Office
Northern_Ireland_Parliament
Northern_Ireland_parliament
Northern_Ireland_Parliament_building
Northern_Ireland_peace_process
Northern_Ireland_people
Northern_Ireland_Police
Northern_Ireland_Policing_Board
Northern_Ireland_political_parties
Northern_Ireland_politicians
Northern_Ireland_politicians
Northern_Ireland_politics
Northern_Ireland_Pound
Northern_Ireland_Pound
Northern_Ireland_Railways
Northern_Ireland_Railway_locomotives
Northern_Ireland_referendum,_1973
Northern_Ireland_referendum,_1998
Northern_Ireland_Secretary
Northern_Ireland_Sign_Language
Northern_Ireland_Transport_Holding_Company
Northern_Ireland_Unionist_Party
Northern_Ireland_Women's_Coalition
Northern_Ireland_Women’s_Coalition
Northern_Ireland_Womens_Coalition
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