Расклад и эволюция политических сил Северной Ирландии в период обострения конфликта (1969 - 1996 гг.) и на современном этапе (1997 - 2000 гг.)

Abstract

The Northern Ireland conflict, one of the longest, though nowadays slightly shadowed antagonisms, attracts special attention in the context of contemporary European processes. Such conflicts strike a too sharply dissonant chord against the «civilized», outwardly successful background of European integration and, at the same time, appear to be more than the internal problem of one state only but a challenge to the whole United Europe as well. The analysis of this conflict is important not only for projecting development prospects for Great Britain, Ireland and Ulster, situated on their border. It is also important for understanding the very nature of hard ethnic and confessional struggle between these European communities which are otherwise rather close. That is why, being careful enough about all possible attempts to extrapolate the analysis results from one problem to another, we might consider Ulster antagonism between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority as a pattern for research into such a contemporary intercommunal conflict. In its turn, the Northern Ireland conflict development cannot be understood without characterizing major political parties and forces on both sides of the communal divide. The analysis of the growth and decline of different parties and movements helps to understand the core trends of the conflict. It is also relevant to pay due attention to the role of terror in conflict development, as well as to review the aspects of terrorist tactics of several Northern Ireland's paramilitary organizations, first of all, of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), in their change, and to point out the reasons for such change. The attempt of detailed analysis is one of the tasks of the present paper. This work includes the review of Ulster political parties and paramilitary organizations during conflict escalation and at the current stage, though the period taken is only an episode of their long evolution which has began many decades (or sometimes even centuries) ago and is still going on. That is why this work provides a brief survey of main political parties of Ireland starting from the XIXth century. As this paper has indicated, it was the extreme wing that has dominated in both communities for a long time. Catholic extremists, and first of all the IRA, considered both the Unionists and the British state as enemies and opted for violence as their principal tool in the struggle for united Ireland. The consideration of the IRA campaign of the last decade leads to conclude that economic targeting in a modern urban-industrial state gives certain paramilitary groups an opportunity to discover all the vulnerability of such state. It isa rather significant feature of modern paramilitary activities, which has become the object of research only recently. In this view the IRA campaign has much in common with terrorist actions of radical groups in Italy, the USA and other developed states of the world. This makes it possible to speak about defining a pattern model with due attention to all the differences between such examples. Some researchers use the expression "asymmetric warfare against a state" in connection with such contemporary trends. The end of British direct rule in Northern Ireland in December 1999 and formation — for the first time in Ulster's history — of the coalition government with the representation of major political parties of the Catholic community (which would have been incredible j u s t several years ago) will have an effect on situation development fully comparable to that of the Good Friday (Stormont) agreement of April 10, 1998. And it goes without saying that it would change the political map of Northern Ireland. But nevertheless, these undoubtedly positive tendencies still do not mean the real settlement of the Ulster conflict, A long and dramatic road with a lot of set-backs of antagonism is still ahead. And much on this road will depend on the future balance of political parties. That is why it is important to consider their evolution up to our time, which was the main aim of the present work.