Northern Ireland

Official name: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (note - Great Britain includes England, Scotland, and Wales)

Capital city: London

Internet country code: .uk

Flag description: Blue field with the red cross of Saint George (patron saint of England) edged in white superim­posed on the diagonal red cross of Saint Patrick (patron saint of Ireland), which is superimposed on the diagonal white cross of Saint Andrew (patron saint of Scotland); properly known as the Union Flag, but commonly called the Union Jack; the design and colors (especially the Blue Ensign) have been the basis for a number of other flags including other Commonwealth countries and their con­stituent states or provinces, and British overseas territo­ries

National anthem: “God Save the Queen”

Geographical description: Western Europe, islands includ­ing the northern one-sixth of the island of Ireland between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea, northwest of France

Total area: 93,000 sq. mi. (243,000 sq. km.)

Climate: Temperate; moderated by prevailing southwest winds over the North Atlantic Current; more than onehalf of the days are overcast

Nationality: noun: Briton(s), British (collective plural); adjective: British

Population: 60,776,238 (July 2007 CIA est.)

Ethnic groups: English 83.6%, Scottish 8.6%, Welsh 4.9%, Northern Irish 2.9%, African 2%, Indian 1.8%, Pakistani 1.3%, mixed 1.2%, other 1.6%

Languages spoken: English, Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic

Religions: Christian (Anglican, Roman Catholic, Presbyte­rian, Methodist) 71.6%, Muslim 2.7%, Hindu 1%, other 1.6%, unspecified or none 23.1%

(Ulster), an administrative-political unit in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; situated in the northeastern part of the island of Ireland. Area, 14,100 sq km. Belfast is the principal city. Administratively, Northern Ireland has, since 1975, consisted of districts. Population, 1.5 million (1971), 55 percent urban.

About two-thirds of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland are Protestants, who are descended from English and Scottish emigrants and who make up most of the population in the east. The rest are Catholics, who are relatively more numerous in the rural area in the west. Despite a high natural rate of population growth—10–11 per 1,000—especially in Catholic families, the population has grown relatively slowly because of emigration, which has abated to some extent only during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Internal migrations have typically gone from west to east, to Belfast and its environs.

Economy. Northern Ireland is economically less advanced than the other regions of the United Kingdom. Its manufacturing industry produces less per capita output, family income is lower, and wages are lower, only four-fifths of the average British wage. Northern Ireland also has the highest unemployment rate in the United Kingdom—8.1 percent (1972).

Agriculture plays a comparatively large role, employing 9.9 percent of the work force, a figure three times higher than the average for the country as a whole. The extraction industry is developed only to the extent of obtaining salt, peat, and building materials. The manufacturing industry, which employs 31.8 percent of the economically active population, has traditionally emphasized the shipbuilding, linen, and food-processing industries; newer industries include the production of synthetic fibers, for example, in Antrim, Kilroot, Coleraine, and Carrick-fergus, as well as Londonderry.

Industry is concentrated in the east. Greater Belfast has most of the transport machine building, including shipbuilding, and most of the electrical, printing, and paper industries. However, it has less than 30 percent of the textile and garment industry; the garment industry is more characteristic of Londonderry, and the linen industry is dispersed throughout many small cities.

Agriculture has emphasized animal husbandry, which accounts for nine-tenths of the value of agricultural production in Northern Ireland. Specifically, it has emphasized the raising and fattening of cattle (more than 1.6 million head in 1974), swine breeding (0.9 million), sheep raising (about 1 million), and poultry husbandry (13 million). Most of the cattle, bacon, and eggs go to the British market. Potatoes are widely grown throughout Northern Ireland, and vegetables and fruits around Belfast, in the Lagan River valley, and to the south of Lough Neagh. Many farms are quite small. Farms with fewer than 20 hectares (ha) make up 78.7 percent of all farms; 30 percent of these have fewer than 6 ha. Farms with 20 to 60 ha make up 18 percent of all farms, and those with more than 60 ha, 1.2 percent. Land is usually rented from year to year.

History. The history of Northern Ireland before the 20th century is inseparable from that of Ireland as a whole. The human presence in Northern Ireland dates from the sixth millennium B.C.; Celtic tribes first appeared in the fourth century B.C. During the early Middle Ages what is now Northern Ireland was part of the independent Irish kingdom of Ulster, which in the late 12th century was formally subordinated to the English crown, although real power still rested with the clan chieftains (seeULSTER).

With the establishment of English rule over all of Ireland in the 16th century, what is now Northern Ireland became a part of the province of Ulster. During the Reformation, Protestantism sank deep roots in Ulster, with only a few Catholics remaining. In the rest of Ireland, however, Catholicism remained dominant.

In the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, concluded after the Irish people’s war of national liberation against English imperialism from 1919 to 1921, Great Britain agreed to grant most of Ireland dominion status (in 1949 this part became the Republic of Ireland) but retained its rule over Northern Ireland. Here, in an area torn from the rest of Ireland, a formally autonomous province—Northern Ireland—came into being as a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However, the Northern Ireland Parliament was not given power over basic questions of domestic and foreign policy, including questions of legislation; it could consider only local questions, such as health care, education, and transportation.

The dominant political party in Northern Ireland was the Unionist Party, a close ally of the British Conservatives and an advocate of unconditional union with Great Britain. Drawing support from imperialist circles in Great Britain, the Unionists installed a regime in Northern Ireland that was incompatible with democratic rights and liberties; they consciously encouraged religious strife between Protestants and Catholics.

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, amid widespread police repression, an acute political crisis erupted in Northern Ireland, a crisis provoked by the masses’ economic difficulties and by social and political discrimination against Catholic toilers. Inresponse to the terror unleashed by ultra-right-wing Protestant extremists, the toiling masses initiated a civil rights struggle. In 1969, British troops were sent to Northern Ireland; by 1973 more than 20,000 had been sent.

Since 1972 the British government, while continuing to rely on the use of armed force, has engaged in political maneuvering whose goal is to mitigate the crisis in Northern Ireland. In 1972, for example, it prorogued the Parliament; since then, it has maintained “direct rule” from London, which gives the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland unlimited plenipotentiary powers. It convoked the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 but prorogued it in 1974. It also convoked the Constitutional Convention in 1975 and prorogued it in 1976. As the Communist Party of Ireland (a union of Communists from the north and south of Ireland) and the Communist Party of Great Britain have repeatedly pointed out, these maneuvers are ineffective, for Great Britain’s ruling circles do not want genuinely democratic reforms, reforms that would take into consideration the interests of all social strata in Northern Ireland, including the Catholic minority.