Hillsborough vs. Belfast essays

Hillsborough vs. Belfast essays This paper will deal with the Northern Irish conflict, focusing mainly on the two Anglo-Irish Agreements. The most recent and well-known is the Belfast Agreement or the Good Friday Agreement of April 10th, 1998, the older agreement is the Hillsborough Agreement of November 25th, 1985, which was signed by both prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald. Firstly a short introduction to the conflict in general will be given, after which the agreements will both be discussed in more detail. The events leading up to both agreements and the consequences will then be analyzed and compared. The goal of this paper is to find an answer to the following research question: What factors made the Belfast Agreement more stable and why, and is there anything that can be said about the future of the peace process by deduction from this comparison? This question will be answered after the comparison between the two agreements in the conclusion, which will be followed by a discussion in which the conclusions drawn in this paper will be scrutinized. For further reading suggestions and a source list, I would like to refer you to the last page, where a comprehensive list of all used sources will be given. In 1170, more than a century after the Norman Conquest of England, Henry II of England claimed Ireland and attempted to attach it to his kingdom. He succeeded in establishing control in a small area surrounding Dublin, but the different Irish clans held strong and the major expansion of English dominion did not take place until the sixteenth century. In 1609 military conquest had established English rule over most of the island, save the province of Ulster. The clans in Ulster fought long and hard, but lost and their leaders left for Europe. The land was confiscated and distributed among English settlers. A hundred years later only about five percent of the land of Ulster ...