The First Colony Part I

Press TV (2025)

Film Review

Ireland was the first colony of Great Britain, which had one point colonized 25% of the world. It’s here the British developed the “partitioning” strategy of resisting democratic resistance to colonization – partitioning off Northern Ireland, as they would later partition India and Palestine.

The first British invasion and occupation of Ireland occurred in the 12th century, with the British carving up the island into feudal estates. In the process they made large numbers of Irish peasants landless.

The 1649 invasion by Oliver Cromwell brought all of Ireland under British control. Over the next 150 years, the British encouraged Protestants from Scotland to resettle in northern Ireland, passing lows that denied Catholics the right to vote and required them to pay tax to Protestant churches.

In 1798 extreme poverty and an extremely harsh penal code led to the first of many rebellions, led by the Society of United Irishmen. Irish revolutionary fervor steadily increased during the 19th century, driven in large part by

• 1801 – the Act of Union dissolving the Irish parliament and bringing Ireland under direct British rule.
• 1845-51 – the Great Hunger (deliberately misnamed the Potato Famine), caused by confiscation of Irish grain by UK troops for export to England, leading to the death of one million Irish natives and emigration of millions more.

In 1915, the brutal arrest and executive of the Easter Rising leaders blossomed into a massive public campaign for full independence.

Following the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence, southern Ireland seceded from the UK and became the Irish Free State. It was declared a full independent republic in 1949.

Between the late sixties and the 1998 Good Friday agreement, discrimination by Northern Ireland’s Protestant leadership (backed by British troops) against the Catholic majority led to three decades of sectarian conflict and 3,500 deaths.

The Good Friday agreement created a new government based on power sharing between Sinn Fein, an Irish party committed to Ireland’s reunification, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), committed to remaining part of Britain.

Meanwhile support for Irish unification only increases. At present, Northern Ireland receives a multi-pound subsidy from the UK, which in the eyes of a growing number of British politicians, produces little return. At the same time, more and more Northern Irish Protestants are envious of the better standard of living Irishmen enjoy south of the border in the Republic of Ireland.