1G - The condition of Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations: continuing north/south friction including riots of September 1964
Learn why partition and community divisions persisted between 1939 and 1964, despite changes in the relationship between Britain and the southern state. Explain the September 1964 flag riots and the beginnings of civil-rights campaigning without projecting the later Troubles back into this period.
War and the constitutional divide
The Second World War highlighted the island's divided sovereignty. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, was at war and supplied bases, industrial production and military personnel. Belfast suffered devastating German bombing in 1941. Éire remained officially neutral under Éamon de Valera, using neutrality to demonstrate an independent foreign policy after the return of the Treaty ports in 1938.
Neutrality complicated British-Irish relations because Britain wanted the resources and strategic advantages of fuller cooperation. However, neutrality should not be equated with identical practical treatment of the belligerents or complete isolation from Britain. Trade, migration and voluntary service continued to connect people across the Irish Sea. Different constitutional positions coexisted with substantial everyday connections.
The Republic of Ireland Act of 1948 came into effect in April 1949, ending the southern state's remaining external relationship with the Crown and its Commonwealth membership. Britain's Ireland Act of 1949 recognised the change and stated that Northern Ireland would not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without the consent of its Parliament. It also treated the Republic differently from an ordinary foreign country for specified purposes, preserving important practical relationships. Ireland Act 1949, section 1
The guarantee reassured unionists, but nationalists objected because the unionist-controlled Stormont parliament effectively possessed the decisive constitutional veto. The southern constitution's claim concerning the whole island remained, while Britain confirmed the northern state's position. Southern independence had become more complete without resolving competing claims about partition.
Stormont and unequal citizenship
Northern Ireland's Unionist Party remained dominant at Stormont. Basil Brooke, later Lord Brookeborough, was prime minister from 1943 to 1963. Parliamentary stability and access to wider British economic and welfare provision offered benefits, but a substantial Catholic and nationalist minority distrusted institutions associated with unionist power. Constitutional security did not ensure equal confidence in government.
Grievances concerned housing, employment, electoral arrangements and policing. Discrimination was particularly consequential where public authorities controlled jobs and homes. In some councils, housing allocation could also affect local electoral power because the local franchise depended on property occupation and included additional business voting. Adult suffrage in parliamentary elections and the more restricted local rules must be distinguished: it is inaccurate to claim that Catholics as a group simply had no vote.
Gerrymandering meant drawing electoral boundaries to advantage a political group. Derry was a prominent example of nationalist grievance because ward arrangements helped maintain unionist council control despite the city's Catholic majority. The combination of boundary rules, restricted local voting and allocation of housing created a mechanism through which inequality could reinforce political power.
Security institutions also divided perceptions. Unionists regarded strong powers and the police reserve as protection against republican threats. Nationalists questioned impartiality, particularly in relation to the overwhelmingly Protestant Ulster Special Constabulary, often called the B Specials, and the Special Powers Act. Treating those concerns only as religious hostility would miss their institutional and material basis.
The Campaign for Social Justice's February 1964 pamphlet, Northern Ireland: The Plain Truth, publicised alleged discrimination with local examples. It is authentic campaigning evidence, useful for understanding what activists sought to expose; its claims and comparisons should be checked rather than treated as a neutral official survey. Campaign for Social Justice pamphlet, 5 February 1964, archived by CAIN
Gerrymandering
Drawing electoral boundaries to advantage a party or group. Distinguish it from restrictions on who can vote: both can affect outcomes, but they are different mechanisms.
Partition survives political and economic change
The IRA's Border Campaign of 1956–62 attempted to challenge British rule through attacks, especially near the border. Both northern and southern governments took security measures, including internment. The campaign ended without achieving unity and with limited popular support. The Republic's suppression of republican activity demonstrates that a constitutional claim to unity did not mean endorsement of every armed attempt to obtain it.
Partition also separated economic structures. Northern Ireland retained dependence on older industries, with unemployment and the need for investment important issues. The Republic faced its own weak employment prospects and substantial emigration. Movement to Britain connected economic life even when constitutional claims remained opposed. Shared economic difficulties could encourage practical thinking without automatically overcoming political distrust.
Seán Lemass, Taoiseach from 1959, associated southern policy with economic development and a more outward-looking approach. Terence O'Neill replaced Brookeborough in 1963 and sought industrial investment and some easing of community tensions. These leaders opened possibilities for a less rigid politics, but by the end of 1964 partition and unionist dominance remained. Their later official meetings fall beyond this lesson's endpoint and should not be counted as an achievement already secured in 1964. Ulster University CAIN: chronology, 1939–67 entries
The central distinction is between policy adjustment and constitutional transformation. Changes in economic priorities and leadership could modify the setting for relations. They did not remove the legal guarantee, the southern claim or the northern institutions which maintained division. This explains why apparently promising developments could coexist with renewed street conflict.
The September 1964 flag riots
In September 1964, during the Westminster election campaign, an Irish tricolour was displayed at the Republican Party's office in Divis Street, west Belfast. To republicans, the flag represented national identity and opposition to partition. Unionist opponents regarded its prominent display as a challenge to the northern state's identity. Ian Paisley's agitation increased pressure for its removal.
On 28 September, Royal Ulster Constabulary officers, acting under the Minister of Home Affairs' instructions, removed the flag. Serious rioting followed in west Belfast. The episode's importance lies in the interaction of a symbol, political mobilisation and police action. The display was a trigger; underlying disagreement about identity and the impartiality of institutions made that trigger explosive. CAIN chronology: 28 September 1964
The Flags and Emblems (Display) Act of 1954 protected lawful display of the Union flag and empowered police to require removal of other emblems when their display threatened a breach of the peace. The Union flag was exempt from that removal provision. The law did not simply contain a blanket ban naming every display of the Irish tricolour; the asymmetry lay in the protection of one emblem and the discretion applied to others. Original Flags and Emblems Act, sections 1–2
That asymmetry helps explain nationalist anger. Police intervention could appear to enforce one community's identity while restricting another's. Conversely, supporters of removal claimed to defend order and the constitutional position. An explanation should distinguish those claims from the actual result: action intended to prevent disorder contributed to serious disorder in the setting of deep distrust.
The beginnings of civil-rights campaigning
Civil-rights campaigning offered a way to challenge unequal treatment through evidence and demands for citizenship rights. The Campaign for Social Justice was established on 17 January 1964 by activists including Patricia and Conn McCluskey. It publicised grievances over employment, housing and electoral arrangements, seeking attention beyond Northern Ireland as well as within it. Pamphlets, publicity and appeals to wider political opinion were central to these beginnings. CAIN: civil-rights chronology, CAIN: summary of the campaign
This was not identical to an armed campaign for an all-Ireland republic. A demand for fair housing allocation or equal local voting rights could challenge the operation of government without requiring agreement on the state's ultimate constitutional future. Different national identities might coexist with a claim to equal treatment. That distinction increased the potential audience for reform, though unionists could still fear that reform campaigning concealed a challenge to the Union.
Keep the chronology precise. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, NICRA, was formed in 1967, and the later mass marches and escalation fall outside this option's 1964 endpoint. By 1964, the lesson's subject is the emergence of organised publicity and rights-based grievances, not a fully developed account of the later movement or Troubles.
Consider the original practice interpretation that renewed tensions by 1964 were simply a continuation of the struggle for Irish unity. Partition and the flag dispute give that argument substantial support. However, the focus on jobs, houses and local electoral rights shows a developing language of equal citizenship. A stronger judgement connects constitutional division to everyday exclusion while recognising that the strategy and stated demands of reform activists were changing.
By 1964, southern sovereignty had changed substantially, while partition and unequal confidence in northern institutions persisted. The flag riots exposed old divisions; early civil-rights campaigning introduced a distinct reform strategy within that divided setting.