ABSTRACT
The recent history of Northern Ireland, especially since 1969, makes it difficult to argue that the ‘Irish Question’ has been resolved. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the hypothesis that the political-constitutional settlement in 1922, which partitioned the country into two parts, was flawed and incomplete in both geographical and psychological terms. The fundamental causes of the problem, in particular the divided aspirations of nationalists and unionists1-especially those in the North-were not dealt with or solved by creating a new independent Irish state and a jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. The large Catholic minority lef t in Northern Ireland, most of them nationalists, did not cease to be nationalists or become converts to unionism, and so the problem was likely to re-emerge at regular intervals. The Protestant majority was left with political control over a region containing a large, recalcitrant and unhappy minority, which felt abandoned and betrayed: even had it been possible to generate structures and processes within Northern Ireland calculated to win over this minority, it is doubtf ul if much would have changed, at least in the short and medium term.
