ABSTRACT
Northern Ireland exemplifies this more than most places. Irish nationalists in the late nineteenth century sought to claim Irish history in support of their ideology of republican nationalism. Religion plays a powerful role in the Northern Ireland conflict. The very labels used Protestant and Catholic, ascribe an overtly religious antagonism and submerge the religious differences within each community. The Catholics are a minority in Northern Ireland and have been discriminated against politically and economically; thus they have reinforced their already strong ethnic identity, especially the religious and nationalist components. A powerful pull on the Protestants in Northern Ireland is their identification with Ulster. The Ulster Protestant may not really have a nationality at all, that is, an Ulster nationality, but adopts the British nationality for essentially negative reasons, to not be part of Irish-Ireland. Harold Wilson, the British prime minister at the time, bore a great deal of the responsibility for the failure.
