A report on Partition of Ireland, Unionism in Ireland and Irish nationalism

Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating a devolved government for the six northeastern counties.

The majority of Northern Ireland's population were unionists, who wanted to remain within the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the majority in Southern Ireland (which became the Irish Free State in 1922), and a significant minority in Northern Ireland, were Irish nationalists and Catholics who wanted a united independent Ireland.

During the late 1980s the British Government became increasingly willing to give concessions to Irish Nationalism, such as the Anglo-Irish Agreement and extending to, the Northern Ireland Security, Peter Brooke's declaration of "no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland.", causing uproar amongst strands of Unionism.

A variant of this is Irish republican legitimism, which also rejects the Republic of Ireland because of its tacit acceptance of partition and continuing British rule in Northern Ireland.

This, and the subsequent Irish War of Independence, led to the partition of Ireland.

This usage is most common among people in Northern Ireland who are unionist, although it is also used by the media throughout the United Kingdom.

Most Irish nationalists object to the use of Ulster in this context.

Achieving a united Ireland is a central tenet of Irish nationalism, particularly of both mainstream and dissident Irish republican political and paramilitary organisations.

Unionists support Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, and therefore oppose Irish unification.

Ireland has been partitioned since May 1921, when the implementation of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 created the state of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.

For Unionists, Home Rule meant a Dublin parliament dominated by the Catholic Church to the detriment of Ireland's economic progress, a threat to their cultural identity as both British and Irish and possible discrimination against them as a religious minority.

1920: Fourth Irish Home Rule Act (replaced Third Act, passed and implemented as the Government of Ireland Act 1920) which established Northern Ireland as a Home Rule entity within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and attempted to establish Southern Ireland as another but instead resulted in the partition of Ireland and Irish independence through the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922.

Three were representative of unionism: the Ulster Unionist Party which had led unionism in Ulster since the beginning of the 20th century, and two smaller parties associated with Loyalist paramilitaries, the Progressive Unionist Party (linked with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)), and Ulster Democratic Party (the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA)).

Two were broadly labelled nationalist: the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and Sinn Féin, the republican party associated with the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

As part of the agreement, the British parliament repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (which had established Northern Ireland, partitioned Ireland and asserted a territorial claim over all of Ireland) and the people of the Republic of Ireland amended Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland, which asserted a territorial claim over Northern Ireland.

The Ulster Volunteers was a unionist, loyalist militia founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government ("Home Rule") for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom.

Later that year, Irish nationalists formed a rival militia, the Irish Volunteers, to safeguard Home Rule.

After the war, the British Government decided to partition Ireland into two self-governing regions: Northern Ireland (which overall had a Protestant/unionist majority) and Southern Ireland.