5.7. Did the partition cause the Troubles?
Breen and Devine (1999:52) say,

"The sectarian divide has lain at the root of the conflict that was renewed in the late 1960s."

O'Leary and McGarry (1993:55) trace the cause of the Troubles further back, saying:

"There is one indisputable historic cause of the current conflict. Without the colonial plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century, and its legacy, Northern Ireland would not exist. The roots of the present antagonisms lie in the conquest of Ireland by the Tudor monarchs of England in the sixteenth century, and the subsequent consolidation of English rule through the colonization of Ulster by Scots and English settlers. Since the Irish refused to become loyalist Protestants the Tudors decided that loyalist Protestants should be brought to Ireland."

The literature on Irish history, politics and social life point towards, if one is to seek only one explanation, the conclusion that the partition of Ireland did cause the Troubles in Northern Ireland that began in the late 1960s. The Unionists could not have got so much political power alone in the whole of Ireland as they got in Northern Ireland, so there would not have been Protestant privilege and discrimination against Catholics, which are the problems that lay behind the outbreak of the Troubles. That is to say, the period of violent conflict 1969-1994, known as the Troubles, is a direct consequence of the partition of Ireland and the politics practised in Northern Ireland by the Protestants and Unionists.