Why have Protestants and Catholics been in conflict in Northeast Ireland for centuries?
As long as there has been a (not very) United Kingdom there has been trouble in Ireland, Wales and Scotland, all of them have at some time attempted to rebel against the English monied landowners, who generally were more interested in profit than the lives of the families who had worked and lived upon the land for generations. The Welsh were more or less appeased when the heir apparent to the English throne was named as the Prince of Wales, hence the next in line to the throne always having that title. The Scottish were consistantly rebelling and when it became apparent that military conflict might suppress rebellion it would never enslave the people a more underhand way was adopted – money, as Robbie Burns put it “we were bought and sold for English gold”. The Irish had the additional problem of religion, basically the English government removed catholic landowners and families from the most productive land in Ireland and replaced them with protestant people loyal to the English thron
