The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. Luke 12:51-53
This is the most dramatic and important democratic decision ever taken by the British people. But it leaves our country deeply divided. The Andrew Marr Show 26 June 2016
This has been the rebellion of the diminished against the cocky, the ignored against the shapers of modern times, and the struggling against the strutting. ibid.
[John] von Neumann could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head. Sylvia Nasar
Angry and divided Britain. The victims of abuse online. The rise of extremism. And how can Britain be repaired? Angry Britain: Beyond Repair? ITV 2019
Welcome to Luton: it’s the birthplace of militant Islam. Divided States I: Europe, Tommy Robinson, History 2019
Muslims have essentially become the new Jews. ibid. commentator
EDL mobilised a new generation of activists who were just focusing on Islam. ibid.
The worst refugee crisis in central Europe for a generation. ibid. news
According to the UN, over 5 million Syrians have been forced to flee their country since the war began in 2011. ibid. caption
The AfD gained 94 seats in the German parliament. ibid. caption
In recent years intolerance has been on in the rise in the United States. Divided States II
Hellerton, Pennsylvania: New charges after a fight between students sparked by a racist video posted online. ibid. television news
Portland, Oregon: Police say a known extremist with white supremacist beliefs terrorised a young Muslim woman and her friend on a train, slashing three men who came to their aid. Divided States III, television news report
‘Oregon was found as a white racist utopia.’ ibid. woman
Portland, Oregon, is also home to a large anti-fascist group called Antifa. ibid.
A crowded restaurant with people watching basketball, a man yelled, Get out of my country, before opening fire into Indian Hindus working here … Adam Purinton is in … jail charged with murder. Divided States IV: Olathe, Kansas
‘We’ve seen a massive spike in anti-Muslim sentiment.’ ibid. Jonathan Greenblatt, anti-defamation league
But look on the streets of America, you can see this is a nation deeply divided. Election losers are accusing the winners of cheating. Racial tension. The healing has to begin. Donald Trump may have lost but around 70,000,000 Americans voted for him … What next for these Divided States of America? … How possible is it to heal that divide? Dispatches: Divided States of America, Channel 4 2020
An island smaller than Sicily or Sardinia has been utterly divided. Christopher Hitchens, Cyprus: Stranded in Time, BBC Frontiers 1989
Turkey’s invasion, a catastrophe on an epic scale for the Greek-Cypriot majority, was greeted by many of the Turkish minority as a deliverance. An extremist coup sponsored by the then military dictatorship in Greece had given Turkey a long-awaited pretext for intervention. The Turkish action led to the occupation of one third of the territory of Cyprus, a proclamation of a separate Turkish/Cypriot state and the displacement of nearly 200,000 Greek refugees. ibid.
The dead zone is patrolled only by the United Nations. ibid.
A loss that is emotional as well as material. ibid.
The Wall is inescapable. On both sides of the Wall soldiers keep watch on each other as they have hour by hour for fifteen years. ibid.
How did we get such a divided country? … The most fraught issue of all – the gulf between Inners and Outers. The new national divide. Life After Brexit: A Newsnight Special
Korea was arbitrarily divided along the 38th parallel … Neither was the war itself the organic result of decisions taken by the Korean people. The Corbett Report, Debunking a Century of War Lies, James Corbett online 2018
‘Between 1920 and 1922 Belfast is the most violent place in Ireland. It is really the epicentre of revolutionary violence. What we see again and again is violence in one part of Ireland leads to violence in another part.’ The Road to Partition s1e1, historian, BBC 2021
On 22 June 1921 King George V and Queen Mary arrived in Belfast for the first official opening of the Northern Ireland parliament. Fearful for their lives, they had come to a city scarred with sectarian division. The occasion marked the creation of the new state of Northern Ireland. ibid.
This is the story of the dramatic events that led to the partition of Ireland. A story that continues to reverberate to the present day. And dominate the relationship between the islands of Britain and Ireland. ibid.
For Britain, the loudest and most strident demands for self-determination came from very close to home, from a country that it had ruled for centuries: Ireland. Prior to the war, and in response to long-standing demands from Irish nationalists, Britain had been preparing to devolve some powers to a Dublin-based parliament, through so-called home-rule. But home-rule was fiercely resisted by Unionists, particularly in Belfast and large parts of Ulster, where for centuries the population had been impacted by migration from Scotland and England. ibid.
By the end of the nineteenth century Ulster’s distinctiveness was marked by its status as the most industrialised part of Ireland. ibid.
The outbreak of the First World War averted to threat of a violent confrontation between Ulster Unionists and the British government, and home rule was suspended. ibid.
Nine weeks after the Easter rising, on the western front the men of the 36th Division made a very different blood sacrifice. In July, during the first two days of fighting at the battle of the Somme, the Division suffered an appalling 5,500 casualties. Men fighting for Britain … ‘The battle of the Somme was absolute slaughter particularly for Ulster Unionists.’ ibid.
As Ireland went to the polls in December 1918, voters had a choice between Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party, and between two radically different visions of Ireland’s future. ibid.
Both Unionists and Republicans would take advantage of another political force that emerged for the first time in 1918: Women. They had become more politically engaged before the war, and were voting now for the first time. They included the members of the Ulster Women’s Unionist Council. ibid.
‘Sinn Fein took matters into their own hands and formed an independent though illegal parliament in Dublin … the Dail is rapidly backed by force which is rapidly known as the IRA.’ ibid.
Republicans in favour of taking up arms had already done so. On the same day as the Dail sat in Dublin for the first time, two members of the Irish Royal Constabulary were killed in an IRA ambush in County Tipperary. The first shots of the Irish War of Independence had been fired. ibid.
Lisburn: Loyalists went on the rampage in the town, looting and burning Catholic homes and businesses. ibid.
The deployment of the Black-and-Tans was to backfire, and their reputation for brutality and reprisal attacks on civilians and property intensified the conflict in the south, leading to international condemnation. ibid.
Despite the war of independence raging across the island, Unionists in the north continued to lay the foundations for a new state. ibid.
1918: In Ireland, Nationalist demands for independence from Britain had already resulted in an armed rebellion in 1916, and the bloody fallout from radicalised public opinion. While Nationalists wanted to break from centuries of British rule, in the industrial north-east of the island, many Unionists feared the loss of their cultural and economic ties to Britain and the empire. The Road to Partition II
This was a royal visit like no other. The King and Queen had come to a land where a bloody war to win independence from Britain still raged, and a city ravaged by sectarian violence. ibid.
The Irish delegation succumbed to pressure and signed the Treaty. But deeply conflicted by its terms, Collins said that he had in fact signed his own death warrant. ibid.
Just two months later in August 1922 the civil war was to take a dramatic turn and claim its most high profile victim: Michael Collins. ibid.