Background
Upon the partition of Ireland in 1921, six of the nine counties in the province of Ulster were excluded from the independent Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland).
These counties, two of which had slim Protestant majorities, remained a part of the United Kingdom. Two other Ulster counties also remained part of the UK, despite having Irish nationalist (pro-independence) majorities. Academically cited records from 1926 indicate that at that stage 33.5% of the Northern Ireland population was Roman Catholic, with 62.2% belonging to the three major Protestant denominations (Presbyterian 31.3%, Church of Ireland 27%, Methodist 3.0%).
Tensions between Northern Ireland's Irish nationalist/Catholic population (which mostly supports Irish reunification) and its Protestant/unionist population (which mostly supports remaining part of the UK) led to a long-running bloody conflict known as The Troubles (late 1960s to late 1990s).
Read more about this topic: Ulster Loyalism
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