SUMMARY
Note to reader: this Country page primarily contain brief information about state-based violence during the period 1946-1974, and to some extent 1975-1988. For more detailed information on organized violence after 1989, please consult the specific Conflict and Dyad pages available on the left-hand side of this page. These pages contain (when applicable) more detailed information regarding all three categories of organized violence in this country from 1989 and onwards, as well as detailed information about state-based violence 1975-1988. The left-hand side menu also contains links to Actor pages for all groups involved in organized violence since 1989 in this country, as well as actors involved in state-based violence 1975-1988.
The United Kingdom (UK) was a major colonial power and controlled nearly one-quarter of the worlds land surface by the end of the 19th century. However, the first half of the 20th century saw the weakening of the British Empire, though victorious in the two World Wars. In the decades following the Second World War the vast majority of the British dependencies became independent. Many former colonies retained a loose association with the UK in the Commonwealth of Nations.
Several of the dependencies achieved independence only after the British authorities were confronted with armed insurgencies by pro-independence movements. In Palestine, controlled by the UK as a League of Nation mandate, the Jewish IZL (Irgun zwai leumi; National Military Organisation) launched a violent struggle at the end of the Second World War that continued into 1946. Other extra-state conflicts broke out in present-day Malaysia (in Malaya 1948-1957 and North Borneo 1962), Kenya (1952-1956), Cyprus (1955-1959) and South Yemen (1964-1967).
In Northern Ireland, the PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) launched an armed struggle against the British government in 1971 to achieve reunion with Ireland, which had withdrawn from the Union with Great Britain in 1921. After decades of fighting, in 1998 the so-called Good Friday Agreement was signed and the intrastate conflict was terminated.
The United Kingdom has also been involved in a number of interstate disputes. In 1946, Albania and the UK engaged in an interstate conflict about the status of the Corfu Channel located between the Albanian coast and the Greek island of Corfu. In 1951-1952, Egypt clashed with the UK over the UK-controlled Suez Canal located in north-eastern Egypt. An agreement on the gradual withdrawal of the British followed the short interstate conflict. However, when Egypt led by Abdel Nasser declared the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956, the UK, together with France and Israel attacked Egypt, but soon withdrew following pressure from the United Nations and the USA. In 1982, an interstate conflict over the British Falkland Islands broke out, when Argentina occupied the islands located about 500 km from its coast. The British denounced the invasion and defeated Argentina the same year. In 2003, the UK together with Australia joined the USA and invaded Iraq claiming that the Iraqi government headed by Saddam Hussein maintained stocks of weapons of mass destruction. After the successful toppling of the Hussein regime, the UK backed the new Iraqi government in the ensuing intrastate conflict against various rebel groups.
The UK also provided secondary warring support to other governments of former British colonies and protectorates, such as Oman (1957 and 1972-1975), present-day Malaysia (1958-1960 and 1963-1966) and Sierra Leone (2000). Moreover, the UK contributed troops to the forces of international coalitions intervening in the inter-state conflicts on the Korean peninsula (1950-1953) and in Kuwait (1991) as well as the intrastate conflicts over Kosovo in Yugoslavia (1999) and in Afghanistan (2000s). It also backed the USA against al-Qaida in the 2000s and the coalition supporting the government of Iraq against IS (2004-).
Since 1946, the United Kingdom has experienced the extra-state, interstate and intrastate categories of UCDP organised violence.
