Locating Modern Ireland

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Wednesday May 24, 2006 01:50 by jim travers

Beyond the Orange and Green

The Celtic tiger in the Republic of Ireland has shown that Protestants and Catholics on the island of Ireland can work and live in peace and harmony with one another, once the society they live in accommodates that need.
See also: Opinion/analysis- Dublin-Miscellaneous.....jim travers

The troubles in Northern Ireland did not start with the establishment of a twenty-six counties Irish Free State in Southern Ireland and the birth of a Six-County Ulster as a separate jurisdiction and part of the United Kingdom. Ireland has always had religious and political strife throughout its history. In recent times that strife has come to the forefront of world headlines as the twentieth century heralded in a new age of mass communication that resulted in an increased media interest and attention to the problems in Northern Ireland.

This strife which is labeled as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants is viewed by many as a religious or holy war to which both sides are prepared to hold their ground even unto death. It is important to note that the Northern Ireland problem pre-dates the existence of Northern Ireland as a political entity and the so called holy war is a simplified answer in explaining the root causes of the conflict especially in modern times. The people of Northern Ireland have a lot in common despite the presumed belief that both Catholic and Protestant communities cannot live together, when in actual fact both communities do live together by sharing the same common ground on the island of Ireland. A.T.Q. Stewart says; ‘ they share the same homeland, and like it or not, the two diametrically opposed political wills must co-exist on the same narrow ground’. He goes on to note that the two communities are not intermingled “but they are interlocked, and in ways which it is probably impossible for anyone except a native…to understand’.1

The Northern Ireland problem is a complex mix of religious and political ideologies that are deeply embedded in a class struggle, which polarise and stagnate communities into actions of opposing self-interests. Both sides of the political and religious divide lay claim to their inherent right to self-determination and both sides colour code that right as either Orange and Green or Loyalist and Republican.

In order to examine the argument of whether the conflict is a religious or political one we must first look at the basic similarities in life that both communities equally share. These basic similarities where most eloquently defined by John. F. Kennedy in his Commencement Address at American University when he said; “ So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal”. 2

This article endeavours to critically examine the generalisation that the cause of the conflict in Northern Ireland is fundamentally either religiously or politically orientated. Contrary to the belief of a great ethnic, religious and political division within Northern Ireland both Catholic and Protestant people have more in common with one another than what the divisions of their ethnic identities seem to suggest. As conflict has always played its part in Irish history, I will therefore confine my analysis to the conflict that existed since the foundation of the Northern Ireland state, while at the same time taking into account, but not elaborating upon previous events in history that lay the foundation stone to the current conflict
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The troubles in Northern Ireland is not primarily about religion nor is it about politics, it is about the power and influence individuals or groups use in consolidating that power through the fear of religious and political indifferences. It is about manipulating ordinary people through the division of class, into believing that their very lives and ways of life are at stake should they capitulate to any other form of authority or power that dilutes or threatens their perceived collective status of dominance. The staunch religious identities and the nationalist forms of conflict make both sections of society alien to one another’s similarities in the form of their working class status.

Gustav Therborn has argued that: ‘A Marxist analysis would involve the assumption that the emergence and character of religions and nationalism are related, but not reducible to men’s different experiences in different modes of production and particular classes in ways that the analysis must disclose. It would imply that religions and nationalism where they exist…have a different character and function in different modes of production and that they play different roles for different classes…further, Marxists would argue that religions and nationalism, religion and national conflicts develop in and through the class struggle’. 3

The historical roots of the modern Ulster problem can be traced to the early seventeenth century when the province was brought under British control and colonised by Protestant settlers. The basic fear Ulster Protestants have is that Catholics will outbreed them, which will result in a power shift towards a united Ireland. They’re basic answer in resolving this problem is to deny Catholics their civil rights that included employment, educational opportunities, and adequate housing. These beliefs’s to the everyday working class Protestant is sound logical thinking that help protect his interests and family security. It is a belief supported and promoted by his political leaders and enshrined in his religious teaching.

The Orange Order, founded in 1795 was very much a working-class Protestant movement that found no support in the upper class ranks of the Protestant business, professional and farming community. Support for the Orange Order only came from the upper class when; ‘the pressure of a Bill, popularly understood to be aimed at giving over the country to a Dublin government and the control of the Roman Catholic Church was mooted. This made Protestant people of unionist loyalties turn to the Order as a likely instrument for maintaining the British connection and preserving the Protestant religion.4 This new found support for the Orange Order that came from the upper and professional classes was based on their financial and land occupancy loses should the threat of a united Ireland come to fruition.

Industrialisation made Ulster unique. The rest of Ireland, overwhelmingly Catholic and rural, experienced defeat and repression in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A terrible famine in the mid-nineteenth century, and then a mass emigration that over the next hundred years, drained the countryside of more than half its population…Dublin and the lesser cities an towns made their living from shipping, insurance, and banking and as market towns for agricultural hinterland. But Belfast, through cotton and linen manufacturing and later shipbuilding, became a metropolis; it resembled Glasgow or Birmingham much more than any Irish town. Its population soared from twenty thousand people in 1801 to nearly three hundred and fifth thousand by 1900.Catholics from the rest of Ireland were drawn to the city by its prosperity…resulted in a series of sectarian clashes between the Protestant and Catholic working class… Those earlier riots are worth pausing over because the pattern they set still survives in Belfast today.5 These pattern of events were also prevalent through the early part of the twentieth century with the Unionist bourgeoisie using economic depression and unemployment as a political lever in their struggle to maintain power as a Protestant Ulster for a Protestant people.

During the second half of the twentieth century the role of the Orange Order as defender of the working-class Protestant people was overtaken and replaced by Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. The Thatcher years heralded in a new era in the privitisation of public companies that threatened the traditional Protestant bases of employment and security. Some Protestants feared that privitisation would eventually move Ulster towards a united Ireland while others though privitisation would bring Ulster closed to the economic policies of mainland Britain

These different opinions produced confused patterns of political opposition to government economic policies that would effect the long-term status of Northern Ireland. For example: Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) poses as a stalwart defender of the union with Britain. Superficially it would seem that the party would welcome policies in Northern Ireland, which achieved a greater convergence of the region with the UK. However, the party’s electoral base comprises mainly lower middle and working classes, whose material circumstances would be detrimentally affected by some of the harsher repercussions of Thatcherism.6

The nationalists on the other hand were delighted that the industries they once were excluded from were now shedding jobs and condemning Protestant workers to the same fate as Catholic workers. Their history and struggle was enshrined in their contempt of a state that denied them their civil rights and liberties. In their song they romanticised the glorification of physical force that freed them from the shackles of oppression but eventually they would have to pick up the pieces for reconciliation, once physical force had ceased.

Roman Catholic bishop, Cathal Daly once said: ‘In each generation since independence many young men of twenty have gone out to kill and die because they loved Ireland, but knew no other way of loving her, had been taught and shown no way but the way of the patriotic song’. 7 The songs that enflame the passion of resistance, strife and conflict are the same songs that send people from both sections of the divide to their graves.

The pivotal point in the fragile relations between the Protestant and Catholics communities came when in a peaceful march in Derry; thirteen people were shot dead by British soldiers. World opinion on the British occupation of Northern Ireland emerged that sent worrying vibrations throughout the Protestant political leadership. The whole of Ireland erupted in sea of protest and anger as Unionist intransigence finally realised their worst fears; they had helped swell the ranks of the Provisional IRA and inadvertently cracked the pillars of their once secure Protestant Ulster. After a series of protests that resulted in the burning of the British embassy in Dublin the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir John Pack wrote: Bloody Sunday has unleashed a wave of fury and exasperation the like of which I have never encountered in my life, in Egypt or Cyprus or anywhere else. Hatred of the British was intense. Someone had summed it up: We are all IRA now. The already shaky position of Jack Lynch, the Irish Taoiseach, was now extremely precarious and the threat posed by the IRA to democratic institutions in the Republic would now be far more serious.8

The playing pitch appeared to be level, employment and manufacturing was in decline and Protestant workers now faced the same grim prospects as their Catholic neighbours. Opinion throughout the world was focussed on the plight of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland and the regime that controlled the state. For the Protestant leadership remedial actions that in the past dampened the swelling tide of resistance was now under scrutiny and world attention. Britain was more cautious in her approach for fear of an escalating groundswell of Irish nationalist resistance in mainland Britain. Despite the Protestant leadership rallying the Protestants working class in demonstration and civil disobedience at the failure of Britain to tackle the nationalist problem the new seeds of change were sown. For the Protestant system of dominance, this was the beginning of the end.

The conflict in Northern Ireland runs deeper than the fundamental beliefs that it is either a religious or political conflict. People from both sides of the divide and also both side of the border find similarities in life that they can enjoy, enhance and compromise on. All side has a basic goal in life and that is to live in peace. Where once Protestant people from Northern Ireland dared not to set foot in Dublin because their political and religious leaders told them that Catholic priests walked the streets in their robes as people bowed and kissed their rings. We now see Protestant people working, living and socialising in a city and state they were once indoctrinated into believing was their enemy.

We only need to go back to the height of the troubles in order to see the co-operation and concerns of partamilitary groups and others who were attempting to address the problems that went to the heart of both working class Protestants and Catholics.

In September 1972 council member James Anderson, announced that his personal choice as ‘Loyalist leader’ was Ian Paisley. James Anderson criticised successive governments for neglecting the ordinary people in Northern Ireland. This criticism caused a rift within the powers of the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) and the class conflict that was developing within. In October of that year a circular was distributed to the press. It claimed that: ‘ social-orientated and class conscious elements of the UDA were forming active service units of the Ulster Citizens army for the protection of protestant working class areas… These parasites, who never in the past were friends of the Ulster worker, have not changed. Their sole aim is still the pursuit of power at any price’. This class-conscious thinking developed within the ranks of the UDA and went as far as the possibility of accommodating the Catholic working class. With this in mind meetings were arranged with the Official IRA. 9 These behind the door activities by loyalist and nationalist paramilitary organisations showed that a groundswell of activity by working class people within these organisations were fundamentally more or equally concerned about social issues as they were about nation loyalties and allegiances.

In later years it was identified that the key to bridging the divide would only be found in economic prosperity, where that prosperity is equally applied and available to all people throughout Northern Ireland. In 1988 the then Minister for Economic Development, Richard Needham MP said in an interview: “ With little movement anticipated on the political front, and not much beyond containment in security policy, the economy is now the interesting leg of the stool. If work can be found for the idle hands of ten-thousand unemployment boys in west Belfast, in itself will do more to impact on the political and security areas than anything else.” 10

There is a long tradition of political and religious strife and division that has contributed to the problems in Northern Ireland. The key to unraveling this division is time, combined with economic prosperity that reaches the four corners of Ulster and beyond. The Celtic tiger in the Republic of Ireland has shown that Protestants and Catholics on the island of Ireland can work and live in peace and harmony with one another, once the society they live in accommodates that need.

Orange and Green, Catholics and Protestants in a modern Ireland are seeing social and economic changes dilute their inherited belief as their colours fade and eventually turn to white. What is left is the division of class and the struggles that goes with it.

See also: Opinion/analysis- Dublin-Miscellaneous.....jim travers

References

1. Daly, Cathal. Bishop quoted in J. McGee, Northern Ireland: Crisis and Conflict,
Routledge and Keegan Paul Ltd. 1988, p.27.
2. Quoted in W.V. Shannon, ‘A Quiet Broker? A Way out of the Irish Crisis’, Priority Press,
New York, 1985, C1. p.6.
3. Kennedy, J. F. Commencement Address at American University, 10 June 1963.
Http:// www.jfklibrary.org/j06106.htm ( visited 16-05-2005)
4. Needham, Richard. Quoted in Frank Gaffikin and Mike Morrissey ‘Northern Ireland The
Thatcher Years’, Zed Books Ltd. 1990. C3.p.90: R. Wilson ‘ If it Moves Sell It’, Fortnight
September 1989.
5. Quoted in J. McGee, Northern Ireland: Crisis and Conflict, Routledge and Keegan Paul Ltd.
1988, C1. p39.
6. Peck, Sir, John. Quoted in David McKittrick and David McVea, Making Sense of the Troubles
The Blackstaff Press Limited, 2000. C4. p.78.
7. Quoted in Gaffikin. Frank, and Mike Morrissey ‘Northern Ireland the Thatcher Years’, Zed
Books Ltd. 1990 C3. p.91.
8. Stewart, A.T.Q. (1977, p.180). (1977, p.181) quoted in ‘Integration and Division’
Edited by Fredrick W. Moal and Neville H. Douglas. 1982. C1. p.1.
9. Therborn, Gustav. Quoted in Belinda Probert ‘Beyond Orange and Green’ , Academy Press.
1978. (First Edition) C1.p.8
10. Quoted in Belinda Probert’ Beyond Orange and Green’ Academy Press. 1978. (First Edition)
1978 (First Edition) C7. p.140.

See also: Opinion/analysis- Dublin-Miscellaneous.....jim travers