I was interested to see that today is the 100th anniversary of Northern Ireland’s covenant with the UK (a.k.a. Ulster Day). Apparently, 30,000 celebrants marched thru Belfast earlier today not counting spectators.
Any perspectives on this event from Ireland and the UK? Scotland in particular - they are planning for the independence vote, but there are a lot of ties between NI and Scotland so does this mean unionist sentiment is high out there?
And should I have worn an orange shirt today (if I had one?)
Second, where are you from, and how do you feel about Ulster Day, personally?
As to my own perspective, I started getting interested in Irish politics back when I first heard about Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers. In my small town in the United States, we have a Catholic church which is across the street from the Lutheran church, and they always got along peacefully, so I wondered why, on the news radio, it was called a religious war. I found out it was actually about politics. I read as much as I could about it, even read “Trinity” by Leon Uris (skewed to the Catholic side), but this whole thing started with Henry II and his son, John Lackland, when they conquered Ireland.
Both sides have their points. I think everyone would be better off trying to see their similarities instead of their differences, after all, you’re all living in the same place. Make that place better for everyone. I think it would be more helpful if they didn’t have things like “Ulster Day”, and put the past behind them. Look to the future.
If you really felt strongly about it, don’t wear orange, wear black and tan, but first, look up what that is. Don’t follow things blindly, educate yourself first.
Hi Emily, I’m from Canada with some links to Scotland. I enjoyed seeing Ulster Day and really didn’t see anything wrong with the sentiments being expressed. I have also followed the NI conflict over some years and must admit that I have come over to mostly agree with the Loyalist view, even though they have been more media-shy about presenting their side to the world. Among other things, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the Republic of Ireland (the South) has been basically purged of Protestants. But that is just my perspective from someone who’s far away at the moment so I’m glad to hear the perspectives of others.
Understood, but then again Northern Ireland is also a recognized, established country that should not have to feel ashamed for putting on national-origin festivals like any other country in the world. Ulster Day sounds pretty cool and rather benign all things considered.
I know there are significant links between NI and Scotland and was curious if their politics overlaps somehow especially with the talk about Scottish independence.
I am not following you on that point and with all due respect, it seems like an odd suggestion. I’m well aware of the Black and Tans who were a vicious paramilitary group commissioned by the British. I humbly suggest that wearing orange may express support for the Ulster common people, but wearing black and tan would mean that one is directly embracing some of the worst killers in Irish history. Definitely not good.
NB: you should probably go with Unionist. Loyalist is more loaded with paramilitary actions, just like if you call yourself Republican, you’d better check that you don’t mean Nationalist.
This has been mentioned in a thread recently and it was a shitstorm. Suffice it to say, whether this was a big deal or not, the events I assume you’re talking about happened almost 90 years ago.
True, although the problems both sides have with holidays is when it seems like it is done to be provocative rather than a simple event.
I am not an expert on this, but wouldn’t be surprised if there were some mutual support. Peter Robinson is not a fan of either type of independence.
And many in NI, mostly Protestants, are Scottish or Scots-Irish extraction. Any many in Scotland are descended from relatively recent Irish immigrants. Many fit into that specific ideology. Glasgow football is/was very sectarian.
You can, but that won’t happen just because you say it does. Even the orange+green flag is loaded.
Your perspective is a bit off IMHO. The Free State/Republic Of Ireland has and had Protestant presidents and other major political representatives from inception. Although the protestant population of the south declined over the period after 1922 and has only started going back up in recent times it is incorrect and offensive to call it a “purge”.
The political status quo vis-a-vis being Roman Catholic in NI in the period up to the start of the troubles was far more pernicious, with poorer catholics essentially disenfranchised and the vast majority if not the entirety of good public jobs being reserved only for Protestants. The South had and has its problems but never had the systemic discrimination that caused the north to descend into violence and chaos for so long.
As for unionism, as a political concept I have no issue with it, and in fact from an economic POV it probably makes sense for NI to keep its fate tied to that of Britain. However unionism has rarely been espoused in utilitarian terms and almost always in tribal terms. Most of those marching for Ulster Day are members of the Orange Order, a sectarian group somewhat akin to the KKK in that it marches noisily where it’s not wanted and displays symbols of Protestant dominance and Catholic inferiority. A Catholic, by definition, cannot be a member of the Orange Order. It wouldn’t matter except it’s notorious for marching down contentious routes in areas where nobody wants them. It’s a disgusting hangover of a past where bigotry was enshrined in the state and promises to blight the future of this island for years to come.
My post was negative so I’ll try for a positive one. I think maybe, just maybe, the Orange Order can redeem itself through reform and becoming a non-divisive totem of Ulster-Scots/British/protestant/unionist identity but they need to cut out the sectarian songs and overt sectarian semiotics and stop marching where they’re not welcome. The Ulster-Scots people have a rich culture and history and shouldn’t need to go with mindless bigotry as a means of expressing their identity.
I don’t know. Maybe purge is kind of strong, but the Republic did identify itself pretty strongly with the Catholic Church and make life pretty uncomfortable for Protestants for quite a while. Putting aside violence against Protestants during the Anglo-Irish War and Civil War itself, even after the Republic was solidly stablished and at peace, there was anti-Protestant action. Enforcement of the ne temere decree, attacks on Orange Order parades, preferential treatment of Catholic schools over Protestant ones, the decline of Protestant representation in the Dail, etc., certainly made Southern Protestants feel unwelcome, and encouraged them to leave.
I apologize for being offensive, and of course anti-Catholic discrimination in NI is abhorrent. Surely you must also acknowledge that the Republic of Ireland can be seen as a profoundly unfriendly place for Protestants in the 20th century (with its own biased policies on education, jobs, mixed marriages etc. See here for details on how the Protestant population went down to only 3%.) It’s hardly surprising that many Protestants would bolt to the north and turn hard-line under those conditions, and I’m a little surprised you’re not being more sensitive to that side of things.
I find it has some uncomfortable similarities to the more recent (albeit less dramatic) decline of the English/Protestant population in Quebec, something which I am personally familiar with.
I was just using the color orange in the OP as a shorthand for unionism, not to call out the Orange Order, which is something I’m only vaguely familiar with. But I looked at some footage of Ulster Day and it seems unfair to call it blatantly sectarian, most of it was drum bands and came across to me like a parallel-universe St. Patrick’s Day parade. The sectarian stuff must have been buried a little if it was there.
Thanks, unionist it is.
Good article - that’s kind of what I was expecting to see regarding Scotland.
It’s a complex issue, it’s certain that Protestants were discriminated against, but they remained in many ways a privileged minority in the Republic. Outside of the north they were typically higher in the economic pecking order than their Catholic neighbours. As late as the 1980s, it wasn’t unheard of for job vacancies to be advertised seeking “Protestant”. So discrimination was a two way street. There were and are Protestants elected to public office including as I already stated President of the country. Until forced to by the British government after years of bloodshed Northern Ireland never had powerful Catholic members of government or as figureheads.
For an interesting treatise on the complexities of being a Protestant in the Republic (up to 1983) read the conclusion here: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/population/bowen83.htm As explained in the linked text, Protestants were such a small minority within the republic that the majority never feared them to the same extent the Protestant majority feared their Catholic neighbours in the north.
In education, Protestants typically had their own schools feeding into the main university in the south, which remained predominantly Protestant well into the life of the state and to Protestant owned companies. Until recent times they lived separately in many ways from their Catholic neighbours:
“but by and large, the minority met with relatively little overt discrimination or open persecution. And on the few occasions when Protestants did encounter organized Catholic pressure, the Dunbar - Harrison case and the incidents at Fethard-on-Sea and the Meath hospital showed that the government was not prepared to countenance such behaviour.” (from the above cite)
Ne Temere, as it was typically enforced in Ireland is a black mark on the country but often a compromise was made where the male children were raised by their father’s faith and the female children by their mother’s. As terrible as Ne Temere was the fact that mixed marriages were at all common must surely indicate that plenty of Protestants were comfortable enough in the Republic as it was to marry a Catholic.
With regard to the overall decline in Protestant population (as a %) as well as the reasons Wesley Johnston cites in his analysis linked by LC Strawhouse there were things like:
Catholics typically had and continue to have a higher birthrate than Protestants. So overtime the percentage population would probably have dropped regardless of any outward migration.
The economic success of Northern Ireland after 1922. For over 30 years the Free State/Republic was an economic basketcase. I don’t know how many Catholics moved north for jobs in that period (would they have been hired had they applied?) but it would seem likely it would have been easier for Protestants to move to and integrate in areas of the north where ready employment was available, which were typically predominantly Protestant.
The disappearance in the south of jobs related to the UK and the British Empire. The British Army and British civil service jobs that would have been significant employers of Protestants outside of Ulster before 1922.
Also, it’s worth noting that since 1992 the Protestant population of the Republic has increased significantly. This is generally due to immigration.
As I said, the Republic wasn’t perfect but the Catholic Church was probably worse to its own poorer members than to Protestants in the Republic until recent times. I take significant issue with the idea though that Protestants were purged in any significant, widespread, systematic fashion in the south. The main sectarian communal violence that took place during the creation of NI and the Free State was in Belfast in 1920-22. And nothing the Catholic political ascendancy in the new Free State did, as heinous as some of it was, was as bad as how the Unionist government operated in NI until the '70s. Whataboutery of this kind doesn’t hold up to significant scrutiny. There’s also the fact that the very real discrimination against Catholics in NI didn’t lead to a mass exodus of Catholics from there. Why was that?
So some Protestants went up north to do far worse to Catholics there than ever done on them in the south? Seems fair. Why the hell would I be sensitive about it? I’m not Catholic anymore, I’m an atheist but I still hate sectarian bigotry as practiced by the Orange Order and its ilk. In the modern UK there should be no place for an organisation like it currently stands. I don’t know why they’re indulged to the extent they are. Keep your union, I don’t care, but stick loyalism and all that domineering pomp in the dustbin of history where it belongs.
The parade was organised by the Orange Order, an avowedly sectarian organisation. The drum bands you talk about play sectarian songs, walk down contentious routes, intimidating Catholics. It isn’t directly analogous to a St. Patrick’s Day parade nor other largely innocuous expressions of ethnic or national pride like say Bastille Day or St. George’s Day. Although credit where it is due, the Orange Order at least left out the sectarian tunes while passing a local Catholic church, at the behest of the Parades Commission. There are plenty of assholes amongst northern Catholics/Republicans, but there is no direct equivalent among the Catholic community of the marching season amongst Protestant loyalist/unionists. Worth noting too that there is still at least one Orange Order parade in the Republic to this day that passes without incident.
It’s mostly confined to some districts of Glasgow, notoriously in the Celtic/Rangers football rivalry and, in a much milder form, in the Hibernians/Hearts of Midlothian matches in Edinburgh.
Thanks for the two articles, the Kurt Bowen and Irish History ones were both particularly interesting.
I agree that there is no excuse for anti-Catholic policy in NI or for overtly sectarian displays. It’s great that people are getting to just ignore those displays on both sides.
Getting back to the ROI, of course there are many legit reasons for demographic change and I can see that it is complicated. But still something is not sitting right with me- I feel like I’m hearing between the lines (not from you, but overall) that just because someone may be Protestant and arrogant, that “obviously” makes them unworthy of sympathy and understanding. The fact remains that nobody chooses to have their population dropped from 10% to 3% in a short time or to have to self segregate in enclaves. In Quebec they would basically tell the English speaking Protestants that their time is over and they’re on the wrong side of history now, so either get used to being sidelined or get out. That kind of talk didn’t sound too good in Quebec and I’m getting much of the same feeling here under the surface. Maybe I’d have a different view with more study but that is what makes it hard to not be on the unionist side.
Please, study a bit more! It’s not a matter of turning against either side–but of understanding the whole picture. Unless you’d prefer dark suspicions & reading between the lines…
I don’t know what further evidence I can profer that you are incorrect in your assumptions. I explained, I hope correctly, why the Protestant population of the Republic declined in the period between independence and 1992. Some of it was probably due to sectarianism, plenty not. And for what it’s worth Protestants remain a vital and powerful section of the community in the Republic. Being Protestant and arrogant is fine, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be, but being bigotted and basically invading neighbourhoods that aren’t of the same background and putting on belicose displays is wrong as far as I’m concerned. You’re looking, imho, for an underdog that just isn’t there.
My family are from the north, I have Protestant friends, I’ve no issue with creed, just groups like the Orange Order. They disgust me. I don’t really know how I can explain it better than that. More important to the point of talking about Ulster, the treatment or mistreatment of Protestants in the south historically is largely moot with regard to displays of Protestant dominance in the north. They remain separate jurisdictions. You asked for people’s opinions and I’ve given mine. I detest the Orange Order and I feel the Ulster Covenant was a sad watershed in this island’s history.
That’s fair comment. FWIW, I’ve learned a lot from this thread alone (certainly not trying to embrace anything offensive) and I appreciate your informative replies.
Someone interested in the subject might find Ruth Dudley Edwards, The Faithful Tribe, (2000) useful.
Orange institutions have a remarkable capacity to tread on their own dicks. Millwall F.C.'s mantra, “no one likes us, we don’t care” might have been written for them.
The first thing that comes to mind are the Dunmanway killings (and the Cooolacrease killings). But there were a lot of attacks during the civil war on Anglo-Irish holdings in the south. Here’s a page going into detail about the “arson campaign” directed against Anglo-Irish landholders by the anti-treaty IRA during the Civil War:
And there was a mass exodus of Catholics from Northern Ireland. Christian Luprecht points out in his essay “Deter or Engage?: The Demographic Structure of EthnoNationalist Mobilization”, that until the 1950s, even though Catholics made up 35% of the population of NI, it made up about 60% of the emigrants, and that, even though Catholics had a higher birth rate than Protestants, any demographic increase was offset by Catholic emigration. So there was a large scale exodus by Catholics as a result of anti-Catholic discrimination and poverty.
Beyond that, saying “Well, we treated our Protestants better than the North treated their Catholics!”, while it’s true, is also not really a good answer, given the way that the North treated their Catholics. Saying “we’re not as bad as the other guy” seems to me to defect the question away from the actions of the Republic.
I didn’t deny there were sectarian murders/violence in the south during the War Of Independence and The Civil War but still the worst of it was in the north, in number of people killed and the number of people driven from homes and employment. With regard to Dunmanway and Coolacrease, although they’ve been described as sectarian and for all I know were, there have been other plausible reasons posited for the killings. It doesn’t excuse the actions of the murderers but I don’t think they can be framed simply as sectarian incidents. And neither incident was part of a systemic campaign to ethnically cleanse Protestants. I should also point out that much of the violence in the North was aided or instigated by what was meant to be the police force.
I would categorise the burning of the Big Houses as different to the nakedly sectarian killing of working class Catholics/Protestants by their neighbours, irregulars, or the armies, police forces. The big houses, as your cite explains, were often burned down in reprisal for Republican homes being destroyed and because local paramilitaries assumed the Ascendany occupants of the houses were loyalist. On a more symbolic levels, these houses were clear reminders of the gross inequality and subjugation that British rule had meant. The destruction during the Civil war is also explained:
“Why did the Anti-Treatyites embark on a concentrated campaign against the Big House in early 1923? One reason was simply that it was easy to do at a time when their military capability was seeping away. Another, the stated reason, that it was reprisal against the political elite of the Free State for the execution of Republicans. Thirty seven of the houses destroyed were those of Senators, of whom about 20 were old landed families.”
So, although the properties targeted were owned by Protestants (were they all?) it is facile, maybe erroneous, to claim these burnings as acts of sectarian violence. They were the desperate last attempts of action by a depleted band of paramilitaries. Their target was the Free State government and its allies. Still a shitty thing to do no doubt.
I stand corrected in my previous assertion, thanks, although an overall higher level of outward migration isn’t what I’d necessarily call a mass exodus without knowing what percentage of people left NI in the period. I must track down that paper by Luprecht as I haven’t read it. It would also be interesting to see how disproportionate Protestant migration out of the south was in the same period especially in the period after say 1925.
Beg to differ, I think it is a good answer to LC Strawhouse’s comments that implied that a purge of Protestants down south legitimised the standpoint of loyalism, and that loyalism should be the side an outsider should be rooting for.
And in fairness, I also have amply admitted the Free State/Republic was lacking in many areas in this regard.
Sectarian violence and discrimination, on the part of the state or by angry mobs, was a feature of Northern Irish life post-partition in a way it never was in the Republic. The fact is the Republic wasn’t as bad to its Protestant minority as many other countries were in the same period when dealing with ethnic and religious minorities. There’s far more the Republic could have done, I’m sure, but isn’t that always the case? I still stick by my earlier contention that poorer Catholics were bigger victims of the worst actions of Irish state until recent times.
A further general comment, unrelated to yours.
The people celebrating the Ulster Covenant last weekend, as well as many of them being of questionable classiness, don’t realise or maybe just don’t care that it made it impossible for a devolved all-island parliament, fully within the United Kingdom, to form. Their intransigence and that of extremists on the other side led to a century of bloodshed, repression and the continued social and economic retardation of the whole island. Those marchers also have to face the demographic reality of Northern Ireland today.
And having written another essay-length post I think it’s time I went to bed!
With all due respect don’t we have to consider one other thing? Looking back on the 20th century, even if we accept all their other flaws, it seems that the Protestant Unionists were at least correct not to put themselves under the policies of the Catholic Church (referring to its incarnation at that time and place.)
I’m not sure correct is the right term. They didn’t want to have to deal with Catholics/Republicans* on equal terms so they made their own state where the Protestant/Unionist majority ruled over whatever Catholics/Republicans remained within the partitioned six counties. They did what they thought was best for themselves. If you’ll allow me to indulge the hypothetical again, in an all-island political system the Catholic church couldn’t have been nearly as powerful and influential as it remained through much of the 20th century in the South. Unionist/Protestant voters would have represented a significant bloc providing a balance against Church influence. There was mutual distrust on both sides going back centuries so it was perhaps inevitable that a split had to happen, it’s sad though.
*Bit late to point out that not all Republicans are Catholic and not all Unionists are Protestant.
