The Catholics and the Protestants do not fight over which version of Christianity God prefers. They fight because the Catholics are descended from the original Celtic Irish, and the Protestants are descended from English and Scottish settlers who were sent to Ireland for the express purpose of dominating and marginalizing the Irish. It is not so much a religious as a tribal division. That is why the old Irish joke – “Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?” – does not pose a meaningless question; you can change your beliefs, but not your tribe.
Posting this because of speculation that a no-deal Brexit, creating a “hard border” between NI and the Republic, might revive the Troubles.
You’re basically right. Theological points don’t feature at all in the issues which divide the two communities; “Catholic” and “Protestant” are simply convenient components of the cultural heritage of the two communities which serve as a shorthand to identify them. There are numerous other cultural markers - you can usually tell, within a few minutes of meeting somebody, which community they belong to without having to do anything so crass as to ask - but this one is particularly consistent and is already associated with a nomenclature, so it is the one that is use.
The hardening of the border poses a threat because it undermines the “parity of esteem” for the two identities which is the foundation of the peace settlement. Imposing tariffs, checks, controls etc on trade with the Republic of Ireland marks “Irish” as a foreign identity in a way that “British” is not marked. This is offensive and threatening to those who identify as Irish. (Plus, obviously, it’s signficantly economically harmful to NI as a whole, and it imposes on NI a project which it has voted against, all of which reinforces the perceptions of the community that they should not trust, or expect fair treatment from, the British government.)
Is there any other reason for the two factions to fight? More to the point, is there any reason still relevant in this day and age? “Home Rule is Rome rule!” doesn’t seem to matter much, any more, if it ever did. Why have the Troubles again?
A hundred years ago, there would have been plenty of people - most but not all Protestant - who identified as Irish andBritish, and who would have been unionists in political terms. But such has been the polarising nature of the conflict in NI that the number of people whose primary idenfication is “Irish” and who are political unionists has been declining steadily, and is probably now very small.
A 2014 survey suggested that, among Protestants in NI:
68.3% identified only as “British”
14.5% identified only as “Northern Irish”
11.1% identified as both “British” and “Northern Irish”, but claimed no other identity
2.1% identified only as “Irish”
1.0% identified as “British”, “Irish” and “Northern Irish”
0.5% identified as both “British” and “Irish”, but claimed no other identity
0.2% identified as “Irish” and “Northern Irish”, but claimed no other identity
IOW, the great bulk of NI Protestants do not accept “Irish” as an identity, either alone or in conjuction with others.
Well, “Protestant” won’t do as a national identity in this day and age, will it?! This isn’t Martin Luther’s time, nor yet John Calvin’s! Are they really anachronistic theocrats?!
No, they’re not. As I have already pointed out, theology isn’t an issue here.
And for the most part they don’t identify as protestants - they mostly identify as British, Northern Irish or both. They are identified as Protestant by others - often, I have to say, by commentators in North America who assume, and/or who inadvertently help to promote the misconception that, this tension is mainly a religious one. It isn’t. The two communities can be characterised by their respective denominations, but the issues that divide them are not religious issues - not at all.
The strand of unionism that used to tie up swings in children’s playgrounds on Sundays has retreated to the last ditch on same-sex marriage and abortion, but since they are represented by the DUP, they have a strong position at Westminster while there is still no clear majority from the rest of the UK, and they have the blocking power that’s prevented the devolved NI government from operating these last couple of years.
AFAIK, the parties that represent Irish nationalists don’t stick to the Catholic church’s line on such matters, though individual members might well do.
A hard border would be an economic disaster for both sides. I don’t think anyone is seriously contemplating it.
This is patently ridiculous, as NI is not a part of Great Britain. Great Britain is the island made up of England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom includes Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My cousins might hurt you if you called them British. If they’d been drinking with you, they might pour their drinks out.
But I can understand how the Brexit folderol would have the Protestants feeling defensive of their nationality and their passports. Quite a few people are hoping that parliament hocks this up badly enough to force Northern Ireland back into the Republican fold. But I don’t think it had even begun in 2014, which is the date given for the poll. The referendum was in 2016, were they campaigning over it that far back?
The British government is aggressively pursuing policies which, if not changed, will certainly result in a hard border. That’s the problem we’re facing, basically.
You may think it’s ridiculous, and you know your cousins better than I do so I’ll take your word for it that they think it’s ridiculous too. But the people in NI who identify as British presumably do not think it’s ridiculous. Those people exist, their identification is genuine and heartfelt, and they are numerous.
They were not. This identification is not a response to Brexit, but a long-standing matter. A recognition of the reality and signficance of this identification, and equally of the corresponding Irish identification, is one of the cornerstones on which the Good Friday Agreement rests, and that was concluded 20 years ago. The pattern of identification is much older than that.
Irish-American weighing in here. Ireland’s history is such that its shores and bloodlines have been invaded by nearly every civilization that had boats. (The Celts, whom you cite, weren’t exactly the “original” Irish, but were just another wave of invaders, originating somewhere in central Europe.) I once read about a teenage girl who was half-Irish and half-Vietnamese and wished she was “purely” one or the other. I can’t think of two less “pure” old world nationalities than those two.
It’s in the Irish character that if you somehow magically waved away all the Protestants, the remaining Catholics would find something to fight about with each other. Or vice-versa, if you magically waved away the Catholics.
Northern Ireland is of course not part of Great Britain, it is, however part of the British Isles, and the residents are British citizens by law, if not by personal identity. Britishness is not dependent on residence in Great Britain, see the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and so on for details. They might be offended, but their passports would have ‘British Citizen’ written in there, so its hardly a ridiculous statement.
It’s a little surprising to me how little comment there is about the sheer impracticality of a hard border in Ireland- there’s been talk of the impact on the peace process. But hang on a moment, supposedly, in under 2 months time, the default situation is that somehow a 310 mile barrier is going to be stuck up along the border which currently has over 200 roads crossing in, including a few that loop in then back out. This means going through the middle of farms, across house driveways, even down the centre of a road for some distance… That’d be a damn big complicated project, even if everyone locally was asking for a barrier, and to put it mildly, they’re not.
Impractical, but not in the sense of impossible. There was a hard border there for 70 years, after all. It may not have worked well at doing the things borders ought to do - smuggling was rife, it was impossible to secure, etc - but it was a sufficiently hard border to inflict lasting adverse economic, social and political injury on the communities on both sides of it.
Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, two of the founders of the 18th c. republican group the United Irishmen, and leaders of the Irish revolt of 1798, were Protestants.
There have always been Protestant Irish Republicans. There still are.
But in modern times - since the late 19th century, anyway - Protestants in (what is now) Northern Ireland have been overwhelmingly unionist in politics, and nowadays they overwhelmingly identify as British or Northern Irish or both.
“Gladstone spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question; unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question…”
a little off topic for GD, but I’m curious: What are some of these markers?
How obvious are they, and do they affect social interactions? When you meet somebody new, do you categorize him (even if only silently in your mind) as belonging to one of the tribes, or is it irrelevant?
There are lots of markers. Surnames are often a reasonably reliable marker, obviously. So are given names; George is highly likely to be a Protestant; Patrick a Catholic. (But not all names are so heavily marked.) What school somebody went to is pretty telling. Who else they know - in Ireland when you make a new acquaintance one of the first things you do is establish who you know in common, and this tells you a good deal about his or her social network and connections which enables you to place them.
None of the markers are conclusive, but there are so many of them that, cumulatively, they build up quite quickly into a reasonably reliable indicator. The apparent triviality of some of the markers is a subject of humour from time to time- Catholics go to more funerals that Protestants do, for example; And it’s a standing jokey stereotype that Catholics go on holidays to Bundoran (a holiday resort town) while Protestants go to Newcastle (another resort town) but it’s a stereotype precisely because it is, in fact, true. (Not that all Catholics do this, obviously, but anyone holidaying in Bundoran is probably a Catholic.) If she plays or has played camogie, she’s a Catholic; hockey, a Protestant. Etc, etc.
Do people make a point of categorising one another in this way? Not generally, no; it’s rarely necessary. But it happens anyway; the impressions you form of somebody as you get to know them will include an impression of which community they belong to.
Does this affect social interactions? I have never lived in Northern Ireland, but friends who have tell me yes, it does; if you are a member of one community there and you are introduced to somebody who you realise is a member of the other community (or who you just can’t place, which does happen), there are likely to be a couple of conversational topics that you will prefer to avoid or be restrained about until you know them a good deal better.
And, sensitive political topics aside, there are assumptions you will make about things that might or might not be familiar to them. For example, you would take it for granted that a Catholic living in Northern Ireland within a couple of hours drive from Dublin, a European capital city of more than a million people with a vibrant social and cultural life, will be familiar with the city (as in, will have spent time there, will know the place) whereas you wouldn’t take that for granted with a Protestant living in NI.