-Are there any Protestants who support the Nationalists or Catholics who support the Loyalists especially for people such as English Catholics?
-What was the American reaction in general to the IRA’s campaign of terrorism?
-Is Ulster more religious than the rest of the UK?
Possibly. One of the Irish members could clarify this. ?Remember that a lot of this is not “Catholic belief” vs. “Protestant belief” but ethnic conflict: predominantly Catholic ethnic native Irish vs. transplanted-in-the-1600s predominantly Protestant Scotch-Irish settled in Ulster (now equally “Irish” but intensely loyal to the UK.
Opposed to terrorism. Note the distinction however between civil disobedience and general conflict on the one hand and overt terrorism on the other. The IRA per se were not terrorists; the Provos (Provisional IRA) were a terrorist splinter group.
No.
It’s not part of the UK. All of it is part of Ireland.
Going back a bit (and not limited to Ulster) - Charles Parnell, one of the leading proponents of Home Rule in the nineteenth century was Anglican.
I think that if Parnell’s career hadn’t been derailed by the O’Shea affair a peaceful transition to Irish independence may have happened pre-WWI.
I suppose you have come from an alternate universe since the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Irish Americans (including my father) donated vast sums of money to the IRA. There was a cover story that the money was going to political activity and humanitarian assistance, and no doubt some of it did. But my father certainly knew that much of the money was going into buying weapons.
Note I didn’t use the word terrorism, because that word speaks to how they choose to use the weapons. I’m sure no one donated in the hope that innocent civilians would be killed, but they were perfectly content wish ill on British Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and even the English Royal Family.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your terrorist is my freedom fighter, and vice versa. Virtually every great power, including the US, has funded groups that by any reasonable standard except their own, engaged in terror tactics.That is why the “War On Terror” is complete bullshit – the players can’t even agree on a definition of what it is. Look into the history of Nicaraguan Contras for an example.
Also Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, Robert Emmet, the list goes on. More modern: Robert Erskine Childers and his son Erskine,
Politics aside, Ulster IS part of the Republic. Ulster and NI are only synonymous to strong unionists. NI consists of 6 counties. Ulster is these same six plus three from the Republic of Ireland.
Polycarp, you’ll find a smaller percentage of people in NI say they are “not religious” vs. England, Wales, Scotland, although it is probably true that many of these are identifying their political affiliation more than their true beliefs. However, I wouldn’t know how to find this cite again, but I have seen higher beliefs in religion reported in NI.
The IRA were certainly considered terrorists by the British during the War of Independence. They were also considered terrorists by the Irish government throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and were considered terrorists by the British and Six County governments right up to the split in the late 1960s. Calling the Provos a “terrorist splinter group” also suggests that the Official IRA, the faction left behind after the split, were not terrorists, which is something the families of the innocent victims who died at their hands would probably disagree with. The IRA always engaged in activities that could be deemed “terrorist” if you wanted to use such a word; it didn’t magically begin once the split happened, although that may be an uncomfortable truth for people who supported their cause up til then.
I’m assuming you mean Northern Ireland rather than Ulster; Northern Ireland does have much higher church attendance rates. In 2007, 45% of people went to church at least once a month, compared with 18% in Scotland, 14% in England, and 12% in Wales.
Ok, just to clarify, in Northern Irish politics, the terms nationalist/republican and loyalist/unionist, although similar imply different things. Nationalism is/was the more moderate end of the Republican spectrum, and the main nationalist party, the SDLP came about from the Civil Rights movement in NI in the '60s. Nationalists typically support the eventual union of NI with the Republic but wouldn’t typically have supported armed means to bring about this eventuality. The term Republican would very generally imply a stronger identification with physical force, but I’m sure there are and were Republicans of a more pacificist background. Broadly speaking, SDLP = nationalist, Sinn Féin and the myriad paramilitary organisations such as the PIRA, OIRA, INLA etc. = republican.
A similar distinction exists on the other side. The term Loyalist almost exclusively refers to the more extreme element of those who wish to perpetuate the union with Britain, ie loyalist terrorists such as the UDA, UVF, LVF. Unionism generally refers to the (slightly) more moderate political tradition related to perpetuating the union in NI. Maybe the linguistic distinction is meaningless but you would never hear of a unionist terror group for example.
All that being said, there are certainly some people on both sides of the community who would either vote for their non-traditional party or in some cases would join up with paramilitaries. Plenty of nationalists in NI might vote for a unionist candidate in elections, if, for example, their local representative had been doing a great job, or sometimes as a protest against the main nationalist or republican candidate. I’m sure there are some of a unionist persuasion who would similarly vote for a nationalist or even a republican candidate.
Beyond that, one’s religious background, although a general indicator of affiliation isn’t 100%. There are Protestants who support a united independent Ireland, there are Catholics who wouldn’t want NI to leave the UK.
There were Protestant members of the IRA, for example. I’m not too sure if there were any Catholic members of loyalist groups, I suppose it’s possible but seems less likely. Republicanism, as well as being identified with Catholicism, has a long left-wing, secular tradition that can appeal to non-Catholics. There are though, at least some non-traditional members of loyalist terror groups, there were some UDA members whose father was Egyptian.
I’m not sure what English Catholics have to do with your question to be honest.
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I’m sure there are others more qualified than myself to answer this but my impression from my myriad visits to the US is that the American public, insofar as anyone cares, would be generally sympathetic to the IRA. I’ve seen Republican memorabilia on display in the US that you wouldn’t really see in the Republic.
Religion plays a bigger part in life in NI, but I don’t know if people are more religious. Many of my Catholic cousins in NI will go to mass every week whereas most of my relatives down here don’t bother. However, that might be more to do with the urban/rural divide. There are certain groups like the Free Presbyterians that are prominent in NI but wouldn’t really get much traction in Britain. In some ways, NI religosity is more similar to the American bible belt’s than it would be to Britain’s.
I think Ruadh has cleared this up. Any group with IRA in the title is/was a terrorist organisation (freedom fighting unit).
Now you’re just being silly. Part of Ulster is in NI, part of it is in the Republic. It is not wholly contained in either.
The OP was wrong to use Ulster when he meant NI, but you are equally wrong in insisting that Ulster is part of the Republic.
There was also a leading young loyalist who I think was killed and IIRC parents were refugees from the Balakans (Bosnia perhaps?), also notable because he supported Celtic FC.
He wasn’t wrong to use Ulster for NI, plenty of people in NI and in Britain do that. It’s just that for the sake of accuracy, best practice would be to avoid the term.
“Ulster Says No!” was a unionist watchword for years.
Just because people use it doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. Loads of people here in Sweden say England when they mean Storbritannien, the sheer amount of them saying it doesn’t make it any more right.
I agree, the geographiocal distinction between Northern Ireland and the historical counties of Ulster is something that’s goign to be lost on a lot of people including a lot of people in the UK and Ireland.
What’s wrong in a name? If people in a place decide to call it something, that’s it’s name, or one of them at least. The term England for the UK is problematic in the sense that you are alienating all the UKians who aren’t in England/English. When someone in Northern Ireland uses the term Ulster, they’re not offending anyone (well maybe soo eejits in the other 3 counties but I’ve never met anyone from there who cared). It’s shorthand for “the 6 counties of Ulster that = Northern Ireland”.
You’re pretty much saying I’m wrong to say I live in Ireland, as I’m referring to the Republic of Ireland, but ZOMG Northern Ireland is also in Ireland and I don’t live there. For the sake of accuracy, it might make sense for me to always qualify that I’m living in the Republic of Ireland but in reality it doesn’t matter.
When a unionist, or a person from Britain refers to Ulster, they almost universally are referring to the 6 counties, not the historic 9 counties.
Probably belaboring a bit, but this argument brings to mind this song: I am not American - YouTube
I’ve just seen enough people get their panties in a twist about it, including many people from the Republic on this board. The kind of people that also get moody if you write Éire instead of the Republic of Ireland.
For God’s sake, look at what I was replying to: “Politics aside, Ulster IS part of the Republic.” That is simply wrong. Both on a literal level (two thirds of the counties are in Northern Ireland, so the majority of Ulster is not part of the Republic) and the colloquial (even if inaccurate, Ulster as a single entity is used colloquially to mean NI, not to mean a part of the Republic).
Anyway, “Ireland” is perfectly correct because it is the official name of the country, rather than “Republic of Ireland”.
It is, but the term suffers from the exact same problem that makes Ulster “wrong”. 