Closed minds and walled off zones
The past centuries' history of sound and fury was in its last throes with the advent of the Free State in 1921. By 1949, it had shaken off its last political bonds with the United Kingdom, its former coloniser, shedding its dominion[1] status to become a republic in its own right. Admission to the European Community in 1973 diminished its ongoing economic dependency. After the partition[2] of the island, its northmost corner that Protestants insist on calling Ulster had known 50 years of peace. Thus two nationalisms had obtained a State that represented their interests and in each, large sections of officialdom ranked religion at the top of their values, thereby legitimising it. In the South, once the Protestant Ascendency[3] landlords had been compensated, the Protestant presence ceased being a problem ; with their domains repurchased and allocated to Irish peasant farmers, they left the island or settled down quietly. In the North, a two third Protestant majority maintained a political stability that served its ends. Then, in 1969, violence flared up between the two communities. Three decades of conflict ensued with a toll of 3,600 dead and some 30,000 wounded before 10 years of painstaking negotiations finally put paid to the “troubles”. The devolution of the Province with its own decontaminated, non-partisan institutions, keeps it within the Union to the satisfaction of the Protestants, but allows for the democratic possibility of an eventual reunification of the island by referendum, which gives hope to the Catholics.
However, the fading of one of the most controlled borders in Western Europe and the relative prosperity of the Province, have not altered the entrenched and enduring segregation of (notably working-class) neighbourhoods. Only 5% of schools accept children of both faiths. State schools teach Protestant children and Catholic maintained schools the Catholic. Students of both confessions come together at university but this after studying, throughout their school years, history curriculums the impartiality of which leaves room for doubt. Furthermore, young Protestants practise English sports (football, rugby) while the Catholics play Gaelic football or Hurling[4]. Toponymy and Christian names vary according to confessional obedience. Still in 2010 the media had a field day with the hardliners in both camps as the Marching Season[5] unfolded. Between April and August, these parades celebrate such occasions as the 12th of July Battle of the Boyne (1690) won by William of Orange[6] over deposed Catholic king James II[7]. One month later in (London)Derry, the Protestants honour their Apprentice Boys who in 1688 lived through a pitiless siege after shutting the gates to the Jacobite monarch. In October the Reformation Day Parades commemorate the publication of Luther's thesis at Wittenberg, the founding act of Protestantism.
Every year the authorities anticipate trouble because in the seventies the number of marches quadrupled providing the Protestants with opportunities for sorties that challenged the demarcation of Catholic territory. It must be noted that, especially in the cities, each community's territory is clearly marked out : pavement curbs in different colours, murals, flags (the Union jack or the Republic's flag) hanging from the windows. Clashes tend to arise, for instance when the “walk” (the term preferred by the Orange Order) advertised by the loud echoes of the Lambeg drum[8] is perceived as a triumphalist assertion of domination, a way of saying « this is our land ; know your place »
. In Belfast, some twenty Peace lines[9] keep feuding communities apart for instance on the Shankill and Falls Roads. Meanwhile in the South, manifest in the renewed interest in the traditional Gaelic sports and language, identity concerns run high : since the nineties, the Celtic Tiger rides the crests and troughs of a turbulent economy which has drawn to the country a Polish influx of migrants – Catholic though they be.
It is as though the mental and physical barriers erected throughout history between the two communities, were edgily swapping sides. Enforced or sought after, their demarcations have been kept up by two states born of ethnic and religious conflicts and of quasi colonial relations that run from the Plantagenets' Pale to the six Counties kept in the Union via the Ulster Plantations
The conflicts are both ethnic and religious : their identity driven ideologies are not confined to religion. Despite the antagonistic representations all too readily bandied around by each community, it does seem that the implementation of anti-Catholic laws was not as harsh as was long believed. The deportations across the Shannon in 1653-1655 for instance targeted thousands of people but were never fully implemented. The Penal Laws (1695-1727) were enforced with varying degrees of severity according to the local balance of power and the magistrates' inclinations. Officers of the State soon recognised the virtues of flexibility. After all, the discriminatory policies of the 16th to 18th centuries aimed to meet the economic interests of the ‘ascendant' class much more than to convert the downtrodden one. Anti-catholic laws were only ever fully enforced at times of grave danger (for instance the 1715 invasion). At other times the authorities did not interfere with the Catholics' religious observance, for which leniency they expected gratitude.
In order to explain current history's gripes, dwelling on the past representations that each opponent harbours of the other is of the essence.
Before setting forth the reasons to hope for an appeasement of these long-standing conflicts, an anti-Catholic feelings at least as old as the Reformation needs examining which, half way through the 19th century, stood as some sort of national institution and remains to this day an obstacle to genuine Britishness.
Then we shall turn our attention to the past of humiliation, spoliation, dejection that embitters the Catholic psyche, although the acrimony has considerably dropped as a result of the societal upheavals in the Republic.
