Unconscious bias against Ireland's protestants and unionists

A 19th century painting by Édouard Debat-Ponsan, depicting Catherine de' Medici (in black) viewing the carnage of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (a day of Catholic mob violence and murder in 1572)

Just because you are gay it does not automatically mean that you believe in government control of the economy and large public spending.

Today we live in an identity-politics world where the conservative and centrist is evil and the progressive left is benevolent and virtuous.

And so it is in Northern Ireland, the unionist is bad, the nationalist is good. As Newton Emerson said: "The special problem with Sinn Fein is its ideological imperative to paint unionists as a community defined by prejudice." Unionists are the "despised tribe" and the "despised hangers-on".

The 'Despised Tribe' and 'Despised hangers-on'

In a previous post I wrote that Catholic-Nationalists in Ireland can regard Protestant and Unionists as associated with "Saxon and Guilt".

I also wrote about Northern Ireland's image problem and the Reginald Maudlin moment here. I wrote about Unionism's anglophobia here. I also wrote about Ireland's "big, mad children".

In this post I look at how the British press and mainland opinion often looks with low regard upon the pro-Union community of Northern Ireland. Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote in his autobiography, 'Memoir: My Life and Themes', published in 1998:

Protestant, planter and guilt. Catholic, Gael and virtue.

Captain John Smith trading with Virginian Indians. Painting by Sidney E. King, National Park Service.

On Slugger O'Toole I wrote that being protestant is often a byword for outsider and guilt, while being Catholic is shorthand for Erin and virtue. In that I wrote:

Irish nationalism's xenophobia against long settled Protestants

Sinn Fein MLA Phil Flanagan tweeted:

"Unionists didn't have a problem with immigration when their ancestors descended on Ireland to grab land from the native population..."

While, republicans don't have a problem with immigration, so long as it's not protestant immigration to Ireland of centuries past. As Eoin O'Malley of Dublin City University wrote in the paper 'Populist Nationalists: Sinn Fein and redefining the 'radical right'':

"Nationalism in Ireland cannot sit easily with anti-immigrant bigotry (as long as the immigrants are not long settled Protestants."

Being Protestant and Bloody Sunday, Ctd

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey attacks Reginald Maudling (cartoon by Cummings)

The Guardian reported on events in Dublin on the day of February 2 1972, two days after Bloody Sunday:

"Hatred of Britain in the Republic reached fever pitch as the embassy’s interior blazed fiercely, watched by several thousand. ‘Burn, burn, burn,’ they shouted as chunks of masonry and woodwork fell blazing onto the street. They redoubled their cheering whenever they saw the fire breaking through into new parts of the building."

Northern Ireland's Dance

By Ian Knox

I remain very confused about Belfast and Northern Ireland. So much of it is progressive, cultured and astonishingly metropolitan. Yet the politics is feudal and tribal and certain estates are ominous and intimidating.

IRA violence wiped out Protestant self-identification as Irish

Source here.

IRA violence turned Irish against English and English against Irish, protestant against Catholic, and
robbing protestants of Irishness. As Christopher Hitchens said:

"It was also the Provisional IRA, and not just the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act, that left “the Irish community in Britain feeling like a suspect nation."

The Provisional IRA may have persuaded Britain to the negotiating table, however their relentless campaign of homicide powerfully dissuaded Irish unification and effectively rendered extinct protestants who self-identified as Irish. That fact alone speaks for how the armed separatism was not only immoral and wrong, but also spectacularly counterproductive. What justification is there for the PIRA armed campaign of destruction of persons and property if the result was to dissuade and create a vehement rejection of being Irish among the very people who they wanted to be Irish in an Irish Republic?

Brian Kennaway said:

"[IRA violence] knocked the Irish heart out of Ulster Protestants."

Nick Laird on the Protestant-Irish identity

Nick Laird, poet from Northern Ireland, said:

"The complexities of being a Protestant, in that you’re Irish when you’re in Britain, but you’re not Irish when you’re in Ireland. You’re a bad fit everywhere."

Being Protestant and Bloody Sunday

James Nesbitt played Ivan Cooper in 'Bloody Sunday' in 2002

As Paul Bew reminded us, Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972 stands as the worst massacre of British citizens by British troops since Peterloo in 1819. Ruth Dudley Edwards said:

"Unionists wanted to believe – until Lord Saville proved otherwise – that innocent protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday had been carrying weapons."

The inglorious Twelfth

John Hewitt, Ulster poet, at a 12th July march

Seamus Heaney wrote a poem, 'Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966', about his experience of the Twelfth July:

'The lambeg balloons at his belly, weighs
Him back on his haunches, lodging thunder
Grossly there between his chin and his knees.
He is raised up by what he buckles under.

The Protestantisation of Southern Ireland

COI Dean Victor Griffin who opposed the Protestant ascendency in the North and the Catholic ascendancy in the South, was the first public representative of new-look Protestantism in Ireland said Roy Foster

Ian D'Alton wrote that the Irish Free State "was rescued by Catholics becoming Protestants." This was a formulation most prominently articulated by the recently deceased Eddie Holt - The Protestantisation of the South's middle class. Coincidentally I wrote in 2015 that 'The Calvinist Ulsterman is more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised.' The religious proclivities of the North and the South have inverted.

G.K. Chesterton on Belfast

G.K. Chesterton by David Low.

[UPDATE - Read here and here for G.K. Chesterton on Unionism and Home Rule respectively]

The Protestant turned Catholic G.K. Chesterton wrote 'Irish Impressions', published in 1919 he shared his thoughts with great contemporary relevance on his time in Ireland. He devoted a chapter to the Ireland's leading industrial centre, 'Belfast and the Religious Question,' in which he wrote scathingly of the superiority of the northern Protestant creed. He began with thoughts on Ireland and poetry:

"Of that cloud of dream which seems to drift over so many Irish poems and impressions, I felt very little in Ireland. There is a real meaning in this suggestion of a mystic sleep; but it does not mean what most of us imagine, and is not to be found where we expect it.

George Bernard Shaw on his Irishness, Edward Carson and Home Rule

George Bernard Shaw by Alick P.F. Ritchie

George Bernard Shaw is the venerated and revered Irish man of letters, and a protestant Irishman to the very narrow" of his bones at that. Like all Irish he proclaimed his Irishness but unlike the Irish, he also proclaimed his unIrish roots:

"I am a traditional Irishman, my family came from Yorkshire."

In sharing this Wildean aphorism, Shaw touches on a truth that many on the island can relate to, even if it's uncomfortable in doing so. Shaw also proclaimed his unionism as a protestant Irishman. In a letter to The Irish Statesman, January 10 1920, George Bernard Shaw said:

Fintan O'Toole - Ireland's parallel monarchy

Fintan O’Toole wrote in ‘Enough is Enough: How to Build A New Republic’ (page 28) about Ireland's 'parallel monarchy’ of the Church:

"Having shrugged off one culture of deference to titled nobles, the new state embraced another. The elected representatives of the people always kneeled before a bishop and kissed his ring. The fact that the bishop was addressed as ‘My Lord’ and lived in a house that was always called a ‘palace’ did not seem to cause any great discomfort to Irish people who would have been enraged by any sugges- tion that Ireland should honour an aristocracy. Indeed, Mary Kenny has argued persuasively that the Church occupied the place where the monarchy had been: ‘even the ardent Republicans would find a vehicle for the pomp and ceremony that every society either derives from tradition or reinvents – the Holy Roman Catholic Church would soon fill the vacuum left by the departed pageantry of His Majesty.’7 She points out that the Eucharistic Congress of 1932, which was the Irish state’s first great public ceremonial, ‘followed in almost every detail the format used for royal visits and royal events in Ireland… Not coincidentally, words and phrases previously applied to the monarchy were at- tached to the papacy: “allegiance”, “loyalty”, and “kingship” (of Christ).’ The ‘parallel monarchy’ of the Church preserved all the habits of awe, obedience and humility that might have been thrown off in a genuinely democratic revolution."

In an article in the Irish Times, 'Why do we allow a foreign state to appoint the patrons of our primary schools?' Fintan O’Toole wrote:

"Why do we allow a foreign state to appoint the patrons of our primary schools? If some weird vestige of colonial times decreed that the British monarch would appoint the ultimate legal controllers of almost 3,200 primary schools in our so-called republic, we would be literally up in arms. Why should we tolerate the weird vestige of an equally colonial mentality that allows a monarch in Rome to do just that?"

Gary Mitchell - When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Gary Mitchell spoke with the belfast Telegraph and shared his experience of school:

"I left with nothing. It's strange because in primary school I excelled. I passed the 11-plus. I didn't go to grammar school but went to Rathcoole Secondary School. We did mid-term exams and I was first in almost every subject. But people wouldn't play with me. I wasn't allowed on the football team. I was on my own. 

I got this idea in my head that I could be bottom of the class in every subject if I really tried hard, and believe me coming bottom in some of the subjects was very difficult because they got really low scores. But I managed it, and I became popular."

Let's repeat what Gary Mitchell just said: "I managed it - [to be bottom of the class in every subject] - and I became popular." This is horrendous. Then he said:

"I realised that learning things was a bad idea, and being dumb was a good idea. Being stupid was the smart thing to do."

He explained here his journey from chronic worklessness to famous playwright. He then explained his life after becoming famous:

"Things were going great – I had a family, plenty of money, plenty of opportunities and plenty of work. Everything seemed perfect. In fact, I remember standing outside our house one day with my wife, and she told me it was like heaven. Nothing ever went wrong – just before everything did go wrong.

Saint Patrick's Day - We need to end the identification of Irishness with monolithic Catholicism.

There is not such thing as a proper Irish person. There is no doctrinally orthodox and prelapsarian pure way to be an Irish person. It may exist as a demented ideal is some puritans, but these notions are racist, xenophobic and the most obvious bar to peace in Ireland. This is the Celtic nationalism that worked to make Irishness irrevocably incompatible with Englishness. It is a dangerously and wrecklessly conservative, idiosyncratic and reactionary view of identity. On par with the purist ideology of the BNP and EDL.

 

Éamon de Valera typified the little-Irelander mentality perfectly. Gearoid O Crualaoich explained that de Valera had 'a static conception of a "truly Irish" way of life.' De Valera and others cherished and pursued the "fior Gael" ("true Irish"). This was explicitly shown in his famous but loopy 1943 speech 'The Ireland That We Dreamed Of'.

 

It was the ireland of "cosy homesteads", the rural countryside, neo Gaelic, Catholic Arcadia. As J. T. Morahan said in 1931*:

"[English] culture is not the culture of the Gael; rather it is poison gas to the kindly Celtic people."

Taoiseach Éamon de Valera said in 1951:

"I am an Irishman second: I am a Catholic first and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong."

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said in 2013:

 "I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic taoiseach."

Thomas Nast - No Sect Can Rule this School

Carlos Velazquez wrote a commentary on the cartoon done by Thomas Nast, the father of the American editorial cartoonist tradition, which accompanied an article from a 1875 edition of Harper’s Weekly.  On page 385 of that publication is an articleed titled 'The Public Schools and its Foes.' Directly above the article was another political cartoon by Nast. The Thomas Nast cartoon, 'No Church need apply' depicts a Catholic bishop passing out Vatican decrees to young school children. These children are placed in a doorway of the school, besides which appeared a sign which read, 'No Sect can rule this school,' This was the theme of the companion article. Carlos explained the cartoon and the companion article here:

"The companion article written by Eugene Lawrence highlighted the greatest enemy of the common schools as being the Roman Catholic Church and its leader Pope Pius IX as well as other religious/political institutions that did not promote American common schools. The article favored the condition of the common schools and emphasized what we consider today to be the separation of church and state: 

“Their people have become conscious that the common school is the source of ease, comfort, wealth; that it doubles the value of their lands, build towns, factories, railroads; and hence all over the south there is a plain advance toward a new condition of society.” (p.386)

Furthermore, Lawrence cited the common schools as places for “repression of violence” and “cultivation of knowledge” and expresses the notion that the enemies of the common school, which included, “a foreign pope, democratic politicians and a foreign sect” as being responsible for “the decreed destruction of the common school…” (p.386)

Linda Irvine - Being a Protestant and being Irish

Linda Irvine explained to William Crawley on the BBC programme It's a Blas, which followed William's journey to learn Irish, how she viewed Irish identity and the language. She said:

"I feel I'm British, but I'm Irish. I feel that as Protestants from Northern Ireland we are the other Irish. We are the ignored, forgotten Irish that have been over looked. Because when people think of Irish identity they think of catholic, they think of nationalist and they think of republican. And that's not who I am. That's not my identity. So I think that is why people from my community have rejected that idea of an Irish identity and what goes along with that - Irish dancing, Irish language. So for them that is something that is alien to them. Yet for me I see actually now that that identity is mine as well."

A protestant party for a protestant people

In a previous post here ('A catholic party for a catholic people') we covered Patrick Murphy's critique of Sinn Fein in The Irish News - a party that operates to the exclusion of the protestant people of Northern Ireland. The DUP are the opposite side of the same medieval coin. As Alex Kane said:

"The DUP (along with the UUP) regards its primary task as the protection, promotion and preservation of unionist interests. Put bluntly, that means doing everything possible to undermine the republican, united-Ireland agenda. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein (with the SDLP) sees its primary task as continuing to erase, or at least blur, the signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks which sharply define Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom."

And as we said in the previous post here, the Assembly cannot stand if parties cannot come to realize that they owe a duty and responsibility to those people who are perceived to be on the other side.

A protestant party for a protestant people

In a previous post here ('A catholic party for a catholic people') we covered Patrick Murphy's critique of Sinn Fein in The Irish News - a party that operates to the exclusion of the protestant people of Northern Ireland. The DUP are the opposite side of the same medieval coin. As Alex Kane said:

"The DUP (along with the UUP) regards its primary task as the protection, promotion and preservation of unionist interests. Put bluntly, that means doing everything possible to undermine the republican, united-Ireland agenda. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein (with the SDLP) sees its primary task as continuing to erase, or at least blur, the signs, symbols, touchstones and benchmarks which sharply define Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom."

And as we said in the previous post here, the Assembly cannot stand if parties cannot come to realize that they owe a duty and responsibility to those people who are perceived to be on the other side.