The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd

Gerald Dawe said:

"I come from a Protestant background, but as a young fellow I had lots of Catholic and Jewish friends, and non-religious friends. We all used to hang out together, and we used to go to dances together, we used to party together, we used to go on holidays together. It was a very mixed group. But by the early ’70s all that changed. I used to walk girls home over to west Belfast and it never was a problem, but when The Troubles really started to dig in, that kind of freedom disappeared. I mean you’d take your life in your hands… Belfast became a very dark and dangerous city. People didn’t go out after 7 or 8 o’clock at night. It was pretty grim … It wasn’t the same city that I had known growing up."

The two worlds of Northern Ireland, Ctd Ian James Parsley

Ian James Parsley wrote in the Compromise After Conflict blog here:

"Northern Ireland is increasingly pillarised three ways – in addition to “Catholic/Nationalist/Republican” and “Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist” we now have a growing “Secular/Progressive/Liberal” pillar, to some extent at least. That latter pillar tends to be built on the growing professional, suburban class and is marked by its tendency to be internationalist, to reject old categories, and (demonstrated indisputably in polling) to regard itself predominantly as “Northern Irish” (rather than “Irish” or “British”)."