The divisions within Northern Ireland society have as much to do with class as religion or nationality

The history of blue Ireland, a put up created in 1921, has non been a peaceful iodine, and the study of the country has been as turbulent it could be said that in that location is a meta- interlocking a conflict nearly the conflict. The energises of these troubles ar varied, and it is far too simplistic to reduce it to b atomic number 18ly a ghostlike one although the Protestant faith is now identical with unionism, and Catholicism with bailiwickism, thither atomic number 18 in fact many reasons for the divisions inwardly the parliamentary procedure.The conflict has become one of national personal individuality, branch and policy-making and stinting equality, as well(p) as, some take over argued, culture. These are totally blockadeogenous, i. e. internal, explanations for the disobedient nature of northern Irish life in recent decades, barely others birth placed the buck on external exogenous sources, claiming the deportment of spacious Britain or Ireland (or some(prenominal)) are responsible for the current situation.The roots of these divisions are buried below centuries of conflict, betrayal and mistrust, and, whilst religion played an important dowery, it was part of a wider economic and giving medicational battle. It is important to take these into account, that one of the problems facing northerly Ireland is the sheer amount of unresolved history that underlies either movement and decision.This essay will therefore take the recent Troubles as its main focus that is, the causes and incumbrances of the collapse of the Stormont assembly on twenty-fourth March 1972 and the imposition of Direct Rule by Westminster, ending in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. Whilst this tentative agreement has by no means brought a complete halt to the frenzy and divisions in Northern Ireland, there was grand hope, that has non yet proved to have been completely unfounded, that it would signify the commence of the end.Northern Ireland had the second highest church make attendance in Western atomic number 63 after the Republic of Ireland, with 95% of Catholics and 45% of Protestants attending church on a weekly basis in 1969 and there foot be no denying the fact that the divisions inside Northern Irish society have been given u expertthly labels on a shallow level at least it is a battle among Catholics and Protestants. If this is so, and then it is not chimerical interview to ask equitable which of the dickens is principally at fault.Patrick Buckland is just one who observes that it is the Protestant community who see the conflict in spiritual call, claiming For Catholics the problem was largely political for Protestants largely spectral. They reverenceed the resources and the power of the roman Catholic church, with 69% of Belfast Protestants in 1994 believing the Church had a signifi goatt, powerful or too powerful influence in the government of the Republic of Ireland.This fear of the Catholic hegemony, that would swamp and overrun their own flair of life and attain of worship, boosters rationalise their hostility towards the minority in the North. As an ethnic group, they are defined by their religion, which inevitably shapes their communities, their politics and their outlook. It could even be claimed that they pass back on their faith because they have no national identity of their own. Four features of unionist politics during the cessation 1972-1998 were clearly influenced by religion.The refusal to take a leak any square accommodation with the Catholic minority, the steadfast rejection of any thoughtfulness of an unify Ireland, the desire to maintain the Union to preserve the Protestant elan of life and the support for the evangelical Democratic unionist Party were all bound up with Protestantism the last point echoed in Steve Bruces claim that the Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict because that is the specifiedly conclusion th at makes instinct of Ian Paisleys career.Finally, the anthropologist Don Akenson claims that the conflict stemmed from the Ulster Protestants belief that they are Gods elect people, and this explains their sense of superiority, their ability to discriminate against their Catholic population without qualms and their determination to detain the autonomy of the Six Counties, their promised land. However, it is also possible, as many Unionists have done, to blame the divisions on the Catholic religion.Many extreme stalwarts claimed that nationalism is nothing by the tool of the Vatican in an attempt to turn back the tide of Protestantism. Whilst this view is peradventure a little extreme, they pointed to the religious genocide that took place in the South between 1941 and 1971, when the Protestant proportion of the population fell from 10% to 4. 1%, the ratified enforcement of Catholic morality that caused the Protestant emigration to the North and the Papal practice of law ensuri ng that the offspring of mixed relationships were raised as Catholics.Unionists also argued that it was the Catholic hierarchy that merge the divide by teaching a Catholic, southern Irish national identity within their schools, that it was their refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Union and its security forces that take to the downfall of the first Stormont Assembly. They were also incensed by the Churchs refusal to excommunicate members of the IRA, as they did during the Civil War between 1922-3, and their willingness to bury IRA dead and smart strikers in consecrated ground.This, coupled with the disco genuinely of IRA weapons on church land, led to the belief, in Unionist circles at least, that the Church played an proportionalityless role in the conflict. It was this strident and violent Catholic nationalism that link Protestantism to unionism after all, there were a small number of Catholic unionists, which is not to be evaluate if Protestantism and unionism had bee n one and the same from the very beginning. Despite all this, it moldiness be remembered that the conflict was not a theological one, and that religion alone cannot explain the divisions within society.Although Northern Ireland nonetheless does have one of the highest church attendance figures outside the Republic, in pull back with the increasingly secularisation of the rest of the UK and Europe, numbers fell (just 29% of Protestants and 67% of Catholics went to church weekly in 1998) as the conflict developed, intensified and continued. The full stop 1972 and 1998, saw Northern Ireland become an increasingly secularised state between 1981 and 1987 the separate rate increase at the same rate as undischarged Britains and the number of births outside marriage doubled yet the divisions continue.If the conflict was the settlement of purely religious reasons, it would be expected that there would have been a correlation between countrys most afflicted by the Troubles and the d egree of religious intensity of the inhabitants, but this plainly was not the case the most costly communities were to be found in the countryside, but the vast major(ip)ity of the violence was carried out in the cities, which recorded much lower church attendance figures in 1992 it was estimated in one Belfast Catholic parish just 38% of the population attended mass on a weekly basis.The same should have been true for the paramilitaries, that those most committed to the cause would also have been the most devout, but there is large evidence that many only turned to religion after incarceration most famously, many of the aridity strikers led by Bobby Sands in 1981 had converted to Catholicism once in jail.There has also been a careful avoidance by the main political parties in the province to avoid religious labels the DUP was at a time the Protestant Unionist Party, but swiftly changed its name to the Democratic Unionist Party in 1971 preferring terms such as social democr atic, unionist, nationalist and so on, and they pursue political and economic not religious policies. It should also be pointed out that even if they did have religious labels, it would not have inescapably meant that the conflict was a religious one numerous European political parties, the German CDU being just one example, proudly possess a religious name.Between 1969 and 1994, only one Protestant cleric was killed, and he, the man of the cloth Robert Bradford, was a hardline, outspoken UUP MP, and both sides, to a greater extent, respected the sanctity of churches and churchmen. An important point in this issues is that there is, in fact, nothing per se religious about Catholics taking up arms in the later(a) 1960s/early 1970s against a perceived aggressor or oppressor. This was not a holy war, not a crusade, but a fight against the inequalities and discrimination they faced.Nor was the Protestant discrimination of Catholics inherently religious Catholics were case-harde ned unjustly because they were seen as disloyal to the state, not because of their rosaries and belief in transubstantiation. The question of whether the Northern Ireland Troubles were prompted by the religious tensions is best summed up by toilette McGarry and Brendan OLeary when they said There is no need to invent ingenious religious agendas to account for militant republican paramilitarism and the same is true for the loyalists.There are a number of other, more(prenominal) fundamental and receivedistic issues that explain the divisions within the province. There were clear class divisions within Northern Irish society throughout the twentieth century that could be said to have had an effect on the development of the Troubles. Stated crudely, there a disproportionate of the midriff classes were Protestant, whilst Catholics were much more likely to make up the work classes. In 1971, 69% of Catholics were manual workers, in comparison to 59% of Protestant, and throughout the p eriod the number of unskilled Catholic workers rose, whilst Protestant figures fell. olibanum the Northern Irish conflict could be seen in terms of a Marxist push one where the mainly Protestant elites were attempting to maintain the status quo against the demands of the Catholic working class. However, this would be to oversimplify the problem, and overlooks the not insubstantial Catholic nitty-gritty class and ignores the significant influence the Protestant working class were able to uphold on the Unionist leadership. If it had been an issue of class, then it would not be illogical to expect that political parties would have organised along class lines, but this was not necessarily the case.Whilst the UUP was heavily dependent on the support of the Protestant working class, this was not at the expense of middle class votes. The differences between the DUP and the UUP were not class-based, but scarce political, although it could be said the SDLP attracted more conservative nationalist support than Sinn Fiin before 1998. It might also have been expected that the small Catholic middle class would have been more unionist in character, if it had merely been a class struggle.Therefore to perceive the divisions in society as being along class lines is misleading, but there is a case for looking at the economic inequalities between the devil communities, and the effect that they had on the formation and character of the conflict. In 1989, the Northern Ireland chest of drawers Minister Richard Needham said If work can be found for 10,000 out of work boys in West Belfast that in itself will do more to impact on the political and security areas than anything else. In all societies, political stability is linked to economic prosperity, and the fact that, for most of the period 1972 to 1998 the Northern Irish economy consistently underperformed economically in comparison to the mainland. At times in the 1970s, unemployment reached levels as high as 12%, whils t Great Britain had enjoyed full employment. Key staple industries, such as textiles, ship- and airplane building suffered from fierce overseas competition and by the 1970s were in near-terminal scorn.political extremism, and, by extension, paramilitarism was always more prevalent amongst the disadvantaged on both sides of the religious divide rather than the more affluent a considerable proportion of the violence emanates from deprived Catholic and Protestant ghettos. Therefore there is some truth in Needhams statement if Northern Irelands economy had been stronger, then perhaps the more violent nature of the conflict could have been contained.A very important economic issue was that of discrimination. In 1971, 17. 3% of Catholic men were unemployed, in contrast to just 6. 6% of Protestants. Twenty old age later, the figures were 21. 3% and 9. 6% respectively. For those Catholics in work, they could expect to be paid comfortably less than their Protestant counterparts. Direct and indirect discrimination against Catholics were inherent in the economic inequalities they faced.Thus the roots of the conflict can be seen in Catholic demands for an improvement in their economic situation, but attempts, in particular under the leadership of Terence ONeill, to address these discrepancies had an important consequence the Protestants became increasingly more pertinacious to protect their economic privileges. They began to complain of what Birrell called reverse relative deprivation, that is, during the 1970s Protestants began to feel relatively deprived as the gap between them and Catholics began to close, which led to an increased resistance to anti-discrimination policies, which in turn fuelled Catholic discontent.By the 1990s, the violence of loyalist paramilitaries were being attributed to the perception that Catholics were now doing better than Protestants, thanks to reverse discrimination in their favour this point of view was particularly prevalent in t he Shankhill area of Belfast, as uncovered by the 1993 Opsahl Commission. Another economic motive that could help explain the divisions within Northern Ireland was the clear financial disadvantages of abandoning the Union.In the oral communication of McGarry and OLeary, Protestants are said to be more loyal to the half-crown than to the Crown. angiotensin-converting enzyme of the reasons Unionists were so opposed the idea of a united Ireland was because it would lead not only to the end of their economic advantages, but to a superior general decline in the average standard of living, seeing as the Republic simply could not guarantee degree of expenditure on the province as Britain by the early 1990s, the subsidy given to Northern Ireland from London genuinely exceeded the Republics income tax revenue.This does not explain the continued nationalist support for and end to the union, even when aware of the inevitable economic disadvantages, but it is an important work out in unde rstanding Protestant intransigence. However, economic factors alone simply cannot explain the divisions that led to the outbreak of the Troubles, or their continuation for so long. As Trotsky pointed out, if mere deprivation was the cause of revolutions, the masses would always be in a state of rebellion.If economic reasons were the cause of violence between the two communities, it would be expected that periods of depression would be accompanied by an intensification of conflict, which simply was not the case after the 1958 slump there was no outbreak of violence, and the Troubles genuinely started during a period of relative growth, falling unemployment and increasing prosperity, which would point to a political, rather than economic, trigger.Whilst political extremism is more likely to be found in under allow areas, repression (especially in the case of nationalist groups) was still as major reason for joining paramilitary forces, rather than objective deprivation. As already me ntioned, there was no economic incentive for the Six Counties to unite with the South, especially before the Republics emergence as a Celtic Tiger, but the British subvention of the province also does not fully explain Protestant unionism, for it increased considerably during the years of Direct Rule, and in 1972 it was nowhere near the i3. billion it was in 1998.Unionism was driven by the belief in the right to self-determination and the resolve to preserve the Protestant way of life, not an economic self-interest, and equally, Nationalism has a social psychological basis rather than a purely or largely frameworkist foundation (McGarry and OLeary). For shared material experiences to shape a community in any significant way, they must firstly, according to McGarry and OLeary, have a deep sense of national identity formed through shared historical or geographical experiences and facilitated by common culture, language or religion.Whilst economics clearly played a crucial role in con solidating existing divides, it does not explain the creative activity of the divisions in the first place. The violent divisions in Northern Ireland society can all be traced to the problem of national identity. Culturally, there was no real divide between the two communities, except over fairly superficial matters such as sport and newspapers.Religious, economic, class and cultural issues, whilst important in understanding the complexity of the Ulster question, are not, in themselves, enough to explain the inherent causes. In terms of religion, whereas the Catholics were a single denomination, the various Protestant denominations were united only by the fact that their non-Catholicism, which was not strong enough to bring in a strong enough degree of cohesiveness. Religious labels, however, were used as a demarcation between the two communities.Unionists were not united by their religion, their class or their economic self-interest, but by their identification with the rest of t he United Kingdom, by the fact that they considered themselves to be British even when the government did not necessarily agree. Equally, nationalists were united in the belief that they are Irish, and spiritually and ethnically a part of the southern Republic. People were members of a religious community, considered to be a cradle Catholic or Protestant regardless of their substantial religious or non-religious conviction their religious label was an ethnic label.Whilst churches retained and reinforced the social boundaries, through religiously driven activities, and the high order of endogamy (in 1968, 96% of the population had parents of the same religion, whilst between 1943 and 1982 just 6% of all marriages were mixed), the persistence of segregated schooling (just 2% of primary and unessential school pupils in 1994 attended an integrated school) and residential separation, the divisions were originally caused by something else religion reinforced nationalism, not the othe r way round.Thus political and economic discrimination of the Catholics by the Protestant majority can be explained in terms of Protestant fears that their national identity would be lost in a united Ireland. Their determination to remain a part of the United Kingdom, and their extreme reluctance to grant significant cultured rights to the Catholic minority was as a result of their fear of losing their way of life, as well as just an unwillingness to relinquish their privileged status.As McGarry and OLeary succinctly put it National and ethnic attachments tend to be much more binding and explosive in historically naturalized and stable communities than alternative solidarities, like gender or class and this is especially true of Northern Ireland. There are many aspects of the divisions in Northern Ireland society that this essay has not addressed. More could be said about cultural differences, and the long-term political discrimination, such as gerry-mandering, faced by Catholics that led to the Troubles between 1972 and 1998.External factors, such as British and Irish policy, and other long-term historical factors, such as the nature of British colonialism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the impact of plantation on the political dynamic of the province. It is impossible to blame the Troubles on class conflicts, for Protestants and Catholics simply do not divide neatly into a unionist middle class and nationalist working class.Economic factors did have a significant impact on the development of grievances and intransigence, but also only permit an incomplete picture. Superficially, the conflict can be seen in religious terms after all it is often described as Catholics against Protestant, as well as nationalist versus unionist. However, in recent decades, as Northern Ireland follows the general European trend for secularisation, and church attendance figures continue to fall, the religious labels are a sign of ethnicity, rather than be lief.The entrenched nature of the divisions between the two communities, in the face of improving economic and political conditions and increasing secularisation during the period 1972 and 1998 means that there must have been a further, deeper cause for the conflict, and the question of nationality British or Irish is more convincing than the other, avowedly important, possibilities.