Wish You Could See ...'

After reading adverse reactions to the material on Northern Ireland which, chiefly from my pen, this magazine has carried from time to time, I could not conscientiously avoid reverting to the subject. I do so with rueful remembrance of words spoken by a fellow countryman many years ago: “The path of investigation is perilous; it is thorny; it is strewn with the ashes of long past controversies, which yet when stirred develop heat as well as smoke.…”

Some of the letters addressed to me personally have been gracious and reasonable, and I am grateful for them; others did not wish me well and prophesied for me a fiery future. As most of the objections reappeared after the editorial “The Orange Enigma” (August 6 issue), I confine myself to the letters carried by CHRISTIANITY TODAY on September 24.

The editorial did not, as is stated, “allude that the Orange Order is made up of brainwashed bigots,” nor did it ascribe “all the woes and troubles” of the province to the Order. On the contrary, it quoted extensively the movement’s lofty ideals—after a paragraph that recognized the destructive and unhelpful roles of other elements such as the IRA and the Dublin administration.

One correspondent compares the July 12 Orange processions with American Independence Day, but his wording suggests he would not make a strict parallel between national and sectarian celebrations.

Another critic denies that “no Ulster Unionist member of parliament can be elected without Orange Order sanction.” The editorial’s statement could be easily tested: I know that the editor will gladly give space if our correspondent will now identify a U. U. member who won election against the wishes of the Order.

A third writer says it is false to call Ian Paisley “a fellow traveler of the Orange Order” (the editorial did prefix the words “more evangelical”), but I cannot understand the disclaimer when the two hold in common so many major principles. One letter decries “Dutch William’s victory over the Catholic James” as “a very superficial view of history”—but acknowledges that this view may be held by many of the Orangemen to whom the editorial was at that point referring.

One letter scoffs at “the alleged discriminatory practices you so freely parrot,” though it earlier admits discrimination in certain cases (the only letter to do so). Lest there be any doubt about it, let me pursue this vexed theme, for a correspondent writes: “A recent report of the Commissioner of Complaints … states … there was no evidence to confirm discrimination by local authorities or public bodies.” This, however, is not as conclusive as it looks; the reference, presumably to the commissioner’s Second Report (1970), is misleading inasmuch as that official stated there were some grievances outside his terms of reference, and in which discretionary powers were vested in local authorities.

This magazine has been accused of “biased, uninformed statements,” of publishing a “grossly exaggerated” report, and of spreading “propaganda started by those whose hands are red with the blood they have shed.” In the hope that the curious imprecision of these charges will develop into something more substantial, I will be very specific in adding to the editorial’s allusion to “discriminatory practices in jobs, housing, and local government.” The examples given differ in importance and range over a lengthy period.

In September, 1959, the Belfast Telegraph carried the advertisement: “Protestant girl required for housework,” and invited applications to “The Hon. Mrs. Terence O’Neill,” wife of the minister of finance soon to become prime minister. Two years later, according to another Belfast newspaper, the Unionist association in one ward issued a pamphlet stating that its three candidates employed over seventy people and had “NEVER employed A ROMAN CATHOLIC.”

In 1970 an impartial foreign researcher noted that “Harland & Wolff’s shipyard in Belfast, with 10,000 employees the largest firm in Northern Ireland, has a workforce which is about 95 per cent Protestant,” and added: “The Orange Order has always been strong among workers in the shipyard.” The account goes on to cite a 1,500-strong engineering works which has “only a handful of Catholics on its payroll.” The company chairman, replying to the charge of discrimination, suggested that “Catholics probably do not feel at home in a Protestant atmosphere” (Richard Rose, Governing Without Consensus, p. 297).

Regarding the Ulster Special Constabulary (police auxiliary), the government commission headed by Scots judge Lord Cameron says: “The recruitment of this force, for traditional and historical reasons, is in practice limited to members of the Protestant faith.… In practice we are in no doubt that it is almost if not wholly impossible for a Roman Catholic recruit to be accepted” (Disturbances in Northern Ireland, pp. 53, 75).

Couched as they are in cautious legal terminology, Lord Cameron’s findings are revealing. I quote one section at length: “In certain areas … the arrangement of ward boundaries for local government purposes has produced in the local authority a permanent Unionist majority which bears little or no resemblance to the relative numerical strength of Unionists and non-Unionists in the area.… There is very good reason to believe the allegation that these arrangements were deliberately made, and maintained, with the consequence that the Unionists used and have continued to use the electoral majority thus created to favour Protestant or Unionist supporters in making public appointments … and in manipulating housing allocations for political and sectarian ends (Disturbances, p. 13).

This in my view all adds up to evidence of discrimination, and it is no disloyalty to the Protestant constitution to admit it. Many will think the Northern Ireland government did just that, not only in disbanding the Ulster Special Constabulary and in replacing the previous city administration in Londonderry, but in “taking housing powers from local authorities and local councillors and vesting them in a Central Housing Authority, employing a points scheme as an objective measure of need in assessing qualification for public housing.”

This brief essay has necessarily covered only a part of a complex problem; I was concerned with specific issues previously raised.

On a notice board next to my desk is a newspaper clipping, with a picture showing the agony on the face of an English mother whose soldier son was murdered in Londonderry. In an open letter to the people of Northern Ireland headed “I WISH YOU COULD SEE THE GRIEF IN OUR HOUSE,” she writes: “You say you are all Christians. For God’s sake start acting like Christians.” May this Christmas season remind us that the best sermons are always the simplest and the most disturbing.

J. D. DOUGLAS

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