The Agony of Ulster

When I arrived in Northern Ireland, on a weekend in June, the countryside was green and lovely, but in the capital city it was rough. Bomb blasts shattered the midnight quiet, snipers were busy, and death came to innocent people, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. The weekend before I left for California in July, nine people were killed and 130 injured in a series of carefully timed bombings that ripped things apart all Friday afternoon.

Is this a Roman Catholic-Protestant civil war, as most of the media would have us believe? Of those killed, more than four hundred were victims of bombing, sniping, cold-blooded murder, and rioting perpetrated by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the supporters of this misnamed terrorist gang (it is not at all recognized by the legitimate Irish Republic). Until recently, only a score died from Protestant reprisal. To those who watched on television as a fireman shoveled up the dismembered body of an innocent young woman, the wonder of it is that the majority of citizens have not killed more of those they consider responsible for the savagery.

The first Sunday morning I attended a Portstewart church and heard an excellent address by a Methodist layman. The pastoral prayer caught my attention: without mention of the local agony, it began with petitions on behalf of victims of the floods in Pennsylvania. The sermon was on forgiveness. There seemed more sorrow than bitterness over the fact that, next to bank robberies, the primary source of IRA funds is misguided enthusiasts living in the States; their contributions are used to buy Communist-made arms for the slaughter.

What is it all about? In 1912, 100,000 of the million Protestant majority in Ulster signed a covenant to resist separation from the Scots, Welsh, and English, who with them made up the United Kingdom. A hundred years of separatist agitation had persuaded the South that Ireland should set up a national barrier against the rest of the British Isles. This the North, dependent on British coal and iron for its flourishing industries, and lacking in hatred for ancient enemies, strenuously opposed. In 1921 a majority in the South voted for separation and a majority in the North voted for union. This is the overriding issue in Ulster today, continued union with Great Britain or union with the Republic to the south.

The logic of the case for the uniting of Ireland is so very simple that the logic for the larger union with Great Britain is overlooked. The Irish and the Scots are the same race. Ireland was originally called Scotia, and its Scots conquered what is now Scotland. Both have received Nordic infusions. A million citizens of the Republic live in Britain, where millions more are of Irish ancestry. Ireland sells the bulk of its produce there. Britain still grants British rights to entering Republican Irish.

Fifty years have passed since separation. Between 1912 and 1961 the Roman Catholic population in the Republic dwindled 5 per cent to 2,673,473, and the Protestant population dwindled more than 55 per cent to 144,863. In the North, the Protestant majority increased by 13 per cent to 927,495; Roman Catholics increased by 16 per cent to 497,547. Two Southern Irish have been emigrating for every Northerner. A majority of the Republic’s population are in the non-productive ages, below twenty and above sixty-five. The average income in the North is 25 per cent above that in the Republic, which proportionately has the highest national debt in the world. Educational and welfare services are better in the North, and prices are lower. Despite Seattle-like layoffs, the North has been diversifying its economy. It is difficult to convince an Ulsterman that his choice in 1921 was unwise. In fact, in 1971 the Ulster government set out to celebrate provincial progress, and provoked its enemies to embark on a campaign of terror to persuade Ulster to unite with the Republic.

But what about the grievances of Ulster’s Roman Catholic minority? Grievances there have been, but played up out of all proportion to the real situation. They were denied one-man one-vote? An utter falsehood concerning every United Kingdom and province-wide election in fifty years, though only householders had voted in local government affairs. Denied adequate schooling? The Northern Irish government paid up to 95 per cent of the cost of operation of a Roman Catholic school system. Denied adequate housing? With new housing estates exclusively Roman Catholic and controlled by the IRA, this provokes bitter humor on the other side. Local boards in both communities sometimes discriminated in favor of their co-religionists, but it was not a major problem. If, as some say, discrimination is the real cause of the trouble, why are so few aware that almost every complaint has been rectified, with no effect whatsoever on the terror campaign? The second largest city, Londonderry, was, it is true, dominated politically by Protestants though it had a Catholic majority. But this situation has been changed. The IRA has simply exploited the grievances.

One curse in Ireland, North and South, is a preoccupation with history, often misinterpreted. It was Pope Adrian IV who urged the English King Henry II to annex Ireland and bring its Celtic Church into conformity with Rome. Had the Scriptures been translated into the Irish language at the Reformation, the political division of the British Isles might never have occurred. James I, of Bible fame, a Scot, decided to plant Scots and English and Huguenot settlers in Ulster, to help pacify the country and to introduce industrious citizens. In the next reign, many of these settlers were slaughtered by the Irish clans, but one more often hears of Cromwell’s revenge at Drogheda. William of Orange, who defeated James II at the Boyne, enjoyed the pope’s support, though his enemy was Catholic. The Westminster government ill treated the Presbyterian North as well as the Roman Catholic South and West, but of course it ill treated the Scots and Welsh and English as well. It caused the emigration of three out of every four Ulstermen, the famed Scotch-Irish, to America, where they formed the bulk of Washington’s army and contributed a dozen Presidents to the United States before John F. Kennedy. The battle cry of the United Irishmen in 1798 was “Remember Orr!”—for a collateral ancestor of mine who was hanged by the Westminster authorities. In the nineteenth century an enlightened parliamentary government began to redress the Irish grievances, until today none of the huge Irish population in Great Britain suffers discrimination or is without redress.

In 1865 some demobilized soldiers of the United States army who were of Irish birth or ancestry met in Cleveland, Ohio, and proclaimed an Irish Republic. They decided that an invasion of Ireland was impractical because of the British fleet, and so they decided to conquer Canada instead, then offer to trade Canada for Ireland, and once in possession of Ireland to double-cross the British and give Canada to the United States. They invaded Canada across the frontier at a time when there were few British troops in the country. The United States proclaimed its neutrality in this struggle between the “Irish Republic” and Canada. The Canadians failed to see the logic of their liberation and roundly defeated the invaders, who were then interned by the American authorities and finally shipped back to their homes in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities of Irish Catholic settlement.

The same nationalist organization continued to struggle for the independence of Ireland. Roman Catholic and Irish-American sentiment (but not Scotch-Irish) continued to play a large part in Irish affairs, providing the money for the uprisings that finally led to the setting up of the Irish Republic. DeValera raised the funds in Boston and assured the Irish-Americans, “Ireland will never forget the generosity of America”; but during World War II his government in fact forgot and refused to allow American troops to land in its territory. The troops were received with open arms in Northern Ireland instead. During World War II the IRA engaged in sabotage of the Allied effort in Great Britain.

The IRA has no official standing anywhere in Ireland. I was informed by a Cuban émigré that men of the IRA were trained for urban guerrilla-type warfare in Cuba. And the other week an IRA agent declared in an interview by a San Francisco radio station that the first aim of the IRA was to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and that its second aim was to drive out capitalism and establish a socialist workers’ republic. The latter is also the declared objective of Bernadette Devlin, who professes to advocate a socialist workers’ republic modeled after Cuba. The IRA intends to overthrow the government of the Republic of Ireland as well as of Northern Ireland and establish a kind of Cuba on the doorstep of the European Economic Community; hence it is opposed not only to cooperation with the United Kingdom but also to cooperation with the Common Market.

Some say Ireland is too small a territory to be under two separate governments, and this argument has certain merits, though it cannot be applied everywhere. If it were, Spain and Portugal or Haiti and the Dominican Republic should be under a single government. The deciding factor in these days of democracy is: do the people of Haiti wish to be absorbed by the Dominican Republic? Do the people of Ireland wish to be part of the larger United Kingdom? Do the people of Northern Ireland wish to be joined to the Republic of Ireland instead of part of the United Kingdom? Persuasion is acceptable, but not murderous terror.

There was a great hue and cry when Brian Faulkner, an able, moderate prime minister, interned several hundred suspected terrorists without trial. Here is a statement made by a deputy prime minister in January, 1971: “If we were forced to establish internment, we would have the support of 80 per cent of the people of this country.” He cited previous experience of his government in interning terrorists of the IRA in 1957, when juries were intimidated; the action resulted in peace for five years. This speaker was the deputy prime minister not of Northern Ireland but of the Republic! It makes the hue and cry seem hypocritical. Great pressure was soon brought to bear to release the internees, some of whom went back to sniping and bombing.

Members of the IRA are nominally Roman Catholic but not practicing Catholics. Many are atheists, and their support of Roman Catholic interests is entirely political. There are some practicing Roman Catholics in the civil-rights movement. Leaders such as Cardinal Conway are torn between their abhorrence of the IRA and their support of Irish reunion, and this applies to the Republic’s leaders also, such as Prime Minister Lynch.

At the other extreme is the figure of the Reverend Ian Paisley, whose confrontation with the civil-rights marchers helped precipitate crisis. Violence occurred when he and his own following marched through a Roman Catholic area—and he was then demonstrating against the Irish Presbyterians, as evangelical a body as any major denomination anywhere. The present moderator of the Irish Presbyterian Church is Dr. Victor Lynas, an ardent evangelical who served as director of the United Irish Churches Commission, which sponsored my own visit to Ireland a dozen years ago. The other denominational leadership is likewise moderate. The speaker of Northern Ireland’s parliament, Major Ivan Neill, who providentially escaped kidnapping and murder, is an ardent Baptist layman. Prime Minister Faulkner is a practicing Presbyterian layman. The great majority of Protestants are moderate, and quite a number of Roman Catholics have voted for continuance in the United Kingdom.

Ulster evangelicals are content with the attitude of the Nixon government in the present crisis: expressions of distress over the situation, willingness to mediate if so asked, and a benevolent neutrality otherwise. They are uneasy about the attitude of Senator McGovern and critical of that of Senator Kennedy. Arthur Blessitt, who carried a wooden cross through both Roman Catholic and Protestant militant areas, has become a popular speaker in the British Isles. Billy Graham was well received both North and South; one observer in the highest echelon of leadership told me that Graham seemed very well briefed and conducted himself with tactful courage. Ian Paisley preached strongly against the visitor.

Ulster Protestants have noted the reiterated promise of the British government that under no circumstances will they be handed over to the Republic against their expressed will. They feel that the Westminster leaders were deceived by the agitators over civil rights, an excuse for bloody and unjustified revolution. Fifty years ago they faced the same terror, and overcame it partly by putting able-bodied men supporting law and order into uniform—the B Specials, who were boycotted by the minority, just as for many years the Ulster parliament was boycotted. The British government was persuaded to pressure the Ulster authorities into disbanding this force, which could have checked the IRA. Its members, and thousands of military veterans, have quietly enrolled in para-military organizations, dedicated to home defense. Their restraint in the face of outrageous provocation has been extraordinary. They have taken overt action only to pressure the British authorities into liquidating barricaded sanctuaries of the IRA, considered intolerable. But after three years of terror, their impatience is mounting.

What of the future? Will Ulster unite with Republican Ireland? Not by coercion, that is certain. Will the Republic reconsider its relations with Great Britain, and accommodate its constitution to its Northern neighbors? Will the entry of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland into the Common Market have any effect on the situation? Who knows?

The wonderful 1859 revival was preceded by sectarian strife; but on July 12 that year the Orangemen paraded to churches and took up collections for the Bible Society. The terror of 1921 was overwhelmed by the revival of 1922–23 under W. P. Nicholson’s preaching. Who can say what a true revival would accomplish now, North and South?

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

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