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Sectarian
violence between Catholics and Protestants is flaring
in parts of Northern Ireland. On 3 June 2002, three
people were injured in shootings as violence raged
for the fourth night running in east Belfast. According
to the BBC, ‘At one stage, up to 1000 people
were involved in hand-to-hand fighting…[as] sectarian
tensions boiled over between nationalists and loyalists
after an uneasy day in the flashpoint area’.
This
strife in east Belfast is only the latest sectarian
violence to rock Northern Ireland. Over the past year
there have been intermittent clashes between Catholics
and Protestants in north Belfast over the route taken
by Catholic mothers to the Holy Cross primary school
for girls. According to Peter Shirlow, a senior lecturer
in human geography at the University of Ulster who
has studied Northern Ireland’s rising sectarian
tension, 64 percent of Belfast residents think that
'inter-community relations have deteriorated since
the IRA and loyalist ceasefires' of the early 1990s.
Shirlow's
latest research follows his studies in 1999 of parts
of working-class north Belfast, where he found that
the number of residents who worked in mixed workplaces
had fallen from 75 percent to 33 percent over the
previous 10 years; that around 80 percent of residents
would not shop in areas dominated by the other community;
and that 'despite five years of relative peace and
the continual decline in the level of violence between
[Catholics] and [Protestants], social relations between
the two communities have not significantly improved'.
So
what is behind Northern Ireland's rising sectarian
tension? Where did the peace process go wrong? When
it was kickstarted by British and Irish governments
in the Downing Street Declaration of 1993, one of
the peace process’s main aims was to 'end sectarian
division' by 'embracing cultural diversity' and 'celebrating
the worth' of both Catholic and Protestant communities.
But Northern Ireland seems more divided than ever
before. 'These divisions, this tension, threatens
the very core of the peace process and the Good Friday
Agreement', says Northern Ireland secretary John Reid.
But
in reality, the deepening divide is a result of the
peace process, not a threat to it.
Over
the past 10 years, many of the root causes of sectarianism
in Northern Ireland have gone - but still sectarianism
persists. From the start of the conflict in 1969 to
the IRA ceasefire in 1994, much of the British media
depicted the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland
as a sectarian feud between Catholics and Protestants,
fuelled by historical animosities, religious antagonism
or just the inability of Irish people to live together.
But in truth, the Troubles were a war between the
British army defending Northern Ireland as part of
the United Kingdom, and the Irish Republican Army,
which wanted an end to British interference in Ireland.
And sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland were caused
by the everyday reality of inequality and discrimination
within Britain’s Northern Ireland statelet.
Since
the partition of Ireland in 1921, Catholics in Northern
Ireland suffered discrimination - first under successive
Northern Ireland Unionist governments and then, after
1972, under direct British rule. In the 1920s, the
rate of unemployment among Protestants in Northern
Ireland was 6.6 percent while for Catholics it was
17.3 percent. Sixty years later, in 1983, this disparity
still existed - with 14.9 percent unemployment among
Protestants and 35.1 percent among Catholics.
According
to a study published in 1987, 'Over the period 1971
to 1985, Catholic men were about two-and-a-half times
as likely as Protestant men to be unemployed'. Catholics
also suffered discrimination in housing, education,
harassment by the largely Protestant police, and a
lack of political representation.
It
was this inequality, rather than simply history or
religion, which led to the two communities being divided.
The advantages of this set-up were marginal for the
Protestant community, but considering that Northern
Ireland was the most impoverished part of the UK such
material divisions assumed a great importance. And
the cultural symbols of the Protestant community,
like Orange parades, were not just cultural expressions,
but were about Protestants defending their position
in society.
Northern
Ireland's Protestants tended to see concessions to
Catholics as a threat to their position, while Catholics
saw change as the only way forward. It was Catholic
demands for civil rights over housing and employment
that sparked the conflict at the end of the 1960s
- which soon became a war over whether Northern Ireland
was Irish or British, with Catholics putting their
hope in Irish reunification and Protestants wanting
to keep the Union between Northern Ireland and Britain.
In short, under British domination Northern Ireland
had sectarianism built in, where Catholic and Protestant
interests were often at loggerheads.
Now
all that is changing - and Catholic inequality is
becoming a thing of the past. A report issued by the
Equality Commission in August 2001 showed that 'the
Catholic share of the workforce has risen from 34.9
percent in 1990 to 39.6 percent in 2000'. The commission
found that the share of employment between Protestants
and Catholics is now almost the same as the share
of the population: the economically active population
in Northern Ireland is 58 percent Protestant and 42
percent Catholic, while the overall composition of
the workforce is 60.4 percent Protestant and 39.6
percent Catholic.
And
with the share of Catholic workers in the university
sector rising from 21 percent to 33 percent over the
past 10 years - and from 23 percent to 32 percent
in insurance companies, and from 18 percent to 32
percent in banking - one of the few areas where Catholics
are seriously under-represented today is in the security
sector (8.7 percent Catholic and over 90 percent Protestant).
Yet
as Protestants and Catholics move closer to being
equal, the more divided they seem to become. The material
divisions between Protestants and Catholics might
be narrowing, but sectarian tensions are widening
- and it is the peace process that is driving them.
The
Irish peace process has division and instability built
in. With its aim of containing the conflict rather
than resolving it, the peace process draws the political
parties into a dialogue without resolving any big
political questions or fundamental differences. So
throughout the peace process, both Unionism and nationalism
have been robbed of their rationale.
Unionist
parties cut their teeth by defending the link between
Britain and Northern Ireland against the threat posed
by republicans - but now that no such threat exists,
Unionists often seem to lack a sense of purpose and
direction. On the other side, republicans have ditched
the principles on which their movement has been based
since the early 1900s - no longer talking about being
the 'legitimate government of Ireland', but instead
effectively accepting their position as a minority
movement within the six counties of Northern Ireland.
With
the national question off the agenda, and the conflict
robbed of its political content, all sides in Northern
Ireland are turning to culture and identity. The peace
process is not about resolving the conflict but about
'celebrating cultural diversity' - not about overcoming
the divisions between Catholics and Protestants but
about recognising those 'cultural differences' and
respecting them. This might sound like an improvement
on the past, when Protestants lorded it over Catholics
and the IRA was fighting a war with the British army
and loyalist paramilitaries - but in reality it means
that divisions have intensified.
As
political questions have moved down the agenda, so
cultural and purely sectarian conflicts have risen
to the fore. Consider the annual problem of the Orange
marching season, particularly around Drumcree in Portadown
- often presented as a case of history repeating itself
year in year out, but which in fact has its roots
in the peace process itself. The number of Orange
parades has risen exponentially as the peace process
has progressed. In 1985, there were 1897 loyalist
parades, rising to 2467 in 1990 - and then upwards
throughout the 1990s, from 2411 in 1993 to 2520 in
1994 and then 2581 in 1995. According to the Parades
Commission, there were 3200 parades in Northern Ireland
for the year 1998 to 1999.
Violence
and rioting as a result of Orange parades is also
more frequent today, becoming an annually predictable
feature of life in Northern Ireland. No doubt, most
Catholics were never very fond of Orange marches and
would do their best to avoid them - but since the
mid-1990s Orange parades have resulted in more and
more serious disturbances. In 1986, nine Orange parades
were re-routed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary -
in 1998/1999, 203 Orange parades were judged to be
'possibly contentious' and 119 were re-routed by the
Parades Commission.
By
elevating 'cultural difference', the peace process
has unleashed a new round of sectarianism - driven
not by inequality and discrimination but by the idea
that Northern Ireland has two distinct communities
whose culture and interests are different, and who
must be constantly policed and kept apart. Cultural
diversity is the new sectarianism - and in many ways,
this new sectarianism is even worse than the divisions
of the past. Stripped of any political content, today's
conflicts in Northern Ireland are now what many wrongly
assumed them to be during the Troubles: base, atavistic,
sectarian clashes.
Even
worse, these divisions are being set in stone. Each
new institution of the peace process is built around
the question of how best to accommodate the two distinct
communities. So the Parades Commission's role is to
balance the rights of Protestant marchers against
the rights of Catholic residents - as if Protestant
and Catholic rights are clashing things that need
to be managed by an outside force. And the Northern
Ireland Assembly institutionalises sectarianism, by
demanding that 'at their first meeting, members of
the assembly will register a designation of identity
- nationalist, Unionist or other - for the purpose
of measuring cross-community support in assembly votes'
- effectively freezing different identities in law.
But
setting up more bodies to ensure respect for cultural
differences and to police the two communities is like
fighting fire with petrol - and can only drive another
wedge between Catholics and Protestants, as they are
increasingly encouraged to see themselves as distinct
from each other.
Welcome
to the New Northern Ireland.
Read
more from Brendan O'Neill here
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