Linen Hall Library

Holy Wars: Sectarianism in the CitiesHoly War in Belfast by Andrew Boyd; Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience 1819-1914:An Aspect of Anglo-Irish History by Frank Neal; Glasgow the Uneasy Peace: Religious Tensionin Modern Scotland, 1819-1914 by Tom Gallagher; Edinburgh Divided: John McCormack andNo Popery in the 1930's by Tom GallagherReview by: John GrayThe Linen Hall Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 32-33Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533989 .

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Holy wars:

sectarianism in the

cities Andy Boyd's Holy war in Belfast still holds the field supreme as a history of Belfast sectarianism if only because, as his new publishers correctly claim, this *was, and still is, the only history ! ever written about sectarian conflict in the city of Belfast'. Boyd's new edition takes some account of events since first I publication in 1969 ? he closed then | with a brief chapter entitled 'Civil Rights', now he concludes with The Long Terror'. Although he also offers new material on the twenties and thir ties this remains the best seller of two decades ago complete with relatively uncomplicated analysis.

Now, as before, Boyd opens with the fairly breathtaking assertion that 're- j ligious bigotry in Ulster is not difficult to understand'. If indeed one was to argue for the ultimate over simplifica tion, the existence of a simple contin uum between the plantation experi ence and present day ethnic/religious/ national frontier conflict there would at least be a consistency between first proposition and following argument. That is not the case here. Boyd offers us the full and overstated romantic view of the Ulster of the 1790's where Presbyterians fought alongside their Catholic neighbours for national inde pendence'. This leads him directly to 'one of the most disturbing facts in Irish history', and something of a prob lem for his own history?the transfor

mation of a people apparently wedded to selfless non-sectarianism into pro

tagonists in orgies of sectarian rioting. Boyd finds scapegoats, first and

foremost in the Orange Order, which in his account emerges as though from nowhere, then in the arrival, as though by divine thunder clap, of not one but a succession of bigoted and rabble rous

ing clerics. Contemporary sources of

fer some justification for this line of ar

gument, notably the liberal Presbyterian Northern Whig, but lib erals were not merely consistently on

the retreat throughout the century, they consistently misunderstood both the nature and the strength of the forces arrayed against them. In par ticular they never understood to what extent forces in society operating from the bottom up were driving them into oblivion. In the same way Boyd mis takes effect for cause. That is not to

deny the sustaining, indeed exacerbat ing role of particular organisations and individuals, but this is in itself incom

prehensible unless we know more about the fertile ground over which

they marched.

Deprived of any meaningful account of the underlying factors at work we are left with accounts of riots. These

serve up to a point?at least here they are readily accessible to the popular reader?but they hardly offer a road to

wider understanding, rather they re

duce to a blur of mutual brutality. The

republication of Holy War in Belfast might accordingly serve best if it acts as incitement to Irish social historians to carry us further in a field which they have wilfully neglected to date. Let us

give Boyd credit as lonely pioneer. Only in this century has Belfast

emerged with a unique reputation for sectarian division. In the eighteenth century Belfast, even taking the least romantic view, was a haven of enlight enment compared with Glasgow where in the 1790*8 the thirty-nine catholic inhabitants were more than matched

by forty-three anti-catholic societies.

In early nineteenth century Liverpool the Twelfth' was known as 'carpenters day* long before Belfast had many ships' carpenters and long before they had assumed a central role in our own disturbances. Although the situation in Belfast progressively worsened during the nineteenth century the

experience of Liverpool in particular was little better.

Other similarities of experience, rapid industrialisation, huge popula tion growth, and disproportionate catholic immigration suggest that comparisons may be instructive. Eng lish and Scottish historians, on the evidence here, offer an example to fol

low with no less than three major mainland studies. These immediately suggest the complexity of factors which determined the momentum of sectar

ian violence in any particular location.

We might reasonably assume a rela

tively similar experience for Liverpool and Glasgow, and yet, as titles aptly suggest here, in Glasgow "uneasy peace' prevailed whereas in Liverpool 'sectarian violence' became endemic.

More difficult still to fit into any easy comparative frame work is Edinburgh

which for all its nineteenth century liberalism and pro Home Rule politics still spawned the most effective *No

Popery political movement on the mainland in this century.

Frank Neal sets out with fullest canvas, here complete with useful pre fatorial prospectus of factors of which account must be taken. However, his

argument eventually disappears be neath the tyranny of riotous detail. By 1909 when Liverpool suffered some of its worst riots Rude's concept of the 'rarely purposeless' mob cited at the outset has become much more difficult to sustain and we discover that the attempt to establish causality in social science is extremely difficult'.

HISTORY

If Neal accordingly fails in his at tempt to give a comprehensive over

view he nonetheless offers a great deal of raw material and valuable insights on a number of themes. The first of these is perhaps the extent to which the alliance between Anglicanism and

working class English Orangeism was formed, at least in embryo, in defence of the pre-1832 British constitution, before specifically Irish issues of mas sive Irish Catholic immigration devel oped. The second area in which he is conclusive is in establishing that the Irish famine had a more dramatic ef fect on Liverpool than on any other British city. While we are familiar with the general range of prejudices aroused by starving immigrants, Neal usefully conveys both the totality of the impact, and more specifically the eco

nomic impact on existing residents.

Tom Gallagher, in contrast to Neal, narrows the focus and in doing so has

Andrew Boyd Holy War in Belfast

Belfast: Pretani Press. 3rd and revised ed. 243pp. ?3.50 pb. ISBN 0

948868 07 4

Frank Neal Sectarian violence?the

Liverpool experience 1819-1914 ?an aspect of Anglo-Irish

history Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1988. 272pp. unpriced hb. ISBN 0 7190 1483 2

Tom Gallagher Glasgow the uneasy peace?

religious tension in modern

Scotland, 1819-1914 Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1987. 382pp. unpriced, hb. ISBN 0 7190 2396 3

Tom Gallagher Edinburgh divided?John

McCormack and No Popery in the 1930*8.

Edinburgh: Polygon, 1987. 208pp. ?9.95 pb. ISBN 0 948275 40 5

written what must surely be the defini tive history of Glasgow Catholicism.

Drawing on an extraordinary range of

sources Gallaghers's account is always

coherent, often affectionate, and never

less than critical. Well into the nine teenth century indigenous Scottish clergy resisted the claims of their

immigrant co-religionists, a useful

reminder of the extent to which the tensions daused by Irish immigration

were cultural as much as religious.

Following the famine the Church in

Glasgow could not resist the Irish advance, and until very recently served as the focal point of immigrant suggestion that the church, while ful

filling an all encompassing and often valuable role as protector, encouraged the Irish community to retain an in

ward looking perspective and hence may have helped arrest their integra

page 32 LINEN HALL REVIEW 5.1

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tion into wider Scottish society. Certainly Catholic advancement in

Glasgow was far slower than in more

violent Liverpool. Exclusion from in dustries such as shipbuilding and engineering may, as in Belfast, have been a major factor in relative disad vantage but in some respects Glasgow offered a more favourable environ

ment than either of the other cities in that religion never became the central issue in its politics. Liberal dominance

was challenged by Labour from the turn of the century onwards and it was despite rather than because of the church that Irish Catholics chose in creasingly to identify with the new party. By 1922 a chronically deprived community was in a position to exert enormous influence on the dominant political force in Scottish politics, and yet even here relative disadvantage survived?as late as 1933 only 6 out of 116 Glasgow councillors were Catho lics.

Despite that crucial, and not fully explained, 'space' in Glasgow politics,

the fortunes of Glasgow Catholics appear to have been more comparable

with those in Belfast than those in Liverpool. Gallagher perhaps under

states the close links ? in the 1890's Belfast Irish News carried regular pages of Glasgow Irish News, and al though in Belfast the national ques tion remained a dominant one after 1922, the day to day role of the Church in guarding the frontiers of its commu

nity bears a strong resemblance to the Glasgow experience.

Gallagher is nothing if not prolific and his study of John McCormack and his Protestant Action movement in Edinburgh provides a useful account of the rapid rise of a supremely effective populist demagogue. Sufficiently so to re-activate a 150 year old tradition of the city mob, to play effectively on the deprivation of a largely hidden work ing-class, and on the new found ins?cu

rit?s of the Scottish lower middle class of the inter-war years.

John Gray

Pleasure island Today Queen's Island is synonomous I with shipbuilding and hardly easy to associate with popular entertainment

and recreation. That earlier history has been well buried beneath gantries and all credit to Eileen Black for sys tematically unearthing it.

Belfast owed this, its first truly public park, to a combination of the | enlightenment of the Harbour Com-

j missioners and to voluntary effort. It I was the Harbour Commissioners who as early as 1843 determined that the

mud bank left over from Dargan's dig gings to clear a direct channel into the port should be laid out as a pleasure ground. It was the Victoria Fete

Committee, intent on raising money for the city's hospital and determined to capitalise on the island's association

with Queen Victoria ? it became Queen's Island at the time of her visit in 1849 ? who developed more ambi tious plans and endowed the island

with a revolutionary glass house, Belfast's own 'Crystal Palace', and

? amongst other innovations with what caji fairly be described as Belfast's first | zoo. On all these matters, and notably the glass house, Eileen Black offers a definitive history.

She is good too on the pomp and ceremony with which the Victoria Fete Committee got matters underway. The'Grand'fetes of 1850 and 1851 are described in detail, events with popu lar appeal, but also events with which

most of the'quality'in the town had a direct association. It was, however, a

momentum which was difficult to maintain. Once glass house and other facilities were in place they soon threatened to become a financial bur den to a purely voluntary and chari table committee and while the Har bour Commissioners could provide the site they felt precluded from investing

LOCAL HISTORY Eileen Black

The People's Park The Queen's Island, Belfast

1849-1879. Belfast: linen Hall Library, 1988.

45pp. illus. ?2.50pb.

in it. In 1864 the glass house was

damaged by fire, and appears to have been demolished soon after. By that date too the shipyard which had first found a foothold on the south end of the island was beginning to encroach on the rest.

While Eileen Black's use of organ isational archives provides much new information it leads her to chart the rise and fall of the island as Pleasure Park from that formal perspective. Precisely because of the eventual weakness of the Victoria Fete Commit tee the informal role of the island as point of recourse for the poor may have been at least as important. Here it would have been nice to know rather more about what went on when facili ties were sub let to more humble les sors and when the quality were not present. As the author rather tantalis ingly points out the island remained in active use as late as 1879 long after any formal organisation had ceased and on the eve of final takeover by the ship yard.

For those who wish to explore this

popular and informal aspect of the Pleasure Park's history, Eileen Black has, however, provided the essential framework.

John Gray

BOOKS RECEIVED BUT NOT REVIEWED

GREGORY, Isabella Augusta, Lady. Lady Gregory's journals. Vol. 2.

Books thirty to forty four, edited by Daniel J. Murphy. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1987. 748pp. unpriced hb. ISBN 0 900675 92 6

A guide to Irish studies in the United States. Revised third edition. New

York: American Committee for Irish

Studies, 1987. 52pp. unpriced pb.

HAINSWORTH, Paul. The Stalker affair: more questions than answers.

Belfast: Committee on the Admini stration of Justice, 1987. 22pp. ?50.00 pb. (CA.J. Pamphlet No. 10)

INGOLDBY, Grace. Head of the corner. London: Michael Joseph, 1988. 170pp. ?10.95 hb. ISBNO 7181 2980 6

JENKINS, TA. Gladstone, Whiggery and the Liberal Party 1874-1886.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

328pp. ?32.50 hb. ISBN 0 19 820129 X

LAFFAN, Brigid. Ireland and South Africa ? Irish government policy in

the 1980*8. Dublin: Trocaire, 1988.

163pp. IR ?3.50 pb. ISBN 1870072 55 3

LUBENOW,W.C. Parliamentary politics and the Home Rule crisis ?

the British House of Commons in

1886. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.

387pp. ?37.50 hb. ISBN 0 19 622966 6

LYONS, J.B. Thrust syphiUis down to

hell and other rejoyceana ? studies

in the border-lands of literature and medicine. Dun Laoighaire: Glendale

Press, 1988. 294pp. IR ?14.95 hb. ISBN 0 907606 37 7

McCORMICK, John. Dion Boucicault.

Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1987.

72pp. unpriced.

McGILLOWAY, Oily. Grey hood the year of the mink. Belfast: Blackstaff

Press 1988. 148pp. ?3.95 pb. ISBN 085640 4012

McNAMEE, Peter and Tom Lovett.

Working class community in North

ern Ireland. Belfast: Ulster People's

College, 1988. 520pp. ?4.95 pb. illus.

ISBN 1 870692 00 4

MATTHEWS, Aidan. Adventures in a

bathyscope. London: Seeker and

Warburg, 1988. 224pp. ?10.95 hb.

ISBN 0 436 27418 3

MITCHELL, G.F. Archaeology and

environment in early Dublin. Dub

lin: Royal Irish Academy, 1987.

40pp. illus. IR?4.95pb. ISBNO

901714 615 IR?9.95hb. ISBNO 901714 65 8

MOULDEN, John. A history of

Methodism in Portrush ? a short

history in celebration of the centen

ary of the dedication of the Clarke

Memorial Church 29th September 1887. Portrush: Clarke Memorial

Church, 1987. 27pp. ?1.50 pb. ISBN

0 948154 35 7

continued on page 34

LINEN HALL REVIEW 5.1 page SS

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