What I experienced in the north of Ireland from 1970 until 1994, was a reign of terror against Catholic working class people carried out by the UDR, the RUC and the British army at the behest of successive British governments. This reign of terror took the form of daily harassment of Catholics at British checkpoints, on the streets of nationalist towns like Strabane. It took the form of the murder of innocent people, house searches, and false imprisonment. This reign of terror against the Catholic working class population was orchestrated from Westminster and 10 Downing Street.
It was not the first time in our history that the ordinary poorer Catholic population as opposed to the wealthy Catholic/nationalist people suffered intense intimidation and harassment at the hands of the forces of the Crown & British government. It is to their shame, that throughout this recent period, the leaders of nationalism inIreland –north and south -remained silent about the intimidation and harassment of the ordinary working class people. The leaders of the Catholic Church, with few exceptions, remained silent about this British sponsored reign of terror against their own people who belonged to the poorer section of society.
The question that needs to be asked is why did the Church leaders stay silent? Why did they collude? Why did they buy into the British narrative that the republican terrorists were the problem? Why did they continue to issue frequent condemnations of republicans?
The answer is because they were closely aligned with the middle class respectable section of the Catholic community. It paid them to do what they did. They were opposed to the working class achieving any power and influence in society. Bishop Cahal Daly made it quite clear that it was the middle class who should provide the natural leaders of the nationalist people. The Catholic hierarchy accepted the Big Lie for political and material considerations. The answer is that, throughout our colonial history, they have taken the side of the British political Establishment against those who rose up in rebellion. “Hell was not hot enough nor eternity long enough for the Fenians,” declared Bishop Moriarty in Kerry in 1856. During the many rebellions against British rule the Catholic Church invariably took the side of the elites, the well to do, the respectable class. The Catholic hierarchical church was always comfortable with imperialism and condemned all expressions of republicanism. They saw republicanism, like democracy, as a threat because it was about empowering the people. British propaganda made it easy for them to condemn those who rebelled and those who espoused republican ideas and ideals.
There are those who do not want to understand the truth about our history but for their own prejudiced and perverse reasons want to place the blame mostly on republicans thereby absolving the British political and military establishment. That is a completely dishonest approach to the conflict.
Is this victimhood bingo? You’ve got the UDR, RUC, Army, British Establishment, middle class catholics, the catholic church itself. If only you had mentioned Stormont, you’d have got a full house!
He forgot about the Castle Catholics and the Uncle Toms as well.
Bishop Moriarty was condemning, not so much Fenianism as the notion that some Fenian leaders were living high on the hog in Paris on the contributions of Irish people in America, in particular, on poverty wages.
There is always going to be tension in a hierarchical organisation between the ‘management’ (bishops and so forth) and the rank and file parochial priest, and independent-minded laity.
The ‘Bold Fenian Men’ (and their WAGs who took over the running of the organisation when President Johnson – who took over after Lincoln’s killing – put them all in prison.
He was anxious abut the British reneging on debts accrued during the Civil War – the Brit Establishment backed the Confederacy – partly due to racism and being pro-chattel slavery, and partly jealousy about America’s industrialisation – which was clearly going to outclass GB.
The industrial working class in GB (England, Scotland & Wales) supported the North, even though the lack of cotton from the Southland, created mass unemployment and widespread want.
What’s ‘pro-chattel slavery’?
I see, now it’s the middle-class of Catholicism that is to blame?
I understand that it irks Republicans when people of any hue ignore the background events that lead to the creation of the PIRA but is it really any morally superior to ignore what the PIRA did and how they were the single most important variable in the bloody game?
(If the British Army withdrew, the troubles would not have been over, they may even have got worse; if the loyalists stopped killing people still the troubles would not have been over as the PIRA would still be attacking the army, the UDR, the RUC and the rest of the very wide range of targets but when the Provos stopped killing people, well, that’s different…)