In Belfast, between July 1920 and July 1922, 557 people were killed; 303 Catholics and 172 Protestants and 82 members of the RUC and British army. Catholics made up a quarter of the population of Belfast at that time. Catholic relief organisations estimated that in Belfast between 8,700 and 11,000 Catholics had been driven out of their jobs and 23,000 driven out of their homes with about 500 Catholic businesses destroyed.
Michael Collins representing the new provisional government in Dublin and Sir James Craig representing the new government for the six counties met on a number of occasions in 1922 to discuss the ongoing violence but the violence continued. A number of Catholic Churchmen were also involved in talks about the worsening situation for Catholics in the newly imposed Unionist state. The British government, led by Lloyd George, ignored the violence in Belfast. One Unionist MP, Major Hugh O’Neill stated in the House of Commons (26 December 1920) that Catholics were not being attacked because of their religion but because they were ‘Sinn Feiners’. He went on to say that: ‘ordinary working class Protestants’ could not be blamed for thinking that Sinn Fein was ‘a largely Catholic movement’. The reason this perception was so strong among many Ulster Protestants was the belief that ‘insofar as Sinn Feiners profess any religion at all they are essentially people of the Roman Catholic faith,’ and ‘never on one occasion have the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church taken any steps to denounce the outrages and murders which the Sinn Fein organisation is carrying on.’ This Unionist spokesman explains how the killing of Catholics was justified.
Nationalists, on the other hand, saw the violence against Catholics in Belfast and elsewhere as a form of intimidation by unionists based on feelings of insecurity in their new statelet. The British government used their fears and insecurity to good effect in ensuring continuing unionist support for the United Kingdom and the Empire.
At that time, leading members of the British government showed that they were more concerned about reports that Unionists in border areas were being threatened by republicans than they were about the brutal and systematic attacks on Catholics in Belfast. So they found an excuse to show their power and might along the new border in the villages of Pettigo and Belleek. They regarded these attacks as a threat to the new unionist state -and indeed to the Empire itself. In 1922, they sent in a number of regiments of British soldiers who were backed up by the newly established local Special constabulary. These were heavily armed. Churchill saw this as an opportunity to consolidate the Unionist state and Britain’s strategic presence on the island of Ireland. The integrity and preservation of the Empire was at stake. Churchill did not see it as a priority to protect the lives of Catholics in Belfast from the Orange /Unionist mobs and the newly formed Specials. That level of violence was acceptable to the British.
The roots of the present anti-Catholic and supremacist bigotry in the north run very deep indeed. It is still associated with their insecurity. The imperialist British governments must be held accountable –just as much as their Unionist allies and the rabble rousing preachers. Like the racism in the USA it will take a long time to eradicate- as long as the British government responsible claims sovereignty over this part of Ireland.
This policy has cost the Irish people dearly in economic and social terms-not to mention in the number of lives lost. Only the ending of British control will release the potential for the full and proper social and economic development of this part of the island of Ireland. That is why a border poll is so necessary and the sooner the better.
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