Northern Ireland- a failure 99 years on?

downcow wrote: »

You beat me to it. That was my thought exactly when I read Francies post

I suppose you'll deny now that we have done this all before and I showed you writings from protestant themselves explaining why they took a back seat and removed themselves from the new administration?

Yes...you probably will pretend this is all new.

Fionn1952

Shefwedfan wrote: »

How is it a debate?

I am just wondering how long you play the charade. Just google "protestants living in ireland after spilt" and its the very first link.

You have no problem finding the most random documents to support SF, even using letters to a paper so don't try BS us all saying you can't find the information. You just don't want to share it.....standard Francie

Just as a brief aside, how the bejaysus is a discussion of the decline of the Protestant population of Ireland even remotely related to supporting SF? Last I checked, we've had FF or FG governments all the way since then....

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Because they listened to false promises of jobs in the north?

You should pm jm08 and get your stories to align. He says it was the big house prods who were encouraged north for jobs. You say the wee house prods.

.....and I don’t know who all these prod bankers etc were if all the big house prods went north.

I am afraid your story is leaking

Fionn1952 wrote: »

Just as a brief aside, how the bejaysus is a discussion of the decline of the Protestant population of Ireland even remotely related to supporting SF? Last I checked, we've had FF or FG governments all the way since then....

Did you read the post? my comment is Francie can trawl the internet to find the most random documents when he wants to but seemingly can't find anything once it doesn't support his point....

I thought that was clear but seemingly not

downcow wrote: »

You should pm jm08 and get your stories to align. He says it was the big house prods who were encouraged north for jobs. You say the wee house prods.

.....and I don’t know who all these prod bankers etc were if all the big house prods went north.

I am afraid your story is leaking

Twas a joke downcow...the wee house protestant was more or less abandoned by Unionism and left to his/her own fate. Same as up north...until the DUP realised they were a fertile vote to grab.

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Did you read the post? my comment is Francie can trawl the internet to find the most random documents when he wants to but seemingly can't find anything once it doesn't support his point....

I thought that was clear but seemingly not

Why would I be 'finding docs that don't support my point'?

Fionn1952

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Did you read the post? my comment is Francie can trawl the internet to find the most random documents when he wants to but seemingly can't find anything once it doesn't support his point....

I thought that was clear but seemingly not

You referred to finding random documents to support SF, and specifically referenced a letter to a newspaper as an example. I presume you were referring to the letter he linked to earlier in the thread regarding the Protestant population of Ireland.

So, I'll repeat.....how was that letter anything to do with SF?

Or is it just the usual play the man nonsense? The old, 'call Francie a shinnerbot and avoid the topic'?

downcow wrote: »

So why did the ‘wee house prods’ leave? I suppose you have worked out a story for them as well

The reason to go is fairly obvious - jobs. Belfast was at that stage a thriving industrialised city. The rest of Ireland was an agrarian backwater with no money.

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/mary-kenny-old-protestant-virtues-can-help-us-through-this-economic-crisis-26722353.html

downcow wrote: »

You should pm jm08 and get your stories to align. He says it was the big house prods who were encouraged north for jobs. You say the wee house prods.

.....and I don’t know who all these prod bankers etc were if all the big house prods went north.

I am afraid your story is leaking

They didn't all go. Many had very good businesses in the south. In any small town the bank manager, the doctor, the solicitor and the accountant were all protestant.

For example, Mary Kenny writing about how protestants were regarded in Ireland:

When I was a young feminist, in the early 1970s, I gave my late brother James a lecture about the fact that Bank of Ireland -- where he worked -- had never had a woman member of the board. "And women are 50pc of the population." He countered that Bank of Ireland had never had a Catholic member of the board either. "And Catholics are 95pc of the population."
Yes, indeed, that was the way it used to be in many areas of banking and mercantile affairs. Irish Protestants were widely regarded as the safest pair of hands in running anything to do with money. We would now consider this sectarian, but in traditional Ireland, it was more like a division of labour: the Catholics did the politics, and the Protestants did the business.
The big businesses in Dublin -- such as Guinness, Jameson and Jacobs -- were traditionally Protestant in senior management, and far from people generally complaining about this, it was considered a great thing for a Catholic to get hired at all.
It was more problematic in the North, obviously, but, in Dublin, Irish Protestants were widely regarded as honest and reliable.

jm08 wrote: »

They didn't all go. Many had very good businesses in the south. In any small town the bank manager, the doctor, the solicitor and the accountant were all protestant.

For example, Mary Kenny writing about how protestants were regarded in Ireland:

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/mary-kenny-old-protestant-virtues-can-help-us-through-this-economic-crisis-26722353.html

So now your argument is people only got high power jobs in Ireland because of religion?

Nothing to do with education etc like most people get these jobs. It was just religion

I dont see you complaining that all protestants got banned from working as civil servants. Probably says a lot. Look how successful these companies are and look at the mess of the whole civil service is.

Maybe it might have made sense to bring in people based on skills, not because they where catholic. What do you think?

[Deleted User]

It does seem unlikely that many Protestants were forced out, tbh. I think some unionists who have lived all their lives in a place where religious tension is very high might find the whole thesis far more likely than it actually is.
In my lifetime there has been almost no religious tension in the South, tbh most of the minority tradition fitted In fine and were part of the community. I’d think being a Protestant in the South has been more comfortable than being either religion in the north for at least the last 50 years.
Really having cities, towns and even villages divided on the basis of religion is insane in 2020, it’s an indictment of how disastrous partition has been for the six counties.

https://sites.google.com/site/protestantcork191136/a-myth-exposed-protestant-decline-in-ireland-1901-1926

Shefwedfan wrote: »

So now your argument is people only got high power jobs in Ireland because of religion?

Nothing to do with education etc like most people get these jobs. It was just religion

I dont see you complaining that all protestants got banned from working as civil servants. Probably says a lot. Look how successful these companies are and look at the mess of the whole civil service is.

Maybe it might have made sense to bring in people based on skills, not because they where catholic. What do you think?

No. Actually it was mostly who you knew.

Protestant civil servants were not banned, they just got better jobs elsewhere in banking, law, medicine etc. Remember the big accountancy practices were all protestant and the recruitment process was about who you knew, not what you knew. Bear in mind it was extremely rare for catholics to get jobs in places like Guinness and pretty much all the big businesses were protestant owned (like Arnotts, Jacobs, Odlums, Gouldings, Jamesons etc. etc.

Nevertheless, they all settled well into the new State and are as proud to be Irishmen and women as anyone.

You might learn something from this paper by Frank Barry of Trinity.
http://www.irisheconomy.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Life-and-Death-of-Protestant-Businesses-in-Independent-Ireland.pdf

Edit: on your last point about bringing in people based on skills - David McWilliams (the economist) grandfather, a protestant from Scotland, came to Ireland as a skilled stone cutter and was brought into repair some of the cut stone buildings that were damaged during 1916 and War of Independence etc. He stayed, founded Dalkey United Football club and the rest is history. David's father married an Irish catholic and he ended up going to Blackrock College.

TheBoyConor

Do Irish protestants in the South genuinely consider themselves irish as in as Irish as the rest of us?
I find it hard to imagine a Protestant as being fully Irish. I just always think that it is something that they might have accepted out of necessity and lack of any alternative rather than being proud of it.

I think there is still a general wariness and coolness around protestants here. I have seen on many occasions where people would be talking about someone and, somehow, their bring from a Protestant family would come up. Then you would having someone saying something like "oh......I never knew that about her" and it would be clear that the person's opinion of the person has changed.

I have myself been on the end of that, and I'm from a Catholic background. I have a surname that is not very common outside of my home area, and there have been times where I've been asked my name or introduced and there'd be a bit of an "oh" pause. A judgy pause. On more that one occasion is was followed up by a direct question as to whether I was a Protestant. I'm not. I also have been party to conversations where people have suspected that someone else might be a Protestant based on nothing more than their surname. And this in not in border counties, this is well South.
I also experienced a conversation where someone, upon finding out that someone they had become aquainted was a Protestant, was genuinely surprised that the person was a pleasant friendly character.

So this notion that protestants are fully integrated into the South and that we all live happily ever after is simply not true. There are some things which Protestants tend to bed involved in. And there is most definitely a coolness or wariness about them. The tone and mood of a conversion can change when it's revealed that someone is a Protestant.

I think it is very difficult to erase from our collective memory that it was the ancestors of these people and their sponsors that drove the Irish from our land and prospered on the back of our oppression. In many instances, we still see some of them living a lifestyle that originated with their ancestors privilege.

jm08 wrote: »

No. Actually it was mostly who you knew.

Protestant civil servants were not banned, they just got better jobs elsewhere in banking, law, medicine etc. Remember the big accountancy practices were all protestant and the recruitment process was about who you knew, not what you knew. Bear in mind it was extremely rare for catholics to get jobs in places like Guinness and pretty much all the big businesses were protestant owned (like Arnotts, Jacobs, Odlums, Gouldings, Jamesons etc. etc.

Nevertheless, they all settled well into the new State and are as proud to be Irishmen and women as anyone.

You might learn something from this paper by Frank Barry of Trinity.
http://www.irisheconomy.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Life-and-Death-of-Protestant-Businesses-in-Independent-Ireland.pdf

Edit: on your last point about bringing in people based on skills - David McWilliams (the economist) grandfather, a protestant from Scotland, came to Ireland as a skilled stone cutter and was brought into repair some of the cut stone buildings that were damaged during 1916 and War of Independence etc. He stayed, founded Dalkey United Football club and the rest is history. David's father married an Irish catholic and he ended up going to Blackrock College.

Sorry not banned but made compulsory to speak Irish....

Your lovely story about McWilliams just proves if people worked they got places. If people sat in the pub they didn’t

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Do Irish protestants in the South genuinely consider themselves irish as in as Irish as the rest of us?

My partner, a proud and practicing Protestant is sitting beside me here and says she and her family are as Irish and proud to be Irish as anyone else here.

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Do Irish protestants in the South genuinely consider themselves irish as in as Irish as the rest of us?

Yes. Neale Richmond is interviewed in this podcast and I believe he's from a Church of Ireland family.

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Sorry not banned but made compulsory to speak Irish....

They probably had to have maths and English in their Leaving Cert as well. Big deal. Facts are that the civil service was below them. I think Martin Mansergh might be one of the few who were recruited and I doubt if he had Irish as he was brought up in England (he joined DoFA in 1973.

Your lovely story about McWilliams just proves if people worked they got places. If people sat in the pub they didn’t

McWilliams' grandfather was a skilled craftsman who when he came to Dublin to do a specific job. Your little dig is fairly pathetic about the unemployed sitting in the pub.

TheBoyConor

Do you mind me asking you what her own surnames is?
Are you Protestant also, or was I'd a mixed marriage?, just out of curiosity is all.

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Do Irish protestants in the South genuinely consider themselves irish as in as Irish as the rest of us?

They do. I have quite a few friends who were brought up as protestants and they would be shocked to not be considered as Irish as everyone else.

downcow wrote: »

You beat me to it. That was my thought exactly when I read Francies post

On a number of occasions you have been exposed as ignorant to the facts when it comes to treatment of Protestants in the South. I'd imagine that you'd still hold tightly to your myths about Protestant 'persecution' even if you were presented with a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

I can think of no other post-conflict society where a minority that was associated with the former ruling class were so secure during the very measured decolonisation process. In Algeria those associated with the French colonists fled in their hundreds-of-thousands and tens-of-thousands were massacred after France withdrew. Protestants who remained in Ireland lived in peace and prosperity and I'm glad they did.

Your notions about the persecution of Protestants are nonsense.

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Do you mind me asking you what her own surnames is?

Yes I do mind.
It is Scottish in origin if that is a help.

Are you Protestant also, or was I'd a mixed marriage?, just out of curiosity is all.

Raised in the RC faith, of no religion now.

Shefwedfan wrote: »

Nice little image......tells its own story wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Ireland_protestants_1861-1991.gif

What story does it tell?

Kaybaykwah

FrancieBrady wrote: »

Yes I do mind.
It is Scottish in origin if that is a help.

Raised in the RC faith, of no religion now.

It's a testament to the openness of the Irish republic that it is now a country that has experienced economic prosperity and educational attainments that has left the North in the dust.

Another thing regarding this myth that downcow would like to propagate on the mistreatment of Protestants in the republic; how would that have been possible without muscular British intervention?

Indeed, as was stated earlier, many prominent Protestants were instigators of Republicanism, and this for more than a Century before the armed rebellion for Independence occurred.

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Do Irish protestants in the South genuinely consider themselves irish as in as Irish as the rest of us?
I find it hard to imagine a Protestant as being fully Irish. I just always think that it is something that they might have accepted out of necessity and lack of any alternative rather than being proud of it.

I think there is still a general wariness and coolness around protestants here. I have seen on many occasions where people would be talking about someone and, somehow, their bring from a Protestant family would come up. Then you would having someone saying something like "oh......I never knew that about her" and it would be clear that the person's opinion of the person has changed.

I have myself been on the end of that, and I'm from a Catholic background. I have a surname that is not very common outside of my home area, and there have been times where I've been asked my name or introduced and there'd be a bit of an "oh" pause. A judgy pause. On more that one occasion is was followed up by a direct question as to whether I was a Protestant. I'm not. I also have been party to conversations where people have suspected that someone else might be a Protestant based on nothing more than their surname. And this in not in border counties, this is well South.
I also experienced a conversation where someone, upon finding out that someone they had become aquainted was a Protestant, was genuinely surprised that the person was a pleasant friendly character.

So this notion that protestants are fully integrated into the South and that we all live happily ever after is simply not true. There are some things which Protestants tend to bed involved in. And there is most definitely a coolness or wariness about them. The tone and mood of a conversion can change when it's revealed that someone is a Protestant.

I think it is very difficult to erase from our collective memory that it was the ancestors of these people and their sponsors that drove the Irish from our land and prospered on the back of our oppression. In many instances, we still see some of them living a lifestyle that originated with their ancestors privilege.

excellent post. I really appreciate your honesty, and indeed your skill at articulating what many here are either unable or unwilling to articulate.
You got right under then skin of it

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

What story does it tell?

I know a few people on here seem to have issues with following a link past the headline but it is the first tiem someone wasn't fit to follow a picture. It's a new low for this forum.

FrancieBrady wrote: »

My partner, a proud and practicing Protestant is sitting beside me here and says she and her family are as Irish and proud to be Irish as anyone else here.

we have had this discussion before Francie. I can take you to a once proud Irish catholic and irish dance champion and fluent irish speaker. She married a domineering Free presbyterian. She has walked away from her whole identity, attends a FreeP church, runs to loyalist band parades, would describe herself now as a unionist and would tell you northern nationalists have been bred to be sectarian.
I think it is quite sad but it doesn't prove anything other than that she has a controlling husband who doesn't value diversity

[Deleted User]

I wonder is to do with where you live, the church of Ireland people I know would be of the small or medium sized farm variety so I doubt their ancestors were oppressing anyone.

Kaybaykwah wrote: »

It's a testament to the openness of the Irish republic that it is now a country that has experienced economic prosperity and educational attainments that has left the North in the dust.

Another thing regarding this myth that downcow would like to propagate on the mistreatment of Protestants in the republic; how would that have been possible without muscular British intervention?

Indeed, as was stated earlier, many prominent Protestants were instigators of Republicanism, and this for more than a Century before the armed rebellion for Independence occurred.

I think your struggle is that because a small minority of prods were treated fine and stayed that you are rolling that out to deny the lot that prods suffered.
Would it help if we talked about the prods, who would not become proud Irish, accept the old wafer on the tongue, and agree with the republican version of history. Would you accept they suffered in you diverse (thats a laugh) Ireland??

mariaalice wrote: »

I wonder is to do with where you live, the church of Ireland people I know would be of the small or medium sized farm variety so I doubt their ancestors were oppressing anyone.

another interesting try at a suitable narrative, but why did the vast majority of those types leave?