Old scores
Recently a documentary entitled Old Scores was shown on Northern Ireland television. Made in Belfast and intended mainly for local viewing, it was about a group of Protestant and Catholic teenagers who lived in the Rathcoole housing estate in the northern suburbs of Belfast, and who played together as a football team for the last time in the summer of 1969. The province at that time was about to erupt into sectarian violence, and the mixed housing estate of Rathcoole was shortly to become staunchly Protestant. The Catholic residents were persuaded, by threats and intimidation, to leave the Catholic ghettos.
Some of the players in this team ended up in the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force, others in the Provisional IRA. One served three years in the Maze prison, another is at present serving 18 years for shooting three Catholics, a third — Bobby Sands — grew up to become a Westminster MP, and later died on hunger strike. The Belfast Telegraph called the documentary “a very worthwhile human story which looks at an aspect of the troubles from a different angle”. But in fact the theme of the documentary was to show both sides of the sectarian divide with no attempt to trace the real cause of the Ulster tragedy.
Those players of the football team who were still alive and available were interviewed and asked for their opinions of their former teammates. The Catholics still living in the ghettos spoke guardedly but none seemed even faintly aware of the cause of their predicament. All measured the problem in terms of Catholics and Protestants without even knowing why. None could see any inconsistency in being a teammate one minute and a deadly enemy the next. One Catholic, on being asked “Would you play football with a Protestant again?” replied “No”. Asked "Why did Bobby Sands get mixed up with the paramilitaries?” he said “He was unlucky”. Most saw the only way out of their dilemma as emigration. To date three had settled in the Channel Islands, one had gone to Australia, and another was attempting to emigrate to America. The documentary typifies the media approach to the troubles in Northern Ireland which attempts to explain everything in sectarian terms.
Sectarian Roots
What are the origins of this sectarianism? Sectarianism has a long and complicated history in Ireland, but basically the present upsurge dates from the early years of the 20th century.
Protestant and Catholic workers have been used as pawns in the economic rivalry between the industrial capitalists of the North, and the emerging capitalist class of the South. The North is predominantly Protestant, and the South predominantly Catholic. With the threat of Home Rule for Ireland the Northern capitalists, seeing that Home Rule could exclude them from the lucrative markets of Britain and its empire, enlisted the aid of the Protestant working class to fight for the Partition of the North from the rest of Ireland. They did this by implying that Home Rule would mean that the Protestant religion would become submerged in a Catholic Ireland. So successful was this ploy that the Catholics in the North have become the whipping boys for many of Ulster’s problems. Over the years the bitterness has grown and the Catholics have reacted accordingly.
Bigotry . . .
Many Protestant workers will tell you that Catholics are devious, clannish, and that their entire outlook is determined by their church. For example if they marry Protestants the children of the marriage must be raised as Catholics. Another sore point is that Catholics get everything that is going in the way of social security and, because they generally have large families, this usually amounts to something more than the minimum wage. In addition in the Catholic ghettos very few pay rent or gas and electricity bills. Hence the saying "they neither work nor want”. Those few Catholics who find favour in the Protestants' eyes are given the accolade: “He is not a bad fellow for a Catholic”. To discuss the class struggle with the Protestant worker is likely to cause the assumption that you are in some way connected with the Catholic orientated Provisional IRA. or Sinn Fein.
Catholic workers are equally explicit about their Protestant counterparts, saying that Catholics are treated like second class citizens, discriminated against and kept out of the best jobs; or that the RUC is a mainly Protestant police force which has a bias against Catholics. Only in a United Ireland, they say, where we will no longer be in a minority, can Catholics expect to get justice.
The Real Issue
There will be no justice in Ireland or anywhere else until workers realise that it is not their religion but their class position in society which is the cause of their poverty, poor housing, and insecurity. The real problem is exploitation by those who own the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution. These owners can be Catholic or Protestant.
It is true that the capitalist class would be glad to see the end of sectarian violence. As we say in our pamphlet Ireland, Past, Present and Future:
By the 1960s the factors which divided the capitalist class had changed. Capitalism in the South had developed to a point where trade protection was being counterproductive, and the new economic strategy was concerned with attracting foreign investment. In the North the traditional industries were in decline and the Unionist government too was fighting vigorously to attract foreign capital. A new economic pattern was developing in both states involving multi-national firms which, as often as not, operated on both sides of the border. There was a growing interchange of capital and personnel, and both states stood on the threshold of the profitable markets of the European Economic Community. The old bigotries were no longer required, the capitalist priorities which had dictated their use had changed. There was to be a new era of “bridge building" and "reconciliation”. Unfortunately however the poison had been injected deep into the veins of the working class. The warnings, the fears, the naked hatred nurtured over decades by businessmen, politicians, churchmen, and even judges could not be easily wafted away!
It is sectarian divisions which cloud the real issue — the class struggle between the working class on one hand, and the capitalist class on the other. Old Scores might be a human story but it did not tell us anything new about the troubles in Ulster. There are no old scores to settle between workers no matter of what persuasion they happen to be. Their common and overriding interest is to understand the nature of capitalism, and then to organise on a class basis to end it. With the introduction of a society where production will be for use and not for sale, the hatred and bigotry conjured up by the use of the words Catholic and Protestant will be as extinct as the dinosaur.
WHC
. . . or reason?
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