Job Discrimination – 100 Years of Partition
The partition of Ireland and the sectarian carve up of six of the nine counties of Ulster, was by no means a motiveless attempt by the British to pacify those in the north that wished to remain British, as Unionists and some British historians would like to believe.
The line of the crudely drawn border, carving its way like a manmade river meandering and cutting off communities and families from north to south, at first glance looks like a ham-fisted attempt to run a natural line around the North East of Ireland. But this unnatural line, and every other decision that went with it, was an extremely well thought out and strategic plan on the part of the British Government to hold on to the last vestiges of their crumbling empire.
During the late 1900’s, when the decision to partition Ireland was being planned, the North East of Ireland was an industrial powerhouse. Linen factories and mills, large industrial farms and ship building provided the majority of Ireland’s wealth creation and employment opportunities. And accounted for two thirds of Ireland’s overall industrial output and two thirds of Ireland’s exported goods came from Belfast. Therefore, it was no coincidence that these counties that had the biggest concentration of wealth production were selected to remain under British control. It was also no coincidence that the majority of the population in these counties was of a protestant background and of a mostly unionist outlook.
Since the plantations, the owners of the large farms and estates and those of the linen factory and mill empires were planters and descendants of planters, who evidently looked upon unionist and protestant workers more favourably than their catholic counterparts. This resulted in the vast majority of employment within these industries being occupied by protestant workers whilst a highly disproportionate number Catholics found themselves unemployed within the Six Counties. The small number of jobs given to Catholics were reserved for the lowest paid and lowest in social status, males would often only find work as farm labourers outside the cities and females forced into what James Connolly referred to as the “linen slave mills of Belfast” where the conditions were treacherous.
This was a theme that would continue from the foundation of the rotten little statelet known as “Northern Ireland”, through government decisions and under the direction of big business owners. A two tier society, where Protestants were given every opportunity, including employment and business ownership, whilst Catholics were treated as second class citizens. A statelet ruled by a Unionist junta of orangemen, that declared themselves a “a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people”, forced upon its Catholic population the title of ‘enemies of the state’ and encouraged their ostracisation. Sectarianism was a top-down state managed programme run in the interests of the capitalist and unionist ruling class. Whilst working-class Protestants didn’t have everything, they were given priority when the scraps were given out by the ruling Unionist junta.
This distrust of Catholics and the savagely sectarian nature of the state meant that even those Catholics fortunate enough to find employment within the industries in the cities and towns in the North were faced with regular discrimination, sectarian abuse, threats, violence and even beatings or murder to intimidate them out of employment, allowing their position to be filled by a loyal Protestant worker instead.
These practices continued until the civil rights movement in the 1960s attempted to shine a light on the discrimination faced by Catholics in several areas including housing and employment. The civil rights movement demanded that government policy and employment practices be changed to address the issues of unemployment and housing shortages for Catholics. Ultimately no official government policy changed on employment and the sectarian practises remained in place until the signing of the Good Friday Agreement; and, as part of it Section 75 of the ‘Northern Ireland Act 1998’ provided legislation to promote equality of opportunity in a number of categories including employment. In theory, we were told this legislation would put an end to sectarianism and discrimination in employment.
But, as with other sections of the Good Friday Agreement, aspects that were promised never came to fruition. The areas with the highest unemployment rates in the North have consistently remained majority ‘nationalist’ or ‘Catholic’ areas. The areas of Foyle (Derry & Strabane), West and North Belfast have year on year topped the list of areas of highest unemployment. Whilst in terms of educational attainment, since 1998 Catholics have consistently outperformed their Protestant counterparts in grades of GCSE, A-Levels and further education enrolment.
Traditionally and in other countries, educational attainment strongly correlates with employment. So those areas with high educational attainment usually have high employment rates as those young people with decent education move into work. This is clearly not the case in the Six Counties, indicating other factors at play dictating employment across the religious divide.
The fact that the areas with the highest rates of unemployment, and multiple social deprivation indicators, are still in predominantly nationalist areas 23 years after the Good Friday Agreement promised an end to sectarianism and discrimination, suggests that there has been a shift to more covert or underhand practices of discrimination as well as strategic underfunding and underinvestment in nationalist areas. This is simply a modern continuation of oppression through unemployment, of those Catholics, Nationalists and Republicans deemed a threat to the state since its foundation and has continued for the last 100 years to this present day.
Rather than celebrate the centenary of this rotten little statelet, instead, we should commiserate the tens of thousands of families forced to suffer in poverty due to unemployment, at the hands of this state, due to their religious or political outlook.
Rather than celebrate the 100th anniversary of this rotten little statelet, instead, we should commit ourselves to the ending of sectarianism across Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement and every other version of ‘power sharing agreement’ since, has proved time and again that it can’t end the scourge of sectarianism in our society. This is because it is so deeply rooted in the DNA of the state. It is entrenched in this state to oppress one section of society so that the state can survive. To end sectarianism in the Six Counties would ultimately end the Six County state itself. Therefore, the only way to rid the north of that bigotry is to rip the Orange State out by the root. And in its place build a 32 County Socialist Republic that guarantees real equality and prosperity to all, regardless of whether they are protestant, catholic or dissenter.
ENDS
