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Labour and Northern Ireland: by Bert Ward
A cold house
The world knows about the discrimination exercised against Catholics by
unionists in Northern Ireland. Unionists themselves have acknowledged the
injustice of this. David Trimble repeated it in his Nobel prize acceptance
speech in Oslo. "Ulster Unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island,
built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics. And northern
nationalists, although they had a roof over their heads, seemed to us as if
they meant to burn the house down". Less known, is that in the Republic of
Ireland nationalists were keeping a cold house for Protestants, who were
murdered, intimidated, and their businesses boycotted, to drive them out.
Mixed marriages were not allowed without the Protestant partner giving a
prior binding promise that the children of the marriage would be brought up
as Catholics.
No southern politician has made a statement equivalent to that of David
Trimble. And whilst calumny was being poured upon the heads of unionists in
the north, Protestants in the south, as a proportion of population were
falling from 12% to 2%, while the catholic proportion of the population in
the cold house of the north was rising, so that nationalists and
republicans now talk gleefully of the pace of demographic change and its
consequences when Catholics outnumber Protestants.
Condemning the real culprits
The discrimination practised against Catholics led to the creation in 1967 of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. And whilst Unionists have been deservedly condemned for this discrimination, nobody has condemned the real culprits, the United Kingdom Governments that permitted it.
The two main parties since 1924 in our two party system of government have been the Conservatives and Labour. Any investigation into why these so different parties, when in Government, did not act to end this discrimination will start with their origins, structure and ideology.
The formation of the Conservative Party
The Conservative party, the official title being the National Union of
Conservative and Unionist Associations was formed in 1867 following the
Second Reform Act which increased the electorate.. Its function was to be,
(Continued on page 33)
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