Cornelius O’Leary

The Age of Consolidation: 1874–1920

‘It is just as bad as bad could be. There is scarcely a town in the United Kingdom, except Belfast, in which a Liberal candidate could not count on polling a very considerable number of votes.’I This lament in a Northern Whig editorial after the general election result of 1874 had been declared marks the recognition by the Belfast Liberals that Belfast was incontrovertibly a Conservative city, and might well serve as the keynote for the developments of the next fifty years.

Class and Religion in Belfast

THE perceived and actual influence of religion on party support provokes more extensive investigation of its effects, and of its relationship with other social characteristics in Belfast. However, it is also interesting to investigate class phenomena for the very reason that class does not exert as strong an influence as elsewhere in Britain. The most plausible explanation lies in the possibility that class distinctions and feelings assume a different guise in Northern Ireland. We are able to compare Belfast responses about class and religious affiliations with information obtained in Glasgow at exactly the same time and in the same way. The comparison shows whether the impact of religion and class differs from that encountered in at least one other city. Since in a modern industrialised community the absence of strong class effects is a more anomalous phenomenon than the presence of religious influence, we begin by considering occupational differences. We then link these to subjective class feeling, and consider the relationship of both factors to religious identifications.

The Age of John Bates: 1832–55

THE first election after the Reform Act (which doubled the Irish electorate) marked the emergence all over the country of political clubs and societies characterised by their devotion to political principles, but also by the more utilitarian purpose of managing the registration system at its first trial. Two main parties emerged generally, but not uniformly.I The Liberals, or Reformers, were prevalent throughout the three southern provinces and to a lesser extent in Ulster. They had been agitating for Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, and the agitation over the previous fifteen years for these objects had provided them with a rudimentary organisation. The conservatives relied on family influence and patronage. But it is incorrect to label all the non-Liberal borough proprietors as Conservatives or Tories. Some had pursued an eclectic course in the years before 1832 — Lord Donegall, for example, voted against Catholic emancipation but in favour of parliamentary reform, and it was not until the late 1830s that such great Ulster families as the Downshires and Ranfurlys were definitely aligned with the Tories. They wished to conserve their family influence but were otherwise independent.

Party Images and Voting Choice: 1966

THE fact that Unionist hegemony in Belfast rests on genuine majority support rather than electoral sharp practice shifts our explanatory concern one stage back from the distribution of votes cast to the motivations behind these votes. In turn this shift implies a change in the main type of evidence considered, from aggregate, historical voting statistics to contemporary survey responses. What we learn about motivations from the answers made to us in 1966 is of course strictly time-bound. We cannot extrapolate backwards to the reasons for voting Unionist in the Depression years between the wars, nor to the springs of Unionist support during the pre-war struggle for Irish independence. Nevertheless, the motivations which reveal themselves in the 1960s are affected by the historical developments reviewed in the foregoing chapters and may in turn provide insights to aid interpretation of these developments. And contemporary motivations do relate most immediately to the development of the contemporary crisis; for whatever historical influences are present can act only through their effects on current motivations.

Support for Established Institutions, Cross-cutting and the Reaction of Political Moderates

SIGNS of the impending crisis in Northern Ireland are scattered through the evidence reviewed in previous chapters. When interpreted contextually, these give strong indications of how and why a crisis developed. The class division underlying politics in Britain was in Belfast overlaid by religious tension and Unionist hegemony (Chapter 8). That hegemony was seen as irreversible under existing procedures because it was based on the solid support of a popular majority — the Protestants (Chapter 7). Party divisions carried over (although not as clear-cut cleavages) into political attitudes and preferences on issues (Chapter 9). Unionist councillors formed a socioeconomic elite who ran the Corporation as their personal machine, where non-Unionist representatives seemed not to belong (Chapters 4, 5, 10). Certainly a majority of Unionist adherents and councillors — seconded by the press — wished in 1966 to make conciliatory moves towards the Catholics (Chapters 9 and 11), which if carried through might have defused the imminent crisis.

1920 and After

On 11 March 1919 the British Government, through its law officers for Ireland, formally introduced in the Commons a bill entitled the Local Government (Ireland) Bill. Its proximate cause was the fact that the suspensory Acts of 1916, 1917 and 1918, prolonging the lives of the existing local authorities, were shortly due to expire. The local authorities were either four or five years old and were in grave need of renewal.1 To hold fresh elections under the existing system would not, of course, require new legislation, but as the Attorney-General for Ireland2 indicated in his speech opening the second reading debate, the Government was taking advantage of this opportunity to introduce proportional representation as the mode of election for Irish local authorities ‘in view of the dissatisfaction which largely prevails in the country’.3

Local Elections and Party Competition: 1897–1967

MODERN social and institutional developments in Belfast are entangled with politics to an even greater extent than in other cities. It is to the political severance of the North from the rest of Ireland that Belfast owes its present role as an administrative and, in a modest sense, cultural centre. It is the political link with Britain that has provided financial aid for the post-war restructuring of the economy, and technological assistance for the ailing shipbuilding and aircraft industry. The British link has also provided a political and financial stimulus to the development of welfare services and housing (far more extensive than in the Republic) which as we have seen became one of the main preoccupations of the Council and its committees.

Recruitment of Activists

IN terms of its influence over attitudes, activism emerged as a factor in Belfast politics at least comparable with class, religion and party. Subsequent chapters will be concerned with exploring some of the implications of this finding. For if activists, by virtue of experiences in Council and administration which they share with each other but not with their followers, develop preferences and appraisals which differ from those of the general population, this will have immediate bearings on the question of representation — the extent to which councillors act on the preferences of their constituents (Chapter 11). It also indicates the presence of constraints on free communication between activists and population (Chapter 12). Different preferences may have evolved in procedural as well as other areas while patterns of conflict and agreement may also diverge (Chapter 13).

Influences on Political Attitudes: Class, Religion, Party and Activism

CARRYING on the analysis of class and religious manifestations in Belfast, we are interested here in estimating the relative pull of class and religious feelings when these are compared directly. This analysis forms the first section, below. The comparative influence of class and religion can also be estimated indirectly, through their effect on a wide variety of preferences, perceptions and attitudes, at both activist and popular levels. The attitudinal investigation is also capable of showing whether the party divisions already examined are carried over into political outlooks and whether councillors as a group share preferences and perceptions which set them apart from the population. In the second section of the chapter, therefore, we shall compare the mutually independent effects of class, religion, party and activism (i.e. the councillor-resident distinction) over a wide range of attitudes.

The Early Years: 1613–1832

BELFAST alone among the great towns of Ireland has been a political community almost from its beginning, which can be dated precisely to the first decade of the seventeenth century. Like all the other towns, with the exception of Kilkenny, it was built on tidal water at a ford across the river Lagan. Although some habitations existed since prehistoric times, they were insignificant until the conquest of Ulster under Elizabeth and James I. During the first five hundred years after the Norman invasion the ford of Belfast was the object of a long struggle between the Anglo-Normans and the Irish, and a twelfth-century castle was built there, not twenty miles from the first and greatest Norman castle of Carrickfergus. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Belfast was in the hands of native chiefs who dominated the whole of Ulster except Carrickfergus, and a small part of County Down. The next efforts to gain control of Belfast were almost contemporary with the coming of the Reformed religion to Ireland, and the reign of Elizabeth witnessed the subjugation of the Gaelic chiefs and the granting of the castle and harbour of Belfast to a succession of royal retainers, including Essex. The conquest was complete after the final desperate rebellion of the remaining Ulster chiefs, the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, their submission and eventual flight to the continent in 1607.