It’s a common misconception that The Troubles (the conflict/war in Northern Ireland from the 1960s-1998) was about religious hatred between Catholics and Protestants.
It was actually not about religion. It was about colonialism.
To understand, you need to know a little about Irish history.
Starting from the 1500s, the British began a program of systematic, intense colonisation of Ireland. Native Irish people were driven off their land, which was then settled by British people. The northern part of the island was particularly heavily settled, to the point that about half the population was made up of British settlers.
At the time, the vast majority of British people (and therefore the British settlers) were Protestant, while the vast majority of Irish people were Catholic.
As the centuries passed, the native Irish population and the descendants of the British settlers did not integrate. They lived largely separately…. attending separate schools, living in separate communities… and worshiping separate religions.
Religion became one of a handful of “markers” (along with language, cultural practices, etc) to identify whether someone was a native Irish person, or a descendent of the British settlers.
Laws were established that systematically discriminated against Catholics (who were mostly Irish) in favour of Protestants (who were mostly descendants of British settlers). These were in effect in Northern Ireland until the latter part of the 1900s. They meant that Irish Catholic people were denied equal access to education, housing/land ownership, and political representation. This was known as the Protestant Ascendency.
In the 1960s, a Civil Rights Movement began in Northern Ireland. It was inspired by the African American movement in the US. Irish people marched and held protests for their rights. This Civil Rights Movement came to an end when British soldiers fired live ammunition into a peaceful protest in Derry, an event known as Bloody Sunday.
Following Bloody Sunday, tensions between the two main groups in Northern Ireland (Irish people/“Catholics”, and the descendants of British settlers/“Protestants”) escalated dramatically and the region descended into violence. The Troubles had begun.
Of course, when the British press was reporting on the sudden civil war that had erupted in one of their territories (Northern Ireland) they glossed over the fact that… you know… they caused it, by colonising Ireland, displacing it’s population and then systematically oppressing the Irish for centuries.
Colonial powers don’t really like to acknowledge the effects of their colonialism.
So instead, the British media simplified the situation by calling it a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. And other countries, who don’t know any better, caught on and also portrayed it as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants.
But in reality, religion was not the root cause of the conflict- it was colonialism.
another dimension of the exclusion and colonialism in northern ireland was in employment practices at the harlan & wolff shipyards, which used to be the biggest industrial employer in the biggest city in northern ireland - you basically had to be a protestant to work there, except as a glorified janitor. in the ‘good old days’ before thatcherite deindustrialization, this meant that catholics were effectively barred from good jobs, and were forced into precarious, unskilled, poorly-paid positions. if you think this sounds a lot like the dynamics between white and black auto workers in detroit, you’re right.
