Culture and Society

Question 1

Why did each community keep to themselves?

Answer 1

• -Catholics saw themselves as Irish and rejected the Northern state
• -Kept cultural ties with the rest of the island and developed these within their schools, newspapers and clubs eg GAA
• -Protestants/unionists considered themselves British and looked to London for cultural inspiration and leadership

Question 2

What cultural activities did nationalists have?

Answer 2

• -Catholic minority retreated into its ghettos e.g Bogside, Falls Road, Ardoyne, Creggan
• -Self-consciously preserved and cultivated their cultural identity
• -Catholic schools: Irish language and history (not official curriculum)
• -Hurling, Gaelic football
• -GAA: most public expression of identity, unaffected by partition

Question 3

What was the Ancient Order of Hibernians?

Answer 3

• -Links with Nationalist Party, parades on Paddy’s Day and 15th August
• -Small parades restricted to Catholic areas
• -RUC didn’t let Catholics parade in town centres
• -1954 Flags and Emblems Act: police could remove republican tricolour or papal flag if a unionist objected
• -After fall of Stormont: parades for Easter rising, Bloody Sunday, hunger strikes

Question 4

What cultural activities did unionists have?

Answer 4

• -Douglas Hyde, WB Yeats, Lady Gregory: Protestant leaders of cultural revival in the South
• -Unionists rejected cultural revival because they thought it led to nationalism
• -Thought of themselves as British and took their cultural identity from there
• -Felt there was no need to encourage a distinctly NI culture in literature or the arts post-1921
• -Students had to study English literature and history, little reference to Ireland
• -No support for local artists and writers
• -No attempt to develop an Ulster identity
• -1951: Stormont govt failed to name an artist to represent NI at the Festival of Britain because they felt it was ‘as much a part of Britain as Yorkshire’

Question 5

What were the Loyal Orders?

Answer 5

• -Only feature of NI culture that got official unionist recognition
• -Collected name for the Orange Order, Apprentice Boys and the Royal Black Institution etc
• -Held parades for significant protestant victories over Catholics
• -Gave them a sense of common identity
• -United them in determination to resist Catholic threat

Question 6

What was the Orange Order?

Answer 6

• -Biggest and most important loyal order
• -1795 founded
• -Cultivated it as a weapon in their struggled against nationalism
• -Intimately involved with the UUP
• -Represented on the UUC
• -Almost impossible for an Ulster politician to succeed if he wasn’t an Orangeman
• -Organised into lodges
• -Members have to be invited by the local lodge
• -Resist Popish worship
• -Love, uphold and defend Protestant religion
• -‘By all lawful means, resist that ascendancy of that Church’
• -Democratic structure
• -Orange hall was centre of social activity for the Protestant community e.g dances, games, meetings
• -Parades celebrating historic events e.g Battle of the Boyne (1690) or the Battle of the Somme

Question 7

What is the 12th of July?

Answer 7

• -Battle of the Boyne
• -Several big parades, big one in Belfast
• -10,000+ Orangemen and women etc
• -Burn effigies of Pope and irish figures
• -Great family day out
• -Each lodge saw to catering and transport for its members and arranged for a band
• -Bowler hats, Orange collarettes
• -Colourful banners showing King Billy, other Protestant heroes or scenes from the bible
• -Uniformed marchers
• -Pipes, accordions or flutes, Lambeg drums
• -The sash my father wore, The green grassy slops of the Boyne
• -Speeches from unionist leaders or Protestant churchmen
• -Extolled virtues of Protestantism, praised its defence of civil and religious liberty, reasserted its defiance of the Catholics
• -Evoked and celebrated a common Protestant past and a Protestant identity in the face of the threat of universal Catholicism

Question 8

Orange marches and nationalists:

Answer 8

• -Tension near or through Catholic areas
• -RUC protected these marches as they were ‘traditional’
• -Triumphal anti-Catholicism
• -Resented that Orangemen could parade through nationalist areas but not vice versa
• -Led to disturbances on the 12th