Irish Catholics

Question 1

Jobs

Answer 1

-Irish catholics had a desire for work but only worked in low skilled manual jobs
-many found work as navvies on the railways, these were dangerous jobs that were very labour intensive
-worked in factories around Glasgow and the central belt which were low paid jobs needing little skill
-many Irish found jobs in ports
-Catholics were openly discriminated against by receiving lower pay or being denied the opportunity for promotion
-many Scots believed the Irish drove down wages and threatened their positions but some Irish were so desperate for work that they would work for less
-by 1870s Catholic Irish and protestant Scots were forming trade unions and going on strike

Question 2

Difference of religion

Answer 2

Catholics
-ornate chapels
-use lots of symbols
-Pope head of church
-believe you speak to God through priest
-‘purgatory’

Protestant
-simple church building
-against the use of symbols
-no overall head of the church
-believe you speak to God directly
-no purgatory

Question 3

Living conditions

Answer 3

-most Irish catholics tended to settle in areas where ships disembarked like Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee
-majority of Catholic Irish arrived poor and so tended to settle in the slums where rent was cheap
-conditions in these areas were terrible often leading to outbreaks of typhus and cholera

Question 4

Communities

Answer 4

-Irish catholics tended to stick together to support one another, and so distinct communities began to develop in Dundee and Glasgow
-The Catholic Church helped to set up clubs, football teams, and schools (celtic)
-in Dundee in the early 1860s there were 3 Catholic churches and 3 schools serving 20000 people but by 1870 the number had doubled
-the communities were reinforced by intermarriage

Question 5

Assimilation

Answer 5

-some Irish catholics chose to spend part of their wage on drinking or gambling which led to Scots blaming the Irish for their poor economic circumstances
-Scots viewed the Irish as insular, drunk, poor, uneducated, dirty and disease ridden
-violence and conflict was part of the Catholic Irish experience with certain parts of Glasgow being out of bounds depending on religion
-it was not unusual to see running battles between catholics and protestants on the streets
-in 1923, the church of Scotland, a protestant church published a pamphlet “the menace of the Irish race to our Scottish nationality”

Question 6

Sectarianism

Answer 6

A form of bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attacking relations of inferiority and superiority to differences between subdivisions within a group.