Abstract
This chapter shows the changing ways in which religious and national distinctions were embedded in social structure and institutions in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland over the last century; how far this was echoed in public practices and attitudes; and how, when and by which groups this was challenged and changed. Using aggregate data for the last 50 years it shows the different temporalities of change in each jurisdiction: threshold-like change in the Irish state, and cyclical fluctuation between polarization and permeability in Northern Ireland. It traces the changing proportions within each divided group who want change in group boundaries (‘changers’), who resist it (‘die-hards’) and who are undecided (‘swayers’). Thus it sketches the social baseline from which identity change occurred in the 2000s.
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JM1BCD01.
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JM2BCC02.
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NF1FWP01.
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JF1FPC01.
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This was also true in other parts of the country, see Ruane and Butler 2007.
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LM2FPC02.
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JF1FPC01.
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Groupness (a term coined by Brubaker 2002, and developed by Lamont et al. 2016) encompasses the full spectrum from relatively open and thin groups with permeable boundaries to fully polarized, solidaristic groups with shared aims and assumptions and clear enemies, and every possible combination in between.
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For analysis of the sequence of nationalist political mobilization, at once peripheral protest against British policies and power which kept most of Ireland as a producer of low value agricultural goods and a predominantly Catholic-based protest against remaining horizontal inequalities, Garvin 1981, is still the best single volume.
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There are difficulties of categorization including estimating the proportion of ‘others’, which for earlier years includes very high proportions of other Protestant denominations (the percentage of Jews is tiny, 0.1 of the population in the Republic in 1926). See Jardine 1994. Vaughan and Fitzpatrick 1978. By the 2000s, in-migration increased the proportion of ‘others’ in the South, although much less so in the North (Hayward and Howard 2007; Hayward 2014).
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These were documented in the extensive research carried out by the Fair Employment Agency in the 1970s and 1980s, and earlier employment practices and beliefs were recorded by Barritt and Carter 1962, pp. 94–95, 102.
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The classic study of the early period is Buckland 1979.
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In the 2006 census, only in one border county was the percentage of Church of Ireland respondents married to Roman Catholics less than 40%, and in some counties the figure was over 65%.
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Nic Giolla Phadraig, 1986; Fahey, 2002; Fahey et al, 2005 36–7; Breen and Reynolds, 2011; and http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/who-still-goes-mass-ireland-nowadays; https://faithsurvey.co.uk/irish-census.html. In Northern Ireland, surveys conducted by Rose (1971) in 1968, Moxon Browne (1983) in 1978 and Smith and Chambers (1991) in 1986. See also Life and Times surveys 1998–2014, and http://www.ark.ac.uk/sol/surveys/community_relations/time_series/crconstit.htm
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Abortion was made unconstitutional by referendum in 1983 by a two-thirds majority, and in 1986 63% of the public voted to retain the constitutional ban on divorce. Although divorce was carried in a second referendum in 1995 it was only by 50.28% of those voting. In the 2018 referendum the constitutional ban on abortion was removed by two-thirds of those voting.
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Fahey et al. 2005, 123; Irish Times July 8, 2016, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/majority-support-repeal-of-eighth-amendment-poll-shows-1.2714191; Irish Times October 7, 2016, http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/irish-times-poll-majority-want-repeal-of-eighth-amendment-1.2819814
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In a seeming paradox, those of ‘no religion’ are by far the most likely to declare many friends not of the same religion: thus in Fig. 3.2 the total percentage of those with many such friends since the early 2000s is significantly higher than the percentage of Protestants + Catholics with many such friends. The changing percentages of Protestants and Catholics with many such friends is a sign of demographic change—in the past, Catholics were likely to be minorities in Protestant neighbourhoods but now Protestants (in the West) are minorities in Catholic neighbourhoods with resultant change in friendship patterns.
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Sources: Rose, 1971, 307; Social Attitudes and Life and Times surveys 1989–2012, see http://www.ark.ac.uk/sol/surveys/community_relations/time_series/CRencycontact.htm, accessed July 22, 2017
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Northern Ireland Life and Times, Community Relations Module, COMDIV, and PARKOPEN.
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Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey, NIRELAND; NIRELAND2; NINATID
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Identity module, 2007, http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/results/identity.html, PCSEP, PCSEPFUT, accessed 24 May 2018.
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Northern Ireland Life and Times, Identity module, http://www.ark.ac.uk/nilt/results/identity.html, BRITPROT, IRISHCAT, BRPROT2, IRCAT2. Accessed 24 May 2018.
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O Dochartaigh 2012; Coakley 2009; http://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2015/1104/739633-prime-time-cross-border-poll-test-page/, accessed 9 January 2017.
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In 2017 only about 30% of the population were fully committed to the woman’s right to choose, although a year later two thirds voted to repeal the constitutional ban on abortion. http://www.thejournal.ie/abortion-poll-2-3268035-Mar2017/. Accessed 2 October 2017. See also Irish Times survey, 6 October, 2017. On the marriage equality and abortion repeal referenda, see Chap. 9.
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A survey carried out on behalf of Fortnight magazine in 1988 listed recent atrocities by the British and the IRA and asked if any of them had changed individuals’ support for Sinn Fein (Coopers and Lybrand 1988). Catholics swayed in their support in response to atrocities.
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http://www.thejournal.ie/prime-time-irelands-call-2426738-Nov2015/. A full 30% were undecided.
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This includes voters for the Alliance party and the Labour party. They were disproportionately professional middle class.
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The section of the professional middle class and higher managerial strata who had turned away from traditional unionism in the early 1970s had expanded to include more business people, workers in cross-community NGOs, radical evangelicals, and the increasing numbers in mixed marriages (Hayward and Magennis 2014; Mitchell and Ganiel 2011; Smithey 2011).
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Todd, J. (2018). Ethnic Divisions? Types of Boundaries and the Temporality of Change in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In: Identity Change after Conflict. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98503-9_3
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