Keeping Catholics in their place
Lowry, David R.
SECRET REPORT ON DISCRIMINATION IN ULSTER Keeping Catholics in their place DAVID R. LOWRY A SECRET REPORT on job discrimination in Northern Ireland was leaked recently to the Irish Times. This...
...Thus when Britain assumed direct rule in 1972, everybody, both Catholic and Protestant, anxiously waited for a British initiative in the job discrimination area...
...If Catholics choose not to emigrate to find work, then one day in the future Catholics will constitute a numerical and hence electoral majority...
...Job discrimination against Catholics had been a major cause of the civil rights unrest which preceded the current fighting...
...McCrudden leaked to the Irish Times...
...The report was prepared by Dr...
...McCrudden reported in February of this year and, as yet, his report is still officially secret...
...He urges nothing less than "full-blooded affirmative action" if Catholics are not to remain the victims of job discrimination for many generations into the future...
...Indeed, the 1980 FEA study conclusively demonstrated that the gap between Catholics and Protestants "was widening" and would worsen for the "foreseeable future...
...Interestingly, in the American-owned Hughes Tool Company plant in Belfast only seven of sixty craftsmen are Catholic...
...Now it is clear to all that Britain's approach was ineffective...
...The FEA found that in the British government-owned Short Brothers aircraft manufacturing plant in Belfast only between 4.5 percent to 8 percent of skilled men are Catholic...
...As the British government flunked this issue in 1976 when it established the FEA, it seems hardly likely that the more conservative regime of Mrs...
...Moreover, in the absence of concerted action Protestant bigotry and supremacy remains unaffected and unchallenged...
...This report confirms the view of close observers of discrimination against Catholics that the British reform legislation of 1976 has not worked...
...The British-appointed FEA, powerless though it is, now has clearly and unequivocally contradicted the official British position...
...Catholics are now, according to the FEA, worse off than before the ten-year British rule of Northern Ireland...
...When asked in 1981, the NIES refused to sign a declaration that henceforth it would pursue equal opportunity in hiring...
...The FEA 1977 confidential investigation shows why this union complicity in discrimination is inevitable...
...British legislation has neither improved the situation of Catholics nor diminished Protestant privilege and political hegemony...
...Skilled or "craft" unions have, during this century, been Protestant-dominated and, consequently, conspicuously silent on the issue of discrimination against Catholics...
...One survey shows that two-thirds of all emigrants from Northern Ireland were Catholic...
...The FEA investigation of the state-owned utility, the Northern Ireland Electricity Service (NIES), is most revealing...
...In 1980 an FEA study showed that the position of Catholics in relation to Protestants was worsening under British direct rule...
...At Standard Telephones only "six or seven" out of sixty-nine skilled workers were Catholic in March of 1980...
...In August of 1977 the FEA decided to embark upon an investigation of skilled trades in Belfast's heavy engineering sector...
...The recent Irish Times revelations raise two neglected issues...
...Catholics will continue to be forced to emigrate to find work, and the artificial Protestant-Unionist electoral majority will remain...
...Since the establishment of the state of Northern Ireland in 1922, Catholics had been systematically and openly discriminated against...
...Secondly, why is it that American corporations doing business in Northern Ireland seemingly "fit in" to the system of discrimination without incurring the wrath of Irish-American politicians...
...At the Hugh Scott engineering works in Belfast the firm's workforce is 100 percent Protestant...
...At the modern Ballylumford power station in Antrim only 3 percent of the engineers are Catholic, while at the Coolkeeragh power station in overwhelmingly Catholic Deity less than 25 percent of engineers are Catholic...
...The British have always conceded that, prior to the imposition of direct rule from London in 1972, the Unionists in Belfast did indeed discriminate but argued that the British have outlawed discrimination...
...Reports compiled by the FEA since 1977 again and again confirm that Catholics are the victims of discrimination in all significant sectors of the Northern Irish economy...
...Northern unions largely reflect the aspirations of Protestant workers and have never taken a position of moral or political leadership...
...Skilled trades are highly-paid, high-status occupations, and apprenticeships are much sought after...
...The British failure to diminish discrimination condemns future generations of Catholics to the indignity of second-class citizenship in their own land-a continuing cause of unrest and violence which will surely afflict future generations as it has this present generation in Northern Ireland...
...Of over one thousand skilled workers at the Harland and Wolfe Shipyard there is not one skilled Catholic tradesman-a fact that did not stop the British government from recently giving Harland and Wolfe over $100 million to continue its operations of both shipbuilding and discrimination...
...McCrudden shows that since 1976 only 216 people have complained to the FEA and, in 1981, new complaints were only running at two or three per month...
...American law expressly forbids corporations from "perpetuating the present effects of past discrimination" in race, sex, and religion...
...Unionists were assured of remaining in power in Northern Ireland, and the future of the state of Northern Ireland as an entity was secured...
...THE FEA did set about doing one of the few things that it was permitted to do-research...
...By depriving Catholics of equal opportunity, successive Unionist regimes calculated that Catholics would be deprived of income and forced to emigrate to earn a living...
...How "moral persuasion" could be expected to be appropriate in the midst of entrenched and subtle discriminatory practices during an incipient civil war was never explained...
...But while the FEA was toothless and unable to prevent discrimination, its research findings have added considerably to our understanding of the sheer depth and scope of discrimination against Catholics...
...Most Catholics are discouraged from complaining as there seems to be little point to it, given the fact that the FEA lacks proper prosecutorial power, personnel, financial support, and legislative enforcement machinery...
...Because of this forced emigration Catholics would never constitute a majority within Northern Ireland...
...Instead the approach was one of "moral persuasion" by which discriminating employers would be "educated" and persuaded to change their ways...
...The FEA study confirms Ulster Catholics' worst fears...
...The FEA's still confidential study of the NIES notes that Catholics are only found in any number in lower-grade jobs...
...Thus discrimination was the cornerstone of Unionist political strategy-Discrimination leading to emigration of Catholics was very successful...
...late 1960s did not make any legislative or administrative move to undermine discriminatory practices...
...Successive Unionist governments never faltered on the issue of discrimination against Catholics...
...Even the relatively more enlightened regime of Captain Terence O'Neill in the DAVID R. LOWRY teaches at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York...
...In 1976 the British government belatedly enacted the Fair Employment Act which was supposed to help eradicate discrimination in employment against Catholics in Northern Ireland...
...Thus Catholics will probably continue to suffer the practice and the effects of discrimination indefinitely...
...Less than 10 percent of NIES engineers and only 12.6 percent of its administrative staff are Catholic...
...Regrettably the British did not give the FEA effective powers of enforcement...
...Systems of discrimination were, and still are, crucially important to the Unionists...
...IN ADDITION to these internal FEA investigations we now have the report on the operations of the FEA by Dr...
...The FEA concludes of the NIES that "all the information we have obtained supports the overall picture . . . that the electricity service has been a Protestant preserve...
...McCrudden was engaged at the end of 1979 after complaints by some of the senior staff of the FEA regarding the workings of the FEA...
...The FEA was never given proper prosecutorial power...
...The British Fair Employment Act of 1976 established the Fair Employment Agency (FEA) to monitor discrimination in employment...
...This investigation has not yet been completed but parts of it have been leaked to the Irish Times...
...Firstly, why is the British government continuing to finance at great expense enterprises which discriminate against Catholics-the fact of discrimination having been established by the FEA, an agency of the British government...
...Eventually Britain enacted a rather weak piece of legislation in 1976...
...Or, to put that another way, why is it that so many Irish-American politicians devote so little time and energy to the distress of Irish Catholics who are powerless in their own land, especially when this suffering is at the hands of American-owned corporations...
...American corporations are seemingly content to engage in patently discriminatory practices which, if performed in the United States, would be manifestly illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964...
...In this way the electoral impact of the higher Catholic birthrate was negated...
...Of the 241 managerial staff at NIES "at least 91 percent" are Protestant...
...He is a former member of the Faculty of Law at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland...
...Christopher McCrudden, a law professor at Lincoln College of Oxford University, and he notes that British anti-discrimination law enforcement has "failed" and is "in need of a complete overhaul...
...When that day comes, it is thought that the demise of the state of Northern Ireland will not be far behind...
...British government officials in the United States continue to argue that Her Majesty's government has addressed the issue of job discrimination in Northern Ireland...
...He lists twenty recommendations designed to overhaul completely the inadequate and ineffective enforcement powers of the FEA...
...Thatcher will act upon McCrudden's proposals...
...By March of 1981 the FEA had made only ten findings of discrimination and had successfully prevailed in court in only one case, McCrudden concludes: "If one way of assessing the success of the agency is its ability to have findings of discrimination supported in the courts, it has clearly failed...
Vol. 109 • July 1982 • No. 13
