Catholic unionist

Last updated March 15, 2023

Catholic Unionist is a term historically used for a Catholic in Ireland who supported the Union which formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and subsequently used to describe Catholics who support the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The term Catholic unionist has become controversial since the start of the 1970-1998 Troubles, due to the strong association of Ulster Unionism with Protestantism. The most recent surveys suggest that, although a plurality of Catholics in Northern Ireland are technically unionists in that they support Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, very few would self-identify as unionist or support an explicitly unionist political party. This has led to the nickname unicorns for self-identified Catholic unionists, by analogy with a non-existent creature.^[1] They can be contrasted with Protestant nationalists, who supported separation from Great Britain.

Historical background

Roman Catholic support for the Kingdom of Ireland (1542-1800) had the full backing of the Holy See from 1555, with the papal bull Ilius per quem issued by Pope Paul IV during the reign of Queen Mary.^[2] Only one monarch after her, had been Catholic, James II (1685-89), who called the Parliament of 1689. The kingdom had mainstream support from Jacobites, in hopes that eventually a Catholic monarchy would reign. In general, the Holy See had better relations with Europe's monarchies, particularly Spain, Austria, France and Portugal, and was seen as a conservative force. The Irish Catholic Hierarchy, and notably Archbishop Troy, supported the passage of the Acts of Union 1800, expecting that Catholic MPs would be elected, but this was delayed by three decades.

Notable Catholic Unionists 1800-1922

Historically, after the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, a great number of Irish Catholics such as Thomas O'Hagan served in senior positions in the British Empire of the 19th century, and many of the Irish nobility and landed gentry had remained Catholic or had converted to Catholicism in the 19th century.

Among these were:^[3]

Irish Catholic unionists were a political minority group without their own representation in the House of Commons. They tended to support the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union and subsequent Irish Unionist Alliance. As the electorate expanded after the Representation of the People Act 1884, the influence of the grander Catholics inevitably declined.

From Home Rule to Free State

Irish Catholic unionists petitioned against the Government of Ireland Bill 1893 on the grounds that it would create a "revolutionary spirit disastrous to the true interests" of Catholicism.^[4] Whilst sympathetic to Ulster's resistance during the Home Rule Crisis they were not averse to devolution, and some would have preferred a home-ruled united Ireland within the United Kingdom.

For many Catholic officials and lawyers, loyalty to the British system depended on the prevailing political climate. It might be essential for their careers and then dropped; an example being George Gavan Duffy. John O'Connor KC started his political life as a Fenian activist and later became an MP and King's Counsel. Other such as General Bulfin and Antony MacDonnell chose to remain loyal.

From the success of Sinn Féin at the 1918 election, Irish Catholic Unionists were constantly physically attacked and threatened by republicans for their loyalism, as the Irish poet Edward Dowden would note: "The free expression of opinion by Catholics is checked by a system of intimidation and terrorism".^[5] The most notable murder was in June 1922, when a local magistrate James Woulfe-Flanagan was shot dead in front of his family while leaving Mass at Newry Cathedral.^[6]

The Holy See itself was cautious in 1916-22 and would not recognise the revolutionary Irish Republic of 1919–22, despite an emotive plea from Seán T. O'Kelly.^[7] Once agreement had been reached on the establishment of the Irish Free State, Monsignor Luzio was sent to interview the 26 Irish bishops, describing them on his return as "26 Popes". The British diplomat to the Vatican at the time was John Francis Charles, 7th Count de Salis-Soglio, who owned large landed estates in Limerick and Armagh.

From the 1920s a number have served as cultural and political bridges between Dublin and London, such as Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1905-2001).

On the partition of Ireland in 1921-22 several former Catholic Unionists were appointed to the first Irish Free State Senate.

Northern Ireland (post-1921)

Andrew Bonaparte-Wyse (1870-1940) Permanent Secretary, Northern Ireland Ministry of Education.
G. B. Newe (1907–82), Minister of State, Department of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, 1971–72, appointed by Brian Faulkner.
Richard Doherty, author, military historian and RUC reservist from County Londonderry.
Sir John Gorman, UUP MLA for North Down from 1998 to 2003.
Sir Denis Henry, was born in County Londonderry in 1864. A son of prosperous Catholic businessman, he was elected MP for South Londonderry in 1916 and later served as Solicitor-General for Ireland and then as the first Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
Tina McKenzie, former chairperson, council candidate and European Parliament candidate for the pro-union political party NI21 and businesswoman. She is the daughter of Harry Fitzsimons, a former member of the Provisional IRA.^[8]
Conor Burns, Conservative MP for Bournemouth West since 2010, Minister of State for Trade Policy 2019-2020, Minister of State, Northern Ireland since 2021.^[9]^[10]

Many prominent members of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland have been Catholics, including the majority of its past leaders (such as John Cushnahan, Oliver Napier and Seán Neeson), some of its Deputy Leaders (such as Seamus Close and Eileen Bell), former MP (of the Northern Ireland Parliament) Thomas Columba Gormley, as well as three of its seven current Assembly members. The Alliance Party is not, as such, a Unionist party,^{[ citation needed ]} as its support for the Union is based purely on that being the wishes of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland.

Republic of Ireland

Stan Gebler Davies (1943–94) – a journalist for the Irish Independent , who stood as a Unionist for the Dáil in 1987.^[11]
Edward Haughey (1944–2014), OBE. Educated by the Irish Christian Brothers in Dundalk; self-made pharmaceutical tycoon. Nominated to Seanad Éireann by Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, serving from 1993 to 2002, taking the Fianna Fáil whip. In 2004, he became a life peer in the House of Lords for the Ulster Unionist Party, as Baron Ballyedmond, of Mourne in the County of Down.
Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008), Labour Party TD (1969–77) and Senator (1977–79) who was later elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996 for the UK Unionist Party; however, he later resigned from the UKUP after his book Memoir: My Life and Themes called on Unionists to consider the benefits of a united Ireland to thwart Sinn Féin.
Cllr. Maria Gatland née Maguire, a Dublin born former member of the IRA and gun runner, who has become a local councillor for the Conservative and Unionist Party in Croydon, England.

Voting trends

Catholic supporters of the Ulster Unionist Party - the dominant political force in Northern Ireland until the 1970s - tended to support the reformist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill against the emerging hardline Protestant Unionist Party (later the DUP). The UUP later took a more hardline turn itself, and Catholic support for Unionist parties sharply declined.^{[ citation needed ]} Catholic supporters of the Union today may vote for the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (notwithstanding the SDLP's support for a united Ireland), or for the non-partisan Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, or for none of the major parties.

Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey's 2014 poll results suggest that half of Northern Irish Catholics favour Northern Ireland remaining as part of the United Kingdom.^[12] The NILT results also suggest that 6% of Catholics would vote for the nominally unionist Alliance Party, but that only 1% would support any of the mainstream or 'hardline' Unionist parties. Similarly, the poll results suggested that 7% of Protestants would vote for the Alliance Party, while 1% of Protestants would vote for the moderate nationalist SDLP.^[13]

A 2011 survey by the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey found that 52% of Northern Irish Catholics respondents favoured Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom over a united Ireland.^[14]^[15]

Related Research Articles

Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares an open border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2021, its population was 1,903,100, making up about 27% of Ireland's population and about 3% of the UK's population. The Northern Ireland Assembly, established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998, holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the UK Government. The government of Northern Ireland cooperates with the government of the Republic of Ireland in several areas agreed under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. The Republic of Ireland also has a consultative role on non-devolved governmental matters through the British-Irish Governmental Conference (BIIG).

Ulster is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland ; the remaining three are in the Republic of Ireland.

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement. Following the partition of Ireland, it was the governing party of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. It was supported by most unionist voters throughout the conflict known as the Troubles, during which time it was often referred to as the Official Unionist Party (OUP).

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.

Unionism is a political tradition on the island of Ireland that favours political union with Great Britain and professes loyalty to the British Crown and constitution. As the overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority, following Catholic Emancipation (1829) unionism mobilised to keep Ireland part of the United Kingdom and to defeat the efforts of Irish nationalists to restore a separate Irish parliament. Since Partition (1921), as Ulster Unionism its goal has been to maintain Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and to resist a transfer of sovereignty to an all-Ireland republic. Within the framework of a 1998 peace settlement, unionists in Northern Ireland have had to accommodate Irish nationalists in a devolved government, while continuing to rely on the link with Britain to secure their cultural and economic interests.

The 1918 Irish general election was the part of the 1918 United Kingdom general election which took place in Ireland. It is now seen as a key moment in modern Irish history because it saw the overwhelming defeat of the moderate nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had dominated the Irish political landscape since the 1880s, and a landslide victory for the radical Sinn Féin party. Sinn Féin had never previously stood in a general election, but had won six seats in by-elections in 1917–18. The party had vowed in its manifesto to establish an independent Irish Republic. In Ulster, however, the Unionist Party was the most successful party.

The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), or simply Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. As of the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it is the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and has made recent breakthroughs to place third in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and third highest-polling regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

James Dawson Chichester-Clark, Baron Moyola, PC, DL was the penultimate Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and eighth leader of the Ulster Unionist Party between 1969 and March 1971. He was Member of the Northern Ireland Parliament for South Londonderry for 12 years, beginning at the by-election to replace his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker in 1960. He stopped being an MP when the Stormont Parliament was suspended and subsequently abolished with the introduction of Direct Rule by the British Government.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement was a 1985 treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The treaty gave the Irish government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government while confirming that there would be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland unless a majority of its citizens agreed to join the Republic. It also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved consensus government in the region.

United Ireland, also referred to as Irish reunification, is the proposition that all of Ireland should be a single sovereign state. At present, the island is divided politically; the sovereign Republic of Ireland has jurisdiction over the majority of Ireland, while Northern Ireland, which lies entirely within the Irish province of Ulster, is part of the United Kingdom. Achieving a united Ireland is a central tenet of Irish nationalism, particularly of both mainstream and dissident Irish republican political and paramilitary organisations. Unionists support Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom, and therefore oppose Irish unification.

The Irish Unionist Alliance (IUA), also known as the Irish Unionist Party, Irish Unionists or simply the Unionists, was a unionist political party founded in Ireland in 1891 from a merger of the Irish Conservative Party and the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union to oppose plans for home rule for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The party was led for much of its existence by Colonel Edward James Saunderson and later by William St John Brodrick, Earl of Midleton. In total, eighty-six members of the House of Lords affiliated themselves with the Irish Unionist Alliance, although its broader membership among Irish voters was relatively small.

The earliest references to the history of Derry date to the 6th century when a monastery was founded there; however, archaeological sites and objects predating this have been found. The name Derry comes from the Old Irish word Daire meaning 'oak grove' or 'oak wood'.

The partition of Ireland was the process by which the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland divided Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. It was enacted on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Act intended both territories to remain within the United Kingdom and contained provisions for their eventual reunification. The smaller Northern Ireland was duly created with a devolved government and remained part of the UK. The larger Southern Ireland was not recognised by most of its citizens, who instead recognised the self-declared 32-county Irish Republic. On 6 December 1922, a year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the territory of Southern Ireland left the UK and became the Irish Free State, now the Republic of Ireland.

Protestant Irish Nationalists are adherents of Protestantism in Ireland who also support Irish nationalism. Protestants have played a large role in the development of Irish nationalism since the eighteenth century, despite most Irish nationalists historically being from the Irish Catholic majority, as well as most Irish Protestants usually tending toward unionism in Ireland. Protestant nationalists have consistently been influential supporters and leaders of various movements for the political independence of Ireland from Great Britain. Historically, these movements ranged from supporting the legislative independence of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland, to a form of home rule within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to complete independence in an Irish Republic and a United Ireland.

The Irish Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of World War I.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Politics of Northern Ireland</span> Overview of the politics of Northern Ireland

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Ulster Protestants are an ethnoreligious group in the Irish province of Ulster, where they make up about 43.5% of the population. Most Ulster Protestants are descendants of settlers who arrived from Britain in the early 17th century Ulster Plantation. This was the settlement of the Gaelic, Catholic province of Ulster by Scots and English speaking Protestants, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England. Many more Scottish Protestant migrants arrived in Ulster in the late 17th century. Those who came from Scotland were mostly Presbyterians, while those from England were mostly Anglicans. There is also a small Methodist community and the Methodist Church in Ireland dates to John Wesley's visit to Ulster in 1752. Although most Ulster Protestants descend from Lowland Scottish people and English, some also descend from Irish, Welsh and Huguenots.

The Unionist Anti-Partition League (UAPL) was a unionist political organisation in Ireland which campaigned for a united Ireland within the United Kingdom. Led by St John Brodrick, 1st Earl of Midleton, it split from the Irish Unionist Alliance on 24 January 1919 over disagreements regarding the partition of Ireland.

References

↑ O Connor, Fionnuala (2 May 2017). "Fionnuala O Connor: Time for both sides to stop fighting a war that is over". The Irish News. Retrieved 13 June 2017. We have been here before. Behold the recurring search for the unicorn, the Catholic unionist, the creature who can make up the numbers.
↑ "Documents on Ireland | The papal bull of 1555 conferring the title of king of Ireland on Philip II of Spain". Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 12 March 2019.Ilius Per Quem text]; accessed online, March 2019
↑ Most are in Gorman, Converts to Rome; 4th edition, London 1899
↑ John Biggs-Davison and George Chowdharay-Best The Cross of St Patrick The Catholic Unionist Tradition in Ireland (1984) p195
↑ John Biggs-Davison and George Chowdharay-Best The Cross of St Patrick The Catholic Unionist Tradition in Ireland (1984) p258
↑ See: http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/ Archived 19 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine Witness Statement WS 890 of Captain Edward Fullerton, pages 24-25.
↑ https://www.difp.ie/volume-1/1920/memorandum-by-sean-t-oceallaigh-to-pope-benedict-xv/35/#section-documentpage Archived 12 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine Memorandum by Sean T. O'Ceallaigh to Pope Benedict XV, ROME, 18 May 1920
↑ Clarke, Liam (6 November 2013). "NI21's Tina McKenzie: My politics are very different to my IRA terrorist dad's". Archived from the original on 11 January 2014. Retrieved 11 January 2014.
↑ Quinn, Ben (4 May 2020). "Conor Burns: the Eurosceptic stalwart who befriended Thatcher". theguardian.com . Retrieved 5 July 2022.
↑ "The Rt Hon Conor Burns MP". gov.uk . Retrieved 5 July 2022.
↑ Obituary: Stan Gebler Davies Archived 25 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine The Independent 24 June 1994
↑ "NI Life and Times Survey "Do you think the long-term policy for Northern Ireland should be for it..."". ark.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
↑ "NI Life and Times Survey - 2014: NIPARTY "Which Northern Ireland political party would you support?"". ark.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 21 March 2016. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
↑ Henry McDonald. "The Kingdom will remain United – in Ireland, at least". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 July 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2015.
↑ Moriarty, Gerry (20 June 2011). "Over half Catholics surveyed want North to stay in UK". The Irish Times . Archived from the original on 2 November 2011. Retrieved 17 September 2011.