NationStates Jolt Archive


How does the future of such a State fare?

Cybach
04-05-2008, 12:25
Segregation in Northern Ireland is a long-running issue in the political and social history of the province. It often been regarded as both a cause and effect of The Troubles between the Roman Catholic and Protestant populations of Northern Ireland.

A combination of political, religious and social differences plus the threat of intercommunal tensions and violence has led to widespread self-segregation of the two communities. Catholics and Protestants lead largely separate lives in a situation that some have dubbed "self-imposed apartheid". The academic John Whyte argued that "the two factors which do most to divide Protestants as a whole from Catholics as a whole are endogamy and separate education"

Education in Northern Ireland is heavily segregated. Most state schools in Northern Ireland are predominantly Protestant, while the majority of Catholic children attend schools maintained by the Catholic Church. In all, 90 per cent of children in Northern Ireland still go to separate faith schools.[3] The consequence is, as one commentator has put it, that "the overwhelming majority of Ulster's children can go from four to 18 without having a serious conversation with a member of a rival creed." The prevalence of segregated education has been cited as a major factor in maintaining endogamy (marriage within one's own group).

Public housing is overwhelmingly segregated between the two communities. Intercommunal tensions have forced substantial numbers of people to move from mixed areas into areas inhabited exclusively by one denomination, thus increasing the degree of polarisation and segregation. The extent of self-segregation grew very rapidly with the outbreak of the Troubles. In 1969, 69 per cent of Protestants and 56 per cent of Catholics lived in streets where they were in their own majority; as the result of large-scale flight from mixed areas between 1969 and 1971 following outbreaks of violence, the respective proportions had by 1972 increased to 99 per cent of Protestants and 75 per cent of Catholics.
It was estimated in 2004 that 92.5% of public housing in Northern Ireland was divided along religious lines, with the figure rising to 98% in Belfast.] Self-segregation is a continuing process, despite the Northern Ireland peace process. It was estimated in 2005 that more than 1,400 people a year were being forced to move as a consequence of intimidation.


In response to intercommunal violence, the British Army constructed a number of high walls euphemistically called "peace lines" to separate rival neighbourhoods. These have multiplied over the years and now number forty separate barriers, mostly located in Belfast. Despite the moves towards peace between Northern Ireland's political parties and most of its paramilitary groups, the construction of "peace lines" has actually increased during the ongoing peace process; the number of "peace lines" doubled in the ten years between 1995 and 2005.

The effective segregation of the two communities significantly affects the usage of local services in "interface areas" where sectarian neighbourhoods adjoin.[u] Surveys in 2005 of 9,000 residents of interface areas found that 75% refused to use the closest facilities because of location, while 82% routinely travelled to "safer" areas to access facilities even if the journey time was longer. 60% refused to shop in areas dominated by the other community, with many fearing ostracism by their own community if they violated an unofficial de facto boycott of their sectarian opposite numbers.

In contrast with both the Republic of Ireland and most parts of Great Britain, where intermarriage between Protestants and Catholics is common, intermarriage in Northern Ireland is rare.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1191027,00.html

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/60718-1006.htm

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428(199710)87%3A4%3C520%3AERSIBN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G








How will this play out for the State of North Ireland in the future? Having two people living on the same land who refuse almost any contact with the other party? Living side by side, yet purposely making sure they shop at their own, send their children to their own schools, attend their own churches, erect large walls where the boundary of one neighborhood ends, etc..? That there is an almost forced segregation practiced willingly by both sides, keeping their children from ever meeting the others before 18 or later. Discouraging any fraternization with members of the other side?

Is this a sort of foreshadowing as to how life in a future Israeli/Palestinian State may look like? Also two people who hate eachother forced to share one land?

What are your views that almost a decade after the peace accords, still yearly many people (from both sides) move to communal strongholds and away from mixed neighborhoods citing intimidation? That every year there are still riots.

What else do you think could be done to help bring along an amalgamation of the two societies for the overall stability of the region? How does one deal with the issue of the formerly Catholic minority, looking through immigration, higher childbirths and more Protestant emigration becoming the majority in the region? Therefore awakening the fear of the remaining Protestants now in the minority that North Ireland now with a Catholic majority could theoretically pass a vote to re-connect with mainland Ireland instead of being in Union with the United Kingdom [North Irish newspapers for public peace concerns ban the public releasing of demographic data]?
Nobel Hobos
04-05-2008, 12:36
Uh, send in the Atheists?

Seriously, it does sound very worrying when put like that. Like Bosnia-Hertzogovina waiting to happen again. People don't want to move (it's like backing down, also family tradition of the birthplace) but they don't want to live with the "enemy" who have an equal claim to the place.

EDIT: JSTOR link doesn't work for us proles. Could you copy-n-paste to some public location?
EDIT(2): OK, there's the first page summary I guess. Your thread might have more traction if the lead quote was recent. 2004 is just a bit dated for this issue.
Yootopia
04-05-2008, 13:43
The Peace Walls are slowly but surely coming down. So feh.
Nadkor
04-05-2008, 13:52
I think you're looking at Northern Ireland as it was in, say, 2000. A lot has changed in a short period of time; sure, there's still a worryingly high level of segregation in some areas, but there's not the same sense of division in society that there was previously. It's a lot more open, especially amongst younger people who missed the worst of the Troubles, although there is distrust felt by older people who lived through the Troubles.
SaintB
04-05-2008, 14:01
http://www.crfmedia.com/Video-Belarus/09%20Title.jpg

Ronald Reagan has the answer!
Nobel Hobos
04-05-2008, 15:04
The Peace Walls are slowly but surely coming down. So feh.

Were those Peace Walls a useful step in defusing the conflict?

(Genuine question)
Nobel Hobos
04-05-2008, 15:07
Ronald Reagan has the answer!

Oh, great. The Answer is now the legal property of Nancy Reagan's psychic's cat.
Kamsaki-Myu
04-05-2008, 15:26
Were those Peace Walls a useful step in defusing the conflict?

(Genuine question)
No. What ultimately defused the conflict was universal political disenfranchisement. The DUP and Sinn Feinn alike are widely perceived to have betrayed their core voters in working together, and actually, this sense of betrayal has a kind of unifying effect.

The thing most people looking in don't really understand is that the reasons for conflict in Northern Ireland were roughly weighted 10% national identity, 5% religious identity and 85% blood feuding and gang warfare. Nowadays, in light of the common enemy of the politicians at Stormont, the importance of continuing the blood feud is greatly diminished.
Call to power
04-05-2008, 15:28
I say we ask Putin what to do!

no wait...these problems are sorting themselves out and the majority population of Northern Ireland don't want to leave the UK regardless of religious change
Ashmoria
04-05-2008, 15:47
No. What ultimately defused the conflict was universal political disenfranchisement. The DUP and Sinn Feinn alike are widely perceived to have betrayed their core voters in working together, and actually, this sense of betrayal has a kind of unifying effect.

The thing most people looking in don't really understand is that the reasons for conflict in Northern Ireland were roughly weighted 10% national identity, 5% religious identity and 85% blood feuding and gang warfare. Nowadays, in light of the common enemy of the politicians at Stormont, the importance of continuing the blood feud is greatly diminished.


are you saying that the people are so angry that their factions' leaders have stopped the blood feuding and gang warfare that they have dropped their gang feuding and blood warfare?
Kamsaki-Myu
04-05-2008, 15:57
are you saying that the people are so angry that their factions' leaders have stopped the blood feuding and gang warfare that they have dropped their gang feuding and blood warfare?
Yeah, kinda. It doesn't really make much sense to me either, but then, none of this conflict does, so what's new?

It could be an interesting twist in the process if Scotland tries to forge independence though. Northern Ireland has a much closer tie to Scotland than it does to England, and you may find the debate gets reignited if the Union starts to fragment.
Egg and chips
04-05-2008, 16:59
To go slightly off topic and very trivial, has anyone else seen Dara O'Briain's sketch on having a Catholic/Prtoestant wedding in Ireland? One of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while...
Call to power
04-05-2008, 17:09
To go slightly off topic and very trivial, has anyone else seen Dara O'Briain's sketch on having a Catholic/Prtoestant wedding in Ireland? One of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while...

Dara O'Briain = <3 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=v0thRUS1wUw&feature=related)
Cybach
04-05-2008, 18:42
Uh, send in the Atheists?

Seriously, it does sound very worrying when put like that. Like Bosnia-Hertzogovina waiting to happen again. People don't want to move (it's like backing down, also family tradition of the birthplace) but they don't want to live with the "enemy" who have an equal claim to the place.

EDIT: JSTOR link doesn't work for us proles. Could you copy-n-paste to some public location?
EDIT(2): OK, there's the first page summary I guess. Your thread might have more traction if the lead quote was recent. 2004 is just a bit dated for this issue.


Here are some more recent links then, my bad about the others. These are all 2007:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/13/comment.politics

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/podcasts/2007/07/audio_mark_oliver_on_a_new_pea.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1551421/Fragile-calm-behind-Ulster%27s-%27peace-walls%27.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/04/guardiansocietysupplement.northernireland

The walls that went up to separate Catholics from Protestants in the Seventies have not been torn down. There are more of them now than ever. Catholics travel for miles to avoid a Protestant leisure centre and Protestants go out of their way to avoid a Catholic newsagent. In Belfast: Segregation, Violence and the City, published last year, Peter Shirlow and Brendan Murtagh managed to measure the effects on everyday life of the frontiers marked with graffiti saying 'Kill All Taigs' (Catholics) or 'Kill All Huns' (Protestants).




All pretty much state that the "Peace walls" are still continuing to be built. The largest one recently around the Holy Cross School, and there is a big resistance to government efforts to dismantle them. As one of the inhabitants said:

"If they took it down it would only take one idiot with a petrol bomb to start it again," says Ellen Baxter, 47, who lives with her husband and three children 50 yards from the peace wall on the Shankill side. "No one wants to go back to the bombings and shootings but these things can escalate quickly. We will need the walls for a long, long time."



So there is still a general push towards segregation. As well as the links show there is a disenfranchisement between the local population and the government at Stormont. They disagree with the view that is being sent out that all is peaceful and life is ok, claiming it is still tense and violent except for bombs and guns it is now stones and petrol bombs/molotovs.

Or as was put below by another inhabitant:

"We haven't had peace for 10 years here. There is a fixation on tying a ribbon around Northern Ireland, [saying] it is all done. The reality is very different. It is going to take some generations to work this conflict out. I hope the walls come down. I'm not sure I will live to see it."


Or two very different people who live less than 100 meters apart from eachother on opposite sides of a wall.

On the Shankill Road, Tom Roberts, an ex-UVF member who spent 13 years in jail for killing a member of the Irish National Liberation Army, runs the loyalist ex-prisoners' organisation. He warns that there is "no room for complacency". The Unionists and Republicans had not changed their view and "all the ingredients for conflict that were there before are still there".

In the Beehive pub, on the Falls Road, David O'Neill, 49, a father of four who was 10 when the Troubles started, tells how he joined the IRA at 13. "The next thing I knew, I was 23," he says. "I missed my teenage years. I grew up too fast, doing things that no teenager should have to do." Out of 30 classmates he had at secondary school, 16 are now dead.
Dragons Bay
04-05-2008, 18:56
At least it has ceased to be at a state of an all-out war. Confidence building takes time.