The socialist party was in control and they were making education available and free for everyone. This was the first time the poorer Irish were given a chance at University education. Catholic schools were given less money than Protestant schools and so could not buy the same amount of equipment that the Protestant schools could afford. Primary and secondary schools had no contact what so ever with the school of the different religion. Protestant teachers worked in Protestant schools and vice versa. The schools curriculum would be relatively the same but Protestants would play sports such as Hocky, cricket and rugby and Catholics would play football, hurling and camogie, all the other sports they both played but because more money was given to Protestant schools they had better equipment and so Catholic children were discriminated against. At the same time television was entering Northern Ireland, and the people both Protestant and Catholic were seeing how the rest of the world lived.
There was a Protestant group called the Orange order. They professed loyalty to the English Crown and to Protestantism. They swear an oath to eradicate the Catholic Church. Not all the members thought they had to go out and kill every Catholic they meet but in the 60’s it was an instrument of discrimination that was done in the name of God.
Protestant councils also discriminated against Catholics “one has been to put Protestants in better houses than Catholics but charge the same rents…Another way has simply been to house more Protestants than Catholics. Of 1589 houses built between the end of the second world and 1969 built by Fermanagh council 1021 of the houses went to Protestant families.” (The Sunday time’s insight team, Ulster, Penguin special). Two things caused the housing shortage. One was that the poorer Catholics were expanding their population faster than anyone in the government would have foreseen, and the other was the Protestants dominated laws that were designed to keep Catholics from getting houses. This was because Northern Ireland in the 1960’s in order to get a vote you had to own a house. In fact if you owned 10 houses you had 10 votes. The government controlled public housing, and discrimination kept Catholics from getting votes. The housing shortage was getting very bad when the students entered the scene. Their attitude was the American Blacks were not taking discrimination and neither should they. An American Black woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the back of a bus in the South, Inspired the Irish students. So, the students started to encourage squatting in empty houses that the Northern Ireland housing authority wouldn’t allocate to the Catholics. This started a clash with the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) the British state police of Ireland. The RUC came in and forcibly removed the squatting families from these houses. This began the downward spiral into the war today.
Unemployment for Catholics linked on with Poverty, poor medical health services and then a higher death rate.
GERRYMANDER.
Terrance O’Neill who was Protestant wanted to join Protestants and Catholics together. The Protestants did not like this idea and wanted O’Neill to go. In 1968 the Catholics marched peacefully for equality but they received a violent response. The Protestants thought the Catholics wanted to take over which was wrong. Fighting started and O’Neill resigned. Unionist leaders were deeply suspicious of socialism. Some of their actions to reduce the threat of the labour movement actually resulted in discrimination against Catholics. Discrimination started in the 1920’s and 1930’s so by now it was not an unusual thing.
