Something else was that the Protestants saw that the Civil Rights protests always seemed to favour the catholic end of the line which made the Protestants resentful and angry, this pushed them to try and stop the protests and began to ignore them, this angered the Catholics very much and they began using violent protest as a way to get what they wanted and needed
While there was still an economic recession in Ireland around the 1960’s, the country tried as hard as it could to keep aloft. Under Prime Minister Sean Lemass (Elected 1959, served until 1966), Ireland’s sluggish economy was given a boost. The First Programme for Economic Expansion, economic mobility, consumer spending, and foreign trade increased, while emigration decreased. In spite of this newfound economic stability, Ireland still had a difficult time joining the European Economic Community, as did Britain. In the worldwide oil crisis and ensuing recession forced Ireland into deflation, which inspired efforts to tax farmers’ incomes, and wealth taxes. This obviously didn’t create a good image of Prime Minister Cosgrove in the public eye, and Jack Lynch of Fianna Fàil was re-elected in 1977. The Fianna Fàil proposed to cut taxes and borrow money from other nations to get back on its feet.
During these times, the political leaders had many different views on the place of Catholics, placing them in the lower classes and keeping them under the rest of the Protestant people so that they received lower quality healthcare and housing etc. Both communities were hit hard by the following recession and the protestant people saw no reason for the Catholics to complain, this made the Protestants angry at forthcoming civil rights protesters because this looked like the Catholics just wanted to be inferior and lazy. Another protestant view is that the Protestant majority justified their ‘light discrimination’; therefore their domination must be maintained.
Historically, N.I is a protestant state and the Protestant leaders said that this must also be maintained to keep a Unionist state, from the 1960’s onward the Catholics have always been associated with Republicanism which helped the IRA to exaggerate the Catholic grievances to their own cause. Protestant saw no real Catholic case in the matter and mocked the Civil Rights Protesters.
The Protestant Politicians justified their discrimination against the catholic people with their own righteousness, claiming steak to the whole of the north of Ireland and politically pushing the Catholics off the scene, using Gerrymandering and force to move the Catholics into their own area of Ireland, labelling them as evil and satanic so that they might want to leave and go back to Southern Ireland. The main goal of the political injustice was to reinforce the Unionist sight so that the rest of Ireland would be taken into the sway of the British Empire.
