The Catholics were not just discriminated against in the police force, for even churches blocked attempts to create a non-religious state education system in both the 1920’s and then again in the 1940’s. This was still largely segregated in the 1960’s although there were a few mixed colleges and universities where educated people met from other communities. But this only catered from the small minority, most of the people being middle class citizens. There were less opportunities and hardly any funding in the Catholic schools and this set an example to the children who are raised playing different sports to Protestants and going to different organisations e.g. scouts troops, youth clubs. Many Protestant schools had decent links with employers and universities. This allowed Protestants to get better jobs and the opportunities of extra work.
As well as segregated education many industries and business employed Catholics or Protestants only. An example of this is the Bushmills whiskey distillery in county Antrim which was mainly Protestant because the company was situated in a Protestant area of Northern Ireland. Protestant owners dominated most of the major industries so were usually filled by Protestant workers with the Catholic’s doing mainly manual jobs. Source C shows us that there was a high level of unemployment amongst Catholics in 1971; they had a 17% average unemployment compared to only 7% of unemployed Protestants. Most unions were also led by Protestants. This was because not many Catholics owned businesses neither did many own houses either. Catholics had such poor, old houses because 2/3 of new houses built by local authorities went to Protestants because of voting regulations e.g. Fermanagh council built 1,500 houses and 1000 of them went to protestants. Unionists councillors had refused to build houses for Catholic tenants and the Catholics had to pay the same amount of rent as the Protestants living in much better, new housing conditions. Source E shows us a picture of Catholics living in a shed with only a metal roof and with a bath outside and a bucket to use as a toilet. As many Catholics didn’t own houses they lost some of their rights to two votes as much as Protestants.
There were three types of elections throughout Northern Ireland. The first was a General Election where each adult, whether Catholic or Protestant had one vote each. Then there was the Stormont Election where you could only have two votes if you owned a business or attended university-this included mostly just Protestants as Catholics did not own businesses due to education and most students were Protestant. Then possibly the most important election was the Council Election where you could only vote if your property was worth over £10(most Catholics didn’t have that money) or if you were a tenant of a public authority houses you were allowed to vote -but 2/3 of Protestants lived in these public authority houses- or if you owned a business or a company you were entitled to a second vote but most companies were owned by Protestants. This was important because any Catholic representing party would have some power in the Stormont Election and the General Elections, which would mean Catholics, had some say in the way the area was run. Because the Council Elections were so important the government used a deceiving tactic called Gerrymandering. When there were more Catholics than Protestants in one council election area, the government would move the borders so that the Protestants would be elected because they would then outnumber the Catholics. We can see that this happened in Londonderry (Derry) where there was 36,049 Catholics and only 17,695 Protestants. After the voting regulations had been applied 14,325 Catholics were entitled to a vote against only 9,235 Protestants. From the numbers given it should have been the Catholics who won control but because of the moving borders the Protestants got into power in that area and most other areas.
Catholics faced many disadvantages in Northern Ireland in the mid-1960’s. I can see this from their general civil rights and how appalling they were. They were disadvantaged from the Protestants in many ways and this continued.
The Protestants made sure that the Catholic population could have no say in the way that their country was run so that they would remain down trodden and couldn’t get into high positions in work or social status.
