how did protestant politicians explain social economic and political differences between catholics and protestants

Politicians blamed that the differences between Catholics and Protestants had been brought about by some historical events such as the plantation schemes, Cromwell’s invasion, the Battle of Boyne and the great famine to show how cruel and unjust Catholics were; The Protestants also proved that Catholics were “lazy and untrustworthy traitors who would use terrorism to achieve a united Ireland”. Catholics had therefore become poor because of their laziness in comparisation to the traditional protestant work ethic. The government tried to explain the unjust council-housing allocation and the difference in employment by saying that protestants were more loyal than Catholics… as Ian Paisley said: “if jobs are scarce Protestants should get these jobs”.

Amongst politicians there were different views. Some claimed that there was no discrimination whilst others said that “religion was blind” and that Protestants should have preference over the Catholic second-class citizens. O’Neill saw Catholics as the problem to public order and peace, and that Protestant people in Northern Ireland ought to be dominant over the Catholic population. Others like Basil Brooke a British Ulster Unionist politician said that as Catholics weren’t loyal to Northern Ireland, Catholics weren’t welcomed as they were an enemy within their Protestant state…

Reverend Ian Paisley used religion against Catholics. In his “Free Presbyterian Church” he told his protestant  followers that the Catholic faith was satanic and he continuously described the Roman Catholic popes as the “anti-Christ”. These followers understood that the Roman Catholic were loyal to the pope in Rome rather than  to the UK which meant that they were different and consequently they should be treated differently in order to avoid them from uniting the two Irelands in one Catholic state… and to achieve this they’d want to destroy the actual Northern Ireland. Despite all of these accusations the Catholic Church in the Irish republic did nothing to help…

Still, some politicians claim that all people face disadvantages economically and politically  and that discrimination occurred regardless of religion; it was impossible to keep everyone happy.  This was done to take importance to the fact that Catholics were being segregated in all senses by the racist politicians who had to say that they were  a threat for their Protestant-country simply because they had different ideas.