Minority report

HISTORY: RICHARD ENGLISHreviews Outside the Glow: Protestants and Irishness in Independent IrelandBy Heather K Crawford UCD Press, 240pp. €28

HOW FULLY IRISH are Irish Protestants? This engaging book by Heather K Crawford tries to answer that question in relation to the contemporary Republic, relying mainly on 100 interviews carried out during 2004-5.

So 64 Protestants and 36 Catholics provided the “prime source” driving this account – not a large enough sample to be decisive but one that offers a body of telling evidence nonetheless.

Crawford stresses that “nearly 90 years after partition and independence, there remain tensions in the relationship between southern Irish Protestants and the Catholic majority population of the state”.

The interview material she adduces makes very clear that, at individual level, there has been a frequent sense of Protestant vulnerability, exclusion and marginalisation. Indeed, she chronicles far more “inter-communal harassment” in both directions than would be assumed by those who think that sectarianism only obtains in the North.

This really should not surprise us too much. The understandable definition of independent Ireland according to the heavily Catholic and Gaelic identification of the nationalist majority clearly had consequences for those who did not share these attachments. That the majority rarely reflected on (or even noticed) this fact did very little to soften its effects on the Protestant minority who experienced it from day to day.

In practice a denominationally segregated educational system largely endured, Catholics frequently assumed (wrongly) that all Protestants were posh and wealthy, and the creation and sustenance of a majority-nationalist Irish identity left little comfortable room for those whose allegiances and instincts diverged.

Dr Crawford’s book calmly deals with education, intermarriage, the Irish language and social class, and the resulting account is readable and valuable. It would have benefited, I think, from a thorough definition of what sectarianism actually is (as so much supposed debate on this important topic involves people using very different meanings of the word and therefore rather talking past one another).

And it would have been a stronger book had more rigour been used in explaining what nationalism and national identity actually are and exactly why they have dominated in Ireland and elsewhere.

For (regrettably) I suspect that Irish experience here needs to be viewed with a gloomy recognition also of what has happened historically in other settings. The benefits of nationalism for the majority national community in a state has mostly tended to be accompanied by some exclusion for those outside the dominant group, as discussions of majority-minority relations with people from Prague or Berlin or Marseilles or Belfast or Bradford would make very clear.

Being outside the national group has to be a possibility if being inside it is to have special meaning. This does not negate the rewards of nationalism for those who adhere to it. But it does render it an ambiguous and often unpleasant creature.

These doubts about Dr Crawford's book in no way undermine the strong contribution it makes. Outside the Glowgives voice to individuals whose experience has all too often been ignored or dismissed, and its sometimes poignant quotations demonstrate powerfully how diverse and telling the experience of independent Ireland's small Protestant community has been.

THE BOOK ARGUES that “both communities need to acknowledge, rather than deny, that inter-communal tensions remain”. Heather Crawford’s suggestion that such tensions will best be managed through “mutual respect” is made all the more cogent because of the thoughtful research presented by her in this important book.

Richard English is professor of politics at Queen's University, Belfast. His most recent book, Terrorism: How to Respond, is published by Oxford University Press