“Bound in darkness and idolatry”? Protestant working-class underachievement and unionist hegemony

Abstract

Over the past decade or more there has been a growing concern at the levels of educational underachievement within loyalist working-class areas of Northern Ireland. The inability of both educational and social policy initiatives over the past decade to improve the situation in any meaningful way has raised important questions concerning how the problem can be tackled more effectively. Placing the issue within the theoretical framework of Gramsci's hegemony, this paper argues that there is a need to better understand the historical nature of the problem and to recognise the political and social forces that have shaped its existence. It argues that there is a need to move away from explaining Protestant underachievement simply by the availability of jobs in Ulster's industrial past and to place its roots in the complex battle for social, political, and economic power since the 1801 Act of Union.

Keywords::

• educational underachievement
• hegemony
• Ulster unionism
• loyalism
• Northern Ireland
• Gramsci

Notes

^1. See, for example, Purvis et al., Educational Underachievement; Collins et al.,Participation Rates in Further and Higher Education.

^2.McAdam, “We Have to Deal with the Root Causes of the Problems.” This has seemingly been reinforced by the conflict which arose following the decision by Belfast City Council to fly the union flag only on designated days. See, for example “Union Flag Dispute: Riot Breaks Out in East Belfast,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-21020296. See also Nolan, Northern Ireland Peace Monitoring Report.

^3. See “Forgotten Lands” series in Belfast Telegraph, July 25–26, 2011. The education system in Northern Ireland tends to be divided along religious lines. The vast majority of Protestant working-class children will attend a state school which will have a predominantly Protestant student profile.

^4.McAdam, “Slow Demise of Trade Apprenticeships Left Working Class Stranded.” There has been a greater academic focus on the wider social and economic causes of working-class detachment from education over the past decade (see, for example, Connolly and Healy, “Symbolic Violence”; Ingram, “Working-class Boys”; Ingram, “Within School”) but the “popular” explanation remains that of industrial decline.

^5.Lears, “Concept of Cultural Hegemony,” 567; see also Coates, Context of British Politics.

^6.Gramsci, Selections, 12. Further references will be cited parenthetically.

^7. For a wider discussion on this see Jones, Antonio Gramsci.

^8. Ibid., 45.

^9.Simon, Gramsci's Political Thought, 43; See also Riley, “Hegemony and Democracy.”

^10. Gramsci letter from prison qtd in Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State, 20.

^11. See, for example, Bourdieu, “School as a Conservative Force”; also Goldthorpe, “Habitus and Social Inequalities in Education.”

^12.Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution.

^13.Colley, Britons.

^14.Cannadine, Class in Britain; Knight, Nineteenth Century Church; Gilbert, Religion and Society; Guttsman, British Political Elite.

^15.Hempton, Religion and Political Culture; McCann, Popular Education.

^16.McCann, Popular Education, 1.

^17.Reisner, Nationalism and Education, 239.

^18. House of Commons debate, 13 June 1807, Hansard, vol. 9, cols. 798–99.

^19.Colley, “Whose Nation?,” 97–117; see also Thompson, “Social Control in Victorian Britain,” 189–208.

^20.Evans, Forging of the Modern State; Philp, French Revolution and British Popular Politics.

^21.Colley, Britons; Evans, Forging the Modern State.

^22. See also Feuchtwanger, “Conservative Party and Reform,” 289–304.

^23.Acemogmu and James, “Why Did the West?,” 1167–99; Cannadine, Class in Britain.

^24.Colley, Britons, 351–2.

^25. Ibid., 335.

^26. Kumar, “Nation and Empire”; Colley, Britons.

^27. Lord Salisbury qtd in Smith, “Cecil, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne.”

^28. Quoted in Bentley, Lord Salisbury's World, 73.

^29.Green, Education and State Formation. Further references will be cited parenthetically.

^30.Carr and Hartnett, Education and the Struggle for Democracy.

^31.Coolahan, Irish Education; Akenson, Education and Enmity; Atkinson, Irish Education.

^32.Bew, Ireland.

^33.Connolly, Religion and Society.

^34. Quoted in The Times, March 6, 1829. See also Peel, Memoirs.

^35.Lougheed, “National Education and Empire,” 11.

^36. House of Commons debate, 9 September 1831, Hansard, vol. 6, cols. 1249–50.

^37. Quoted in Belfast Newsletter, January 20, 1832.

^38.Brown, “New Reformation”; Hempton, Religion and Political Culture; Connolly, Religion and Society.

^39. See Kumar, “Nation and Empire,” 593. Kumar argues that modern Ulster Protestants, because of their continued emphasis upon the Protestant constitution, are “the most, and also perhaps the last, British people”.

^40. See, for example, the contribution of Dean Burgh to the Royal Commission of Inquiry, Primary Education, Ireland: vol. I (Dublin, 1870), 68.

^41. Edward Stanley (chief secretary) letter to the Duke of Leinster (1831).

^42. “Our Plan of National Education,” Belfast Newsletter, April 6, 1832.

^43. A Protestant Layman, The Error of the Synod of Ulster in Joining the National Board Addressed to Rev. Henry Cooke, DD, LLD (Belfast, 1842), 5.

^44.Holmes, Henry Cooke.

^45. W.H. Bellamy on behalf of the committee of the National Club, “Address to the Protestants of the Empire,” The Standard, November 30, 1848.

^46. “Editorial,” Belfast Newsletter, January 23, 1846.

^47.Cannadine, Class in Britain, 62.

^48.Miller, “Belfast's First Bomb,” 274. Here, Miller quotes Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, 59–60.

^49.Billig, Banal Nationalism.

^50.Loughlin, “‘Imagining Ulster.’”

^51. See views expressed by Niven, Orangeism.

^52.Cannadine, Class in Britain; Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class.

^53. Quoted in Belfast Newsletter, August 11, 1884.

^54. Ibid.

^55. Quoted in Belfast Newsletter, August 30, 1884.

^56.Matthew, Gladstone, 501.

^57. Ibid., 194.

^58.Bew, Ireland; Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland.

^59.Boyce, Nineteenth Century Ireland; O'Day, Irish Home Rule.

^60.Cannadine, Class in Britain, 108–10; see also Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class.

^61. For a detailed discussion see Weston, “Salisbury and the Lords.”

^62.Dutton, “Unionist Party and Social Policy,” 873; see also McLean, 1909 Budget.

^63. See Lewis, Carson; Stewart, Edward Carson.

^64. For a discussion on the wider crisis see McLean, 1909 Budget; Pugh, “People's Budget.”

^65.Gailey, “King Carson.”

^66. Sir Edward Carson qtd in The Times, October 12, 1909.

^67.Gailey, “King Carson,” 77–8.

^68. Sir Edward Carson qtd in The Times, October 12, 1909.

^69. See, for example, Letter to the Editor published in The Times, September 29, 1909.

^70.Walker, History of the Ulster Unionist Party; Collins, Nationalism and Unionism.

^71. See Jackson, “Irish Unionism,” 35.

^72. Part III of “Ulster To-day: Impressions of Travel” piece by “Special Correspondent” published in The Times, May 9, 1913. “Special Correspondent” was J.M. Hone. Thanks to Mr Nicholas Mays, Archivist with News International Archive and Record Office.

^73.Akenson, Education and Enmity.

^74.Fleming, “Aristocratic Rule?”; Patterson and Kaufmann, Unionism and Orangeism; Bew, Gibbon, and Patterson, Northern Ireland.

^75. Harry Midgley MP speaking in Northern Ireland House of Commons debate on the Education Estimates, June 30, 1942. Quoted in Stormont papers, vol. 25 (1942/43), 1716.

^76. Ibid.

^77.Simon, “1944 Education Act”; Wallace, “Origins and Authorship”; McCulloch, Failing the Ordinary Child?

^78.McCulloch, Failing the Ordinary Child?, 49.

^79.Simon, “1944 Education Act,” 35.

^80.Sanderson, “Education and Social Mobility,” 375; see also Watson, “Education and Opportunity.”

^81.Watson, “Education and Opportunity,” 355.

^82.Todd, The People, 216–35; Simon, “1944 Education Act”; Goldthorpe et al., Affluent Worker; Reay “Finding or Losing Yourself?”

^83.Todd, The People, 234.

^84. See, for example, ibid., 216–19.

^85. Gramsci, Selections, 26.

^86.Simon, “1944 Education Act.”

^87.Bourdieu, “School as a Conservative Force,” 32.

^88.Sanderson, “Education and Social Mobility,” 383; Goldthorpe et al., Affluent Worker.

^89. See Dorling et al., Poverty.

^90.Akenson, Education and Enmity, 10; see also Bew, Gibbon, and Patterson, Northern Ireland.

^91.Osborne et al., “Trends in Higher Education Participation,” 287–8.

^92.Miller et al., “Higher Education,” 258; see also Breen, “Class Inequality,” 403–5.

^93.Osborne et al., “Trends in Higher Education Participation,” 288.

^94. See Breen, “Social Mobility,” for discussion of this mobility.

^95.Hume, “Northern Catholic: I.”

^96.Hume, “Northern Catholic: II.”

^97.McGrath, Catholic Church; Farren, Politics of Irish Education.

^98. See, for example, Wichert, Northern Ireland, 180–5.

^99. Interview with author, June 27, 2013.

^100. Ibid.

^101.Department of Education, Qualifications and Destinations, 6.

^102.Purvis et al., Educational Underachievement, 16.

^103. Interview with author, June 27, 2013.

^104.Novosel, Northern Ireland's Lost Opportunity.

^105. Quoted in Moloney, Voices from the Grave, 368–9.

^106. Interview with the author, October 21, 2014.

^107. Ibid.

^108.Purvis et al., Educational Underachievement.

^109. Billy Hutchinson, http://www.pupni.com/news/press-release/pup-conference-billy-hutchinson-re-affirms-equality-diversity-and-respect/ (accessed November 28, 2013).

^110. Ibid.