The changing demographics of Northern Ireland

Posted By: May 03, 2018

Irish Americans ought to be very aware that we are in a period of important centennial commemorations: the 1916 Rising and the 1918 Irish election when the people of Ireland overwhelmingly voted for national independence and freedom from England.

I use “England” not Britain because one can hardly blame Scotland or Wales for the oppression of Ireland.

Those seeking independence won 79 Seats out of 105 Seats.

England’s response, of course, was to partition Ireland by means of the “Government of Ireland Act,” December 23, 1920.

But the word “partition” doesn’t quite capture the reality, implying as it does that the country was divided into coequal parts: North and South.

In reality, six counties in the northeast were torn away from Ireland, which is composed of 32 counties.

And torn, too, was the province of Ulster, which is composed of nine, not six, counties.

Why were counties Donegal (the most northerly reaching county in Ireland), Cavan and Monaghan not included in “Northern Ireland”?

Well, while some may be reluctant to state it, the plain, historical truth is this: had these three counties been included, there would have been too many Catholics in the new, artificial state of Northern Ireland for the British government and the unionists to control in what was designed to be an anti-Catholic state.

How do we know that? What is the proof?

Since we are talking about numbers, demographics, we must begin with the Irish Census of 1911, the most recently available statistics for that time period, which gave the total population of the Six Counties as 1,250,531.

Here is the Unionist/Protestant percentages in the six counties in 1911: Fermanagh: 43.8; Tyrone 44.6; Derry 54.2; Antrim 79.5; Down 68.4 and Armagh 54.7.

The Unionist/Protestant percentages in the three excluded Ulster counties were: Cavan 18.5; Donegal 21.1; Monaghan 25.3.

In 1920, the Unionist/Protestant leader and founder of the state of Northern Ireland, Edward Carson, bluntly stated in the British parliament the reality of these statistics: “The figures will at once show where the difficulty comes in. We have to refer in these matters to Protestants and Catholics – we should only be making the very greatest camouflage of argument if we did not treat them in that way – because these are really the burning question over there.

“The inclusion of these six counties would bring in under the jurisdiction of the north of Ireland parliament 820,000 Protestants out of 890,000 in the whole province [counting Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan].

“On the other hand, while you would leave out 70,000 who are in these three counties [Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan], you would bring in from these three counties into the northern province, an additional 260,000 Roman Catholics.” (Edward Carson MP, Westminster, May 18, 1920).

The Dublin-born Carson and the northern unionists felt free to set up their sectarian, anti- Catholic state because they knew that all the top British leaders were deeply and venomously anti-Catholic: Robert Cecil, “Bloody” Balfour, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Bonar Law – imperialists, bigots and racists, every one of them.

Even worse, that irrational religious bigotry was condoned and enshrined in the top law of England: the Act of Settlement of 1701, the foundation stone of the royal family and a document that forbids a Catholic from inheriting the English throne.

So, ultimately, it is the unwritten non-codified British constitution that is to blame for religious bigotry in Northern Ireland. Orangemen were just being loyal to the anti-Catholic bigotry and sectarianism of the British un-written and noncodified constitution.

But now, almost a hundred years later, there has been a dramatic change as the following chart shows, and which the accompanying Irish National Caucus map graphically illustrates.

According to the most recent Census of 2011 – which gives the population of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland as 1,810,863, the Unionist/Protestant percentages are: Fermanagh 37.78; Tyrone 32.57; Derry 36.44; Antrim 54.66; Down 63.06 and Armagh 36.16.

Experts commonly believe that the next census in 2021 will show an even greater percentage increase in the Catholic population.

All of which teaches the obvious truth: gerrymandered, contrived and artificial states do not succeed in the end, especially if they were maintained through inequality, disrespect, and discrimination.

All this inexorable progression of history means that the re-unification of Ireland is inevitable.

However, pending the re-unification of Ireland, the “Beloved Community” must be built up in Northern Ireland, based fully and generously on the Good Friday Agreement.

May 3, 2018
________________

The writer is founder and president of the Irish National Caucus.

This article appeared in the May 2, 2018 edition of the Irish Echo.