Volume 13, Number 8 · November 6, 1969
Holy War
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
In Northern Ireland many well-informed people will tell you that it is an illusion to believe that the struggle is a religious one. Unionists, who are almost all Protestants, will assure you that their opponents, who are almost all Catholics, are the objects of distrust not because of their faith, but because of their political allegiance, which has generally gone, not to the British Crown and to what Unionists like to call the Constitution of Northern Ireland, but to the idea of an Irish nation. Surprisingly, some high Catholic ecclesiastics are in general agreement with this view: the real trouble, they think, is not between Protestant and Catholic as such, but between Unionist and Nationalist; it just so happens that the Catholics tend or have tended to be Nationalists; they are oppressed not for their faith but for their politics.
Feature, 6026 words
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