Religion, Politics and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Belfast: The Pound and Sandy Row (review)

This work sets out to challenge some of the by now conventional revisionist interpretations of the politics of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Some historians have argued that Nationalism developed in Belfast only in the 1800's and that Protestant antipathy to Catholics was not of an "ethnic hatred" variety prior to the emergence of Catholic-Nationalism. With admirable clarity and consistency over the period surveyed, 1820-1901, Hirst shows that such ideas are not supported by the evidence.

The study focuses on two working-class areas, the Pound and Sandy Row, respectively Catholic and Protestant sections of the city. From an economic viewpoint both areas were remarkably similar, and Hirst concludes that sectarianism did not originate because of economic conditions. Belfast's sectarianism can be explained by the fact that cross community hostilities were brought to the expanding city by migrants from the Ulster countryside. With the checks and balances of rural life stripped away, the city was poised for the sectarian strife which was a hallmark of much of the nineteenth century and beyond.

Although a working-class phenomenon, the sectarian antipathies of the city were never the less fostered by the local authorities. Time and again Hirst shows how biased the magistrates and the police were against Catholics. In addition to Protestant hostility to Catholicism per se, exacerbated by things such as the great religious 'revival' of 1859, Protestants were also fearful of the politicization of the Catholic working class, a process at work from the early decades of the century. Hirst shows that there was a strong level of support for such radical groups as the Ribbonmen, Young Ireland, and Fenianism, in addition to the constitutionalism of Daniel O'Connell and his Catholic Emancipation movement of the 1820's.

Her views on Fenianism are a direct refutation of the theories of Professor Vincent Comerford and confirm my own 1999 work, The Church, the State and the Fenian Threat 1861-75, which, unfortunately, Dr. Hirst seems not to have consulted. Hirst's description of the transformation of Catholic life in the Pound under the episcopacy of Bishop Patrick Dorrian, in the 1860's and 1870's, is almost wholly derived from Ambrose Macaulay's Patrick Dorrian: Bishop of Down and Connor, 1865-85. I am not, however, convinced by her conclusion that Dorrian's management of affairs, "increased the fears of the Protestant population regarding ultramontanism" (p. 93), since she has already demonstrated that anti-Catholicism was already a well established part of Protestant identity before the emergence of Dorrian. Hirst's treatment of Catholic issues in Belfast would have benefited from consulting the Catholic archives of the Diocese of Down and Connor, which are readily available to scholars.

On the other hand, there are admirable accounts of the growth of Sandy Row in both its religious and political aspects, and she is at pains to show that the working classes of both communities were quite capable of producing their own political leadership independently of that provided by the city's middle classes. The author's treatment of sectarian riots in the city between 1851 and 1886 gives good academic underpinning to earlier more popular studies, without necessarily adding anything to our overall knowledge of the riots themselves.

This is a well written and splendidly produced volume and will be essential reading for all students interested in the political and religious development of Belfast.