O’Leary, B. and McGarry, J. (1996) ‘Exercising Control: the second Protestant Ascendancy, 1920-62’

O’Leary, B. and McGarry, J. (1996) ‘Exercising Control: the second Protestant Ascendancy, 1920-62’, in B. O’Leary and J. McGarry, eds., The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, 2. ed., London, Athlone Press, 107-52.

1. Northern Ireland (‘NI’) is “the paradigm of state- and nation-building failure in western Europe” (107), as “the product of differential political power” (108).
2. External environment (British imperialism and Irish irredentism) also played a key role.
3. Three models of an acceptable modern state and citizenship:
   1. Statist: “people” are all resident adults: multicultural nation-state;
   2. Nationalist: all members of the nation make up the ‘people’: nation-state;
   3. Universalist: the entire human species is ‘the people’: global-state.
   4. Particularist: Only members of an ethnic group are the people: hegemonic state.
4. NI between 1920 and 1972 was particularist at the sub-state level.
5. “Control is ‘hegemonic’ if it makes an overtly violent ethnic contest for state power either ‘unthinkable’ or ‘unworkable’” (109); where one ethnic community dominates another by extracting the resources it requires from the subordinated one.
6. NI from 1920 to 1969:
   1. Sovereignty formally contested between Ireland and the UK;
   2. Not fully integrated into either;
   3. Institutions lacked by-communal legitimacy;
   4. It was a semi-state ‘regime’ created by the UK.
7. Illustration that democratic rule was compatible with tyranny of the majority: territorial, constitutional, electoral, economic, legal, cultural control were pervasive.
8. Territorial control:
   1. Demarcation of 6 Ulster counties as NI with in-built Protestant majority;
   2. Gerrymandering of local government jurisdictions by UUP to drastically reduce nationalist local councils;
   3. Boundary commission’s terms of reference and composition were loaded against nationalists’ interests and contributed to its failure.
9. Constitutional control:
   1. Governed under the UK Government of Ireland Act establishing a devolved parliament modelled on Westminster in Belfast:
      1. majoritarian government under parliamentary sovereignty unrestrained by a constitution;
      2. unitary form;
      3. concentration of executive power in one-party Cabinets;
      4. fusion of executive and legislative power under Cabinet dominance;
      5. bicameral legislature with lower house much more powerful.
   2. From 1920 to 1972, only UUP governments in power, characterised by Cabinet predominance: extremely stable.
   3. Cohesion of the Unionist bloc was key: no incentives to bargains and make concessions to nationalist minority.
   4. No real checks and balances: not an authentic pluralist democracy.
   5. Nationalist minority had little at stake in this regime.
   6. Legislature modeled on adversarial pattern, but parliament’s real task in NI was simply to express Unionist domination (115).
   7. Upper House was replica of Lower House in terms of membership: did nothing to protect minority.
   8. Deviated from Westminster model in 2 respects:
      1. Subordinate parliament could be declared unconstitutional if it violated section of the act outlawing religious discrimination (but did not extend to political opinion; offered no protection against the Special Powers Act; did not protect cultural and communal rights); and
      2. Proportional representation electoral system.
   9. No legal aid before 1965;
   10. Courts were unwilling to strike down Stormont legislation violating division of powers with Westminster: applied permissive ‘pith and substance’ doctrine;
   11. Administrative separatism:
       1. Westminster exercised almost no supervision or control over Stormont: NI has more the status of a ‘dominion’ than a subordinate level of local government;
       2. Stormont abolished Proportional representation system without Westminster interference.
10. Electoral control – hegemonic entrenchment of UUP in government & institutionalization of ethnic divisions:
    1. Electoral domination of local government;
    2. Restriction of local franchise;
    3. Retention of company votes;
    4. Disenfranchisement of anti-UUP voters (Catholics);
    5. Abolition of PR (STV) and replacement with FPTP;
    6. Exclusion of relatively recent immigrants from the Irish Free State;
    7. Conservation of University constituencies;
    8. British voting system focusing elections on straight nationalist-unionist contest and disadvantaging smaller parties than could fragment unionist vote (125).
11. Coercive control: hegemonic control must be backed by coercive resources:
    1. Creation of UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), USC (Ulster Special Constabulary), RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) in the 1920s;
    2. Catholics did not join the police: RUC seen as “Protestants with guns” (126);
    3. Politically subordinated to the ruling party (UUP).
12. Legal control:
    1. 1922 Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (permanent after 1993): draconian piece of legislation (internment without trial; arrest without warrant; curfews; prohibition of inquests; right to compel people to answer questions or be guilty of an offence…);
    2. 1952 Public Order Act: control non-violent forms of political opposition;
    3. 1954 Flags and Emblems Act: outlawed symbolic displays of nationalist allegiance.
    4. Overwhelmingly Protestant judiciary integrated into the UUP.
13. Economic Control:
    1. Direct and indirect discrimination in employment and in public housing;
    2. Both horizontal, inter-class stratification (upper occupational classes), and horizontal, intra-class stratification (superior positions within occupations within same class), as well as vertical stratification (higher status industries and locations) favoring Protestants.
    3. Catholics constituted a majority of unemployed;
    4. UUP positioned at the center of a system of patronage.
14. Administrative Control:
    1. Two key aspects: housing management and public employment.
    2. Housing segregation maintained predictable electoral outcomes and prevented development of mixed communities.
    3. Maintained clientelism, with UUP as an effective cross-class party.
    4. This is evidence of systematically organized domination and control of an ethnic group by another.
    5. It also shows that the Westminster model of government is compatible with hegemonic control: after 1920, NI was a particularist regime exercising hegemonic control: it seemed to be “a hermetic system which seemed incapable of change or reform” (135)
15. Cultural control: Orange order marches –‘representative violence’ leading to ‘communal deterrence’ (140).
16. Motivations for hegemonic control (UUP):
    1. Feared incorporation into a Catholic Irish nation-state (Irish nationalism & irredentism);
    2. Betrayal by the UK: Britain would abandon NI to the Dublin Parliament if expedient, either totally or through appeasement tactics; Unionists’ strategic dilemma: full integration with UK would make NI Protestants more British but would deprive them of tools of hegemonic control in NI and therefore more vulnerable to abandonment in future Anglo-Irish negotiations;
    3. Insurrection by Catholic minority: both violent (IRA) and non-violent: requires repressive security against those disloyal, so as to control them effectively: “Thus the colonial legacy was preserved into the liberal democratic era” (140).
    4. Fragmentation of Protestant community:
       1. Politics as a zero-sum game: need for strong and resilient unity;
       2. Fear of betrayal from within very powerful;
       3. Modernising Unionist elites might move away from the hegemonic control model and sense of group solidarity;      
       4. At least Two Unionist political cultures:
          • Ulster loyalist ideology: settler-ideology;
          • Ulster British ideology: liberal political values refuting above.     
    5. “The environment in which hegemonic control was maintained shows that the development and sustenance of the fears of Ulster Protestants is comprehensible without recourse to a historicist and essentialist conception of their identity” (141).     
17. External environment of hegemonic control:
    1. British state-development:
       1. Ill-equipped to deal with NI because of its constitutional tradition;
       2. NI could not be a miniature of the British political system;
       3. Why was NI not integrated into the British political system after 1920?
          • The Anglo-Irish Treaty was regarded as the final settlement of the Irish question, and no one wanted to reopen it;
          • Now Irishmen were fighting Irishmen rather than British;
          • Stormont Parliament was intended to keep
            Irish issues out of British politics, with reduction of Irish MPs at Westminster;
          • UK party competition in the 1920s and 1930s focuses on economic and class cleavages, whilst religious and territorial problems receded in importance due to the Irish settlement – thus increasing British systemic stability;
          •  Ambitious British politicians were no longer interested to raise Irish questions at Westminster.
          • Labour refused to organize in NI: it was a place best left as a place apart.
          • Tories’ ties with UUP meant they also did not want to bring about changes.
          • “Hegemonic control, provided its uglier manifestations were not too visible, was preferable for British policy-makers to the known historical costs of direct intervention and management of Irish affairs”
          • Integration of NI into the British state would have further soured relations with the Irish state (144).
          • 1949 Ireland Act: NI remains part of the UK as long as its Parliament wants it to be. By then, hegemonic control was well entrenched, with a logic of its own (145).
    2. Irish nation-building failure:
       1. Mimetic version of British failure;
       2. Irish cultural nationalism reinforced the inter-Irish divide;
       3. Irish nationalism mirrored exclusivism and sectarianism of Ulster unionism;
       4. Development of Irish Free State facilitated consolidation of hegemonic control in NI by UUP;
       5. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael party competition in Ireland had three mutually reinforcing effects that all reinforced partition by excluding Ulster Protestants from the Irish nation;
       6. “Irish state-building, logically but unintentionally, took place at the expense of pan-Irish nation-building. The symmetry is evident: British state-maintenance also took place at the expense of pan-British nation-building in Northern Ireland. Hegemonic control was the joint by-product of these nation-building failures.” (147).