Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Table
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise of Sectarianism
- 2 The Influence of the Orange Order
- 3 Explaining the Decline of Orangeism
- 4 Sectarian Dividing Lines and Post-War Slum Clearance
- 5 The Diminishing Politics of Sectarianism: How Class Politics Displaced Identity Politics
- 6 Ecumenism: ‘The Great Mersey Miracle’ and a Decline in Religious Observance
- 7 The Transfer of Racism: Did Liverpool's Black and Chinese Communities Become ‘New Aliens’?
- 8 The Emergence of a Common Identity: The Integration of the Irish and the Harmony of ‘Merseybeat’
- 9 Everton and Liverpool Football Clubs: New Gods
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Appendices
- Index
5 - The Diminishing Politics of Sectarianism: How Class Politics Displaced Identity Politics
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Table
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise of Sectarianism
- 2 The Influence of the Orange Order
- 3 Explaining the Decline of Orangeism
- 4 Sectarian Dividing Lines and Post-War Slum Clearance
- 5 The Diminishing Politics of Sectarianism: How Class Politics Displaced Identity Politics
- 6 Ecumenism: ‘The Great Mersey Miracle’ and a Decline in Religious Observance
- 7 The Transfer of Racism: Did Liverpool's Black and Chinese Communities Become ‘New Aliens’?
- 8 The Emergence of a Common Identity: The Integration of the Irish and the Harmony of ‘Merseybeat’
- 9 Everton and Liverpool Football Clubs: New Gods
- Conclusion
- Select Bibliography
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
The Politics of Sectarianism
In Liverpool, sectarianism and xenophobia became useful tools to gain power. By feeding on prejudice directed towards the Irish ‘invaders’ and their offspring, fear and economic rivalry became entities that local politicians would exploit for electoral success. For the Irish, their politics was centred neither upon the conditions nor the town in which they found themselves. It was instead focused upon factors relating to their homeland. As a result, Liverpool politics became quickly ‘impregnated with religious-cum-national stereotypes’. David Kennedy paints a portrait of Liverpool's unique political landscape:
Like no other mainland British city, Liverpool reflected the contours of the on-going struggle in nineteenth century and early twentieth century Ireland between Unionism and Nationalism over the matter of Home Rule for Ireland … The local Labour Party struggled to gain a commanding foothold in the city until well into the twentieth century. ‘Liverpool’, the frustrated Labour leader, [Ramsay] MacDonald, wrote in 1910, ‘is rotten and we better recognise it’. The local Home Rule supporting Liberal Party and, more especially, the Conservative–Unionist Party were more adept at competing for civic power by recourse to ethno-religious politics.
Aughton comments that, ‘politics in the city … had a very distinctive local flavour … religion played a major role. Orangeism, still a powerful force up until the Second World War, was strongly linked to Unionism and the Tory Party … the city's socialists were seen to be linked to Catholicism’.
MacRaild states that, ‘from the 1830s politics [in Liverpool] was coloured by an Orange and Green palette’, yet much of the political outworking of religious antipathy began with the formation of the WMCA in the late 1860s. This organisation was interconnected with both the Orange Institution and Conservative and Unionist Party. As many of its members were also Orangemen, it acted as a link between the two organisations and helped provide ‘an influential working man's voice within the Tory apparatus’. The WMCA ‘took as its emblem the maintenance of Protestantism’, and was an important component in the local Conservative leadership's ‘long-term strategy of courting the working man's vote as a defence against Liberal (and later Labour) advances’.
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- Liverpool SectarianismThe Rise and Demise, pp. 141 - 165Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017