IF politics in Northern Ireland has a quaintly archaic tone, it is probably because the issues have not changed much since 1690. In that year, the English armies of William of Orange trounced the Irish Catholic troops of James II on the banks of the Boyne River and established Protestant ascendancy over all Ireland, including the six counties that constitute Ulster. Ever since—and particularly after Southern Ireland went its Catholic way—Ulster's leaders have been preoccupied with safeguarding the Christian Reformation. William's picture is still painted on the red brick wall of many a Protestant home in Belfast, along with slogans like "No Pope Here." Protestant extremists have taken lately to insulting Catholic women with a new shout: "Ee-aya-addio, you can't take the pill!"
The taunt may be fresh, but the sentiment is not. Having governed their country as a virtual Protestant theocracy since Ireland was partitioned in 1920, the Orangemen of the North pay scant heed to Catholic feelings or, often, to Catholic rights. The Unionist Party monopolized the central government at Storemont from the first, and it has kept power—including voting power—in the hands of the Protestant haves. Businessmen, for example, command up to six votes each in local elections. Nor do the burdens of a chronically weak economy fall equally: unemployment in some Catholic areas runs as high as one person out of six, double the national level.
The Catholics (who number 500,000 in a population of 1,500,000) have chafed with increasing bitterness under this arrangement. Through the years, clashes between Protestants and Catholics—especially in the capital of Belfast —have drawn enough Irish temper from both sides to make "Belfast confetti" a second name for paving stones. During the past five months, the bitterness has erupted almost weekly in a wave of demonstrations, street riots and vigilantism. The unrest has presented the country's moderate Prime Minister, Captain Terence O'Neill, with his toughest problem and most serious political challenge in six years.
The Oligarchic Order. The conflict, as always, has strongly religious overtones. But because the central issue involves civil rights at the local level, it has become a cause not only for Catholic activists but also for New Left militants, Communists and even a few liberal Protestants. Last summer near the town of Dungannon, a 29-year-old opposition M.P. named Austin Currie staged a sit-in to protest the assignment of a family flat to the unmarried teenage secretary of a Unionist bigwig. The protest quickly spread to Londonderry, where a system of blatant gerrymandering has resulted in the two-thirds Catholic majority's getting only one-third of the public-built housing; it eventually turned into a nationwide campaign for reapportionment and for the "one-man, one-vote" principle.