From: Eugene McElroy <emcelroy@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Anglo-Saxon Ethnocentrism
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:17:55 GMT

a partial source of colonialism and counterinsurgency...

                   ANGLO-SAXON EHTNOCENTRISM:
                  ITS ROOTS AND CONSEQUENCES IN
         NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES

                       by Cecilia A. Karch

(this article was written in 1971 and is contained in the book
"Taking State Power", edited by John Leggett. While some aspects
of this article are dated, the theoretical thrust of the article
still holds in large part, and still makes instructive reading
for both the US and Northern Ireland.)

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terminology

     Throughout this essay I avoid usinng the term caste and
instead use class-racial categories to describe the socioeconomic
statuses operating in both the Southern United States and
Northern Ireland. Both societies are a product of one capitalist
class system. Double exploitation has been operative here. Blacks
and Irish Catholics have been kept in a subordinate position by
the ethos of capitalism, the doctrines of racial prejudice, the
practices of low wage return for high labor output, and the
discrimination of employers on the matters of hiring, promoting,
and dismissing. For many centuries the English chose to
categorize the Irish as a separate race and many academic
treatises were written to buttress a doctrine on Irish racial
inferiority and their correlated lower caste position. Similar
doctrines were penned by the English on blacks. However, in my
opinion the term caste only serves to confuse the issue. Unlike
the Hindu system with its long-term condition of near impermeable
boundaries separating occupational categories of caste and
subculture, a far greater amount of upward job mobility and
cultural assimilation of majority group culture has occured among
southern U.S. blacks and the Northern Irish. Yet the mobility is
limited by barriers. The white upper classes of both societies
integrate Anglo-Saxon racial and ethnic biases into the class-
racial structures to heighten competitive antagonisms among the
lower classes of both the dominant and subordinate racial groups.
In both the southern United States and Northern Ireland, the bulk
of the subordinate racial group can be found in the lower and
middle classes; indeed, the Blacks and Irish Catholic have been
overwhelmingly lower class. By contrast, the upper class blacks
and/or Irish Catholic have been few in number. Consequently, when
the term upper class black and/or irish is used in this paper, it
is used only to demonstrate that there are class divisions within
race-ethnnic groups. It should be made clear that these
upperclass minorities have constituted only a fraction of the
entire upper class and, furthrmore, have wielded little or no
political power.


             Northern Ireland and the United States

     This essay demonstrates the linkages of ethnicity and race
to problems of class between Northeern Ireland and the American
South. This is an attempt to examine one angle of the problem of
social stratification that has not been scrutinized. As such, it
is meant to imply that the problems of racial and class
stratification in these areas demonstrate economic and political
similarities derived from a planter class and a colonial system
that has left both sections ripe for antagonisms both of a class
and racial ethnic nature. Both sections were colonized by a
similar group of people who established an agricultural system of
race-ethnic stratification. The system necessitated the
development of a myth and mores that served to bolster the
practical realities of life. In both sections, despite the
passage of time, these supremacy myths acts as an impediment to
viable socio-economic change. Despite the disadvantages suffered
by a majority of the dominant group, the continued existence of
the value system which buttresses competition between these
groups in a class system inhibits alignments with the subordinate
group in attempts at reformation.
     We begin the analogy by tracing the similar development of
economic and social relationships in both sections. The planter
class of the South, which W.E.B. DuBois has stipulated comprised
7 percent of the population and owned 75 percent of the land, was
Anglo-Saxon in backround being decendants of either English or
Scotch-Irish settlers. They were for the most part of humble
origin, although members of the English upper class settled in
the Tidewater region of Virgina and Maryland. The plantation
system arose out of the English venture of colonialism, which had
already established a planter class of the same ethnicity in
Ireland. By  the time of the plantation system in the southern
colonies, the English had effectively conquered the Gaelic
natives of Ulster and then moved en masse to reservations on the
rocky coast of Ireland. The exceptions consisted of those who, of
necessity, were kept on as chattels to till the soil. The
Plantation of Ulster had brought in that group of Scotch-Irish
who form the basis of ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland today.
     Under James I, the Gaelic lords were scattered. The king
then granted charters to Scottish nobelmen commissioning them to
colonize Ulster. The Scotch-Irish nobles arrived with their
poorer tenants. Unlike the Irish, the Scots were settled in
communities and forever changed the social order in Northern
Ireland. The Gaelic Irish, however, were not to be pacified.
Warfare similar to that on the frontier of America was staged
between the conquerors and the natives.

           Scottish Protestantism and Colonial Values

     The Lowland Scots had just recently embraced Protestantism
under the banner of John Knox and were vehemently anti-Catholic.
Hillaire Belloc has noted that although the Catholic Church
throughout Europe in the sixteenth century was inundated with
abuses, it was at its very worst in Scotland. There, it was not
unusual to witness illiterate priests, often under the influence
of alcohol, stumble through the Latin phrases ofthe mass.
Furthermore, the Church worked in conjunction with the noblemen
to overtax the poor Scottish peasants.
     In light of all the dabauchery and oppression, there arose a
mass movement which eagerly accepted a grim brand of Calvinism.
Since the political allegiances of the time were based on
religon, the Scottish peasants who left for Ireland, seeking
better soil and fairer weather, brought with them a hatred of
Catholic Ireland. This hatred was transferred into religous
ethnic conflicts as the Scots fought to retain their holdings
taken from the Catholic indigenous population. The Irish wars
were considered by the English and Scottish soldiers to be the
worst of fates. The be sent to fight the Irish was viewed as
tantamount to the death sentence.
     It must be borne in mind that this ws England's first
colonial venture, and that the decendants of those who both
settled Ulster and those who fought the Irish wars were the
soldiers and colonials  of America. It is H. Mumford Jones's
contention that the difficulties that the English encountered
when dealing with the Irish were the main reason for the late
entry of the English into the colonial race. The reports of the
ferocity of the native Americans struck a similar note to English
and Scottish ears. At that historical moment, when attempts at
pacification had failed miserably so close at hand, why venture
to play the same game far across the ocean where it was certinly
far more difficult to retreat to the safety of English soil? The
repression meted out to the Irish by the English and Scotch-
Irish was undoubtedly partially responsible for the English
cruelty and viciousness toward the American Indian and to the
black slaves.
     Colonization and constant warfare with the Irish had
instilled in the Scotch-Irish settlers not only a hatred of
Catholicism and of the Irish, but a feeling of superiority in
culture as well. This ethnocentrism accompanied the Scotch-Irish
when they left the Emerald Isle to seek a less strife-ridden
settlement in America.
     The Scotsh-Irish were by far the most numerous of the early
immigrants to America. Their names have been made immortal by the
Daughters of the American Revolution for their viciousness in
fighting the Indians and for carving out the lands that were to
become the first thirteen states of the USA. That tweleve U.S.
presidents have Scotch-Irish backgrounds has instilled pride in
their decendants in Northern Ireland in much the same way that
the status of John F. Kennedy does in the Republic.
     In the South it was the same ethnic groups of English and
Scotch-Irish settlers who formed the basis of the planter class
and of the lower orders. Southerners are fond of pointing out the
homogeneous nature of their society. Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism,
which spiraled under the heyday of English imperialism and formed
the basis of nativism in this country (100 percent Americanism
being the slogan of the Klu Klux Klan and other such movements),
has its roots in the origins of these settlers. One of the
frequent explanations given in the development of the North-
South conflict has been the theory that the South as a region was
alienated from the North by its ties with England. Culturally and
economically, the plantation South remained linked to the English
imperialist venture. Thus the planters in the South differed
little from the English planters in the West Indies (with all the
racial biases implied) or from that latter group of English
planters in India and Africa.

      U.S. South and Northern Ireland: Landlord Oppression

     Thus the 'peculiar institution' of the South differed little
from other systems of colonial exploitation in operation at the
same time in the rest of the world. Whereas in the Souuth the
planter class comprised 7 percent of the population, the large
landholders in the North of Ireland commprised 1 percent of the
population. Many landlords in Ireland were English absentee
landlords whose estates were managed by Scotch-Irish. As might be
expected, the Protestant yeomanry of Ulster were better off than
their Catholic counterparts in the rest of Ireland. The most
prevelant form of cultivation was hugh estates run by Protestant
managers with Catholic peasant tilling the soil.
     A doubly captive class structure was in operation both in
Ireland and in the South. In Ireland the planter class consisted
of English landlords who were either of royal blood or upwardly
mobile entreprenures. This latter group was to become dominant in
the Victorian era of industrial expansion through the mechanism
of patronage. Absentee landlordism was especially prevalent in
this class. The colonizers were further stratified into a rising
middle class of Dissenter merchants (i.e., Presbyterian, not
Church of England) and the lower classes of Protestant yeomanry
and peasants. The Protestant peasantry were able to squeeze
tenant-right reforms from the upper class at a much earlier date
than their Catholic counterparts. A tiny minority of Catholics
managed to maintain their upper class status through co-optation.
Others, formerly belonging to the upper class, retained at least
a middle class status by entering into capitalistic activities.
Both the Dissenters and Catholics suffered discrimination based
on religon. Like the Jews, they turned to trade activities when
the professional doors were closed. This small middle class
formed the leadership cadre of the libertarian United irishmen,
the Irish revolutionary response to  the ideals of the American
and French revolutions. Beneath the upper crust was the mass of 
the population, the Irish Catholic peasantry, chattel property of
the English landlords. 

            Northern Ireland and Ethnic Distinctions
                                   
     Since there were few Protestant peasants in the south of
Ireland, it was in Northern Ireland that the distinctions based
on ethnicity were most evident. The majority of Protestant
peasantry kept the religon of their fathers, a strict
Calvinistic, fundamentalist form of religon, similar to that of
the Bible Belt of the southern United States. The Catholics of
Ireland, like the blacks of America, had few rights. They were
forbidden to speak their language, to practice their religon, or
to acquire an education that would permit them  to rise in social 
status through the professions. What was created by this system
of apartheid was a large illiterate peasant mass, beasts of
burden to be used to exploit their own land for the benefit of
Mother England. The Catholic peasantry of Ireland were little
better off than the blacks in the South, nor much different in
status from them. The only technical difference was that they
were native to the soil of Ireland and did not need to be part of
a slave trade. No price was paid for their labor. They were as
much a part of the land to exploit as humus in the soil. In fact
after Cromwell's rape of Ireland, many Catholics were sent as
slaves to the West Indies to work on the plantations there.
Vestiges of their forced resettlement can especially be seen in
Montserrat, where the natives speak with an irish brouge. The
blacks of the West Indies did not know what to make of the Irish,
since the English overlords treated their Irish slaves more
cruelly that they did the blacks.
                              
                  The Southern U.S. Similarity

     In the southern United States a similar class-racial system
prevailed. The white peasant eked out a living on the poorest
soil. He suffered from disease and malnutrition and neither
benefited from nor produced anything in quantity for the system
in operation. These "po' whites" as they have been disparagingly
been labeled, differed in economic and social status. Pushed out
of the areas most suitable for single crop production, many
yeoman farmers lived in respectable "poverty" and were able to
feed themselves, if not produce much for the market. Within this
class were some who could afford a slave who worked with the
farmer in the fields. Another group of whites, slightly better
off, lived and earned a living in the small toens as merchants
and craftsmen. From this class of petit bourgeois came many of
the overseers on plantations. The lowest group of whites were the
"clayeaters", or "mean whites", as they were called. Reduced to
extreme levels of poverty, many were perhaps seen eating dirt to
glean from it certain minerals and other substances in an attempt
to counteract the diseases that plauged their bodies.
     Depending on the region, these people lived mainly by
hunting and fishing and scratching what subsistance they could
from the soil. The lowest orders of whites were illiterate and
non-churchgoers. After the Civil War these people formed the mass
of sharecroppers and tenant farmers. As the Industrial Revolution
penetrated the South (with the establishment of cotton mills by
northern and a few southern capitalists from the upper orders),
these people, in the main, formed the backbone of the southern
proletariat. Inducements were also made to the mountain men and
to small independnent farmers, who were suffering from low
agricultural prices, to move to the mill towns, foresake the land
and become cogs in the wheels of southern capitalism. it is this
class that sparked the vehement drive to keep blacks out of
industry.
     Before the Civil War the skilled artisans of the South were
black slaves hired out to capitalists in the larger cities. After
the war, the whites soon reversed roles. Unable to sustain
themselves before the was because of competition from black slave
labor, they were opposed to competing for jobs with blacks for
wages. Thus, until recently, whites formed the backbone of the
skilled proletariat in the South.
      Reconstruction and the Industrial Revolution reinforced the
stratified social relations in the South. The promise of 40 acres
and a mule never came to fruition. Both the black and the white
rural populaces remained subordinate to the Bourbon planter, who
were able to reinstate their claims after the Civil War. The bulk
of the farming population in the South today are expploited by 
the landed "gentry", and the people have no access to the
authorities for infringements on agreements or other abuses.
Black landowners inthe South form a minute stratum of the
population. Victor Perlo has demonstrated that often black
farmers and black landless laborers are more economically
disadvantaged than their white equivalents, although both suffer
from landlord exploitaion, whether under the sharecropper or
factory-farm system. Child labor laws and other measures such as
40-hour week, or safety regulations, are often unknown to the
farm proletariat of the South. They are solely dependent on the
patronage of the planters.
     As in Irelannd, the frequency of absentee landlordism is 
high. Tenants rent their acreage either for cash or crops with no
security of tenure. Legally binding written agreements are rare,
and class-racial sanctions prevent a black tenant from filing
suit against a white planter. Law enforcement in rural areas
until very recently was a perogative of class. Planters are
expected to reprimand their tenants. Local law enforcement is an
upper-lower and lower middle class profession. The upper classes
control the governmental apparatus and are above the law for most
infractions. They have therefore left local law enforcement in
the hands of lower class whites. A similar practice is in
operation in Northern ireland, where the Protestant
paramilitaries are allowed to vent their fustrations on lower
class Catholics. The vigilante system of law enforcement is a
common phenomenom inn both geographical sections.
     The rise of the cities in the South has called for a
modification of traditional economic and social roles.
Distinctions were drawn in the labor force between black and
white blue-collar jobs. By and large the most menial tasks are
still 'nigger' jobs and the more skilled labor is a white
preogative. The taboo on social relations between upper- and
middle-class whites and blacks effectively operated to exclude
the latter from white collar employment, whereas assigning the
majority of unskilled labor positions to blacks effectively cut
into the number of job opportunities available to lower-class
whites. "Before  the Depression the existence of 'negro jobs'
sanctioned by the caste dogma of the division of labor, provided
a basis of subsistance for the colored society and actually
worked to the economic disadvantage of the white people in lower
occupational groups."
     With the introduction of federal relief during the
Depression, whites began to undercut blacks in the unskilled
occupations. However, divisions were maintained by further
stratifying job positions. When that became impossible, whites
were given responsibility over their black co-workers. The
entrance of blacks into the skilled bule-collar professions
through black-owned enterprises has done much to modify class-
racial occupational relationships, further weakening the lower-
class white status position in a society based on white
supremacy. Black society in the Southern cities is class
divisible. There are black lawyers, doctors and other
professionals as well as a long-established black middle class of
entrepreneurs. Although an upper-class black still suffers the
impediments of racial discrimination in certain social
situations, it can be said that through his interactions with
white professionals found within the upper-middle class, the lot
of an upper class black in manifestly better than that of a
lower-class white. The economic status of upper-class blacks has
modified the class racial structure to the extend that except for
the most intimate personal relationships, the racial barriers are
virtually redefined in order to accommodate the separate status
of the individual.

                       The General Lesson

     The insidious function of a socio-economic system based on
upper-class supremacy is to cloak the class divisions manifestly
apparent in most capitalist societies. White upper-class racial
groups have utilized this decoy tactic to further consolidate
their own positions. The class-racial distinctions are so tightly
drawn that crystal clear class alignments and the formation of a
solid working-class movement are almost impossible. As such, the
supremacy value system in the South has served as a method of
unimpeded double exploitation for the subordinate group.

                         The Irish Case

     We now turn to Northern Ireland and examine another society
in the process of "modernization" which exhibits a similar lack
of working class solidarity. The class-racial distinctions
nurtured so successfully by the avowedly Anglo-Saxon ethnic group
that reigns supreme in the southern United States are equally
apparent in the north of Ireland.
     The mechanism by which the traditional society of Northern
Ireland was transformed into a modern mixed economy with strong
class clevages was the same mechanism utilized by the dominant
class in the South--textile mills. The Northern Irish and English
mill system no doubt was the model on which the American system
was built. As in the South, the mills drew heavily from the
marginal farming class of Northern Ireland. Long raped by England
for her agricultural commodities, Irish land during the
nineteenth century was increasingly turned into pasture, forcing
the peasants to turn to other means of employment. The port city
of Belfast soon became the center of textile activity.
     The years of improper utilization of the land brought on the
Famine, and the peasant working-class demarcations in the city of
Belfast were formed after this era. Both groups lived in mill
housed built by the Presbyterian capitalists to lodge them, and
their decendants continue to occupy these very houses. Housing in
Northern Ireland is drawn along ethnic-religous and class lines
in much the same way as it is in the Southern U.S. Both working
classes live around the mills and places of work in the decaying
central city. The upper classes of both groups have evacuated to
the suburbs.
     The Catholics and the Protestants form two homogeneous blocs
leading out in different directions from the city. Protestant and
Catholic middle clases generally do not mix in neighborhoods, but
rather have equal housing in separate suburbs. Within the
economic system, Protestants and Catholics do not mix on the job
except in the new factories established by primarily English and
American multinational corporations. Even there, the traditional
patterns are often followed so as to avoid conflict. (Protestants
on the whole are mainstream working class, skilled laborers,
whereas Catholics are marginal and unskilled.) The economic
market, partly as a result of civil strife, continues on a
downward spiral. Northern Ireland, the Minister of Development
recently stated (1971), was nearly bankrupt after two years of
violence. Many industries, no matter what the inducement, are
either closing the subsidiaries in Northern Ireland or refusing
to come at all. One of the most pressing economic problems for
the state of Northern Ireland has been her de facto provincial
status, which has led to a considerable drain of commodities and
taxes going to Britain. The Exchequer of Great Britain yearly
must "donate" one hundred million pounds sterling to keep the
place operating at all. Industries are offered tax write-offs and
factories are built to specification in the hopes of persuading
industrialists to come to Northern Ireland. But the fact of the
matter is that the factories are foreign-owned, and the moment
the market falls, the subsidiary company in Northern Ireland is
clsoed.
     Outwardly, it appears that in Northern Ireland, as in the
American South, "race" issues are at the root of the problem.
However, discrimination in Northern Ireland, although based to a
certain extent on "ethinc" animosity, is in the main due to
economic duress which in turn exacerbates "ethnic" tensions. Both
Northern Ireland and the American South have been fair pickings
for highly industrialized capitalist societies. The leadership of
both communities has maintained itself through a single-party
apparatus based on supremacy. By dividing the lower orders (which
was a deliberate policy in Northern Ireland at the turn of the
century when the proletariat was organizing), the establishment
is able to maintain it position through the numerical superiority
of Protestants over a sizeable Catholic minority. For both in the
South and in Northern Ireland, the black and Catholic minority,
repsectively, form a considerable portion of the populace. The
fear of cheap labor and the competition for scares jobs have
prompted the poorer Protestant Anglo-Saxon population of both
areas to respond violently in order to prevent what they percieve
as both a loss of status and of economic position. Their postion
is tenuous to say the least. The cultural values of the dominant
Anglo-Saxon ethnic group of both communities support a similar
response. The contention of the writer is that the common
heritage of both groups has led to similar responses to the
percieved threats to their status.
     James McEvoy of the Sociology Dept. of UC-Davis has states
in his book, Radicals or Conservatives, that the Goldwater and
Wallace movements in American society share "an intense
nationalism, patriotism and a high degree of expressive and
ritualistic "Americanism"--all forms of socially intergrative
behavior described by Katz, Kelman, and Flacks as examples of
symbolic integration." According to McEvoy, the origins of the
intense nationalism of these groups:
     "...is found in the fact that they identify their life
styles and locations in the prestige order with a mythical
(although partially historically based) concept of the state.
Thus, while the contemporary state has been a prime agent in the
disruption of the prestige order of American Society, these
groups evolve in their defense a concept of the State based on a
reactionary view of history and harken back to the time when the
state represented the values they hold dear and positively
sanctioned the norms they admire. The function of this invocation
is obvious. It is an effort to bolster declining prestige by
creating a direct identification of the affected group with the
most powerful formal political structure in the Society--the
state."
     This reaction may be prevalent in most societies, but in
Anglo-Saxon dominated societies it has taken on particular
attributes. It is to these we now turn.

                     The Besieged Mentality 

     Both Northern Ireland and the South suffer from a 'besieged
mentality', viewing themselves as an embattled minority within a
hostille nation. In Northern Irelandthe threat of Home Ruleand
the Easter Rebellion (1916) led to the division of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland into three sections. Ireland was split North
and South, while Northern Ireland's relationship with Great
Britain remians one of a misunderstood poorr province. American
Civil War, with memories of Reconstruction, gave birth to and
maintained a 'Lost Cause' mentality, a regional inferiority
complex withdefensive psychological manifestations. Both the
South and Northern Ireland, before their respective wars, had
fought to maintain their distinctive institutions, and both
remained highly sensitive on the subject. After the civil war in
Ireland and with the introduction of the state of Northern
Ireland, a one-party totalitarian organization based on Anglo-
Saxon supremacy was inaugarated. Each section retains the myths
in order to bolster the political  set-ups: the Protestants of
the North has their battle cry of 'No Surrender' to the forces of
popery. (On July 1, 1690, the Protestant King William of Orange
defeated Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne, thus
ensuring that Protestant hegemony would prevail against the
ravages of poperry.) The U.S. South retains the romance and
chivalry of a cultured nation hacked to pieces by a greedy North.
     Surrounded on all sides by a hostile Catholic nation and
within their province by fellow Catholic 'citizens' who comprise
one-third of the population, the Protestants of Ulster have used
the one party system of government to disenfranchise that third
of the populace. In the Irish North, through the medium of
business and property qualifications, the Catholics were
prevented from exercising voting rights. 'One man, One vote' was
a crucial issue in Northern Ireland. Local government is of the
utmost importance in the politics of Northern Ireland. For
through the maneuverings of gerrymandering and franchise
disqualifications, Protestants have managed to retain their
supremacy even in Catholic strongholds of the country. In this
sense, even where Catholics could vote, the effect of their
ballots has been minimal. In somewhat the same sense, southern
Blacks were offcially disenfranchised either through statue or
through the device of the poll tax and literacy test.

                         Law and Rights

     Law enforcement in both regions is a preogative of the
dominant group, Blacks and Catholics having little access to the
law for redress. In Northern Ireland, the para-military B
Specials exerted the overwhelming repressive apparatus of the
Protestants when Catholics began to get 'uppity' in much the same
manner as did the lynchings and actions of the state troopers in
the South.
     One effect of voting qualifications in both sections was to
disenfrahcise large numbers of poor whites and poor Protestants.
In both sections the machinery of governmnet has long been the
special prerogative of an elite, whether the Bourbonns of the
South--or their ancestral innspiration, the Anglo-Irish
aristocracy with their private desmesnes in Northern Ireland.
Both societies can be categorized as modernizing, although until
recently they were trated as static and traditional by
establishhment development theorists. Until the 1970 general
election, the one-party oligarchy of Northern Ireland was able to
circumvent all potential grievances from turing into party
realignments by drumming up the issue of the border and
Protestant supremacy at every election. Each prior election thus
had been a plebiscite for Protestant supremacy. But with the
impetus toward 'modernization and development' and the rise of a
strong middle class in both sections,contention for power has
emerged as significant. The professional and middle classes of
both sections are seeking control of the reins of government.
With the dawn of the civil rights struggles in both sections, the
lower orders as well, so long neglected and nonparticipatory due
to the predomoinance of the 'race' issue, are rebelling and
demanding a share of the pie. Both George Wallace and Ian Paisley
speak the language and air the grievances of certain sections of
the lower classes.

             The Ethnic Completion of Class Struggle

     It has been indicated that the similarities of property
relations and social stratification in the two commuinities are
striking. The reasons are clear. Under the circumstances of the
ethnic-race stratification described, the oppression meted out by
the dominant groups on party politics is always similar. The
class struggle in both communities is classic, and both societies
could be termed modernizing societies in turmoil, coupled with
racial overtones that often distort the basic struggle.
Furthermore, the two communities are similar in that the upper-
class participants in the struggle are of the same ethnic
composition. Their struggle is the product of one and the same
venture by the Anglo-Saxon civilization to attempt to gain
control of the markets of the world for their personal
consumption. Because of the vast landmass of America, it took
longer for  the fomer colonies to reach the sophistication that
the mother country possessed in the eighteenth century.
Nevertheless, the values of the mother country which aided in
internal development also affected foreign policy at a later
date.
     Since the American South recieved little ethnic imput from
varying cultures, the values of the Anglo-Saxon were allowed to
fertilize and become hybridized in American soil. In the most
important particulars, therefore, the culture remained intact. It
is these values and cultural traits that we now consider for an
explaination of the manner in which the turn of events in both
Ireland and the southern United States has ben shaped and formed
to varying degrees by their dominance, and by England's
imperialist ventures and the Scotch-Irish embroilment and
identification with this process.

                   Values and Cultural Traits
     
     Religon has always been a very serious businness to the
people of the South. Their Scotch-Irish ancestors brought with
them a fear of God, belief in the literal word of the Bible, an
overriding concern with morality, and the sins of the flesh, and
a deep hatred of Catholicism. Both the South and Northern Ireland
share the cultural trait of evangelism, and a fundamentalist
outlook that colors every facet of life. The Calvinistic notion
of the elect permeates both communities, thereby adding to the
myth of ther Children of God surrounded on all sides by
evildoers. Both sections suffer from conformity complexes within
their ranks. Outsiders are suspect, and any tamperinng with the
status quo in tanamount to damnation. In 1904, the Methodist
Bishop Warren A. Candler of Georgia, in his *Great Revivals and
the Great Republic*, declared the Anglo Saxon to be divinely
appointed for the advancement of evangelical religon in the
world. A Baptist minister had declared that other religons had
lost:
                 whatever there is of advantage in this unmixed
Anglo-Saxon blood. Romanism had flooded their cities, and invaded
and dispoiled the old patriotism and the old culture and
political ideas. The hope of  the world is America, the hope of
America is evangelical religon of the most orthodox type, the
hope of the AMerican church is the Southern Evangelical churches.

     Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism and evangelicalism were linked in
a distinctive Southern ideology that differed little from the
ideology of Protestant Ulster, its roots. Both Northern Ireland
and the South have much higher Church membership and attendance
rate in their respective nations as a whole. Southern Ireland,
the Republic, is always viewed by outsiders as a strongly
religous country. Indeed it is. But Church influence and
membership in Northern Ireland is higher (67 per cent membership)
in comparison with the rest of the British Isles.
     This pervasive influence of the Protestant churches within
the dominnant strata has meant that the values of the religous
community are also the moral vlaues of  the body politc. In a
world of increaing secularism, both Northern Ireland and the
American South have viewed themselves as bastions of Christianity
pitted against the forces of secular communnism and perverted
liberalism. Drinkinng regulations and recreation on Sunday are
legislated against in both sections--an example of the influence
of the dominant group, despite the proclivities of the rest of
the population. People's Democracy, the student led civil rights
movment, eventually was sucessful (in 1970) in putting forward a
bill to open thw swimminng pools on Sunday for Catholic children
in Northern Ireland.
     When the social gospel of Protestantism, pressing for
similar reforms, entered the South in the 1920's, it ran head-
long into a gathering momentum of Fundamentalism. By virtue of
their importance in all walks of life, the various Southern
churches naturally assumed class distinction as well.
Denominations and sects are as class-aligned as the people who
sit in the pews. Church membership in the Presbyterian and
Lutheran churches is drawn mainly from the upper and upper-
middle classes. Thier parishes are primarily urban and their
minniasters and congregations are highly literate. Sermons often
deal with theological abstractions rather than with the 'nitty-
gritty' of life. According to Liston Pope, in the 1930's,
Presbyterian and Lutheran ministers who were required to do
missionary work in the wilds of the mill villages and rural 
areas had litttle rapport with these congregations, and
attendance dropped off. The class and educational gaps were too
wide to permit mutual understanding. By far the most popular
religon in the mill villages, where the congregation often had
little more than a grammer school education, were the newer
Fundamentalist sects, such as Church of God and Free Will
Baptists. In a survey Pope took in 1939, which by current
accounts is valid today, he found that out of eleven Church of
God ministers, eight had recieved a level of education of grammer
school or less, and three had finished high school. Of the
Presbyterian ministers, however, all fourteen had a college
degree in theology. The Baptist and Methodist churches had been
declining in numbers among the poorer classes as the
denominations became more 'estblishment' oriented.
     Northern Ireland exhibits similar distinctions. Although the
majority of the populace is either Church of Ireland or
Presbyterian, depending on the area, one or the other is very
definitly the dominant order. For example, Belfast is a
Presbyterian city founded by wealthy Presbyterian merchants. The
lower classes are predominantly Church of Ireland because when
they were brought in from the rural areas to work the mills, they
retained the religous affiliation of their aristocratic
landlords. However, a goodly number of the lower classes are
Presbyterians, the descendants of the Scottish peasants who came
with the Plantation of Ulster. But increasingly among the working
class, especially the lowest level of working class, the inroads
of Paisleyism and other forms of evangelicalism have made great
strides. Belfast is called the Bible Belt of Ireland. There, Dr.
Donald Soper, a proponent of Protestant unity with Rome, was
stoned by a Paisleyite mob afer he had referred to Belfast as "a
city of religous nightclubs". Within  these run-down mission
halls "star-studded attractions" such as the ex-priests reval the
evil master-plannings of the 'communist' Catholic Church.
     Like the South in the 1920's and again in the 1960's, rising
unemployment, general econommic decline, and a burden of guilt on
willing shoulders, instill in the minds of these confused and
unhappy people the spirit of a crsusade to preserve the values
demeaned by society at large. They have been ignored in the
political spectrum and are aware of theri declininng prestige as
a marginal group. The predominant force of religon in their lives
can reach a fever pitch in chaotic and uncertainn times. Revivals
in the South are a throwback to the 'salvation' of the elect
practiced in the mission halls of Northern Ireland.
     The forgotten an unimportant peoplle of both sections are
the poor whites and the poor rural and small town Protestants of
Northern Ireland. They are an important tool in the maintenance
ofd the supremacy of the dominant class, a tool to be pitted
againt the subordinate, using the dialoge of race/ethnicity in
order to undermine class conciousness. Living marginally as they
do, not quite middle class, some petit bourgeois (most very poor,
yet one step higher is status from their neighbor of the pariah
'caste') they can be whipped to a frenzy if they are told that
their status positions and prestige are in jeopardy.
     
      Conservative Ideology, The KKK, and the Orange Order

     Perhaps the clearest manner in which to present the
continuing influennce of the conservative ideology of this
stratum of Anglo-Saxon is th portray the two most blatant
examples of folk movement which epitomize the cultural traits and
ideology of this group: the KKK and the Orange Order. I choose to
label the Orange Order the granddaddy of the KKK because of the
similarity of rituals, the secrecy of the organization, the
religous overtones, and the inherent 'supremacy' attitudes.
     Back in the eighteenth century, when the plight of the
agricultural tenants, Protestant and Catholic, was insufferable,
the Organge Order was founded as an agricultural secret society
to wage war on the rack-rentinng landlords. However, it quickly
became a means, under loak of secrecy, for burning out Catholic
tenants. A fraternal endowed with ritual and mystery, the Orange
Order allowed its members to turn the night sky red on missions
of destruction. Warfare between the two sections was rampant. In
1798 the upper echelons sensed the utility of the Orange Order
and used the group as a peasant militia to stamp out a revolt.
For a time the wealthiest and the most aristocratic of patrons
showered their favors on the Order. The English Parliament,
however, eternally on guard against the potential strength of
their colonial allies, very quickly felty compelled to disband
the Order at the end of the eighteenth century. From that time
until the late nineteenth century, the Orange Order deteriorated
into a fraternal drinking club in the rural areas. Yet the Order
was a means of fostering solidarity among Protestants. The Orange
Hall meetings provided a place where members could remind
themselves, in the face of continuously bad agricultural years,
that they were at least a step higher than their Catholic
counterparts. It is "said" that:
     "An Orangeman who was asked how long his order had been in
existence answered off hand that Orangeism could be traced back
to the Garden of Eden. This was a thoroughly accurate statement.
He meant simply to convey that all the essentials of a perfect
nature and of an exaulted religon were to be found associated in
the primal day of our race. Our relationship to the Father of our
spirits was renewed, and while we maintained that relationship by
faith and obedience no one could take away our inheritance. That
was Protestantism, that was Orangeism. Popery, however, obscured
the truth, and while affecting to lead man right plunged him into
a moral quagmire, into a wilderness of error and supersitition.
Against Popery's usurpation of the office of our redeemer,
Orangeism which is organized Protestantism, is the only effective
weapon, and so we reach the conclusion that the triumph of
Bethlehem depends in the long run on Belfast."
     Orangeism in its modern form, which came into being after
the collapse of the Penal Laws (Ireland's version of the Jim Crow
laws), represented an attempt by the poorer class of Protestants
by mob violence what their ancestors had achieved by the more
decorous method of legislative enactment. Following Catholic
emancipation, the poorer order attempted to maintain their 
status in society by violence and fear in nesessary, just as the
formation of the KKK in 1865 had followed the emancipation of the
slaves in the South. With virtual  control over lands and
tenancy, however, the aristocracy no longer needed the Protestant
rabbel to keep the Catholics in their place. In fact, the
aristocracy preferred and generally obtained Catholic tenants,
who expected less and raised no questions about rights and
privileges.
     At the turn of the century, with the advent of the Catholic
party in Parliament and the cries for Home Rule, the Orange Order
was again revived. Once more, positions of control were dominated
by the upper classes, who feared loss of ascendancy if Parliament
were to return to Dublin. The Orange Order formed the grass roots
basis of  the Unionist party, the totalitarian apparatus
manipulating Northern Ireland today. Although most members of the
uppr classes profess distain for the Order, they have found it
expedient to belong, and no one rises in the unionist Party
hierarchy who is not in the Order. On July Twelfth the poor
Protestant can hold  his head up high as he participates in the
parades that are organized throughout Northern Irelannd. For on
the Twelfth, marching with the Prime Minister and other notables,
the Orangeman tells himself that he is a better man than his
Catholic counterpart, peking behind closed shutters at the
marchers in their bowler hats and sashes. Today, the Order, like
the Klan, has been under considerable attack and suffered much
abuse from liberal British journalists covering the action in
Northern Ireland. As such among the lower classes , the Orange
Order has again become an organizational plebiscite of their
solidarity in the face of opposition from all sides:

     "The dark eleventh hour draws on and sees us sold
      To every foreign foe we fought against of old."

     This little ditty was published in Paisley's "Protestant
Telegraph" at a time when fear was running high that  the Twelfth
processions were to be cancelled for fear of violence:

     "Orangemen all over the North are under attack. Tremendous
and far-reachinng attempts are being made to force a cancellation
of the Twelfth processions...why should the Northern politicians,
Communists and a motely crew of liberals and progressives all
seek an end to the Orange parades? It's really very obvious. It
has been recognized for some time that the Unionist government is
largely an irrelevance. It is the Protestant Cause, and the
Orange Order which stands for that cause, that binds Ulster
together."
     These statements were made under the headlinne "The Final
Betrayal." The same paper has called Harold Wilson a "Red" and
has labeled the Pope a supporter of subversive Communist
activities in the North of Ireland. In Belfast, you often hear
little children say that the Pope is planning to build a castle
in Ireland once the Catholics take over. According to one anti-
Catholic book, mass Protestant repatriation back to England is
the design of the Vatican plotters.
     In all the literature, the same current of though is driven
home. The Ulstermen are the last bastion of the great Anglo-
Saxon Protestant traditions. England has become demoralized and
decadent. It is they, the Orangemen, who must take up the banner
and save Christianty from the pagans. Every Orange Order has a
chapllin to lead the faithful in prayers, and every Twelfth of
July the platforms in "the Field" are filled with ministers
exhorting the faithful to remain steadfst in the face of all the
odds.
     Because of the disturbances, the Orangemen are increasingly
critical of the upper class Unionist party. As a result,
Orangemen are running their own candidates on reactionary
platforms. They are calling, of course, for stringent measures on
the issue of law and order. {The Unionist Party split long ago
into two parties, the Ulster Unionst Party (UUP) which is
reflective of the upper orders of Unionism, and Paisely's
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). emcelroy} 
     The leader of the Protestant petit bourgeois, unemployed
youth and marginal working class in Ian Kyle Paisley, a breakaway
gospel tabernacle minister who holds a degree from that bulwark
of Fundamentalism--Bob Jonnes University in South Carolina.
Ronald Cooke, an exponent of Paisleyism in the United States, has
stated in his polemic "The Thunder of Papal Propaganda" that: "To
any thinking person, the Roman Catholic Church is a far greater
threat to our freedom than Communnism...God has stamped Paisley's
ministry with his own approval. The world may rage and pagan
popery amy lie blatantly, and weak kneed evangelical papers like
"Christianity Today" may crawl along with the rest, but God
blesses Paisley's ministry and all Hell cannot deny that such is
the case. The Free Presbyterian Church is enjoying a meteoric
rise and each church emphasises sound doctrine, soul winning
missionary outreach and separation from apostasy and comprimise.
A man of God does not need the propaganda and power which Rome
enjoys in the World today. One with God is a majority. Paisley,
like Luther before him, has trust in Almighty God...the force of
evil, no matter how firmly arrayed they might be, are doomed to
defeat."
     Bob Jones University is well known as the vanguard of racism
and white supremacy. Its radio station and newspapers waft forth
biblical quotations supporting white supremacy and the
subordinate position of "the Negro". As one might guess, Bob
Jones Unniversity is blatantly anti-Catholic and anti-Red. Those
so portrayed generally include anyone to the left of George
Wallace. The founder of the university, Bob Jones, Sr., was a
"big-wig" in the KKK back in the 1920's. When he percieved a
cultural drift toward legitimation of racial views through
college endorsement, he invested his money in the university he
billed "the world's most unusual." Jones was the most popular
evangelist of his time. By the age of forty he had converted a
million people:
     "When he hit town things happened. People didn't march down
to the mourners bench for an eveninng's catharsis and then forget
it. The fear of God hung over the community long after Rev. Jones
had departed. When he preached in Dothan, Alabama, the people
decided to close the brewery, although it was the chief industry.
Fifty years later it is still closed."
     Jones is an example of the militant Funddamental fervor that
flooded the South after World War 1. The disappointments of the
war, the return of Black soldiers from the front, "uppity" after
their freedom abroad, falling agricultural prices, and the return
of the dull, listless life of the small towns--all were
responsible for the rise of the KKK of the 20's.
     The Klan was revied by an Alabaman, William Joseph Simmons,
who in the darkness of Thanksgiving night 1915, climbed Stone
Mountain with a group of friends in white robes. They gathered
beside a flag-drapped altat with a Bible open to Romans 12.
There, "Bathed in the sacred glow of the fiery cross, the
invisible empire was called from its slumber of a half a century
to take up a new task." The Klan was resucitated. The newly
founded Klan struggled for five years to make converts. But with
the nationwide showing of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation",
heralded by President Wilson as "the pageant that finally told
how history should have been written," 100 percent Americanism
began to rear its head, hand-in-hand with Klan revival. Simmonns
had declared: "America is no melting pot...my friends, your
government can be changed between the rising and the setting of
one sun...when hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box and their
vores outnumber yours, then the alien horde has got you by the
throat."
     The South was industrializing. Poor whites were moving to 
the cities to take up factory jobs. The typical poor white was
uprooted and confused. And here ws the Black returning from the
war and the immigrants in the North competing with his labor. To 
the uprooted, the Klan mollified the poor white's sense of
confusion and defeat by dubbing him a Knight of the Invisible
Empire. To  the small shopkeeper and artisan, the Klan, with its
econommic boycott, became a powerful tool in his competition with
Jews and Catholics. Like Paisleyism and facism in general, the
KKK was chiefly a phenomenom of the small towns and growinng
cities, not rural areas:
     "The Klan was a means of giving them an innsturment with
which they could effect their community and become important. The
robes, the flaming cross, the spooky processionals, the kneeling
recruits, the occult liturgies, all tapped a deep urge toward
mystery and brough drama into the dreary routine of a thousand
communities."
     Wilbur Cash observed: "Here is ghostly rides thru the
moonlit, aromatic eveninng to whip a negro or a prostitute or
some poor white given to violate the 7th commandment...to tar a
feather a labor organizer or a schoolmaster who had talked his
new ideas too much--in slow swaying noonday parades where every
Negro was gone from the streets, and the Jews, Catholics and
aliens had their houses and shops shuttered--here was surcease
for the personal frustrations and itches of the Klansman of
course. But the old coveted, splendid sense of being a heroic
blade, a crusader sweeping up mystical slopes for White
supremacy, religon, and morality, and all that had made up the
faith of the Fathers: of being the direct heir to continuous line
of the confederate soldiers at Gettysburg, and of those old
Klansmen who  had once driven out the carpetbagger and tamed the
scalawag; of participating in ritualistic assertion of the
South's continuing identity, its will to remain unchanged and
defy the ways of the Yankee and the world in favor of that one
which has so long been its own."
     The Klan in the 1920's was a move against modernizatin and
secularism. In fact, one cannot differentiate between the rie of
fundamentalism and the Klan--both were products of the smae
mentality. The Klan waged war against all immoralists, against
Catholics, Jews and all non-Anglo-Saxons. The "True American"
movment was popular in the South during the rise of the Klan; it
witnessed one of its proponents, Governor Sidney J. Cats, stand
firm against the imminent transfer of the Holy See to Florida.
Florida, it would appear, is not so far from Belfast. The True
Americans in Birmingham were successful in ousting Catholics from
county and municipal jobs.
     Both the Orange Order and the Klan, with their ritual and
secrecy, were largely derived from the panoply of that other
"great" institution, the Masonic Order. Fraternal orders appear
to be culturally aligned to the Anglo-Sazon psyche. Like the
Orange Order, the Klan had powerful connections with the
churches. Charles Alexander, in his treatise on the Klan in
Texas, "Crusade for Conformity", has noted that the Klan often
took to marching unannouced into Sunday services in order to
present the minister with a donation.
     "The Klan courted the Protestant ministers by making them
exempt form payment of initiation fees and dues, by posing as the
defender of the conservative moral code, by warring on
bootleggers, by contributing money to impoverished preachers and
their churches and by urging members of their order to attend
church regularly and contribute freely. If Klansmen were to be
100 percent Christians, they had to go to Church every Sunday.
Give your support and encouragement to your ministers; send your
children to Sunnday school."
     Likke the Orange Order, the KKK entered into politics. In
the early 1920's the Klan was in complete control of the cities
of Atlanta, Fort Worth, Birmingham, Dallas, Tulsa and Little
Rock. Thousands of office holders owed their places to the Klan,
and more reached the House and Senate thanks to the Klan-
delivered votes. Total membership reached a peak of 3 million in
1923; according to another source, 8 million had joined the Klan
by 1925.
     The Klan's influence in politice faded after 1925. Unlike
the Orange Order, the Klan never developed a specific political
program, nor did it have a dynamic leadership. After scandals
involving the two main organizers--Clarke and Mrs. Tyler (found
carousing in bed together) and the imprisonment of the Grand
Wizard for murder and rape--the Klan disintegrated quickly. But
the social ideology behind the Klan never faded. It is said that
in small towns in rural areas, sheriffs ofter wear hoods at night
when prowling for disobedient blacks. Lynchings, tar and
featherings, burnings, all were numerous and inglorious in the
1920's. In the South, the rise of the black civil rights movement
witnessed a revival of violence and the reemergence of the Klan.
A similar development arose in Northern Ireland with the advent
of Catholic civil rights. Paisley's henchmen, militant Orangemen,
embarked on an equally violent crusade with disasterous results.
for the statelet of Northern Ireland.
     As we have noted, in the South as in Northern Ireland,
politics is controlled by the upper classes to the extent that
partisan politics in the current U.S. definition has always been
unknown. In fact, black voting registration in Dixie was a mere 5
per cent in 1940. By 1950 it had climbed to 20 percent and by
1960 up to 28 percent. Registration reached 44 percent for the
1964 presidential election. However, in many areas registration
hovered nearer the earlier figures. Although the voting
participation has risen considerably among the white population
in subsequent elections, often the only participation in the body
politic by these poor Protestanta is in the area of local law
enforcement. In both sections the police and local magistrates
are drawn from the lower classes. What this has meant with regard
to justice and attempts to achieve civil rights, is violence and
bloodshed. In the South today, as in Ulster, the upper classes
have organized themselves into 'respectable' racist bodies, be
they White Citizens Councils or the upper and middle class
manipulation of the Orange Order and the recent Vanguard
Movement. In both sections these respected bodies and personages,
making speeches about law and order, stir the passions of the
crowd with attacks on all who oppose their principles--the
doctrine of white Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Like the Orange Order,
the Citizens' Councils have succeeded where the Klan failed as an
institution, and few politicians in the South can be elected
without their endorsement.

                    THE SUBORDINATE MENTALITY

      
     The system that operates in Northern Ireland and the South
has served to bolster a subordinate mentality among the
discriminated groups in both sections. This phenomenon has been
labeled "projection" or "seiality by many theorists:
     "Projection is one of the most common consequences of
repression. When an individual attributes to another individual
or group those traits and motives which actually threaten his own
peace of mind, and when, by so doing, the individual manages to
reduce or rationalize away some of his own feelings of guilt,
anxiety, or envy, as the case may be, that process is called
projection. This psychodynamic process may be found at work in
the collective as well as individual behavior, and it is
especially prevalent where inter-group, inter-ethnic, and
international relations are concerned. Some of the most thoroughy
documented examples of projecction may be found in case studies
of anti-semitism conducted by psychoanalysts and clinical
psychologists."
     "In the South this attitude has produced the Negro 'shuffle"
while in Northern Ireland, and in all of Ireland prior to
independence, the "stage Irishman" was made famous in the English
dance halls and plays. It is interesting to note, that  durinng
the heyday of English Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism parallels were
frequently drawn between the 'childish' Irish and the Negro race.
Both the Blacks and Irish had to be protected from their own
inferiorities by a paternalistic Anglo-Saxon race. Both the
Blacks and the Irish used this protection and developed it into a
self-preservstion mechanism. It has become a means whereby one
can mask one's own feelings by projecting the stereotype believed
by the upper class to be one's own identity."
     This mode of psychic operation is passing with the increaded
militancy of both orders, black and Catholic irish. The young
militants castigate the middle class and upper class members of
their group for their cooptation by the establishment. The
Churches in both sections have served to bolster the doubly
exploitative system by their 'pie-in-the-sky' attitude. As well,
the history of the established Churches in both sections has been
on of close collaboration with the authorities. At times the
Churches have not only sanctioned the authorities but have gone
so far as to help suppress movements for freedom.
     The complete subordination of both Irish Catholics and
Southern blacks over the passage of time  has innstilled a
defeatist attitude in the minds of the most oppressed. In the
South attempts at increasinng the voting preogative of the blacks
are still thwarted by black fear, ignorance and cynicism--
especially after Martin Luther King's defeats. Acceptance of a
militant stance by Catholics in Northern Ireland has met with
similar difficulties. Raising the level of consciousness of both
groups is an uphill task for militants in both sections.

                          FINAL REMARKS

      
     In conclusion then, the class-racial structure found in the
American South shares many similarities with a social structure
operating in Northern Ireland. This paper has attempted to
demonstrate that these similarities are not merely coincidental.
They are the product of ethnocentrism and like economic
exploitative systems. The Anglo-Saxon culture that gives the
South its distinctive institutions is derived from the parent
culture developed in the nine counties of Ulster. The mentality
that produced the Anglo-Saxon value system put into operation a
class-ethnic system to bolster the dominant economic position of
the upper classes.
     The cleavages instituted by this exploitative system are
bearing fruit in both quarters. Class consciousness continues to
be thwarted by the supremacy values of the dominant class-racial
group. Few inroads have been made in uniting the lower classes of
both 'races'. In fact the status (both position and prestige) in
the face of subordinate group militance has driven the lower
classes of the dominnant group to right wing ideology. The upper
order continue to rule the roost. Principles of 'divide and rule'
still govern class relationships in Northern Ireland and in the
southern United States, and will no doubt continnue to do so for
some time.

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