Fantasy Ireland?
Owen Bowcott noted that results of the census had raised sectarian tensions (and headcounts) every year since 1971. But when the last results were finally announced in December 2002 the hope of Catholics attaining majority status by force of higher birth rates, drained away almost overnight. Yet all of Northern Ireland’s Nationalist parties hold out for a possible future re-unification. Boston based writer Ron de Pasquale reckons it relies on pitching it coherently to the Protestant middle class.
Mick,
… Underlying all this is a slowing of the Catholic birth rate.
It is certainly slowing, but still higher than the Protestant birthrate. Sectarian birthrate stats are surprisingly hard to find, by the way, so I’d be interested to hear where you got yours.
A proxy is to look at the birthrates in council areas that are largely of one religion – for example Carrickfergus for Protestants, and Newry and Mourne for Catholics. The differences are quite striking: Carrickfergus (around 90% Protestant, or at least ‘non-Catholic’) has a birthrate per 100 of 11.3, whereas Newry and Mourne (75% Catholic) has one of 15.6. You can pick other examples if you wish, but the pattern is much the same.
… re the rise in Unionist per centage
Don’t forget to factor in two things: firstly the continued decline in the vote going to the Alliance party and ‘others’. In the local elections the unionist parties may have simply been recovering some of their ‘natural’ voters from wherever they had strayed. The unionist percentage, in any caase, dropped by one percent between the 2001 Westminster elections (52.9%) and the 2005 Westminster elections (51.9%). Secondly, the slightly skewed effect of the new Electoral Register, which most people recognise affected the nationalist parties more than the unionists. This system has now been relaxed a bit, so expect to see some nationalist bounce-back next time.
… a birthrate per 100 … should, of course, read ‘a birthrate per 1000 …’. Sorry for the typos.
Like hen’s teeth Stephen.
I’m drawing primarily from two sources. Compton has figures he has compiled from Baptismal records that run from 1971 until 1987. It shows a drop in both Catholic and Protestant birth rates, but the former is way more pronounced than the latter.
Also David Coleman’s essay, Demography and Migration in Ireland North and South, which concludes:
Brian Boru,
“George it was in the news and is on the CSO website. Here for your info:”
Firstly, this is not the NQHS, as you stated, this is a population and migration estimate. They are totally different things. The NQHS doesn’t address nationality. Here is its output:
http://www.cso.ie/qnhs/core_outputs_qhns.htm
Secondly, nowhere in your links is it stated that 12,000 Eastern EU migrants are unemployed. I don’t have an issue with your 65,000 Eastern EU migrants estimate but I do with the one that 12,000 of them are “probably” unemployed.
I still don’t know where you are getting that 12% figure.
Sectarian Headcount fetishists:
This is what we all love and this is also the tragedy of our situation.
Did you know it is possible to go through the NI census website and work out ward by ward, village by village, pisshole in the snow by pisshole in the snow and find out who is on the up? The psychology of it all is great, warped, crack. If I look at bits of west Tyrone, for example I lump in every other religion and none to maximise the Prod headcount. Latvians, venusians, satanists, tree huggers, scientologits – they’ll all do to makee me feel that my wee hole in the hedge hasn’t gone completely green yet.
You’re all at it, go on, be honest, drooling over statistics and fighting over the nuances, giving your wishful thinking the force of fact with any available, twistable, spinable piece of data. Because at heart, though we dress it up intellectually, it still that ‘oul whore underneath: Two tribes playing the numbers game.
In the words of the master, Derek Mahon:
God, you could do it, God
help you, stand on a corner stiff
with rhetoric, promising nothing under the sun.
But sure I’m as bad
BogExile,
You’re all at it, go on, be honest, drooling over statistics …
I’ve never denied it. I love the stats.
Bogexile… got a link?
Here, I think.
The more brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, the more community you have, and the more contacts with community. It doesn’t matter if you’re name is Paisley or Durkin. A closer community would solve a lot of the problems in the western world that have developed over the last 40 years. (Not that i’m 40 but i thought i’d use a big round number).
China with it’s one child policy for Urban areas is in danger too. Just think, one child means no aunts and uncles, no cousins and of course no brothers and sisters. (At least you don’t have to share the inheritance). I think we should stop expecting and complaining about the state not helping, and start to look after ourselves through family and the extended community through larger families.
OK, i’ll get off the soapbox now.
http://www.nisranew.nisra.gov.uk/census/Census2001Output/KeyStatistics/keystats.html
Go, on, fill your boots!
Kinawley 3% more Catholic, Newry 128% more spied… etc etc.
Thanks lads… nice use of SVG, first time I think I’ve seen it used in anger since I learned it in college years ago
If you really want to fill your boots, you have to go to the NISRA interactive site where you can go past key statistics and get it broken down even further.
http://www.nicensus2001.gov.uk/nica/public/index.html
Mick,
I don’t know how old that essay is but the CSO did a fertility rate survey in 2003 where the high variant rate was put at 2.0 for the forseeable future, the medium one for 1.85 and the low for 1.71.
In 2004 and 2005, the birth rate has been following the high variant path.
Prof Tony Fahey, a sociologist with the ESRI said Ireland’s economic success appeared to be the driving factor behind our high birth rate.
This is backed up by the fact that the TFR fell consistently from 3.76 in 1960 to 1.85 in 1995 but that it has been rising with the economic boom.
Quote from Fahey:
“It’s striking that, despite what people say about the cost of childcare, we still have the highest fertility rates in the EU. The real driving factor would appear to be the economy and jobs,” he said.
“Ireland shares something in common with the US in that State support for childcare is pretty meagre . . . The lesson in the modern world is what encourages families to have children is not affordable childcare or tax breaks, but simply the abundance of jobs.”
NCB Stockbrokers said in a report today that Ireland’s favourable demographic profile will benefit the country’s economy over the next 15 years.
The report – called 2020 Vision – says the population of the Republic will grow by 30% to over 5.3 million by 2020.
So it seems if the Northern economy really does take off there is no saying where the demographics will go.
If it doesn’t, the region’s influence on the island will continue to diminish.
CSO Report:
http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/population/2004/Publication Pop & Labour force for web.pdf
’99 George, though I’d guess the data could be from a few years earlier. The differences between high and low rates are minimal when you compare them with the historic rate. And when you consider that 2.1 is considered to be the replacement rate, its clear that Irish fertility rates have profoundly changed since its historic highs.
However you look at it, the projected increase in the Republic’s population is more likely to be based on the fact that it is attracting new people towards a successful economy than from indigenous growth patterns.
I’m not here trying to argue anything other than following previous lines of growth in the Northern Irish Catholic population is not taking account of new trends, and political stratagems based on such extrapolations are likely to end in failure.
Rather than banking on a huge increase in the Catholic population, it might be more productive for nationalists to begin selling the benefits of a UI to their Protestant neighbours.
Mick,
… it might be more productive for nationalists to begin selling the benefits of a UI to their Protestant neighbours.
They’re not mutually exclusive, you know.
Plus, there is the fact that if a community is more numerous, it is more visible. If it is larger and more visible, it starts to become the mainstream. The mainstream has a magnetic effect on many people, drawing them into its way of thinking. In this way, as ‘nationalist’ values become the norm, and not the exception, over wider areas of the north, they will start to become more accepted even by those people who may, in earlier years, have dismissed them. Little by little, one small step at a time, perhaps sub-consciously, the minority (unionist) population will start to take things like the Irish language, the GAA, and other aspects of ‘Irishness’ for granted.
Numbers help the process of osmosis, and are a handy complement to persuasion.
http://www.nisranew.nisra.gov.uk/census/Census2001Output/KeyStatistics/keystats.html
Go, on, fill your boots!
Kinawley 3% more Catholic, Newry 128% more spied… etc etc.
Even more remarkably, according to the Neighbourhood Statistics website, 112.1% of briths registered in the New Lodge in 2004 were to unmarried mothers. And no, I am not making that up!
Stephen while I would like that to be true, if what you were saying was true, then surely we wouldn’t have had partition in the first place?
George, while I agree our economy is doing well, I dispute the notions – pushed by the neo-liberal movement and the internationalist Left – that someone immigration is of life-and-death importance to our economy. Even if it is true that this is needed for 6% growth, I am sure the Irish people would be content with 3 or 4%. We risk storing up troubles here if we continue with the same rates of immigration. Immigrants need somewhere to live, and this extra demand pushes up house prices further. I believe that we need to optimise growth rather than aim for maximum growth – the latter being the govt’s policy it seems. This policy is very short-termist, and may ultimately be the cause of a housing crash as eventually the house-prices would go even further out of the affordability of Irish people. In that context, hundreds of thousands of jobs could go. It is better to aim for a level of growth that is sustainable, rather than a boom and bust cycle which I fear we are now risking. I heard in the radio today about a house in Clare going for 1 million euro, and one in Dublin going for 3.7 million. House prices are beginning to get out of control now, and this is not a trend we should be encouraging. It is all the more ironic the govt is ignoring this problem – and actually worsening it by its policies on immigration – when you consider the hullabaloo from them years ago about the Bacon report and looking for ways to moderate house-prices that were already a serious source of public-concern since the late 90′s.
Economic think-thanks tend to have a neoliberal bias, with their rants about “flexible labour markets” by which they mean us turning a blind eye to exploitation, displacement, and the flouting of labour law. I have to say that I would regard their advice on bringing unlimited numbers of cheap labour immigrants in with the deepest of suspicion – as do many, many Irish people. This ignores the non-economic complications of immigration – implications ignored by the political elite obsessed with placating their property-developer benefactors. It’s like the debate on the Act of Union 1800 all over again – every man has his price it seems…:(
Mick
I don’t like working with figures of religious allegiance and still less with Paul Compton’s revised amended estimate of religious allegiance in the context of a boycott. These are more likely to tell you who is going to communion than what the province thinks. The best source for what is really happening are the elections to the European Parliament, which have been held regularly every five years over 25 years. With only one constituency, and a small number of candidates, it is possible to get an idea of what the electorate really thinks.
The results are at:-
http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/fe04.htm
Adding these together I calculate that the Unionist 1st preference vote in these elections was:-
1979: 60.8
1984: 58.0
1989: 57.8
1994: 55.4
1999: 52.3
2004: 48.6
Thus in two and a half decades the Unionist vote has come down by 12.2%, which is consistent with my assertion that it comes down by 5% a decade, or 0.5% per annum.
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I believe some people may have had this idea before. I can’t see much evidence that it works. But if you could sell what no-one else has managed to sell, I’m sure we could pay you a commission.
Stephen is getting a little hysterial with this catholic birthrate thing, the nationalist vote is falling and the nationalist proportion of children is falling. As Paisley used to say, Prods have children too you know. I think nationalists should sit back and wait for their majority, it certainly worked for them when they talked about it in the 1930s.
Loyalist, you conveniently forget that for every Catholic death in the 6 counties, there are 2 Protestant ones due to the far older age-cohort in the latter community. So it’s not just about births. It’s about deaths too that will help determine events. Learn something new every day don’t you?
You know where the tip jar is Paddy!!
Using Paddy’s reference, the combined European Election votes of SDLP and SF are as follows:
79: 30.5
84: 35.4
89: 34.6
94: 38.8
99: 45.4
04: 42.2
These are the only people who can be expected to vote for a United Ireland as these are the only anti-partition parties. There may well be some Humeites who didn’t vote for SF or Morgan perhaps, but there is at least some support for the contention that the growth in votes for re-unification is slowing.
In total, 12% in 25 years, 0.5% per year.
A lot of the problem with these statistics is the fundamental problem that “past behaviour is no indication of future performance”.
I can only see us following the European trend, with more children out of wedlock, lower church attendance, and less baptisms. The increase of mixed marriages is also key. Take my wife’s family as an example – the mother has had 5 children – all Catholics. 1 is unmarried, 2 have married Catholics and have had 4 Catholic children, and 2 have married a Protestant and an Immigrant (me) respectively and have had 4 children, all un-baptised.
In the past, pressure was to baptise Children immediately and only marry your own kind. Now the pressures can be resisted and will become easier to resist as time goes on.
So all I can see for the future is the Catholic numbers to join the protestant numbers in decline. Whether they reach a magical 50% before this happens is uncertain – but I doubt it.
We have here an example of the confusion wrought by using religious figures in a political context. Statistics regarding the uptake of sacraments such as baptism and marriage are being brought into an argument over voting habits. This at last explains to me the surprising number of non-aligned among the under 4s. People are putting themselves down on the census as Catholic or Protestant, but their children as of no religion, because they were not baptised.
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This misses the point. We are primarily interested in whether Ireland will be united, and not whether a majority of its inhabitants are in receipt of the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
With respect to the posting above regarding the Nationalist vote in the EU elections, it should be born in mind that these are 1st preference votes. Fully fledged Unionists won only 48.6% of the 1st prefs in 2004, but they were able to pick up another 3% in transfers from Centrists, and therefore get two seats. Oscillations in the growth curve of the Nationalist vote and decline curve of the Unionist vote can be shown to be caused by expansion and contraction of the Centrist (usually Alliance vote).
It seems there are 1st pref Alliance, 2nd SDLP; 1st pref Alliance, 2nd UUP; and 1st pref Alliance, no 2nd pref. Some years only the last of these vote Alliance.
An interesting question which everyone could supply information on is, how do the children of mixed marriages vote? I always assumed that they tended to the Nationalist side because of the exclusivism of Orangemen, but there are plenty of counter examples. It seems to depend largely on what estate you were brought up in. Michael Stone mentions that some of his fellow UDA members had catholic mothers. The Loyalist criminal son of SDLP parents mentioned above would probably have come about because his parents moved to a middle class, mixed area, where their son mixed mainly with well-heeled but not entirely well-behaved young Protestants.
PaddyReilly,
An interesting question which everyone could supply information on is, how do the children of mixed marriages vote?
Some work was done on the issue of ‘tribal’ identification amongst the kids of mixed marriages a number of years ago. The results were approximately 50% saw themselves as ‘cultural Catholic’, 33% ‘cultural Protestant’, and 17% ‘a plague on both your houses’.
I would imagine that such kids would tend to gravitate towards the largest group in their environment, so if they are being brought up in a Catholic area they will tend towards nationalism, and the reverse if in a Protestant area. Hence the important osmotic effect of larger Catholic numbers and greater visibility for the nationalist viewpoint.
“Statistics regarding the uptake of sacraments such as baptism and marriage are being brought into an argument over voting habits. This at last explains to me the surprising number of non-aligned among the under 4s. People are putting themselves down on the census as Catholic or Protestant, but their children as of no religion, because they were not baptised.”
I would understand this argument if it was about the “religion” breakdown in the census. But the census figures we are discussing is “community background” breakdown in which the census people allocate nonaligned to one of the two background religions depending on other data such as the religion of the postcode, the religion brought up in, or the religion or community background of the child’s parents.
I am a bit worried that the number of catholics by community background now less than 50% of those under 10. Hopefully osmosis can come to the rescue – as Stephen Copeland says a lot of people at the margins will become nationalist by osmosis so hopefully the figure of 50% will not be too long in coming.
“Hopefully osmosis can come to the rescue – as Stephen Copeland says a lot of people at the margins will become nationalist by osmosis so hopefully the figure of 50% will not be too long in coming”
Osmosis: The movement of water through a membrane from a less concentrated to a more concentrated solution. And this is given as the reason why mixed-marriage kids will become nationalists (Stephen – do you have a source for your mixed marriage data)????
One things for sure, they won’t go for the extremes of Sinn Fein or DUP, if they vote at all. Anyone know how the non protestant/catholic vote now?
DK,
(Stephen – do you have a source for your mixed marriage data)????
‘Cross-Community Marriage in Northern Ireland’ by Gillian Robinson (1992). In section 1.3:
There is a popular view that a majority of the children born to cross-community marriages are brought up as Roman Catholic. Rose (1971, p.507) found that 4% of those he interviewed claimed to have been the product of a mixed marriage. Of these two-thirds declared themselves to be Roman Catholic. More recent evidence from the latest Social Attitudes survey in Northern Ireland (Stringer and Robinson, in preparation) shows that 2% of those interviewed said that their parents marriage was mixed (with 9% of respondents themselves being in a mixed marriage). Of those who said they were the result of a mixed marriage over half identified themselves as Roman Catholic while just under a third identified themselves as Protestant.
The research is at least 14 years old, and things have moved on, but I do not know of any reliable later research.
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This is demonstrably not the case. I already quoted the UDA members with Catholic mothers mentioned by Michael Stone in his book. This probably included MS himself: his mother, a Miss O’Sullivan I think, abandoned him at an early age.
Paul Hill came from a mixed, but broken marriage, and though his own Republican activities were imagined by the Surrey Police Force, he had a brother who was not so innocent.
Children generally conform to the speech patterns, and sectarian outlook of their peers, not their family. If they themselves are of suspect origin, they often have to go to extremes to prove themselves.
So if there is any ground to be made, it will be made by welcoming immigrants into your fold, and not by trying to work on the self-interest of the middle classes. Sinn Féin, quoted above as ‘extremist’, have not been lacking in this field, if the Rev Ian is to be believed.
“Community background” is at best an educated guess at sectarian status. I wouldn’t worry about the religious figures: concentrate on the electoral returns.
“Tiocfaidh ár lá” would do best as the motto of the Alliance Party in the short term (a couple of years) and the SDLP in the long term (half a dozen).
PaddyReilly,
“Tiocfaidh ár lá” would do best as the motto of the Alliance Party in the short term (a couple of years)
We read the same tea leaves! Though I reckon they’ve got a good half-generation of ‘power’ coming their way.
… and the SDLP in the long term (half a dozen).
Huh? Where do you get that from?
I am a bit worried that the number of catholics by community background now less than 50% of those under 10.
Declan, you are one warped dude.
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My tea-leaves say that sometime after January 2008 the Nationalist vote will have increased to the point where it equals the decreasing Unionist vote, say 48% each, and that consequently the Alliance Party will hold the balance of power.
Or maybe Unionists 49.5%, Alliance 2%, Nationalists 48.5%, same effect.
But the Nationalist vote will continue to increase, and consequently, after four years or so, the SDLP will hold the balance of power.