Migration in Scotland & Ireland
Scot's role in the plantation
The early plantations of Ireland in Medieval times and under the Tudors before 1606 did not concern the Scots (other than sending thousands of fierce Redshank mercenaries who had replaced the Gallowglass) -the Scots we were at this point a completely separate nation. After however the union of the crowns in 1603 the king now in London starts to involve Scots.
The lowlands of Scotland had it's reformation by this point. These however were Presbyterian’s and not part of the King's Church. Further the reformation in the lowlands had been more complete than England's with only 5% or so left of the old faith. However in the Gaelic Highlands most were initially anyway catholic. Before the union of the crown the King had to tread a careful path of trying not to upset anybody just too much, so there was a nervous peace on the subject -he took it out on witches and warlocks instead. Sword waving clansmen to the North, Reivers and Mosstroopers to the South and he kind of ran the bit in the middle.
James VI&I the new king came to terms with the ongoing Tyrone rebellion, against the Tudor conquest of Ireland. 130,000 dead and Ulster particularly devastated. Indeed James had been in part selected because he seemed to hold together part catholic part protestant Scotland with limited casualties.
The new king initially magnanimous stops the war, the Irish tried again to rebel in a thing called the flight of the Earls, with Spanish aid -it failed. Jamie hatched a scheme to up the plantation effort of Ireland, increasing the numbers of staunch loyal protestants -half from Scotland. Mainly into devastated Ulster, with considerable areas of it's land gone
fallow.
That and take the Catholic churches and land and hand it over to his own with a view to conversion of the natives. Then confiscate and redistribute lands from the rebellious Irish nobles.
Scotland's Great famine, the Seven ill years
In the 1680s-90s Similar levels of death to the later Irish famine, given as about 12% though this may vary by historian. Equally 10-15% of the country migrated, 7000 to America, 20,000 to Europe and England but 80-100,000 to Ireland Coming during the famine particularly from Aberdeen area where the famine was at 25% deaths, surprisingly also from Argyll where a third of the migrants came from, so many were Gaels. Though Argyll is Campbell land and they were Presbyterian. 100,000 migrated outside this famine. Scotland's population a bit under 1 million
In Ireland facing continued persecution from both sides, government and Catholics constituting the core of 150 to -300,000 of Presbyterian led nonconformist Scotch-Irish re-migration to pre-revolutionary America in particularly early 1700s but continuing till the revolution. Their numbers boosted by English nonconformists mainly but also French Huguenots, Quakers and even Germans.
Interestingly the numbers of Scots who migrate to Ireland are as we shall see actually quite similar to the Irish who come later to Scotland after their famine in the 19th century, which was at a similar level. Both also about 50% caused by a famine the rest economic migration.
For a short time Scots outnumber English migrants to Ireland but this falls away with English migration representing probably 70% if the modern Protestant Irish. Monarch's church and English nonconformists.
The Great Irish famine & Scotland
Irish Migration before the Famine
In the early 19th century there was seasonal migration for harvest collection in 1820 this was 8,000 by 1840 this was 25,000 most permanent migrants were skilled textile workers mainly from Ulster. The was also Irish immigration as manual labourers in farms and the textile industry. These seem to be mainly Catholic but seem to have included a large protestant element. However their religious hostility is not seen in a good light and are cold shouldered by native Scottish Episcopal and Catholic churches who had been achieving greater political and religious freedoms. Asking them to go to separate churches and so on.
The Irish Famine
The Irish famine 1846- 51 12% of Irish die, 12% migrate during this period. About 1 million die, due to the staple potato crop failing. 1 Million forced into migration. Continued migration reduces Ireland population 8.5 to 4.6 million by 1901. 1966 before Ireland’s population starts to increase. (Unlike Scotland Ireland was overwhelmingly rural). Falls most heavily on the 80% of Ireland that was Catholic.
Leads to mass migration to Scotland 80- 100,000 migrate during this period, with total migration about 180-200,000.
However to set this in context during this period 1846-70, there is also mass migration from Scotland. Individually, Canada, the US and Australia each receive over 200,000 Scots migrants. Helped along by the Highland clearances in full swing. Indeed Scotland between 1841 and 1931 sends 2.75million abroad, inclusive of England. From an original population of about 3million in 1840.
Scotland's population despite heavier per-capita industrialisation than England increases at half their rate. A symptom of the industrialisation of society is universally very rapid population growth.
A large typhus outbreak the poor relief system is overwhelmed, them more taxes raised and distributed again. Fever hospitals are set up and some help given. 13 medical personnel and 4 priests ministering to their flock also die. The Scots did try to help the victims of the famine.
The situation was partly alleviated by also large scale Scottish migration noted above, leaving lower paid jobs to the Irish. Manly mining, steel and shipbuilding. 1851 Irish Catholic migration tails off. The migrants spread about the Glasgow and Lanarkshire principally to represent 20- 30% of the population employed mainly in the heavy industries of the Industrial revolution.
Also there seems to have been no large scale unrest outside the 1850 The Anti-popery movement” anti catholic disturbances, led by the still small LOL quickly abated (the re-establishment of the Catholic church in England. Scotland waited till 1876, just in time for the LOL to arrive in force).
However the strong hostility to Protestants of the Irish catholic church as the now more numerous Irish Catholic hierarchy asserts it's self. And they try to section off the migrants and their descendants from the Scottish population. They place adverts on papers warning that socialising with them would lead to their “denationalisation” and the dangers of being tempted away from the faith by such interaction, by people "poisoning and corrupting their hearts".
Universally Irish nationalists The priesthood oust the local Scottish hierarchy of the church as soon as they die off and systematically replace it with the identity of the much larger Irish church –to the extent of knocking the thistles of the stonework of Chapels and replacing them with shamrocks. Religious Apartheid?
Universally Irish nationalists The priesthood oust the local Scottish hierarchy of the church as soon as they die off and systematically replace it with the identity of the much larger Irish church –to the extent of knocking the thistles of the stonework of Chapels and replacing them with shamrocks. Religious Apartheid?
Indeed in these early decades of the migration, the main objection was not religious. After all the Scottish protestants were fighting like two Kilkenny cats in a bag (to used an Irish metaphor) over the Disruptions in the 1840's. It was that the capitalists ever seeing an opportunity used the desperate position of the migrants to undercut the wages of the well organised Scottish workers with the that of they would “bring in the Irish”. Even then the reaction seldom spilled over into violence. Relations though strained at times
remain a nervous peace. Jobs in the expanding Scottish industries pay far better than a farm labourer in the fields of famine stricken Ireland. In general conditions in Scotland were better than England where Anti Catholic riots and killings broke out the immigrants herded into the worst conditions -Angel Fields in Manchester being a particular point.
“The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity. This is the impression and the line of thought which the exterior of this district forces upon the beholder.”
Friedrich Engels
Protestant Irish Migration and the Orange Lodge
The Orange Lodge early doors
Founded in Ireland 1795, the government found use for them in quelling the 1797 protestant led rebellion. First Lodge in Scotland 1807, First 12th in Glasgow 1821. 1835 The Cumberland scandal an attempt to oust queen Victoria from inheriting the throne -banned for sedition. 1836 reconstituted as the Loyal Orange Lodge. Had to swear to be loyal to the monarch you see.
1830's Protestant Irish migrants important as skilled textile worker in the expanding Industrialisation of Scotland. Orange Lodge heavily associated with Protestant migration to Scotland 1836-45 4 rising to 12 lodges in Glasgow there is also no Lodge building in Scotland. Scotland actually dominated by the Liberals in this era who were in favour of Catholic emancipation. The Lodge is not a significant presence at this point and remains very closely associated with Irish Protestant Migrants. Much of the -at this stage- sporadic trouble however reflected this group, who were militantly anti-catholic.
The native Scots far less so, they for instance provoked a riot in Airdrie in 1836 and were banned by the council from marching. Orange parades were banned in many towns in Lanarkshire in the 1850's.
A problem was that fraternal organisations such as the Masons did not recruit Catholics -who were forbidden to join by their church- however they simply set up their own. This also may have affected this group who though protestant were very much rough trade so turned to the LOL.
Also the Protestant Irish are equally considered with the Catholic unruly, EG in 1848 29% of Irish people in jail in Airdrie were Irish Protestants. Unlike the stereotype they were recorded as having a similar 40% semi-literate or illiterate profile.
1845- 51 The Irish famine and the migration of the Catholic Irish to Scotland, oddly there seems little growth in The LOL. And there is little increase in trouble as a result of the migration.
Mainly there is an outbreak in 1850 but this was part of a UK wide reaction to the re-establishing of the Catholic church in England. This pattern continues till the 1870's.
Protestant Irish migration
1871 The first physical Orange Lodge building built in Scotland equates with the rise of Protestant migration replacing Catholic as the primary Irish group migrating to Scotland. 80% of the Irish migrants Ulster Protestants during this period. 1870-1900 45-60,000, with them is comes an exponential increase on the Orange lodge, indeed it is suggested in some quarters the standard 25% may be nearer a third.
It also coincides with migration from Ulster during the 1870 to early 20th century of over 1Million.
With this comes more prevalent militant Anti-Catholicism and anti-home rule politics. By 1901 there were about 35,000 members of the LOL in Scotland, rising to 40,000 in the inter-war years, dipping during the war but recovering by the mid 1950s and rising to 60-80,000 during the late 70's to the late 80s buoyed by the troubles, then declining steeply to about 5000 at present.
The LOL has always had a strong female presence in Scotland indeed in the 1930- 50s period may represent the majority of members. Throughout it's history it has and maintains strong connections including familial to Ulster in 1881 72% of office bearers were Irish born even up to the 1930s the vast majority had Irish antecedence, either Irish fathers or grandparents this obviously has thinned out in modern times as Ulster migration has declined.
However they remain far more linked to Ireland by dint of the annual visit for the 12th and are far more connected to Ireland by family than the Catholic minority. They remain looked as as extremists by most protestants and bigots by many more. Though just claiming protestant views they push heavily the links to the monarchy and are more Episcopalian and unionist than the Presbyterian traditions of Scotland.
Political & Social Implications
They both follow Irish politics, the Catholic group follow nationalist politics Irish home rule movement in the 1870s to the early 20th century initially under under Charles Stuart Parnell also the Fenian brotherhood the attempted rebellion of 1848 and 1867, bombs on the London underground 1883- 5, Phoenix park murders, home rule crisis in the early 1900s. Obviously on the home rule side of the Irish question, in direct opposition to the Orange lodge. Irish politics was of course very violent on both sides.
The protestants follow unionist politics, they aligned with the Conservatives and Unionist parties helping to depreciate the working class vote toward reform even Socialism and helped deliver Unionist votes even in strongly working class constituencies and opposed the early stirring of nationalism in Scotland. violently against Home Rule and with "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" Lord Carson and his Volunteers.
Orange leaders preaching against Bolshevism and it's link to Catholicism -how they reached that conclusion is a complete mystery. Irish politics was of course very violent on both sides. With frequent clashes with the LOL and Catholics identifying with nationalist politics. It brings in also a generalised attitude to bigotry toward people for simply being of a different religion.
Politically under these influences Scotland was changed, helped by the extension of the franchise to all male householders. Which surprisingly shifted the political colour from Liberal dominated Scotland, where they might garner up to 85% of the vote toward conservatism. At the heart of that conservatism, religion loyalism, the time of the Unionists which went on till the 50s. Exacerbated by events in Ireland, the partition of Ireland, the Free state, the fall out from the great
War. The Easter rising. The establishment
of Irish home rule passed by the House of Commons in 1914 was forgotten, as was the sacrifice of many Catholic Irish in the Great war. The decimation of the Ulster division on the Somme was not.
They were many Lord Carson’s volunteers and the only time the Orange parades have been cancelled was in 1916. Scotland 135,000 died 10% of the UK population, 20% of the casualties, nearly as high as France actually higher than Russia as a percentage of WW1 dead, mostly ignored. As was a Scottish home rule bill which was at the Lords in 1914. A huge 400,000 mass migration mostly to Australia, imposed on the Scottish people.
The growth of the Labour movement as a radical even revolutionary force in Scotland. The terror of the Peti-bourgeois shop keeper and the foreman equally, the minister and the priest in it’s atheist views.
And how the George Square incident must have scared them. The police read the riot act at 60,000 workers from Clydeside protesting in the Square who got beaten up. The authorities panicked and sent 10,000 troops to Glasgow complete with tanks to stop a phantom revolution. Russia and the revolution scared more than it pleased, and the religious conservatism of the Chapel and the Kirk, wanted the status quo.
The Liberal party's 1918 education act further fossilised the divisions in Scotland, recognising the already prevalent Catholic education system and funding it.
The English do not however do this and integrate their education system. It maintenance becomes the central promise however to Labours Catholic vote. Not of course Socialism that went long before Gordon Brown got his paws on anything
The Unionist party dominated politics, despite the Legends of John MacLean, the Red Clydesiders and the Labour party and kept thing just how they liked it.
The Unionists ran Scotland with the help of the LOL during this period and much of the more radical activities were more often to do with the Communists however very strong particularly in Red Clydeside. And the Labour party remained timorous and seldom in power until the post war era, and even then rule of course came from London.
Indeed the catholic part was counter to the social side of reformism, particularly the issues of divorce, women's rights and contraception, membership of socialist organisations discouraged by a conservative clergy. Even showing reluctance to oppose Franco in the Spanish Civil War seeing the Republicans as anti-catholic. Indeed the Scottish catholic press ran numerous articles claiming the Republic was run by an anti-Catholic Jewish/Masonic Bolshevik cabal. The view from the LOL I have noted above?
So the witches brew of sectarianism was developed in Scotland, segregated communities, ancient religious divisions, split and confused national loyalties. What was loyalty? To Britain, Empire, religion, the kirk, was it the Presbytery or
the queens church, or the chapel. The
nation, which nation Britain, Ireland, if Ireland, which Ireland, Scotland where you lived?
A confused identity emerged, a bit Scottish a bit Irish a bit British in different measures and religious affiliation.
Secret Societies, the Masons, the Orange lodge the various and numerous Irish societies, the Knights of Columba, the Ancient order of Hibernians. All questionable, the Fenians, heroes or cowardly terrorists, the Orange lodge banned several years back for sedition by parliament for trying to overthrow Queen Victoria, in the Cumberland plot now posing as ultra loyalists. Those societies and churches bullied you into line.
The normal process of communities blurring through contact and intermarriage was stunted. The two groups were kept apart socially -though they did intermarry- and friction grew particularly the Old Firm became a visible focus for the groups. Orange bands flourished, Hibs bands multiplied in reaction. Violent clashes were numerous. Yea stayed wi yer ain, you had to. In Scotland the religious protection racquet was in full swing, and loyalty the Vig.