Sectarianism in Australia
Encyclopedia
Sectarianism
in Australia is a historical legacy from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Australia was a sectarian society divided between Catholics — predominantly but not exclusively of Irish
background — on the one hand and Protestants of British
heritage on the other .
of New South Wales
in 1788 brought anti-Catholic, Anglican Ascendancy
sectarianism with them: the settlement was perpetually on high alert in case of risings led by exile
d Irish political prisoner
s — there were rebellions in Ireland in 1798
and 1803
and many involved had been transported to Australia — in the context of war with republican
France
. No Catholic chaplains were permitted in the colony for its first thirty years.
In 1804, Irish prisoners staged a successful but doomed uprising
. Traditional Protestant British state-hatred of the "Catholic Irish" coalesced with contemporary fears of a pro-French republican fifth column and the Irish convicts and settlers — most of whom spoke Irish
as their community language until the 1850s — represented a separate ethnos
to be kept under constant suspicion and both formal and informal surveillance. Ironically, many of the Irish republican convicts who were prisoners after the 1798 rebellion were, in fact, Protestants. Nonetheless, it is recorded that predominantly Catholic Irish-speaking prisoners were frequently singled out for physical maltreatment by the authorities and sometimes murdered by English
convicts for speaking Irish on the basis that it was a conspiratorial tongue.
in 1854 and the transportation of Fenians (including their subsequent rescue
) in the 1860s meant loyalism
and Protestant ascendancy (including Orangeism) remained pre-eminent values in the colony in the second half of the nineteenth century, with most Protestant Australians of English background strongly attached to British imperialism as their core identities — at the time, British imperialism, loyalism and notions of innate Protestant and Anglo-Saxon
supremacy
were mutually reinforcing, though some Catholics in the Australian colonies attained positions of power by adopting vocally loyalist public postures.
, and they enjoyed an ostensibly more level playing field when it came to community relations and national influence. This was particularly noticeable in civic society, where the increasingly urban Irish Catholic
population played a disproportionate role in the labour movement
, including the foundation of the Australian Labor Party
, and were in direct political opposition to the disproportionate role in business played by Anglicans and Presbyterians who were typically involved in conservative politics. Sectarian antipathy between the two blocs characterised Australian society and politics in the 1920s and 1930s with Protestants using Freemasonry
to express a solidarity based on social and political anti-Catholic attitudes. This developed into a strong and mythic tendency sustained until the 1950s for most Catholics to vote Labor and for most Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists to vote for their conservative opponents.
— constantly fed sectarian tensions between Catholics of Irish nationalist background and Protestants of British unionist background. This divide became starkly and bitterly apparent during the First World War: Anglo-Saxon
Protestants were reflexively enthusiastic supporters of the war and conscription
, in line with the establishment culture of loyalism; conversely, Irish-Scottish Catholics were reflexively critical of both. When the Australian government tried to introduce conscription it was defeated — on two occasions by referendum
) — leading to a split in the ALP. Prominent Irish Catholic campaigners against the war and conscription such as Archbishop Daniel Mannix
were widely denounced in public as traitors by Protestants. The 1916 Easter Rising
in Ireland heightened the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic atmosphere, even though most prominent Catholics — including Archbishop Mannix — condemned the Rising.
The Irish War of Independence
worsened community relations in Australia even further. Anglo-Australian Protestants saw the First World War as a definitive loyalist experience in which Australia had contributed significantly to the honour and prestige of the British Empire
and organised loyalist rallies to counter those calling for Irish self-government; with the same reasoning, they considered Irish Australian Catholics with Irish nationalist sympathies to be treacherous— regardless of the fact that large numbers of Irish Australian Catholics had signed up, fought in the Australian contingents of the British army and been killed in Europe. Anglo-Australian Protestant ex-serviceman formed loyalist paramilitary
organisations in preparation for a final confrontation with Irish Australian Catholics in an atmosphere of severe sectarian and ethnic suspicion. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty
, partition of Ireland
and Irish Civil War
, sectarianism became less explicit but did not disappear: Australian conservatives — primarily Protestant — were still strongly loyalist and antipathetic to the existence of the 'disloyal' Irish Free State
.
and Vietnam War
, sectarianism did not pit Protestant against Catholic in supporting or opposing either conflict. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth
in 1953 and her tour around Australia in 1954 did not attract sectarian comment, either in terms of calls of 'disloyalty' from Anglo-Australian Protestants to Irish Australian Catholics, or in terms of calls of 'fawning' from vice versa. One commentator considers that anti-Catholic sectarianism in Australia expired in the 1950s when the predominantly Protestant conservative government of the time agreed to state aid for Catholic schools .
Nonetheless, the Australia of the 1950s was still an Australia in which notions of Catholicism and Protestantism, loyalism and disloyalism, were of everyday noteworthiness. Catholics were still associated with Irishness, Protestants with Englishness, though, as Australia developed away from Britain, the division became less bitter. This was enabled in part by the mass migration in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s of large numbers of non-English and non-Irish settlers, primarily from Italy
, Greece
, Malta
, and Eastern Europe
. Old enmities simply made less sense in this new cosmopolitan demographic environment.
What is more, the entry of Britain into the Common Market in 1973 devalued the long-cherished Anglo-Australian Protestant value of loyalism. Around the same time, republicanism in Australia
, largely divested of its historical insinuations, became a real possibility with the election of — and subsequent dismissal of — the Whitlam Labor Government, which dismantled many of the old imperial symbolism that had hitherto characterised Australian public office These reforms were continued during the 1980s and led, ultimately, to the Australia Act of 1986 which removed the power of the British Parliament to legislate for Australia.
campaign in 1999, where a number of commentators suggested that, broadly speaking, monarchists were more likely to be Protestants of English background and republicans were more likely to be Catholics of Irish background and that the republic debate itself risked resurrecting sectarian enmity between the two groups.
Sectarianism
Sectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
in Australia is a historical legacy from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Australia was a sectarian society divided between Catholics — predominantly but not exclusively of Irish
Irish Australian
Irish Australians have played a long and enduring part in Australia's history. Many came to Australia in the eighteenth century as settlers or as convicts, and contributed to Australia's development in many different areas....
background — on the one hand and Protestants of British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
heritage on the other .
Protestant Ascendancy and anti-Irishness as founding cultures of the nascent Australia
The British military authorities who founded the penal colonyPenal colony
A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory...
of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
in 1788 brought anti-Catholic, Anglican Ascendancy
Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...
sectarianism with them: the settlement was perpetually on high alert in case of risings led by exile
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
d Irish political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s — there were rebellions in Ireland in 1798
Irish Rebellion of 1798
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 , also known as the United Irishmen Rebellion , was an uprising in 1798, lasting several months, against British rule in Ireland...
and 1803
Robert Emmet
Robert Emmet was an Irish nationalist and Republican, orator and rebel leader born in Dublin, Ireland...
and many involved had been transported to Australia — in the context of war with republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. No Catholic chaplains were permitted in the colony for its first thirty years.
In 1804, Irish prisoners staged a successful but doomed uprising
Castle Hill convict rebellion
The Castle Hill Rebellion of 4 March 1804, also called the Second Battle of Vinegar Hill, was a large-scale rebellion by Irish convicts against British colonial authority in Australia...
. Traditional Protestant British state-hatred of the "Catholic Irish" coalesced with contemporary fears of a pro-French republican fifth column and the Irish convicts and settlers — most of whom spoke Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
as their community language until the 1850s — represented a separate ethnos
Ethnos
Ethnos may refer to:*Ethnic group*Ethnos...
to be kept under constant suspicion and both formal and informal surveillance. Ironically, many of the Irish republican convicts who were prisoners after the 1798 rebellion were, in fact, Protestants. Nonetheless, it is recorded that predominantly Catholic Irish-speaking prisoners were frequently singled out for physical maltreatment by the authorities and sometimes murdered by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
convicts for speaking Irish on the basis that it was a conspiratorial tongue.
Loyalism as state culture
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the immediate threat of an Irish convict seizure of the penal colony largely evaporated, though anti-Irish and anti-Catholic suspicions did not, particularly given the massive Irish migration occurring as a consequence of the Great Irish Famine between 1845-1849. Irish and Scottish involvement in the Eureka StockadeEureka Stockade
The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 was an organised rebellion by gold miners which occurred at Eureka Lead in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Battle of Eureka Stockade was fought on 3 December 1854 and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict...
in 1854 and the transportation of Fenians (including their subsequent rescue
Catalpa rescue
The Catalpa rescue was the escape, in 1876, of six Irish Fenian prisoners from what was then the British penal colony of Western Australia.-Fenians and plans to escape:...
) in the 1860s meant loyalism
Ulster loyalism
Ulster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...
and Protestant ascendancy (including Orangeism) remained pre-eminent values in the colony in the second half of the nineteenth century, with most Protestant Australians of English background strongly attached to British imperialism as their core identities — at the time, British imperialism, loyalism and notions of innate Protestant and Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
supremacy
Supremacy
Supremacy may refer to:* Supremacism, a philosophy that one is superior to others, so dominate, control or rule those who are not* Acts of Supremacy, 16th century laws in England concerning King Henry VIII and the church...
were mutually reinforcing, though some Catholics in the Australian colonies attained positions of power by adopting vocally loyalist public postures.
Position of Irish-Scottish Catholics and Anglo-Saxon Protestants
Irish Catholics were a greater proportion of the population in Australia than they had been in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrelandUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, and they enjoyed an ostensibly more level playing field when it came to community relations and national influence. This was particularly noticeable in civic society, where the increasingly urban Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
population played a disproportionate role in the labour movement
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
, including the foundation of the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
, and were in direct political opposition to the disproportionate role in business played by Anglicans and Presbyterians who were typically involved in conservative politics. Sectarian antipathy between the two blocs characterised Australian society and politics in the 1920s and 1930s with Protestants using Freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
to express a solidarity based on social and political anti-Catholic attitudes. This developed into a strong and mythic tendency sustained until the 1950s for most Catholics to vote Labor and for most Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists to vote for their conservative opponents.
Irish nationalism and a resurgent Empire loyalism
Towards the end of nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, growing unrest in Ireland — for example, the Land WarLand War
The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from...
— constantly fed sectarian tensions between Catholics of Irish nationalist background and Protestants of British unionist background. This divide became starkly and bitterly apparent during the First World War: Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
Protestants were reflexively enthusiastic supporters of the war and conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
, in line with the establishment culture of loyalism; conversely, Irish-Scottish Catholics were reflexively critical of both. When the Australian government tried to introduce conscription it was defeated — on two occasions by referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
) — leading to a split in the ALP. Prominent Irish Catholic campaigners against the war and conscription such as Archbishop Daniel Mannix
Daniel Mannix
Daniel Mannix was an Irish-born Australian Catholic bishop. Mannix was the Archbishop of Melbourne for 46 years and one of the most influential public figures in 20th century Australia....
were widely denounced in public as traitors by Protestants. The 1916 Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
in Ireland heightened the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic atmosphere, even though most prominent Catholics — including Archbishop Mannix — condemned the Rising.
The Irish War of Independence
Irish War of Independence
The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...
worsened community relations in Australia even further. Anglo-Australian Protestants saw the First World War as a definitive loyalist experience in which Australia had contributed significantly to the honour and prestige of the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and organised loyalist rallies to counter those calling for Irish self-government; with the same reasoning, they considered Irish Australian Catholics with Irish nationalist sympathies to be treacherous— regardless of the fact that large numbers of Irish Australian Catholics had signed up, fought in the Australian contingents of the British army and been killed in Europe. Anglo-Australian Protestant ex-serviceman formed loyalist paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
organisations in preparation for a final confrontation with Irish Australian Catholics in an atmosphere of severe sectarian and ethnic suspicion. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty
Anglo-Irish Treaty
The Anglo-Irish Treaty , officially called the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland, was a treaty between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and representatives of the secessionist Irish Republic that concluded the Irish War of...
, partition of Ireland
Partition of Ireland
The partition of Ireland was the division of the island of Ireland into two distinct territories, now Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland . Partition occurred when the British Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act 1920...
and Irish Civil War
Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....
, sectarianism became less explicit but did not disappear: Australian conservatives — primarily Protestant — were still strongly loyalist and antipathetic to the existence of the 'disloyal' Irish Free State
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...
.
Demographic and cultural shifts
When Australia entered the Second World War there was no repeat of the public anti-Catholic denunciations that had characterised society in 1914, even when in 1941 the British garrison at Singapore fell to the Japanese, leaving Australia largely undefended. Large numbers of Catholics and Protestants alike joined up to fight with Australian formations during the war. Similarly, when Australian troops fought in the Korean WarKorean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
and Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, sectarianism did not pit Protestant against Catholic in supporting or opposing either conflict. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
in 1953 and her tour around Australia in 1954 did not attract sectarian comment, either in terms of calls of 'disloyalty' from Anglo-Australian Protestants to Irish Australian Catholics, or in terms of calls of 'fawning' from vice versa. One commentator considers that anti-Catholic sectarianism in Australia expired in the 1950s when the predominantly Protestant conservative government of the time agreed to state aid for Catholic schools .
Nonetheless, the Australia of the 1950s was still an Australia in which notions of Catholicism and Protestantism, loyalism and disloyalism, were of everyday noteworthiness. Catholics were still associated with Irishness, Protestants with Englishness, though, as Australia developed away from Britain, the division became less bitter. This was enabled in part by the mass migration in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s of large numbers of non-English and non-Irish settlers, primarily from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Greece
Greek Australian
Greeks are the seventh-largest ethnic group in Australia, after those declaring their ancestry simply as "Australian". In the 2006 census, 365,147 persons declared having Greek ancestry, either alone or in conjunction with another ethnicity....
, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, and Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. Old enmities simply made less sense in this new cosmopolitan demographic environment.
What is more, the entry of Britain into the Common Market in 1973 devalued the long-cherished Anglo-Australian Protestant value of loyalism. Around the same time, republicanism in Australia
Republicanism in Australia
Republicanism in Australia is a movement to change Australia's status as a constitutional monarchy to a republican form of government. Such sentiments have been expressed in Australia from before federation onward to the present...
, largely divested of its historical insinuations, became a real possibility with the election of — and subsequent dismissal of — the Whitlam Labor Government, which dismantled many of the old imperial symbolism that had hitherto characterised Australian public office These reforms were continued during the 1980s and led, ultimately, to the Australia Act of 1986 which removed the power of the British Parliament to legislate for Australia.
Echoes of sectarianism
Thus the old sectarian divide — or, indeed, the English-Irish divide — had largely metamorphosised into a debate around the extent to which Australia, an independent country, should retain symbolic manifestations of its historic links to Britain, though anti-Irish sentiment resurfaced in the 1970s and 1980s. Recognition, however, that sectarianism as an everyday influence was a thing of the past was most clearly seen in the Republic referendumAustralian republic referendum, 1999
The Australian republic referendum held on 6 November 1999 was a two-question referendum to amend the Constitution of Australia. The first question asked whether Australia should become a republic with a President appointed by Parliament following a bi-partisan appointment model which had...
campaign in 1999, where a number of commentators suggested that, broadly speaking, monarchists were more likely to be Protestants of English background and republicans were more likely to be Catholics of Irish background and that the republic debate itself risked resurrecting sectarian enmity between the two groups.