6 - Outsiders?, 1918–1921

Summary

This chapter assesses the political behaviour of Protestant republicans during the revolutionary period, as well as the attitude of the wider Irish advanced nationalist movement towards Protestants. It describes the various means by which some Irish Protestants sought to demonstrate loyalty to the idea of an Irish republic, at a time when the republicanism was adopting a more Catholic nature. It discusses the conscription crisis, which prompted the creation of a specifically Protestant anti-conscription organisation. It analyses the Irish Guild of the Church, the bulk of whose membership had by 1918 come to sympathise with the rebels, and the Irish Guild of Witness, a splinter group, whose members remained loyal to the Crown. The next section deals with the Ulster problem, which forced Protestant republicans to reorient their message in an effort to detach the Protestant working class from unionism, and so avert partition. Finally, it discusses the Protestant Friends of Ireland, an American-based nationalist body, and examines some of the rhetoric Éamon de Valera used about Irish Protestants during his American tour, 1919–1920. Ultimately, this chapter shows that, facing a republican movement that was becoming more Catholic, Protestants were forced to form their own, explicitly Protestant organisations.