Editorial: Protestant disadvantage?

There is a great deal of deprivation in many working class Protestant areas of Northern Ireland and it needs to be tackled urgently.

It is easier to identify these smaller disadvantaged areas now that the Noble measures split Northern Ireland into 890 super output areas (SOAs) rather than 582 electoral wards.

Whichever way we look at it, the Shankill is badly off. One of the Shankill SOAs is the second most disadvantaged in Northern Ireland and another is seventh; one part of Woodvale is in the worst 20.

So are many Catholic areas, headed by Whiterock and featuring the Falls and New Lodge in Belfast and Brandywell and Creggan in Derry. Overall, disadvantage is more severe among Catholics than among Protestants.

EU funding

It is welcome therefore that the Democratic Unionist Party, now the biggest political grouping, accepts that poverty affects all communities and must be tackled urgently and systematically. But where does that leave the debate about the causes of the recent Loyalist riots?

One argument is that, whilst both Catholics and Protestants suffer from disadvantage, Protestant areas are more likely to have weak community infrastructure and less likely to receive funding from sources like the European Union Peace Fund.

A report commissioned by the Department for Social Development, disclosed in last month’s SCOPE, contradicted the notion of Protestants suffering more from weak infrastructure. In fact Catholics make up well over half of the population of these weak areas.

Unpublished report

This month, we have information on another unpublished report by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, which shows that Protestants have done quite well out of EU money to build up community infrastructure (measure 2.7). Groups in Protestant areas put in slightly more applications for funding, 31, than the 30 submitted from groups in Catholic areas and were more likely to succeed (61% versus 50%). More to the point, 57% of the money allocated went to beneficiaries in Protestant areas compared with 43% to those in Catholic areas.

We already know from a report published by the Special European Union Programmes Body earlier this year that Catholics make up 72% of the population of the 500 most deprived areas (using the older Noble indicators) and that these areas submitted 1,600 applications for Peace II funding overall. Within these most deprived areas, Protestants made more applications and received more funding per head of population than Catholics.

Facts like these are lost in a debate about ‘perceived’ grievances and we have heard much about the supposed gains Catholics have made from the use of violence. But the disadvantaged Catholic communities from 30 years ago, 20 years ago and ten years ago in west and north Belfast, Derry and elsewhere are still with us.

Anti-poverty campaign

What about solutions? NICVA has been running a campaign to sharpen up the government’s anti-poverty strategy. Some of the proposals will help all disadvantaged communities, such as an assault on the problem of economic inactivity, higher benefits and national minimum wage, better childcare, an attack on health inequalities and resources to build community confidence.

Perhaps the most important is an attack on educational inequality. Here is where perceptions really are important. Long-term social change can take many years to work its way through to people’s consciousness; the loss of the shipyards and heavy engineering industry in Northern Ireland has battered the job prospects of Protestant working class boys in particular. In the days when the phone call from the recruitment officer at Harland and Wolff to the school was all-important; educational qualifications did not matter.

The phone calls have long since stopped but there is no upgrading of the importance of education to take their place. In addition, the selection system at 11 means that grammar schools, especially on the Protestant side, are dominated by middle class pupils. People from the Shankill and other working class Protestant areas have long been the losers. They should look to the privileges of the middle class in education, job security and high incomes instead of looking enviously at supposed gains by their disadvantaged colleagues in Catholic areas. All will gain from a proper anti-poverty strategy.

Back to SCOPE, October 2005