Discrimination against Catholics in Scotland was no simple expression of religious prejudice, but a part of an imperialist ruling-class strategy to maintain its rule, finds Lewis Akers

Sectarianism in Scotland has long been seen as the preserve of the lumpen elements of society, reduced to a phenomenon that only exists as cultural baggage at Celtic and Rangers football matches. However, Chris Bambery’s The Old Divide: A History of Sectarianism in Scotland sets the record straight and demonstrates that sectarianism isn’t some aberration but has been engineered by those at the top of society as a tactic of divide and rule.

Unlike many contemporary accounts, which chart the starting point of sectarianism in Scotland as being primarily religious and linked to the football rivalries of the old-firm derby, Bambery takes a much more serious approach. He is clear that the purposes of sectarianism in Scotland are not primarily religious but political. He says that ‘the rise of both the Orange Order and sectarianism in Scotland’ should be seen not as independent but linked to the ‘role of Scotland in colonising Ireland for the British Empire and in repressing subsequent Republican movements which challenged colonial rule’ (p.24). The end they serve was in its origins to justify the maintenance of the British Empire, the subjugation of Ireland and any demands for independence or home rule.

With its starting point being the political and class-based use of sectarianism as a tool for the ruling class, it is able to offer a more clear-sighted analysis that cuts through the window dressing often attached to current discussions on sectarianism. Bambery’s key argument is that sectarianism ‘trickles down from the top encouraged by elite voices’ and that although it is often working-class people ‘who pick up on this and carry out racist attacks’, that ‘they are incited to do that from above’ (p.25). This makes the history altogether the more interesting as it gives explanation to sectarianism as a tool for political control rather than just an aberration or some organic outburst of hate from below.

Bambery charts the rise of sectarianism from the foundation of the first Orange Lodge in the early nineteenth century. The lodge was set up first by those ordinary Protestants in Scotland who had been involved in crushing the 1798 United Irish uprising, and afterwards developed further in response to the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants in the wake of great famine in Ireland. These roots are crucial to understanding the reactionary nature of loyalism today. Many of the ideas espoused by the United Irish uprising have their roots in the same place as the French Revolution, which happened only a few years before and provided inspiration to many key figures like Wolfe Tone. This shows that even from its origins, it was about defending the forces of reaction rather than the forces of progress, represented at the time by bourgeois liberalism and the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

One of the key arguments which is threaded through the book is the way in which through successive waves of Irish immigration into Scotland, sectarianism was used as a way of gatekeeping and excluding Irish immigrants (and by default, Catholics) from certain workplaces and industries. This was particularly the case in skilled trades, engineering, and manufacturing. Many industries along the Clydeside favoured Protestant workers because of the work of the Orange Order and Masonic Lodge, but one of the key examples is Scottish Protestant League which had a strong political voice in Glasgow, especially in the west of the city amongst skilled workers.

Capitalist interests, workers solidarity

In addition to the question of protecting Scottish jobs for the indigenous Scottish population, Bambery argues that the growth of sectarianism can be directly linked to opposition to the successive attempts at achieving home rule for Ireland. Elites in Scotland opposed home rule seeing it as the first domino to fall in the end of the British empire. As many Scottish industrialists relied on the empire for trade and access to wider markets, they saw it as untenable for home rule to be allowed to happen as it was a potential threat to their dominance in the markets.

This led to a trickle down of sectarianism from the top to the bottom, rather than what is assumed, which is that sectarianism is the result of working-class intolerance and prejudice.

To achieve this broad-based opposition to home rule, industrialists, specifically those on the west coast of Scotland, allied with the Conservative Party and the Orange Order to build opposition to home rule amongst the public. After the Reform Bills had been passed and there was a larger franchise amongst working-class men, the Conservative Party, through an organisation called the Primrose League, ‘was able to mobilise volunteer workers, especially among women, who undertook voter registration, canvasing, transporting voters to the poll, and general propaganda. The League ‘helped put the Conservatives on an equal footing, and by the 1890s a superior one, with the Liberals’ (p.78). This provided the Orange Order, which had a strong connection with the Conservative Party, a strong political voice which gave sectarianism an even greater sense of institutional strength and acceptability.

It is worth noting that there are many parallels between the voice and veil of acceptability that sectarian ideas and groups like the Orange Order got from the growing ascendancy of the Conservative Party, and its links to it, and those which the far right are currently gaining from the rise of Reform across the UK.

However, the book isn’t all about the persecution faced by Irish Catholics in Scotland. Bambery paints a picture throughout the book of Catholics fighting back against persecution, despite the weight of institutional racism of the police and the state against them. He points to a number of examples of the Irish and Catholics organising themselves against loyalist pogroms and in the workplace.

One key turning point seems to be the that Irish Catholics united with the Protestant working class and paved the way for the emergence of Glasgow as a site of industrial militancy and earning the label ‘red Clydeside’. The emergence of class solidarity through industrial disputes and political action worked as a bottom-up antidote to the scourge of sectarianism. While this was always in battle with the prevailing views in the church of Scotland and society at large at the time, it shows the power of building unity through struggle.

Understanding this history is crucial for understanding the situation with the far-right street movement in Scotland and across the UK today. It shows that there is a way through the current rise of the far right and the division sown by politicians today if we are able to unite working-class people from all backgrounds around demands that change their material conditions. Bambery’s book is an essential primer for those who want to understand the rise of the far right today in Scotland and the basis that it has in the history of sectarianism in Scotland. It will join his People’s History of Scotland as refreshing alternative to the histories of Scotland which fail to dig below the surface to discover the material reasons which lie behind comfortable assumptions of mainstream historians.