THE ULSTER CONFLICT skilled workers of expelling Catholic workers from factories and shipyards at times of high sectarian tension. The sectarian riots also concretized the development of religious ghettos in Belfast with both Protestants and Catholics driving members of the other sect out of « their » areas. We have to look to factors such as the Orange Order's deliberate policy of apartheid (marrying a «Papist» was the most frequent cause of expulsion from the Order), and the determination of both Protestants and Catholics that education should remain under denominational control. The intense activity of priests on both sides of the religious divide was also a far from negligible factor. Between 1851 and 1911 the number of Catholic priests in Ireland outside Ulster increased from 2,500 to 4,000, the number of monks from 200 to 1,200, of nuns from 1,000 to 9,000, and the annual cost of religion was from £ 3-4 million. Catholic priestly productivity fell by half - there being one priest to about 1,000 laity in 1911 compared with one to 2,000 in 1851. Protestant soul-saving techniques, however, were approximately twice as labour-intensive and probably absorbed capital at three times the Catholic rate. In addition there was an extensive export trade in both Catholic and Anglican missionaries. Yet another factor was the rapid growth in communications media which brought events in the rest of Ireland under the more immediate scrutiny of the Ulster Protestants, exemplified by the 1864 riot which was parked off by a symbolic event in Dublin. Reports of the growing strength of Fenianism in the 1860s and the home rule movement in the 1870s and 1880s, both associated with a Catholic nationalism, only served to reinforce the siege mentality of the Orangemen and to strengthen their defensive character armouring of Protestant suprematism. « Fenian » came to be used as a common substitute word for « Catholic », signifying that all Catholics were regarded as potential rebels against the prevailing order. By the time of the next serious sectarian rioting in Belfast during the home rule crisis of 1886 the two sections of the working class had become so polarised both spatially (in where they lived) and psychologically (in their perceptions of each other as human beings) that the rioting could go on sporadically for four months, involving the deaths of 32 people, the injury of 371 more and £ 90,000 worth of damage. 87
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