Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Protestants, who formed a majority of the population in

Ireland population

Northern Ireland but a minority on the island as a whole, feared being subsumed by Catholic Ireland; Catholics, who represented a majority on the island but a minority in Northern Ireland,

Ireland population

The Catholic birth rate in Northern Ireland was approximately double the Protestant birth rate – yet during the three decades prior to the march on Derry, the Catholic population had remained virtually static, because so many people had no choice but to leave.

Catholic birth rate decline

The whole sectarian schism between Protestants and Catholics was a poisonous distraction, she had come to believe: working-class Protestants may have enjoyed some advantages, but they, too, often struggled with unemployment. The Protestants who lived in grotty houses along Belfast’s Shankill Road didn’t have indoor toilets either. If only they could be made to see that life would be better in a united – and socialist – Ireland, the discord that had dogged the two communities for centuries

Religion as distraction from main goal

They are the dupes of the system, the victims of the landed and industrialist unionists. They are the men in overalls.’ These people are actually on our side, McCann was saying. They just don’t know it yet.

Protestant irish

‘But if rod and net cannot succeed by themselves it may be necessary to do something to the water.’

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I’ll wear no convict’s uniform Nor meekly serve my time That Britain might Brand Ireland’s fight Eight hundred years of crime.