Demography is not always destiny (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
![](https://unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/paulmorland-100x100.jpg)
When I was researching my first book, which was about demography and ethnic conflict, I met with a well-known Sinn Féin politician in his Stormont office. I wanted to understand whether the elevated Catholic birth rate in Northern Ireland during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies — higher than among the Catholics of the South, despite the much easier availability of contraception — was a conscious effort on the part of the Nationalist minority to boost its numbers.
He told me how the Unionist authorities had tried to counter that higher birth rate by encouraging Catholic emigration through discriminatory housing and employment policies. Generally, those authorities were successful: Catholics disproportionately left Ulster and thus their share of the population held stable, with higher arrivals of babies being offset by higher departures of working-age people looking for opportunities on the British mainland and the US. But sometimes these policies backfired.
“One friend of ours went to the housing office to ask for a bigger house,” my Sinn Féin interlocutor remembered. “They said: ‘Come back when you have eight children.’ So he did.”
Once civil rights improved the lot of Catholics in Northern Ireland, their disproportionate departure from the Province ended. But their birth rate remained significantly higher than that of Protestants for a few decades more, laying the foundations for a growing share of the population.
A roughly 2:1 Protestant advantage was baked into the Partition — indeed, Cabinet papers make it clear that this was the basis on which the border between Northern Ireland and the Free State was drawn. But in the closing third of the 20th century, that Protestant advantage began to erode, and a rough parity of numbers between the two communities came into sight.
Numbers matter in ethnic conflict. As long ago as Biblical times, the Pharaoh of Egypt fretted about the number of Israelites in his realm. In an era of democracy, those who wield the greater number of boots on the ground also wield the greater number of crosses on ballot papers. One way or another, power tends to derive from numeric predominance.
But how to establish numeric predominance? Broadly, it can be undertaken through what experts have named “demographic engineering” — that is, changing the demographic facts to suit one side or another in a conflict. This can be done the “hard” or “soft” route. Hard demographic engineering means causing people to be born, or to die, or to move. History is replete with examples of these practices, and so is the contemporary world. Higher Catholic birth rates on the one hand, and the encouragement of higher Catholic emigration in Northern Ireland is just one example. In Ceausescu’s Romania, an ethno-nationalist regime with a merely superficially Communist-internationalist veneer, ethnic Romanians were deprived of access to contraception in order to boost their numbers, while ethnic Hungarians found it easier to get hold of family planning devices. Ethnic Romanians were not permitted to leave, while Jews and ethnic Germans were traded for hard currency. The result was a more homogeneously Romanian Romania.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeCould it be that the population of Northern Ireland have finally realised how their ‘life chances’ are entirely dependent on the extraordinary generosity of the English Taxpayer?*
(* ditto Scotland.)
17.OO BST: Hurrah! It finally seems that HMG** is to cease the vexatious prosecution of former Northern Ireland veterans!
So Johnny Mercer’s sacrifice of his political career was not in vain!
(** Today’s Queen’s Speech.)
Spot on. This writer focuses on birth rates by religion, with some reference to lifestyle and economics. But life options is the crux of it – younger catholics don’t believe in their religion and just want the best opportunities. The U.K. gravy train provides that, so they’re not fools who’ll jump off it.
“while ethnic Hungarians found it easier to get hold of family planning devices. ” – well, this is an example of Western ignorance. The majority of ethnic Hungarians did not have easier access to family planning. Those who lived near the borders had easier access because of the flourishig cross-border black markets.
Interesting article. I wonder what political consequences differential birth rates in England will have and why no one is writing about it.
Aren’t polls a great comfort? There’s tremendous comfort in polls altogether.
And statistics. Statistics are the thing.
I wonder if Brexit has more to do with not wanting unification than we thought it would. In that many people in NI prefer to be part of GB’s market as opposed to the Eurozone.
You may wonder but please note that a majority of voters in the North opposed Brexit.
Does the Republic want unification? It takes two to dance a tango. I lived two years in the Republic, it doesn’t make me an expert, but I didn’t meet many Irish keen in unification. It’s anecdotal, but many were has baffled about NI politics than the average outsider.
Duplication due to the peculiar slowness of today’s comment system,
or ‘flash to bang’ as some would say!
“Scottish independence, like Brexit, may change the equation, but not necessarily decisively.”
Stated as though this is a certainty ! It’s not going to happen.
“Republican and Nationalist leaders with names like Wilson and Hume, and Loyalist terrorists with names like Murphy“
*Republican terrorists with names like Adams. Righteous Among Nations with names like Foley
“Republican and Nationalist leaders with names like Wilson and Hume, and Loyalist terrorists with names like Murphy“
*Republican terrorists with names like Adams. Righteous Among Nations with names like Foley