Protestant teachers to teach Protestant children
A History of Ulster by Jonathan Bardon (The Blackstaff Press, 1992)
Charles S.H. Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, had made considerable personal sacrifices by joining the Northern Ireland government. One of the richest men in the kingdom at the dazzling centre of London society, he turned down the offer to become a minister to join Craig and his colleagues as minister of education. Back in Ulster he looked oddly out of place and out of time, Lady Spender remarking that `he apes his ancestor the great Lord Castlereagh, wears a high black stock over his collar and a very tightly fitting frock coat, and doesn't look as if he belongs to this century at all'. Determined to uphold the Union his forebear had forged, he threw himself enthusiastically into the task, and won the devoted support of his civil servants, in spite of his tendency to address them like domestics and to emphasize points by striking his ministerial table with his riding crop.
`Religious instruction in a denominational sense during the hours of compulsory attendance there will not be', Londonderry declared in 1923, overruling one of the main recommendations of a committee had appointed under the chairmanship of Robert Lynn. The marquess, like the architects of the National Schools the previous century, set out create a system of elementary schools drawing pupils from all parts of the community. He now faced the intense hostility of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches. The managers of Catholic schools had stated their opinion in 1921 that `the only satisfactory system of education for Catholics is one wherein Catholic children are taught in Catholic schools by Catholic teachers under Catholic auspices'. Catholics refused to serve on the Lynn committee and Catholic teachers, meeting at Strabane and Omagh in February 1922, pledged themselves not to accept salaries from the Northern Ireland government and recognized only the authority of the Department of Education in Dublin. Around one third of Catholic schools refused co-operation and for several months the Provisional Government paid the salaries of their teachers; as the civil war extended,, however, the Cosgrave government stopped payments by October 1922 and the campaign of non-cooperation ended soon after. By then the Catholic Church had lost the opportunity to protect its interests.
Protestant opposition was slower in coming. In part this was due to the complexity of the Education Bill, which Londonderry steered through parliament in 1923 with remarkable ease considering the outcome. The act incorporated most of the Lynn's committee's recommendations that the state pay all teachers' salaries in elementary schools, which were to be in three categories: `four-and-two' schools (where the management committee was made up of four persons nominated by the managers or trustees, and two by the local education authority) were eligible for capital grants and got half the cost of repairs, equipment, heating, lighting and cleaning; but the voluntary schools, the third category, got only a contribution towards heating, lighting and cleaning. Londonderry spoke hopefully of having schools were children of different faiths might study and play together, and allowed denominational religious instruction only outside hours of compulsory attendance. He pointed to Section 5 of the Government of Ireland Act which made it illegal `either directly or indirectly to establish or endow new religion'. Or to set religious tests for teachers maintained out of public funds.
`Protestant teachers to teach Protestant children' was the watchword of
clergy who resented their control over teaching appointments and campaigned
for compulsory Bible instruction in the state schools. Alderman James Duff,
chairman of the Belfast Education Committee, countered that `any clergyman
who says that under the new education act the Bible is thrown out of the
schools is a man who has no right to wear the cloth'. The Ulster Teachers'
Union, composed of Protestants, carried a resolution denouncing these `discontented
divines who were misleading people', but lead by the Reverend Dr William
Corkey, manager of nine schools in the Shankill area, the campaign gathered
strength. The United Education Committee of the Protestant Churches, founded
in 1924, saw its opportunity as a general election approached early in 1925:
the committee met the Belfast Country Grand Orange Lodge and leading politicians
on 27 February; a provisional conference was called for 5 March; and a stirring
handbill was distributed. With the title `PROTESTANTS AWAKE' in large red
letters, the handbill denounced the Londonderry act, arguing, for example,
the `the door is through open for a Bolshevist or an Atheist or a Roman
Catholic to become a teacher in a Protestant school'.
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