Protestant teachers to teach Protestant children
A History of Ulster by Jonathan Bardon (The Blackstaff Press, 1992)
The Westminster government was deeply unhappy and when the bill was in draft,
Charlemont and his senior officials were summoned to the Home Office in
London. There the permanent secretary, Sir John Anderson, considered that
obligatory simple Bible teaching `would certainly be regarded by Roman Catholics
as unacceptable and co constituting a preference in violation of Section
5'. Once again, however, Westminster could not face withholding assent and
it was left to a Northern Ireland attorney-general, John MacDermott, to
declare in 1945 that the 1930 legislation broke the terms of the 1920 Government
of Ireland Act. Had Nationalist politicians and the Catholic Church complained
to London the matter almost certainly would have been referred to the judicial
committee of the Privy Council. In fact, the Catholic hierarchy felt that
it had well in the circumstances, retaining complete control over Catholic
schools. Bishops could have chosen to opt for `four-and-two' status, as
some Protestant schools had done, but this would have meant sharing management
with Catholic laity, which they were not then prepared to do. The result
of this insistence on total clerical control was that a generation of Catholic
children suffered from inadequate and outmoded facilities by comparison
with their Protestant peers. But even if Catholic schools had accepted `four-and-two'
management, as did some Christian Brothers schools, they still would have
been disadvantaged. There is no doubt that Westminster had allowed the Unionist
government with its unassailable majority to discriminate against Catholic
in education provision. |
