What About Irish Friends?

During my recent extended visit in the United States I was asked many questions about Irish Friends. For example, “Do Friends in the North of Ireland belong to London Yearly Meeting?” This article attempts to give an answer to this and to some of the other questions.

For centuries Ireland was a conquered country whose native Roman Catholic people never had accepted conquest. By 1922 she had gained her independence, but not as a united country. Twenty-six counties in the central and southern parts, plus Donegal in the Northwest, became the Irish Free State, which since 1949 has been a republic outside the British Commonwealth. The remaining six counties, known as Northern Ireland, continued as an integral part of the United Kingdom, with some measure of autonomy. A long, winding border separates the two parts, and only certain roads, on which customs posts are stationed, are “authorized” for motor traffic. All who travel by train from one part of Ireland to the other must pass through the customs. (Few Friends ever have any difficulty with customs. In the Republic the main thing looked for is obscene literature, and in the North spirits and cigarettes.)

Many of the present Protestant families came to the North during the Plantation of Ulster early in the seventeenth century, when the native Catholics were driven from their lands and gradually pushed toward the mountains and the bogs. The English and Scots became the well-to-do ruling class. With certain notable exceptions they represented strongly puritanical attitudes and standards of behavior and a determination to hold on to a policy of “no surrender” to Rome. Bitter antagonism between Protestants and Catholics has been the keynote of Northern Ireland, and the “powers that be” have tried to prevent the Catholics from increasing their proportion of one-third of the population. In the last year or two there have been indications in some quarters that barriers of suspicion and intolerance are beginning to break down,
and some Catholics and Protestants are meeting and listening to one another. (In the worlds of business and of sport there has always been a certain amount of cooperation.)

After the act of 1922, when Southern Ireland became independent, a large number of Protestants left the country. Now only five or six per cent of the Republic’s population are Protestants, and these live peacefully beside their Catholic neighbors. The Constitution of the Republic gives to the main Protestant churches (including the Society of Friends) full freedom to worship and to educate their people. Throughout the whole of Ireland Protestants and Catholics have their own schools. The governments of both Northern Ireland and the Republic pay all elementary teachers’ salaries according to fixed scales, and the greater part of the salaries in secondary schools.

Quakerism began to take root in Ireland when William Edmundson came from England to the North of Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century. He travelled widely and was joined by other Friends. The Society expanded and strengthened, but over the years there was constant emigration of Irish Friends to North America, and now there is only a small remnant (under 2,000 Friends) of what was once a large Quaker community with many more Monthly Meetings than there are at present. The seventeen Meetings which still take place regularly are in Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Belfast, and, with two exceptions, in a line running west of Belfast and south of Lough Neagh. All these Meetings are unprogrammed.

Ireland Yearly Meeting, to which all Irish Friends belong, is usually held in Dublin during the first few days of May. Dublin young Friends make valued contributions to the gatherings, and their paper, Irish Young Friends Quarterly, is an interesting and often challenging production. The still younger Friends meet each year in their own Junior Yearly Meeting and send in a report to the main Yearly Meeting. Friends look forward to this report, which in recent years has indicated a lively interest in the Society, much common sense, and flashes of insight. Ireland and London Yearly Meeting have bonds of friendship and common interests. They exchange representatives, and the Friends Service Council is a joint service.

There are four Friends’ schools in Ireland: Newtown in Waterford; Rathgar Junior School in Dublin; Drogheda Grammar School, north of Dublin; and Friends School, Lisburn, near Belfast.

A small private mental hospital, situated in Dublin, is under the care of a c.ommittee of Friends, and plans are on foot for building a Home for Elderly Friends.

Irish Friends have hesitated to make any official statements regarding the religious, political, and social issues which from time to time have torn their country, but there always have been a few individual Friends who have worked publicly for reconciliation and justice. Others have rendered service at times of suffering; often they have been helped by American Friends. In the last five or six years several Friends have taken a leading part in organizing an annual conference which is sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (Northern Ireland) and the Irish Pacifist Movement (Dublin). This conference is held in either the North or the South, and Catholics and Protestants from all over Ireland meet to discuss and meditate and to seek together for better understanding of the country’s issues.

Within the Society of Friends in Ireland, as in some other countries, there are fundamental differences in theological beliefs and in the language used to express religious convictions. At times this leads to severe tension in some Meetings, but, frustrating and painful as these differences are, it is acknowledged that through them we have learned toleration and self-discipline. Real unity does exist among Irish Friends-a unity which is rooted in warmth of affection for one another and in search for the same goal.