Immigrants and Religious Conflict Italian, Lithuanian and Polish Catholics in Scotland'

1
Immigrants and Religious Conflict(Italian,
Lithuanian and Polish Catholics in Scotland).

• Stephen J. McKinney, Lecturer,Department of
  Religious EducationFaculty of EducationUniversit
  y of Glasgow

2
Tolerance / inclusion within religions or
denominations

• Increasing awareness of importance of (multiple)
  ethnic and cultural identity, but emerging
  awareness that religious identities are equally
  important and complex.
• Are religions/denominations genuinely inclusive
  within themselves -
• Tolerant of the variety of internal
  traditions/identities?
• There can be different insider voices
  representing a variety of traditions/identities
  within a religious group.
• Competing? Dominant voices?
• Which tradition holds the power?
• Who makes decisions for a religious group?
• Who speaks for a religious group?
• Which religious traditions/identities are
  represented in the public forum?

3
Immigrants to Scotland between the 18th and 20th
centuries

• Irish
• Jews
• Asian
• Italians
• Lithuanians
• Poles

4
Irish Catholic

• Vast majority of Catholics in contemporary
  Scotland are descended from large scale Irish
  Catholic immigration in the nineteenth century.
• The Irish Catholics constitute the largest single
  group The history and impact of this particular
  group have been explored in some depth
• Arrival of Irish Catholics and hostile response
  of local populace and Scottish establishment
• Employment opportunities and the socio-economic
  progress of the Irish Catholics Bigotry and
  sectarianism
• Catholic schooling
• Contemporary relation of Catholic community and
  wider Scottish community
• Possible futures for this Catholic community
• (Boyle and Lynch 1998 Bradley 1995, 1998,
  2000 Conroy 2001, 2002 Devine, 1991, 1999 Finn
  1999, 2000, 2003 Gallagher 1987, 1991 Handley,
  1945, 1947 McKinney, 2004).

5
Insider Accounts

• Someone who writes about a particular group but
  also identifies, partially or completely, with
  the aims, objectives and views of that group.
• Often the only people who have the interest and
  impetus to write about the particular group in
  any depth the group may have been treated in a
  superficial, perfunctory or distorted way in
  official histories (De Vos, 1995, p.17).
• We are also witnessing a revolution in the
  recording of social and cultural history.
  Todays ethnic minorities are not content to
  remain mute they too, seek to be heard. The
  defeated and the oppressed, now literate, are
  themselves contributing their interpretations to
  the writing or rewriting of history, adding their
  own and, where facts fail, creating or deepening
  their own sustaining mythologies (De Vos, 1995,
  p.16).

6
Insider Account is Problematic

• Can lack a critical edge
• Can fail to have a broader perspective
• Can be defensive
• Can exaggerate or even minimize difficulties
  encountered by the group
• Can champion the group or champion factions or
  certain perspectives within the group
• Insider accounts are more likely to discuss
  challenges faced by the group, rather than
  challenges caused by the group
• Tendency to be less critical when evaluating
  commonly held assumptions within the group and
  the views of fellow insiders.

7
Advantages of Insider Accounts

• provide a fuller account of the origins and
  development of immigrant groups
• Based on a more thorough examination of original
  documentary sources and secondary sources
• Increasingly, include analysis of collections of
  oral histories - the insider status provides ease
  of access for obtaining oral histories.

8
Italians, Lithuanians and Poles

• The Italians, Lithuanians and Poles examined
  mainly from insider accounts.
• Italians (Rossi, 1991, Colpi, 1991 Pieri, 1997,
  Ugolini, 2000)
• Lithuanians (Miller, real name Stepsis 1998
  ODonnell, 1998, 2000)
• Poles (Ziarski-Kernberg, 2000)

9
Sectarianism

• These were relatively small groups, but all
  shared the Catholicism of the Irish Catholic
  immigrants and all were to experience hostility
  and vehement sectarianism in Scotland, some of
  which has only recently been disclosed

10
Sectarianism

• Sectarianism, according to Leichty and Clegg
  (2001) is
• Sectarianism is a distorted expression of good
  things the need for identity and belonging, and
  for the freedom to be different. Sectarianismis
  a complex of attitudes, actions, beliefs and
  structures, at personal, communal and
  institutional levels, which always involves
  religion, and typically involves a negative
  mixing of religion and politics. It arises as a
  distorted expression of positive human needs,
  especially for belonging, identity and the free
  expression of difference and is expressed in
  destructive patterns of relating hardening the
  boundaries between groups overlooking others
  belittling, dehumanising, or demonising others
  justifying or collaborating in the domination of
  others physically intimidating or attacking
  others (Leichty and Clegg, in Gorrie, 2001).

11
Sectarianism

• In Scotland the term is most frequently used to
  refer to tension between Catholics and
  Protestants (Finn, 1999, pp.869-870, 2003, p.904).

12
The Roots of Sectarianism in Scotland

• Arrival of a large number of Irish Catholics in
  the mid-late nineteenth century.
• Escaping famines and subsequent deprivation and
  destitution (Collins, 1991, pp.1-11).
• Gathered in the industrial cities and towns
  seeking employment and competing with the local
  population for jobs (Devine, 1999, pp.487-488).
• They arrived in large numbers to already
  dangerously over populated areas (OTuathaigh,
  1985, p.21).
• They arrived in Scotland resentful and suspicious
  that the British authorities had not provided
  properly organised relief schemes in Ireland
  (Foster, 1988, pp.318-344).
• The Irish Catholic immigrants appeared to present
  a threat to the Presbyterian tradition of
  Scotland (Gallagher, 1991, p.34). .
• Church of Scotland, in the absence of a Scottish
  parliament (after the union of crowns of 1707),
  had become strong focus for Scottish identity and
  was perceived by the Scots and by outsiders as
  the embodiment of Scottishness (Robbins, 2000,
  p.252).

13
Sectarianism

• The incorporation of Catholic schools into the
  state education system in 1918 provided a public
  and visible focus for sectarianism (Bruce, 1985,
  pp.43-44).
• Large numbers of Irish Catholic (or immediate
  descendants) employed, almost exclusively, in
  heavy industry and manufacturing.
• The depression proved a catalyst for concerted
  sectarianism as foreign Irish Catholic workers
  were used as scapegoats for the economic ills
  besetting society.
• Racist and sectarian activists like White and
  Cormack (Brown, 1991, Kelly, 2003). Early 1950s,
  a Church of Scotland report articulated concerns
  about the menace of the Catholics of alien
  origin (Kelly 2003).
• Ecumenical movement in Scotland in the 1960s
  brought an end to any explicit sectarian or
  anti-catholic discourse in the institutional
  Church of Scotland (Brown, 2000, pp.275-281).

14
The Lithuanians

• Arrived between 1880 and 1914
• Fleeing from poverty and cultural and religious
  suppression by the Russians
• About 7,000 in 1914
• They settled and worked in the mining areas,
  especially Ayrshire and Lanarkshire
• They formed a vibrant and colourful community

15
External Struggles two perspectives

• (Maan (1992, pp.30-32) acknowledges that the
  Lithuanians experienced hostility on their
  arrival and as they settled in, but ultimately
• Being of the same faith and the same colour of
  skin, there were no strong barriers between the
  Scottish and Lithuanian peoples (Maan, 1992,
  p.31).

16
External Struggles two perspectives

• Millers (p.70) account, however, contrasts with
  Maans statement. Miller states that their
  Catholic faith and foreign origin meant that
  Lithuanians were often discriminated against
• Probably the main thing they brought with them
  was their religion. To the Calvinistic
  Presbyterian country of Scotland they brought and
  diligently pursued the Roman Catholic faith. The
  traditional religious bigotry, particularly in
  the west of Scotland, meant that there were two
  reasons why the Lithuanians suffered ostracism
  and prejudice a) they were foreigners, and b)
  they were catholic. Having suffered almost a
  century of Russian persecution this treatment was
  nothing new to them and they persevered in
  practicing their faith(Miller, 1998, p.70)

17
External struggles

• James Keir Hardie, the influential Socialist
  leader, often spoke publicly and vehemently
  against the Lithuanians, perceiving them as a
  threat to local employment (Reid, 1978, p.122,
  Miller, 1998, pp.23-24
• Later, in the economic crisis of the 1930s, when
  Scottish society sought to blame the continued
  presence of immigrant workers, however long
  established, for widespread economic depression,
  many Lithuanian men changed their names and
  concealed their ethnic identity to gain
  employment.

18
Internal struggles

• The Lithuanian struggle to gain acceptance in the
  work place was mirrored in their struggle to
  retain their own cultural expression of
  Catholicism within a predominantly Irish
  Catholic church (ODonnell, 1998, 2000)
• In 1898 Lithuanian priest, resided in a parish in
  the Archdiocese of Glasgow and ministered to the
  widespread Lithuanian settlements (1998, pp.
  171-175).
• This was funded by the Lithuanians themselves.
  They paid church dues twice

19
Internal struggles

• The priests helped retain a sense of Lithuanian
  identity the services celebrated in Lithuanian
  combined with the language classes helped to
  promote the language.
• The Lithuanians petitioned for a Lithuanian
  Church in Bellshill a request which was refused
  on a number of grounds
• The Lithuanians were small in number and not
  perceived as a permanent community
• The Archdiocese of Glasgow may have regarded the
  Lithuanians as a threat to unity (1998,
  pp.176-183).

20
Lithuanian

• ODonnell suggests that a Lithuanian church would
  have helped preserve language, culture and
  identity
• it seems fairly obvious that the institutional
  Catholic Church in the West of Scotland had
  little sympathy for the ethnic aspirations and
  outlook of the Lithuanians.
• The diocesan authorities were willing to allow
  and assist in organizing a supply of chaplains
  for the community. However, for reasons that had
  largely to do with the position of the Catholic
  Church in Scotland, they were not willing to
  accept that the community had any need, or right,
  to have its own church or parish. To the extent
  that a national Church was perhaps essential to
  such a small community if its culture was to
  thrive, it can be argued that the policy of the
  Glasgow Archdiocese was of key importance in the
  process of Lithuanian assimilation (ODonnell,
  1998, p.183)

21
Assimilation

• This assimilation was hastened in the inter war
  years
• Break-up of the traditional mining communities,
  including Lithuanian communities,
• Dispersal to new housing - the relatively small
  numbers of Lithuanian families found themselves
  isolated from each other
• Marriage outside the community became common
  (Miller, 1998, p.138).
• Lithuanian language, preserved mainly as a
  spoken language, became obsolete (Boyd, 1983,
  pp.32-34).

22
Assimilation

• ODonnell comments
• As Scotland enters the twenty first century, the
  Lithuanian community, first established here
  around a century ago, has been largely
  assimilated into the general Scottish community
  (ODonnell, 2000, p.185)
• Miller, an elderly member of the Lithuanian
  community, predicted in 1998, that with the
  passing of his generation, the Lithuanian
  community and culture in Scotland will disappear
  (1998, p.150).

23
Discussion

• The development of insider accounts has provided
  a voice for immigrant groups and alternative
  perspectives on Scottish social history from the
  eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
• The writers of Irish Catholic descent have staked
  a claim in Scottish history for their group and
  have sought to redress some of the recorded
  historical inaccuracies and imbalance.
• The writers of Lithuanian, Italian and polish
  descent have also staked a claim in Scottish
  history for their groups and have sought to
  establish the historical contribution of these
  groups to Scotland.
• The history of the Irish Catholic community in
  Scotland is scarred by incidences of
  sectarianism,
• The other three immigrant groups have also faced
  hostility and sectarianism at some point in the
  history of their presence in Scotland

24
Discussion

• It has also emerged that the Italians and the
  Lithuanians did not always have a comfortable
  relationship with the larger wider Catholic
  community of Irish descent.
• The growth of the post reformation Catholic
  community in Scotland has been dominated by a
  particular ethnic-cultural form of Catholicism.
  The Irishness and Catholicity of this larger
  immigrant group alienated the Scottish population
  and these identifying features were to be the
  source of tension and conflict. This tension and
  conflict helped to provide the impetus for the
  self preservation and maintenance of Irish
  Catholics but possibly precluded the inclusion of
  other cultural forms of Catholicism a drive for
  conformity rather than pluriformity, resulting in
  a form of cultural imperialism (Grace, 2002,
  p.7). ODonnell and Colpi suggest that this is
  probably true for the Lithuanians and the
  Italians. The Poles appear to have fared better
  in more recent times as a result of more
  inclusive attitudes.

25
Discussion

• The Irish Catholic account has often been
  perceived to be synonymous with the account of
  Catholics in Scotland
• One type of insider voice has dominated
• Academic research has paralleled this dominance
• Other insider voices are weakened, at times,
  silenced.
• The traditions/identities these voices represent
  can be weakened
• Intolerance can be as destructive within a
  religion or religious denomination as between
  religions

26
Tolerance / inclusion within religions or
denominations

• Increasing awareness of importance of (multiple)
  ethnic and cultural identity, but emerging
  awareness that religious identities are equally
  important and complex.
• Are religions/denominations genuinely inclusive
  within themselves -
• Tolerant of the variety of internal
  traditions/identities?
• There can be different insider voices
  representing a variety of traditions/identities
  within a religious group.
• Competing? Dominant voices?
• Which tradition holds the power?
• Who makes decisions for a religious group?
• Who speaks for a religious group?
• Which religious traditions/identities are
  represented in the public forum?