Sectarianism in the north west of England, with special reference to class relationships in the city of Liverpool 1846 - 1914

Abstract

Through a mixed thematic and chronological approach, this thesis attempts to place working-class anti-catholicism. within a broader social context whilst retaining. sight of the intricacies of the subject itself. Chapter One describes the city of Liverpool in the nineteenth century, with a view to providing not just a backdrop to the thesis but Pýso revealing some of the forces permanently exerting an influence on working-class opinion. The thesis argues that the most important of these forces was economic, in the form of intense rivalry for limited resources between Protestant English and Catholic Irish working people (Chapter 3). The sectarian dimension to this struggle is provided by the long-term popularity of an anti-Catholic agitation, in this case, the Papal Aggression. It finds that anti. -Catholic, in various intensities existed throughout the social classes of nineteenth century Liverpool, though its manifestations varied from class for class and between Protestant Sects. In Chapter Seven it is later suggested that the middle and upper-class deserted sectarianism leaving the working-class alone in their anxiety and outrage by the end of the century. In Chapter Five the physical manifestations of working-class anti-Catholicism are explored and it is argued that they fit into the mainstream picture of working-class leisure and middle-class respectability.
Chapter Six suggests that a dual class and sectarian identity existed within the Protestant working-class which made any union with the social elite troublesome and even permitted Protestantism to be used as a vehicle for limited forms of class conflict whilst failing to prevent unity of industrial action across the sectarian divide. Chapter Seven reviews the development of anti-Catholicism as it shrinks in appeal between 1870 and 1914 to being a workingclass, Low Church or Nonconformist obsession.