“Papists” and Prejudice: Popular Anti-Catholicism and Anglo-Irish Conflict in the North East of England, 1845-70

The North East of England was regarded as a major Catholic stronghold in the nineteenth century. This was, in no small part, due to the large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants who contributed greatly towards the region's unprecedented expansion, with the Catholic population in Newcastle and County Durham increasing from 23,250 in 1847 to 86,397 in 1874. How far were the Catholic Church and its incoming Irish adherents accepted by the Protestant population of North East England? This book will provide a timely reassessment of the hitherto accepted view that local cultural factors reduced the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish feeling in the North East that seemed deep-seated in other areas.This book demonstrates the way in which north-eastern anti-Catholicism was far from homogenous and monolithic, cutting across the political and religious divide. It highlights the proactive role of the Catholic communities in sectarian controversy, whose assertiveness contributed, ironically, towards the development of local anti-Catholic feeling. Finally, it will show how large-scale Irish immigration ensured that the North East experienced regular outbreaks of sectarian violence, whether English-Irish or intra-Irish, which were influenced by local conditions and circumstances.This book is the first comprehensive regional study of Victorian anti-Catholicism. By examining areas of enquiry not previously considered in broader studies, its findings have wider implications for understanding the prevalent and all-encompassing nature of anti-Catholicism generally. It also contributes towards the wider debate on North East regional identity by questioning the continued credibility of a paradigm which views the region as exceptionally tolerant.

About the Author :
Jonathan Bush completed his doctoral thesis at Durham University in 2012. At present, he is working as a professional archivist for Durham University, cataloguing the collections of the former Roman Catholic seminary, Ushaw College.

Review :
"The virtues of the book are numerous. It is meticulously documented, it possesses an excellent index, and it includes an admirable twenty-three page bibliography of all the relevant secondary books and articles of the past half-century that help clarify our understanding of Protestant/Catholic and English/Irish rivalry in the mid-Victorian world."– Walter L. Arnstein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Historian, 77:2 (2015)"Although many aspects of Victorian anti-Catholicism are already well researched, this book offers an important additional dimension through a detailed regional study. […] On the basis of extensive and meticulous research in local newspapers, archives, and pamphlets, Bush reconstructs a fascinating, hitherto largely unknown, history of local antagonisms. His pioneering work suggests that there still is much to be uncovered through comparable local studies of other parts of the country in the development of a realistic, if disturbing, understanding of cultural, political, and religious divisions in mid-nineteenth-century British society."—Professor John Wolffe, The Open University, The Catholic Historical Review, 103;2, 2015"In this major treatment of the North East of England – one of Britain's most important centres of nineteenth-century Irish immigrant settlement – Jonathan Bush shows how anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feeling was more ingrained than historians have previously acknowledged. Bush challenges myths about how the liberal-radical traditions of the North East made the region's people welcoming of the Irish. In what is the most comprehensive analysis of the region's layers of anti-Catholicism and anti-Irish hostility, Bush admirably places a check on the recent revisionist drift in the historiography and shows that hostility, prejudice and opposition were as commonplace in the North East as they were elsewhere."– Professor Donald MacRaild, Professor in History, Northumbria University"Dr Bush has transformed our understanding of Victorian anti-Catholicism in the North East of England. He greatly modifies the existing picture of the lack of such local sectarianism compared with Lancashire, London and Glasgow, by identifying the commonplace nature of religious disturbances caused by Liberal and Protestant Dissenting forms of 'No Popery', by the local Orange presence and by popular anti-Catholic lecturers, resulting in the embattled character of north eastern Roman Catholicism."– Dr Sheridan Gilley, Emeritus Reader, Durham University