Britain’s mostly benign, institutionalised anti-Catholicism is starting to re-emerge, warns Progress deputy editor Conor Pope

In June last year, a new police ombudsman report was published into the 1994 Loughinsland massacre, where masked members of the Ulster Volunteer Force walked into The Heights pub in County Down and opened fire with assault rifles. They murdered six people, and injured five more. The UVF claimed an Irish republican meeting had been taking place. No evidence was found that the pub had any links with violent republicanism; the victims, all Catholic, had simply been watching the Republic of Ireland versus Italy in the football World Cup. No one was charged.

On the release of his report last June Dr Michael Maguire, the Northern Ireland police ombudsman, said that he had ‘no hesitation in saying collusion was a significant feature of the Loughinisland murders’. The police had committed a series of failures in investigating the massacre, and the operation was characterised by ‘indifference and neglect’.

In plain terms: the British state was complicit in covering up the murder of six citizens in the United Kingdom on account of their faith. In 1994.

I was in Belfast when the report came out and its shocking conclusion was, as you might imagine, rather big news. I was surprised, on returning to London a few days later, that the coverage in mainland Britain had been minimal. Many people I spoke to were totally unaware of the news.

It is a dramatic and thankfully uncommon example, and comes with its own context of the Troubles, but the response to what happened in Loughinisland is, in fact, indicative of wider anti-Catholic prejudice in our country. This is not something that happened in long ago history, or that can be explained away as uniquely isolated or due to the exceptionalism of sectarianism in Northern Ireland.

Anti-Catholic feeling is more prevalent in Britain than many would believe. It was only in 2013 that legislation barring members of the royal family from marrying ‘papists’ (Roman Catholics, rather than fans of this column) was repealed. However, the law remains that any person in the succession who has ever had communion with Rome is ‘deemed to be dead’.

These are elements of the residual and, thankfully, largely latent anti-Catholicism that remains in the United Kingdom, and that should be kept in mind when considering more recent news.

The reaction to Carol Monaghan, the Scottish National party member of parliament, who wore ashes on her forehead while in a select committee meeting two weeks ago – a mark, most associated with Catholicism, given by a priest to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

Her colleagues were reportedly surprised that she did not feel ‘embarrassed’ by her display of faith, and the BBC’s politics Facebook page asked if it was ‘appropriate’ for her to have done so. Neither of those receptions, I suspect, came from a place of realised hostility, but they do show discomfort with the religion.

Monaghan, to her credit, took the small furore in good humour, and said she relished the ‘educational opportunity’. But if some Catholics bridled uncomfortably at the coverage, it is because the implicit question seemed to be: should you not hide the fact you are Catholic? That a sensitivity remains about that idea should not shock – for many years Catholics did have to hide their faith completely, and worship in secret. Even rosary beads were banned.

That it was an SNP MP who prompted this is interesting in itself. The Scottish nationalists are traditionally much more Protestant, and it is only in the past 15 years or so that a remarkable shift among Scotland’s Catholics – overwhelmingly working class – from diehard Labour supporters to embracing the idea of independence.

Labour, for its part, has historically relied on the backing of the Britain’s Catholic communities and yet, as far as I can tell, has never had a Catholic permanent leader (Tony Blair did not feel comfortable converting until after his premiership was over).

This sensitivity can also go some way to explain the reactions to Michael Gove’s column in the Times on Friday, in which he described Theresa May as ‘Britain’s first Catholic prime minister’, and questioned whether the sensibilities that go along with that put her in a poor position to deliver Brexit. He was talking of her as an Anglo, rather than Roman Catholic, but his analysis of her supposed embrace of Catholic social teaching does rather lean towards a suggestion of the latter.

Gove is not alone in drawing lines between Christian rupture and Brexit: leaving the European Union has been compared to the reformation again, and again, and again. The EU as some sort of papal plot is plainly absurd – secretive Vatican overlords are unlikely to have designed a system where Protestant Germany has most influence – but does maintain a sinister edge, echoing the age-old accusation of Catholics’ supposed ‘split loyalty’.

This is not a problem in our society as clear or as direct as Islamophobia or antisemitism, but our country’s mostly benign, institutionalised anti-Catholicism is starting to re-emerge as Britain starts to reassess its place in the world. It is worth plotting a point between the worst and most violent contemporary excesses of it to the more dormant examples; they do not happen in isolation.

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Conor Pope is deputy editor at Progress. He tweets at @conorpope

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