TRANSPLANTED IRISH INSTITUTIONS - University of Canterbury

Chapter 6.
113
CONCLUSION.
The Irish issue and sectarianism went hand-in-hand in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century in New Zealand. Rory Sweetman suggests that there were "several factors
dividing Catholics from Protestants in New Zealand before the war (attitudes towards
alcohol, gambling, religious education and similar social issues)" but that these were not a
major cause of the sectarian tension. I He argued that "the Irish issue [Home Rule] was the
catalyst which helped to destroy New Zealand's domestic harmony.
Its removal
immediately weakened the forces of institutional sectarianism. "2 This may have been true
for the World War I period but earlier outbreaks of sectarian antagonisms did not have the
Irish issue as its catalyst.
Its main cause was the institutionalized sectarianism of the
Catholic Church and the Protestants, through the H.A.C.B.S. and the L.O.1.
Sectarianism did not always take such overt and effective forms as the P.P.A. and
its campaign of anti-Catholicism. In this regard Moores was correct in his assessment of
sectarianism by stating that
it is clear that sectarian tension was often present during the nineteenth century. Though its more
spectacular and violent manifestations were usually occasional, brief, and localised, these tensions
continued to accumulate and fonned a tradition out of which the Protestant Political Association
was to emerge in the second decade of the twentieth century.3
Moores was clearly laying the cause of sectarian tension at the feet of militant Protestants
who formed organizations such as the L.O.1. and the P.P.A.
The Irish Protestants had separatist beliefs and formed Protestant Benefit societies
such as the Protestant Alliance Friendly Society of Australasia. 4
The Catholic Church in
lR.M. Sweetman, 'New Zealand Catholicism, War, Politics and the Irish Issue 1912-1922', University of
Cambridge, Ph.D., 1990, p. 2.
2Ibid., p. 350.
3H.S. Moores, The rise of the Protestant Political Association: sectarianism in New Zealand during
World War I', Auckland University, M.A., 1966, p. 15.
4In H. W. Cleary, The Orange Society, Melbourne, Bernard King & Sons, 1897, ninth edition, p. 5, he
states that the "Protestant Alliance Friendly Society may be looked upon as practically but a benefit
branch of the Orange association." This was a fair comment as the P.A.F.S.A. and the L.O.1. sometimes
marched together. The P.A.F.S.A. also advertised in the Orange newspaper, the Nation.