Roy Foster: belief

Transcript context

…You think your views on religious toleration and the history of religion in Ireland were shaped by that background? I think they couldn’t not have been. Quakers had been dissenting Protestants in the late 18th and 19th centuries. They had been rather discriminated against by the established Church of Ireland, one would have to say the Anglican Church of Ireland. Therefore, they felt — I think — more at one with the Catholic majority of the island. Anyway, that squared with the Quaker beliefs in equality, which go back to Charles Fox and beyond. I think, yes, if you take a Quaker view of Irish history, you will have a more intrinsically sympathetic view to the varieties of religious experience that exist in Ireland than you would if you were either coming from a hard-line Church of Ireland background or a devoutly Catholic background. Quakers sit rather attractively, to me, in a middle territory, and a territory that doesn’t privilege privilege, if I can put it that way. If we think of Ireland in the mid-to-late 19th century, do you think there was a path where British union with Ireland persists, is at least moderately liberal, and is permanent? Does that involve earlier home rule? Or giving Catholics access to the spoils system? How does that look? Was it ever on the table? Was it just fantasy?…

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