The Violent Conflict Between Irish Catholic Migrants And British Mainstream Groups In The Mid-19^th Century

Britain completed the industrial revolution to be the first country realized urbanization in the Worldwith the city population ratio of more than50%in the middle of19th century. Industrialization andurbanization not only brought great wealth and honor for the Britain, but also beget a series of socialproblems. Correctly dealing with the relationship between population and city development was one ofproblems to be solved in the process of urbanization in the UK. In the mid-19th century, a large number ofrural population influx to the Britain city, but the city development was not perfect, municipal managementwas limited and difficult to meet the population explosion, the conflicts between migrants and urbanmainstream group occurred constantly. This paper attempts to inspect the relationship between the foreignpopulation and the city development from Irish Catholic migrants in the early stages of the Britishurbanization.At the end of1840s, Ireland turned out a great famine, a large number of poor Irish Catholic migrantsmoved to the British towns and industrial centers, lots of migrants had exacerbated the crisis of city. TheIrish Catholic migrants were a group different from the mainstream population in the economy, policy,religion and habits. In this period, the majority of Irish migrants were Catholics from rural and remote areas,they were no proficiency in a particular line, low cultural quality and living in poverty. In the UK, theylived mainly in the working-class slums, engaged in the heavy work with lower wages and poor workingconditions.The Irish Catholic migrants fought for rights in a new environment, British mainstream discriminatedmigrants, so Irish Catholic migrants were difficult to quickly integrate into the new environment of the city.In rejection and protest, migration and mainstream society contradicted intensified and led to a furtherbloodshed. In the mid-19th Century, the conflict between mainstream and Irish Catholic migrants had twoclimax periods: the first occurred in the late40’s to great famine and anti-Catholic invasion in the50’s;second occurred from the60’s to the early70’s. Conflict occurred mainly in the working classneighborhoods, Irish labors and other workers of Britain in heavy industry which were the main body of theviolence, this was mainly due to the job occupations of Irish Catholic migrants. The violence was usuallyderived from the individual or a small range of disputes, but the inherent bias in Britain which existed tothe Irish Catholic migrants and provocative Protestant pastor inciting led to a greater unrest. Suffering economy and city crisis in the mid of the nineteenth century, Protestants restored the hierarchy of theCatholic church, Finney terrorist attacks had influenced on the tensions between the Irish Catholic migrantsand the British mainstream. Working-class poverty was the root cause of violence, and the unfairdistribution of resources was the result of arch-criminal working-class poverty.The violence had left the Irish Catholics and other groups in Britain suffering a severe loss of materialand spiritual, and had a negative influence on the development of the British economy and society stably.At the same time, the violence also exposed the British government in improving housing, public health,poverty and other social issues, the government gradually abandoned laissez-faire policies, and acceleratedthe pace of social reformation. Despite rejected by mainstream society, the Irish migrants graduallyintegrated into British society with help of Catholic Church. In addition, the violence improved the Irishpeople’s National consciousness and promoted the development of the Irish independence movement.