Herbert Moore Pim

[cb1979]

BBC NI did an interesting programme around the time of the Good Friday Agreement where they interviewed three Catholic Unionists. The first was Sir John Gorman from Co. Tyrone. Gorman served with the Irish Guards in WW2 and won the military cross. When he returned to NI he joined the RUC and was elected to the NI Forum (that negotiated the GFA) from North Down. He served as the chairman of the forum.
Louis (?) Boyle who was the first Catholic chairman of the Young Unionists in Queen's University but left the UUP and declared that the party was sectarian after failing to get a nomination to run for Stormont. The third participant was Patricia Campbell, who was John Molyneaux's personal secretary but took the party to the employment tribunal after she failed to be appointed to a position within the UUP which she said was based on her religion.

[whooley]

Actually it just struck me that both Murphy and O'Sullivan converted during their childhoods, so I suppose you could argue that they were really the children of converts. I wonder how much that kind of conversion, as opposed to an adult making a decision of conscience, may have added to the strident nature of the views to which they subscribed.

The Dictionary of Irish Biography tells us that O'Sullivan was son of a Catholic schoolmaster, who sent his sons to a Protestant free school in Clonmel run by Richard Carey. The boys converted under Carey's influence and went on to TCD. I presume that their father would have remained a Catholic.

Murphy was also the son of a Catholic schoolmaster, but his father did convert. The family had to flee from Limerick to Mayo when the conversion became known.

So the cases are slightly different.

[JohnD66]

Interesting replies, thanks. It looks like the Catholic Church was winning the religious battle in the early 20th century - with a number of prominent converts there.

Probably the result of the institutions' increasing power and influence?

On the politcal front, (I'm not making a polemical point here by the way) it does seem as if there were more Protestant nationalist activists at about that time than Catholic unionist activists. I suspect that a lot of, particularly better off, Catholics held the Empire in some regard but it seems rare that they actually campaigned for Ireland to stay in it?