September 6 1974
The central committee of People’s Democracy state that a survey in Newtownabbey showed that, due to massive intimidation, 3,700 of 9,000 Catholics in the three parishes of Whitehouse, Greencastle and Whiteabbey in 1969 had fled from the area.
More than half the Catholics in Whitehouse, which included the Rathcoole estate, had left, and in Monkstown estate only 16 out of 181 Catholic families were left.
In Carrickfergus and Greenisland one third of the Catholic population had been forced to leave in the last two years, the committee claim. Enrolment in the Catholic primary school in Greenisland had dropped by 45 per cent.
The committee say: “The Catholic exodus from the Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus area is particularly significant. This is the north’s boom area with practically full employment and expanding new industries.
“The Catholics excluded from the traditional engineering industry are now being squeezed out of the new industries as well. The fleeing refugees are flocking into the old overcrowded city ghettos already crippled with heavy unemployment”.
The Troubles resulted in the displacement of thousands of people, often through intimidatory tactics or worse, with figures for the Newtownabbey area outside Belfast, including the Rathcoole estate, providing stark evidence.
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Protests Against Cavehill Church
The sad thing about yesterday’s public inquiry into the plan for a new Catholic church on the Cavehill Road, Belfast, was the failure of the opponents of the plan to come up with anything even faintly valid in support of their opposition.
The plea of excess noise and traffic simply will not hold water. Numerous Protestant churches have been built in Belfast in recent years, but such problems did not register with the various denominations when siting their churches.
Even more ludicrous was the suggestion that to have two churches nearby would be a planning aberration. Anyway how is it possible, in a Christian community, for one of two nearby churches to be offensive to the other?
