1* Why ?

In 1869 the first Vatican Council issued five great encyclicals which would determine the role of the Roman Catholic Church in a modern society. The second of these encyclical dealt with the "Christian Education of Youth". It claimed the Roman Catholic Church was: "founded upon... the express mission and supreme authority given her by her divine founder." 11 Later the encyclical states "this institution owes its existence to the initiative of the family and of the Church, long before it was undertaken by the state. Hence the school is by its very nature an institution subsidiary and complimentary to the family and the church. "

Douglas interprets this to mean that, unless exceptional circumstance are present Catholic children must be educated separately. The encyclicals, he maintains, leave no room for doubt, no room for compromise.12

The effects of bigotry is not mentioned in any of the books, studied here, as a reason for segregated education. The instances mentioned below prove that bigotry was a problem in Scottish society around the turn of the century. No evidence has been found to allow this study to speculate on its effects on the Roman Catholic Hierarchy's opinion of how its children should be educated, or parental response to such bigotry. It can only be assumed that it played some part.

2* How ?

Sister Martha Skinnider provides a clear, chronological historical account of the events and conditions leading up to the 1918 Education (Scotland) Act which permitted the state funding in Scotland of denominational schools. Nowhere else was there found such a detailed account of what happened. The following is a summery based on her account (except where it is otherwise indicated).

Presbyterianism was established as the national religion of religion of Scotland by act of parliament, in 1560. Catholicism continued only in the remote parts of Scotland where the penal laws were more difficult to enforce. By the end of the eighteenth century there were thirty nine Catholics in Glasgow (and forty three anti Catholic societies13.) The Irish potato famine and the industrial revolution led to an influx of Catholics to Glasgow and Lanarkshire and their children had to be educated. Anti Catholic feeling ran high in Scotland before the coming of the Irish.

The first Catholic school in Glasgow was aided by Kirkman Findlay, in Glasgow Major funding came from charity sermons by popular established church preachers. Teachers were Catholic but the bible was not, and no creed was taught. Growth was haphazard, but then so was all the education at that time14 . These schools were able to apply for grants, the same as any other parish, denominational or adventure school, for books.

Catholic schools started applying for grants in 1847 after the setting up of the Catholic Poor Schools Committee. The grant was provisional on inspection and inspection was denominational. The Argyle Commission conducted an inspection in 1856 and found the poverty and ignorance among the Roman Catholic parents to be the "chief obstacle" to Roman Catholic education because they did not value education, because they were themselves uneducated .15

In 1869 a bill was introduced to establish a non denominational national system of education with no provision for voluntary schools. Had this bill been passed at this point in time, there would have been no more grants and Catholic schools would have ceased to be. The bill did not pass until 1872 and it had been amended so that voluntary schools could continue to receive grants. The Catholics had however taken notice of what might yet come to be and had, since 1869, been organising themselves together with their English counter parts, to meet the upcoming crises. One benefit of this was that Glasgow was nominated £6,000 from a fund to help build schools in preparation for the compulsory element of the new bill.

The 1872 act brought about three major dilemmas for Catholic schools:-

Kenneth17 implies that education was wanted by the Roman Catholic community but the Argyle Commission say that it is not valued18 . This could be an example of bigotry of the part of the non denominational Inspectorate (which Skinnider describes as sympathetic) deciding that Catholics did not appreciate the value of education.

The 1872 act was not as bad as had been expected. New school boards were to be set up and they had the power to compel attendance. So at least the schools would be full. Action had to be taken to make sure there was enough places for every child, and grants would still make some money available to the religious schools.

The opening of the 'Scotch Education Department' brought another change which would have a significant effect on all future negotiations It was in effect controlled by the Education Office for England and Wales. This was a relief to Catholics as they feared that bigotry would be a problem otherwise. However this presupposes that the English were not bigoted. Selby's account of Cardinal Manning's struggles in England prove that the English were bigoted.19

The years 1872 to 1918 were hard for Catholic schools and by 1898 there was a gradual and reluctant realisation that they would have to find some way to become 'rate aided'. The campaigning began but there where certain minimum conditions which the Catholic Hierarchy would accept; retention of proprietary right of the school buildings and control of staff and management within the school.20

There followed various attempts at negotiation none of which succeed. The out break of war in 1914 stopped any further progress for a while.

In 1917 Robert Munro, who had taken over as Secretary for Scotland, had decided that the whole education system was urgently in need of simplification. He wanted to abolish the parish system and administer the grant system on a needs basis. Simplification would be complete by the transference of Episcopalian and Roman Catholic voluntary schools to the Local Authority, though certain safeguards would be made to uphold the religious character the voluntary schools.

While the Catholic Hierarchy had been content to wait until after the war to restart negotiation, Mr. Munro believed that the reforms were vitally bound up to the problems peace time would bring. Consequently the bill was published just before the 1917 summer recess to allow 'full and frank discussions' to take place.

The bill promised that:

Of the seven Roman Catholic Hierarchy members who met in early 1918 to discuss the bill, two refused to have anything to do with it, and the other five viewed it only as a basis for negotiation. The Catholic Education Committee for Scotland decided that the guarantees offered by "section twenty" 21 of the bill were acceptable. They set up a committee to study the bill further. In February 1918 they declared the bill to be an honest attempt at redressing the wrongs of the past. This was a very important finding because it led to the acceptance of the bill. Indeed this committee went on to compare it favourably to the spirit and conditions of the English bill of 1902. It declared that by the Scottish Bill equality would be given to Catholic Education. This was not the case with the English Act of 1902, as they still had to provide their schools " free of all capital expenses to the rate payer ".22

*What objections to denominational education were there at its inception?

There was still some resistance to the bill from the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. The committee felt that if the Church were given more power in the selection of teachers then the objections would be overcome. A General Election was due in November and any attempt to amend the bill would delay its passage and therefore wreck it. An 'apostolic' visitor to Scotland tried to placate the two Archbishops who objected to the bill (Glasgow and Edinburgh). No amount of persuasion would turn them. In the end it took an 'epistle' from the Pope, brought about by the information provided for him by the Catholic Education Committee, to silence the Archbishops' objections, the bill passed unencumbered.

Not every one agreed that they should have equal treatment or indeed that equal treatment was being given to the Catholics. (Complaints were focused on Roman Catholic schools alone) The effect of the concessions given in the change over were considered to show preferential treatment of Roman Catholic Church because only educational factors should be allowed to influence the provisions made in a school23. Further, a reformed faith minister had nowhere near the amount of control that a priest had over religious instruction, neither did they have any control over the teaching staff24 .

A letter to the Glasgow Herald from a Church of Scotland minister is presented by Marshall as the "general thrust" of the 'no popery' argument of the time25. It shows the amount of distrust that working class Protestants (and some of their religious leaders) had for Catholics. The expression "Free Staters or their offsprings..." would seem to imply that Catholics are at best to be regarded with contempt but more probably to be regarded as less than human.

The most vehement objection was the assertion that the state was in fact paying the Vatican. Many teachers in Roman Catholic schools were Nuns and would therefore hand over any salary to the church adding it to Vatican coffers. Protestant rate payers were therefore subsidising the Roman Catholic Church. No mention was made of Catholics having had to subsides non denominational schools prior to this bill.26

Militant Protestants felt betrayed by the Act because it was passed under war time legislation and therefore it was seen as Rome taking advantage whilst the country was still preoccupied with the 1st world war . This: like the line "every where plot and plan the downfall of Great Britain " as quoted by Marshall27: is again evidence of the conspiracy which was attributed to Rome at that time.

Alexander Ratcliffe the founder of the Scottish Protestant League wrote:

"When the Protestants of Scotland were fighting for their country...Roman Catholics were busy with the time serving politicians framing an Act of parliament which was to put the clock back on the reformation..."28

Ratcliff stood for the Parliamentary seat of Stirling and Falkirk Burghs on a blatantly sectarian manifesto and received 21% of the vote. This did not get him elected, but it does illustrate the extent of bigotry there was against the Irish Catholics.

Ratcliffe and his Scottish Protestant League were however an embarrassment to the vast majority in the Kirk, even the Orange Order did not agree with him. Never the less his prolific writing and his extreme views still have a limited impression on some Protestant thinking today29 .