"Ulster Protestants are predominantly descendents of the Scots (and some English) who settled in the north-east of Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That the settlers were of a different ‘race’, were of a different religion, and were in economic competition with the native Irish meant that relations between the two groups were generally distant and periodically degenerated into open warfare. Little or nothing that has happened in the history of Ireland since settlement has brought two two populations any closer together."

"Shipwright who worked in Edward Harland's shipyard included many who were not natives of Belfast at all, but immigrants from Greenock and Glasgow; they had brought to Ireland not merely their skill as shipbuilders but also a deeply-ingrained Calvinistic antipathy to the Catholic Church." Holy War pp. 42-43.

"Those who argue the case for platonic Protestant nationalism do not mention one of the silent subjects of twentieth century history, tacitly ignored by both sides for their own purposes: the victimisation, murder and banishment of 'ordinary' Protestants (not landowners or British Army figures) in places like Limerick and Cork, after the treaty, in 1922. Here, thinking from hand to mouth approaches selective amnesia."

"At the back of the unionist image of the recent past are the demographic changes: working-class Protestants being 'pushed' out of west and north Belfast and the city side of Derry; rural Protestants being pushed out from the west to the east; middle-class Protestants exporting their children to England and Scotland . [Net migration to Scotland and England was running at 9 000 per year in the late 1980s.]"

"Before the communal violence of 1969 forced many people to move house and clarified boundaries, a few working-class areas were thoroughly mixed, but mostly mixed streets represented borders, with each side clustered at the end nearest its heartland .. Contrary to the myth of pre-Troubles communal harmony, such proximity reinforced the sense of distinctiveness .. ‘Them’ playing in the playground on Sundays, even though the council had chained up the swings and rides for the preservation of the sabbath; his friends confined and cramped by the Presbyterian sabbatarian ethos of Protestant Belfast."

"Between August 1969 and February 1973, around 60 000 Belfast people (around 10% of the population) were forced to leave their homes.
The Lower Ormeau, predominantly Protestant at the start of the Troubles, had been experiencing a gradual out-movement of socially-mobile families, mainly moving further up the Ormeau Road. As they had left, Catholic families had taken their place .. Belfast no longer feels a proud Protestant industrial city. Donegall Pass today is frequently described by respondents as the last Protestant enclave in that part of the Belfast. They talk like a minority people."

".. the overall position was made worse by the wholesale movement of very frightened people. In Belfast some 30-40 000 people left their homes because of intimidation and went to areas among their co-religionists where they could feel safe. It was the largest movement of a civil population since WWII. SUch was the bitterness that the last act of many, before they left in lorries piled high with possessions, was to set fire to the house and slam the front door. The old buffer zones of mixed-religion areas disappeared, the ghettos shrank in on themselves, their boundaries becoming more sharply defined. They became places were terrorists could operate, stifling what opposition there might be with threats of knee-capping, tar-and-feathering and, for the more serious crimes, a 'head job' - a hood over the head and a bullet through it."

"It is also the case that most people were forced out of their houses not by violence so much as by the fear of violence. Irrespective of how they got on with their neighbours, they followed the news reports of what was happening in Londonderry or in other parts of Belfast and concluded that what was happening elsewhere could soon be happening to them unless they moved to secure areas."

"Local Protestants find the Permanent Patrol Bases reassuring, but they have come too late to prevent demographic change. According to a study for the Economic and Social Research Council by Liam O'Dowd of Queen's University Belfast, the Protestant population in the border districts on the northern side declined by 12% between 1971 and 1991. In the same period, the Catholic population grew by 29%.
On the Southern side too the Protestant population is waning .. Partition brought about a considerable exodus of Protestants from the Free State; most went to Britain. From about 10% of the population of the 26 Counties in 1911, Protestants slipped to little more than 3% by 1991. In the three Ulster counties in the South, the fall was from just over 20% to just under 10%." 22.05.1994

"The consequences of significant demographic change in recent years - with the 1991 census figures revealing that at least half the population now lives in areas which are more than 90% either Protestant or Catholic - has significant implications for the spread of integrated education."