Editing Belfast (section)

=== Industrial expansion, sectarian division ===
[[File:High Street, Belfast (5785358121).jpg|thumb|right|High Street, c. 1906]]
While other Irish towns experienced a loss of manufacturing, from the 1820s Belfast underwent rapid industrial expansion. After a cotton boom and bust, the town emerged as the global leader in the production of [[linen]] goods (mill, and finishing, work largely employing women and children),<ref name="Belfast, The Making of the City 32">{{cite book |last=Beckett |first=JC |title=Belfast, The Making of the City. Chapter 3: "Linenopolis": the rise of the textile industry |author2=Boyle, E |publisher=Appletree Press Ltd |year=2003 |isbn=0-86281-878-8 |location=Belfast |pages=41–56 }}</ref> winning the moniker "[[Economy of Belfast|Linenopolis]]".<ref>{{Cite web |last=ConnollyCove |date=12 August 2019 |title=Linenopolis: The Linen Quarter of Belfast {{!}} Connolly Cove {{!}} |url=https://www.connollycove.com/linenopolis-linen-quarter-belfast/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210214064424/https://www.connollycove.com/linenopolis-linen-quarter-belfast/ |archive-date=14 February 2021 |access-date=6 November 2019 |website=Connolly Cove }}</ref> Shipbuilding led the development of heavier industry.<ref name="Johnson2020">{{cite book |author1-last=Johnson |author1-first=Alice |title=Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-78962-449-6 |series=Reappraisals in Irish History LUP |page=277 |chapter=A British or an Irish city? The identity of Victorian Belfast }}</ref> By the 1900s, her shipyards were building up to a quarter of the total United Kingdom tonnage,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eoin |first=O'Malley |date=1981 |title=The Decline of Irish Industry in the Nineteenth Century |url=http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/68696/v13n11981_2.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |journal=The Economic and Social Review |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=(21–42) 22 |via=Trinity College Dublin |archive-date=28 January 2024 |access-date=28 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240128100059/http://www.tara.tcd.ie/bitstream/handle/2262/68696/v13n11981_2.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y |url-status=live }}</ref> and on the eve of the [[World War I|Great War]], in 1914, close one eighth of world production.<ref name=":26" />{{rp|167}} This included from the yard of [[Harland & Wolff]] the ill-fated RMS ''[[Titanic]],'' at the time of her launch in 1911 the largest ship afloat.''<ref name="Titanic In History">{{cite web |title=Introduction To Titanic – Titanic in History |url=http://www.titanicinbelfast.com/template.aspx?pid=342&area=1&parent=321 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070817040144/http://www.titanicinbelfast.com/template.aspx?pid=342&area=1&parent=321 |archive-date=17 August 2007 |access-date=18 May 2007 |work=Titanic. Built in Belfast |publisher=Ulster Folk and Transport Museum }}</ref>'' Other major export industries included textile machinery, rope, tobacco and mineral waters.<ref name=":21" />{{rp|59–88}}

Industry drew in a new Catholic population settling largely in the west of the town—refugees from a rural poverty intensified by Belfast's mechanisation of spinning and weaving and, in the 1840s, by [[Great Famine (Ireland)|famine]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kelly |first1=Mary |date=April 2013 |title=Historical Internal Migration in Ireland |url=https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~gisteac/proceedingsonline/GISRUK2013/gisruk2013_submission_63.pdf |url-status=live |journal=GIS Research UK |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180817225743/https://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/~gisteac/proceedingsonline/GISRUK2013/gisruk2013_submission_63.pdf |archive-date=17 August 2018 |access-date=17 August 2018 }}</ref> The plentiful supply of cheap labour helped attract English and Scottish capital to Belfast, but it was also a cause of insecurity.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Heatley |first=Fred |title=Belfast, The Making of the City |publisher=Appletree Press |year=1983 |isbn=0-86281-100-7 |editor-last=Beckett |display-editors=etal |editor-first=J. C. |location=Belfast |pages=129–142 |chapter=Community relations and religious geography 1800-86 }}</ref> Protestant workers organised and dominated the apprenticed trades<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal |last=Munck |first=Ronald |date=1985 |title=Class and Religion in Belfast – A Historical Perspective |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260533 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=241–259 |doi=10.1177/002200948502000203 |jstor=260533 |s2cid=159836923 |issn=0022-0094 }}</ref> and gave a new lease of life to the once largely rural [[Orange Order]].<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Foster |first=R. F. |title=Modern Ireland 1600–1972 |publisher=Allen Lane |year=1988 |isbn=0-7139-9010-4 |location=London |pages=389–396 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Farrell |first=Sean |url=https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=upk_european_history |title=Rituals and Riots: Sectarian Violence and Political Culture in Ulster, 1784–1886 |date=2000 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |pages=125–150 |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-date=6 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200506135301/https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=upk_european_history |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref> Sectarian tensions, which frequently broke out in riots and workplace expulsions, were also driven by the "constitutional question": the prospect of a restored Irish parliament in which Protestants (and northern industry) feared being a minority interest.<ref name=":9" />

On 28 September 1912, [[Unionism in Ireland|unionists]] massed at [[Belfast City Hall|Belfast's City Hall]] to sign the [[Ulster Covenant]], pledging to use "all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present [[Conspiracy (political)|conspiracy]] to set up a [[Home Rule]] Parliament in Ireland".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Connell Jr |first=Joseph E.A. |date=2012 |title=The 1912 Ulster Covenant by Joseph E.A. Connell Jr |url=https://www.historyireland.com/the-1912-ulster-covenant-by-joseph-e-a-connell-jr/ |access-date=19 January 2024 |website=History Ireland |archive-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119202415/https://www.historyireland.com/the-1912-ulster-covenant-by-joseph-e-a-connell-jr/ |url-status=live }}</ref> This was followed by the drilling and eventual arming of a 100,000-strong [[Ulster Volunteers|Ulster Volunteer Force]] (UVF).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bowman |first=Timothy |date=2013 |title=The Ulster Volunteers 1913–1914: force or farce? |url=https://www.historyireland.com/the-ulster-volunteers-1913-1914-force-or-farce/ |access-date=19 January 2024 |website=History Ireland |archive-date=8 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231208103037/https://www.historyireland.com/the-ulster-volunteers-1913-1914-force-or-farce/ |url-status=live }}</ref> The immediate crisis was averted by the onset of the [[World War I|Great War]]. The UVF formed the [[36th (Ulster) Division]] whose sacrifices in the [[Battle of the Somme]] continue to be commemorated in the city by unionist and [[Ulster loyalism|loyalist]] organisations.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Evershed |first=Jonathan |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpg869s |title=Ghosts of the Somme: Commemoration and Culture War in Northern Ireland |date=2018 |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press |doi=10.2307/j.ctvpg869s |jstor=j.ctvpg869s |s2cid=243890001 }}</ref>

In 1920–22, as Belfast emerged as the capital of the six counties remaining as [[Northern Ireland]] in the United Kingdom, there was [[The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922)|widespread violence]]. 8,000 "disloyal" workers were driven from their jobs in the shipyards:<ref>Lynch, Robert. ''The Partition of Ireland: 1918–1925''. Cambridge University Press, 2019. pp.92–93</ref> in addition to Catholics, "rotten Prods" – Protestants whose labour politics disregarded sectarian distinctions.<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Cochrane |first=Feargal |title=Belfast, the Story of a City and its People |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2023 |isbn=978-0-300-26444-9 |location=New Haven }}</ref>{{rp|104–108}} Gun battles, grenade attacks and house burnings contributed to as many as 500 deaths.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Glennon |first=Kieran |date=2020 |title=Facts and fallacies of the Belfast pogrom |url=https://www.historyireland.com/facts-and-fallacies-of-the-belfast-pogrom/ |access-date=19 January 2024 |website=History Ireland |archive-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119202415/https://www.historyireland.com/facts-and-fallacies-of-the-belfast-pogrom/ |url-status=live }}</ref> A curfew remained in force until 1924.<ref name=":25" />{{rp|194}} The lines drawn saw off the challenge to "unionist unity" posed by [[Belfast Labour Party|labour]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Walker |first=Graham |date=1984 |title=The Northern Ireland Labour Party in the 1920s |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23195875 |url-status=live |journal=Saothar |volume=10 |pages=19–30 |issn=0332-1169 |jstor=23195875 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231222173839/https://www.jstor.org/stable/23195875 |archive-date=22 December 2023 |access-date=30 January 2024}}</ref> Industry had been paralysed by [[1907 Belfast Dock strike|strikes in 1907]] and again in 1919 (when the city was effectively policed by strikers).<ref>{{Cite news |last=Burke |first=Jason |date=2025-04-18 |title=‘Belfast became an idle place in darkness’: Forgotten event brought city to a halt amid an economic crisis |url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/belfast-became-an-idle-place-in-darkness-forgotten-event-brought-city-to-a-halt-amid-an-economic-crisis/a334573543.html# |access-date=2025-04-20 |language=en-GB |issn=0307-1235}}</ref> Until "troubles" returned at the end of the 1960s, it was not uncommon in Belfast for the [[Ulster Unionist Party]] to have its [[:Category:Belfast City Council elections|council]] and [[:Category:General elections to the Parliament of Northern Ireland|parliamentary]] candidates returned unopposed.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Budge |first1=Ian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jIWMCwAAQBAJ |title=Belfast: Approach to Crisis: A Study of Belfast Politics 1613–1970 |last2=O'Leary |first2=Cornelius |date=2016 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-349-00126-2 |location=173-197 }}</ref><ref>Walker, B.M., ed. (1978). ''Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801–1922''. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. p. 331. {{ISBN|0-901714-12-7 }}</ref>

In 1932, the opening of the new buildings for [[Parliament of Northern Ireland|Northern Ireland's devolved Parliament]] at [[Stormont Buildings|Stormont]] was overshadowed by the protests of the unemployed and ten days of running street battles with the police. The government conceded increases in [[Outdoor relief|Outdoor Relief]], but labour unity was short lived.<ref name=":18" />{{rp|219–220}} In 1935, celebrations of [[George V|King George V]]'s Jubilee and of the annual Twelfth were followed by deadly riots and expulsions, a sectarian logic that extended itself to the interpretation of darkening events in Europe.<ref name=":18" />{{rp|226–233}} [[Northern Ireland Labour Party|Labour candidates]] found  support for the [[Anti-clericalism|anti-clerical]] [[Second Spanish Republic|Spanish Republic]] (marked today by a [[No Pasaran|''No Pasaran!'']] stained glass window in City Hall)<ref>{{Cite news |date=10 November 2015 |title=Honouring Belfast men who died for democracy of Spain |url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/honouring-belfast-men-who-died-for-democracy-of-spain/34183759.html |access-date=15 February 2024 |work=BelfastTelegraph.co.uk |issn=0307-1235}}</ref> characterised as another instance of [[Popery|No-Popery]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Harbinson |first=John Fitzsimons |date=1966 |title=Extract from A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1891-1949 (Queens University Belfast thesis). |url=http://geocities.com/irelandscw/docs-Midgley.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091028150414/http://geocities.com/irelandscw/docs-Midgley.htm |archive-date=28 October 2009 |access-date=15 February 2024 }}</ref>

In 1938, nearly a third of industrial workers were unemployed, [[malnutrition]] was a major issue, and at 9.6% the city's [[infant mortality]] rate (compared with 5.9% in [[Sheffield]], England) was among the highest in United Kingdom.<ref name="episode 48">{{cite episode |series=A Short History of Ireland |author=Dr. Jonathan Bardon |number=48 |publisher=BBC Audio |year=2006 }}</ref>