Contributor:

Professor Henry Patterson

Talk title:

Social Class: A Family’s Story

Talk Synopsis:

This talk explores the central role of social class in determining people’s life chances and experiences in Northern Ireland in the pre-Troubles period. It draws on the story of Henry Patterson’s own family and describes how it was affected by social and economic change, community divisions and world affairs. It also looks at the effect of WW2 on his father’s political outlook and how ‘like many servicemen’ he had ‘his horizons widened and his politics radicalised’; the ‘great social reforms introduced by the Labour government after 1945’; his father’s involvement in trade unionism and labour politics; class tensions in Bangor; and the role played by ‘the labourist tradition’ of his father’s generation in erecting what Frank Wright has described as ‘barriers of restraint against the real possibilities of madness’.

Short Biography:

Henry Patterson is Emeritus Professor of Irish Politics at Ulster University.

Further Reading:

A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party – Aaron Edwards