The years from 1956 to 1968 saw a profound cultural transformation in majority attitudes to religious minorities, and the latter’s engagement with Ireland. Israel’s victory in the wars of 1956 and 1967 changed the self-perception and public standing of the Jewish community. The disbanding of the British Empire in Africa, which was virtually completed by 1967, helped to detach Protestants from residual ‘West Briton’ nostalgia. In parallel with decolonisation, the beginning of the process of European integration created the prospect of a future political settlement within which minority status would be resolved in a pluralist definition of legitimate belonging. Finally, Vatican II (1962–5) was decisive in transforming the atmosphere of the country, but liberalisation was gradual, and at first often superficial. In 1966 – on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising – The Irish Times denounced the terrifying conditions of the country’s industrial and reformatory schools. That the minorities as a whole were unmoved by such revelations showed the extent to which – despite professions of liberalism – they were largely part of Ireland’s conservative consensus.