Nick Laird on the Protestant-Irish identity

Nick Laird, poet from Northern Ireland, said:

"The complexities of being a Protestant, in that you’re Irish when you’re in Britain, but you’re not Irish when you’re in Ireland. You’re a bad fit everywhere."

Being Protestant and Bloody Sunday

James Nesbitt played Ivan Cooper in 'Bloody Sunday' in 2002

As Paul Bew reminded us, Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972 stands as the worst massacre of British citizens by British troops since Peterloo in 1819. Ruth Dudley Edwards said:

"Unionists wanted to believe – until Lord Saville proved otherwise – that innocent protesters in Derry on Bloody Sunday had been carrying weapons."

Ireland's Capitalist Crown

Just as Ireland had a "parallel Monarchy" in the form of the imperial Roman Church, so Ireland now has a "parallel Crown" in the form of capitalist bonds and debentures.

Ireland's venerated martyr James Connolly wrote in 1914 that "Ireland has no war with Germany, it welcomes the German as a brother struggling towards the light", and went further than David Cameron by calling migrants to Ireland "hordes", a "swarm of locusts", "boys of the bull-dog breed" and "Brit-Huns", making Ireland "Rotten" with a "new plantation". James Connolly wrote in a 3 part essay series titled 'Slackers'.

Unionists and nationalists write to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson

Oil on canvas By Sidney Edward Dickinson

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson coined the expression "self-determination", a catch-penny cry in Ireland. Dated August 1 1918, Edward Carson and other unionists sent a letter to the U.S. President which responded to the Nationalist Manifesto sent to Wilson in June 1918 and openly circulated. Mr Carson and his co-signatories wrote:

Edward Carson and John Redmond respond to the Easter Rising (May 3 1916)

Cartoon of Carson and Redmond by Percy Fearon, 'Poy'. 

On May 3 1916 the House of Commons convening for a motion titled ‘Disturbances in Ireland, Resignation of Mr. Birrell’. John Redmond and Edward Carson both spoke in reaction to the Easter Rising that broke out on April 24 1916. The Ulster poet John Hewitt said: "I accepted Sir Edward Carson and his twin, John Redmond, as men from the same country as myself, who had diverging ideas about the governing of it." John Redmond said:

1916 Revisionism

NBC presenter Brian Williams

E.L. Doctorow said "History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew." Napoleon said "History is a set of lies agreed upon." Jane Austen wrote in her novel Mansfield Park

"The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!"

Sinn Fein revisionism

Gerry Adams wrote about the 'Good Old IRA', equating the PIRA to the IRA that brought about partition 

Sinn Fein and IRA were not about attaining human rights but about attaining a united Irish socialist republic at the cost of human rights and human life. Most of the Civil Rights demands Sinn Fein claim the Provisional IRA secured through violence were achieved before the organization was even born at the end of 1969 In 1972 the IRA announced that they would rid Ireland of the British even if they had “to demolish Belfast brick-by-brick”. Martin McGuinness said around 1973:

"It doesn’t matter a fuck what John Hume says, we’ll go on fighting until we get a united Ireland."

Orange and Green, we're all Paddies

The Simpsons portrays Saint Patrick's day and the division in Ireland between Orange and Green 

Many Protestants born in Ireland strenuously and stridently object to being Irish.

To the outsider there's not a shade of difference between the Orangemen and the Green Gael, the planter and the native. The English, American and Europeans and the world see us all as Irish equally.