The Scots Irish

Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on St Patrick's Day 2018:

"Ulster-Scots Protestants are as much a part of the history of the Irish in America as the Irish Catholics are. In the same way, they are an integral, respected and valued part of the history - and the future - of the island of Ireland."

John Hume wrote in 1989:

Religious apartheid in 1940s southern Ireland

As has been a recent theme on this blog, I've been a little alarmed at the growing narrative that only protestants and unionists are bigoted, something Sinn Fein and republicans appear to be promoting.

As Jenny McCartney wrote in 2004 following the complete exit of protestants from a catholic estate in Belfast:

"Mr Eoin O'Broin - steeped so long in Sinn Fein’s myth that Northern Ireland’s Catholics must always be oppressed and Protestants the oppressors - simply cannot bear to admit the truth about the intense anti-Protestant bigotry in many working-class Catholic areas... It is pure dishonesty, however, for anyone to pretend that the sectarianism flows in only one direction."

Yes James Craig said Northern Ireland was a "Protestant State", but why do we forget de Valera said that Ireland was "a Catholic nation"

John Draper wrote in History Ireland:

"Did the Unionist leader James Craig really describe Stormont as a ‘Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’, as quoted by Tony Canavan in ‘A papist painting for a Protestant parliament’ (HI 16.1, Jan./Feb. 2008)? This is at variance with the version given by Craig’s biographer, Patrick Buckland (James Craig, Gill and Macmillan, 1980). Citing Northern Ireland House of Commons records, Buckland says that Craig was making a comparison between the north and the south. Craig is recorded as saying that southerners had boasted and ‘. . . still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State.’ Note that in this version there is no reference to the northern state and parliament being ‘for a Protestant people’. Critics may draw that inference, but that does not mean that the prime minister uttered those words. 

Having to speak to republicans like they're a child

James Stephens said:

"It is too generally conceived among Nationalists that the attitude of Ulster towards Ireland is rooted in ignorance and bigotry."

John Hume said that being pro-Union does not make you a bigot. He wrote in his famous 1964 letters for the Irish Times:

"Another positive step towards easing community tensions and towards removing what bigotry exists among Catholics would be to recognize that the Protestant tradition in the North is as strong and as legitimate as our own. Such recognition is our first step towards better relations. We must be prepared to accept this and to realize that the fact that a man wishes Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom does not necessarily make him a bigot or a discriminator. Which leads me to the constitutional question."

Sinn Fein is "the Irish for John Bull"

Cartoon by Morten Morland (2003), via the British Cartoon Archive

Presently in Northern Ireland Sinn Fein has worked to make itself synonymous with progress and positive. They have done this to the detriment of Unionism and the wider protestant culture, both of which are perceived as cold and narrow minded.

The creation of Northern Ireland and the Free State gave Home Rule to all of Ireland

'All right—who else can steer?' O’Neill and Chichester-Clark drowning in a cartoon by ‘Mac’, Daily Sketch, 1 January 1971. (British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent)

The Ulster Proclamation of Provisional Government of 1913 signalled the intent of unionists to form their own administration in the nine northern counties of Ireland if Westminster handed powers to a nationalist parliament in Dublin.

It was issued the year after almost half a million people in Ulster signed either the Solemn League and Covenant or Declaration in opposition to Home Rule and as tens of thousands joined the original Ulster Volunteer Force in preparation to resist the move by force. The crisis was overtaken by the outbreak of World War One and a nine-county government was never formed.

The vanity of Irish exceptionalism...

I voted agained Brexit, but I believe in democracy. The Brexit vote and the disentagling process can be critiqued, but many commentators and papers have taken a sneering and condescending approach to those who favour separation from Brexit.

Irish Republican's lack of self-awareness

Postcard showing the 'Ulster Cow'. A priest and John Redmond portrayed trying to tax an Ulster farmer. The cow, labelled ‘Ulster,‘ belches 'defiance' - 'Now All of you try and milk her, dairymaid Redmond Don't Funk. We have been beaten, not hands down, but horns up, Carson's a Holy terror.'

Alex Kane wrote an article in the Irish Times pointing out that unionists and republicans in Northern Ireland both suffer from having a blind spot in their view of the world.

Ethics and Empire, reappraising colonialism?

Shane O'Neill of Tyrone meets Queen Elizabeth of England

Ian d'Alton wrote:

"In 1916 Irish Protestants were looked upon, in the words of novelist Susanne Day, as ‘illegitimate children of an irregular union between Hibernia and John Bull’."

Hubert Butler wrote:

"We protestants of the Irish Republic are no longer very interesting to anyone but ourselves. A generation ago we were regarded dramatically as imperialistic blood-suckers... Our brothers in the north are still discussed in such colourful terms."

Erskine Childers wrote in ‘The Framework of Home Rule’ (1911):

"In natural humanity the colonists of Ireland and the colonists of America differed in no appreciable degree. They were the same men, with the same inherent virtues and defects, acting according to the pressure of environment. Danger, in proportionate degree, made both classes brutal and perfidious."

European report labels Ireland a tax haven, Sinn Fein votes it down

Valerie Flynn wrote in the Times, 'Sinn Fein MEPs help Ireland avoid tax haven label':

"The adopted report criticises Ireland’s role in tax evasion. In it the European parliament notes with “regret” that the latest EU tax haven blacklist focuses only on non-EU jurisdictions and omits “countries within the EU that have played a systematic role in promoting and enabling harmful tax practices”. 

The parliament noted that “at least four member states would be included on the [blacklist] if screened according to the same EU criteria”. Although not named, Ireland was one of the four member states in question. The report was adopted by a large majority of MEPs."

The Westminster convention of non-interference in Northern Ireland (1921 - 1969)

'The Lobby of the House of Commons, 1886' by Liborio Prosperi ('Lib'), published in Vanity Fair Christmas Supplement 1886

Paul Rose, MP for Manchester Blackley, helped to set up the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster in 1965. Speaking at a debate on Northern Ireland in the House of commons on 22 April 1969 (just before Bernadette Devlin made her maiden speech) Paul Rose said:

Edward Carson - If Home Rule for Ireland, why not for the north-east of Ireland?

In opposition to the third Home Rule bill Edward Carson said:

"What argument is there that you can raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east province?"

Lloyd George said:

"I was drenched with suspicion of Irishmen by Englishmen and of Englishmen by Irishmen and, worst of all, of Irishmen by Irishmen. It was a quagmire of distrust which clogged the footsteps and made progress impossible. That is the real enemy of Ireland."

Irish Ireland, not Ireland

'Posting in Ireland', by James Gillray

Republican teaching records that Irish Ireland and the true Irish Nation had nearly extinguished, only the Easter Rising ‘woke up’ the Irish people and unleashed them towards independence.

Todd Andrews wrote that "Dublin [in 1901] was a British city and accepted itself as one", and Ernie O'Malley said, "‘the old hatred of the redcoats had disappeared."

Tom Barry wrote that he had "no  national consciousness" but events of Easter Week gave him a "rude awakening", and "Through the blood sacrifice of 1916 had one Irish youth been awakened to Irish nationality."

Eamon de Valera said in 1926:

"[Clarke, Pearse and Connolly] made sure of an Irish Ireland by dying for it."

Unconscious bias against Ireland's protestants and unionists

A 19th century painting by Édouard Debat-Ponsan, depicting Catherine de' Medici (in black) viewing the carnage of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (a day of Catholic mob violence and murder in 1572)

Just because you are gay it does not automatically mean that you believe in government control of the economy and large public spending.

Today we live in an identity-politics world where the conservative and centrist is evil and the progressive left is benevolent and virtuous.

And so it is in Northern Ireland, the unionist is bad, the nationalist is good. As Newton Emerson said: "The special problem with Sinn Fein is its ideological imperative to paint unionists as a community defined by prejudice." Unionists are the "despised tribe" and the "despised hangers-on".

The Vatican's colonialism and imperialism

I want to look at the Doctrine of Discovery and the conquest ethic of the Catholic Church. I do this because Catholics in Ireland equate conquest, colonialism and imperialism only with Britain, perfectly ignoring these impulses that exist in the Catholic church of the past and present. Surely that is an act of blatant hypocrisy?

In 'Interpreting Northern Ireland' John Whyte wrote:

"The Protestant school flew the Union Jack daily, a practice on which a catholic teacher commented: “They fly the flag down there to show that they are more British than the British themselves. It’s also to let us know that they are the lords and masters and we (Catholics) should be continually aware of it.” 

On the other hand, the catholic school was full of religious symbols, and a Protestant teacher commented: “it’s hard to escape the view that a special show is being put on for our benefit… they must know that these are the very things that we object to, yet still they are flaunted everywhere.”"

Paul Gough - Why Ireland Wasn't a Colony

Stephen Howe wrote in his 2008 article, ‘Questioning the (bad) question: ‘Was Ireland a colony?’:

"Might we usefully think of Ulster in certain periods as a Scots colony, or even Wexford as a Welsh one?"

After 1916 relations between Carson and Redmond improved

Delivering the John Redmond Lecture in April 2012 in Waterford the Minister of State for Northern Ireland the Rt Hon Hugo Swire MP reminded us that if you walk out of the Members’ Dining Room in the House of Commons and turn right you will pass a bust of John Redmond, continue towards the Members’ Library and you will face a bust of Sir Edward Carson.

Degrees of Irishness?

The Rt Hon Timothy Healy, Governor General of the Irish Free State, by Sir William Orpen

'My dear Boy, come and see me whenever you like in the bee-loud glade,' is what Tim Healy reputedly wrote in a letter response to W.B. Yeats, a story told by Lady Gregory and recalled by Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Is the British uniform really foreign?

On April 17 2017 Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy told a Sinn Féin commemoration at the republican plot at St Finbarr’s Cemetery in Cork where lord mayors Tomas Mac Curtain and Terence Mac Swiney are buried:

"Let me just make it clear – it is important that we remember those who fought in world wars; those people who were part of the Irish nation but for whatever reason decided to wear foreign uniforms, it’s absolutely legitimate that they should be remembered and should be commemorated."

Diarmaid Ferriter in ‘The Transformation of Ireland: 1900-2000’ wrote:

"Thousands of Irish soldiers, many of them nationalist, fought with the British army, suggesting a high degree of contentment with Ireland’s place within the Empire."

People suggest that Ireland before independence was a mere colony. However as Edward Carson said, Ireland had county councils and representative institutions. And John Redmond said in 1915:

"[Ireland has] its feet firmly planted in the groundwork and foundation of a free nation."

Read my post on Ireland's social revolution here.

The terrible ignorance of Ireland's unionists

Northern Ireland is the subject of a "terrible ignorance" by the people of the Republic of Ireland. This allows misunderstandings to linger and suspicions to fester. There are stereotypes of what an Irish protestant is like, as I wrote here, but these are incorrect. I wrote in my article, 'A Terrible Ignorance':

"Not only did Ireland of the twentieth century airbrush the constitutionalist tradition, they erased the avatar of a loyal Irish-British person and burnt the hard-drive. 

My Irishness is not singular and prescriptive, I’m Irish and British. Two buckets are easier carried than one, so I stand in-between. 

The unorthodox views of the northern protestant are never considered by the south. The Irish suffer willed amnesia when it comes to the loyal Ulstermen and women who are British and Irish."