The Identity of Ulster: The Land, the Language and the People

"This book is not on the list because it’s the best book: it isn’t. But it’s an extremely influential book. Ian Adamson is a former Lord Mayor of Belfast, a retired pediatrician and a long-serving unionist politician. In the 1970s, he developed a theory called ‘the theory of the Cruthin’ whereby Northern Ireland, or Ulster—as he would always call it—had a different ethnic makeup from the rest of Ireland. He supported some of the activity and ideas that were circulated in the 1980s that were trying to appropriate ancient Irish mythology—the Rúraíocht or Ulster cycle as it’s called—into Ulster unionist identity. So what he is trying to do is create some sort of mythological history, whereby there is an ethno-cultural basis for Ulster unionism. “The United Kingdom included the whole of the island of Ireland until 1922.” He then became very prominent in the development of the Ulster-Scots Language Society, and became chair of the Ulster-Scots Academy. He was at the centre of promoting the idea there was a separate language, called Ullans, which is a variant of Scots spoken in Northern Ireland and actually across the border in Donegal. That actually got a lot of UK government funding, and indeed some Irish government funding, as well. He’s not a historian. He’s somebody creating a political mythology, a political prehistory, to suit the current conditions and to defend, ultimately, a unionist agenda in Northern Ireland. The Irish pre-history he created—which was published by Nosmada Books in 1974 and then another small Northern Irish publisher in 1978 and so on into its revised impressions—is really a mythological history. It has been very important in its influence on a conception of a modern and separate Ulster identity. It reinforced Ulster unionist identity at a crucial time in the 1980s and 1990s. Ian Adamson was quite a senior politician, and he became very influential in promoting this idea of Ulster separateness. The interesting thing about books like The Identity of Ulster is that they’re at the meeting point between the way people imagine their communities—that Benedict Anderson phrase—and history. Often there is a big overlap between the way you imagine your community and what actually happened: World War I, Bannockburn, the French Revolution. In the case of The Identity of Ulster , there isn’t really very much historical overlap at all—it is a kind of instant, readymade, Unionist foundation myth. It unquestionably influenced popular opinion—the idea that there is a separate Ulster Enlightenment, that there’s a separate Ulster identity that goes back hundreds of years. Ulster is one of the original provinces of Ireland, but if you look at Irish unionism in the 19th century, although there was a slightly different flavour in the North, nobody was saying that Ulster had a totally separate identity, or that that was why it couldn’t be incorporated. They were trying to prevent the whole of Ireland from moving out of the Union. This idea that Ulster has a particular ethno-cultural identity is very modern. “A lot of what is driving Brexit is pure English nationalism, except it doesn’t say it is” Adamson has also been chair of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council and is currently president of the Belfast Civic Trust. He’s got a whole range of ways that he’s been able to have a really significant impact on Northern Irish society—and he’s got the books that support his interpretation. His interpretation can be found in a light or diluted way in a lot of the way that Ulster Unionism conceives Ulster identity and separateness. But, actually, it’s challenging to find the documentation to support his thesis in The Identity of the Ulster. That’s a good choice of identities, but they all go in the same direction, I think. They are part of the United Kingdom and that’s their aim. But what became very visible after the Troubles started in the 1960s is that they have a very different approach from the rest of the United Kingdom. Their politics is completely separate. That’s not very well understood. For example, just before the 2010 election, the BBC reported the Conservative Party’s formal union with the Ulster Unionist Party, the UUP. David Cameron wanted to get the UUP on board and thought that by having the Conservative Party involved in Northern Ireland—and the UUP fully identified with it as they had been up to 1970—they would get more seats and that that would help him if he was a bit short of a majority. But the UUP were more or less massacred. The link to the Conservative Party was actually unhelpful to them. So they rescinded it in 2012, which was not widely reported. It’s very difficult for a UK political party to operate in Northern Ireland, which means that, really, it’s very difficult to see how, functionally, it’s part of the UK. But it is. The DUP seem to be in no hurry to let the Prime Minister off the hook, in terms of supporting her administration. They want a number of things, probably financial, linked to Brexit, and maybe other things too. Greater marching rights for the Orange unionist community has already proven itself to be on the agenda. It’s very difficult to categorize them. The official Unionists, the UUP, were linked to two organizations, the Orange Order (and they stopped being linked to that many years ago—directly, anyway) and the Conservative Party, which they were linked to briefly in 2009/10-2012, but also up to the time of the 1970 general election. So the UUP were associated with middle-class unionism and clearly aligned with the Tories. But, in Northern Ireland, the UUP was seen as increasingly soft on alignment with the nationalist community. “I know it’s old history, but we are still living with it” So the DUP was begun by Ian Paisley and his allies. They’re basically a working class, populist party. They’re seen as tougher than the UUP and have had some associations, in the past, with the seamier sides of the Northern Irish conflict. That’s not true now, obviously. But it’s difficult to say they’re a Labour Party or a Tory party. They’re Labour in the sense that they want a lot of expenditure on Northern Ireland. They’re Tory—and more than Tory—in their attitudes to same-sex marriage, abortion, and a whole range of issues that have moved into general social legislation across Europe, but are still very much opposed by many members of the DUP. It isn’t UK politics, really. Currently, the Northern Irish executive is suspended because they can’t form a government. All governments in Northern Ireland are formed on power-sharing principles, which are now, really, between the DUP and Sinn Fein. What’s happened in Northern Ireland is that politics has gone more to the extremes—between Unionism and Republicanism. That’s now happened at the Westminster elections too. Northern Irish politics in Westminster is divided between seven Sinn Feiners who don’t take their seats and 10 DUP members who do. Sinn Fein have never taken their seats, since 1918. “Like Gladstone, Tony Blair understood that there was a real problem in the historic relationship with Ireland that needed to be addressed—whereas quite a lot of other politicians have just seen it as some sort of issue that’s got to be resolved” Nearly all the Sinn Fein seats are in the west of the province, and the DUP seats are in the east. Sinn Fein’s seats are in the majority Catholic areas, and they’re also in the very high majority Remain areas. That was evident in the Assembly elections as well: Sinn Fein have benefited from a Brexit polarization coming on top of the standard Northern Irish polarization. All Sinn Fein representatives tend to, intermittently, demand an all-Ireland poll, on the future of Ireland. They ultimately want reunion with the Republic. All DUP representatives want to stop that at any price and remain united to the Crown and Great Britain. There are a lot of polarizations happening in the UK at present, and this is a very old one. Brexit has added another level to it. What you began to see in Scotland, for the first time in the last two or three years, is a similar polarization between Unionism and Nationalism, accentuated by the way in which Brexit is taking place, against the background of a Remain vote. Among countries in the EU, of the polling I have seen (which covers 10-15 countries) support for the EU is highest in the Republic of Ireland. The difficulty is that a lot of these places that are now voting Sinn Fein—and have done in the past—voted Remain by 80:20. And they’re right on the border with the Republic. For these people, this is a very difficult moment, because they never wanted to be in the British state anyway. Now they find they’re actually being dragged out of Europe, when their neighbours, who they want to be reunited with, are, generally speaking, passionately pro-European. I think that’s a very shrewd point. I think one of the reasons we keep hearing about how the United Kingdom is so united on this issue is because it clearly isn’t. A lot of what is driving Brexit is pure English nationalism, except it doesn’t say it is."