identity – Slugger O'Toole

Unionism needs to reclaim its Irishness…

Ollie Donaldson on August 24, 2022, 8:45 am

| Readers 5954

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Irish language legislation is coming. This is despite the protest of some unionist activists and politicians, who have objected due to the politicised nature of the language. That the Irish language has been politicised obscenely is hard to object to, however the response to simply shut any language legislation down is not proving to be an effective one. Nor, in my opinion, is it an appropriate response. However, what else is possible after the wholesale retreat from Irishness by most …

The Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition report now available…

Brian O'Neill on December 1, 2021, 6:32 pm

| Readers 3804

Commissions have a formula in Northern Ireland. They gather together the great and the good to analyse a problem in great detail. The commission spends several years and lots of cash engaging with all the key stakeholders, a final report is created and a series of recommendations are given, the report is discussed in-depth on the Nolan Show and Talkback before being ignored by the politicians. A few years go by and some crisis emerges. The solution proposed by politicians …

The start of normal politics in NI?

Robert Campbell on October 13, 2021, 12:16 pm

| Readers 3630

mind, brain, mindset

In my previous post (here), I described the rise of the non-religious in N. Ireland, showing that that there are now three main blocs as defined on a religious basis: And showed how a gradual trend has recently increased: I suggested previously that the rise of the non-religious was paralleled by support for the Alliance party. I’d like to look further into this, again using raw data from the Northern Ireland Life and Times Surveys (here). I entered their data …

English Nationalism and its identity issues…

Brian O'Neill on September 13, 2021, 8:01 am

| Readers 3318

face, faces, dialog

You think we are bad with identity politics until you look across the water at England. The Daily Express managed the impressive task of simultaneously criticising migrants and congratulating them on the same page. You don’t like to overshadow Emma Raducanu’s magnificent achievement with discussion around her heritage. But it is astonishing how quickly people can switch from ‘immigrants out’ to embracing new ‘British’ stars. We have been here before. When Andy Murray loses he is Scottish. When he wins …

What Northern Ireland Means To Me…

Julia Paul on September 2, 2021, 11:04 am

| Readers 3867

trees, avenue, road

I’ve always been of the view that every birthday is worth a celebration, even if it’s simply to remind people you still exist. But of course marking the centenary of Northern Ireland was always going to tricky. In the Belfast Telegraph, Sam McBride laments the lost opportunity to use the anniversary to find common ground between Unionists and Nationalists, and highlights the fact that recognition of the centenary has been underwhelming to say the least. In the ever present ‘crisis’ …

What’s in a name #3…

Niall NYC on July 28, 2021, 8:30 am

| Readers 4118

I was delighted to read, from afar, that the DUP MP for East Londonderry Gregory Campbell deigns that the border in Ireland is not “a threat to anyone who feels Irish on this part of the island.”. I’m sorry, but “feels Irish”? Am I naïve in thinking we had moved on in “Our Wee Country” since 1998? Or does this typify a mindset that refuses to accept geographical reality? There is a Big Island called Britain, and there is a …

For the sake of future generations, we simply cannot go on like this…

Samuel Thompson on April 8, 2021, 6:59 pm

| Readers 29939

I remember back in 1984 being on holiday on a Greek island and wasting an evening drinking largely on my own while a friend who hailed from the loyalist part of the Donegall Road, spent hours trying to convince a friendly English couple that he was British not Irish. After around two hours of the best persuasive arguments he could muster, the woman said, ‘But you’re Irish!’ I learned a couple of lessons that evening, one was not to waste …

Survey evidence shows unionists and nationalists supporting power sharing at home and waiting on developments outside

Brian Walker on June 18, 2020, 10:31 am

| Readers 4501

Just under 60% of Catholics in Northern Ireland now categorise themselves as nationalist compared with 50% two years ago. 67% of Protestants now classified themselves as unionist compared with 55% in 2018. After the past year of political trauma the big surprise in the NI Life and Times Survey for 2019 is not that there has been a hardening of political allegiances but that this has failed to polarise opinion for their finally incompatible causes. The remarkable fact is that …

Identity is more than a passport

Soapbox on July 15, 2019, 9:49 pm

| Readers 3431

Chris Eisenstadt is a dual national who has lived in Northern Ireland since he was 11. Recently, with the success of the English cricket team, there has been a “debate” about what it means to be English. The captain of the team, having been born in Ireland, has been praised and criticised for his decision to take to the field (is it a field? My cricket knowledge is rubbish. I’d never pass the Tebbit test) for England. I don’t know, …

The Citizenship Rights of the Good Friday Agreement – Real or Imagined?

Emma DeSouza on March 19, 2019, 10:00 am

| Readers 5513

The Belfast Good Friday Agreement is widely championed as a success. Revered as a model of peace, it’s representative to many as a demonstration of the power of collaboration and compromise. And in a lot of ways, this is all true – “decommissioning”, the North South institutions, and power sharing have all changed the very fabric of Northern Ireland for the better. However, considering the lack of codification, the St. Andrews amendments and the current stalemate at Stormont, did we …

Future Ireland / Children of the Ceasefire / 1

Soapbox on January 12, 2019, 8:24 am

| Readers 1482

This is one of three winning articles for the Future Ireland series. The articles were submitted together – by three friends who met at college – a northern Catholic, a east Belfast Protestant, and a Dublin man. We liked the nuanced content of the pieces, the sense of identities in flux, and the fact that each tried to understand the perspectives of the others. Also how being children of the ceasefires weaves throughout their pieces. By Matthew Redmond – hailing …

Future Ireland / Children of the Ceasefire / 2

Soapbox on January 12, 2019, 8:23 am

| Readers 940

This is one of three winning articles for the Future Ireland series. The articles were submitted together – by three friends who met at college – a northern Catholic, a east Belfast Protestant, and a Dublin man. We liked the nuanced content of the pieces, the sense of identities in flux, and the fact that each tried to understand the perspectives of the others. Also how being children of the ceasefires weaves throughout their pieces. By Seanín Little Growing up …

Future Ireland / Children of the Ceasefire / 3

Soapbox on January 12, 2019, 8:22 am

| Readers 753

This is one of three winning articles for the Future Ireland series. The articles were submitted together – by three friends who met at college – a northern Catholic, a east Belfast Protestant, and a Dublin man. We liked the nuanced content of the pieces, the sense of identities in flux, and the fact that each tried to understand the perspectives of the others. Also how being children of the ceasefires weaves throughout their pieces. By William Clarence – from …

Is Your Child Green or Orange?

Roy Fisher on December 6, 2018, 12:54 pm

| Readers 3465

Children in Northern Ireland are continuing to be shoe-horned into Orange and Green identities, by the very programme set up to break down divisions. This article draws on a recent FOI request to the NI Executive, to show how children participating in ‘Together: Building a United Community’ (TBUC) Camps, ended up being designated as one community background or the other. A factor which surely makes it more difficult to break out of the cycle of polarisation in Northern Ireland, and which …

Future Ireland / Irish Unification: An Evangelical View

David Millen on October 13, 2018, 8:34 am

| Readers 6482

The Unification Agenda At the time of writing, questions about unification are more topical than ever. Brexit has polarised our population, and this in its turn has added significant impetus to the unity debate. Supporters of unification have rightly read this as an opportunity, and proposals for border polls abound. Emotions across the population run high, with most people seeming to sit on either extreme of a continuum that runs between elation and dread. So how do we pick our …

The end of the world

Andrew Gallagher on May 10, 2018, 6:33 pm

| Readers 2835

Sea cliffs

In the 19th century national identity in Europe was more deeply entwined with religion than it is today. Witness the creation of Belgium in 1831 from the remains of the Spanish Netherlands, when formerly Hapsburg areas seceded from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands to form a Catholic-majority, multilingual state with a French-speaking aristocracy. In the 20th century the focus of national identity shifted: the same Belgian state is now hoplessly riven between French- and Dutch-speakers, regardless of religion. The …

Two “Communities” demographics: Don’t mention the Others

Soapbox on April 25, 2018, 12:01 pm

| Readers 7538

Roy Fisher does a deep dive into the census data, showing how it is almost impossible to opt out of the two communities model… “When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, ‘Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?’” – from The Wit and Wisdom of Quentin Crisp (1984) When the quotation above …

Take Back Control – of our Ulster-Scots histories

Claire Mitchell on November 25, 2017, 8:00 am

| Readers 9655

A friend of mine was sacked from the civil service for saying that Ulster-Scots was a made up language. Unfortunately he said it in the newspaper. But lots of us have said it in private, right? LOLed at the dafties whilst railing against the DUP. Or for unionists, awkwardly pushed it forward as a political issue. I’ve been thinking recently about how radical the Scottish legacy in Northern Ireland is. And how uncomfortably this sits beside our understandings of Ulster-Scots …

A Question of Identity

David McCann on October 16, 2017, 7:39 pm

| Readers 2390

The View presenter Mark Carruthers has taken a look into the complexities of identity in Northern Ireland. In his 30 minute documentary for Radio Ulster he speaks with academics, politicians and members of the clergy about their experiences with identity and what makes up a Northern Irish identity. As the radio programme starts, Carruthers points out the difficulties that people have in being able to actually pin point what actually makes up Northern Irishness or does such an identity even …

British or Irish. When it comes to identity we are all mongrels…

Claire Mitchell on October 7, 2017, 1:53 pm

| Readers 6888

We are all mongrels, to a greater or lesser degree. British-Irish-Northern Irish crossbreeds. Not to mention the fact that if we did ancestry DNA tests we’d probably be 20% African. We live in a divided society and in a contested state. So to hear Foster and O’Neill playing Punch and Judy at the Tory party conference this week was frustrating. ‘Northern Ireland is British’, ‘Oh no it’s not’. etc. etc. I was studying and teaching Northern Irish politics in University …