Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground

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But what elevates Susan McKay’s masterful book is that it challenges our preconceptions about a community that is regularly reviled by their political opponents, and shines a light on the heretofore overlooked diversity within that community. It was more - red top for number 52, make sure Mrs Murphy at 16 pays you for the cream from last week. Who knows what the future holds for them, but there are lots of people in this book for whom I wish nothing but the very best.

There was an initial wariness but the barriers soon came down, or as much as they could as the conflict was still ongoing. There has been little peace dividend in the working class estates or the deep rural interior of Ulster. This book comes almost exactly twenty years after Susan McKay’s previous opus on this subject, 2000’s “Northern Protestants: an Unsettled People”.Living in Northern Ireland and growing up from mid teens in the midst of an identity crisis, where death and destruction were commonplace and the "other" were always suspect.

My response to that is: the book promises to hold up a mirror to Northern Protestants and that's exactly what it delivers. You get dragged back into the old divide,” she says wearily, noting how the traumas of the recent past so inform the stalemates of the present. I had almost forgotten having read Susan's previous "Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People" - it was before I started keeping a record of the books I read and I never owned a copy.In the meantime, unionist anxiety is turning to anger and, on the ground in loyalist areas, to unrest and threats of violent resistance from the paramilitaries, who have been an ominous presence at recent anti-protocol protests. It’s a deep but breezy read, and I found myself constantly saying far past my bedtime, “Just one more section. Towards the end of the decade, as civil rights protesters demanded an end to a political system designed to disempower Catholics, that unionist rallying cry grew louder and more strident in its opposition to the same. Sure, I knew they existed, and they were identifiable by their different school uniforms as they quickly walked through 'our' estate on their way home.

The burden of political violence and its effect on people's lives is passed from generation to generation. Poots’s reign as leader lasted just 21 days before he, too, was toppled in a rebellion within his own party. One person opines that ‘Protestant working-class people don’t have a problem with limited abortion rights. Voices that are needed to be heard, welcomed and like the rest of us to be challenged appropriately. The drawing together of such an eclectic group of people allows the reader to glimpse into their lives and to see that there is not one voice of Protestant people but a myriad of voices that represent positions that are important to them.The role of religion is paradoxical in NI, despite so many born-again Christians, and many in the community with uncharitable attitudes. So often, when we hear the voice of Protestants, it’s mouthed by the DUP, the UUP, loyalist rabble rousers and paramilitary apologists. A superb piece of work, there is breadth and depth here and it's a recommended read for anyone wanting to gain insight into the many different experiences and perspectives of northern protestants in the early 2020s. Despite that, it is a book worth reading to understand why it is so difficult to find a way forward in Northern Ireland in 2021. First published in 2000, ‘Northern Protestants – An Unsettled People’ was an instant success and is widely recognised as a ground-breaking book.

McKay’s interviews thus manage to combine to make an important point: what looks like an absurd preoccupation with questions [End Page 204] of identity for those outside the region are in fact articulations of the hopelessness with respect to material questions for those who live inside. That may ultimately prove untenable given the rapidly shifting demographics but, for now, it represents the kind of paradigm shift in political thinking that is needed for real progress to be made. The presence of a range of female voices was particularly welcome, though the lack of progressive voices from a male, explicitly loyalist or faith-based perspective doesn't necessarily reflect my experience. Once again, her subjects are ordinary Protestants who, as McKay puts it, “are outside the unionist mainstream” and often feel “excluded and unrepresented”. I saw another review of this book that expressed disappointment that McKay doesn't offer suggestions for how to fix the problems of northern Irish society.And those interviews provide an invaluable insight into the psyche of the Northern Protestant community. Had I read a book like this as a teenager, I imagine it would have shocked me enough to change my adolescent views on whether it's possible to reconcile left wing ideas with any kind of formalised unionism. The most interesting voices here tend to belong to people who have made the biggest leap from one often inherited political belief system to another. It is a fascinating time in Northern Ireland given Brexit looming before them along with an election that placed Sinn Fein in power.