Identity Politics – Respect Yourself.

I came across the song Respect Yourself by the Staple Singers in a documentary about 1971 and the impact of music that year, and it sparked some thinking.

The song become an anthem for the black population of the US. Along with Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes and many more, black music was political like never before. It was also being heard on white radio and for the first time there was a TV show, Soul Train, that featured and was introduced by African Americans.

So what has that to do with our identity in Northern Ireland in 2021?

Respect.

An old fashioned notion that seems to have gone out of fashion. Respect yourself, and respect others. “Respect your elders” was a common instruction from parents. “You have to earn respect” was a lesson taught.

That takes me to the crux of the thought. That identity politics is filling a hole that used to be filled with respect in the Unionist community.

In the first 50 years of Northern Ireland the Protestant Working class was that, working. I completely accept that there was discrimination in employment. That is covered extensive in the history of Northern Ireland. But I am looking at one of the issues facing us today, the imaginary disenfranchisement of the Protestant/Loyalist community.

Belfast was an industrial city. Everyone knows about the shipyard, it is still visible. Mackies Engineering employed thousands. The largest Ropeworks in the world. The largest tobacco factory. Linen mills all over the north. Whiskey distilleries. And each of these industries having multiple other businesses supplying them with raw materials, services and many other products. My family on my mother’s side was in printing for the linen industry, packaging that went around the world.

There were jobs. They were started young. The leaving age for school was raised to eleven in 1893. Parents complained as they wanted to get the children out to work. Jobs were passed through families, with relatives getting a job when the time came. No interviews, no need. Start on Monday as an apprentice. And that is when you started to earn respect as well as a shilling.

That respect also had another element. The Protestant working class had a built in social position. They were Protestant. They were superior in a class structure that was based on religion and then social status. As Heather McGhee says in her book “The Sum of Us” the white population of the US, no matter how poor, always had the blacks to look down on.

The respect of work is almost quantifiable. Getting up, getting dressed, a purpose, a camaraderie, a society, a participation in success, friendship and money. The same sense of community that still gets talked of in mining villages, where the work was horrific but that was less important that the benefits of just being in work.

The respect started to disappear in the 1960’s, because the work was drying up. SHip building was no longer the cash cow for East Belfast, as competition from the Far East yards started to make Harland and Wolff look out of date, economically unviable and the long term looked bleak. Linen had been superseded in the market by new man made fibres, less expensive and easier to use. The Unionist government of Terrence O’Neill tried to replace linen with grant aided factories to produce these new cloths. A new town, Craigavon was created to host new industries.

And O’Neill attempted to build bridges with Ireland. The Civil Rights movement happened. Paisley and his henchmen appeared on the scene. Northern Ireland was turned from a relatively stable place for investment to a nightmare. People would stay in jobs, work hard and not expect too much pay. Now the Troubles meant that the economy was heading towards total collapse.

The end of industry resulted in the end of the Protestant self respect. Jobs no longer just there to walk into. New employment that required higher levels of education were out of kilter with the working class society that had not previously needed it.

Respect no longer came as a natural part of life. It had been binned to be replaced with the falsehood of identity. Flag waving became the only way to identify oneself. No longer could the men say ” I work in…” Days were filled with time, which was filled with growing sectarianist blame. The leaders of Unionism by the ‘seventies and ‘eighties used the threat of a United Ireland to shift the blame for the economic decline to constitutional politics. Respect in Protestant working class areas came from being “hard men” protecting the community from the Republicans.

It is interesting to look at respect in light of Brexit too. A post Imperial United Kingdom, having lost the Empire, no longer seen as a major power, and not getting the constant thanks from Europe for WW2 has seen the population reacting by reverting to identity politics. Their need to be English more important than the economy. The desire for respect.

We see a total lack of respect between communities too. Catholic, Protestant, Unionist, Republican, there is no basic understanding of the right of each community to have diverse opinions. In fact it is total disrespect that fuels the continuing hatred.

It is still there in 2021. The howls of protest from the leadership about “culture” and identity, distracting from the real deflation of respect from there being no new jobs, no infusing of the areas with the desire for education, to bring the young men and women along a path to fill the new jobs that have been coming for 30 years.

Meanwhile there is growing confidence in the Nationalist community. The changing demographics resulting in a belief that the goal of a United Ireland will be achieved in their lifetimes. No longer feeling the pain of the discrimination in the Northern Ireland of the first 50 years. A sense of moving forward, and growing respect. As they watch the Loyalists trying to work out what their future might be, they sit quietly and wait for what they see as inevitable.

Respect should not be a zero sum game. If one has more the other less. If there was mutual respect, Northern Ireland would be a very different place. If it was not drive to division for no other reason than difference, and moved to respect those differences, we could all be better off. If Unionists show respect towards the agreements they signed, and to the possibility of their not being in the UK any more, they might start looking for what the opportunities could be to improve the lives of the citizens.

SO maybe it is time to revisit respect. Look at the idea that because we think something it does not make us infallible and that others opinions have a part to play on our society.