Identity – It’s a Stitch Up.

We hear a lot about identity in Northern Irish politics. National identity, cultural identity, religious identity, all thrown into a pot to create people that have a go to position on most things based on the recipe.

If you line people up you actually can’t tell who they are, or which set of identities they may be claiming. Eyes are not closer together, kicking with one foot or the other does not reveal background. But ask the name, the church, the school, the sport, the location and you will have a pretty good idea of what the basic beliefs will be.

Religious identity in 1922 was the driving force of the partition of Ireland. Modern Nationalists seem to believe that what they call the “statelet” was set up solely to facilitate the establishment of a Protestant place for Protestant people, but I think that misunderstands the time and the people who identified as British.

History needs to be read in context, and 1921 was only three years after the end of the Great War. It was five years after the Battle of the Somme. The Ulster divisions had been fighting, not to prove their allegiance to the Crown, but because it was core to their identity and they were as British as a man from Finchley (to quote Margaret Thatcher.) There were, of course, people from all over Ireland that had fought and died in the British Army, but for many they were looking forward to Home Rule or independence. But, and this will be a contentious point, while those men of Ulster were heading over the top to almost certain death, they were aware that the Easter Rising had happened only three months previously. That their being at war was being used to enable the Rising. The North was depopulated of fighting men, who had been putting blood to anti Home Rule Covenants in 1912.

The northern economy was still being driven by sales to the British Empire, linen, ships, machinery, tobacco, whiskey and more.

My identity is connected to that war. My Grandfather was a Major in the Printers division of the 36th Ulster. He had signed up when too young, his father agreeing to let him go, and he had been promoted because of his education as a gentleman. (I know, I know.)

Meanwhile in the south, the identity of those wanting at first Home Rule and following the Easter Rising was being re-enforced. The disastrous, vicious, deadly response of the British government, in part of the United Kingdom. The decisions made in London would result in the shift from Home Rule to independence and strengthen the Irish indentity. The Irish wanted to be free from British rule, but also to be free to be Catholic without prejudice. British Rule in Dublin resulted in sectarianism in employment and education. A sectarianism that was re-opened when the North was given a local parliament.

So come 1922 we arrived at the establishment of two territories on the island of Ireland, mirroring each other. One Catholic one Protestant. Both intolerant of the other. And that intolerance is added to the identity of individuals. Of people who in every other walk of life are known for their friendliness, their craic, their being supportive of neighbours, and tolerant of much, except…

The divisions continued and grew. There were plenty of reasons to decry the other side. Ireland remining neutral in World War Two, in the fight against Fascism and Nazi Germany pushed Protestant Ulster further away. The sectarianism in the North proved every day to Catholics, because it was purely about religion, that the second class citizenry that had been removed from the South still remained in force in Northern Ireland.

I arrived in 1958. The ’50s, when all was peace and quiet, and boring. My identity forging began with a christening into the Presbyterian Church. I went to Inchmarlo, that was not so much Protestant as cementing that I was middle class, but Protestant. My out of school friends that I played with day in day out were primarily Catholic, with football played in the winter netless tennis courts of what was then Aquinas Hall primary school. But those friendships highlighted the differences. Michael Gilligan went to a chapel mass to listen to a priest, I went to a church service to listen to a minister. He supported Celtic and me Manchester United. But we watched each of our teams win the European Cup together in ’67 and ’68. Cubs, scouts, youth club, junior badminton, all enjoyed with other Presbyterians at Malone. My football identity had begun in 1966 when George Best came into my life, I am a United supporter to this day. The Beatles were here there and everywhere adding another lifelong identity marker. I am still an anorak, reading and listening.

By now the division between Ireland and Northern Ireland was as if there was a sea border. Going South was a major trip. The countries had different Tayto Crisps, which sounds frivolous, but shows that there was enough space that there was no conflict of interest. Yet my mother had gone to school in Dublin, but a boarding school, for boarding Protestants.

On going to Inst in the city centre identities were further forged in Belfast of 1969-1976. IRA bombs, UVF strikes. You had to know your own identity so as not to make a literally fatal mistake about where you went, who’s territory.

Day by day identity being reinforced by the increasing awareness of difference. If they were different, they were different from me, so I had to be something. By fifteen I had battled my way free from religion, the first set of fights with my Dad. I knew who I was. Or so I thought.

I went to Queens. I helped out in Fringe Festival and then got involved in Rag, raising money for charities through having a great time with a bunch of students from all sorts of backgrounds. My middle class Malone Road was a door opened to ridicule, but it was light hearted. And then my identity changed.

Like every other part of it to date, it was learning. I learned that the other people who live in Northern Ireland had a different life, a different appreciation of the security forces, had experienced day to day sectarianism that I could never understand, because I was Protestant, one of the discriminating class, who had never known about our contribution to the Troubles. The history I had been taught was British. The geography was British. I hadn’t learned anything about my own country.

To this day that is the education that I received at Queens. That my identity can be what I choose it to be, not what has been ingrained from childhood. Dad who had so wanted me to go to University was for several years, very perplexed at the outcome of the education. He had grown up in Ballymena, and while he was Protestant, he had never been in the Orange Order or Ulster Unionist Party, and had been an early supporter of Alliance. I went through the radical student phase with gusto. Towards the end of his life he had come around to asking my opinion because he was happy that I had learned to think differently.

Having bounced around with chosen identities, I have now arrived at Northern Irish. Not British, not Irish. My wife is Irish, and very different in her identity, so I cannot be the same as her. I feel that to be British in 2022 is to live in the past, and I have lost interest in that, believing that the institutions are backward looking to the point of stifling innovation and creativity.

Is being Northern Irish forward thinking? In the context of the Protocol, I believe so, For the first time since it was formed there is almost a balance in the population. There is an opportunity to build an economy of our own, trading to GB and the EU. Creating new businesses that stand out because they are Northern Irish, with that brand having a commercial value. There is a chance to see that working together we can become more prosperous, and that by building relationships north and south, east and west, we can stand on our own two feet. We don’t need parent countries, we need independent thinking.

It is not an independent Northern Ireland, we are not big enough, but with market access in all directions we can develop new customer bases that want to work with us because we are Northern Ireland. A place not owned but shared, equally, for the prosperity of all, supported by the EU and GB, not as a handout, but because it makes money!

A shared identity that celebrates our differences, taps into both cultures, stops wasting time and resources in driving in two directions when there is one that would be better for us all.