A Green And Orange Puzzle

Back in September of 2011 I discussed the growing number of Irish speakers in Belfast from a Protestant and Unionist background, symbolised by Linda Ervine, the wife of the former PUP leader Brian Ervine and sister-in-law of the late David Ervine. Her involvement has grown considerably since then, as have the numbers speaking our shared language. From the Irish Times:

“… right at the epicentre of the recent protests and riots over the union flag, a Protestant Irish-language revival has been taking place in East Belfast.

Linda Ervine, a sister-in-law of the late loyalist leader David Ervine, and the first Irish-language development officer in the east of the city, says that one night it was touch and go whether they could proceed with an event.

“We had a speaker over from West Belfast at the height of the trouble, and we thought no one would turn up to hear him. But we actually ran out of chairs in the end. One man said that he couldn’t believe that in the middle of all the flags and police Land Rovers there was a talk about Irish placenames going on”.

Ervine, who is based at the East Belfast Mission on the Newtownards Road, started learning Irish two years ago as part of a cross-community project with women from the nearby nationalist Short Strand. Now she’s running five classes a week, delivered by three specialist teachers. It is supported by Foras na Gaeilge, and there is a growing demand for more. Last month Ervine hosted an Irish-language festival as part of the island-wide Seachtain na Gaeilge…

“What I’m trying to do is to give people in my own community the opportunity to engage with the lost part of their heritage,” says Ervine. “I want to return that to them…”

Michelle Porter, who has been learning Irish in East Belfast since last September, recently travelled to the Donegal Gaeltacht with her father, to develop their conversational skills. “Being from Ireland, I’d like to be able to speak the language.”

Ervine says that Protestant people who have spent some time away from Northern Ireland often return “less frightened by the idea of Irishness”. She says, “It can even become something they hanker after. No matter how Orange you are when you’re here, you’re Green when you’re away.”

This was the experience of one of her students, Robin Stewart. “It’s a voyage of discovery of who I am,” he says. “We say we’re British, but we’re always more than British. A lot of us are descended from Gaelic people; we have as much connection with this place as the people who tell us we’re just Brits. For me, going for Gaelic is a natural thing. And I like to wind people up, to challenge their assumptions.”

Stewart grins mischievously, before saying: “The English imposed their language on me, and on all of us. In learning Irish, I’m getting up off my knees.””

The latter points raise some interesting questions on identity and the terminology of identity – or the lack thereof. Out of respect I always try to refer to the British minority on the island of Ireland as the “British Unionist” or “British” community (or more rarely, simply the “Unionist” community). However that is just the most general of terms and a (too?) convenient catch-all to describe a population with quite diverse origins. Indigenous Irish, Scandinavian-Irish, Norman-Irish, Anglo-Irish, Scots-Irish, Anglo-Scots-Irish, the list of hyphenated names goes on and on, and all contributed to the population group (if we can term it so) that is politically “Unionist” in the north-east of the country.

Yet many reject the label of “British”. They regard themselves as Irish but with a distinct form of Irishness. Some prefer the term “Scots-Irish” as a means of describing their identity, though that could hardly apply in every case. Others simply use the word “Protestant”. Yet that is hardly satisfactory either. A distant branch of my own Ó Sionnaigh family converted to the Protestant faith in the 1700s in order to retain their property and titles: and they like me are of the line of the Uí Néill!

Perhaps we need to start separating out the wheat from the chaff, if you’ll excuse the phrase? Is there a distinct community-within-a-community, a sort of Irish community within the British Unionist community, that Republicans and Nationalists are failing to recognise – let alone address?