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[Kilsally]

http://lark.phoblacht.net/questionofident.html

A Question of Identity

Billy Mitchell • 26.9.02

It has often been said that we are what we are because of an accident of birth. That is true to an extent. But it is far from being the whole truth.

To be what one is always means both accepting and modifying a range of influences that impact on our lives from childhood through adolescence and on throughout adulthood. This is not always recognised by those who accept uncritically the influences that flow towards them from their family and their community. In the movement between parents receiving influences from their parents, and they in turn transmitting them on to their children, essential changes take place.

Identity is not something that is static. It is something that is being defined and redefined as we grow to maturity. Yet this process of defining and redefining does not lead to a new identity. It should, and often does, lead to a proper understanding of who we really are and of what it means to be what we already are. If nothing else it should help us to co-ordinate and to synchronise the several strands that go to make up who we are.

We have the power to either accept in total or to modify the influences that impact upon us as a consequence of being born into a particular family, in a particular country at a particular time in history. To refuse to use that power is to do ourselves a great disservice. We have also the power to completely reject and to turn away from those influences and to embrace news ones.

In an impressive speech on the subject of anti-sectarianism to a recent Progressive Unionist Party Conference, my colleague Dugald Mc Cullough accused those within the Protestant and Unionist community who refuse to engage in fresh independent thinking and critical self-analysis as being too "terrified to think beyond the familiar" and of being "traitors to their Protestant heritage" which prides itself in being open to the influences of independent and creative thinking. To accept uncritically the influences of our parents is just not good enough. "Because my daddy says it has always been this way, is not a reason for anything", argued Mc Cullough. He went on to say that "It is indeed a mean-spirited and narrow-minded father who wants to see his son grow up in his shadow, and it is a poor-spirited and shallow son who apes and imitates his father rather than do his own thinking".

It is important that all who claim to have a specific cultural identity should engage in a critical examination of their roots. We ought to think for ourselves, so that when we act politically, culturally or religiously we are genuinely acting for ourselves. If we are to contribute positively to a cultural community we must be constantly bringing fresh ideas and new thinking to that community. The development of cultural identity is by its nature a developmental process. It is not a onetime act to which we can appeal and upon whose events a traditionalist can rest. Tradition and innovation are two elements of one process, and the development of cultural identity requires both elements.

This means that we must think beyond the familiar. It means too that we must understand exactly what the familiar really is. We may start off in life being who we are because of an accident of birth, but to understand who we are and to live our lives accordingly, we must engage in both critical self-analysis and in critical cross-cultural analysis.

I was born into an English speaking evangelical Protestant home to working-class parents of Scots-Irish extraction who supported the legislative union between Ireland the rest of the United Kingdom. My parents were born prior to the secession of the twenty-six counties from the United Kingdom, consequently they regarded themselves as Irish Unionists. My father died young and left my mother a young widow which meant that my brother and myself were brought up in relative poverty. I have often referred to this as “privileged poverty” as a protest against those nationalists who claim that because I am a Protestant I enjoyed a privileged upbringing of wine and roses with no experience of poverty.

This "accident of birth" has me boxed off into a pigeon hole labelled " Disadvantaged working class Protestant Unionist". Different people looking at me out of their own distinct pigeon holes will add their own interpretative labels. What exactly do these labels mean? Can I change the labels? Do I want to change the labels? These are some of the questions that I have had to ask myself in recent years.

Class Identity

There is little that I can do to change the label "working class". A lottery windfall might change my economic status and my lifestyle, but it would not change the class that I was born into. More importantly, I have no desire to change the label. I am what I am by an act of predestination (some may call it an act of fate) and while I have endeavoured to develop a better way of life for both my family, and myself, my roots and my heart lie with a particular class of people.

If I were to believe all that I read about being part of the privileged Protestant ascendancy I would have to reject this label. Nationalist academics and republican socialists are almost unanimous in their belief that there was no such a person as an economically poor or socially disadvantaged loyalist. Yet for many loyalists our class identity was formed out of our experiences growing up in disadvantaged families and communities. My own experience of life was one of watching my young widowed mother struggle to make ends meet. For our family, life was a struggle to obtain the basic necessities of life and to ward off the attention of the moneylenders, the tick men and the host of other parasites who fed on the misery of the poor. It is true that I had to go to Long Kesh to understand that experience in terms of class identity, but the fact is that the understanding when it did come, came from an analysis of personal and group experiences and memories, not from books by philosophers and social theorists.

It wasn’t until I went to prison and had time for both personal reflection and interaction with others from a similar background that I began to realise that the struggle that we went through as a family to make ends meet was something experienced by a great many other working class families. There was a sense of pride, fostered by the application of a suspect theology to social life that prevented Protestants growing up in my generation from complaining about their predestined lot. In Long Kesh we explored issues that we took for granted on the outside.

Of course we knew other people were getting it “as tight” as we were, and there was a genuine sense of community that encouraged you to share what you had with your neighbour. But you didn’t talk about it. You didn’t analyse it. You accepted it as part of life. Didn’t the preacher assure us that the sufferings of this life would be replaced with joys eternal in the life to come! Joe Hill summed that spurious theology up in the song “There’ll be pie in the sky when you die, bye and bye”.

Even in prison we did not attempt a scientific analysis of our experiences. I have never read Karl Marx but I have read Other Marks - the marks of pain furrowed across the brow of my widowed mother who was at her wits end because her money and her food had run out, the marks of pain on the faces of at least a dozen neighbours or friends who died before their time as a result of industry induced cancers, the marks of shame on the face of a school friend who felt that the only marketable commodity left to sell was her own body. These marks spoke volumes.

Doctrinaire socialists may well be correct in producing their scientific analyses of the causes of poverty and deprivation. My analysis, flawed as it might be in terms of doctrine and theory, is the product of personal experience. I have been there, I have experienced it and I am entitled to wear the t-shirt. Jon Sobrino, the Latin American Liberation Theologian, has identified two classes of “the poor” for whom Jesus the Liberator had a soft spot. The first class was the economic poor - the hungry, the poorly clothed, the badly housed, the sick and the infirm. The second class included the social outcasts of his day - women, prisoners, prostitutes, winebibbers, lepers, strangers, and ‘the one who was different’; the kind of people whom the New Right have designated as the underclass. If I must wear labels that identify me within the context of class and family identity then I will accept the labels of ‘economic poor’ and ‘social outcast’.

Religious Identity

Religion plays an important part in the development of personal and communal identity. This is true even for those who reject religion. Philosophic atheism is as instrumental in developing a world and life view as is religion. Indeed many commentators have suggested that philosophic atheism is simply a religion without God.

In Northern Ireland we tend to adopt a religious or faith perspective on a broad range of issues. Thus, when trying to unpack issues about identity, the issue of religious belief is high on the agenda for discussion. I was born and raised in a Baptist home. My late mother was an active member of Glengormley Baptist Church during the forties and fifties, and my religious upbringing was heavily influenced by Baptist theology. Up until I left school and went out into the world I accepted the moral restraints and social implications of evangelical Protestantism as mediated through Baptist teaching.

Baptists belong to one of the smaller evangelical Protestant denominations. If we were to identify Baptists within the framework of Wolfe Tone’s classification of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter, Baptists would be classified as dissenters. They predate the Protestant Reformation and have developed outside of the framework of what historians call the Magisterial Reformation. Consequently they were hunted down and persecuted as ‘heretics’ by the Catholic Church, the Protestant State Churches and the Reformed churches. Their belief that baptism should be by total immersion as opposed to sprinkling provided persecutors of the Baptist community with a novel method of putting them to death - they were immersed in water until they either recanted or drowned. Thus death by drowning was how many Baptists became martyrs for the faith.

Three of the core principles of the early Baptists were (1) Freedom before God in Faith, (2) Freedom of religion in the face of the State and (3) Freedom of personal conscience in the face of the Church. If the slogan “Civil and Religious Liberty” means anything to me, it is within the framework of these three Baptist principles.

Many Baptists supported the English Revolution of 1649 because they believed that only by breaking the totalitarian power of both the monarchy and the bishops could they secure civil and religious liberty for their people. Indeed it was the Baptist leader, Thomas Collier, who drafted the Somerset Petition supporting the trial of the despot, Charles I. John Bunyan, whose classic book “Pilgrim’s Progress” was written in Bedford Gaol, was the pastor of one of the more radical pro-revolutionary churches during the English civil wars. He served twelve years in Bedford Gaol at the restoration of the monarchy rather than conform to the dictates of the king and the bishops. Brian Manning, in his excellent book “The Crisis of the English Revolution”, acknowledges that “The driving force for the coup d’etat, both inside and outside the (New Model) army was provided by the religious radicals. These were mainly Independents and Baptists”.

Baptists have traditionally stood for religious freedom. Sadly, when in the course of time their hard won battle for civil and religious liberty was taken for granted, they lost their radical edge and became part of the conservative evangelical sub-culture. Instead of aligning themselves with the Levellers and the Diggers and pressing home the revolution, they became satisfied with a hollow victory that eventually led to the restoration of the monarchy and the state church.

That must be my point of departure from the church in which I was brought up. I wholeheartedly embrace the three core principles of civil and religious freedom espoused by the Baptists and the Independents during the English Revolution, but I cannot be satisfied with the limitations placed by them on the scope of that freedom. They fell short of supporting freedom for women and Catholics, and they disassociated themselves from the more radical elements of the revolutionary movement. It could be said that, once they had gained the freedom to worship as they pleased and to be included within the structures of civic society, the Baptists sold out to Parliament and deserted the cause. They moved from a position of radical dissent to a passive non-conformity that was satisfied with its own legitimisation.

Sociologists and economists have pointed to the collusion of Protestantism with the spirit of capitalism. The church into which I was born had an opportunity to challenge that collusion but it became comfortable with its hard won liberties and veered away from its radical potential in exchange for legitimisation. Freedom for “me” and for “mine” while others remain unfree is not freedom at all. Freedom for selective groups shackles others to a life of injustice and social exclusion. A religion that fails to challenge the root causes of social exclusion and injustice because it has fallen into an “other worldly” comfort zone is a parody of true Christianity.

My sense of identity as an evangelical Protestant remains in a state of tension because the evangelical community to which I belong, and from which I cannot in conscience divorce myself, refuses to leave its bunkers and engage with the real world. Thus my spiritual life is being developed on the fringes of mainstream evangelicalism and I tend to identify with liberation theology and the new leftist brand of evangelicalism that is slowly emerging (unfortunately not at a great pace in Northern Ireland).

Cultural Identity

Born and raised in south-east Antrim to parents who came from Scotch-Irish dissenting stock I have a natural affinity with what has become known in recent years as the Ulster-Scots tradition. The Ulster-Scots culture has its own particular modes of expression and celebration - language, literature, drama, dance, music, ritual, symbols and emblems. However, as I have written elsewhere,

    “Both the Anglo-Irish and the Ulster-Scots cultures have been in Ireland long enough to have assimilated elements of the Irish-Gaelic culture and of each other’s culture. The same is true for the Irish-Gaelic culture. It has embraced elements of both the Anglo-Irish and the Ulster-Scots cultures.”

Prior to the politicisation of Irish culture by the republican community my family were always comfortable with regarding themselves as Irish and with enjoying traditional Irish culture. Indeed the several elements of both the Irish and the Scottish cultures that merged in County Antrim have provided us with a richness in cultural expression and enjoyment that the family circle has always cherished. Thus, I have no problem whatsoever in accepting and embracing my sense of Irishness. The term Scotch-Irish or Ulster-Scot is no more contradictory than the term Irish-American. It is a term that keeps alive the historic cultural strains that my family have enjoyed for generations.

This country is as much my country as it is the country of Gerry Adams or Anthony Mc Intyre - now there’s two good old Scotch sounding surnames - it is the land of my birth and it’s soil holds the bones of generations of both my maternal and my paternal family lines. views on culture generally are expressed in my article Culture & Identity and need not repeat them here.

Where I differ from Adams and Mackers is that I am an Irish person who wishes to see a social and political union established and maintained between all of the peoples of the islands commonly called the British Isles (but any other name would do) whereas they desire a smaller union between the peoples of one island. I would certainly differ greatly from Adams, but perhaps not so much from Mackers, on the issue of nationalism. A single identity confessional state where the terms Irish, Gaelic and Catholic mean the same thing has no appeal for me. Nationalism - whether it be British or Irish, Protestant or Catholic - is something that I just cannot reconcile with my belief that the value and worth of each human being should be based on our common humanity and not on ethnicity, cutlure or religion.

I differ from Adams and from most nationalists and Irish republicans in that I just cannot accept the notion that by forcing the unionist community into an all Irish state we will bring an end to sectarianism and the vicious cycle of alienation, conflict and violence that goes with it. Geographical unity will be meaningless without the unity of the people and that sort of unity cannot be brought about by force of arms or by the decree of London and Dublin. Adams, in particular, is naïve to believe that once geographical unity is achieved the scales will drop from the eyes of the unionist community and, miraculously, we will all realise that we were closet nationalists all along. A united Ireland, whether by force or by stealth, does not mean a united people and without a united people nothing will change in terms of that vicious cycle of alienation, conflict and violence that we have been so used to. Culturally I remain an Irish Unionist.

Conclusion

Keeping my sense of identity under critical examination is something that I believe is part and parcel of daily living. This may mean redefining some of the beliefs and values that have been passed on to me. It could even mean rejecting beliefs and values that were one time considered precious and indispensable to those who went before me. But if I am to be “me” rather than being what is expected of me by others who have shared my journey in the past then I must expose myself to critical self-examination. If I remain committed to my working class identity it is because that is where I personally want to be. If I remain an evangelical Protestant, albeit a of a radical kind that may not be accepted within conservative or liberal evangelical circles, it is because that is where my faith and religious convictions have led me. If I remain an Irish Unionist it is because I believe in the social and political union of all the peoples of these islands. Others can take these labels and place their own interpretation on them, and on me, all I can do is live by what I believe and present my identity to others the way I personally see it.

[Captain Marvel]

I'm new to this site and find the commentary quite fascinating.I am an American of Irish Catholic ethnicity,born and raised in New York of Irish immigrant grandparents.
Although Roman Catholicism is my cultural heritage,I do not attend that church nor follow it's doctrines.I am a Gnostic Christian.
The term "Scots/Irish" seems artificial,divisive,and racist to me.It implies a superiority over,and distinction from,the "Irish/Irish".
Are not the Scots Gaelic just like the Irish,and isn't Scotland an ancient Irish colony?The Scotti were from Ireland.How exactly,aside from religion,do the Scots differ from the Irish?Has not the recent study of the Y chromosome indicated common ancestry of these national groups?
Please someone enlighten me.

[Bonnie Hodge]

I feel quite ignorant of the current atmosphere in Ireland. I follow the US business news and my impression of the Ireland of today is that the economy is doing very well. Is schooling and job training available to both religions? My Scotch/Irish decendents arrive in the US in 1720 and were Protestant, my great grandfather was orphaned during the famine, came here to live with an uncle, that side is Catholic. I'm a Christian today and am quite comfortable attending any church. I have Jewish friends. In the US today in my opinion, you are probably judged more on your economic status than your religion. Thankfully, economic status here can change quickly. I have friends that have much more than I'll ever have and I have friends that have much less. I have access to educational oportunities that can help me change my status. Can someone clue me in?

[Captain Marvel]

Scotch Irish
(a semi-mythological species)

Aka:fine old stock,good country people,Mr.Charlie,Orangemen,Prods,the silent majority,Scots-Irish

Identifying characteristics :the stars and bars,the King James bible,the first nickel they ever made,Skull and Bones,the GOP


Celtic,but not Catholic,and therefore (almost) honorary Anglo-Saxons- a White race of hardworking,frugal, Godfearing,true blue southerners,dreamed up,in 1895,by American "historian" Samuel S. Green,who contended that America had been invented and settled by these decendants of Lowland Scottish Presbyterians.These Scotch-Irish had,allegedly,been transplanted in the seventeenth century (in a process begun by the British king James I and completed by the British dictator Oliver Cromwell) to "plantations" in the raped- and-pillaged (by the grace of God!) province of Ulster-whence  they providentially departed for the "plantations" of the American south.

All rubbish,of course.While it is true that in the five years preceding the American Revolution 55,000 of such ambitious Protstant tradesfolk (victims of Englands brutal new tariff policies,by the by) did emigrate to Dixie,they had been preceeded thither by a quarter of a million Irish-Irish,who had already composed one eighth of the south's entire population.

Ethnologically,as well,the Scotch-Irish concept is specious:the west of Scotland-and-Ulster-had always been racially homongeneous,if migratory (Gaelic speaking) society.In the sixth century,the native Scots were converted to Christianity by the Irish saint Columcille;in medieval latin,Scotus meant "Irish born;in the forteenth century, Scotland's king Robert the Bruce was Irish chieftan Hugh O'Niell's son in law,and so on.

But no sooner had most historians ditched the Scotch-Irish concept than David Hackett Fischer published (in 1988) Albion's seed:Four British Folkways in North America.In support of his thesis,he asserts that thousands of eighteenth century immigrants from Ireland,who called themselves Irish,and were Irish,were in fact "North Britons".


Quoted from How to be Irish (even if you already are) by Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers

[Mc1]

[quote=Captain Marvel,Apr 3 2005, 08:55 AM]
I'm new to this site and find the commentary quite fascinating.
Billy Mitchell is an interesting man. He was a Loyalist paramilitary (UVF) and was sent sown for murder( I think of a member of a rival Loyalist group). He had been a Baptist Sunday school teacher and became a born again Christian in prison. He is now a leading member of the PUP, which is to the UVF what Sinn Fein are to the IRA. He is also a playwright and seems to have good relations with some Republican former paramilitaries. Do aGoogle on him.
The term "Scots/Irish" seems artificial,divisive,and racist to me.It implies a superiority over,and distinction from,the "Irish/Irish".
I don't think Mitchell would see assertion of distinctiveness as racist or supremacist or even divisive in itself. I don't see him as any of these things.
Are not the Scots Gaelic just like the Irish,and isn't Scotland an ancient Irish colony?The Scotti were from Ireland.
Early mediaeval Scotland was ethnically part Scoti-Irish (Q Celtic in language), part Brythonic Celtic (P Celtic akin to the Welsh - some early Welsh literature is infact from what is now Scotland), part Norse - some direct from Scandinavia some via Ireland, part Anglo Saxon (Edinburgh was named for the King of Northumbria) and part Pictish - the probably P Celtic ancient inhabitants of northern Britain, plus there was an input of Anglo Norman.
Some would argue that the Scoti were themselves descendants at least in part of peoples who had earlier crossed to Ireland from Scotland called  the Cruithin (with a c or q type first letter in Irish, hence Q Celtic) or Pretyn (in Brythonic with a P), This was possibly a Pictish or Brythonic group who adopted the Gaelic language.
Pre Norman Ireland was Gaelic speaking with a history of immigration whuch linked it in some ways to Scotland and in some ways differentiated it (no Anglo Saxon part, Brythonic and Pictish elements having taken on Irish Gaelic language. Little Norse DNA remains in Dublin the main Viking settlement in contrast to Scotland. So there were similarities and differences. The planted settlers who went to Ireland could have been descendants of any of Scotland's ethnic groups. Largely they were English speaking descendants of Anglo Saxon or Brythonic people English from the borders or Gaelic/English  speakers from Galloway, who would be a mix of Scoti,Norse Irish and some Pictish blood.
How exactly,aside from religion,do the Scots differ from the Irish?Has not the recent study of the Y chromosome indicated common ancestry of these national groups?
It's another country. Another history. Different accents. Different humour but with some elements of continuum and some of conflict through the north of Ireland as it ever was. Som euse the continuum to delegitimatise the idea of a separate scots Irish identity in Ulster others iuse it to assert its legitimacy.
On the Y chromosome check Cahal's thread "The Irish are not Celts". Briefly the Scots, Irish northern Spaniard and others in the west of Europe are closely related - including parts of England. But they do not seem  to be closely related to the ancient Celts of central Europe as their Y chromosome is infrequent where the Celts of central Europe wwere prominent e.g. Halle in Germany or Hallstadt in Austria (hall = salt). On the other hand maybe the old male Celtic blood of central Europe may have been squeezed out by German and Slav males. We don't know. But you get an audience if you say the Irish aren't Celts.
Are you enlightened?

[Mc1]

[quote=Captain Marvel,Apr 6 2005, 08:58 AM]
(a semi-mythological species)

British dictator Oliver Cromwell
Not really British. English, yes. This is just an excuse to use "British" in a perjorative way.

All rubbish,of course.While it is true that in the five years preceding the American Revolution 55,000 of such ambitious Protstant tradesfolk (victims of Englands brutal new tariff policies,by the by) did emigrate to Dixie,they had been preceeded thither by a quarter of a million Irish-Irish,who had already composed one eighth of the south's entire population.

I don't know much about these immigration patterns. Maybe someone on the forum will add something but I think there was some toing and froing on here some time ago about who was and wasn't Irish/Scotch Irish in the south.

Ethnologically,as well,the Scotch-Irish concept is specious:the west of Scotland-and-Ulster-had always been racially homongeneous,if migratory (Gaelic speaking) society.In the sixth century,the native Scots were converted to Christianity by the Irish saint Columcille;in medieval latin,Scotus meant "Irish born;in the forteenth century, Scotland's king Robert the Bruce was Irish chieftan Hugh O'Niell's son in law,and so on.

This is just wrong headed . Is a Croat a Serb? Are American WASPS British?
On that basis we could say there should be no Scottish nation or ethnicity. Let's take everyone with a Scots Gaelic surname and send them north and everyone with a Saxon name down to the borders and then annex southern Scotland to England or the southwest to Wales. Or we could get a Nazi to come in and measure heads. Tying nationhood to race is exactly what the most diehard "Ulster Scots" do. Ethnicity is only part race and especially in Scotland and Ireland basing ethnicity is  as likely to prove your opponent's case as your own.
"The Gael is gone the Dane is gone the Norman is gone and the Irishman is here" wrote Arthur Griffith. Irish Republican  "Irishness" has at its best not been racial. I think that Ulster Scottishness should be accorded the same liberty. If it is not it will appeal to precisely the unsavoury elements who often speak up for it.

[Captain Marvel]

Mc1,

If you really consider yourself Scottish,or Irish, or "Scotch-Irish",would you not then follow that you would support an independant republican Scotland and a united republican Ireland?Northern Ireland is an English colonial beachhead.Although referred to as Ulster,the statelet does not include all the counties of Ulster,three of which are excluded in order to maintain a Loyalist majority.Ireland is an island.The sovereignty of which should be determined by all of it's inhabitants.
Instead of calling yourselves Scotch-Irish,you should more accurately be called English-Lackeys,Lickspittles,or Bootshines.
Imagine how you would feel if all the Catholics in Scotland took some portion of that land and called themselves Irish-Scots .
I'm from a Norman-Irish family but my Grandfather never called us NORMAN-Irish.We are simply Irish.

[Mc1]

Captain Marvel,
My father was Anglo Welsh. My mother's people were from Ireland pre-partition. I don't know what they said they were. Irish, Irish and British. Probably not Scottch Irish, down in Dublin. I'm a mongrel Brit, Atlantic Islander, whatever.
If you really consider yourself Scottish,or Irish, or "Scotch-Irish",would you not then follow that you would support an independant republican Scotland and a united republican Ireland?
I live and vote in England. I don't support an independent England. Let the Scots decide. Let the Irish decide. I doubt that many in the REpublic would want to reunite tomorrow. It's not easy to integrate 1m unwilling citizens into a state of under under 5M. They voted either side of the border to support the Good Friday Agreement. One step at a time is the way forward.
Northern Ireland is an English colonial beachhead.
Where do we want to go from the beach? It's a drain on our resources. The majority still want us and the Republic could not cope with 1m disaffected Unionists.
Although referred to as Ulster,the statelet does not include all the counties of Ulster,three of which are excluded in order to maintain a Loyalist majority.
In fact if there had been a county by county referendum there would have been only two counties in NI. It was  a fix, I agree. but it's there. You can't turn the clock back and the Unionists had their fears. Ulster I believe has been differently defined at different times but I don't know for certain.
Ireland is an island.The sovereignty of which should be determined by all of it's inhabitants.
Maybe but not because it's an island. Scots nationalists live on an island with the English, remember.
Instead of calling yourselves Scotch-Irish,you should more accurately be called English-Lackeys,Lickspittles,or Bootshines.
Whatever you want to call them their legitimate presence and cultural existence is recognised even by violent Republicans. Adams and co. would never come out with your kind of phraseology. Many Republicans have in the past supported the idea of a federal Ireland because of the need to recognise the uniqueness of the north.
Imagine how you would feel if all the Catholics in Scotland took some portion of that land and called themselves Irish-Scots .
Not all Catholics in Scotland are of Irish extraction, by the way. I can imagine how the nationalist Irish feel. I have no problem with Irish nationalism but the settlements were made 300 years ago. They belong as much as the Americans or the Aussies. Are white Americans Iriquois, Apache etc or do they call themselves Irish American, Italian American etc.
I'm from a Norman-Irish family but my Grandfather never called us NORMAN-Irish.We are simply Irish.
So was my Great Grandma.That's what Griffith said. Fair enough. But how do you force that on a group of people? What do you propose? Anyway Carson the father of Northern Ireland always declared himself to be Irish as did many Unionists. These labels may not be worht that much in the end.

[/quote]

[stonewall]

QUOTE
All rubbish,of course.While it is true that in the five years preceding the American Revolution 55,000 of such ambitious Protstant tradesfolk (victims of Englands brutal new tariff policies,by the by) did emigrate to Dixie,they had been preceeded thither by a quarter of a million Irish-Irish,who had already composed one eighth of the south's entire population.





''Almost all of the original 'Irish' immigrants who came to the 13 colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were from Ulster--- A fact which Catholic historians are likely to overlook when they discuss the Irish contribution to Americas beginnings.

Irish Catholicism in fact made almost no contribution to the political foundation of the American nation.

In 1790 there were only about 25,000 Irish Catholics in the whole United States---less than seven tenths of 1% of the American people and less than 5% of the 'Irish American' population the rest of the 555,000 'Irishmen' in the United States were chiefly Protestants of Presbyterian persuasion.''

Paul Blanshard one time head of New York's Department of Investigations and Accounts, educated at Michigan, Harvard and Columbia.

[Captain Marvel]

The notion that the "Scotch"Irish and the Irish are distinct ethnic groups is a dangerous fiction perpetratated by British (English) imperialists who have never had the best interests of Ireland in mind.Our Anglo Welsh friend contends that it was all messed up 300 years ago and that we'll just have to live with it.He attempts to frighten Irish Nationists by stating that the northern Protestants could not be peaceably incorparated into the Irish Republic,convieniently disregarding Irish nationalists in our history such as Theobald Wolfe Tone(1763-98) a leading spirit of United Irishmen and also a Presbyterian.
Andrew Jackson,the seventh U.S. president,hated the English and was a Protestant.He was a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and  wished for the independance of Ireland from Britain.Jackson's parents were both Ulster Irish.


Lets have a united,secular Ireland,and an independant Scotland!!! Gaelic people unite for our common interests!!!

[Captain Marvel]

I was quoting a source in that post Stonewall.

It is foolish for you to disregard the Irish Catholic contribution to America.America became an industrial power due to Irish Catholic labor,building railroads,canals,bridges,becoming miners in large numbers,and due to their massive influx,creating the first truly large American cities on the East coast.Nobody credible would contend these facts.

Irish Catholics fought and died by the tens of thousands in the civil war.To quote the annonymous confederate speaking to the Union officer "..you'uns only won 'cause you had more Irish than we'uns."

[Captain Marvel]

One more thing Stonewall,

If you trully are an American patriot,I suggest that you make an effort to resist,in some way, the invasion of our country by Mexico-instead of vilifying Irish Catholics.
Our idiot President does nothing about this.He calls the Minutemen on the border "Vigilantes".

[Mc1]

The notion that the "Scotch"Irish and the Irish are distinct ethnic groups is a dangerous fiction perpetratated by British (English) imperialists who have never had the best interests of Ireland in mind.Our Anglo Welsh friend contends that it was all messed up 300 years ago and that we'll just have to live with it.

You in America don't have to live with it. I don't in England. The inhabitants of Ireland especially the 6 counties of NI do, however they define themselves . They will be the ones to settle it. Not you, not me.

He attempts to frighten Irish Nationists by stating that the northern Protestants could not be peaceably incorparated into the Irish Republicc onvieniently disregarding Irish nationalists in our history such as Theobold Wolfe Tone(1763-98) a leading spirit of United Irishmen and also a Presbyterian.
Tone, Neilson, Emmet, Parnell, Smith O'Brien, Childers, Robert Barton - all Protestants. I know this. Didn't stop the Ulster covenant, though did it? I do not maintain that they cannot be peaceably incorporated but it won' t happen tomorrow.
Andrew Jackson,the seventh U.S. president,hated the English and was a Protestant.He was a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and  wished for the independance of Ireland from Britain.Jackson's parents were both Ulster Irish.
Is it a virtue to hate the English? I would not boast that anyone hated the Americans or the Irish. I would criticise them as prejudiced. Should my mother have hated her English Grandfather and loved her Irish ones?
Lets have a united,secular Ireland,and an independant Scotland!!! Gaelic people unite for our common interests!!!
I'm not against either of these things. But what does Gaelic have to do with it? I explained the Scots are not all of Gaelic descent - the Scoti were one element of five main ethnic groups in early Scotland. Nor are the Irish Irish by virtue of being Gaelic. Was Tone Gaelic? The Gaelic speakers of western Ireland may genetically be pre-Gaelic, the language having been brought by later settlement.

[Captain Marvel]

Mc1.

I didn't intend to imply that Jackson's sentiments regarding the English were virtuous.I was suggesting that Jackson was not the "Honorary Anglo-Saxon" that some dubious historians now wish to paint him as.
Your writing of Irish and Scots being not trully being Gaelic is hairsplitting non-sense.Certainly the cultural basis of both nations are Gaelic.For you to "muddy the waters" by introducing the notion of 'true' Scottish and Irish racial affinities is ridiculous. You attempt to undermine the national aspirations of the aforementioned groups by suggesting that they are are not really genetically or culturally related and that Gaelic culture is somehow invalid because the inhabitants of the isles preceeded this culture which came to the isles (probably) by cultural diffusion.This simply isn't true.These groups (including the Welsh)have deep roots in the British isles going back 9,000 years(Anglo-Saxons by contrast go back to only the 5th century AD). How exactly does the latter importation of this neolithic (Celtic) culture make it invalid?
The British monarchy is an archaic,anachronistic absurdity.The superstitious Papists,and firebreathing evangelists are also an archaic,anachronistic absurdity.The British isles should come into the twenty first century by becoming secular and republican.NO MORE IMPERIALISM!!!!! Lets have independant nationality along geographic lines.Yes I am an American,but I wish the best for my ancestral homeland (which by the way includes Wales and England).

[Mc1]

Captain Marvel
OK, I'm glad that you don't approve of hatred of the English.I have no expertise in what historoians are writing about Jackson.
I honestly don't know what "truly Gaelic" is. Gaelic is a language (or two), not a race which today coincides with any one nationality or ethnicity. Irishness is not dependent on Gaelicness or Tone etc would not be considered Irish. Nor is Scottishness dependent on race historically. I'm sorry but the Scots are just historically descended from several groups four of which did not speak Gaelic. Thats a historical fact. There was a huge Gaelic input into the Scots culture as there has been a huge English and European input for centuries
I in no way deny  the relatedness of the Scottish and Irish populations. On the contrary, genetics shows it, and relates them both to the Welsh, and the northern Iberian populations in particular. But this relationship may predate later Gaelic speaking population movements and be independent of them to a degree. In the light of this they're still related and perhaps more anciently profoundly than we thought.
Where did I say latter importation of neolithic culture invalidated anything? The modern inhabitants of Wales, Scotland and Ireland do show genetic patterns going back 9000 years as you say, but these may be pre Celtic and none the worse or better for that. Neither later Celtic invasion/settlement nor  Anglo Saxon invasion and settlement nor Viking or Norman is  invalid for having come later, in my view. The English by the way show heavy influences genetically from their Germanic forbears but not everywhere - some parts show patterns more closer to Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The north east and east of England are more genetically English than the soulth and west.
"Papists" is an insulting term, not many firebreathers around these parts, some literacy classes run by churches, homeless hostel you know the kind of thing.
Boundaries are not all geographical. Shall we abolish the Netherlands which crosses into Germany on a plain and where historically the dialects fused into one another?
Look. I'm not a monarchist or an anti-monarchist. The Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians are happy, liberal prosperous countries and happy as monarchies. So what? Live and let live. Let's live good lives in our homelands and hope that Ireland can have peace and prosperity, but that depends on them all "owning" the process not on us telling them who or what they are. No one likes that. Explain to Unionists the benefits of a united Irish Republic but don't start the conversation with "You're not British" or "You're not Scots Irish".

[stonewall]

Andrew Jackson,the seventh U.S. president,hated the English and was a Protestant.He was a member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and  wished for the independance of Ireland from Britain.Jackson's parents were both Ulster Irish.
Lets have a united,secular Ireland,and an independant Scotland!!! Gaelic people unite for our common interests!!!

Are you sure about this---- Andrew Jackson a member of the A.O.H.   Somehow I don't think so.

The A.O.H. is a Roman Catholic organization.  I don't think he could have been a member.    He was a Presbyterian.

How do you stand re the Cruthin people. Do you believe they have a right to exist as a separate and distinct people?

[stonewall]

Oh, Forgot to say Andrew Jackson's parents were Ulster-Scots.

[Mc1]

Stonewall
I have heard that there are Protesatnst AOHs in the south. Heard it on RTE.

The Cruthin do not now exist as a separate tribe. Nor do the Picts, Gaels, Norman British etc. Some of their descendants  consider themselves Scotch Irish, some Scottish some Irsih, some are doubtless in England, the USA, Australia etc.. They are mixed in with the local populations. Do you want to cut out a portion of Scotland for them? It's legit to point out their existence against  the "Ireland was always homogenous and Gaelic" type of argument, they must not be written out of history for the convenience of a certain view of Irish history, but you can't build a whole political philosophy on the existence ot a tribal group hundreds of years ago and use it to justify NI existence as a 21st century state.

[stonewall]

Mc1


Well, we live and we learn a Protestant A.O.H., thats a new one on me.  Used to hear them joke about the A.O.H. and call them Catholic Orangemen.  Seems they were right ha.


Quote
''but you can't build a whole philosophy on the existence of a tribal group hundreds of years ago and use it to justify N.I. existence as a 21st century state''

Well, its seems to me that is more or less what the Irish Republic has done. Their whole existence as a state,is based on the Gaelic concept.   The state was formed with a Gaelic ethos clearly in mind.

[Mc1]

Stonewall
I would say there is more of a continuum between modern Irish and their Gaelic speaking forebears than between the NI unionist poulation as a whole and the Cruthin.
I'm part north sea Germanic, I presume but I'm not Dutch, I'm British.