“Cultural divisions in Northern Ireland – Myth or Reality” are notes for a Radio Interview I gave in Paris at 10.30 am on Friday 29th April 1983 .It also formed the basis of a talk given there to 23 Young people from the Farset Youth Project, under the leadership of Jackie Hewitt, Ann Brown and Fred Proctor

Culture is total range of activities and ideas of a group of people with shared traditions which are transmitted and reinforced by members of the group. 

I was born in Bangor and reared in Conlig a village between Bangor and Newtownards.  From the hills of Conlig you can see Galloway on a clear day.  I was descended from the Sloans of Kinelarty through my two grandmothers who were sisters.  One grandfather Robert Kerr from Lanarkshire in Scotland was a devotee of James Keir Hardie and fought for the flame of idealism, and working for socialism and the unemployed.  I travelled extensively in my youth through the Highlands of Scotland with my grandfather, to the Isle of Skye were I was taught the legend of Cuchulainn, to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and to Galloway where he taught me about the Covenanters, whom he loved.

I learned that Catholic and Protestant Gaelic speakers on the Scottish Highlands and Islands were in the majority Protestant.  The first book printed in Irish Gaelic was the Book of Common Order commonly called John Knox’s Liturgy, published in Edinburgh in 1567 for the use of Presbyterians.  Scottish Gaelic was not a literary language until the early 17^th Century.  Old British was displaced in Ireland by Gaelic just as English Literature displaced Gaelic.  When Gaelic was planted on the British mainland its verbal system was on along the lines of the old British language.  Scottish Gaelic was to preserve archaic features now lost in Irish Gaelic.

The division of Ulster Gaelic from that of the rest of Ireland developed well before the arrival of English in the 17^th century and there was an increasing influence of Scottish Gaelic on Ulster.  TF O’Rahilly in 1932 outlined the features which distinguished the two languages and regarded the position of word stress as the most important of these. The southern language of Gaelic stretches from south County Meath running through West Meath to Longford in Co Galway.  This is more than homogenous than the Ulster dialects. Modern Irish Gaelic was basically developed from Munster and Connaught dialects.

In 1770 Ulster Lallans was used by Rhyming Weaver poets until about 1870.  My ancestor Edward Sloan of Conlig was one of these.  Allan Ramsay was a member of the Easy Club along with the Jacobite leader Dr Archibald Pitcairn and had strong Jacobite sympathies following the 1715 rising.  During the occupation of Edinburgh in 1745 he was a highly respected figure but probably disapproved of Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s policy of invading England.  He supported the aims of the French moderate Cardinal Fleury who died shortly before the 1745 Rising was embarked on.

Ramsay lived to influence the Whig “Pacifiers” following defeat at Culloden Moor.  “The Gentle Shepherd” deals with the Restoration of the Stuarts following the Cromwellian interregnum. It contains Jenny an early advocate of Women’s Liberation.   He stands midway between the Scots renaissance poets Henryson, Gawain Douglas and Dunbar and the later Romantic group, of which Burns personifies the French Revolution, Scott is the product of imperial compromise and MacDiarmid adheres to the Russian Revolution.  At first Ramsay appears the least conspicuous but he is the still small voice between the two storms, right at the beginning of the Scottish Enlightenment.

In 555 AD Bangor Monastery was founded on Ulidian territory by Comgal and became the centre of literature both sacred and secular in the 6th and 7th Centuries.  The original Chronicles of Ireland and the poetry The Voyage of Bran were written there.  In the area the old traditions were preserved which were remoulded in to the Ulster Gaelic masterpiece “The Tain”.  The Bangor Antiphonary in Latin is an important relic of the Bangor monks.  The peregrinations of Columbanus and Gall are well known in the re-evangelisation of Europe.

In 637 Congal, Prince of the ancient British Cruthin attempted to regain the soverainty of the whole North  with help of mainland British allies but was defeated and killed at the Battle of Moira in 637 AD.  Samuel Ferguson the Unionist Post has said that this was the greatest battle ever fought within the bounds of Ireland.

In Conlig  I learned from my Grandmothers the story of Archibald Wilson, the Carpenter of Conlig, who was hanged for his part in the United Irish rebellion on 26^th  June 1798.   On his grave slab is the poem:

Morn not dear friends, tho’ I’m no more,

Tho’ I was martyred your eyes before

I am not dead but do sleep here.

Yet once more I will appear. 

That is when time will be no more

When thel be judged who falsely swore

And them that judged will judged will be

Whether just or onjust then thel see.

Purpere, dear friends, for that grate day

When death dis sumances you away.

I will await you all with due care

In Heaven with joy to meet you there.

History is primarily a record of human relationship with a vast network of variation in the manner of its evolution.  Now is the time to widen its perspective beyond the religious and political divide.  People do not change their minds rather their horizons are widened.  We begin to comprehend that what we thought was the whole of reality is but a small part and that a representation.  Nobody can claim to own reality just as nobody can legitimately claim that theirs is the only view of history.

Throughout the years, that road was a shared road, and, even today, it has on that contended section a major health centre at Everton, a public library, shops, a car wash and an ambulance station; all of these. The shopkeepers are happy to take money from Protestants and Roman Catholics. Nobody asks when you go in to check in your book whether you are a Protestant or a Roman Catholic, but republicans and nationalists in Ardoyne have sought to sectarianise the road and to claim it as their preserve. Year after year, there has been republican violence emanating from Ardoyne, and in response to that, the Parades Commission has through the years placed more and more restrictions on the parades, especially the return parade. It has pandered to republican and nationalist bigotry, it has pandered to the intolerance of the republicans and the SDLP and, especially after last year, it has pandered to dissident republican violence.

Last year, dissident republicans rioted and burned vehicles, while a republican gunman attempted to murder police officers, and then this year, the return parade was banned. Once again, the Parades Commission sends out a very clear message: the Parades Commission rewards violence. That is irresponsible and immoral, and Peter Osborne, Brian Kennaway and the other members of the commission should hang their heads in shame. Previous commissions were bad, but this commission is the worst ever. This determination was not only an attack on the Orange Order, it was an attack on the entire Protestant community in Ballysillan. It has caused deep hurt, and it has damaged community relations.

Of course violence is wrong, and on Sunday afternoon, along with party colleagues, I visited the homes of local people, many of them elderly, who had been affected in various ways by the violence. Indeed, our party colleague Nigel Dodds suffered directly on Friday night, but it is hard to convince others to refrain from violence when they can say to you, “Violence pays”. Moreover, although republican violence and the Parades Commission stopped the parade, violence will not get it back. The way forward is by the removal of the Parades Commission. Northern Ireland needs a new start, a new structure and a new system for the issue of parades; that is a priority. The Parades Commission is not an impartial body, rather it has been thoroughly partisan and punitive. Republicans have opposed Orange parades, and they have been aided and abetted by the Parades Commission.

The commission was a product of direct rule from Westminster and was imposed in Northern Ireland at a time when Sinn Féin was ramping up its campaign against the Orange Order, with parades being disrupted, the order being demonised and Orange halls being attacked. Today, the violence against the Orange Order and Orange parades in north Belfast comes from dissident republicans, but they learned their trade from Sinn Féin.

Forty years ago, on 2 March 1973, an Orangeman by the name of George Walmsley left Ligoniel Orange hall for the last time to go to his home in Glenbank Drive. George was a quiet man who had served in the merchant navy. He lived at home with his parents, his father had died just a week earlier, and he was going home earlier that night to make sure that his mother, an elderly woman, was in good form. He worked as a foreman for the Belfast Corporation and he lived at home with his parents. As he left the hall, Provisional IRA gunmen shot him dead and another Orangeman who was with him was shot nine times by the Provisional IRA but survived. It was a brutal murder, and a thoroughly decent man was murdered by sectarian killers.

The murder of George Walmsley was a brutal murder, and a thoroughly decent man was murdered by sectarian killers. No one has ever been made accountable for the murder, nor have there been any inquiries. How did the Parades Commission mark the 40th anniversary of his murder? They banned the Ligoniel lodges from going home.

We hear much of the talk around a shared future, but it seems that republicans in Ardoyne cannot even share a road with us. We hear much talk from republicans of an island of equals but, as George Orwell put it, some are more equal than others. If we are looking at the issue of apartheid in South Africa and all the rest, I would suggest to some of those here who are republicans and nationalists that if they are looking for issues of supremacy, they should look in the mirror.”

Today I attended, on the invitation of John Kennedy, the Annual Wreath Laying Ceremony at Islandbridge, hosted by the Royal British Legion Ireland on the Saturday nearest July 11th, prior to Ireland’s National Day of Commemoration.

The ceremony was open to the public.

Minister of State at D/Taoiseach, Mr Paul Kehoe TD with participating Mayors at WW1 commemoration

The Islandbridge memorial garden has a fascinating history: Following a meeting of over one hundred representatives from all parts of Ireland, held in Dublin on 17th July 1919, it was agreed that there should be a permanent Memorial to commemorate all those Irish men and women killed in the First World War and a Memorial Committee was appointed to raise funds to further this aim.

A number of schemes were suggested including a Memorial centre-piece in Merrion Square but all were found to be impractical or inconsistent with legal obligations.

The matter had arrived at an impasse, until, in 1929, the Irish Government suggested that a memorial Park be laid out on a site known as Longmeadows on the banks of the Liffey.

The scheme embodied the idea of a public park, to be laid out at Government expense, which would include a Garden of Remembrance and War Memorial to be paid for from the funds of the Memorial Committee.

Construction of the linear parkway, about 60 hectares in extent stretching from Islandbridge to Chapelizod, began in 1931 and took about two years to complete. The Memorial Gardens were laid out between 1933 and 1939. The workforce for the project was formed of fifty percent of ex-British Army servicemen and fifty percent of ex-servicemen from the Irish National Army.

Myself, George McCullough, Philip Orr and John Green at Islandbridge