Loyal, Not Loyalist

Abstract

According to its critics, Ulster-Scots is a Unionist-Loyalist weapon in a cultural war: an invented tradition and a DIY language of political Unionism. At best it is a Protestant delusion, and at worst it is twentieth-century-style Loyalist supremacy under cover. By contrast, many of its promoters seek to disconnect it from such ideologies, claiming that it is simply an ethnic group, a category of cultural heritage and a language. In this book, I argue that neither of these explanations accurately explains the Ulster-Scots movement. While the relationship between Ulster-Scots and Unionism/Loyalism, Britishness and Protestantism is unequivocal, it is more complex than a veil. Rather, Ulster-Scots is an ethnic dignity movement of a historically dominant but recently demerited peoplehood. It arose at a moment in which ethno-cultural identities had become normative under the Northern Irish peace process, Protestant humiliation had become conspicuous and a sense that expressing pride in being Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist was no longer socially acceptable. I contend that Ulster-Scots is an attempt to reinstate a sense of collective dignity using the language of ethnicity as a conduit. Hence, promoters express an ambiguous relationship to the various features of the ‘Protestant community’, part rejection and part attempt at rehabilitation.