‘Punching Holes in History’: Tom Paulin’s Interest in Russia

Abstract

In contrast to Heaney, Paulin grew up in a Protestant environment. It is difficult to classify him along territorial or confessional lines. Son of a Scottish father and an Irish mother, he was born in Leeds and spent his childhood and youth in Belfast.1 The poet turned his back on Ulster Unionism as a young man when he became aware of the social inequality created by the British establishment.2 He states: ‘I grew up in a culture that was officially Loyalist, but I came to see it was a rotten society. I left it […] to get away from the claustrophobia of that society.’3 Initially believing that ‘greater social justice in Northern Ireland could be achieved within the context of the United Kingdom’,4 he came to support the Civil Rights movement. Despite his sympathy for the Catholic community, Paulin has ever since rejected the Catholic and Protestant Churches as instances of power and control. He cherishes the idea of a United Ireland in the form of a ‘non-sectarian, republican state which comprises the whole island of Ireland’.5 The poet explains: ‘I think there really has to be a united Ireland, and I don’t mean in any way that I’m committed to bloodshed — but it is a fundamentally absurd political state, and it’s got to go.’6 He sees his own position as ‘eclectic’ and ‘founded on an idea of identity’, which has yet no formal or institutional existence.7