| Copied from the May/June 1994 issue of
The Irish American Magazine.
Just an Ordinary Ulster Woman
I'd describe myself as an ordinary Belfast woman. My husband is a teacher,
he's at one of the large secondary schools near here in east Belfast, and
we've lived here more or less all our lives. My husband is an Ulsterman, my
mother was English and my father Ulster, he was in the British Army and
wounded in Italy in the Second World War: and we have three grown-up-
children.
I think I'd also describe myself as someone very much from the Province: I
mean by that that I was born and brought up in this area, I went to school
here, and then I went on to the University of Ulster where I studied
English.
So I've never really moved very far away from Belfast. But I do go
occasionally to England to see my brother and sister, both of whom are
married and live there: one in Yorkshire and the other in London.
Politically I'd describe myself as a Unionist: but I'm not a member of any
particular party nor is my husband, and we both like to think of ourselves
moderate.
I'm a perfectly ordinary Ulster woman, by which I mean that I'm British and
proud of it. It might sound strange to say to someone coming newly here
from England that I enjoy living in Belfast, but it's true, I do, very much.
I think an exaggerated picture of the troubles is given by the media: for
all of that, nevertheless Belfast's a fine place to live, and its people are
fine people. They have a tremendous integrity and courage, and great
readiness to put up with difficulties and sometimes danger. I can't ever
see them allowing themselves to be incorporated in the rest of Ireland,
they're much too independent for that. I hope I'm not sounding too
prejudiced if I say the Catholic church doesn't really like independence of
thought at all. I regard the idea of full integration between the north and
south with a mild amusement: it really wouldn't ever work, because the
people are so different.
Ulster people are British people and Irish people are Irish, and never the
twain shall meet as they say.
But that doesn't mean I think that here in the north, there's no hope of
future rapprochement between the two-thirds of the population who are
Protestant and the one-third which is Catholic. I genuinely believe, or
perhaps it'd be better to say I since rely hope, that one day all this
dreadful factionalism and sectarianism will gradually disappear, and people
will all live happily together. There are a surprising number of mixed
marriages you know. I can't quote the exact numbers, but I understand that
they're increasing all the time between Protestants and Catholics: and I do
think this is good. In fact one of my own children, my oldest son, has
married a Catholic: She's an extremely nice girl and I think it isn't
unusual nowadays for this kind of thing to happen. I was a little surprised
when my son agreed any children they had should be given a Catholic
upbringing and education, and we have from time to time discussed it. But
my daughter- in-law Evelyn is not what one might call a bigoted person, and
I'm sure anyway as they get older, the children will probably re-think a lot
of the ideas which the Catholic church does tend to try and instill as
dogma.
I also think great strides have been made in recent years about anti-
Catholic discrimination. It did occur, everybody admits that: but rapid
progress has been made in such areas as housing and employment, and there's
now a far more equal and fairer situation. I don't think it's a great help
to anyone if politicians go on talking about anti-Catholic discrimination
any more now. There are Catholic people with bad housing, but there are also
Protestants in the same situation: and anyway, there are a lot of people on
the mainland with bad housing, and no one can point the finger there and say
it's due to religious discrimination can they?
I think one of the most important things that would contribute to an
improvement in the situation is an absolutely firm and irrevocable statement
by the British Government that they intend to keep the Army here.
Protestants do want to be reassured that the extremists and terrorists are
never ever going to achieve their aim of uniting both north and south.
There's really far too much mild speaking by the British Government about
this: I think it does nothing but give support to Sinn Fein and the IRA.
And I honestly don't know what their idea is, because certainly no one inthe
south, or no responsible person in the south, is all that anxious to take on
the economic problems of the north. We have a much higher standard of
living here than they do in the south, and this is something which the
Republican or Nationalist elements, whatever you want to call them, don't
seem to want to try to understand, or pretend not to. Belfast Catholics
would very quickly find out which side their bread was buttered on if
Northern Ireland were taken over by the Republic: their standard of
living'd drop very sharply indeed. You can't help but suspect sometimes that
terrorists have never really given much thought at all to their own
political ideology, if you can call it that.
They want to force a united Ireland not only on the north but on the south
as well. But the south doesn't want it, that's the fact of the matter. So
I don't think there's any point on the argument that there'll be no peace
here until all the political parties including Sinn Fein get together round
the table. I Think that would be deeply insulting to the Protestant people
of Belfast. They've stood up for years against the most appalling acts of
destruction of property, not to mention the loss of hundreds and hundreds of
loves: so then to be told they had to sit down and try to reach agreement
with those who'd done such things to them is unthinkable. At least until
Sinn Fein makes an irrevocable commitment never to resort again to violence
of any kind, that is. But even if they did that, I think the majority of
people wouldn't trust them, and with good reason.
And you know, to ordinary people like me there's a great danger that Sinn
Fein and the IRA may feel that if they continue their campaign of
intimidation, and indeed step it up which they've been doing particularly
during the last year or so, the British Government might feel it's no longer
worthwhile them staying here and leave. But that really would be a terrible
letting-down of Northern Ireland people. The British Government mustn't
give any sign or indication that it's weakening in its resolve to crush the
terrorists.
I don't know what your own particular views are, so you must forgive me if I
assume incorrectly your attitude towards the situation here is probably the
same as that of the majority of British people on the mainland. You seem to
give the impression at times you don't want to know what's going on here:
you want us out of your hair as it were, and you're impatient with the lack
of progress that's being made. In my personal opinion that's because you
don't properly understand the situation: and you don't understand because,
to be honest, I think you don't want to understand.
You'll hear a great deal I'm sure, if you haven't heard it already, about
the Battle of the Somme in 1916, when so many men from Ulster lost their
lives. And you may be tempted to think 'Good heavens, that was how long ago,
eighty years?' So it was: but one of those hundreds of thousands of men who
died was my grandfather: and the memory of that is part of my family's
history. It can't just be dismissed as obsession with the past: my
grandfather died for Britain, my father was wounded in the Second World War
for Britain, so surely this deserves respect and most of all some loyalty?
You must forgive me if I sound angry about this: but the fact of the matter
is I am angry. And I'll continue to be for the whole of my life, unless the
British Government assures me... not just with words but with actions...
that the sacrifices those men and many others made really do still count for
something.
How can you betray us? We feel we're being left on our own to fight
fanatical bigots who want to take us back to the dark ages and the ruthless
oppressiveness of the Roman Church. Our fathers, our brothers, our sons,
they all sacrificed themselves for you in two world wars: so how can you do
this to us now, and show us no feelings of loyalty or gratitude?
I'd say over and over again to English people: 'Look, please listen to me.
You're British, I'm British. We have the same background of history and
culture. I'm Anglo-Saxon, just as you are. I was born British and I want
to live British. I feel under threat from those Irish people in the south,
and if the border went I'd be terrified, because I feel the south is a male-
dominated and church-dominated country. We fought with you and for you in
the last war. We gave you submarine bases and air bases: and without
question, we gave you the lives of thousands of our men just as we did in
the First World War. But what did they do in southern Ireland? They called
themselves 'neutral' and they didn't lift a finger on your behalf.
There are stories and rumors that I won't go into, but you must have heard
them yourself often enough, of the extent to which they went to give aid and
succor to the Germans.
Not to us, their neighbors, but to the Germans. You were being bombed and
we were being bombed: we were in battle together, and when the war was over
we suffered the deprivations of rationing and everything else. We never
demanded that we should be given freedom from you, in fact we insisted we
were with you by your side.' That's what I'd like to say. I'm sorry, I'm
afraid I've let my feelings run away with me, but I think such feelings...
and they're not just mine... are not properly understood or appreciated, and
they're certainly not respected.
Just to give you one small example, I can't tell you how angry it makes me
on the occasions when I go to London and do something like offering a
Northern Irish banknote to a taxi driver and he refuses to accept it, and
says like one did when I was there last year: ' Sorry lady, I don't take
foreign currency.' I can't tell you how that makes me feel: rejected, hurt,
neglected, they're only a few of the words that come to mind.
Look, I'm sorry, do forgive me. Rationally I can't deny the Nationalists
have their own history, and when they learn about what the British have done
to Ireland, it rouses very strong feelings in them. It was dreadful, nobody
could say it wasn't. But I think it should be remembered that when the
British were imperialists and colonialists, as they were for hundreds of
years, their behavior towards all the people they subjugated was terrible.
It wasn't just the Irish... it was towards the people of India, and
everywhere else you can think of: Africa, south-east Asia, Scotland, Wales,
China, everywhere the British were terrible. And the British ruling class
were terrible to their own people too: they made them live in poverty, they
sent women and children down the mines, they massacred people at
Peterloo...you name it, they did it. The British ruling class were always
cruel and arrogant, they didn't behave in that way just towards the Irish.
But the people I've mentioned from other parts of the world, they're not
still fighting the British, they've got over what was done to them, they're
not still carrying on terrorizing the British in their country who've stayed
there.
And lastly I'd like to admit I'm not really very proud of all my prejudices:
I know they're the result of my emotions and not my intellect. I mean,
whenever there's an atrocity, I always find myself thinking 'The bloody
Irish!' And intellectually I know very well the Irish aren't any bloodier
than anyone else. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, but I
have an uncontrollable emotional reaction which comes from my background and
upbringing and everything else. I'm surprised though at how quickly the
emotional reactions come to the surface. Perhaps it's because I'm getting
old.
But it makes me angry when I see slogans painted on the walls in streets
saying 'Brits out'. It's the unthinkingness of it that annoys me so much.
Two-thirds of the population of Northern Ireland are British, so what on
earth does some idiot with a spray can mean by 'Brits out'? That's the sort
of trivialisation Nationalists and Republicans indulge in that upsets me.
It's not a matter for slogans, it's how people live together: they should
do it and they could do it, in peace and with respect for each other. I
honestly don't believe the troubles in the north of Ireland are the
responsibility of anyone except the Nationalists and the Republicans.
They simply won't accept the historical inevitability of the situation, the
situation of the north of Ireland being British and staying British, and its
people preferring to die rather than be taken over by the Republic. Surely
they can see that, surely it can be accepted as fact and a way be found for
us all to live together as civilized people? Instead of talk of 'Brits
out', it's the Nationalists and Republicans who should go out. If they
don't like living here under the British Government, if they won't accept it
and don't want it, then they should go peaceably down to the south and leave
the north to us.
Have I sounded like a tub-thumper? I hope not. As I said to you at the
beginning I'm just an ordinary Ulster woman. An ordinary Ulster woman's
what I want to stay.
*****************************
Margaret Anderson is a university lecturer. She is one of the many people
interviewed by Tony Parker in his recently released book May the Lord in His
mercy be kind to Belfast. He describes her thus: "A tall gray-haired woman
in a green skirt and white blouse, she sat straight-backed on the settee in
her comfortably furnished sitting room. From time to time she gave a small
grave smile, polite and proud."
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| re: .7
There's not a lot the Government can do to convince that lady in
Belfast, because she doesn't want to be convinced. If abortion on
demand, free condoms, divorce-while-you-wait, and whatever other
non-RC changes you care to imagine, were introduced tomorrow, she'd
soon be going on about the godless heathens in the South.
The whole bit about "male dominated Rome Rule" is purely a
smoke-screen, and changing it won't make a blind bit of difference to
"the people of Ulster". It's a red herring to argue for social change
in the Republic for the sake of convincing the Unionists. There are
all sorts of good reasons for making changes, without trying to con
people into thinking that it'll make any difference to the Unionists.
Yes, her fears are real. But they're not entirely rational. And you're
asking the wrong question when you ask what are the Government in Dublin
doing to soothe those fears. Because you can't soothe irrational fears.
You can try to convince the person that their fears are irrational, but
that can only happen in an atmosphere of trust, and unionists don't
trust Dublin, and don't want to be convinced that their fears are
irrational.
(I'm not arguing for a do-nothing, head-in-the sand response. I believe
that there are people in the Unionist community who know that the
people of the Republic aren't priest-ridden, bare-footed, eating
butter-milk and potatoes. It's in everyones best interests to reach
out to those people, to build a relationship with them that will allow
NI and the Republic to grow, economically and socially).
It's a little bit funny to read a Unionist suggest that Nationalists
should learn to live with the inevitability of the British presence in
Northern Ireland, when I keep hear complaints when Albert Reynolds
reflects a fairly widespread view in the Republic (and indeed, in
Britain), that some form of unity is inevitable, in the (very) long
run.
The real failure, and indictment, of Unionists, is that in 50 years
they failed to make good little Brits out of the 40% of their
population that are Nationalists. Whereas Unionism dies out in the
Republic, not because it was beaten to death, but because it didn't
make any sense.
Aengus
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