Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground

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In many ways the book is a continuation of her acclaimed 2000 book, Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People, which was updated and re-released in June. She cites a BBC interview Arlene Foster gave earlier this year in which she said one of unionism's problems was that when it was "in difficult circumstances... they turn in on themselves and people start to look for Lundys to blame."

Political unionism presents the idea that the Protestant section of the community in Northern Ireland are a monolithic group of aggrieved and socially conservative people whose overarching priority is the constitutional status of the region. Certainly, the DUP must be concerned with the popularity of Doug Beattie, especially considering that Edwin Poots was not a popular choice even within the DUP itself. Dee Stitt, convicted armed robber, UDA leader and erstwhile community worker, told her to do research on him.

My creativity emerged from the cognitive dissonance of growing up queer in a milieu that found me unpalatable and odd,” she said. She has returned to north Down with her English wife and child to make films and live by the sea. “Digital natives have access to ideas that go far beyond those imparted by the traditional cultural sources that informed their parents’ imaginations,” she observed. “There is a fluidity to their sense of persona and identity.” She likes the sense that Northern Ireland “has unclenched somewhat”. Both books take a look at Protestant people from all walks of life in Northern Ireland, to build up a varied picture of the community in the present moment. I just thought, aye, well I’ll form my own opinion here,” she told me. (Martin McGuinness was, in her estimation, “a bad rascal”.) Shifting Ground' may be the perfect title for Susan's book, for a number of reasons, not least the fact that many Protestants and unionists are reconsidering where to hang their political hats following recent polling and leadership changes within the DUP and UUP.

I think a lot of what's happened recently vindicates a lot of what I found in the book. There is greater diversity within the community than politics is able to show. I met people who told me they voted DUP, but they only did so because they're unionist, they don't necessarily support the DUP's politics. And I think, if there are alternatives, unionism may become more fragmented. But there are other influences at work now. Women who have held communities together through generations of disadvantage are demanding a voice in public life. As Eileen Weir put it to me, “working class women are streets ahead of the politicians”.There are pastors, politicians, paramilitaries, poets, business entrepreneurs, community workers, farmers, army veterans (of whom there are thousands in the north), oddballs and more. Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground, is the follow up to 2001's Northern Protestants - An Unsettled People, which is believed to have sold over 10,000 copies.

As young DUP councillor Dale Pankhurst put it to me, “it’s the paranoia in the psyche”. He was speaking in the context of a young Catholic woman and her children having been intimidated out of moving into a house they had been allocated in Tyndale, in north Belfast. People might have thought, he reasoned, what if such a person is “a real hard-line republican?” Trojan horses come in many cunning disguises. The DUP has resorted to its traditional route of drumming up electoral support, instilling fear that the other side is otherwise going to come and take away everything you hold dear: Your home, your identity, your flags, and your culture. There's a dominance of voices at the moment saying 'This will be a disaster, this will be a difficult summer, we can't rule out violence'. These voices are given a lot of prominence in the media, and it is very disturbing. It makes people feel uneasy and a bit fearful.

You have requested "on-the-fly" machine translation of selected content from our databases. This functionality is provided solely for your convenience and is in no way intended to replace human translation. Show full disclaimer As is the case elsewhere, many younger people have rejected party politics altogether, embracing more global issues such as climate activism and gender politics. Belfast playwright Stacey Gregg describes an emerging “fluidity of persona and identity” among her contemporaries, wryly observing that Northern Ireland “has unclenched somewhat”. The club counters bad influences with good ones. World champion boxer Carl Frampton is a regular visitor to the club. I had heard him speak at an anti-sectarianism rally when there was rioting across the peace line in Tigers Bay in north Belfast. Frampton said he came from Tigers Bay and had rioted himself as a boy. “People have been stirring the pot again, and young people are being manipulated,” he said. “It just made me overwhelmingly sad.” She said: "I was very surprised because I suppose it's often believed that people in the Republic of Ireland don't have an interest in the North. I know from working in the south that it's often an uphill struggle to get southern media interested in northern stories, but it's good to see that book-buyers are having more of an interest in the north."