Professor John Brewer formerly of Queen’s University and currently Aberdeen University has spent years studying the psyche of the Ulster Protestant.
I have dragged him back centuries to the Reformation to try to get into the heads of those Scottish Planters whose offspring are marching in Belfast this week-end:
2 Comments
An excellent piece by Prof John Brewer. I would be interested in his views on why Loyalists think they have lost so much and why they claim to have a harder time than their Catholic counterparts. Yet the official statistics clearly point out that Catholic’s are still more than twice as likely to be unemployed as their Loyalist counterparts, more social deprivation than their Loyalist counterparts. But one area were Catholics surpass their Loyalist neighbours is in education. Have Loyalists been let down by their own politicians who mis-sold them the GFA. have they really got no peace dividend in comparson to their Catholic counterparts. I would like to read Prof Brewer’s comments on these issues.
Also I wonder what Unionists think of Loyalists – I am treating them both as different groups within a bigger Protestant family. If Loyalists are so let down by their politicians should they not get involved in politics themselves.
Lastly is there a danger that “Compromise” gets mis-sold and becomes a dirty word, a surrogate surrender instead of a means of solving disputes
Francis – I wonder if the key issue for ‘Loyalist’ communities is not the statistics re:employment, etc., which many may be unaware of, but how the wider peace process itself is experienced (in other words, not the reality itself but how the reality is experienced). Historically since the founding of the N.I. state, there were advantages the Protestant community enjoyed over the Catholic community that quite rightly needed to be addressed in the name of justice and fairness, for example, discrimination in jobs, voting, policing, etc. However these advantages were not necessarily experienced as advantages by all in the Protestant community. They were subjectively experienced as part of the norm. When those advantages were taken away they were then experienced by some within the Protestant community as a loss. Conversely, they were almost universally experienced as gains by the Catholic community. Perhaps some within the Protestant community did not experience this as a move towards a more fair and just society, instead their perception was they were losing out because it is subjectively experienced as a loss. The same argument could also be used to explain the emotions over the parade issue. Also throw into the mix other factors such as deindustrialisation and the loss of jobs, lack of educational achievement, etc., and you have a potent mix for a subjective reality in which there is an overwhelming sense of social, cultural, and economic loss.