Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground

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Sarah Laverty, a Green party member, grew up unionist in staunchly Protestant Ballymoney, but now describes herself as “left wing, progressive, feminist, socialist”. Had I read a book like this as a teenager, I imagine it would have shocked me enough to change my adolescent views on whether it's possible to reconcile left wing ideas with any kind of formalised unionism. Susan McKay is an award-winning journalist, commentator and author of five books: Sophia’s Story , Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People , Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground , Without Fear: A History of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and Bear in Mind These Dead . I helped a protestant man on his milk round, but as we sat and ate sandwiches, we didn’t talk so much. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

The pain of people who lost loved ones during the troubles is still understandably raw in many cases, compounded by the governments recent pronouncements on how they are treating the legacy of the troubles. Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground” is essential reading for anybody who has any interest in Northern Ireland, or in the concept of reconciliation.And of course it soon removed from me the notion that Protestants in the North of Ireland were one large, groupthinking monolithic block. You get dragged back into the old divide,” she says wearily, noting how the traumas of the recent past so inform the stalemates of the present. Her analysis of the upheavals within the Protestant community and unionist politics is a thought-provoking contribution to current debates about Northern Ireland. The rest of the interviews,snatches of conversation with people at Drumcree and historical analysis and context provided by McKay only serve to confirm the accounts of the former.

Now with 100 years of the intentional segregation of people on this small island based on their religion; it is timely to ask ordinary people how they feel. Ties in to topical debates around identity in the context of Brexit and the centenary of the foundation of the NI state.

This book is a very impressive collection of verbatim interviews with a broad spectrum of people who fall under the umbrella of Northern Protestants. Most people interviewed seemed willing to respect the rule of law and democracy on the inevitably of a United Ireland. So one person admits that their standard of living and the ability to own a house and run a car ‘matter more to me than the flag that’s flying above our country’ (122) and another, a community activist, concisely describes the reigning neoliberal orthodoxy of the DUP’s economic policies based around deregulated land development before concluding that she would ‘rather politicians focused on policies that eradicate poverty than deliver food parcels’ (90). But what elevates Susan McKay’s masterful book is that it challenges our preconceptions about a community that is regularly reviled by their political opponents, and shines a light on the heretofore overlooked diversity within that community.