Alternative Alternative Protestants: The Different Strands of Contemporary Protestant Irish Nationalism
Discussion of northern Protestant support for Irish unity often centres on a particular type: the liberal or civic-minded former unionist who retains a largely British identity but has gradually concluded that a united Ireland might offer a better future.
Such people certainly exist and their voices are often worth listening to. But they represent only one strand of a much broader and older phenomenon.
Protestant Irish nationalism exists on a spectrum. At one end are those who remain culturally British and support unity for pragmatic, economic or social reasons. Others have developed a stronger sense of cultural and political Irishness or regard themselves straightforwardly as Irish nationalists. Further along are Protestants whose politics are explicitly Republican.
The distinction matters. Supporting a united Ireland because it appears economically advantageous or because the Union no longer seems to work is totally different from rejecting partition as illegitimate and regarding the sovereignty of the Irish nation as an overriding political principle. The latter position can lead far beyond the comfortable territory of liberal constitutional nationalism.
Indeed, some Protestants have been drawn towards radical nationalism or Republicanism through wider political worldviews fundamentally incompatible with unionism. These have ranged from various forms of socialism to certain systematically reactionary or socially conservative outlooks on nationality and society. Their reasons for rejecting British rule cannot easily be reduced to contemporary arguments about prosperity, demographics or creating a more inclusive state.
Protestant Republicanism is far from being a recent curiosity. Protestant participation in the struggle for freedom in Ireland reaches back to the foundations of the Republican tradition itself. Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, other United Irishmen and later John Mitchel were not campaigning for a slightly more accommodating constitutional settlement under British occupation.
Contemporary discussion therefore risks mistaking one increasingly visible type of Protestant nationalist for the whole phenomenon. There are Protestants who may be persuaded to support constitutional change, Protestants who consider themselves Irish nationalists and Protestants whose politics are uncompromisingly Republican.
They overlap, but they are not the same thing.
