Opinion

Patricia Mac Bride: For me, Ulster is more than just a place

Thousands of people turned out to watch Saturday's Orange Order parade marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. .Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press
Thousands of people turned out to watch Saturday's Orange Order parade marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. .Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press Thousands of people turned out to watch Saturday's Orange Order parade marking the centenary of Northern Ireland. .Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press

The Sunday Times Ireland edition had a headline last weekend: “Ulster Turns 101.”

It appeared over a photograph of Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson, resplendent in Orange collaret, attending the parade to mark the 100th anniversary of “our wee province,” postponed from last year due to Covid-19 restrictions.

I felt it incumbent to point out to the Sunday Times via the megaphone that is Twitter that Ulster, in fact, existed from before the Norman invasion of 1169 and that they might want to work on their arithmetic.

I confess I never really understood the unionist use of Ulster as a name for the place called Northern Ireland, the north of Ireland or the six counties depending on your political outlook or audience. But it is a name that many are wedded to.

At the time of partition, unionists wanted the newly-created political entity to be called Ulster and not Northern Ireland. In 1937 when Bunreacht na hÉireann came into force, replacing the name of the Irish Free State with Ireland, unionists lobbied for the name to be changed to Ulster and lobbied again in 1949 when Ireland officially became a Republic and left the Commonwealth.

The powers that be at Westminster refused the name change on each occasion but did not object to the naming of the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Ulster Defence Regiment. Loyalist paramilitary groups have Ulster in their name, not Northern Ireland. The UDA never defended Monaghan, the UFF didn’t fight for the freedom of Cavan and the UVF wouldn’t have recruited many volunteers in Donegal. Three Ulster counties were cast adrift at partition by unionist elites seeking to create a permanent political majority, yet these counties are disregarded by the use of Ulster in referring to the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Is it a case that the use of Ulster in this context is intended to confer a greater historical legitimacy to a partitioned island? The Plantation of Ulster refers to the nine counties. The Ulster Unionist Council was established in 1905 and the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant was signed in in 1912, but it didn’t take long for demographics to result in the six county covenanters breaking their promise to their brethren in the other three counties of the cúige.

Is it a case that calling it Ulster removes any hint of part Irish-ness that even the contested name of Northern Ireland suggests?

Much was made of first minister-designate Michelle O’Neill using the term Northern Ireland in her speech at Stormont following the election, as it was seen to signal a significant policy change by Sinn Féin. In reality it was the outworking of the party’s election pledge that she would be a first minister for all, and a recognition that accepting terminology different from that which might have been used in the past is part of a process of respect for all traditions.

But it’s hard to respect the use of a term that’s geographically inaccurate. As Dr Peter Doran from the School of Law at Queen’s put it: “All nations co-opt and construct mytho-poetic narratives to conceal their traumatic and violent origins “in” history as opposed to claims to timelessness. Appeals to ancient mythologies of Ulster are deployed here, but unconvincingly.”

Ulster for me speaks to sport – to rugby and to football and hurling championships (and as a Derry woman I am not missing an opportunity this week to congratulate our senior footballers on winning the Anglo Celt Cup!) It is the Ulster Cycle: the tales of the Red Branch Knights, the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Children of Lir adrift on the Sea of Moyle that were real, tangible historic tales of my childhood. It’s the Donegal coast, the Antrim Glens, the Walls of Derry and the lakes of Fermanagh and Cavan.

But it also acknowledges an Ulster-British identity that still exists throughout all nine counties, no matter the political boundaries. People did not give up the right to describe their home as Ulster just because of partition, nor should they be asked to. The cultural and historic link to that geographic area prevails in those whose are descendants of the plantation.

The problem is that the term Ulster should not be used as a synonym for Northern Ireland and in many cases that is what happens, and historically has happened in the case of some of the institutions established post-partition.

Three new political entities were created on these islands in 1922: the Irish Free State, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland. Two new states were created at that time as well – but Northern Ireland was not one of them. It has never met any political nor standard legal definition of a country.

The existence of the province of Ulster predates any of that. For me and I suspect many others, it is more than just a place, it is a feeling.

An interchangeability of terms, whether it is lazy or politically motivated, diminishes something that is pretty special.