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Outside of a few literary-minded individuals, and a number of academics
who tend to focus on their own disciplines, very little
has been written "for the people, by the people, or
about the people" who make up the diverse Protestant
community in Northern Ireland. "Northern Protestants:
An Unsettled People", by journalist Susan Mc Kay,
is an attempt provide a platform for ordinary Protestants
to express their views and to tell part of their story.
The
book has the value of being written by a northern
Protestant who is genuinely interested to know what
her own people have to say for themselves. It has
the disadvantage of having been written by a journalist
who sets the comments of her interviewees within the
context of her own interpretative framework. At times
Susan lets the people speak for themselves, at other
times she appears to analyse and interpret what they
are saying, and this doesn't always work.
There
is a feeling amongst some Protestants that Ms Mc Kay's
uneasiness with her own people have caused her to
highlight the "bad" and to diminish the "good" that
is to be found amongst them. Indeed some have suggested
that what is "good" in terms of Biblical Protestantism
would automatically be regarded as "bad" in the eyes
of a self-confessed 'Protestant Agnostic'. This is
probably true. But it is beside the point. The book
is not supposed to be about Biblical Protestantism,
it is supposed to be about those who come from a Protestant
background, regardless of whether they practice the
Faith or not.
I
believe that the people interviewed by Mc Kay are
fairly representative of the wider Protestant community,
and that the book makes a useful contribution to the
debate about Protestant identity. However I do have
two concerns about the book. The first relates to
the unfair imbalance between the focus on the pain
inflicted by Protestants on nationalists and the pain
inflicted on Protestants by nationalists. The Prologue
to the book, which majors on two case studies of pain
being inflicted by Protestants against Catholics should,
in my opinion, have been balanced by case studies
of the pain suffered by equally innocent Protestant
families.
As
a community we must face up to the fact that our people
(myself included) have carried out some of the worse
excesses of violence against our fellow citizens,
but we must never allow the guilt of what some of
us have done as an excuse for marginalizing the hurt
and the pain that others within our community have
suffered. Susan Mc Kay quotes from Mary Shelly's gothic
novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, "Be calm!
I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your
hatred on my devoted head . . . Remember that I am
thy creature". 'Liberal' Protestants must never forget
that those within our community who engaged in acts
of violence are the creation of that community.
My
second concern relates to the derogatory references
to Mount Vernon housing estate. These are simply a
repeat of the unsubstantiated tittle-tattle fed to
local journalists by well-known begrudgers and felon
setters. In a book that claims to break new ground
in the search for understanding, the people of Mount
Vernon are written off without any attempt to hear,
let alone to understand, their story. Susan Mc Kay
could do worse than read Michael Atcheson's "Mount
Vernon: More Than a Mural".
On
the whole I found that the views expressed throughout
the book, and the stories told by its sixty-odd contributors,
are ones that I hear week in and week out.. They are
the views and experiences of ordinary people who have
grown up in the cut and thrust of life across the
Province. Opinions range from a raw anti-Catholic
sectarianism to a colourless apologetic form of post-Protestantism
that wishes it was something else.
There
are some strong views about temporal and eternal realities
that are rooted in a Calvinistic world-view as well
as some equally strong opinions that are rooted in
secular liberalism. There are indications of both
Protestant agnosticism and, if there can be such a
thing, Protestant atheism. Many express the hurt and
the pain inflicted on them by violent nationalism
while others express the guilt and the pain of belonging
to a community whose members have inflicted pain on
the Catholic community. Expressions of Irishness sit,
sometimes easily and sometimes uneasily, alongside
expressions of Britishness.
Susan
Mc Kay's closing remarks are worth pondering, "There
are monsters which have to be faced down, but there
is much to be proud of too. There is much honest ground
to stand on".
I
would submit that the monsters that have to be faced
down do not necessarily wield sledgehammers and carry
assault rifles. The "ghost at the middle class table"
will always find a working class body to possess in
order to act out its hidden desires. Before we can
genuinely stand on honest ground and face down the
monsters we must exorcise the ghosts of sectarianism
that haunt the leafy glades of suburbia and the marbled
corridors of power - they are the real monsters in
our midst.
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