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Discussions about the Irish language tend to fall into tediously predictable patterns. It is hoped that this book will be a step towards an informed, critical and engaged debate.

The essays here, which range from the personal to the scholarly, revisit old questions with new perspectives. Some of them bring fascinating new material to light for the first time.

This is no dry academic work. All the contributors are involved with the Irish language movement, and the interplay of commitment and objectivity make for a stimulating read.

The essays here are designed to stimulate constructive debate on the Irish language in Northern Ireland. In a society where communication takes the form of cliches being hurled back and forth across no-man’s-land, it is not always easy for Irish language enthusiasts to find the space for a reasonable discussion. This book represents an attempt to create such a space.

The essays draw on a number of disciplines; history, anthropology, sociolinguistics, and four of them are based on doctoral research. The authors were asked to make their work as accessible as possible to the general reader, and to cut down on learned gobbledygook.

Inevitably, some themes recur throughout the book. The relationship between political ideology and the language movement is discussed in all the essays, and a number of contributors offer varying interpretations of the role of Douglas Hyde. No attempt was made to impose order on such overlapping themes: in itself, the variety of opinion expressed here both reflects and contributes to the debate within the language movement.

Much remains to be covered: Comhaltas Uladh, Irish-medium education and Irish in English-medium schools, the residual Gaeltachts within Northern Ireland in the early days of the state, the relationship of the Catholic church with the language movement, the gaelicising of west Belfast, the 1991 Census, Irish in the arts, economic activity, broadcasting, prisons. Further research is needed in all these areas.

Our thanks are due to the contributors, to Colm Mac Aindreasa for knowing what buttons to push, to Séamus Ó hAnnaidh for his patience and creativity, and to Máire Bean Uí Bhruadair and Eibhlín Ní Chnáimhsí for their direct input and for keeping the show on the road when their colleagues were otherwise engaged.

In recent years Protestant learners of Irish have become very ‘mediagenic’, attracting considerable interest in local newspapers, as well as in radio and television broadcasts. This interest is not without due reason. Protestant Irish speakers cross physical and ideological boundaries between the unionist and nationalist communities. They challenge the Catholic and! or nationalist image of the Irish language, as well as stereotypes of Northern Protestants as the champions of British culture in Ireland. The phenomenon of Protestant learners confronts many preconceived notions of what the Irish language represents; it also forces us to examine our attitudes to nationalism and unionism in Ireland.

In certain circumstances Protestant learners represent a religious minority within a minority language group. On the other hand, many of these Protestants would like to see a united Ireland, and by learning Irish they feel they are taking part in a nationalist project of cultural restoration. They are welcomed within Irish language circles, and their Protestantism seems unimportant and becomes backgrounded. Their opinions on the Irish language often differ little from their Catholic counterparts. Unionist learners of Irish are another case altogether. Their way of looking at the language often differs from that of nationalists, but they undercommunicate their views in Irish language circles for fear of giving offence. In preparing this chapter, I decided to concentrate on unionist learners of Irish as I wished to contribute something new to the understanding of the Irish language issue in Northern Ireland; the nationalist approach to Irish is comparatively well-known.

In this chapter I will draw upon the beliefs and experiences of 81 Protestant learners of Irish whom I studied for a doctoral thesis; most of the fieldwork was carried out between October 1992 and December 1994. I will use quotations and evidence supplied by many Protestant learners during ‘one-off’ interview situations. However, I will also mention two groups of learners which I studied over a period of time. Between February and October 1993 I taught Irish to a group of working-class Protestants in the Glencairn estate, which is in the Greater Shankill area of Belfast. I also observed a network of middle-class learners located in the affluent north Down region. The stark contrast between these two groups convinced me of the importance of class background in the analysis of Protestant learners of Irish.

The dominant ideology embracing the Irish language is that of Irish nationalism; the language is connected with the desire to end British rule in Ireland. In the following quotation, a Protestant nationalist explains his interest in the language:

This Irish speaker had discovered a secular symbol which he believed could be used to unite a people divided by religion. Many nationalist learners believe that the language provides a means by which they can express their Irish national and nationalist identities. Consequently, many nationalist Protestant learners do not understand how unionists can learn the language and retain their allegiance to Britain. This point is illustrated by the following quotations, which were supplied by three nationalist Irish speakers who were Protestant:

In the first text the respondent cannot reconcile unionism and the Irish language. In the second text the speaker asserts that unionists who learn Irish do so because they are in the process of abandoning their allegiance to Britain. In the second and third texts the speakers articulate the belief that unionist learners will change their outlook when they are drawn into Irish language circles. In the third text, the speaker claims that unionist Irish speakers cannot be loyal to successive British administrations which attempted to destroy the Irish language.

In the third text we have an example of linguistic determinism, the view that each language expresses and creates a distinct and autonomous system of thought. The belief that language and world-view are closely related has existed for centuries. Linguistic determinism is an important element of German Romantic nationalism, the Irish version of which linked the separatist movement to the revival of the Irish language. Since the Irish language is believed to be a repository of Irish nationality, advocates of linguistic determinism argue that unionists will acquire a nationalist outlook by learning the language.

The assertion that Protestants learn Irish because they are nationalist has some validity. The 1996 Social Attitudes Survey reported that no more than 6% of Protestants favour a united Ireland (Breen 1996: 36). However, 31% of my respondents said they were nationalist in outlook. Therefore the percentage of nationalists among the group I studied was higher than that among the Protestant population as a whole. However, the assertion that all Protestants learn Irish because they are nationalist is invalid; 46% of my respondents were unionist in outlook². I must emphasise that these figures are not set in stone, as the proportion of unionist learners is rising.

It is true that many Protestants who learn Irish are nationalist in outlook. The idea that unionists can be converted to nationalism by means of the Irish language is more controversial; most of the nationalist learners I encountered had rejected unionism before they learned Irish. I have found little evidence of a ‘conversion process’ among unionist learners of Irish.

I asked some of my unionist respondents about their opinions on the relationship between the Irish language and Irish nationalism. In the course of one interview, a learner told me that he was afraid that his Protestant neighbours would intimidate him if they discovered his interest in Irish; they might believe that he was betraying the Protestant community. I asked him if Protestants who learned the Irish language were betraying their community, by becoming nationalist in their outlook, for example. He was most emphatic that they were not:

This learner wishes to divest the Irish language of its ‘unnecessary’ nationalist image, and views the language through unionist cultural lenses (for example, in his reference to Ulster Irish). A north Down learner explained the conflicting attitudes he held about the Irish language:

This unionist learner struggles with his wish to enhance his knowledge of Irish culture and his dislike of the association of the Irish language with nationalism. His account illustrates the ambivalent feelings many unionist learners have about Irish. They perceive the ideological gulf that lies between themselves and nationalist Irish speakers to be a large one. In the following text, the speaker discusses a magazine supplement about ‘raving nationalist’ Irish speakers who were Protestant:

Just as many nationalists cannot understand how unionists can learn Irish and retain their political allegiances, this text reveals the incredulity of the speaker at the suggestion that she may become a nationalist.

Unionist learners do not feel that they must choose between two mutually opposed British and Irish cultures. Rather, they often express a syncretic cultural identity which draws upon elements of Britishness and Irishness:

This north Down learner is adamant that she is not embracing an Irish nationalist identity at the expense of her British one; the way in which her response is worded suggests that she might have felt that this was expected of her.

For many Protestants, national identity is situational and complex (Waddell and Cairns 1986). Protestants may feel Irish on holiday in Donegal, British on Remembrance Day, and subscribe to an Ulster identity when they feel that the British government has failed them. Middle-class unionists often express a sense of Irishness (albeit a vague and ill-defined one) in cultural or geographical terms. They may articulate Irish identities by supporting the Irish rugby team or Irish athletes at the Olympic games. They will also take holidays in the Republic of Ireland, thereby familiarising themselves with other parts of Ireland (Todd 1987: 16). Unionist intellectuals often favour the expression of an Irish identity which is compatible with a British one (e.g. Foster 1995). The Irish language provides a means for some unionists to express an Irish identity which they feel is harmonious with their allegiance to Britain.

Working-class unionists are more attracted to an Ulster national identity than their middle-class counterparts. This identity has as its primary imagined community Northern Protestants, while there is a secondary identification with Britain (Todd 1987: 3). Moxon-Browne explains the Ulster allegiance in terms of disillusionment with English policy in Northern Ireland (1991: 28). Working-class unionists who learn Irish may associate the language with this identity, expressing a preference for the Ulster dialect of the language:

In this text the speaker alternates between expressing Irish and Ulster identifications. Towards the end of the text the speaker uses the term ‘Gaelic’, thus challenging the insular image of the language by introducing a semantic link to Scottish Gaelic.

Nationalists who believe that unionists will lose their political outlook when they socialise with Irish speakers are often mistaken. Many Protestants, especially middle-class ones, have Catholic friends and take holidays in the Republic of Ireland, but they do not adopt the views of the nationalists they encounter. Furthermore, the nationalist belief that unionists would abandon their political allegiances upon their exposure to Irish history is optimistic, to say the least. History is a product of present concerns as well as a storehouse of essential truths. Thus there are unionist and nationalist histories of the Irish language:

By describing Irish as a Celtic language, this learner symbolically links the language to the British ‘mainland’. He rejects what he perceives to be the attempt of Irish nationalism to substitute an insular Irish identity for one embracing the historical links between Britain and Ireland. His reference to the sea ‘binding nations together’ echoes the unionist assertion that the Irish Sea facilitated rather than hindered population movements between Britain and Ireland in ancient times.

It is not only nationalist Irish speakers who hope that the language can be used to change the opinions of others. Many middle-class unionist learners believe that working-class learners would adopt their liberal views if they learn Irish:

This middle-class unionist balances his positive opinion of the Irish language with a negative evaluation of Protestant working-class Orange culture. The speaker wishes to replace and / or supplement Orange culture with Irish culture. Middle-class unionist learners, like the person I have just quoted, believe that working-class loyalists will become less anti-Catholic if they learn Irish.

I doubt the ‘conversion’ of unionists to nationalism or even liberal unionism by means of the Irish language. However, Protestants make many exciting discoveries when they take an interest in the Irish language. They often acquire a new way of looking at their surroundings. Many learners describe their interest in the Irish language as one that comes to have enormous personal benefit for them:

In the following text, a learner describes her experiences in an Irish language college in Donegal:

Many adult Protestant learners experience a tremendous sense of excitement when they begin to learn Irish, but they also feel a sense of regret that they were not informed about the language earlier in their lives. Graduates often told me they would have chosen to study Irish at degree level had they been more aware of the language before they enrolled for university. Among Protestant learners there was an almost universal regret that the language had not been introduced to them during their school years.

Some Protestant learners have difficulty in identifying with the Irish language because their interest receives little support in their own community:

The degree to which learners can identify with Irish depends upon the knowledge that is available to them. The speaker in the above text had just begun to learn Irish. She struggles to identify with the Irish language, but feels she cannot as it is not part of her background. When I had finished interviewing this learner, I attempted to demonstrate to her that there was a tradition of Protestant Irish speakers. I did this by showing her a Protestant translation of the New Testament into Irish, whereupon she became tremendously excited, exclaiming, ‘Why did no-one show me this before? Why did no-one tell me about this?’

Many Protestant learners lessen their alienation from Irish by drawing upon historical evidence of previous Protestant involvement in the language. This Gaelic past enables contemporary Protestants to ‘traditionalise’ their interest in Irish:

In this text a north Down learner associates the Irish language with a Protestant heritage (the McAdam programme and the articles), his school tradition (William Neilson), and his local identity (County Down). These have the combined effect of rationalising his interest in Irish in terms of a tradition. Even if there are not many contemporary Protestant learners of Irish with whom he can identify, he feels re-assured that many other Protestants spoke Irish in the past. In this way, the learner circumvents occasional feelings of isolation among Catholic Irish speakers.

When considering the Irish language, commentators often concentrate on the ideologies of nationalism and unionism, as well as features of Protestantism and Catholicism in Ireland. It is important to consider that learners of Irish often have other kinds of identification; local community and familial identities, for example. In many situations these ‘small-scale’ identities may be more important to learners of Irish than ‘macro-level’ national or religious ones. In the following quotation, the speaker is replying to the question, ‘When did you first want to learn Irish?’

This north Down learner attributes her interest in Irish to her family history, her childhood experiences, as well her fascination with language. She and the other members of the group relate their interest in Irish to long-established customs in the district, including traditional music and dancing. The group also read about the Protestant Gaelic tradition in County Down and are enthusiastic about the Irish roots of local surnames and placenames. The group feels that Irish culture has not been ‘imported’ from other parts of Ireland, but represents part of the tradition of their local community. While discussing the Irish language with the north Down learners, I formed the impression that their local community identity was as relevant to them as wider and more abstract concepts of British and Irish identity.

Thus small-scale affiliations are important when Irish speakers consider their relationship with the language. On the other hand, western concepts of ethnicity and culture that transcend national boundaries have had their influence on Irish language enthusiasts. Both Protestant and Catholic learners of Irish are influenced by a global upsurge of interest in minority cultures and languages. This is particularly true of younger learners of Irish; it is now trendy to be ‘trad’:

The Irish language is related to the world-wide upsurge of interest in minority ethnicity and the dislike of bland, homogenous Anglo-American culture. As such, Irish is de-ethnicised by divorcing it from concepts of Catholicism and nationalism; the language is represented as part of a culture that is accessible to everyone.

I have shown how nationalists, including Protestant ones, regard the connection between the Irish language and Irish nationalism as common-sensical and natural. However, unionists who learn the Irish language do not accept certain conventions of the Irish language scene. This leads to cultural mis-matches between unionist and nationalist Irish speakers. The following incident happened during a cross-community Irish language class. The teacher handed out a photocopied song that is very popular among Irish speakers; the song includes a line which refers to driving the ‘na Gaill’ (the foreigners) out of Ireland³. One unionist learner reacted in this way:

Unionist learners object to aspects of the Irish language scene, such as singing republican songs (usually in English!), and discussions about the GAA, in which few Protestants express an interest. Like the learner quoted above, most unionist learners of Irish keep a very low profile at Irish language classes and events. They are fearful of objecting to certain conventions as they feel at times that they are observing a culture which is alien to them. The fact that nationalist Irish speakers are unaware when they are giving offence compounds the problem.

As the Irish language is often associated with the Catholic community, Protestant learners of Irish find that they are often assumed to be Catholic. This often irritates them as it underlines their distinctiveness from other Irish speakers. In the following text ‘Adele’, who was brought up on the Shankill Road, tells her experiences to myself and ‘Ruth’, a fellow Protestant learner. Adele begins by relating an incident which occurred while she was attending an Irish language course in Donegal:

In this text Adele indicates her reluctance to travel to Catholic west Belfast and her lack of identification with the language revival there. The pièce de résistance comes when a foreigner, whom she expected to be more neutral in outlook, expresses anti-Protestant attitudes. In doing so, she makes a terrible faux pas in terms of the social etiquette in Northern Ireland, but Adele decides that she cannot embarrass Monika by telling her that she is speaking to a Shankill Protestant; thus she draws upon a convention which prohibits embarrassing her interlocutor. Adele’s decision does not challenge Monika’s belief that all ‘indigenous’ learners of Irish are Catholic.

When I talked to Adele on another occasion, she expanded the events related above to elaborate on what she called the ‘Catholic tribalism’ of Irish speakers. She said that they discuss life in their home districts, arrange to socialise in areas where Protestants are reluctant to go, and discuss GAA matches that Protestants have little interest in. In doing so, Catholic Irish speakers create and sustain friendships that are restricted to other Catholics. They draw upon ‘pools of predictability’ of shared background and experience which facilitate intra-Catholic socialisation (Burton 1978: 65). In such encounters Adele’s distinctive Protestant identity is highlighted, although she is a ‘fellow’ nationalist.

Protestant learners who suspect that their religious or political affiliations may be resented by Catholic learners often attempt to conceal their religious identities from other Irish speakers. For example, one learner told me that Catholics on a Gaeltacht course stare at her when she tells them that she is from Bangor (which implies that she is a Protestant). She prefers to tell other Irish speakers that she is from County Down (which gives no indication of her religious affiliation). Other Protestants go further and deliberately masquerade as Catholics when they believe that they may be in danger if their real identities are revealed. One Protestant, who learned Irish in west Belfast, bought a copy of the Andersonstown News every week in order to be able to pose as a local in class.

Adele’s experiences represent a type of ‘worse-case scenario' that Protestants relate about their interaction with Catholic Irish speakers. Protestant learners feel a sense of difference between themselves and Catholic Irish speakers, but the potential to form lifelong friendships with Catholics exists. In many instances the shared love of the Irish language overcomes political and sectarian divisions. In the following text, a learner describes his experience of learning Irish in an evening class run by the nationalist-controlled Queen’s University Students’ Union:

In this text the speaker asserts that increasing secularism dissolves tensions between Irish speakers from differing religious backgrounds. Political issues arise when the class has finished and its organisers no longer have any control over the issues that will be discussed. The speaker even claims that as a Protestant he is especially welcomed within an Irish language environment. In the following text, a unionist university student explains how he related to classmates that did not share his political views while on a Gaeltacht course:

In forming friendships, the speaker and his Catholic friends decided to avoid political issues in conversation, as they would not agree about them. They followed the rules for ‘mixed’ socialisation in Northern Ireland by avoiding contentious issues. As such, they agreed to undercommunicate aspects of their ethnic identities. Humour was used to avert conflict between the students; this is a stylistic device often employed to defuse tense situations (Tannen 1989).

Learners of Irish sense a degree of autonomy of the language movement from nationalism. They also notice that their teachers make great efforts to make them feel welcome. Members of the Irish language movement wish to welcome Protestant learners of Irish for many reasons: Catholics regard themselves as being less sectarian than Protestants; the Irish language movement is avowedly non-sectarian, and some Irish speakers strive to put this principle into practice; nationalist Irish-speakers believe that to deny Protestants access to the Irish language would symbolically bar them from admittance to the Irish nation; and Irish speakers are keen to encourage others to take an interest in a language which they fear is in danger of becoming extinct.

When Protestant and Catholic speakers of Irish meet for the first time, they often follow the social etiquette which entails the avoidance of religious and political topics of conversation. However, Protestant learners often notice that many Catholic Irish speakers depart from this etiquette, as they feel the need to prove they are not republican. Thus Protestant learners often become the unwitting confidantes of Catholic Irish speakers who bitterly resent the republican image of the Irish language. This process is often two-way; many Protestant learners, especially middle-class ones, feel they must distance themselves from the loyalist extremists of their own community. As one learner explained to me, ‘We need to prove that we’re not Orange bigots and they have to prove they’re not Provos’.

In the absence of such ‘proof’, Protestant and Catholic Irish speakers often fantasise about each other’s political beliefs, leading to incidents which reveal mutual misunderstandings. The experience of a Protestant friend of mine provides an unfortunate illustration of this phenomenon. While studying the Irish language at university, he was disturbed by jokes’ about his being a spy for MI5. Upon finishing the course, he continued his involvement in the Irish language scene, but noticed that some members of the Irish language movement fell silent when he was near them. Later he moved to Scotland and became involved in the Gaelic language and music scene. He told me that he felt more at home in this environment, as the political and sectarian barriers which prevented him from being comfortable in the Irish language scene did not exist in Gaelic Scotland.

At present most Irish language classes in Northern Ireland are in nationalist districts. Protestants, including many nationalist ones, are often reluctant to go into these areas for many reasons: they are afraid of republicans, as they fear being mistaken for loyalist or security force spies; they may have jobs, such as those in the civil service, that identify them with the British state; they may abhor violence, and those who support it; some of them fear being shunned by Irish speakers; they may object to a nationalist and / or republican bias in the teaching of Irish; and in the case of west Belfast, they are afraid of losing their cars to joyriders. Many Protestant learners do not go into nationalist districts to learn Irish because they simply do not know what to expect there; as one put it to me, ‘I’d be a stranger in a strange land’.

Some Protestants feel uncomfortable at the prospect of attending classes located in nationalist districts, even if they feel they would be made welcome there. One north Down learner told me that he had attended a couple of classes in Cumann Chluain Ard, an Irish language society in west Belfast, but that he wouldn’t go there often:

In another conversation this learner told me he would not go to the Shankill Road to learn Irish; although he would be a Protestant in a Protestant district, there would be people in a class there who would support violence to achieve their political goals. In his social activities, the support or non-support for violence is a more important factor for the learner than the ideologies of unionism and nationalism. Thus he feels more comfortable in the presence of non-violent unionists than fellow nationalists who support violence to achieve a united Ireland. This ‘non-violence’ criteria for comfortable social interaction is a feature of the north Down group as a whole; the learners often castigate both republican and loyalist ‘extremists’. I can generalise from these experiences by saying that middle-class Catholic and Protestant learners often get along together because they are opposed to the use of force to achieve political goals in Northern Ireland.

In the following text, a nationalist learner from east Belfast voices her fears about travelling to nationalist districts of the city to learn Irish:

Such classes are at a very early and precarious stage of development. Furthermore, Protestant learners are often unaware of the number of Irish classes in ‘safe’ areas that are available to them. Classes in neutral or Protestant districts often cater for complete beginners, and there are few support mechanisms for those Protestants who get past the beginners’ or intermediate learners’ stage. If inter-communal conflict increases, classes in Protestant districts often close, due to local hostility or the fear of it.

Many Protestant learners like to go to the Gaeltacht to learn Irish as they feel more comfortable with Irish speakers from the Republic of Ireland. The image of the Irish language in the Republic differs from that in Northern Ireland. As the Southern state settled down in the years after partition, nationalist fervour declined. Public opinion was not favourable towards the Irish language movement, which was seen as ‘excessively nationalistic, even xenophobic’, associating Irishness with ‘militant and narrow Catholicism’ (Tovey et al. 1989: 32).

Membership of the European Union encourages notions of diversity and plurality, and a ‘movement beyond narrow homogenising nationalism’ (Todd 1994: 156). Today young enthusiasts are attempting to give the language a modern and ‘trendy’ image, replacing the isolationist ideology embracing Irish with one which incorporates pluralist and secular beliefs. Attempts are being made to define an image for Irish which rejects the associations of the language with the Catholic Church and republicanism. Protestant learners of Irish respond favourably to these moves, and often feel more relaxed in learning venues across the border:

I have related how some Protestant Irish speakers have good relations with their Catholic counterparts. In fact, some of them told me they would be more afraid of ‘their own’ than Irish-speaking Catholics. Protestant learners living in working-class districts are afraid that their interest in Irish will be discovered by ‘hoods’ or paramilitaries who may intimidate them. Some of them feel they cannot go to classes even if they are made available in their own districts; they prefer to travel anonymously to other areas in order to learn Irish.

Protestants whose unionism is beyond doubt, such as loyalist paramilitaries, have no problem with telling working-class Protestants that they are learning Irish; their loyalty to their community is beyond doubt. Ian Adamson, a Belfast councillor interested in the Irish language, related a telling incident to me⁴. Before the ‘troubles’, in the late 1960s, he was a medical student living in the Sandy Row area:

The problem with this type of behaviour is that it makes unionist learners of Irish acceptable to other unionists, but it makes them unacceptable to many Irish-speakers. Thus unionist learners may have to stress their unionism in their own community, but underplay their political beliefs in Irish language circles. Many Protestants feel they have to cultivate an image of studied neutrality to go between both camps. Those that cannot do so, such as relatives of security force members or civil servants, experience great practical difficulties in learning the language.

Working-class learners are troubled by the fact that many of their friends and neighbours perceive Irish to be a republican language. The problems of the Glencairn class are a case in point. The learners struggled with the republican image of the Irish language, particularly since their estate was situated in an interface zone close to Catholic districts of west Belfast. In February 1993, the Glencairn Community Development Association received the following letter:

However, one learner had personal reasons to reconsider her interest in Irish. Although she was very enthusiastic about the language, she had a crisis of conscience when republican paramilitaries shot her nephew:

In learning Irish she appeared to be associating herself with the murderers of her nephew. After an IRA bomb exploded on the Shankill Road on the 25th of October 1993, I telephoned the class organiser, a local community worker, to tell her that I did not wish to take the class in the wake of the explosion. She agreed that it would not be a good idea for the class to continue as feelings were very high in the district.

Later, when I interviewed the community worker, she had decided to abandon learning the language; the republican connotations of the language had become too much for her:

Another learner who had attended the class said that she rarely associated Irish with the ‘troubles’, and the Shankill bomb only temporarily deterred her from learning Irish:

Later in the interview she returned to her original interpretation of the language:

Although her interest in Irish had not been deterred by the Shankill bombing, the class had finished and was not resumed; she would not be able to learn Irish on the estate, whether she wanted to or not.

The experience of the north Down group differed considerably from that of the Glencairn learners. The group had some reservations about going to folk nights in Catholic bars after explosions in Newtownards and Bangor, but none of them were deterred in their efforts to learn Irish. For the north Down learners, the republican image of the language was a mere nuisance, rather than a major psychological obstacle to their learning activities. On the whole, the north Down learners cultivated their interest in their home district and in the Donegal Gaeltacht, circumventing any possible difficulties with the Irish language scene in Belfast⁶. Like many middle-class Protestants, the group removed itself from the ravages of the troubles as much as possible.

Generally speaking, middle-class learners feel that they can tell their friends and relatives that they are learning Irish without fear of serious reprisals. However, for some the language can be a touchy subject that is best avoided in mixed or polite company, as this Cultra learner attests:

In this section I will explore the attitudes of Protestant learners to the Irish language revival. In discussing the aims of the Irish language movement with the learners, I used a document published in 1993 by the Committee for the Administration of Justice (CAJ), which recommends that the British government support the Irish language revival by implementing a wide range of measures, including state-sponsored bilingualism. The CAJ document uses European and United Nations charters to argue the case for a greater effort by the British government to promote the Irish language in Northern Ireland. The measures proposed include: the right for parents to have their children educated through Irish; the right to use Irish in court and with public bodies; and government support for an all-Ireland television service in Irish. Viewed together, these proposals represent some of the most far-reaching goals of the Irish language movement.

Many Protestant learners of Irish are not well acquainted with the achievements and goals of the Irish language revival; they are particularly unaware of revivalist activities in west Belfast. Their attitudes to the revival are often informed by their own ideological positions:

The speaker draws on the conservative element of Protestant ideology which opposes state interventionism, and he appears to empathise with the policies pursed by the Conservative government. In the first part of the text he echoes unionist disdain at nationalist complaints of deprivation and dependence on government hand-outs (Bruce 1994: 61; Todd 1987: 22). Irish is described as a ‘luxury item’, a ‘cultural pursuit’, like classical music. In short, the speaker views Irish as a leisure pursuit that is not within the remit of public funding. This is exactly the representation of the Irish language that the revivalist movement is attempting to refute.

The conception of the Irish language as a leisure pursuit partly explains Protestant disbelief of the objectives of the Irish language community to create a bilingual community in west Belfast and / or Northern Ireland. Protestant learners live, work and recreate in English language environments in which the Irish language has little immediate relevance. They are not engaged in full-time revivalism to create an Irish language community; most jobs involving the Irish language are located in nationalist districts, areas in which few Protestants would consider working. Protestant learners are more concerned with finding appropriate evening-classes than battling with the Department of Education to secure funding for Irish-medium schools. However, it would be erroneous to suggest that Protestant learners conceive of the Irish language as a mere hobby. Many of them make tremendous efforts and take great risks to learn the language. This indicates that the language is very important to them, even if it does not appear to have a huge impact on their everyday lives.

Protestant learners often oppose some aspects of the revival by the attribution of ‘political’ motives to those involved in them. In the following texts, the learners express their opinions on the erection of bilingual street-signs:

In the first text the speaker claims that those who erect street-signs are not concerned about the welfare of the language, but have an ‘ulterior motive’. The second text provides a suggestion as to the nature of this motive; a hostility to the unionist and British authorities. The use of Irish in street-signs is described as a form of boundary-maintenance. Protestant learners often attribute cultural motives to learn Irish to themselves, and ‘political’ motives for learning and promoting Irish to others, particularly republicans. I asked a member of the north Down group for her opinions on the language revival in Belfast:

The learner places an ideological and geographical barrier between the north Down learners, who learn the Irish language for ‘cultural’ reasons, and the Irish speakers of west Belfast, who she perceives as manipulating the language for ‘political’ purposes. She implies that republicans jealously guard Irish from unionists interested in the language. However, her opposition to republicans ‘abusing’ the Irish language is at variance with her libertarian principles, which permit anyone to learn Irish if they wish.

Protestant learners attribute ‘political’ motivations to those who do not share their own political outlooks; they accuse others of manipulating the language for cynical reasons and of being uninterested in the language for its own sake. ‘Cultural’ motives to learn Irish are attributed to themselves to indicate a genuine concern for the welfare of the language and it’s future. Learners often attribute positive ‘cultural’ motives for learning Irish to themselves, and negative ‘political’ motives to political opponents. This process often takes the form of constitutional nationalist and unionist learners accusing republicans of ‘politicising’ the Irish language:

Of course, by opposing the involvement of republicans in the Irish language revival, Protestant ‘culturists’ can be just as ‘political’ as those they oppose. Indeed, some Protestant nationalists are suspicious about unionists interested in the Irish language, and suspect the latter of having ‘political’ motives:

Here we have the mirror image of the unionist belief that republicans are manipulating the Irish language for political purposes. The speaker describes the connection between the Irish language, culture and nationalism as ‘positive’. He suspects unionists of having a negative motive for learning Irish in that he believes they wish to score points over nationalists. However, the speaker is reluctant to oppose unionists learning Irish, as this would conflict with his belief that the language should be available for all who wish to learn it.

The above texts demonstrate that the views of Protestant learners on the language movement are informed by their personal opinions on nationalism and republicanism. However, the imputed connections between nationalism and certain Irish language projects does not result in unionist antipathy to all aspects of the revival. Many are favourable to Irish language programmes on radio and television, as well as Irish-medium education. Protestant learners often express a sense of awe when they meet children who can speak Irish. In the following text, a learner from the Shankill Women’s Centre describes a visit to an Irish-medium primary school on the Falls Road:

This learner can identify with the enjoyment the children receive from learning Irish. For her, potentially divisive political issues become unimportant. For many such individuals their common identification as Irish speakers overcomes religious and political issues. In Northern Ireland, interest groups unite people from different backgrounds, but as I have shown, enthusiasts often bring their backgrounds with them.

The differing beliefs and experiences of Protestant learners of Irish are often informed by their class backgrounds. Generally speaking, Protestant working-class learners have more difficulties than middle-class ones. This is because social sanctions are imposed more rigorously in working-class districts than in middle-class ones. Protestant middle-class learners have greater opportunities to bend the rules; some of them even abandon unionism, the main political ideology of Northern Protestants⁷.

Middle-class Protestants do not fear community punishment if they reject the values of their peers; thus the north Down group learn Irish, and some of them express a nationalist outlook, without fear of censure from their friends and relatives. Middle-class Protestants often believe themselves to be liberal and non-sectarian; therefore they will not oppose other Protestants who learn Irish. The world-view of middle-class Protestants is facilitated in part by the fact that they often live in peaceful districts, insulated from the violent sectarian strife of working-class areas.

Middle-class learners can diversify their learning experiences on account of their income; they drive to different classes and attend Irish language courses in the Gaeltacht. Their trips to the Republic symbolises the convergence of values of many Southern Irish speakers and Northern Protestant learners; both reject the traditional associations between the Irish language with Catholicism and republicanism.

Because middle-class learners are educated and well-read, they are often able to draw upon realms of knowledge, such as that of a Protestant Gaelic heritage, which are not widely available in the public domain. Such forms of knowledge are used to bypass the Catholic and / or republican image of Irish, and they help Protestant learners to identify with the Irish language.

Middle-class unionists often subscribe to a British / Irish identity; they combine a sense of British citizenship with a regional or cultural sense of Irishness. The north Down group differ from other Protestants in that they are learning Irish, but they attempt to associate the language with the mixed British / Irish identification of Northern unionists. Some unionist learners believe that by learning Irish they are taking part in an attempt to re-define unionism in terms other than the articulation of an ersatz Englishness.

Some unionists who value the Irish language recommend that unionism should engage nationalism in a contest to define the meaning of the Irish language. They wish to disassociate the language from nationalist ideology and represent it as the property of both religious and political traditions in Ireland. In doing so they tap into two powerful trends in Ireland: the rejection of republicanism, with its perceived monopolisation of aspects of Irish culture; and the adoption of pluralism, which stresses the equal validity and cross-fertilisation of the various cultural traditions on the island.

Protestant working-class learners of Irish have more problems than their middle-class co-religionists. They often fear Catholics and are reluctant to venture into nationalist districts to learn Irish. They are simultaneously envious of and repelled by the culture of their republican ‘opponents’. Some of them attempt to appropriate nationalist cultural capital for themselves and for the Ulster national identity of the Protestant working class. This is part of the struggle to define a coherent Protestant cultural identity in Northern Ireland. However, many working-class learners do not have access to the information that would enable them to challenge the dominant republican / Catholic image of the Irish language.

Working-class Protestants who learn Irish often have deep feelings of ambivalence about the language. They are wary of publicising their interest, as many of their neighbours and friends view the Irish language with suspicion. If their interest in Irish becomes well-known, they come under great pressure within their own communities to reject Irish by accepting the relationship between the language and republicanism. On some occasions, learners do so, and abandon learning Irish. Others continue to learn Irish and face punishment if they are unable to demonstrate their loyalty to the Protestant community beyond doubt. Working-class Protestants have little knowledge of how to find Irish classes, and have a restricted choice of learning venues as they often do not have their own means of transport. Given their difficulties, it is not surprising that most of the Protestant learners of Irish whom I encountered were not working-class.

Unionist learners of all classes often perceive the Irish language to be a private activity that should not impinge upon the public British character of the ‘province’. They are unnerved by public forms of the Irish language, such as bilingual street signs and the use of Irish language personal names. This is due in part to feelings of ambivalence about certain aspects of the Irish language that are associated with republicans. Middle-class learners cope with this problem by distinguishing the language from its speakers; they represent Irish as part of a ‘benign’ culture that is manipulated by malevolent political opponents. They create or draw upon images of the language which challenge the views of Irish speakers with whom they disagree. If they feel uncomfortable with certain learning venues, they avoid them and seek alternative ones, some of which are hundreds of miles away. Middle-class learners insulate themselves from republican Irish speakers in the manner in which they escape the full impact of the troubles.

Working-class Protestants, including those who learn Irish, often feel themselves to be in the front line of defence against republicanism, and they resent the Irish language as it is often used in a symbolic fashion by republicans in the media. Working-class learners differ from their middle-class counterparts in that they have more difficulty in disassociating Irish from Catholic/nationalist speakers of the language. Like other members of their class, working-class learners often perceive these Irish speakers to be their adversaries; therefore they experience feelings of ambivalence arising from their desire to learn the ‘enemy’s’ language. Despite their difficulties, some working-class learners display an ability to make the Irish language ‘their’s’ as easily as their middle-class counterparts. However, the mental mobility of some working-class learners is not matched by a physical one; however enthusiastic they are about the Irish language, the fear of social sanctions from both Catholics and Protestants constrains their ability to tell co-religionists about their interest and find learning venues.

References

Adamson, I, 1974
The Cruithin: The Ancient Kindred. Bangor: Pretani Press.

Adamson, I, 1985
The Identity of Ulster. Belfast: Pretani Press.

Adamson, I, 1991
The Ulster People. Bangor: Pretani Press.

Breen, R, 1996
‘Who Wants a United Ireland? Constitutional Preferences among Catholics and Protestants.’ In R. Breen, P. Devine and L. Dowds (eds.) Social Attitudes in Northern Ireland, 1995-19 96. Belfast: Appletree Press.

Bruce, S, 1994
The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision. Oxford: University Press.

Burton, F, 1978
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Cohen,A. P. (ed.), 1986
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Foster, J. W, 1995
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McGimpsey, C, 1994
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Footnotes

1. Chris McGimpsey is a Ulster Unionist Party councillor and Irish language enthusiast. His views on the Irish language have been published in ‘The Irish Language and the Unionist Tradition’ (1994).

2. Of the remaining 23% of learners, some declined to offer a definite opinion on the border, or I judged from the nervousness of the respondents that it would be unwise to discuss political issues with them.

3. The song was ‘Óró, Sé do Bheatha ‘bhaile’.

4. Adamson’s interpretation of the Irish language has been published in a series of works (Adamson 1974, 1985, 1991).

5. The programme in question was a BBC Northern Ireland ‘Spotlight’ production relating to demographic changes threatening the survival of Protestant communities in north Belfast and Fermanagh.

6. Two of the learners eventually went to Irish classes in Belfast, including west Belfast, as there were no more suitable classes in their home district.

7. None of the working-class learners I met were nationalist in outlook.