Ulster Scots / Scotch-Irish

In recent years many loyalists and unionists have taken a renewed interest in, and placed increasing emphasis on, Ulster Scots identity. This stresses the Scottish origins of many Ulster Protestants and provides an ethnic category uniquely associated with Northern Ireland Protestants in a way which neither 'British' nor 'Protestant' identities do. Unionists and loyalists have also paid increasing attention to the 'Scotch-Irish' (also 'Scots-Irish'), the American descendants of Ulster Presbyterian emigrants of the 18th century. This ethnic category is widely portrayed in loyalist webspace as a slumbering giant that should be mobilised in support of loyalism in the same way that Irish republicans mobilised the support of Irish-Americans. Scotch-Irish and Ulster-Scots are collapsed together to create a unified diasporic identity for Northern Irish Protestants. The Internet is seen by some as providing the opportunity to build a worldwide diasporic support network for loyalism and unionism for the first time, building on this ethnic base.

The Ulster-Scots presence online ranges from the exclusively genealogical through the cultural to the directly political websites that represent the Ulster Scots as the ethnic base for loyalist and unionist politics. This list does not include sites which deal with Ulster Scots and Scotch-Irish topics from a purely genealogical or historical point of view but focuses on sites that at least recognise the link between these ethnic categories and the contemporary political and cultural debates around identity in Northern Ireland. It does however include the sites of a number of key organisations that, while not directly political, are central to the cultural landscape around which political debate is taking place.

Political and Cultural

Organisations and agencies