I tried checking it out on ChatGPT and couldn’t find it, but I am pretty sure that somewhere in the files of the Derry Journal, there is a quote where the DUP MP for East Derry, Gregory Campbell, told a journalist – might even have been me – in the most trenchant of terms that no way was he Irish, not under any circumstances. 

He was British. No discussion. 

In recent coverage of his somewhat public set-to with President Catherine Connolly during her first official visit to Derry, he stated “you’re in our country” and later chided her for not using the term Londonderry.

And, as if to emphasise further his British identity, he added that Northern Ireland would not be leaving the UK now or in the future. 

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Rather than get into a verbal spat, Connolly responded quietly that she was there to listen. But Gregory’s outburst was very telling in its own way. 

It is hardly groundbreaking for me to state that this need for a rather strident emphasis on identity is at the very heart of unionism’s collective anxiety.

It can often manifest itself as unnecessarily aggressive – union flags everywhere, footpaths painted red, white and blue, the frequent need for unionist politicians or pundits to proclaim that while they are on the island of Ireland, they are not of it, not Irish. 

It’s a hard sell.

Most of my in-laws emigrated in the 1960s and ’70s. One of the brothers-in-law spent more than 40 years in the building trade in England. 

During one of his annual trips home, he came to visit and I just happened to be watching the July 12 celebrations on the TV at the time.

Given that the BBC’s coverage is not quite the same these days, this must have been about a decade ago.

Anyway, we were having a coffee and idly watching the parade as we chatted, so I don’t exactly recall what it was the commentator said, but whatever it was, the brother-in-law started to laugh really heartedly and I asked him what he found so amusing. 

“I have worked with many Protestant guys from the north on the sites over the years,” he replied, “and many of them try really hard to portray themselves as not the same as us, to come across as more British than the Brits. 

“But on the building site the Brits always refer to them as ‘Paddy’. They don’t care if they come from Londonderry or Derry or Portadown or Ballymena – we’re all ‘Paddies’ to them.”

I remembered that observation while reading a book a few months after this conversation, Ulster Loyalism and the British Media, and it struck a massive chord with me. 

Written by former university lecturer Dr Alan Parkinson, the very first paragraph went down the exact same track as that mentioned by my brother-in-law all those years ago.

In his opening lines, Parkinson quotes from an article by the writer Walter Ellis in The Sunday Times of June 1994. 

Ellis wrote: “In Northern Ireland the Protestants proudly proclaim their loyalty to England and the Crown, and are regarded as vulgar aliens. The Catholics, who have, after all, bred the IRA and vote regularly for secession from Britain, are, by contrast, seen as lovable rascals, no less a part of the nation than the Scots or the Welsh – and better company.

“The Prods (of whom I am one) are used to being shunned. Nobody likes us. We are regarded for the most part as bloody-minded scum, lost down one of history’s blind alleys. The English are not touched by our devotion. Rather, they think that we ourselves are ‘touched’. Proper Paddies, in fact. Vile is how they see us, just like the Boers, and when we pledge our loyalty, they shy away, embarrassed, as though we had just broken wind.” 

So, you’d think that with this kind of analysis ringing in their ears, the strategy of unionism would have been to do a scoping exercise, see what they needed to change, and then go big on winning converts to unionism, particularly winning hearts and minds in the nationalist community. 

Not a chance. 

They seem, instead, to have gone for the burying-my-head-in-the-sand option since 1994.

Nothing hypocritical of Gregory Campbell in attacking President Connolly for solely using the term Derry, when he himself insists on describing his native city as Londonderry on each and every occasion? 

The vast majority of people who live there, at least 75 per cent, want it to be called Derry. 

His attitude to the Irish language over the years is not universally beloved either. 

Why too did his colleague, the sports minister Gordon Lyons, have almost to be dragged kicking and screaming to attend his first GAA match? 

Why was Casement Park’s funding politicised big time by unionist politicians, particularly when there was no controversy for the upgrading of rugby and soccer stadiums? 

And why did the DUP spend years opposing just about every issue in regard to the usage of the Irish language?

So, it seems to me that Edwin Poots got it right this week when he hosted Seachtain na Gaeilge celebrations at Stormont. I even saw a clip where the former DUP leader spoke a few words as Gaeilge. 

Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin, president of Conradh na Gaeilge, said the significance of the occasion should not be underestimated. He said: “It’s incredibly significant that we had the Speaker of the Assembly, Edwin Poots, who addressed the event, who chaired the event, who arranged for the event to take place here at Stormont.”

After reading that, my mother’s old maxim – that you could catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar – came to mind for some rather obvious reason. 

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