"Irish republicanism looks back in awe to the rebels, who took to the streets of Dublin in 1916. But for many years it has also looked forward to the centenary year of 2016, one hundred years on from the 1916 Easter Rising. It has even harboured the hope that by 2016 there would be a 32-county United Ireland.
Both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have held out that hope and have promised their followers that the target date for a United Ireland is 2016.
Speaking in New York in January 2000, Gerry Adams said that there was ‘no reason why we cannot celebrate the 1916 Rising in the year 2016 in a free and united Ireland.’
Martin McGuinness has said the same thing. In November 2003 he said, ‘Certainly it is our view that it can be accomplished over a short period. Gerry Adams has said 2016 and I think that is achievable.’
Well, Gerry and Marty, dream on, dream on … because there isn’t going to be a United Ireland!
At that event in New York in 2000 Gerry was so confident that he made a promise. He promised to shave off his beard if it didn’t happen. Well I have a present here for Gerry, because he’s going to need it! The beard will be going because a United Ireland isn’t coming.
Community
Of course Gerry has to keep on with his prophecies about a United Ireland – he has to keep the charade going – he has to keep the show on the road.
Back in June he travelled three thousand miles back to New York to speak to a motley crowd of Irish-Americans at a Unite Ireland Forum. The aim was ‘to open a dialogue among Irish Americans about how best to unite Ireland.’
Meanwhile back in Ulster, on the same day, thousands of people gathered in Carrickfergus for a pageant to celebrate the landing of King William III in 1690. The event is part of the annual calendar of celebrations of a community that is British and unionist. Its loyalty is to a United Kingdom and not a United Ireland.
That community is the rock on which his plans and prophecies for a United Ireland will founder. They are resolutely determined to remain within the United Kingdom and neither terrorism nor republican propaganda has diminished that determination.
Do you remember what Adams said – there is ‘no reason’ why there would not be a United Ireland in 2016. Well there is a reason and we are that reason. The unionist community is the reason why it will not happen.
Culture
I have spoken of our community and I want to speak also of our culture because so many nationalists and republicans tell us that we have no real culture.
Of course they do that because they know that culture is important. It is one of the things that define us as a people and it is one of the things that bind us together as a community.
The truth is that we have a rich, diverse and vibrant culture and one of which we can be proud. Ulster has produced some of the greatest scientists in the history of the world and a philosopher who was one of the greatest in British history.
The tragedy has been that for too many years that rich heritage has been hidden away from us. As regards both the media and the education system, it has often been excluded or marginalised.
However things are starting to change and the biggest change will have to be in the field of education, whether Caitriona Ruane likes it or not. I was delighted when the Boys Model School in North Belfast introduced the Lambeg drum and the fife as one of the musical activities in the school. Why should Ulster children not have access to Ulster culture.
Roman Catholic maintained schools provide an Irish cultural dimension for children through the teaching of the Irish language and Irish cultural activities, such as Gaelic sports, Irish dancing and Irish traditional music. This was noted by Dr Jude Collins, who was the senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Ulster. He said:
Catholic education supports a sense of Irish identity. The schools don’t talk a lot about this in their official curriculum, but it’s part of what they do. Children attending Catholic schools are helped to see that … Irish music and Irish games and the Irish language are a wonderful source of fun and fulfilment, as well as a rich heritage to be proud of. They give children an Irish lens through which to view the world.
Well in the same way children from the unionist community deserve to have their cultural heritage and identity reflected in the curriculum and in the after-school activities in the schools they attend.
Covenant
Republicans have been looking forward to a centenary in 2016 but Ulstermen should also be looking forward to a centenary and in fact they should be looking forward to a decade of centenaries.
I think of 2012 and the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant, the document that has become known as the ‘birth certificate of Northern Ireland’. It is a document that was inspired by the old Scottish covenants and it is a document that was written almost 100 years ago but the great principles that are embedded in it are still as relevant today as they were then and they will still be relevant tomorrow.
The centenary of the Ulster Covenant is just three years away and we are duty bound to prepare for it. It is a time to look back to the faith and fortitude of those who signed it but it is also a time to look at the principles in the Covenant and build on those principles as we look forward to the future.
It speaks of Britishness – those who signed were ‘loyal subjects of the king’ and citizens of the United Kingdom, men who sought to preserve their equal citizenship in the United Kingdom.
It speaks of the benefits of the Union – material wellbeing – we must never forget the benefits of our position within the United Kingdom, benefits that are enjoyed by every citizen of Northern Ireland and we must seek to convince others of those benefits.
It speaks of civil and religious freedom – human rights. This is not, of course, the human rights agenda of Monica McWilliams and the Human Rights Commission. It is not the human rights agenda of the far left. For that is simply the unelected and the unelectable seeking to impose their aims without the backing of the ballot box.
It also speaks of Ulster – the men who signed the Covenant signed it as ‘men of Ulster’ and the women who signed the declaration signed it as ‘women of Ulster’.
The authors of the Ulster Covenant were men of strong faith and the main author, Thomas Sinclair, was the leading layman in the Presbyterian Church. And when it came to signing the Covenant the leaders of the Protestant churches were there to the fore, signing it immediately after Carson. We live in a day when there is an attempt to secularise our society and to sideline religious faith. That is something which we are right to resist.
But 2012 is only the start of that decade of anniversaries. We will also come to 2016, the centenary of that year when on 1 July so many of the Sons of Ulster fell at the Battle of the Somme. Over 9,000 men from the Ulster Division took part in that attack on 1 July and only 2,500 were able to answer the roll call on 3 July. In the House of Commons on 10 July Asquith said that Ulster, through its troops on the Somme, ‘had covered itself with undying fame’.
Yes we have a decade of centenaries, from 2012 through to 2021, the centenary of Northern Ireland. Some of us are old enough to remember the jubilee celebrations in 1971 and of course they were held against a background of terrorist violence but the worst efforts and the worst outrages of the IRA could not force us out of the United Kingdom. Here we are and here we stay and we can also look forward to those centenary celebrations in 2021.
That decade from 2012 to 2021, a decade that is only a few years away, is a wonderful opportunity for us to look back and be inspired by the past but it is also an opportunity to prepare ourselves to move into Northern Ireland’s second century."
