The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

…we must reassess our historical attitude to those almost one million people who are of British origin and have lived on this island for several hundred years. They have carried their sense of Britishness with them during this time and while at one level it was a source of conflict at another level they have contributed to what constitutes the Irish nation today… nationalists must rediscover those positive aspects of Britishness of a sizeable section of the Irish people. The same is true of those who display Britishness. They too must examine their past and rediscover their Irishness… Obviously it would be in the Unionists’ interests to actively engage with this kind of thinking. But there is still a hankering after the old days, a refusal to recognise that a basic component of Unionism is gone for ever – supremacy. A second problem for Unionism is the unacknowledged fact that, for all their talk of British heritage, a majority of the British on the ‘UK mainland’ would cheerfully vote them out of the Union if they ever got the opportunity do so by way of referendum.