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Changing Relationships in the Irish Borderlands

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Changing Relationships in the Irish Borderlands Changing Relationships in the Irish Borderlands Kirk Simpson and Hastings Donnan ABSTRACT: In this article we focus on Protestant and Catholic relationships in the bor- derlands of south Armagh in Northern Ireland and north Monaghan in the Irish Re- public. Studies that emphasise Protestant and Catholic relationships at the urban or macro level have done little to unravel the complex processes of relationship-building that operate along the border, where Catholic and Protestant not only live in close proximity to one another and cooperate in a range of everyday activities, but where in the recent past each ‘side’ has used ethnic identity to select targets for assassination. The complexities of intercommunal dynamics in rural border areas and the ways in which they impact upon relationships between border Protestants and Catholics are discussed, with particular reference to moments that have significantly shaped their political subjectivity, most notably the sectarian violence that erupted in 1969 and which was formally brought to a close by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Such complexities, we suggest, muddy the over-dichotomised view of the Irish borderlands that often informs public policy making. KEYWORDS: borders, conflict, Northern Ireland, sectarianism, violence Introduction Much of the debate regarding power and identity amongst Catholics and Protestants in Studies that focus only on Protestant and Cath- Ireland, and in Northern Ireland especially, olic relationships at the urban or macro level is reducible to the question of political sover- have done little to illuminate the more complex eignty and a dichotomous examination of the processes of relationship-building that operate relationships between two, opposed, ethnopo- along the Irish border. In the borderlands of litical categories. However, this often does little south Armagh and north Monaghan, the Cath- to unravel the complex process of the operation olic majority and the Protestant minority reside and perception of political, social and cultural and work in close proximity to one another. power within the northern border Protestant They frequently cooperate and encounter mem- community in particular. In the context of the bers of the ‘other’ community in a host of every- south Armagh–north Monaghan border region, day (often mundane, rural) activities. However, Protestants are a minority population whose in the recent past each ‘side’ has used ethnic experience of residing in a ‘frontier’ zone is identity to select targets for assassination. The often incongruent with the more self-confident complexity of such ambivalent relationships and voice of political and cultural unionism that is the sinister history of intercommunal attacks articulated in areas of Northern Ireland where undermines the simplistic and dichotomised Protestants are in ‘safe’ majorities. As a result, view of the Irish borderlands that sometimes policies enacted with the latter in mind often forms the basis of public policy making. sit uncomfortably with the former. There has Anthropology in Action, 13, 1–2 (2006): 69–77 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action doi:10.3167/aia.2006.131209 AiA | Kirk Simpson and Hastings Donnan always been an uneasy tension and ambiva- tant role within the grand political arena, most lence between border Protestants and their met- notably, defining and defending the bound- ropolitan co-religionists. In one sense, as the aries of Northern Ireland and the British state. custodians and frontline representatives of a This, however, has been complicated by the unionist Ulster committed to remaining part of recognition that Protestants are increasingly a the United Kingdom, border Protestants have small and unevenly distributed minority in the been symbolically central to the unionist project. borderlands, something exacerbated by the vi- Yet in another sense, as a peripheralised mi- olent events since the early 1970s which gener- nority on the edge of the Union that often feels ated a belief that an insidious process of ‘ethnic its voice is ignored by an urban, Protestant elite, cleansing’ was perpetrated by republican para- they have been marginal to the unionist cause militaries against local Protestants (see Harnden (see Buckland 1981; Stewart 1989). Caught be- 1999; Potter 2001; Dawson 2003). An acknowl- tween the fickle attentions of fellow Protestants edgement by border Protestants that they remain and the state on the one side, and their own wari- part of the wider ‘majority Protestant commu- ness of the growing Catholic majority around nity’ in Northern Ireland has been the source them on the other, it is an identity expressed of little comfort to those who feel isolated at and understood by engaging its own margin- the margins in south Armagh, and who have ality and sense of exclusion (Tsing 1993). It is felt themselves besieged and disempowered. within this zone of ambiguity that the regional identity of border Protestants has been forged, The Protestant people here got battered. We had to take it. Hold the line, you know? But we got increasingly so in the context of the growth of battered. And we were just expected to keep a cross-border policy making that followed the stiff upper lip and not say anything about it. political developments of the late 1990s. ‘That’s what Protestants do, you know? They can In this article we explore Catholic–Protestant take it’ (…) But then came ‘the big sell-out’ [i.e. relationships at the edges of the state where, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998] (…) that’s we suggest, the distinctive dynamics of social just what a lot of people called it. A lot of people here are right against it. It has upset a lot of hon- relations at the limits of sovereignty exert a spe- est people here. A lot of people felt ‘what was it cial kind of influence upon public policy, which all for?’ (Protestant interviewee, south Armagh) must sometimes confront the reality of lives lived across states. As public policy ‘ripples out’ Such views have been central to relations be- from urban, political centres, affecting relation- tween Protestants and Catholics in the border ships at the limits of sovereignty at state bor- region, not least because of the ‘zero-sum’ na- ders, it may be reshaped and reconfigured by ture of the Irish political situation whereby any borderland residents whose daily existence rec- gain for the Catholic (nationalist) side is seen ognises and involves two states, on a pragmatic as a loss for the Protestant (unionist) group. Yet level if not always an ideological one. One re- at the same time, Catholics have often been sult of this process may be a ‘ripple back’ effect regarded by Protestants as ‘good neighbours’, that can unsettle historic affiliations within eth- people who pull together in times of trouble, nopolitical collectivities. ‘mucking in’ to milk the cows, helping Protes- tant farmers with the harvest or, before the vio- lence flared in the north, managing the farm Protestants and ‘Minority Status’ while Protestants attended Orange Order parades.1 As those charged with upholding and main- The presence of this ‘good neighbour’ arche- taining the line, border Protestants were (and type within border Protestant narratives points many still are) acutely aware of their impor- to their belief in an alternate, ‘extraordinary rural 70 | Changing Relationships in the Irish Borderlands | AiA border community, one that is inclusive of Cath- For some border Catholics, Protestant memo- olics and that transcends the ‘ordinary’ politi- ries of Catholic neighbours in the border area as cal and historical divisions of Northern Ireland politically benign and of Protestants as a strong, and the Irish Republic. The construction of such cohesive, powerful community are both exag- alternative communities is arguably pragmati- gerated and linked to erroneous perceptions of cally advantageous to Protestants in the border- border Catholics as politically, socially and cul- lands, where they constitute a minority popula- turally disempowered prior to the Troubles. tion, potentially negating the effects of political Nevertheless, there is some sense amongst and social power as exercised by a large Cath- the majority Catholic community in the border olic majority in the region (and in the Republic, areas that in spite of historical division, Protes- where it was anchored to a powerful Catholic tants and Catholics could be ‘good neighbours’ political centre). to one another (Donnan 2005). This is some- For northern border Protestants, the sociopo- what easier in north Monaghan than in south litical upheaval in the border area which began, Armagh because of the violence that broke out for them, in 1969—and their especially vulner- in the latter. able position within that bounded milieu— The Protestant perception of pre-Troubles Mon- was motivation enough for some to recommit aghan—when Catholic neighbours milked the enthusiastically to the wider group identity of cows on the Twelfth—was true. It definitely hap- Northern Ireland Protestant and British citizen pened. But they (southern Protestants) always (see Buckley 1989). The status of border Protes- say that. It was true, but who knows to what ex- tants as a marginalised, minority population tent the Catholics were thinking ‘I’m minding therefore became central to their need for mem- the cows for that black Protestant bastard who is away over the border on the Twelfth’. (Catholic bership of the wider political group, the Ulster interviewee, north Monaghan)2 or
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