Many people who have written about Unionism have identified what they believe to be 'confusion' about identity. One of these writers, Tom Nairn, has asserted that Britishness in this context is an assertion of ascendency over the native Irish rather than an authentic sense of identity. Sarah Nelson has written that unionists display 'complex and ambivalent feelings of identity'. David Miller sees Unionism not as related to membership of the British nation but in terms of an external relationship with the British state.
Yet unionist claims about their Britishness are the basis of their asserted right to self-determination in favour of the Union. The UUP has argued that unionists do not feel confused about their identity at all. They say that unionists have no single view of their identity but ask 'Why should they - there is considerable diversity within our community'. The apparent contradictions and uncertainties of unionist identity are not seen by unionists as a problem. In fact they are regarded as a strength.
All this can be explained by an understanding of how historical experience has shaped unionist identity. To begin with, we must consider the nature of Britishness. Linda Colley's excellent book 'Britons; The Forging the Nation 1707-1832' traces the history of the idea of Britishness, rather than the history of the British State. The two things are clearly related, but they are not the same and they should not be confused. Colley thinks that Britishness cannot be explained as a concept used to impose English cultural and political hegemony on the Celtic fringe, nor as a hybrid of the cultures of England, Scotland and Wales. Rather, it was superimposed on top of traditional regional and local ties.
The new identity was based squarely upon Protestant religion. It was primarily a Scottish invention rather than one invented in England and imposed on Scotland. This is where the distinction between nation and state is important. The Union can be said to have been imposed, the idea of Britishness which has sustained the Union for three hundred years cannot. In fact, Britishness never met with much enthusiasm in England where it was (and in many cases still is) regarded as primarily a strategic arrangement and the primary object of identification remained England. The idea, in contrast, caught on in Scotland. One of the earliest manifestations of a British identity actually predates the Union. It is the solemn league and covenant of 1643 which called for a federal union of the three Stuart kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in the battle against the Counter-Reformation. After the parliamentary union of 1707, it was again the Scots who were most enthusiastic about the concept of Britain, as evidenced by the influx of Scots into the military and the colonial administration, ensuring that the empire would be genuinely British. It was in effect a way for the Scots to circumvent the reality of English dominance in the British Isles and preserve Scottish identity by sacrificing political sovereignty and adopting a dual identity. Britishness developed in relation to broader social and cultural forces such as commercial and industrial growth, the spread of literacy and better communications, the emergence of a 'warfare state' and a shared history based around the break with Rome and sustained by war against Catholic enemies. All of this was essential to the process of developing social and cultural integration and its importance cannot be overstated. The history of the Irish Nation within the Union from 1801 until 1921 clearly shows the difference between nation and state. Without the shared historical context and the shared sense of purpose that it fostered, the idea of Britishness could never have developed and the Union could not have survived.
Colley's work concentrates on Great Britain but there are obvious implications for understanding the development of Ulster Protestant attitudes. Firstly, militant Protestantism is not unique to Ulster but was an essential part of the construction of the United Kingdom, albeit an outdated part. Secondly, identity in the UK is stratified with Britishness not replacing traditional loyalties but resting alongside them. So Britishness is not inconsistent with other layers of identity. Thirdly, the development of Britishness was not a subjugation of the periphery by the metropolitan core. It should be possible to draw a parallel between Protestant Ireland and Scotland, attempting to establish themselves as equal players in the UK.
Most importantly, Protestants in Ireland shared the historical experience which generated Britain as more than a constitutional construct. The Scottish settlement of the seventeenth century, which developed outside the Plantation scheme, was more an extension of Scotland than a colony, so great was the interaction between the two, and this ensured a high level of interaction between the whole British settlement in Ulster and the mainland. They fought the same battles against the counter Reformation. They colonized America and played their part in the building of the Empire. The economic history of Belfast is a mirror of any number of northern British towns and cities; founded on trade (although uniquely in the British Isles not the slave trade), industrialized on textiles, diversifying into heavy industry through shipbuilding and the decline of the heavy industries in recent times. Unionists shared in the spread of literacy, Belfast had an established printing press in the 1690's and there was a steady stream of young men to the Scottish universities from where they returned to practice medicine or to become ministers. After the Union in 1801, unionists quickly became absorbed into the British political system. Men such as Henry Cooke fitted naturally into the British Conservative network whilst many liberal Presbyterian radicals found a home with the British Liberals. In the twentieth century, unionists were at the Somme and they were Blitzed by the Nazis. The context of their sense of belonging is and has always been quite firmly British.
This is the fundamental premise of unionism. It is often supposed that unionists want to remain within the UK because they are afraid of the Republic of Ireland. This is a misunderstanding. Unionists want to live in the UK because it is their country. It is as simple as that.
So why is there 'confusion' about identity? Britishness is normally part of a dual identity, so the British in Ireland may have been expected to look for a new identity to go alongside their Britishness, if only to allow them to be equal players in the Union and not just a colonial offshoot- remember that the whole point of Britain was that it was not an excuse for English domination of the British Isles. Settlers in other parts of the world have developed an affinity for the land in which they have settled, so it is reasonable that British settlers in Ireland would develop an Irish identity, and this is what happened. Robert Lynd wrote in 1866 that, "We too are Irish. We love Ireland with as pure a patriotism as any. It is our own and our father's native land; we have no other." This development was seriously compromized, however by the parallel development of Irish Nationalism. Implicit in the unionist version of Irishness is an assumption that it is Irishness as a subgroup of Britishness. Irish Nationalism has as its political expression independence from Britain. The Nationalist definition of the Irish Nation has put unionists in the position of having to choose between being British and being Irish. It is a choice which they have not especially wanted to make; in the sporting context, for instance, unionists have happily preserved and participated in all-Ireland organizations. But when forces to make the choice, they have consistently and unequivocally chosen Britain.
Having been denied the option of Irish identity in most contexts, unionists developed an alternative. This was an Ulster identity which began to emerge during the Home Rule Crises when the idea of a separate Ulster solution to the 'Irish Question' was met with a relatively warm reception in the northeast of the island, although it didn't become policy until all else had failed. This development was more than simply pride in regional characteristics, it was an overtly political project with the aim of establishing that the Plantation origins of the Ulster Protestants gave them a right to oppose the dissolution of the Union. As time has passed since partition, identification with Northern Ireland has grown at the expense of affinity with Ireland. There can be little doubt that most of the current generation would describe themselves as 'Northern Irish' and 'British', rather than Irish.
Identity is defined socially as a collective 'self' in relation to its implicit negation, the 'other'. This is not something which only happens in unionism, or only in Northern Ireland, or even only in ethnic conflict. The process by which we define ourselves is inherently relational. In Northern Ireland, and where other ethnic conflicts exist, relationships with the 'other' have a cultural impact which is much wider than just identity formation. The line that unionists know who they are not but not who they are is a well worn one. Hopefully it has been shown that unionist Britishness can be explained better than that. But whereas British identity generally has been formed and sustained from a position of strength, against various continental others, imperial rivals and conquered peoples, unionist identity has developed under the additional influence of an immediate, belligerent and threatening neighbour (with no value judgment attached).
There is a history within Protestantism generally of fear of the Roman Catholic Church but it would be wrong to reduce the threat posed by Irish Nationalism in unionist minds to an antiquated religious relic. The threat is in fact a culturally subjective concept, which is why so many nationalists struggle to understand what unionists are scared of. One of the few points of agreement which emerged from the Hume-Adams dialogue which in many ways set the Peace Process in train was that peace would involve reassuring unionists that their fears about the Republic were unfounded. In the Downing Street Declaration the Taoiseach made a number of references to the 'fears' and 'uncertainties' which inform 'Northern Unionist attitudes towards the rest of Ireland'. The Declaration also states,
"In recognition of the fears of the Unionist community.....The Taoiseach will examine with his colleagues any elements in the democratic life an organization of the Irish State that can be represented to the Irish Government in the course of political dialogue as a real and substantial threat to their way of life and ethos, or that can be represented as not fully consonant with a modern, democratic and pluralist society, and undertakes to examine any possible ways of removing such obstacles"
This is an example of the belief that unionist antipathy towards the ideal of Irish unity results from fear of the rest of Ireland. But this is to get things back to front. The legitimacy of the ideal of a United Ireland rests on a nationalist story which means nothing to unionists. The fulfillment of the nationalist ideal can only happen at the expense of the union to which they feel that they belong for all the reasons outlined.
The fear of the Republic question is a secondary one and arises from the fundamentally discriminatory nature of republican ideology. It claims a right for the Irish, on the basis of their Irishness while simultaneously denying that right to the British population in Ireland on the basis of their Britishness. This is why the idea of an independent Ulster has raised its head from time to time. It is no accident that the idea has appeared at times when the prophets of betrayal and sell out have been shouting at their loudest. The logic is that even if Britain turns its back on Northern Ireland, the idea of an all Ireland Republic remains unacceptable. Support for this proposition has never been tested because it is a secondary question. But people certainly shouldn't overestimate its significance. It is clearly a long way down the list of preferences. If unionism was simply a function of fear, it would be reasonable to assume that support for an independent Ulster would be much greater. It is not because the reason that unionists want to remain in the UK is because it is their country.