I READ with amusement the article “Influence of Trump vice-president elect JD Vance for unionists in US ‘something of a fantasy’ says expert” (November 26).
Northern Ireland unionist/Protestant leaders periodically raise the silly and delusional notion that there is serious potential of organising significant support among the Scots-Irish in America for England’s continued domination and partition of Ireland.
Jeffrey Donaldson raised that nonsense a couple of years ago. And now, DUP minister Gordon Lyons has another go at it, declaring that vice president-elect Vance is “good from Northern Ireland’s point of view”.
The article stated: “US-Ireland expert Liam Kennedy, director of the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies, says that any change in the unionist position in Washington thanks to Vance is unlikely.”
Indeed, one does not have to be an expert to dismiss this nonsense.
Let me just mention two names: the great George Washington, and the anything but great King George III.
The Irish and Scots-Irish flocked into Washington’s army to kick George out of America. So, why would today’s Scots-Irish support the very same principles their forefathers and foremothers fought against: empire, monarchy, an Established Church (meaning no separation between Church and state), a sectarian and anti-Catholic constitution, and so forth and so on?
And, lest there be any doubt about the identity of the cause of Ireland with the cause of George Washington, listen to his own words years after he had kicked King George III out of his colonies in America: “Patriots of Ireland; champions of liberty in all lands, be strong in hope. Your cause is identical with mine. You are calumniated in your day. I was misrepresented by the loyalists in my day. Had I failed, the scaffold would be my doom.” (George Washington, 1788).
So, Minister Lyons, good luck with your ‘tilting at windmills’.
Now, I realise full well there is still an underlying anti-Catholicism in America, and why wouldn’t there be since England’s 13 colonies imported the vicious Penal Laws (as well as slavery, of course)? And as historians have said, “To be English was to be anti-Catholic.”
But vice-president-elect Vance is Catholic and, among Protestant evangelicals, regarded as the most fervent Protestants, St Pope John Paul II was the most revered religious leader in the world.
The Scots-Irish and Irish-Americans totally identify with the ‘One Ireland’ internet petition of the Irish National Caucus: “Ireland, too, has the right to be one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – change.org/IrelandOneNation. And the Scots-Irish increasingly identify with it since the strong movement in Scotland for national self-determination and independence. God bless Scotland.
In conclusion, it must be understood that the term Scots-Irish got a bit well known in 1850 when the Scots-Irish wanted to distinguish themselves from famine Irish flocking into the US. Indeed, the first known use of the term in 1573 was by Queen Elizabeth I. She used the term ‘Scotch-Irish’ to describe Scottish Catholics in Ireland.
Oh, the irony and the windmills.
Fr SEAN McMANUS
President,
Irish National Caucus
Washington
