Last April I wrote an article on unionist attitudes to the notional Irish Language Act, specifically responding to comments made by the TUV’s Jim Allister on the subject. The fact that ten months later the article in question is still entirely relevant is not an indictment of my skills as a writer, capturing the zeitgeist, but rather a reason why every man, woman, child, and farmyard animal in Northern Ireland should form an orderly queue along the Mourne wall and proceed to bang our heads against it in the hopes that the proceeding sound waves will reverberate and cause some sort of sea change at Stormont, or at least cause the island to break away from its coastal shelf and float nearer to China as more and more it seems our ability to work democracy is regressing ( as opposed to devolving).

Jim Allister, ten months before now, established his opposition to Acht na Gaeilge, whether it stood alone or leant on a crutch of some sort, on the grounds that it was simply ‘another part of the de-Britishisation of Northern Ireland.’

Last week on the BBC’s Talkback programme, Allister intensified his view by warning the audience of the “dark side” of as Gaeilge, evident in the Green Book, the handbook of the Provisional IRA, which stated, ‘culturally we hope to restore Gaelic in a distinctive new Irish socialist state as a bulwark against imperialist encroachments from whatever quarter.’

It should not need to be said that the Irish language out-dates the Provos by a fairly wide margin, and there is no virtue in Allister’s stance as all it does is reinforce the bubble which Protestants throughout Ireland have been spiritually herded into the events and leaders of the last hundred years. Allister is the Ian Paisley for the present day and continues the mentality of ‘not an inch, and no surrender’, which, it has to be said, has been attempted by Arlene Foster with her establishment of a cold-house for crocodiles around the time of the Assembly election last year.

The association, by connotation or otherwise, of anything tinted green with militant Republicanism is an example of wilful historical ignorance and as such is most detrimental to the constituents Allister would claim to represent.

Also on Talkback was Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin, advocacy manager for Conradh na Gaeilge in Belfast, among the founders of which was Thomas O’Neill Russell, a Quaker, responsible for the preservation of the Irish language becoming one of the main objectives of the national movement, through his “assiduous” lobbying of Home Rule MPs. Mac Giolla Bhéin also made the point that the Presbyterian Church, of which Allister is a member, promoted the Irish language, certainly moreso than the Catholic Church ever did.

When one thinks of the Gaelic Revival, among the firsts thoughts to spring to most people’s thinking will be the name W.B. Yeats, and that of Lady Gregory; cultural nationalism was never bound by any shibboleth in any significant way before partition and its surrounding events served to alienated Ulster Presbyterianism from its history. The border drawn through Ireland in the early twenties, as soft as it is for one watching the gentle rippling waters meet the mighty Mourne shore, seems to exist most prevalently in the minds of those a few tens of miles away from it in County Antrim.

Also on the Talkback episode on question was David McNarry, UKIP’s Leader in the North, who said that although he was “normally a law-abiding man,” were he to see an Irish language road-sign in his neighbourhood he would take it down. Surely he is aware that 95% of all place-names in Northern Ireland are anglicised forms of the Irish original anyway: there is no gargantuan leap of linguistics between ‘Belfast’ and ‘Beal Feirste’. Furthermore, a place will generally benefit from a clear understanding of where it came from and how it came to be; Ireland, north or south, has a proud oral tradition, and that is something worth protecting through simply writing it down.

The aggressive response by certain elements of unionism is not warranted and is not productive. Such fears of the ‘de-Britishisation’ of Northern Ireland seem to be inter-woven with opposition to Irish unity, and thus opposition to Irish culture seems largely based on Sinn Féin’s advocacy of it, however there doesn’t seem virtue nor reason in allowing one’s fears of the future to blind one to the past.

The debate around an Irish Language Act has been framed in cultural terms by Republicans and Unionists alike, yet that is a mistake; advocates of the preservation and celebration as Gaeilge, such as Linda Ervine and Turas, emphasise its mutuality across the country, and similarly unionist leaders should represent their constituents to the fullest possible extent rather than keep them within these stagnant bubbles of the Orange and the Green.

Cultural arguments get in the way of a full and mature policy debate over what is, after all, the proposal for law and thus there are honest questions over how an Irish Language Act would work, how much it would cost, and precisely what good it would do.

Arlene Foster has by-and-large been blamed for the breakdown of the last deal, however it seems that she is far more moderate than she is given credit for: her maiden name is Kelly, she is Church of Ireland and from Fermanagh and this outside the Antrim Presbyterian clique of the traditional DUP leadership, furthermore she was an Ulster Unionist until it became evident that that party was dead, yet she lacks the conviction and the bravery to risk her career for the sake of doing what she thinks is right.

There is no Executive because we have too many politicians but no leaders; they lead from behind.