"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."

George Orwell

History is perhaps little more than the story as told by those who win, or those in the process of winning, embellished and sanitized for contemporary consumption and serving the political interests of the dominant grouping in a given society. As a result the history that forms the dominant paradigm reflects less the truth of those events and actions carried out by flesh and blood humans but rather the current relations and structure of power within the given society, and the world system. From a philosophical point of view it is perhaps the case that there is no absolute truth waiting to be discovered. Instead of truth we have truths, we have competing truths related to relations of power and political struggle between different interest groups. Truth does not float, so to speak, in mid air waiting for this or that historian, scientist or would be detective of truth to discover. The social process, shaped by the political struggle between differing interest groups in society, by which some things come to be defined as truth and others as falsehood is a somewhat less than objective process. Truth is something to be fought for and won and the history of the 20th century demonstrates more than other century the danger when those "who command the future conquer the past". In Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia history was literally rewritten to suit the interests of the new power elite. For the loyalist people the struggle against Irish imperialism is a struggle to articulate a past and a culture and above all to remember…

Enter the Settler ...

"The claim of the Gael to Ireland is by the sword only, and by the sword was it reclaimed in later days by the descendants of these ancient peoples - namely the Belgic Dalriata and the Cruthin."
-Ian Adamson

The world is well versed in the republican version of the history of Ireland and of Ulster the entity that historically comprised those six counties that now constitute the state of Northern Ireland as well as those border counties that have been subsumed into the southern Irish state. This simplistic view of Irish history can be, for the sake of simplicity, stated as follows: Ireland is an island, a single territorial and cultural entity in which existed a people, the Irish, who were colonized by the British and were supplanted, particularly in the North of Ireland by colonists from Scotland and England. This is the essence of their version of Irish history, albeit; with some embellishments and qualifications depending upon the idiosyncrasies of those putting forward this view of history. The reality is, however, not so neat and tidy nor so ideologically sound as with regard to their struggle against colonialism and British imperialism as they so define it. The history of virtually every country in the world, Ireland being no exception, is the history of numerous invasions, some being more successful than others. Those who give this version of history, the republican version, consider them selves in the role of oppressed indigenous people, but as we shall see, their ideological conceptions are based upon a very selective interpretation of history.

Many people are puzzled by the fact that loyalists and unionists claim that there are two distinct countries that make up the island of Ireland. Those who adhere to the republican version of history exploit this confusion to the maximum. They argue that the partition of Ireland was arbitrary, the British just marked a line on map, and that Ireland is really just one country artificially divided to appease unionists. What we find, when we look at history from an objective standpoint is that Ulster has always been a distinct territorial entity within the island that they refer to as Ireland. Anthony Alcock writes:

"From the earliest days of Irish history Ulster has been geographically separated from the rest of Ireland while in terms of population the strongest links have been with Scotland rather than the rest of the island."

From the beginning of the Celtic invasion of Ireland it is thought that Ulster was protected by an array of natural defences: bogs, woodland and lakes. Then in the last centuries BC the people of Ulster erected a great wall, called the Black Pigs Dyke, to protect them from the invaders.

The question raised by this assertion is: who are these people who were resisting the invading Celts? These people are the original inhabitants of Ulster, although to use the somewhat contested concept indigenous may be somewhat erroneous. The best that we can perhaps say with certainty is that, as far as history permits, these are the original inhabitants of Ireland before the coming of the Celts. Collectively these peoples became known as the Ulaid, but were made up of various peoples: the Cruthin or Picts of Scotland and two Belgic tribes known as the Ulaid and Dalriata. For the sake of clarity we will refer to them collectively as the Ulaid. The term Ulster is itself derived from the term Ulaid. The question is, with regard to the central thrust of this essay, what is the relation of these people to those within Ulster who make up the loyalist people? And what is the significance of this for the republican view of history with its neat, concise and simplistic theory of colonial conquest and dispossession.

The Celtic invasion of Ireland would ultimately prove a success despite the best attempts of the original inhabitants of the island to resist the invading culture. It has been established that the area that proved most hard to conquer and that put up the most hostile resistance was Ulster. It would not be until the 5th century AD that Ulster would finally come under the sway of the Celts with the victorious campaign of "Niall of the Nine Hostages" with the fall of Emain Macha the capital of Ulster in present day county Armagh. The original inhabitants of Ulster, the Ulaid, were pushed and crowded into parts of Co Antrim. Many of the original inhabitants would ultimately flee Ulster and settle in Scotland. With the plantation of Ulster many centuries later the descendants of these very people would return to Ulster and reclaim by the sword their land that had been ripped from them by the robber baron. The plantation of Ulster, involving large numbers of Scottish settlers moving back across the water to their native land, would see Ulster once again in the hands of its rightful heirs. The loyalist people of Ulster can thus trace a cultural inheritance from those original inhabitants.

The republican view of history points to the arbitrary and artificial nature of partition but the loyalist people can point with equal force to the selective use of history in pursuit of Irish imperialism. Republicans have drawn a dividing line at a given point in history and stated that any people who have come to Ireland after that date are foreign invaders and that any people or peoples existing before that date are by comparison the true indigenous inhabitants. The loyalist can, however, go further back still and claim that far from being the original inhabitants of Ireland the Gael was part of a process of invasion that has been going on for centuries. Ian Adamson writes:

"The Gaelic invasion of our Country was of course the longest and most complete… That the Irish Gaels suffered under later English domination is but one side of a coin which carries on the obverse the long cruel extermination of the population and culture of the ancient kindred of the Ulster people…"

This cruel extermination of the true people of Ulster still continues unabated as the present representatives and agencies of Irish imperialism refuse to give up their irredentist claims to a land that they have no rightful claim to. The struggle of the loyalist people is as much a struggle to remember and articulate the past, as it is just to survive against the onslaught of imperialism.

Unlike our republican counterparts we do not claim, however, to have a monopoly on truth. The best that we can say is that our truth approximates the most accurately with what may have transpired. We present our truths to you and hope that while you may in many cases not accept them you might at least understand our history and thereby come to an understanding of our people.