Morning View: ​A welcome essay on Northern Ireland from a leading Kennedy

In print and online today we publish an essay from Joe Kennedy III, America’s new economic envoy to NI.

It is his first essay in the local media since being appointed to the new role.

Given the way in which Mr Kennedy opens the essay, referring to the attempted Eagle’s Wing journey from Co Down to his home city of Boston in New England, it is perhaps fitting that he writes the article for this newspaper.

The Eagle’s Wing was trying to get to a part of America that was almost untouched by Europeans at the time, little more than a decade after English pilgrims landed there in the Mayflower.

That boat crossing from this part of the world was in fact unsuccessful yet it is, as Mr Kennedy implies, almost a metaphor for the huge influence of the Scots (ie Ulster Protestant) Irish in what would become the United States. Why were they so influential? Because they were among the earliest settlers and because they had a great work ethic.

It is apt to run such an article on these pages because we are a newspaper of that tradition, and we have been publishing since the early 1700s when most of the first Ulster travellers crossed the Atlantic (the earliest surviving editions have adverts for those sailings).

The Catholic Irish, of whom Mr Kennedy’s ancestors are among the most famous, arrived more than a century later. Once they had bad relations with the Scots Irish, but not now. The Catholic Irish are among the most influential American groups now.

It is perhaps a sign of that more establishment outlook that Mr Kennedy wisely in his essay shows no signs of the old pro Irish nationalist thinking that once was a given in any of the Kennedy politicians. NI needs to maintain strong links with the US and it is very welcome that Mr Kennedy is hitting the right note.