Nelson McCausland: The Irish language is more than a cultural issue — it is being used by Sinn Fein in a politico-cultural way to advance the cause of a united Ireland

He wrote with a passion for the language but I would respectfully suggest that his contribution was somewhat naïve.

I would encourage him to read the book Language, Resistance and Revival: Republican Prisoners and the Irish language in the North of Ireland, which was written by Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh and published in 2013.

In it he set out the Irish republican strategy of using the Irish language to push forward a process of ‘decolonising’ Northern Ireland.

It is a strategy which republicans developed from the writings of the Marxist revolutionary Frantz Fanon and they have been pursuing this strategy for the past thirty-five years.

That is the background to the demand for an Irish language act and why they regard an Irish language act as essential to their politico-cultural strategy.

Feargal MacIonnrachtaigh is well-placed to explain the Sinn Fein strategy because he was born Fergal Enright and was the son of the late Terry Enright, a prominent Sinn Fein activist who learned his Irish while interned at Long Kesh.

Almost forty years ago, in the wake of the IRA hunger strikes, Sinn Fein set out its cultural strategy at a seminar titled ‘Learning Irish’.

That day Terry Enright, also known as Tarlach Mac Ionnrachtaigh, chaired one of the workshops and said, ‘The armed struggle is the highest point of the cultural revival.’ Thereby he linked the language to IRA terrorism.

That was also the day when Padraig O Maoicraoibhe (Pat Rice), then a Sinn Fein cultural officer said, ‘I don’t think we can exist as a separate people without our language. Now every phrase you learn is a bullet in the freedom struggle.’

Later that year a report of the seminar was published by as a booklet by Sinn Fein with a foreword by Mairtin O Muilleoir, who went on to become a Sinn Fein politician.

No unionist should be going into a negotiation about the Irish language or into a debate about the Irish language without reading both the booklet and the book. I would also encourage Dr Davison-Kernan to read both.

The Irish language is part of the cultural wealth of Northern Ireland, along with the Ulster-Scots language and tradition, and along with other cultural traditions such as the Orange tradition.

Unfortunately Sinn Fein have taken something which should be seen as cultural wealth and turned it into a cultural weapon for the ‘decolonising’ of Northern Ireland, as set out in Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh’s most informative book.

This is more than a cultural issue, it is a politico-cultural issue designed by Sinn Fein to advance the cause of a united Ireland, or as Professor John Wilson Foster recently described it, ‘the amputation of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom’.

Nelson McCausland, Newtownabbey