Paul McElhinney: Power vacuum: Why is the Ulster Scots’ message not heard in US?

Ulster-Scots (or Scotch-Irish) links, despite their ubiquity and longevity in the US, have been nothing like as well leveraged as have Gaelic/nationalist/catholic interests in pursuit of key policy goals relating to Ireland. With over half of the 40 million or so Irish in America claiming Scotch-Irish heritage, why is this so?

To some extent, the neglect of Ulster interests in the US policy-making mix was rectified in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 by the more even-handed attention shown by the Clinton administration to the problems in Northern Ireland.

Theretofore, Ulster unionists could rightly point to successive US administrations’ poor understanding and appreciation of key unionist interests and concerns. The Good Friday Agreement put the issues on a different plane and through the deft management of the key lynchpin in the process, Senator George Mitchell, the problem was framed and solutions devised that sought to meet a wider group of concerns than previous US policy blueprints.

Unionist interest in many aspects of the Agreement may have cooled in the interim, but it was a major milestone in establishing peace and security at the time worthy of support of the then main unionist party. Without US support, it would have been impossible.

Yet, 25 years on, the Ulster-Scots message still manages not to be fully heard in the US corridors of power. Representatives of nationalists opinion, on the other hand, still manage to galvanise support in Congress and the administration towards their causes through skilful use of their vast and long-established networks.

One could posit that the lobbying role of the British Embassy in Washington has wider interests to pursue and thus, reluctant to appear partisan towards one political tradition in Northern Ireland. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that had the nationalist lobby had two senators of the calibre and seniority of Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, they would have vigorously seized the chance to enlist them in support of their own lobby.

One looks back to the latter part of the 20th century and to the famous ‘Four Horsemen’, Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, Daniel Moynihan and Governor Carey, whom the Irish Embassy in Washington brought on board to support the Irish government’s policy on Northern Ireland to counter support for NORAID and the IRA.

This was a masterstroke of diplomacy which unionist interests might well have learned from. Since then, however, unionists have continued to underperform in political lobbying in the US, compared particularly with Sinn Fein. This, in many ways, is surprising given those very Ulster-Scots links alluded to earlier. Motivating and galvanising that constituency would be a big challenge, admittedly. One wonders why such a concerted strategic option has not been actively pursued to date.

The nationalist lobby has recently been successful in ensuring that the US administration and Congress have got behind Irish and nationalist views on the Northern Ireland Protocol, to the extent that the US will not support a new US/UK trade deal if the Good Friday Agreement is endangered following any change to or abandonment of the Protocol. What unionists would give for that kind of leverage over such influential policymakers. But for the moment, it is a mere pipedream.

In the area of economic and industrial development, influence in the other direction has been seen with the examples of US investment in Northern Ireland over the years. Again, the ability to attract US investors has been hampered for a variety factors. Critically, Northern Ireland has also had to compete with the impressive efforts and successes in attracting inward investment of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) in the south.

In many ways, the influence of the Ulster-Scots has been much more evident in Canada than in the United States. The city of Toronto is a good example of a destination which took in many Ulster-Scots of Presbyterian faith. This was particularly evident in the moral tone of many of its municipal laws and regulations, notably regarding alcohol sales.

Its successful business environment also owes much to the hard work, thrift and prudence of its Ulster-Scots inhabitants. Interestingly too, it has been noted that relations with the city’s sizeable Gaelic Irish Catholic population are very constructive and without rancour. This has often been ascribed to the fact that taking the two populations away from the intense crucibles of Belfast and Londonderry and placing them in neutral territory allows for greater peace and harmony to develop.

While working in Washington in the 1990s, I remember coming across some senior executives from Northern Ireland’s then Industrial Development Board (IDB). They were on a fact-finding mission there with the objective of trying to ‘enter the Washington system’ and to some degree, replicate the strategy and approach of the south’s IDA.

While the initiative was worthwhile and well-motivated, it was clear that the challenges were and remain great. At that time (pre the Good Friday Agreement), terrorist violence was a strong deterrent to inward investment. Those challenges have intensified in different ways in recent times with inflationary and recessionary pressures in the US and the UK and the effects of the war in Ukraine.

Gaining a share of that limited amount of mobile US investment is becoming increasingly difficult. New trade regulations set to be introduced by the US administration are likely to make further investment even more difficult to secure.

As time moves forward, we are unlikely to see a repeat of the migrations from Ulster to the United States similar to those in the 17th 18th and 19th centuries. US immigration controls are clearly much tighter now and those of an Ulster-Scots background in present-day Ulster have tended to emigrate in recent decades in the main to England and Scotland.

Indeed, southern Irish people have emigrated in much larger numbers to the United States in recent decades than their Ulster neighbours. Thus, any replenishing of Scotch-Irish culture there is unlikely to be significant. That culture, on the other hand, is likely to remain on through its remaining symbols, customs and traditions.

Religion, music, and politics have been the main arenas of influence – strong but in an understated way.

Paul McElhinney, a lecturer, writer and former official in the Department of the Taoiseach, has written many articles in Irish and international journals and is the author of ‘Lion of the RAF’, a biography of Air Marshal Sir George Beamish. He is currently working on the history of Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club in Dublin and a book on the city and county of Londonderry.​

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