Border loyalism has had a slow, fractured journey, to which this insightful book attests
These are the shadowlands, the three Ulster counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan not in Northern Ireland, their unionist and Protestant inhabitants marooned tantalisingly “outside the glow” after 1920. This was an angry peoplehood, abandoned by their fellow Ulster loyalists who were prepared to jettison them in pursuit of a more defensible statelet. In the new Irish Free State, they were treated with considerable hostility and suspicion.
What is it about this area that marks its unionism and Protestantism out from the rest of independent Ireland? Burke suggests that it is a specifically Ulster loyalism that provides the pull — “a community or culture defined by narratives of Protestant settlement, struggle and heritage in Ireland’s northern province, and fealty to a wider British identity”.
What marks out loyalism in these counties from the rest of “the South” is its participation in violent resistance during the War of Independence. Here Burke argues that Monaghan loyalists were active and successful against suspected republicans in 1921, whereas in Cavan armed resistance was less intense and poorly organised. Pettigo in Donegal was a flashpoint between the IRA, local loyalists, the Ulster Special Constabulary and the British and Irish armies in June 1922.
Through the churches and particularly the Orange Order, Border Protestants had a support network of depth and breadth that was largely Border-blind, and which was unavailable to other southern Protestants — the Orange Order had vanished from the rest of independent Ireland long before the 1970s.
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