1798 Rebellion and Community in the Ards Peninsula

I am deeply thankful to a transatlantic and distant relative - or as we say in Ulster-Scots, a far-oot-freen - who recently sent me typescripts of some family letters from ancestors we share, which are correspondences written between an emigrant who had gone to Philadelphia, and his family back home.

The letters date from 1797 (written to Ballygarvan and Nunsquarter near Kircubbin) and there's a further one dated 1821 (to Ballybally, which I suspect is a typo for Ballyboley, between Carrowdore and Greyabbey).

The 1797 letters give fascinating community context to the era before the 1798 Rebellion, and position the 'United Men' rather differently than the nationalistic way in which they have come to be presented.

We are usually shown them in the simplistic national duality of "British v Irish". However, these letters show them as being one of three elements within a complex community dynamic, made up of the Catholic agrarian "Defenders", Protestant agrarian "Peep O Day Boys" and then the "United" as a different strand altogether. For example:

"this country still continues the war against France contrary to the general wish of the people. There was a great talk of peace the while past but no, found to our cost it was too good news to be, the peepaday men and Defenders still continue at war in this country and are making great depradations the folly of these parties makes a union next to impossible" (letter, 23 April 1797)

"our rulers continue to oppress and lode us more and more and they are at present persecuting the peasable and well disposed for being united in the case of liberty" (letter, 24 April 1797)  

There is much to think about in the content of these letters, which are very much in line with the Canadian academic Donald Harman Akenson's enlightening book about the Islandmagee community entitled Between Two Revolutions. In it he takes a 'bottom up' community perspective to explain the seeming contradictions of how the Ulster-Scots acted in 1798 compared with 1916, rather than the usual 'top down' national perspective.

It was when reading Akenson (see post here) that the penny finally dropped with me that our era's binary fixation on nationality in Ireland is a dead end. In reading Between Two Revolutions, community, and community liberty, emerged as a more fluid and vivid way to think.

However, our ongoing political context in Northern Ireland, and 'hybrid non-linear warfare', remains focussed upon concepts of nationality; every issue ends up there, by design. 

Or, as the old adage says, when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.

• High profile 'conversations' like this about a hypothetical future Ireland are a cosmetic distraction when almost the entire political establishment of the Republic of Ireland is already gaslighting its own population and seeking to diminish its liberty. Thankfully the population defied them at the ballot box (Guardian report here).

• Gravestone below of Alexander Byers of Greyabbey who was killed at Battle of Ballynahinch in June 1798.