Donegal has 311 kms of European border which cuts through a scattered villages, farms, and rural roads. Only 9kms connect Donegal to the rest of the Republic. Language can give us insights into where the battle for survival meets self-deception. Ulster dialects mixing Shakespearean English, Ulster Scots, and Gaelic criss-cross the border and mingle with our Ulster silences. Donegal has places where Ulster Gaelic is a first language:

It’s a rich language … full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception—a syntax opulent with tomorrows. Brian Friel Translations (Hugh in Act 2: Scene1)

Writers seek to merge the mythological images of the languages of Ulster and the realities of modern English. Can we learn to honour the romantic self-deception inherent in the culture of our survival and adaptation?Donegal has also 1235kilometres of coastline. In the words of Moya Cannon “language was tidal; / it lipped the shale cliffs, / a long and tedious campaign, / and ran up the beaches, over sand, seaweed, stones.” Dun na nGall the Gaelic form for Donegal translates as Fort of the foreigner – a reminder of how the sea brought many people to this shore over the centuries. When I was a child, the dark glossy hair and brown eyes of many Donegal people carried stories of the survivors of the Spanish Armada. Margaret Barrington’s story in The Glass Shore describes the desperation and anger of a village of women who lost their men to the sea and ends with their enthusiastic welcome to the Danes torpedoed onto their shore in World War II.  Is it time to reassess the mix of heritage, language, and culture in Ulster in both jurisdictions?

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“It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but the images of the past embodied in language”. The words of Hugh in #Brian Friel’s play Translations highlights the complexity of the relationship between language, landscape, culture, and the realities of history with its wars and economic systems. This image of the “Tinnies” sculpture replaces the dominance of the former British Army checkpoint. Are images even more important than the language which describes them or does language shape our mental images or is it a mix?

Anglicised place names remain a point of tension. Gerry Anderson, a local radio presenter nicknamed Derry “Stroke City” to dodge the conflict over the British-identity Derry/Londonderry. His humour created a road sign towards a new era heralded by writers like #Lisa McGee of #Derry Girls. Peace sculptures are dotted around border towns including this Strabane sculpture, nicknamed the Tinnies, celebrates  peace and music. Tinney is a family name in Ireland and someone once told a taxi-driver in Abercorn Square that four Tinneys were waiting for him at the roundabout and it is only when he arrived there looking for his passengers that it clicked. Can humour and culture be an antidote to the toxic traditions mixed with polarised politics in Ulster?

The language of Ulster which intertwines Gaelic, Ulster Scots and Ulster English dialect is buried deeper in our consciousness and ripples out across these islands. Ulster Scots is a powerful reminder of the centuries of connection across the causeway between Ulster and Alba before colonisation. Gaelic rich in words for which there is no English, once named perceptions and emotions which remain now as mere echoes in the cave of the heart.

When we Irish adopted the English language of  development, progress and literature, we internalised the conflict between our Irish and British cultures and identities on this island. We embraced the realities of development in our daily lives and left the rest to religion and romance. Citizens caught between British and Irish identities are marginalised into silence. The Irish state and its citizens bulldozed across the island to build houses, hospitals, hotels, schools, colleges, and retail parks. We chose development and survival of the fittest as we recovered from poverty and submission. Along the way we lost a sense of priority. We paid no heed to the side effects on our health, culture, and the wealth of nature when we polluted our waters and tore up roots older than colonisation.

The post UlsterBorder Nineteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Banners, flags, and emblems have an emotional history in Northern Ireland and can unhinge us. Madge Herron describing her father tells us:

“That little line where all his flags hang out is now collapsed/In the house next to us, there the people take to killing one/Another at odd hours of the night.

The #UlsterBorder marks the boundary created by treaties between nation states but the lines of culture criss-cross my consciousness.. Many of us have a mixed British-Irish identity and many families have people living and/or working on both sides of the border or experience of migration to England and Scotland in search of work.

Surprisingly after partition, #Donegal continued to host Twelfth July celebrations marking the victory of the Protestant William of Orange over the Catholic King James in 1690. Before the “Troubles” the bands were on their way to being more cultural than politically provocative. In the 1950’s and 1960’s my father’s pub in Strabane, the 12^{th of} July was a day for thirsty bands from #Tyrone to gather – some on their way to holiday in Donegal. As a teenager in the late 1960’s, I worked in the #Sandhouse Hotel, Rossnowlagh serving the bands and their followers who came from all over Ireland and Scotland.  #Arlene Foster when she was first minister of Northern Ireland crossed the border from Fermanagh and sat on a Rossnowlagh fence in holiday mood. Watch the lambeg boogie to get a flavour of hope in mixing our cultures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0QTfX7GuSI

The post #UlsterBorder Eighteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Locals cross the border between #Donegal in the Republic and #Fermanagh in Northern Ireland daily. Both counties are rural and both part of #Ulster. Since the #PeaceAgreement in 1998, a united Ireland needs a majority of citizens in both jurisdictions to vote for an end to partition. It is in the hands of all those who live on the island of Ireland and does not depend on the UK government. Reassured citizens on both sides of the UK-IRISH border found it easy to resume criss-crossing community life on the border for work, for shopping, for social life. The border no longer marked a boundary between the opposite poles of British and Irish where:

British=Industrialisation,Imperialism Landowner, Protestant

Irish=Rural, Oppressed, Peasant and Catholic

Since #Brexit, do those binary equations with their echoes of revenge, collaboration and violence fit the diversity of the #UlsterBorder today?

“Two buckets were easier carried than one. / I grew up in between”. Seamus Heaney spoke of the polarisation of industrialised versus rural in Ulster, but city life and rural life are interconnected now more than ever.

Living on the #Ulsterborder, a non-binary identity in rural buckets or choice of city would be easier to carry by those who identify British, Irish, European as changing interconnected identities.Can we reassess the legacy of the past with its call to violence and move on? Since #Brexit, Norherni remains in the single market for goods and continues to operate under EU custom rules. Is #Article16 which puts customs controls at Larne and Belfast sustainable?  Can we find a place in between?

The post #Ulster Border first appeared on Margo Gorman.

The farmer buys diesel at a service station in #Pettigo which has petrol pumps in both euro and sterling. Ireland joined the euro as a common currency but the UK kept sterling and miles. When you cross the #Ulsterborder in recent years, the end of kilometres, the beginning of miles and a change in currency are the only obvious differences. #Brexit and new trade barriers highlight how the borders created in the aftermath of colonialism, the industrial revolution and national self-determination in the last century need to be reassessed in the 21st century. Is it possible to talk about the historical impact of plantations, British Imperialism, and national self-determination as history without recrimination? Do we Ulster folk understand the mix of Irish and British in our identities, economies and cultures before and after #Brexit?

The ties between the communities on these islands are closer than retro-nationalists would have us believe. The poet Nora Hughes, now living in London, echoes the cross-community hunger marches in Belfast in 1932 “before the start of the war/when people of the city/ left their safe havens to chant in unison the old/ droll song…Yes we have no bananas…” Nora’s poem acknowledges the bonds of hunger, slavery, war, and colonialism which reverberate to the Windward Islands and beyond. In Great Britain, “Black British” can be a non-binary plural identity for those, including the many Irish in England, who do not readily claim English identity. Are the labels Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, British, European or British-Irish or Irish-British equal in Ireland or is any dealings with the Brit label seen as a betrayal?

The post UlsterBorder Sixteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Small roads with stone bridges criss-cross the hills between #Donegal and #Tyrone. Many roads and bridges to Castlederg on the #Ulsterborder between Donegal, Fermanagh and Tyrone were closed during the “Troubles”. #MichellGallen, a writer who grew up in Castlederg in #Tyrone, articulates a 21^st century perspective on bridges in her novel, Big Girl small Town. Her main character, Majella, reflects on the lack of bridge-building between communities forced apart by violence. Bridge building is “complicated by the fact that although most people could see the need for rebuilding the literal bridges, no one had an eye for invisible bridges.” Majella’s unshared thought of drawbridges as a solution to this problem makes dark humour from the besieged feeling of many communities close to the #UlsterBorder”. How will we cope with a border here as #Brexit divides Ulster once again?

The post Ulster Border Fifteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Since the Peace Agreement in 1998, this road sign may be the only indication you have crossed #European border. Mainland Europeans accustomed to driving on the right are reminded to drive on the left but so many of the small roads crisscrossing between #Donegal #Tyrone #Fermanagh #Derry are in remote sparsely populated areas. Even in areas of greater population, the signs of an international border were this road sign and the change from metric to Imperial measurements and the change of currency from euro to sterling. The Bank of England and the financial hub of London may seem a long way from Pettigo but sterling remained as a sign of UK resistance to any dilution of British sovereignty and economic independence. The UK never joined a European common currency or adopted metric measurements.

The Peace Agreement combined with membership of the #EU meant greater alignment of Northern Ireland and the Republic in commerce and trade and #Article 16 could offer opportunity to maintain this BUT differences between those who push the binary British versus Irish struggle put this at risk. Toxic traditions and the 20^th century nationalist narrative prevent acceptance of 21^st century diversity. Does #Brexit threaten the cross-border life enjoyed by those born since 1998 like the  Derry poet and novelist #Susannah Dickey, who rejects those “perceptions of identity which were often reductive and binary.”

The post ULSTER BORDER Fourteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Polarisation in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s meant the roads that crisscross the #UlsterBorder were blocked during the “Troubles” and the main border crossings like this one in Strabane, my birthplace, had heavily fortified checkpoints. After demolition, it is hard to know when you cross the #Ulsterborder. Many crossings between Donegal, Tyrone, Fermanagh are single track and rural. Since #Brexit this international European border can run through a house so someone can sleep with their head in #EU and their feet in the #UK.

German friends, curious about the creation of a European  border after #Brexit recalled the building and demolition of the Berlin Wall which ran through buildings, streets, and farmland. (Some of Sabine’s photos appear in this #Ulster Border series.) Since their visit,  #Article 16 of the #Brexit agreement seeks to avoid  a hard border by keeping Northern Ireland in the #EU single market for goods, but the potential for a new economic border in the Irish sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain has produced friction and fear. There are always those who are ready to take advantage of the tensions between US and THEM to provoke violence and crime.

Crime can “blur the border” in the words of best-selling crime novelist Brian McGilloway from Derry (brianmcgilloway.com). Set in the Ulster borderlands, he captures an atmosphere where the boundaries between revenge and justice or between cop and criminal are also blurred. Do #UlsterBorder writers create a space which blurs false distinctions between Self and the Other, between ME and YOU? Where is the beginning of “othering”? We know the ending is hatred and violence. Toni Morrison says “Narrative fiction provides a controlled wilderness an opportunity to be and become the Other.” (The Origin of Others pub, Harvard University Press.)

The post UlsterBorder Thirteen first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Cross-community initiatives celebrated by the NI Women’s Coalition continue but success has been restricted by high news-grabbing polarised politics and manipulation. #Brexit threatens the fragile #Belfast Peace Agreement of 1998. Would #British and #Irish politicians have succeeded in drawing up the Agreement without the vision and graft of the Women’s Coalition in the background in the 1990’s? There is more to culture than the content of media headlines. Women writers and activists are worthy of more recognition, especially in the decades of the #Ulster Border. Women writers explore beyond the US versus THEM of Irish Nationalist versus Ulster Loyalist.

Derry poet Colette Bryce voices the complex experience of those who grew up during the “Troubles”. Her poem “-Don’t speak to the Brits, just pretend they don’t exist” expresses the everyday contradictions in the mix of Derry, Donegal Gaeltacht, and Dublin life.(www.colettebryce.com)

The post ULSTER BORDER Twelve first appeared on Margo Gorman.

Insights into Ulster Border tensions have been transformed by Irish Times journalist, Freya Mc Clements @freyamcc from Derry. Her interviews and insights give insights into the frustration of people like Jim Wilson, a former member of a loyalist paramilitary group now a community worker who seeks “to calm tensions caused by the controversy over the Northern Ireland protocol” in the #Brexit agreement. (Irish Times 20/02/21)

Tensions over #Article 16 are much less apparent along the rural Ulster land Border and we will resist a return to violence. Joint entry of the UK and Ireland into the #EU on 1^st January 1973 changed our lives and the European compulsion to modernise the Irish State became an important factor in the PEACE Agreement of 1998.

During the “Troubles” the economic impact of the EU was overshadowed by army checkpoints on the border and by eruptions of violence. In the decades before this, the tensions of partition had faded into comic smuggling stories where we hid butter, cigarettes, or whiskey in our clothing and the 1956 IRA campaign did not gain traction. Rigid divisions between Nationalist and Unionist left no place for those of us who do not accept this binary compulsion.

100 years after partition, cross border relations are once again threatened by  #Brexit with confusion over #Article 16 bringing chaos and uncertainty. The ports of Belfast and Larne became major flashpoints distracting from the land border meandering through rural Ulster which would be impossible to maintain as an EU border. How to solve our dilemma? It is clear that violence has never solved anything, www.qub.ac.uk lectures on anniversary of partition

The post Ulster Border Eleven first appeared on Margo Gorman.