THE PAST IN THE PRESENT: THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY IN LOYALIST ULSTER

This article discusses Loyalist identity formation in Ulster, as Unionists and Loyalists strive to reconcile with or, conversely, distance themselves from the fundamental political changes that have followed in the wake of the paramilitary ceasefires of the mid-1990s and the 1998 Good Friday Belfast Peace Agreement. It is argued that in the unresolved questions surrounding identity and allegiance lie the keys to conflict and its resolution in Northern Ireland. The article has four specific objectives. First, these revisionist identity authorings are set within a conceptual context that links three closely related ideas that are crucial to the emerging identities of post-1994 Loyalist Ulster: resistance; subalternity; and Thirdspace. Secondly, the implications of these ideas for the renegotiation of Loyalist identities are explored, before, thirdly, a brief examination of the subject matter, content and resources—the heritage—for those identities. Finally, the article isolates some of the major themes of these identities in order to elicit the repercussions of Loyalist self-imaging. Particular emphasis is given to the Somme mythology and the Ulster-Scots movement.