• Whatever DUP’s Lord Morrow thinks, this place is the last remnant of England’s first settler colony
By Brian Feeney
April 09, 2025 at 6:00am BST
East Derry MLA Cara Hunter caused a bit of a stir last week when she posted on X: “The coloniser mindset runs deep. I literally cannot fathom hating the Irish culture/heritage/language this much when your own reps stood proudly wearing shamrocks a fortnight ago.”
Cue outrage from the usual suspects. It was led by DUP chair Lord Morrow, who said he was not “a coloniser”. He ignored the obvious distinction she made between a coloniser and a coloniser mindset and demanded she retract the post and apologise.
Of course Hunter is absolutely correct and her opinion was endorsed by Wallace Thompson, founder member of the DUP and a close associate of its leadership for decades.
Thompson said: “Cara Hunter is quite right. Unionism often does display a coloniser mindset towards the Irish language. Patronising and disrespectful. Crocodiles, yogurts and all that.”
Morrow also made this unhistorical assertion: “Northern Ireland is not a colony.”
DUP chairman Lord Morrow. Picture by Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press
Listen, this place is the last remnant of England’s first settler colony.
It was carved out of Ireland as a tribal reservation for people de Valera generously described as the “political minority”, when thirteen-sixteenths of the island broke free from colonial rule. These three-sixteenths remain under British rule. Go figure.
As soon as the north was invented, unionists immediately began displaying a coloniser mindset. They set out to obliterate any manifestation of Irishness, linguistic, symbolic or cultural, just as the English did until the early twentieth century.
You could commit a breach of the peace by displaying an Irish tricolour, or singing a ‘party tune’. Stormont’s 1949 anti-Irish language Miscellaneous Provisions Act outlawed naming a place or street “other than in English”.
The English carried out such cultural suppression whenever they took over any part of these islands.
In Wales, in Henry VIII’s Acts of Union 1535-42, English became the only language in official documents and courts. Welsh patronymics like ‘ap’ and ‘ab’ (son of) were banned so, for example, ap Hywel became Powell.
In Ireland in the early seventeenth century, people were well aware that the English were trying to create sacsa nua darb anim Éire (A new England called Ireland), as the poet Fearflatha Ó Gnímh put it. English became the official language, Irish names were ‘translated’ etc.
It took until the twentieth century to undo this suppression but there’s still a way to go both in Britain and here.
Unionists have opposed the process tooth and nail, delayed it, frustrated it, but always lose because they are on the wrong side of history.
The next major step forward is for the PSNI to go bilingual in signage and official documentation like elsewhere in the UK.
How does Seirbhis Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann grab you, Lord Morrow?
There’s a great irony for guys like Morrow. If they want to be, altogether now, like “the rest of the UK”, they should accept UK practice should they not?
Look up Police Scotland’s website and what do you find? Police Scotland/Poileas Alba. You can read about Police Scotland’s Gaelic Language Plan 2021-26, bilingual signage on vehicles and so on, set within the framework of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005.
Look up Welsh police and you’ll find the four constabularies are bilingual, as in Heddlu Dyfed-Powis or Heddlu Gogleddu Cymru. Heddlu is painted on the vehicles.
In all this the north is the outlier in the UK because of opposition by the party which struggles to show how exclusively British they are, except when they’re in Washington being Irish. Can you get your head round their confusion?
Seriously though, the PSNI going bilingual like police in Britain might go some way towards improving recruitment of nationalists, otherwise known as ‘cultural Catholics’ since few practise.
The fact is that the PSNI is rather stiff about being a British police service, often quoting Home Office rules and practice.
They need to start channelling their Irishness, being open and up front and welcoming to nationalists, which they aren’t at present, nor make any effort to be.
It’s all about recruiting more Catholics but they must reach out to nationalists, even though it will drive the Lord Morrows of this world nuts.
The chief constable has to say the words, “We in the PSNI welcome nationalists as recruits and we want them and here’s what we’ll do to encourage them.”
It’s time to call a spade a spade and stop talking about “all communities”. Wearing Seirbhis Póilíneachta Thuaisceart Éireann somewhere on their uniform or having Seirbhis Póilíneachta painted on a vehicle they’re driving would help enormously.
Ironically it would make the PSNI more like other UK police forces, but in a way unionists oppose because of a coloniser mindset.
No wonder they’re nonplussed when their king greets Michelle O’Neill in Irish.
by Jeffreys_therapist
10 comments
I would imagine that Feeney means unionists as a collective and/or political force, as I’m sure not every person who wants to remain in the UK thinks like this
It’s good that we’re slowly overriding a lot of the anti-Irish laws Unionists put in place years ago.
But many Unionists calling themselves “British” and despising anything even remotely Irish and causing petty rows over it, is just a bitter colonial mindset
Many people with a Unionist background like Edward Carson and C.S Lewis called themselves Irish, so go figure
Anyone who leaves Scotland out of the story of Northern Ireland is not worth listening to
There is a lot in there – referring back to 1949 even, no mention of how the country changed after 1998 and power sharing. Picking a fight with the PSNI for following Home Office rules, and then mentioning Police Scotland as a model, when it also has to follow Home Office rules. And then picking a new fight on the two most sensitive things – the Irish language, and the PSNI – especially when the PSNI runs pretty scared of loosing nationalist community support and had the policing board etc etc.
Perhaps the PSNI should embrace the Irish language, but in the end, no public service here works like it should, and this will become a talking point for the next 10 years if we are not careful.
My view – Brian Feeney once a wind up merchant, always a wind up merchant.
Hahaha Brian feeney. Why not just share an article from An Phoblacht mate?
It’s fine admitting that unionism is a coloniser’s mindset here in the North of Ireland.
My Ma’s a prod from Ballyclare, a whole half of my family are descendants from colonisers. My Granda always used to say his ancestors originally came to Antrim from Scotland and from Scandinavia before that because my Ma’s maiden name is found a lot in Norway. According to my Granda we had an ancestor who fought in the Battle of Antrim for the United Irishmen but my Granda was definitely a unionist.
I guess in my waffle here, I’m trying to say you can be from colonisers and also be against colonisers, as my supposed ancestor was and indeed many thousands of United Irishmen were.
This whole concept of being ‘British’ is relatively new and only really came about during the Troubles.
I listened to a talk by Linda Ervine and she was saying it was only during the troubles that many unionists stopped saying they were Irish and insisted they were British instead.
It is a fact however that if you are an opponent of the Irish language, you simply are a sectarian bigot and that’s all there is to it.
It’s almost as if making sweeping statements about entire and diverse groups is bigotry in of itself.
Cara Hunter, there. A Yank who moved over here. Tell me more about “colonisers”. Last time I checked, she’s not a member of the Sioux tribes etc.
Nice to see this lad still pumping out his normal boring obsessed articles. I suppose when your competition at that paper is writing silly, ridiculous pieces like that guy who was crying about never meeting unionists in Santa Ponsa it’s no surprise.
I’m quite surprised by Cara’s language on this but it is sort of humorous that she posted in on X. I thought they were all boycotting that platform.
It’s absolutely mental people can say with a straight face this place isn’t a colony… during a discussion about whether it’s “appropriate” to display signs in the native language of the land or not lol
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