Ulster Unionist David McNarry says his party isn't a flock of bigots. Just because they floated a motion to prevent Irish being spoken officially in Northern Ireland doesn't mean that they want to prevent Irish being spoken....officially...in Northern Ireland.
It's all in the way that the Shinners use Irish, as if it's the indigenous language and the unionists are a bunch of interlopers who refuse to learn the native tongue and don't want to hear it. It's all in the way that the use of Irish in official business reminds the unionists that they were planted there and that Irish is, indeed, the native tongue of the entire island. Even the part that they insist is a corner of the British Empire -- where they speak English.
The motion to ban Irish in Stormont was defeated, thanks to the SDLP and Sinn Fein and a few Democratic Unionists who regard the issue as a non-issue. Nelson McCausland of the DUP would like the Irish language to be embraced as part of the culture, to accept what cannot be erased. The Welsh speak Welsh, the Scots speak Scottish, and they're all part of the same empire. Why try to make a native tongue go away, or legislate it into the corner?
Unionists have been very vocal in their antipathy to Irish being spoken in the Stormont Assembly. It makes the nationalists that much more keen to speak it.
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