I once read a quote about Irish Protestants which I found particularly insightful. It went something like this:
"They are not a majority in Northern Ireland, they are a miniscule minority of one million on a hostile planet."
I can't remember who said it, but I thought it was a very sharp way of contrasting historic Protestant dominance in the North of Ireland with the fact that we are very much a people apart, unloved and misunderstood by the wider world.
It occurred to me recently that Ireland must be one of the few countries in the world where the term "Protestant" still has meaning. How many people in Australia for example, would choose to define themselves in this manner? I assume that people of the reform tradition in Sydney or Melbourne would either define themselves widely (as Christian) or narrowly (as Methodist, Presbyterian etc).
Only in a few other countries, such as Scotland and Switzerland, does the "P" word still have resonance. And even in these places, Protestants tend to be far less likely than their Irish co-religionists to live in segregated areas or to vote along community lines. Ireland is certainly the only country I know of where, up until very recently, being a Protestant was enough to get you killed.
This is not at all surprising. Protestantism is not, like Catholicism, one church with one structure and one leader. Indeed the whole point of Protestantism is that it is about your personal relationship with God, not with any particular church. So rather than one church, there are hundreds. Protestantism is naturally atomistic to the point where the term "Protestant community" is very close to being an oxymoron.
It is not strange then that Protestants tend not to think of themselves as a group unless they feel under some sort of physical or ideological threat from Catholicism. The only thing which unites all Protestants in all parts of the world is the fact that we aren't Catholic. Even the word "Protestant" acknowledges this salient fact. What is it against which we are supposed to "Protest"? The Church of Rome. So whenever Protestants don't feel under threat, they tend not to define themselves as such. That's why the term "Protestant" had more meaning in seventeenth century England than it does in the England of today.
While theoretically, Irish Protestants have hundreds of millions of kin, from Los Angeles to Lagos, in reality there are very few other people who define themselves as we do. We are religious dinosaurs, still fighting the battles of 300 years ago when the rest of the world has moved on.
So, when looking at events in the recent past in Northern Ireland, most other Protestants didn't feel sympathy for kin who were hurting. Rather, if they paid any heed at all, it was to realise, part amazed, part disgusted, that the divisions which they had long put behind them were still so raw in Ireland.
Our isolation from the wider world has only encouraged obstinance. The realisation that no-one likes us leads some to the conclusion "fuck the world". It certainly encouraged loyalist paramilitaries to think that way.
In the course of the Troubles the IRA enjoyed a certain level of international support for their campaign, especially in Irish-America. Even those who didn't approve of the IRA's methods, often conceded that their cause was just. I would argue that those who funded the Provos from afar were morally bankrupt, but their patronage did have one positive impact.
The fact that the IRA was respected in some quarters abroad encouraged the organisation to moderate their behaviour. Every time the Provos did something particualrly brutal, like the Enniskillen bomb in 1987, they lost some support internationally and hence they lost money. Thus after every "own goal", there was a strong impetus on the republican movement to try to avoid civilian casualties in the future.
For all the many depraved things the IRA did (and they did many), one is left with the unsettling realisation that they could have done many more if they'd been so inclined. After all, it takes less effort not to phone in a bomb warning.
On the loyalist side there was no international support to placate. They had no friends abroad, so the UVF and the UDA had no particular urge to mask their naked sectarianism and blood-lust behind euphemisms like "legitimate target". Thus loyalist violence, walking into Catholic bars and opening fire etc., was more random and more obviously sectarian than that of the IRA.
But this was a vicious circle. Loyalists had no friends because they went around murdering people just for being Catholic. But the fact that they had no international support only encouraged loyalist groups to become ever more brutal. It's almost as if loyalists were determined to cut off their nose to spite their face; doing their best to show the world that we Irish Protestants are what some of you think we are - murderous bigots.