Professor Arthur Aughey and author Dr. Aaron Edwards at the book launch

The launch of A People Under Siege: The Unionists of Northern Ireland, From Partition to Brexit and Beyond took place at No Alibis Bookstore in Belfast on 15 June 2023. Remarks were made by the Publisher at Merrion Press, Conor Graham, who said that the author’s books make ‘a significant contribution to the history of this place’. Professor Arthur Aughey, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Ulster University, launched the book, saying that A People Under Siege resonated with a

very distinctive authorial voice, an authorial voice that’s confident in its ability and confident in having something to say. Readability is intelligence after all… This book is a history of a people, a people with all their anxieties and expectations, all their weaknesses and their strengths, all the challenges that face them and the opportunities they may take. And it’s traced over the period of a century… The optimism in the book is in an idea of progress which Aaron takes from the Ulster-Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson… It’s not just a history, it’s about people. And for those who have read Aaron’s previous books you can gather it is often those who have been marginalised historically or who are not featured currently who feature prominently… What Aaron tries to do in the book is to locate people, locate place and locate ideas and try to build a vision from it… The book ends with a brief manifesto which draws on Edna Longley’s celebrated description of Northern Ireland as a cultural corridor or a channel of influences between things British and things Irish… It reminds us that whatever the institutional configuration of Northern Ireland, whatever the constitutional configuration of Northern Ireland, Unionists, Nationalists and Neither are bound together in a community of fate. And that binding together that community of fate can be either vicious… or, possibly, it can be virtuous. To be differently British, to be differently Irish is the reality of people here, even if – like that Cole Porter song – they might be true to these different identities in their own fashion. Now, Aaron doesn’t quite put it that way but that was the song in my head when I finished the book: Differently British, differently Irish, each in their own way.

The book launch was attended by family, friends and academic colleagues and was accompanied by coverage in BBC Northern Ireland’s The View, the Irish Times and the Sunday Independent.

About the Book

Since the Brexit referendum of 2016, extraordinary uncertainty has hung over the future of the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, creating a crisis for the unionist community. A referendum that began on the question of sovereignty quickly degenerated into cries of betrayal over a redrawn border in the Irish Sea, and has led to unionists becoming more insular again, resurrecting ethnic and nationalist notions of what constitutes the Union.

In A People Under Siege, historian Aaron Edwards, a native of Belfast, explores the profound challenges facing the community and, in the process, articulates what is really meant by unionism. He explains key developments within unionism over the past turbulent century and examines how a people who believe themselves to be once again under siege are viewed by others beyond their community. In doing so he confronts the narrow, sectional beliefs and prejudices of unionists and loyalists, as well as outlining their more positive and forward-thinking aspects. By embracing these, Edwards explains how divisions could be healed and a position reached of mutual acceptance, tolerance and understanding that will benefit the entire population.