Keeping religion out of politics and public life, both de facto and de jure, enables one to do this and has become the basis for all modern liberal democracy. Currently, and over the last 200 years, everyone in Ireland seems determined to do the exact opposite which is why both Ireland and the British Isles are now politically divided.

The rise of the liberal left is something I have watched with alarm during 40 years in academia. but the greatest has been the sustained attack on the ideals of the Enlightenment which, ironically, were embraced by Karl Marx. He would almost certainly have treated ‘woke-folk’ with contempt.

The security and livelihoods of Ulster depended on maintaining, unhindered, those British connections that Irish nationalism opposed, and still does. However, this didn’t mean that Ulster workers saw themselves as not Irish.