A couple of weeks ago, it sent out a 19-year-old youth, who had only joined it a matter of days beforehand, to tell the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster, which is looking into the impacts of the Brexit Protocol, that such was the anger that he could not rule out people resorting to violence. Already, with the results of a new census imminent, it is only among the over-60s that Protestants are in a significant majority. Already, unionism does not have a majority at Stormont. The North has changed dramatically, and unionism, instead of spending 2021 celebrating the centenary of the foundation of the Northern Irish state it used to dominate, is in crisis. Men who had been stirring for a return to violence for months showed teenagers how to make petrol bombs, then stood cheering on the footpaths like dads at a school sports day. They did grim interviews in which they blamed the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and said it must be scrapped. An attempt is being made to groom and radicalise a new generation of boys to believe in violence and sectarian hatred.

What I found striking was that it wasn't difficult at all to find women to speak to me, or non-binary to speak to me - there are lots of LGBTQ in the book, lots of women in the book, lots of people who aren't part of political parties. Read More Related Articles

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She said: "I was very surprised because I suppose it's often believed that people in the Republic of Ireland don't have an interest in the North. I know from working in the south that it's often an uphill struggle to get southern media interested in northern stories, but it's good to see that book-buyers are having more of an interest in the north." I certainly found a lot of anger, but it was anger directed at things like the failure of the Executive to deliver on abortion law, anger about poverty, anger about the fact that there are food banks all over Northern Ireland and people are struggling to survive, anger about the humiliation of people not being able to get benefits.

Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground, is the follow up to 2001's Northern Protestants - An Unsettled People, which is believed to have sold over 10,000 copies.

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The outworkings of Brexit - championed by the DUP - have added to the sense of disenchantment and dislocation felt by some northern Protestants

Dee Stitt, convicted armed robber, UDA leader and erstwhile community worker, told her to do research on him. The DUP now seems very out of step, and I think the UUP had been on social issues as well, until very recently. Amnesty International did a poll recently where they shared that 67% of DUP voters felt that abortion should not be regarded as a crime. So their politics are out of step with the views of their voters.Susan said she chose to write the follow up to Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People now, because of the great changes that were happening on these islands.

The book features almost 100 interviews with politicians, former paramilitaries, victims and survivors, business people, religious leaders, community workers, young people, writers, and others. Read More Related Articles But there are other influences at work now. Women who have held communities together through generations of disadvantage are demanding a voice in public life. As Eileen Weir put it to me, “working class women are streets ahead of the politicians”. Robert Lundy was the city’s governor during the 1689 siege and felt that a siege would inflict unbearable hardship on the people and that surrender should be negotiated with the Jacobite forces. He was banished, his name still used as a warning to those deemed to be traitors to the Protestant people.

I also spoke with Margaret Veitch and Joan Anderson in Enniskillen. They are angry and despairing. Their parents, Billy and Nessie Mullan, were murdered in the IRA’s Remembrance Day bombing in their home town in 1987. No one had been convicted for the sectarian atrocity and the sisters felt the victims and their families had been forgotten. There are pastors, politicians, paramilitaries, poets, business entrepreneurs, community workers, farmers, army veterans (of whom there are thousands in the north), oddballs and more. However, if there's one theme dominating the book it's summed up in its title, which is taken from a remark by a local poet, Jean Bleakney, whose family is from Garrison and who grew up in south Armagh and Newry. Most of the people who are interviewed aren't the same red angry faces we see on our tv's on a daily basis, talking like they are the spokesman (for they are mostly men) for the whole unionist/protestant/loyalist community. Susan talks to artists, entrepreneurs, community activists, bandsmen, church leaders and writers, ex policemen and ex paramillitaries. Victims and survivors too, of course. A true cross section of society. I think the British people got a bit of an eye-opener into the DUP when they held the balance of power in Theresa May's government, and I think it's fair to say they didn't get a very flattering view of what unionism represented.