Trying to escape words of prejudice

I was bewildered when a Dublin lady living in Belfast was described to me as "very nice, you know, but English" - even more so when I overheard my four-year-old daughter describing me in the same terms. What does "English" mean?

I write as an English woman who, throughout my life, has tried to be multi-cultural and to acknowledge the genetic inheritance I received from my English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh grandparents.

It was easy to do so growing up in my part of multi-racial Liverpool. At our local Church of England primary school, for example, on St Andrew's day (patron of Scotland), we sang Auld Lang Syne; danced Scottish reels; heard about Robert the Bruce watching the spider; and celebrated the defeat of the English at Bannockburn.

On St David's day (patron of Wales), we sang Welsh songs; appreciated the desire of the Welsh to keep their culture; and learned how Edward, after promising them a Prince of Wales who could speak English, gave them his new-born son!

On St Patrick's day, we sang St Patrick's Breastplate; heard about the coming of Christianity to Ireland and hence to Europe; we were told something about the uneasy relationship between England and Ireland, including the potato famine, and its effects on Liverpool's culture.

On St George's day (patron of England), we sang about building Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land"; celebrated Shakespeare; and talked about the multicultural modern England.

In retrospect, we celebrated the disunity of these islands just as much as their unity.

It was from this background that I came to Belfast to study medicine at Queen's University in the years before the "Troubles".

By chance, another English girl and I lived for a year in a Christian hostel and were immersed in "a Protestant culture for a Protestant people". The staff and other residents were very friendly and pointed out all the restrictions of a puritan culture. They warned us how everything closed on the Sabbath and explained the behaviour of exclusive sects. Some showed us how to break the rules and taught us how to diffuse the energy of those people who handed out tracts and would try to save our souls.

Even so, the pressure to be "saved" and conform could become too great. I would then run up and downstairs singing, Santa Maria, ora pro nobis - words which must have been very hurtful to those evangelical Protestants but they neither objected nor complained. So we learned that, behind all the dour rules, there was a desire to give us our personal space.

I learned to value the Ulster Scots identity; to recognise and appreciate their association with the ancient kingdom of Dal Riada, and their deep love for their land; to learn from them about the townlands and Irish place names. When I asked why they didn't learn Irish, they said: "If you live here long enough you will find out."

There was in the hostel a small, antagonistic group who would say: "You English deprived us of our non-conformist religion; you threw out our ministers; you would not recognise our marriages." I was so bamboozled by all this that I fled to the comparative safety of the Church of Ireland.

However, a smaller group even tried to prevent us from going there. The Church of Ireland, they said, was dominated by bishops; kept saints' days; and used set prayers from a book - whereas to them only extemporary prayer was sincere worship.

After I moved from the hostel to digs, I still had problems trying to understand Protestant culture. My landlady would do her washing on a Sunday but, instead of hanging it out to dry, she hid it in a drawer until Monday. She "had to keep the Sabbath" because "Catholics want to destroy us".

I was not alone in my bewilderment. One of our lecturers, an English Catholic, was fixing his gate with a hammer and nails on a Sunday when he was told by a passerby that he would be better using a screw for that. He replied: "But I thought a nail would do." "Yes," the passerby answered, "but if you used a screw you wouldn't be breaking the Sabbath" and walked on.

Nobody had explained to the lecturer, or to me, that on the Ulster Sabbath there must be - as in the building of Temples (1 Kings 6.7) - "neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard".

To me, a Liverpudlian, criticism of government was as natural as breathing. But now I found that with unionists any criticism I had of Westminster was acceptable, while if it was Stormont I criticised, I was immediately told: "Ah, but you don't know what it is like to live here."

If I was having trouble with puritans then, I reasoned, relationships with Catholics would be easier, and certainly those I met around Queen's were pleasant and friendly. In Liverpool, I had often heard my Catholic neighbours criticise their church but Northern Irish Catholics, speaking about their religion, seemed different.

The impression I got from them was that "the priests are always right" and that everyone went to daily Mass and heeded every word of the sermon. They appeared to live up to the parody of what Protestants believed about them. Years later, I discovered that this was merely an elaborate front to impress Protestants.

Often, to some Catholics, the sound of my English voice seemed to evoke memories of past injuries and a deep sense of national hurt. They showed this by hostility and rudeness - "I don't speak to Brits", "you Protestants have been destroying us for 800 years". Once, while I was waiting for a bus outside a hospital as an ambulance went past, I was verbally abused by a woman standing next to me for not crossing myself - and I had no idea why.

I tried to learn Irish and to find out more about Irish culture but all I got was a stream of political propaganda. If I opened my mouth in this context to criticise the Westminster or Stormont parliaments, I was told: "Good, we will make a republican of you yet." It seemed that Catholics and nationalists gave me less space in which to be myself than those Protestants who were out to save my soul.

This belief was heightened by the few - the very few - Protestant nationalists I met. They complained that local Catholic nationalists would have nothing to do with them.

That was 40 years ago and times have changed. Today, in religious circles, I move freely among, and share in the worship of, a variety of churches where nobody tries to convert me to anything. In most churches, autocratic clergy saying "you must" are being replaced by clergy with a more pastoral understanding.

Among non-ecumenical minded Protestants, there is debate about widening horizons. Gradually and quietly, churches are turning to face the 21st century. But politically and culturally, we are still so emotionally involved with certain words, used to describe one another, that we have not yet acquired a vocabulary which would allow people to move forward.

As an Englishwoman wedged between two mono-cultures, I am forced to ask what does "English" mean? When I ask people what they mean by "English", they say: "Don't worry, we don't think of you as `English'."

Is "English" an expression of prejudice? Does the word conceal hurts which might be better expressed in different words?

The Presbyterians saw the English as forbidding their religious freedom - yet the same laws applied to English Presbyterians. Catholics saw the English as Protestant tyrants who, for hundreds of years, have been oppressing them - yet if Cromwell caused havoc in Ireland just because he was English, and regarded the Irish as anti-English, what excuse had he for his violence in England?

Why am I, as an English woman, 300 years later, still regarded as having some responsibility for Cormwell's dirty deeds?

What is "Irish?" Do you have to be Catholic to be Irish? If you learn the Irish language, is there still an implication that you have to become a republican? What do people mean when they say to me: "With a voice like yours, you can't have had an Irish father?"

I live in Belfast, but I can't say where that is without offending someone. Is it in Ulster? The Six Counties? Northern Ireland? The Province? The North? Part of the UK? All I wish is that I could open my mouth and talk to people without offending someone!

Dr Joan Turner is a member of the Church of Ireland Marriage Council.