A Senior Ulster Unionist Party adviser admitted during an Irish Times debate in Galway last night that there was a feeling within unionism that nationalists had a stronger culture.
"I think there is a feeling within sections of the unionist community that we don't have a culture - I think it is a reaction to the cultural triumphalism of the other side," said Mr Stephen King, an adviser to the party leader, Mr David Trimble.
Addressing the debate on whether there was a Northern Irish culture, as part of the Cuirt 2000 Festival of Literature, Mr King said the North had developed links with Scotland which helped to distinguish it from the South.
He pointed out that the predominantly Catholic people of the Glens of Antrim had a particularly close relationship with Scotland, while the Gaelic language in the North had been influenced by Scots Gaelic.
"I would argue that Scotland has given the north of Ireland not only its humour, its rigorous attitude to life, and its distrust of fine arts, but the bones of positive regional consciousness through language which goes some way towards offsetting what divides us from each other in the North," he said.
"Those who seek to define culture only in terms of those aspects in which Northerners or unionists have not excelled in reveal their own racist agenda."
Mr King said that his point extended to the language of the people, pointing out that Hiberno-English rather than Gaelic was the language of the majority in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mr Tom Paulin, a regular reviewer on the BBC television's Late Review, said there was a scepticism and negativity within unionist culture. "I do know that the negativity within unionist culture is deeply dangerous and that it needs to be addressed in an understanding way," he told the audience at the Town Hall Theatre.
"I think that the nationalist community is much more practised at presenting arguments to people beyond their own natural constituency."
Mr King admitted that the unionist community had been unable to forge links equivalent to those of the nationalists with groups such as the ANC in South Africa or the Basques in Spain.
Ms Mary Holland, of The Irish Times, who chaired the debate, argued that this was because unionists had the power within Northern Ireland through most of its history.
She said that she had met people from the Shankill Road area of Belfast who had told her that they had the jobs but not the music or the poetry of the nationalist community.
Another speaker, the Northern Ireland-born artist, Mr Felim Egan, said that there was little discussion of Irish or Northern Irish art during his time in college in Belfast in the early 1970s.