ANNIVERSARIES:CULTURE MINISTER Nelson McCausland said unionists should look to a decade of centenaries marking the Ulster Covenant in 2012, the Battle of the Somme in 2016 and the creation of the Northern state in 2021.
Contrasting these with what he said was the impossibility of a united Ireland by the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Mr McCausland said the trio of anniversaries he outlined would underscore the Britishness of unionists and their place within the United Kingdom.
“I think of 2012 and the 100th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant, the document that has become known as the ‘birth certificate of Northern Ireland’,” he said.
Mr McCausland warned against what he claimed was creeping secularisation.
“We live in a day when there is an attempt to secularise our society and to sideline religious faith. That is something which we are right to resist.
“We have a decade of centenaries, from 2012 through to 2021, the centenary of Northern Ireland.”
Some people could remember the 50th anniversary in 1971 which was marked “against a background of terrorist violence”, he said.
“But the worst efforts and the worst outrages of the IRA could not force us out of the United Kingdom,” he added.
“Here we are and here we stay, and we can also look forward to those centenary celebrations in 2021.”