I'm an Ulsterman. I'm from the Shankhill, Belfast. I am called William, or Billy for short. My father was also called William, or Billy for short, and was also from the Shankhill. My grandfather, another Shankhill man, was called William and nicknamed Billy too. And his father, my great grandfather, is from the same place. He too was named William, or Billy by his friends and family.
These three generations of my family were in the shipbuilding trade. I'm the first member of my family not to work at the Harland and Wolff yard in Belfast. My great-grandfather had eleven brothers and sisters. I dont know exactly how many of his generation married or exactly how many children they produced. I've so far tracked over two-hundred of them.
Many still live in the Shankhill. Some of them are still shipbuilders.
There are seven called William, also nicknamed Billy, and five called Wilma. I stand here, in front of you, as a representative of all of them. And I ask in their name the great question put by our patron, Reverend Dr Paisley. What do they know of Ulster, who only Ulster know? Or, what can my family, who come from Ulster, who lived in Ulster, who know only Ulster, say of this, our country?
Reverend Dr Paisley once spoke of the destruction of ancient Athens and the miraculous survival in the blackened ruins of that city of the sacred olive tree; the symbol of Greece, their country. And he also spoke of us, the Ulstermen, at the heart of a vanished empire, seeming to find within ourselves that one of our own oak trees, the sap rising from our ancient roots, and he said perhaps, after all, we who have inhabited this island fortress for an unbroken thousand years, brought up, as he said, within the sound of Ulster bird song under the Ulster oak, in the Ulser bog, beneath the red banner of Ulster, it is us who know most of Ulster.