Coleraine man Lee Reynolds talks about role as new Ulster-Scots Commissioner

JUST before Christmas Coleraine man Lee Reynolds took up his post as the first ever Commissioner for the Ulster-Scots and Ulster British Tradition.
This week we got speaking to Lee, son of former Chronicle Ulster-Scots columnist, Charlie Reynolds, about his feelings on getting the position and his plans for the role.
Although originally from Ballysally, Lee has lived in Belfast for many years and is a former DUP Councillor, probably best known for being one of then First Minister Arlene Foster's Special Advisors.

We asked Lee - do you feel daunted by what lies ahead?
“No, it’s more of a chance to get stuck in. I’m thinking about what I have to do in the next five years, and when – I have to plan it out.”
His position has less power than his Irish language counterpart, Pól Deeds.
Commenting, he said: “I have what I have. On day one, I'm not going to complain about what I haven't got, but work with what I have.”
“This is a new institution, there are new opportunities there, new powers, let's focus on that.”

COLERAINE
Lee, 52, was born and reared in Coleraine, mostly in Ballysally, where his mum still lives.
He was educated at Harpurs Hill and Ballysally primary schools and Coleraine Inst, then at Coleraine Tech from 1989-91. From there he went to Queen’s and studied Economic and Social History.
“There was no Ulster-Scots module in that,” he laughed.
“The old coal gas fires in Harpur’s Hill were no good for my lungs. We moved. I was diagnosed with bronchitis but they later changed it to asthma.”
He continued: “Coleraine was a nice, peaceful, quiet, safe and hard working place to grow up in that's a lot of the values you have yourself!”
Referring to Ballysally, he quoted a saying he had heard, ‘everywhere needs somewhere to look down upon.’
“In the story of Coleraine, Ballysally ended up that place. But when I go home I hear the stories about what happens in other places and its like ‘we’re supposed to be the bad spot?’”
“I don’t think the BBC documentary helped – it was effectively poverty porn.”
Lee said that ‘to his shame’ he’s not back up in Coleraine as much as he would like.
“Da’s side was north Antrim, from the Benvarden area. Ma’s side was East Londonderry - Greenhall outside Garvagh.”
“I grew up in a house where we talked about being Ulster-Scots, we were Ulster-Scots.”
He recalls two influential books, his dad gave him - Rory Fitzpatrick’s ‘God’s Frontiersmen’ and Phillip Orr’s ‘Road to the Somme.’

Did any teacher nourish and inspire his sense of Ulster-Scots?
“Sadly no! Indirectly, my history teacher at Coleraine Inst. Joe Cassells instilled in me a love of history.”
Lee said he remembered the term ‘Ulster-Scots’ used twice during his entire education.
“There was a discussion in P7 class and one of the other weans said ‘we’re Irish’ and my P7 teacher Mrs Patterson went ‘no we’re not the Irish, we’re the Ulster-Scots.’ That was it, no exposition or explanation, it was just a simple statement.
“When studying migration to America Mr Cassells said ‘these people are called the ‘Scots Irish’ they should really be called the Ulster-Scots’ – that was my experience of education in 80s and 90s.”
He said the only reference he could recall about the language was a Latin teacher who said ‘people from Ahoghill talk funny.’”
Lee was community development officer for the Ulster-Scots Heritage Council in the 1990s.
He was first introduced to the Ulster-Scots Language Society though an inner city cultural group he had been involved in Sandy Row/Donegall Pass as a student.
He was a prominent young Ulster Unionist, but defected to the UUP in 2003.

PANEL of EXPERTS
Lee was one of the authors of the Ulster-Scots Panel of Experts report in 2022, where Ulster-Scots is defined as ‘Language, Culture and Heritage’, whereas in the Westminster legislation that created his role, its ‘Language, Arts and Literature’, with Ulster-British added.
Commenting, he said: “Political negotiations in NI are a bit like a mince making machine.
“What comes out the other end isn’t necessarily as good as what was put in to begin with.
“‘Language, Culture and Heritage’ got squeezed down to ‘Language, Arts and Literature’.
“I see the latter lying at the center of the broader Language, Culture and Heritage within all that is the Ulster-Scots identity.”
Mr Reynolds revealed that the specific powers within the legislation apply only to Ulster-Scots.
Interpreting this, he said: “I am the Commissioner of Ulster-Scots and the Champion of Ulster British.”
He plans to have a public consultation this year on a working definition of Ulster British that will be used for the work of his office over the next five years.

LANGUAGE DECLINE
What, if anything, can be done to address language decline, especially among the young?
Lee said: “We are dealing with the situation of a half remembered language, what we have is not enough to keep it alive.
“We need to do fields studies, a recording project, interviewing people, especially older people to document what is there.
“We also need a dictionary project, a corpus project, a translation project.
“Ulster-Scots as is will not survive – it will come to such a state that is effectively gone. Even British English is under duress from American English,” he said.
“Social media is a great tool, if used right,” he continued, “but we are not yet in a position to maximise the good out of it, but are in a position to maximise the harm of it - the wiping away of variation, everything moving towards American standard English!”
“Existing Ulster-Scots speakers need to be given support and confidence, they have a cultural wealth they have been told is worthless, they should be proud of it and should be communicating it!”

   
HUMAN RIGHTS
His office is informed by three key human rights documents. The Council of Europe’s Charter for Minority Languages and Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
From these, he said, two principles are derived - “one: that an identity community gets to work on its identity, develop its identity and communicate its identity to the next generation.
“Two: inter communal dialogue- is not 'either or' but both of these principles !”
How does Lee intend to deal with the great variety of ‘takes’ on this Ulster-Scots ‘tradition’?
That often, ‘Ulster-Scots' doesn’t seem to dig under the surface for fear of excluding people or be accused of that?
For some its a language, for others a culture, others link it to Orange or Protestant senses of identity, with views centered around the ancient links between Scotland and Ireland also prevalent?
Lee said: “I will have to deal with mindsets. There is the determinant mindset, which is ‘you are ‘this’ - therefore you are also ‘this’ and ‘this’ and ‘this’ and are nothing else but these things.
“We need to move away from this mindset. The co-terminus way is more open – to develop this within Ulster-Scots and Ulster British. You can be both but you don't have to be. People have many identities.”
Again citing the three human rights documents that advise his new role, he said:
“The principle is self definition,” he said, “no one has the right to tell anyone else, who and what they are.”
What about the problem of those with one interpretation of Ulster-Scots trying to dominate those of another?
“We don’t want to allow domination – Mark Thompson (the broadcaster) used a lovely phrase and it’s always stuck with me ‘we’re building a city of many gateways.’ We’re looking about getting people in. The route they choose to get in, is not something we should worry to much about.
“It’s a city of many gateways but not a city of many gatekeepers.”

RECLAMATION
How do you enthuse people to read, write and speak Ulster-Scots – to overcome that ‘couldn’t be bothered' barrier?
“Work needs done to get people appreciating its wealth, getting their interest, getting them to learn more, getting to use it and to use it in new places. There will be a shock value to that - ‘ye canny use Ulster-Scots there’, ‘we can, we are’.”
“In terms of weans at school inter-generational communication is one of the important things.”
He commended the Robert Huddleston Festival for its poetry competition for schools, adding: “one of the things they encourage the weans to do is talk to their grandparents and then write their story.”
Mentioning Eric Hoffer's book ‘The True Believer’, he said, “it’s a couple of generations on when people realise they have lost something, then want to go back.
“Probably this younger generation are more likely to realise 'there is something there in our family, a wealth, and it seems to have gone and I want it back.’
“We should be encouraging that.”

EDUCATION
Lee, who said he was meeting the Curriculum Review on the following Monday, said education was central.
“We need to be in formal education. It needs to be embedded at all key stages, we have to excite a child's curiosity from an early age.”
He said that an aim would be, for a baby now, to be able to sit a GCSE exam in Ulster-Scots, by the time they are 14, be in in Ulster-Scots studies such as history and literature or language.
“You can’t study Ulster-Scots without studying the language as at least part of it,” he said.
“The legislation introduces a new educational duty. It is the responsibility of my office to make that duty real, to make it mean something and start delivering within the education system.
“I will put it to the Department - how are you going to fulfill this new duty within the curriculum?”
“Things have improved for Ulster-Scots in recent times, where you have teachers or principals who took an interest but there has been no systemic change.
“By the nature of things, any curriculum change would be available to all but you would expect greatest interest from core communities.”
He hit out at a recent Department of Education statement that he said, claimed: ‘we already fulfill the educational duty for Ulster-Scots.’
“Seriously, come on! It must be the first time in history when a new duty has been placed on a Department and they’ve fulfilled it from day one. The curriculum is written so broadly that in theory anything can be in it.
“Even if it’s in the curriculum, that’s no guarantee of classroom delivery. Teachers need materials and training. Schools will not do training unless you pay the bill.”
What power do you actually have, not only in respect of the Department of Education, but other bodies?
“I can publicly highlight their failure to deliver for Ulster-Scots. I can write reports into their behavior. I have a shame factor in terms of the research I can potentially do.
“Here are Human Rights standards, here is how this is meant to be interpreted, I’ve applied it to NI and you're not fulfilling it!
“There is a complaints function – a member of public can come to me and I can investigate that complaint and potentially hold that complaint up and challenge that organisation.”

Lee concluded: “None of this is islands, it’s all interrelated. To make this work we need to be the world’s best jugglers, to make sure all the balls are kept in the air at the same time.”