Queen's Rebels

Book excerpt: "Queen's Rebels" is a seminal book, described as 'the classic discussion of Protestant loyalism' and 'the most original study of Ulster loyalist ideology'. It is an interpretive essay on the history of the Ulster Protestant community from the seventeenth-century plantations to the mid 1970s. A central concern of the essay is the seemingly contradictory pattern of 'conditional loyalty' on the part of twentieth-century Ulster Protestants. The book was written in the mid-1970s during the some the most violent years of 'the Troubles' when the author spent a year in Belfast, and it has been long unavailable. The new introduction by John Bew places "Queen's Rebels" in the context of the literature on the Northern Ireland and brings the story up to date.