What constitutes to someone being Irish?

[Cybercubed]

Born there? Parents from there? Grandparents from there?

I'm born and raised in England, my parents are both Irish (mum from Belfast Dad from the ROI). In England whilst growing up people routinely called me Irish and so that's how I saw myself. Then I moved to Northern Ireland as teenager and had a reality check, because then everyone started calling me English. I still have an English accent so everyone still refers me to as an English person here. I've always understandably have a bit of an identity crisis therefore, compounded by the fact that the "British vs Irish" issue is right of the forefront of Northern Ireland politics as well I don't feel I fit in with either community here.

We've all heard of the term 'plastic paddy' which usually gets thrown at anyone with a non Irish accent calling themselves Irish. I personally don't really identify as anything more and feel kinda stateless but do you think calling yourself Irish should be reserved for those who are born and/or raised there only?

^^ above also very jumbled but ye get what I'm saying, I'm sure.

fighting a common (and truly evil) enemy that would have invaded you, enslaved you, and wiped your culture/language off the face of the planet.

Ummmm.....awkward!

My point about Germany was that German collective guilt over its past (which is rightly waning with new generations) helped transform the country into a different one, whereas the British government has historically had a problem with saying sorry (and that maybe that's a factor in why people don't cheer for our football teams). Germany places huge emphasis on holocaust education, but there is lots about British history I only discovered as an adult, such as the fact that concentration camps were used by the British in the boer war. So I disagree and think looking back on history is really important but agree that I don't think I should feel the need to personally feel guilty about being British.

@SionnachRua

What would be acknowledging it 'enough' in your opinion?

I notice you keep dodging the WW2 thing, presumably as it is all a bit embarrassing for you...

I can guarantee WW2 leaves more trauma in living people's minds than the famine. Nobody alive today even witnessed the famine. We only finished paying back our war debt recently.

@Bassettgirl

Germany has done very well in making amends over WW2 but it would simply never occur to me to expect an apology from modern day Germans. They had nothing to do with it. Neither would I ever speak to then in an accusatory manner.

No matter what the English do, they will always be flamed for their history. See this thread, an Irish person has inevitably brought up the famine (which nobody alive today remembers, wasnt caused by the English and has been apologised for by our PM). Yet you bring up the fact Ireland hid behind the UK during WW2 and benefited from hundreds of thousands of English being massacred without lifting a finger to help, and there is no word of an apology, or even gratitude.

Complete double standards because of a superior victim mindset, and a sense of entitlement toward England that so many people have.

"Yet you bring up the fact Ireland hid behind the UK during WW2 and benefited from hundreds of thousands of English being massacred without lifting a finger to help, and there is no word of an apology, or even gratitude."

Thousands of Irish served in WW2, including my Irish catholic grandfather who joined the Royal Navy in 1942.

Mine too.

But omg will we ever be done with these threads.

It's a sensitive issue. Not everybody defines identity in the same way. Some people define Irish in a way that I do not define it. Nobody owns the definition. I hate these threads. They're divisive.

@Cybercubed yes I know and I am aware of that.

Which is why i am careful to say Ireland and not 'the Irish people'.

But the country itself made zero official contribution to the war effort, presumably because they didnt want to pick the wrong side in case the Nazis won. They didn't take up the moral fight, a small number of republican organisations actually supported the Third Reich.

Whereas the UK endured the Blitz, many cities were absolutely flattened and the effects are still very visible today. The loss of hundreds of thousands of men. Huge war debt. An enormous depression afterwards. It was the British people that suffered, not the government who are the ones responsible for mishandling the famine.

Not a single word of gratitude from the Irish.

Far from it, the British are expected to apologise and 'acknowledge' a naturally occurring famine that happened 100 years before the war because our government (very tragically) mishandled it.

You dont get more entitled denial than that.

The women in Magdalene laundries were abused by the nuns/government who colluded in it.

The irony here is that these poor women would have probably been better off under British rule.

de Valera, his refusal to modernise, his faux 'golden age' folksy ideas about Irelands history and resurrection of it, and the catholic church was a disater for women and childrens rights

@Flaxmeadow

A lot of the women in the laundries fled to England for a better life afterwards...

the British are expected to apologise and 'acknowledge' a naturally occurring famine
The potato crop failed and all other grain crops were taken from the Irish people by the British government. Nothing "naturally occurring" about that.

The primary cause was potato blight. That caused the famine. It wasnt 'caused' by the British government. It was enormously mishandled though.

What happened to all the other food they could have eaten?

But the country itself made zero official contribution to the war effort, presumably because they didnt want to pick the wrong side in case the Nazis won.

I'm embarrassed for your lack of information. Read Clair Wills' That Neutral Island. Or even googling would be an improvement on your current ignorance.

What these threads do show is how much hostility and bad feeling their is between the two nations, the politics of Northern Ireland typifying it. Another reason why I punt on the Irish v British issue, too much hatred honestly its offputting.

@SaintofBats

Care to enlighten me? Surely if the contribution was that enormous you could just say?

@JaneJeffer I'm not sure, I know their diet relied heavily on potatoes which is why it had such a huge effect.

@Cybercubed I dont 'hate' anyone. But I find it irritating I am expected to stay silent when the English are being accused time and time and time again.

What these threads do show is how much hostility and bad feeling their is between the two nations
I really don't think there is, much as some people would like there to be and try to stir these threads up with their displays of ignorance.

I remember learning a quote for my A level history paper to the effect of 'nature caused the blight but Britain caused the famine'. Can't remember which historian wrote it though!

People didn't just live off potatoes because they were fussy eaters and didn't fancy anything else...it was because it was what they could access.

The potato crop failed and all other grain crops were taken from the Irish people by the British government.

This isn't true and more grain was imported tha exported in Ireland. The Gov could have done more yes, but Gov at the time didn't "take grain". They had an economic policy of non interference, also known as laissez-faire. They saw it as wrong to interfere with landowners and merchants business dealings and that the markets would eventually right themselves. The unfettered capitalism of the time

Nothing "naturally occurring" about that.

But it was also an extremely virulent blight that didn't just affect Ireland. I believe Belgium and other parts of the continent suffered local famines too.

Not a famine on the same horrific scale as Ireland, but in England the period was known as 'the hungry forties" . This idea that the English were eating all Irelands produce just isn't true

1845 - 3,251,907 quarters (8 bushels=1 quarter) of corn exported from Ireland to England

1845 - 257,257 sheep exported to Britain

1846 - 480,827 swine exported to Britain

1846 - 186,383 0xen exported to England

1847 - 4,000 ships carrying peas, beans, rabbits, salmon, honey and potatoes left Ireland for English ports

1847 - 9,992 Irish cattle sent to England

1847 - 4,000 Horses and Ponies sent to England

1847 - Approximately 1,000,000 gallons of butter sent to England

1847 - Approximately 1,700,000 gallons of grain-derived alcohol sent to England

1847 - 400,000 Irish people died due to starvation

The imported grain was maize which was hard to cook and digest although it stopped some people from starving to death.

JaneJeffer

The very first thing that comes up in a google search of your copy and paste is a family tree site, probably by an American family history enthusiast. Who quotes as a source "genocide studies", again this will be from America.

Not a reliable source

www.usbornefamilytree.com/irishfoodexports.htm

Any more opinions on the actual topic of the thread would be appreciated lol.

Ireland didn’t cover itself in glory but to think it was “because it didn’t want to pick a side”. I’m presuming you know there was more to it than the Famine, can you really not see the irony of a British person talking to an Irish person saying “a truly evil enemy which would have invaded you, enslaved you and wiped your culture/language off the planet”. So you agree that invasion, enslavement and (trying to) wipe a culture/language off the face of the planet would be evil - so why do you expect a county that had only recently escaped the rule of the country that did all that to it, to happily and freely join forces (and indeed as noted above, a lot of covert help was in fact given).