Irish racism in England

[angell84]

I am shocked. I am half English, half Irish. My Irish mum lived in England for a long time, gave birth to us children there with her English husband, and then moved back to Ireland.

The reason that she always gave me for returning to Ireland, was that, "she could not take the nastiness to her anymore". She described one incident of many to me: she went to my brother's primary teacher in England, and said that he had lost something, he must have been six at the time, and the teacher said to her , "sure what do you expect - he is half Irish".

I always thought of it in an abstract way, I never really understood what she meant. Until I spent quite a long time in the U.K this year.

I was absolutely shocked at the hatred and nastiness, and calling Irish people stupid.

How can it be possible? The U.K stole alot of Ireland's land, committed mass genocide during the famine, eradicated the Irish language,

And yet instead of apologising, many people are going around calling Irish people stupid.

Isn't it nearly unbelievable? It would be like a German going up to a Jew and calling them stupid. That it was their fault , thhat everything happened the way it did.

I am really shocked

@Fanlights Seriously? hmm ...Yes

It cant work both ways, either the ROI is another independent european country as important to Britain as somewhere like the Netherlands or the countries are permanently intertwined. If this obsession with the british and the tedious tribal disdain for them is to go on and on I know which one I would prefer. You dont hear the same in France about Germany, Poland about Russia.

Yes demail, Nationalist could only ever of course apply to irish republicanism, thanks for illustrating my point perfectly.

Im talking about the last 20 years or so where nationalists have been distorting history. The same thing happened in Yugoslavia and was in a large part responsible for war.

Its not that long since home rule supporters were depicted as apes? well it was 100 years plus ago actually...
Home rule was also supported by the british, conveniently forgotten about now.
The history is there, deal with it as history or not at all.

It is on the curriculum. I ended up in the local newspaper for my score on the test on the troubles so it must have been.

The black irish thing is interesting. There are lots of irish clan surnames, including my own, that come from the word for foreign (gall) and dark (Dubh). Doyle (Dubhghaill) means dark foreigner. I think they are likely decended from Southern French (Normans), Basque celts and settled spanish traders (likely to settle there due to religious similarities)

That's not why the Americans labelled Irish immigrants 'black'.

It's about the fact that Irish people who arrived in the USA were white and spoke English, but they were dirt poor, uneducated, catholic. They had to be relegated to be beneath white people.

That one theory for its use in America but it also a term that now refers to black hair dark eyed Irish people.

An American on here once gave out to me for not knowing this but it was American classism! Not Irish classism. Her history, not mine.

The word black was to lump them in with the blacks. The Irish rose above the blacks socially by forming parishes and networking through their parishes and forming schools and communities and being loyal to each others' businesses.

The thing with that is I would question if they called black people 'blacks' back then in the US. More likely it would have been 'Negro' or something a lot more objectionable.

The history is there, deal with it as history or not at all.

You're not exactly an analytical thinker, are you, @Patroclus? In your strangely black and white mental universe, is there only one version of history called The Facts That Everyone Agrees On?

@Patroclus I'll think you'll find that Polish do have the same feelings about Russia.

There are two countries who love Ireland (based on emigration/immigration) when they have a connection and they are usually Americans and English (liverpool, Boston, New York, Chicago, Manchester).
The one country who seems to love us for no known reason as we are like chalk and cheese is Germany.
Most of our tourists would be American, British and German. Canadians feature also but less so than the Americans. British due to proximity perhaps or ancestry. No explicable reason why the Germans are so fond of us.

And here's Wiki on it, though they mention France also....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

By far our biggest tourists are British!

United Kingdom 3,728,900
United States & CanadaCanada 2,101,500
Germany 681,400

3.7 million in 2017. That's almost equivalent to the entire population of Ireland lol.
So while there is some animosity held, millions of Brits still go to Ireland.
Out of the 3.7 million visitors, I haven't seen one publicised case of a British reg car being vandalised. That's to the pp who mentioned her parents telling her not to park where it would be seen.

My favourite moment incidentally from Ireland's absolute crash and burn in the financial crisis was this one......

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18371142

I think Angela Merkel even mentioned it subsequently with a wry grin.

Was anyone watching the Late Late? With the comedian on about Merkel coming over in two weeks to see how we had spent our money? Can't think of his name?

This was broadcast this Friday. It's about Angela Merkel coming to Ireland to see how we account for the money she/the EU gave us.

1. The FAI (Football association of Ireland) is in debt thanks apparently to John Delaney
2. Ireland tried to enforce gambling legislation on Bingo players
3. We bought a printer costing 1.8 million but it now won't fit in the doors of the Dáil (equiv of HoC).

There's an earlier bit in it but I can't find a clip about it, about us spending half a billion on a new hospital....

Irish Catholics are not affluent?

I'll just go and tell my dad that his grandfather's castle in Co wicklow (Glenart) was never his, and that his full time nanny was a figment of his imagination, and that his parents didn't fully fund university education for their six children (four of whom are women).

I'll go ahead and tell him that the several thousand pounds he and his siblings get every year from the rent of the shops they own (in addition to their own well salaried degree and PhD educatated careers) is imaginary too.

All the family silver, several acres of land, horses and private beach (clugga also co wicklow) aren't theirs either.

My dad is in his 60s and is not the oldest of his siblings.

He married my mam (from Liverpool) and I grew up between Ireland and Liverpool, and can say with some certainty that my Irish family was/is far more privileged than my English side.

His house had a name ffs. Our house in Liverpool didn't even have a proper garden.

Re the Black Irish comment. I’d never heard of it until recently when I read an interview with the actor Dean Winters and he referred to himself as Black Irish. So I went to look it up. It just reminded me when I read piglet89’s comment.

Isnt Dean WInters fake irish? surely the fact hes italian has more to do with it

There are well established facts yes, that have even sometimes been tested in court, such as the holocaust. Again what you are saying Fanlights sounds like the sort of thing I hear from pro Mladic serb nationalists all the time.

I don’t know, he referred to himself as Black Irish, as I said, I’d never heard the expression before so went to look it up. Most of what I can find refers to the Irish with dark hair and complexions and seems to be a term used in the US. I’ve not heard it in the U.K. or Ireland before.

Well I just don’t see in 10 years time we will even be having this conversation. Boris Johnson has got a huge majority. That changes everything about Brexit, because he is now very powerful. Previously he was a mess.

Britain has decided that it doesn’t want to be part of the EU. Because of that decision we have to do radical things to our economy to be more competitive. The EU don’t want that but now after three and half of years of piddling around you now have a British PM who really doesn’t care about Ireland and will presumably just go with the same old advice as usual, ie no change.

What happens in the interim to Ireland is their business. As an EU state, they will have to be different from Britain. The difference between us is where the money will come. It’s why it’s been so hard fought, to avoid alignment.

All of this means diminishing links with ROI. Historically and in the future. Part of that will be immigration, a lot will be Law, and finally, very different interest. What happens to NI is interesting- but basically nothing unless Stormont comes back. That’s not happening any time soon.

I’m not pro Brexit. But it’s now a fact and so the obligation is to make it work. Removal of certain EU rules can be very beneficial for trade and state funding. I have no reason to imagine a bed of roses but also it does have advantages.

Maybe you should hang around less with rabid Serb nationalists and read up on historiography, @Patroclus.

Lex what a refreshingly rational and balanced post.

@LexMitior - no consideration of the GFA in your analysis - that in itself is very interesting.