Ah you're a Catholic!

[Appleday11]

I moved to England to work last year. I'm Irish.

When I arrived at my workplace, one of my colleagues said "Ah you are Irish, this is a nice city, there is a Catholic church down the road that you can go to".

I think she was trying to be helpful but I thought it was quite bizarre. I'm not Catholic and I told her so.

Second time - I was out in the pub with a mixed group of people. Some of them I had never met before. One man said "ah you're Irish, you're a Catholic!" I told him Im not.

Third time- I was at another group. A woman said to me "you are Irish. Ah so you like such and such. And you are a Catholic". I told her I am not.

I found it strange as I have never really thought about religiom. Do some people here think that all Irish people are Catholics? My family were not religious at all and I was never brought up any religion

You were the one who said they were shipped off for years, aren't they lucky they got to come home 😀
What are you talking about that I'm "utterly obsessed"? I posted ONE POST about my own history lol
You're the one who sounds "utterly obsessed" on this thread. Calm down love 😉

If I met an Irish person, I would presume they were Catholic just because they come from a majority Catholic country, yes. I wouldn't assume they were practising.

I'm from Wales. If you have any knowledge of Wales, you might presume I'm from a non-conformist/chapel background. You might also think I don't attend any church regularly. You'd be right on both counts.

Yes, I see what you mean. This kind of aggressive one-sidedness doesn't help actual recognition of Irish historical grievances.

Yes, this BBC clip about Northern Ireland's Peace Babies is quite interesting on the divides that even now exist to some degree (much less though).

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DOYKBiAcTID0&ved=2ahUKEwj4j6OfqvWSAxWVYEEAHfpNIggQtwJ6BAgtEAE&usg=AOvVaw3wdohDItkLUJdyJOGUtJ0A

Not everyone does but in England's past there certainly are traumatic events that effected huge numbers. The most recent would be WW2.

Is Irish hatred of the British really common though? I hope not.

Irish history is also my history, and the history of a lot of English people - so many of us have Irish blood/grandparents/ancestry.

I have actually watched a lot of documentaries and read a lot of books about the Troubles (and history leading up to) including the autobiography of Gerry Adams (which is a very controversial choice to many here). I consider myself far better acquainted with Irish history than most.

But truly, compassion fatigue sets in when there is this constant berating of English people, how awful they are, how they’re ’uneducated about history’, how we have ‘never suffered’ and so on. It’s relentless, and these threads are yet more thinly veiled opportunities to dig at English people and force us to engage with it all over again.

Let me ask you, what will be enough for some Irish people to start to move on from this issue? Britain has released virtually all IRA prisoners, Northern Ireland has complete autonomy over its future. Britain has issues public apologies, held extensive and very expensive inquiries into the Troubles, we negotiated the GFA. Ireland has prospered in the last decade and is doing very well, better than England in many ways, so no active harm remains.

You have to realise this level of hatred is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. It’s not healthy at all

I think it is, sadly. I used to think it was a hatred of the British government (which would be more specific and understandable) but things like threads like these just prove otherwise.

I think wrongs done to Ireland in the past should be remembered, especially as there's more coverage of stuff like slave trade & Indian colonialism abroad, but stuff closer to home not covered. Scotland & Wales too.

More broadly, Scotland & Wales & Ireland should be taught about more in school history generally.

But keeping grudges & trauma emotionally alive is not helpful, nor directing it at modern people who bear no responsibility.

Yes...this reminds me actually of a thread I did a few weeks ago on AIBU about why the SNP keep being voted in. Several posts noted that anti-English sentiment is one factor among others.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/amibeingunreasonable/5483947-to-wonder-why-people-keep-voting-snp

I also listened to an interview with The Times Welsh former editor, Simon Jenkins, which mentioned anti-English sentiment in Wales being unhelpful (eg. Museums reluctant to promote castles built by the English)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gcwy

So anti-English sentiment is an issue to some degree across the UK...probably worse in Ireland due to the particularly fraught history into recent times.

Great post. It's certainly an unhealthy approach.

I'm quite interested in the Troubles myself : I don't suppose you might be able to recommend any books you found particularly informative?

Exactly, there have been lots of immigration riots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_anti-immigration_protests

Of course, so I would say:

Gerry Adams - Before the Dawn
Dirty Linen - Martin Doyle
Say Nothing - Patrick Keefe
Killing Thatcher - Rory Carroll

Documentary wise, Hunger is a film but a good one regarding the hunger strikes. There was a good series on iPlayer called Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland (they also did an excellent series on the invasion of Iraq). Also ‘Sunday’ on C4 (ends with audience debate which was quite poignant I thought).

Irish people may want to comment on that list if there is a moral hole in it somewhere but I think it covers the main aspects/viewpoints.

I see what you mean, but not sure about those analogies. Pakistan has only been a country since 1947, that's not an ancient hatred. And Taiwan was similarly not an ancient hatred: that again began in the 1940s when Chiang fled there to keep the Nationalist government going.

What would be a better analogy...

This sounds great, thank you so much. I have read Say Nothing, which I thought was very well-written, but none of the others. I really like long-form documentaries, I think they can give insight you don't necessarily get from a book.

Really? This thread is absolutely littered with them!

I visited Ireland in the 1990s and it was predominantly white with a few Poles and everyone went to church

You are comparing your visit to someone who lived and was educated there. Really?

Visiting family actually. I’m of Irish descent

Until very recently, Eire with the exception of Dublin maybe, was predominantly white Irish.

I have family in Spain (who are Spanish). As a mere visitor to Spain to visit family, I wouldn't dream of declaring that I know more about Spanish culture and history than the Spanish who were born, bred and educated there because it would make me sound very stupid indeed.

@Catlady007007
The thing is…. I don’t think this post is genuine. I think it’s been started deliberately to encourage an argument about race and to sow division
Im afraid I think it’s highly unlikely that someone in the UK in 2026 would immediately point someone, even if they were Irish, to a Catholic Church. The only exception maybe was if the other person was also catholic and they were trying to find common ground. If so, the OP has missed any nuance and is using it deliberately to cause an argument.
The censuses of the 1990s in Ireland showed that over 90% of the population identified as catholic and over 93% were born in Ireland and the remaining 7% were British ( of Irish extraction) plus some Poles.

I agree with you although there was immigration to Ireland in the 90s, particularly the late 90s. (Also please don’t call Ireland Eire…there are a few reasons for this).

Exactly. I'm increasingly suspicious of this OP.

I agree. I think a lot of these anecdotes are questionable because they just seem utterly unbelievable.

It does feel like every couple of months somebody pops up just to ‘make a comment about English people, as an Irish person…’ and these threads always end in a pile on by certain Irish posters to say how racist, imperialist and awful we are, and berate us for not knowing Irish history or showing enough contrition about events from hundreds of years ago (tbh nothing would ever be enough for them anyway).

It’s like a strange urge they get to repeatedly kick the hornet’s nest and then cry victim when people don’t want to tolerate their bullshit.

It does feel like every couple of months somebody pops up just to ‘make a comment about English people, as an Irish person

I suspect it’s quite often the same ‘somebody’.