Black and Tans / Yup the Ra

[BATIRA]

Hi - how do you feel about references to the Black and Tans, singing Come Out Ye Black and Tans, shouting “yup the RA” in a professional workplace?

I like what you did there. 😀

Not to mention the women’s football team singing it in their dressing room after beating Scotland in October 22, and the video going viral. I’m completely unattuned to sport but even I was aware of that, and my undergraduates were discussing it in a seminar on nationalist writings. And having to explain to newly-arrived visiting students.

Has this passed you by, OP?

Oh dear OP
I have similar experiences and worse ‘f… off back to England’ and ‘we’ve had five hundred years of you so go home’ type of thing.

Apart from one incident where a neighbour refused to fill my kettle when my water was off all the other anti-English insults were from men.

I was attacked by a man in a shop who screamed into my face that I was a English c..t not one person intervened and I called the Gardai only to find the shop manager deleted the video and refused to witness.

All this was west of Ireland nothing ever happened anywhere else.

Not everyone believes that this happens to English people.

Some who believe will somehow imply you are exaggerating.

They are being arseholes and if this is happening in a work place then it should be reported as bullying and discrimination- you have the law to back you up.

The irony for me is that despite not sounding Irish I actually am!

Good luck with challenging this behaviour- if they’re like this with you imagine how they’d be with other immigrants!

Not engaging with local culture??

May she be forever punished by forcing her to attend every local GAA game in the county.

What a twisty way to engage in a bit of victim blaming.

I agree its unacceptable OP, and particularly so in the presence of an English person. However context is important. Many people especially younger ones have no idea of the significance and its a chant thats been around for so long its as meaningless as 'oggy oggy oggy oy oy oy.' I think its important to raise it and try and stamp it out but I think you should try to not be offended unless it was hostile. It sounds different to the targeted racism that @graceinspace999 describes above. People of all cultures have phrases they don't understand that can be offensive. For example when a British person says 'Southern Ireland', I've seen many a debate about that on MN, also 'throwing a paddy' which I admit I didn't know about and wouldn't be offended by but I can understand why someone would.

Ha..' throwing a paddy ' or ' that's a bit Irish ' my Sil uses these a lot. Can't help it I suppose. Its an age thing too.

You'll notice this thread was from a few months ago at about the time when the Wolfe Tones played electric picnic. It was all over all the Irish news, which was probably what inspired the conversation. My point was that if the OP was even reading the paper or watching the news, they would have known this. And that up whatever is a common expression that you would easily hear if you were just going around.

I didn’t hear it! I’ve no interest in the Wolf Tones or the Electric Picnic. I don’t feel under obligation to immerse myself in parts of Irish culture in which I have no interest.

Also that is a completely different context.

I think singing up the ra near a person you know to be English is racist bullying.

It’s telling them you celebrate the deaths of those innocent people who died by being blown to pieces in England - by singing up the IRA.

I still think you were victim blaming though maybe unaware.

The OP didn't say it was directed at her which is why I think colleagues were discussing something that was on the news at the time. My point was that if she had been reading or watching the news in Ireland, she would have been aware of that.

It was in her presence and singing in a workplace.

They were talking about the horrific Black and Tans who haven’t oppressed Irish people for a very long time and as a non-news watcher I would hazard a guess were not headlining on the nine o’clock news.

The more you write the more I see your posts as stretching and bending backwards to excuse the behaviour.

I’ve heard it all before and I think I’ll leave it here as I don’t think you’ll ever see how horrible and isolating it is to be perceived as ‘different’ and to be alone and on the receiving end of such behaviour 😔

The OP stubbornly refused to answer questions about the context in which the song was being sung, or what type of 'professional' workplace this occurred in, so it seems perfectly possible that it was as part of a discussion of current affairs, if not the Wolfe Tones, then the Irish women's football team controversy, which was all over the media. Both were certainly discussed in my workplace, and would have been explained to foreign colleagues.

Any of these explanations seem considerably more likely than an office suddenly bursting into a rousing chorus of 'Come Out Ye Black and Tans' on a wet Tuesday morning in between meetings.

don’t think you’ll ever see how horrible and isolating it is to be perceived as ‘different’ and to be alone and on the receiving end of such behaviour

I can assure you that my 25 years living in various parts of England featured countless crude manifestations of anti-Irishness, and some outright discrimination.

I don’t think I was addressing you?

Of course Irish people have suffered racism and discrimination in the UK! Especially in the 1970s.
That is disgusting behaviour.

You might have heard conversations about Irish matters which were meant for you to hear while not including you.

However, the same can be said for using that as an excuse to bully English people today - however indirectly.

Remember that a lot of people here today that you see as English or ‘foreign’ are actually Irish.

Be fair to the OP about her reticence in answering every single question.

If you look back at all her posts you’ll see she has answered enough questions to give a clear picture of her situation.

I have had similar directed at me and it is a way of disguising the hostility in order to defend against being pulled up for bullying.

She does not want to out herself on a public forum and it’s easy to understand why unless you are determined to find fault with her.

Why is it so difficult to understand that there are small groups of people who behave like this when you see the ‘ far right’ or ‘patriots’ running around with sticks and disgusting placards.

Your post is offensively stupid.

I left England in December 2019. Not the 1970s.

The anti-Irish remarks were made directly to me, not overheard, and, given the total ignorance of staggering numbers of English people of the most basic facts about Ireland, would, in any case, not have involved any discussion of Irish current affairs.

These people were not Irish, don’t be silly. In some cases an anti-Irish remark was followed by them priding themselves on having voted for Brexit and being canny enough to have applied for an Irish passport via a grandparent. Often then followed by a complaint about how long the process took.

Their Irish grandparent does not make them Irish. It certainly doesn’t appear to have given them the remotest knowledge of or interest in Ireland, or any insight into their own motivation for kneejerk anti-Irishness.

The Black and Tans burnt down the city centre of my home town, and shot a man on the first floor landing of my next door neighbours house, killed two unarmed civilians in my workplace, and ransacked the house I grew up in. The locations of B and T outrages were flagged up by an art project by a local artist in 2020. We’ve just had the decade of centenaries. Irish reunification is being discussed. The only member of the parachute regiment to stand trial for the murder of unarmed civilians on Bloody Sunday has not yet been tried. Forgive me for not thinking this is ‘old news’. Forgive me also for thinking that you might want to think a little harder about why people might be discussing outrages perpetrated by the British army upon innocent civilians, whether or not they fit your own narrative of what constitutes ‘current news’.

No one of any nationality should be bullied for their nationality. Why would someone like me think otherwise, when I had such unpleasant treatment at the hands of a minority of English people, often unexpected ones? But the OP chose to give no details about the circumstances in which ‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans’ was being sung in her workplace. If it was being done to intimidate her and make her uncomfortable, then of course that is completely unacceptable, just as the regular assumption that I must have approved of IRA bombings, or actually being a member of the IRA, was, or being pulled aside regularly in airports and ferry ports when travelling to and from England when I first started travelling there.

Offensively stupid? So rude.

I haven’t addressed you at all in this thread unless you keep changing your name?

Yet again the OP is being wise to not out herself where people like yourself call others ‘offensively stupid.’

Why do you need to resort to such insults?

Anyway I’m not sure if you are directing your post at me or someone else up thread because you seem very hostile for no reason.

By the way I am Irish. I don’t look or sound Irish as I’ve already said but I was educated here.