Are London Irish really Irish ?

[OpheliaWasntMad]

What do people born in Ireland think?

I have Irish parents who lived moved to London when they were young (separately). I think of myself only as British or English. I don’t feel remotely affiliated to Ireland. We used to go to see my parents’ families during the summer holidays (hated it) but there was absolutely nothing culturally Irish in our lives.

Despite spending the vast majority of her life here, and having a home and standard of living she could only have dreamed of in rural Ireland, my mum used to sneer at ‘the English’ and their ways. I always resented this.

Yes - this is me too

But I think our version of Ireland was probably our parents version - ie outdated and frozen in the past

That's it exactly. Ireland has changed so much in the last 30 years that people who were raised by Irish parents abroad are often holding onto a version that no longer exists.

For me, you are Irish if you have an Irish passport.

This is my experience too.
Im fine with it . I’ve not got an issue with it.

But I’m definitely not “English” and British is a vague term because it includes so many different cultures .
The dominant culture of my childhood was Irish (at home and in Catholic school ) and yet I’m not Irish in Ireland.

So if I were white and born in India I would be Indian?

I'm NI born and raised and I live in a London area with a pretty thriving Irish population (old style pubs with frequent live music, you can get all the Irish brands at the corner shop). I would consider the Irish people who live in this area to be Irish. Some of them have the accent, some of them don't, but they are certainly more Irish than English and "Irish" seems to come above "Londoner" for them.

Me, I'm a Londoner. I hold both passports like most, and "British" is probably my primary nationality, but I'm not English, and I'm certainly a variety of Irish, but I am very much a Londoner.

The dominant culture of my childhood was Irish (at home and in Catholic school ) and yet I’m not Irish in Ireland.

I have always been treated as if I belong by family & family friends when back in Ireland. There are a lot of us though which maybe made a difference. Everyone in my mums small town knew my mum & her family.

That's it exactly. Ireland has changed so much in the last 30 years that people who were raised by Irish parents abroad are often holding onto a version that no longer exists.

It’s changed dramatically in my lifetime.

Yes, I remember being told to speak quietly in public by my English mother in the 1980s in rural Ireland because of the anti-English sentiments being expressed connected to the Hunger Strikes and after Lord Mountbatten and others’ deaths. We also had some abuse connected to the British car number plate as well in the nearby towns. My father was affronted and amused at the same time, after all his experiences of racism in England! I absolutely agree with the PP who said that the version of Ireland being remembered in the 70s/80s by diasporic parents was ‘frozen ‘ in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially around social attitudes, which in reality had changed greatly by C21, particularly the Catholic Church’s influence.

I think it must be difficult growing up as the child of immigrants - trying to assimilate into a different culture to that of your parents.

The one benefit I found with being a London is that so many people are 2nd gen immigrants. I only met people with English born parents when I went to uni.

I’m certainly aware of the importance of the diaspora and the London Irish community, have done some speaker events at the Hammersmith centre, and have London-Irish friends. DS was born in London, but we moved away from London when he was a baby, and then back to Ireland (where DS lost his English accent entirely in a few months). There are lots of different versions of lived Irishness. I don’t think there’s any harm in acknowledging that while you may have grown up outside Ireland, you have a strong connection to it.

The London-Irish have always punched above their weight culturally, too, with people like Shane McGowan and Martin McDonagh.

“There are lots of different versions of lived Irishness”

I like this phrase ..

It just shows how ridiculous it is to try to put one nationality on someone.

Lots of people move around and marry people from different countries.

My friend was born in London. She has an Irish mother and a Polish father.

She has British, Irish and Polish citizenship.

And she can get a British, Irish and Polish passport

The very sad thing is that this (exclusion of others that are different to us) happens everywhere.

It happens in Ireland too.

I went to some groups in dublin.

I was chatting to some people who weren't irish. They had moved to Ireland for work.

I asked them what they thought of ireland. They said "ireland is nice , but irish people are extremely cliquey , they will only talk to other Irish people. I feel very lonely here"

Your last point is the same for all immigrant groups, though. I used to teach Martin McDonagh plays when I had a lecturing job at a UK university with a high proportion of second and third generation Asian students, and they completely got his London-Irishness, and that he was both playing with a set of stereotypes and mocking the version of your parents or grandparents’ home country that you’re fed by people whose version of that country is frozen in the past when they left. And they were often also ‘the English kid’ when they visited family in their parents or grandparents’ homeplace.

I certainly found it challenging to come home after being decades gone. Some old friends of mine who’d been in the US, at first illegally, since the mid-80s actually moved back during the Tiger years, were deeply unhappy, and went back to the US after a couple of years. Now one of them wants to retire here and the other doesn’t, as their children are settled in the US.

Irish parents here. Culturally I’m more Irish than anything else, raised with Irish music, bacon and cabbage, home made barm brack and Barry’s tea…Irish passport, fear of god and the wooden spoon and a warm but strict mammy. But I’m too English to be Irish and too Irish to be English.

Everyone identifies with their parents heritage.

If someone is born in the UK to Jamaican parents, they will identify with Jamaica.

People born in the UK to Irish parents identify with ireland.

Why does being born somewhere mean you're from there really anyway.

It's just where your mother happened to be when she gave birth .

I think people identify with where they are born. But that's just one thing.
They also identify with where their parents are from and where their grandparents are from

Exactly this!

I agree with this.
I think people who were born and live in Ireland can be a bit sneery about “plastic paddies” without understanding how important cultural identity can be when you live in a big multicultural city where each group celebrates their own culture and identity - whether Jamaican, Polish , Indian or whatever..

I’m not London Irish but you could call me Nottingham Irish if that’s a thing. Both parents Irish, I come from a family of six kids, big Irish Catholic community, you could look at me and my siblings and just know we are Irish because of our colouring, freckles, ruddy complexions etc. I have a fairly unusual Irish name too. So yes, I’ve got an English accent but in all other respects I do identify as Irish.

I don’t think Irish people look down on the diaspora at all, @MoreCraicPlease — I was the diaspora in the US and UK for nearly 30 years before deciding to move home, partly because of a rise in the kind of intermittently anti-Irish attitudes I’d experienced throughout my time in the UK but which rose around Brexit, and with which I didn’t want my London-born child to have to deal with. I think the rhetoric around overseas votes, people still on the electoral register travelling home to vote in the gay marriage and abortion referenda, Mary Robinson’s light in the window, awareness of the cultural output of diaspora figures like a Shane McGowan etc means the diaspora remains very ‘present’. And there’s currently a strong current of returning emigrants.

“I don’t think Irish people look down on the diaspora at all”

I think there has been sneering about people who say they’re “Irish” (because they have Irish heritage and feel culturally Irish) but they weren’t born or bred in Ireland. I think the pp was referring to that sort of sneering attitude..

I was born and grew up in London but both parents are Irish and my mum returned to Ireland shortly after my birth. I consider myself British with Irish descent.

Im Irish with an English dh, dc born near London, always seen them as more Irish than English, as did they. Ime my Irish traditions were stronger than my dh's English ones (Christmas, speaking gaeilge, christenings, weddings, funerals, and Donegal instead of Devon for holidays). Thats just the way they worked out in our family. Dc have only ever had an Irish passport-again I think because my dh didn't care enough to sort it whereas it was a big deal for me. We're back in Ireland now so dc definitely see themselves as predominantly Irish, though feel torn when Ireland play England in the rugby lol

Both DH and myself are Irish and grew up in Ireland, our first born was born in London and we moved back to DH's city when DS1 was 15 months old - he's Irish.

I went to London on a two week holiday back in 1984 and was looking forward to the London social life. I'll never forget the shock of being taken to some ballroom of romance place on Holloway Road and seeing Margo singing, she was off her head and kneeling for a lot of it. It was like stepping back to the 50's and not like the nightclubs I was used to in 80's Ireland.

I ended up staying over 12 years and my Irish born friends I'd been to college with also thought the same about the London Irish communities being stuck in a time warp.