The English view of Irish people: that’s the topic I’m going to be talking to ex-Derry Journal editor Pat McArt about, later this morning. But as I always do, I like to sort out my thinking on a topic by writing it down.
The fact is, I’ve lived in England for two years and in Canada for near to ten, and I’ve never encountered anti-Irish sentiment – certainly not red-in-tooth-and-claw racism. In fact, I often found that being Irish – being a bit different – was an advantage. I suppose it’s like adding flavour to a dish – Irish people bring that something extra.
Maybe when I say I haven’t encountered anti-Irish sentiment, I really mean I’ve never encountered a view of Irish people that annoyed me. When I was a university student, I used to spend the summer working in English factories. The charge-hand and the other English workers would habitually address me and other Irish students as ‘Paddy’. There was the occasional student who would rage against this as insulting, but at the time I didn’t mind. I knew what my real name was and besides I’d been called worse things than Paddy.
There is a danger for Irish people, which George Bernard Shaw pinpointed: they tend to play the fool in front of the English. I may have been a fool from time to time but I’ve never played the fool – though there is the temptation. When it’s clear that English people or Canadians or whoever expect you as an Irish people to be full of fun, liable to break into song at any moment, fond of a drink – it’s easy to slip into that prepared place. Sometimes I found myself having to tell me: “Be yourself”.
Most of what I’ve written so far concerns my reaction to the views of English or Canadian or other people. Occasionally, though, those views can be condescending. The British tabloid press, for a range of reasons, presents the Irish as either musha-aren’t-we-fun or as treacherous, given to not supporting Britain in her hour of need. Ireland’s neutrality in World War Two is the great example of this. So too was the English tabloid press’s response to Leo Varadkar lining up alongside the EU in the Brexit debate, and not alongside their old friends the English.
It’s dangerous to generalise about a nationality, but I do think that English people – certainly English leaders – do tend to assume an English superiority over lesser races without the law. When I taught in Óllscoil Uladh/Ulster University, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a fair sprinkling of English staff members. At meetings, their voices often predominated and they certainly tended to impress their listeners through their very accents, even when they were talking undiluted bilge.
So I’d say there are two parties to racism – the racist and the person on the receiving end. It is possible for the person being demeaned to reject that condescension/discrimination, and in their response to show that, if anything, it’s the racist who has the problem.
Footnote: I’ve confined this blog to racism against Irish people. Irish racism against other people: sin sceal eile….
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