This blog first appeared as a column in The Andersonstown News
Sometimes you get tired of the pussy-footing. In the pages of one southern newspaper in recent weeks, there’s been a lot of discussion of “the obsession” the Irish have with the British. All of the people writing on the topic, whether columnists or letter-to-the-editor writers, have to a greater or lesser extent rolled their eyes and tut-tutted at the “unhealthy” attitudes of the Irish. They point to the schadenfreude we feel as we watch the Brits stumbling from disaster to disaster, flouting treaties made and reversing solemn commitments. They speak of our unhealthy Anglophobia.
Some of the writers have declared that Ireland is a nation of racists: I think that’s a pretty fair judgement. Most of us are keenly alert to racial difference. People are identified by the colour of their skin if it’s not white; if it is white, they are identified in more reasonable ways – their job, their personality, their interests. Mind you, we can be racist without reference to skin colour too: ask any Traveller.
But to get back to the English thing: the southern newspaper spoke of kids telling their friends not to mention that their father is English: Shhhhhhh – keep it quiet, for God’s sake.
What none of them seems willing to do is address the source of this anti-Brit sentiment. It’s as if it’s a genetic programming we suffer from and yet that we can, if we choose, change. After all, we have so much in common with the Brits: football (soccer), pop music, television, family living in Britain, a common language – the list goes on. Hence it makes no sense for us to be going around boiling with animosity. Even though Britain regarded Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World Was as betrayal, and failure to fall in line with Britain in its EU wrangling as ungrateful and perverse. To fail to see the British point of view in just about anything is to expose oneself as a clod-hopper, a half-wit whose hackles go up because we’re too stupid to see the subtlety of our relationship with Britain.
The southern newspaper and its various scribes are at least partly right. We Irish, especially in the north, do traditionally carry a barrow-load of anti-British prejudice around with us. But nobody, it seems, is prepared to break ranks and state the bleeding obvious: our prejudice is rooted in the British imperial past and specifically on its present claim to jurisdiction over the six northern counties. What’s more, don’t waste your time writing a letter to that paper pointing out thqt there is this giant incontinent rhino in the room. I have, and let me promise you they won’t print it.
Decades back, of course, Britain announced that it was making no claim on the north-east of Ireland. It had no selfish or strategic interest in remaining in charge here. Which is nice, especially as it hands constitutional change over to the Irish themselves, should they feel the need to hold a plebiscite on whether Britain should withdraw or stay.
]
Meanwhile, Britain constantly feels betrayed . A few weeks ago Bonnie Greer, the African-American author and journalist appeared on Question Time and spoke a few home truths to her adopted country:
“Oftentimes, I hear people talking about Ireland as if this country[England] owns Ireland. Ireland owes this country nothing. Ireland owes this country no concessions, it owes it no quarter, it owes it nothing… I’m from Chicago, that’s where I was born, and you know what we do on St Patrick’s Day? We dye the river green. People are very serious about Ireland in the United States – don’t mess with it, don’t make it look bad.”
What a pity so few are as forthright as Bonnie Greer. Because f we keep on not confronting the problem, it’ll be a long time before we solve it.
Comments are closed.