The experience of generations of Irish people in England has been well documented throughout the years – from 18th-century navvies to the modern creatives of today. It was also a common theme across this month’s Abroad section.
Mayo native Eimear Maguire went from attending the “fairly strict but fairly simple” Convent of Mercy in Ballina to being “thrust into a comprehensive, 1,200-student school” in West Yorkshire when her parents chose to make the move over in the 1980s. With a “weird name and a strange accent” combined with “all the Irish cultural, political stuff going on behind the scenes”, she says, “I was asked if I was a terrorist every day, asked if we were in the IRA. All of that type of stuff.”
England didn’t start to feel like home until she moved to Nottingham in 1994 to become a nurse. By that time, “things had changed” with the emergence of popular Irish bands in the UK such as the Cranberries, U2 and Aslan making it “trendy to be Irish”.
Kevin Rowland, of Dexys Midnight Runners, speaks to Peter Murphy about having Irish parents and what that meant in a time when Irish people were the punchline of jokes. “I just thought, ‘This is f**king ridiculous.’ The people telling those jokes were not the f**king brightest tools in the box by any means, and they would be laughing at the Irish. And they weren’t just Irish jokes; they were anti-Irish jokes.”
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He says he has bonded with other second-generation Irish musicians in Britain in the post-punk years over this too, such as Johnny Marr of the Smiths and Siobhán Fahey of Bananarama and Shakespears Sister.
“The thing about those second-generation musicians, from John Lydon right through to Oasis, with most of our fathers working on building sites, there’s not an also-ran among them. They’re all at the cutting edge of their culture.
“It’s incredible, really. Look at the population of Ireland and the population of England: a disproportionate amount of significant players were second-generation Irish,” says Rowland.
Author Kate Kerrigan’s show Am I Irish Yet? explores the experiences of a London-Irish person trying to fit in in small-town Ireland and says: “We were separated from the idea of Englishness, although I’d say my other siblings identify as Londoners. Their affinity is with London. But I never felt that. I always felt that affinity to Mayo. Because Mayo to me was Ireland. That was where I went on my summer holidays. We never went to Dublin, and we had no real awareness of the city. I am very much a Mayo girl.”
Columnist Laura Kennedy spent some time living in London before she moved to the Australian capital of Canberra and says: “Each place we live in marks us indelibly. London gave me significantly more notions. Australia certainly hasn’t – the Australian tolerance for notions is extremely low.”
She has also made two grim discoveries in recent weeks: first, Australia actually has a winter and, second, Australians apparently decline to insulate homes. Her thermal long johns might be here to stay for another while.
Elsewhere, Daragh Brehony, a arbitrator from Rathfarnam now based in Madrid, finds Spanish people warm and says it’s been easy getting to know them. One hiccup, however, is his name.
He says: “Daragh is common and known at home, but in Spain it always causes confusion. Spanish speakers pronounce every letter, so the silent gh really throws them. Every new introduction turns into a mini-phonetics lesson, with me repeating my name four or five times. In the end, most people just settle on `Darag’ with a hard g, and I’ve learnt to roll with it. After 10 years, it’s just part of the routine of living abroad with an Irish name.”
Sinéad Harrington swapped RTÉ for Bordeaux with her husband, leading rugby coach Noel McNamara. Living abroad has enhanced her sense of pride in being Irish. “I’ve spoken more Irish since we’ve moved – it’s like a wonderful secret language because nobody here knows it or knows what you are saying,” she says.
Dublin man Stephen Hurley manages the Kerrygold brand in Germany and when he first moved, he was impressed with the infrastructure and apparent efficiency compared with Ireland at the time. This has changed, however. Long years of austerity policies and underinvestment have seen infrastructure standards decline alongside a decline in education. Ireland is now more advanced than Germany in many ways, he says.
Hurley also says that, contrary to what some might think, the Germans do have a sense of humour.
“You can’t slag people off here and assume that they will find that funny, but they do have a black sense of humour. Germans famously love punctuality, but the reality is sometimes different. The trains don’t always run on time these days, so there’s many jokes made about that.”
Finally for this month, Kevin Kenny and Maddalena Marinari on how the Irish and Italians handled emigration to the US. Read here.
Thanks for reading!
