*
*Migration Histories > Irish > Settling
* Introduction 
 
*
Report on Justice Butt's speech at the opening of Liverpool Assizes, The Irish Programme, February 1884
*
*
Report on Justice Butt's speech at the opening of Liverpool Assizes, The Irish Programme, February 1884
* Moving Here catalogue reference (BL) 025IPLV18840209
Opening the Liverpool Assizes court sessions in February 1884, Justice Butt commented on the "great number of Irish names" up for trial as evidence of a criminal streak in the Irish character. Local journalist John Denvir angrily rebutted this charge: "while offenders bearing Irish names are not, as he states, out of all relation to the number of people in Liverpool, they are chiefly of a class who have never seen Ireland and who have become contaminated by their surroundings in this country".

The author Anthony Trollope also commented on anti-Irish prejudice in his novel, Castle Richmond

That there is a strong feeling against things Irish it is impossible to deny. Irish servants need not apply; Irish acquaintances are treated with limited confidence; Irish cousins are regarded as being decidedly dangerous; and Irish stories are not popular with the bookseller.
*
The Irish Frankenstein
*
The Irish Frankenstein Punch 20 May 1882
Caricatures of Irish people as ape-like or monstrous beings occasionally appeared in satirical magazines like Punch, particularly at times of media outrage over a political crisis in Ireland or violent incidents in England: the Irish uprising of 1848; the shooting of a policeman in Manchester in 1867; the "Phoenix Park" murders in Dublin in 1882; in the aftermath of the Birmingham and Guildford pub bombings in 1974.

Often it was the innocent who suffered. Catholic chapels were attacked in 1882 and Irish ironworkers driven from Tredegar. Every Irishman who showed himself out of his house was stoned, and his house, in many cases, gutted, his furniture being thrown out and destroyed," according to one police report. At such times all Irish people were liable to be condemned as violent by nature, intolerant and superstitious.

In the early 1970s the Birmingham bombs - the wave of anti-Irishness was horrific. I was refused service in a shop. I was made to feel that being Irish was a bad thing. I tried to hide my accent. That was the beginning of it. Up till 1974/5 there was a whimsical thing. Then the violence thing was revived. We were feared rather than patronised. People would just ignore you. I've been made to feel that you just don't belong.
(Man, IR, Islington, aged 40-49)
Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain by Mary Hickman and Bronwen Walter (Commission for Racial Equality, 1997).

There is nothing new in the display of prejudice against immigrants and refugees taking up jobs and housing.

*
Preston Lock-out cartoon - 'The Warping and Winding Room', 1854
*
*
Preston Lock-out cartoon - "The Warping and Winding Room", 1854
* Moving Here catalogue reference (LARO) DDPR/138/87B
Crude racial stereotypes in appearance and dialogue lie behind this cartoon of Irish mill-workers at work as their horrified employer looks on. Some of the women are shown bare-breasted to further shock the viewer. This one was produced at the time of the Preston Lockout in 1854. Others resented Irish people settling in certain areas.

Debased alike by ignorance and pauperism, they have discovered, with the savage, what is the minimum of the means of life, upon which existence may be prolonged. The paucity of the amount of means and comforts necessary for the mere support of life, is not known by a more civilised population, and this secret has been taught the labourers of this country by the Irish.
*The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes of Manchester in 1832 by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth.

The Anthropological Review and Journal of 1866 claimed that "Gaelic man" was characterised by "his bulging jaw and lower part of the face, retreating chin and forehead, large mouth and thick lips, great distance between nose and mouth, upturned nose, prominent cheekbones, sunken eyes, projecting eyebrows, narrow elongated skull and protruding ears". This sort of "scientific" racism was not uncommon in the nineteenth century and was also directed against Jewish and African people. "Without intending offence", stated an article on the London Irish in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine of July 1901, "we would point to this common feature in the Hibernian and Negro idiosyncrasy, that a dull manhood follows upon a youth of the highest promise". This "no offence, but -" introductory remark always heralds a statement that will be offensive and is one commonly experienced by migrant groups.

Similar attitudes often lie behind anti-Irish jokes which stereotype Irish people as stupid or ridicule their accents, as in the Preston Lock-out [en dash, not em] cartoons. A survey carried out as part of Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain by Mary Hickman and Bronwen Walter found that 70% of those surveyed found such jokes offensive and only 30% accepted them as "harmless fun". Only in 1994-95 did the Commission for Racial Equality commission this study, a move ridiculed by the Sun newspaper as "a load of codswallop". It greeted the news with a page of Irish jokes "to give the researchers a flying start".

Liam Greenslade has commented that, "English racism focuses upon colour of skin rather than ethnicity. In this milieu the Irish are literally invisible until they open their mouths". This invisibility was reinforced by the official treatment of Irish citizens in England as if Ireland was still part of the British Isles, an attitude sometimes contrasted with that towards those from Commonwealth countries, and the decision by many Irish people in post-war England "to keep their heads down and their mouths shut".

*
Anti-Irish jokes: Why we're not laughing from the Irish Voice, 1987
*
*
Anti-Irish jokes: Why we're not laughing from the Irish Voice, 1987
* Moving Here catalogue reference (HMA) ldbcm2002.81
At times, the fashionable stereotype of Irishness might emphasise a sense of humour, quick-witted repartee, a strong faith and courage. For those simply trying to get on with their lives, labels of comic or eccentric genius can be nearly as tiresome as negative stereotypes.

Anti-Irish prejudice might be reflected in discrimination in the work-place or an unwillingness to take in Irish lodgers, an experience common to other immigrant groups.


Source : Luton Museum Service
Other Irish interviewees from Luton, such as Larry McGrattan, emphasised that they had no personal experience of discrimination, either in housing or in the work-place.

J B Keane's autobiography shows how incidents of prejudice are not always as simple as they appear on the surface:

It was a good-looking,well-kept house on the outside and the curtains were attractive - always a good sign of a house. Murphy knocked again and finally a small fat woman of middle-age with a cigarette in her mouth and a tam on her head opened the door.
'I'm not 'aving 'im!' she said.
'Why not ?' Murphy demanded.
'I'm not 'avin' Paddies!'. She was adamant.
'He's not a Paddy', Murphy said. 'He's a Jock the same as myself'.
'Awight,' she asked quickly,'which part you from ?'
'Glasgie!' I lied, without batting an eye-lid. Finally, she said: 'You'd better come in then.
Self-portrait by J B Keane (Dublin, 1976).

When the landlady later discovered that Keane and his friend were Irish, they were evicted. Keane had come to Northampton in 1952 from Listowel in Kerry to work in a chemist's shop. He subsequently explains how the landlady's mistrust of the Irish stemmed from her experiences in the Second World War when her boarding-house had been wrecked by Irish lodgers in a fight. However, later, she and her husband take them back in and help them find jobs in a local factory. This is not a simple tale of unthinking prejudice.

1 | 2 |Next >


Creators: Aidan Lawes

 
*