A couple of years ago I attended a conference in Dublin on the subject of immigration. At the time, my Government responsibility was not in this area but rather the role of running the Irish Aid programme.
As is normally my practice, I absorbed the briefing notes prepared for me by my officials, but delivered something quite different. I spoke instead of my own experience as an emigrant who left Ireland in the middle to late 1980s. In summary, I found England to be a welcoming place and my stay there was devoid largely of what might be termed overt racism.
There was one incident where I was chased out of a pub by some thugs who had been taunting me while I was enjoying a pint in my local after work, and from time to time there were the odd comments that may have caused a small amount of upset, but nothing too serious. At the conference I mentioned that the Irish experience as immigrants in Britain was not universally negative or oppressive.
As soon as the words left my mouth, there was a sharp intake of breath by the audience and a certain amount of hissing. It struck me as I stood before them that this otherwise politically correct audience were not entirely tolerant when it came to the ancient enemy, Britain. The case during the week whereby a UK national working in a factory here in Ireland was taunted and harassed by his Irish co-workers illustrates the more unseemly side of socalled Irish nationalism.
Some of the coverage of this incident has sought to make light of the spectacle of a group of Irish workers singing rebel songs continuously at their British colleague in an effort to bait him.
However, this kind of bullying behaviour is infantile in the extreme, and nothing short of prejudice. It is also depressing to think that there are still Irish people who can only conceive of their own national identity purely in terms of opposition to things British. It is this underbelly of anti-Britishness that is the least attractive aspect of Irish nationalism.
Thankfully, the Republican ideals of Wolfe Tone and the refinement of these ideas in the leaders of the 1916 rebellion has meant that the Irish nationalist identity as a whole has leant more to the left than towards more jingoistic notions of nationality.
The Irish nationalist struggle down the centuries has always had more to do with elemental issues of power, land and religion, rather than issues of blood, race and notions of supremacy. It is in fact the republican inheritance of our history – in my view, a defining aspect of the ethos of our State – that makes it possible for Irish people to deal with and manage immigration well.
