The Irish Thread

[KitKat]

Video from the 50's or 60's of Irishmen working in London.

[KitKat]

A very moving clip about Irish people being forced - through unemployment and a failing economy - to leave Ireland in the 1950s and move overseas for work. The vast majority moved to Great Britain, particularly in areas like London (such as Kilburn, Cricklewood and Hackney), Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow.

As a result of this, there are over 6 million people in Great Britain (10% of the population) with *at least* an Irish grandparent. Many within that number are 100% ethnically Irish, with two Irish immigrant parents - such as musicians

*Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis
*Morrissey and Johnny Marr of The Smiths
*John Lydon of The Sex Pistols
*Boy George of Culture Club
*Kevin Rowland of Dexy's Midnight Runners
*Shane MacGowan of The Pogues
*Gary 'Mani' Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream

Other notable people who are 100% ethnically Irish are
* Paul O'Grady, television presenter and comedian
* Steve Coogan, actor and comedian
* Dermot O'Leary - Television personality
* Martin McDonagh - Playwright and filmmaker
* Terry Eagleton - Academic and writer
* Jimmy Carr - Comedian and TV personality
* Caroline Aherne - Comedian and screenwriter

Many Irish immigrants in Great Britain were subject to discrimination, partly because of their religion - almost all were Roman Catholic, a religion whose followers the British Monarchy exclusively denies membership too, over Hindus and Muslim. It was also partly to do with a reputation the Irish had for revelry and lack of intelligence. Anti-Irish sentiment was particularly strong in the 1970s, when the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) and illegal undemocratically-sanctioned terrorist group - began exploding bombs in British cities, killing many civilians. This led many ordinary British people to assume all Irish people were sympathetic to the IRA, which they were not.

This clip is taken from the documentary series 'Seven Ages', which details the first seven decades since the birth of the Irish Free State in 1921. This footage features contributions from the likes of Presidential Candidate Michael D Higgin, former President Patrick Hillary, former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald.

[Aussiepom]

My forebears came from Ireland,having travelled from France or so I was told.
The dearest old Irish man I ever met was resident on the estate where I live.
'Old Mic' we used to call him.
Every time I used to call on him,I was offered a tot of of good old Irish whisky.
Bless his little heart.
AP

[KitKat]

The moral hijacking of Bloody Sunday

by Brendan O’Neill
Monday 30 January 2012
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On the 40th anniversary of the paratroopers’ massacre in Derry, it is remarkable how much Britain has exploited this event to its advantage.

Forty years ago today, 13 Catholics in Derry were shot dead by British paratroopers. A fourteenth man died from his gunshot wounds five months later. For years, what came to be known as Bloody Sunday was held up by many as an indictment of British rule in Ireland. Yet now it is used to justify British rule in Ireland. One of the most subtle and least-criticised coups carried out by the British state in recent years has been its moral appropriation of this atrocity, its transformation of Bloody Sunday from evidence that Britain plays only a destructive role in Ireland into an event which shows that British largesse, especially of the therapeutic variety, is still required in that apparently childish nation.

The 14 men who were killed, seven of whom were teenagers, had been part of a crowd of 10,000 protesters. They were demanding equal rights for Catholics in housing, employment and voting, in a sectarian, Protestant-run statelet where Catholics were two-and-a-half times as likely as Protestants to be unemployed. In the four years before Bloody Sunday, since a fledgling Catholic civil-rights march in Derry in October 1968 was brutally broken up by the local police force, tensions had been running high in Northern Ireland. The British Army arrived in August 1969 to back up Britain’s local Protestant allies and internment without trial was introduced in August 1971. All marches were banned. It was against this backdrop that thousands of Catholics in Derry defied Britain’s emergency laws and marched for civil rights on 30 January 1972.

The response of the paratroopers transformed the conflict. The belief of many Catholics that it was possible to reform Northern Ireland, to make it a more equal place, was shattered by the brutal force with which Britain seemed determined to preserve the sanctity of one of its few remaining colonies. Huge numbers of nationalists were radicalised by Bloody Sunday, coming to believe that it was only through the expulsion of British forces from Northern Ireland, and the unification of Ireland, that proper freedom could be attained. There followed a long, bloody war between the IRA and British military forces. ...

Read full article here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/12022/