Anti-Irish sentiment

American political cartoon by Thomas Nast titled "The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things", depicting a drunken Irishman lighting a powder keg and swinging a bottle. Published 2 September 1871 in Harper's Weekly.

Anti-Irish sentiment (or Hibernophobia) may refer to or include racism, oppression, bigotry, persecution, discrimination, hatred or fear of Irish people as an ethnic group or nation, whether directed against Ireland in general or against Irish emigrants and their descendants in the Irish diaspora.

It is traditionally rooted in the medieval period, and is also evidenced in Irish emigration to North America, Australasia, and Great Britain. Anti-Irish feeling can include both social and cultural discrimination in Ireland itself, such as sectarianism or cultural religious political conflicts in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.

Discrimination towards Irish Travellers, an Irish minority group, is evident in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Perspective

An Irishman depicted as a gorilla

The negative stereotyping of the Irish began with the Norman chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis, also known as Gerald of Wales. To justify the Norman invasion of Ireland, he wrote disparagingly of the Irish. "Gerald was seeking promotion by Henry II within the English church. His history was therefore written to create a certain effect—of supporting Henry II's claims to Ireland."

Over the centuries, hostility increased towards the Irish, who steadfastly remained Roman Catholic in spite of coercive force by Edward VI and subsequent rulers to convert them to Protestantism. The religious majority of the Irish nation was ruled by a religious minority, leading to perennial social conflict. During the Great Famine in the middle of the 19th century, some evangelical Protestants sought to convert the starving Catholics as part of their relief efforts.

Discrimination against the Irish was rooted in anti-Catholicism and in disgust for their poverty-stricken lifestyle.

History

Negative English attitudes towards the Gaelic Irish and their culture date as far back as the reign of Henry II of England. In 1155 Pope Adrian IV issued the papal bull called Laudabiliter, that gave Henry permission to conquer Ireland as a means of strengthening the Papacy's control over the Irish Church. Pope Adrian called the Irish a "rude and barbarous" nation. Thus, the Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169 with the backing of the Papacy. Pope Alexander III, who was Pope at the time of the invasion, ratified the Laudabiliter and gave Henry dominion over Ireland. He likewise called the Irish a "barbarous nation" with "filthy practices".

Gerald of Wales accompanied King Henry's son, John, on his 1185 trip to Ireland. As a result of this he wrote Topographia Hibernica ("Topography of Ireland") and Expugnatio Hibernia ("Conquest of Ireland"), both of which remained in circulation for centuries afterwards. Ireland, in his view, was rich; but the Irish were backward and lazy:

They use their fields mostly for pasture. Little is cultivated and even less is sown. The problem here is not the quality of the soil but rather the lack of industry on the part of those who should cultivate it. This laziness means that the different types of minerals with which hidden veins of the earth are full are neither mined nor exploited in any way. They do not devote themselves to the manufacture of flax or wool, nor to the practice of any mechanical or mercantile act. Dedicated only to leisure and laziness, this is a truly barbarous people. They depend on animals for their livelihood and they live like animals.

Gerald was not atypical, and similar views may be found in the writings of William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh. When it comes to Irish marital and sexual customs Gerald is even more biting: "This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. They indulge in incest, for example in marrying – or rather debauching – the wives of their dead brothers". Even earlier than this Archbishop Anselm accused the Irish of wife swapping, "exchanging their wives as freely as other men exchange their horses".

One will find these views echoed centuries later in the words of Sir Henry Sidney, twice Lord Deputy of Ireland during the reign of Elizabeth I, and in those of Edmund Tremayne, his secretary. In Tremayne's view the Irish "commit whoredom, hold no wedlock, ravish, steal and commit all abomination without scruple of conscience". In A View of the Present State of Ireland, circulated in 1596 but not published until 1633, the English official and renowned poet Edmund Spenser wrote "They are all papists by profession but in the same so blindingly and brutishly informed that you would rather think them atheists or infidels". In a "Brief Note on Ireland," Spenser argued that "Great force must be the instrument but famine must be the means, for till Ireland be famished it cannot be subdued. . . There can be no conformity of government where is no conformity of religion. . . There can be no sound agreement between two equal contraries viz: the English and Irish".

This "civilising mission" embraced any manner of cruel and barbaric methods to accomplish its end goal. For instance, in 1305 Piers Bermingham received a financial bonus and accolades in verse after beheading thirty members of the O'Connor clan and sending them to Dublin. In 1317 one Irish chronicler opined that it was just as easy for an Englishman to kill an Irishman or English woman to kill an Irish woman as he/she would a dog. The Irish were thought of as the most barbarous people in Europe, and such ideas were modified to compare the Scottish Highlands or Gàidhealtachd where traditionally Scottish Gaelic is spoken to medieval Ireland.

Modern period

File:No Irish Need Apply (lyric sheet - female version).jpg

London version of NINA song, Feb. 1862

One of two "No Irish need apply" ads by a business for male workers found in The New York Times between 1851 and 1923.

In the Early Modern period following the advent of Protestantism in Great Britain, the Irish people suffered both social and political oppression for refusing to renounce Catholicism. This discrimination sometimes manifested itself in areas with large Puritan or Presbyterian populations such as the northeastern parts of Ireland, the Central Belt of Scotland, and parts of Canada. Thinly veiled nationalism under the guise of religious conflict has occurred in both the UK and Ireland.

Anti-Irish sentiment is found in works by several 18th-century writers such as Voltaire, who depicted the Catholic Irish as savage and backward, and defended British rule in the country.

19th century

See also: Catherine O'Leary

Irish racism in Victorian Britain and 19th century United States included the stereotyping of the Irish as violent and alcoholic. Some British illustrators depicted a prehistoric "ape-like image" of Irish faces to bolster evolutionary racist claims that the Irish people were an "inferior race" as compared to Anglo-Saxons.

Similar to other immigrant populations, they were sometimes accused of cronyism and subjected to misrepresentations of their religious and cultural beliefs. Irish Catholics were particularly singled out for attack by Protestants.

In Liverpool, England, where many Irish immigrants settled following the Great Famine, anti-Irish prejudice was widespread. The sheer numbers of people coming across the Irish sea and settling in the poorer districts of the city led to physical attacks and it became common practice for those with Irish accents or even Irish names to be barred from jobs, public houses and employment opportunities.

In 1836 young Benjamin Disraeli wrote:

[The Irish] hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.

Nineteenth-century Protestant American "Nativist" discrimination against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s when the Know-Nothing Movement tried to oust Catholics from public office. Much of the opposition came from Irish Protestants, as in the 1831 riots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

During the 1830s in the U.S., riots for control of job sites broke out in rural areas among rival labour teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and local American work teams competing for construction jobs.

Irish Catholics were isolated and marginalized by Protestant society, but the Irish gained control of the Catholic Church from English, French and Germans. Intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was strongly discouraged by both Protestant ministers and Catholic priests. Catholics, led by the Irish, built a network of parochial schools and colleges, as well as orphanages and hospitals, typically using nuns as an inexpensive work force. They thereby avoided public institutions mostly controlled by Protestants.

No Irish need apply

After 1860, many Irish sang songs about "NINA signs" reading Help wanted – no Irish need apply. (A variation was, Irish need not apply, or INNA). The 1862 song, "No Irish Need Apply", was inspired by NINA signs in London. Later Irish Americans adapted the lyrics and the songs to reflect the discrimination they felt in America.

Historians have hotly debated the issue of anti-Irish job discrimination in the United States. Some insist that the "No Irish need apply" signs were common, but one professor, Richard J. Jensen, argues that anti-Irish job discrimination was not a significant factor in the United States, these signs and print advertisements being most commonly posted by the limited number of early 19th-century English immigrants to the United States who shared the prejudices of their homeland. However, in July 2015 the same journal that published Jensen's 2002 paper published an extensive rebuttal by Rebecca A. Fried, an 8th-grade student at Sidwell Friends School. She discovered multiple instances of the restriction used in advertisements for many different types of positions, including "“clerks at stores and hotels, bartenders, farm workers, house painters, hog butchers, coachmen, bookkeepers, blackers, workers at lumber yards, upholsterers, bakers, gilders, tailors, and papier mache workers, among others.” While the greatest number of NINA instances occurred in the 1840s, Fried found evidence for its continued use throughout the subsequent century, with the most recent dating to 1909 in Butte, Montana.

Alongside "No Irish Need Apply" signs, in the post-World War II years, signs saying "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" or similar anti-Irish sentiment began to appear in the United Kingdom, as documented by the Irish Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University.

20th century

A 2004 report by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs stated that Irish soldiers in World War I were treated more harshly in courts-martial because British officers had "a racist bias against Irish soldiers".

In 1934, J. B. Priestley published the travelogue English Journey, in which he wrote "A great many speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland... I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England... if we do have an Irish Republic as our neighbour, and it is found possible to return her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff, what a fine exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease."

Since the formation of Northern Ireland in 1921, there has been tension and violence between its two main communities. Most of the Irish nationalist/republican community are Catholic and see themselves as Irish, while most of the unionist/loyalist community are Protestant and see themselves as British. Since the Troubles began in the late 1960s, loyalists have consistently expressed anti-Irish sentiment. Irish tricolours, daubed with the loyalist slogan "Kill All Irish" (KAI), have been burnt on the yearly Eleventh Night bonfires. In August 1993 the Red Hand Commando announced that it would attack pubs or hotels where Irish folk music is played, although it withdrew the threat shortly after. In 2000, loyalists made posters and banners that read "The Ulster conflict is about nationality. IRISH OUT!". Some of the Provisional IRA's bombings in England led to anti-Irish sentiment and attacks on the Irish community there. After the Birmingham pub bombings, for example, there were reports of isolated attacks on Irish people and Irish-owned businesses in the Australian press. In the 1990s, writers for the Daily Mail newspaper "called for Irish people to be banned from UK sporting events and fined for IRA disruption to public transport", one of numerous opinions expressed over many years which has led the Daily Mail to be accused by some in Ireland of publishing "some of the most virulently anti-Irish journalism in Britain for decades".

21st century

In 2002, English journalist Julie Burchill narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred, following a column in The Guardian where she described Ireland as being synonymous with "child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women." Burchill had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in the London journal Time Out that "I hate the Irish, I think they're appalling".

In 2012, The Irish Times carried a report on anti-Irish prejudice in Britain. It claimed that far-right British nationalist groups continued to use "anti-IRA" marches as "an excuse to attack and intimidate Irish immigrants". Shortly before the 2012 Summer Olympics, British athlete Daley Thompson made an anti-Irish statement on live television. When Thompson was shown an image of a runner with a misspelt tattoo, he said that the person responsible for the misspelling must have been Irish. The BBC issued an apology.

In March 2012 in Perth, Australia, one classified ad placed by a bricklayer stated "No Irish" should apply for the job.

On 8 August 2012, an article appeared in Australian newspapers titled "Punch Drunk: Ireland intoxicated as Taylor swings towards boxing gold". The article claimed that Katie Taylor was not "what you'd expect in a fighting Irishwoman, nor is she surrounded by people who'd prefer a punch to a potato". The journalist who wrote it apologised for "indulging racial stereotypes". The following day, Australian commentator Russell Barwick asserted that athletes from Ireland should compete for the British Olympic team, likening it to "an Hawaiian surfer not surfing for the USA". When fellow presenter Mark Chapman explained that the Republic of Ireland was an independent state, Barwick remarked: "It's nothing but an Irish joke".

On 25 June 2013, In an Orange Order HQ in Everton, an Irish flag was burned. This was seen by members of Liverpool's large Irish community as a hate crime.

In December 2014 British broadcaster Channel 4 caused an "outrage" and "fury" in Ireland and the UK when it planned a comedy series about the Irish Famine. The situation comedy, named Hungry, was announced by writer Hugh Travers, who said “we’re kind of thinking of it as Shameless in famine Ireland.” The response in Ireland was quick and negative: “Jewish people would never endorse making a comedy of the mass extermination of their ancestors at the hands of the Nazis, Cambodians would never support people laughing at what happened to their people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and the people of Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan would never accept the plight of their people, through generational famine, being the source of humour in Britain,” Dublin councillor David McGuinness said. “I am not surprised that it is a British television outlet funding this venture.” The writer defended the concept saying, "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." It is reported that thousands of people signed an online petition protesting against the proposed series. The petition stated: 'Famine or genocide is no laughing matter, approximately one million Irish people died and another two million were forced to emigrate because they were starving...Any program on this issue would have to be of serious historical context... not a comedy.' Channel 4 issued a press release stating that “This in the development process and is not currently planned to air... It’s not unusual for sitcoms to exist against backdrops that are full of adversity and hardship”. Protesters planned to picket the offices of Channel 4 and campaigners called the proposed show 'institutionalised anti-Irish racism'.

Irish Traveller discrimination

Irish Travellers are an indigenous minority present for centuries in Ireland, who suffer overt discrimination throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, similar in nature to antiziganism (prejudice against Romani people) in the United Kingdom and Europe. Anti-Traveller racism is similar to that experienced by the Irish during the diaspora of the 19th century, with media attack campaigns in the United Kingdom, and in Ireland using both national/local newspapers and radio. Irish Travellers in the Irish media have stated they are living in Ireland under an apartheid regime. In 2013, Irish journalist Jennifer O'Connell, writing in The Irish Times, wrote that "Our casual racism against Travellers is one of Ireland's last great shames". While there is a willingness to acknowledge that there is widespread prejudice towards Travellers in Irish society, and a recognition of discrimination against Travellers, there is still strong resistance among the Irish public to calling the treatment of Travellers racist. Travellers suffer discrimination in employment and secondary school place allocation.

Extensive abuses of social systems like the housing scheme, welfare schemes, and resource teachers for Travellers in primary schools perpetuate the social conflict between Travellers and "the settled community", examples including the burning down of houses allocated to the Travellers by the state due to Traveller feuds. These feuds between large Traveller families often culminate in mass brawls where dozens of Travellers cause damage to themselves as well as public and private property. In 2013 a Traveller home in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal was destroyed by fire days before members of a Traveller family were due to move in. Local Councillor Pearse Doherty said the house was specifically targeted because it was to house a Traveller family and was destroyed due to a 'hatred of Travellers'. Another local Councillor Sean McEniff of Bundoran caused controversy and a complaint under the 'Incitement to Hatred Act' when he stated that, due to the house's initial purchase, Travellers “should live in isolation from the settled community.” and "I would not like these people (the family) living beside me”.

The British television series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has been accused of bullying and an instigation of racial hatred against Irish Travellers in England. The series has faced a number of controversies, including allegations of racism in its advertising and instigating a rise in the rate of racially motivated bullying.

Anti-Irish quotes

They (the Irish) live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the habits of pastoral living. ..This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not avoid incest.

— Giraldus Cambrensis

Yes, I am a Jew, and when the [Irish] ancestors of the Right Honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

— Benjamin Disraeli reply to a taunt by Irish Member of Parliament Daniel O'Connell

I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country...to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.

— Cambridge historian Charles Kingsley, letter to his wife from Ireland, 1860

Our ancestors cut a civilisation out of the bogs and meadows while Mr Haughey's [Irish] ancestors were wearing pig skins and living in caves

— Ian Paisley

Marry those be the most barbaric and loathy conditions of any people (I think) under heaven...They [the Irish] do use all the beastly behaviour that may be, they oppress all men, they spoil as well the subject, as the enemy; they steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution, licentious, swearers and blasphemers, common ravishers of women, and murderers of children.

— Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, 1596

You can’t trust the Irish, they are all liars.

— Margaret Thatcher

The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.

— Charles Trevelyan, head of administration for famine relief during the Great Irish famine

See also

• Sectarianism in Glasgow
• Anti-Catholicism
• White ethnic
• Philadelphia Nativist Riots
• Stage Irish
• Black Irish

External links

• Irish Famine Unit II: Racism