Posted by Jim on
Ireland owes the US on issues such as peace and investment. We should never forget.
by Alan Ó Maonaigh, Irish Central
Having spent some time as a student in the US, I was struck by the genuine warmth and sincerity of Americans. It certainly gave me a new insight into Americans, and into Irish Americans, far removed from the clichéd view that we often have here in Ireland of our friends across the Atlantic.
What also struck me was just how little we actually know of real-life America, and equally how little we know of Irish America.
Much of that can of course be explained by over-consumption of US TV, which is probably as representative of ordinary America as “Love/Hate” or “Fr. Ted” would be of Irish life. Save for St. Patrick’s Day, many of us here in Ireland rarely give Irish America a second thought, and if the truth be known many have a slightly unfair view of Irish America.
I have been as guilty as the next in not regarding the Irish American community as truly Irish, and maybe even smirked at those who proudly claimed to be “Irish” yet were born in America.
To many of us in Ireland, to be Irish is to be born there. It is a geographical definition, and indeed some in Ireland view others to be more or less Irish based on their place of birth. But is that really unusual, I mean, what Irish American is not a proud American first? Should the collective term more accurately not be American Irish?
As I mentioned above I spent some summers in the States as a student, the majority of the time in Chicago – a city I felt as much (if not more!) at home in as my adopted home of Dublin. After spending some time in Chicago, it is hard not to get a feel for what modern Irish America is in relation to America.
To me Irish America is law and order, it is the emergency services, it is construction, it is politics, it is trade and finance and it is work ethic. Irish America, as observed in Chicago in the mid-noughties, is America. It seemed to represent perfectly the American Dream.
The peace that has held on our island for nigh on two decades is a direct result of the influence of, and the power exerted by, Irish America. Were it not for the fact that Irish America had sufficient political power and sway to convince the US administration to lean on both the Unionist and British camps in Northern Ireland, we would still be in a situation where equality of franchise was not guaranteed, and I have no doubt that violence would still prevail to this day. We would still be waiting for an honest peace broker in Europe.
The fact is, that politically, Europe holds Ireland in little regard, and had made little effort to end the Troubles, even though Ireland was a member of the EU/EEC for decades. We are as European as any other nation, but those in the political seats of power in Europe see us, the British and the Scandinavians as a nuisance in some ways.
It was Irish America who helped deliver peace.
The prosperity of modern Ireland would not be possible without the generosity and largely underappreciated dedication of Irish America to Ireland. The US is now Ireland’s largest export market, much of this export being attributed to the large number of American blue-chip multinational firms located here.
What often is forgotten by the commentariat in Ireland is the role of Irish Americans in enabling these firms to locate here – many preferring to think that our island is a utopic destination for FDI and that the investment thus naturally flowed towards our shores.
As an employee of a multinational myself, I see first-hand how the role of the US multinationals in Ireland has revolutionized Irish business culture and ethos on the whole. The US, aided by Irish America is a true friend of Ireland, and when the financial crisis was at its nadir, it was the continued US investment here that allowed us pay our way, and recover.
To many proud Irish Americans it seems being Irish is seen as an ethnicity, stretching through the generations, more akin to a Jewish outlook on heritage, and not bound by a specific border.
In Ireland, conversely, we sometimes get caught up a little too much in our immediate locality, and fail to see that the Irish diaspora is a huge network of underutilized potential.
Both sides perhaps should know more about the other side, as we linked ethnically, culturally and economically. I have come to the belief that to be Irish and to be born in Ireland are two sides of the same coin – we might be facing different ways, but we are intrinsically bound together, whether we like it or not.
Posted by Jim on May 14, 2015
Garvan Grant
May 14,2015 04:37 AM
An excerpt from Garvan Grant’s “True(ish) History of Ireland.” Photo by: Mercier Press
You may think you know the story of how the English invaded Ireland, but this excerpt from Garvan Grant’s “True(ish) History of Ireland” sheds light on some of the subtler nuances of this dark chapter in Irish history.
An English Solution to an Irish Problem
And so began eight centuries of fun, games and oppression. From the twelfth century on, the English did everything in their power to make the Irish more ‘English’, including teaching them tiddlywinks, making them eat Yorkshire pudding and, when all else failed, taking their lives. The Irish are a famously stubborn lot, however, and very little worked. Often, the Irish would just turn around to their conquerors and say: ‘Yip, that’s grand, we’re all English now, so you fellas can head off home and we’ll look after things here for you.’
The English usually replied: ‘How jolly decent of you! Back home, they told us you were savages, but you chaps are actually quite good sports!’
And the Irish would reply: ‘Not a bother, me lord sir! See youse later.’
Then, as soon as the English were gone, they would just carry on being all Irish, having fun and staying up late telling stories about how they managed to dupe the English.
However, the English soon realized that their policy of absenteeism was becoming a joke. They knew that the best way to defeat the cunning Irish was to suppress the entire country, which would have cost a fortune … or they could just build a big wall around the greater Dublin area and put signs on it saying, ‘Beyond this wall is Britain. No Irish, no savages, no dogs!’ They decided on the less painful latter option and called the walled area The Pale. These days The Pale is protected by the fast and dangerous M50 ring road instead of a big wall, though most people who live outside it have little or no desire to enter.
More Irish than the Irish Themselves
Ironically, the Norman and English policy of trying to make the Irish less Irish backfired, and by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a lot of the former oppressors had become more Irish than the Irish themselves. First among these were the Fitzgeralds, the Earls of Kildare, who looked Irish, ate chips a lot and wore Celtic football shirts. They were descended from a man called Norman Fitzgerald, who, as his name suggests, was more Norman than most Normans. He had been a big pal of Strongbow’s back in the day, but his descendants were now plotting a way to be independent from the English crown.
That particular crown was being worn by Henry VIII at the time and the Fitzgeralds decided it would be best to butter him up and pretend they were ruling Ireland in his name. The other option would have been a massive war, which would have definitely got in the way of traditional leisure pursuits such as coursing, cursing and just hanging out. This arrangement also suited Henry VIII, as he had a lot of domestic issues to deal with. Well, six to be exact.
Horrid Henry Divorces the Church
Henry’s home life also rather famously caused a row with the Church, which wasn’t keen on people divorcing their wives, let alone beheading them. This meant that a split with Rome was inevitable. Naturally, Henry decided to become head of his very own Church and dissolved all the monasteries in England and Ireland. This led Garrett Óg Fitzgerald to quip: ‘As long as “Pope Henry the Wife-Murderer” doesn’t dissolve the pubs, we shouldn’t have a problem.’
Unfortunately, someone told Henry about this particular gag, which led him to crush the Fitzgeralds and force his rule on all Irish clans. He did this using the ‘Surrender and Regrant’ policy, which meant that if you surrendered to him, he wouldn’t kill you and you could keep your land, which was doubly nice of him. The Irish chieftains agreed, but only because it didn’t really affect them either way.
The Virgin Queen: A Mostly Lovely Girl
When Elizabeth I ascended to the English throne in 1558, she took a more lenient attitude towards Ireland, because ‘the trendy young queen is desperate to find a husband, get married and settle down’. (Note: this rather sexist comment appeared in an editorial in the December 1558 edition of Hello! magazine and is not a historical fact.) She even let the people of Ireland carry on being Catholic, speak their own language and live, which was dead nice of her.
In return, all she wanted from the various chieftains who had divided the country up between them was ‘unconditional loyalty’, the swearing of an odd oath and bucket-loads of cash. This suited everyone – until some of the Irish fellas got greedy and started scrapping with their neighbors over bits of land. This led to Elizabeth showing her not so lovely side and coming down quite hard on the Irish.
Eventually, in 1607, four years after Elizabeth’s death, a bunch of Irish earls decided enough was enough. They were going to go to Europe and bring back a fierce army that would defeat the English and end the conquest of Ireland forever and ever. Unfortunately, as the weather and the food were so lovely on the continent, they stayed there and never came back. This was known as The Cowardly Flight of the Earls, though the earls later shortened it to the much more catchy ‘Flight of the Earls’.
If You Can’t Beat Them, Make Them Join You
Tired of fighting, the English then decided the best way to ‘civilize’ the Irish was to send some nice English, Scottish and Welsh people to live on their lands, so the Irish could see just how brilliant being British was. These ‘Plantations’ might have worked too, except that a lot of the planters weren’t very brilliant – or very nice. They hadn’t signed up for it because they loved the Irish and wanted to make them better people; they came because they were given free land with free peasants (or ‘slaves’) to work on it. It was lovely in theory, but probably not a recipe for success on the ground.
Please Tell Me That’s Not Cromwell
Until the seventeenth century war in Ireland had been mainly about unimportant things such as land, money and power, but after the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, it became more about good, old-fashioned religion. How God felt about this change was anyone’s guess.
In 1649, when the latest war in England ended and Charles I lost his head and couldn’t find it anywhere, the English sent over a lovely chap by the name of Oliver Cromwell. He was only in Ireland for nine months, but managed to get in more violence than many other English people had done in decades.
His theory of how to win a war – and it has yet to be proved wrong – was to kill everybody. He and his army – they were originally going to call it the New ‘Slaughter Everybody’ Army but eventually decided on the much catchier New Model Army – basically attacked anyone they met who wasn’t one of their soldiers.
Many English people look on Cromwell as a great hero and a military genius; Irish people, on the other hand, lean more towards the genocidal nutcase description. However he was viewed, he certainly made his mark on Ireland. The Act of Settlement of 1652 basically meant that if you were Irish, Catholic or just in the way, you could be slaughtered and have your land confiscated. The only other option was … actually, in typical Cromwellian fashion, there wasn’t any other option.
Oliver’s Army
The Irish are a generous people and are never keen to criticize anybody, even if that person’s sole aim is to wipe them off the face of the planet. They were even quite nice about Oliver Cromwell. The following is a selection of quotes from various members of the Sweeney clan who knew and loved the real Oliver Cromwell:
• Ah, sure, he wasn’t the worst by any means. Yes, he slaughtered all of us, including me, my wife and the kids, but who wouldn’t have done the same in his situation? Just doing his job.
• Religious type, as far as I remember. Big into all the God stuff. And golf. Yeah, God, golf and killing Irish people: those were his things!
• Complete loony!
• Good-looking chap and could really hold a tune. Also a sharp dresser. But apart from that, a bit of a bastard.
• Complete bitch and I really doubt he was a virgin! Or is that Queen Elizabeth I’m thinking of? Now she was a piece of work, not that I ever met her. Cute nose, though! Or was that Cleopatra?
• Total psycho.
• A gentleman through and through. You really couldn’t have met a nicer chap. And a professional, a consummate professional. If you wanted Irish Catholics taken care of, he was your only man.
Posted by Jim on May 13, 2015
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD today warned that the British Conservative government’s plans to repeal the Human Rights Act is a direct attack on the Good Friday Agreement and the international Treaty that gives effect to it in law.
Speaking in the Dáil today, the Sinn Féin leader called on the Taoiseach Enda Kenna, as co-guarantor of the Agreement along with the British government, to urgently raise this matter with the British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said:
“Following their election victory last week, the Conservatives have said that they plan a fundamental change to human rights legislation, including repealing the current Human Rights Act and replacing it with a new Act.
“Part of their focus is to end what they describe as the ‘excessive influence of the European Convention on Human Rights’.
“Under the Tory’s plan, the ECHR would no longer be able to make binding decisions over the British Supreme Court or force the government to introduce laws to bring them into line with Europe.”
Teachta Adams warned that:
“The implications of the Tory plans to repeal the Human Rights Act and reject the current oversight role of the European Convention on Human Rights are enormous for the administration of government, for justice, policing, and equality in the north.
“It is also a direct and scandalous attack on the Good Friday Agreement and the international treaty signed by the British and Irish governments which gives legal affect to the Agreement.
“This would be a grievous breach of the Good Friday Agreement.
“Under the terms of the treaty between Ireland and the Britain, which incorporates the Good Friday Agreement into law, and is lodged with the United Nations, the British government is obliged to complete the incorporation into law in the north of the European Convention on Human Rights.
“The Agreement also commits to safeguards to ensure that the Assembly and public authorities in the north cannot infringe the European Convention on Human Rights.
“These safeguards also apply to policing.
“The Tory government proposal is a clear and significant breach of the Good Friday Agreement and of the International Treaty that underpins it. There is an onus on the Irish government as a co-guarantor of the Agreement to raise this matter as a matter of urgency with the British government.”
