Mise Éire : On being Irish in a European context
I wrote the article, “On Nationality and Identity”, over two years ago now, regarding nationality, ethnicity and identity in modern Ireland. I still strongly believe in what I’ve written, though now a virulent form of isolationism is spreading across Europe and to a lesser extent, Ireland, thru the IREXIT movement.
I am Irish-born and I’m an Irish citizen — something I am immensely proud of. I’m also a speaker of both Irish and English, and I’m happy to hold a conversation in either language. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam*. But it isn’t as simple as that. I’m a reasonably proficient French speaker, and studied the language in Primary school back when I was just eleven years old. Recently, all that Français came rushing back when I visited Paris on business last year, at the same time that Les Gilets Jaunes were at their peak in Paris, coincidentally.
I felt a kinship with the French people while I was there, and it was very clear that they felt the same. Indeed, most anywhere I’ve traveled throughout Europe, that broad kinship has always been under the surface.
I grew up in the 1970s in Ireland, just as Ireland joined the fledgling EEC — the European Economic Community — in 1973. I was one of the last waves of Irish schoolchildren who’d learnt the old imperial system; feet and inches. We switched over to metric, and my brain tried to make the best of it. Thus, another vestige of British colonialism was no more.
Ireland had finally begun digging itself out of decades of deliberate isolationism, largely driven by then President Éamon De Valera. We had closed our borders to foreign imports, and had slapped tariffs on anything British. Yet we had no problems exporting our humans, and we exported them in their droves — to the UK mostly, and to Australia and America. We Irish built the UK after the war, and that influx led to that “thick drunken Paddy with his pick” stereotype, and the slew of racially-tinged “Paddy Irishman” jokes, as Britain pushed back with their own insularity.
So come all you navvies bold who think that English gold,
Is just waiting to be taken from each sod.
Or that the likes of you and me could ever get an OBE,
Or an knighthood for good service to the hod.
They’ve the concrete master race to keep you in your place,
The ganger man to kick you to the ground.
If you ever try to take part of what the bosses make,
When they’re building up and tearing England down.— Christy Moore, Paddy On The Road
Our roads were shite, our economy was shite, our outlook was shite, and we were in thrall to the Catholic Church. Contraception was banned, divorce was banned, being gay was a veritable death sentence and “homosexual acts” were illegal. Abortion had also been rendered illegal since the formation of the State, and this led to horrific incidents like the deaths associated with Mamie Cadden backstreet abortions. And young women were incarcerated in “Magdalen Homes” — sometimes forever — for the social crime of being pregnant outside marriage. Their children often died in Mother and Baby Homes, like happened in Tuam, or they were sold to wealthy Catholic Americans. But all of that was acceptable to society so long as it was invisible, not talked about, suppressed.
It would take the “Norris v. Ireland” case to finally decriminalise homosexuality. Notice that that was David Norris going to the European Court of Human Rights, which led to change. Similarly for abortion, there were two cases which made it to the ECHR though they did fail. I think you can see where I’m going with this.
The EEC pumped over €50 billion into Ireland — largely forgotten now — though schemes like the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, and so on. Over the decades that followed, Ireland grew and began to prosper. Infrastructure was built, trade was developed, and industry flowed into Ireland. We became way better educated, and college was free — the EU literally paid us to go. I would not be where I am today, without the EU paying for my college under the ESF. As a nation, we did well.
The EEC, in time, became the EC, and finally the European Union. We handed in our green Irish passports for purple bilingual EU ones (“An tAontas Eorpach”), and these allowed us to travel, to live and to work anywhere within the Schengen Region. Europe shaped us, and we them.
We still have gombeenery — goodness knows we do! But a lot of that parochial nonsense is kept in check today by the European Union. I’d hate to go back to the days where Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael could run rampant and do what they pleased. When they had that power, they oppressed us.
Today, I’m immensely proud to be Irish. But I’m also proud to be European. We are they, and they are we. We work better together. We have a common currency, common goals, and a unity that I really value. The EU has been good for Europe, for Ireland, and I support them.
I know there are dark forces in the world today that would like nothing more than have the European Union dissolve and fragment, as it had been after the Second World War. Thus, we would no longer be a threat to them as a political bloc. So they try to destroy the EU from within, with disinformation campaigns, false grassroots orgs, and cheap trashy memes. But again and again, Ireland has shown that we are aligned to Europe. Previous polls have consistently shown that Ireland leans over 80–95% in favour of union with Europe, and indeed, the recent General Election has proven that insularity and nativism has no place in modern Ireland.
* Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam : A nation without a language, is a nation without a soul
