Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T21:28:08.010Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Othered Irish: Shades of Difference in Post-War Britain, 1948–71

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2015

JOHN CORBALLY
JOHN CORBALLY*
Affiliation:
Diablo Valley College, Social Science Department, 321 Golf Club Road, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523, USA; [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to consider white Irish immigrants within the context of immigration of colour in post-war Britain. It considers the similarities in the imperial-historical reasons for the immigration of mostly poor rural workers from the West Indies, South Asia and Ireland. The discussion explores the experiences of both white and non-white immigrants in London and Birmingham up to 1971, comparing all three groups but focusing on Irish immigrants. I aim to append the Irish experience to analyses of post-war immigration, which tend to focus on non-white Commonwealth immigrants from the West Indies and South Asia. By exploring the Irish experience, I question existing scholarship which suggests Irish immigrants assimilated into post-war Britain free of the ethnic tensions and difficult conditions that migrants of colour indisputably endured. I also demonstrate the degree to which British historians have disregarded the experiences of Irish people in Britain.

L’altérité des irlandais: nuances de différences dans la grande-bretagne de l’après-guerre, 1948–71

Cet article a pour objectif principal de considérer les immigrants irlandais blancs dans le contexte de l’immigration des ‘personnes de couleur’ dans la Grande-Bretagne de l’après-guerre. Il considère les similarités entre les raisons impérialo-historiques qui ont poussé à l’immigration des travailleurs agricoles pauvres, pour la plupart, venus des Antilles, de l’Asie du Sud et de l’Irlande. La discussion explore l’expérience des immigrants blancs et non blancs à Londres et Birmingham jusqu’en 1971, et compare les trois groupes ci-dessus, mais en s’intéressant de plus près aux immigrants irlandais. Le but de l’auteur est d’ajouter l’expérience vécue par les Irlandais aux analyses de l’immigration de l’après-guerre, qui ont eu tendance à se focaliser sur les immigrants non blancs des pays des Antilles et d’Asie du Sud appartenant au Commonwealth. En explorant l’expérience irlandaise, il remet en question les études qui suggèrent que les immigrants irlandais se sont assimilés dans la Grande-Bretagne de l’après-guerre sans avoir à affronter les tensions ethniques et les conditions difficiles indubitablement rencontrées par les personnes de couleur. Il montre en outre à quel point les historiens britanniques ont négligé l’expérience des Irlandais en Grande-Bretagne.

Die ausgeschlossenen iren: nuancen des andersseins in großbritannien 1948–71

Dieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf die Erfahrungen weißer Immigranten aus Irland im umfassenderen Kontext der Einwanderung Farbiger nach Großbritannien im Anschluss an den Zweiten Weltkrieg. Er beleuchtet die Ähnlichkeiten imperial-historischer Gründe für die Einwanderung meist armer Landarbeiter von den Westindischen Inseln sowie aus Südasien und Irland. Dabei werden die Erfahrungen weißer und nicht weißer Einwanderer in London und Birmingham bis 1971 untersucht. Alle drei Gruppen werden verglichen, doch der Schwerpunkt liegt auf irischen Einwanderern. Frühere Studien zur Immigration in den Nachkriegsjahren konzentrieren sich in der Regel auf nicht weiße Einwanderer aus Commonwealth-Gebieten wie den Westindischen Inseln und Südasien. Dieser Beitrag hat es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, sie durch eine Analyse der Erfahrungen irischer Einwanderer zu ergänzen. Diese Analyse stellt bisherige Forschungsergebnisse in Frage, denen zufolge irische Einwanderer sich unberührt von den ethnischen Spannungen und schwierigen Bedingungen im Großbritannien der Nachkriegszeit einlebten, unter denen farbige Migranten zweifellos zu leiden hatten. Dabei wird deutlich, wie stark britische Historiker die Erfahrungen der irischen Bevölkerung in Großbritannien bisher vernachlässigt haben.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 105 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Birmingham Catholic Archdiocesan Archives (hereafter BCAA), Archbishop's Papers, APD/S/J1, Notes on the Working Party on Commonwealth Immigration held in the Lord Mayor's Conference Room, 3 Feb. 1966. ‘Commonwealth Immigrants’ refers to immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia. ‘Irish immigrants’ refers to those from the Republic of Ireland.

2 BCAA, Letter from Lord Mayor's office to Archbishop Dwyer, 13 Apr. 1966.

3 For studies of other white migrants, see Kushner, Tony, The Jewish Heritage in British History: Englishness and Jewishness (London: F. Cass, 1992)Google Scholar; Panayi, Panikos, The Impact of Immigration: A Documentary History of the Effects and Experiences of Immigrants in Britain since 1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Taylor, Becky and Sliwa, Martyna, ‘Polish Migration: Moving Beyond the Iron Curtain’, History Workshop Journal, 71 (2011), 128–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Panayi, Panikos, Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Leicester University Press, 1996) ix, 173Google Scholar.

4 Paul, Kathleen, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 7Google Scholar. Also see Spencer, Ian, British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain (London: Routledge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hampshire, James, Citizenship and Belonging: Immigration and the Politics of Demographic Governance in Postwar Britain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fryer, Peter, Staying Power (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Hiro, Dilip, Black British, White British (London: Paladin, 1971)Google Scholar; Layton-Henry, Zig, The Politics of Immigration: Immigration, ‘Race’ and ‘Race Relations’ in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar, and Miles, Robert and Phizacklea, Annie, White Man's Country: Racism in British Politics (London: Pluto Press, 1984)Google Scholar. These and more recent works such as the study from Bill Schwarz focus almost exclusively on immigrants of colour, in Schwarz's case on Caribbeans. See Schwarz, Bill, The White Man's World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

5 Hansen, Randall, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain: The Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), vGoogle Scholar. See also Dean, D. W., ‘Conservative governments and the restriction of Commonwealth immigration in the 1950s: The problems of constraint’, Historical Journal, 35, 1 (1992), 171–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Panayi, Panikos, An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800 (Harlow: Longman, 2010), 65Google Scholar. See also Holmes, C., ‘Immigration’, in Gourvish, T.R. and O’Day, Alan, eds, Britain Since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1991), 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Weight, Richard, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000 (London: Macmillan, 2002), 145Google Scholar.

8 Addison, Paul, No Turning Back: The Peacetime Revolutions of Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 124Google Scholar. My emphasis.

9 Paul, Whitewashing Britain, 110. For arguments suggesting Irish assimilation, see Hornsby-Smith, Michael P, Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner: Sociological Studies of the Catholic School System in England and Wales (London: Sheed and Ward, 1978)Google Scholar. Also Hutchinson, John and O’Day, Alan, ‘The Gaelic Revival in London 1900–22: Limits of Ethnic Identity’, in Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan, eds, The Irish in Victorian Britain: The Local Dimension (Dublin: The Four Court, 1999)Google Scholar; William Ryan, ‘Assimilation of Irish Immigrants in Britain’, PhD dissertation, St Louis University, 1973). Also, Addison, No Turning Back, esp. 116–18.

10 Hickman, Mary, Religion, Class, and Identity: The State, the Catholic Church, and the Education of the Irish in Britain (Avebury: Ashgate, 1995), 215Google Scholar. Also, Hickman, ‘Reconstructing deconstructing “race”: British political discourses about the Irish in Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 21:2, 288–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hickman, Mary, Bradley, Joseph, Walter, Bronwen and Morgan, Sarah, ‘The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness: Second-generation Irish identification and positionings in multi-ethnic Britain’, Ethnicities, 5, 2 (2005), 160–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Mac an Ghaill, Máirtín, ‘British Critical Theorists: The Production of the Conceptual Invisibility of the Irish Diaspora’, Social Identities, 7, 2 (2001): 179–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the ‘vanishing Irish’, see Keogh, Dermot, O’Shea, Finbarr and Quinlan, Carmel, The Lost Decade: Ireland In the 1950s, (Cork: Mercier, 2004)Google Scholar.

11 Irish nurses in particular she shows contended with ambiguous identities working along nurses of Caribbean origins. Ryan, L., ‘Who do you think you are? Irish nurses encountering ethnicity and constructing identity in Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30, 3 (2007), 416–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, Ryan, L., ‘I had a sister in England’: Family-Led migration, social networks and nurses’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34, 3 (2008), 453–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Though we tread similar ground regarding conclusions on the Irish experience I want to explore the historical evidence for such claims.

12 Walter, Bronwen, Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place, and Irish Women, Gender, Racism, Ethnicity (New York: Routledge, 2001), 116Google Scholar.

13 See Gray, Breda, Women and the Irish Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2004), 17Google Scholar; also Ryan, Louise and Webster, Wendy, Gendering Migration: Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008)Google Scholar and Lennon, Mary, McAdam, Marie, and O’Brien, Joanne, Across the Water: Irish Women's Lives in Britain (London: Virago, 1988)Google Scholar.

14 Webster, Wendy, Englishness and Empire 1939–1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 155Google Scholar; see also Webster, ‘Immigration and Racism’, in Addison, Paul and Jones, Harriet, A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939–2000, (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 97Google Scholar.

15 Delaney, The Irish in Postwar Britain (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 4, 209, 175Google Scholar.

16 Ryan and Webster, Gendering Migration, 99.

17 Fielding, Steven, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in Britain, 1880–1939 (Philadelphia, Pa.: Open University Press, 1993), 6Google Scholar. Joseph Lennon notes too that ‘Irish culture long found parallels with representations of Asian and West Asian cultures; both long signified alterity and had colonial histories.’ Lennon, Joseph, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 371Google Scholar.

18 Kenny, Kevin, Ireland and the British Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2006), 15Google Scholar. On Ireland's relation to post-colonial studies, see also Howe, Stephen, Ireland and Empire: Colonial legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

19 See Waters, Chris, ‘“Dark Strangers” In Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947–1964”, Journal of British Studies, 36, 2 (April 1997), 207–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, Schwarz, Bill, ‘“Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette”: Reflections on the Emergence of Post-colonial Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 14, 3 (2003): 264–85, 265CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Gilroy, Has it come to this? in Howe, ed., ‘The New Imperial Histories Reader’, 335.

21 Rose, E. J. B., and Institute of Race Relations, Colour and Citizenship: A Report on British Race Relations (London: for the Institute of Race Relations by Oxford University Press, 1969), 72Google Scholar, citing census figures.

22 From 1971 Census, cited in Muhammad Anwar, Patrick Roach and Ranjit Sondhi, From Legislation to Integration? Race Relations in Britain, 2.

23 Davison, Robert and Institute of Race Relations, Black British: Immigrants to England (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 53Google Scholar.

24 See J. Stevenson, ‘The Jerusalem that Failed? The Rebuilding of Post-War Britain’, in Gourvish and O’Day, ed., Britain Since 1945; also, Berry, Fred, Housing: The Great British Failure (London: C. Knight, 1974)Google Scholar.

25 BCAA, Archbishop's Papers, Facts Regarding the Life of Irish Catholics in Birmingham, 1954, AP/J6, Irish Centre, Birmingham, 1952–1963.

26 ‘Housing Plan to Aid Irish’, Birmingham Evening Mail, 18 Mar. 1962.

27 Spinley, B. M., The Deprived and the Privileged: Personality Development in English Society (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1953), 40Google Scholar.

28 BCAA, Irish Centre, Birmingham 1952–1963, ‘Suggested scheme for a centre in Birmingham’. Also, BCAA, Archbishop's Papers, AP/J6, Letter from Rev. Hickland, 21.1.1957, Annual Report from the Birmingham Irish Centre, Mar. 1959–Mar. 1960.

29 ‘Suggested scheme for a centre in Birmingham’.

30 Rose, Colour and Citizenship, 121.

31 Rex, John and Moore, Robert Samuel, Race, Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook (London: published for the Institute of Race Relations by Oxford University Press, 1967), 11Google Scholar.

32 See Desai, Rashmi, Indian Immigrants in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 32–3, 48Google Scholar.

33 1961 Census Data, cited in Burney, Elizabeth, Housing on Trial, 1st edn (Oxford University Press; 1967), 83Google Scholar.

34 Walter, Outsiders Inside, 160, 87.

35 Facts Regarding the Life of Irish Catholics in Birmingham, 1954.

36 See O’Grady, Anne, Irish Migration to London in the 1940's and 1950's (London: PNL Press, 1988), 13Google Scholar.

37 See the short interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS-05fZZN4g, in which an Irish labourer explains English people conceiving of Irish labourers as savage (0.45), (last visited 13 Sept. 2014).

38 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .” Interviews with London Irish Elders’, by David Kelly in collaboration with the Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University, Interview with John Thompson.

39 ‘Brum Landlords Exploit Irish Couples’, Irish Weekly Independent, 9 Apr. 1956.

40 ‘Coloured folks dominated house buying’, Warley Courier, 16 Jul. 1963.

41 Elton, Godfrey, The Unarmed Invasion: A Survey of Afro-Asian Immigration (London: G. Bles, 1965), 52Google Scholar.

42 Birmingham City Archives (Henceforth BCA), MS 2141/A/7/9, Cuttings on race bill, ‘The Immigrant’, Birmingham Planet. Also Rex and Moore, Race, Community and Conflict, 136.

43 Dunne, Catherine, An Unconsidered People: The Irish in London (Dublin: New Island Books, 2003), 37Google Scholar. The derogatory term culchies denotes those from outside of Dublin.

44 1966 census statistics, cited in W. Ryan, ‘Assimilation of Irish Immigrants in Britain’, 74.

45 O’Donoghue, John, In a Strange Land (London: Batsford, 1958), 70Google Scholar.

46 Jackson, The Irish in Britain, 71.

47 From the 1965 Philip Donnellan documentary, The Irishmen, cited in O’Grady, Irish Migration to London in the 1940's and 1950's, 9.

48 London School of Economics (LSE)/Longden/9/19, ‘Powell and his Allies’, from Labour Research Department 1969.

49 ‘Powell raises questions of Irish Republic citizens in Britain’, The Times, 28 Aug. 1969.

50 ‘New committee, Irishmen, and Liberals’, The Guardian, 22 Sept. 1966, Letter to the editor from Dermot Whall, Birmingham.

51 ‘Keeping down family size’, The Observer, 6 Dec. 1970.

52 ‘How the city's Irish live’, Birmingham Post, 23 July 1971.

53 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Interview with Noel Kelly.

54 See Walvin, James, Passage to Britain: Immigration In British History and Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), 14Google Scholar; also Tomlinson, Jim, ‘The Decline of the Empire and the Economic “Decline” of Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 14, 3 (2003), 201–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 For the dire state of mid-century Jamaica, see Holt, Thomas C., The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832–1938 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 397Google Scholar. Riots in the 1930s forced the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts of 1940 and 1945 and ultimately independence in 1962. For India, Nicholas Dirks considers British wealth extraction part of a prolonged extortionate use of land revenue and monopolisation of the Indian economy, which the British used to bankroll both its imperial and metropolitan dominance. See Dirks, Nicholas, ‘Coda, The Burden of the Past: Colonialism and the Writing of History’, in Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, cited in Howe, Stephen, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (New York: Routledge, 2009).103, fn11Google Scholar.

56 LSE/Jeger/6/7, Colour Problem, Letter from Mrs K. Groves to Lena Jeger, 6 Sept. 1958.

57 See the University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, ‘Report of Proceedings at 91st Annual Trades Union Congress’, 7–11 Sept. 1959, 428. To its credit, the powerful TUC increased its activism to stem colour prejudice, devoting more space to the issue in its annual reports every year thereafter.

58 National Archives, London, (hereafter UKNA), Ministry of Power, Manpower, 1951, UKNA: PRO, POWE 37/237.

59 Social Survey, Irish Immigration Research Officers Correspondence, 1961–63, UKNA: PRO, RG40/230. See also Jackson, The Irish in Britain, 108.

60 Irish Republic Labour Report, 1963–66, UKNA: PRO, LAB 13/1741.

61 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, A Higgins (9. 30).

62 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Pat McCann (6.38); Clarence Ollson Senior and Douglas Manley, A Report on Jamaican Migration to Great Britain, (Kingston: Printed by the Govt. Printer, 1955), 31–2.

63 Interview with Charles MacNamara, 22/5/2001. Partner: Luton Museum Service (LMS), Reference: LTNMG 2002/266/2. Date(s): 2001, Community: Irish Community, Theme: Settling: http://goo.gl/OZbI2k (last visited 16 Sept. 2014).

64 Interview with Thomas F. Bourke. First part of oral history interview with Thomas F. Bourke, born in County Mayo, 2001. 1932LTNMG 2002/264/1. Community: Irish Community: http://goo.gl/qwCD7X (last visited 16 Sept. 2014).

65 L. Ryan, ‘I had a sister in England’: Family-led migration, social networks and nurses’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34, 3 (2008), 453–70.

66 BCAA, Archbishop's Papers 1929–1965: Irish.

67 UKNA: PRO, RG 40/230, Social Survey, Irish Immigration Research Officers Correspondence, 1961–63.

68 UKNA: PRO, HO 344/284, Memorandum on the Irish problem for the ministerial committee, Nov. 1964.

69 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Noel Kennedy. (7. 40).

70 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Tom Timmins (9. 00).

71 ‘Hundreds of Irish on Social Security’, The Times, 8 June 1967.

72 Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 139–40.

73 Cited in Ryan and Webster, Gendering Migration (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998), 125Google Scholar; see also the oral histories conducted in the 1980s by O’Grady, in Irish Migration to London in the 1940's and 1950's, esp.14.

74 http://www.movinghere.org.uk/stories/story31/story31.htm?identifier=stories/story31/story31.htm Emmigration (sic) from the Land of Saints and Scholars, 1965 . . . Contributed by Anon. (last visited 13 Sept. 2014).

75 Mac Amhlaigh, Donall, An Irish Navvy: The Diary of an Exile. (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1964), 6Google Scholar.

76 M. Lennon, McAdam and O’Brien, Across the Water, 63, 96–7.

77 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Andy Higgins (10.20).

78 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Madge Messenger (2.39).

79 BCA, LP 21.7, The Church and the Emigrant, from “The Furrow”, 1958, ‘A Worker in Birmingham’.

80 ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’, Interview with Andy Higgins (01 27).

81 BCA, 2/74. Irish Navvy Poems, ‘The Exile Song’.

82 Request for a declaration of the Pakistani Citizenship Act as a citizenship law under section 32 (8) of the BNA, Treaty Department; Nationality, 1951. UKNA. FO 372/7089, Treaty Department; Nationality, 1951.

83 From Dalton's diaries, cited in Phillips, Mike and Phillips, Trevor, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 75Google Scholar.

84 Rugby to Attlee, 17 Nov. 1948. UKNA: PRO, CAB 21/1843.

85 Directive on Race, June 1939, Tom Harrisson Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex, quoted in Fielding, Class and Ethnicity, 131.

86 Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 133.

87 Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University, Gaelic League file, Lynch, Anne, The Irish in Exile: Stories of Emigration (Community History Press, n.d.)Google Scholar

88 ‘Reminiscences of Joe Davis’, Irish Post, 16 Feb. 2000.

89 BCA, MS 2141/1/7/4. 1964–71. The Irish and the immigration bill.

90 Interviews with elderly Irish women in London, 1997–98. Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University ‘Continuing the oral tradition’; also the thirty oral history interviews carried out by O’Grady in Irish Migration to London in the 1940's and 1950's (1988) and the oral history DVD, ‘“I Only Came over for a Couple of Years . . .”’.

91 ‘Continuing the oral tradition, Interviews with elderly Irish women in London’, l (1997–98), 7.

92 Interview with Charles MacNamara, 22/5/2001. Partner: LMS, Reference: LTNMG 2002/266/2. Date(s): 2001, Community: Irish Community, Theme: Settling: http://goo.gl/OZbI2k (last visited 16 Sept. 2014).

93 Cited in O’Connor, Kevin, The Irish in Britain (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1972), 164Google Scholar.

94 See in the Haringey (London) magazine, ‘Racism: Anti-Irish jokes: Why we’re not laughing’, The Irish Voice, 3 (1986), Haringey Museum and Archive Service, Bruce Castle Museum, ldbcm2002.81.

95 See Hickman, Mary, Walter, Bronwen, and Great Britain, Commission for Racial Equality, Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain: A Report of Research undertaken for the Commission for Racial Equality London: Commission for Racial Equality (1997)Google Scholar.

96 Walter, Outsiders Inside, 14.

97 The Irish Times, 10 June 1993, 4. Only in 1995 did the Commission for Racial Equality agree to a long-sought Irish category for use in ethnic monitoring systems.

98 Curtis, Liz, Nothing but the Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism (London: Information on Ireland, 1984)Google Scholar; see also, Mac An Ghaill,‘British Critical Theorists’, 179.

99 See ‘Internal Exile’, The Irish Voice, 3, 1986. Haringey Museum and Archive Service, Bruce Castle Museum, ldbcm2002.81. The Irish Voice is the community magazine for the Haringey Irish in Britain Representation Group (IBRG),1987: Community: Irish Community. Out of those that would eventually work to change attitudes in England, the Federation of Irish Societies was formed in 1973 to promote Irish pride. The IBRG pointed to a new approach, forming in 1981 to foster a more positive identity for the Irish and to counter stereotypes.

100 Irish Studies Centre, London Metropolitan University, The London Irish (1987). See too Mary Tilki, and Louise Ryan, Alessio D’Angelo, Rosemary A Sales (2009), ‘Forgotten Irish, Project Report’, Middlesex University.

101 See Aspinall, P. J., ‘Suicide amongst Irish migrants in Britain: A review of the identity and integration hypothesis’, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 48, 4 (1 Dec. 2002), 290–304CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Also Cruickshank, J. K., ‘Mortality in second-generation Irish people living in Britain and Wales’, BMJ, 313 (1996), 753CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Greenslade, Liam, ‘Na daoine aird: Irish people and mental health problems’, International Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy, 11, 2 (1993), 1986Google Scholar. See also Mac an Ghaill, Máirtín and Haywood, Chris, ‘Young (male) Irelanders: Postcolonial ethnicities: Expanding the nation and Irishness’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 6 (2003), 386–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 The Sunday Mercury, 23 Mar. 1991.

103 For government efforts to solve problems of integration for non-white migrants, see Cabinet office, Commonwealth Immigrants: Integration. 6/15/39/1, UKNA: PRO, CAB 21/5287. Between 1967 and 1970, the National Foundation for Educational Research worked to better understand difficulties faced by ethnic minorities adapting to life in Britain. Focused on all the major immigrant groups, it did not consider the Irish. Letter from Miss Joyce Smith, assistant to the Secretary of State to Lord Bridges, 14 Nov. 1973. UKNA: PRO, PREM 15/1717. An article in a Birmingham newspaper in 1992 called for Irish people to begin to consider themselves an ethnic minority, noting the Labour Party had recognised the need since 1984. BCA, Unclear Title. 10 June 1992. BCOL. 941.5.

104 Gray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, 107.

105 Hickman, Mary, et al., ‘The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness’, Ethnicities, 5, 2 (2005), 160–82, 67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Krausz, Ernest, Ethnic minorities in Britain (Paladin, 1972), 125Google Scholar.

107 O’Connor, The Irish in Britain, 153, 160.

108 Hansard (HC) Vol.882 col.35 (25 November 1974), Roy Jenkins.