Читать книгу The Irish Are Coming - Ryan Tubridy - Страница 5
ОглавлениеFOR EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OR THEREABOUTS, one of history’s greatest neighbourhood disputes has been rumbling on between two countries that on the face of it should be best of friends. Separated only by a 130-mile stretch of water, Ireland and Britain have always had what the Americans like to call ‘issues’.
Until relatively recently, the Irish considered themselves to be put upon by their nearest neighbour. We felt residual repression and an entitlement to complain about ‘eight centuries of hurt’. The British considered the Irish a boozy, noisy and troublesome neighbour but – let’s be fair – weren’t short of the odd bout of anti-social behaviour themselves. Such clichés are convenient by way of a Ladybird introduction to Anglo-Irish neuroses but they are glib and hide the enormous complexities that lie behind this strange and compulsive relationship. So let’s look a little deeper.
Eight hundred is a neat number. Round, even and large, it’s the number used when people casually refer to the amount of time Ireland has been annoyed, pestered and occupied by ‘the Brits’. For a long time, when someone was asked why we had such a gripe with the British, the retort was simply ‘Eight hundred years’. It’s unlikely there’ll be mention of the Norman invasion of the late twelfth century that marked the start of direct English involvement in Irish affairs but in many respects, that’s when the trouble began. Ireland proved a difficult outpost to maintain despite being right on the doorstep because the people tended to be fiercely proud, independent and uncooperative. The more they kicked off, the more the English cracked the whip and so began the rocky road that would last … well, eight hundred years.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Irish lands were confiscated and plantations created with English bosses in charge. Some were benign and respectful to locals but a lot came and treated the place and the people with contempt, often functioning as absentee landlords, sending in agents to do the dirty work while enjoying the financial rewards from afar. Cromwell was hated for bringing across his soldiers to enforce the law with an iron fist that left a bloody legacy, and when Wolfe Tone led the 1798 rebellion against English rule, he achieved national support. His efforts were fruitless in the short term, but the die was cast for future leaders of an embattled nation.
The famine known as the Great Hunger saw a million Irish dead between 1845 and 1852 and a million more emigrating to America, Australia and Canada, hoping that a new land would bring fresh hope and a bright beginning. The British government response to the famine was scribbled on the back of an envelope too late in the day and then tied up in red tape. In very simple terms, they sat back and tutted as the Irish starved and the population dropped by a quarter (although debate on this issue continues to rage, but that’s for another day).
Despite this, Ireland sent the English lots of its best writers and dramatists and in 1914 a whole load of Irish boys headed for London to sign up and fight for King and Country. But two years on, bang in the middle of the First World War, another bunch of Irish boys marched up to Dublin’s General Post Office to proclaim a Republic. Within months of that failed 1916 rebellion, the British made martyrs of the leadership by killing them in cold blood and found themselves in the middle of war they could well have done without. That was settled in 1921 and what can only be described as an Anglo-Irish Cold War began – and would last for the best part of the next century.
The lure of television
Throughout the fraught twentieth century, Ireland strove to forge its own identity by pretending that Britain barely existed. This meant doing things on our own terms as a country and not kowtowing to our former masters. We didn’t ‘do’ the Second World War (we even had our own name for it – ‘The Emergency’) and those who did join the British army were largely ignored or reviled on their return home and have only recently been officially remembered in post-peace-process Ireland.
The Irish might have moaned about the ‘bloody Brits’ but in the 1950s and 60s they headed to London in their droves when there was lots of building work to be had. There are very few motorways you can drive on, Tube stations you can enter, football stadia you can cheer in, or buildings you can work or live in that haven’t felt the trowel of an Irish plasterer or the brush of an Irish painter. It was suitable work for émigrés who weren’t particularly educated or qualified but knew how to dig a hole and work hard. They were drawn towards population centres like London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow, but often stayed in their own self-created ghettos – such as London’s Cricklewood and Kilburn. Partly this was because the welcome they encountered wasn’t the friendliest, with many a boarding house having a ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ sign by the front door. However, just as they did in America, the Irish newcomers found their feet, made money and set up homes.
United by war and economics but divided by history and denial, it was the second half of the twentieth century that introduced a third intangible thread that brought these disparate countries together – popular culture. Television would change the day-to-day lives of British citizens first and it wasn’t long before the Irish followed suit. By 1955, when the signal was strong enough, Irish television viewers could watch British programmes and suddenly the ‘old enemy’ was in Irish living rooms. They looked just like us and they had similar worries. Bar the accents, they could’ve been us. What to do now?
It was only a matter of time before the lure of the London limelight became too strong for a slew of Irishmen who watched their televisions in awe as Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock and Bob Monkhouse strutted their stuff. The small screen offered some local talent the opportunity for big things. A selection of Irish broadcasters, actors and entertainers reckoned they had what it might take to mix it with the best of these guys and so packed their bags, kissed goodbye to a future in Ireland and headed for the streets of London. In many respects, this marked the beginning of a very public association between Irish people and the great British public. The most obvious and recognizable names emerge throughout the 60s and into the 70s and yet these iconic monikers are only one part of a much bigger story and a much deeper relationship.
Anglo-Irish relations deteriorated again with the Troubles of the 70s and 80s. The British looked askance at anyone with an Irish accent and wondered if they had a whiff of sulphur about them, or if they were related to someone who might be troublesome. Then there were the gross injustices of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four when people were just picked up off the street and banged away until eventually justice came along. Throughout that time, Terry Wogan was enormously important as a symbol of the civilized Irish. Every morning from 1972 to 1984 people woke to the tones of a cheery Irishman who made them forget about the unrest and reassess their view of the nation, then throughout the 80s he was on their TVs every evening straight after the news. I’ve always thought Wogan was more important than he’s given credit for in terms of tempering the British view of the Irish at a critical time.
The peace process came along in the 1990s, leading up to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Sure, there have been ups and downs since but once Queen Elizabeth came to Ireland in 2011 and was seen belly-laughing with a fishmonger in Cork, it seemed clear the Cold War was over and the neighbours were friends at last.
The Irish in Britain
The question this book asks is ‘What have the Irish ever done for the UK?’ Sit comfortably, because the answer is rather longer than you might realize … Who invented the submarine? Who is the cleverest funny man in Britain? Who is the most-loved radio host? Who makes the best hats for royal occasions? Who populates the cast of Harry Potter films? Who raised hell like no others? Who reports from the world’s most treacherous hot spots? You know where this is going but you’ll have to read on in order to equip yourself with such ‘Oh, I never knew that’ moments.
From the Duke of Wellington (the man, not the pub) to the Coach and Horses (the hostelry of choice for Richard Harris and Peter O’Toole) and from Eamonn Andrews to Graham Norton, the Irish have served and been served by the UK. This book is intended as a friendly postcard or, at the very least, a yellow Post-it from one neighbour to another with a view to reminding each other of how we’ve enriched each other’s lives, in sickness and in health, for richer and for … you get the idea.
I wrote this to celebrate those born in the Republic who came to live in Britain (for a time at least) and made a significant impact on British life.
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Inclusion is based on a more or less arbitrary decision-making process by a committee of one, with no discussion and no voting. This is not Eurovision or a council election. This is one man’s curiosity about two countries that mean so much to each other. I haven’t included Bono, who is of course a household name in the UK, because he has always remained resident in Ireland. I haven’t included Daniel Day Lewis because he was born in England although he now has Irish citizenship. I haven’t included anyone from the North of Ireland because their history of emigration to England and reasons for emigrating are an entirely different story. I’m writing about the country I’m from, and George Best, Kenneth Branagh and Patrick Kielty need a book of their own (maybe someone will write it one day). Having said all that, I might break my own rules sometimes – but that’s the author’s prerogative.
For each of the people my committee of one has chosen, I’ll be looking at why they came over, how they fared, what the Irish think of them, what the British think of them, and what I personally think of them. In this way, I hope to shine some light on our differences and similarities, our shared quirks and oddities, and the way history has affected our views of each other.
So let’s get on with it and endeavour to discover how the Irish really did help to make Britain Great.
