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Periscope by Niall O'Dowd

The Irish are back in London

Posted on Thursday, November 04, 2010 at 06:56 AM

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Even the taxi drivers know the Irish are coming back to London.

Several times during a trip there last week they asked me if I was relocating, saying they have had lots of pick-ups from the airport of Irish people who were.

London remains one of the first stops for potential emigrants, and with the Irish economy on the slide there is no doubt that many are indeed arriving.

I worked in London in the early 1970s for a year and found it a very depressing place to be Irish at that time.
With IRA bombing campaigns going on, it was clear there was an unspoken antipathy to the Irish, understandable in many ways.

That, thankfully, is now gone, hopefully forever.

However, the length of The Troubles meant that the Irish community in London was never able to step out front in the way it did in America.

They were, rather, the equivalents of the Germans in America who kept low profiles after the two World Wars. But that has now changed.

Not for the first time London has become a safety valve for Irish social problems. But the Irish coming now are encountering a much better welcome.

The powers-that-be in Ireland are probably glad to see them leave, despite platitudes to the contrary.
The Irish unemployed might get shirty and start protesting, a la France and Greece, but if they are on a Ryanair flight to London they won’t get that opportunity.

I visited Kilburn High Road, and the new Irish presence is definitely being felt.

This patch of North London has always been the equivalent of the Bronx for Irish first coming to America, a first port of call. And with the Irish sailing again, Kilburn on a Saturday night looks like it is booming.

The faces are all young. The stories are familiar and would be to any generation of Irish.

The brief Irish boom has been followed by a thundering bust, and from Malahide to Mayo the siren call of emigration once more is heard.

The Irish Post newspaper, which has been the bastion of the Irish community since 1970, is reflecting those new changes too.

The Post is a remarkable newspaper.

Its founder, the late great, Brendan Mac Lua, stood up for the Irish during the worst of The Troubles. And his newspaper became a powerful voice in cases such as the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, miscarriages of justice against innocent Irish that were widely condemned.

Current news editor Siobhan Breathnach says the impact of Mac Lua has lasted. There will be a census in Britain which for the first time will ask the question about Irish ethnicity -- a pet project of the Post.

It will be fascinating, not just for the numbers of Irish-born but also the numbers who are British who relate to their Irish ancestry.

While it will not be as large, percentage wise, as Americans who claim Irish ancestry, it will provide an invaluable insight into how the Irish influence has lasted down the generations of the British.

There are obvious examples – rock star Shane MacGowan and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who credited his Irish grandmother, from Co. Donegal, with much of his empathy for the issue.

But there are millions of others too, who will now have the opportunity to state their claim to a heritage that was long hidden.

It will make for very interesting reading.

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35 comments

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Towngate | Nov 09, 2010, 08:10 AM EST

sirpeter - your idiocy and ignorance grows by the second! How can you be so very wrong about so many things. Amazing!

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sirpeter | Nov 09, 2010, 05:22 AM EST

@downinthebasement..No!! Most English have Irish and Celtic ancestry.England was part of the Celtic world for..not centuries but thousands of years.It was only when England was crushed by the Romans and Italians and later beaten to a pulp again at the battle of Hastings in 1066 by the French/Normans,that English names evolved,names that don't mean anything really.In the words of Harry Potter,the English were mudbloods long before ye came and tainted our beautiful Celtic Ireland and pure untainted language with a bastardized English language and meaningless surnames.

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downinthebasement | Nov 09, 2010, 12:54 AM EST

Most Irish have English and British ancestry...Ireland was part of the British Empire for centuries... How do you explain all the English surnames in Ireland?

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maloney | Nov 08, 2010, 06:56 PM EST

towngate...you assume they know what they are doing in the first place.

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Towngate | Nov 08, 2010, 06:49 PM EST

CENSORSHIP ......Niall and editors - explain blocking my posts or return Copy.

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Towngate | Nov 08, 2010, 06:46 PM EST

Typo last post: Thats 'parameters'.

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Towngate | Nov 08, 2010, 06:31 PM EST

CENSORSHIP ?! Niall you should 'fess up' publicly to NOT ALLOWING POSTS without explaining why. If you cannot respond to my e-mail request regarding editorial peramiters, then please return by e-mail the texts of my Comments on this article and on Cormac's 'Dark thoughts on losing the war'

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sirpeter | Nov 07, 2010, 09:30 PM EST

marsha12..That's the best post here,and your reasoning that the Irish are good at partying is spot on.A little post with far reaching wisdom and words. Go raibh míle maith agat!

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sirpeter | Nov 07, 2010, 09:03 PM EST

Thanks kurtjohnson.For the past while now,friends have told me that on the beer mats of Manchester ect, ha ha,..there is an advert for English people to come and work in Northern Ireland,I guess it's some Unionist ploy to bolster the protestant population and vote to counter act the growing Catholic population.I'm serious when i say that.In the good friday agreement if the majority want to end partition,then that's the end of partition.

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kurtjohnson | Nov 07, 2010, 07:34 PM EST

Good posts, sirpeter. It's nauseating to hear the british drone on about the immigration they created through their constant nation mugging projects and lust for cheap labor (or at least that of their "leaders" under that unwritten constitution of theirs). Parenthetically, why are so many limeys immigrating to County Fermanagh?

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marsha12 | Nov 07, 2010, 03:50 PM EST

I don't understand why there still would be a question of the Irish living anywhere they want. It's the 21 century. I want more people of Irish heritage to come to America. It makes a good party to have the Irish! "So Come One Come All".

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dan Breen | Nov 05, 2010, 05:47 PM EDT

PLEASE ALMIGHTY LORD O'DOWD, WHO SPEAKS FOR ALL THE IRISH AND IRISH AMERICANS, GO TO ENGLAND AND STAY !! AND YOU GET TO KEEP YOUR AMERICAN MONEY !!

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elektros | Nov 05, 2010, 05:26 PM EDT

One estimate is that as many as 25% of the English have some Irish ancestry. It will be interesting to see what the census says. I can see why people would still go to England now, even though things are bad there, it isn't as bad as in Ireland, and America has high unemployment now as well.

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sirpeter | Nov 05, 2010, 03:55 PM EDT

downinthebasement..And wasn't Britain part of the Roman Empire.When it came to Ireland and the Union of 1800..It wasn't Britannia rules the waves..It was Britannia waives the rules.

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downinthebasement | Nov 05, 2010, 10:32 AM EDT

Wasn't Ireland part of the Great Britain at one time? Why the confusion?

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