My Dad was 18 when he tried to join the Royal Air Force. He’d wanted to fly planes since he was a little boy. Going to England and signing up to the RAF seemed to be the most straightforward way to do that.
He took a ferry to Wales, jumped on a train to London and revelled in the debauchery of 1970s Soho. Home had been that relentlessly flat, green strip of soil called the Curragh.
Bathed in the lurid glow of strip bars and porno kiosks, it must have felt like another planet. He’d swapped Dominican friars gripping rosary beads for pimps with golden crosses nestled in greasy chest hair.
The RAF didn’t want him.
A Kildare man in London: ‘The British view colonisation like their parents’ sex life – they know it happened, but prefer not to know details'
Irish in Oxford: ‘I felt alienated from the very start’
The voice note is anathema to the values that uphold Irishness as we know it
An Irishman at Oxford: It was an education in being an outsider. I felt alienated from the very start
They told him to try again once he had finished his legal studies at UCD. He was disappointed, but decided to have another go once he got his degree.
Then Bloody Sunday happened.
Rather than daydreaming about darting through the sky in an Electric Lightning, my old man was in the crowd cheering Ewhen the BritishE embassy burned in Dublin. The Anglo-Irish relationship hadn’t just soured – it turned rancid. Serving the crown suddenly was suddenly out of the question.
He never went back.
Contrary to the stereotype, the Irish attitude towards Britain isn’t one of static resentment. It hardens and softens again over time according to the developments of the day.
I moved to London shortly after the Brexit referendum. Boris Johnson and his clown-car of hardliners were in the ascendancy. Their contempt for the Irish peace process was galling. Relations never reached the lows of the Troubles, but it was an uncomfortable reminder of how little some English people think of Ireland.
The notion of the treacherous, slovenly Paddy has been around for almost a thousand years. It was first codified in 1185 when Gerald of Wales wrote Topographia Hibernica, describing us as “dedicated to leisure and laziness ... a truly barbarous people”.
The framing of the Irish as a morally inferior ethnic group allowed the British to rationalise the atrocities that followed. They used Ireland to experiment with colonisation for the first time, a process of trial and error that they would eventually perfect in Africa and beyond.
Today, most people I meet here have a positive disposition towards us. Though some old habits die hard.
The Daily Mail’s coverage of Kneecap’s win at the British Independent Film Awards was another reminder of the UK’s discomfort with uppity colonials. If an Irish artist living in the UK makes any critique of the establishment that governs them, they can be easily and thoughtlessly dismissed as “anti-Brits”. The singularity of their cultural identity is not embraced, but they are not considered “properly” British either. The black sheep of the empire, the same but different, mad cousins living on a rock in the Atlantic.
Most ordinary people in the UK have no strong feelings on Ireland or its place in the world. They think of it as the land of black beer and singsong accents, if they think about us at all. The complexities of our shared history is poorly understood. They look at British colonisation the way they look at their parents' sex life – they know it happened, but they’d prefer not to know the details.
There is an alternative reality, perhaps, where events played out differently. One where Dad flew planes at the pleasure of her majesty, one where Irish people feel less protective of our national heritage. But here in the England I live in, I cling on to my Irishness more tightly than I might otherwise.
Here it feels lighter and more fragile, like it might slip away from me if I loosen my grip. Rather than soften my accent or the Hiberno-English peculiarities of my speech, I lean into them.
“What’s the story? Any craic?”
I am not British, I am Irish, now tell me a story.
The confused look I get is vaguely satisfying.
A tiny mutiny has taken place.
- Peter Flanagan lives in Hackney, London, and works as a comedian
- Sign up to The Irish Times Abroad newsletter for Irish-connected people around the world. Here you’ll find readers’ stories of their lives overseas, plus news, business, sports, opinion, culture and lifestyle journalism relevant to Irish people around the world
- If you live overseas and would like to share your experience with Irish Times Abroad, email abroad@irishtimes.com with a little information about you and what you do
