Maurice J Casey’s article on immigration in Ireland recounts his experience of multiracial Ireland as well as examples of people of colour – Paul Robeson and others – reaching back to before the foundation of the Irish Free State (Who are ‘the Irish’? History shows we’ve been a mixed bunch for centuries, 25 September). But the article did not recognise the long tradition of racism from within the broad church of Irish nationalism.
From Sinn Féin and the Young Ireland luminaries Arthur Griffith and John Mitchel to the far-right Blueshirts of Eoin O’Duffy, nationalism in Ireland has always had the romantic and mythic appeal to pure Celtic origins. Despite the integration of both Vikings and Norman English into the Irish gene pool, for some who fly the Irish flag, Irishness is a genetic, rather than a civic or social, definition that encompasses all those who live in Ireland.
Ireland also has a tradition which recognises that the struggle to be free from English occupation and domination is part of a wider struggle of oppressed people, irrespective of colour or nationality. Solidarity with the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and, today, in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli occupation is part of an anti-imperialist tradition that exists in every generation from James Connolly through Frank Ryan to Bobby Sands.
Today, the fight against racism and sectarianism across the whole of Ireland is being fought over the attitude to migrants, and this will to a large extent determine the nature of the united Ireland that will no doubt come. Humanity and solidarity with migrants is an essential part of building an Ireland that will serve the interests of the working class, which has always been multinational and multiracial. As Connolly explained: “Let no Irishman throw a stone at the foreigner; he may hit his own clansman”.
Jack Byrne
Wexford, Ireland
Maurice J Casey lays bare the myth of a pure Irish genealogical identity. Dead right he is too, and how anyone could construe otherwise is bewildering. An island that has been invaded, colonised and governed by so many outside nations, races and interlopers could never emerge as racially pristine.
There have been various “visits” and varied outcomes, from wandering Celts to marauding Vikings, to invading Normans, via the Scots, Tudor-English, Spanish and French sorties, to say nothing of the adventurism of Barbary coast pirates in June 1631 in West Cork. There’s even evidence of Middle Eastern trading links way back in medieval times.
The far-right protest movement in Ireland is spawning a radical racism that distils essentially into an anti-people-of-colour cabal. While Ukrainian refugees have been broadly welcomed, people of colour, especially Africans and Middle Eastern asylum seekers, have been frequently met with resentment, if not violence. So sad and disappointing, nay disgraceful, for a country typically renowned for warm hospitality and generosity of spirit. Of course, the anarchic manipulations of malicious social media’s warped truths have a lot to answer for.
Casey nails it with his exposition on the patent reality of “a verifiable history of intertwining migrant histories”. Let’s grow up and smell the coffee – a veritable global blend of racial brew, and all the more refreshing for that.
Jim Cosgrove
Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland