The English Irish

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32777, 30 November 1971, Page 24

The English Irish

RAYMOND COFFEY.

(By

LONDON. If all the Irish living in England combined to seek solution to the problem of Northern Ireland says Mr James Mulqueen, “We’d have the six counties back by tomorrow morning.” Mr Mulqueen, aged 21, is an immigrant from county Clare and has been in London for only two years. But what he said is probably not far from the truth. For, while it tends to escape notice in all the furore over Northern Ireland, there are, in fact, more Irish living in England now than there are in all of Northern Ireland. ' And because of a unique arrangement whereby Irish citizens can vote in England from the day they arrive, the “Irish vote” has become a! significant factor in British politics. It is likely to become even more significant, because the flood of Irish immigration into England continues with no signs’ of abating.

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! The Rev. Liam Fanning, a Roman Catholic priest who I runs a welfare centre for Irish immigrants in London, believes that the British Government inevitably will have to sever its links with lreland and see Ireland reunited. The Government, Father Fanning says, “is only trying to put off the evil day” and the only ultimate result, he believes, will be that the Irish in Britain will turn away from the Conservative Party even more than they have in the past. Because there is free movement between Ireland and Britain, with no passport formalities, it is impossible to get precise figures of the number of Irish in England. But no-one disputes the Irish Embassy’s estimate of at least one million—including about 500,000 in Greater London alone. That estimate is of nativeborn Irish only. When “firstgeneration” Irish, bom in England but still Irish citizens, are included the count soars into the millions and leads to mildly bitter jokes about having to “save England for the Irish.” The total population of the six counties of Northern Ireland is only about 1.5 million —about one-third Catholic and two-thirds Protestant. The Irish are now the largest immigrant group com-

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ing into England greater than from any of the Commonwealth countries and they have been arriving at an estimated rate of 15,000 a year for several years. Even though they are the same colour as the English and speak the same language, the Irish in England manage to make themselves a highly visible minority. They tend, for one thing, to stick together, both in the places they live and the jobs they take. The construction industry, is so dominated by Irish labourers that it sometimes seems almost a monopoly. One construction industry giant, McAlpine, is referred to informally as "McAlpine’s Irish fusiliers.” And a section of North London, along Kilburn Road, is so much an Irish ghetto that anyone walking into a pub on a Saturday night and speaking in an English accent is almost taking his life in his hands.

i There are also large coni centrations of Irish in the ! industrial, north, in Liveri pool—where many of the ’ immigrants first get off the : boat—and Birmingham. They come to get the jobs and the higher wages that they cannot get in depressed Ireland. WILLING WORKERS Astonishingly, they seem to get jobs readily in spite of the fact that unemployment in Britain is now the highest figure since 1940. The explanation, according to Mr Mulqueen who handles job applicants at the Irish centre run by Father Fanning, is that “these English people don’t want to work—the unemployment benefits in this country are too good.” The Irish, he says, are willing workers and wages that an Englishman might sniff at look pretty good to an Irishman. Asked how he liked England after being there two years, Mr Mulqueen replied, bluntly “I don’t.” His wife, “would go home tomorrow if she could,” and if there were any decent job prospects for them in Ireland.

But while they all talk of going back, the Irish immigrants mostly end up settling permanently in England and taking out their homesickness in the endless round of parties, dinners, “ballad nights” and other social affairs at the Irish Centre and other gathering places. “GOOD-NATURED” BRAWLS

The young Irish coming to London, particularly from the farms, have difficulty adjusting to the big city. And they still have to contend with the stereotyped vision of the Irishman as a lazy, cloddish sort, who only wants to sing and fight.

On one recent day in a North London Magistrate’s Court, 13 of the 14 men appearing on drunk and disorderly charges were Irishmen, several of them bruised and bandaged and bleary looking. One of them, it turned out, was making his 39th appearance in the court.

But even their brawling, a police official observes, is good-natured and the police don’t really mind the Irish because “there’s no malice in them—they don’t use knives and things like the West Indians and some other immigrant groups.”

The Irish themselves tend to be sensitive and defensive about this view of their character and attribute it to British prejudice and snootiness.

In addition to positions in the construction industry, the Irish in England also take a huge number of the nursing jobs in English hospitals.

And there are a lot of bartenders and barmaids, bus drivers, mailmen, domestics, bank clerks and accountants and factory hands. Over-all, the Irish voting in England are a tiny proportion. But they do outnumber the million Protestants in Northern Ireland who have tied themselves to Britain and to the chagrin of the British Government.