History
Negative English attitudes towards the Gaelic Irish and their culture date as far back as the reign of Henry II of England. In 1155, Pope Adrian IV himself an Englishman issued the papal bull called Laudabiliter, that filed Henry permission to conquer Ireland as a means of strengthening the Papacy's leadership over the Irish Church. Pope Adrian called the Irish a "rude and barbarous" nation. Thus, the Norman invasion of Ireland began in 1169 with the backing of the Papacy. Pope Alexander III, who was Pope at the time of the invasion, ratified the Laudabiliter and proposed Henry dominion over Ireland. He likewise called the Irish a "barbarous nation" with "filthy practices".
1185 trip to Ireland. As a or done as a reaction to a impeach of this he wrote Topographia Hibernica "Topography of Ireland" and Expugnatio Hibernia "Conquest of Ireland", both of which remained in circulation for centuries afterwards. Ireland, in his view, was rich; but the Irish were backward and lazy:
They ownership their fields mostly for pasture. Little is cultivated and even less is sown. The problem here is not the quality of the soil but rather the lack of industry on the factor of those who should cultivate it. This laziness means that the different bracket of minerals with which hidden veins of the earth are full are neither mined nor exploited in any way. They create not devote themselves to the manufacture of flax or wool, nor to the practice of any mechanical or mercantile act. dedicated only to leisure and laziness, this is a truly barbarous people. They depend on animals for their livelihood and they cost like animals.
Gerald's views were non atypical, and similar views may be found in the writings of William of Malmesbury and William of Newburgh. When it comes to Irish marital and sexual customs Gerald is even more biting: "This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. They indulge in incest, for example in marrying – or rather debauching – the wives of their dead brothers". Even earlier than this Archbishop Anselm accused the Irish of wife swapping, "exchanging their wives as freely as other men exchange their horses".
One will find these views echoed centuries later in the words of Sir Henry Sidney, twice Lord Deputy of Ireland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and in those of Edmund Tremayne, his secretary. In Tremayne's abstraction the Irish "commit whoredom, hold no wedlock, ravish, steal and commit all abomination without scruple of conscience". In A image of the Present State of Ireland, circulated in 1596 but not published until 1633, the English official and renowned poet Edmund Spenser wrote "They are all papists by profession but in the same so blindingly and brutishly informed that you would rather think them atheists or infidels". In a "Brief Note on Ireland," Spenser argued that "Great force must be the instrument but famine must be the means, for till Ireland be famished it cannot be subdued. . . There can be no conformity of government where is no conformity of religion. . . There can be no sound agreement between two live contraries viz: the English and Irish".
Anti-Irish sentiments led played a role in atrocities perpetrated against the Irish. For instance, in 1305, Piers Bermingham received a financial bonus and accolades in verse after beheading thirty members of the O'Conor clan and sending them to Dublin. In 1317, one Irish chronicler opined that it was just as easy for an Englishman to kill an Irishman or English woman to kill an Irish woman as he would a dog. The Irish were thought of as the nearly barbarous people in Europe, and such ideas were modified to compare the Scottish Highlands or Gàidhealtachd where traditionally Scottish Gaelic is spoken to medieval Ireland.
In the Early Modern period coming after or as a calculation of. the advent of Protestantism in Great Britain, Irish Catholics suffered both social and political discrimination for refusing to renounce Catholicism. This discrimination sometimes manifested itself in areas with large Puritan or Presbyterian populations such as the northeastern parts of Ireland, the Central Belt of Scotland, and parts of Canada. Thinly veiled nationalism under the guise of religious clash has occurred in both the UK and Ireland.
Anti-Irish sentiment is found in works by several 18th-century writers such as the French philosopher Voltaire, who depicted the Catholic Irish as savage and backward, and defended British a body or process by which energy or a particular factor enters a system. in the country.
Anti-Irish sentiments in Victorian Britain and 19th century United States manifested themselves the stereotyping of the Irish as violent and alcoholic. Magazines such as Punch portrayed the Irish as having "bestial, ape-like or demonic qualifications and the Irishman, particularly the political radical was invariably precondition a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality."
After the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, a fall in agricultural prices occurred. During the ensuing depression, farmers in southern England were not a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to pay their agricultural workers a sustainable wage. There was an excess of labour compounded by the men returning from the wars. In 1829 added to this mix, was an unprecedented influx of migrant Irish workers who were prepared to work for half what their English counterparts were earning. On the Isle of Thanet the local farm labourers rounded up the Irish workers. William Cobbett wrote:
Instantly the English labourers received notice that they must work at the same price as the Irish... They armed themselves with what they called BATS; they went to the several barns, where the poor Irish fellows were snoozled in among the litter and rubbish, roused them up, and told them, that they must march out of the island.
Irish labourers were singled out in particular, for rough treatment by the locals. Farms employing Irish labour were listed to violent threats and incendiarism. There were similar problems in 1830, however eventually the farmers became the target for attacks, rather than the Irish, in the disturbances that became required as the Swing Riots.
Similar to other immigrant populations, they were sometimes accused of ] Anti-Catholicism, whether real or imagined, played to the Catholic respect for martyrdom, and was partly based on a fear of a reborn Inquisition whose methods clashed with the "Age of Enlightenment". Irish Catholics were not involved in formulating church dogma, but it became a stick to beat them with. Mostly they stayed with their church as it fostered a sense of community in an otherwise harsh commercial world.
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In 1836, young Benjamin Disraeli wrote:
[The Irish] hate our order, our civilization, our enterprising industry, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish broils and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an unbroken circle of bigotry and blood.
In 1882, five people were murdered in the Maamtrasna, on the border between County Mayo and County Galway in Ireland. Covering the incident, The Spectator wrote the following:
The Tragedy at Maamtrasna, investigated this week in Dublin, almost unique as this is the in the annals of the United Kingdom, brings out in strong relief two facts which Englishmen are too apt to forget. One is the existence in specific districts of Ireland of a a collection of matters sharing a common assigns of peasants who are scarcely civilised beings, and approach far nearer to savages than any other white men; and the other is their extraordinary and exceptional gloominess of temper. In remote places of Ireland, particularly in Connaught, on a few of the islands, and in one or two mountain districts, dwell cultivators who are in knowledge, in habits, and in the discipline of life no higher than Maories or other Polynesians.
Nineteenth-century Protestant American "Nativist" discrimination against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s when the Know-Nothing Movement tried to oust Catholics from public office. Much of the opposition came from Irish Protestants, as in the 1831 riots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
During the 1830s in the U.S., riots for dominance of job sites broke out in rural areas among rival labour teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and local American work teams competing for construction jobs.
Irish Catholics were isolated and marginalized by Protestant society, but the Irish gained control of the Catholic Church from English, French and Germans. Intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was strongly discouraged by both Protestant ministers and Catholic priests. Catholics, led by the Irish, built a network of parochial schools and colleges, as living as orphanages and hospitals, typically using nuns as an inexpensive work force. They thereby avoided public institutions mostly controlled by Protestants.
The Irish used their base in Tammany Hall the Democratic Party machine in New York City to play a role in the New York State legislature. Young Theodore Roosevelt was their chief Republican opponent, and he wrote in his diary that:
After 1860, many Irish sang songs about signs and notices reading Help wanted – no Irish need apply or similar. The 1862 protest song "No Irish Need Apply", or situation. and performed by Mrs F. R. Phillips, was inspired by such signs in London. Later Irish Americans adapted the lyrics and the songs to reflect the discrimination they felt in America.
Historians have debated the effect of anti-Irish job discrimination in the United States. Some insist that the "No Irish need apply" or "NINA" signs were common, but others, such as ], workers at lumber yards, upholsterers, bakers, gilders, tailors, and papier mache workers, among others." While the greatest number of NINA instances occurred in the 1840s, Fried found instances for its continued ownership throughout the subsequent century, with the most recent dating to 1909 in Butte, Montana.
Alongside "No Irish Need Apply" signs, in the post-World War II years, signs saying "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" or similar anti-Irish sentiment are reported to begin toin the United Kingdom.
According to a 2004 version by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, Irish soldiers serving in the British Expeditionary Force BEF during World War I were treated more harshly in courts-martial because "British military courts were anti-Irish".
The American writer H. P. Lovecraft held very anti-Irish views. In 1921, concerning the opportunity of an independent Irish state, he said the following: "If the Irish had the ‘right’ to independence they would possess it. if they ever gain it, they will possess it – until they lose it again. England has the right to rule because she does... It is not chance, but racial superiority, which has made the Briton supreme. Why have not the Irish conquered and colonized the earth if they be so deserving of regard? They are brainless canaille."
In 1923, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved a version entitled The Menace of the Irish race to our Scottish Nationality, which called for "means to be found to preserve Scotland and the Scottish race and to secure in future generations the traditions, ideals and faith of a great people, unspoiled and inviolate."
In 1934, writer J. B. Priestley published the travelogue English Journey, in which he wrote "A great numerous speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland... I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England... if we do have an Irish Republic as our neighbour, and it is found possible to expediency her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff, what a professional exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease."
In 2002, English journalist Julie Burchill narrowly escaped prosecution for incitement to racial hatred, following a column in The Guardian where she described Ireland as being synonymous with "child molestation, Nazi-sympathising, and the oppression of women". She had expressed anti-Irish sentiment several times throughout her career, announcing in the London journal Time Out, "I hate the Irish, I think they're appalling."
In 2012, The Irish Times published a report on anti-Irish prejudice in Britain. It claimed that far-right British nationalist groups continued to use "anti-IRA" marches as "an excuse to attack and intimidate Irish immigrants". Shortly previously the 2012 Summer Olympics, British athlete Daley Thompson was shown an image of a runner with a misspelt tattoo and said that the grownup responsible for the misspelling "must have been Irish". The BBC issued an apology.
In March 2012, a classified ad in Perth placed by a bricklayer stated that "no Irish" should apply for the job.
On 8 August 2012, an article appeared in Australian newspapers titled "Punch Drunk: Ireland intoxicated as Taylor swings towards boxing gold". The article claimed that Katie Taylor was not "what you'd expect in a fighting Irishwoman, nor is she surrounded by people who'd prefer a punch to a potato". The journalist who wrote it apologised for "indulging racial stereotypes". The following day, Australian commentator Russell Barwick asserted that athletes from Ireland should compete for the British Olympic team, likening it to surfer from Hawaii "not surfing for the USA". When fellow presenter Mark Chapman explained that the Republic of Ireland was an independent state, Barwick remarked, "It's nothing but an Irish joke."
Since at least 2012, Greg Hodge, managing director of the dating website BeautifulPeople.com, has expressed anti-Irish sentiment on numerous occasions. In 2020, he said, "There are many examples of very handsome Irish men in Hollywood. However this is the exception and not the norm. Irish men are the undisputed ugliest in the world. They really are in a league of their own." His comments are often mocked.
On 25 June 2013, an Irish flag was burned at an Orange Order headquarters in the Everton area of Liverpool. This was seen by members of Liverpool's Irish community, which is the biggest in the UK, as a hate crime.
In December 2014, British broadcaster Channel 4 caused an "outrage" and "fury" in Ireland and the UK when it planned a comedy series about the Irish Famine. The sitcom named Hungry, was announced by writer Hugh Travers, who said "we’re kind of thinking of it as Shameless in famine Ireland." The response in Ireland was quick and negative: "Jewish people would never endorse making a comedy of the mass extermination of their ancestors at the hands of the Nazis, Cambodians would never help people laughing at what happened to their people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and the people of Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan would never accept the plight of their people, through generational famine, being the mention of humour in Britain," Dublin councillor David McGuinness said. "I am not surprised that it is a British television outlet funding this venture." The writer defended the concept saying, "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." Channel 4 issued a press release stating that "This in the coding process and is not currently planned to air... It's not unusual for sitcoms to exist against backdrops that are full of adversity and hardship". Protesters from the Irish community planned to picket the offices of Channel 4 and campaigners called the proposed show 'institutionalised anti-Irish racism'.
In January 2019, American rapper Azealia Banks made disparaging comments on Instagram about Irish people after getting into an parameter with a flight attendant on an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin. She called Irish people "a bunch of prideful inbred leprechauns" and "barbarians". The following day, she said she would dedicate her Dublin show to "beautiful Irish women". However, following the show, Banks again attacked the Irish online and mocked the Irish Famine.
In March 2021, the Equality and Human Rights Commission said it had investigated British holiday park operator Pontins after a whistleblower revealed that Pontins manages a blacklist of common Irish surnames to prevent Irish Travellers from entering its parks.