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Anti-Irish sentiment may refer to or include persecution, discrimination, hatred or fear of the Irish as an ethnic or national group, whether directed against Ireland in general or against Irish immigrants and their descendants in the Irish diaspora.

It is traditionally rooted in the medieval period, and is also evidenced in Irish immigration to other countries like the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Anti-Irish feeling can include both social and cultural discrimination within the island of Ireland itself, such as sectarianism or ethno-political conflicts in The Troubles of Northern Ireland.

Discrimination and racism towards Irish Travellers, an Irish minority group, is evident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom. Such racism is open and can be compared to that experienced by the Irish diaspora in the 19th century, with the hanging of signs in private establishments in Ireland stating "No Travellers" in the same style as "No Irish Need Apply". The European Parliament Committee of Enquiry on racism and xenophobia found them to be amongst the most discriminated-against ethnic groups in Ireland.

Perspective

The negative stereotyping of the Irish began with the Norman Propagandist Giraldus Cambrensis also known as Gerald of Wales. His wrote despairingly of the Irish to justify the Norman invasion of Ireland. “Gerald was seeking promotion by Henry II within the English church. His history was therefore written to create a certain effect—of supporting Henry II’s claims to Ireland.”

Hostility increased towards the Irish who steadfastly remained Roman Catholic in spite of coercive force by Henry VIII and his administration and subsequent rulers to convert the Irish nation to Protestantism. Thus a situation unusual in Europe developed where the religious majority were ruled over by a religious minority. Religious minorities were discriminated against all over Europe but in Ireland the majority of the people suffered discrimination from the minority ruling class. This led to endless social conflict and thus the consequent dehumanising of the vanquished Irish.

Many concerted efforts were made by English Protestant Churches to evangelise the Irish but each attempt ended in failure and they publicly blamed their failures on the people they were trying to convert. In the middle of the 19th century when a great famine (caused by economic mismanagement) struck, many saw it as God punishing the Irish for not converting to Protestantism.

Therefore most of the negative stereotyping of the Irish is rooted in the politics of cuius regio, eius religio. A principle which held that every ruler had the right to dictate what religion their subjects’ should believe in.

Middle Ages to Early Modern Era

Negative English attitudes towards Irish culture and habits date as far back as the reign of Henry II and the Norman invasion of Ireland. In 1155 the Papacy purportedly issued the papal bull Laudabiliter which granted Henry II's request to subdue Ireland and the Irish Church:

do hereby declare our will and pleasure, that, for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion.

An early example is the chronicler Gerald of Wales, who visited the island in the company of Prince John. As a result of this he wrote Topographia Hibernia ("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 use 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 part of those who should cultivate it. This laziness means that the different types of minerals with which hidden veins of the earth are full are neither mined nor exploited in any way. They do 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 their livelihood for animals and they live like animals.

Gerald was not 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 during the reign of Elizabeth I, and in those of Edmund Tremayne, his secretary. In Tremayne's view the Irish "commit whoredom, hold no wedlock, ravish, steal and commit all abomination without scruple of conscience." In A View 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 conformitie of government whereis no conformitie of religion. . . There can be no sounde agreement betwene twoe equall contraries viz: the English and Irish."

This vision of the barbarous Irish, largely born out of a form of imperialist condescension, made its way into Laudabiliter, one of the most infamous documents in all of Irish history, by which Adrian IV, the only English Pope, granted Ireland to Henry II, "to the end that the foul customs of that country may be abolished and the barbarous nation, Christian in name only, may through your care assume the beauty of good morals."

This "civilising mission" embraced any manner of cruel and barbaric methods to accomplish its end goal. For instance, in 1305 when Piers Bermingham received a financial bonus and accolades in verse after cutting off the heads of thirty members of the O'Connor 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 as he would a dog. The Irish were thought of as the most barbarous people in Europe, and such ideas were modified to compare the lands in Scotland where Scottish Gaelic was spoken to Ireland.

Anti-Irish sentiment also occurs in several eighteenth-century writers such as Voltaire, who depicted the Catholic Irish as savage and backward, and defended British rule in the country.

19th century

Anti-Irish racism in Victorian Britain and 19th century United States included the stereotyping of the Irish as alcoholics, and implications that they monopolised certain (usually low-paying) job markets. They were often called “white Negroes." Throughout Britain and the U.S., newspaper illustrations and hand drawings depicted a prehistoric "ape-like image" of Irish faces to bolster evolutionary racist claims that the Irish people were an "inferior race" as compared to Anglo-Saxons.

Similar to other immigrant populations, they were sometimes accused of cronyism and subjected to misrepresentations of their religious and cultural beliefs. The Irish were labelled as practising Pagans and in that time (19th century), anyone not being a "Christian" in a traditional British sense was deemed "immoral" and "demonic". Irish Catholics were particularly singled out, and Irish mythology, folklore, and customs were ridiculed.

Nineteenth-century Protestant American "Nativist" prejudice 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, riots broke out in rural areas among rival labour teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and "native" American work teams competing for construction jobs.

Irish Catholics were isolated and marginalised by society. Both ministers and priests discouraged intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants. In addition, the creation of a parochial school system and numerous colleges affiliated with the Church tended to compound rather than alleviate anti-Catholic discrimination.

After 1860 many Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED – NO IRISH NEED APPLY"; these signs came to be known as "NINA signs." (This is sometimes written as "IRISH NEED NOT APPLY" and referred to as "INNA signs"). The 1862 song, "No Irish Need Apply", was inspired by NINA signs in London. Later Irish Americans adapted the lyrics, and the songs perpetuated the belief among Irish Americans that they were discriminated against. Historians have hotly debated the issue of anti-Irish job discrimination in the United States. Some insist that the "No Irish need apply" signs were common, but others such as Richard Jensen argue that anti-Irish job discrimination was not a significant factor in the United States, these signs and print advertisements being most commonly posted by the limited number of early 19th-century English immigrants to the United States who shared the prejudices of their homeland.

Modern period

In the Early Modern period following the advent of Protestantism in Great Britain, the Irish people suffered both social and political discrimination for refusing to renounce Catholicism. This prejudice sometimes manifested itself in areas with large Puritan or Presbyterian populations such as Northern Ireland, the Central Belt of Scotland, parts of Canada Thinly veiled nationalism under the guise of religious conflict has occurred in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

21st century

In 2012, The Irish Times did a report on anti-Irish prejudice in Britain.

In the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, the British athlete Daly Thompson made an anti-Irish statement on live television. When Thompson was shown an image of a torch runner with the words "Oylmpic torch bearer", tattooed on her arm, he asserted that the person responsible for the misspelling must have been Irish. The BBC subsequently issued an apology. An Australian newspaper group, Fairfax Media, issued an apology on 8 August 2012, for an article, originally titled “Punch Drunk: Ireland intoxicated as Taylor swings towards boxing gold” which had been published on The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Brisbane Times websites that morning. The article in question claimed that 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 the piece also apologised for “indulging racial sterotypes”. Another article published on 8 August by Jon Saraceno in USA TODAY was amended to omit comments depicting intoxicated Irish fans celebrating Katie Taylor’s success: “Back home on the emerald-green isle, pints of Guinness flowed freely, perhaps enough to replenish the Irish Sea. The 'punters' inside betting parlors wagered pounds as if they were bits of candy”. The international sports network ESPN issued an apology on 9 August 2012 after one of its presenters, Russell Barwick, asserted that athletes from Ireland should compete for the British Olympic team saying “It’s like an Hawaiian surfer not surfing for the USA,” he said. “It’s not like Tasmanians say they don’t want to represent Australia”. When fellow-presenter Mark Chapman tried to explain that the Republic of Ireland was actually a different country, Barwick remarked: “It’s nothing but an Irish joke”.

Irish Traveller discrimination

Irish Travellers, an indigenous minority present for centuries in Ireland, suffer overt discrimination throughout the British Isles. Similar in nature to antiziganism (prejudice against gypsies) in the United Kingdom and Europe. Anti-Traveller racism is similar to that experienced by the Irish during the diaspora of the 19th century, with media attack campaigns in the United Kingdom, and in Ireland using both national/local newspapers and radio. Irish Travellers in the Irish media have stated they are living in Ireland under an apartheid regime. While there is a willingness to acknowledge that there is widespread prejudice towards Travellers in Irish society, and a recognition of discrimination against Travellers, there is still strong resistance among the Irish public to calling the treatment of Travellers racist. While some discrimination may occur to Travellers in employment and secondary school place allocation, it is limited.

Abuses of social systems like the housing scheme and resource teachers for Travellers in primary schools perpetuate the social conflict between Travellers and "the settle community" examples being burning down of houses allocated to the Travellers by the state due to feuds and as a tradition when someone dies in an abode.

See also

• Sectarianism in Glasgow
• Anti-Catholicism
• White ethnic
• Philadelphia Nativist Riots
• Stage Irish
• Black Irish

References

1. "Racism in Ireland - Travellers". Flag.blackened.net. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
2. "Irish Travellers: Racism and the Politics of Culture - Jane Helleiner - Google Books". Books.google.co.jp. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
3. "British court rules Irish travellers covered by Race Relations laws - RTÉ News". Rte.ie. 2000-08-29. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
4. ^ Racial,ethnic, and homophobic violence: killing in the name of otherness (p18) Marie-Claude Barbier, Bénédicte Deschamps, Michel Prum Routledge-Cavendish, 2007
5. ^ Jensen, Richard (2002, revised for web 2004) "'No Irish Need Apply': A Myth of Victimization". Journal of Social History issn.36.2 pp.405–429
6. Traveller, Nomadic and Migrant Education by Patrick Alan Danaher, Máirín Kenny, Judith Remy Leder. 2009. Page 119.
7. Laudabiliter: a new interpretation by Professor Anne Duggan
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/Reformation_in_Ireland
9. http://castle.eiu.edu/historia/archives/2006/Henderson.pdf
10. Gerald of Wales, Giraldus, John Joseph O'Meara. The History and Topography of Ireland. Penguin Classics, 1982. Page 102.
11. James West Davidson. Nation of Nations: A Concise Narrative of the American Republic. McGraw-Hill, 1996. Page 27.
12. Hastings, Adrian (1997). The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59391-3, ISBN 0-521-62544-0. pp. 83-84.
13. Travels to terra incognita: the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides in early modern travellers accounts. c1600-1800. Martin Rackwitz. Waxmann Verlag 2007.p33, p94
14. "Voltaire's writing, particular in this field of history, show by this stage in his career Ireland and the Catholic Irish had become shorthand reference to extreme religious fanaticism and general degeneracy".Gargett, Graham: "Some Reflections on Voltaire's L'lngenu and a Hitherto Neglected Source: the Questions sur les miracles" in The Secular City: Studies in the Enlightenment : Presented to Haydn Mason edited by T. D. Hemming, Edward Freeman, David Meakin University of Exeter Press, 1994 ISBN 0859894169.
15. ^ Wohl, Anthony S. (1990) "Racism and Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England". The Victorian Web
16. Hoeber, Francis W. (2001) "Drama in the Courtroom, Theater in the Streets: Philadelphia's Irish Riot of 1831" Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 125(3): 191–232. ISSN 0031-4587
17. Prince, Carl E. (1985) "The Great 'Riot Year': Jacksonian Democracy and Patterns of Violence in 1834." Journal of the Early Republic 5(1): 1–19. ISSN 0275-1275 examines 24 episodes including the January labor riot at the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the New York City election riot in April, the Philadelphia race riot in August, and the Baltimore & Washington Railroad riot in November.
18. John G. West, Iain S. MacLean, Encyclopedia of religion in American politics, Volume 2, Greenwood Publishing Group (1999).
19. The Irish in Atlantic Canada, 1780–1900
20. IRISH IMMIGRANTS AND CANADIAN DESTINIES IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S “ALIAS GRACE” Ecaterina Hanţiu University of Oradea.
21. "Kirk 'regret' over bigotry – BBC.co.uk". BBC News. 2002-05-29. Retrieved 2012-10-09.
22. Irish society: sociological perspectives By Patrick Clancy
23. Whelan, Brian (17 July 2012). "Return of anti-Irish prejudice in Britain?". The Irish Times. Retrieved 17 July 2012.
24. "Daley Thompson in race row over anti-Irish joke on BBC". Irish Independent.
25. ^ "'Fighting Irish' article prompts apology". Irish Times.
26. "Irish celebrate Katie Taylor's debut in Olympic ring". USA Today.
27. "Aussie journalist 'sorry' for suggesting Ireland should join Team GB". thejournal.ie.
28. "ESPN's Aussie presenter's Irish Olympic rant". Irish Echo.
29. The political geography of anti-Traveller racism in Ireland: the politics of exclusion and the geography of closure. Jim MacLaughlin Department of Geography, University College, Cork, Ireland
30. "Was ist EZAF ? | Europäisches Zentrum für Antiziganismusforschung und -bekämpfung". Ezaf.org. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
31. Travellers: Racism and the Politics of Culture By Jane Helleiner(introduction 9)
32. Jaya Narain (2010-03-11). "Anger as judge awards 'illegal' travellers' camp its own postcode... despite opposition from local council and residents | Mail Online". Dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
33. "They are dirty and unclean. Travelling people have no respect for themselves and their children". (County Councillor quoted in Irish Times, 13 March, 1991) cited in http://www.paveepoint.ie/pav_irerac_3.html
34. "Killarney is literally infested by these people." (County Councillor quoted in Cork Examiner, 18th July, 1989) cited in http://www.paveepoint.ie/pav_irerac_3.html
35. "Deasy suggests birth control to limit traveller numbers" (Headline in Irish Times, Friday, 15 June 1996.) cited in http://www.paveepoint.ie/pav_irerac_3.html
36. ^ Buckley, Dan (2006-12-15). "Racist attitudes towards Travellers must be dealt with urgently | Irish Examiner". Examiner.ie. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
37. Pavee Point - Unless otherwise noted. "Pavee Point Factsheets - Travellers and Work". Paveepoint.ie. Retrieved 2012-05-21.
38. Email Us (2011-07-05). "School appeals entry bias against Traveller - The Irish Times - Tue, Jul 05, 2011". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2012-05-21. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
39. http://www.waterfordcity.ie/documents/reports/TAP2009-2013.doc
40. http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/Publications/services/SocialInclusion/InterculturalGuide/Traveller/Traveller.pdf

External links

• Irish Famine Unit II: Racism

Template:Anti-cultural sentiment

• Anti-national sentiment
• Ireland
• Irish people
• Sectarianism