The Elizabethans and the Irish by David Quinn, asked whether the Irish could be anglicised, referring to Francis Bacon and others: 'Most of them wanted to turn Irishmen into Englishmen.' During this time the Irish were described as savages. Turberville compared the Irish with the Russians in 1598: 'The wild Irish are as bloody rude and blind as the Russians.' North American Indians were described in similarly disparaging terms.
The Stereotyping of the Irish and Other Savages
The concept of cultural extinction of everything native and the superimposition of a God-ordained superiority that the coloniser seemingly possessed, was the ultimate objective. History was written by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant men, fully excluding women and indigenous people worldwide. The Irish apparently disregarded English 'modesty' which somehow equated with human decency. Communication was perceived as a conduit of culture. African drums were banned as was the speaking of Irish - a language 2,000 years old.
Migrants were regularly stereotyped. They were perceived as marginal people, unwilling to forget their origins and reluctant to integrate into the home population.
19th Century Attitudes of Newspapers
The racial prejudices of the 19th century British establishment towards the Irish were recorded in the print medium for posterity:
- The Gazette of York in November 1845: ' The Englishman is patient and forbearing....everyman is always striving up the ladder.. The Irishman is content with shelter and a turf fire with potatoes and water to live on.'
- The Gazette of York July 1847 ' English benevolence conquered ...the prejudices of the Celt....who were falling victim to the famine...until Saxon energy and Christian philanthropy stepped between the living and the dead.'
- A Glasgow newspaper:" The ape-faced, small-headed Irishman who showed ' the unmistakable width of the mouth, immense expense of chin and forehead villainous of the lowest Irish'"
- The Times excoriated the Irish as 'wanting of character' and accused them of fecklessness and hopelessness.
From Savage Celt to Primitive Ape, Anglo-Saxon Images of the Irish
Perry Curtis in Apes and Angels described how Victorian England, threatened by Darwinism and the origins of mankind, decided to make a monkey of the Irishman. Catholic and Celtic Irishmen were characterised as orang utans. Punch depicted Charles Stuart Parnell as Frankenstein - a wholly Irish creation of Mary Shelley. The worst depiction was of England (John Bull) and America (Uncle Sam) surrounded by rioting Irishmen, depicted as white apes.
In America, a cartoon was published in Harpers magazine where John Bull and Uncle Sam discussed a southern Black and a white Irish ape, on scales, trying to determine if democracy could survive militant Fenianism and the freedom of slaves.
British Prime Minister Disraeli hated the Irish. He described them as having 'clannish brawls and coarse idolatory'. Disraeli was vitriolic of Catholic, Celtic culture. Disraeli converted from Judaism to Protestantism. A nasty exchange with the Irish Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, reflected badly on a man who presented Queen Victoria with India or Africa or both. These colonies were retrieved by the natives in the 1940s and 1960s as the British Empire declined. India learned from the Irish War of Independence.
Stereotypes Still Exist
Irish jobs, anti-Irish cartoons, anti-Irish red top UK newspapers still exist. The modern stereotype of the Irishman prone to violence justifies the abuse of justice towards the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and Winchester Three. The UK Prevention of Terrorism Acts abuses, against the Irish, remain.
In Conclusion
A history of mutual suspicion and racism must be transcended. Mankind must celebrate a common humanity and aspire to a socialist society. The UK must revise its images of John Bull's other island. Douglas Hurd, former British Foreign Secretary, wrote, in the 1980s, of an Irish mother rearing her children on a diet of hate.
Sources
- Poverty and Prejudice by Frances Finnegan, Cork University Press 1982
- Nothing but the Same Old Story: The Roots of Anti-Irish Racism by Liz Curtis, Sasta 1996
- Negative Stereotypes of the Irish
- The Fight for Irish Feedom 1917-1921
- Benjamin Disraeli vs Daniel O'Connell
Michael Manning - ' The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity' W.B.Yeats
