| The Joe Horgan Column
By Joe Horgan
In terms of geography, the Irish Sea is no more than a healthy stretch
of water. Ireland and Britain are very, very close neighbours. When I was
a child going over on that ferry it was, of course, an incredibly long journey.
Considering the trip from our house in Birmingham to our grandmother’s door
took the best part of 18 hours it wasn’t far off what it now takes to get
to the other side of the world.
Ireland was different then and so was England. Often, for two neighbouring
islands, they have seemed separated by so much more than a stretch of water.
But now, many years on, walking down the main street of an Irish city suddenly
doesn’t seem so different from walking down the main street of a British
one. Of course, in a world of purely commercial values it can be hard to
assert that things can have a cultural and human value above that of simple
economics.
Irish pubs and Irish shops on Irish streets may well be subsumed by an
aggressive business policy but what else goes with them? While the relentless
subsuming of our cities and towns by a global nothingness creates a strong
argument for some sort of cultural protection, the relationship between
Ireland and Britain seems set to move into a new phase outside of the presence
of Marks & Spencer or The Sun in Irish life. For now it seems that after
all the strife and upheaval, perhaps Ireland and Britain are actually very
alike.
Perhaps the end of the relentless explosions of violence from the north
of Ireland has acted as an impetus to a new phase. When I was growing up
in the 1970s the image of Ireland in British minds was far removed from
what it now is. English neighbours made it clear to my mother that they
thought of Ireland as dangerous, though admittedly one neighbour’s surprise
that there were beaches in Ireland made us think that the British knowledge
of their nearest neighbour was not so great.
But that was then and Ireland now has a much sunnier image. Who could
have imagined back then that a British Prime Minister, though far from being
the first to have some Irishness in his background, would actually extol
his Irish family lines as a warm positive? The fact that Tony Blair can
exploit his mother’s Donegal birthplace as an advantage speaks volumes about
the changing nature of the relationship.
Now the largest body of tourists to Ireland come from Britain. Maybe
a fair few of these are of Irish descent, but we are still seeing a substantial
number of people with no Irish background coming from Britain and seeing
Ireland as a desirable holiday destination. Perhaps they still find here
some of the social warmth and environmental beauty that Britain has struggled
to maintain. Whatever the case, the British no longer equate Ireland with
bombs and guns but with a good time and an easygoing manner.
Ireland is now receiving immigrants rather than sending them and the
biggest proportion of immigrants to this country are coming from Britain.
How much that is a further indicator of the depth of change cannot be underestimated.
A substantial amount of these may well be returning emigrants or the children
or descendants of emigrants, but at least some will be British and even
now that seems amazing. From Paddy the bomber or the character in the thick
joke to Paddy the resident of a desirable island — how the British mind
has changed.
What is most interesting about all of this is what it suggests to us
about the British and Irish themselves. Could it actually be that they often
quite liked what they saw all along and that it is only now that they can
admit it? Is it not the case that in many ways the British and the Irish
are actually very alike? Either way, it is at least true that the relationship
between the two is far closer and more complex than the past might have
led us to believe.
A friend of mine, a second-generation Irishman like me, once told me
of living and working in Dublin around the time of Princess Diana’s death.
He said he was amazed at the amount of people who offered him their consolations.
He said this perplexed him, not on account of being misjudged by his accent
but because many of these Dubs seemed genuinely to find it upsetting. But
is it not the case that a seemingly visceral Irish republicanism was only
ever part of the Irish mind and that a fascination with the likes of Coronation
Street and the Royal Family was always there too?
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