The Irish in the UK

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Hello. As a an English boy growing up in Liverpool in the nineteen fifties, I had to spend a significant amount of time explaining that I was not Irish. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud i'r ysgol lle'r ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol ysgol and spend most of my time out of school life knocking around with a boy called McNamara.

And drink my first pint of draft guinness in a pub called Molly Malone's. Well, now a fine new book reminded me of another association, of the times when, with a couple of mates in tow, I'd take the bus up to Alder Hay Hospital, in the hope, and it was often a vain hope, of finding a suitable girlfriend, a possible wife, among the hundreds of young Irish nurses who had finished their shift. Mae'r llwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwydwyd And all history before.

and it's co authored by Gornia MacPollin and Nea Doshi and Louise Ryan, who is Senior Professor of Sociology at London Metropolitan University, and who now joins me in the studio. begin with a twenty twenty one clip from BBC One's drama series Call The Midwife. And in this clip, Nancy Corrigan, a pupil midwife, delivers a baby. You've had a baby before. I've delivered a baby before. Well, as a matter of fact, I've actually delivered several babies. Come on, we're gonna breathe this baby out.

We've just heard Meghan Cusack as Nancy, and that episode was set in nineteen sixty six a reminder that Irish nurses have been in England for many decades, but As you point out, Louise, the story of Irish migration has often focused on Irish men. Your oral history shifts that focus and includes

the voices of forty five Irish nurses who worked in the NHS. Let's start off by you telling me why it was important to tell their stories. I was intrigued by your introduction there because Many people, when you talk to them about Irish nurses, they'll say things like Oh yes, my next door neighbour was an Irish nurse or my auntie was an Irish nurse or when I was young and I was in hospital there was a lovely Irish nurse. So people are sort of aware of Irish nurses often on an individual basis.

But what is less well understood is the enormous contribution that Irish nurses made to the NHS really from nineteen forty eight onwards. The NHS was actively recruiting nurses in Ireland. And by the nineteen sixties there were almost thirty thousand Irish born nurses working in the NHS. We're talking about between eleven and twelve percent.

Of the nursing staff had been born in Ireland in that kind of crucial period in the fifties, sixties and early seventies, which would have been the the high peak. of those that migration from Ireland. So really a very, very significant proportion of the NHS workforce. So we really wanted to honour the contribution of that early generation and unfortunately that's a generation who are now dying out.

Sadly, three of the participants in the book have already passed away, all in their nineties. They had good long lives. So we really feel there's an urgency to gather these stories. And they're stories, aren't they, which will put a different angle on migrants. That is so true. And at the moment there's such a kind of toxic anti migration narrative. in public media, in political circles. that this story is about human beings. This story is about mostly women. We have two men as well.

And it really humanizes the experiences of people leaving home and

and coming to this country to do a job of work and to contribute to society. Let's go back to motivation. I mean, why did they come in the first place? I mean what were their motivations? So from the moment the NHS was set up in forty eight It was very clearly apparent that there just were not enough nurses to staff it. So there was a very deliberate and targeted process of recruitment from Ireland.

So from forty eight onwards the NHS was advertising in Irish newspapers and in the book we actually have an example of that from the Cork Examiner in nineteen forty nine. And that ad is quite revealing because it really shows how enticing the NHS advertisements were. They paid your travel to come over.

you were paid while you trained, your uniform was provided, and of course you had the guarantee of accommodation in the nurse's home. Most of those who were coming over were just about 18, 19 years of age. So it was vital for them to have guaranteed accommodation, but also for their parents. Can you imagine waving them off on the train? No mobile phones, they were incommunicado, potentially for a week until a letter would arrive.

But the reassurance of knowing that they were almost in a sort of boarding school environment. It wasn't just the economic lure, it was they wanted to be nurses. Some of them always wanted to be nurses and they told us funny stories about when they were children, their dollies were always sick, they were always nursing their dollies. One of them even told us a story about the family pet.

the dog who was very placid and he'd just lie there and she'd bandage all of his paws. So some of them had a burning ambition to be nurses. But others didn't really. They were pragmatic, they wanted a job, they wanted a career, they wanted opportunities, and nursing supplied that and the NHS was coming knocking on their door. Now I've got a reading here. These are the words of a woman you called Neve, who left Ross Common on her own at the age of eighteen.

I'd never been to before, made my way to the North Wall to get the boat to Liverpool. Really, if I think about it now I hadn't a clue. I was very naive. I had never used a telephone. I'd never seen a traffic light. That's just an example of the let's call it culture shock really experienced by nurses. sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

I mean what kinds of expectations did the nurses actually have? I mean what kinds of surprises did they experience? Many, many surprises because if we think about what Ireland was like in the fifties, it was a very different place. To the island now, It was very conservative, uh most people lived in rural areas, they didn't have television. So their image of British society was formed largely by radio and by newspapers and magazines.

And one of the funny things that several of the nurses talked about were accents because they were only really familiar with what we might call BBC English, which was what they would consider to be very posh English accents. And the nurses actually thought that everybody in England spoke like that. So when they arrived to pla places like Leeds or Liverpool or the East End of London

One of their first kind of culture shocks was, Oh my God, what language are these people speaking? They don't talk like the BBC, so they didn't understand the accents, the colloquialisms. For example, one of the nurses who went to Leeds said one of the senior nurses on the ward said to her, Can you get me um a pot of char? And she hadn't the foggiest idea what a pot of char was.

to be told she means a pot of tea. In some ways it was very positive because they had a lot of freedom, they had money in their pockets, they were teenagers away from home for the first time. They had fun. But in another way they were quite surprised by British society, again in contrast to the kind of images that they'd seen in magazines or at the cinema. rationing was still in place and one of our nurses who arrived in nineteen fifty two was absolutely stunned.

to find that butter and cheese and meat were rationed. She'd come from a farm in Ireland, and she couldn't believe that she had to queue up for a little portion of butter. So so there were many things that surprised them. I mean you talk about abortions, for example. Yes, this was something that several of the nurses talked about because of course at that time and again we're going back to the late forties and fifties, abortion was not legal in this country either.

So what the nurses were encountering were the the consequences of backstreet abortions, women coming into the hospital in a really bad state of health, having had a botched abortion or having tried to induce a termination at home and then kind of having to deal with something that they were really struggling to even get their heads around, what was going on. Let's go back to their professional lives a little bit.

training did they undertake and I mean how successful were they in their careers? I mean did they advance further up the chain? All of our participants were full of praise for the opportunities for lifelong learning that the NHS offered. So many of them became midwives, many of them went on to become district nurses or community nurses. Some of them went into senior management posts and

And several of our nurses went on to pursue further education. I think we have about four in the book who have PhDs and who ended up becoming nurse lecturers in a university setting. And the other opportunity afforded by the NHS, which again was very unusual for the time, was that after you had children, you could go part-time or you could work night shifts.

And many of our participants were switched to night shifts when they had small children, and then they would swap childcare with their husbands, handing the child over to their husband as their husband came in the door in the evening, they were rushing out to go on the night shift, and that's how they managed without Childcare. Some did.

enormously and really valued that and they wanted to be part of an Irish community. They went to Irish centres, they went to Irish dances and they really enjoyed that. Many of them married Irish men that they met at those Irish dances. But others who wanted to explore different things, to embrace multiculturalism. The nurse's home w was like a sort of cultural melting pot in many ways. So they were working with nurses from the Caribbean, with nurses from Africa, from Asia.

And so because of that, they were also invited to go to different kinds of parties, to try different kinds of food. And many of them embraced that. Some of them talk about going to reggae parties with other Caribbean nurses. So they didn't just live in a little kind of Irish world.

I've got another reading here. These are the words of a nurse you called Dervler, who arrived in the in the mid nineteen sixties. And here she is she's contrasting the more protected environment of the hospital with the well, the explicit racism she observed in wider society. When we used to go up to London to the markets and the shows, I started realising that in Paddington there were a lot of signs on the windows of lodging houses saying no gypsies, no black.

No Irish and no dogs. It was an eye opener, a shock to the system because in the hospital there wasn't any of that. Davler there is talking about the decade before the troubles in Northern Ireland, that period of ethno nationalist conflict.

lasting from the late nineteen sixties to nineteen ninety eight between the Catholic nationalist and the Protestant Unionist communities Tell me how the nurses negotiated their Irish identities and their experience of prejudice, including I mean in particular really during the troubles. As we've heard in that quote, those no Irish signs were prevalent in this country long before the troubles. So of course again the nurses were protected from some of that because they lived in the nurses' homes.

So they didn't have to go around looking for accommodation. And as we've said, many of these hospitals had lots of Irish nurses and so they felt a sense of solidarity. But it was often out in mainstream British society that they encountered this kind of explicit anti-Irish prejudice. And around the time of the Troubles we have a very moving story in the book about a nurse who worked on the district, so she was obviously out and about going into patients' homes.

And she happened to be in Birmingham at the time of the notorious Birmingham pub bombings in the early nineteen seventies. And she speaks about the backlash that she experienced. She was talking to people every day in a clearly identifiable Irish accent. And she really encountered a lot of hostility and prejudice and she says

The uniform must have protected them to some extent. Yes, the nurse's uniform to a certain extent was was almost like a sort of coat of armour. Once once they put it on they felt confident. they were able to assert their professional status as nurses, but it didn't always protect them. There was a nurse who talked about a bombing incident in Manchester, and she was treating the victims who were brought into the hospital after the bombing.

and she was getting a feed of abuse, if I can use that expression, from some of these patients. Even though she was a nurse, she was wearing the uniform, she was caring for them. people were so angry about what the IRA had done that they were lashing out at any Irish person. I mean when we're talking about prejudice or we're talking about racism, at least these Irish nurses were white.

But that wasn't the same for other nurses who were working alongside them. No, that's true. And absolutely those nurses also experienced racism, of course. But I think that We shouldn't underestimate the racism that Irish nurses experience, despite the fact that they were white. For some younger listeners now, when they think about terrorism, when they think about terror suspects, when they think about suspect communities

they might think of of other groups, they wouldn't necessarily think of the Irish, because that occurred over a protracted period of time. But it ended in the nineteen nineties. So for many people that's been forgotten, but for the people who lived through it being Irish in this country was was quite challenging. I wonder what the nurses made of the NHS? I mean, particularly the older ones when they look back on it. We were interviewing them now as older people.

And their relationship with the NHS had completely flipped because now they were mainly engaging with the NHS as patients. They had quite ambivalent attitudes, I think is the best way of putting it. Of course they felt that the NHS had been better for the in their day. Patient care was better. But they also acknowledged that nurses today are under immense pressure

often understaffed, under resourced. Did the nurses feel generally feel appreciated for w work that they had done? They felt appreciated on an individual level. And they said that patients were often very grateful to them. Patients used to bring in boxes of chocolates and packets of biscuits as a kind of mark of gratitude. But in the bigger picture about the contribution of Irish nurses

Huge contribution, the numbers that we talked about earlier. Our participants felt that in the main that wasn't actually widely known in British society. So many of them said that Irish nurses were in a way under the radar and they really hoped that this book would help to shift the narrative and and really turn a spotlight on the contribution of Irish nurses. I'm I'm sure it will.

Louise Ryan, thank you for the moment. Now I'd greatly welcome any comments on the lives and times of the Irish in the UK and you'll find me at thinkingaloud at bbc.co.uk At the BBC, we go further. Through frontline reporting, global stories, and local insights, we bring you closer to the world's news as it happens. And it starts with a subscription to bbc.com, giving you unlimited articles and videos, ad-free podcasts.

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Now, one recent survey estimated that up to 75% of Liverpool's population had Irish ancestry, many of these immigrants escaping from the harsh conditions in their home country. But a research paper forcefully reminds me that this diaspora was far from being confined to Merseyside.

London was also a principal area for Irish immigrants seeking work, even a a prime destination. The story of their lives and times is the subject of Migrants and Descendants, multi-generations of the Irish in London in the twenty-first century, a chapter in a book entitled London, the Promised Land Revisited. And its author who now joins me is Bronwyn Walter, who's emeritus professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University. Bronwyn, you point out that Irish migration has a much

longer history than many of us are aware, and the Irish have been really deeply woven into the fabric of London for centuries. There have been three major waves of Irish migration, But it has a much longer history we know Shakespeare had Irish characters. The largest was in the middle of the nineteenth century. when famine in eighteen forty seven was responsible for huge outpourings

about a million people in Ireland died and more than a million emigrated. A lot went to the United States, but a lot, unnumbered really, came to Britain. And London was certainly became a focus, although Liverpool remained very important in the mid nineteenth century, Lancashire was the major place. The the Irish particularly went to the East End, because that's where uh men were required for manual labour in the docks. and women were needed for domestic service.

The Irish were the major migrant group in the mid nineteenth century. It fell off the Irish migration in the late nineteenth century and particularly the early twentieth century, the twenties and thirties. But after the Second World War, the nineteen fifties was a major period. This is when quite a lot of nurses came who we've been hearing about.

More than half of uh people under forty left Ireland during the nineteen fifties. London really has now become the major destination? London uh crept up. It had been only about twelve percent. uh in the nineteenth century, but it crept up to being about a third of all Irish people. There was a big demand. And then we can talk about a third wave, can't we? We can talk about another group. to uh nineteen ninety, and this was when the economy of Ireland just collapsed.

it was quite a different wave because it was highly educated people. The largest settlement originally was in the East Ends. Yes. And then what happened? During the nineteen fifties they began to move to Kilburn. And West London. And the East End by then the Irish were in their fourth, fifth, sixth generation. Are we talking about

Many of them having retired by now, th those earlier waves. They certainly will have done and died. I'm afraid. They died much younger than, you know, their English compatriots. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, the way in which there's no mention Of Irish backgrounds in that influential sociological study

Family and Kinship in East London. I remember it well, one of the first sociological books I encountered, published in nineteen sixty three. I mean it's how do you explain their absence? Yes, they they disappeared as Irish people. They've become the white working class. Well I think this happened in the nineteen fifties. when it was decided that uh Irish people would not be kept out by acts of against immigration. It was only for Caribbean Indian people.

So I think that must lie behind some of this exclusion whiteness.

Well, no. seen as thoroughly white up until the nineteen thirties. The idea of recognizing the distinctiveness of the Irish group I mean I suppose that was done a little in a two thousand nine report entitled The Forgotten Irish. I mean what did that have?

Well that was trying to make the case that the Irish needed resources because b being seen as white had kept them out of resources that were given to recognized ethnic groups, again Caribbean uh Indian subcontinent and it was trying to bring to attention the fact that the health of the Irish

uh has always been markedly less good than English people of their age for all sorts of reasons, like poor working conditions, especially for men in the building trade, uh but again, uh Irish women who were made to work particularly hard in manual jobs.

people who would not have died at that age in Ireland, but they did in England. And you're talking about that influential documentary entitled The Lost Generation from two thousand and three. That ha addressed the problem as well, didn't it? It came out

few days before Christmas two thousand and three and it showed homeless people in London and in Coventry and there was a huge outcry in Ireland. They had no idea people from the west of Ireland sent blankets to Coventry reverse support from Ireland to England from people who are clearly, you know, dying on the streets in a very bad way, and that had a huge effect. because before that time the Irish government had agreed they would pay three million euros to support.

emigrants in poor situations and they put that up to fifteen million euros. by two thousand and eight. I'm interested in looking at Irish people's relationship to to other migrant groups, including earlier times. Tell me about the Irish workers who supported the Jewish residents when they were targeted by the fascists. In the nineteen thirties. They were in the same situation, they were living in the same places, they were doing the same kind of jobs, and they were friends.

So they were very much supportive when the Mosley came through the East End, but the Jews and the Irish stood up to this. I've got a little quote here. This is from the academic Bill Fishman and he's talking about the nineteen thirty six Battle of Cable Street. Suddenly a barricade was erected there, and they put an old lorry in the middle of the road and old mattresses.

The people up the top of the flats, mainly Irish Catholic women, were throwing rubbish on the police. We were all side by side. I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic dockers standing up to stop Mosley. Well, We heard earlier from Louise Ryan talking about Irish nurses' experience of anti-Irish racism.

To what extent Irish people have felt they share some of the experiences of discrimination as African Caribbean residents have felt? There was a study from the Commission for Racial Equality, which I took part in. And it brought out many ways in which The Irish were discriminated against the

in ways that are similar to those of, say, the West Indian population. A study which Louise took part in four or five years ago found thirty four percent of teachers had experienced anti-Irish attitudes in their English school. So I think it doesn't go away. I think it gets quieter during the Northern Irish Troubles. It absolutely erupted, it was there, it was ready to go, in very similar ways to the nineteenth century and these punch cartoons of monkeys

But unless there's any cause to bring it out, it it doesn't appear in strong ways. Turning back to you, Louise, I mean until the recent arrival of large numbers of Eastern Europeans there's been a tendency yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r have parallels with those of the Irish people in the UK. It was something that that really made me feel quite curious around two thousand and four.

when there was EU enlargement and famously a million Poles arrived in Britain within a very, very short space of time. But as the numbers increased there was growing resentment and criticism of all of these Eastern Europeans coming over here. taking our jobs uh in inverted commas and British politicians started to talk about British jobs for British workers. What made me curious was whether those white European Eastern European migrants would start to be

racialized would experience prejudice and discrimination. I was able to draw on the research that I had been doing for many years with the Irish. who had been white, but white kind of conditionally. As Bronwin was saying earlier, from the sort of sixties, seventies, eighties onwards, th the sort of narrative was that migrants are black, migrants are brown.

The idea that migrants were also white and Whereas as Bronwyn has very clearly articulated, in the nineteenth century, probably most migrants to this country were white, and being white did not preclude you from being a migrant but We sort of fell in, I suppose, to this very simplistic dichotomy that white people are British and black people are are migrants.

What the Irish had done was to really complicate that story, and then that really became a valuable lesson when a million Poles arrived and then people from Romania and Bulgaria arrived in large numbers. Because we could see exactly how they were also being racialised and discriminated against.

And that brought very much to the fore the need to learn about the history of migration and not just to see migration in literally simplistic black white dichotomies. Louise, Ryan, Bron and Walter, and thank you both very much. We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas primed and ready for painting on. We love the story part of the word history. and we love it trimmed out with colour and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes. Observe our Celtic scroll.

Decorate our essence. That was a Thinking Aloud podcast from BBC Radio 4. You'll find a treasure trove of other Thinking Aloud programmes on BBC Sounds. At the BBC, we go further. See Clearer. With a subscription to BBC.com, you get unlimited articles and videos, ad-free podcasts, the BBC News Channel streaming live 24-7.

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