Everyone loves the Irish, even the Brits

[pennyw]

I currently work as a researcher in the House of Commons, Westminster, alongside many politicians who experienced first hand, some tragically, the IRA bombing campaign in the 1980s. Never once have I encountered prejudice, discrimination or ill will against me at the heart of the British establishment but maybe I hadn’t dug deep enough and read between the lines where the apparent racism still lurks.

Everyone loves the Irish, even the Brits « Generation Emigration

 

[tigerbob]

I currently work as a researcher in the House of Commons, Westminster, alongside many politicians who experienced first hand, some tragically, the IRA bombing campaign in the 1980s. Never once have I encountered prejudice, discrimination or ill will against me at the heart of the British establishment but maybe I hadn’t dug deep enough and read between the lines where the apparent racism still lurks.

Everyone loves the Irish, even the Brits « Generation Emigration

On two occasions I was nearly caught up in an IRA bombing. Firstly, the Harrods bomb (I had just walked into Knightsbridge tube (the Harrods end entrance) about 3 minutes before it went off, and then nearly 10 years later the bomb in the Sussex pub, where I was just about to take a client to lunch (my office was on Bedford Street, about 200 yards from The Sussex - we got there about 3 minutes after the bomb went off - and to this day I am surprised that I never heard it).

The only time, as and Englishman, that I have ever encountered hostility towards me from an Irishman merely because I was English was on St Patrick's Day in 1996 when, at a bar called The Old Shillelagh in Detroit, an Irish singer found out I was English and dedicated a song to me called "Fuck the British Army". Bizarrely, all the Americans in the bar stood up and cheered - I have always hoped it was because they were young, naive and drunk.

Of course I despise the IRA, but no more so than I despise the other side of that hideous coin (the UDA, et al)

Despite the above, I have always found the Irish in general to be great fun and great company. It would be a shame to let a few rotten apples spoon an otherwise very friendly barrel.