IT IS one of those unavoidable things but quite often as Irish people we end up talking about England. Or making some reference to England. There are obvious reasons for that and if you wish to reference the eight hundred years of repression then be my guest. I’m as tired of that recurring trope as I could possibly be.
The fact that we are interlinked with England, though, is unavoidable. By language, by history, by family, by good things, by bad things. Of course, for those of us who grew up in England, in Irish families in Irish communities, this is even more entrenched.
We may have spent many years asserting our Irishness but there was never any denying the places we came from and the people we’d known there. I was thinking about this recently as I spent some time with some old friends from England. Now, these are English people, not Irish people in England or Irish people from England. And, of course, I was seeing these people the week after those terrible riots in England.
The riots gave us all a version of England and the English, didn’t it? In that version they are bigoted, hostile, ignorant, violent, angry, and hateful. It was England and the English at their worst. And, you know, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t have to search too far to find more English examples of that.
Now, it doesn’t fall to me to apologise for the English and it doesn’t fall to me to seek to extol them. What I can do, though, is talk about them honestly and I can only say that the English people I’ve just spent my time with were some of the best people I know. Witty, warm, good craic, polite, funny, decent and kind. Now, I’m a firm believer that these are qualities shared across the nations of the world. I’m not a nationalist. Certainly not in any sense of some people being superior to others by virtue of where they were born or what culture they inhabit. But, still, in the light of those riots and, always, in the context of our tortured history I think it’s worth pointing out, from time to time, that the English, you know, they can be bloody great.
For a start I don’t think I’ve laughed that much, so often, for a very long time. Is there an Irish humour and an English humour? Strangely enough I’ve always thought we were much the better craic and yet found individual English people funnier. Does that make any sense? For instance, Tommy Tiernan doesn’t make me laugh but the typically English Stewart Lee does.
Then again Kevin McAleer’s sketch about being stopped by the British army is one of the most Irish and most funniest things I’ve ever seen. So it’s not really about that. What it is more about is that the values of goodness and kindness and decency aren’t defined by nationality. Which, when we’ve all watched terrible things inspired by people’s distorted sense of their own particular identity, is well worth remembering.
Now this isn’t about cheering them on in football or cheering on whoever they’re playing against. The essence of sport is tribal and the essence of it in that context is harmless however corrupted it might become. And, like I say, I have no interest in negotiating the eight hundred years, whether with an Irishman in a Manchester United top or a shaven headed Englishman wrapped in the flag of St. George.
The actualities, subtleties, and teased truths of history are of a different discipline to what I’m trying to say. Do you remember our mothers saying there’s good in everyone no matter culture or creed? I’m trying to say something as simple as that, which seems a strange thing to tease out. But such is our age and such are the destructive tendencies within it that reiterating these truths is no harm. Lovely English people having a good, honest laugh. With bite but without bile. And Irish people sat with them laughing along. At each other, at the world, at us all. There is so much more that unites us, so much more that we have in common, than anything that might divide us. And if the Irish and the English can see that, even after, you know, the eight hundred years, then we’ll surely be alright, won’t we?
Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
See More: English Identity, Irish Identity
