With the Irish Culture and Heritage Day being held at the Grange Club in Stockbridge, Edinburgh on Saturday, September 28, GERARD CASSINI considers the Irish community in Scotland
THE Irish Scots are a very distinct part of the Irish in Britain community. When Thomas Winning was made Cardinal in 1994, a tartan army accompanied this son of an Irish miner working in Lanarkshire to the Vatican. The Archbishop of Glasgow’s enthusiastic band of supporters who went to Rome to see him collect his red hat were not festooned with shamrocks –they were dressed in tartan and accompanied by a piper.
In Scotland, the Irish have carved out a distinct character for themselves. Unlike those who journeyed to, for example, London, Manchester or Wales, the Irish in Scotland embraced – to some extent – the culture of their new homeland.
This is probably not surprising, as from the earliest times an interchange of population, ideas, language – even sports – has taken place. The first settlers to Ireland probably came from Scotland some 9,000 years ago, crossing a land bridge to what is now Co Antrim. Thereafter, cultural and trading ties were fostered. A kingdom was even established in the 5th century – Dalriada combined parts of Antrim Down and Argyll. In those days, sea journeys were probably easier and speedier than journeys overland.
Sottish Gaelic is a direct descendant of the Irish language, and the Highland Gaels are often regarded as closer to the Irish than they are to Lowland Scots. Ireland even bestowed upon the Scots their very name. Roman chroniclers called the Irish ‘Scotti’ to distinguish them from the Picts. Well into medieval times a ‘Scot’ was someone who spoke the old Irish language.
It was against this background that the starving of Antrim and Donegal came to Scotland in large numbers in the 19th century. Finding Scotland much closer in every way than their counterparts who settled in the Americas or Britain, they embraced Scottish culture. Most of the Irish immigrants came from Ulster which had easy access to Scotland via sea routes. In the late 19th century more than 80 per cent of Irish immigrants came from the North of Ireland – and around 25 per cent of these were Protestant.
Both Catholics and Protestants had very different identities, and hence experiences with Protestants being more easily subsumed into Scottish society. Many Protestants were educated and found skilled employment in the likes of the shipyards, or at management levels in the coalmines.
Into the 20th century, and emigration from Ireland became steadily more Catholic. Meanwhile, Protestant immigrants became accepted into mainstream Scotland.
Thus, when we talk about the Irish community in Scotland today, we are largely speaking about the Catholic population.
But this embrace of Scottish culture proved none too popular with the locals. Waves of emigrants from Ireland arrived in Scotland from the 19th century onwards. They mined for coal, dug canals, worked in the shipyards and made steel — unlike their Protestant fellow immigrants, few worked in the upper echelons of the companies.
Scotland was in the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution, with the Irish contributing significantly to a dynamic workforce.
In the 18th century about 3 per cent of the population were Catholic. By 1900 this had risen to 10 per cent, and according to the latest figures, some 16 per cent of Scotland are Catholic. Most of these are of Irish origin, although the Italian Diaspora accounts for some, along with Poles and Lithuanians.
However, exact figures for those of Irish ancestry are difficult to evaluate — for the simple fact that religious intolerance was much greater in Scotland than in the more cosmopolitan areas of England, so many Irish people assimilated and kept quiet about their Irish roots.
Nonetheless the incomers gave Scotland some of its greatest sports stars, and founded two of its most famous football teams, Hibernian and Glasgow Celtic. The latter retains its Irish links, and is still described as a soccer side that thinks it’s a GAA club — a GAA team that happens to play soccer in Scotland instead of hurling in Croke Park. As Frankie Boyle said when Celtic played Falkirk for a cup match: “The people of Falkirk are about to get a crash course in Irish history.”
But not just sport – the arts as well. Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, third child and elder son of ten siblings, was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859: “I, an Irishman by extraction, was born in the Scottish capital after two separate lines of Irish wanderers came together under one roof.” And from under that roof emerged one of the most enduring characters in literature — Sherlock Holmes.
The Irish community in Scotland has come a long way in less than a century. In 1923 a report to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was entitled The Menace of the Irish Race to Our Scottish Nationality. But by then the Irish had established themselves as a vibrant community. The Education Act in 1918 had enshrined the right of everyone to state-funded education. Bigots condemned the Catholic schools as ‘Rome on the rates’. But it was too late for them to do anything, and Scotland’s Catholic population – the majority of whom were Irish or of Irish ancestry – began to establish themselves in every strata of society.
However that has not stopped the Catholics of Scotland being treated – to some extent – as outsiders. They may no longer be classified as second-class citizens, but definitely not the full bawbee.
Irish Culture and Heritage Day in Edinburgh in 2023, the Consulate General of Ireland in Scotland has announced that it will host this year’s event on Saturday, September 28 at the Grange Club in Stockbridge, Edinburgh.
