LUKE 'Ming' Flanagan swept to victory in the recent European elections. He tells why he celebrates Britain for its anti-EU stance; how 19 out of 20 children between his family and that of his wife emigrated to London and reflects on personal connections that could label him an Anglophile.....
Mr Flanagan, what’s your relationship with Britain?
For the summer of 1989 I worked for McWeeney Smallman on a demolition site and old post office site across from Buckingham Palace. I was there for four months. It was like going home because I got to visit my sister in Crouch End and to visit my brother. I always remember we had a dog for 14 years and word came through that Patch had died so all the Flanagans in London met up for a dinner. We might not have met up for anything else but we met up when the dog died.
What was the London of 1989 like from an Irish perspective?
I was going from a small town to a big city. It was very exciting. Not only did my brother and sister live there but Queens Park Rangers football club happened to be there too and we are all fanatics in my house. Don Givens and the Gallens were there. There was a big Irish contingent at the time. My father and mother lived in London in the 1960s. Two brothers and a sister would have been born there. The joke we have in our house is that there are three Tans and three Paddies in the house.
It was easy for you to get set up then?
We had it handy because friends of a friend of mine got a house and a job. I walked straight into a job. I found the cost of living high relative to wages. The interesting thing is that between my family and my wife’s family — 10 kids on her side and six on mine and both sets of parents — 19 of the 20 of us worked in London. And my younger brother, the pull is for him to go over now.
That’s a pretty arresting statistic for two families. How many are still there?
Only two, which is kind of amazing. My wife’s brother, he would be nearly 50, and my brother but the rest of them have nearly all come home in the last five to seven years.
You’d expect it to be the opposite that only two returned home. What circumstances made that happen?
Well, three of us were only there for a couple of years really. They just found a reason to come back and the so-called Celtic Tiger attracted a few of them back. My mother would always have said, far away fields are greener and all, but she would have always kind of regretted coming home from London (in 1971). She really liked the people over there, the multi-cultural aspect of it. She found everyone really friendly. That was her experience of it, even though she was a very conservative lady. She seemed to like it over there and she regretted leaving.
How were they received in Roscommon as returning emigrants? Was there a big disconnect?
I don’t think you have to leave the country for that to happen. I think if you were gone to Dublin for five years it would be the same. I don’t think it’s a thing that’s unique about coming back from London [or abroad]. I’ll tell you what the problem is — if my brother wanted to return back to Ireland in the morning he wouldn’t be able to get social welfare for six months and you know what effect it’s having? It’s having an unusual effect in that it is creating massive racism in Ireland.
In what sense?
When I was canvassing for the European election it was one of the most common things that came up, and I know people have got it wrong — it doesn’t matter what country you are coming from, you have to be in Ireland for six months. People I met were telling me: ‘My brother came back from England and he wasn’t entitled to anything’ and they’d say ‘someone can come from another country and claim’. But I think they need to change that system because you are creating fertile ground for racism.
There is an onus on the Government to provide support for people who return then?
Yes. To welcome them back. If you wanted to come back, the idea that you would be treated as a complete and other outsider in that first six months you come back… I think that’s very unfair.
Did you ever feel your identity was a negative thing when you lived away?
No. Only one cliché rang true: don’t work for an Irishman. I was warned because they treat you bad. We worked for a fella over there and he seemed to get over his inferiority complex about being Irish by calling us ‘thick Paddies’.
Have you ever been accused of being an Anglophile?
Look, some people would get offended if you said the Irish are a lot like the British but let’s turn it on its head — the British are a lot like the Irish too. We are all sitting in the same pot and the water is boiling. All I know is that my family got a phenomenally warm welcome when they went to London. There’s one part of me that certainly is an Anglophile, if you want to call me that, and that is the part that says I wish our Government would stand up to Europe in the same way that the British Government are trying to do, or trying to give the impression they are, because our approach to Europe is that we are inferior and ‘thank you for helping us’.
Where do you think that comes from?
I don’t know where it comes from.
Is it inherited?
Well, John Waters [Irish Times columnist] called it post-colonial syndrome. You know, young people coming along now, people say they are cheeky. You know where that comes from? They don’t suffer from post-colonial syndrome.
What stand do you want to see taken against Europe then?
Well, the British Government and the British public weren’t stupid enough to join the Eurozone project. I think we should have been brave enough not to join as well and stood on our own two feet and stick with a currency that suits our economy better. But there’s this thing in the back of our head, that somehow we are not able for it.
We seemed to turn out like a young lad who at the age of 15 couldn’t wait to leave home and then did when they turned 17. They got their independence and then a year later they got cowardly and moved back in with mammy again. Well, that’s us, we got our independence from Britain, we fought for it, then we moved out and discovered we had to make our own dinner so we joined up with Europe and got them to decide everything for us.
When did you leave home yourself?
I’m personally the type of fella who likes his independence and I think we should keep it… you had that experience obviously [laughs]?
Isn’t it ironic that your brother, who was born in London, moved back here years after your parents returned to Ireland? Was that difficult for your mother?
I think the sadness was overcome by the fact that they were better off getting a job over there. That’s the way she looked at it. And as someone who has two daughters it would horrify me that they’d have to do it, but that’s another generation that failed.
What’s it like now in terms of emigration from your constituency?
Every young person is getting out as quick as possible. It’s similar to the year my oldest brother did his Leaving Cert. There were 32 in that class and 30 of them immigrated to London and I think one went to New York. That was just complete and utter wipe-out. That’s the sad thing about the boom — we had what was normal in other countries [for a time] as in young people living in your area. Not having a situation where there’s a gap between 18 and 50. For the first time in my life people were around — this was normality for a lot of countries but it hasn’t been for us.
You’re an MEP in Europe now. How do you view Ireland as part of the bigger European model?
There is one thing that is interesting about this European Union that we are part of and the idea that we have a single market. One thing that makes a single market work well is the ability for labour to move but unless you have notions about yourself, you don’t go to Germany — you go to England, or Australia or to the US. So we really want to stop codding ourselves and forcing ourselves as a square peg into a round hole called Europe. I love the place but it isn’t where we go; it isn’t where we do our business but sadly our State thinks we sound less British if we get more connected with Europe. It’s nearly ‘look at us; we are independent from Britain now. We are with Europe.’ I’ll tell you, Cromwell was bad but he never ran anyone off the bogs.”
See More: Emigrant, Ireland, London, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan
