St Patrick's Day

As an Irishman, St Patrick's Day is always special to me and is celebrated all over the world wherever there is an Irish community or even an Irish influence. It is indicative of how the Irish diaspora has spread and put down roots almost everywhere. The history of the waves of Irish emigration and the prejudice which they met has, however, frequently been overlooked in the sea of party hats and waves of Guinness on the day itself. Ireland's troubled history itself has resurfaced in recent weeks with the killings in Northern Ireland and the fear that things could spiral out of control once again.

It is very appropriate that Patrick himself was not Irish but a immigrant from elsewhere and indeed a slave. The legend is that he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken from either Gaul or Wales, both of which were at that time in the Roman Empire, to the perceived barbarian land of Ireland, which lay outside the Pax Romana, later to be emulated by the Pax Britannica, where Ireland would be one of the first countries added to the new empire. Patrick managed to escape, returning to Gaul and later became a priest and missionary, returning to Christianise the pagan Irish. His method of teaching them about the Trinity was to pick a shamrock and explain that the three divinities in one were similar to the three leaves of the one plant. Thus the shamrock became the national symbol.

The oppression of the Catholic majority in Ireland in the 18th century under the savage Penal Laws (an early form of apartheid introduced by the new settler class) led to many Irish seeking their fortunes in continental Europe and particularly in the armies of the Catholic courts of France, Spain and the Hapsbury Empire. A recent exhibition in Dublin about 'The Wild Geese' as these exiles were known had a painting of an Irish general in the service of the Habsburg Empire trying to persuade his fellow Irish officers on the opposing French side of a battle to defect to the Emperor's cause.

The great waves of emigration truly started after the Great Famine, an exercise in Free Trade, which the IMF would have been proud of, where the British government allowed stocks of food to be exported from the country while thousands lay dying and sick. The only relief offered by the Victorian British authorities was the Poor Relief Board, where armies of sick and starving peasants were offered soup in return for building roads which led to nowhere and where the Workhouses strictly segregated families, in case welfare should prove too attractive and they develop a 'dependency culture'. Thousands headed for the cities of America and the UK and the truly Irish diaspora began. Later many more found themselves heading for Australia as political prisoners.

Those first Irish immigrants encountered hostility and attack, on both sides of the Atlantic. Martin Scorsese's recent 'Gangs of New York' illustrates the hostility which the starving Irish immigrants arriving from Ireland encountered from 'the natives' in New York and elsewhere. It is for this reason that the Irish have always had an understanding of the dynamic of immigration and emigration and of the problems which immigrants encounter. The memory of the Great Famine is also a reason why Irish contributions towards the developing world are one of the highest per capita in Europe.

Today with the debate on immigration again raging and the recent Panorama programme which advocated an amnesty for illegal immigrants, it is salutary to look back at the experience of the Irish and what they contributed to UK society. The Green Party conference this weekend is going to debate a forward looking and progressive motion which I am supporting to grant decent conditions and a level playing field to immigrants and asylum seekers across the EU. The other European Green parties have already supported it and are running on a brave and radical manifesto on this issue in the elections taking place across Europe in early June. With a rampant BNP and racism and xenophobia in the news every day, thanks to the likes of the Daily Mail it is ncessary to take a long term view of this issue and to see it also in an historical light.

The following is from a book on the history of immigration into the UK I am currently reading entitled 'Bloody Foreigners. The story of immigration to Britain.' by Robert Winder (2004). In the chapter on the great Irish immigration of the 19th century Winder writes:

"From uncompromising beginnings the Irish developed into a success story, they stepped onwards and upwards into the centre of a country they simultaneously adopted and altered... Their story gives hope for any future immigrants to these shores, because the initial discomfort, no matter how extreme, did not last for ever. At the end of the century, as the red brick turrets of Westminster Cathedral began to rise into the sky above Victoria Station, it was clear that, thanks to the Irish, England now embraced a sizable Catholic population. Inside, there were pillars of Cork and Connemara marble, a bronze statue of St Patrick, and a mother of pearl shamrock. Britain was at last a country not merely of religious reform but of religious variety and tolerance, a fact which would be increasingly important as members of other faiths began to congregate in these islands."

The lesson remains as relevant today as it was in the 19th century. For me, this is the real meaning of St Patrick's Day wherever it is celebrated from Melbourne to Manchester.