‘Today’s far-right stereotypes about refugees echo what Irish faced abroad’
HISTORY podcaster and author Fin Dwyer said the ‘parallels’ between racism encountered by the emigrating Irish in the past and people coming into Ireland today are ‘really obvious’.
The former archaeologist discussed anti-Irish racism in the UK in the 1930s in a recent episode of his Irish History Podcast, which he has hosted since 2010 and is downloaded over a quarter of a million times a month.
Drawing parallels with the present day, Dwyer, who recently released his third book, A Lethal Legacy: A History of Ireland in 18 Murders, said new arrivals here ‘should be welcomed’, in a climate where anti-immigration sentiment is burgeoning online and among certain far-right groups.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘We as a people have travelled all across the world. I would challenge anyone to find a family in this country who doesn’t have someone who has been an immigrant somewhere.’
The history expert said similarities ‘are really obvious’ between the racism directed at the Irish in the 1930s and those arriving here today, adding: ‘Stereotypes about immigrant groups don’t change.
‘‘The stereotypes often made [today] about people coming from outside, who increasingly aren’t white, are the same stereotypes directed at Irish people in Britain. And I think there is a lesson in that, in that the people who stoke this stuff up are not genuine.’
In a recent podcast, Dwyer, from Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny, detailed a speech made in the 1930s by a rabblerousing English preacher, Major Dane, in which he alludes to an Irish tendency towards crime and exaggerates the numbers arriving in what he calls an ‘invasion’.
‘If three million workers had migrated, Ireland would have been almost empty, given it represented almost 68% of the entire population of the island in 1911,’ Dwyer said.
‘If you can see the same rubbish being peddled in the 1930s and the 2020s, it tells you something more about the message and the people saying it than any of the underlying issues.’
The historian also observed that ‘partition hasn’t been good for Ireland’.
‘I’m sure there are lots of people in the six counties who would argue that partition has been good, but I think history is catching up with it,’ he said.
‘If you look at, for example, the once great allies of Ulster unionism, the Tory party in England, they increasingly appear to have no interest in maintaining the union.
‘Look at [sacked British home secretary] Suella Braverman’s comments [last week], where she seemed to confuse Catholic and Unionist marchers, which is a fairly extraordinary thing given her faction of the Tory party traditionally would have been the strongest allies of Unionism.’
Dwyer said Braverman’s comments touch on a ‘much broader shift in British politics that seems to indicate that their interest in the North is declining, and that obviously presents big questions for Ireland, both north and south.’
He warned that we can ‘glibly
throw out “unification”’ but there remains ‘a lot of things that have to be answered’.
‘It won’t be the same country after unification, and it’s not just about making unionists feel welcomed – a united Ireland would have to be their country. It’s not just about taking away the border.’
The Waterford-based historian has built a reputation for measured analysis of Ireland’s past, often using the lives and experiences of ordinary people as a vehicle for telling a wider story.
This is the approach in his latest book, where he uses 18 separate murders – most of which will be unfamiliar to the average reader – to chart the history of the last 200 years on the island.
The killings are framed as flashpoints in a wider context rather than making them the sole focus. Dwyer describes it as ‘not a book that looks at murder for murder sake’ and definitely not a true crime book.
Early chapters capture the dayto-day tensions that led to a century of failed rebellions up to 1916, through the lives and deaths of often quite ordinary people.
A chapter on partition and the events of 1922 doesn’t even mention Michael Collins; instead is uses the story of the Hughes family and the sectarian killing of one of them to capture the mood of the time. The final chapter focuses on the 1982 killing of Declan Flynn in Fairview, north Dublin.
Dwyer said murders have historically captured the attention of the public, which in turn helps historians in their research.
‘When a murder takes place, people in the past – as they do in the present – took a huge interest in the people involved, whether that’s the victims or the people who perpetrated the crime. And this provides
‘New arrivals should be welcomed’
‘It’s definitely not a true crime book’
us with a lot of detail about their lives.
‘Obviously history is often written from the perspective of powerful people, whereas a murder actually often can give us an insight into people who normally would be forgotten by the historical records.’
Dwyer said our ‘obsession’ with murder and true crime is nothing new, but can be ‘particularly unedifying’ when content ‘doesn’t pay respect to the victims and people affected by the murder.
‘And I suppose that’s one of the things I was trying to be cognisant of.’