No Irish, no truth

ONCe again that hoary old ‘ No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ myth crops up. There’s no evidence from either Irish or British sources that such signs existed. The fact that so many people claim to have seen them should make it easy to find actual verifiable examples, but they’re as hard to come across as the Loch Ness monster.

It’s true there were racist signs in postwar Britain. A 1963 BBC documentary showed notices saying ‘No coloureds’, ‘No West Indians’ and ‘Whites only’, but the idea that they also referred to the Irish is nonsense.

There’s no record in the Oireachtas of any TD or Senator in the Fifties, Sixties or early Seventies making this claim. Can you seriously imagine every politician over several decades, from de valera to haughey, remaining silent if such offensive signs had been widespread across the water?

When the British Parliament banned racist signs in the Sixties, not one Westminster politician claimed the signs affected the Irish. A 1953 Catholic Truth Society handbook advising young Irish emigrants read: ‘english people may seem cold and aloof at first but will become friendly as they get used to you.’ Nothing about antiIrish signs or ‘social apartheid’.

The sad reality is that far from making common cause with black people, the Irish were as racially prejudiced (or not) as any other white people in Britain. Incidents of Irish hostility to West Indians took place in Nottinghamshire (1948) and Notting hill (1958).

Oswald Mosley, who wanted to deport black immigrants, specifically wooed Irish voters in West London in the 1959 General election.

The ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ phrase was invented retrospectively, probably during the propaganda war over Northern Ireland, to depict the english as hating everyone who differed from themselves. Many bought into it because they wanted to.

elsewhere, we read of the warmth of the British towards Irish Olympic and Paralympic athletes (Mail). Let’s use these times of improved relations to dump ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ in the dustbin of false folk memory.

JOHN DRAPER, London N13.