The alleged animosity between the English and the Irish has become the ethnographic pantomime of these islands. Proximity and familiarity now breed not so much contempt as resignation. We are stuck together by history, popular culture, language and geography. When we are repelled, it is by our similarities as much as our differences.
The Irish intelligentsia laments the English dominance of Irish popular culture, but that's the way it is. Many Irish people have chosen to have a view on Jade Goody, support Manchester United and buy Heat magazine. In contrast, English watercooler moments do not include discussions about who won the Irish You're a Star, nor do the English buy the Irish Independent or support Shamrock Rovers. (So we know everything about you, but you know little about us. This may be discourteous, but it is not surprising.)
It is easy to conclude that English culture, particularly popular culture, has, in a straight line from Victorian music halls to Celebrity Big Brother, steamrollered indigenous Irish culture. The drivers have always been demographic—it is now 4.2m people versus 50m—and economic. The old story—give or take an exaggeration or 12—is, after all, true. The English grabbed our land, slapped us around for a few hundred years and we lived off scraps. Ordinary people made the best of a bad hand, resulting in huge emigration from Ireland to England, particularly in the past century.
Who were these people, many of whom could not speak English when they docked in Liverpool, Holyhead or Bristol? What is their legacy? What happened to the children and grandchildren of the great Hibernian exodus, and what did they contribute to England?
It turns out that the cultural story is not a one-way street at all. In fact, Irish immigrants came to dominate a field in which England excels—youth culture.
Everyone knows that Lennon and McCartney were grandchildren of Irish immigrants, as was George Harrison. It is not surprising that teenagers from Liverpool in the 1960s might be first or second-generation Irish, given that Liverpool was home to the biggest Irish community in England. But was the Irish origin of the Beatles a coincidence?
From John Lennon on, most of these English cultural icons have spoken fondly of their Irish roots and suggested that they have helped their creative drive. Morrissey's 2004 single "Irish Blood, English Heart" speaks for itself. Johnny Rotten's autobiography, No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish, sums up his sense of being an outsider growing up in Islington in the 1970s. And on the eve of England hosting Euro '96, at the height of the Britpop movement, Noel Gallagher was asked to pen the official England team anthem, to which he responded: "Over my dead body, mate, we're Irish."
For most, the attachment is more ambiguous; they can be English and Irish. One need not dominate the other.
So Lennon, Morrissey, Lydon, Gallagher and a whole host of others (including David Bowie) stem from a specific tribe, rarely studied, yet prominent in all walks of English life—the Hiberno-British, or HiBrits for short.
The HiBrits are Ireland's demographic echo. The product of Ireland's perennial economic underperformance, which seemed to be a defining national characteristic until about 15 years ago. But our loss was England's gain. England made them and reaped the rewards.
Although rarely classed as such explicitly, HiBrits are by far the largest ethnic minority in England. A recent study suggests that one in four English people are HiBrits, claiming to have some Irish background. If this is true, it means that today there are close to three times as many HiBrits as real Irish. More officially, the 2001 census found 6m HiBrits in England. Over one in ten of the English population have an Irish parent or grandparent. (Tony Blair is actually more Irish than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Blair's mother was born in Donegal, whereas Kennedy's parents were both born in the US.)
By 1971, over 900,000 Irish people lived in England, while the population of Ireland itself was under 3m. The vast majority of Irish people in England came over in the 1950s, when over 500,000 emigrated to Manchester, the Midlands and London. The vast majority stayed. This was the period of the disappearing Ireland, when two out of every three children born in the 1930s and 1940s emigrated. Their children make up the lion's share of today's HiBrit population.
There was a later, smaller bulge in the 1980s, which ensured that HiBrits continue to be born in English maternity wards. As Ireland has transformed itself, now absorbing more immigrants per head than any other country in the world, emigration to England has dried up. But the existing Irish population in England is still significant. Thirty years after the 1971 peak, there are still over 650,000 people born in Ireland living in England.
The story of how this tribe influenced English culture, particularly popular culture, has never been told. However, the HiBrit impact on music, comedy, television and football—the heart of English popular culture—is no less impressive than Jewish influence in Hollywood.
What drove them to make such a contribution to popular culture? Their outsider status was clearly a factor. While they knew they were different, the rest of society saw people of the same colour, speaking the same language and supporting the same football clubs. More than other outsiders, they were the silent ethnics. They minded their own business and tried to get on. Their parents met in Hibernian clubs and the children were sent home to granny in Ireland for the summer.
The psychology of being in the place but not quite being of it might explain why so many English comedians, too, are HiBrits. Could anyone except Steve Coogan—both of whose parents are Irish—have created the monstrously middle-English Alan Partridge? Other HiBrits in comedy include Peter Kay, Jimmy Carr, Paul Merton, Neil Morrissey, Caroline Aherne and Billy Connolly.
At the heart of mainstream broadcasting, we have Judy Finnigan, Dec Donnelly (of Ant and Dec), Anne Robinson, Sharon Osbourne, Dermot O'Leary, Dermot Murnaghan and Martha Kearney.
In football, HiBrits play both ways. Wearing the green strip were Steve Heighway, Ray Houghton, who headed England out of the 1988 European championship, and Kevin Sheedy, who scored against England in the 1990 World Cup. Others include John Aldridge and Andy Townsend. And the HiBrits for England? Wayne Rooney, of course, and, just scratching the surface, four recent captains: Kevin Keegan, Steve McMahon, Martin Keown and Tony Adams.
The HiBrits have been well accepted and are part of the furniture. Many argue that they are now as English as the English themselves. But the HiBrits knew the "otherness" as kids when they closed their front doors and entered a very Irish world of labourers, nurses, spinster auntie Mary and hairy bacon. But this distinction was never clear, and the lines between the tribes—the immigrants and the hosts—were often blurred.
In recent years, HiBrits—who might once have hidden their Irishness, as it put them a bit too close for comfort to the mad drunk in the local park—have begun to revisit their Hibernian side. This metamorphosis mirrors the changing image of Ireland in England. Where once we were feckless, lazy and drunken, the same characteristics are now seen as carefree, liberated and spontaneous.
Yet the HiBrits needed England as much as England needed them. It is clear to anyone brought up in the stuffy Ireland of the 1970s or 1980s that these products of mass immigration could never have made it in Ireland. Can you imagine Boy George, Julian Clary or Paul O'Grady—all HiBrits—getting away with cross-dressing in Ireland back then? They still risked being lynched in rural Ireland as late as the early 1990s.
The economic renaissance of Ireland means that the relationship between the two peoples has changed. As Ireland's economic performance surges ahead of England (the Irish are now on average 20 per cent richer than the English) the flow of people and money is reversing.
For the past 200 years, the poorer Irish emigrated to England and the richer English invested their money in Ireland. Today the opposite is the case. According to the last Irish census, the English are the largest ethnic minority in Ireland. Over a third of our 600,000 foreign-born population comes from Britain. Meanwhile, the Irish are now the largest foreign investors in British property. Last year, 53 per cent of all deals done with foreigners in the London market were done with the Irish. Landmark buildings like Battersea power station, Harvey Nichols and Bishopsgate have also recently been snapped up by Irish oligarchs.
What will happen to the HiBrit tribe and their place in English popular culture? Where will the next Morrisseys, Lennons, Lydons and Gallaghers come from? And will second-generation English immigrants in Ireland be the font of a new type of Irish creativity?
The Irish used to be England's poor cousins, providing cheap labour for the English economy and turning run-down areas into Irish ghettos. In turn, England saved millions of Irish from destitution in a country that seemed incapable of economic advance. These migrants in turn spawned the HiBrits who have marked English popular culture and added to the mix that makes the English who they are. Their presence over the coming generations will be missed by both tribes.
