Irish Diaspora in Britain

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

1.58 pm

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Irish diaspora in Britain.

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh, a Leas-Chean Comhairle. Happy St Patrick’s day to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to everyone. That is the hard bit of my speech done. It is worth recording that, while there are around 600,000 people who declare themselves to be Irish living in Great Britain, the true figure, if we look at those who are first and second generation, is probably something like 10% of the population of this country—some 6 million people. There should be 60-plus MPs here today on that basis. Alas, there are not. In fact, there are proportionally more Britons living in Ireland than there are Irish living in Britain, which is an interesting statistic. I say that because we have a very complicated relationship between our two islands, and a complicated history that has been interwoven over not just a few hundred years but thousands of years, from St Patrick travelling one way and St Columba travelling another way.

Those of us who have some claim to an Irish background are very proud of that background. I grew up in the very Irish city of Manchester, and in an Irish part of that city, listening to Radio Eireann at breakfast every morning. It is instructive that I knew as much about the tallyman’s projections for an Irish election, and that I knew, long before it had been declared, that the last seat in Donegal would go Fianna Fáil, as it virtually always did. Even better, I knew at least the advertised prescription for worming cows.

I never used that piece of information but, nevertheless, it has held me in good stead.

Manchester was a very Irish city, and the Irish were everywhere. One of the players who died in the Munich air crash, Billy Whelan, was Irish, and one of the heroes was Northern Ireland’s goalkeeper Harry Gregg, who dragged people—Bobby Charlton among them—from the ruins of the plane, for which he became a legend. He was a legend on the football field, too, because a few months previously he had helped Northern Ireland to defeat England. Northern Ireland went on to play in the 1958 World cup.

When Manchester United won the European cup in 1968, slightly after Celtic—that team was partly Irish, too—four of its players, Shay Brennan, Tony Dunne, the very Scottish but very Irish Pat Crerand and, of course, the great George Best claimed Irish origins. The Irish in Manchester could not be ignored.

The image of the Irish in those days was of builders and nurses, which was true to a degree. My good friend John Kennedy, who is known to many hon. Members, came from County Mayo with nothing in his pocket and built a business that has allowed him, as an older man, to be a philanthropist. My equally good friend Rita Maher—God rest her soul—probably nursed more people back to life, and towards the end of their life, than I had mugs of tea in her kitchen.

They are the archetypal working-class Irish, but it would be a mistake to see the Irish as just that, even though there are 200,000 Irish people working in our NHS—the Irish are much more than that. Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, was Irish-born but lived long parts of his life in England. Britain’s greatest general and the victor at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, was Dublin-born. The Brontë sisters are famed Yorkshire women writers, but their father was from Northern Ireland. Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw had Irish backgrounds and contributed to British society. I am proud to say that Denis Healey and Jim Callaghan were both of Irish origins. More recently, Danny Boyle, Caroline Aherne and Professor Teresa Lambe, one of the co-creators of the AstraZeneca vaccine, are all from Irish backgrounds.

The contribution is much wider than the image of builders and nurses. “McAlpine’s Fusiliers” declares:

“As down the glen came McAlpine’s men

With their shovels slung behind them”.

Nevertheless, we have doctors, lawyers, accountants and academics, everything the Irish contribute to this country. It is great to be able to record that.

These two islands have a complicated history that has caused problems. Although there is no doubt that the north of Ireland suffered most during the troubles, no part of these two islands did not suffer—my own city was bombed by the IRA in the late 1990s. The Good Friday agreement was a triumph not just for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, although their perseverance was instrumental in making it work, but for the many others who brought it into being. It was so important because it was not just about peace or even reconciliation; it was about a very different way of living together. It was about mutual respect between the people of these two islands, which is worth recording because the Good Friday agreement has taken a knock in recent years.

This is not the right time to rerun the Brexit debate, but Brexit has confounded and confused the relationship between these two countries. It has had an impact on the Irish living in Britain. We have to get back to getting it right. We owe it not simply to the Irish in Britain or to Britons in Ireland; we owe it to all our people to get it right once again. That is the big prize we have to pursue because, in the end, mutual respect is what we should be about.

Brian Dalton of Irish in Britain, who is alas stricken with covid—good luck to you, Brian—would say that the challenges facing the Irish in Britain are, of course, about making sure we live well together, but we face some challenges in common, such as dementia in an ageing Irish population and heart conditions in an Irish population whose diet in their youth probably was not always good. We face these things together.

It is about recognising Irish heritage and what it means in modern society, but there is something more important. The 6 million people of Irish origins are the template for this mongrel nation of ours. I say that with pride, because we are a mongrel nation brought together from many different strands. It is the template for how we treat and respect each other. If we can use the Irish in Britain as the template for how we respect heritage and how we respect each other, we will achieve something important for modern Britain and for the relationship between our two islands.

I am proud to be part of the hand-me-down Irish diaspora, and I am proud that colleagues are here to speak on this tremendously important issue. I am proud because the Irish in Britain represent the best of modern Britain, as do all those who weave the tapestry of what we are as a nation.

May the blessings of St Patrick be with us all this day, and may the blessings of St Patrick—I say this wearing a shamrock and a Ukraine badge on my lapel—be with the people of Ukraine, too. The peace we want between these two islands is the peace we want around the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd]

This has been a great debate. It has been a celebration—not simply of people who are very proud of their own claim to part of Ireland but, much more than that, of the role that the Irish have played. As the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who spoke on behalf of the SNP, rightly said: what would we be had the Irish not been here? Ours would have been a very different country.

People have rightly touched on the difficult times—the “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs” signs that were part of my city and my upbringing. Fortunately, we are now a long way from that. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that I have a friend, whose father was Jamaican and mother was Irish, who once said to me, “You know, the Jamaicans and the Irish are very similar—it’s just that on the Jamaican side of me I’ve got sunshine.” The rain in Ireland keeps it green, as it keeps large parts of Britain green.

This is a day of celebration, as St Patrick’s day always is. I will not speak for too much longer, as I do not want to keep my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) away from either the Guinness or the races.

I join the appeal of the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) in respect of the specific problems faced by Irish Travellers. It is an important issue that we should recognise on this day of celebration.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) that it was of course the Irish who built the Manchester ship canal, which enabled the Guinness boat to travel up from Dublin. That made sure that for a long time we had Dublin Guinness in Manchester, not simply that from London.

My final point is simply this. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made an important point about the role of the Irish embassy, as did my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North. I pay tribute to the current ambassador, Adrian O’Neill. He has had a difficult time with covid and, without getting into the issues of Brexit, it has been a rocky few years since the referendum. It is in all our interests to make sure that we re-establish that good relationship. It is good for the Irish in Ireland, good for the British in Britain and good for the Irish in Britain. On this day of celebration, let us look forward to better times for all.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

It has been a real pleasure to be in the Chair for this debate and to hear so many good friends spoken of in such warm terms—especially Sir Patrick Duffy who, as the shadow Cabinet member and hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) said, is the oldest living former MP. He is my constituent and a very dear friend. I spoke to him this morning and he was in fine form. He received a lovely letter from Mr Speaker on his 101st birthday last year. I wish him and everyone else a very happy St Patrick’s day. I also wish Sir Patrick a very happy birthday for his forthcoming 102nd birthday.

That was probably a complete abuse of my position, but nevertheless I wanted to do it.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Irish diaspora in Britain.