[Moderator's Note:
The following item appeared on the H-Ethnic list
where it is given the title
H-ETHNIC: "no Irish need apply" an urban legend
Sent: 30 March 2001 00:25
Note that Richard Jensen mis-spells the name of the novelist Thackeray.
Spalpeen does not mean rascal.
But much useful material here.
P.O'S.]


To: H-ETHNIC[at]H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: H-ETHNIC: "no Irish need apply" an urban legend

by Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu
an expanded version of this note is online with
illustrations and hot-links,
at http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

The question of "No Irish Need Apply" has some interesting
dimensions that are worth thinking about. (I am not Irish,
but grew up Italian Catholic with Danish connections).

1. Did actual "No Irish" signs exist? The evidence is overwhelming,
no.
a) Irish Americans all have *heard* about them -- and remember
elderly relatives saying they did *see* them. I suggest this
is urban folklore. They have the same status as leprechauns.
Historically they could have existed only in the Civil War
era; when people claim to have seen them in the 20th century
it proves the myth is pretty deep. And it suggests that the
same myth was prevalent 150 years ago. (In other words, when
someone said "I saw the sign in the 1920s" they are dead
wrong and it shows the depth of the myth, and therefore is
evidence that the signs did not exist in the 1870s either!)
b) Other ethnic groups--like my Italians--also had a strong
recollection of discrimination but never report such signs.
Were the signs intended only for the Irish?
c) No historian, curator or archivist has ever seen one, nor a
photo of one.
d) We actually *do* have a few newspaper ads for personal
household workers (nannies, cooks, maids) that say
"Protestant Only." (I looked through the want ads in the
*Chicago Tribune* for one week in the 1880s and did see one
or two of these.
1) A want ad in a Boston newspaper from Aug. 3, 1868, reads:
"Wanted - A good, reliable woman to take care of a boy two
years old.... Positively no Irish need apply." Nannies
may have been contested terrain, but the vast majority of
maids in large cities were Irish women, so there can't
have been many matrons refusing to hire them. (More often
they complained servants were hard to find.)
e) Searching all the text of the several hundred thousand pages
of 19c magazines and books online at Library of Congress,
Cornell and Michigan, you can find a dozen offhand reference
to the slogan; (do a search at
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/
and http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/

1) earliest known usage: The English novelist William Makepeace
Thackery uses the phrase in "Pendennis" an 1848 novel of
growing up in London in the 1820s p 102
2) "WANTED-- An English or American woman that understands
cooking, and to assist in the work general, is wished; also
a girl to do chamber work. None need apply without a
recommendation from their last place. IRISH PEOPLE need not
apply, nor anyone who will not arise at 6 o'clock, as the
work is light and the wages are sure. Inquire 359
Broadway."
- --unverified text of undated want ad in New York newspaper,
ca. 1840
3) First American usage: a printed song-sheet, Philadelphia,
1862, online at Library of Congress. Seems to be a reprint
of a British song sheet. The narrator is a girl looking for
a job in London who reads an ad in London Times dated Feb
1862, and sings about Irish pride. The last verse was
clearly added in America. online at
http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/cw1/cw104040/001q.gif
Library of Congress.

4) 1862 or 1863 New York City songsheet with basic text that
became the ur-text for all later songs (see online version
at Library of Congress or at
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

NO IRISH NEED APPLY.
Written by JOHN F. POOLE, and sung, with immense success, by the
great Comic-Vocalist of the age, TONY PASTOR.

I'm a dacint boy, just landed from the town of Ballyfad;
I want a situation: yis, I want it mighty bad.
I saw a place advartised. It's the thing for me, says I;
But the dirty spalpeen ended with: No Irish need apply.
Whoo! says I; but that's an insult -- though to get the place
I'll
try.
So, I wint to see the blaggar with: No Irish need apply.

I started off to find the house, I got it mighty soon;
There I found the ould chap saited: he was reading the TRIBUNE.
I tould him what I came for, whin he in a rage did fly:
No! says he, you are a Paddy, and no Irish need apply!
Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black his ere--
To tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish need apply!

I couldn't stand it longer: so, a hoult of him I took,
And I gave him such a welting as he'd get at Donnybrook.
He hollered: Millia murther! and to get away did try,
And swore he'd never write again: No Irish need apply.
He made a big apology; I bid hlm thin good-bye,
Saying: Whin next you want a bating, add: No Irish need apply!

Sure, I've heard that in America it always is the plan
That an Irishman is just as good as any other man;
A home and hospitality they never will deny
The stranger here, or ever say: No Irish need apply.
But some black sheep are in the flock: a dirty lot, say I;
A dacint man will never write: No Irish need apply!

Sure, Paddy's heart is in his hand, as all the world does know,
His praties and his whiskey he will share with friend or foe;
His door is always open to the stranger passing by;
He never thinks of saying: None but Irish may apply.
And, in Columbia's history, his name is ranking high;
Thin, the Divil take the knaves that write: No Irish need apply!

Ould Ireland on the battle-field a lasting fame has made;
We all have heard of Meagher's men, and Corcoran's brigade.*
Though fools may flout and bigots rave, and fanatics may cry,
Yet when they want good fighting-men, the Irish may apply,
And when for freedom and the right they raise the battle-cry,
Then the Rebel ranks begin to think: No Irish need apply

a> Meagher's men, and Corcoran's brigade were Irish Catholic
Civil War units from New York City, raised in 1862

b> After a few rounds of singing and drinking, you could read
the sign. And a few more rounds and you could see the
leprechaun.
c> for 330 more Irish songs see
http://web-users.lpt.fi/~zaphod/irish/

5) Other examples are included,. with links, at
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

f) Recollection is a group phenomenon. Tip O'Neill (Speaker of
the House in 1980s) grew up hearing horror stories of how the
terrible Protestants burned down the convent & school run by
the Catholic Ursuline nuns. When O'Neill went to college he
was astonished to read in a history book that it happened 100
years earlier-- he had assumed it was a recent event. [John
A. Farrell, *Tip O'Neill* (2001) p 55 - an excellent source.]
Farrell says O'Neill "also saw the No Irish signs" - which
since he was born in 1913, would have been circa 1920s [ibid
p 56; note that Farrell does not quote O'Neill directly on
this.]
g) Anti-Irish sentiment was strongest from 1830s to 1870s. Any
signs would have happened then, and it's inconceivable that
any business in Boston put one out in 1915-20. Can you
imagine what the Irish toughs would have done? People who
"remember" the signs in the 20th century only remember the
urban legend.

2. Here a surprise: www.ebay.com SELLS THESE SIGNS. In fact 6
identical ones are now advertised by several different dealers
from around the country for sale for $10 or so. Doubtless some are
even now hanging in the dens of Irish Americans.
look at http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.jpg

Or search Ebay.com at: #1418574790, #1418606298 (seller says
"it has been aged to give it an old appearance) item
#1419140260, #1127003744 and #1419746325
They are all the same sign; they say > but were all made and sold in novelty
stores in the 1950s. They are fakes. For confirming evidence
see ebay item #1418566276 or #1419873462 or look at the many
gag signs offered by cbasket[at]mindspring.com on Ebay.com

3. The Irish image in the popular media has been a topic of
interest for historians.

a) Start with
http://www.oconnellstreet.com/clover.htm
for some nasty anti-Irish cartoons
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/unit_2.html

b) the scholarly source is Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the
Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America
(1986)

c) for a good museum exhibit (Gaelic Gotham) about New York
City, see http://www.mcny.org/irish.htm

d) the best recent study Ron Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds.
The New York Irish (Johns Hopkins UP: 1996), especially
Hasia Diner, "'The Most Irish City in the Union': The Era of
Great Migration, 1844-1877" pp 87-106

4. So where does this urban myth come from? My best guess is
the Irish drinking song from 1862 or 1863, based on the
1862 London Irish song. This was a war year, and the Irish
engaged in major political battles, including large-scale
draft riots in New York City in 1863. The Irish needed a
sense of victimhood.

(Note that Poole changed the lyrics to a male experience,
and the lad fights back vigorously. This is a song to
encourage bullies. Note reference to the boy's recent
arrival, and the reference to New York Tribune newspaper,
the leading Republican paper of the day; note also that he
starts his job search by looking at the newspaper ads, which
is very unlikely for a new arrival. The narrator is male but
the ad seems to be for a houseworker, because it gives the
house address. The term "donnybrook" for a fracas is 1850s.
Spalpeen means rascal and was current only in Ireland.)

5. The first arrivals formed all-Irish work crews for
construction companies in the building of railroads in the
1830s. They systematically employed strikes, terrorism and
destructive violence to settle any grievances they may have
had with their employers, not to mention internal feuds
linked to historic feuds back in Ireland. National attention
when the railroads and coal companies destroyed the "Molly
Maguires" who had engaged in similar employment practices in
the 1870s.
a) Matthew E. Mason, "The Hands Here Are Disposed to Be
Turbulent": Unrest among the Irish Trackmen of the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, 1829-1851," Labor History (1998) v39#3:
253-72. As historian Julie Green has noted, "In the
anthracite coalfields of northeastern Pennsylvania during
the 1860s and 1870s, the Molly Maguires took action on their
workplace-based grievances, committing intimidation,
physical assaults, arson, industrial sabotage, and murder.
The Irishmen who participated in these actions felt squeezed
by unrelenting employers, hostile police and politicians,
and ethnic-based discrimination." Labor History, (1999)
v40#4 p548.

6. Were the Irish victims of job discrimination in reality?
That's possible without any signs of course. The evidence is
exceedingly thin--the Irish started *very* poor and worked
their way up steadily, all along believing that the
Protestant world hated them and blocked their every move.
No other European Catholic group seems to have shared that
chip on the shoulder (not the Germans or Italians--not even
strongly anti-Irish groups such as the French Canadians). In
my opinion the *political* hostility against the Irish in
the Civil War Era was real enough. The critics argued that
the Irish were corrupt and priest-controlled, and did not
support true republican values. (See all the Thomas Nast
cartoons.). Perhaps Irish politicians used that political
hostility to promote the false notion of economic or job
discrimination on the part of the Other. (The purpose being
to enhance Irish solidarity, which in political terms was
very high indeed-- the highest for any political group in
American history.)

7. Then (and now) the sharpest tensions pitted Catholic Irish
against the Protestant (Orange) Irish. The latter group
called themselves Irish and would not have set up "No Irish"
signs. The literature of the Irish Protestants never
mentions the existence of "No Irish Need Apply." I think
that's because there was no ethnic discrimination against
the Irish. Any historian can easily see job discrimination
in the 19th century against blacks and Chinese (the latter
indeed led by the Irish in California). No one has spotted
job discrimination against the Irish Catholics, except the
Irish Catholics themselves.

8. My conclusion is that the slogan--or possibly even an
occasional sign in the window of a private dwelling-- may have existed
in
London before 1830, to warn away Irish maids (that's the
Thackery reference). Signs were (probably) nonexistent in
the US, though it is possible the slogan was sometimes used
in rare newspaper want ads for domestic help. (No one has yet seen
an such an ad in an actual newspaper--only one clipping from an
unknown
paper.) Rather I think the "signs" were creations of the Irish to
inculcate
group solidarity against an evil "Other" -- and that the overt
discrimination
the signs reflected justified a violent response against the
other -- a donnybrook for the foes of St. Patrick. Young
Irish boys had a reputation as bullies (autobiographies by
Jews often mention getting beaten up by Irish gangs; for
that matter, it happened to me.) The myth justified bullying
strangers and helped sour relations between Irish and
everyone else. (Mayor Daley built his political reputation
as a gang leader circa 1919, with probably involvement in
the Chicago race riot that year.)

Perhaps the slogan has reemerged in recent years as the
Irish feel the political need to be bona-fide victims. (You
can find hundreds of references on the Internet at
google.com ) The Potato Famine makes them victims, of
course, but it will not do to have the villains overseas.
There must be American villains. See for example
http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html

9. If we conclude the Irish were systematically deluding
themselves over a period of a century or more about the #1
symbol of job discrimination, the next question to ask is,
was there *any* basis for the collective chip on the
shoulder about the economic hostility of Protestants to
Irish aspirations. Historians need to be critical. Because a
group truly believes it was a victim, does not make it so.
On the other hand, the Irish chip-on-the-shoulder attitude
may have generated a high level of group solidarity in both
politics and the job market, which could have had a
significant impact on the on the occupational experience of
the Irish.

10. How successful were the Irish in politicizing their jobs?
Observers noticed that the Irish tended to work in
equalitarian collective situations, such as labor gangs,
construction crews, or with strong labor unions, usually in
units dominated numerically and politically by Irishmen.
Wage rates were often heavily influenced by collective
activity, such as strikes and union contracts, or by the
political pressures that could be exerted on behalf of
employees in government jobs, or working for contractors
holding city contracts, or for regulated utilities such as
street railways and subways. Perhaps the Irish (with the
notable exception of the household servants) relied somewhat
less on individual skills or market forces, and more on
collective action and political prowess for their job
security and pay rates. How successful were they? By the
early twentieth century their pay scales were probably above
average. My analysis of Iowa data in 1915
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

shows the Irish Catholics had above average incomes, but
that additional years of schooling helped them less than any
other group. This suggests that group solidarity was a
powerful force for uplift, but it improved the status of the
group as a unit rather than as an average of separate
individuals. When the Irish grumbled about "No Irish Need
Apply," they perhaps were really warning each other against
taking jobs which were controlled by Protestants and immune
from the political pressures that group solidarity could
exert. There was method to the myth, which is why it
persisted so long.
a) Individual upward mobility was not a high priority for the
Irish, as shown by Stephan Thernstrom, *Poverty and
Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century
City* (1964) and also Howard Gitelman, "No Irish Neeed
Apply: Patterns of and Responses to Ethnic Discrimination in
the Labor Market," Labor History 1973 14(1): 56-68. Looking
at Waltham, Massachusetts, 1850-90; shows Irish avoiding
on-the-job training or formal education; they stayed in the
lowest-paying, unskilled jobs.

11. The collectivist system seems to have broken down after WW2,
as the machines rapidly decayed, as unions entered an era of
decline, and as the Catholic school system generated high
school and college graduates well-equipped to make their way
in the world on their own, with little group support. The
last maids quit household work during the war. As the unions
weakened, the Irish abandoned blue collar unionzed jobs and
joined the white collar world. With the election of John
Kennedy in 1960, Irish political solidarity climaxed. LBJ
won 80 percent of their vote in 1964, but since then they
have split evenly between the parties and no longer comprise
a bloc vote. As Andrew Greeley has pointed out in *That Most
Distrustful Nation: The Taming of the American Irish* (1972)
and many other reports using national survey data, by the
1960s the Irish had moved from the very bottom to the very
top of the ladder, with an economic status that surpassed
their old Yankee antagonists. Irish history is an American
success story, and they no longer need myths about "No Irish
Need Apply."

Richard Jensen
rjensen[at]uic.edu

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: No Irish

Re. Paul O'Leary's point that anti-Irish feelings can be conveyed
forcefully without written notices or overt bans - or for that matter
Irish jokes - but through a rather subtle use of language. During 12
years' recent residence in the northwest of England on many occasions
I heard the expression: 'that's very Irish'. I simply didn't
understand what it meant at first, but it quickly became clear that
it referred to statements or actions that were viewed as illogical or
contradictory or even inexplicable. Mostly I heard it said jokingly
among English people about themselves. But an expression like this,
obviously widely used, does reinforce and perpetuate negative
stereotypes about the Irish. However, I suspect a century from now
historians would have trouble uncovering a piece of information like
this - unless the expression is still being used in the 22nd century!

By the way, I've asked people in Australia if they are familiar with
this usage and some have said that they are. I wonder if it has
reached the US?

Elizabeth Malcolm
Melbourne


Professor Elizabeth Malcolm Tel: +61-3-8344 3924
Chair of Irish Studies FAX: +61-3-8344 7894
Department of History Email:
e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, 3010
AUSTRALIA

From: Ultan Cowley
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 12

Apropos of Dan Cassidy's reaction to my previous message:

The term 'dipsomaniacal' exaggerates the meaning of my original phrase 'the
constant influence of too much drink', while the substitution of the word
'pissing' for 'damping' (an original quotation), with its more gentle and
humorous undertones, is misleading.

The following quotes exemplify the phenomenon to which I refer; they are
available in interview form on audio tape in my personal archive, for
anyone who cares to contact me in person and listen to them. Alternatively,
anyone unable to do so, but anxious to check this out, may contact Dr. Liam
Harte, Department of Irish Studies, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill,
London, and I will arrange for him to listen to same & verify their
authenticity on my scheduled visit there to deliver a public lecture on
Irish Navvies on May 15th next.

'These men were unsuited to the new-style hostel accommodation, which was
run along military lines, and often staffed by ex-servicemen. Only the
Rowton Houses, such as Arlington or Conway, still retained to some degree
the sort of semi-charitable system which had characterised the pre-war
lodgings of the tramping fraternity:

"A lot of men went into digs that shouldn't have been there at all - they'd
wet the beds, an' all that, they couldn't help it. The `Pincher Kiddies' -
the `Milestone Inspectors', their kidneys were weak from years of sleepin'
out under hedges"
William ('Bill') Brennan, arlington House, Camden town, London, 1997

Pincher Kiddies', also known as 'Long Distance Kiddies' or 'Tramp Navvies'
refers to the predominantly pre-WW II breed of Irish navvies whose
lifestyle derived from that of the 19th C. Railway Navvies in England, who
adhered to what were known as 'The Ways of the Line'. In the 1930s they
were the backbone of Sir Robert MacAlpine & Sons' workforce - in fact a
grandson, Sir Malcolm MacAlpine, has described that era in correspondence
as 'The Golden Age' of the Irish navvy.

'Malcolm O'Brien, who was to end his career with an MBE, began in London in
the 'Fifties taking what he could get because, as he put it,

"In those days one "followed the shilling". You'd arrive in London, check
the paper, phone up a number?"Any chance of a start?"; "What can you do,
Paddy?"; "I'm a joiner"; "Right - start in the mornin' Paddy". No
interview?."

'Once on site he would meet some other Irish lads, get chatting in the tea
break, and perhaps be told: `We have a room - there's four of us in it, but
there's an extra bed (or mattress on the floor). You can move in with us'.
This would cut the cost of the room all round but very often, in Malcolm's
words,

"It was rough; they were like animals, I'm sorry to say - most of them
didn't have any hygiene. In Ireland, even in the city where I came from,
90% of the houses didn't have an internal toilet. They damped the beds or,
at best, pissed in the sinks. When I came over to London my mother was
ashamed to say I was in London because, in Limerick, a fella in trouble
would be given the choice by the courts of either gaol or England?".
Malcolm O'Brien, OBE, Director, Tarmac Construction, Wolverhampton, 1997

The second quotation is closer to what I was referring to in my original
message. The use of the word 'damping' rather than 'pissing' is deliberate
and connotes a certain shame-faced acknowledgment that this was aberrant
behaviour which, like excessive drinking, is regrettable but also somehow
amusing.

Incidentally, the frequency with which the Irish courts offered someone 'in
trouble' the choice between gaol or the boat to England can't have endeared
the Irish to their British hosts either...

I have been given similar accounts of behaviour on hydro dam and power
station schemes, where men lived in camps, on several occasions but none of
my respondents thought it an issue - merely typical of male collectives in
similar situations.

I am by no means alleging that this was how all Irishmen (or all
construction workers) behaved in similar situations but I am acknowledging
its commonplace occurrence and suggesting that a normal human reaction to
it might have been to prohibit Irish tenants.

Far from trying to blacken the reputation of the Irish in British
construction I have dedicated the last six years to researching and
recounting their story IN ALL ITS RAMIFICATIONS, with special emphasis on
their personal perspectives, at considerable personal cost and
independently of any academic institution. I have often wondered why no
salaried academic ever attempted it...

However I don't believe this story can be told in a credible manner by
airbrushing out any unsavoury aspects which may reflect badly on the Irish
and I would point out that, if my navvy respondents had thought me
prejudiced or hostile, I could not have obtained the degree of wholehearted
and enthusiastic cooperation which I was given.

Ultan Cowley, M.Sc.(Econ.)
Manchester
England

At 06:00 30/03/01 +0000, you wrote:
>
>
>From: DanCas1[at]aol.com
>Subject: Re:The Dipsomaniacal Irish Worker Serial Boardinghouse-Bedwetting
>Syndrome
>
>In a message dated 3/29/01 11:39:57 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk writes:
>
>
>> , I would point out in mitigation of this stance
>> that, apropos of the Irish navvies, it was commonplace for men to
>> practically boast about their habit of 'damping down the bed', in digs
>> etc., under the constant influence of too much drink.
>>
>>
>
>A Chairde:
>
>The caint on this particular topic of "No Irish Need Apply" has taken a
turn
>into the toilet, or perhaps the surreal toilet.
>
>Is there a mite or mote or scintilla of reliable evidence: citations,
>articles, interviews with landladies or boarding house housekeepers, oral
>histories, memoirs, or research that has been conducted into this
>"commonplace" Dipsomaniacal Irish Worker Serial Boardinghouse Bedwetting
>Syndrome?
>
>At the expense of sounding maudlin, I should state that I was only able to
>attend college because of wages earned by a long line of laborers and
>workers, born in Ireland, some of whom were, undoubtedly, hard drinkers,
and
>some of whom lived in men's boarding houses in Brooklyn and lower
Manhattan.
>
>I have never in my semi-long life ever heard a single Irish or Irish
>American
>worker, either drunk or sober, brag about pissing in their bed. And, I have
>personally known and/or worked on construction sites all over the city of
NY
>with hundreds of them; as well as being related by blood to scores, both
>living and dead.
>
>Bed-pissing as a mitigating factor in the banning of Irish workers from
>London housing is a new one for me.
>
>Why am I feeling pissed off?
>
>Daniel Cassidy
>Director
>The Irish Studies Program
>An Leann Eireannach
>New College of California
>San Francisco
>

From: "Anthony McNicholas"
Subject: RE: Ir-D Ultan Cowley responds to Dan Cassidy

Dear Ir-D List
I think Ultan is quite correct in saying that sanitised versions of history
are no service to anyone- you have to allow the evidence to take you where
it will. As far as bed-wetting and boozing are concerned, I have come across
the phenomenon anecdotally, in regard to building and factory workers,
Irish, English and otherwise. When I was at college in the Midlands in the
1970s, it was not uncommon amongst students, who, unlike the navvies did not
have the excuse of having done staggering amounts of work before they drank
equally staggering amounts of beer.
I think Ultan is also right to point out that this habit however common or
rare it might have been, would have encouraged some landlords to prohibit
such tenants. I doubt though, that it was confined to Irish navvies, or was
more common amongst them than navvies of any other nationality. However,
prejudice does not need evidence. You can read accounts in the press, or
hear it on the streets about immigrants from whatever quarter, taking all
our jobs and claiming all our dole at one and the same time.
To some people, immigrants can do nothing but wrong-a quotation from a Times
editorial of 1868 caught my eye, complaining of the Irish that "these Celtic
invaders lessen the rate of wages and this is their principal fault" (from
Alan O'Day 1977 p114, I've lost the title). Who read the Times but the kind
of people who would have employed such ragged trousered philanthropists to
undercut English workers? A case of having your cake and then complaining
about it.
Outsiders, when they do something negative, always seem to be regarded as
representatives of their kind. It does not seem to operate when they do
something good, nor does it apply to host populations who are usually
regarded as individuals. What I am saying is that though 'No Irish' signs
may have been in some cases a response to aberrant behaviour on the part of
some Irish building workers, the overwhelming reason for their existence was
the prejudice of some English landlords.

Anthony McNicholas
- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Sent: 30 March 2001 13:00
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Ultan Cowley responds to Dan Cassidy



From: Ultan Cowley
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 12

Apropos of Dan Cassidy's reaction to my previous message:

The term 'dipsomaniacal' exaggerates the meaning of my original phrase 'the
constant influence of too much drink', while the substitution of the word
'pissing' for 'damping' (an original quotation), with its more gentle and
humorous undertones, is misleading.

The following quotes exemplify the phenomenon to which I refer; they are
available in interview form on audio tape in my personal archive, for
anyone who cares to contact me in person and listen to them. Alternatively,
anyone unable to do so, but anxious to check this out, may contact Dr. Liam
Harte, Department of Irish Studies, St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill,
London, and I will arrange for him to listen to same & verify their
authenticity on my scheduled visit there to deliver a public lecture on
Irish Navvies on May 15th next.

'These men were unsuited to the new-style hostel accommodation, which was
run along military lines, and often staffed by ex-servicemen. Only the
Rowton Houses, such as Arlington or Conway, still retained to some degree
the sort of semi-charitable system which had characterised the pre-war
lodgings of the tramping fraternity:

"A lot of men went into digs that shouldn't have been there at all - they'd
wet the beds, an' all that, they couldn't help it. The `Pincher Kiddies' -
the `Milestone Inspectors', their kidneys were weak from years of sleepin'
out under hedges"
William ('Bill') Brennan, arlington House, Camden town, London, 1997

Pincher Kiddies', also known as 'Long Distance Kiddies' or 'Tramp Navvies'
refers to the predominantly pre-WW II breed of Irish navvies whose
lifestyle derived from that of the 19th C. Railway Navvies in England, who
adhered to what were known as 'The Ways of the Line'. In the 1930s they
were the backbone of Sir Robert MacAlpine & Sons' workforce - in fact a
grandson, Sir Malcolm MacAlpine, has described that era in correspondence
as 'The Golden Age' of the Irish navvy.

'Malcolm O'Brien, who was to end his career with an MBE, began in London in
the 'Fifties taking what he could get because, as he put it,

"In those days one "followed the shilling". You'd arrive in London, check
the paper, phone up a number?"Any chance of a start?"; "What can you do,
Paddy?"; "I'm a joiner"; "Right - start in the mornin' Paddy". No
interview?."

'Once on site he would meet some other Irish lads, get chatting in the tea
break, and perhaps be told: `We have a room - there's four of us in it, but
there's an extra bed (or mattress on the floor). You can move in with us'.
This would cut the cost of the room all round but very often, in Malcolm's
words,

"It was rough; they were like animals, I'm sorry to say - most of them
didn't have any hygiene. In Ireland, even in the city where I came from,
90% of the houses didn't have an internal toilet. They damped the beds or,
at best, pissed in the sinks. When I came over to London my mother was
ashamed to say I was in London because, in Limerick, a fella in trouble
would be given the choice by the courts of either gaol or England?".
Malcolm O'Brien, OBE, Director, Tarmac Construction, Wolverhampton, 1997

The second quotation is closer to what I was referring to in my original
message. The use of the word 'damping' rather than 'pissing' is deliberate
and connotes a certain shame-faced acknowledgment that this was aberrant
behaviour which, like excessive drinking, is regrettable but also somehow
amusing.

Incidentally, the frequency with which the Irish courts offered someone 'in
trouble' the choice between gaol or the boat to England can't have endeared
the Irish to their British hosts either...

I have been given similar accounts of behaviour on hydro dam and power
station schemes, where men lived in camps, on several occasions but none of
my respondents thought it an issue - merely typical of male collectives in
similar situations.

I am by no means alleging that this was how all Irishmen (or all
construction workers) behaved in similar situations but I am acknowledging
its commonplace occurrence and suggesting that a normal human reaction to
it might have been to prohibit Irish tenants.

Far from trying to blacken the reputation of the Irish in British
construction I have dedicated the last six years to researching and
recounting their story IN ALL ITS RAMIFICATIONS, with special emphasis on
their personal perspectives, at considerable personal cost and
independently of any academic institution. I have often wondered why no
salaried academic ever attempted it...

However I don't believe this story can be told in a credible manner by
airbrushing out any unsavoury aspects which may reflect badly on the Irish
and I would point out that, if my navvy respondents had thought me
prejudiced or hostile, I could not have obtained the degree of wholehearted
and enthusiastic cooperation which I was given.

Ultan Cowley, M.Sc.(Econ.)
Manchester
England

From: peter c holloran
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 12

Despite Richard Jensen's obvious bias, even he admits US newspaper want
ads used the words no Irish need apply in 1868. Prejudice was and is
common, why deny it? Careful research on this topic is needed, no? I hope
some diligent graduate students are working on this topic now.

Peter Holloran
Worcester State College
Department of History
Worcester, Massachusetts
01602

From: DanCas1[at]aol.com
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 15

In a message dated 3/30/01 7:52:12 AM Pacific Standard Time,
irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk writes:


>
> Despite Richard Jensen's obvious bias, even he admits US newspaper want
>

A Chairde:

Mr. Jensen's post is a masterpiece of a type: that argument (or abstract)
which is in itself a perfect example of the very thesis it seeks to
disprove.

Daniel Cassidy
New College
San Francisco

Forwarded on behalf of Boston Irish Tourism Association...

CHECK OUT THE SPRING CALENDAR OF IRISH EVENTS ON

WWW.IRISHMASSACHUSETTS.COM

INCLUDING

THE BOSTON IRISH FILM SERIES (APRIL)

PARNELL SOCIETY EVENT AT FANNY PARNELL'S GRAVESITE (APRIL)

IRISH WRITERS SERIES (APRIL)

SPRING REVELS (MAY)

IRISH FIDDLER KEVIN BURKE (MAY)

STONEHILL IRISH FESTIVAL (JUNE)

GAELIC ROOTS SUMMER SCHOOL (JUNE)

BLOOMSDAY ACTIVITIES IN MASSACHUSETTS (JUNE)


We'll be adding new listings frequently over the next few weeks.

THANKS!

Boston Irish Tourism Association

From: "Dale B. Light"
Subject: No Irish Need Apply

Regarding the discussion of Richard Jensen's observations It would seem
that there is substantial agreement on two points. 1) there is little or no
direct evidence for signs reading "no Irish need apply" and 2) there is
considerable direct evidence of newspaper advertisements that specified "no
Irish." Presumably the two forms apply to different categories of
employment. Signs would have been posted at employment offices,
construction sites, industrial plants, etc. while newspaper notices would
advertise domestic positions or perhaps lodging. One might extend this to
consider gender differences. Signs would refer to male employment
opportunities while newspaper ads would refer to predominantly female
opportunities. This leads us to consider a number of salient points about
the opportunities and liabilities faced by immigrants in mid-to late-
nineteenth century America.

First of all, newspapers remain in numerous archives. Signs do not. They
would commonly be discarded. The disparity may well be a result of what
kinds of evidence have survived.

Secondly, we must note that the evidence for discrimination usually comes
from large urban areas where there was a distinct surplus of young Irish
women. Men tended to roam the country looking for work while women remained
in the cities. The result was very unbalanced "sex ratios" in the eastern
cities. In Philadelphia by 1880 there were ten Irish immigrant women for
every six men. Discrimination might suggest a significant surplus of female
workers that allowed employers to be more discriminating in their hiring
practices. Or it might simply reflect the more intimate nature of domestic
service. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that in middle-class
households the maid and other servants were often considered to be part of
the family. The boss of a construction site might not care about the
personal habits of his workers, but a middle-class housewife bringing
someone into her home and family would. Much of the literature on the
experience of immigrant women suggests that domestic service was a valuable
educational experience, teaching girls respectable forms of behavior. This
presumes that immigrant women lacked such skills and perspectives and might
thus be less attractive to employers than native-born girls. One could spin
variations on these arguments for some time, but lets move on to consider
another point.


Even if there was employment discrimination it is hard to see that the
Irish suffered much as a result of it. Domestic service, for which there is
direct evidence of discrimination, was dominated by the Irish through the
nineteenth century. The relatively few instances of blocked opportunities
could not have mattered much. Regarding male employment, Bruce Laurie has
long argued that nativist opposition to immigrant labor was not widespread.
Employers obviously benefited from a large supply of immigrant workers.
There were nativist unions, but these were skilled workers in declining
trades who were desperately fighting to keep their positions. Much of this
animosity, moreover, was directed against German, Irish Protestant, and
English immigrants who were competing in skilled labor markets, rather than
agaisnt the unskilled Irish Catholics. The unskilled immigrants commonly
found work and opportunities for advancement not in the declining sectors
of the economy but in the new, dynamic sectors and suffered little from
being excluded from declining trades. In other words they avoided the trap
of skilled labor and got in on the ground floor of the "new economy" that
was emerging in mid-nineteenth century America. This is just one of many
reasons why studies of comparative social mobility are practically useless.

It might be argued that instances of discrimination, however ineffecual or
rare, were a significant psychological liability faced by immigrants. I am
not myself sympathetic to this kind of argument because it has been so
often abused in contemporary discourse, but it is something to be
considered. Even though immigrants did not suffer economically from
instances of discrimination, they might have suffered psychologically.

Finally, we might accept the argument that instances of discrimination in
employment (as the evidence seems to suggest) were relatively uncommon and
had little economic effect, but then we have to reconcile this finding with
the widespread belief among Irish-Americans that they were the victims of
pervasive and persistent discrimination. One might argue in this regard
that it was in the interests of religious and ethnic leaders to emphasize,
publicize, and even invent instances of nativist antagonism as a way of
building and maintaining constituencies within the immigrant working class.
There is good evidence in the correspondence of mid-century Catholic
clerics such as "Dagger John" Hughes that they welcomed and even sought to
incite nativist antagonism as a way of "keeping the Catholics [the laity]
steady" in their adherence to the Church. It is interesting to note, for
instance, how storied the 1844 "anti-Catholic" riots in Philadelphia have
become as opposed to the several anti-black riots that occurred in the same
city in the same period. Keeping the memory of past harms alive and even
embellishing them obviously served various class, institutional and
political interests within the emerging Irish-Catholic ethnic community.

Its getting late and I still have many papers to grade so I'll stop here. I
hope that this will generate some responses because it touches on themes I
am developing in my current book.

Dale Light

From: "peter holloran"
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 17

A brief quote from The American Irish: A History ( Longman, 2000) by Kevin
Kenny may be useful in this discussion:

Formally speaking, the Irish were in one sense better off than other
subordinate groups; but in social practice and popular stereotype the
antebellum Irish faced abundant discrimination, much of it frankly racial in
character. If this racial subordination was less severe than that faced by
others, it was racial nonetheless. (page 69)

Peter Holloran
Worcester State College

From: anbinder
Subject: No Irish

It is sad to see the way this "discussion," at least on this side of the
Atlantic, is degenerating into name calling, which to me does not seem
justified. I read Jensen's post carefully, and don't see any "obvious bias"
to which Hollaran refers explicitly and Cassidy does implicitly. What I saw
in Jensen's post was a discussion of No Irish Need Apply "signs", in shop
windows etc. No one on this list has come up with any evidence to refute
his
main asertion, that such signs probably never existed. I don't recall him
denying that anti-Irish newspaper ads were ever written, though maybe some
people inferred that. He certainly has not denied that anti-Irish prejudice
existed, as one writer to this list has absurdly stated.

Allow me to contribute my own two cents. I have spent the last nine years
studying the Irish in New York and addressed the "No Irish Need Apply" sign
issue. I found no evidence of such signs in the nineteenth century. As to
newspaper ads, help wanted ads saying "Protestants only" or "preferred" were
very common; ads saying "no Irish" were rare, but did appear on ocassion. I
think the distinction is important. Here are some examples of the latter,
and
some comments by the Irish press, which are interesting in and of
themselves.

New York Daily Sun, May 11, 1853: "WOMAN WANTED.--To do general housework;
she
must be clean, neat, and industrious, and above all good tempered and
willing.
English, Scotch, Welsh, German, or any country or color will answer except
Irish." Apply at 233 W. 23rd St.

New York Herald, May 13, 1853: "WANTED--A COOK, WASHER, AND IRONER; ONE who
perfectly understands her business; any country or color except Irish.
Apply
at 69 East Fourteenth, between the hours of 9 and 11."

Commenting on the above, the Irish-American (May 28, 1853) vowed that "we
shall kill this anti-Irish-servant-maid crusade." Says they have hired a
lawyer to sue the advertisers and the papers involved.

On May 16, 1857, the Irish-American proudly noted that there had not been a
"no Irish need apply" ad in a while, and that the last was put in by a
German
merchant prince advertising for a coachman.

In the first 20 years of the Irish-American, from 1851-1870, these are the
only references I found to this subject. Perhaps some enterprising scholar
can look into the grounds upon which the Irish-American could have sued the
papers and advertisers, and the outcome of such action if it ever really was
handled by an attorney.

Tyler Anbinder
George Washington University
Washington DC

From: "EugeneOBrien"
Subject: Re: call for essays

Friends,

In the context of the "No Irish Need Apply theme, I have a collection in the
process of being finalised and there are 3 slots left for essays dealing
with poetry and politics in Northern Ireland.

Given the reasonable state of the peace process, and given the general drift
of opinion on this subject, it seems timely to provide some sense in which
the poetic and the politic intersect and interact. There is also the effect
of the poetic on issues of identity, whether reinforcing essentialist
stereotypes or providing a form of emancipator discourse.

If anyone has any ideas for a 5-6000 word essay (I'd especially appreciate a
feminist perspective) please contact me off-list so as not to intrude on the
discussion.

Many thanks,

All the best,

Eugene.

Eugene O'Brien,
Department of Languages and Cultural Studies,
University of Limerick.
Eugene.OBrien[at]oceanfree.net

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

I'm flattered by the attention my posting on "No Irish Need
Apply: A Myth of Victimization" has received. Let me
suggest that people look at the website for my much more
detailed analysis, complete with references, www links, and
illustrations.
http://www.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

I have been updating that website and will continue to do so
as people send me information.

The "myth" can be phrased this way:
"Unskilled workers and servants, especially,
encountered the ubiquitous "No Irish Need Apply"
notices when they searched for jobs in Boston, New
York, and other major cities."

That is a direct quote from p 323 of Kerby Miller, *Emigrants and
Exiles* (1985) an otherwise brilliant study that has greatly
influenced me and every other specialist in ethnicity. (My
first book dealing with anti-Catholic discrimination and
Irish responses appeared in 1971, by the way, *The Winning
of the Midwest, 1888-1896*).

That "No Irish Need Apply" regarding maids and servants was a
cliche in middle class London by the 1820s (the website
provides a page from a Thackeray novel that demonstrates
this, and which makes fun of the cliche.). It probably
refers to handwritten window signs for maids, but may have
included British newspaper ads for maids. It was never a cliche in
the USA, except among the Irish themselves.

It is possible that handwritten signs regarding maids did
appear in a few American windows, though we have zero direct
testimony. There may have been a few newspaper ads that used
the phrase, though only one unidentified clipping has been
located so far (from 1868). There are a handful of
editorials in Irish Catholics newspapers that refer to such
ads. (As Terry Anbinder notes, quoting the Catholic press in
1857, the newspaper ads had stopped appearing by then.)

I argue that no such signs ever existed on commercial
establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union
halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters
etc. anywhere in America. Zero...None...Ever...

The fact that Irish vividly "remember" seeing them is a historical
puzzle which I have attempted to solve.
Only Irish seem to remember seeing the sign: No
historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever seen one;
no photograph exists. No Protestant, no Jew, no German
Catholic, no foreign traveler ever reported (in print or in private
letters)
seeing one in the USA. The business literature, both published &
unpublished, never mentions one. The newspapers and
magazines are silent. The courts are silent. Isn't that odd?
There is no record of an angry Irish youth tossing a brick through the
window that holds such a sign. There *are* a few references
to the slogan in the non-Irish literature (I track down
each one of them--they derive from the song or from the
London cliche.)

The Irish, I conclude, were remembering NOT a sign but rather a vivid
song of 1862 that became popular during the crisis of the
draft riots of the Civil War, and still circulates. I
provide a picture of the original 1862 song sheet: click
here to see it yourself:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/poole.gif

As for the question of anti-Irish prejudice: I try to
explore that too. Most of the prejudice was anti-Catholic
or political (usually anti-Democrat.) The leading carriers
were Protestant Irish (who *never* would have said "No
Irish"), suggesting strongly that it was religion we're
talking about. Was there job discrimination against the
Catholic Irish in the US: possibly, but I have seen no evidence
whatever, which leads me to doubt it.

The myth had "legs": people still believe it, even subscribers here.
The late Tip O'Neill said he saw the signs as a youth in Boston in
1920s.
My online essay tries to explain the durability of the myth
by relating it to non-individualistic group-oriented Irish
work culture. (That of course is a hypothesis--one that I
derived from Miller's book, and also a 1976 American Historical
Review essay by Herbert Gutman.)

The downside of the myth is that it gave Irish gangs a good
reason to beat up strangers (the song explicitly encouraged
this response) and it warned Irish jobseekers against
breaking with the group and going to work for The Enemy. The
myth fostered among the Irish a terrible misperception or
gross exaggeration that Americans were prejudiced against
them as Irish, and were deliberately holding back their
economic progress.

--------------------------------------------------------

From: "Matthew Barlow"
Subject: Re: Ir-D No Irish 20

I must admit that I have a problem with Richard Jensen therefore arguing =
that "no such signs ever existed on commercial establishments, shops, =
factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, =
personnel offices, labor recruiters, etc. anywhere in American. =
Zero...None...Ever..."

How can we, as historians, ever conclude anything concretely about the =
past? We are left to reconstruct it from the diaries, court records, =
government records, newspapers, etc. left to us by the people who lived =
that past. These sources have their own inherent biases. Now, I'm not =
suggesting a great Anglo-American cover-up of "No Irish need apply" =
signs in the USA, all I'm suggesting that it is dangerous for Jensen to =
conclude that there were "Zero...None...Ever..." in the American past. =
How does he know what a few didn't escape the notice of some =
commentators? =20

That there may not have been such signs, I can accept. That there were =
"Zero...None..Ever...", I cannot. =20

Might I also suggest that such signs were unecessary? Perhaps it was =
"common sense" to Americans and Irish alike that the Irish were not =
welcome to apply for certain jobs. I have just finished reading John =
Marlyn's novel, Under the Ribs of Death, about the immigrant experience =
in the north end of Winnipeg. The protagonist of the story is a young =
Hungarian immigrant to Canada. When it comes time for him to look for a =
job, while there is no explicit discrimination against =
Hungarian-Canadians, in that there are no signs discouraging Hungarians =
from applying for jobs, the discrimination is implicit. In at least one =
scene in the novel, the protagonist, Sandor, is refused a job when it =
becomes apparent that he is Hungarian and from the North End. =20

All of this is to suggest that perhaps, "No Hungarian need apply" signs =
weren't necessary in early 20th-century Winnipeg, "No Irish need apply" =
signs were not even necessary in 19th-century America.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Matthew Barlow
mbarlow[at]sympatico.ca=20

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded through the courtesy of Leon Litvack...


Dear friends,

The Royal Irish Academy Committee for Anglo-Irish Studies is
organising a conference (19-20 April 2001) called 'After the
Union: A Cultural Desert?'

For further details point your browser to
http://www.ria.ie/events/conferences/anglo_prog.html

For further information please contact
> Ruth Hegarty
> Administrative Officer,
> Royal Irish Academy / Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann
> 19 Dawson Street,
> Dublin 2,
> Ireland.
>
> Switchboard: 00 353 1 6762570
> Fax: 00 353 1 6762346
> Direct Dial: 00 353 1 6380918
> E-Mail: r.hegarty[at]ria.ie
> Website: www.ria.ie

All good wishes,

Leon
----------------------
Leon Litvack
Senior Lecturer
School of English
Queen's University of Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland, UK

L.Litvack[at]qub.ac.uk
http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/prometheus.html

Tel. +44-(0)2890-273266
Fax +44-(0)2890-314615

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of Indiana University Press...

http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/books/0-253-33843-3.shtml

Irish Immigrants in New York City, 1945-1995
Linda Dowling Almeida


The story of one of the most visible groups of immigrants in the major city
of immigrants in the last half of the twentieth century.

Cloth
0-253-33843-3
$35.00


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Background: When the Irish Ran New York
2. The 1950s: "It Was a Great Time in America"
3. The 1970s: The Interim
4. The 1980s: The New Irish
5. The Catholic Church: What Parish Are You From?
6. Who Are the Irish?
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

"Almeida offers a dynamic portrait of Irish New York, one that keeps
reinventing itself under new circumstances."

? Hasia Diner, New York University

"[Almeida's] close attention to changes in economics, culture, and politics
on both sides of the Atlantic makes [this book] one of the more accomplished
applications of the 'new social history' to a contemporary American ethnic
group."

? Roger Daniels, University of Cincinnati

It is estimated that one in three New York City residents is an immigrant.
No other American city has a population composed of so many different
nationalities. Of these "foreign born," a relatively small percentage come
directly from Ireland, but the Irish presence in the city ? and America ? is
ubiquitous. In the 1990 census, Irish ancestry was claimed by over half a
million New Yorkers and by 44 million nationwide. The Irish presence in
popular American culture has also been highly visible.

Yet for all the attention given to Irish Americans, surprisingly little has
been said about post ­World War II immigrants. Almeida's research takes
important steps toward understanding modern Irish immigration. Comparing
1950s Irish immigrants with the "New Irish" of the 1980s, Almeida provides
insights into the evolution of the Irish American identity and addresses the
role of the United States and Ireland in shaping it.

She finds, among other things, that social and economic progress in Ireland
has heightened expectations for Irish immigrants. But at the same time they
face greater challenges in gaining legal residence, a situation that has led
the New Irish to reject many organizations that long supported previous
generations of Irish immigrants in favor of new ones better-suited to their
needs.

Linda Dowling Almeida is Adjunct Professor of History at New York
University. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Boston College and
her Ph.D. from NYU. She has published articles on the "New Irish" in
America. She is a long-time member of the New York Irish History Roundtable,
and has edited Volume 8 of the journal New York Irish History.

Publication date: March 2001
Specs: 232 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append.

Indiana University Press
601 N. Morton St.
Bloomington, IN 47404 (812) 855-8817
1-800-842-6796 iupress[at]indiana.edu

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Our attention has been drawn to the following item...
[Note that your own email linebreaks might fracture this long Web
address]...

http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-04-01/News_and_Views/Opinion/a-105547.asp?la
st6days=1

The New York Daily News
From: News and Views | Opinion |
Sunday, April 01, 2001

Irish History, Poor Revision
By JAMES MULLIN

In October 1996, Gov. Pataki signed a law ordering schools
in New York to teach students about Ireland's mass
starvation (1845-1852). He was immediately attacked by
The Sunday Times of London and British Ambassador John Kerr.
In the Times editorial, "An Irish Hell, but not a Holocaust," Pataki
was accused of spreading "Fenian [revolutionary] propaganda."

Two years later, the contract to develop a curriculum was
awarded to Maureen Murphy of Hofstra University. The final
product, 1,071 pages long, is now ready for distribution.

But something is missing.

In the teachers' introduction, Murphy states: "The famine that
accompanied the failure of the potato crop was rooted in Ireland's
troubled history as a colony of Great Britain." Exactly so, yet none
of the 150 student activities that follow includes readings in Irish
history before the 19th century.Without this history, students
cannot comprehend how an industrious people living in a fertile
land could have become so impoverished that they were living in
one-room mud huts and subsisting on potatoes. They can only
conclude that the Irish were poor by nature, which was the racist
view of the Irish at the time.

There are no readings on centuries of repressive English trade
laws, which effectively destroyed Irish trade. Students will not
learn how the native Irish were driven off millions of acres of
fertileland following Oliver Cromwell's 17th century conquests, or how
they became tenant farmers on land they had previously owned.

There are no readings on the draconian Penal Laws under which
Irish Catholics were forbidden to enter a profession, vote, hold
public office, practice their religion or engage in trade or
commerce. One Penal Law forced Irish landowners to divide their
estate among all their children instead of passing it on intact to the
eldest son. The Irish would later be blamed for living on
progressively smaller and smaller plots of land.

When Pataki signed the famine education bill, he said: "The
concurrent export of food demonstrates that the tragedy could
have been avoided if the British had allowed Ireland to retain
sufficient grain and livestock to feed its own people."

Christine Kinealy, author of "This Great Calamity," agrees: "There
was no shortage of resources to avoid the tragedy of a Famine.
Within Ireland itself, there were substantial resources of food,
which, had the political will existed, could have been diverted,
even as a short-term measure, to supply the starving people." This
quotation is identified in the curriculum as "the nationalist
position."

History is as much about what is omitted as it is about what is
included. For example, there are two curriculum readings on the
Jeanie Johnston, which carried famine refugees and never lost a
passenger, and none on the "coffin ships," which lost tens of
thousands.

In a letter of reply to Kerr, Pataki said the ambassador's
description of the famine as a natural disaster "ignores how the
Irish became so utterly dependent on the potato."

The curriculum has a similar deficiency. Despite student activities
on potatoes, ? "How to Grow Potatoes," "Traditional Songs
about the Irish Potato" ? there is no explanation of why the Irish
came to subsist on nothing but potatoes.

Pataki's letter also called Kerr's attention to the "underlying
racism" that contributed to the British attitude that the Irish were
responsible for their own plight, but it is absent from the
curriculum.

In an early reading aimed at teachers, "Addressing Controversial
Historical Issues," Murphy says that historians have views and
goals just like political activists, but "their professional
commitmentrequires that they hold themselves to a higher standard
when they draw conclusions based on evidence."

Revisionist historians cannot set aside their own political views any
more than political activists can. Their real purpose, and central
ideological goal, is to remove all traces of so-called "nationalist
mythology" from Irish history. What is left isn't "value-free"
history;in fact, it isn't history at all.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Moderator's Note...

The recent Irish-Diaspora list strand about 'No Irish Need Apply' ground to
a halt at the weekend, when I returned to the original senders a number of
messages that I thought it not worth the bother of distributing via the Ir-D
list.

In some messages 'No Irish Need Apply' had become an acronym, NINA - always
a bad sign. So NINA can join Liam Kennedy's MOPE ('Most Oppressed People
Ever') in your collection of annoying Irish Diaspora Studies acronyms.

The basic rule of any email discussion forum is... Bad Conversation Drives
Out Good. We were all becoming a litle unhappy with the tone of recent
exchanges. Some of the returned messages were classic
fingers-hit-the-keys-before-brain-engages responses. As to content... -
responses were repetitive, no new points being made.

I think I am going to let the NINA strand alone for a while - this decision
is made simply to protect the longterm resource that is the Irish-Diaspora
list.

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

Forwarded for information...

Subject: Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas
(formerly MELUS Europe) Call for Papers
MESEA
The Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe
and the Americas
(formerly MELUS Europe)

Call for Papers
Third MESEA Conference
University of Padua, Italy
June 26-29, 2002

Comparative Sites of Ethnicity: Europe and the
Americas

This conference will highlight the comparative aspects of ethnic sites
between the Americas and Europe or within the Americas but with
some kind of reference to Europe. In the spirit of MESEA, papers
should be informed by a comparison between the Americas and
Europe either on a thematic or on a methodological level. Proposals
for workshops and papers may engage the following topics, among
others:
geographies of ethnic urbanization/ politics of location/ ethnic
authorship/ literatures of immigration/ ethnicity in literary theory/
diversity in the classroom/ nationalism and ethnic identities/ ethnicity and
the media/ gendering ethnicity and space/ ethno-archeology/ sites as concept
of criticism/ theories of space and ethnicity/ the topology of ethnic
history or literature/ sites of memory/ ethnicizing religions and culture

Keynote speakers:
Georgio Agamben (University of Venice)
A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff (University of Illinois at
Chicago)
Werner Sollors (Harvard University)
Andrew Williams (University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hills)
Sau-Ling Wong (University of California at
Berkeley)

Performance by
Brenda Dixon Gottschild and Hellmut Gottschild
TONGUE SMELL COLOR

- - Deadline for proposals: January 10, 2002. Send your cv and a one-
page proposal to:
Dr. Heike Raphael-Hernandez
University of Maryland (European Division)
Im Bosseldorn 30
69126 Heidelberg
Germany
{ HYPERLINK mailto:hraphael[at]faculty.ed.umuc.edu }raphael-hernandez[at]mesea.org

- - Only members of MESEA or MELUS US/India may present
papers at this conference.
=46or membership information please contact:
Dr. Dorothea Fischer-Hornung (Ruprecht-Karls-Universit=E4t
Heidelberg)
{ HYPERLINK mailto:fischer-hornung[at]mesea.org }fischer-hornung[at]mesea.org

- - For current MESEA information, please check: www.mesea.org

Forwarded for information...

From: Deirdre McMahon

RESEARCH SEMINAR IN CONTEMPORARY IRISH HISTORY
PROGRAMME FOR APRIL-JUNE 2001

The seminar is intended to act as a forum where those engaged in research in
Contemporary Irish History can discuss their work. It is open to all willing
to participate, including researchers visiting Dublin to use the National
Library, the National Archives and other repositories.

Proposals can be sent to any of the three convenors: Dr Michael Kennedy
(Royal Irish Academy: difp[at]iol.ie); Dr Deirdre McMahon (Mary Immaculate
College, University of Limerick: Deirdre.McMahon[at]mic.ul.ie) and Professor
Eunan O'Halpin (Trinity College Dublin: eunan.ohalpin[at]tcd.ie).

4 April: Gender and Public Policy in the 1960s: the case of the 1965
Succession Act (Dr Eileen Connolly, Dublin City University)
11 April: The Dictionary of Irish Biography and research in Irish history.
(James McGuire, Dictionary of Irish Biography, UCD).
18 April: The IRA and the Good Friday Agreement (Professor Richard English,
Queen's University Belfast).
25 April: New challenge, new doctrine ? British military perspectives on
Northern Irish terrorism since 1969 (Mark Seaman, Imperial War Museum,
London)
2 May: Frank Aiken: Towards a Political Biography (Aoife Bhreathnach, de
Montfort University, Leicester)
9 May: An Overview of the Bureau Military History Papers (Commandant Victor
Laing, Military Archives)
16 May: The politics of Irish migration to Britain 1945-70 (Dr Enda Delaney,
Queen's University Belfast)
23 May: German Intelligence in Ireland 1939-45 (Dr Mark Hull, University
College, Cork)
30 May: The ideology of immigration control after 1945 (Dr Katrina
Goldstone, St Patrick's College, Maynooth)
6 June: Ireland and the geopolitics of North Atlantic aviation (Dr Michael
Kennedy, Royal Irish Academy)
13 June: Peace and War: Moynihan Family Letters 1908-18 (Dr Deirdre McMahon,
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

Seminars will take place in Room 3025 at 4pm each Wednesday in the Arts
Building, Trinity College Dublin.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information, on behalf of Kate Bond...

From: Kate Bond

UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER - SUMMER SCHOOL
THE ISLAND HAS MANY VOICES
AN INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF IRISH CULTURAL HERITAGES

Academic Directors: Professors Robert Welch and John Wilson

This two-week course is based at the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at
the University of Ulster in the city of Derry/Londonderry. Based at the
Magee campus, which is home to the world's first Institute dedicated to the
study of Ulster Scots heritage and culture, the Summer School will provide
an opportunity to both experience and learn about the origins of the voices,
languages and accents that animate this liveliest of regions.

The program will draw on the expertise of leading scholars in the fields of
Irish history, literature, language and culture to provide an in-depth but
enjoyable course of learning and study designed to explore the diversity of
Irish culture and heritage.

Recent discussion in Ireland has focused on the plurality of Irish cultural
identities, and the need to celebrate difference while renewing traditional
values and customs. The history and cultural expression of these varied
identities will be discussed, studied and debated and shown through poetry,
story and song. Excursions to the places and regions which illustrate this
diversity will allow students to experience the excitement of these cultures
at first hand.

The Summer School is suitable for anyone who has in interest in the history,
literature society and culture of the island of Ireland. It is based at the
Magee Campus of the University of Ulster in the historic city of Derry and
take place from 29 July - 12 August 2001.

The registration fee is £850 GBP (to include all tuition fees,
accommodation, field trips and cultural visits and meals when on field
trips).
Please visit the website at http://www.arts.ulst.ac.uk/academy/summerschool.


For further information please contact:

Kate Bond
Summer School Co-ordinator

Magee Campus
Northland Road
L'Derry
N Ireland
BT48 7JL

Tel 00 44 28 7137 5456
Fax 00 44 28 7137 5487
Email ke.bond[at]ulst.ac.uk