Intro:
Hello. Welcome to Irish passport. Let’s do it. Welcome to the Irish passport. I’m Tim Mc Inerney. I’m Naomi O’Leary. We’re friends. Cé he bhfuil tú Naomi? Go hana mhaith ar fad, Tim. This is your passport to Irish culture, history and politics. I’m recording. 1 2 3. OK.
Naomi O’Leary:
Hello.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Hello, and welcome back to the Irish Passport podcast, where today we’ll be discussing the knowledge gap about Ireland and Northern Ireland in the UK. But first, Naomi, as usual, we’ve chosen a listener question to answer. And this one is great because it’s really topical this week.
Naomi O’Leary:
So Monique from Hastings sent us this message via Facebook. What do you think about the Republic of Ireland’s new taoiseach, Leo Varadkar?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Hi Monique. Yeah, this one has definitely made headlines around the world this week. So the taoiseach of Ireland, you might remember, is the equivalent of prime minister, Right. Taoiseach is an Irish word. It means chief. So in this case, chief of state.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. And this is the youngest taoiseach we’ve ever had. He’s only thirty eight years old, I believe. So, yeah, fair play to him to getting where he is.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, sure. He didn’t wasn’t actually elected by the public. He’s taking over the job from our former taoiseach, Enda Kenny. And they both come from the right leaning Fine Gael party. Fine Gael, again, an Irish word which is pretty typical for Irish political parties. It means Tribe of the Gaels.
Naomi O’Leary:
They love their dramatic names, don’t they? So the main opposition party is being a Fianna Fáil, which is Soldiers of Destiny.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. They’re all made in the 1920s and 30s. So it’s all very a Game of Thrones in tone.
Naomi O’Leary:
So, to answer your question, Monique. So, Leo Varadkar was elected in a party election because Enda Kenny retired, and he replaced him as party leader, and was voted in as taoiseach. I think basically Irish people are in kind of two minds about the international attention this is getting, because the headlines all around the world all focus on the fact that Leo Varadkar is gay rather than, you know, the Irish headlines, which kind of just treat him as an ordinary politician.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Right. And we should also mention that Irish people are definitely very proud of this, and the fact that Leo Varadkar is of Indian heritage, too. It was actually a main subject of his acceptance speech. I think we have a clip of that. Will we play that?
Naomi O’Leary:
Go for it.
Leo Varadkar:
And I think if my election as leader of Fine Gael today has shown anything, it is that prejudice has no hold in this republic. I know when my father traveled 5000 miles to build a new home in Ireland, I doubt he ever dreamed that his son would one day grow up to become its leader. And despite his differences, his son would be treated the same and judged by his actions and character, not his origins or identity.
Naomi O’Leary:
You can tell that that’s the clip that, you know, every international reporter would have chosen for their coverage.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, sure. And the Irish Times noticed this, in an article that I saw by the journalists Áine McMahon. She just published a full list of the headlines, and they’re all of this same tone. So Reuters wrote that, “Ireland Elects First Gay Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar”. The New York Times reported, “Leo Varadkar Elected as Ireland’s First Gay Prime Minister”. And The Guardian tells us, “Ireland’s First Gay Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, Formally Elected”. You know, it kind of reminds me of, during the marriage equality debates, that people were saying, you know, I don’t get gay married, I get married. You know, I don’t post a gay letter, I post a letter. And, you know, Leo Varadkar has a right just to be a prime minister, in his own right.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, that’s true. But at the same time, you know, as a journalist, I can completely understand that they are just going to, you know, grab the most newsworthy thing about it. And it is remarkable, you know, or it’s news to the rest of the world, even if it isn’t to Ireland. But I think the the disconnect here is that it’s not really a revolution in Ireland the way that people abroad kind of presume it to be. So, Varadkar is kind of well known and kind of old hat, you know. He’s been around for a while, you know. He’s fairly well respected, and people have been expecting him to become taoiseach for ages. Like, this whole campaign was kind of going on for a very long time.
Tim Mc Inerney:
True.
Naomi O’Leary:
And also, you know, that the reporting does tend to ignore that Varadkar, he doesn’t have a particularly progressive record. Although he has said that there’ll be a referendum, Varadkar supported retaining jail sentences for abortion. And in general, he’s pretty firmly economically centre-right. That latter one is one that’s particularly controversial at the moment, because Ireland is emerging out of some really lean years that followed after the financial crisis, and a lot of sectors are crying out for public investment.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Varadkar’s opponents actually like to characterize him as a kind of a Tory equivalent, comparing him to the conservatives in the UK. So like you say, Naomi, his appointment is a bit of a mixed bag. It depends on which way you look at it from. And, in any event, we do wish the very best of Mr. Varadkar and hope he does well by the country at this crucial time. So, Naomi, let’s explain what we mean by the knowledge gap — our subject today.
Naomi O’Leary:
So, I actually spoke to the very charming Harry Cooper, who’s a journalist who works for Politico, a magazine that I write for sometimes, as well. You know, we were chatting about this and how events in Northern Ireland and Ireland kind of tended to come as a surprise to him. He never seemed to see them flagged up in the way that he might expect them to be. Why not just let him explain it in his own words?
Harry Cooper:
My name’s Harry Cooper. I’m a reporter based in Brussels at Politico, Europe. I’m from from Birmingham, but grew up in the Isle of Man.
Naomi O’Leary:
What was your impression of how the recent Northern Ireland election was reported? So, this is the snap election that took place to re-elect the Stormont Assembly.
Harry Cooper[/Skipto]
It wasn’t reported. Honestly, I was aware that there was a political situation in Northern Ireland related to the mismanagement of some sort of a renewable heat scheme, I think. That’s because I’m in Brussels that I knew that. In the UK, I really was not aware of any coverage. And then on the day, there were these big headlines saying the nationalists have had this massive resurgence. But for me, I thought, what does that mean? Because I — being honest — I feel horribly ignorant about about Irish politics
[skipto time=06:24.730]Naomi O’Leary:
Can you tell me a little bit about what your knowledge on awareness of Northern Ireland was growing up?
Harry Cooper[/Skipto]:
I actually I had this this really interesting phrase on the news yesterday. And it was an Indian MP who was talking about the historical amnesia that Brits suffered from in the context of the empire. And I think you can apply that to many different areas. So, for example, British people’s knowledge of the European Union or even as we’re talking about British people’s knowledge of Irish politics. I really struggled to remember ever being taught about the Troubles, about the partition, about what is actually going on in Ireland’s, growing up. And yeah, I always have this slightly… I always feel slightly embarrassed when my Irish friends jokingly, often jokingly will say, “oh, you, you awful English person”, like referring to these crimes that England… that the Brits committed in Ireland in the last century. I don’t know what those crimes are. And of course, now I sort of have a bit more time sort of read around, but it’s not in the way the public awareness in the UK, I’d say. I think there’s possibly a generational division here, because I knew that my parents were aware of what was going on in Ireland because of all the attacks, the terrorist attacks in the 70s and 80s. Again, I feel like my generation, our generation is, especially in the UK, has really taken for granted a lot of a lot of what we we take to be accepted facts. So, for example, the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, I don’t even think we really acknowledge that that’s a debate. In, I want to say England as well because I don’t know what the situation is in Wales and Scotland, and I really think that something very specific about English awareness of these issues. I think English people generally don’t really have very strong… We have a very bizarre sense of of our nationality. It’s kind of this sort of embarrassed pride, almost. I think especially in the context of Irish politics, which seems to be very I mean, Irish people are known to be very proud to be Irish. And I think English people may be a bit confused about this, and don’t really understand where this identity has come from. So I think I always have this feeling that English people have this sort of slightly bemused by what goes on in Ireland. And I don’t think we have because we’re never really taught about it. It’s kind of I mean, it goes back centuries, centuries of history that we’re talking about, and I don’t think anyone really wants to get really beneath the surface, you know.
[skipto time=09:03.590]Naomi O’LearyHow about here in Brussels, because we’re faced with this prospect of the UK withdrawing as a member of the EU and as a voice in the EU? And then we have Ireland remaining. So, is there an awareness, among other — in this debate in Brussels, among other EU countries — that there’s a distinction between the UK and Ireland, or do you think they get conflated here as well?
Harry Cooper:
Very good question. Honestly, I don’t think people realize how sensitive it is. I mean, I didn’t realise how sensitive it was until quite recently. I did not realise, for example, that part of the Good Friday Agreement, there is this acknowledgement that at some point in the future, if there were a border poll, then that would be fine. Like I had honestly did not realise that was part of this deal. But the problem is that there is so much uncertainty about so many things in the discussions there about to begin. I don’t know that it will necessarily be regarded with as a priority issue. I feel like the bill, for example, the amount that the UK will have to pay is likely to be the headline. And given that we’re starting from a point where knowledge of knowledge of the European Union and what it actually means is already non-existent in most parts of the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it’s not just a UK issue. I think people will struggle to understand the relevance of Brexit for what’s going on in Ireland.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Fair play to Harry Cooper for being so honest about this, I have to say.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, absolutely. It was really nice to speak to him about it, actually. I spoke to Siobhán Fenton, who’s a freelance journalist who grew up in Belfast. So she told me that she grew up surrounded by the idea that the whole reason that Northern Ireland is part of the UK is because Britain wants it. You know, that it wouldn’t relinquish Northern Ireland against the wishes of a significant minority there. When she arrived in England, she told me people weren’t even aware that Northern Ireland is part of the UK. So, this lack of knowledge in this context is all the stranger because it’s something that has hugely high stakes. Like, there was regular fatal violence over this issue right into the 1990s and there’s still regular bomb scares in Northern Ireland. You know, when when I was reporting for our first episode on the border, I had to go a really long way round to get to Clones because a road was closed due to a bomb scare. You know, it’s I mean, it’s nothing like it used to be, of course, but that tension and that risk is very much under the surface and it’s something that needs to be treated with care. So, Siobhán spoke to me about this and about her shock at having to explain things like the the Good Friday Agreement — the peace deal that brought an end to much of that violence — to journalists.
Siobhán Fenton:
Something that whenever I turned up in England for the first time when I went across for university, I was completely gobsmacked by it because I think that so much, —particularly in Belfast, because of the Troubles — we’re told that, you know, the reason why we are in the UK is because Britain wants us so much. And I kind of was expecting English people to kind of have this very nationalistic sense of wanting Northern Ireland to be part of the UK because, at least in kind of the communities that I grew up in in Northern Ireland, that there’s a very strong sense that when we’re in Britain because Britain wants us. And then when I arrived in Britain and found that the people just didn’t realise at all that Northern Ireland was in UK. I was really, really quite, quite shocked by that. I guess because, because of… Because Northern Ireland was really.. only ever really in the news in England, unfortunately, during the Troubles because of the nature of the conflict. And once the conflict was resolved, it’s kind of not really been mentioned again. There’s very little coverage of the peace process or of life in Northern Ireland since then, so I think it’s a case of kind of being out of sight in and out of mind.
Naomi O’Leary:
Have you encountered any kind of particular examples of, you know, lack of knowledge that really took you aback?
Siobhán Fenton:
So I did an interview with a BBC radio show recently, and just before I went on, one of their researchers who is, you know, very informed and politics and current affairs said to me, “So the unionists are the Catholics and the nationalists are Protestants, isn’t that right, Just to check, before we go live”. You had to do like a kind of twenty second kind of history of the Troubles kind of cross-community relationships and about twenty seconds before the show started, which was slightly stressful. But in terms of Brexit correspondents, a political correspondents in the national papers, and they’re like, “What is this Good Friday agreement? What more does it mean? How can Brexit impaxct on it?” It can be quite, slightly terrifying in terms what’s such a complicated issue really isn’t understood in England very much, unfortunately.
Tim Mc Inerney:
And we have to remember, as well, that the knowledge gap has had some very real and harmful consequences for real people on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Naomi O’Leary:
Right. And it became impossible to ignore with the result of the UK election. So, the result meant that the conservatives decided to ask the Northern Irish party, the Democratic Unionist Party, to enter government with them or to support them. And that sent people, you know, flying around to try and find out who the DUP are. You know, they were just not a well-known thing — particularly in England — even though they’re the biggest pro-British party in Northern Ireland. And they’ve been in power, you know, for ages. So I spoke to one academic, Jon Tonge, who wrote a book about the DUP. Nobody was interested until his phone just started ringing off the hook with the result of the election.
Naomi O’Leary:
I’m quite interested in the fact that you must have been in huge demand over the last few days.
Jon Tonge:
Yeah.
Naomi O’Leary:
Is it curious that the DUP had to be explained?
Jon Tonge:
Yes. Strange things. We published the book in 2014, and there was a lot of interest in it in Northern Ireland, and it was serialized for a few days by the Belfast Telegraph over there. But, on this side of the water, there was little interest. No one really knew or cared about the DUP. And then, you know, on election night, once the political arithmetic was beginning to stack up, so that became clear. The DUP were the only people who can get the conservatives over the line and everything changed. The DUP were probably the most searched item in the whole of the internet in the world for awhile. The DUP’s website crushed. And yeah, everyone was fixated. People were going, “What? these people believe in same-sex marriage. These people are so against abortion”. Well, you know, welcome to Northern Ireland.
Naomi O’Leary:
Do you find at the level of lack of knowledge about Northern Ireland in general is remarkable at all in Britain?
Jon Tonge:
No one ever cares about Northern Ireland. Well, that’s not true. Not no one. But far too few people care about Northern Ireland on the side of the water in England. That was a problem throughout the conflict. I mean, you had three decades of this horrible, grisly conflict on England’s doorstep. And yet very few people cared. A lot of places in England are utterly ignorant about Northern Ireland and its politics. You know, people scurrying around to find out who the DUP are. I mean, the DUP have been around for a long time. They’ve been around since 1971. And the level of ignorance is something else. I sense the backlash from Northern Ireland. People are very irritated with English people and their lack of knowledge about the DUP. But it didn’t really come as a surprise.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Another issue that has been directly affected by the knowledge gap is abortion access, of course, which is a truly cross-border issue. It affects the Republic with the restrictive Eighth Amendment, which is being hotly debated right now. It affects Northern Ireland since Northern Ireland isn’t covered by UK abortion legislation and it affects the rest of the UK because thousands of women travel to England and Wales from the island of Ireland — both parts — to access abortion every year. According to the Irish Family Planning Association, over 3000 women and girls gave Irish addresses in UK abortion services last year. I spoke to Caitlin de Jode yesterday. She’s an activist for the London Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, originally from Northern Ireland. And I asked her how she felt when the wider UK last week suddenly seemed to wake up to the fact that abortion was illegal in a whole constituent part of their country. Just like Jon Tonge, she said that she was being flooded with questions about who are the DUP, what is this party and what did they plan to do. Personally, she said that she found the lack of awareness to be quite shocking.
Caitlin de Jode:
That they were under the spotlight, even though none of their positions on abortion, gay marriage and even climate change are secret. You know, we’ve known about them for years. I’ve been campaigning against them.
Tim Mc Inerney:
The situation of abortion rights in Northern Ireland, Caitlin told me, suffered from its own knowledge gap. People either thought that it was affected by the Eighth Amendment, which restricts abortion in the Republic of Ireland, or that it was covered by the same abortion laws as the rest of the UK. But in actual fact, Northern Ireland actually has its own peculiar abortion legislation. Dating from The 19th century, actually, and contrary to what many in the UK seem to believe the restrictions, there are not a Catholic phenomenon — as they are in the Republic of Ireland — but are actually backed by Protestant evangelical movements, particularly within the unionist DUP Party — which has, of course, just stepped closer to power over the entire UK.
Caitlin de Jode:
So the legislation that regulates abortion is actually the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.
Tim Mc Inerney:
To give you an idea of how outdated this legislation is, it was used to prosecute Oscar Wilde for sodomy charges back in 1895.
Caitlin de Jode:
Essentially a virtual blanket ban. When Northern nationals travel to England for abortion, they’re not funded by the NHS, which I think is something that is so shocking and so few people actually know about it.The DUP are incredibly hardline in their stance on abortion. Whilst the SDLP and Sinn Féin have also not moved to sort of support the calls for pro-decriminalisation, it’s been the DUP who’ve most most outspoken in blocking any attempts to soften the legislation in the North.
Naomi O’Leary:
Fenton also talked about this. She said that the sudden spike in interest where there had been none before had been a frustrating experience for both abortion rights campaigners and members of the LGBT community. So, Northern Ireland, of course, unlike the Republic of Ireland or England, Scotland and Wales in the UK, has no legal recognition for same-sex marriage. But it seemed to Siobhán like nobody cared about that until it looked like those policies might affect the rest of the UK.
Siobhán Fenton:
It was slightly frustrating and I think seeing that English people — or, English feminists — suddenly cared about Northern Ireland’s abortion laws whenever was a possibility that they might see a slight reduction in term limits, for instance, that the DUP would vote at Westminster, which would obviously be very worrying. But I mean, there are women in Northern Ireland right now here awaiting trial for committing an abortion and they’re facing life imprisonment. We had a woman last year who was put on trial for having an abortion and found guilty. And people across the water, as we call them, didn’t care, unfortunately. And it was okay. That happened to Northern Irish people. But, you know, there are English people at stake now. And same sex couples still can’t get married. And MPs and lots of even activist groups in England don’t really seem to be aware of that.
Naomi O’Leary:
So, somewhat out of sight and out of mind overall. You know, I found it interesting when Siobhán described her shock at discovering that people didn’t realise Northern Ireland is part of the UK. I certainly find when I lived in England that there was confusion about this, but also a lack of awareness that Ireland is an independent country — and that includes among people with highly paid jobs who should really know better. There’s a classic example of this that came from the UK’s Minister for Brexit, David Davis. Let’s listen to what he had to say on Sky News Murnaghan programme. He was being asked not long after the Brexit referendum if there was any way Scotland could somehow have an exception and remain in the EU. Here’s what he had to say.
Dermot Murnaghan:
I mean, do you think there is a way? We heard Nicola Sturgeon talking today on the Marr Show. Nicola Sturgeon still believes there might be some kind of way — she’s leaving it very vague — that Scotland could stay in the European Union and perhaps not leave the UK.
David Davis[/Skipto]
I don’t think that works. I mean, one of one of our really challenging issues to deal with will be the internal border we have with Southern Ireland. We’re not going to be going about creating other internal borders inside the United Kingdom.
[skipto time=21:20.980]Tim Mc Inerney:
Wow.
Naomi O’Leary:
Did you catch that, listeners? He seems to be under the impression that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is an internal UK border. Let’s hear it again.
David Davis:
The internal border we have with Southern Ireland.
Naomi O’Leary:
Now, please tell me, what is this Southern Ireland that you speak of, David Davis? Anyway, I find this confusion over this to be something I encountered pretty often, unfortunately, when I lived in England. And sometimes it’s indirect. Like, for example, people might do a double take when you say that Ireland doesn’t use the pound sterling, for example.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, I recognize that doubletake look. Definitely. Actually, I think it was only when I moved abroad that I realised how weird this actually is. You know, I always kind of presumed. Yeah, sure. You know, Ireland is small. It’s a small island, it’s got a small population, that it’s just to be expected that people in the UK wouldn’t know about it. Serenity. But actually, when you think about it, it really is pretty odd. I mean, if people in the UK don’t know whether Ireland is part of the UK or not, that means they don’t know the borders of their own country. And that’s highly unusual, right?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, right. If you accept that that, you know, this fuzziness also applies to Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. You know, it’s unusual. And it’s not like the UK is enormous and like really hard to keep track the bits of it, like.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’ve seen all these like YouTube videos, you know, these kind of geography explanations which aim to like demystify how complicated this whole situation is. But, you know, like it really isn’t that complicated. There are only two sovereign states involved, the UK and the Republic of Ireland. And there’s one single border between them. Like you mentioned just before we heard Siobhán speak there, this is all the more baffling because of that thirty year war that waged on UK territory. And it wasn’t just in Northern Ireland, either. We have to remember that this war’s violence often caused huge death and destruction on English and Scottish and Welsh soil.
Naomi O’Leary:
Do you think it’s a generational thing, Tim? Like, is it the people who’ve become adults in a period when Northern Ireland it was mostly peaceful, that it’s kind of it’s not really a thing for them? It’s dropped out of their consciousness, but maybe their parents were aware?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, not really. I mean, knowledge of that conflict was pretty poor all the time. And this certainly is not a new thing, this knowledge gap. In fact, it’s been quite a consistent background factor in the history of the Irish Republic. You know, we have to remember that a whole lot of people never wanted the Irish Republic to exist. And a lot of people just refused to acknowledge it, you know. So in some ways, we could say that the knowledge gap in Ireland was actually quite deliberate.
Naomi O’Leary:
Really? Why? Why do you say that?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, I mean, it was all part and parcel of the mind games that characterized a lot of the Irish independence movement on both sides. So the Irish Republicans declared themselves independent from Britain actually long before Britain ever acknowledged that fact. And so if you ask a lot of people, they would consider Ireland’s real independence date as dating back to the 1916 rising when they declared the Republic at the GPO.
Naomi O’Leary:
Oh, OK. So, perhaps there wasn’t this one year where everybody remembered a huge event that was a big rupture. And from that point on, it was different.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, exactly. And it’s also worth remembering that when independence was signed into law in 1922, it was pretty ambiguous. Originally it created an Irish Free State. So, that’s not the same thing actually as an independent republic. It’s more like what Australia or Canada have now. So, it had governmental independence from the UK, but it was still considered part of the empire and the Commonwealth, and the government — controversially — still had to swear allegiance to the British monarch.
Naomi O’Leary:
Right.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. And because of this, a good half of the Irish rebel movement actually didn’t really recognise the Irish Free State for ages. And this put the country in a really vague place.
Naomi O’Leary:
Tim, tell us about the sneaky republic. I love this story.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, I love telling this story. My students actually like this one, too, because it’s such a sneaky move. So the Irish taoiseach and Easter Rising veteran, Éamon de Valera, had been plotting to kind of throw England out of the Irish Free State by the backdoor. So in 1936, the British King Edward VIII, he famously abdicated so that he could marry an American divorcée, Wallace Simpson. You know the story. Like, it was a massive scandal at the time and the whole monarchy was in a total crisis. You might remember that was the subject of the recent film, The King’s Speech. So the whole thing was so unusual when it happened that there was no real good protocol. And every country in the Commonwealth, which of course, included the Irish Free State, was required to ratify the King’s abdication.
Naomi O’Leary:
It’s worth knowing here at the de Valera like the ultimate Machiavellian. He’s like a Bond villain, you know, like what kind of people love him or hate him, but you would want to be up against him, I’d say.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, for sure. So this was like his dream opportunity, right? And during just this moment when there was essentially no agreed King, Éamon de Valera ran into the government in the middle of the night, acting as a kind of de facto monarch. And he drew up a whole new constitution wherein he removed all mention of the monarchy, the Commonwealth or the UK Governor-General from Irish law.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. So like in the absence of a king, for like one night, he acted with extreme power himself to boot out any future king.
Tim Mc Inerney:
And I mean, whether that power was legally justified or not is a matter of debate. But the fact was that nobody had ratified the new king in the Commonwealth. So it wasn’t really official. And while he did this, when everyone woke up the next day, he released this document, to the horror of the UK public, basically declaring total independence. So there was no Irish Free State anymore. There was just a republic — which de Valera had renamed Éire — of course, which a lot of people still use that word. It means just Ireland in Irish.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. So. So the Governor-General who represented the King and the Commonwealth was sent home and his house was turned into the Irish president’s residence, Áras an Uachtaráin. So this was very much the tone between the UK and Ireland for much of the 20th century. Kind of, you know, better a bitchy politics on both sides. Just after 1922, when the Free State was enacted, for instance, the new government had this massive statue of Queen Victoria removed from Leinster House in Dublin, which is the current government. They took it out with a crane and then they gave it as a gift to Australia as a diplomatic gesture. And it was I mean, it was a total two fingers to the UK and to the Commonwealth. You know, they were saying to this other Commonwealth country, basically here you might want this. You know, we not like you.
Naomi O’Leary:
Like, “take this old queen statue, like it’s not for us”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Big time. You know, James Joyce describes the statue actually as the “Auld Bitch”.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. And I understand in these early days, the Irish State was issuing passports, but they might not consistently be accepted by British border officials. So they might just, you know, confiscate them. And people had to get both British and Irish passports, just have one spare to be safe and it really wound people up. So in 1937, can we consider that the date that Ireland became a republic?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, this is another vague spot, right, because that’s the day when de Valera considered Ireland to be a republic. But then, you know, that doesn’t mean much to his counterparts across the water. So they didn’t actually recognise this in the UK until 1949, when the British King and the Irish President finally signed the Republic of Ireland Act, which took the country out of the Commonwealth totally.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. Ireland is not in the Commonwealth anymore. So it’s actually more politically removed from the UK than countries like Australia or South Africa.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yes. And it’s hard to imagine it being in the Commonwealth, to be honest, because a lot of Commonwealth events involve like a lot of pageantry before the Queen as far as, you know, I can see. Anyway. So right up until 1949, the UK, I can see, it wasn’t good to come out and like declare to the rest of world like, “whoops, we lost a constituent country”. You know, it kind of preferred to keep the whole thing a little bit ambiguous.
Tim Mc Inerney:
It made it kind of easy to ignore Ireland’s independence. Like you say, there wasn’t one big breakaway date. But what I find fascinating, actually, is how the changes to the UK’s status also kind of went under the radar. I mean, the name of the United Kingdom changed in 1922, a change from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. You know, so the passports would have changed their text and hire an entire home country had seceded.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, like loads of territory. Miles of it.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Massive amounts of territory, indeed. And culturally, you know, this is really significant. Very much similar to if Scotland declared independence today. So it’s difficult to understand how people seem to have totally missed this fact.
Naomi O’Leary:
Huh? You know, loads of Irish people I spoke to have these anecdotes about the moments when they realize that people from the UK just do not have the same history of them. They haven’t learned the same history. And for me, it was when I first arrived in England when I did my master’s. So, on the first night when I was out for a drink with my new classmates, I went up to buy a round. And when I got back, one of them said, Oh, thanks, Naomi. We’re just debating whether we should bring back Cromwell.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Oh, my God.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. I take it that my face was like the perfect punchline because everybody fell about laughing, but they were also surprised. Like they they didn’t do it as a joke on me. They just didn’t think that Cromwell was a non-neutral figure. So, I discovered that, while in Ireland, Cromwell is remembered in the popular imagination as like an evil mass murderer. In the UK, he has a totally different reputation. You know, like his role in the colonisation of Ireland is kind of incidental and he’s remembered more as a political leader who was important in the history of the British parliament.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, sure. Right. And I mean, like in Ireland, you know, Cromwell’s name is literally a curse. You can actually say may the curse of Cromwell be on you. And it seems a pretty insulting curse.
Naomi O’Leary:
Right. So there we see the depth of the difference that there can be. So I decided for this episode to get to the bottom of it by sitting down and doing a comparative investigation of the UK and Irish history courses. Yes, listeners, I have done that service for you. So, are you ready to hear it?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Go for it. And I haven’t heard this yet, so I’m looking forward to it.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. So, this is a history where the nations are intimately bound up together. You know, you can’t really learn one without the other. Because it’s our national story — you know, it’s why Ireland exists — it makes sense that the Irish history syllabus dedicates a large section, you know, of study to the emergence of the nation.
Tim Mc Inerney:
For sure. Yeah.
Naomi O’Leary:
But, the way it’s taught in Britain is very different. So, let’s just start with some overall history statistics. OK, so Tim, if you had to guess what percentage of students in the UK would you say study history until about the age of fifteen.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Until fifteen. Let me think. I suppose most people. So what, like 70, 70 percent?
Naomi O’Leary:
OK, so it’s around 40 percent. So that’s going by the number of people who do history GCSEs, which are like the exams that you take when you’re about 15 or 16 in school. OK. So to compare, the most commonly taken subject is maths, which is about 92 percent of people. What would you say it is in Ireland, the percentage who do history at about that age?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Until they’re fifteen? Oh, I would probably say everyone, right?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yes, you’re right. In Ireland, it’s nearly everybody. It’s not a compulsory subject, but, in practice, almost everybody does history for their junior certificate. It’s about 90 percent. OK. So if we look at what that actually means, that basically means that almost everyone who goes through school in Ireland will learn for three years the history of Ireland from prehistoric times, through to plantations through the story of how Ireland came to be a nation state, you know, up until about the 1980s-ish.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Right.
Naomi O’Leary:
So clearly, you know, all the students in Irish schools, they’re not just studying Irish history. They do European history. So they do, you know, the Renaissance, the French Revolution and World Wars. And they do like American Independence and Civil Wars. And you get a fair whack of British history in there as well, because the history of Britain is very much embedded in the whole history of Ireland and Irish independence. And of course, in the World Wars, as well. So you do kind of skip over the long lists of kings that I know to be a thing in the UK. They can kind of reel off lists of kings. Anyway, let’s get to the final high school exams. So the people who do a full A-level — you know, when they’re about 17 — in history. That’s roughly the same as the number who do Irish leaving cert history — so, around 15 percent. But I took a look at those courses. So I actually got books, I acquired schoolbooks and I have them in front of me. I bought a textbook off Amazon, Tim.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well. Well done, Naomi. Invested.
Naomi O’Leary:
I did. Right. So, okay, let’s look at the Irish one. So when you go into that leaving certificate exam in June, when you sit down there, a full 50 percent of the marks that you can get are about Irish history. So just to give you an idea of the history that these Irish students are learning. I have just one textbook here in front of me. So this one’s called, “The Pursuit of Sovereignty and the Impact of Partition 1912 to 1949”. It’s about 250 pages long. And it goes bit by bit by bit from home rule to the Easter Rising to the War for Independence to the early years of Northern Ireland, and so on.
Tim Mc Inerney:
I’m with you.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK, so now if you look at the A-levels in the UK, they’re really different. OK. So in A-level courses, right, the whole system’s a bit different. The courses and the books can differ from school to school because different private companies create the courses and the examinations in accordance with guidelines which are set by the Education Ministry. OK. So it’s it’s overseen by the state, but it’s a lot more privatized than it is in Ireland. OK, so I looked at just one course in depth to get an idea. This is called the AQA history course. I find it very interesting to look at. These are my observations. OK, so as you would expect, British histories, all those kings and Tudors and Stuarts and industrialisation and all of that, they’re, the founding block, which is understandable.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Fair enough. Yeah.
Naomi O’Leary:
Now, there isn’t really a category that’s called European history like there is in the Irish course. Well, I find this very interesting because the European Union is another thing about which there is a big knowledge gap. So, the focus tends to be country to country. So you can study Germany by itself from 1871 to 1991, and study the French revolutionary period. And you can study fascism in Italy. All these things are separate, you know.
Tim Mc Inerney:
OK. So a different approach.
Naomi O’Leary:
A different approach this quite a lot of Russia. You can do a bit of America. You can do bit of China. Do the Cold War and stuff. It’s really very flexible in terms what you can pick from all of this. So you can go from quite deep and, you know, just study a few things, if you want to, in quite a lot of depth.
Tim Mc Inerney:
I wouldn’t mind that.
Naomi O’Leary:
So where is Ireland? Did you notice Ireland?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Oh, right. Of course. Yeah. Because it’s neither in the UK, nor one of those options is that it?
Naomi O’Leary:
It’s tucked away. Now, if you were to study Ireland, if you were to choose the tracks in which Ireland features, I had a look at where it comes up, okay? I did a review. OK. So it appears within this module, it’s called, “Challenge and Transformation Britain: 1851 to 1964”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
So, Ireland appears in the transformation of Britain from the mid 19th century.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. OK. So about one sixth of that course actually deals with Ireland, right. Here’s another one. Right. You can take this this module if you want. It’s called the British Empire, 1857 to 1967.
Tim Mc Inerney:
OK, well this makes more sense, right?
Naomi O’Leary:
There is no Ireland in there.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Oh, this explains so much, Naomi.
Naomi O’Leary:
Right. There’s no Ireland. OK. So now the only other place among all the lists of loads of different options you could take, the only other place I could find Ireland was tucked away into. Are you ready? “Wars and Welfare: Britain in Transition 1906 to 1957”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
OK. Alright. So this, this has, this has opened our eyes a bit I suppose to to why people might not know anything about this.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. So. Yeah. And even in that it’s really tucked away. OK, so do you know where you find Irish Independence in there? It’s under the heading — like a sub-category — which is called, “The Impact of War in 1914 to 1922”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
It’s under the First World War.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. The Impact of War. Yeah.
Tim Mc Inerney:
And this is — let’s just remind our listeners — this is like, I suppose a third of the United Kingdom seceding and breaking away.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. So, you know, “The Impact of War” includes all sorts of crap. Right down at the end underneath all these things, there’s a little line which says, “Ireland, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
This, I suppose this is, I mean, this has to be written by historians.
Naomi O’Leary:
Um, we’ll get to that. OK. So we’ll get to the mechanics of the history course in a minute. OK. But if you look at this. Right, the knowledge gap is kind of it to be expected, really. Right?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. So, you know, these things are, they’re kind of unintentional framings, you know, that don’t really give you a sense of Ireland as a nation with its own history that kind of existed with a sense of itself as a distinct unit over a very, very long period of time. You don’t really get that.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. Right. Definitely.
Naomi O’Leary:
But there are other aspects that are actually more controversial.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Hold on. More controversial than this.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, so. Wait, wait. I’m going to play you a clip now, which is from, it’s from another A-level history course, OK. Not the same one. But it’s a, it’s a real textbook. It’s by Edexcel, which is part of the big educational company Pearson. OK. So Pearson used to own the Financial Times and The Economist, but they sold them a couple years ago. OK. Here’s from Pearson Edexcel textbook. It’s called, “British Political History 1945-90 Consensus and Conflict”. And it’s by a man called Geoff Stewart. Let’s hear the first clip. This is about the Falklands War.
Naomi O’Leary:
“Margaret Thatcher rose magnificently to the challenge. The risks were enormous with a very real chance of military disaster. She gave the go ahead. She was determined to restore the islands to British control. It was vital that aggression be defeated for the sake of British self-respect and the rule of law in the world. In these feelings, the prime minister seemed to have articulated the response of the majority of her compatriots. Galtieri couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. It was a simple case of right and wrong”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Oh, my God. My, my — my mouth actually just fell open there. This is about the Falklands, though. It’s not about Ireland.
Naomi O’Leary:
No, that’s about the Falklands, alright. But just an example, alright. So a bit of a bit of a fan of Margaret Thatcher, wouldn’t you say?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, “it was a simple case of right and wrong”, I mean, I hope this this man doesn’t have a degree in history.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK, well, let’s hear the second clip now. This is about the Maze Prison. So the Maze Prison’s a bit of notorious prison from the time of the conflict in Northern Ireland, it grew out of a time when the British government was using internment. So that basically means the large scale imprisonmen of big groups of people without trial. And the policy was used to sweep up large numbers of people — who were overwhelmingly Catholics — in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, and the justification was that they might be involved in terrorism. Anyway, the Maze Prison became internationally famous when republicans began to do hunger strikes in the early 1980s. They were striking because they wanted to be recognized as political prisoners, not criminals. So here’s what the textbook says to say about that whole episode.
Naomi O’Leary:
“The Maze was, in every respect, a model prison conforming to all aspects of the Charter of Human Rights. Yet the IRA denounced it as a British death camp. This was total nonsense, but the power of propaganda convinced many of the Catholic community in both the Irish Republic and within the Irish community in the USA that this was the scene of a modern atrocity. When Bobby Sands starved himself to death in May 1981, there was outrage. Yet Thatcher was rightly unmoved. It was self-inflicted and totally unjustified by any objective criteria. But it took moral courage to say so and accept other deaths. Once again, this was a display of moral courage and determination on the prime minister’s part”.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Wow, that is that is way beyond what I thought might be possible. Honestly, that is something else. I mean, for our listeners. Just to give you an idea. In the Maze, one of the protest was it was a dirty protest. This is where prisoners were afraid of being attacked by prison officers because when they left their cells to use the toilet and as part of the wider protest for recognition of their political status, they refused to leave their cells and therefore were smearing their excrement all over the walls, not wearing any clothes. And the only objects in their cell were a bare mattress and a blanket. This is what he’s calling model prison.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK, so needless to say, this is clearly one specific viewpoint. Right. But it masquerades as an impartial account. Right. This is in the narrative text of the history book. It’s not like a boxed off separate opinion that students are asked to analyze. It’s presented as though these are the simple, undisputed facts. It’s a problem.
Tim Mc Inerney:
This is, I mean, it’s actually frightening. You know, I’m a historian and I’m a lecturer. And I know well how powerful this is because, you know, the things you say to young people about history totally shapes their mind and outlook. You know, my students, you know, can’t help themselves. But repeat back sometimes my opinions to me as fact. You know, so it’s really you have to be really, really careful of what you say and try and keep reminding them all the time of the objectivity in history. And because once they’ve learned this when they’re young, it’s it’s very hard to, as it were, reprogramme them again. You know, I’m sure your listeners will empathize with this. You know, imagine trying to just re, reconstruct the history that, you know, already a history becomes part of who you are. This is, at the very least highly irresponsible.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. Now, I fairly hounded Pearson for comment about this. Right. I wanted to know above all, who is Geoff Stewart, the author, because I had a suspicion. I tried to find out about him online, you know. There was weirdly there, was weirdly little record. So I had a suspicion that he might be like Michael Gove or somebody, right.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Go on.
Naomi O’Leary:
So according to Pearson, Geoff Stewart, it is not a pseudonym. He was a history teacher. And he also helped to design the exams for the history course for for a long while. He was a senior examiner, as well as writing this book.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, I hope the students praise Margaret Thatcher for their sakes.
Naomi O’Leary:
OK. I asked if we could interview Geoff Stewart, and Pearson said that they passed on this request but didn’t hear back. So if you’re listening, Mr. Stewart, we would love to have you on as a guest. We would love to have you on as a guest. So, um, Pearson also told me that this book has already been phased out because the history course was updated. So it was in place between 2008, they told me, and up until 2015, there were selling about 1500 copies every year. Well, I want to give credit to Henry Stewart, who actually brought this to light first. He was blogging about it on the local schools network. He noticed this, these passages of text because his son was taking an AS history course and he felt it was biased.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Imagine that.
Naomi O’Leary:
Alright. So, Tim, do you want to read the statement Pearson gave us?
Tim Mc Inerney:
OK. You’ve just sent me this by e-mail, so I haven’t read it before. Right. So Pearson say, “We follow a clear process to produce content on all our subjects. Specialists are highly qualified. We check our content and engage with teachers and subject specialists before we go to print. Our books, go through a rigorous quality control process, including review by subject experts.” For some reason, I’m doubting this. Pearson Sorry, I’ll go back to the quote. “A review by subject experts and teachers, as well as separate fact checking and editorial checks”. Well, I suppose I mean, we can only we can only take them by their word, but we might advise Pearson to maybe check out some new fact checkers.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. Improve the system. It seems like.
Tim Mc Inerney:
OK, well, let’s move on from that anyway, and we’ll leave it to our listeners to see if they have any additional information. This is that we’re starting to get into investigative journalism there, Naomi, a little bit.
Naomi O’Leary:
That’s what we want, yeah.
Tim Mc Inerney:
But if you have any information, actually — or if you’ve studied that history syllabus — we’d actually love to hear from you. Since the UK has such a loud voice on the international stage, we have to recognise as well that some of this kind of lack of awareness, or this kind of maybe inadvertent ignorance tends to become received opinion. Something that always kind of stuck out to me was the use of the term British Isles to include Ireland, you know, for instance. People in the Republic of Ireland are often surprised to hear this being used because it isn’t used very much in Ireland. It isn’t recognised by the Irish government. Like, it’s highly problematic, really. Out of the two states within the so-called British Isles, one of them doesn’t recognize the term, you know. So I don’t know if it’s possible to use this with, you know, a good conscience. But if you go to the Wikipedia page of the British Isles, for instance, which I have open here in front of me, this fact isn’t mentioned. The fact that one of the countries within them doesn’t recognize the term isn’t mentioned until the fourth paragraph where it says I quote, The term “British Isles” is controversial in Ireland. And then later on, the government of Ireland does not recognise or use the term. You know, this is a —
Naomi O’Leary:
I’m taking that this is a particular bugbear of yours, Tim.
Tim Mc Inerney:
It’s a particular bugbear of mine. I’ll tell you why. Because I tried to change it immediately. All I wanted to do was put that fact in the first paragraph that the government of Ireland does not recognize or use the term, which I think is fair. But the moderator is very active, and changed it back within like 20 seconds, about three times, and then he told me to stop.
Naomi O’Leary:
Wikipedia wars.
Tim Mc Inerney:
So I left that one alone. But like, you know, that that almost seems to me that in the hands of some people that this knowledge gap is contrived. It’s kind of contrived. You know, it’s a way of culturally dominating the Republic, you know, on an international level.
Naomi O’Leary:
Have you noticed this playing out in the international sphere?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah, for sure. Like in France, where I live, again, a lot of people just presume that Ireland is part of the UK. And you can’t really blame them, because the UK overwhelmingly dominates the international narrative on this. So when popular culture or media discussion in the UK just lumps the Republic of Ireland with the UK all the time, it becomes a kind of undercurrent that the independent state of Ireland doesn’t exist. It’s you know, it’s a really powerful effect. You know, I was just telling someone last week here in Paris about the podcast. And, you know, he he flat out refused to believe that the Republic of Ireland was an independent country.
Naomi O’Leary:
We must say that, you know, it is a plight that does affect smaller countries, especially when they speak the same language as a big country that’s right beside them. And I do think that Ireland does quite well in terms of having a strong international brand, if you could call it that, you know.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Sure. Good point. I mean, actually, lots of Canadians I know tell me that they have a similar problem. And Canada is, you know, massive that people just somehow it’s hard to imagine that people consider it as part of the United States. But at the end of the day, if people in the UK are unsure whether they have sovereign control over Ireland, how can we expect anyone else around the world to know?
Naomi O’Leary:
You know, I think it might be changing with Brexit. So, OK, this is what I’ve noticed. OK. So it forces the UK and Ireland on two opposite sides of a negotiating table in a huge international process. Right. So Ireland is with the rest of the EU and the UK is on the other side. Now, in the lead up to those negotiations, the Irish government made an incredibly intense diplomatic effort just before the negotiations took place. They sent delegations to every single other EU country, sometimes several times to highlight what they call Ireland’s unique challenges with Brexit. So what that essentially means is that just making sure the leadership of every country knows that aren’t into this distinct country, that it can’t be lumped in with the UK. It can’t be assumed. It’s just going to follow the UK and whatever the UK decides to do. And that is a very committed EU member, with among the highest levels of public support for the EU in the whole block. And of course, making sure that all the countries know that there’s a border, a sensitive border, one that could be affected. And you know what it is and what Northern Ireland is. So that’s really explaining the whole case on an international scale.
Tim Mc Inerney:
And this is, of course, the subject of our first podcast, right?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yes. And that’s not a coincidence. I have to confess that the knowledge gap was why I wanted to make this podcast series to begin with. I just felt that there was a real information gap about Ireland and its history at a time when it was becoming hugely politically important. And also that we’re kind of at a unique moment in terms of people being interested in finding out more about it — not least among the tens of thousands of people who have decided to claim Irish citizenship in the wake of Brexit. Welcome to any of you who might be listening, by the way. The name of this podcast was inspired by those people. And we hope it will be a resource for everybody who wants to discover or rediscover Ireland with an open mind.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Absolutely.
Naomi O’Leary:
So all in all, Tim, what’s your conclusion about the knowledge gap?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Well, like you said, Naomi, it looks like it’s actually kind of, um, at an open ending right now. The knowledge gap seems to have led UK voters to walk quite blindly into a border crisis that’s to come. And it doesn’t look like there’ll be any easy way around this. It’s also led to a situation where the future of Northern Ireland in the union has come into question. So I don’t think we’re gonna hear the end of this any time soon.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah. Of course. You know, the absence of Northern Ireland in the Brexit debate was crazy. And it’s nothing unusual. It’s like that with like all election campaigns. Anyway, I think the one thing that can definitely be said for, you know, probably for the first time in earnest, is that the knowledge gap and the dangers that it presents, its being acknowledged, you know, by people on both sides of the Irish Sea. So do you think that things will change now that the UK public has had something of a rude awakening to this whole thing?
Tim Mc Inerney:
Honestly, things really could change, but it’s anyone’s guess how, so let’s keep a close eye on it.
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah, and if you have any questions, you know, just fire them at us. It’s lovely that, you know, if anyone wants to learn and increase their knowledge. We’ll try and help whatever, whatever way we can. And we really want to thank all of our UK guests for being so candid about all of this. And once again, we need to stress that we don’t want to point blame at anyone in particular. You know, it’s a kind of a it’s a phenomenon. It’s not really anybody’s fault, you know, but it just continues to have pretty momentous effects on people’s lives.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Absolutely. So thanks again to everyone. Naomi, what are we gonna be talking about next week?
Naomi O’Leary:
Okay. You thought we were controversial in this episode. Just wait for this next one.
Tim Mc Inerney:
I’ll do my sound again, will I?
Naomi O’Leary:
Yeah.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Dun Dun dun.
Naomi O’Leary:
It’s the Catholic Church. We couldn’t avoid it any more.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Yeah. For the next episode, we’ll be speaking to the amazing Catherine Corless, who has become a beacon for many survivors of abuse in Catholic institutions.
Catherine Corless:
What really kept me going was the silence of the people who should be helped and I should given the answers. I was been fobbed off the whole time. It was just as if things have never changed from the 1940s and 50s. These are illegitimate children. And I mean to say it was kind of so what. It just drove me to find justice for them.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Our interview with her is really something else. So I really urge you to tune in for that one.
Naomi O’Leary:
We’ll also be talking to journalist and doctors about the recent National Maternity Hospital scandal, which saw protests against the new National Maternity Hospital being given over to an order of nuns.
Tim Mc Inerney:
For now, thanks for listening. You can send your questions and comments as usual to us via email at theirishpassport@gmail.com.
Naomi O’Leary:
And you can always get us on our web site of all the relevant links: www.theirishpassport.com or on Twitter at @PassportIrish. And we have a Facebook page.
Tim Mc Inerney:
Make sure to share, rate and review the podcast on social media and iTunes. It makes all the difference to us.
Naomi O’Leary:
It really does. And thanks so much for joining us.