Joseph M. Bradley

The limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness Second-generation Irish identifications and positionings in multiethnic Britain

The focus of this article is the second-generation Irish in England. It is based on data collected as part of the Irish 2 project, which examined processes of identity formation amongst the second-generation Irish population in England and Scotland. The article examines and maps identifications and positionings of second-generation Irish people and discusses how two hegemonic domains - Ireland and England - intersect in the lives of the children of Irish-born parents, with material and psychological consequences. Their positionings in multiethnic Britain are compared with those of ‘visible’ minority ethnic groups, and their narratives of belonging and non-belonging are analysed in terms of the limitations of whiteness and the boundaries of Englishness.

Sport and the Contestation of Ethnic Identity: Football and Irishness in Scotland

The greatest single immigrant group in Scotland derives from the island of Ireland. During the years of the Great Irish Famine in the mid-nineteenth century until the First Word War, several hundred thousand Irish migrated to Scotland. Traditionally, this migrant community has been largely ignored in academic, popular and public literature and representations. It is primarily through the sport of soccer that this groups distinctiveness and identities are manifest in Scotland. However, the existence and the successes of Celtic, a football club founded and supported by the Irish Catholic immigrant community, highlights not only this marginalisation but the prejudice perceived and experienced by the Irish diaspora in Scotland. This paper highlights the role and significance of the Scottish print media in reflecting, creating, sustaining and disseminating this prejudice.

Family stories, public silence: Irish identity construction amongst the second‐generation Irish in England

Abstract Formal narratives of history, especially that of colonial oppression, have been central to the construction of national identities in Ireland. But the Irish diasporic community in Britain has been cut off from the reproduction of these narratives, most notably by their absence from the curriculum of Catholic schools, as result of the unofficial ‘denationalisation’ pact agreed by the Church in the 19th century (Hickman, 1995). The reproduction of Irish identities is largely a private matter, carried out within the home through family accounts of local connections, often reinforced by extended visits to parent/s ‘home’ areas. Recapturing a public dimension has often become a personal quest in adulthood, ‘filling in the gaps’. This paper explores constructions of narratives of nation by a key diasporic population, those with one or two Irish‐born parents. It places particular emphasis on varying regional/national contexts within which such constructions take place, drawing on focus group discussions and interviews for the ESRC‐funded Irish 2 Project in five locations — London, Glasgow, Manchester, Coventry and Banbury.

BRITISH AND IRISH SPORT: THE GARRISON GAME AND THE G.A.A. IN SCOTLAND

This article reflects on the historic cultural and political cleavage between Irish Gaelic sports and the British sport of soccer. In nationalist Ireland soccer, a British innovation and largely British dominated game during the 19th and early 20th centuries, was traditionally known as ‘the garrison game’. This was due to its popularity within British garrison towns in Ireland while that country was part of the British Empire in the period up to 1922. Although still used by a few older stalwarts of the G.A.A., the description of soccer as ‘the garrison game’ has virtually passed as Gaelic sports have come to dominate in much of Ireland while soccer has become a globalised sport. The contextual setting for this paper is viewed through the sporting experience of the Irish diaspora in Scotland. Brief reference is made to Irish Catholic immigration into Scotland as well as Irish cultural resistance to British hegemony in late 19th century Ireland. The native Irish experience is compared with the differing sporting encounter of the Irish in Scotland. In Ireland, Gaelic sport eventually re-established itself throughout the country while for the Irish in Scotland, Gaelic sport struggled as soccer became the sporting avenue for social integration and national and cultural distinctiveness. Some of the reasons for this development are explained here, while this work also considers some later manifestations of antagonism between both sports and determines why the soccer-gaelic conflict has not been a significant issue in the Scottish diasporic context. This paper concludes that despite historical antagonisms between both sports, Celtic Football Club has served the Irish in Scotland in a similar way to which the G.A.A. has traditionally given shape and expression to ideas of Irishness in Ireland itself.

When the Past Meets the Present: The Great Irish Famine and Scottish Football

Social, cultural, and political identities on display in many of the world’s professional football (soccer) arenas are never produced and reproduced in isolation. Pieter Schoonderwoerd, for example, contends that football songs and chants “do not mysteriously appear from out of the ether with no prior basis in existing culture or historical lineage.” The current controversy around what has come to be known as the “Famine Song” reveals the culture of Scotland’s football environment, exposing the long history of the embedded nature of the country’s anti-Irish dispositions. The discursive themes and context surrounding the song’s appearance and responses to it illuminate a defining feature of football in Scotland: an ideological and attitudinal racism that frames much popular local commentary on Irishness. Such racism is predicated on culture and ethnic origins rather than on skin color or biological attributes. Although an Irish presence in Scotland existed prior to the midnineteenth-century “Great Hunger,” the devastation caused by An Gorta Mór initiated a mass migration that continued for decades, helping to make Scotland, particularly the west-central areas of Glasgow and Lanarkshire, a major recipient of Irish immigration until the early twentieth century. It is within the narrative of the Famine and Irish migration to Scotland that the history and core identities of Celtic Football Club and its supporting community are found. Former European Cup–winning captain and manager Billy McNeill

Gaelic Sport, Soccer and Irishness in Scotland

This essay reflects on the history of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Scotland. A significant number of Irish immigrants and their offspring transformed the social, political and religious make-up of much of Scottish society in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, despite a considerable amount of Irish cultural activity, and an important GAA presence in Scotland, the Association has rarely acquired a vibrancy that matched the size of its diasporic constituency. This study looks at the vicissitudes in the life of the GAA, considers some of the reasons for the organizations comparative weaknesses and reflects on the contribution of Gaelic sports to the construction of Irishness in modern Scotland. While the history of the GAA is an essential part of the ongoing narrative of the Irish in Scotland, this essay recognizes that Irishness and sport in Scotland cannot be explored without some deliberation on the supporter culture of Celtic Football Club. The essay therefore reflects on Celtics significance for the Irish diasporic community in Scottish society and the ways that this has impacted on the historical positioning of the GAA within Scotland.

The Gaelic Athletic Association in Scotland, 1948–2007: Diaspora and Immigrant Identity

In Ireland, the Gaelic Athletic Association has become a unique sporting body. This success has largely depended on its inherent Irishness. The Irish diaspora has transported aspects of its language, religion, politics and culture wherever it has settled. The GAA has been one expression of this distinctiveness. In Scotland, the GAA has traditionally been a small organization. Using historical reflection and contemporary insight we can see how Gaelic sport in Scotland assists us understand numerous aspects of Irish identity and Irish sport beyond the island of Ireland.