Republican News · Thursday 3 July 2003

Exploring Irish America

Irish on the Inside: In search of the soul of Irish America

By Tom Hayden

Verso, €16 Paperback

Irish on the Inside is a long overdue survey of the dynamics that make Irish America and its relationship to the old country as well as to the Irish people. It explores Irish America in all its complexity and contradictions and how the issue of identity for many Irish Americans remains unresolved, despite the intense pressures to assimilate during many generations. The melting pot theory of America is challenged as a sham, whereby it is maintained that it was really a device used to mould the "ethnics" (anyone not Anglo-American) into the Anglo-American cultural milieu that was English speaking, English thinking and preferably Protestant, with an abiding commitment to a puritanical and capitalistic outlook on life.

The history of Irish America is surveyed from the time that Irish prisoners of war, children, women and men, were brought to the Americas as slaves and indentured servants in the 17th century, thus laying the foundations of the English colony in North America, modelled very much on its obscene precedent in Ireland. It goes on to mention the exodus of the Scots-Irish Presbyterians (fleeing the Penal Laws) to America in the 18th century, who in turn formed the backbone of the colonial revolution against British rule and then expanded the frontier into 'virgin land', clearing out the natives of course.

In the 19th century, the Catholic Irish migration to America began fleeing political persecution and social and economic poverty that their defeated colonised state entailed. In America, far from finding sanctuary and acceptance in the "land of the free", they had to fight against anti-Irish (and particularly anti-Catholic) prejudice and discrimination, culminating in the first major urban riots in American history.

However, the Famine began the huge Irish exodus across the ocean, the effects of which are still felt today - most people of Irish descent in the world live on other continents and Ireland's population is still pretty much half of what it was in 1845. Like their predecessors, they had to fight against discrimination and established anti-Irish racism. Eventually, the Irish did gradually rise up the social ladder, but at the same time, dished out similar discrimination and oppression to other ethnic groups struggling to carve out their piece of the American action.

The Irish in America became labour leaders, clergymen, policemen, judges, soldiers, business people, politicians, presidents, gangsters, entertainers and workers of all descriptions, thereby infiltrating all sectors of American life. They settled the length and breadth of the USA, particularly in the major cities.

The Irish in America infiltrated all sectors of American life, settled the length and breadth of the USA and spanned the political spectrum, from radical labour leaders in the Wobblies to rabid reactionaries like Senator Joe McCarthy

They spanned the political spectrum, from radical labour leaders in the Wobblies (IWW), communist agitators such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, unrepentant Fenians such as John Devoy and today's liberals, such as Michael Moore, Bill Bradley, etc. to rabid reactionaries like Senator Joe McCarthy, Cardinal Spellman, Father Coughlin (famous for his anti-semetic fulminations), Pat Buchanan and many others. There were other bizarre combinations, such as Mayor Richard Daley, who "ruled Chicago with an iron fist" for decades and was at once rabidly conservative, but with a strong working class social conscience. Thus is Irish America - conservative and radical, Catholic and Protestant, right and left, liberal secular and religious fundamentalist, progressive and reactionary - in all its complexity and contradictions.

The author, Tom Hayden, was one of those people converted to the New Left in the 1960s (and one of the few who remained so). He was elected to the Californian State legislature from 1982 to 2000, and campaigned hard on the MacBride Principles and on Irish issues in the North generally.

There are three parts to this book; the first is a series of observations on Irish Americans and his life experience as one, the second his personal observations on the political situation in the North of Ireland, and the third a discussion of what it means to be Irish, whether in Ireland or America, and the legacy of postcolonialism.

The first part of the book, 'Irish on the Inside', surveys various snapshots of Irish American history and how these tie in with his own upbringing as an Irish American Catholic. Among the issues he discusses are assimilation, drinking, sexuality, political activism in the 1960s, suburbanisation and atomisation of ethnic communities and the Irish involvement in organised crime. Other historical snapshots include Robert Emmet, Tom Paine, the San Patricios, the Molly Maguires, the Vietnam War and others.

In the second part, 'Going North', he deals with some of his personal experience in fighting for these issues as well as his visits to Ireland (North and South), during which he met Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. He also discusses the interest taken by the Clinton presidency in Irish issues and how this broke from the traditional norm of the anglophile position - particularly in relation to Adams obtaining a visa in 1994, which was a humiliating slap in the face to British diplomacy. The political developments in Ireland are discussed from the war period of the 1970s and 1980s to the signing of the GFA in 1998 and the interminable crisis that has followed it since.

The third part of the book is a very interesting analysis of postcolonialism, particularly in relation to the 26-County state and Irish people generally. The assimilation of Irish Americans into the Anglo-American milieu is discussed in the context of postcolonialism. However, this part of the book, 'Recovering the Irish soul', focuses on how there is now an increasing drive to recover the Irish identity almost obliterated by colonialism and assimilation (or anglicisation). This recovery is most evident in the North, argues Hayden, as a result of being at the coal face of British imperialism. However, similar trends have been taking place in the South, in America and in other parts of the world with large Irish emigrant communities. This section makes for particularly interesting reading.

Overall, the style of this book is written very much as a personal journey or odyssey in search of a personal identity, which wouldn't necessarily appeal to everybody. However, anyone with even a peripheral interest in this area shouldn't be put off. This book is well written, with a lucid flowing style that is easy to read and it is not littered with academic jargon.

The analyses and insights are intelligently put and merit consideration. For republicans, this book is definitely recommendable.

BY CATHAL Ó MURCHÚ