More than a century and a half after they first began to arrive here in numbers, Scotland still doesn't know quite what to make of the Irish in its midst. For many decades, the narrative favoured by the four main pillars of Scottish society – media, church, legislature and judiciary – was one that portrayed them as ignorant, dirty, feckless and not fit for meaningful work. They had to be watched at all times. For, if hard-working, honest and upstanding Britons turned their backs for just one second they would find themselves with a knife between the ribs and a revolution on their hands.
The old peddled myths have largely dissipated in the intervening years but, sporadically, vignettes appear that remind you that some parts of Scottish society still have issues with the Irish.
Earlier this month in Glasgow, three young Irish people, including two from Donegal over visiting relatives, claimed that they were forced to leave the taxi they had booked following a night out. They said they had taken this course of action after the driver had aggressively asked them to stop conversing in Irish Gaelic, the first language of two of the passengers. The taxi firm then added insult to alleged injury when its spokesman implied that they had all been drunk because, well… it was late at night and they were all from Donegal.
A few days later, a 41-year-old Ayrshire man, David Limond, was convicted of making sectarian and racist threats to a young female journalist in which he urged listeners to his radio podcast to abuse her on Twitter. The journalist, Angela Haggerty, is taking her first steps in her chosen career and works for the highly respected business and media magazine, The Drum.
As well as writing for the magazine Haggerty blogs, tweets and Facebooks. She also, palpably, takes no shit and, as such, represents the vibrant future of Scottish journalism. She says she is also proud of her Irish heritage "and that seems to irk people like Mr Limond".
One of the activities that led Haggerty to being called "Taig of the Day" by Mr Limond was editing a book Minority Reporter: Modern Scotland's Bad Attitude Towards Her Own Irish by the controversial Scots/Irish author and journalist Phil Mac Giolla Bhain, in which he addresses the issue of anti-Irish racism in Scotland.
Mac Giolla Bhain is a troublemaker and a pain in the arse, two attributes that ought to be de rigueur for anyone seeking to make it in our trade. He is also a razor-sharp investigative journalist and respected activist in the National Union of Journalists who has been published all over the world. Several of his blogs broke important exclusives about the impending downfall of Rangers FC and embarrassed many Scottish football writers who simply chose to look the other way as the Ibrox edifice began to quake.
He and I, though, have a little bit of previous. This stems from my view that anti-Irishness in modern Scotland can be prone to exaggeration and can lead to an unfortunate victim complex among those who claim to observe it lurking in the shadows of Scottish society. Indeed, Mac Giolla Bhain, in an on-line piece for the Guardian, once took me to task for espousing such views.
Nevertheless, Minority Reporter is a thoroughly well-researched and well-written book that is of vital importance in understanding this fraught relationship between Scotland and her Irish immigrant population. Indeed, it might also be said that the failure of any Scottish newspaper to review the book thus far is a symptom of the boil that the author seeks to lance. He cites The Famine Song with its infamous chorus: "The famine's over, why don't you go home" as being racist in the extreme as well as mocking the human catastrophe of the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór).
He also rails against Scotland's political classes for being dilatory in their response to this. Indeed, it was only after the matter was raised in the Irish parliament and Irish media that The Famine Song was deemed to be worthy of criminal prosecution. And yet I wonder how Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King would have regarded ordeal by the singing of a dodgy song, they whose people had to endure lynchings, violence and hatred every day of their lives.
Mac Giolla Bhain also cites the 10-year ordeal of Neil Lennon, Celtic's Irish manager, in Scotland that, following several assaults and death threats, culminated in two men being jailed for trying to send a homemade bomb to him. And, in a very poignant section, he laments the extent to which Scots of Irish lineage have been discouraged from celebrating their ethnicity while those of Italian and Asian descent, for instance, have not. I suppose I am one of the Scots/Irish who have disappointed Mac Giolla Bhain. I am proud of my Irish heritage, but prouder still that I was born a Scot. Being Scottish defines me more than the country that my great-grandparents left at the start of the last century. When Scotland play Ireland it's Scotland every time (though it's Ireland against everybody else). Through education, hard work, a great deal of humour and no little charm the Irish in Scotland have largely overcome the prejudices and practices that prevailed for most of the 20th century.
It would be wise to take a step back from the outrage engendered by The Famine Song and the baiting of Neil Lennon and an ignorant taxi-driver and an online troll and observe them for what they are: the death rattle of a culture that most of Scotland has rejected.
An Gorta Mór only discriminated between rich and poor, not between Catholic and Protestant. In a land of plenty, you died if you were poor. When Glasgow unveils its long overdue memorial to the Great Famine it should be a rallying point for all – Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Muslim – to unite against their real enemy: unfettered capitalism and the greed and corruption that always follow in its wake.
Minority Reporter: Modern Scotland's Bad Attitude Towards Her Own Irish is published by Frontline Noir. £9.99. To order a copy for £7.99 with free UK p&p go to guardianbookshop.co.uk or call 0330 333 6846
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