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As argued previously, Irishness in England can be understood as a dialogue between diasporic and transnational imaginings of Irishness. A further aspect of this dialogue, and one I feel has been neglected in the literature is the frequently translocal nature of Irishness and the ways in which Irishness abroad is often articulated through localised identities. In

the case of England, these localised identities may refer to the hybrid identities that have arisen in cities with large Irish populations, such as London-Irish and Birmingham-Irish, as mentioned above, and as discussed to a greater extent in Chapter 3. However, a less remarked upon facet of localised identities is the extent to which Irish localities, specifically at the level of the county are drawn upon as a resource.

In order to properly situate the role of county identification within discourses of Irishness, and particularly diasporic Irishness, some historical context is needed. Prior to the Norman Invasion of Ireland in 1169 (the date from which the hallowed “800 years of English oppression” mantra is taken) the island had been traditionally divided into five provinces:

Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Meath,⁵ but now formed a patchwork of constantly fluctuating greater and lesser kingdoms and lordships. Gradually and piecemeal, over the following centuries, successive Anglo-Norman and English governments sought to re-divide the country along the lines of the shires of England, both for administrative regions and in order to suppress rebellions against English rule in Ireland. By 1606, the counties of Ireland had been ‘shaped’ in the cartographic layout familiar today (P. J.

O'Connor, 2006).

While it is difficult, due to the paucity of research on the topic to trace the emergence of specific county identities, as opposed to national identities or identifications with the immediate locality (e.g. parishes), it seems clear that by at least the 19^th century, the county divisions had come to be seen as ‘natural’. For example, O’Connor (2006) has outlined how the popular ‘emigrant songs’ of the 19^th and early 20^th century almost exclusively referred to the protagonist’s longing for the county, as well as the country of his (almost exclusively ‘his’ rather than ‘her’) birth. It can also be argued that the establishment of the

5 Modern-day Ireland is divided into 4 provinces with Meath having been incorporated into Leinster, but this is largely only for sporting and ceremonial purposes. It should be noted that the traditional province of Ulster incorporates the 6 historical counties that currently make up Northern Ireland as well as 3 counties within the Republic.

Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884 along county lines served to confirm the county as an intermediate locus of identification between the immediate locality (the parish, by and large) and the nation. It is one of the peculiar ironies of Irish history that an explicitly nationalist organisation such as the GAA should have cemented the colonial county system imposed by the English in the popular Irish imagination. McNally (2007), for example, in commenting on the ‘sacrosanct’ nature of the county in GAA circles has argued (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that “through the GAA, our former masters have achieved the colonisers’

dream of imposing their system and then getting the locals to police it.”

It may be argued that contemporary Ireland, and in particular the 26-county nation-state, is suffused with a kind of ‘banal county-ism’, to paraphrase Billig (1995). Indeed the very use of the phrases “the twenty-six counties” and the “six counties” as a means of referring to the two nation-states on the island of Ireland is an example of how readily ‘county’ is drawn upon as an interpretative repertoire in discussing Ireland and Irishness. It should be emphasised that this is a particularly nationalist register: the use of the phrase “the six counties” to describe Northern Ireland is a politically contentious one and refers to historical imaginings of the region rather than any current political realities. Unlike the Republic, local government in Northern Ireland is no longer run along the basis of the historical county divisions, having been re-organised in 1971.

In one of the rare geographical analyses of the topic, Gillmor (2003) has noted how daily life in Ireland continues to be infused with references to the county. For example, such everyday features as postal addresses, car registration plates, local government, local newspapers, national news reports etc. all make reference to the county, a form of

“flagging the county daily” to paraphrase Billig (1995). Similarly, the county is celebrated through the widespread phenomenon of ‘county songs’ as well as the aforementioned sporting rivalries along county lines fostered by the GAA.

Gillmor’s analysis corresponds with my own retrospective observations on growing up in Ireland – I would add that alongside the high-profile nature of GAA county allegiances and rivalries, educational material at primary school level regularly made reference to the 32 counties of Ireland, and questions relating to the colours, songs and nicknames associated with certain counties were regular features of table quizzes etc. While it is not my intention to claim that my own upbringing in Ireland was in any way typical (although I would claim that it was certainly not atypical) I feel it reflects both the all-pervasive nature and the relative taken-for-grantedness of the county as a reference point, and as an object of identification. Similarly, as also noted by Gillmor (2003), O’Connor (2005) and O Briain (2009), in my experience it is so common as to be almost unremarkable that when Irish people meet for the first time outside Ireland, they will immediately attempt to ascertain what county the other is from. The advent of GAA replica jerseys has become a means for the Irish abroad to further advertise their county identities in an immediately recognisable way, at least to other Irish people. The image of the young Irish backpacker in Australia walking along Bondi Beach in his/her county jersey has become something of an archetype of the Irish abroad in contemporary Ireland and this has been mirrored in the labelling of the Bondi Beach area as ‘County Bondi’ (McConnell, 2010) in much the same way as the Kilburn High Road was dubbed ‘County Kilburn’ by, and in reference to, a previous generation of Irish migrants (Ryan, 2003a).

Among the Irish abroad, the persistence of county identities has led to the formation of County Associations, which arguably have in turn shaped the articulation of county identities outside Ireland.⁶ County Associations in England were initially organised within individual cities rather than nationwide. Both London and Manchester have Councils of

6 I am grateful to Nicole McLennan of the London Metropolitan University for sharing some of the

preliminary findings from her ongoing research project on London’s County Associations. She has asked me to make clear that this remains a work in progress at the time of writing.

Irish County Associations and relatively active county associations also operate out of Birmingham, Luton and elsewhere. While the documentary evidence on the origins of many county associations is patchy, it is known that the formation of County Associations in large urban centres in the United States dates back to the mid-19^th Century, and it can be assumed that the Irish in England followed this model. While most of the current County Associations in London, along with the Council of Irish County Associations (CICA) were formed in the 1950s, it seems likely that many of these were revivals of previously existing associations.

In general, the stated aims of such associations, as set out in their constitutions were similar, in that they existed to bring together people from the ‘home county’ living in London, to provide for the welfare of members and to assist new arrivals, and to promote ongoing ties with the ‘homeland’ and ‘home county’(McLennan, 2009). The associations, while generally officially non-sectarian, regularly included priests in their membership and some organisations sought the patronage of bishops from their ‘home’ dioceses. In London, through the CICA, the associations were heavily involved in the running of the London Irish Centre in Camden as well as organising the St. Patrick’s Day parade and from 1975, the London Irish Festival (Harrison, 2004; McLennan, 2009). As such, the County Associations may be regarded as central to the Irish ‘establishment’⁷, both in London and England, and representative of a certain type of ‘traditional’ Irishness abroad.

While more recent migrants have tended to be less involved with County Association, perhaps due to their association with a traditional and socially conservative Irishness, I argue that this lack of engagement has not resulted in a decline in the significance of county identity.

7 A distinction probably ought to be drawn here between the “Irish establishment” associated with the London Irish Centre in Camden, and the ‘Establishment Irish’, the upper-middle-class professionals, who were to be found in the “exclusive, plush surroundings” of the Irish Club in Belgravia (Rossiter, 2009).

Despite the prominent role played by the county in post-migration Irishness, this persistence of local identities and the ways in which they might intersect with national and diasporic imaginings of Irishness is something that has been neglected in the Irish diaspora literature. If county-based affiliations and allegiances are mentioned at all, they are only done so in passing, without further analysis as to what drawing on a repertoire of county or regional identification might signify. One might surmise that this is an indication that the

‘banal county-ism’ referred to earlier extends to the academic sphere. For example, Kells (1995) in writing about her research among young middle-class Irish women in London, gives an account of one of her participants (Caroline) emphasising the importance of regional differences:

My bluntness was part of my Northern origin, she said, and she contrasted this to Corkonian evasiveness. The difference between country and town, and farming and non-farming origin was also fundamental, she felt (Kells, 1995, p. 211).

While Kells fits this into a North/Republic divide regarding Irish identities, and mentions briefly the role of regional differences in her participants’ narratives, I think the specific reference to ‘Corkonian’, as opposed to simply ‘southern’ adds an extra dimension to how this difference is constructed. Caroline both highlights her own identifications as being specifically Corkonian, and attributes certain personality characteristics to that identity.

Similarly, when one of Gray’s participants draws a comparison between people like her, from Dublin and the East coast and people who would have come “straight from Tipperary and got off the ferry” (Gray, 2004, p. 111), she interprets it as constructing a class-based urban-rural divide. Again, while this is a legitimate reading, I would argue that there is an added significance in that rather than simply using the terms ‘the city’ and ‘the country’, Dublin and Tipperary are both explicitly referred to. This reflects the prominence of county-based identifications of place – Dublin is not simply constructed as the city in

opposition to the country, it is constructed as an urban county, in contrast to the rural county, Tipperary.

Some exceptions to the conceptual invisibility of the Irish county in research on diasporic Irish identities include Kneafsey and Cox’s (2002) study on the importance of specific foodstuffs to constructing a sense of Irish identity in Coventry. They found that their respondents associated particular brands with specific local and regional Irish identities (e.g. Denny sausages as representing Waterford as well as Ireland) and argue that this was an example of Irish migrants “using the links between foods and particular locations to mark out distinct individual and cultural identities operating at both national and sub-national scales” (Kneafsey & Cox, 2002, p. 12). In a slightly different vein, Nick McCarthy’s (2007) ethnographic study of performances of Irishness through Gaelic Football matches in Australia makes reference to the propensity of spectators at the matches to praise or condemn players based on the perceived characteristics of their

‘home’ counties. McCarthy argued that:

The constant mentioning of various counties and their association with particular types of play, both good and bad, helps create a uniquely Irish space, one which adds inexorably to the atmosphere of the day (McCarthy, 2007, p. 376).

On approaching the research, I felt that this particular intersection of local and national Irishness was worthy of further examination. Expanding on the observations of Kneafsey

& Cox and McCarthy, as well as my own experiences and early informal participant observation research, I felt that this was not simply an example of local and national registers becoming variously salient dependent on the context, but rather that this was an example of the national being articulated through the local. I further hypothesised that such articulations were a discursive form of authentication of the Irishness of the speaker or the

performer and that by grounding his or her Irishness within a particular locality within Ireland, this amounted to a re-territorialisation of Irishness. As such, local references act as a kind of shibboleth through which authentic Irishness can be verified. As explored in Chapter 6, if the St. Patrick’s Day parades are criticised for promoting an inauthentic Irishness in allowing ‘anyone to be Irish’, simply by drinking Guinness, donning a green frizzy wig and singing ‘Danny Boy’, the ability to wear a Tipperary GAA jersey and sing

‘Slievenamon’ may be recognised as a greater level of affinity with Irishness demonstrated through local knowledge.

As support for this hypothesis, articulating an authentic national identity through evoking a localised identity is not confined to the Irish abroad. For example, Sala, Dandy & Rapley’s (2010) research around constructions of authenticity among Italian migrants in Western Australia highlighted the ways in which regional accents (i.e. Roman accents) were employed in order to emphasise national identities and rhetorically differentiate these along authenticity lines from those who would be unable to pick up on such markers of locality.

This thesis examines the ways in which local, primarily county, identifications are employed as a resource in making claims on authentic Irishness and support narratives of

‘typically’ Irish ways of living. In keeping with the overarching theme of the thesis, it also examines how such localised claims may intersect with the ways in which authentic personal Irish identities are located within collective Irish identities. The majority of this analysis takes place in Chapter 7.