Irish Identity, History, and Diversity

Introduction

As Ireland changes and becomes more diverse, the question of Irish identity becomes more complex. What does it mean to be Irish? How has Irish history left its mark on the people? What might it mean to talk about Irish liberation? This article is an attempt to clarify these kinds of questions and offer a perspective on Irish society as it is today. I am grateful to the many people who have contributed to forming the ideas discussed here.

Who Are the Irish

It’s useful, for analytical purposes, to make a distinction between Irish society and Irish people, although there is actually a huge overlap between the two.

Irish society comprises a rich mix of people born on the island of Ireland and people who have moved or immigrated to the island either temporarily or permanently. Most of these are Irish by identity but others are not.

In thinking specifically about identity, Irish people include those born on the island of Ireland and their descendants, regardless of class, culture, creed, ethnic background, where they live in the world, or other differences. They can also include people, regardless of their background or other identities, who have experienced anti-Irish prejudice or oppression. And they include people born on the island who claim a British heritage or identity and who choose also to claim an Irish identity.

There are other people who have acquired an Irish identity, for example naturalised Irish citizens, but who may not have experienced the historical oppression of Irish people or internalised that oppression^[1]. They may, however, be affected indirectly by the internalised Irish oppression in the culture around them (see below) or they may have experienced struggles in relation to assimilation or being accepted by other Irish people. These may include experiences of racism, xenophobia, or other forms of mistreatment. 

One of the challenges we face is to create safety and space for people to heal any of the hurts connected to being or becoming Irish and to create an inclusive society free of oppression towards any group.

Diversity of Heritages

Irish pre-history is not fully understood yet, but it includes connections to the peoples of northern Europe and Mediterranean regions. 

Many later-arriving groups, such as Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, Scottish, English, Welsh, Chinese, Nigerian, Indian, Pakistani, or Polish, for example, have also contributed to the diversity of heritages in the country. 

And these groups have included many different religious heritages, such as Roman Catholic, Protestant (Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Quaker, and others), Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Baha’i, people of other religions, people who identify as atheists, and people with no religious identity.

Identity

It is clear that Irish identity is neither homogeneous nor static. It is diverse and changes over time. In the past, it has been seen (and stereotyped) as comprising a set of aspects that were held to be uniquely and centrally ‘Irish’ (for example, Irish language, traditional Irish music, Roman Catholic religion, and so on). Sometimes, these elements were seen as necessary requirements for the identity. In fact, however, Irish identity today is not confined to any one religious, ethnic, or national tradition and includes elements from a wide range of diverse heritages.

Claiming an Irish identity does not preclude any person from claiming other national identities in addition. It is possible to claim an Irish identity and a US identity, or an Irish identity and a British identity, or an Irish identity and a Nigerian identity, or any other combination of identities that are part of a person’s heritage. In this sense, just as Irish people may choose to identify as both Irish and American, there is no inherent conflict when someone chooses to identify as both Irish and British. True Irishness is open and inclusive of all identities.

Indigenous Irish

Many Irish people can be thought of as indigenous. According to the UN, Indigenous populations are composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them by conquest, settlement, or other means, and reduced them to a non-dominant or colonial condition. An indigenous identity is commonly associated with people who have experienced dispossession of their land, suppression of their language, religion and culture, and attempted genocide. 

Indigenous Irish includes those who are descended from people who were part of the Gaelic, clan-based society that was overcome and colonised by the Normans and English. They comprise people born on the island of Ireland as well as members of the Irish diaspora, both white Irish people and Irish people of colour. Many of them retain a strong connection to the land, to the culture, to the people, and to their history despite economic or political marginalisation and cultural discrimination. 

As indigenous Irish, they share many similarities with indigenous people from other lands and can gain a lot from the work on indigenous liberation. Unlike many other indigenous peoples, however, indigenous Irish people are also predominantly white. This means that while as indigenous they can be said to have an oppressed identity, as white people they still have work to do to eliminate racism within the culture.

One other difference between Irish and other indigenous peoples is that the early conquest and colonisation did not involve the suppression of the native religion. Whereas the imposition of Christianity was an integral part of the oppression of many native cultures, Irish people had already adopted Christianity centuries before the arrival of foreign colonisers. Following the Reformation, however, the suppression of the native, Catholic religion did become a central part of the colonising project.

Travellers

Travellers are a minority ethnic group who have been part of Irish society for centuries. They number about 36,000 on the island of Ireland and are heavily oppressed within the culture. Worldwide, there are many thousands more of Irish Travellers. 

In Ireland, Travellers experience very high unemployment and face on-going struggles to obtain appropriate accommodation. Their infant mortality and their suicide rates are significantly higher than the national average, while their life expectancy is lower. Only a small proportion of Traveller have a third-level educational qualification and the education system historically has not been supportive of Traveller participation. They also face high levels of prejudice and discrimination within society generally.

Important parts of Traveller culture include extended family, community, religion, respect for older people, crafts, music, storytelling, horses, caravans, language (Cant, Gammon, or Shelta), and nomadism. 

While individual settled people have taken steps to support and become allies for Travellers, very little work has been done directly by settled people generally on their relationship with Travellers. A key challenge for settled people is to acknowledge and take responsibility for the prejudices that, individually and as a group, they have internalised and act out in their relationships with Travellers. Implicit in this is recognising that it is not possible to grow up in Irish society as a settled person and not internalise at least some of the prejudices towards Travellers that have been embedded in the culture. 

Oppressed and Oppressor Experiences

While recognising and valuing what is rational and positive in the contributions to Irish culture and identity of all the peoples who have been part of that history, it is also important to recognise and acknowledge the role played by oppression in Irish history.

At its core, the source of Irish oppression is English domination from the time of the Norman invasion in 1169 until the present day (as we shall see below). From the 16^th century onwards, this central source became essentially English Protestant domination. 

Like other nations colonised by England, Irish people have a rich and complex history of active and ongoing opposition to the colonisation, on the one hand, and of active participation in the British Empire project (both in Ireland and in other colonised countries) on the other hand. In the latter case, there is the participation of Irish people in the military, administrative, and commercial expansion of the British Empire (including participation in the genocide of other native peoples). This can be understood particularly in the context of internalised oppression as people struggled to escape their own oppression by taking on oppressor roles.

Healing the hurt attached to the colonial history and the residue of division and painful emotion that has ensued is an important aspect of Irish people’s development. This includes acknowledging and facing the on-going effects of colonial oppression and any oppressor role they, or their ancestors, have played in this oppression.

Colonisation and Plantations

The history of the island and its people cannot be fully understood except in the context of a sustained process of colonisation and its effects. This colonisation itself has to be understood in the context of the development of feudalism and later of capitalism in Europe generally.

The early attacks by Viking raiders and the foundation of Viking settlements along the coasts had a substantial but not overwhelming impact on the native Irish society. Those who settled on the island eventually assimilated into the existing society and culture.

The Norman colonisation of Ireland, beginning in the 12^th century, was largely a response to the pressures of the feudal system, which required finding new lands with which to reward and occupy the landless sons of the Norman aristocracy.

Conflict between native Irish kings provided an opportunity for Normans from Britain to gain a foothold on this island. Their success in this and fears that they might grow in power led to the English King getting the approval of the Pope to come to Ireland and demand submission from the Norman aristocracy and native Irish Chieftains. Over the coming centuries, the English gained more and more power leading to the eventual elimination of the native Irish clan system and the domination of the English throughout the country.

The original clan system was eliminated, and colonisation embedded, through a variety of processes: 

• A series of ‘plantations’ where the native Irish were dispossessed of the land and replaced by ‘planters’ from Scotland and England or by soldiers who had fought in the English armies of conquest. The most successful of these were in the 17^th century when the planters were mostly Protestant and Presbyterian.
•  Replacement of the Gaelic land ownership and management system, which was collectivist, quite egalitarian and clan-based, by the system of private property and inheritance by the oldest son.
• Replacement of the ancient Brehon legal system with English common law.
• The suppression of the Catholic religion and various Penal Laws that severely restricted the rights and powers of Catholics.
• Harsh military conquest and accompanying famine and disease that, at various points, had huge negative impact on the native population.
• ‘Transportation’ to other colonies and sentencing to bonded servitude of those who resisted and fought against the oppression or who were left vulnerable to exploitation as a result of the oppression.
• The elimination of separate political structures and combining of the two countries into one United Kingdom under the English parliament.
• The stereotyping and demeaning of the Irish people as savage, immoral, and less than fully human by English politicians and mass media.
• The suppression of the Irish language and culture, and 
• The oppression of poor peasants through a system of absentee landlords, harsh rents, and evictions. 

These were accompanied by high levels of emigration as people attempted to escape to find a better life for themselves in other countries, primarily England and the United States. Many of the core aspects of traditional native society were eliminated by the middle of the 17^th century.

This colonisation process had a number of effects: 

• Severe economic oppression and dispossession from the land with consequent effects on the health and well-being of the population.
• Severe political oppression where the bulk of the population were systematically excluded from power.
• Severe cultural oppression where the Irish language, Gaelic culture, and Catholic religion were harshly suppressed, and
• The internalisation of the oppression in a variety of forms that included low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness, divisiveness, attacking of leaders, and difficulty in valuing their own thinking. (These will be described in more detail further on).

Fleeing their own country to survive, Irish emigrants in the 19^th century sought refuge in countries, particularly the US, where people refused to accept them as equals and saw them as a separate ethnic group. Preceded by the institution of slavery, Irish immigrants in the US, for example, were offered a harsh deal: take the side of other European-heritage people in denying the humanity of native and African-heritage people and become ‘white’ or continue to be threatened, targeted, and excluded. In this process, people who were trying to escape their own oppression were induced to switch roles and participate in the oppression of other people.

Many of the divisions currently existing in Irish society have their roots in this process of colonisation and reflect the various heritages of coloniser and colonised. The eventual partition of the island into a Roman Catholic-dominated, independent Republic and a Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland incorporated into the United Kingdom further institutionalised the divisions between the different traditions.

The Great Famine

This period of mass starvation, disease, and emigration happened between 1845 and 1852. By the 1840s, close on two-fifths of the population were totally dependent on the potato and it was the major food-source of the rest. Between 1845 and 1849, the potato crop failed in three seasons out of four. The result was starvation and disease – dysentery, typhus, and cholera.

At least one million people died and a million more emigrated, causing the island’s population to fall by at least 25%. Some estimates suggest that the decrease may have been closer to 50%. The impact of this decrease in population has had huge effects in terms of language, religion, politics, economics, and other aspects of Irish life. Its impact on how Irish people think and feel has never been fully explored.

In thinking about the past, the challenge is to face the full harshness of Irish history. There may be a tendency to want to ‘skip over’ what happened rather than face the grief and anger about it. Underlying, unhealed feelings about the recent ‘Troubles’ may also be a reason why people do not face their feelings about their earlier history. (In a similar way, underlying, unhealed feelings about their earlier history may also be a reason why some people may not face their feelings about the ‘Troubles’). A key part of growth is to acknowledge and heal all of the feelings about recent and past history.

Genocide

Genocide is a key feature of the colonisation of indigenous peoples around the world. This can take the form of actual physical genocide and also cultural genocide. In the case of the former, at several points in Irish history the population was severely reduced, sometimes by half, through a combination of war, disease, and famine.

In the case of the Famine mentioned above, this was welcomed by Trevelyan, the senior British administrator in Ireland, as both a just retribution on the population and a benefit for the economy. He stated that ‘The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated … the real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.’ 

Apart from acts of physical genocide, there was an ongoing policy of cultural genocide with the aim of eliminating the language, religion, traditions, social system, legal system, and culture of the indigenous Irish.

While the Famine could be said to have operated as a form of genocide by neglect rather than deliberate intent, repeated experiences of war, famine, disease, along with cultural oppression have constituted genocide and have been internalised as such. It has been difficult for Irish people to look at these experiences in detail and the feelings of grief and anger attached to them remain to be faced fully and healed.

The effects of internalised genocide are reflected in high levels of violence, suicide, self-harm, mental health issues, substance abuse, and so on and these are commonly seen within many groups of indigenous people who have been subjected to genocide. They affect Irish people not only on the island of Ireland but also in the countries of the diaspora.

Partition, Civil War, and the Troubles

The war of independence (1919 – 1921), which followed the 1916 Rising, led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty with the British. As a result, the country was partitioned between The Irish Free State (26 Counties with a Roman Catholic majority) and Northern Ireland (6 Counties with a Protestant majority). The latter became a constituent part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

Partition institutionalised divisions between Ulster Protestants and rest of the island. It also created a large, mostly Catholic, minority in Northern Ireland that was disaffected from the UK and experienced severe, state-supported discrimination. Protestants in the Free State/Republic did not experience discrimination in the same way as Catholics in Northern Ireland. However, they found the Catholic ethos and the power of the Catholic Church within the State unwelcoming and restrictive and many left.

This Treaty caused a split among Irish nationalists and led to a civil war in the Free State. In the end, the pro-Treaty side won. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) never accepted partition and in subsequent years various armed campaigns took place, particularly within Northern Ireland or along the border with the Republic to bring about a united Ireland. The most violent of these and most costly in terms of human lives lost lasted from the late 1960s until the Good Friday /Belfast Agreement in 1998. 

Many of the divisions that resulted, particularly between Catholic and Protestant communities but also from the Civil War, became institutionalised in Irish society. The residue of painful emotion on all sides left by this history is still there and remains to be faced and healed.

Internalised Oppression

One of the most damaging effects of oppression of any kind is the way in which it gets internalised. The details of this vary from one oppressed group to another but the broad process is similar across all oppressed groups. 

Particularly for older generations, Irish internalised oppression is reflected in a variety of ways, including those listed below. However, the form of the internalised oppression may vary from one generation to another, from one country to another, and from one social identity to another. For younger people, in particular, internalised oppression may look different from that of older generations. This is one of the areas where more work is required to clarify such differences.

Low Self-Esteem

This shows up as feelings of inferiority, insignificance, stupidity, over-concern with how others see Irish people, feeling ashamed of other Irish people, devaluing the Irish language or culture, accepting stereotypes of Irish people, or other negative feelings. Sometimes, this is reflected in comments people make about themselves personally. At other times, the comments are about Irish people as a whole.

There is also a tendency for people to mistrust or not value their own thinking or the thinking of other Irish people. The thinking of outsiders sometimes carries more weight than the thinking of Irish people.

One particular form that internalised oppression can take for some people is a rigid pride in the endurance of oppression over many centuries rather than a relaxed pride in what is special about them as a people. In this way, Irish people may come to define themselves in relation to their oppression rather than their humanness.

Depending on the context, these feelings may lead Irish people in other countries either to keep a low profile and try to be invisible or alternatively adopt a high profile but with a rigid, perhaps romanticised, pride in being Irish.

Powerlessness and Hopelessness

People internalise that they are powerless to change anything. They feel too small, too weak, too vulnerable, too scared, or too inadequate to challenge or resist the status quo. Often, as well as feeling powerless they also feel hopeless about the possibility of succeeding in changing things. 

This may show up as apathy, the expectations of defeat or failure, resistance to taking any initiative, depression, attempts to appease dominant groups, or other reactions that leave people stuck. One particular way this can be seen is in the tendency for people to complain about what’s wrong without ever doing anything constructive to try and change things.

For individual Irish people, the seeds of powerlessness lie in the historical experience of being colonised and subjected to harsh violence and domination. These historical defeats are reinforced by traumatic experiences in childhood, especially where violence has been used against them, and also by a surrounding culture of powerlessness and hopelessness as people grew up.

One effect of powerlessness that is relevant in an Irish context is seeing violence as the only way, or at least an essential element, of achieving change. In this sense, powerlessness can be seen to breed violence and this has lots of implications for how demands for change are handled.

Divisiveness

One of the effects of the internalised oppression is to divide people into opposing factions or cause them to see other Irish people as the enemy. Instead of uniting in the face of a common struggle, they end up blaming each other or fighting among themselves. This was captured by Irish playwright, Brendan Behan, when he said that the first item on the agenda was the split!

Religious divisions have been one significant form of this in Ireland but it operates along the lines of other oppressions also, for example, classism, racism, and sexism. Sometimes, the divisiveness has been actively reinforced from outside but even without any active outside intervention there is a pull for people to split because of the internalised oppression.

Attacking of Leaders

Anyone who steps up to take leadership or becomes visible as a leader risks being attacked by other Irish people. Possibly because of the low self-esteem, it can be difficult for people to believe in or support one of their own who goes against the stereotype that has been internalised and tries to bring about change. 

This dynamic is sometimes justified on the basis that the leader is incompetent or making mistakes. However, where we see a repeated pattern of leaders being attacked or ‘done in’, what we are looking at is a pattern of internalised oppression rather than an individual failing. Irish history provides many examples of this dynamic. The widespread use of social media platforms makes the spread of this pattern so much easier and also so much more destructive.

Survival Behaviour

Over time, people develop various survival strategies that, unfortunately, tend to leave the oppression intact. Such strategies include different types of addiction that either distract people from the oppression or leave them numb to its effects. Or, they include strategies that try to lessen the likelihood of being targeted by oppression such as appeasement behaviour or assimilation. And, they include finding ways to collude with or manipulate the system so as to ensure an individual’s survival or prosperity or perhaps the survival or prosperity of their immediate family, while leaving other people to suffer. 

One particular form of survival behaviour is seeking relief from oppression by finding other groups to oppress, for example, immigrants or Travellers. We saw above how this left people vulnerable to taking on a racist role when they emigrated to countries such as the United States. Like all forms of survival behaviour this, of course, leaves the broader oppression still in place.

One of the difficulties posed by internalised oppression is that the effects of this become identified with, and confuse people about, what it means to be Irish. So, for example, behaviours such as the abuse of alcohol or the ‘fighting Irish’ that people have seen as a characteristic of being Irish are actually a feature of internalised oppression and have nothing to do inherently with being Irish.

It is clear that change in an Irish context involves identifying the forms that internalised oppression takes within different age and other social groups and moving beyond those. It also involves facing the places where Irish people have taken on oppressor roles in relation to women, Travellers, Black and minority ethnic groups, LGBTQ+, or other social groups.

The Irish Language

Irish, as a spoken language of the people, was the majority language up to 1800 but became a minority language during the 19^th century. The primary education system introduced at that time prohibited the speaking of Irish and children were punished for speaking the language in school. The Famine in the middle of that century affected a disproportionate number of Irish speakers through death and emigration. During that century also, Irish place names were systematically anglicised with Irish language names being replaced by English names. 

Internalised oppression played a strong part in the decline of the language. Prominent political and church leaders, for example, saw the language as backward and advocated its replacement with English. These attitudes have persisted and, even among some native speakers, people have doubts about the value of the language or the importance of ensuring it remains central in the culture.

In Northern Ireland, Unionist-dominated governments withdrew any support for the language and viewed it as both inferior and unnecessary but also as a threat. Partly for this reason, the language issue became much more politicised there.

As with many indigenous peoples, an important element of change and development for Irish people is reclaiming the language.

Sexism and Male Domination

As is the case with other countries, Ireland is a society dominated by male priorities and perspectives. The merger of Church and State had a profound effect on women in both political and religious areas of their lives with little opportunity to escape the combined structural dominance. They are hugely under-represented in positions of power and influence and every day they experience sexism and male domination in many forms, including violence. The elimination of this inequality has to be a central element of progressive change and development.

LGBTQ+

Sexual activity is the excuse or ‘justification’ for the oppression, but oppressive attitudes towards LGBTQs start long before any sexual activity. Rigid gender rules of what boys or girls do and don’t do are used from an early age to channel everyone into a heterosexual norm. The punishment, social and physical, for not conforming can be severe. (It is notable, however that earlier Gaelic Ireland was quite tolerant and accepting of diverse sexualities).

The feelings that LGBTQ+ people have of not belonging, of being different, and of being bad cannot be overestimated. This is the case even if it is disguised by an exaggerated sense of superiority that some LGBTQ+ people may adopt as a defence against the oppression.

Irish LGBTQs struggle with the elements of internalised Irish oppression described above – low self-esteem, powerlessness, attacking leaders and so on – but as LGBTQ+ the social disapproval and discrimination from an early age can reinforce and duplicate this Irish internalised oppression. 

Since the 1990s, Ireland has changed dramatically – the situation for  LGBTQs has been transformed with dramatic changes to the law. 

In spite of these positive developments, overcoming the oppression of LGBTQ+ people is still a major challenge.

Classism

The history of Irish oppression can also be seen as a history of class oppression. The initial Norman conquest of Ireland and later English domination took place within the context of the feudal system. This gradually saw the imposition of that system in Ireland, replacing the native clan system.

During this period, a new ruling class of aristocrats, landlords, and a Protestant ascendancy dispossessed the native Irish and reduced them to an impoverished class with very little power or resources. All of this was reinforced by various anti-Irish and anti-Catholic laws.

Some of the revolts and uprisings that took place were largely attempts by this ruling class and later a new middle class of merchants and smaller Catholic landowners to secure their place within the English establishment. They were concerned with reducing the inequalities between Ireland and Britain, increasing the political power of the ruling class in Ireland, and removing the economic barriers to Irish traders and landlords. They were not centrally about ending oppression for Irish people as a whole.

At a later stage, the struggle for independence and the ongoing struggle for a united Ireland prioritised the ending of English domination but often without a clear perspective on the class issues at the heart of the oppression. However, class issues did come to the fore at other times. Particularly in the 19^th century, with the Young Ireland movement and the Land War, and into the early 20^th century, class was central for many activists. Some even saw that the natural allies for Irish people were the English working class. During this period also, women’s issues were highlighted. Overall, however, the ending of class oppression, women’s oppression and other oppressions would come to be seen either as non-priority issues or issues to be addressed finally only when national liberation had first been achieved.

At this point, the economic system in both Northern Ireland and the Republic is based firmly within a capitalist model. Inequalities of class permeate society north and south and the inability of the economic system to resolve the climate emergency  underscores the necessity for change. As in the past, ending classism is still not a priority issue for most elected politicians and legislation aimed at eliminating inequality does not include class as one of the categories covered.

Ultimately the liberation of Irish people, not to mention the survival of humanity, must overcome the divisions that capitalism promotes, put an end to classism, and seek a more rational and humane economy. 

Ongoing Oppression

Gaining political independence for the 26 southern counties did not mean that Irish oppression was at an end. In the modern world, aspects of the historical oppression remain, such as the occurrence of anti-Irish prejudice experienced by Irish people in Great Britain and the disregard for the impact of British policies, such as Brexit, on Irish people, both in Northern Ireland and in the Republic.

While colonialism in its historical form may have been eliminated, it still continues in newer forms. The popular culture, values, language, and priorities of what some have called the major Anglosphere powers, particularly Great Britain and the United States, compete with and overwhelm native Irish culture, values, language, priorities, and independence. This external influence operates as a form of cultural and, especially, economic colonialism and is much more insidious than the historical, military colonialism. 

Anglosphere culture, values, and language come to be seen as superior, more significant, more interesting, more attractive, and more relevant than traditional Irish culture, values, and language. As this becomes internalised, it reinforces the historical internalised oppression that continues to be reflected in the culture.

The challenge of this new form of colonialism is shared with many other indigenous peoples and less powerful or poorer nations.

As we saw in the section on Who Are the Irish, as this identity becomes more diverse, Irish oppression also takes on new forms over and above the historical oppression. Identifying and addressing these new forms of oppression in addition to the forms of current oppression referred to in this section are part of the ongoing work of Irish liberation. 

Unity

A goal for many Irish people is to achieve a united Ireland and an end to partition, although many others, especially in Northern Ireland, oppose it. 

It is important to distinguish between political or structural unity and a unity of the people, although these are closely related. Given the deep historical divisions and the threat of violent resistance, it is unlikely that political or structural unity would work without sufficient unity of the people.  For this reason, building unity of the people is a key issue for Irish people. All policies and initiatives that are likely to affect Irish society significantly, whether coming from within the island or externally, need to be evaluated in terms of the extent to which they end historical divisions and injustices, and bring people closer together. 

Many indigenous societies that have been colonised now include the colonisers and their descendants with their own cultures. In a similar way, Irish society includes the descendants of colonisers along with more recent immigrants with a variety of cultural heritages, hopes and fears. The integration of all these strands of people on the island is a significant but achievable challenge.

Healing and Liberation

Oppression of any kind leaves a large and deep residue of hurt and painful emotion. Overcoming the effects of a colonial history requires the healing of that hurt and painful emotion and removing the divisions that ensued.

While it is possible and even enriching for Irish people to celebrate various aspects of their heritages (for example, Viking Dublin, Norman castles, and so on), it has been confusing for people to know how to incorporate the very large British impact. In particular, it has been difficult for people to separate what was destructive and oppressive about the impact of British culture from what had value and could be celebrated. 

Achieving this will require the healing of any painful feelings attached to Irish history and the elimination of any oppressive behaviour and institutions that reflect that history. As this is done, it will be possible to separate what was rational and valuable in Irish history from what was irrational and oppressive.

This work of healing and liberation has implications for each of the groups that make up Irish society. Each one has to examine its own history and the part their people have played. They have to name the hurts they endured, any oppressive role they played, and the residue of painful emotion they still struggle with. In this process, they get to heal the hurts they suffered, eliminate oppressive attitudes and behaviour, and build new non-oppressive relationships and structures. Facing how they have been oppressed and how they may have oppressed others and the resulting painful emotion goes hand in hand with, and works best when accompanied by, the reclaiming of pride in all that is special about Irish people.

Revised: 7 July 2023

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^[1] Internalised oppression refers to the damaging effects on people, individually and collectively, of their experience of ongoing oppression. This is a characteristic of all types of oppression although the specific forms it takes vary from one oppression to another.