Beautiful Poem: "You Don't Get To Be Racist And Irish"

Richard Mellor

When I was a teenager I worked with Irish immigrants laying sewer systems in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. I worked on building sites with them in what was called "The Lump". I tell my friends here that they were like our (California) Mexicans. This was the 1960's. Ireland was just beginning to exit to some extent the centuries old grip that British colonialism had on the country and its economy. Ireland was England and then Britain's first colony. Many of the guys I worked with were illiterate practically, they were from villages they had never left before and they were brought, over some of them, by a ruthless Irish contractor named Murphy. Ireland was a backward country unable to develop due to British colonial practices.

The friend that sent me this talks of the trauma that this did to the Irish psyche, how they saw themselves, the drink and other cultural damage that a colonial power visits on the colonised. Another friend, a black woman from Kentucky tells me of the same traumatic affect centuries of slavery and a complete marginalisation form the norms of society has had on black Americans especially the children

The Irish did so much of the construction and building work in the country that they wrote songs and poems about it. "Building up and Tearing England Down" was one of them if I recall. There were signs in boarding house windows before the Race Relations Act, "No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs." There is a great song called Master Mcgrath about an Irish greyhound sent to England to challenge England's champion. The Irish were described in some British bourgeois magazines as the "Savage" race, "White Chimpanzees" and on other occasions as the "Englishman's Ni#&er" and it was said that the Irish got a breather when people from the other colonies that were a different color and religion started coming over.

When I left London one in six or so were of Irish descent. Many of my ancestors came from there looking for work as they did here in the US. There is a reason the population of the country is lower than it was before the great hunger (there was no famine in the real sense as food was being exported.)

Today it is in the EU and has many different people in it from other countries, mostly asylum seekers and refugees. But as always, there are always those that feel threatened by others and respond to the bourgeois trap of nationalism. The travellers, an ethnic minority recently granted that status are discriminated against an Irish friend told Facts For Working People on our weekly Zoom meetings today. She said she was at a rally in Galway in support of the protests against the murder of black Americans and against racism and she saw a couple people with tee shirts that said, "More Blacks, More Irish More Dogs." remembering the famous posters in the windows of boarding houses. 

Many Irish friends have told me how ashamed and embarrassed they are that there are so many people in the US body politic and throughout society who hold racist, intolerant and hateful views.
Thanks to Saoirse for sending the poem. It was first published here.

There are hundreds of thousands in the streets of the United States today standing with black America in their struggle against racism and police murders of their people, especially black males. It is a wonderful site.

Here are the words to this lovely poem:

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

You’re not entitled to sing songs

of heroes and martyrs

mothers and fathers who cried

as they starved in a famine

Or of brave hearted

soft spoken

poets and artists

lined up in a yard

blindfolded and bound

Waiting for Godot

and point blank to sound

We emigrated

We immigrated

We took refuge

So cannot refuse

When it’s our time

To return the favour

Land stolen

Spirits broken

Bodies crushed and swollen

unholy tokens of Christ, Nailed to a tree

(That) You hang around your neck

Like a noose of the free

Our colour pasty

Our accents thick

Hands like shovels

from mortar and bricklaying

foundation of cities

you now stand upon

Our suffering seeps from every stone

your opportunities arise from

Outstanding on the shoulders

of our forefathers and foremother’s

who bore your mother’s mother

Our music is for the righteous

Our joys have been earned

Well deserved and serve

to remind us to remember

More Blacks

More Dogs

More Irish.

Still labelled leprechauns, Micks, Paddy’s, louts

we’re shouting to tell you

our land, our laws

are progressively out there

We’re in a chrysalis

state of emerging into a new

and more beautiful Eire/era

40 Shades Better

Unanimous in our rainbow vote

we’ve found our stereotypical pot of gold

and my God it’s good.

So join us.. 'cause

You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish