A Mayo historian's perspective on Ireland's immigration issue

Guests of a Nation: "Understanding our history is a crucial tool for navigating the complexities of the present"

by. Dr. Michael M. O'Connor

We should know better, but we do not, and we do not because our educational system is programmed to tell a story that omits aspects of our history, the hierarchy, the patriarchy, or some other archy have determined we should not know about.

If our history could be packaged and placed in a sealed container, then perhaps it would matter little to anyone but historians.

The past, however, has a hold on us, whether we know it or not, or like it or not - the contents of the container leak into the present and disrupt the perfect order we have created around us.

This is why understanding our history is not just a matter of academic interest but a crucial tool for navigating the complexities of the present.

The past is tangible, but its telling and retelling are open to distortion. Those who know the complete story can choose elements to support their argument. Those who do not can draw on the grains of knowledge they have to support a personal belief, no matter how wrongly held.

Our society is becoming polarised; everything is presented to us as black or white, right or wrong. There is no middle ground, no room for persuasion or compromise.

It is, therefore, essential to reflect on how our personal beliefs, often unconsciously, shape the narratives we accept.

This introspection is crucial for a thoughtful understanding of history and how it can shape the present and inform the future.

Driving along the Cottage Road, a narrow one-and-a-half-car-wide boreen from French Hill to Breaghwy, one is constantly reminded of the importance of understanding our past. Like everywhere else in our county, this area is steeped in history.

At French Hill in 1798, French Grenadiers died in an engagement with the retreating English forces under the command of General Lake.

This event is rooted in our collective memory, and we commemorate it. In the following decades, the townlands along the Cottage Road were ravaged by famine, and the population thinned by emigration.

The Famine is a lesson in the brutal unravelling of society and the consequences for those caught up in it.

But we do not have a monopoly on being persecuted. In the past year, we have witnessed the near-total destruction of the enclave of Gaza and the slaughter of many thousands of men, women and children by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

In 2023, British Army deserter Mike Flanagan of Foxford was remembered for establishing the IDF.

Back to the Cottage Road and another historic battleground. In the townlands of Tully, Logaphuill, Barney, and Ballyshane, landlords Harriet Gardiner and Suzanna Pringle went to war with their tenantry and were ultimately defeated. This, again, features in our public discourse and memory.

Decades later, my granduncle John and his friend Walter Dogherty, members of the National Army, were accosted by a group of anti-Treaty men while they were cycling on the Cottage Road.

Happily, the men were all acquainted and parted company following some humorous banter.

This was Ireland in the early twentieth century - a complicated place where everything was not always black and white.

This minor event and many other events, big and small over past generations, were part of a broader national struggle for self-determination, a struggle that we must understand to appreciate the present.

Today, the Sports Centre at Breaffy House hosts international refugees and migrants fleeing conflict, persecution, and economic collapse.

Like the Irish in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they have been forced to flee their borders; like the Irish, they have not been welcomed by all. Céad Míle Fáilte literally means one hundred thousand welcomes, but in reality, it is often far less than that.

As an avid user of social media, it saddens me to see people whom I know and always thought of as decent post the most hateful comments about our international guests and those who support and assist them.

Very often, the remarks are prefaced with ‘I am not RACIST but …’. What follows the ‘BUT’ is racist, and no exculpatory language can detract from that. Others have filled their time and social media spaces slavishly and bot-like, reposting right-wing racist content.

There is no compassion for the men, women and children terrorised by the hate, the violent rioting and burnings.

Some weeks back, at Mass in a church some miles from Castlebar, the priest called on the large congregation to pray for those seeking protection in Ireland and that they may be safe within our borders.

I wondered, perhaps unfairly, what some of those in attendance thought.

Locating an IPAS centre at Breaffy is, of course, noteworthy from a historical perspective. In 1823, Colonel John Brown of Breaffy married Jamaican heiress Frances Jane Hawthorn. At the time, Browne served with the 92nd Regiment of Foot in Jamaica.

Frances was the daughter of Jamaican planter and slaveholder John Hawthorn.

At his Outen Plantation in St. Ann, Black Africans and their children were enslaved in perpetuity as unpaid labour.

It is unknown whether the dowry John Hawthorn paid Browne or other proceeds of slavery funded Breaffy House’s development and the Browne lifestyle. Comparative case studies would suggest it did.

Not far from Breaghwy, the early nineteenth-century Burke occupants of Ballynew House benefited from the proceeds of slavery remitted by a family member who had a plantation in Jamaica.

A sizeable number of Catholic, Church of Ireland, Irish and Anglo-Irish individuals and families across Ireland profited from historical slavery over many generations.

If nothing else, this link to one of the most heinous episodes in world history should inform how we respond to the needs of others from faraway places. This, however, is an aspect of our history that is not on the curriculum.

Despite the abundance of evidence that John Mitchel was a committed racist and a white supremacist who believed Black people were inferior, Mitchel is still held aloft by many. Mitchel called for the reintroduction of the Slave Trade and expressed a desire to have a plantation in Alabama ‘well stocked with N******.’

In William Hamilton Maxwell’s novel, The Adventures of Captain Blake (1850), the character tasked with hanging a 1798 rebel on the Green in Castlebar is a ‘negro’ named ‘Sambo’.

In a highly racist and fictitious account, the dark deed is left at the door of a Black man despite the reality that White men performed the hanging in question.

In The Last Speech and Dying Words of Martin McLoughlin (1798), the author recounts the rape of his wife by ‘A West Indian Negro’ who served with the French in their campaign from Kilcummin to Ballinamuck. Some suggest McLoughlin’s account was anti-French propaganda.

Castlebar prison records evidence the rape of a woman by a white Irish rebel. Hardly a day goes by when someone does not falsely attribute an act of rape or violence against a woman to an immigrant.

The reality of the daily assaults and rapes perpetrated by White Irish men against women and children is ignored.

‘Not Irish,’ ‘Not One of Us,’ and ‘Not Our Own’ have become the catchphrases of those who seek to portray the Irish as a homogenous people.

But we have never been that. We are a blend of many races and cultures that have come and gone over millennia. This process of arrival and assimilation will continue.

Those who came before were assimilated and, we are told, became more Irish than the Irish themselves. There is no master race. Irishness is a state of mind.

It cannot be reduced to a genetic formula, a passport or a rubber stamp that says ‘citizen.’ Recently, Boris Johnson revealed that President Joe Biden allegedly told him he was not really Irish.

Ireland has social problems, and so does every other country. Our government has not always got it right, and future governments of whatever colour will continue to make mistakes.

In recent decades, however, we have achieved a lot. Since 2008, we have suffered an economic collapse and recovered. We have come through Brexit when many said we would not.

We have endured and recovered from a catastrophic pandemic. Whether we like it or not, we have been ‘given’ the Apple money.

For those who are unhappy, our democracy provides a remedy through the election process.

If those who wantonly destroy property, attack members of An Garda Síochána, threaten our elected representatives and preoccupy themselves with peddling hate are not checked, they will destroy the fabric of our hard-won democracy.

The freedom of speech they rely on to attack others will take us to a place where many of the freedoms we take for granted are undermined.

(Dr. Michael M. O'Connor, Murrisk, Westport, is a widely-published historian).