Maurice J Casey’s article on immigration in Ireland recounts his experience of multiracial Ireland as well as examples of people of colour – Paul Robeson and others – reaching back to before the foundation of the Irish Free State (Who are ‘the Irish’? History shows we’ve been a mixed bunch for centuries, 25 September). But the article did not recognise the long tradition of racism from within the broad church of Irish nationalism.
From Sinn Féin and the Young Ireland luminaries Arthur Griffith and John Mitchel to the far-right Blueshirts of Eoin O’Duffy, nationalism in Ireland has always had the romantic and mythic appeal to pure Celtic origins. Despite the integration of both Vikings and Norman English into the Irish gene pool, for some who fly the Irish flag, Irishness is a genetic, rather than a civic or social, definition that encompasses all those who live in Ireland.
