Should I Hate the English Now?
This is my dissertation that I submitted for my BA Psychosocial Studies degree at Birkbeck, University of London in June 2019. I have not made any changes from the original submission other than omitting the appendices because I don’t want to replace the oral element of the original piece. This is therefore imperfect, very long (just over an hour with the audio — 39 minutes without), very personal and unreservedly subjective.
Acknowledgements
Bryony Evans and Claire Murray for chats and feedback;
Dr Gail Lewis, Dr Yasmeen Narayan, Dr Margarita Palacios and Sharon Tugwell for helping me develop my voice.
Dr Brendan McGeever for encouraging me to express what I’ve learned about myself.
Abstract
This is a psychosocial autoethnographic account researching the effects of Brexit on Northern Irish subjectivity and the expression of politically motivated anger.
Following the Brexit referendum, I noticed a change in my attitude towards British politics, and the position of Northern Ireland and Northern Irish people in British culture. Encountering a lack of awareness of Northern Irish issues and a disavowal of Britain’s role in the ‘Troubles’ and its colonial relationship lead to increasing feelings of anger. This coincided with what I was learning on my psychosocial studies degree, and I was aware that my social media posts were influenced by postcolonial discourses and my reflexive lived experience.
This study attempts to capture the lived experience of a Northern Irish subject living in London through Brexit, the impact on their subjectivity and an attempt to use their voice as a productive use of politically motivated anger. Using autoethnography as a methodology, the subjective journey is presented through photographs, social media posts, extracts from an oral journal and vocal narration. Readers will listen to me reading the dissertation to further enhance the subjective experience and create a sense of reciprocity and a containment for the feelings they will hear me express.
Instructions
My dissertation is both written and oral. I will read it to you (in-text citations will not be read aloud).
When you are ready, click the link below.
Thank you.
Let’s begin…
Introduction
‘…what kills you is the ignorance; what grinds you down is how much they don’t know about the past and, if they do know, how little they care. It’s a strange and maddening thing to discover about the people who shaped your country’s fate and who are poised to do so again.’
(Nolan, 2018)
In October 2018 I read an article by Megan Nolan called ‘I Didn’t Hate the English — Until Now’ (ibid.), and the idea for my dissertation began. It was that strange experience of someone expressing exactly how you have been feeling but did not have the words. I didn’t ‘hate’ the English, but I too had become aware of a change in my subjective experience, noting feelings of anger when encountering the occlusion of knowledge about Northern Ireland following Brexit. I expressed these feelings of anger via social media, beginning with the results of the Brexit referendum, but it was after the results of the 2017 general election that I began to post regularly, because of an increasing sense of the lack of awareness of Northern Ireland in British politics that seemed to be resurfacing as a result of Brexit.
I noticed a change not just in the emotional tone of my social media output, but also in the language used. I could see that my posts were being informed by my psychosocial studies degree, by what I had learned in researching Britain and Ireland’s colonial relationship, and the impact of colonisation on the psychic space of the colonised subject. I decided to use this change in attitude to develop an autoethnography that would attempt to capture a sense of how Brexit was not just affecting Northern Ireland, but how it might be affecting Northern Irish identity. I felt my political engagement and my learning on my psychosocial studies degree combined with the colonial history between Britain and Northern Ireland was affecting my lived experience and subjectivity.
My research questions are:
1- What is the psychosocial experience of being a Northern Irish subject living in England through Brexit?
2- How can I use my voice to address what makes me angry about English attitudes towards the Irish and Northern Irish that have emerged through ‘Brexit?’
My main areas of research would be Brexit, Britain and Ireland’s colonial relationship, anger and hatred, and the voice. I wanted this dissertation to be a reflection of my experience and I wanted it to be expressed in my own voice. When researching David Lloyd’s work on the association between the Irish and orality, and the idea of an oral space (2011), I decided that I could best represent my subjective voice by using my physical voice. I would record the dissertation and use reflexive recordings as my research data along with content I posted on social media. I would use these as snapshots to form the foundation of my autoethnography; a series of mini chapters that would show my journey in coming to understand my psychosocial experience of being Northern Irish and the experience of expressing politically motivated anger.
Literature Review
British citizenship emerged in the political context of the move from the Empire, to the commonwealth, to EU membership. It was predicated on making some citizens into immigrants in a racialised hierarchy that links race with British citizenship on all levels (Bhambra, 2017). The Brexit Leave campaign reignited a dormant sense of Englishness. It was an imperial understanding of Britishness that was threatened by migration and the ‘internal others’ living in Britain; the racialised minorities and settled migrants that Englishness defined itself against (Virdee & McGeever, 2018). Brexit brought together a series of conflicting ideas. These include imperial longing and an insular island mentality which would separate Britain from a global world and the threat of migration and its internal others (ibid.) A nationalism that is simultaneously imperialist and anti-imperialist; both superior to other nations but oppressed by the EU (O’Toole, 2018). This longing for Empire 2.0 may be the culmination of post-colonial melancholia; an attempt to rectify the trauma caused by the end of empire, while also disavowing Britain’s colonial past (Gilroy, 2004). This ‘imperial amnesia’ is constituted by a further contradiction in which the horrors of Britain’s colonial past must remain there, while the greatness of the empire continues to define Britain’s success (Gopal, 2016). A key part of anti-Irishness is fuelled by Britain’s disavowal of its role in Northern Ireland (Curtis, 1984), (Hickman M. , 1995), (McVeigh, 2002), (Kapur & Campbell, 2004), (Gilligan, 2017). Fenton (2018) and de Mars et al (2018) outline how Brexit demonstrated a lack of consideration towards Northern Ireland in either the Leave or Remain campaigns. This could affect not only the ability to implement Brexit but could have a detrimental impact on the Good Friday Agreement. This in turn affects many aspects of Northern Ireland including the border, Anglo-Irish relations, recourse to justice and Northern Irish identity. One example of the impact on identity can be seen in the court battles that Emma Da Souza is engaging in with the British Home Office. She claims that the right for Northern Irish citizens to be Irish, British or both is being revoked by Britain, who will impose British citizenship on Northern Irish citizens following Brexit (Donnan, 2019).
In looking at Northern Irish identity I returned to research I did during my psychosocial studies degree which transformed my own sense of Irishness. McVeigh (2002) and Curtis (1984) argue that anti-Irishness is a core part of British culture, with phrases like ‘taking the mick’ and ‘paddywagon’ (Mick and Paddy being derogatory terms for the Irish) becoming part of the English language. Anti-Irishness can be traced back to the Norman invasion. However the racialisation of the Irish in nineteenth century Britain constituted the Irish as racially inferior to the British and other white Europeans through the racist pseudo-sciences of the time (Curtis, 1984), (Gibbons, 2004) (Virdee, 2014). Racist discourse was a tool of British colonial rule, it regulated Britain’s ‘internal enemies’ such as the Irish and justified colonial governance by claiming they were incapable of self-governance (Stoler, 2000). The ‘simianisation’ of the Irish figure in nineteenth century cartoons physically othered the Irish body and associated them with anti-African racism so that their whiteness was made invisible (McVeigh, 2002). Racism draws on ‘reservoirs of stereotypes and projections’ but is also constantly changing and must be situated in the ‘historical moment in which it appears’ to understand its dynamics (ibid., 2002, pp. 150–151). From the nineteenth to the twentieth century the Irish were consistently presented as ‘stupid, drunk, cunning, lazy, sectarian and violent’ so the British could be constitutively defined as ‘persevering, hard-working, tolerant, rational and peaceful.’ (Hickman M. , 1995, pp. 215–216). Anti-Irishness in Britain was further heightened when connected with Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ (Hickman & Walter, 1997).
At this time the Irish were again depicted in British newspaper cartoons as bestial and sub-human (Curtis, 1984). The British education system in the 1970s characterized Britain as the problem solvers and the Irish as the problem ‘rooted in an irrationality exemplified in the persistence of sectarian religious hatred and a physical force tradition’ (Hickman M. , 1995, p. 213). McVeigh and Gilligan argue that while sectarianism may or may not be considered a racism, it should not be seen as just a religious phenomenon, arguing it is also about ethnicity and is linked to the older anti-Irish racisms (2002). The stereotype of the Irish being inherently violent was projected onto all people in Northern Ireland, reducing it to ‘Irish tribalism’ (Hickman M. , 1995, p. 213). While there was an overlap between anti-Catholicism and anti-Irishness in Britain, Curtis (1984) and McVeigh (2002) argue that Irish Protestants can experience anti-Irishness. The UK Government presented itself as a neutral arbiter in a conflict that was located in Northern Ireland which it was forced to police while disavowing responsibility. Furthermore, those that questioned UK policy were vilified as terrorist supporters and sympathisers (Gilligan, 2017). The Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1974 (PTA) was created in response to the conflict. Hillyard (1993) and Hickman (1995) argue that the PTA turned the Irish in Britain into a suspect community and the British public were encouraged to suspect Irish people of being terrorists and terrorist supporters. It created a new form of criminal law through which the Irish lost rights by being targeted while traveling, extensive surveillance, and stop and search techniques (Hillyard, 1993). It created a climate of fear that affected the Irish psyche as McVeigh explains in his own experience of being questioned under the PTA, in which he forgot that he had done nothing wrong (2002).
As a result, many Irish in Britain denied their identity (Curtis, 1984). While the Irish can assimilate in Britain through being white in a white culture, McVeigh (2002) argues that assimilation for the Irish in Britain is not easy to reconcile internally. The identity of the Irish migrant in Britain is socially constructed in the context of the anti-Irishness in British culture and a coloniser/colonised relationship (Hickman M. , 1995). Kelly Oliver (2004) theorises this as the ‘colonisation of psychic space’; the psychoanalytic effect of racialisation on subjective agency. Oliver develops Frantz Fanon’s work to discuss how the inferiority projected onto the colonised subject is internalized and the colonised subject begins to see him/herself as the coloniser does. In effect it naturalises the oppression in the mind. The subject sees themselves negatively, alienating them from their own agency and turning the hatred on themselves (Fanon, 1986) (Oliver, 2004). Virdee says that Irish migrants who came to Britain in the early twentieth century carried the collective memory of colonisation and oppression and became the racialised outsider in Britain. This led to a detachment from dominant political ideologies, allowing a unique perspective and ‘politicized consciousness’ (2014, p. 24). Over time the British category of belonging stretched to integrate the Irish at the expense of other minority groups, but this project will look at the current Irish political consciousness post Brexit, which for me is one of anger.
Irish anger is an offence to British ‘propriety and the emerging norms of a well-regulated civil society’ (Lloyd, 2011, p. 7). Kapur and Campbell (2004) use Melanie Klein’s object relations theory to look at anger and hatred in Northern Irish society. They argue that ‘Ulster Rage’ exists both culturally and on a subjective level as it is a society collectively stuck in Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position. In this position the individual is unable to view objects ambivalently, instead projecting hatred and persecutory fears onto others (Klein, 1986). Frosh (2011) states that hatred is part of the human psyche; and again, using a Kleinian framework, argues that is it present from infancy and a constitutional part of human consciousness (Klein, 1975). Also in the object relations tradition, D.W. Winnicott’s work suggests that we can work through this hate by acknowledging the feeling and expressing it to those it is directed at so they know how you feel (1949). Hate can then make a positive change when used politically to diminish suffering, rather than justify acts of violence (Butler, 2004). While acknowledging that hatred can cause destruction, Lorde (1996) writes of the productive use of anger for black women in tackling racism. Anger can provide insight about the self, and when ‘expressed and translated into the action of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification’ (p. 175). The expression of hatred and anger in Northern Ireland lacks containment (Kapur & Campbell, 2004). This is what Bion described as the means by which an infant’s anger towards the mother is transformed through their calm and soothing response, known as ‘maternal reverie’ (1984) (Winnicott, 1949). Kapur and Campbell (2004) connect the lack of containment for Northern Irish subjectivity to the inability of the state to contain hatred and anger through the governing failures of the devolved government and the British government’s disavowal of its role in the conflict.
Caverero believes a subject can only be understood through their embodied voice as it discloses ‘a vocal ontology of uniqueness’ (2005, p. 173). It is through vocalised speech that the unconscious is brought to the surface in a way that the rules of writing cannot access (Ong, 2002). David Lloyd suggests that rather than physical markers it is the orality of the Irish that marks their ‘racial difference’ (2011, p. 2). Irish accents were used to identify Irishness for derision (Curtis, 1984), and for identifying potential terrorists under the PTA (Hickman M. , 1995), (Hillyard, 1993). Lloyd suggests that the inconsistent nature of the Irish character, one that is non-fixed, fluid and fluctuating is summed up best by the mouth; a site of introjection and projection, activity and passivity. It makes it ‘the privileged corporeal signifier of Irish racial and cultural difference’ (2011, p. 3). Within its colonial relationship with Britain, the orality of the Irish, with its ‘emotional oscillations’ becomes a marker not just for derision but the ‘oral space’ created by the Irish voice creates a form of resistance to the ‘imposition of a homogenising colonial culture’ (Lloyd, 2011, p. 4). The angry Irish voice can be a threat to British society, with some banned from broadcast (Curtis, 1996). Using it can perhaps be an act of resistance. Oliver and Fanon argue that because power is fluid, so too is subjectivity and agency and through ‘disalienation’ the hatred that was turned inwards can be used as a form of resistance through using the tool of the coloniser (Fanon, 1986) (Oliver, 2004).
I will now take forward the following concepts I’ve accumulated from my research: how we might think of Irish anger as a result of Britain and Ireland’s colonial relationship, how Brexit has reignited both the colonial relationship and anger, and what it means for a Northern Irish subject to vocalise the experience as an act of resistance and to gain containment.
Methodology
Why Autoethnography?
Autoethnography allows a reflexive engagement with my research. My dissertation is personal and any attempt at objectivity is a fiction, as it would always be a partial perspective (Lapadat, 2017). I chose to embrace my subjective experience and use my evolving positionality and affective response to Brexit as a tool and method of analysis. Autoethnography uses personal experience as primary data to expand the understanding of a social or cultural phenomenon using a variety of writing products. It differs from a biography in that it is linked to a cultural phenomenon and from journalism in that it is an ethnographic study. It is an attempt to transcend ‘mere narration of self to engage in cultural analysis and interpretation’ (Chang, 2013, p. 43).
Jones, Adams and Ellis (2016) outline ways of conceptualizing autoethnography that I use as guidelines. Autoethnography should:
· comment on and critiques culture;
· contribute to existing research;
· embrace purposeful vulnerability; and
· create reciprocal relationships with audiences to compel a response. (p. 22).
My dissertation comments on and critiques culture and contributes to existing research by providing an insight into the effect of Brexit on the Northern Irish subject. I have used my recorded voice throughout to use my vulnerability purposefully. While writing may show my thought process it is only through the uniqueness of the embodied voice that the subject can be heard (Caverero, 2005). It is also through the use of my voice that I will aim to create my own ‘oral space’ (Lloyd, 2011). By playing the recording through speakers my voice is now taking up oral space in a room, in Britain. By using my voice to discuss my feelings of anger I am attempting to create the conditions of disalienation discussed by Fanon (1986) and Oliver (2004). I aim to resist the colonisation of my psychic space by acknowledging the construction of my identity, by reforming it through the vocalization of anger which historically has been used as a means of undermining Irish voices, rights and identity. A reciprocal relationship is created by using my voice. This is because the voice is always used in relation to an ear, it is spoken and the ear receives; also the ear recognizes the unique subjectivity of a voice, even if it is a voice that it has not heard before (Caverero, 2005).
Autoethnography breaks socio-political silences (Jones, Adams, & Ellis, 2016). The Irish subject is unable to process anger and hatred due to the lack of containment at the level of the state (Kapur & Campbell, 2004). I am using my voice to express feelings of anger knowing that the two people marking my work will not only hear it, they will have to respond. The feedback on my dissertation will relate to the expressions of my feelings of anger. I am creating an oral space that will receive feedback in an attempt to construct a containment for my feelings. I also wish to address the knowledge gap of Northern Ireland in psychosocial studies. My degree has transformed my cultural identity by viewing my personal and cultural history through a psychosocial lens, however Northern Ireland was not often included when looking at British cultural identity. This occlusion might be reflective of a wider pattern in British academic studies about the UK in which the default position is to omit Northern Ireland or, if included, to treat is as a place apart rather than a region of the UK (Gilligan, 2017). My dissertation is a personal intervention to this occlusion by inserting a psychosocial study of Northern Irish subjectivity into the degree.
Ethics
Jones et al argue that autoethnography is an ethical research practice as it humanizes the research process making it more inclusive (2016). Autoethnography also combats ethical considerations in ethnographic studies as it avoids the misrepresentation of research subjects and removes the power imbalance that exists between researcher and participant (Lapadat, 2017). Due to ethical limitations placed on participant vulnerability, autoethnography is able to offer first person perspectives and insights into areas that were previously hidden (ibid). Therefore, I argue that the subjective experience of feeling and expressing anger requires a vulnerability best accomplished with autoethnography. That said, the ethical considerations that I feel need addressing for my project are relational ethics and researcher vulnerability.
Relational Ethics
As I am both the researcher and the participant, I will not be anonymous. I can consent to the use of my own data, but it would be difficult to protect the anonymity of those mentioned in my story or who can be easily identified by association. I must balance the right to narrate my own life with other people’s right to privacy (Couser, 2004). Where possible I will obtain consent before including anyone in my story who might be identifiable or implicated in my research.
Researcher Vulnerability
The power of a personal narrative and the strength of the vulnerable position also leaves the researcher open to scrutiny by the audience (Lapadat, 2017). As I know the dissertation will only be engaged with by two people, I am aware of the level of scrutiny that I leave myself open to. The process of creating an autoethnography can stir up strong emotions and unresolved issues for the researcher (Denshire, 2014), (Poulos, 2013) (Rambo, 2013). The purpose of my dissertation is to explore the strong emotion of anger, but I needed to be mindful of the emotional labour involved. I spoke to my supervisor and personal tutor and made myself aware of the university student counselling services. Lapadat suggests that a benefit of the autoethnographic process is that it can be a therapeutic process (2017). As I am constructing a containment for my feelings, the possibility of a cathartic process is both an ethical consideration and an area of investigation in the research
Process
My autoethnography was created using snapshots and the journey metaphor (Muncey, 2010). Snapshots are physical evidence of the past that stimulate the researcher’s memory to connect the present with the past (Chang, 2013). Mine are personal photographs and social media posts from 2016 to 2019 in which I expressed feelings of anger in an engagement with British politics or Brexit. I think of these social media posts as my research journal; the full collection can be found in Appendix 1 (not included).
My other snapshots are a series of audio recordings or an ‘oral journal’ made between February and April 2019. I recorded myself when I was having an emotional response to news items, current events or my research. I turned these recordings into research data by transcribing them in a form of poetry. For Laurel Richardson, transcribing the voice as poetry reflects speech patterns and captures voice, diction and tone. It recreates an embodied speech and is ‘a historically situated exemplar of sensemaking (Richardson, 1997, p. 142). I took each pause in my speech to create a line break. The full transcriptions can be found in Appendix 2 (not included).
With the journey metaphor method in mind I used my social media posts (research journal) and oral journal (data) as points on the map of my journey. I used reflexivity as my guiding compass in conjunction with my academic research to get an ‘understanding of the territory but not hidebound by expectations or predictability’ (Muncey, 2010, p. 63).
I first printed my social media posts and transcriptions and made reflective notes on what I had been writing and saying, and then drew connections with the research contained in my literature review; Irish anger, Britain and Ireland’s colonial relationship, Brexit and the use of my voice.
Having reviewed my notes I created mini chapters that showed my journey. I illustrated what my thoughts on my cultural identity and political anger were before my degree followed by how I reacted to Brexit and the 2017 general election; I did mini chapters on these using photographs, social media posts and oral journal extracts. My active research period was February to May 2019. I placed social media posts and oral journal extracts in chronological order to get an overview of my reflective experience during this time, particularly centred around significant current events and stages of my research; and created more mini chapters. I moved some of the oral journal clips out of sequence where I felt they could support other stages of the autoethnography (the oral journal transcripts are italicised).
When recording the autoethnography I allowed myself to move away from what was written in front of me and record how I was feeling in order to capture the felt experience of creating my oral space and illustrate a live reflexivity of the process. Initially I was going to transcribe these intersections, however on reflection I decided that I would not so that a part of the dissertation could only be heard and not read. This is for three reasons. Firstly, it stops the reader from opting out of the oral recording and muting the potential of the oral space. Secondly, it increases the marker’s aural engagement with the dissertation as they will not know what I will say next. Thirdly, my oral space attempts to resist academic restrictions by transgressing the limiting nature of the written word (Lloyd, 2011), and limitations of an academic word count.
These moments are disruptions and I telegraph one is coming up by typing ‘DISRUPTION’.
My Autoethnography
Chapter 1: Before
I have disavowed
I always have a little bit, like, where I was from, like I didn’t want to kind of be from there, I didn’t want to grow up
I hated
The sort of violence and
And what I saw as this hate amongst people, like I, I
Because I was quite judgemental about it and quite negative, and I moved here
To get away from that, but…
It, I mean it was…
Also, I was constructed in it and I realise that.
(Sunday 03 February 21:35)
I feel like being Northern Irish gave me an understanding of hate. I was born a Catholic, in West Belfast, in 1982; a ‘Troubles baby’. In a society divided by hatred. Before knowing what hate was, I was already potentially hated by ‘the other half’ because of where I was born and who I was born to, I had the potential to hate them for the same reason. Born in hate. Yet I don’t remember hating. The society I grew up in was normalised, it was all I knew.
For my Creative Archives module, I listed a series of Northern Irish memories that I wanted to archive, to share. I revisit them here.
I’m 5 and I see a man explode on my street — the bomb in his pocket went off early — he intended to blow up the British Army barracks on my street.
An act of violence witnessed, but unremembered.
I can’t access it, but it must be in there somewhere.
I remember him walking past the car. Then nothing.
I wouldn’t sleep in a room by myself — I was afraid of the dark — I still can’t watch anything that involves the loss of limbs or amputations.
Finbar McKenna was an IRA volunteer, he died 2 May 1987 on Crocus St, West Belfast.
I visit the street in April 2019, he has a plaque.
I’m 8 years old.
Watching a British soldier kick my dog.
Hot tears. I’m angry. I’m scared.
Soldiers were a part of life. Crouched in your garden. Behind gateposts. On the streets while we played. A normal sight.
I hated that soldier, I hated him.
I’m 17 — in London with a group of English teenagers; new friends.
I’m told that there are no bins in Kings Cross because my lot kept blowing London up.
I feel shame. They see something in me that I don’t, but it overpowers me. It’s painful and uncomfortable. I feel helpless.
At the time I would’ve described it as being put in my place.
Today I would describe it as being hailed.
They made up their minds about me and for me because of where I was from.
I can’t even remember who said it, but the experience remains. It was the first time I felt Irish, and it didn’t feel good. Their view of me took over the view I had of myself.
After this I try to assimilate, to fit in.
DISRUPTION
I tell these stories not because I am special, but because they are typical of Northern Irish stories and atypical of British stories. I am British and Irish, I grew up in Ireland and Britain, but my experience is Irish as it does not fit in the British story.
Chapter 2: Referendum Reaction
I voted Remain. I was devastated by the results. I stayed up with friends, staring at the TV in disbelief. Somewhat encouraged by Northern Ireland, and specifically West Belfast voting for Remain.
The next day I felt numb, but I could see that this was going to have an impact on my identity as well as my way of life.
Being Irish meant being different again because although the country I lived in was leaving the EU, I would retain my EU status as an Irish citizen. It was protected in the Good Friday Agreement.
I was different, but it was a relief.
Chapter 3: General Election: Generated Anger
I posted this following the 2017 General Election:
DISRUPTION
My dissertation began here; a display of consciousness rising and the first time I used my voice to express anger generated by a psychosocial understanding of myself and the world around me.
And I guess I can see then, then that, it’s like, that what I picked up on that,
After the General election, like that’s
That
The ease with which
The Iri-Northern Irish
Became terrorists again, like it just sits in this sort of arsenal
This sort of, just like acceptable
Association
In the British imaginary that can just be pulled out like that, like with such ease,
Such ease, like it hasn’t gone away.
(Wednesday 17 April 23:02)
I’d watched the Tory election campaign call Jeremy Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser due to his association with Sinn Fein. This made me angry, but there was something familiar about it, some association between Northern Irish Catholics and terrorism that was a part of modern Britain and part of my first experience here. I was angry but not surprised.
When the DUP agreed a confidence and supply agreement with the Conservative party, left wing press and politicians started calling Theresa May a terrorist sympathiser:
My anger boiled; I was furious. Catholic, or Protestant, Unionist or Nationalist, Republican or Loyalist — if you were Northern Irish, you were Irish, and associated with terrorism.
Something shifted, I felt proper anger.
I saw prejudice, ignorance and occlusion in action.
I began to reframe.
Chapter 4: Should I?
I knew I wanted to use my dissertation to look at feelings of anger at Brexit. I initially considered looking at political discourses that made me angry. Then I read Megan Nolan’s article and something incredible happened…I realised I wasn’t alone (Nolan, 2018).
Another Irish person was discussing the phenomena of encountering English ignorance and prejudice reignited by the nationalism that fuelled Brexit.
It wasn’t just me. Something was happening to another Irish person living in London.
Did I hate the English?
Chapter 5: Research: Resurface
I started my oral journal in February. This is an excerpt from my first entry:
Like, that it’s a British problem, it’s part of
It’s part of their history
It’s part of their responsibility, like
They’re blind to it in a way that I just don’t have the privilege of being blind to it
…
Yeah, the ignorance of that is making me angry and that’s kind of why I want to do this dissertation, but it also scares me
Because I don’t want to be angry, I can see the
I don’t want to be resentful
I don’t want to get bitter
I don’t want to waste my energy ranting on social media, or
Ranting here, so, it is like
If I deny it, like it’s still there and I think that’s what’s wrong, like stuff has come up cos I’ve denied it
And so yeah, I want to know what I can do about it.
(Sunday 03 February 21:35)
This would become a major theme of my research. How can I use this anger productively when I feel uneasy about being angry? I remember that Lorde (1996) says it can give an insight to the self, but do I really want to look at myself in that way. The vulnerability that I was so excited to be using is actually quite painful.
I’m quick to blame, it is their fault, their history, their problem. Maybe as Brexit brought up a latent Englishness it has also brought up a latent Irishness in me. Maybe that hatred was in fact there, perhaps I pushed it away, denied in order to assimilate. In order to live here I had to disavow my hate.
Perhaps I no longer can.
Perhaps I am projecting hate and persecutory fears out of me and onto the British.
Am I split? Is it justified? Do I need containment?
Chapter 6: Bloody Sunday
On 14 March 2019 it was decided that only one British soldier would face charges over the Bloody Sunday killings.
It’s been really horrible actually, I think
Yeah, like one of the more difficult days
Sort of being aware
Of
How much
That day
and the, the legacy of it and the fuckin’ horrors that people have lived with, is sorta
Just sits within you, and how
It doesn’t
With people here, you know, which isn’t their fault,
But
Yeah, I was really heavy hearted to sit in work and have someone to be like “oh great they’re prosecuting one”, it’s like one?
You know
All those — people that were killed, like innocent civilians — and one soldier
Who is having full support of…
Having legal fees etc paid and MPs saying that it, you know, that
Soldiers shouldn’t live in fear of prosecution, it’s like they killed innocent civilians and then how quickly
People are like “Ah
The IRA or that they were IRA or that they were, you know”
And it’s
It’s really sad because it is just this sense, I can’t shake this sense that
It’s because, they, they were Irish victims.
(Thursday 14 March 22:23)
This would not be the most difficult day during my research period, but it was close. The innocent victims murdered on Bloody Sunday were of less value than the soldiers that killed them. They were worthless, worth less. Their murders continue to be justified because they were Irish Catholics, because there was an assumption of an association with the IRA. They were terrorists or terrorist sympathisers.
DISRUPTION
Bloody Sunday is in the cultural blood of every Northern Irish person. It’s how we see Britain. My degree might have taught me to look at Northern Ireland through a postcolonial lens, but I always knew that the British army murdered civilians.
This day it was confirmed they could murder with impunity and with the support of the state.
I felt so isolated. I found myself reaching out to other Irish people on social media. Speaking to those who also carried Bloody Sunday in their hearts.
Chapter 7: Am I British Now?
It’s the second of April 2019, I’m feeling quite restless and quite angry actually
Em
Yeah just reading reports that, uh,
The UK immigration office
Could
Impose, full British citizenship on the people of Northern Ireland
Taking away essentially an Irish
our right to call ourselves Irish and the right then to hold an EU status
as an Irish citizen,
um, which is protected under the Good Friday Agreement — that that could be taken away,
and
I’m angry
(Tuesday 2 April 2019 08:25)
My little Irish passport that I photographed after the referendum might not be the protector of my EU rights after all.
The Good Friday Agreement states that I can be Irish, or British, or both. This was not, it turns out, enshrined in UK law and therefore we are all British subjects. This is turn would not have mattered had Brexit not come up.
Brexit was threatening the rights of all Northern Irish people to call ourselves Irish. It felt like we were being made British. It felt like re-colonisation. I was angry.
I researched about Irish people’s assimilation in Britain, how during the Troubles many pretended they weren’t Irish. I had always had a slight feeling of difference internally, but I could live with it.
Not anymore.
I guess sort of what’s happening at the moment is that, or maybe around Brexit, is that there’s no
That assimilation’s been taken away, or that need to assimilate, or the desire to assimilate or the possibility of it, like
Because suddenly you’re confronted with, I feel, like you’re confronted with this sense of Britishness or Englishness or whatever that I feel like
I’m not a part of, that, I’m, I’m aware of Irishness and I don’t want to deny that anymore
(Friday 05 April 2019 12:20)
I felt like the cost of Brexit along with Britain’s disavowal of its colonial past with Northern Ireland would be the rights and lives of Northern Irish people. I felt more than ever that I needed to use my voice in any way I could, to share my feelings.
Chapter 8: Looking Back
I might have encountered some lingering anti-Irish prejudice when I first visited London, but I lived here following the IRA ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement. I moved here aged 19 on 10 September 2001. My early adult years in London were spent watching islamophobia turn Muslim people into terrorists.
A truly startling part of my research was around the Prevention of Terrorism Act, reading a report done by Liberty into the human rights violations against the Irish in Britain and how they were turned into a suspect community. An entire new section of British criminal law was created to deal with it. How people were encouraged to fear and suspect the Irish in their community, because they were a threat to Britain. How the Irish lived in fear of persecution. Is it a wonder some wanted to assimilate? Is it a wonder that there was hatred?
It’s like, it’s not
surprising, I guess,
That
Or it would be, it would be
Weird or
Foolish to assume that those
Prejudices would just lift.
You know, or, or maybe that if they did that was the power of the Good Friday Agreement, and that how much that,
You know, how important, that is
(Wednesday 17 April 2019 23:02)
What had been unsettling me during the general election started to make sense. By resurfacing the connection with Northern Ireland and terrorism there was an anger that was based on a knowledge of what had happened before. Or perhaps I could see what it meant be othered. I could see what it meant when you were labelled as a threat to Britain.
Northern Ireland had been ignored before, but the price for ignoring it and the Good Friday Agreement during Brexit was the possibility to now achieve Brexit. The island of Ireland is a threat to Britain, to Brexit, to Empire 2.0.
The border became a symbol of the divide between Britain and Ireland, Britain and Europe, being British, or Irish, or European. The problem with the island mentality of the Englishness brought to the surface through Brexit is the potential price paid by the part of the UK it disavows responsibility for.
For some Brexiteers it would be fine to reverse the clock, to drag Northern Ireland back because they did not have to live through those times.
DISRUPTION
Chapter 9: Lyra McKee
On Thursday 18 April 2019 Lyra McKee was shot and killed in Derry. The following tweets and recordings are from Friday 19 April 2019.
08.23
It’s, em
The Nineteenth of April, and
I’ve just woke up and reading stories about
A journalist that was shot in Derry last night and killed, and
I feel really shocked; I actually feel quite numb
I
I just
I, I can’t
Comprehend the fact that it might
It might, go back to
The way it was during the Troubles, which
I mean I was,
I was totally aware of; I mean I was
I don’t know, it’s just so shocking, that
It’s really shocking.
I think
Like no one wants, no-one in Northern,
Well, some people obviously
Do want some semblance of return or are still using violence in that way, but it’s just
I just,
Yeah, I don’t know
I’m going home tonight, I’m going back to Belfast, and
I’ll be at that rally tomorrow and I’ll
Yeah, I just,
I’m shocked, I’m in shock
I’m actually in shock, I don’t know what, I don’t really feel anything, but I thought I needed to speak because
It’s just so horrible, it’s so horrible.
08.36
It’s been twenty-one years
since the Good Friday Agreement, since the ceasefire, and the
It’s, again, it’s just
It’s just horrible and I guess
You know
That there is still this, obviously, a level of
Violence
Within people back home, and
I have to
I have to ask myself what I’m doing, and
And this, and it’s just this thing, like it’s
It doesn’t feel
Like arbitrarily asking about hatred and anger because
I can assume that hatred or anger
Fuelled the murder of that woman.
…
I guess what I’m saying is like this is
Is it healthy what I’m doing, even asking this, like should this be…
Should this be something that I’m doing given
Like, do you contribute to it by talking about anger and hate?
I don’t know.
08.44
08.48
This is
It’s just the reality that I
I think, I just completely
Forgotten about,
And I, I, I haven’t experienced this in adult-
I’m just reading about
She’s twenty-nine
So was a, a child
When the Good Friday Agreement
was signed, like
And said, yeah, she was one of the ceasefire babies, that just you know,
That group up in peace.
It’s so, it’s making me angry
And
It’s just that awfulness of the situation that, it just took so
Long
To mend, to take a step, to make that peace happen, and
That people could kill that woman
09.01
I just don’t know if I can read about
I can read English or British people
Hot, like hot takes on Northern Ireland today, or
How this can be used to politicise
Or for the politics of their own agenda, like I just don’t
Well…
I’ve — I’ve read it already, so it is happening, and I just don’t know whether I can
And should today
I know this is one of those things that
Like I said, like ethically, like being mindful of myself,
And this feels like one of those moments because it’s just
It’s a devastating loss of a life and for people that
Grew up in Northern Ireland it’s just
This dread — I feel a dread of a return to something that we, I thought was behind
Peace is a really fragile thing and so important
You know, the world that my…
I don’t want my niece
Who was born last week, or my nephews, to grow up in…
The same country I grew up in
I don’t want that.
12.27
I feel heavy
Numb, shocked
Angry, but just
It feels so senseless and so
Frightening
And I just don’t want to do this project today
And I’m a little behind and
Where I want to be and
I’m like, I’ve been doing so much research and it, I guess it’s just so
It’s so in me I guess, like so much of the past and then the reality’s hit today and..
I’m just
Kind of like, why am I doing this?
12.42
She was a writer
And she spoke personally about what she did
and what she went through, and
Her experience of growing up in
In Belfast, and
Yeah…
Maybe we should all do that
Maybe that is
What I’m trying to do
And there’s good in that.
It’s just so senseless.
13:25
13.37
You know what, I’m ang, I’m angry
That that
Woman
Was killed
I’m angry that Lyra McKee was killed, and it’s
It’s not
It’s angry at the whole
Situation
Not
Either the peripheral or bigger thing — the fact
You know
That she was in that position, that anyone’s in that position,
That any, that, that all of this violence exists, I’m angry over it.
You know, we hoped that that was behind us, and, and
A woman who like
Who used her voice
Who was a compassionate journalist
And LGBT
Human being
That grew up with
You know, didn’t grow up in a peaceful, -
Sorry, grew up in the peace process,
Didn’t grow up active in the troubles, but dealt with the
Still the, the
Ramifications of living there
And the trauma of it, which
I think we all just have, like, I
I feel
Absolutely numb
And it’s going to
It’s passing into anger, but I
It some, it’s
It’s anger and it’s disbelief and it’s unfairness that
That we’ve had to grow up in that society
That everyone is so warped, and so
Effected
By, the Troubles
By it all
By the history
Which is colonialism, which is Empire, which is all of it. Like
But it’s
You know
It, it all adds up to, to that woman being shot last night
And I’m really angry about it, I’m really, really angry,
I’m so angry right now, it’s so unfair
It didn’t have to happen
And it’s not
Because of..
Fuck
People saying it’s because of Brexit
It’s not
That
It’s because of it all
It’s because of it all
It’s so unfair
It’s so unfair
Chapter 10: Home
DISRUPTION
I travelled back to Belfast that evening.
I met my new niece on the Saturday, and I went to a rally.
The rally was initially about the #weareirishtoo movement started by Emma D’Souza.
It still was, but it became about Lyra, about peace, the fragility of that peace and the full ramifications of Brexit on Northern Ireland and its people.
After the rally I sat outside Belfast City Hall, watching the peace rally banners be replaced with Union Jacks. I collected my thoughts.
I guess, yeah, this anger, it’s like if
A complete lack of awareness and acknowledgement of Northern Ireland has, I think, in part lead to
Brexit, because if they’d looked in any way they’d say “we cannot do this and
Maintain
The Good Friday Agreement’ like it couldn’t have happened and there’s that
Infuriating, like that’s
What everyone speaking today, like that’s,
That’s where it came from.
You know they felt that that was
What was throughout
This complete
Lack of knowledge, respect and dedication to Northern Ireland by the British government,
And
there’s anger at that
and I
I’m angry at that
I’m glad I was here.
(Saturday 20 April 13:08)
Epilogue: After, Next
On Wednesday 24 April I was back in London and I wanted to throw the dissertation away. The reflection and the research and the scope felt too much…
That what I’m trying, what I’m trying to look at in myself, and in terms of my experience, and my feelings, and the history, and the current situation. Like it’s so much and it’s impossible to capture, and
Yeah
That is feeling a little overwhelming.
I questioned whether it was responsible to look at hate. Was it wrong to hate, to be angry? Was it in fact a defect?
I thought of Lyra McKee. How she used her voice. I read her articles, I read what people said about her and I realised that:
You know she believed in peace
She believed in the peace back home, and she, and she
You know, she told peoples’ stories, people that were affected by the conflict
I decided that I should tell my story too.
I silenced myself when I moved here. I pushed away the negativity because I wanted to escape. We can’t though.
I am the product of where I am from and the history that created where I am from. Not wanting to acknowledge that will not change it.
I decided to end my research that day and take stock of how I was feeling.
It’s scary and it’s making myself vulnerable to talk about my feelings in this way
But again, I guess that’s what I’m trying to do in this
Idea of creating this oral space
Like what Lloyd says, it’s trying to
I’m trying to use
My emotions, use my anger
Fear, I was scared. I was scared about revealing the negative part of myself, scared of showing my anger and I was scared of showing my fear.
Writing this now, I have come to realise that the anger, the hatred, the uncertainty is about fear. I’m frightened of being invisible, frightened of losing my identity and I’m frightened of peace being lost.
I feel it’s capturing, this thing, like this threat
The threat, of, like, towards that peace, like the idea of going back to
The horrors, of like, the past, which I, I was old enough to remember
I don’t hate the English, but I am afraid of what this Englishness will do.
I feel it should be spoken about. I want you to know my experience, and so…
In carrying on and doing this, it’s
Honouring that, that, aspect of, of, telling a story
Sharing a bit of pain, or sharing
Yeah
Asking to bear witness, which is
Is the right thing to do, I think. Northern Irish voices should be heard over here.
I created this oral space so that that you would hear me, and I would like to hear back, because…
There’s a conversation, even if it’s with me and two people, and even if it’s a conversation of putting all this in and just getting marks back, it’s a conversation
It’s less about demanding containment from you. I just want to tell you my story.
My research and my inspiration have been in the stories of other Irish writers in books, in newspapers and in social media. My oral space is my story, and I am telling it because it helps me remember that…
I’m not alone in this.
You know?
(Wednesday 24 April 2019 20:30)
CONCLUSION
The main challenge of my project is linked to the strength of the methodology, the purposeful vulnerability from the researcher/participant. At times it was difficult to move forward. I felt lost and because I was researching my response to current events, I had no way of foreseeing where the research would take me and the vulnerability it would demand. By being open to this level of engagement however I was able to show an authentic psychosocial experience to cultural events as they happened around me and to me.
Reflecting on my output on social media in conjunction with my academic research allowed me to see the influence of my psychosocial studies on my sense of self and the language I used. I spoke with a confidence, perspective and a language gained from my degree. The subjectivity of my experience was down to an intersection of my past, my degree and the culture I live in now. While I could look at other Irish writers and find an affinity, my lived experience was a culmination of my individual history, when I was born, what I experienced and how I learned to reframe it. A challenge from this perspective was how to choose what I felt should be included. The problem with a subjective account is that it is very difficult to objectively edit; It felt like self-censorship, self-silencing — an uncomfortable task when engaging in an exercise of breaking your silence!
This leads me to one of the two findings from my analysis, that of working with others. This started as a project about me, but from the moment the idea crystallised to the day I decided to end my research I was engaging with other Irish writers. From Megan Nolan (2018) to Lyra McKee; the personal experience of Irish academic writers I researched such as Robbie McVeigh (2002); the Irish people on twitter I reached out to when the Bloody Sunday decision was made; to Claire, my friend from home who I discussed each level of my dissertation with. I wanted to collaborate, I learned from others, I discussed my experience with them, then I wrote alone. To develop this research, I would like to engage in collaborative autoethnography (Lapadat, 2017); to share experiences and to work with those to create a shared subjective experience, because none of us are formed in isolation.
A connection with others was also felt in trying to achieve containment for my feelings. I always knew I would be heard. My desire to have containment became the relief of knowing someone would hear my thoughts, that I could share what I have learned. This no longer felt like rants on social media, I had a purpose in expressing my feelings, I did use my vulnerability with purpose. I could share what I had noticed in these feelings developing around me, and the cultural phenomena I saw resurface around me. I could discuss the return of anti-Irish prejudice through associations with terrorism and an occlusion of British responsibility. Knowing that I could tell someone this, that I for once had a platform to share my story allowed me to talk about the fears I felt.
My research showed me that my lived experience is constituted in a colonial relationship and history that was repeating and reinventing itself. My degree gave me the language and perspective to see this, and my dissertation gave me the means to illustrate it.
Thank you for listening, I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Let’s begin…
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