OPINION:Tomorrow, the British will celebrate as only they can. And we'll sneer 'cos we don't like them and they don't like us. Right? Wrong. . .
AS I had spent most of my post-university years on continental Europe, I had little or no exposure to Britain before I got a job with the BBC exactly a decade ago. I had formed the deluded opinion that, after decades of threats from the IRA/INLA, English people didn’t really like us.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The first and possibly most superficial reason is our accent. Whereas ignorant stereotyping dictates that Brummies are thick, Scots are boring and Liverpudlians all thieves, the Irish voice is deemed trustworthy and (ironically) unthreatening.
It therefore came as a surprise to learn that instead of disguising my middle-class Dublin accent when I arrived, my brother in law (who had been living there a while) encouraged me to accentuate it – especially if I wanted to woo British women.
In the 10 years since joining the most respected news broadcaster in the world, no one has ever restricted or glass-ceilinged my career on the basis of my nationality or my accent. Yet how many English accents are heard on Irish national TV or radio?
Since 2008, I’ve been a regular reporter on the BBC’s main news bulletins – an honour decided upon by the most senior (and choosy) of editors. In that time I’ve had to make plenty of pronouncements on the economic health – or otherwise – of the UK. All the while, the Irish economy has been imploding.
Yet I haven’t encountered any vitriolic comments (on or offline) about the sheer neck and effrontery of an Irishman pontificating on a relatively robust British economy given what his homeland was doing with its own financial affairs.
Indeed, contrary to expectations, there was no mass schadenfreude in Britain when Ireland’s economic humiliation reached its denouement with the arrival of Ajay Chopra and his International Monetary Fund colleagues last November. While some commentators tut-tutted and “told you soed” – notably Polly Toynbee in the Guardian, most UK citizens took pity on their Irish cousins with a “there but for the grace of God . . .” attitude. The chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne was quick to put his money where his mouth was by offering Ireland a bilateral loan of £3.25 billion (€3.67 billion) – reminding sceptical Tory MPs that Ireland was Britain’s closest neighbour and its fifth-largest export partner – more than China, India, Brazil and Russia combined.
Indeed Osborne is Anglo-Irish himself, being the heir to the baronetcy of Ballentaylor – a plot of land in Tipperary that his forebears were doubtless given for backing the then king against Irish rebels.
There is a valid argument of course that this loan is purely in Britain’s self-interest, given the level of exposure British banks – especially RBS which owns Ulster Bank – have to the collapsed Irish property market.
But British banks are also heavily in hock to Portugal and Greece, where millions of lobster-skinned Brits sun and sex themselves every year. Yet the two consonants in PIG weren’t offered any special loans from the UK treasury, which is itself in the process of slashing Britain’s own gargantuan budget deficit.
The closeness of Britain and Ireland to each other will be brought into sharp relief when the Queen visits Ireland for the first time next month. Ahead of that visit, her eldest son became the first heir to the British throne to set foot in an Irish embassy last November. I was there and chatted to Bob Geldof, Willie Walsh and Terry Wogan. All agreed that we had been given opportunities in the UK that might not have been possible had we stayed in Ireland.
The future king told us that 10 per cent of Britain was either Irish, had Irish parentage or grandparentage. This means that most British people either know, work with, live near, or are related to an Irish person. And these UK-based Paddies deserve our acclaim because, on the whole, they must be pretty good micro-ambassadors to have endeared the entire race so well to the locals.
Another reason is that British people can’t pigeon-hole Irish people in a way that they can (and still do) to their fellow UK citizens by virtue of their education, accent, family etc. The Irish in Britain don’t wear the old school tie. UCD, Blackrock or Clongowes on a CV doesn’t mean anything over here. Instead they roll up their sleeves, forge relationships, educate themselves, endear themselves and better themselves.
Finally, In case you think I’ve drunk the kool-aid and have gone totally native, I still can’t bring myself to cheer the team in white with roses or lions on their shirts. When Germany thrashed England in last year’s World Cup, it was a source of immense and irrational pleasure. As was the slam-denying thumping meted out by BOD and company in the rugby last month.
Oh, and despite jibes from friends, I’ve yet to lose that accent.
JOE LYNAM
is the BBC’s business correspondent