THE IRISH ARE COMING, BUT CHRISTCHURCH NEEDN’T FEAR
Belfast Telegraph
Aug 24, 2011
UK
An exodus of Irish builders, from north and south, will help to
re-build earthquake-hit New Zealand, proving that emigration is still
a huge part of our story, writes Malachi O’Doherty
It’s a nice thought that, though the Irish never colonised any part of
the world, they have influenced most of it. In fact, it used to be a
proud boast of Irish nationalists that British colonisation could not
have proceeded without Irish people being on hand to do the spadework.
A verse in an old song, quoted by Daniel O’Connell in some of his
speeches, celebrates that smug thought:
At famed Waterloo
Duke Wellington would look blue
If Paddy was not there too,
Says the Shan Van Vocht.
Irish emigrants in New Zealand are contributing now to the
reconstruction of Christchurch, damaged by earthquake. The city needs
8,000 construction workers and one uncharitably phrased news report
in the country says Christchurch is about to be “overrun by Irishmen”,
as if that is something to be dreaded.
The construction companies are advertising on Irish websites, with
high expectations of finding eager builders who have been impoverished
by the economic collapse here. It is the old story; that employment
prospects for the Irish are often better abroad than at home. And a
workforce with that tradition is well-attuned to opportunities for
making big money in far-off places.
When I look at my own family, all of the four brothers have worked
abroad. One had holiday work on Butlins holiday camps. Another worked
on oil rigs in the North Sea. Another was a fitter for Mackies,
working in several European countries.
I picked fruit in England, taught English to the Libyan army in
Tripoli and took things at a more contemplative pace for a few years
in India. At a St Patrick’s night party in New Delhi, I drank Jameson’s
whiskey with grumpy Christian Brothers.
It seems that an essential part of growing up Irish has been to be
shaped by exile and nostalgia. Our songs are replete with that pining.
And future songs will be about repairing New Zealand while dreaming
of good stout, or the Atlantic breeze, for we do homesickness like
no one else can.
Of course, the construction workers will have less to complain about
when they can talk to home on Skype every night.
It may be that the old version of exile and estrangement has been
overtaken by technology and that the thousands heading south to rebuild
Christchurch will never be as decisively cut off from home as earlier
generations were. And maybe it won’t be possible to produce those
doleful songs of lonely nights under foreign skies when you’re just
a text message away.
The Irish workers have not always been loved. There is a hint of
the expectation that their arrival in New Zealand will not be warmly
received by everyone in that use of the word “overrun” in the newspaper
article. But why should anyone think that Irish builders who need
work and money would be a problem? It appears that the reputation
of the hard-fighting and hard-drinking navvy is pestering the New
Zealand imagination.
Irish navvies built the North American railways and buried many of
their own dead beside the track, but this is not remembered as heroic
endeavour and self-sacrifice. Instead, the stories and songs recall
fighting and drinking. It may well be that the cliche of the drunken
Irishman derives more from the behaviour of lonely and frustrated bands
of men in foreign countries than from the sights seen on Irish streets.
But surely that derives, too, from the unhappy condition of men
who were overworked and underpaid, who had no prospects of getting
home again.
William King’s wonderful novel, Leaving Ardglass, describes the
angsts and antics of Irish builders in London in the 1950s, many of
whom wasted their lives there, making only enough money to drown the
pain of separation, getting further each year from any prospect of
going back home with savings and dignity.
Many of those men were homeless and pathetic on the streets of London
for years afterwards, believing that no one back in Ireland would
welcome the sight of them on the step.
Ireland is misunderstood abroad if it is understood through the
legendary squalor of the migrants and pettiness of missionaries. For
the other stereotype is of our cloying religiosity. The most common
human export from this island was the missionary priest.
And the days of our exporting religion are not quite over, though
recruitment to Catholic missionary orders has virtually stopped.
We may not be exporting Catholicism anymore, but this country generates
an awesome enthusiasm for evangelical religion and literal readings
of the Bible.
When Armenia had an earthquake in 1988, Irish people flocked there,
too, but they were not all construction workers. They included fishers
of souls.
Years later, I was invited to meet the head of the Armenian Church,
the Catholicos Karekin II, when I was at a conference there.
I saw the ancient foundations of the historic church at Echmiadzin,
including the relics, among which was the blade of the sword that
pierced the side of Christ on the cross. Well, that’s what they
told me.
As soon as the Catholicos heard I was from Northern Ireland, the
man’s face darkened. He said people from here had taken advantage
of the earthquake to evangelise among Armenians and turn them away
from their church. He seemed afraid I might get up to the same kind
of carry-on myself.
And that’s why Christchurch fears being “overrun by Irishmen”;
because we are naively expected to be like those who went before us.
And some of us are and some of us aren’t.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/the-irish-are-coming-but-christchurch-neednt-fear-16039948.html