I know. I should be glad really. A London Underground line that chooses not to tug a forelock at the Windsors and their ilk. What was once the East London Line - the branch I use - on the Overground has been retitled The Windrush Line after those dapper sons from distant shores. The languid stance, the zoot suits, what’s not to like? Except there was something. For the Irish amongst us, seeing that particularly English example of how difference isn't really different enough.
While certainly reshaping London’s culture those sharply dressed young men were not the men who rebuilt Britain. Instead their days were mostly spent on the buses or in factories, as wives and sisters emptied the bedpans of a baby NHS. And they did this because someone else was busy rebuilding Britain, or England really.
Those men digging through the Empire’s rubble didn’t have as far to come but come they did. The Coffeys, McNicholases, Murphys, Kennedys, Clancys, Careys, Byrnes, Gleesons, and Fitzpatricks - the names on machinery and lorries on London roads every day since - would never be celebrated let alone acknowledged like this. Because when it comes to the Irish the English have always had a problem, one that veers from indifference, via bemusement - why are Irish names so hard to pronounce - to invisibility. As poor Churchill explained ‘We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.’
It's not even about numbers either. In 1971 there were 350,000 of the Windrush generation in England while there was a million Irish (with six million left shivering on the Ould Sod). No, it’s what happens when difference is subtle but also sharply defined. So though we may pass as English, we really aren't. Despite the title of the blog being a Dubliners song maybe it was Bono who was closer to the truth.
We’re one, but we’re not the same