All this 1916 centenary commemoration has got me thinking a bit about identity. Recently, I realised that all my grandparents were born British citizens. At least three of them vigourously did not want to be, but they were all the same until well into adulthood. If you had asked me six months ago what nationality my grandparents were, I would have answered “Irish” unhesitatingly. I now realise that would have been only partly true and that is very strange to me.
I said it to my aunt and she said, “Ah no, they weren’t really British”. National identity is quite the complex thing, isn’t it?
They were British subjects. But never British. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Is that right, Jenny? Some people from NI do describe themselves as British and I assume that the same would have been true for the South pre-independence. It mightn’t have been an identity that they would have chosen but I think that it is one that existed all the same. I could be wrong, of course, but it does underline how complex it all is and how our identities are more multi-faceted than we sometimes acknowledge.
I think during the period of Union the Irish were always understood to be Irish while British subjects. The unionists of Northern Ireland were Irish until the Troubles hardened attitudes.
I did not know that, how interesting.