{"id":19175,"date":"2026-04-22T05:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/19175\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:16:10","slug":"often-painful-story-of-irish-emigration-to-britain-over-200-years-comes-to-the-epic-museum-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/19175\/","title":{"rendered":"Often painful story of Irish emigration to Britain over 200 years comes to the Epic museum \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish emigrants<\/a> who have travelled to Britain<\/a> since the 2008 economic crash are better-off and better-educated than the average person in British society, but it was not always like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re mostly in the high-earning professions,\u201d said Christopher Kissane, the curator of No Irish Need Apply? \u2013 The Economic History of the Irish in England, an exhibition which opened on Tuesday at the Irish Emigration Museum (Epic) in Dublin (running to June 30th).<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a big shift away from construction and work more traditionally associated with the Irish in England, towards finance and tech, which is reflected in the earnings.\u201d <\/p>\n

The 200-year-long story of Irish emigration to Britain told by the exhibition shows that it \u201ctook the Irish a very long time to get there, much longer than it did in the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

It has been created by the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science on the back of research by University College Dublin professors Neil Cummins and Cormac \u00d3 Gr\u00e1da. <\/p>\n

Curator Christopher Kissane on his \u201dNo Irish Need Apply? The Economic History of the Irish in England\u201d exhibit at the Epic Museum. Video: Chris Maddaloni <\/p>\n

They say that despite two centuries of migration, the fate of those of Irish heritage in Britain \u201cis poorly understood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Data technology tools have helped to produce findings that \u201cwouldn\u2019t have been possible in the past\u201d, searching millions of birth, marriage and death records among other files to tell the story of the Irish in Britain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have never had a big-picture economic history of how Irish migrants, or people of an Irish background, had done in England,\u201d said Kissane, adding that the findings were \u201cstark\u201d. <\/p>\n

For decades, the Irish existed in England as \u201can underclass, being on average 50 per cent poorer than the English\u201d, with infant mortality 25 per cent higher until the mid-1950s.<\/p>\n

The disadvantages are explained by the fact that until the second World War<\/a> most Irish emigrants went to the north of England.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Irish were the raw material for the Industrial Revolution in England,\u201d said Kissane. <\/p>\n

\"StillStill from The Irishmen, courtesy of Irish Film Institute <\/p>\n

Some got \u201cstuck\u201d in Liverpool or Manchester and there may have been a \u201ckind of self-selection going on with better-off people with some skills getting to America and those who hadn\u2019t didn\u2019t\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, equally, it\u2019s also possible that people just got stuck in the industrial capitalism that marked the mass Irish migration in the 19th century after the Famine, when there was a boom in industrial jobs in the north of England,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The economic fortunes of the Irish improved after the second World War when new emigrants began to move to London, the English midlands and south.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Manchester byelection defeat leaves Keir Starmer green around the gillsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it still took them a very long time to catch up,\u201d Kissane said.<\/p>\n

The exhibition should, he argued, be visited by people with family connections to England and those without to better understand the ties between the islands. <\/p>\n

In 1971, there were almost a million Irish-born people in England, equal to a third of the population of the Republic.<\/p>\n

\"InfantInfant mortality was much higher for those with Irish surnames <\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long period, England was the fifth province in much more than symbolic terms. It literally was bigger than many other provinces,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Irish in Britain need to be part of Ireland\u2019s story, no matter what accent they speak with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raised in Kerry, Kissane said his Luton-born father and one of his brothers came to Ireland in later years, but another brother did not. <\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, they have very different attitudes to life, to culture, to everything. But they still come from an Irish background,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my uncle died last year, my English-living uncle sang The Rocks of Bawn over the grave with an English accent. That is a huge part of the Irish story.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0The changing Ancient Order of Hibernians: \u2018Irish America has moved past nostalgia in unity debate\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The three siblings came to Kerry each summer as children, speaking \u201cwith their English accents\u201d and did not realise there was a \u201cdividing line\u201d until they visited. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s one thing I hope people take away from this \u2013 the sheer numbers who went and how important those ties to Ireland are for so many and for those who have come after them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because people of an Irish background in England speak with an English accent doesn\u2019t mean that their connection to Ireland is not still very important. Their story is an important part of Ireland\u2019s story. It needs to be respected, understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The English football team is, he noted, full of people with Irish names, with Irish grandparents and great-grandparents.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople wouldn\u2019t be giving out about Harry Kane if he was playing for Ireland, now would they?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irish emigrants who have travelled to Britain since the 2008 economic crash are better-off and better-educated than the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,8752,6142,3930,7783,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-19175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-common-ground","10":"tag-emigration","11":"tag-northern-ireland","12":"tag-second-world-war","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116446664017783836","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}