'No Irish Need Apply' controversy explored at Newcastle event

(Image: Flickr/Pirate Alice)

Tyneside Irish Centre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England is hosting a special lecture next month on the origins of the 'No Irish Need Apply' controversy as part of its history club series.

Historian Professor Don MacRaild of Northumbria University will discuss the origins of the prejudice which sparked the 'No Irish Need Apply' (NINA) concept and of NINA's persistence as an indication of anti-Irish prejudice. He is set to publish an academic article on the issue later this year.

MacRaild's research comes after US historian Richard Jensen's controversial work on NINA in an American context. Just over a decade ago, Jensen examined then-digitised American nineteenth century newspapers and magazines for evidence of NINA signs and adverts, and argued that the issue was more of a myth of victimization exaggerated by the Irish community than it was grounded in concrete examples of anti-Irish signs and ads.

Speaking to WorldIrish.com, MacRaild says that the British context of NINA was quite different to that of America. In contrast to Jensen's work in the US, there is ample evidence of NINA advertisements in digitized British newspapers and pamphlets from the nineteenth century.

"They appear in the 1820s around the time of Catholic emancipation and there was a lot of hostility generally against Irish Catholics in Britain," MacRaild explains. "It rises during and just after the Famine - the 1850s was a high point in general of prejudice against the Irish in Britain."

He says that some of this prejudice stemmed from the sheer numbers and living conditions of the Irish emigrants in British cities: "A lot of it was to do with social conditions - but a lot was to do with basic prejudice."

Later in the century, the NINA adverts in Britain shifted direction somewhat and job notices developed into a form of 'positive discrimination' in which people of particular nationalities or religions were invited to apply, instead of explicitly stating that Irish or Catholics would not be considered.

MacRaild says that a popular nineteenth-century Irish ballad about NINA aptly demonstrates the differences in the context of prejudice against Irish emigrants in Britain and in America. The song was originally performed in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century by singer Kathleen O'Neill, before being later re-written by John F Poole for an American-based audience.

"In England, it's a gentle ballad sung by a girl who is a victim of this prejudice," MacRaild says, "but by the time it crosses the Atlantic it has become much more rambunctious, and is sung by a[n Irish] man who gives a beating to a man who says 'no Irish need apply'."

He says that in Britain, NINA was "a reality of victimization of Irish" emigrants and that what is particularly interesting is how NINA became "an epitaph that nationalist politicians used" to focus on anti-Irish prejudice, including Daniel O'Connell.

MacRaild also told WorldIrish that he would be interested in carrying out further research on NINA in Britain in the 1950-70 period, focusing on the anecdotal evidence of Irish migrants.

The Tyneside Irish history club lecture led by Professor Don MacRaild will be held at the centre in Gallowgate, Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 7.30pm on Thursday, 2 May. Admission is free.

Categories: No Irish Need Apply, UK, lecture, Newastle