Why We Must Stand Against the Debauchery of Far-Right Ignorance

Guardians of Justice: Who I Am and Why This Matters

By Sean Ash

I was born and raised in England, I consider myself to be English, but my roots run deep into Irish Catholic soil. My mother came from an Irish family, and though I was born and grew up in Britain, I was surrounded by the sights, sounds, and values of Irish culture from the beginning.

As a child, I served as an altar boy at St. Mary Magdalene’s, a church tied closely to my school and my sense of identity. I remember getting there early, putting on the traditional black gown and white top, and stepping into something sacred. The incense, the silence, the candlelight, these moments weren’t just part of a religious service, they were part of a living heritage. They connected me to something older than myself, something carried across generations.

Down the road from the church stood St. Cyprian’s, the Irish Catholic hall that served as the beating heart of the Irish community in Brockley during the 1980s. It wasn’t just a social space; it was a home away from home, a gathering place full of life, music, drink, and stories. I can still see the layout clearly: as you walked into the middle hall, the fruit machine was immediately on your left, just inside the door, with a row of seats curving around behind it. The bar was straight ahead, and to the right, more seats lined the wall where families sat and talked for hours. The air was thick with the smell of beer, cigarettes, whiskey, a familiar scent, a tapestry of memory and tradition.

I was in my early teens and working in the club as a pot boy, collecting glasses and learning how to use the dishwasher in the kitchen. One hall had the older crowd, gathered for live bands, singing and dancing; another had the younger ones playing pool, dancing, or hanging about. But no matter where you were in the building, you were part of something living, something unmistakably Irish.

That community taught me pride, respect, work ethic and above all, memory.

Because I remember their stories, the ones they told quietly over drinks or sang out loud at closing time.

They were shamed.

They were blamed.

They were cast as criminals, drunkards, scroungers, and traitors.

They were accused of “not blending in,” of bringing disease, poverty, and a dangerous faith.

And they were targeted not for what they did, but for who they were.

Sound familiar?

Today I hear the same language being used against asylum seekers and Muslims.

I see the same headlines.

I watch the same fear being stirred by those who never learned from history.

This isn’t just a story about the Irish.

This is about what Britain does to those it sees as foreign. And if we forget that history, we risk becoming complicit in its return.

What I find most surprising now is this: so many people I see, people whose families came here as immigrants themselves, either turn a blind eye to what’s happening today, say nothing at all, or worse, they join in. They repeat the same racism their ancestors once endured, aiming it at new arrivals as if history had taught them nothing. I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s because they don’t know their past. Maybe it’s because they’ve never truly acknowledged the struggle that brought their family here in the first place. Or maybe it’s something deeper, a kind of disconnect, a quiet betrayal, a forgetting of the blood, sweat, and heartbreak that built the very lives they now lead. Whatever the reason, it feels like a disrespect to their ancestors. And it reminds me why remembering matters so much.

The Famine: When Hunger Became a Weapon

To understand how the Irish came to Britain in such great numbers, and why they were met with so much hostility, you have to understand the Great Famine. Not just the potato blight, but the politics, the indifference, and the prejudice that turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe.

The famine began in 1845, when a disease called Phytophthora infestans decimated potato crops across Ireland. For millions of Irish families, the potato wasn’t just a staple, it was the foundation of survival. So when the blight struck year after year, the result was devastation. But it wasn’t the blight alone that killed over a million people. It was what the British state did, and didn’t do, in response. 

While the Irish starved, ships full of food, grain, beef, butter, continued to be exported out of Ireland to Britain. Ireland was still a net exporter during the famine. The land was owned by wealthy landlords, many of them British, who valued profits over human lives. The British government, clinging to laissez-fair ideology,  refused to interfere with the market or nationalise supplies. Instead, they closed soup kitchens, tightened poor laws, and offered workhouse relief under degrading, near-impossible conditions.

One senior British civil servant, Charles Trevelyan, famously declared:

“The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated.”

It was cruelty dressed up as moral discipline.

In just a few years, over two million Irish people either died or fled the country. And many of those who fled came to Britain, not because they wanted to exploit it, but because Britain helped create the conditions they were escaping from. 

That history matters.

Because we’ve seen it again.

We’re seeing it now.

When Syrian Refugees come to Britain today, many people ask, “Why here? Why not somewhere else?” But to ask that question without understanding Britain’s role is to repeat the same moral blindness shown in the 1840s.

The Syrian Civil War, which began in 2011, has displaced over 14 million people, nearly two-thirds of Syria’s pre-war population. The conflict has involved chemical weapons, bombings of hospitals, mass executions, and devastation on a scale not seen in generations. And Britain played a part. We armed factions. We bombed targets. We participated in airstrikes. We also had a hand in the destabilisation of the Middle East long before that, during the Iraq War, the Sykes-Picot colonial carve-up of the region, and the installation or toppling of governments for strategic gain.

So when Syrian refugees arrive here, they’re not “invading.” They’re doing what the Irish once did: fleeing from ruins Britain once helped make. 

This is true for many other groups as well; Afghans, Iraqis, Yemenis, Sudanese. We cannot separate Britain’s imperial and military past from the reasons why people come here today. Just as 19th century Britain ruled over Ireland while allowing its people to starve, modern Britain participates in global decisions that drive millions from their homes.

The Irish didn’t come because they envied British wealth. They came because they were starving.

Refugees today don’t come because they want luxury. They come because they’re trying to survive.

The Arrival: Irish in Britain and the Birth of Hostility

When the Irish fled famine and poverty in the mid-1800s, many looked across the sea to Britain, a place of industrial jobs, economic promise, and geographical closeness. But what they found upon arrival wasn’t safety. It was suspicion, rejection and hostility. 

In cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and London, the Irish formed the backbone of the urban poor. They worked the hardest, lowest-paid jobs, navvies digging canals and railways, dockers loading ships, servants scrubbing floors. In London’s St. Giles, Liverpool’s Scotland Road, and Manchester’s Ancoats, Irish immigrants packed into overcrowded slums, often living six to a room, with open sewers outside and tuberculosis inside.

This poverty didn’t evoke sympathy, it provoked fear and blame.  

The Irish were quickly framed in the press and by the public as a problem. Punch magazine, the most influential satirical publication of the time, regularly depicted the Irish as ape-like, violent, and uncivilised. One cartoon from 1867 showed an Irishman with a brutish face, club in hand, standing over the British lion, clearly suggesting barbarism threatening civility.

British newspapers published inflammatory headlines, including:

“The Scourge from Across the Sea.”

“Irish Infestation in London Slums.”

“The Drunken Catholic: A Menace to British Order.”

They were mocked for their accents, ridiculed for their poverty, and feared for their faith. 

In Liverpool, anti-Irish riots broke out in 1852 and 1858, where Irish homes were attacked and burned. In Glasgow, the “Scotch Protestant” movement grew in direct opposition to the arrival of Catholic Irish. And in 1867, after a failed Fenian uprising, the Irish were broadly painted as terrorists, long before the term had modern usage.

What’s most telling is how familiar all of this sounds. 

Today, we hear similar things about asylum seekers and Muslims.

Only the accents and names have changed.

Irish immigrants were told they were un-British, that they didn’t blend in, that they were stealing jobs, and that they posed a religious threat to the national character. Their Catholic faith, tied to Rome, was viewed with the same suspicion and hostility now aimed at mosques and imams. Entire communities were accused of criminality, immorality, and failure to assimilate. 

In one 1868 parliamentary debate, MP William Newdegate warned that:

“The Papist mind is a foreign one. It bends not to English liberty, but to a foreign despot, the Pope. This is not religion, it is tyranny in disguise.”

Now swap “Papist” for “Muslim,” “Pope” for “Imam,” and you’ve got the same speech being made on modern platforms, in debates, in headlines.

What’s crucial to understand is this: it wasn’t about truth then, and its not about truth now. 

Irish immigrants didn’t come to destroy Britain. They came to survive. And yet they were painted as threats. Sound familiar?

The stereotype of the criminal Irishman was so widespread that well into the 20th century, police forces and local councils quietly profiled Irish neighbourhoods. Catholic schools were seen as breeding grounds for sedition. And housing discrimination was common, landlords often refused to rent to anyone with an Irish name or accent.

In Birmingham, Bristol, and London, “No Irish” was often listed alongside “No Blacks, No Dogs” on rental ads. This wasn’t ancient history. This was your Nan’s generation. 

No Irish Need Apply: When Racism Took Form

If the Irish were seen as a threat when they arrived, that threat was soon codified into everyday life, not through law, but through culture, and through signs.

“No Irish Need Apply.”

Few phrases carry such cold, historic weight. It wasn’t just an insult. It was an instruction, posted in windows, printed in job adverts, spoken by landlords and employers across Britain. It meant: You’re not welcome here. Not just because of where you come from, but because of who we think you are.

It wasn’t limited to jobs. It stretched into housing, education, social spaces, and public attitudes. Some pubs and boarding houses refused entry to Irish men and women altogether. Boarding schools excluded Catholic children. Councils made it difficult for Irish families to access decent housing, and local newspapers were full of letters complaining about “the Papist flood.”

The phrase “No Irish Need Apply” has been historically documented in:

• The Times (London), July 17, 1862: “Wanted: Young Girl for Domestic Work—No Irish.”

• The Liverpool Mercury, March 1853: “Irish girls are not desired; their manners unsuited to the English household.”

It even made its way into song. An 1862 ballad titled No Irish Need Apply sarcastically protested the discrimination:

“They insult me in the papers and they mock me in the street,

And if I wear the green and gold, they won’t give me a seat…”

The racism wasn’t veiled, it was loud and proud, woven into the very social fabric of Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

But it wasn’t just about being Irish. It was also about being Catholic. 

To be Irish was to be suspect. But to be Irish and Catholic was to be disloyal to Queen and Country. Protestants feared the “Papist allegiance” to the Pope, who was cast as a foreign tyrant trying to undermine British sovereignty. This paranoia wasn’t confined to pubs and tabloids, it was repeated in Parliament, schools and public law. 

Irish Catholics were accused of:

• Swamping English culture

• Failing to integrate

• Bringing crime and corruption

• Having too many children

• Disrespecting “British values”

These accusations sound chillingly familiar.

Today we hear about “parallel communities,” “no-go zones,” “foreign laws,” and the supposed threat of Shariah courts or Islamic schools. In the past, the threat was Catholic parishes, Catholic education, Catholic allegiance. Then, as now, fear wasn’t about what people were doing, it was about what they represented to the insecure and the powerful.

Victorian newspapers ran articles like:

“Irish Population Growth: A Danger to Protestant England.”

“Our Streets and Our Servants: The Papist Problem.”

If that sounds absurd today, ask yourself: is it any different from modern headlines like:

“Muslim Birth Rates Surging:Will Britain Still Be British?”

“Asylum Hotels Out of Control.”

The form changes, but the function remains the same:

To turn neighbours into threats.

To define loyalty by background.

To isolate the outsider before they even open their mouth.

The Catholic Threat: Faith as Fear

To many Britons in the 19th century, the Irish weren’t just foreign because of where they came from, they were foreign because of what they believed. Catholicism was seen not just as a different faith, but as a threat to national identity. 

At the heart of this was fear, the fear that Catholics, loyal to the Pope in Rome, could never be loyal to Britain. That their rituals were too mysterious, their hierarchy too authoritarian, and their influence too dangerous. These weren’t fringe ideas. They were mainstream anxieties, held by politicians, bishops, teachers, and the general public.

When Pope Pius IX re-established the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850, it triggered national outrage, a moment known as the “Papal Aggression.” Britain responded with protests, effigy burnings, and fearmongering headlines:

“The Papists Are Marching!”

“Rome Claims England: The Pope’s Tyranny Returns.”

“No Popery!”

The Times called it a “foreign occupation by spiritual means.” Protestants rallied across cities to “defend the nation” from Catholic control.

Sound familiar?

We’ve heard the same about Islam:

“Muslims want to impose Shariah law!”

“They’re building mosques in every city!”

“They’re not like us—they don’t share our values.”

In both cases, religion was used not to understand people, but to other them, to mark them out as dangerous, unassimilable, and untrustworthy.

Back then, Catholics were accused of:

• Undermining Protestant institutions

• Refusing to send their children to state schools

• Building “foreign” places of worship

• Holding dual loyalty: to Rome and to Britain

Today, Muslims are accused of:

• Undermining “British values”

• Running Islamic schools or prayer spaces

• Building mosques

• Holding dual loyalty: to the Ummah and to Britain

In both cases, the accusations weren’t about what people were doing wrong. They were about identity, about not fitting the dominant mould.

One anti-Catholic preacher in 1851 warned:

“The Papist does not belong to England. He bows to a foreign altar, and he would burn our Bible if allowed. He is a threat to all that makes this land free.”

Now change “Papist” to “Muslim” and you’ve got the modern far-right narrative.

The Orange Order, founded to “defend Protestant Britain,” staged regular marches through Catholic areas, not unlike how far-right groups today march through immigrant neighbourhoods under the banner of “free speech.” Violence erupted, churches were vandalised, and communities lived in fear.

Even in education, Catholic children were treated as suspect. Teachers were encouraged to reinforce Protestant morality and warn against “Popish corruption.” It was indoctrination disguised as national pride.

This wasn’t just ignorance. It was institutionalised bigotry. 

And yet, somehow, Irish Catholics persevered. They clung to their faith, their families, and their parishes. Over time, some found acceptance. But it wasn’t because the system welcomed them, it was because they refused to be erased.

The Parallels: Then Irish, Now Muslims

Racism changes its face, but not its structure.

The stereotypes may evolve, but the logic of exclusion stays the same. Once it was the Irish. Now it’s Muslims, asylum seekers, and anyone deemed “unBritish” by those who believe they alone own the nation.

The similarities are startling, not symbolic, but literal. 

Accent as a Target

In Victorian Britain, an Irish accent was enough to get you excluded. People would hear the lilt and assume you were ignorant, unclean, or trouble. Even among the white working class, Irish English was ridiculed as a “corrupt” version of the language.

“They can’t even speak proper English,” was often muttered.

Just as today, we hear:

“They should learn to speak our language.”

And just like Irish children were sometimes discouraged from speaking Gaelic, today Muslim children are discouraged from using Arabic, Urdu, or Somali, even at home, under the guise of “integration.”

Faith as a Threat

Irish Catholics were seen as loyal to Rome over Britain. They were accused of wanting to replace Protestantism, to “outbreed” native Britons, and to enforce foreign values.

Sound familiar?

Today, Muslims are accused of trying to impose Sharia law, of secretly building a caliphate in council flats, of wanting to “Islamify” the country. The slogans have changed. The tactic hasn’t.

Criminality and Grooming Stereotypes

In the 19th century, Irish men were portrayed in cartoons and newspapers as drunken, violent criminals. Any mention of a stabbing or robbery in the papers would lead with “Irishman charged” as though it proved something inherent.

Today, we see the same pattern.

A crime committed by a Muslim or an asylum seeker is held up as proof, not of individual wrongdoing, but of a community-wide “problem.”

Irish families were accused of breeding criminality.

Now, Muslim families are accused of harbouring terrorists or grooming gangs.

In both cases, it’s a collective guilt imposed on the innocent, a stain that no amount of decency can erase in the eyes of those determined to see only difference.

“They Don’t Want to Integrate”

This has always been the rallying cry of racists who fear change.

In the 1800s:

“The Irish keep to themselves. They speak strangely. They marry their own. They build Catholic schools and live in slums like animals.”

In the 2020s:

“They don’t want to be British. They don’t mix. They pray five times a day. They dress differently. They build mosques. They want special treatment.”

It’s not about integration. It never was.

It’s about control. It’s about demanding assimilation, not equality.

Irish Catholics were only accepted once they conformed. Once they were no longer seen as “too Irish.”

Muslims, asylum seekers, and other marginalised groups are being asked to do the same: erase everything about who they are to fit into someone else’s version of “Britishness.”

From the Streets to the State

In the past, discrimination was carried out by mobs, employers, and landlords. Today, it’s also carried out by policy.

From the Hostile Environment policy, to the Rwanda deportation scheme, to proposals for citizenship revocation, the message is the same: You’re lucky we even tolerate you.

It speaks the mentality that allowed the Irish to starve. That kept them in slums. That banned them from jobs. That told them to shut up, be grateful, and prove their worth.

We were once that outsider.

We were once that threat.

Now others wear the same target.

The Turnaround: How the Irish Integrated and Were Forgotten

Today, to say you’re Irish in Britain is rarely controversial. The music is celebrated. The pubs are packed on St. Patrick’s Day. The accent is charming. Famous figures with Irish roots, like Daniel Day-Lewis, Saoirse Ronan, or even the Gallagher brothers are held up as part of British cultural life.

But it wasn’t always that way. It took generations. 

It took Irish children enduring mockery in school for the way they spoke.

It took families being forced into ghettos and denied jobs.

It took priests being spat at in the street.

It took Catholic churches being attacked.

It took constant effort, resistance, and cultural pride in the face of overwhelming pressure to conform.

The shift didn’t come from the top. It didn’t come from the newspapers, or from Parliament. It came from ordinary Irish people building lives, raising families, becoming part of the community, and refusing to leave. Their presence could no longer be ignored. Slowly, Britain adjusted.

The Irish didn’t change to earn acceptance. British society changed because it had to.

But something strange happened after that.

Once accepted, many Irish families, including those born in the UK, began to forget.

The accents faded.

The history wasn’t taught in schools.

And the next generation, my generation and those after me, grew up with Irish surnames and Catholic heritage, but without always knowing what those who came before us endured.

Some no longer feel that connection.

Some don’t want to.

Some have gone a step further: aligning themselves with the very politics that would have spat on their grandparents.

And that’s what I find most troubling.

From Memory to Amnesia

There is no shame in building a new life. That’s what migration is about. But when descendants of the oppressed turn a blind eye to new forms of oppression or worse, participate in them, we lose something sacred.

I’ve seen Irish descended Brits join in with anti-migrant rhetoric. I’ve heard people from Polish, Caribbean, even South Asian backgrounds parrot the same talking points once aimed at their own communities.

They say:

“We came here the right way.”

“They’re just scroungers.”

“They don’t want to integrate.”

As if the Irish weren’t once accused of the exact same things. As if their own families weren’t once “the problem.”

It’s easy to forget once you’ve been allowed in. But we’re only ever allowed in until the rules change again.

What Was Lost, What Must Be Remembered

The story of the Irish in Britain is one of survival. It’s one of struggle, ridicule, exclusion, and ultimately, reluctant acceptance. But acceptance came not because Britain suddenly became enlightened, but because the Irish endured. They built parishes, formed unions, entered public life. They didn’t wait for approval. They took up space.

And in doing so, they helped build Britain.

But we forget that at our peril. Because when we forget, we start to believe the myth that we were always accepted. That we were different. That we “deserved” to be here.

That myth becomes a weapon, used against those arriving now.

The Call: We Must Not Repeat History

History doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes.

What we’re seeing in Britain today, the demonisation of asylum seekers, the daily drip of headlines casting Muslims as a threat, the demands for total assimilation, the stripping back of rights, is not new. It’s familiar. Painfully familiar. 

And if you come from a family that once stood on the outside of acceptance, you should feel that familiarity in your bones.

Because once, they said it about our ancestors. And now we hear it again, just with different names.

We Are Not Being Invaded: We Are Forgetting

The boats haven’t brought war. They’ve brought people. People who have fled war, dictatorship, famine, genocide. People who, like our own ancestors, looked across the sea and believed that Britain might offer more than what they left behind.

Some are fleeing destruction Britain helped create. Some are seeking protection from regimes we once funded or bombed or turned away from. And yet, instead of compassion, they are met with rage, contempt, and the bitter irony of hypocrisy. 

We were once them.

And now many of us look the other way.

To Be Silent Now Is to Betray the Past

This is not a political issue. It’s not about “left” or “right.” It’s about memory, and morality, and truth.  

Because what happened to the Irish in Britain was not just poverty, it was humiliation. What’s happening to today’s asylum seekers is not just hardship, it’s targeted hostility, designed to dehumanise them and discourage others from trying to survive.

And when I see people whose grandparents were once shamed for being Catholic now shouting at Muslims for wearing headscarves, I can’t help but wonder: what did they learn from the past at all?

If your grandparents were called rats, don’t call others cockroaches. If your name was once mocked, don’t mock theirs. If your accent was once a reason for exclusion, don’t demand “proper English” now.

The Irish Memory Must Become Moral Memory

Our community has come a long way.

But with comfort comes risk, the risk of amnesia, of mistaking privilege for permanence, of assuming that we’ve “made it,” and so the door should close behind us.

But that door was only ever open because someone held it.

It was held open by those few voices of conscience who stood against the tide of hatred in 19th-century Britain.

By politicians like John Bright, a Quaker MP who publicly condemned the British government’s response to the famine and accused them of “leaving a nation to die.”

By Lord Shaftesbury, who despite his conservative Christian views, pushed for improved conditions for the poor, including Irish labourers living in squalor.

By reformers like Richard Cobden, who challenged the Corn Laws that worsened the famine, and believed in moral governance over profit.

By journalists and religious figures who dared to say that Catholic lives were still human lives, in an age when anti-Popery was a political strategy.

The door was held open by a handful of decent employers, landlords, and educators who didn’t hang signs saying “No Irish.” People who saw past surnames and religion and offered dignity instead of disdain.

After all, that’s why we’re here.

Not because the system was fair.

But because someone, somewhere, refused to give in to cruelty.

Let us remember that, not with guilt, but with responsibility. 

Let us teach our children the truth of what the Irish endured, not the romanticised myth of cheerful underdogs who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, but the honest reality: they were hated, feared and excluded. And they fought to stay, with the help of a few brave others who chose justice over popularity.

Let us not become gatekeepers.

Let us become guardians of justice.

Because when we defend the rights of others, we honour the struggles of those who came before us.

And if we can’t find empathy,

If we can’t find our voice,

Then we have no right to wear shamrocks and speak of “pride.”