I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I also place on record my thanks to the late, great Tony Lloyd, who was my constituency MP when I was a child. He was a huge champion of the Irish community in Greater Manchester, and his legacy lives on today. My hon. Friend is right that it is important to remember that identities and links are changing year on year, with each passing generation, whether they come here to call Britain their home or have third, fourth or fifth-generation children and grandchildren who try to keep their cultural heritage and ties going.
The social and economic impact of the Irish diaspora in the UK and across the world has been duly recognised by the Irish Government in Ireland’s diaspora strategy, which aims to celebrate and strengthen the social, economic and cultural bonds between Britain, Ireland and other parts of the world. The strategy refers to the
“diverse and dynamic global community connected to Ireland through ties of citizenship, heritage and affinity, retaining a strong sense of Irish identity that has remained vibrant over the ages.”
At the time of the 2021 census, there were about 523,000 Irish-born people living in England and Wales alone, but those figures capture only a fraction of the second and third generations with Irish heritage. Bronwen Walter, emerita professor of Irish diaspora studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, estimated a few years ago that there are roughly 5 million people with at least one Irish parent or grandparent.
As visits to Irish cultural and community centres across Britain will show, the intergenerational community is thriving. Irish in Britain has stated:
“The numbers of people frequenting these centres, as well as the profiles of those actively involved in running activities at these cultural hubs confirm the increasing diversity of people who embrace their Irish heritage”.
Every first, second or even third-generation Irish diaspora member will know that when we hear a surname that sounds Irish, or have an inkling that someone has a bit of Irish in their background, we always set about finding out where their relatives—especially their parents or grandparents—are from, even down to the road that they lived on, in case anybody might know them. We want to check the pedigree. I will get that bit out of the way first by doing a little bit of a pedigree check on myself, for anyone who wants to know.
My mum, who was a Kelly before she married, is from Galway and my dad is a Long from Belfast. We have an interesting story about the Galway Kellys, if anyone knows the city: apparently my mum’s family had the shop and lived in the famous historical focal point there called the Spanish Arch—[Interruption.] Yes, I know! The Kellys have laid claim to that historical link for years. Anyone who was anyone was told of their claim to that important building. Then one day, while we were wandering about the Galway City Museum, we came across an old hand-written logbook, which stated the spooky fact that before the Kellys—hundreds of years before, in fact, because the Spanish Arch was built in the 1500s—a Bishop Long had lived there. That gave my dad cause to claim that the Spanish Arch was actually the ancestral home of the Longs, something he stated was further proven by the fact that the lane next to the arch, which runs along the harbour walls in Galway, is called The Long Walk. Suffice to say the Kelly relatives were not impressed at my dad’s protestations; they had always thought that The Long Walk was called that because it was a long road.
Further pedigree checks have been carried out on members of my family. My husband is a Bailey. He has no known Irish ancestry, but he still had to go through his own pedigree check when he was presented to the family many years ago. That escalated to the point that, during one family visit to Galway just before we married, everyone in the local pub that my aunt and uncle frequent had been furiously researching the Bailey family name, to check out my husband and make sure that he was all right for me to marry. Despite his having no known Irish links, they presented him with a genealogical history of the Irish surname Bailey, to prove to him that he actually had an Irish surname and therefore was Irish somewhere along the line, even if he did not know it yet. They also found him a castle allegedly owned by generations of the Bailey family, and presented him with a picture and details about it, so that he could check out whether he had any ancestral claim to it.
Joking aside, I was proud to grow up immersed in our thriving Greater Manchester Irish community. Every year, I was dispatched to the Irish centre, St Kentigern’s, Chorlton Irish Club and the Southern—you name it—to hear the music, arts and culture of my heritage. I read my mum’s copy of The Irish Post every week, which was the voice of the Irish in Britain, because it was important to know who we were and where we came from, and to foster that duty to keep our heritage alive for future generations.