Irish Australian - Status of The Irish

Status of The Irish

Walker (2007) compares Irish immigrant communities in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Great Britain respecting issues of identity and 'Irishness.' Religion remained the major cause of differentiation in all Irish diaspora communities and had the greatest impact on identity, followed by the nature and difficulty of socioeconomic conditions faced in each new country and the strength of continued social and political links of Irish immigrants and their descendants with the old country. From the late 20th century onward, Irish identity abroad became increasingly cultural, nondenominational, and nonpolitical, although many emigrants from Ulster (and especially from Northern Ireland) stood apart from this trend.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Irish Australians — particularly but not exclusively Catholics — were treated with suspicion in a sectarian atmosphere. The outlaw Ned Kelly (1855–80) achieved the status of a national folk hero; ballads, films and paintings have since 1878 kept the feisty robber's tale alive. Kelly, who was hanged for murder, is often viewed romantically as the sort of treatment Irish Catholics in Australia could expect: in reality, however, most of the Irish were urban workers who experienced less official discrimination in Australia than they had at home in Ireland, and many Irish Australians — Catholic and Protestant — rose to positions of wealth and power in the colonial hierarchy. Many Irish men, for example, entered law, the judiciary and politics, while in Ned Kelly's time 80% of the Victorian police were Irish-born, and half of those had served in the Royal Irish Constabulary. In major cities such as Melbourne and Sydney, Irish social and political associations were formed, including the Melbourne Celtic Club, which survives today. The Irish settler in Australia - both voluntary and forced - was crucial to the survival and prosperity of the early colonies both demographically and economically. 300,000 Irish free settlers arrived between 1840 and 1914. By 1871, the Irish were a quarter of all overseas-born.