St Patrick's Day: A Great Day for the Irish
IrishAbroad.com
By Douglas Dalby, IrishAbroad.com MILLIONS of people decked out in vibrant green throng city streets the world over.
Pipers skirl out martial tunes. Dancers jig and reel with steps that would take
your breath away. Rivers and beer are dyed green. Traffic grinds to an official
halt. Happy St Patrick's Day. An event that started out as a defiant protest against
anti-Irish bigotry in the United States has evolved into a global demonstration
of ethnic pride. It is a day when everyone wants to be Irish.
In every sense, St Patrick's Day is a virtual mirror of Irish social evolution.
This year, for example, there will be a massive parade in London; an affirmation of a pronounced Irish identity in a place where in the all
too recent past it was easier to keep your head down. It is tempting to compare
this with the U.S. situation where such parades have been the norm now for generations.
But such a comparison would be facile. There was a time too when the Irish in
America endured their share of hardship before becoming accepted citizens in their
new homeland. If the St Patrick's Day celebrations are now mainstream, they were
born of a different time when the Irish were not as welcome on the streets of
New York.
"The story of the Irish in the New World is not a romantic story of liberty
and success, but the history of a bitter struggle, as bitter, as painful, though
not as long drawn-out as the struggle by which the Irish at last won the right
to be a nation." Cecil Woodham-Smith (The Great Hunger)
St Patrick's Day - March 17th - commemorates the death of Ireland's national saint.
The first American parade on that day can be traced back to Boston in 1737, sponsored
by The Charitable Irish Society to raise funds for ill, homeless and unemployed
Irishmen. The first recorded parade in New York was in 1762 when Revolutionary
War veterans took to the streets to defy "those who didn't like the Irish
very much". But such events were more likely to have been simple processions
common to many saints' days across Europe for centuries.
Backlash and Response
Escaping from the repressive penal English laws in Ireland, the mainly rural Irish
emigrants probably never envisaged that xenophobia would greet them where they
landed. In an English colony, it was perhaps inevitable that the Irish would be
viewed with deep suspicion by an Anglo-Saxon population sandwiched between the
Catholic French in Canada and the Catholic Spanish in southern America. This attitude
persisted even after formal U.S. independence.
Although the Great Famine has rightly been seen as the seminal event that transformed
the East Coast of America into a virtual 33rd county of Ireland, the Irish were
already well represented in The New World. As their numbers grew so did the backlash
against them.
"As early as 1799, frightened Irish Catholics on New York's Lower East Side
defended their national dignity against native-born Americans who paraded through
their neighbourhoods on St Patrick's Day bearing insulting effigies (dubbed 'Paddies')
of the glorious saint," according to Gerry Curran, Deputy National Historian,
Ancient Order of Hibernians. "The custom of "Paddy-Making became widespread
in the early 1800s and continued unabated until the middle of the 19th century.
The social historian George Potter described the Paddy as "an effigy dressed
in rags, its mouth smeared with molasses, sometimes wearing a string of potatoes
around its neck or a codfish to mock the Friday fasting and with a whiskey bottle
stuck out of one pocket ... set up in a public place on the eve of St Patrick's
Day'."
America's Irish story (and by implication, the evolution of St Patrick's Day)
was set in stone between the fateful years of 1846-54 when an estimated two million
people fled famine-plagued Ireland, transforming the Irish into the biggest ethnic
group in America. By 1850, 26 per cent of New York residents were Irish - most
of them living in slums on the Lower East Side. Despite strenuous attempts by
The Irish Emigrant Society to move the diaspora inland, few had any money. They
had come for work and many of them never moved far from the docks where they landed.
Perhaps, inevitably, the influx and concentration in certain areas caused resentment
among a native population who perceived the immigrants as a threat to their livelihoods.
The Irish responded to the bigotry they encountered in time-honoured fashion.
They banded together and fought back. The siege mentality so necessary for survival
in Ireland itself under English rule was transferred to the Irish ghettoes of
New York, Boston and Chicago. The emigrants took refuge in the Catholic Church,
The Democratic Party and organisations such as the Ancient Order of Hibernians
which was founded in 1836. Historical accident also dictated that when New York
adopted a full-time police force in 1845, the Irish influence on local politics
and the sheer weight of numbers arriving, ensured the recruits were overwhelmingly
Irish.
The most organised anti-Irish platform belonged to The American Party - known
popularly as 'The Know-Nothing Party'. Although the name would imply ignorance,
the title refers to the instructions given to members not to disclose to the authorities
their attitudes to the new immigrants. Founded in 1843, the main focus of the
group's anti-immigrant stance was inevitably focused on the Irish who were pouring
into the country at an unprecedented rate. The scene was set for a confrontation
that would shape the future of St Patrick's Day and of the Irish in The New World.
A New Order
The New York St Patrick's Day parade of 1853 was a watershed in the history
of Irish politics in the U.S. It was the first time the AOH marched under its
own banners and the organisation has controlled the event ever since. The following
year - 1854 - in response to an attack on AOH members by Know Nothings in the
July 4 Independence Day parade, AOH ranks were swelled by Irish units of the
State militia who gave it protection. The official sanction given to the parade
in the form of police, firemen, political and church marchers every year can
largely be traced back to the 1854 parade. By the beginning of the Civil War
in 1861, the parade had already grown to be the focal point for Irish activities
in New York. In the few years after the conflict ended, the popularity of the
day had spread to many other major American towns.
The Civil War
Anti-Irish prejudice lessened somewhat after the bloody Civil War of 1861-65,
when an estimated 185,000 Irish-Americans fought on both sides - the vast majority
for the union. It was a perverse twist in a way as there was strong support
among Irish-Americans for the retention of slavery because they feared that
freed slaves would drift north and compete with them for jobs.
The Irish were not completely trusted by their Protestant neighbors, particularly
in the North, so they tended to join separate units of between 80-100 men. As
a result, whole families were wiped out when casualties mounted in particular
units. The Irish emerged from the conflict with great credit. Many regiments
such as Meagher's Irish Brigade became legendary in the field. More to the point,
once blood had been spilt for a cause, it was hard to make old smears stick.
The Irish were loyal to the Union, they had fought and died for it and by extension,
their country. Their detractors may have denegrated the Irish as being more
sympathetic to Ireland and Rome but a stand had been made. Moreover, their bravery
meant they could no longer be summarily dismissed as the feckless, drunken caricatures
propogated by certain "pillars" of society.
In the aftermath of the war a clienalist political system really began to take
a grip on cities and towns across the nation. The Irish, with their social cohesion
and heavy concentration in urban areas, took full advantage. Irish-Americans
- particularly the Democrats - began to dominate local governments. These "party
managers" peddled influence for votes in a system that was to last well
into the 20th century - cities were run like virtual fiefdoms. The most famous
of all these was New York's Tammany Hall: now a byword for corruption and kickbacks
but a powerful political machine that cemented Irish social power in America.
Tammany Hall
As in any political system, there are inevitably winners and losers. Under Tammany
Hall, the Irish were undoubtedly on the winning team. The Society of St Tammany
was formed in 1788 as a social club for craftsmen. Tammany was an Indian chief
and a dubious candidate for canonisation but in keeping with the native American
theme, the club's meeting room was known as the 'wig-wam' and new members as
'braves'. Some latter-day critics might jibe that a cowboy theme would have
been more appropriate! During the 19th century, it's support for Catholicism
and anti-nativism won it many adherents among the millions of immigrants that
poured into the country. Its members would often be the only link the new arrivals
had with the State.
Concessions would be wrought on behalf of the immigrants and the price would
invariably be support at the ballot box and at fundraisers. It was a perfectly
circular system: jobs and favours were secured in return for re-election of
those who had been empowered to give the jobs and favours in the first place.
By 1840, most white males had voting rights in the U.S. In the case of the Irish
and other ethnic groups concentrated in geographically defined areas, power
derived from cohesion. The tribe looked after its own in the face of open hostility
from powerful vested interest groups. Political patronage extended in particular
to Government jobs: It wasn't what you knew, it was who you knew and what you
could deliver for whomever had the power to bestow favours upon you. Tammany
Hall and systems like it would dominate U.S. urban politics well into the 20th
century.
But, it is widely accepted that what started out as a system of mutual dependence
to further the cause of the marginalised, degenerated into an organisation where
corruption became the order of the day. Many reasons are cited for the eventual
demise of the machine. In many ways it was the victim of its own success. Irish-Americans
were no longer at the bottom of society's pile and so had less reliance on direct
political patronage to secure concessions for them. The reform-minded Governor
La Guardia undoubtedly put another nail into the clientalist coffin as did the
introduction of public service exams which ensured a measure of meritocracy
in employment.
The Legacy
Tammany Hall and the Irish-American hegemony secured the Irish grip on the civil
apparatus of key American cities. The New York machine was emulated elsewhere
to similar effect in local, State and Federal politics. The symbolic importance
of St Patrick's Day in garnering the Irish vote was publicly recognised by the
White House for the first time in 1948 when Harry S Truman became the first
American president to attend the New York parade. John F Kennedy's accession
to the Presidency in 1961 was seen by many as the culmination of a defiant Irish
political march that began more than a century beforehand.
The Irish have enjoyed success in all walks of American life. The Irish vote
is still considered crucial in any election. There are an estimated 40 million
people of Irish descent in America and their political cohesion remains nothing
short of remarkable despite the generational removal from their ancestral homeland.
The ties endure and are strong.
Today the Irish are viewed in a positive light - especially on St Patrick's
Day. They have fought and died in America's wars, contributed at the highest
level to its democratic institutions, its judiciary, its economic might and
not least to its social services such as the fire and police departments.
The spirit of the Irish on St Patrick's Day is encapsulated in a story told
about Moira Smith, the only female NYPD officer to perish in the September 11
attack on The World Trade Center.
Brooklyn-born Moira Anne was the daughter of John Reddy from Dublin and Mary
Finn. Her friends recall that on St. Patrick’s Day she was the most enthusiastic
Irish person in the neighborhood. Once, while making their way to the parade
as a youngster she bought a button saying 'Honorary Irishman'. When she found
out what honorary meant she was disgusted and ripped it off. Moira Smith's Irish
heritage helped to define her as a person. She died a heroine in the city of
her birth. She was American but she was also indisputably Irish and proud of
it.
St Patrick's Day has become the public expression of that indominatable Irish
spirit.
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