Not a case of big brother looking down on us: Attitudes to England from Northern Ireland via sport
A chapter I contributed to Sport and English National Identity in a 'Disunited Kingdom' in 2017
Back in the mists of time, when I still had tentative ambitions of being an academic, I would occasionally be asked to contribute the odd chapter to an edited collection or speak at a conference.
This book chapter was one I really enjoyed writing, allowing me to synthesise my passions for football and Troubles history and interrogate some of the preconceived notions people have of Britishness as seen through the lens of the Northern Ireland support-base. It was also the first chance I had to commit to print some of the research I had carried out on Cliftonville’s ‘Red Army’ phenomenon in the 1970s; something which interfaces closely with the quite personal A Walk Among the Dead that I re-published here yesterday. See also my chat with the late, great Henry McDonald in 2018 for Hidden Histories of the Northern Ireland Troubles podcast.
As this chapter lives in a book which costs a fair bit of money and is unlikely to be widely read I am publishing it here for your enjoyment.
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ABSTRACT
This chapter serves to demonstrate the flexibility and malleability of Unionist and Loyalist identity as refracted through the prism of international football, with particular reference to rivalry with England. It demonstrates that far from being a compliant partner in the 'United Kingdom of football', Northern Ireland and its supporters have often been among the most adversarial of the home nations in terms of their attitudes towards England. In January 2016 Toby Perkins, the Labour MP for Chesterfield, presented as a Ten Minute Rule speech in the House of Commons the idea of England having its own national anthem. The chapter seeks to explore attitudes in Northern Ireland toward England, as viewed through the prism of sport. In this regard the relationship between Northern Ireland and England in footballing terms has been almost symbiotic. The chapter also seeks to explore the symbiotic nature of that relationship and the manner in which politics, culture and simple sporting rivalry have defined it.
An uneasy relationship
In recent years the football governing body in Northern Ireland, the Irish Football Association (IFA), has strongly encouraged support from within the Catholic and Nationalist community through its ongoing “Football for All” project. Despite this the national side is generally regarded as the team for Protestants, Unionists and Loyalists. This perception has not been helped by the fact that the Northern Ireland team plays its home fixtures at Windsor Park, the home of Linfield Football Club. Historically Linfield, and thus Windsor Park, have been seen as synonymous with Protestant identity, tradition and metaphor in Northern Ireland (Bairner and Shirlow 1998: 165). This has further reinforced negative feelings among the Catholic, Nationalist and Republican community toward Northern Ireland as both nation and footballing entity.
In turn Protestants in the north east of Ireland have always maintained a suspicion and mistrust of the English, despite their backing for the union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This incertitude was crystallised in the period following WWI when Protestants felt that the sacrifice of many of their young working class men in the Battle of the Somme (1916) should have demonstrated their strong, unwavering loyalty. Officer and Walker (2000, p.298) have stated that for Protestants: ‘The War provided a vital opportunity for a practical demonstration of those aspects of a loyal, Protestant or Unionist self that might have otherwise remained inarticulate or have been misinterpreted by outsiders.’ To their chagrin this would prove to be a loyalty which was not always reciprocated in the years ahead. Indeed, Protestants and Unionists were already suspicious of the English in the period prior to WWI when it was felt that Home Rule for Ireland was being foisted upon them by a conniving British Government in London. In the event Unionists mobilised under Edward Carson and formed the Ulster Volunteer Force to fight the British and Home Rule if necessary. Side-tracked by the Great War, Unionists were angered when after the partition of Ireland in 1921 three of the counties of Ulster – Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal - ended up being ceded to the Irish Free State. A Loyalist song, “The Englishman’s Betrayal” speaks of this sense of dismay in its final verse:
And for those who came back home again, what changes did they find?
For the counties that made Ulster up, they no longer numbered nine
Three counties had been sold away by those we fought to save
For this was England's gratitude for the sacrifice we made.
Such anti-English sentiment has fluctuated over the years depending largely on the political climate in Northern Ireland at any given time.
Defiance
The dislike of England among Northern Ireland’s football supporters has found expression in a manner which would seem confusing or bizarre to many outsiders. Given the history of violence between the two communities in Northern Ireland one might be forgiven for assuming that when England play the Republic of Ireland, Ulster Protestants would cheer for the English given the symbolic strength of the Crown and the Union. However, this is simply not the case and can be viewed as an intriguing intersection between sport and politics in Northern Ireland. Sugden and Bairner (1993) have outlined the discomfiture that many Ulster Protestants have with supporting England against their cross-border rivals. They state that Unionist or Loyalist support for the Republic of Ireland during a fixture with England cannot be taken ‘as exemplifying a more general leaning towards Dublin’, but rather:
On the contrary, it illustrates the depth of mistrust generated within Northern Ireland’s Protestant community by the many and varied attempts by successive English-dominated British governments to settle the ‘Irish question’ in Northern Ireland by admitting Dublin into the apparatus of political negotiation (Sugden and Bairner 1993, p.80).
Some of these political manoeuvres have coincided with sporting fixtures between Northern Ireland and England, thus allowing supporters an opportunity to demonstrate their opposition on a large, public scale. In November 1985 for example, fears of a perceived English accommodation of any southern Irish ‘intrusion’ into the affairs of Northern Ireland became realised. On 13 November 1985, Northern Ireland played England in a crucial World Cup qualifier. While the game was played at Wembley Stadium, there was a tense backdrop to the fixture as Protestants in Northern Ireland became increasingly concerned by the intensifying progress of talks between the British and Irish governments which had been occurring throughout 1985. Earlier in the year British Secretary of State Douglas Hurd had claimed that political arrangements could be created to improve Anglo-Irish relations. These “arrangements” would be based on an Anglo-Irish inter-governmental council which had been established four years earlier. Enraged at developments, Loyalists had campaigned for the formation of Ulster Clubs in protest at any forthcoming Anglo-Irish political agreement.
Many of those Northern Ireland supporters who travelled to Wembley or were watching in the various pubs and clubs at home would have been among the staunchest opponents of ongoing political developments. In the stands at Wembley it was notable that the vast majority of the Northern Ireland support waved the Ulster rather than the Union flag. The Ulster flag had taken primacy in 1972 after Westminster prorogued the Stormont Government. The Ulster flag as a political and sporting symbol is indicative in both cases of defiance against England.
The match itself was a rear-guard performance by Northern Ireland with heroics from the legendary veteran Catholic goalkeeper Pat Jennings, formerly of both Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, providing the team with safe passage to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. At the final whistle Alan McDonald, an uncompromising centre-half, was interviewed by BBC on the pitch and asked whether England, who had already qualified, might not have tried as much as they could have against Northern Ireland. McDonald’s answer was emphatic, his response full of passion: ‘Anyone who says that was a fix can come and see me and I’ll tell them it wasn’t a fix! Cos we bloody earned that and anyone that says different is a joke!’ (Our Wee Country, 2007). McDonald, who died in 2012, was a working class Belfast Protestant whose neighbours would have been among those most vociferously protesting at Anglo-Irish relations.
The much-feared Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed two days after the Wembley fixture by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald. Thatcher had previously stated that Northern Ireland was as ‘British as Finchley’ (Phoenix, 2013), yet once again Northern Ireland’s Unionists and Loyalists were left with a burning sense of betrayal. In May 1974 Protestants, Unionists and Loyalists in Northern Ireland, under the umbrella of the Ulster Workers Council (UWC), agreed to a general strike to force the dissolution of the power-sharing executive which had been formed as part of the Sunningdale Agreement (December 1973). The agreement, with its Council of Ireland, was perceived by Unionists and Loyalists as being a “half-way house” to a united Ireland by allowing Dublin a say in Northern Irish matters. This came at a time when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still very much in full-blooded flow.
The images of the UWC Strike which would have been broadcast across the UK were of Loyalists donning military surplus fatigues and wielding cudgels in a tense stand-off with deployed British soldiers over the closure of industries. On 25 May 1974, toward the end of the strike, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson took to the airwaves to express his disgust at the actions of the strikers, and perhaps reflected the feelings of many in England when he stated,
The people on this side of the water - British parents - have seen their sons vilified and spat upon and murdered. British taxpayers have seen the taxes they have poured out, almost without regard to cost - over £300 million a year this year with the cost of the Army operation on top of that - going into Northern Ireland. They see property destroyed by evil violence and are asked to pick up the bill for rebuilding it. Yet people who benefit from all this now viciously defy Westminster, purporting to act as though they were an elected government; people who spend their lives sponging on Westminster and British democracy and then systematically assault democratic methods. Who do these people think they are?’ (Wilson 1974)
The Northern Ireland football team was, like its citizens, also a pariah during this period. Since October 1971 when a Soviet Union side turned out at Windsor Park, no international team had visited Belfast due to the intensification of violence in the city. Davy Millar, a long-standing supporter, recalls that during this period people in Northern Ireland spent a term in ‘isolation from normality’, describing the bitterly ignominious experience of being a supporter of the Northern Ireland team thus: ‘We listened to our radios as the Northern Ireland team trekked up and down England in search of a crowd for their “home” games, fearing that the pitiful attendances might force us to withdraw from international football’ (Millar, 2000). Wilson’s scorn for the “spongers” of Northern Ireland only compounded the humiliation of having to play home fixtures in England – the very nation, with its Westminster Government – that viewed the people of Northern Ireland as “subsidy junkies”.
In 1972 professional footballer Derek Dougan published an autobiography entitled The Sash He Never Wore. Dougan, originally from East Belfast, was a retired Northern Ireland international coming to the end of his playing career with Wolverhampton Wanderers. In one passage of the book he recalled underperforming for Northern Ireland in a “B” friendly against the British Army in Leeds in late 1957. This meant that he missed out on a chance to play for the senior side in an upcoming British Championship fixture:
I was greatly disappointed that I had let myself down and missed an opportunity, particularly when the match against England, at Wembley, turned out to be an historic one. Ireland [I read this as apparently the proper title, even though it should be Northern Ireland, in the Football Association records] beat England three-two. This was the first Northern-Irish, or Ulster victory in the home international series since 1927 when we won in Belfast two-nil. The Irish have made the most of this rare occasion ever since (Dougan 1972: 90-1).
The match was played on 6 November 1957. While the Northern Ireland side was filled with rich talent which would allow it to go on and reach the World Cup quarter-finals the following summer in Sweden, the England team contained some of Matt Busby’s exciting young Manchester United protégés – Duncan Edwards, Roger Byrne and Tommy Taylor – who would die so tragically exactly three months later in the Munich air disaster.
Northern Ireland’s next victory against England serendipitously occurred shortly after Dougan’s autobiography was published. On 23 May 1972 player-manager Terry Neill scored the winner in a 0-1 win at Wembley. It would be another 33 years before victory was tasted again. Under the management of English-born former Northern Ireland international player Lawrie Sanchez the side’s fortunes progressed on a steep upward trajectory during 2005 and 2006. While the pièce de résistance of Sanchez’s reign was undoubtedly a 3-2 home victory over Spain in a European Championship qualifier in 2006, a 1-0 win over England a year previously (6 September 2005) in a World Cup qualifier was the result which supporters celebrated with most vigour. In the days before the game Sky Sports News took the pulse of supporters in Belfast. A visit to the Northern Ireland Supporters Club on the Loyalist Shankill Road would have provided illuminating viewing for those English viewers who felt that strong projections of Britishness and British identity in the community automatically translated to a fondness for England. One elderly supporter provided a piece of television gold which is now preserved under the moniker ‘Old man can predict the future!’ on YouTube (Fox8269 2006). Asked for his view on the game, the supporter yelled:
‘England?! We’ll bate the big England! All the Rooneys in the world’ll not bate us!’
Reporter: ‘Do you like Rooney?’
Supporter: ‘Aw, hey, the big wonder boy?! We’ll bate him alright! He’ll never score against our goalkeeper.’
Reporter: ‘Give us a score then.’
Supporter: ‘One nil for Northern Ireland. One nil! For Northern Ireland!! We’ll go easy on them!’ (Fox8269 2006).
There is another pragmatic but not insignificant factor in the arousal of strong feelings about England among Northern Ireland football supporters, as exemplified by the enthusiastic response of the Shankill interviewee. England is simply a massive “scalp”. Since the 1996 European Championships (Euro 1996) the team may never have performed as well as the sum of its parts has suggested it is capable of. This has not, however, made victory over England any less important for a nation as small as Northern Ireland. The team which ran out at Windsor Park on 6 September 2005 was a verifiable monument to the quality at England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson’s disposal: Paul Robinson, Luke Young, Rio Ferdinand, Jamie Carragher, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney. This author has a season ticket in the North Stand at Windsor Park, with a seat which before the stadium’s recent redevelopment was directly in line with the goal that England warmed-up toward before kick-off in September 2005. Even as a then 24-year-old who had witnessed a number of extremely talented international footballers among the opposition ranks at Windsor Park, I can vividly recall being extremely impressed by the confident aura which seemed to emanate from the England players during the pre-match routine. It was pure Hollywood.
Having been defeated 4-0 at Old Trafford earlier in the year, the feeling on the night was that if we could escape with 0-1 or 0-2 defeat we would be relatively happy. A draw would provoke scenes of euphoria. Certainly there were not many supporters who felt as confident as “Old man can predict the future.” If the game hinged on one turning point it was in the first half when James Quinn, the ungainly (Coventry-born) Peterborough United centre-forward went arm to arm with Wayne Rooney in an aerial battle in which the Manchester United player came off much the worse. Rooney, then at the height of his petulant younger self, was enraged and lost his focus; the game then morphed into exactly the sort of contest which suited Northern Ireland perfectly – an imitation of an FA Cup Third Round giant-killing in which the superstars of “big England” were hectored, hassled, frustrated and ultimately beaten by a neat David Healy finish when he latched onto a sublime ball from midfield by Aston Villa’s young player of the previous season, Steven Davis. In his BBC Northern Ireland commentary on the Northern Ireland vs. England match on 6 September 2005, local commentator Jackie Fullerton made much of the fact that Healy had scored against England of all teams:
Here’s Davis, it’s a good ball. The flag stays down. Healy!’ Oh! What a moment for Northern Ireland, what a moment for Windsor Park! What about that for your 19th international goal – it’s against England! (TheParkyni, 2011).
The notion of England as a sporting “scalp” is not only restricted to association football. In early 2016 the incumbent England rugby union manager Eddie Jones stated the following prior to a Six Nations fixture with Ireland:
Maybe Clive Woodward summed it up best when he said everyone hates England. It’s true. Because of the history that is involved with England and the surrounding countries, there’s that long-seated hatred of England and you can feel that (Kitson, 2016).
Not many Irish rugby supporters would disagree with Jones. Indeed, it is telling that he was cognisant of the “long-seated hatred” of England which undeniably goes far beyond sporting rivalry and into the territory of political treachery as outlined throughout this chapter. The Scots need only invoke tales of the Glencoe Massacre in 1692 to produce negative feelings toward England, while for many Welsh people the English-orchestrated Capel Celyn flooding of 1965 is still within living memory.
Anti-Englishness – but not as we know it
Ten and a half years prior to the fixture at Windsor Park England had travelled to Dublin to play the Republic of Ireland in a friendly. The match was abandoned after 21 minutes after elements of the far-right Combat 18 group ripped chairs from the upper part of the stand allocated to England supporters at Lansdowne Road and began throwing the debris into the stand beneath them which housed Irish fans. The febrile atmosphere in the build-up to the match had become downright poisonous as the teams emerged onto the pitch; “God Save the Queen” was booed by some Irish supporters while part of the English contingent chanted “No surrender to the IRA” and “Ulster is British.” There had been violent confrontations between supporters late in 1990 after England played a European Championship qualifier in Dublin.
It might have been assumed then that Nationalists and Republicans would have wished for a Northern Ireland victory over England when the teams met in September 2005 given the recent enmities surrounding Republic of Ireland and England fixtures. This was not to be the case and the “anyone but England” mantra took a strange deviation which demonstrated internal frustrations in Northern Ireland eight years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. This was highlighted in an ill-tempered column by Robin Livingstone, the editor of the West Belfast newspaper Andersonstown News who stated ‘Here's hoping England give Norn Iron a good spanking.’ Eamonn McCann, the Derry-based former Civil Rights activist had cited Livingstone’s outburst in an article written shortly after the 1-0 win over England. In the article he described the strong sense of surprise he had encountered among other Nationalists when he had voiced his support for Northern Ireland in this particular fixture:
At the beginning of the week I took part in a handful of radio programmes in which I expressed my hope-against-hope that Lawrie's lads would eviscerate the Brit mixum-gatherum of millionaire mediocrities. One common Nationalist reaction was sheer incredulity. Ah, come on, you can't mean it… (McCann, 2005).
Livingstone’s wish that England would beat Northern Ireland seems a far cry from events of the early 1970s in Belfast. In August 1971, after the introduction of internment without trial for suspected IRA members, Greater Belfast saw swathes of its population rapidly shift from one area to another as people sought refuge from interfaces where violence was increasing. The Cliftonville Road in North Belfast was up until this period a relatively affluent middle-class neighbourhood which was predominantly but not exclusively Protestant (Burgess 2015, p.103). Sugden and Bairner (1993, p.52) have demonstrated how a quintessentially English sport was one of the first casualties as working class Catholics moved into the Cliftonville area from nearby neighbourhoods and laid down a marker,
because of its anglophile connotations, cricket has already been a casualty of sectarian politics in Northern Ireland. Cliftonville Cricket Club was burned out of its premises in north Belfast in 1972, two years after the club’s centenary. The presence of one of the Province’s oldest cricket clubs in the neighbourhood was unacceptable to local nationalists. According to its souvenir brochure (1990), Cliftonville Cricket Club ‘fell victim to elements who were hostile to the club and what it represented in the area.’
For many years the derelict land was used as a Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) pitch colloquially known as the ‘Crickie.’ It is now social housing.
The Republic of Ireland football team had never been credible rivals to Northern Ireland until the 1980s when Jack Charlton took charge in Dublin. Despite this, the first ever encounter between the two sides in September 1978 was politically significant, but it also inadvertently brought into sharp relief the discomfort many Ulster Loyalists had with England by the late 1970s. On the day that the two Irish teams met Northern Ireland – the away side – turned out in their traditional green shirts, whereas the Republic of Ireland wore an all-white strip. Despite this, Northern Ireland fans - particularly those with a strong sense of Unionist or Loyalist identity – still felt the need to travel to the Dublin contest bedecked in the colours of the Union flag. Jim Rainey, a contributor to an online Northern Ireland football forum, remembers how the supporters turned up in Dublin:
All totally pished and up to our necks with “Prodfest gear”, no green in those days. The Northern Ireland support wore red, white and blue and each match was an excuse for denouncing all things Republican and celebrating our Britishness (Perryman 2010: 338).
When Northern Ireland faced England in their next away fixture, the malleability of unionist and loyalist identity became evident. Rainey explains:
We felt we couldn’t go to Wembley with our red, white and blue regalia. How could we differentiate ourselves from the smug English? Northern Ireland played in green so we should all bring anything green we could find. We bought Celtic hooped scarves and sewed small Ulster flags onto them (Ibid.).
To Perryman (Ibid.) this is indicative of ‘Do-it-yourself national-identity making’. For Unionists and Loyalists this dramatic transition in expressions of identity is not unique to sport. The donning of green and white during a period of political instability in Northern Ireland can be read as a gesture of anti-authoritarianism against England and its stewardship of the Union, similar in sentiment to the UWC Strike and the cultural memory of “The Englishman’s Betrayal”. Indeed, Boulton (1973, p.22) has noted that Loyalists throughout Ireland’s modern history ‘have professed a fanatical devotion to the British Crown, the British constitution, the British way of life: and all have been prepared to fight Britain to stay British.’ That this is reflected in football supporter culture where the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland has long held primacy should come as little surprise. Underlining this Bairner (1997, p.98) has stated that in the realm of sport this constituency ‘has traditionally enjoyed a measure of autonomy which has led to the construction of almost exclusively working-class settings with their own particular ambience.’ There can be little doubt that the political frustrations of the Protestant working class in Northern Ireland – often directed towards England – have found unique expression in these settings.
The national anthem debate in a ‘dis-united’ United Kingdom: the ongoing conundrum for Northern Ireland
Unlike the Welsh and Scottish football teams, Northern Ireland does not have a unique anthem. Its Olympic participants are represented by the famous “Danny Boy” which is sung to the strains of the traditional “Londonderry Air”. Scotland used “Scotland the Brave” for a number of years before settling on “Flower of Scotland”, a song which is also synonymous with the national rugby team. For over a century “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” (“Land of My Fathers” in English) has been sung at Welsh sporting events. Northern Ireland’s footballers however, like their English counterparts, stand to attention for the British anthem “God Save the Queen”. The anthem, which is synonymous with visions of royalty and Empire, has lost currency in a rapidly reshaping UK. Indeed, groups such as Anthem 4 England have long campaigned for a specifically English, rather than British, national identity to be expressed through a different anthem. Such campaigns have sought to challenge the conflation of Englishness and Britishness, with Anthem 4 England (2016) stating in its manifesto that,
England needs an anthem that represents England. Why should the British National Anthem continue to be played and sung at occasions which are strictly English affairs? And why should those Scots and Welsh be permitted to say ‘it is the English anthem’ as an excuse for booing God Save the Queen?
The campaigners further suggest that,
No longer should the English expect to sing a song that amounts to little more than collective national forelock-tugging set to music. It’s a cringe-making and toe-curling national embarrassment.
In January 2016 Toby Perkins, the Labour MP for Chesterfield, presented as a Ten Minute Rule speech in the House of Commons the idea of England having its own national anthem. At the time of writing the “English National Anthem Bill 2015 – 16” has reached the second reading stage in the House of Commons, but that has not dampened controversy over the issue in Northern Ireland. Many Protestants, Unionists and Loyalists, already reeling from the vote to restrict the flying of the Union flag on Belfast’s City Hall in December 2012 (Mulvenna, 2012), have detected another attempted diminution of their social, political and cultural identity. The period following the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998 has not been a happy one for this constituency as Nationalists and Republicans are perceived to be in the ascendancy, accommodated by the new political institutions.
Perkins’ speech came at a time when euphoria among Northern Ireland football fans was at its highest point for decades. Having qualified for Euro 2016 supporters looked forward to the team’s involvement in their first major tournament since the Mexico World Cup in 1986. Reacting to the news that Northern Ireland might be forced to drop God Save the Queen as a sporting anthem should England gain its own anthem, the recently-appointed Democratic Unionist Party First Minister, Arlene Foster, stated that she did not want the issue to become ‘politicised’ declaring that: ‘We have a national anthem. I don’t think there’s any need to tinker with that’ (Gordon, 2016).
Foster’s wish that sport in Northern Ireland would not be dragged into a political argument betrayed at best a naivety about the nature of international sport. It is almost impossible to talk about international football without politics becoming part of the discourse. By its very nature national identity is a central essence of political debate. While football might be the “global game”, which brings together people from dramatically different cultures across the world in a shared experience which transcends borders and language, it also has a habit of throwing up some extremely politically charged duals. Notable examples of this include: Iran’s defeat of the USA at the World Cup in France 1998, East Germany’s 1-0 victory over neighbours and hosts West Germany at the 1974 World Cup and not least the infamous “night in November” in 1993 between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in Belfast shortly after the horrors of the Shankill bombing and the Greysteel shootings.
In the wake of Perkins’ proposal and the interest it created in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph ran an online poll which sought to discover its readers’ feelings about the use of God Save the Queen as the Northern Ireland football anthem. Around 5,846 people voted, with 54% of those stating that it was time for a new anthem (Sunday Life 2016). Polls such as this are hardly scientific and there is the strong possibility that many Nationalists and Republicans voted against God Save the Queen. Indeed, West Belfast MLA Pat Sheehan – a former Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoner and hunger striker - stated that,
On its own, it's not going to make a massive amount of difference [changing the anthem], but there are a range of options that the IFA could put in place, that would make Windsor Park a more welcoming sports stadium for all of the community. I feel there is still a chill there [Windsor Park] and I think the playing of God Save the Queen plays into that. (Gordon 2016)
Irish Football Association (IFA) president Jim Shaw outlined the bind in which the association has found itself as it tries to modernise:
The national anthem debate is one of the most divisive in our history. We’ve been debating it for years. If we keep it, we annoy people and we know if it goes, there will be plenty of angry supporters (Sunday Life 2016).
Shaw was quick to point out the political realities which have hitherto limited any movement on the anthem issue in Northern Ireland:
But it’s not for the Irish FA to decide what the national anthem of Northern Ireland is. That is for the devolved government at Stormont. The Scots and Welsh governments decided to change when they came into power. We didn’t (Sunday Life 2016).
Conceding that events might force the IFA’s hand, Shaw further stated: ‘I think it would be very difficult for us to continue using God Save the Queen if the English decide they want a new anthem. I think we would be duty bound to follow suit’ (Sunday Life, 2016).
Conclusion
This chapter has served to demonstrate the flexibility and malleability of Unionist and Loyalist identity as refracted through the prism of international football, with particular reference to rivalry with England. Although there has been a lot of ill-feeling toward England in Northern Ireland from both a sporting and political standpoint, the relationship has also been deeply umbilical. Every weekend huge numbers of football fans from across the country converge on the two airports in Belfast to embark on flights carrying them to Liverpool, London, Manchester, East Midlands and Leeds/Bradford. George Best is perhaps the most famous British footballer of all time and is housed in the pantheon which up until the dawn of Messi and Ronaldo had room only for Pelé and Diego Armando Maradona. The names of Northern Irish players who have made a reputation for themselves playing for English teams roll off the tongue: Martin O’Neill, Sammy McIlroy, Billy Bingham, Pat Jennings, Gerry Armstrong, Norman Whiteside, Harry Gregg, Danny Blanchflower, Jimmy McIlroy and many others are players who have played with no little renown for top English sides.
Indeed the most successful Northern Ireland manager before Michael O’Neill and after Billy Bingham was without doubt Lawrie Sanchez – an Englishman. It is also worth noting that the two most successful Republic of Ireland managers have been Englishmen - Jack Charlton and Mick McCarthy. In this regard the relationship between Northern Ireland (and the Republic of Ireland) and England in footballing terms has been almost symbiotic.
In recent times the picture has changed dramatically. Although there are still a healthy number of Northern Irish players playing in the English Premier League and Football League, there are many turning out for Scottish sides. With the influx of foreign superstars plying their trade in the top English league the room for “home-grown” talent has diminished somewhat. The current Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill who played with success in both England and Scotland has advocated the Scottish game as a means for inexperienced players to get first team football, in turn priming them for the rigours of international football:
I encourage our young players to come here because I genuinely think they will get a better chance to progress. I tell players who are 15, 16, 17 years old, if you get the chance, think about Scottish clubs. Tie it in with a university course – that culture still exists in Scotland, because players are not earning enough money to neglect what happens further down the line, whereas in England, you can be on ten grand a week even if you are not playing (Pattullo 2015).
The national anthem debate has also proved intriguing, and will continue to draw controversy. Despite Northern Ireland’s often adversarial attitude towards England, the desire among many supporters of the national team to retain God Save the Queen demonstrates an unwillingness to separate the British identity which acts as a social, cultural and political glue for Loyalists and Unionists, from the Northern Irish identity which must be given unique expression in an ever-changing and increasingly disunited Kingdom. Like the Welsh and Scottish – and ultimately the English, should they choose to adopt another anthem – an overarching Britishness can still exist comfortably with a distinct national identity.
One thing is certain. No matter how much the UK or Britishness changes in the forthcoming years, the ‘Celtic fringe’ will always take particular pleasure from those rare victories over England.
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