Isn’t there something wonderfully ironic about the news that Irish and British backpackers are being told they aren’t welcome in Australia because of their drunken and anti-social behaviour? I mean, over 40% of Ozzies have Irish blood and in most cases that’s the blood of people who were transported from Ireland and England in the 19th century for…anti-social behaviour! Dear oh dear!

The tide has been rising awhile but reached a new level of visibility when it was reported in the Irish Echo that Dubliner Thomas Dunne, owner of the Queensland hostel Main Street Backpackers, will no longer provide lodging for Irish backpackers because of their disorderly behaviour.
Dunne has been running his hostel and adjacent bar O’Duinn’s since 2006. Backpackers stay there while working locally on farms for up to 20 weeks – a legal requirement to secure a second working visa in Oz.
He told the Irish Echo that “The Irish are the only ones to have caused deliberate damage… This year we have had eight Irish backpackers. It’s only the start of the season and already six have been thrown out…” He’s even had two Irish men arrested and charged with property damage to the accommodation.
The same picture emerges in Perth in Western Australia, where the Irish are disproportionately represented among those arrested for drink-related street disorder, and the police are clamping down.
And it’s not just what happens in pubs and the streets. Apparently property rental agencies are fed up with properties being trashed in drunken parties – and even when there aren’t parties.
The temperance moralists in Ireland love it, despite the fact that the Irish are (still) actually very well regarded in Australia. Indeed, Thomas Dunne was very careful to emphasise this. The trouble is caused by a minority. But sadly they’re out there, creating minor mayhem, and that begs a few questions.
Is it the deeply embedded belief in the craic, the idea that we’re great drinkers and singers and dancers and sure if we get a bit crazy it’s all part of our charm? You know, the wild Irish rogues, the leppin’ schleppin’ madlads on tour…
Which may or may not be related to the idea that we go off to football championships and sing come-all-ye’s till the barrels are empty and everyone loves us.
They generally do too. The Germans thought the Irish were fantastic in 1988, likewise the Italians in 1990. They really did and they were right. And Polish friends report, without exception, that the Poles thought the Irish were the best guests during Euro 2012 by a long shot, a fact now also recognised by UEFA.
But clearly it doesn’t always work like that. The football fans haven’t trashed hotels or started stupid brawls. Tension has almost always been defused by the stardust of a song…
So why has there been an apparent increase in British-style loutishness? Like, Thomas Dunne mentioned deliberate damage…
We have no class or qualifications profiles of those involved so it’s hard to draw conclusions. It could be a sad expression of extended-adolescence drinking culture. It could be an overhang of Celtic Tiger entitlement culture, the violence and vandalism deriving from arrogance and a perverse idea that because we’re Irish we’re excused. It could be stupidity or frustration. But there’s no proof of any of these.
Likewise, we can’t be sure if emigration is a factor as such. Some people have travelled to Australia to ride out the recession at home by working in a booming economy. Their emigration is a very different thing to what it was to 19th century emigrants to Australia. You can get around Ireland in hours, you can fly to the Antipodes in a day, you can communicate with everyone you know in an instant. It ain’t the same thing at all.
So, why do so many people in Ireland talk of emigration in 19th century terms? Why would parents and friends be telling emigrants not to return home because there are no jobs here when, for example, US firms in Ireland are reported to have 2,500 vacancies right now and we have a constant inflow of immigrants to Ireland filling many other jobs?
The Irish Echo describes drunken Irish young people in Ozzie A&E departments being tended by Irish nurses. Well, if they were in A&E in Ireland they’d most likely be tended by nurses from India…
We seem to find our own stereotypes hard to shake, whether it’s the drunken Paddy, the pining emigrant or the economic pessimist. Old letters to and from Irish emigrants echo the present to a remarkable degree. David Fitzpatrick contributed a paper to Irish Historical Studies in 1991 titled “‘That beloved country, that no place else resembles’: connotations of Irishness in Irish-Australian letters, 1841-1915”.
In one letter from 1860, an emigrant girl is told by her brother that “the prospect of living in Ireland at the present is very Dark”. And her father added:
“My Dear Child it is hard hard work to Forget I feel it So, the Native Soil how strangely sweet where first we Breathed who can Forget with Flowing eyes, yet with a thankful heart that you have Escaped as a Bird from the snare of the Fowler.”
Wonderfully poetic. But how odd is it that, even though there is no possible comparison between Ireland then and now, so little has changed in how we speak of Ireland, how we behave at home and abroad (both good and ill) and how we view the future.
Why? More on this anon…