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Identity Theft

18 November, 2016
Posted in: Family

All this 1916 centenary commemoration has got me thinking a bit about identity.  Recently, I realised that all my grandparents were born British citizens.  At least three of them vigourously did not want to be, but they were all the same until well into adulthood. If you had asked me six months ago what nationality my grandparents were, I would have answered “Irish” unhesitatingly. I now realise that would have been only partly true and that is very strange to me.

I said it to my aunt and she said, “Ah no, they weren’t really British”.  National identity is quite the complex thing, isn’t it?

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jenny says

    19 November, 2016 at 20:55

    They were British subjects. But never British. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

  2. belgianwaffle says

    20 November, 2016 at 18:12

    Is that right, Jenny? Some people from NI do describe themselves as British and I assume that the same would have been true for the South pre-independence. It mightn’t have been an identity that they would have chosen but I think that it is one that existed all the same. I could be wrong, of course, but it does underline how complex it all is and how our identities are more multi-faceted than we sometimes acknowledge.

  3. Jennifer says

    21 November, 2016 at 23:22

    I think during the period of Union the Irish were always understood to be Irish while British subjects. The unionists of Northern Ireland were Irish until the Troubles hardened attitudes.

  4. belgianwaffle says

    22 November, 2016 at 20:58

    I did not know that, how interesting.

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