My relationship with racism is personal. The clue is in my name. My father spent his life living in fear, being outed in this country for being Irish at the time when the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and in that order. We were at the bottom of the pile. I have every reason to loathe racism.
I think “fear” might be a tad extreme for being outed as Irish, you know? And those signs were, rather, “a sign” weren’t they?
So he claims that Mr. Murphy, senior, was scared that someone might discover that he was of Irish extraction?
Can’t think how anyone might have discovered that hidden secret.
…when the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”…
No blacks or Irish in your pub can be prudent. But prohibiting dogs is rather unreasonable…
It seems to have turned out that way.
Considering the time.it was remarkably prescient.
Probably not even “a sign”; there seems to be no contemporary evidence for, or even mention of, such signs:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/oct/21/no-irish-no-blacks-no-dogs-no-proof
Beat me to it, although I would not have had a citation, let alone one from the great lie machine.
Every adult on the planet has been discriminated against. The reasons are the property of the discriminator, and not subject to review by anyone. They are entitled to their opinion.
In the past century, Western Civilization decided to codify some discrimination into law. Some of it good, most of it bad.
The alleged blacks, dogs, and Irish sign is problematic. Surely pub owners can morally and legally forbid dogs. So pub owners DO have some say so. “No Irish” would have been a better argument.
There are still pub signs saying no Richard Murphys
A thumbs up is not enough for this.
My father spent his life living in fear, being outed in this country for being Irish
What a pussy. I’ve never met an Irish who was afraid of being known as Irish.
If only people from Ireland were able to open pubs.
Well, he knows where the train is that goes back to Erin, a magical place where dicrimination both racial and sectarian is unknown.
I wasn’t aware that Irish was a race, and instead I thought Spud and his immediate ancestors were, instead, white.
My father spent his life living in fear, being outed as my father.
FIFY
“the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”
Yeah, yeah. Did you know that the Chinese Communist Party eventually confessed that it had erected the notorious notice in pre-war Shanghai saying “No dogs, No Chinese”?
“And those signs were, rather, “a sign” weren’t they?”
Yeah, there’s one photograph of this.
Complete and utter horseshit. There were Irish communities all over the UK in London, Birmingham, Liverpool.
London Irish?
My relationship with racism is personal. The clue is in my name. My father spent his life living in fear, being outed in this country for being Irish at the time when the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and in that order. We were at the bottom of the pile. I have every reason to loathe racism. I might look as though I enjoy white male privilege – and of course, to some degree, I do – but I also know from lived experience what racism feels like. I notice it both in its conscious and unconscious forms, with the latter potentially being even worse than the former. And what I know is that unless the media calls it out, as it is finally beginning to do with Farage, we cannot beat it.
Even by his standards this is utter bollocks. I’ll bet his father never once had to ‘live in fear’ – and as for ‘being outed’ I think the accent (if he had one) may have been more of a clue. To say that being Irish in 2025 is to be a victim of racism is pure, unadulterated crap. Nothing more, nothing less.
I am, therefore, truly grateful to those who have come forward to evidence precisely, based upon their lived experience, just what Farage has been so for so long that he hardly knows any other form of behaviour, and that everything about him is, in fact, based upon a deep-seated hatred of the “other”.
Yes – after all he could be writing hate filled screeds on Twitter and his blog based on blind ignorance and advocating economic theories that would destroy the entire country, as well as supporting the murder of every Jew in the country.
My wish is that the media will use this newfound evidence to continue to speak the truth to challenge his attempt to secure power. It is the way to beat him.
I think a few denizens of the blog here have pointed out that of course this about a threat to power – the power of a largely unelected left wing bureaucracy to make wholesale changes to the country, and the one man who might be able to stop them in their tracks.
Truly he is an exemplar of what pure evil looks like. I’ve encountered convicted kiddie fiddlers who sit more appropriately on the moral high ground.
To say that being Irish in 2025 is to be a victim of racism is pure, unadulterated crap.
To say it in the 1950’s is also bollocks. The Irish are not now, and have never been, an oppressed minority in Britain. They weren’t always celebrated, particularly when huge numbers of illiterate navvies arrived to compete with illiterate native navvies for work, but they weren’t like terrified blacks in rural Mississippi circa Jim Crow or anything remotely like that.
If Britain was some kind of anti-Irish racist pesthole, it wouldn’t be the favourite emigration destination for Irish people, and we wouldn’t have Graham Norton on Eurovision.
Another source that questions the Spud’s assertion, albeit not as categorically as the Graun:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i29b9i/how_common_were_no_blacks_no_dogs_no_irish_signs/
That took four seconds of google-fu, if Spud would like to do some research
My “one web search disproof” theory works again!
Worth pointing out they’re steaming in – they smell blood and its being skilfully co-ordinated, ironically by a newspaper that would be ecstatic if every Jew in the world was dead.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/05/holocaust-survivors-call-on-nigel-farage-to-apologise-over-alleged-antisemitic-comments
But in a letter to Farage seen by the Guardian, the 11 survivors said: “As Holocaust survivors, we understand the danger of hateful words – because we have seen where such words lead
The Holocaust was caused by 13 year old Adolf’s spicy banter on the playground. In other news, there’s people who still think “open letters” from “Holocaust survivors” are relevant to anything in 2025.
“Let us be clear: praising Hitler, mocking gas chambers, or hurling racist abuse is not banter. Not in a playground. Not anywhere.
If it’s not banter, how do you explain why Hitler killed himself?
(because he saw his gas bill)
Top bantz, Steve 🙂
Funny how the left now care about the Jews. Israel were supposed to accept a load of rape and murder and do nothing, but I guess Palestinians > Jews > Farage.
Is Farage the Final Boss of Guardian politics? I think I’m going to help Reform out.
“the 11 survivors said”
I cheerfully assume that every purported holocaust survivor is fake unless there is good evidence otherwise. I guffawed about a year ago when one “survivor” justified his claimed status because his parents had left Germany in 1933.
I could claim to be a Blitz survivor – neither of my future parents was killed by a bomb that fell only eight miles away.
Maybe some Yanks here are 9/11 survivors having visited NYC in the previous couple of years.
Well, I see it as a rather obviously cynical attempt to assert moral authority from an unrelated historical tragedy in support of a contemporary political smear job. But we might as well ask survivors of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster for their opinions on Nigel Farage. Has equally as much to do with tales about what 13 year old schoolboys may or may not have said 50 years ago.
The whole thing’s a nebula of nonsense, and I’m sorry but not surprised to see people trying to weaponise the Nazi genocide of the Jews in 1940’s Europe as an excuse to tell you that… (drum roll…) Nigel Farage is bad.
And here was me thinking Jeremy Corbyn was the greatest “existential threat to Jewish life in this country” (!) The daft bugger has probably been spending more time in the allotment instead of on the ol’ anti-Semitism. I’m not sure it’s possible for a British politician to be more pro-Jewish than Nigel, btw. Unlike most of the rest of the House of Commons, he thinks Israel has a right to defend itself. And to my simple mind, maybe that was the useful definition of anti-Semite all along: somebody who is indifferent to Jews being slaughtered at a music festival. Not so much someone who was an edgelord at 13 years of age back in predecimal times?
Next they’ll be interviewing the kids from Grange Hill school and try to get Roland to say it was Nige who gave Zammo that dodgy gear.
I must be a 9/11 survivor because I visited an office in one of the WTC towers in about 1972.
Are they certified ‘Holocaust Survivors’ like the ‘certified genocide experts’ from a few months ago;)
The UK being so racist that 28% of the population are foreigners.
Well yeah. Those foreigners are racist!!!
Back in those days I recall the late and great Dave Allen made a big thing of being Irish. He was clearly and rightly proud to be Irish. It was not something he needed to, or chose to hide. Indeed I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone Irish who was not proud of their heritage. Now if Murphy was Welsh I concede he might have a point …….
I’m not sure that most of his jokes would have worked as well without knowing that he was not only Irish but understood the role of the Catholic Church as well as he did.
“I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone Irish who was not proud of their heritage”
You didn’t meet my grandpa: he loathed the people he grew up among in an Irish slum. The only part of his Irish Roman Catholic heritage he didn’t manage to shake off was his anti-semitism. Otherwise he was a lovely fellow.
I can’t remember any anti-Jewish stuff from priests and nuns, but I understand Calvin had more robust views? As did Martin Luther, of course. I only mention because I hadn’t heard of Aunty S being a particularly Catholic thing before.
Not that the left footers are incapable of being anti-Semites, the French exist, non? And that’s not the half of it, you should’ve seen their petrol station toilets in the 80’s.
But of course the Catholic Church isn’t anti-Semitic. The opposite of a racialist or nationalist organisation in fact. It’s anti-everything-that’s-not-pro-Our Lord as they see things based on 2,000 years of Christian theology and whatnot. You are perfectly free to disagree, because I’m not the Pope yet.
“But of course the Catholic Church isn’t anti-Semitic. The opposite of a racialist or nationalist organisation in fact. It’s anti-everything-that’s-not-pro-Our Lord as they see things based on 2,000 years of Christian theology and whatnot. You are perfectly free to disagree, because I’m not the Pope yet.”
Until relatively recently in Europe (about 100 years), and still very much the case in the Middle East, the whole thing of religion was bound up with tribes and lands, and that everyone else is a heathen.
It’s why EVERYONE used to persecute every other religion or sect. Because religion=the other tribe getting a foothold, leading to a gateway to colonialism and then, your land is gone. Portuguese Catholic missionaries weren’t sent to Japan to save their souls, but to change the culture, to create more acceptance of the Portuguese. It’s why when there were quite a lot of them, the Japanese started killing them. And it was done publicly and brutally to send a message.
“Because religion=the other tribe getting a foothold, leading to a gateway to colonialism and then, your land is gone”.
You’re talking about Blighty WB…….
The tempura stuck, though.
Get a grip, Steve.
https://historyireland.com/the-limerick-pogrom-1904/
“This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the only anti-Jewish pogrom to take place on Irish soil—that which occurred in Limerick in the early months of 1904.”
Those are rookie numbers.
Point of pendantry m’lud:
My father spent his life living in fear, being outed in this country for being Irish at the time when the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and in that order. We were at the bottom of the pile. I have every reason to loathe racism.
If blacks were listed first of these signs (and my neighbour to the south beat me as well) it meant that they were considered first and therefore the lowest of the low, therefore the Irish would be third lowest of the lowest.
And on another point of point of pendantry, don’t progressives now capitalise Blacks and did Spud miss a trick to virtue signal?
Don’t mention the Black Irish!
Phil Lynott!
Born in West Bromwich.
Just to throw a stone in the pond, how about Celtic v Rangers…? Presumably everyone in Glasgow is “living in fear….”
BTW, I’m partly Irish. Very important when it comes to the 6 Nations. Admittedly, I’m also a tiny bit French. But I generally manage to hide that. 😉
“Just to throw a stone in the pond, how about Celtic v Rangers”
Shoot the lot of them, both mobs. Bloody blemish on the reputation of True Scots.
And there’s never been any discrimination in Ireland whatsoever, has there?
“No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”
Surely, if it really happened, many said, “So?” Or even, “Good.”
You can’t please everybody.
Transition came to US around 1970. Laws were passed that said that if you are open to the public, you have to serve the public. In reaction, some businesses changed to a “club.” A bar I frequented required people to “join the club,” register and pay a fee. Directly trying to keep blacks out. Over a few short years, the reactionaries returned to businesses open to the public.
Gamecock is still a golf club member. And Sam’s Club member. And Amazon Prime member. People have long forgotten the implied racist stigma of being in a “club.”
>being outed in this country for being Irish
Wouldn’t the dude named *Murphy* with an Irish accent have done that? Also, when was it dangerous to be Irish in the UK? Its one step behind ‘being outed’ for being Black.
>the signs in the pubs said “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”,
Which never actually happened.
When did this sign business happen? To wit, should sign have said “negroes,” and not “blacks?” And is the Spud in trouble for saying “blacks,” and not “Blacks?”
Being silly. Commies are always forgiven.
Tangent: while looking for when use of negro changed to black (~1970), I noticed Wikipedia referred to 17th century slaves as “Black.” Trying to find when black became Black, AI never mentions black, and goes directly from negro to Black in 1970.
“He who controls the present controls the past.”