As Irish as Curry Sauce: Daniel’s Story

I’m waiting in a queue on a Friday evening at my local chippy in Manchester when the customer ahead of me asks for a tub of curry sauce. The girl serving asks him, matter-of-factly, if he wants, “English or Irish curry sauce”. He looks bemused and replies “English, please.” When she comes to serve me, I ask her why it is, particularly, Irish curry. She looks a little non-plussed and says, “I don’t know.” On my way home I’m asking myself too why it is Irish curry. There’s Irish stew. Irish Coffee. Irish Whiskey all of which have some connection to the island of Ireland, but Irish curry sauce is a new one on me. I think to myself, perhaps, it’s a sign of the “new” Ireland, not like the Ireland I had left over forty years ago. An Ireland now of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity. An Ireland of different and exotic tastes and of culinary innovations.

It takes me back to conversations with my father about Irish identity. I was born in Manchester but brought up until the age of eighteen – when I left for university – in Bray on the east coast about 20 kilometres south of Dublin. Still, I was always referred to by neighbours when I called at the door of friends as “it’s that English boy.” As if I wore my Englishness like the mark of Cain. I didn’t feel particularly feel English or Irish for that matter. At that time, I was just me, unaware of nationality of borders or heritage. As a keen and decent footballer, I had decided in my own mind that when the call came I’d pull on the green shirt and represent the Republic. Sadly, for Irish football that call never came!

It was during the hunger strikes of 1981 that the real question of my national identity hit home. Tensions were running high even in the sleepy seaside town of Bray. There were black flags hanging from houses and large and threatening meetings at the top of the town. I was often referred to as an “English” bastard when bumping into the wrong crowd, usually with beer in their belly. My father laughed it off. “You’re as Irish as I am,” he said. But I’m not, was always my reply. I was born in England and so I’m English. That’s my nationality. “Well,” he’d ask, “what do you feel?” I replied, “It’s not what I feel. Feelings have nothing to do with it. You can’t feel Irish. You’re Irish or you’re not. It’s about where you’re born and not about where you now live.”

And those thoughts stayed with me for a long time until I decided to apply for an Irish passport. But again, the old doubts were never too far from the surface. I was entitled to an Irish passport because I was a child born to an Irish parent and not because I had spent most of my formative years living in Ireland. This irked me but I persisted with the application. But I was determined not to be seen as a post-Brexit Paddy like so many I knew who had recently obtained their Irish passports. Although most of them had never been to Ireland. Or they’d heard about a long since dead grandparent who had been born there and so this became their route to a passport. A route my own kids, if I had any, could have taken too.

So, now, what does it mean for me to have a passport in my hand as I wait to board a flight or embark on a ferry to Europe. Well, it doesn’t convince me that I’m Irish any more than Irish curry sauce is anything other than plain old run-of-the-mill curry sauce. I am proud to have the passport and its value is this. It reminds me of my Irish heritage without decrying my English nature. It says to me, scratch the surface and, wherever we come from, we all share a common human nature and identity. It speaks to me of tolerance, of acceptance and of the different cultures and characteristic that make me who I am. For that I am grateful and humbled.