Northern Ireland

British and Irish Lions – On This Day in 1974

Nowhere is the word British more overworked than in Northern Ireland

Alan McLellan, prop for the Canterbury Rugby Football team, is tackled to the ground by Fergus Slattery, flanker for the British and Irish Lions . Picture: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Alan McLellan, prop for the Canterbury Rugby Football team, is tackled to the ground by Fergus Slattery, flanker for the British and Irish Lions . Picture: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (Central Press/Getty Images)
By Cormac Moore
August 1 1974

We all seek to identify with the winning side. No race is more adept at this than the English.

They are favourably placed for the purpose. The island that they inhabit and whose destiny they control also shelters other indigenous races, Welsh and Scots, as well as increasing numbers of West Indians, Ugandans and Pakistanis who carry British passports. The virtues and achievements of these are publicised as British while their misdeeds are attributed to their primitive racial strains.

The original Britons were tribes of Celtic origin and were pushed by waves of invaders to the Celtic fringe, to Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and the Highlands of Scotland, as well as to Brittany and Ireland. In a sense most of us are British and our native languages, Irish, Welsh, Breton, Manx and Cornish are all kin to the tongues of the ancient Britons.

But the modern publicist really equates British with English, though he will usually be careful not to offend the Welsh or the Scots by making this interpretation too obvious.

Sometimes it slips out, as it did when one over-enthusiastic commentator, describing the arrival of the conquering rugby team at London Airport, spoke of the “English Lions”.

Four members of the team must have changed their skins on the flight from London to Aldergrove for they arrived here as “Ulster Lions”. Did Fergus Slattery become an Irish Lion on arriving in Dublin?

Nowhere is the word British more overworked than in Northern Ireland where, like the British pound, it has been devalued by inflated claims and low productivity.

Irish News editorial on the tendency for good news stories to be attributed to the English while misdeeds are blamed on more “primitive racial strains” such as the Welsh, Scottish or Irish.
Shipbuilder Harland & Wolff has suspended trading in its shares on the London Stock Exchange after the Belfast-based company failed to publish its annual results on time
The Harland & Wolff cranes in east Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA)
H&W Not in Labour’s Sights for Taking Over

Harland and Wolff were not included when Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn yesterday named 13 shipbuilding firms that Labour wanted to nationalise.

Mr Benn said the industry had failed over the past 20 years to get a rising share of the world market, figures out today showing that the UK is now only fifth in the world shipbuilding league.

Harland and Wolff was not included in a list of shipbuilding firms nationalised in the UK in 1977 in a measure spearheaded by Tony Benn, the late father of the current Northern Ireland Secretary of State Hilary Benn.