Ros Scanlon credits Irish cultural figures for much of the changed atmosphere, including legendary BBC presenter Terry Wogan and musicians such as U2, Thin Lizzy, Sinead O’Connor, the Pogues “and now Ed Sheeran!”
Yet all of these icons are building on the foundations laid by the unacknowledged millions who came to Britain over many centuries.
The generation of Ed Sheeran’s parents and grandparents were the Irish people who built Britain’s roads and housing estates, the railways above and below ground.
The famous ballad ‘McAlpine’s Fusiliers’ remembers how they “sweated blood and they washed down mud with pints and quarts of beer”. Irish nurses were fundamental to the staffing of the NHS.
In those days, most Irish immigrants found expression of their culture in the ballrooms of places like Kilburn in northwest London, or the Astoria in Manchester, or the Irish pubs which often catered to clientele from a specific county. Bouts of hostility encouraged newcomers to stick together.
But the extraordinary cross-fertilisation of the two cultures goes much further back – how could it not, given the colonial history and the proximity of both islands?
For two millennia there are records of the Irish trading, settling, and inter-marrying in Britain; they shared a common language with western Scotland and the Isle of Man, and a Druidic culture with the rest of Britain.
Monks from Ireland helped spread and then restore Christianity during the so-called Dark Ages. Sometimes it worked the other way: Ireland’s patron saint, Saint Patrick, was a Brit.