Hello Triple Distilled Communications Homecoming June 1st, 2023 Ardara Distillery in Donegal. The Irish have a long history of emigration. It pre-dates the Famine years of the 1840s, but that confluence of a failure of the potato – the staple crop for much of the impoverished population – and the subsequent failure of the ruling British government to properly react to the crisis pushed millions into flight. By 1890, 40% of Irish-born people were living abroad. The War of Independence, a brutal Civil War, an
James Doherty grew up in Woking, England; his father was born and raised in the UK to Donegal parents, while his mother was born in the county before moving to the UK. Like a lot of emigrant homes in Britain, theirs was an outpost for family and friends leaving Ireland who would live with them as they found their feet in England. Doherty says that as a result the house was very Irish in his youth, with cousins and uncles passing through. As he got older, and the family became more middle class (“We went fro
He says he never stopped feeling Irish, even though there were times in the 1970s and 1980s – as the Troubles raged – when there was open prejudice, and that for his parents, the aftermath of an IRA atrocity would mean that to be visibly or audibly Irish in the UK was to be perceived as suspicious, or worse, a co-conspirator with terrorists. Pride in their heritage sometimes had to be a private affair.