The Irish in Post-War Britain

Exploring the neglected history of Britain's largest migrant population, this new major historical study looks at the Irish in Britain after 1945. It reconstructs the histories of the lost generation who left independent Ireland in huge numbers to settle in Britain from the 1940s until the 1960s. Drawing on a wide range of previously neglected materials, Enda Delaney illustrates the complex process of negotiation and renegotiation that was involved in adapting and adjusting to life in Britain. Less visible than other newcomers, it is widely assumed that the Irish assimilated with relative ease shortly after arrival. The Irish in Post-war Britain challenges this view, and shows that the Irish often perceived themselves to be outsiders, located on the margins of this their adopted home. Many contemporaries frequently lumped all the Irish together as all being essentially the same, but Delaney argues the experiences of Britain's Irish population after the Second World War were much more diverse than previously assumed, and shaped by social class, geography and gender as well as nationality. This book's original approach demonstrates that any understanding of a migrant group must take account of both elements of the society that they had left, as well as the social landscape of their new country. Proximity ensured that even though these people had left Ireland, home as an imagined sense of place was never far away in the minds of those who had settled in Britain.

History

Delaney, Enda

Europe

Oxford University Press

Exploring the neglected history of Britain's largest migrant population, this is a major new study of the Irish in Britain after 1945. The Irish in Post-War Britain reconstructs, with both empathy and imagination, the histories of the lost generation who left independent Ireland in huge numbers to settle in Britain from the 1940s until the 1960s. Drawing on a wide range of previously neglected materials, Enda Delaney illustrates the complex process of negotiation and renegotiation that was involved in adapting and adjusting to life in Britain.Less visible than other newcomers, it is widely assumed that the Irish assimilated with relative ease shortly after arrival. The Irish in Post-war Britain challenges this view, and shows that the Irish often perceived themselves to be outsiders, located on the margins of their adopted home. Many contemporaries frequently lumped the Irish together as all being essentially the same, but Delaney argues that the experiences of Britain's Irish population after the Second World War were much more diverse than previously assumed, and shaped by social class, geography, and gender, as well as nationality.The book's original approach demonstrates that any understanding of a migrant group must take account of both elements of the society that they had left, as well as the social landscape of their new country. Proximity ensured that even though these people had left Ireland, home as an imagined sense of place was never far away in the minds of those who had settled in Britain.

A survey history of The Great Irish Famine. In particular, the testimonies of four key contemporaries are used throughout to convey the immediacy of the unfolding disaster. They are: John MacHale, the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam; John Mitchel, the radical nationalist; Elizabeth Smith, the Scottish-born wife of a Wicklow landlord; and Charles E. Trevelyan, the assistant secretary to the Treasury. Each brings a unique perspective, influenced by who they were, what they witnessed, and what they stood for.

The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine

GILL MACMILLAN

First-hand accounts of this historic tragedy combined to create a complete and uniquely personal picture of events. Here Enda Delaney tells the story of the Famine through the writings of four very different, real-life characters: Elizabeth Smith, an English woman who was a landlord's wife in Wicklow; John MacHale, the Catholic archbishop of Tuam; Sir Charles Trevelyan, the infamous Assistant Secretary to the Treasury who oversaw relief efforts in Ireland; and John Mitchel, an Irish nationalist who uttered the famous words, `The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight. But the English created the Famine.' Previously published in hardback as The Curse of Reason. "Scholars of Irish history as well as nonacademic readers can draw from Delaney's clear writing as well as his excellent bibliography."--Library Journal.

The Great Irish Famine: A History in Four Lives

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Gill Books

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971 (Volume 209) (McGill-Queen’s Studies in Ethnic History)

Enda Delaney argues that migration to Britain was qualitatively different from that to North America and that transience was the overriding characteristic of Irish migrant experience in the twentieth century. He provides an analysis of reasons for large-scale migration, in the process answering the important question of why so many people left Ireland. Demography, State and Society focuses on a number of vital themes, many rarely mentioned in previous studies: state policy in Ireland, official responses to migration in Britain, gender dimensions, individual migrant experience, patterns of settlement in Britain, and the crucial phenomenon of return migration. It offers much that will be of interest to scholars, students, and general readers in Irish migration as well as those in the wider fields of modern British and Irish history and migration studies.

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971 (McGill-Queen’s Studies in Ethnic History) (Volume 34)

McGill-Queen's University Press

The process of migration is associated with feelings of longing, homesickness, the shock of exposure to a new culture and, in other instances, with escape and freedom. Between the foundation of the new Irish state in 1921-22 and the early 1970s, approximately one and a half million people left independent Ireland, the vast majority travelling to Britain. Demography, State and Society is the first comprehensive analysis of the twentieth-century Irish exodus to Britain. Using a range of previously unused source materials, this book provides a detailed examination of the many ways in which migration shaped twentieth-century Irish society. Enda Delaney argues that migration to Britain was qualitatively different from the transatlantic journey to the United States; indeed, it is argued that, if anything, transience was the leitmotiv of the Irish migrant experience. This book examines in detail the patterns of Irish migration to Britain; it also offers an analysis of the reasons for large-scale migration. In the process, an important question is answered: why did so many people leave? Demography, State and Society focuses on a number of vital themes, many of them rarely mentioned by previous studies: state policy in Ireland; official responses in Britain; gender dimensions; individual migrant experience; patterns of settlement in Britain; and the crucial phenomenon of return migration. A major study of Irish migration, this book also offers much that will be of interest to scholars, students and general readers in the wider fields of modern British and Irish history and migration studies more broadly.

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Liverpool University Press

Between the early 1920s and the end of the twentieth century, two million people left the island of Ireland. For many this continued exodus of mainly young men and women represented damning evidence of political and economic failure. Yet the reasons behind the decision to emigrate could be far more complex than simple  economic necessity. Moreover the meaning of emigration for the individual was also changing radically. 
 
Drawing together the results of the latest research, Enda Delaney offers a comprehensive survey of the causes, chronology and character of emigration from Ireland, north and south, from the troubled aftermath of the First World War to the end of the twentieth century, when what had long been a nation of emigrants became for the first time host to a growing immigrant population of its own.

Irish Emigration Since 1921

Economic & Social History Society of Ireland

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Books by Delaney, Enda

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Delaney, Enda. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Irish in Post-War Britain

The Irish in Post-War Britain

The Curse of Reason: The Great Irish Famine

The Great Irish Famine: A History in Four Lives

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971 (McGill-Queen’s Studies in Ethnic History) (Volume 34)

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971 (Volume 209) (McGill-Queen’s Studies in Ethnic History)

Demography, State and Society: Irish Migration to Britain, 1921-1971

Irish Emigration Since 1921