6 - Competing Identities: Irish and Welsh Migration and the North East of England, 1851-1980

Summary

Contemporary anxieties with a perceived refugee problem in the West, and a revitalised nationalism in Europe, have led to a plethora of sociological studies all eager to establish a definitive understanding of the production of identities.This may well be a fool's errand, especially if we accept the view that ‘identity is never an a priori, nor a finished product’ but, rather, a more fluid and ambiguous process which is constantly challenged and altered over time. Religion, according to some commentators, should be placed at the heart of any understanding of the production of identities, and even those who choose to prioritise other factors agree that it is a significant element. As Mary Hickman argues, ‘Protestantism was the basis of the Union of England and Wales with Scotland, and Catholicism from the sixteenth century onwards was synonymous with “the enemy”.’ According to her analysis, religious identities were also politically constituted and this thesis must therefore have important implications for any appraisal of Irish and Welsh migrations.4 At the end of the 1990s, as the regional agenda assumed centre stage, some scholars sought to arrive at a better understanding of what it meant to be English while others addressed the projected demise of the British state. Inevitably, such deconstructions canonly be undertaken with reference to the relationship between region and nation. If national identity is the ‘product of constant recomposition and renegotiation’ then the same might be held true for regional identity. Not everyone, of course, agrees and some theorists continue to cling to the ‘top down’ model of identity construction. The contention that the North East of England has, or ever had, a fixed regional identity which could be writ large over the two counties of Northumberland and Durham can be readily questioned.However, deconstructing the inherent mutability of any regional identity is altogether more problematic. What this study of Irish and Welsh migration can do is to illuminate the way that the cultures of incomers have leavened and shaped the communities in which they settled and, by extension, contribute to a better understanding of the complexity of north-east identities in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.