‘You cannot even begin to understand the problems we have if you have never been to the north’ – On This Day in 1975

February 22 1975

We, the natives and inhabitants of this island, are occasionally inclined to smile at or write clever little articles about the tremendous ballyhoo which goes into the celebration of St Patrick’s Day in New York.

The great polyglot city is given over from dawn to dusk to people festooned in harps and shillelaghs; whose names they are proud to claim begin with O or Mac; and who have never been, nor will ever come, nearer to Ireland than the banks of the East River.

Their emotional attachment to Ireland, we often feel, is in inverse proportion to their ignorance of Ireland’s problems.

And we feel, too, that those who would be constructive about Ireland must know and experience Irish life; must have the affectionately critical approach of members of a close-knit family; and must be prepared to give something of themselves, in time, in thought, in interest and in personal discovery to the many different aspects of our country.

In other words we mostly believe that if anyone wants to talk big about being Irish he ought to have the requisite qualifications for doing so.

Yet there is no need to go three thousand miles to find people who will talk big enough in all conscience, out of the depths of an ignorance as profound as ever marched along Fifth Avenue on March 17.

It was a point well made by a man who has been very close to the ordinary people and their problems during the past terrible years, Dr Edward Daly, Bishop of Derry.

Speaking at a Mass for peace in Killarney, Dr Daly told his listeners that he wanted people in the south to be concerned about what had happened and what was happening in the north.

“You cannot,” he said, “even begin to understand the problems we have if you have never been to the north.”

Dr Daly was returning the visit of the Bishop of Kerry, Dr Eamonn Casey, who is one of a concerned body of people who have indeed made the journey here often in recent times.

There has never been a lack of those: religious leaders; a certain few and well-remembered politicians who cared enough to come at personal risk, because of their position, and not for any accruing benefit for there was none; artists, actors, musicians, folk groups; and those who have constantly worked and prayed for peace and come to give help to those most in need.

Irish News editorial likening the ignorance and superficial interest many Irish-Americans have in Ireland to that of many people from the south about the north.