The complex question of what it is to be culturally Irish in 2025

He sang wistfully of the English town that shaped his life.

“Found my heart and broke it here. Made friends and lost them through the years. And I’ve not seen the roaring fields in so long, I know I’ve grown. But I can’t wait to go home.”

Ed Sheeran grew up in Framlingham in Suffolk and its rolling hills and magnificent castle inspired his hit single, Castle on the Hill. It was the homeplace he pined for.

So when he recently described himself as “culturally Irish,” the singer faced social media criticism on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Sheeran replied that he had two paternal Irish grandparents, an Irish parent, an Irish passport, and a childhood filled with Irish summer holidays. Ireland was the place where his musical taste was formed, he said. “I can be allowed to feel a connection to a place half my family is from.”

Yet he was accused of being Irish “when it suits him” by one poster.

Another wrote on X: “I’ve seen B*Witched live and have watched a couple of Gaelic football games, which I think gives me an even more legitimate claim to be culturally Irish than Ed Sheeran.”

The mainstream press expressed perplexity at his embrace of an Irish cultural identity “despite being born and raised in England”.

Not everyone agrees.

To Ros Scanlon, programmer for the Irish Cultural Centre in London, it shouldn’t surprise or offend anyone. It reflects her own experience as a second-generation Irish person in the UK.

“He’s owning his Irish heritage, saying he is proud of his cultural background,” says Ros. “That doesn’t mean to say he doesn’t like or love being British, that is part of him too.”

Certainly it is much easier to speak of an Irish identity in Britain now that there is peace in Northern Ireland.

As the Belfast South MP, Claire Hanna, who is now leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, told parliament during a St Patrick’s Day debate in 2022: “Many are moving on from the traditional binaries of the past and embracing the ‘or both’ part of the Good Friday agreement, not feeling that they have to decide between being British and Irish if they do not wish to do so.”

Sheeran’s declaration raises this point once again, and prompts the deeper question of what cultural “Irishness” really is today.

Professor Linda Connolly, director of sociology at Maynooth University in County Kildare, argues that Ed Sheeran’s statement is about an idea of identity that is bigger than where you were born or what you write on a census form.

“Ed Sheeran is stating quite clearly that culturally he is Irish in Britain, and not just British and Irish in terms of citizenship alone,” she argues. “This applies to many second-generation Irish living in Britain.”

In Northern Ireland, Irishness can mean many things, not least because it is fraught with so much painful history.

For many unionists, staunch political loyalty to Britain and the Monarchy, sits alongside a deep attachment to the land they have lived on for hundreds of years. Symbols like the Celtic harp and the Shamrock are seen by many as belonging to both traditions.

There are unionists who cheer for an Irish rugby team but would never dream of singing the anthem of the Republic – a new song, Ireland’s Call, was written for the 1995 World Cup.

It is a complex and evolving set of choices, with frequent arguments. Promotion of the Irish language is bitterly opposed by a vocal section of Unionism. For most Catholics their Irish identity was historically something to be defended in a Unionist dominated state.

It was an identity that helped bind them to their co-religionists on the rest of the island, particularly in the fields of Gaelic sport and culture.

But as politics has changed there is less preoccupation with religious background, a greater sense of belonging to an international culture.

And this is without even beginning to speak of an identity that is demonstrably northern Irish with its shared dry humour.

Everyone has their own menu of what being “culturally Irish” means – for me, it’s about humour, about a love of words and music, and a refusal to take ourselves, or anybody else, too seriously.

It can also mean a sense of a particular landscape, either one you loved, or were glad to escape – or for second or third – generation Irish, a landscape of brief immersion on summer holidays from England. That was the world of “the streams, the rolling hills/Where his brown eyes were waiting” evoked by Shane McGowan of the Pogues.

But there are as many definitions of “culturally Irish” as there are Irish people, or people who want to be Irish. It runs a wide spectrum of styles, influences, opinions and genres – from Oasis (born in Manchester to Irish parents), the rappers Kneecap, novelist Sally Rooney, the Irish actress of Nigerian descent Demi Isaac Oviawe, the London-born playwright Martin McDonagh of The Banshees of Inisherin fame.

The core members of The Beatles all had Irish grandparents or great grandparents, prompting John Lennon to tell a concert in Dublin: “We’re all Irish.”

That was in 1963 – some 62 years before Ed Sheeran’s declaration.

There are many voices too from the Irish Protestant tradition in Ulster – the singer Van Morrison and the novelist Jan Carson, who has written about growing up in an evangelical Christian home, and says she now feels “much more ease and comfort with an Irish identity than a British one”.

Ed Sheeran is himself a product of blended traditions. His grandfather was a Belfast Protestant who married a Catholic from the Republic of Ireland at a time of sectarian intolerance.

Today, it is undoubtedly easier these days for a big mainstream star like Sheeran to embrace an Irish cultural identity in Britain than it would have been several decades ago.

I think of the powerful song Nothing But the Same Old Story by Paul Brady, about an Irishman in Britain during the 1970s, amid the ongoing IRA campaign: “In their eyes, we’re nothing but a bunch of murderers.”

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.

One of the bestselling songwriters of early 19th century Britain was Irishman Thomas Moore. His story typifies the often complex nature of cultural relationships: he was a champion of Irish liberty, but his great song “The Minstrel Boy” – written for rebels fighting Britain – is played by the band of the Irish Guards at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day.

Nowadays, for second or third generation people, the country of their ancestors has never been more reachable. Cheap airfares have changed the nature of how Irish culture in Britain has evolved, says Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, Professor of Irish history at the University of Sheffield.

“The physical distance between Ireland and Britain has diminished in the Ryanair era… It seems to me also that Irish migration to Britain is now more likely to be temporary – people may come for a few years, then go home – whereas previously it was a more permanent departure.”

I should declare an interest. I am Irish. Living in Britain. I was born here while my father was a real-life cultural import, acting in the West End in J.M. Synge’s landmark drama, The Playboy of the Western World, a story from the west of Ireland, which won rave reviews from London audiences.

We went home after the play ended and I was brought up in Ireland. But I returned to work for the BBC. I have spent more than three decades as a correspondent for the BBC, and I have lived outside Ireland for longer than I did in the country.

What does that make me? My identity is made of many parts. I am Irish. I am a Londoner. I am also a Cork, Kerry and Waterford person.

The Irish language and music is an essential part of my cultural makeup. But I also cherish how that music is connected to the music of Scotland and North America, and I reckon one of the greatest songs of Irish exile was written by Englishman, Ralph McTell: “And the only time I feel alright is when I’m into drinking/ It sort of eases the pain of it and levels out my thinking… It’s a long way from Clare to here.”

My attachment to South Africa has shaped me in enduring and indelible ways too. Identity is also a story of deep and loving relationships, whether in Ireland, London, the African continent or France, to name but three important ones.

My feelings about identity are also inextricably linked to my experiences as a war reporter. I spent too many years witnessing ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity often carried out because of hatred of a different identity.

The great writer, James Joyce, rejected any identity built around “nationality, language, religion” and defiantly vowed to “fly by those nets”.

He was writing about a different, much narrower Ireland of the early 20 century. But the policing of identity – who you are allowed to be – is disturbingly present in many societies, and many guises.

So, if somebody asks me to narrow my identity to a single label, I refuse, because it is mine, not to be explained or justified. And if it shifts tomorrow, that is my business.

The nature of identity is evolving – in Ireland it is absorbing the influences of other cultures, but also influencing those cultures.

Professor Nic Dháibhéid hopes the prominence of Irish cultural identities in Britain will prompt a greater interest in the history of the conflict in Northern Ireland, particularly among the under-25s who, as she sees it, “will have no memory of the Troubles, and so there is an even greater need to ensure that there is good mutual understanding between the people on our two islands.”

The big British audiences for Kneecap, to take an example, didn’t happen because young people had a sudden awakening about the problems of life in nationalist west Belfast. Kneecap connected with a much wider youth disillusionment: they are rapping in the Irish language but it’s the challenge to the establishment that resonates with some among the young.

It is important to recognise that the cultural influence can be polarising. Kneecap’s public statements and political stances have divided people.

One member of the band, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, has been charged with a terror offence after allegedly displaying a flag in support of proscribed organisation Hezbollah at a London gig.

“The Kneecap phenomenon is real, as is the Derry Girls one,” says Professor Nic Dhábhéid, also referencing the show inspired by the screenwriter Lisa McGee’s upbringing in the city in the 1990s.

Professor Nic Dhábhéid is one of the historians chosen by the UK government to oversee the writing of a “public” history of the Troubles. She cautions that despite the progress made, the old battle of identities is far from finished, citing the tensions caused by Brexit.

“A decade ago, the narrative was one of reconciliation… I’m not convinced that we’re in the reconciliation space right now,” she argues.

Which makes Ed Sheeran’s honest expression of identity all the more moving.

It was not one of aggressive cultural nationalism: he wasn’t talking about what my identity should be, or yours. It was a statement of what he feels.

I am the father of two children who grew up in Britain. I watch them navigate the challenges and opportunities of different and overlapping identities, encouraging them to follow James Joyce’s advice and fly past any barriers others put in their way.

That, for me, is the way to a future without bitterness.

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