Where does the term 'West Brit' come from?

Analysis: a short history of a term which has been long employed in a derogatory way in Irish politics since the days of O'Connell and Parnell

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By Aidan Enright, Leeds Beckett University

In the 1880 general election campaign, leading nationalist MP Charles Stewart Parnell addressed a public meeting in Co Roscommon, where he denounced the sitting Liberal MP, Charles Owen O'Conor, as 'a symbol of West Britonism in Ireland’. Although O’Conor was already unpopular, Parnell’s intervention was crucial and O’Conor subsequently lost his seat to the nationalist candidate, J.J. O'Kelly.

Parnell’s use of the term ‘West Britonism’ to portray O’Conor in a negative light was emblematic of the increasingly divisive nature of Irish politics at the time, centred around the issues of land reform and home rule. The term ‘West Briton’ has been frequently employed in a similarly derogatory way in Irish political debate ever since, but what does it mean and what are its origins?

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From RTÉ, broadcaster Olivia O'Leary and Sinn Fein TD Eoin Ó Broin debate the legacy of Daniel O'Connell

It is thought that the Liberal Protestant MP, Thomas Spring Rice, may have coined the term West Briton when he referred to himself as such in an 1834 speech opposing Daniel O'Connell's call to repeal the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. O’Connell, who led the campaign for Catholic emancipation in the 1820s, used the term himself in 1836, claiming that the Irish people were ready to become 'a kind of West Britons’ if an Irish parliament was restored.

In the main, though, the term West Briton was used by nationalists and republicans to negatively describe Irish people deemed to be too attached to British culture and too supportive of British rule in Ireland. The term was normally ascribed to upper and middle-class Protestants and Catholics who were college and university educated, spoke with a Queen’s English accent, supported the union, and were loyal to the crown.

From RTÉ Archives, Jim Fahy reports on the inaugural O'Conor family rally in Co Roscommon in 1987

Charles Owen O'Conor, otherwise known as the O’Conor Don, was a landed Catholic whose family were descendants of the last high king of Ireland and campaigned for Catholic emancipation. As MP since 1860, he supported Catholic education, land reform and the preservation of the Irish language. But he was also a loyalist and unionist who opposed home rule, something that became more apparent after his defeat in 1880. While the O’Conor Don was a staunch Catholic and Irish patriot, some nationalists and republicans thought him an unpatriotic West Briton.

In the 1880s, 1890s and early 1900s, the development of an 'Irish-Ireland' culture through organisations such as the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League became inextricably linked to a majority Catholic nationalist support for home rule. The majority of Irish unionists who opposed home rule were Protestants, but the O’Conor Don was one of a minority of Catholic unionists, while Parnell was one of a minority of Protestant nationalists.

Furthermore, unionists and nationalists were not always at odds in this period. The O'Conor Don was a friend of the first President of the Gaelic League, Douglas Hyde, a Protestant nationalist. Both sought to bring unionists and nationalists together through support for the revival of the Irish language, but Hyde thought that every 'Irish-feeling Irishman, who hates the reproach of West Britonism’, should seek to ‘de-Anglicise’ Ireland, whereas O’Conor hoped for an acceptance of British culture and identity in Ireland.

After the partition of Ireland in 1921-22, a Catholic nationalist majority gained cultural and political supremacy in the Irish Free State and the Republic of Ireland, with little account for the Protestant unionist minority. In Northern Ireland, Protestant unionists totally dominated government, even though Catholic nationalists were a large minority. In 1972, direct British rule was introduced after four years of escalating sectarian conflict. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998 brought peace and power-sharing to Northern Ireland, and improved North-South and Irish-British relations. But the relative calm was thrown up in the air by Brexit in 2016, with calls for a border poll on a United Ireland growing louder ever since.

From RTÉ's Humans of Politics podcast, Neale Richmond on the financial reality of working in politics, the sacrifices made by political families and why he hates being called a West Brit.

In Northern Ireland, it is assumed that the majority of Protestants identify as Irish, British and unionist, while the majority of Catholics are assumed to identify as Irish nationalists. In the Republic of Ireland, where the influence of the Catholic Church has receded since the mid-1990s, it is assumed that the majority identify as Irish nationalists. But some upper and middle-class Protestants and Catholics, particularly from the wealthier parts of south Dublin, who speak with a supposedly 'posh' British-sounding accent, are sometimes labelled ‘West Brits’.

For example, the Fine Gael TD, Neale Richmond, who supports a United Ireland, has been labelled a West Brit for advocating tolerance for unionism and British identity in any ‘new’ or ‘shared’ Ireland. A Protestant from south Dublin, Richmond loathes the term, viewing it as akin to being labelled an ‘Uncle Tom’. The Protestant clergyman, Patrick Comerford, takes a similar view, describing the term as ‘racist and pejorative’. Similarly, the Belfast artist and poet Brian John Spencer regards it as a ‘nasty and supremacist’ term that excludes people like him, who are ‘proudly British and Irish’, from being Irish.

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From RTÉ Brainstorm, where does the term 'West Brit' come from?

As we can see, the terms West Briton or West Brit have a long history of being used to other any Irish person who is deemed insufficiently Irish or deemed to insufficiently dislike all things British. But should we really take these terms seriously when even the Irish comedian, Dara Ó Briain, a Gaelic speaker and a GAA supporter, has been labelled as such? Indeed, Ó Briain has amusingly pointed out that the term West Brit as applied to him does not make much geographic sense given that he lives in Britain!

Dr Aidan Enright is an Associate Researcher at Leeds Beckett University, specialising in 19th-century Irish and British Catholic history. His book, Charles Owen O'Conor, the O'Conor Don: Landlordism, liberal Catholicism and unionism in nineteenth-century Ireland will be published by Four Courts Prss in August 2022.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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