No Irish Need Apply

Written by Paddy Ivory Breen and Music by Kenn Gordon this song tells of the plight of the Irish after the first world war and right up to the 60's...Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.....The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant. For example the Anglican bishop of London used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish Anglican ministers in his diocese. By the 1820s it was a cliché in upper and upper middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish and had even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that handwritten NINA signs regarding maids did appear in a few American windows, though no one ever reported one. We DO have actual newspaper want ads for women workers that specifies Irish are not wanted; they will be discussed below. In the entire file of the New York Times from 1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for men, one of which is for a teenager. Computer searches of classified help wanted ads in the daily editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as the Booklyn Eagle, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune show that NINA ads for men were extremely rare--fewer than two per decade. The complete absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA signs and newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the United States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA signs which deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Kenn Gordon
• Paddy Ivory Breen
• Brathair
• 1916
• Irish rebel
• No Irish Need Apply

[kenngordon]

moron

[kenngordon]

personaly i dont know why anyone hate the Irish as the Celts are the greatest folks alive I guess it is just some form of jealousy

[kenngordon]

its not bullshit and in some areas this still goes on ie "No Travelers Allowed" like we are all some kind of criminals" But this song was primarily about the 1920-1960's

[OBAMAisHalfCaste]

@zivkovicable You Idiot the terms Half-Caste and Quarter-Caste do be used on a daily basis in England.

[zivkovicable]

@thepassionwithin Not if you don't want to get fired from your job it's not. I haven't heard the term "half caste" used in the UK since the eighty's. It's not used in the Media or by Academics or by mixed race people themselves, or in fact anyone I know here in London. You really don't know what you're talking about do you?

[whipthenations]

@mooninquirer seriously? The irish came close to being wiped out, their culture was almost destroyed, their language isnt even spoken by all irish people, they speak english now instead of their native Gaelic.You hit the nail on the head when you used the term 'non-white', if the irish were of darker skin tone you would be all on board with anyone who brings up the history of the irish, you are a hypocrite.Not realizing that anyone not born into the ruling class has been persecuted

[thepassionwithin]

@coirpeach1 Not cowards we are just giving it as good as we get it, And black people call mixed-race people coloured in african countries, In south africa they use the term coloured to describe someone of mixed blood, But in england the term half-caste and quarter-caste is used on daily basis.

[thepassionwithin]

@coirpeach1 And what is idiotic about my comments, Half-Caste people are still half-caste people enough said. They are half of two races so that makes them half-caste. They are not 1 race but 2 and dont fit in to either or the other so they are like outcasts only instead of bieng called outcastes they are half-caste plain and simple.

[thepassionwithin]

@coirpeach1 They are Half-Caste you idiot.

[NewYorkStreets1]

@coirpeach1 Your daughter is half-caste, mixed-race half-caste and biracial is the same thing, And if you go to England you will see that most mixed-race people refare to themselfs as half-caste on a daily basis. There is nothing wrong with the term half-caste , It has been around for centuries and will continue to be around for centuries more, We have black half-caste and quarter-caste, Ryan gigs who plays for manchester united is quarter-caste.

[NewYorkStreets1]

@coirpeach1 yaaawn.