The final, ringing note and rallying cry of presidential nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech on Thursday, at the close of the Democratic party’s virtual convention, was that most often quoted of Heaney lines which refers to the space where “hope and history rhyme.” 

It was a revealing moment, given the Biden family is of Irish extraction. If his campaign is successful he will be only the second-ever Catholic president of the United States, and we all know what happened to the first. The Biden campaign is seeking to define this election as a “battle for the soul of the nation,” but in narrower terms there will also be a battle for Irish-American voters, many of whom strongly supported Donald Trump last election around. 

When one uses the term ‘Irish-American’ there is a recognition read into it on this side of the ocean that the second word is doing an awful lot of the proverbial heavy lifting. The ‘American’ thunders in through the door with some loudmouthed talk of how Ryan’s Daughter is a work of genius, and that their granda taught Brian Boru A-Level maths. Meanwhile the ‘Irish’ rolls its eyes, looks into its pint, and takes solace in the sizeable fortune it is about to make showing this dimwit the local sights such as St. Patrick’s birthplace, and the home for retired leprechauns. Anyone with transatlantic relatives will be aware of this dichotomy. 

Considering his background, Biden is fairly archetypal of this demographic as they are presented, with portraits of JFK and Pope John Paul II side by side in their living room, and a general disdain for British occupation. His maternal great-grandparents, Ambrose Finnegan and Geraldine Blewitt, were born near Greenore, Co. Louth and arrived in New York by the SS Marchioness in 1850. 

This history is undoubtedly important to Biden, referred to by the US Secret Service by the codename ‘Celtic.’ He has previously hailed Wolfe Tone as a political hero, and ‘the embodiment of the things that I think are the noblest of all.’ Among his first memories, he says,  were those of his Aunt Gertie who, whenever he stayed in his grandparents house, would recite to him ‘chapter and verse’ bedtime stories of the Black and Tans, of whom, of course, she had no personal experience.  

There has been speculation that Biden’s succession of Trump as president would be a worrying development for Britain, as it seeks to prove itself in the post-Brexit – not to mention Covid – world. Biden has already been reported as saying, if elected, Ireland will be foremost among his priorities. 

This however is a misunderstanding based upon a fundamentally basic reading of US post-war objectives. While the US has a fabled ‘special relationship’ with Britain, this is based upon little more than the fact that Ronald Reagan had the hots for Margaret Thatcher. When it comes to Europe, American allegiances lie with the two countries that most of its white people come from: Germany, and Ireland. Much of the American support for Irish interests is owed to the late John Hume who spent his career shaking hands throughout the Capitol, earning support for peace agreements at home. The St. Patrick’s Day ceremony in which a bowl of shamrock changes hands is more meaningful than it may seem. No other state leader has an annual meeting with the US president. 

Despite Biden’s pride in his Irish connection, he is an outlier within the Irish-American demographic, which is far removed from the enlightenment principles espoused by Wolfe Tone. According to The New York Times, ‘the green vote has never been more red.’ Irish-Americans are well-represented among Trump’s political circle, most notably his vice-president Mike Pence and the recently-arrested mastermind of his 2016 election victory, Steve Bannon. 

Bannon particularly is interesting to listen to, interesting here meaning utterly baffling. Whereas Pence is a two-dimensional drawing of an arch-conservative, Bannon will in his very beginnings of conversation sound awfully like a socialist, but right before he draws his conclusions he will conduct a hair-splitting 90 degree turn off to the right. These are all people who come, like Biden, from the context of impoverished masses fleeing famine and persecution, many of whom speaking little English. Yet with the century and the toil of the generations past, these people are not firmly cemented within the American middle class, with a disproportionate amount of political power, yet they uphold the origin story of the huddled masses. The end result is this peculiar drawbridge mentality. 

This is not a recent development, but is in fact a century old. Harking back to the time of slavery, the Irish in America, themselves at the receiving end of bigotry and suspicion, were staunchly racist, perhaps by way of the logic, as Kris Kristofferson put it, that “everybody’s got to have somebody to look down on.” Meanwhile, however, black abolitionists, chief among them being Frederick Douglass, received a great deal of support in Ireland. Arguably there was no greater global advocate for abolition than the ‘King’ of Irish nationalism Daniel O’Connell. 

O’Connell, much like Hume, built an audience for himself and perhaps to a lesser extent for his movement, across America and Europe. But while Irish-Americans fervently supported the call for repeal of the Union, and national liberation of the put-upon Irish people, they just as strongly objected when he criticised George Washington as a slave-holder and decried the institution as ‘a foul stain upon your character.’

This schism of opinion between the Irish and the Americans lasted well beyond O’Connell’s passing, as in 1970 Bernadette Devlin was given the key to the city of New York by supporters of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, yet at the lavish gala event she found that the supposed allies who were bestowing her with this honour spoke about black people in the same manner and tone in the same way that ‘Orangemen’ spoke about Catholics. This was obviously an issue for Devlin, as NICRA had been formed in the model laid out by Martin Luther King, himself inspired by Frederick Douglass, inspired by O’Connell. 

While in Ireland, attendance at mass has steadily reduced over the last twenty years to the extent that we are now a de facto atheist nation, Irish-Americans have stayed allied to the Catholic church which drags them to the right on many issues, particularly on abortion. Biden himself is personally pro-life but takes a conscientious view that his own philosophical musings ought not to shackle the life of anyone else. However, there is still an allegiance to ‘the old country’ which can bring this vote to the Democratic Party. While Barack O’Bama’s familial discovery was more media novelty than meaningful politics, Bill Clinton, who claims ancestry from Co. Fermanagh, tapped into a spool of support by pledging his devotion to the peace process. It is possible that Biden might do the same again, but by reiterating American support for Ireland in a post-Brexit world. 

You may also be interested in:

Harris Hears the Call of History – August 19

John Hume, Peace Teacher – August 11

Mulvaney to be US Special Envoy – March 7