Identity in the spotlight

If you were shown a photo of Declan Duffy and asked where you thought he was from, you would be hard-pressed to look beyond these shores.

With skin that might scorch under a 40w bulb, red hair, and a slightly impish face he has a distinctly Irish appearance. Both sides of his name only confirm those suspicions. Put him in an Aran geansai and you might involuntarily start to hum the Glenroe theme tune.

“I look very Irish,” Declan says with a knowing laugh, “you know I’ve got the look of a Celt about me.”

He couldn’t be from anywhere else, The Anglo-Celt confirms.

The only thing is, he is. And that anywhere else is England. Declan’s roots may be Irish, but his accent was developed in the south of England as he was born and reared in London.

This sense of being othered from the motherland is the subject of Declan’s acclaimed show ‘Call yourself an Irishman?’ which he’s bringing to Cavan and Monaghan in the coming weeks.

Primarily a songwriter and singer, Declan only developed his interest in acting since moving to Devon. There he was encouraged by person with a drama background to write and perform a one man show.

“The one rule I know about writing is ‘Write what you know’.”

What Declan knew was his own life experience, and as a result the ‘character’ he plays in the show is essentially himself.

“The audience will get to know me as they know their parents, children, great aunts, cousins. By the end of it they’ll feel they’ve lived with me all their lives – for better or for worse.

“I think it’s a very personal story, but it’s universal to so many of the people who were born here over in this country to Irish parents.”

He explains the show is not a play, but there is a narrative arc .

“It looks into the history of Irish migration to Britain, the struggles those people faced, and then once they came through those how that had an impact on us their children in how we find our identity.

Declan’s father is Tommy John Duffy from Shercock, while his mother is Sue Duffy, originally Fay from Bunnoe. They met in Ireland and devoted their working lives to running bars, initially as relief bar managers allowing bar owners “all over London” to go on holidays. They ultimately got their own, The Crown on London’s Edgware Road.

“They spent all of their lives in pubs. I used to say my Dad went in behind the counter of a pub in Cavan Town when he was 14 and he didn’t come out for 40 years, because he spent his whole working life behind the bar.”

Declan recalls how they survived on “five or six hours’ sleep”.

“It’s no surprise now when they sit down within five minutes both of them are asleep.

“When everyone’s finishing work at half five or six o’clock in the evening, mom and dad were getting ready to go back to work for the evening, and wouldn’t be home till one o’clock and would be back up at six or half six the following morning, and around and around and around it went.”

He sets the context for why his parents, like many other Irish people migrated to England.

“That of course is a centuries old story.”

“I had two main ideas for it, I wanted to tell that story of the second generation Irish here, third generation I wanted to tell that story back to those people that are here and have grown up like myself and my sister Roisin.

“But I also wanted to educate people in this country who didn’t know any of that, who didn’t know why the Irish were here, didn’t know the struggles the Irish people had when they came over here, and they really did struggle some of them.”

As a second generation Irish person born in England, it presents issues of belonging.

“We were ridiculed for our Irish ancestry in England. And when we went over to Ireland, we were told ‘Go away back home to England’.

“That’s part of the reason that people who are coming to the shows are identifying with it because it happens to all of us. With us, our cousins it was good-natured, it was craic - they’d be saying to us, ‘Why are you supporting in Ireland? You’re from England.’ But they’d be saying it with a wink because they knew that that was the way to get under our skin.

“Equally of course there were times when we were in Ireland and people would hear our accent and they would lampoon it. And they would make underhand comments about the fact that we were English, and we were in Ireland. But then having said that I fully understand that. I totally understand why people in Ireland might hold a dim view if anyone, not just from England, but from Britain.”

He recalls an older relative who he regards as “a fierce Irish Republican”.

“He would say I have no problem with the English, it’s the British I have an issue. For years I didn’t know what he was talking about. And then I realised - the ordinary decent English people he met he had no problem with, it was the British as Imperial colonising force he had the problem with.”

The Celt notes that the issue is relevant to people living in England who may be from Jamaica or other British colonies.

“Absolutely, that’s one of the things that I didn’t really consider would be the case before that has proven to be the case.

“Cause I talk [in the show] about our cousins over in Ireland would talk about us being the English cousins, and there was a lad at the show who was Anglo-Indian, and he said ‘That’s what happens to me - my Indian cousins call me the English cousin!’ So I wrote it for the Anglo Irish specifically London Irish community, but it does have resonances beyond that.”

Are you at peace with your identity?

“At peace, yes because I’m comfortable in how I feel about myself and about Ireland and Britain, so yes at peace with it, but I still don’t know what to write down on forms. I still don’t know. I’ve always written nationality British because I was born here I’m a British citizen. I can’t say I am Irish - I wasn’t born there and I’ve never lived there so I’m not naive enough to say I’m an Irishman. But I know I’m not English, I’ve never felt English I don’t feel particularly British,” he says, noting he has an Irish passport.

“Even when people introduce me and say, ‘Oh Declan, he’s Irish’ and then they hear my accent so I kind of got into the habit of saying ‘Yes I’m from County London’.”

Since the idea of national identity is a fairly recent phenomenon for much of the world, the Celt wonders if this current fever of xenophobia engulfing the west isn’t just a bubble that will soon burst.

“I wouldn’t be as optimistic about it as that.”

“We’ve always had elements of nationalism, whatever that means. In the modern age, and a huge part of this is social media - the more extreme voices shout the loudest, and those who are the most extreme nationalists shout the loudest and I think that tendency is only going to grow because now you’ve got global leaders, whether it’s in America or whether it’s in Russia or in China, you’ve got those people who are pushing their nationalist agenda almost to the degree where other elements of life, which are just as important are being sidelined, to the exclusion basically of the more humane elements of what it should be to run a country.

“So I’d love to think it would be a bubble that would burst. But having said that, there’s nothing wrong with national pride. There’s nothing wrong with taking your flag to a football match waving it enthusiastically and wanting your team to win. I don’t mind national pride, it’s when it tips over into nationalism, that’s when you get the issues, and there’s an unpleasantness to it.”

Declan Duffy brings ‘Call Yourself an Irishman?’ to The Garage Theatre, Monaghan on Tuesday, February 10; St Patrick’s Hall, Shercock, on Thursday, February 12 and Ramor Arts Centre Virginia, on Friday, February 13. Shows commence at 8pm. See venues and generationirish.net for ticket details.