IS HATRED OF IRISH CATHOLICS RACISM?
My father was a strange character - a fence for gangsters in Birmingham back in the 60s and far from the most of progressive of people when it came to black people, travellers or Irish catholics.

Now there are other tales to tell of how badly he took it that my very first best friend was a black Jamaican kid called Winston (yes named after Churchill!) but the one memory I have to relate here is of one of the few serious conversations with my father about his dislike of Irish Catholics.

(And here was one of the strangest things about him and others who exhibit such casual racism - he actually got on well with lots of Catholics and black guys when he met them personally - all of his hatred was in the abstract. Go figure!)

Anyhow - my old man ran a very very big pub in Birmingham during the 60s and this was a period of Irish Republican violence in the name of home rule. One of those outrages was what was known as the Birmingham bombings when on 21 November 1974, 21 innocent people were blown up by the Provisional IRA in two separate blasts in pubs.

Now living in a pub at the time obviously this had some impact on my father's psyche and he followed the events thereafter somewhat closely including the police "capture" of the Birmingham Six - a group of Irish men who later it was shown were fitted up by the cops and sent to jail innocent of at least that particular crime. One of those six people was Patrick Joseph Hill also known as Paddy Hill.

Years later I discussed this with my father in one of our few discussions that didn't quickly decend into verbal abuse of each other. I was somewhat amazed at his response given he stated dislike of "taigs" which was fuelled by the typical protestant Scottish working class upbringing that he had had and the fact his father had been at one point a "Black and Tan".

Here was the conversation probably spurred by some TV programme about it all if I remember correctly:

Father: "I knew him. I knew Paddy Hill...."

Me: "Really! You never said."

Father: "Yeah I knew him. I knew he hadn't done it even then. I knew it wasn't him when they nicked him for it."

Me - in astonishment at my father's new found liberal views particularly on this subject: "Really!!!! How did you know that?"

Father: "Paddy Hill! He was too much of a fucking poof to do it, it wasn't him. Poofs don't have the balls."

So there you have it - homophobia tops casual racism in the pantheon of hatred. Could be an interesting set of Top Trump Cards there for the EDL special edition.

Sorry for length: it was the only good thing I got from my father. Hellloooo ladiezz.
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Thu 27 Oct 2011, 13:55, Reply)