The Scots-Irish Connection

The poverty that drove Irish people to migrate is established with initial images, then linked to the Detective's enquiries into the central issue of Irish migration to Scotland. The scale of Irish migration from the 1790s to the 1860s is emphasised and linked to the question of how such data can be accurately known. This leads on to treatment of both census data (described and illustrated by the historian Martin Mitchell) and oral history (which is provided by the memories of Scots returning to their ancestral Irish homes).

The Reasons for Irish Migration

The Detective goes to Ireland with the returning Scots to visit a Folk Park and Research Centre. The reasons for Irish migration - poverty, starvation, the desire for a better life - are explored through sources that are discussed and illustrated by the archivist Brian Lamkin. The potato famine of the mid-1840s is related to the prior expansion of the Irish population; its dreadful consequences are emphasised through a contemporary newspaper extract.

Arrival in Scotland

The flood of Irish emigrants to Scotland by way of the sea route to the Clyde is illustrated with modern images and described through an extract from the Glasgow Herald of the time. The impact of so many Irish migrants settling in the area is shown through a recital of some of the names in the Glasgow phone book.

Somewhere to Live

The industrialising and urbanising nature of Scotland at the time is noted and the character of slum housing in Glasgow is shown through the photographs taken between 1868 and 1871 by Thomas Annan. The value of this source is considered and illustrated from the original glass negatives by the historian Michael Donnelly. He notes the very unhealthy living conditions, a point that is further developed through a reading of an 1840 description of slums by a doctor.

At Work

The nature of employment of the time is described and illustrated and the part played by the Irish in coal mining, factory work and canal building is stressed.

Scots Attitudes to the Irish

Anti-Irish prejudice in Britain is illustrated from Punch cartoons. Differing attitudes of Scots to the Irish are demonstrated through readings of two items of evidence given to an 1836 Parliamentary enquiry. One witness - James Wright - denounces Irish ignorance and low morals; the other - Robert Sinclair - observes that Irish and Scots mix well. The views of the historian Tom Devine are sought to resolve this dilemma. The historian Martin Mitchell explains that a flood of Irish workers alarmed Scots who felt their own jobs were threatened; he notes how some Irish were soon active in radical politics.

Irish Communities

Ways in which Irish immigrants gathered together are described including schools, churches, and football teams. A view of Celtic Park is accompanied by an account of the founding of Hibernian and Celtic.

Irish Protestants

The geographical proximity of Ulster to Scotland is illustrated in order to describe the presence there of Irish Protestants (often of Scots descent) as well as Catholics. The founding of the Orange Order is narrated and illustrated with a marching flute band.

Anti-Irish Catholic Activity

Attacks on Catholics by a section of the Church of Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s are described, and a source from the period denouncing Irish migrants is read out. Tom Devine indicates that, in a Scotland traumatised by World War One, the decline of traditional industry and increased emigration, the Irish became scapegoats. Political movements that expressed this anti-Irish Catholic mood emerged in Edinburgh and Glasgow and are described. A newspaper of the time is used to show the violence that developed around a Catholic conference in Edinburgh in June 1935. The modern condition of Orange and Green tension is shown through the comments of football commentators Stuart Cosgrove and Tam Cowan.