I was passing through airport security somewhere in North America in October 2001 when I realised it: I was no longer the face of terrorism, and might never be selected for one of those comprehensive “special clearance procedures” again.

Until then, that’s what a passport with a Northern Irish birthplace had got me – it happened often enough anywhere in the world, and was almost inevitable at airports in the UK. I’d be taken away to a side room, physically searched, swabbed for explosives and asked to unpack my suitcase entirely. Sometimes I even had to unball my balled-up socks. I’d adjusted to it being the price of travel for someone with a birthplace like mine.



These days if you’re Irish, racial stereotyping skews pretty positively regardless of which side of the island you’re from – we’re affable, aren’t we? – but it wasn’t always that way. I arrived in Australia in 1972 at the age of eight in the middle of an apparent Irish joke boom, and spent much of my lunchtimes over the next couple of years being dragged aside and read pages of Irish jokes. As fun goes, it had its limits.

But it wasn’t as bad as being the kid from the Italian family who had his “wog” lunch thrown in the bin most days, only to watch the perpetrators spend $10 in cafes 20 years later for the exact same food – focaccia and prosciutto – with no recollection of what they’d done. And I certainly can’t say to my Muslim neighbours that I know what it feels like to be them this week.

It’s halal food that’s now beyond a lot of comfort zones. Halal tax? There is no halal tax. Halal certification creates export markets and jobs; it can even drive down the price of food through increasing production volumes. Saying halal food costs us more is merely a way to dress up our discomfort about difference this century. It might seem slightly more subtle than the way we used to do it, but the effect is the same.

Irish people crossing the narrow stretch of water to Liverpool in the 1950s and 60s were met with signs in some boarding house windows reading, “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs”. Even before we were all terrorists, we Irish drank too much, got into fights and ducked out without paying our bills.

A job advert reportedly published in Australia stating “No Irish need apply”, followed by a reply from an

Irish person objecting to discrimination. Photograph: None

But NINA – “No Irish Need Apply” – went back well before that, appearing not uncommonly in US job advertisements in the mid-19th century. You might be a trained tailor or baker or upholsterer but, if you were Irish, keep walking.

Australia’s own Irish history wasn’t an easy one. There were Irish Catholics among the convicts brought here, some for political acts but most for the typical crimes that led to transportation. They were tightly controlled under fear of rebellion, not allowed to get together to practise their faith. Australia’s first Catholic priest, Father James Dixon, was a convict transported after a 1798 Irish rebellion, and in 1803 he was allowed to hold Australia’s first Catholic mass. But the following year there was a rebellion of Irish convicts at Castle Hill, which the governor believed had been plotted at mass – and that was it. No more masses. It was 1820 before another priest was officially appointed.

During Sydney’s first 32 years, Catholic group religious observance was prohibited for all but 10 months. There was a perceived danger in letting the Irish get together, and it needed to be prevented.

Australia, and Australian authorities and public figures, are no longer afraid of Irish people, from what I can see. But not all the baggage has been set down. As recently as the last Olympics, Fairfax Media issued an apology after heading its coverage of an Irish boxing win with, “Punch drunk: Ireland intoxicated as Taylor swings towards boxing gold”.

The article read: “For centuries, Guinness and whiskey have sent the Irish off their heads. Now all it takes is a petite 26-year-old from Wicklow … Dark-haired, deep-eyed and engaging, Taylor is not what you’d expect in a fighting Irishwoman, nor is she surrounded by people who’d prefer a punch to a potato.”

Not only do spuds rate a mention (yay!), but we Irish are still stereotyped as drinking far too much – and by Australian journalists of all people. (See what I did there? Slipped a bit of stereotyping into a sentence about stereotyping?) At least they spelled whiskey properly, and at least these days no one thinks we’re going to try to blow things up.

I have no idea what it would feel like to be a Muslim of colour in Australia today. When I came here, I looked like almost everyone else, and it had been a century since an Irishman had shot Prince Alfred in Sydney. I was different and difference isn’t always easy, but I wasn’t that different and, away from international plane flights, I wasn’t seen as a threat.

But the next time someone wants to ban a mosque, let’s remember that we banned Catholicism for most of Sydney’s early years for the same reason: fear that religious observance would let those different people get together in numbers, and plot.

It is not enough to say to my Muslim neighbours, “I know you’re Australians too, like me”, or to say, “times change and it won’t always be your turn”. We’re largely a nation of immigrants and their descendants. We should be better at this by now; better at distinguishing difference from threat, and better at valuing the great things difference can bring.