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Maeve Heath moved to London from Donnybrook in south Dublin just over 60 years ago and, like many Irish emigrants in England, feels the loss of Queen Elizabeth deeply.
“It did give me goose pimples,” Heath says, speaking about the double rainbow that appeared outside Buckingham Palace at the time of the monarch’s death. “I just thought, when I saw those two rainbows, that’s her going up to heaven.”
Heath is the London Irish Centre’s longest-serving volunteer. As a result of her lifetime of service, she was awarded freedom of the city by the lord mayor of London in June 2022. As a part of the ceremony, recipients are asked to declare their allegiance to the crown, saying “I do solemnly swear that I will be good and true to our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth II” and “I will also keep the queen’s peace in my own person”.
While reactions to the death of the queen are relatively tempered among the Irish diaspora, the loss of a constant presence in English public life creates a sense of poignancy.
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Heath (83) moved to England 1962, when the queen was already nine years on the throne. Heath married an Englishman, who worked at the same company. “He was my supervisor and I hated him,” she joked. The two would go on to have two sons and a happy marriage.
In 1977 she was asked to volunteer at the London Irish Centre, for one evening to help cater for the Roscommon county dinner. Later that week, Fr Dennis Cagney asked her to volunteer again. Heath recalls being taken aback but saying “in those days you just got on with it. It wasn’t paid work, it was ‘thank you’ work.”
Violence and discrimination
As violence spilled into London, and the IRA carried out terrorist attacks, Heath would receive bomb threats while volunteering. “It was after the Regent’s Park bombing. It happened several times. I would pick up the phone and they would say they were going to blow us up… The police had to come in in plain-clothes uniform for one of the dinners. It was just awful because you would spend the whole time expecting something to happen.”
Heath describes discrimination she and other Irish emigrants faced in London. “My husband didn’t believe me. Then one day we were going to watch a film in Finsbury Park, and we parked the car a bit away from the cinema so we had to walk to it. I saw the sign then, saying ‘No Irish. No Blacks. No Dogs’ and told my husband to stop and look at it. He was shocked. He said ‘I’m so sorry Maeve I never in my life thought I would see this.’”
Heath adds: “I’m Irish and I’m proud to be Irish, but when you move [to somewhere different] you just mix in.”
Her focus at the centre is helping others with their struggles. “When my mother died, she was only 45. My father had worked all his life but after she died he just stopped. Now we say someone has chronic depression, but back then we didn’t know that.” Heath goes on to highlight that the London Irish Centre offers support services to men and women who suffer with mental health problems like her father did.
‘End of an era’
Heath is joined by a colleague at the centre, Damien Grainger, who believes there should be more education in England on the history of the Irish diaspora. “The Irish built this country. Of course, other nations, like West-Indian nurses did incredible work too but the work of the Irish, and what we faced, needs to be recognised.”
The sentiment is echoed by Millie Doherty, bar manager at the Sheephaven Bay in Camden Town, a part of London with a long association with Irish emigrants. Doherty (21), who was born in Derry and grew up in Donegal, says: “Of course I am a republican.”
But she acknowledges something has shifted with the death of the queen. “In my head, I knew who the queen was before I knew who the Irish presidents were. You just don’t think she’s going to go anywhere. At the end of the day, she served as long as she did and it is the end of an era.”
Asked about the future of the monarchy, and the effect of its presence on colonised nations, Doherty brings the conversation back to education. “Working at a pub has made me realise how little so many English people know about the effect England has had on Ireland. Education is such a massive part of where I’m from in Donegal. I had the privilege of learning all about the history of the Troubles and why Ireland is the way it is now and I don’t think they have that enough here in England.”
Among other Irish people in London there is a similar attitude of parking constitutional questions while the United Kingdom mourns. Many are still just processing the sudden absence of a figure of history.
“We’ve been through Brexit, recessions, a global pandemic, nearly ‘World War Three’ and she was there for all of it,” says Doherty. “Well, she still didn’t see Mayo win an All-Ireland final.”