Plastic Paddy

Plastic Paddy is a slang term used to describe some members of the Irish diaspora, or those with no ancestral connection to Ireland, who appropriate Irish customs and identity. A Plastic Paddy may know little of actual Irish culture, but nevertheless assert an Irish identity. The term is pejoratively used to refer to people on the basis of their perceived lack of authenticity as Irish. It is derived from Paddy, which is a slang term for an Irish person, and plastic, which implies artificiality.

Usage

People who were not born in Ireland, and who did not grow up in Ireland, but nonetheless possess Irish citizenship and an Irish passport are often labelled as Plastic Paddies.

Mary J. Hickman writes that "plastic Paddy" was a term used to "deny and denigrate the second-generation Irish in Britain" in the 1980s, and was "frequently articulated by the new middle class Irish immigrants in Britain, for whom it was a means of distancing themselves from established Irish communities." According to Bronwen Walter, Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, "the adoption of a hyphenated identity has been much more problematic for the second generation Irish in Britain. The Irish-born have frequently denied the authenticity of their Irish identity, using the derogatory term plastic paddy, and the English regards them as "assimilated" and simply "English."

The term has been used to taunt non-Irish born players who choose to play for the Republic of Ireland national football team, fans of Irish teams, who are members of supporters clubs outside of Ireland, and other Irish individuals living in Great Britain. A study by the University of Strathclyde and Nil by Mouth found the term was used abusively on Celtic and Rangers supporters' Internet forums in reference to Celtic supporters and the wider Catholic community in Scotland. In August 2009, a British Asian man from Birmingham, England received a suspended sentence after making derogatory comments to a police officer, who was of Irish origin. The prosecutor said the man had made racist remarks about the officer, including accusations that the officer was a "Plastic Paddy".

Scottish journalist Alex Massie wrote in National Review:

When I was a student in Dublin we scoffed at the American celebration of St. Patrick, finding something preposterous in the green beer, the search for any connection, no matter how tenuous, to Ireland, the misty sentiment of it all that seemed so at odds with the Ireland we knew and actually lived in. Who were these people dressed as Leprechauns and why were they dressed that way? This Hibernian Brigadoon was a sham, a mockery, a Shamrockery of real Ireland and a remarkable exhibition of plastic paddyness. But at least it was confined to the Irish abroad and those foreigners desperate to find some trace of green in their blood.

Scottish-Australian songwriter Eric Bogle wrote and recorded a song titled "Plastic Paddy". In Spiked, Brendan O'Neill uses the term to describe "second-generation wannabe" Irishmen, and writes that some of those guilty of "Plastic Paddyism" (or, in his words, "Dermot-itis") are Bill Clinton, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Shane MacGowan. British Mixed martial arts fighter Dan Hardy has called American fighter Marcus Davis a "Plastic Paddy" due to Marcus' enthusiasm for his Irish ancestry. In the book Why I Am Still a Catholic: Essays in Faith and Perseverance by Peter Stanford, the television presenter Dermot O'Leary describes his upbringing as "classic plastic paddy", where he would be "bullied in a nice way" by his own cousins in Wexford for being English "until anyone else there called me English and then they would stick up for me."

See also

• Mockney
• More Irish than the Irish themselves
• Plastic shaman
• Shane McGowan
• Wannabe

References

• Arrowsmith, Aidan (2004). "Plastic Paddies vs. Master Racers: "Soccer" and Irish Identity". The International Journal of Cultural Studies. 7. Staffordshire Univ, England: 460–79. doi:10.1177/1367877904047864. ISSN 1367-8779. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• ""To Fly By Those Nets": Violence and Identity in Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark". Irish University Review. 34 (2 Autumn/Winter 2004): 315–31. 2004. ISSN 0021-1427. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• "Fantasy Ireland: The Figure of the Returnee in Irish Culture". Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writing (Special Edition: Postcolonial Ireland). 3 (1): 101–14. 2003. ISSN 1474-4600. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bery, A. (2000). 'Inside/Out: Literature, Cultural Identity and Irish Migration to England' in Comparing Postcolonial Literatures: Dislocations. London: Macmillan. pp. 59–69. ISBN 0-333-72339-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Brewster, S (1999). 'M/Otherlands: Literature, Gender, Diasporic Identity' in Ireland in Proximity: History, Gender, Space. London: Routledge. pp. 129–44. ISBN 0-415-18958-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Chambers, Lilian (2006). 'Genuinely Inauthentic: Martin McDonagh’s Second Generation Irishness’, in The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Dublin: Carysfort Press. pp. 236–45. ISBN 1-904505-19-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Graham, Colin (August, 1999). "Debating Diasporic Identity: Nostalgia, (Post) Nationalism, "Critical Traditionalism"". Irish Studies Review (Special Edition: ‘Irish Studies and Postcolonial Theory’). 7 (2): 173–82. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• UK suffers from Plastic Paddy syndrome
• Man Who's 1/16th Irish Proud Of His Irish Heritage (satirical article from The Onion)