I was born on a Dublin street where the Royal drums the beat
And the loving English feet they walked all over us
And every single night when me da' would came home tight
He'd invite the neighbors out with this chorus
Come out ye black and tans, come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra…
Come tell us how you slew them old Arabs two by two
Like the Zulus they had spears, bows and arrows
How brave you faced one with your 16-pounder gun
And you frightened them natives to their marrow
Come Out Ye Black n Tans
At any Pro-Palestinian rally or protest, you are bound to see posters bearing watermelons alongside a sea of Keffiyehs. Swaths of red, green, black, and white, and the sister flags of neighbouring nations in the Middle East and North Africa.
But in Sydney’s 2nd year of consecutive weekly protest against the war on Gaza on Gadigal land in the CBD, what also remains consistent is the men my father’s age wearing shirts bearing Saoirse Don Phalaistín or Freedom for Palestine in Irish, old ladies wearing Claddagh rings while wrapped in the Dublin City crest, and younger people flying Irish flags high with ‘From the PLO to the IRA’ written across the tricolour.
Week in, and week out, these peeks of orange and green stand beside watermelon Yarmulkes and banners strewn for ‘Jews Against the Occupation’ set beside the soaring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, nestled within the Progress Pride Chevron, and joined by Sydney icon and Heartbreak High breakout star Danny Lim, who continues to champion love, peace, and an end to global imperialism.
Solidarity with the Palestinian cause seems to be the brown bread and butter for the prominent Irish Catholic diaspora in so-called ‘Australia’ who are drawing clear parallels between their histories and the current war on Gaza.
During the 16th and 17th Centuries, England conquered Ireland through brutal military force. Tens of thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forced from their fertile ancestral lands westward to rocky, isolated areas where soil was only suitable for potato crop.
The 1652 Act for Settlement of Ireland empowered England to confiscate land from Irish Catholics charged with disloyalty to the British empire. This land was subsequently passed to Protestant settlers and Imperial loyalists from Scotland and England.
Penal codes denied Irish people their Gaelic language, Catholics were denied the right to practice their faith, and basic civil rights were refused.
During this time, 75% of Irish soil, according to the Great Hunger Museum, was devoted to wheat, oat, and barley exports that were shipped abroad under military guard for the profit of the Commonwealth. This created an overreliance amongst the Irish people on staple potato crops as their access to other foodstuffs was limited by occupying forces.
Between 1845 and 1849 a blight destroyed potato crops across the nation. Had the political will existed, food could have been diverted from these forced exports to feed a starving population.
However, no such will existed.
Instead over a million people starved to death, and another 3 million emigrated to the UK, the US, Australia, and other nations in search of safety. Ireland has yet to reach pre-Hunger population levels.
Currently, more than 100 aid groups accuse Israel of blocking aid into the Gaza strip as the IDF continues an aerial bombardment on civilian populations. The UN’s World Food Programme says that the food insecurity situation in the Gaza Strip is “catastrophic”, and that at least 40,000 babies in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition.
At least 61,159 Palestinians have been reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023 according to UNRWA. Recent reports showcase that at least 100 of those deaths were children who starved due to the Israeli blockade that has prevented UNRWA and other NGOs from sending aid.
Land in Gaza and the West Bank is being primed for settlement considered illegal under international law. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has plans to build more than 3,000 homes in a controversial settlement project in the occupied West Bank.
Leading Israeli human rights organisations, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have said their government’s conduct in the war on Gaza constitutes genocide against the Palestinian population. The Israeli Government, as the British government did during the Great Hunger, is purported to have facilitated a famine and a genocide against Palestinians.
This is why the Irish march.
Forced expulsion from native lands, illegal settler occupation, and a state-sponsored famine. Not only is this a tale all too familiar to both the Irish and Palestinian people—it's a strategy straight out of the imperialistic playbook, and one that too many Indigenous groups can relate too. This is what shapes the solidarity between disparate, yet similar communities.
One of the most staunch non-Arab supporters of the Palestinian cause I know is a 50-something year old friend of my fathers, an Irish immigrant, family man, a plumber. Him and my Dad once bought some questionable cactus green shirts of Che Guevara’s face besides Irish Republican Army (IRA) Martyr, MP, and hunger striker Bobby Sands. Something about solidarity and rebellion was scrawled beneath their visage.
These men would chant Up the Ra while Celtic Symphony blasted from some decade old shoddy speaker my Uncle owns. They’d play Come Out Ye Black and Tans in car rides and at Easter lunches.
In 1919, a Guerilla war against British occupying forces was launched by the IRA. During this time, a new British paramilitary group with a reputation for intense brutality arose to combat the rebellion—the ‘Black and Tans.’ That latter song in particular goaded the Black and Tans for the atrocities they committed in both Palestine and Dublin.
On Bloody Sunday in Dublin, the Black and Tans fired on a crowd of civilians at a football match killing 14 and injuring 65. This was not the first, nor the last, attack on civilians from paramilitary groups on either side of the war. In 1922, the Irish Free State was declared following the efforts of the IRA.
Republican political parties were outlawed, and the IRA were deemed a terrorist organisation—a designation which continues to last. In 1987, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was deemed a terrorist organisation by the US too.
The Black and Tans were subsequently disbanded, with 700 instead being deployed to the Palestine Police Force in the British Mandate. This force violently raided Arab villages in Palestine, countered insurgence movements, enforced the partition of Palestine in 1947, and were even tasked with intercepting European Jewish immigrants fleeing the horrors of the holocaust during WW2.
Many colonised peoples see themselves in Palestine because they share colonising forces and experiences. And while the appearance of a few flags cannot speak for an entire nation or peoples, and one nation cannot speak for an entire movement, the solidarity shown by multicultural communities across the world speaks towards this shared struggle.
Now contemporary Irish artists are continuing this tradition of solidarity through music. Christy Moore’s Palestine or Kneecap’s THE RECAP echo the rebel songs of their predecessors—and are dodging terrorism charges for vocalising this support at music festivals. When governments stayed silent in their allyship towards Palestine, their people sung a different tune.
This same solidarity helped pressure the Irish government to recognise the state of Palestine in May. And on our home soil, it has bolstered the efforts of Palestinian diaspora activists as they encouraged the Australian government to do the same last month. Even closer to home, it saw UTS cut its ties with the Israel Institute of Technology.
But as Australia’s recognition comes with unequal terms and conditions—and a lack of real action against Israel’s assault on Gaza—it's clear that more than just the flag-waving Irish need to proclaim their solidarity. It's up to all those who love to claim their Irish ancestry when they're splitting Gs on St Patrick’s Day or lament for their six-time great grandparent who was shipped here for stealing a loaf of bread and such. All us Plastic Paddys whose ancestors are screaming for us to act.
They were starved and their land was stolen. And as settlers on this country, we have contributed to that same theft on another people. So until Palestine is free, it’s a responsibility for all the Irish in ‘Australia’ (including Albanese cause he’s half Irish too) to keep using their voices and work towards sanctions and divestment against the genocidal regime in Israel.
Because just like the protest chant says: ‘In our thousands, and in our millions, we are ALL Palestinians’.
SOURCE LIST:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1233395830/ireland-pro-palestinian
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/irish-war-independence
https://www.ighm.org/learn.html
The Palestine Police Force under the Mandate, A. J. Kingsley Heath (1928)
Rethinking and Recognizing Genocide: The British and the Case of the Great Irish Potato Famine, Neysa King (2020)
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165643
-