{"source_url": "https://www.irishpost.com", "url": "https://www.irishpost.com/comment/50-years-irish-post-something-celebrated-176409", "title": "50 years of The Irish Post is something to be celebrated", "top_image": "https://img.resized.co/irishpostcouk/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL21lZGlhLmlyaXNocG9zdC5jby51a1xcXC91cGxvYWRzXFxcLzIwMThcXFwvMDNcXFwvMTkxNzM2NDVcXFwvU3QtUGF0cmlja3MtRGF5LUlyaXNoLVBvc3QtMTIuanBnXCIsXCJ3aWR0aFwiOjY0NyxcImhlaWdodFwiOjM0MCxcImRlZmF1bHRcIjpcImh0dHBzOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LmlyaXNocG9zdC5jb21cXFwvaVxcXC9uby1pbWFnZS5wbmdcIn0iLCJoYXNoIjoiOWNiNTVlNWRkNTkyMzQwYTJhYWFlODJkYzY1NDFhMTJmMzFhNjIxNSJ9/st-patricks-day-irish-post-12.jpg", "meta_img": "https://img.resized.co/irishpostcouk/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL21lZGlhLmlyaXNocG9zdC5jby51a1xcXC91cGxvYWRzXFxcLzIwMThcXFwvMDNcXFwvMTkxNzM2NDVcXFwvU3QtUGF0cmlja3MtRGF5LUlyaXNoLVBvc3QtMTIuanBnXCIsXCJ3aWR0aFwiOjY0NyxcImhlaWdodFwiOjM0MCxcImRlZmF1bHRcIjpcImh0dHBzOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LmlyaXNocG9zdC5jb21cXFwvaVxcXC9uby1pbWFnZS5wbmdcIn0iLCJoYXNoIjoiOWNiNTVlNWRkNTkyMzQwYTJhYWFlODJkYzY1NDFhMTJmMzFhNjIxNSJ9/st-patricks-day-irish-post-12.jpg", "images": ["https://www.irishpost.com/i/no-image.png", "https://www.irishpost.com/i/logo.svg?v=4", "https://www.irishpost.com/i/logo-50years.svg?v=5", "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/b8a5df4425d09a8a25e351805ade8ceejpg?d=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishpost.com%2Fi%2Favatar.png", "https://www.irishpost.com/i/loading.gif", "https://img.resized.co/irishpostcouk/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL21lZGlhLmlyaXNocG9zdC5jby51a1xcXC91cGxvYWRzXFxcLzIwMThcXFwvMDNcXFwvMTkxNzM2NDVcXFwvU3QtUGF0cmlja3MtRGF5LUlyaXNoLVBvc3QtMTIuanBnXCIsXCJ3aWR0aFwiOjY0NyxcImhlaWdodFwiOjM0MCxcImRlZmF1bHRcIjpcImh0dHBzOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LmlyaXNocG9zdC5jb21cXFwvaVxcXC9uby1pbWFnZS5wbmdcIn0iLCJoYXNoIjoiOWNiNTVlNWRkNTkyMzQwYTJhYWFlODJkYzY1NDFhMTJmMzFhNjIxNSJ9/st-patricks-day-irish-post-12.jpg"], "movies": [], "text": "WHEN I was a kid growing up in Birmingham we used to have three regular newspapers in the house.\n\nThe Daily Mirror, The Observer, and The Irish Post.\n\nThe Mirror in those days had the likes of Paul Foot and John Pilger writing for it.\n\nThis was the days before every tabloid became purely an extension of the entertainment industry. The Observer, which I still get to this day, brought in-depth international news coverage to our inner city streets.\n\nAnd The Irish Post was our newspaper talking about us.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nI think The Irish Post must have been fundamental in many a second and third generation sense of identity because here was a newspaper talking about that very life.\n\nSitting in a house in England, belonging to an Irish family, reading The Irish Post, was as natural a part of our life as Coronation Street on the television and the Sacred Heart on the wall.\n\nIn those days the Post was campaigning on behalf of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.\n\nIn those days the Frank Dolan column was the page I first looked for and it was full of such depth and such insight into Irish life in Britain, and in Ireland, that it gave me the fundamental knowledge I\u2019ve built my own flimsy understandings on.\n\nIn those days the pages of The Irish Post detailed in pictures and in words the vibrant social life of the Irish in Britain.\n\nAll over Britain the Irish living a life of such vitality and exuberance that, for those of us that experienced it, lives still in our memories.\n\nThere it all was in the pages of a newspaper. Proof of it.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nI grew up in it and I lived it. But when I first brought English people to it, people I\u2019d met whilst away studying, I saw it through their eyes and saw in their eyes that this brilliant world was unknown to them.\n\nThis Irish life in Britain was invisible to the British. They\u2019d never seen anything like it.\n\nIt was so full of life it was bursting at the seams. I\u2019d almost think now, at this distance, that I\u2019d imagined it. Those clubs and those pubs, those afternoons and those nights.\n\nBut it was all recorded there in the pages of a newspaper. In the pages of The Irish Post.\n\nThe Irish Post, so full of living that it actually died and came back to life.\n\nMy father bought The Irish Post religiously and not just because I was in it.\n\nIt was more that for him and my mother, back here in Ireland now, that the paper was an enduring connection with that intrinsic part of their life.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThat life where they were Irish in Britain. In the confident decades we\u2019ve had recently, and watching my own children grow up now secure and unapologetic in their Irishness, it is difficult to explain how being Irish used to be.\n\nIreland was not in any way a \u2018cool\u2019 country and being Irish was not anything anyone aspired to.\n\nThe Irish Post flew the flag in days and in places where being Irish was difficult.\n\nIt came out of a community that wasn\u2019t full of the hipster swagger that constitutes a lot of today\u2019s Irishness.\n\nIt came from a people who had no choice but to be emigrants, who had, by and large, left school early because that was the only option, and who experienced the cold winds of hostility and prejudice.\n\nThe Irish Post helped people like my parents to keep their heads up when being Irish was something you might be wiser to be silent about.\n\nI hope younger and future generations remember that. They should.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nA newspaper that comes out of a community and survives for fifty years is something to be celebrated.\n\nIn the New Year we can, at least, be proud and positive about that.\n\nWith English nationalists now in charge in Britain it might be a comfort greatly needed to have this paper around.\n\nHow newspapers themselves survive in the digital world we are busy building, with all of the recklessness of those who think the world has just been invented, I don\u2019t know.\n\nBut here The Irish Post still is. I know it\u2019s January but that\u2019s worth raising a glass for, isn\u2019t it?\n\nSo, for everyone Irish and everyone a friend of the Irish. And everyone else too. Happy New Year.", "keywords": [], "meta_keywords": [""], "tags": [], "authors": ["Joe Horgan"], "publish_date": null, "summary": "", "article_html": "", "meta_description": "WHEN I was a kid growing up in Birmingham we used to have three regular newspapers in the house....", "meta_lang": "", "meta_favicon": "https://www.irishpost.com/i/apple-touch-icon.png", "meta_data": {"viewport": "width=device-width, initial-scale=1, minimum-scale=1, maximum-scale=1", "robots": "index, follow", "description": "WHEN I was a kid growing up in Birmingham we used to have three regular newspapers in the house....", "author": "Joe Horgan", "theme-color": "#004d15", "fb": {"pages": 68969193451}, "og": {"title": "50 years of The Irish Post is something to be celebrated | The Irish Post", "description": "WHEN I was a kid growing up in Birmingham we used to have three regular newspapers in the house....", "type": "article", "url": "https://www.irishpost.com/comment/50-years-irish-post-something-celebrated-176409", "site_name": "The Irish Post", "locale": "en_GB", "image": {"identifier": "https://img.resized.co/irishpostcouk/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL21lZGlhLmlyaXNocG9zdC5jby51a1xcXC91cGxvYWRzXFxcLzIwMThcXFwvMDNcXFwvMTkxNzM2NDVcXFwvU3QtUGF0cmlja3MtRGF5LUlyaXNoLVBvc3QtMTIuanBnXCIsXCJ3aWR0aFwiOjY0NyxcImhlaWdodFwiOjM0MCxcImRlZmF1bHRcIjpcImh0dHBzOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LmlyaXNocG9zdC5jb21cXFwvaVxcXC9uby1pbWFnZS5wbmdcIn0iLCJoYXNoIjoiOWNiNTVlNWRkNTkyMzQwYTJhYWFlODJkYzY1NDFhMTJmMzFhNjIxNSJ9/st-patricks-day-irish-post-12.jpg", "width": 647, "height": 340, "type": "image/jpeg"}}, "twitter": {"card": "summary_large_image", "site": "@theirishpost", "url": "https://www.irishpost.com/comment/50-years-irish-post-something-celebrated-176409", "title": "50 years of The Irish Post is something to be celebrated | The Irish Post", "description": "WHEN I was a kid growing up in Birmingham we used to have three regular newspapers in the house....", "image": "https://img.resized.co/irishpostcouk/eyJkYXRhIjoie1widXJsXCI6XCJodHRwczpcXFwvXFxcL21lZGlhLmlyaXNocG9zdC5jby51a1xcXC91cGxvYWRzXFxcLzIwMThcXFwvMDNcXFwvMTkxNzM2NDVcXFwvU3QtUGF0cmlja3MtRGF5LUlyaXNoLVBvc3QtMTIuanBnXCIsXCJ3aWR0aFwiOjY0NyxcImhlaWdodFwiOjM0MCxcImRlZmF1bHRcIjpcImh0dHBzOlxcXC9cXFwvd3d3LmlyaXNocG9zdC5jb21cXFwvaVxcXC9uby1pbWFnZS5wbmdcIn0iLCJoYXNoIjoiOWNiNTVlNWRkNTkyMzQwYTJhYWFlODJkYzY1NDFhMTJmMzFhNjIxNSJ9/st-patricks-day-irish-post-12.jpg"}, "powered-by": "PublisherPlus (http://www.publisherplus.ie/)"}, "canonical_link": "https://www.irishpost.com/comment/50-years-irish-post-something-celebrated-176409"}