There was a really interesting exhibition on this phenomenon in Dublin’s Collins Barracks museum recently. It was incongruous seeing Prussian or French soldiers with Irish names.
Serving for Perfidious Albion seemed to be the Irish’s main focus. As Ghandi said about the Irish, the only thing they have against the British Empire is that they are a part of it. Then it could be the fact that Irish soldiers pretty much represented the business end of the raj rule in S Asia, and if you were an Irishman caught by the friendly locals, Kiplings advise was the best one to follow.
About the Paddy/non Paddy thing, IIRC Irish Guards nickname is “Micks”. And R Irish is “Paddys”. They are more than a little proud of them.
In fairness, other posters have said that it comes down to context.
Are you Irish? I don’t know as I don’t know where you are from, where your family is from etc. Do you feel you are Irish? That’s more important than what I think.
How many of them are Southern Irish. Are there a significant number of Northern Irish (i.e. non-Nationalist Northern Irish) in these regiments. I really don’t know.
Both the regiments recruit from the Island of Ireland and people of Irish decent. A few others are also brought in, but AFAIK republic citizens are not thought of as “foreign” in Britain as a result its unlikely republic citizens would be counted as such for the British Military.
The only opportunity to serve abroad with the Irish Army is to go on one of our UN missions(Lebanon, several African countries, East Timor etc. ) or embassy duty.
There are some parts of the army that are as highly trained as any other modern professional army. The Rangers for example are our special forces. These boys where trained to combat the most sophisticated terrorist threat of its day. They have also carried out foreign missions under the UN flag like clearing out some of the forest areas in East Timor.
That said the Irish Army is small and very restricted when it comes to advancement. The Navy is tiny and only really protects shipping interests and the air force has a few planes but AFAIK none with any actual guns on them. The RAF flew missions protecting our borders after 9/11.
Irish people have been fighting other people’s wars for nearly as long as there’s been Irish history. My Grandfather along with 60000 other joined up during WWII for example. He joined for purely financial reasons but others joined for any number of other reasons.
The people who would have problems with Irish people in the British Armed Forces are becoming fewer and fewer as “The Troubles” move further into our collective past.
As to the paddy thing.
Context is everything. The use of it in the thread is inoffensive IMO.
The paddies have a good day on paddy’s day = cool
Fucking bog trotting Paddies annoy me = uncool.
I use Brit a lot on this board and have never been called on it as the context is always clear. If I started talking about Brit bastards however I would expect to be called on it. “Brit” as a insult is a thing particular to Ireland though and in real terms “English” is actually also meant 
English-born, Irish parentage. Dual citizenship, in fact, although I’ve always chosen to have an Irish passport rather than a British one. I’ve got a thoroughly mixed attitude to identity - there’s no point calling myself Irish when in Ireland, to anybody there I’m English, and that’s OK with me because in many ways I simply am. Not British, though. I don’t feel at home when there, and nor do I when in Scotland or Wales. But in England, the Irish part of me feels significant.
I’m sure the army does have a tally of citizens, but doesn’t make it public. It probably does have a public record of ethnic minority monitoring, but this won’t tell us the same thing, because it will be based on self-identification rather than official designations, which allows second-generation Irish such as myself to tick ‘Irish’ when we’re also viewed as British citizens according to British law.
Interesting. Thank you for the honest response. FWIW, I think you’re Irish. I have a similar dilema sometimes as I am now a US citizen so I hold two passports. While I still have a fairly strong Northside Dublin accent I’m also starting to get an American accent. If I have kids, and I hope I do, it’s likely that they will be with an American woman so they’ll also be dual citizens. I’d imagine that they are going to have similar issues with identity.
I asked around (specifically once of the attaches at the embassy; informally) and I got the following.
- Irish are not counted as foreigners.
2)There were a few objections in serving in N Ireland, but not anymore than from any other group.
- There was little specific danger, the Brit army is never stationed in Ireland, in N Ireland the IRA would target soldiers anyway without regards to ethnicity, though R Irish and Irish Guards did get some more heat than normal. The only problem would be going to Ireland on leave and apparently there were some incidents.
IIRC, anyone from Ireland could work fairly freely in the UK, with little paperwork or hassle with taxes from a few decades ago. I read a line somewhere in an old publication that they would be treated with regards taxes, as someone from the UK would.
Also, now that I see the thread bumped, I’m reminded of the only soldiers (AFAIK) to sympathise with the IRA in any sort of notable way who were themselves English. Two of them left the army and were paraded around by the IRA for a bit before handing themselves into the police. I can’t find a cite for that, but it was the subject of at least one TV documentary.
It sounds as though the Republic doesn’t have a huge military budget. Which is a good thing.
in the 1950s there were a number of instances (notably the raid for arms on Gough Barracks in Armagh) where the IRA enlisted a man into the British Army for the specific purpose of having an agent on the inside.
Apparently the Queen Mothers pall bearers were the Irish Guards of them 3 or four were republic citizens.