Observations on roots and allegiances

Some people know it by heart. Word for word, they can recite what Roy Keane shouted at Mick McCarthy during their well-publicised pre-World Cup bust-up, finishing with ". . . you were a crap player and you are a crap manager. The only reason I have any dealings with you is that somehow you are the manager of my country and you're not even Irish, you English cunt."

Keane and others in the room later denied that the unspeakable word was ever uttered, but Irish newspapers at the time reported the full insult - Keane really had said English.

Questioning an Irish/English identity is usually taboo in Irish teams: it hits a nerve for many second-generation Irish, insecure about their nationality. Can having an Irish-born parent really make you Irish? Isn't there something fraudulent about claiming to be Irish if - like McCarthy - you sound English?

It is not just a problem in football circles. For decades, during the Troubles, declaring yourself as Irish meant to invite a whole series of uncomfortable and suspicious questions. It was as if saying you were Irish (in a cockney, Scouse or Glaswegian accent) meant that you somehow supported the IRA or its bombing of English cities.

For a few, it did. Several IRA volunteers over the past 40 years were born and grew up in England or Scotland - notably Sean MacStiofain from Islington, north London, the founder and first chief of staff of the Provisional IRA; Hugh Doherty from Glasgow, one of the infamous Balcombe Street gang; and, more recently, Diarmuid O'Neill from Hammersmith, who was shot dead by Metropolitan Police near his west London home in 1996. Other second-generation Irish people responded to the Troubles by joining the British army and fighting in Northern Ireland.

At least five of the 21 people killed in the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974 were second-generation Irish. Within days of the attack, the government had rushed into law the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and, within days of that, the Maguire family, including their London-born children, had been wrongly arrested for terrorist offences.

Vincent Maguire, aged 16, and Patrick, his 13-year-old brother, were arrested despite their cockney accents and their mother's plea to the police to "Leave them alone, they're English born and bred". They were convicted for offences they had not committed and which had never taken place. Vincent was sentenced to five years in prison and Patrick to four years.

What happened to the Maguire children could have happened to virtually any of the hundreds of thousands of Irish migrants in Britain during those years. The presumption of guilt that went with an Irish surname when charges were announced, the stigma of having been questioned under the PTA, and the cold stares of suspicious neighbours all helped define the Irish community's identity, and those of its children.

Now it is innocent Muslims who know what it's like to feel collective suspicion, who hope that "terrorist suspects" in police custody don't have the same family name as them, and who pray that no one under interrogation says they are friends.

So it is odd that, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the PTA, it is a second- generation Irishman, Tony Blair, who aims to tighten terrorism laws that stigmatise another community. Perhaps Roy Keane should have a word.

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