Central to Barry Hazley's Life History and the Irish Migrant Experience in Post-war England, a study of migrant life, largely in cities such as Manchester and Birmingham in the north of England, is the concept of composure as developed by the Popular Memory Group in the 1980s. Offering a framework by which oral testimony can be analyzed, this group emphasized the impact of the present on the past, of the “here” on the “there,” in oral accounts of experience. Rather than providing us with a straightforward record of past events, oral testimonies, the group argued, constitute attempts by individuals to construct historical narratives that reconcile often conflicting aspects of the self in the present. Using a “core sample” of ten interviews (226), Hazley examines the perspectives of a select number of Irish-born interviewees in relation to five historical themes but also and explores their testimonies in relation to broad statements relating to historical context. Using a selection of extracts from a small number (usually three) of these ten semi-structured interviews, Hazley seeks to shed some light on the diverse ways in which “the Irish” in postwar England experienced the early years of settlement, gendered spaces, changing religious norms, and the impact of the Troubles. Coming to very broad conclusions about the value of such interviews for historians, Hazley emphasizes that they offer an insight both into the dynamic nature of memory and into the shifting nature of identity among those whom historians categorize as the Irish. As Hazley puts it, regarding both Irishness and Britishness, historians need to remember that “myths of continuity and self-sameness over time obscure the fact that societies are engaged in an ongoing process of reformulating identities” (222).

Undoubtedly, historians interested in both the migration process and in what Hazley refers to as the “emotional adaption” (150) of migrants will find real substance here. Some of the accounts are harrowing, some are challenging, and some simply offer fascinating glimpses into the dramas of workers’ lives. Reading one woman's account of marriage to a “foreigner” in postwar London, the reader will be left in no doubt as to the way in which primary sources, oral or otherwise, can undermine in an instant accepted versions of a collective past (93). Overall, Hazley's study is valuable in that he challenges myths that may persist in popular discourse about Irishness in Britain, on, for instance, social mobility or on the strength of “community,” and in that he also critiques oral histories compiled by academics who, with the best of intentions, seek to make “visible” the presence of an Irish “ethnic minority”(10). The particular point about narrative construction in order to bring about self-composure is good—migrants make memories just as they make new lives. Importantly, Hazley also shows that the efforts at self-composure rarely produce narratives that are either logical or consistent. The interviewees’ struggles with their actual feelings about the Troubles—when they find ways of reconciling nationalist narratives with the reality of lives grounded in “English” urban spaces—demonstrate this well (188–219). Dynamic processes were and are central to the production of memories of Irishness in postwar Britain, just as they are in Ireland.

That said, as good as all of this undoubtedly is, any historian of the migrant experience worth their salt would probably know all of this. Just as with any primary or secondary source, in order to turn these interviews into history requires historical analysis. Psychological interpretations of interviewees’ phraseology, connections made with public memories in circulation among the Irish-born, and arguments on the impact of the efforts of campaigning groups, such as the Irish in Britain Representation Group or key institutions such as the Catholic Church, are very worthwhile. However, scholars do need to make good, thorough use of comparative analysis and of the multiplicity of other available sources, both oral and written, in order to arrive at a historical argument. Although Hazley certainly refers to some important secondary works, too often he seems to restate rather than critically examine in full the arguments presented by historians, such as those of Enda Delaney (The Irish in Post-war Britain, 2007) on the absence of uniformity in the experience of the Irish in Great Britain (70). The interviews thus appear to be significantly enhancing, or indeed undermining, the arguments found in such works when in fact it may be the case that historians have already critically addressed relevant themes and issues involved. Importantly, specifically regarding identity (Britishness, Englishness, and Irishness), there is now a large body of work that examines all of these in historically contingent terms. Hazley, for instance, makes scant reference to attempts by historians—Paul Ward's contributions to debate come to mind—at examining the complexities of Britishness. True, Hazley's intention was to examine Irishness. However, as he finally admits at the end, ideas of national identity have been present in the past not just in Ireland but also throughout the British Isles. In this lies the real missed opportunity of this work. Coming as he does from a background that, as he confesses in his preface, was not easily understood by his youthful self as being “Irish,” he fails to tackle ideas of Britishness among the Irish-born (xi). These ideas did not go away with partition, even, as recent research shows, in the Republic of Ireland. The migrant experiences he describes are in that sense somewhat self-selecting—alongside these absorbing accounts of the experience of migration by some among the Irish-born coming from a Catholic background, it would have been very interesting to hear about how the British Irish, of whatever background, felt about coming to British England. Lastly, Scotland and Wales are mentioned only in passing by Hazley—again, the complexities of identity in those locations would have been worth a stronger mention.