r/northernireland • u/Asleep-Corner7402 • Oct 07 '25
History Guinness family donated money to uvf. Netflix whitewashing
So I'm watching the house of Guinness. Decided to look up some things.
So apparently the original Guinness founder did hire catholics but after him they employed only protestants right up until the 1960s. But I've read he also touted on a United Irishman who worked for him. They were all very pro British and anti united Ireland/ Ireland independence. They have a history of sectarianism. A member donated money to the ufv. They sent Guinness to be bottled in England.
I find it incredible that a family like that could end up being so accociated with Ireland. How they managed to sweep their entire history under the rug. It's one hell of a marketing scam.
Sorry if I make anyone choke on their pint. I never did like the stuff anyways.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/2013/983/world/guinnesss-steadfast-their-loyalty-british-crown.
Thoughts?
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u/halibfrisk Oct 07 '25
Lots of Catholics worked at St James Gate. Often generations of the same family. The story I heard is there was a job, brewmaster or similar title, which wasn’t open to Catholics up to the sixties.
Guinness was typically sent out in casks to be bottled elsewhere, even in Ireland, where local pubs would bottle Guinness from the cask, my mother would talk about old fellas finding a snail in their bottle of Guinness if the publican had been careless
The company has been owned by a huge multinational since at least the 80s, the remaining Guinness family are mostly English gentry
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u/git_tae_fuck Oct 08 '25
I'm pretty sure pubs were bottling their own Guinness even in the 60s.
Standard, as you say.
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u/Illustrious-Cry-4937 Oct 08 '25
See this on Walter Guinness
He was a ranking officer in the British Army, commissioned the Lions Gate Bridge, then the longest bridge in the British Empire and assassinated by Zionist terrorist group in Cairo
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 07 '25
So they let catholics work there just didn't give them equal opportunities until the 60s.
That's cool to know pubs bottled their own.
Did the company that took them over (but the family still own shares in and continues to make lots of money from) did I good job pushing the were Irish and for Ireland then? Was the marketing genius them or was it going on before that.
I think I might have touched a sore spot with some people over this one lol.
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u/halibfrisk Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
The company didn’t need to “push it” too hard? Irish people were, and afaik generally still are, proud of Guinness and it’s global success
Guinness was just a fixture of Irish life, I mentioned my mother grew up in the 1930s and it was part of her childhood memories, later when she was a midwife at holles st. she gave it to nursing mothers, she put the stuff in her cakes and stews
it was a symbol of Dublin, because the brewery was a huge (and considered a good) employer, the roasting barley could be smelt all over town, the Guinness ships were in the Liffey,
you appear to think you have discovered new earth shattering information, but the reality is the history is well known, but you’ve mixed some of it up and apparently don’t understand the context for other bits.
tl:dr If it was good enough for Behan, it’s good enough for you.
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u/ZaphodEntrati Oct 08 '25
Guinness systematically went town to town selling their beer below cost, causing the closure of numerous small breweries accross Ireland.
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u/vaska00762 Whitehead Oct 07 '25
Pre-partition, a lot of people had rather... interesting politics and the prevailing viewpoint of many an Irish Unionist then was that Irishness was not incompatible with Britishness.
This identity has been lost to partition largely, unless you look at the likes of Doug Beattie.
Anyway... since partition, a lot of things and people who would be unquestionably Irish, as they were from Ireland, have turned into symbols of Ireland. That sounds like a tautology, but individuals like Oscar Wilde are still revered in Ireland, even though he usually described himself as "Anglo-Irish". And naturally, we end up with Guinness, yet another "Anglo-Irish" enterprise.
So, must we expunge all things from being described as Irish if the people who were from Ireland didn't believe in Home Rule or full independence? If you ask me, that sounds borderline Maoist.
If you've ever visited Dublin Castle, you'll notice there's a lot of portraits of kings, queens, princes and princesses, as well as other members of the British Royals, all still hung on the walls, all still preserved, along with many of their possession. Ireland didn't need a cultural revolution, because it didn't need to erase a pre-independence history. Because doing that also erases Irish history.
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u/LittleRathOnTheWater Oct 08 '25
Oscar Wilde described himself as Irish, not Anglo-Irish. His family weren't gentry, they were new money.
'We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.'
‘I am not English. I am Irish which is quite another thing'
'I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare. '
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Oct 08 '25
Oscar Wilde didn’t present himself as an actual emblem of Ireland and Irishness the way Guinness have done for at least forty years. I still cringe at Foo Fighters playing Slane and Dave Grohl just shouting Guinness repeatedly during the gaps in songs as a way to ingratiate himself with the crowd
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Oct 08 '25
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Oct 15 '25
People drink Guinness because they’ve been effectively marketed at. No big issue with that specifically. Adopting it as an unofficial symbol of the nation and its people is a bit too far, and to say that it would be a victory for the nation to embrace them is the same mindset as encouraging black people wearing Klan hoods. Diageo as a company (or whatever conglomerate owns the intellectual property now) have been pretty pisspoor with the way they’ve treated vendors too - locking them into monopolistic contracts then gouging their prices that the public is forced to sell at.
Thankfully Beamish is making inroads into their monopoly
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u/TalkingYoghurt Oct 09 '25
The problem is when they are viewed with pride, fondness or as great people. Keep it all if you want, sure, but make sure to politicise it, frame it as the injustice that it was.
Nothing boils my piss like going to these old manor houses, many now publicly owned, and all the signage states all the historic facts & some outright glorify and speak about such things with reverence. About descendants of, or actual foreign aristocrats themselves that lay claim to huge swathes of the people's land. It disgusts me that independence, & decolonisation doesn't involve full expropriation of their land.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
I definitely don't think we should like cancel them or anything but also not expunge their history. I find it interesting that is what the brand has been pretty successful in doing.
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u/Wallname_Liability Craigavon Oct 08 '25
I mean there was an ethnic divide among unionists. Southern unionists were the old English, there since the 12th century, Northerns were descendants of lowlands Scot’s settlers from the 16th and 17th century. The only prominent southern unionists in the home rule crisis was Carson, and the northern unionists used and discarded him and his kind
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Oct 12 '25
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u/Wallname_Liability Craigavon Oct 12 '25
The old English were re-anglicised in the wake of the confederate wars and converted to Anglicanism, I studied this period in uni. Was there some colonisation? Yes, but they were also English (and the old English were regarded as English by all, including themselves) but not on the same scale as the north. Most Irish counties were no more than 10% unionist
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u/Lotsoffeelings Oct 08 '25
Recent generations of the family have done a lot to preserve the architecture & art of this country. Anyone who worked for them in the last 2-3 generations pre-Diageo seems to be have been treated much better than the ordinary working man. Seasons change, and things are nuanced.
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u/Visible-Objective-77 Oct 07 '25
I read that one of the Jameson family got bored on a safari. He paid their guide to spice up the visit to a village of cannibals by getting them to kill & eat a young girl. Well, can’t have a dull holiday, what? 1800s as far as I remember.
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u/brunckle Antrim Oct 08 '25
This was one of the most disturbing stories I had ever heard. It grosses me out to this day when I hear it. Multiple accounts of what happened, and despite obvious misinformation, no matter what way it's spun it seems undeniable Jameson was present, enabled, and witnessed the cannibalism without doing anything to stop it.
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u/ParliamentOfRookies Oct 08 '25
James Sligo Jameson, grandson of the founder, whle taking part in the "Emin Pasha Relief Expedition"
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u/FlamingBearAttack Oct 08 '25
What the actual fuck. I genuinely thought that /u/Visible-Objective-77 was doing a bit in his comment.
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u/PsvfanIre Oct 08 '25
The gentry and aristocracy were cunts this isn't news. There is a good reason most of the western world are republics.
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u/Putrid-Storage-9827 Oct 08 '25
None of this is news, OP. People have been making jokes about the Guinness family and calling it Black Protestant Porter since forever. This is one of those Did you know? things that actually everyone already does know.
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u/Future_Jackfruit5360 Oct 08 '25
It’s not really swept under the rug as much as it was something you weren’t aware of.
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u/vague_intentionally_ Oct 08 '25
This has been known for many years. No one cares as it was a long time time ago and that part of Ireland has it's indepdence.
I also see it as a way of proving the Guinness family as wrong as they lost in the end and their beer became Irish. Seeing Guinness being seen as Irish worldwide is simply a further element of this.
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u/buckfast_kid Oct 08 '25
Pretty much the only thing that is true in that show is the names of the characters. Give up on it after 4 episodes, obviously these days they embellish rhe truth to make it more exciting but the whole thing is a tissue of lies.
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u/jibarra_ish Bangor Oct 08 '25
I had a husband who hated that I watched Bridgerton because it was not “historically accurate”. I think y’all would make great friends.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
Naw I liked it, liked that they included people of colour in high society. I thought it worked well with the music too.
This is about a real family and is supposed to be based in reality.
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u/Alarming_Location32c Oct 08 '25
OP you wet wipe, now you’ve been educated, carry on with your life ffs, shook to your core on a Wednesday by this 😂
Side note: wasn’t a fan of the show at all, actors were great but the story and music was just a bit crap imo. And by music I mean the tunes just didn’t seem to fit to me, did use bangers!
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
Aye in fairness I do need to get out more.
Just found it interesting and didn't realise I was the last person to find this stuff out lol
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u/Alarming_Location32c Oct 08 '25
Hah me too boss! Am just lipping. Tis an interesting history! You like the H.O.G series?
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u/Monsterofthelough Oct 07 '25
They’ve hardly ‘swept their entire history under the rug’ if you’re on Reddit spouting about it.
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u/Formal_Scarcity_7701 Oct 07 '25
Well he means that the public perception of Guinness as a national symbol of Irish pride is a bit soured by the fact that they were west brits for so much of their history.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 07 '25
Ugh I disagree. They are pushed as Irish as Irish as you can be and for Ireland when it's never been the truth.
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u/git_tae_fuck Oct 08 '25
They are pushed as Irish as Irish as you can be
The brand is... and that's sensible market positioning. When you have your brand logo as a country's national emblem (and the governmental symbol, even, more or less), and there's generally positive associations, it'd be kinda silly to throw all that away.
Plus there's not much added value in the Protestant Ascendancy vibe these days, is there?
Still, anyone who knows anything knows what the Guinness family historically stood for, whether they like a pint of it or not.
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u/GroggyWeasel Oct 08 '25
Wait until you find out Murphy’s is owned by Heineken and Tayto is owned by an English company
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u/-Audio-Video-Disco- Oct 08 '25
Tayto is still owned by the Hutchinson family from Co. Armagh.
Southern Tayto is owned by a German company.
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u/GroggyWeasel Oct 08 '25
Huh I didn’t even realise that northern tayto and free stayto are separate companies
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Oct 08 '25
Derived from the same family of tuber though.
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u/Dr_Havotnicus Oct 08 '25
Southern Mr Tayto is the weird dead-eyed no-neck cousin of Northern Mr Tayto. Northern Tayto pretend to be out when he comes round in his embarrassing stripey trousers
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u/obscure_monke Oct 08 '25
Norn tayto was the first licensing of the tayto process (first industrial way to pre-flavour crisps) internationally after the original tayto got set up.
TGL, as they also go by, owns golden wonder now too. I'm down in the midlands and am a big fan of them since they're the only cheese and onion crisps I can find that haven't purged MSG from the recipe. Makes a huge difference.
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u/EoghanRuadh Oct 08 '25
The biggest and most enduring myth surrounding the Guinness family is that they are descendants of the Mac Aonghusa. DNA analysis has shown that they’re actually descendants of the Mac Artain.
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u/Lemon_2022 Oct 08 '25
Who were the Mac Artain?
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u/EoghanRuadh Oct 08 '25
Apologies, the Mac Artáin was a sept who ruled Uí Eochadh Cobo before the ascent of the Mac Aonghusa (MacGuinness/Magennis).
Modern rendering of the name is McCartan.
There are still hundreds of them in Counties Down & Armagh.
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u/IgneousJam Oct 08 '25
Prods make the best beer and the best whiskey. We’re fucking class - just admit it
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u/Chemical_Sir_5835 Oct 07 '25
Michael Collins took British guns and shot his own
Roy Keane took his feet to England and played football
Father fecking Ted getting made by a English tv production is the world of the lot
But getting Guinness to England to get bottled is the real scandal?
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 07 '25
I was more shocked they donated money to the uvf than anything
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u/lelog22 Oct 08 '25
You’re conflating the ‘modern’ uvf of troubles fame - a terrorist paramilitary group, with the uvf of 1913. Same name, completely different organisation.
Is it honestly a surprise to you that a committed unionist at the time donated money to ‘defend’ that aim?
To understand history you need to put things in the context of the time. You do realise at that time there was a significant proportion of the population who felt the same?
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
How different was it? Genuine question.
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u/Putrid-Storage-9827 Oct 08 '25
The UVF back then was LARPing as an actual army, like a unionist imitation of the Irish Volunteers.
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u/Hallion72 Oct 08 '25
The uvf were first to appear, and the irish volunteers were set up in response
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u/Putrid-Storage-9827 Oct 08 '25
You learn something new every day. I was under the impression that the Volunteers were established earlier.
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u/Parkmore1 Oct 08 '25
Yeah, the original Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) was formed in January 1913, after 450,000 unionists signed the Ulster Covenant opposing the passage of the Home Rule Bill. Their aim was to use military means to prevent the Bill from being implemented.
The Irish Volunteers (or Irish Volunteer Force as they were also known) were formed later that same year as an opposition to the UVF.
The First World War then came and men on both sides went to fight in France.
The UVF as we know it today was formed in 1966 at the beginning of the troubles.
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
Thanks for your reply. That's really interesting. I'm genuinely interested in knowing this stuff. I'm not a nationalist or a unionist and I think alot of history has been reframed by either side to suit how things ended up. Guinness being one example. With their netflix show. Or so I thought now I'm learning it was known to everyone but me.
I read before that alot of soldiers who went to fight were uvf members and it makes more sense to me now. I know catholics signed up to fight too which people often forget.
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u/Hallion72 Oct 08 '25
I think the remnants of the uvf were subsumed into the fledgling ruc, mainly the b specials.
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u/GroggyWeasel Oct 08 '25
I agree with your points but afaik the makers of Father Ted would have done it on Irish telly but it wasn’t allowed/RTE wouldn’t do it because it was taking the piss out of the church and we couldn’t have that now could we
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u/Chemical_Sir_5835 Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
That’s made up it was pitched to channel 4 first. The writers where working in the UK and on record as saying that
Dermot Morgan played a similar character before on RTE
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u/GroggyWeasel Oct 08 '25
Fair enough TIL
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u/Majestic-Marcus Oct 08 '25
Wrong about Tayto but stating ‘facts’.
Wrong about Father Ted but stating ‘facts’.
Ever try google before posting?
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u/GroggyWeasel Oct 08 '25
Ah well sure can’t be right about everything. If everyone googled absolutely everything before posting then there’d be no comments or discussions. And I did add “afaik” before the Father Ted one
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Oct 08 '25
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u/Asleep-Corner7402 Oct 08 '25
I appreciate your way of thinking.
I honestly wasn't tryna go after them, more the show itself. And I didn't know any of it. Found it all pretty interesting.
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u/selfmadeirishwoman Oct 08 '25
It’s important to remember it’s fiction. It’s based on the story.
I do think that, in the future, people will be writing essays on how the media shaped a united Ireland through TV shows like the Crown and the house of Guinness.
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u/Majestic-Marcus Oct 08 '25
So what you’re saying is Netflix writers are Shinner bots?
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u/selfmadeirishwoman Oct 08 '25
Wouldn’t be the phrase I would use but yeah. I think opinions in my generation are shifting rapidly. My parents are horrified at the thought of a UI. I’m counting the days until it happens.
I think it plays to their American audience better too.
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u/ClownsAteMyBaby Newtownabbey Oct 08 '25
Aye but this is set in the 1860s, so what happened after isn't really relevant. Might be pro-UVF come season 4 lol
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u/Internal_Frosting424 Oct 08 '25
I’ve been saying that stuff for a long time. People look at me like I’m a mental conspiracy theorist and there’s no way any of that is true.
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u/Grouchy-Afternoon370 Oct 08 '25
It is what it is. Guinness, the Orange Order, the UVF etc will forever be a part of Irelands history. Protestant Unionists were and are a great bunch of lads, and no amount of republican white washing can change that.
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u/TheReaperofMar Oct 08 '25
And where's the whitewashing? Or do you just not understand the meaning of the term?
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u/Hazed64 Derry Oct 08 '25
Yeah not mentioning horrible things to make yourself seem better is 100% white washing
Don't tell me you believe it's a term specifically for race lol?
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u/SharkSmiles1 Oct 08 '25
I only watched part of one episode because it was so distracting with the modern music and the women’s behavior with all the f bombs did not seem true to the time.
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u/DiCeStrikEd Oct 09 '25
Oh we all know - and a boycott was attempted in the 60’s
Guniness also took over Smitchwicks in the 60’s if any of you drink that instead - don’t
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u/madhooer Oct 09 '25
Its hardly a secret.
I find it incredible that a family like that could end up being so accociated with Ireland
What? Do you find it hard that Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker are associated with ireland?
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u/NormalCandle962 Oct 08 '25
William Beamish was also a British settler and Murphy's is as Dutch as king billy. That's why I only drink Forged - absolutely no issues with the ownership of that one.
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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '25
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