Guinness

[liadnan]

Oh and one final thing... I always think that there's a certain irony that Guinness, or rather Diageo, a multinational built on a business founded by a strongly Unionist Church of Ireland Ascendancy family, does so well out of St Patrick's day.

In the 1830s O'Connell's supporters argued for a nationalist boycott of Guinness because of the strong opposition of the family to home rule. It was largely because O'Connell himself said nay that it didn't happen.

Comments

guinnless

[alan1957.livejournal.com]

that reminds me that when i woz active in the party (WRP - middle/late 70's rather than just the union movement) we used ter frequently come across people (on pub sales) 'oo refused/'ad never drunk guinness because of the family's massive financial support of the tory party. not sure whether that's still the case...

Re: guinnless

[liadnan]

I don't know how much involvement the family still has in what is now Diageo... remember all the fuss about when it was sold etc? But I wouldn't be surprised if they still had a stake. As for being Tory supporters, I'm not remotely surprised. But it's not a criminal offence, and lots of people contribute to Tory party coffers, including my parents. Not least the owner of your favourite pub chain, by the way, though I think most of his political donations in recent years have been specifically Anti-Euro...

Diana Mitford/Moseley was a Guinness by marriage in between, of course. Which is pretty tenuous, even by the usual standards of guilt by association, particularly since her ditching him for Moseley was a massive scandal at the time. But I suppose you can infer that Guinness probably ran with the same crowd.


The only other thing I remember about the later generations of the family is them giving Kenwood and the land surrounding it to the nation, now part of Hampstead Heath.