From top: St Giles Exhall, near Coventry, England; Part of a judgement banning a grave with an Irish language inscription at the church’s cemetery

Ah here.

Historian Dr Francis Young writes:

This is an absolutely extraordinary judgement from a Church of England consistory court, ruling that the Irish language cannot appear on a memorial on account of ‘the passions and feelings connected with the use of Irish Gaelic‘.

If the judgement had been based solely on concerns about comprehensibility for the majority of people in Coventry it might be defensible.

But the judgement not only rules against Irish on the grounds that it could be seen as a political statement, but proceeds on the *assumption* that the use of Irish must be a political statement unless the contrary can be shown (read the full judgement)

I am left open-mouthed at this apparent resurgence of old-fashioned anti-Irish prejudice, not only in a judicial tribunal, but in a judicial tribunal of the church. This is shocking

Full judgment here

Pic via St Giles