corsair
In the eighties I was happily ensconsed in the UK, making things that go bang.
Many of the contracts we were awarded, and I know plenty of other NZ, Oz, and SA folks who found the same thing, were given on the basis that we weren't Irish.
Amongst the other subbies I worked with were Arabs, Kurds, Basques, Libyans, Poles and Czechs (this was before the Wall came down), even the odd Russian, and a few stray Brits (!).
There appeared to be a quite deliberate bias against Irish nationals within the MoD at that time, in Maggie's Britain and when the troubles were bad.
Maybe that bias flowed over to the military, and who knows, perhaps it has continued.
Being NZ with a British passport I never struck any difficulties; I wonder if that would have changed had they known about my membership of the local chapter of Plaid Cymru?
