REVEALED: How Biden’s Irish Catholic mom who hated the English told him NOT to bow to the Queen when he met her while working as a senator in 1982
- Joe Biden’s late mother, Jean, advised her son not to ‘kiss her ring’ upon their first meeting when he was a senator in 1982
- Jean is said to have written ‘hundreds’ of poems ‘about her hatred of the English’
- During one UK visit, she was ‘appalled’ to learn the Queen had previously stayed in the same hotel as she was staying and decided to sleep on the floor instead of the bed
- Mrs Biden died aged 92 in 2010, after having a ‘profound’ influence on her son
- Despite this, the President claimed the Queen reminded him of his mother
- Full coverage: Click here to see all our coverage of the Queen’s passing
Joe Biden’s mother is said to have hated the English so much that she told him not to bow down to the Queen ahead of his first meeting with her.
President Biden first met the late monarch when he was a young senator in 1982, however just as he was leaving for the airport to fly to the UK, he recalled in a 2013 speech, how his mother phoned him.
‘Joey, be polite but do not kiss her ring,’ Biden told his audience to laughter. ‘Swear to God.’
Biden also repeated his mother’s concern about showing undue deference to the Queen in his autobiography, Promises to Keep, this time recalling: ‘When I told my mother I was going to have an audience with the Queen of England, the first thing she said was: “Don’t you bow down to her.”
He went on: ‘”Remember Joey,” she’d say, “you’re a Biden. Nobody is better than you. You’re not better than anybody else, but nobody is any better than you.”‘
To bow or curtsy was not a mandatory requirement when visiting the Queen, however it was the traditional way to greet her.
Joe Biden discussed how much his mother Catherine Finnegan (both pictured in 2008), known as Jean, ‘hated the English’ and told him never to bow down to the Queen or ‘kiss her ring’
In another anecdote, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, known to the family as Jean, was said to have hated England so much that she chose to sleep on the floor rather than in a bed where the Queen once stayed, according to a book.
Author and British TV script writer Georgia Pritchett was invited to meet Biden, then vice president, at the White House while carrying out research for the American comedy series Veep.
She recalled in her autobiography My Mess Is a Bit of a Life, published earlier this year, how Biden was initially speaking about Ukraine, from where he had just returned, but was advised to switch topics.
Noting that Pritchett was British, he discussed how much his mother ‘hated the English’, telling her she had written ‘hundreds’ of poems on the matter.
Pritchett wrote: ‘He went off to find them and returned with hundreds of poems describing how God must smite the English and rain blood on our heads.’
He went on to recollect the time his mother, who was of Irish descent, traveled to the UK and spent a night in a hotel where she was told the Queen had once visited.
Referring to the hotel stay, Pritchett wrote: ‘She was so appalled that she slept on the floor all night, rather than risk sleeping on a bed that the Queen had slept on.’
She added: ‘I admire anyone whose principles come between them and a comfy bed.’
However, despite his mother’s apparent hatred of the English, Biden once compared her to the Queen after meeting the Monarch at Windsor Castle in June last year.
The president said before boarding Air Force One: ‘I don’t think [the Queen] would be insulted but she reminded me of my mother, the look of her and just the generosity.’
Jean Biden was a devout Catholic mother-of-four who raised the future president in Pennsylvania and helped him overcome his childhood stutter.
Queen Elizabeth II and U.S. President Joe Biden attend the president’s ceremonial welcome at Windsor Castle in June last year
She died in 2010, aged 92, having had what Biden has described as a ‘profound’ and ‘formidable’ influence on him. She is still frequently quoted by the president in his political speeches.
She joined him on the campaign trail as he sought election to the Senate and supported him after his first wife and their daughter died in a car crash in 1972.
Biden has said his mother was always quick to remind him his success was ‘because of others’ and taught him to set his own standards ‘based on character alone.’
When Biden was mocked at the grammar school he attended which was run by nuns, one of them had once mocked his stuttering. His mother, at just 5ft 1in, told the nun: ‘If you ever speak to my son like that again, I’ll come back and rip that bonnet off your head,’ according to his autobiography.
His mother joined him on the campaign trail when he ran for Senate, despite believing he would ruin his reputation as a lawyer by running for election, and stood next to him when he was Barack Obama’s running mate.
Jean lived out her final days in a converted garage on the Biden property after she asked her son to sell her house and build her an apartment when her husband died in 2002.
Biden is reported to only be about five-eighths Irish, but is known for playing up his Irish heritage – despite the fact he has a sizable number of English ancestors too.
The White House hasn’t commented on his mother’s reported antipathy towards ‘the English’ but Biden has previously admitted that old prejudices die hard among his Irish family members.
His Irish ancestors left for America at the height of the great famine in the 1840s and 1850s, when the devastating effects of potato blight were exacerbated by British government economic policy.
He claims that he overcame a stutter that blighted his childhood by reciting Irish poetry to his bedroom mirror.
And he once wrote a letter in which he described himself as a descendant of an ‘Irish American family that imbued in him a sense of pride that spoke of both continents’.
The president has even quoted Irish poets in speeches, raising eyebrows with his reference to W B Yeats’ famed final line in Easter 1916, which describes the aftermath of the Easter Rising staged in Ireland against British rule.
During a visit to England last June, Biden told US troops: ‘The world has changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born.’
He is also related to Irish rugby player Rob Kearney and tweeted ‘congratulations cousin’ when Ireland beat New Zealand for the first time in Chicago in 2016.
Biden is vocally proud of his Irish roots and once penned a letter reflecting on his heritage, which he can trace back to the Blewitts from County Mayo and the Finnegans from County Louth.
They left Ireland for a new life and ended up settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Biden’s great-grandfather, Edward Blewitt, was reputedly a member of the notorious Molly Maguires, a violent secret society of Irish immigrant miners that partly inspired the villainous gang in the Sherlock Holmes story The Valley Of Fear.
Addressing New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House Annual Gala last year, he said: ‘I write to you as a descendent of the Blewitts from County Mayo and the Finnegans of County Louth, of an Irish American family that imbued in me a sense of pride that spoke of both continents, a heart and soul that drew from old and new – a pride in community, faith, and above all, family.
‘All these years later, I write to you from a White House designated by an Irish hand, in a nation where Irish blood was spilled in revolution, for independence, and in preservation of the union.
‘And the bridge between the two nations goes back and forth, growing wider and more necessary with every year that passes. Linked in memory and imagination and joined by our histories, we are nostalgic for the future. So it was then, so it is now.’
US President Biden can trace his Irish roots back to both the Blewitts from Co Mayo and the Finnegans from Co Louth
Joe Biden’s Irish roots
Joe Biden has spoken about his Irish heritage on a number of occasions.
The president can trace his Irish roots back to the Blewitts from Co Mayo and the Finnegans from Co Louth.
Mr Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewit emigrated from Ballina for America during the Irish famine, 170 years ago.
Biden’s other great-great grandfather was Owen Finnegan, from the Cooley Peninsula, in Co Louth.
The family moved to America in the late 1840s and settled in Seneca, New York.
Ten of Biden’s 16 great-great grandparents were also born in Ireland.
Biden visited Ireland on an official visit as vice-president in 2016.
On his father’s side, two great-grandparents were also born in Ireland, although the Bidens were primarily of English and French extraction.
‘The Finnegans were fond of their Irish grudges, and they didn’t easily let one go,’ Biden wrote in his autobiography, Promises To Keep. To illustrate this he recalled a maternal great aunt named Gertie once telling him in his youth that ‘your father is not a bad man. He’s just English’.
Footage of Joe Biden dismissing a BBC reporter by mentioning his Irish heritage was captured during the Democratic Primary in 2019.
‘Mr. Biden, a quick word for the BBC,’ the correspondent for the British broadcaster could be heard asking in the clip.
‘The BBC? I’m Irish!’ Biden declared, before walking out.
The clip received renewed attention last year amid his reported row with then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the Northern Ireland peace deal.
Back in 1998, the US helped broker a peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of bloodshed between Catholics in Ireland and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Last summer, it was reported that Biden ordered US officials to give Johnson an extraordinary diplomatic rebuke for putting that peace process at risk over Brexit negotiations with the European Union.
At the time, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters: ‘President Biden has been crystal clear about his rock-solid belief in the Good Friday Agreement as the foundation for peaceful co-existence in Northern Ireland.
‘Any steps that imperil it or undermine it would not be welcomed by the United States.’
Biden, the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who takes pride in his expertise in global affairs, was also a staunch opponent of Brexit.
Devout Catholic mother-of-four who raised future President in Pennsylvania
Jean Biden, a devout Catholic mother, and her husband Joe Biden Senior had four children – the president is the eldest.
The family lived in in Scranton, Pennsylvania, but moved to Wilmington, where there were more opportunities, and Biden Snr became a used-car salesman.
Biden once recalled how his mother fashioned a pair of cufflinks from nuts and bolts after she could not find a pair for him to wear to an eighth-grade dance.
‘Now look Joey,’ she told him. ‘If anybody says anything to you about these nuts and bolts, you just look them right in the eye and say “Don’t you have a pair of these?”‘
Jean Biden (right) was an influential presence in her son’s life and the president often quotes her words and actions in his political speeches (pictured here in 2007)
Jean Biden joined her son on the campaign trail when he ran for Senate, despite believing he was ruin his reputation as a lawyer by running for election (pictured, addressing followers after he was re-elected in 1978)
Accepting the nomination for Vice-President in 2008, Biden paid tribute to his mother, saying. ‘My mother’s creed is the American creed: No one is better than you. You are everyone’s equal, and everyone is equal to you.’
Speaking at her Catholic funeral mass in January 2010, President Biden said she was ‘somewhat selfishly viewed by our family as a remarkable woman.
‘She was a quintessential combination of both optimism and pragmatism. Heroic in her ideals, but solid in her expectations.’
He added his mother had taught the family to ‘never be intimidated by power, wealth or station; that we did not have to accept social convention,
‘We could set our own standard, one that was based on character alone… She believed in us, so we believed in ourselves. How could we do less?’
Biden added his mother held her children to what he called the ‘Biden standard.’
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