MIGRATION- THE ONLY DIFFERENCE

When we look at actual migration itself, the Huguenots were the first to arrive here in the 17th century. They were true Asylum Seekers as they were facing persecution in France, which at the time was a Catholic country, and hundreds of Huguenot protestants had been murdered over the previous century. So, they were the first real Asylum Seekers to arrive here.

Most of them settled in Spitalfields, East London, and their contributions were in areas such as watch-making, gun-making, bookbinding, and paper making. But their biggest contribution was as silk weavers and there’s no denying that they brought new energy to this industry in the area and raised silk to an important fashion item in Britain. In fact, when they moved to Britain, France lost talented merchants and craftsmen, slowing down the country’s progress, and the Huguenots were actually offered cash by France to return. Can you imagine? 

In the late 17th century and early 18th century, people from India started to settle in the UK. It wasn’t really intentional, but they’d been recruited in India to work on East Indiamen sailing ships and then refused passage back home. They were marooned in London. By the mid-19th century, there were at least 40,000 Indian seamen, as well as ayahs (domestic servants who accompanied wealthy British families back to England). Many of the seamen were a transitory group who would lodge in British port towns in-between voyages.

In the early 19th century, Chinese seamen began to establish small communities in the port cities of Liverpool and London. Limehouse in Tower Hamlets became the site of the first European Chinatown. They’d arrived on ships importing tea, ceramics and silks, but by the mid-1880s, small Chinatowns started to form in London and Liverpool with grocery stores, eating houses and meeting places and, in the East End of London, Chinese street names (Nanking Street in Poplar). By 1890 more Chinese seamen, servants and jugglers arrived, but there was growing prejudice against the community, particularly among British seamen who misperceived the Chinese seamen as a threat to their jobs. To prove they were willing to graft many Chinese opened small laundries. 

The Irish, of course, have been emigrating across the Irish Sea since the Middle Ages. In the 1650’s agricultural labourers arrived to help with the annual harvest.  During the Great Famine (1845-52) Ireland suffered a period of starvation and disease and many emigrated to England looking for work. Very much, if I dare say so, like the Joads in John Steinbeck’s terrific book, Grapes of Wrath, set during the Great Depression in America. The novel focuses on a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and bank foreclosures, forcing the tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California along with thousands of other ‘Okies’ seeking jobs, land, a future and dignity. Get that, they’re looking for DIGNITY. But to get there, they have to practically give up all their resources, even selling blankets and utensils and tools on the way to buy petrol. They arrive bewildered and beaten and in a state of semi-starvation, with only one necessity to face immediately, and that is to FIND WORK at any wage in order that the family may eat.

Get that? The Joads in the Grapes of Wrath were looking to FIND WORK to first of all eat, but also to get their DIGNITY Back. just like the Irish arriving here in the 1800s. Can you see where I’m going with this? 

The Irish worked in the iron works and in metal fabrication, shipbuilding and on the roads. And many more signed up for the British Army.

I could discuss the ‘Black Poor’ in Mile End, Stepney and Paddington, the Sierra Leone Creole People, the German immigrants, and the Jews, but of more interest is what is now known as the Windrush Generation. People from across the (then) British Empire were encouraged to move to the UK to help with post-War labour shortages and rebuild our battered economy. In 1956, London Transport became the first organisation to operate a scheme recruiting staff directly from the Caribbean. The majority of those hired were male, but women were also taken on to become bus conductors, station staff and canteen workers. Public transportation in the West Midlands followed suit, and the recruitment scheme became a model for other large public-sector employers, such as British Rail and the NHS. 

Following the independence of Pakistan, Pakistani immigration to the United Kingdom increased, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. They’d been invited by employers to fill labour shortages which arose after the Second World War. They found employment in the textile industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire, manufacturing in the West Midlands, and car production and food processing industries of Luton and Slough. It was common for Pakistani employees to work nightshifts and at other less-desirable hours that the homegrown population didn’t fancy.

Later, of course, they went on to establish corner shops, adopting the Jewish mentality of assisting family members and their own community in business

The 1970s, of course, saw more people arriving from Ireland, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. What they saw in this grey and soggy land that we love so much I’ve no idea, but they all came looking for jobs.

Whatever we feel about the influx of these immigrants over the centuries, they all came to put in a shift, but during the 1980s and 1990s, the civil war in Somalia led to a large number of Somali immigrants, comprising the majority of the current Somali population in the UK, and for the first time we saw immigrants who were workshy.

At the turn of the century, and from then onwards, we’ve seen an influx of Eastern Europeans, many of whom work on construction sites. We see Poles, Romanians, Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians etc. working as labourers, carpenters, dryliners, scaffolders etc. And gorgeous Romanian girls running our onsite canteens. All willing to graft.

All of the immigrants listed above, well almost all of them, who arrived here over the centuries are in our individual family trees. The majority of us have ancestors in that list, and the difference, the fucking DIFFERENCE between them and this recent batch arriving over the last 10-15 years, is that they came looking for work. They arrived over here looking for employment in order to gain some dignity for themselves. But this recent lot, infesting our towns and cities, staying in four-star hotels for free, have no dignity, and that’s the difference.

They have no dignity, no self-respect, no amour-propre, as the French would say. That really is the difference. They hate us, despite all we’ve done for them, and will turn to crime at a moment’s notice.

Copyright © Karl Wiggins