The fire at Ross Lake House Hotel in Rosscahill, Co Galway, could have been an accident. But it came after a protest about plans to house 70 migrants in the hotel, and Gardai are investigating.
Protests and fears about migration are worldwide. Donald Trump says migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman says a “hurricane” of migrants is on its way. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders describes Islam as “an ideology of a retarded culture” and calls Moroccan migrants to the Netherlands “scum”.
What is striking is that even though Ireland (unlike the others) has no far right political party – and is historically a nation of emigrants rather than incomers – scares about foreigners moving next door are similar everywhere. And so is the fear-stoking rhetoric of politicians on the make.
In Britain in 1968 the Conservative grandee and prime ministerial hopeful Enoch Powell made his notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech, forecasting bloodshed unless migration was stopped. Powell played the anti-migrant card and lost. He quit the Conservatives and in 1974 became Ulster Unionist MP for South Down.
A decade later in 1978 the scare-story rhetoric was more subtle. Margaret Thatcher complained that Britain was “rather swamped” by immigrants. By October 2014 the defence secretary Michael Fallon suggested British towns were again being “swamped” by immigrants with residents “under siege (with) large numbers of migrant workers and people claiming benefits”.
A few years later, same rhetoric, same headline-grabbing ambitions from Nigel Farage. In 2016 Farage produced a ‘Breaking Point’ poster suggesting that Brexit would (miraculously) stop migration. It didn’t.
There have been record breaking net migration figures – 745,000 in 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics, and 672,000 people coming to the UK in the 12 months to June 2023. Are we swamped? Under siege? Broken? Rivers of blood? Or – despite the obvious political problems of migration – is fear being stoked more by the nasty and irresponsible rhetoric stoking than by the arrival of the migrants themselves?
Maybe a real migrant story will help. In 2004 Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia all joined the European Union.
Two of my friends, a young man and woman, both recent university graduates, left one of those countries and moved to the UK as an adventure, seeking a better life. They worked as waiters, cleaners and hotel staff. They learned fluent English as they rose to successful professional careers.
Are we swamped? Under siege? Broken? Rivers of blood? Or – despite the obvious political problems of migration – is fear being stoked more by the nasty and irresponsible rhetoric stoking than by the arrival of the migrants themselves?
After the Brexit vote my friends took the hard decision to move back to their country of origin in eastern Europe, where they now have excellent jobs, a family, a new apartment and a good life.
I’ve just visited them and – while they miss the UK and do not regret coming here – they felt that Brexit Britain would under-perform economically and that we would argue about Brexit for years. (True.)
But their story is like that of millions of migrants – including those who once left Ireland and the UK for almost every continent on earth. The Irish diaspora includes around a million-and-a-half Irish-born citizens now living abroad. A recent BBC report said that 5.5 million British people live and work abroad, almost one in 10 of the UK population – although the Brits tend to described themselves not as “migrants” but as “ex-pats”.
I doubt if many in that 5.5 million would believe they have “swamped” or are “poisoning the blood” of their new home country. Maybe we just need to calm down.
And perhaps understand that the biggest cause of fear is not the migrants themselves but the attention-seeking politicians whose irresponsible comments are designed not to solve a problem but to create one that they can exploit to their own advantage.
