The eldest son is a vice-principal of a school in east Donegal and he must have been really stuck during their recent careers day exhibition when he asked if I could come along and meet and greet students who wished to pursue a career in journalism.
Now, I was aware that I belong to an era more akin to smoke signals – it was all shorthand and typing, landline telephones, courts and councils in my day, not your modern iPhones, email, Facebook, Twitter/X and all the rest – but as the son was asking, I felt obliged to do the needful.
I have one abiding memory of that day.
A beautiful wee girl of 16 or 17 came up to me and I soon learned she was from Ukraine. We talked for a few minutes and I asked unthinkingly: “And what would you like to do?”
She replied unhesitatingly: “I would like to go back to my own people.”
I am neither exaggerating nor using some kind of poetic licence when I say the look of longing on her face as she said those words was beyond sad. It has stayed with me.
Not far from Derry city there is a world class park that few have heard about, Swan Park. It’s just outside the town of Buncrana. For me, it’s a bit of heaven on this earth.
About two week ago I was strolling through it and, being a very cold day and the wind howling, I thought the sound I heard was, actually, the wind. But as I came around a sort of hidden corner there was a woman sitting on a bench, sobbing.
She was certainly an asylum seeker – in all probability also Ukrainian – and she was talking into a phone in what sounded like Russian. I don’t know if she had heard that a husband or a son had died, but her grief was all too clear. I could only wave my hand and walk on as I hadn’t a clue what would have been the appropriate thing to do.
And, lastly, to keep this one totally in the family, the wife has been volunteering in a charity shop for the past couple of weeks. She came home one day quite upset. She told of a “lovely Ukrainian woman” coming into the shop and despite having little English, the lady clearly wanted to talk.
She explained that she had a very successful business back in her own country, that she didn’t want to be taking money from social welfare, that she wanted a job, that she felt very isolated and alone, that she had no family here – and then she became inconsolable.
Right across Europe now there is a growing anti-immigrant sentiment. On Monday night I watched a very powerful documentary on Channel 4, Undercover: Exposing the Far Right. Done by the anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate, the people involved have rightly been described as “the bravest” by The Guardian.
Using hidden cameras, the journalists infiltrated the far right across Europe but focused on Britain during the race riots of late July-early August.
During their work they uncovered a plot to kill a Labour MP. They also provided overwhelming evidence of how far-right thugs are using unhindered access to social media to libel and intimidate those who they see as ‘other’ – blacks, Jews, gays, asylum seekers. Death threats were not uncommon, and urging violence to achieve objectives was a regular feature of many postings. It really was scary stuff.
It’s basically out-and-out racism.
These people want a reprise of the ideology of the 1930s, and we all know where that led. And while it’s unlikely that some fascist type is heading into 10 Downing Street any time soon, the slow creep of the ideology should not be ignored.
And our wee Island is not immune from this kind of venomous intolerance. Far from it.
I never thought when stopping off for a cup of a coffee in the village of Convoy on a lovely summer’s day that I would be approached by two guys – one with a distinct English accent – handing out leaflets saying ‘Ireland is full’ and wanting asylum seekers out.
What I found appalling was that it’s not as if we Irish lack knowledge of the bigotry and racism our forefathers encountered when they took the boat for foreign lands.
Here’s what the American historian and freelance writer Christopher Klein wrote about how the Irish arriving in America in the 1800s were received: “In 1849, a clandestine fraternal society of native-born Protestant men called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner formed in New York. Bound by sacred oaths and secret passwords, its members wanted a return to the America they once knew, a land of ‘Temperance, Liberty and Protestantism’. Similar secret societies with menacing names like the Black Snakes and Rough and Readies sprouted across the country.
“Within a few years, these societies coalesced around the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Party, whose members were called the ‘Know-Nothings’ because they claimed to ‘know nothing’ when questioned about their politics. Party members vowed to elect only native-born citizens – but only if they weren’t Roman Catholic.”
Our message to any asylum seeker should be simple: if you come here, work hard, obey the law, then you will be treated with dignity and respect.
We Irish should know better than most about bigotry and discrimination.