Opinion

Allison Morris: Being Irish does not make us superior to modern migrants who seek a better life

 Two officials remove their hats and bow their heads as a container lorry inside which 39 people were found dead inside leaves Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex. Picture by Victoria Jones/PA Wire
 Two officials remove their hats and bow their heads as a container lorry inside which 39 people were found dead inside leaves Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex. Picture by Victoria Jones/PA Wire  Two officials remove their hats and bow their heads as a container lorry inside which 39 people were found dead inside leaves Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex. Picture by Victoria Jones/PA Wire

The circumstances in which 39 people found themselves on a journey for a new life that ended in a sealed container in an Essex industrial estate, will now be subject to court proceedings, and therefore limits comment.

That Ireland - north and south - is now at the centre of a global news story for this type of activity is something that does require further investigation.

As does the political structures and failings that result in hundreds of thousands of people moving and migrating for safety and survival.

I've been shocked at the comments of those who ignore our own history to criticise, dehumanise and vilify refugees and migrants.

The rise of those who claim to be ‘patriots’ and yet use language that is far from patriotic and more akin to racism, should shame anyone who justifies their behaviour.

Being Irish does not make us superior to modern migrants who move to seek a better life.

There should be no need to emphasise and remind people of that fact the we as a people have and continue to move around the globe.

In the mid-19th century it was a move necessitated by the desire to survive and escape the Great Famine.

Many died in coffin ships as they tried to make the perilous journey across the Atlantic

Ships in poor condition, overloaded with desperate people, in conditions so awful that one in five died on the journey.

Those ship owners, the people traffickers of their day, cared little for the welfare of those they were transporting but did care about profiting from their misery.

What makes those people, our ancestors, any different than those packed into dinghies trying to make a similarly perilous journey?

How are they any different to the hundreds of young Irish men and women with a backpack and a dream who head off on planes to Australia, America or Canada every year?

A few years ago, I visited a number of refugee camps in the Balkans.

There were hundreds of men, women and children, living in disused factories and warehouses as they tried to make a journey to a better, safer place.

Some were fleeing war or political persecution.

They were mainly from Syria or Afghanistan, but I spoke to one Iranian university lecturer who fled under death threat from an opposing political regime.

In the camps were dentists, hairdressers, tailors, shop owners and even one former Hugo Boss model.

One woman told me how along with her seven-year-old daughter she was plunged from a sinking dingy into an icy sea in the dead of night trying to cross from Turkey to Greece.

She told us that her little girl said, ‘hold my hand and close your eyes and God will come and take us’. We said her daughter must be very brave, she replied ‘she used to be, now she screams in her sleep’.

They were being treated with compassion by the Serbian people who I found to be understanding, a view shaped by their own turbulent past when many families were displaced or forced to relocate.

While they all had a different story here was one commonality, they had all paid vast sums to people traffickers.

They had sold all they owned, borrowed from desperate relatives or been sent money by those who had managed to reach safety and secure jobs.

The traffickers lied, promised them easy and safe passage, convinced them that the streets of Germany were paved with opportunity and would provide a safe haven and education for their children.

In an unofficial makeshift camp were the hundreds of young men seeking a better life, mainly from Pakistan they were not entitled to refugee status despite the increasingly radicalised regime in some parts of their country.

On a wall they’d painted: ‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark’.

They lived in freezing squalor, they had walked or hitched on lorries and their journey was far from over. People traffickers moved among them openly, a life as a modern slave in forced labour for the strongest, starvation for the weak.

I came home from that trip feeling very lucky and in awe of those charities who work with people to provide dignity in their most desperate times.

I also felt angry at the exploitation of the vulnerable by traders in misery.

Crime bosses who will never spend a hungry day in forced labour, but will happily spend exploit the dreams of those who do.