Learning from history can help Ireland move forward
As a British citizen, I feel this is no mean feat especially when you consider the country is still waging a publicly unpopular war with the US in Iraq, viewed by many as anti-Islam.
And perhaps what is remarkable is how the country avoided imploding into racially fuelled violence when four home-grown Muslim terrorists blew up themselves and dozens of others in London on July 7 two years ago.
It’s fair to argue that the reason Britain enjoys relatively good race relations (compared to those of 50 years ago) is because the country, her rulers and her people have had to learn the hard way.
And Britain has made dreadful mistakes, countless to mention, but has had what I would argue is the courage to move forward and learn — and Ireland must heed the same lessons, too.
Among the mistakes that spring to mind are the appalling “suss” laws of the 1970s which saw police target mainly West Indian young men for random searches.
Others include failure to ensure decent housing standards for all, leading to immigrants finding themselves at the mercy of slum landlords and then congregating in so-called ghetto areas of their own choosing. And the failure of parliament to enact any serious race relations laws until the mid-1970s led to race riots as early as the 1950s.
The lack of such laws meant immigrants from Jamaica and the wider Caribbean, the Indian sub-continent, parts of Africa and, of course, Ireland, were unprotected in many aspects from Britain’s less-than-pleasant island mentality, leading to murder, full-scale riots as well as many quiet tragedies.
And even when parliament did enact its much-lauded Race Relations Act, the government failed to include the police in its scope, ensuring that distrust between ethnic minorities and the law remained entrenched for the next 20 years.
Contrary to what you might read or hear elsewhere, it must be remembered that since post-war immigration started in 1948 Britain has invited almost all her immigrants in — as Ireland is today as she, too, continues to expand after years of being Europe’s economic basket-case.
After a ruinous yet virtuous war had left Britain bankrupt, the country needed labour — and in the immigrants came.
On June 22, 1948, the SS Empire Windrush arrived at London’s Tilbury docks with 450 Jamaicans to an official welcome from the government. Britain needed men to drive buses, men to work in the factories and men to do the hard graft to re-build the country for her people who had just fought a six-year war and were still subject to rationing.
When the National Health Service (NHS) was established that year Britain needed doctors to look after a populace to get them fit for rebuilding the country. In time the government turned to India, which had only just got independence after a bloody struggle with Britain, for her excellent medical school graduates.
As industries like coal mining, steel, railways and roads transport came under state control, Britain had to import more and more labour to keep wheels turning, furnaces alight and goods moving.
Over the following decades, hundreds of thousands from Ireland would join them too — as they had when 19th century Britain needed mass labour to build her roads, canals and then railway networks.
The parallels of 1950s Britain and Ireland 50 years later are all there to see: just like Britain reached overseas for her labour force so the Republic has looked outwards to eastern Europe. But what Britain failed to do was understand that she was “importing” human beings.
They were not just units of labour that could be cast off when they were no longer needed: they needed to be housed, their families accommodated and their traditions respected.
They just wanted the quality of life that their colleagues, neighbours and white friends enjoyed. Nothing more and nothing less.
Today I would argue that Britain takes seriously the issue of integration, race relations and equal right — and as a result treats people fairer than she ever did in the wretched days of Empire.
She has enacted the laws, forced the police to heel and wider society has decided that tolerance as well as mutual respect is the way forward: by and large I like to think Britons no longer eye each other suspiciously over the garden fence any more.
As an Englishman born to Irish and Scottish parents, I occasionally see problems which Ireland should be ironing out and making minorities feel more welcome.
At the risk of making myself unpopular in certain quarters, the Irish public needs to examine its own casual racist attitudes, particularly towards Travellers.
And, unless the Government, Church and decent people act by changing laws, hearts and minds, then these kind of attitudes will begin to form against the Poles, Romanians and Hungarians propping up the country’s construction, pubs and hotels sectors.
And where would we be without them?
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