Irish Diaspora in Britain

Karin Smyth Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I rise proudly to speak as the vice-chair of both the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and the all-party group on Ireland and the Irish in Britain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this debate.

In 2018, I spoke in one of the Brexit debates on the eve of St Patrick’s Day. I said then that, although we did not know where St Patrick was from, we knew that he was probably not Irish, but he did wander and roam across much of these islands. I also talked then about the Bristol merchants who, under Henry II, went to Dublin in 1171 to defend Dublin castle and were rewarded with the establishment of trading posts between Bristol and Dublin. The point is that the movement of people, trading to deliver economic prosperity, is what has fashioned our political relationships across these islands for centuries, and today is no different. In so many other respects, though, today is so very different and thank goodness for that.

My own parents were part of the post-war ’50s exodus of young people from rural Ireland to London. Their older siblings had to come, but my parents came for the craic, because, frankly, it was a lot more fun here than it was in rural Mayo or Cavan. We all know that they faced some challenges, but what fantastic opportunities England gave to them and has given to us, no more so than, in one generation, my being elected here as an English MP, of which the entire family is enormously proud.

Here in Britain, that post-war community established support networks. Since the 1970s, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale, the work of Irish in Britain, as an umbrella organisation, has supported individuals and groups throughout the country. Colleagues can check on its website, but, on average, there are at least 1,000 Irish people in each of our constituencies. The charity supports culture, heritage and health. I and the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who is in her place, proudly supported the Green Hearts campaign a couple of years ago.

The post-war exodus was facilitated by the common travel area—loosely defined, securing centuries-old exports of Ireland’s youth to the powering of Britain’s economy between the then separated countries in 1922. Covid has highlighted for most of us many, many difficulties, but, for me, effectively losing the common travel area was particularly difficult. Trying to visit my older family members, some in care homes, across the border in Cavan and in Northern Ireland with different rules, added needless bureaucracy, cost and stress to thousands of families. We were an afterthought for the Government in Dublin, and it took them a long time to listen to the pressure from us here and through the embassy here in London as they tried to balance their responsibilities to their greatest and oldest neighbour with their responsibilities within the European Union. This will continue to be difficult—we understand that. As we heard last week, Ministers mistakenly suggested that Ireland and the common travel area is an unchecked backdoor to Britain; it is not. None the less, we say to both Governments that, as the diaspora, we will continue to roam freely across these islands, and both Governments need to learn from our experience the social, political and economic benefits of the CTA.

Ireland has changed beyond recognition with membership of the European Union. I want to highlight briefly one area of particular importance that is joyful for me, which is women’s rights. Women were at the heart of Irish politics and culture throughout the battles for home rule and independence, but the consolidation of the Irish state, with the dominance of the Church, meant that very quickly women were relegated to the private sphere. Indeed, although much divides Unionists and nationalists, as the dust started to settle, there was one thing on which they could all agree and that was keeping women in the home. That is where I learned my formative politics: watching and listening to Irish women; learning that what was said in public was not the same as what was said in private.

My nan, sat by her peat fire in Mayo—I can still smell it—and the women would call round. She sat there talking. My Mum carried on this tradition in London, with women coming round for a chat. After a long night of talk on every conceivable subject, my mum passed on to me what she had heard at home, saying, “up the chimney with that now”. Up the chimneys and around the tables of thousands of Irish homes, women talked differently than they did in the public sphere from which they were effectively barred. It ill behoves any politician who does not know what goes up the chimney.

Once in the EU, Ireland, like the UK, had to accept the social change along with economic support: equal pay, maternity rights, non-discrimination on marital status, and finally those votes on divorce and abortion. What I learned from the private conversations around the chimney I also learned from women here in the British Labour party: individuals in private do not change the world. Women have to occupy the public space. Women have to have political power to secure our rights to equality with men and to change the laws that dictate the private sphere, and all legislators across these islands have a long way to go. It has been a privilege to be part of the solidarity among the women of these islands—north, south, east and west—and we still have much work to do.

Today, I have my slightly wilting shamrock and my British-Irish parliamentary brooch. As a child, I was sent to school with the shamrock, but I did not often wear it on St Patrick’s Day through the ’80s. That was due in part to my moving away from my childhood, seeking an identity of my own, and in part due to the fact that being Irish here in the late ’70s and ’80 was hard. We were expected to have a view and to take a side in the constant struggles, but we did not often have a side. I knew that there were many sides, and I knew that I had a stake in them all. The 1980s changed the narrative of having sides. That decade allowed us to have many sides, and we all wanted the same thing: to live in peace and prosperity.

The 1998 Good Friday agreement was not just about Northern Ireland, Ireland, or a border; it was about the freedom of movement of people across these islands, about our deep roots, about mutual interest and respect, and about shared security and prosperity. Our duty now is to build upon it in full.

Finally, one of my predecessors as a Bristol MP is Edmund Burke. I think he was Bristol’s last Irish MP, whose statue still stands proudly in the centre of our city—a city he apparently visited only twice. He lasted six years, which is a milestone that I have only recently passed. During that time, he had a somewhat acrimonious time with the Bristol Merchant Venturers whose patronage was needed in those days in order to be able to hold office. Burke, as is befitting the father of modern conservatism, recognised that restrictions on people—as with the anti-Catholic legislation at the time—and restrictions on trade from Ireland meant an ever-impoverished Ireland, and that, he felt, was economically unwise for England. His riposte to the anti-Irish protectionism of the Bristol merchants should be heeded by us all today:

“England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for us both. Let it be our care not to make ourselves too little for it.”