1980's high Irish emigration : why did 68% go to UK ?

mariaalice

Living somewhere at a certain time is not like how that era is portrayed in the news or history, you yourself are getting on with life, going to work and just living,, so even though those clips you see of what the UK was like in the 1980s, when you were living there it did not seem like that to you especialy if you went to London.

Dyr

true wrote: »

We all know there was hugh emigration in the 1980's. Remember those billboards in the airport where the IDA had a photo of a class, and it transpired every single one had emigrated. Statistics show that the majority of emigrants went to the UK. The NESC (23) report suggests that in the 1981-1990 period 68% of all emigrants went to the UK, 14% to the USA and 18% to other countries.
http://migration.ucc.ie/etudesirlandaises.htm

Why did so many go to England? Surely if Britain in that era was only a quarter as bad as some people would portray, very few would have gone there?
Was it solely for economic reasons that so many economic refugees fled over to there, or did people go because of social reasons: it was more tolerant of minorities, gays etc. Was it because there was much less corruption than at home, from the top down? A fairer way of life? Less tax? Less oppressive culture? Practically every family in the country had someone who went to England then : some stayed, some came back.
68% of emigrants going to one country - only the percentage of Cuban emigrants who go to the USA -as opposed to some other country, despite the propoganda -must be higher! Food for thought.

Because you needed a visa to go work anywhere else?

Food for thought

who the fug

Didn't fancy being illegal in the US, there was work and a large Irish community to network in

Fratton Fred

LordSutch wrote: »

Well to start with I guess wr're talking about ENGLAND here, and in particular the South of England.

I was actually one of those who left these shores in the mid 80s heading for the bright lights of the neasest big smoke which was London. You must remember that for most of the 1980s, Ireland was even more of a basket case than Britain had been in the 70s, and from a young mans point of view all the action was in the south of England, and London in particular. From the best bands in the world, to the best beer, the cheap fags, to really cheap cars (I left a bashed up Mini behind & bought a datsun zx 280 the year after for a song), really cheap car insurance too! + much cheaper consumer goods like Hi fi systems/ car stereos, to everything you can think of. (Shopping in Tesco Marks & Sparks & Sainsbury was a joy after only having Quinnsworth back home), free trips to the doctor & the dentist.

Getting away from Priest ridden narrow minded Catholic Ireland was a breath of fresh air, and thats why so many Irish
people headed over on the boat/train to England. I seem to remember Tax being a massive 'negative' issue here too.

But surely you had nowhere to stay with all the "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish" signs in every window?

Nodin

Fratton Fred wrote: »

But surely you had nowhere to stay with all the "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish" signs in every window?

That was the 1950's fred.

You aren't going to try to make this thread all about you, are ye?

bullpost

You're right -I was wandering around for weeks with my black labrador looking for somewhere to stay !

Fratton Fred wrote: »

But surely you had nowhere to stay with all the "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish" signs in every window?

johnr1

Nodin wrote: »

Transparent, simplistic, tired and sad.

Oh right, so thats what this is about.

I failed to look who the OP was, and was about to write a reasonable response. Now I understand.

The answer OP, is that Maggie was a wonderful kind person, and we all yearned to live under her benevolent rule. Happy now? Mkay, Cheers. :pac:

Fratton Fred

Nodin wrote: »

You aren't going to try to make this thread all about you, are ye?

What a truly absurd thing to say!?

dd972

rusheen wrote: »

Because Ted Kennedy the self expressed "great Irish man" closed the door for Irish Immigration to the USA .unless you could live with being illeagal . Oz wasnt great back then . Only in the last few years there dollar is any good .

Don't criticize Irish Americans who went there in 1847, they're ''one of us'' unlike those Brits and Tans over the water with their Irish parents and passports.

true

Bambi wrote: »

Because you needed a visa to go work anywhere else?

No actually: we were part of the EEC then and could have gone to France, Germany, Spain etc without a Visa. In fact some did. But the vast majority of people (68% ) went to Thatcher's Britain in that decade....a bit puzzling surely if it and she was as bad as some people are now portraying her? If Britain was like it was just before she took over ( in a desperate state, with IMF there, strikes etc ) would as many have gone?

Nodin

true wrote: »

No actually: we were part of the EEC then and could have gone to France, Germany, Spain etc without a Visa. In fact some did. But the vast majority of people (68% ) went to Thatcher's Britain in that decade....a bit puzzling surely if it and she was as bad as some people are now portraying her? If Britain was like it was just before she took over ( in a desperate state, with IMF there, strikes etc ) would as many have gone?

....continuing your habit of ignoring valid points made to the contrary and saying the same thing over and over, I see.

gallag

Nodin wrote: »

....continuing your habit of ignoring valid points made to the contrary and saying the same thing over and over, I see.

All the "valid points" in the world will not explane away many hundred thousand irish men and women preferring Thatchers Britain to their home country.

Nodin

gallag wrote: »

All the "valid points" in the world will not explane away many hundred thousand irish men and women preferring Thatchers Britain to their home country.

...that remark makes no sense whatsoever.

purplepanda

Nothing new, many of the grandparents family travelled over to England & back every year, at least since the '20's & 30's, always the South East & West country / Wales, some worked in construction, others in agriculture. Women in care & service work.

Whilst there was work in Southern England the mid 80's, the north of England was still suffering recession, like many parts of Ireland, even areas of Dublin were not that much different from Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, Birmingham, ect. I traveled around the North of England many times during the period & saw the effects of long term recession first hand.

On BBC Radio a few days back it was mentioned that unemployment in parts of Sheffield in 1996 was 39%. Manchester itself only recovered in the '90's.

It's very obvious that Britain has always been a common destination for Irish immigrants, but you wouldn't know it by the publicity for "The Gathering" where only Irish Americans seem to be the advertising target for marketing.

who the fug

purplepanda wrote: »

It's very obvious that Britain has always been a common destination for Irish immigrants, but you wouldn't know it by the publicity for "The Gathering" where only Irish Americans seem to be the advertising target for marketing.

They mention the rip off gathering stunt on the TV ads

true

Nodin wrote: »

...that remark makes no sense whatsoever.

What part of the statement that was made ( All the "valid points" in the world will not explain away the many hundreds of thousands of irish men and women who preferred Thatchers Britain to their home country) do you not understand?

Do you not understand the other posters point that there were many hundreds of thousands of irish men and women who preferred Thatchers Britain to their home country?

mariaalice

They did not see it as Thacher's Britten they just saw it as a country with more and better jobs, more opportunities and cheaper beer....while trying not to stereotyping all young people I don't think the politics of the UK was a big concern when emigrating and as I said when you are living in a situation you don't experience it as it is portrayed in the news.

karma_

true wrote: »

What part of the statement that was made ( All the "valid points" in the world will not explain away the many hundreds of thousands of irish men and women who preferred Thatchers Britain to their home country) do you not understand?

Do you not understand the other posters point that there were many hundreds of thousands of irish men and women who preferred Thatchers Britain to their home country?

The reasons why so many went to Britain have already been pointed out to you, that you choose to ignore them is no fault of other posters.

By the way it's Irish.

FTA69

They went to London and the large cities. How hard is it for you to understand that a construction boom in the London area does not mean that large swathes of Britain weren't in the doldrums?

WayneMolloy

Why did the British not revoke the common travel area when the Irish started bombing the f*ck out of their cities?

Madness having an open border with a country, when hundreds, if not thousands, of their citizens were intent on committing terrorist attacks in your country.

mariaalice

I was in London in February I passed by a tube station that is being re constructed and refurbished there was a large amount of the construction workers milling around and all of them had Irish accents they are there because thats where the work is its the same reason they were there in the 1980s.

jmayo

WayneMolloy wrote: »

Why did the British not revoke the common travel area when the Irish started bombing the f*ck out of their cities?

Madness having an open border with a country, when hundreds, if not thousands, of their citizens were intent on committing terrorist attacks in your country.

Ehh if you knew much about the troubles you would have surely noticed most of the IRA who were involved in the troubles were from Northern Ireland which is part of Great Britain.

Or would you have stopped people travelling from Northern Ireland to mainland UK ?
Or maybe only allowed people who weren't catholics to travel ?

Ireland and UK have for many years a relaxed attitude to travel between the two countries.
Believe it or not there is a huge chunk of British population with Irish roots and connections.


To answer OP and any posters who keep asking why people from Ireland went to UK during thatchers rule.
It is the same bloody reason why people from the likes of Wales, Scotland, Northern England went to London even though they may not have been fans of thatcher.

It was for work and a better standard of living.

And not some defacto support for the leader as some might make out.

Sunnyisland

Economics is the primary factor, many believed they can come to England/Uk and make a better life for themselves and their families, Most found work and sent money home to their families just like the thousands that have come & found work in Ireland,Also going across the water didn't have quite the same quality of permanence as It is just a short distance.

Nodin

true wrote: »

What part of the statement that was made ( All the "valid points" in the world will not explain away the many hundreds of thousands of irish men and women who preferred Thatchers Britain to their home country) do you not understand?

Have a long think about it.

up for anything

true wrote: »

We all know there was hugh emigration in the 1980's. Remember those billboards in the airport where the IDA had a photo of a class, and it transpired every single one had emigrated. Statistics show that the majority of emigrants went to the UK. The NESC (23) report suggests that in the 1981-1990 period 68% of all emigrants went to the UK, 14% to the USA and 18% to other countries.
http://migration.ucc.ie/etudesirlandaises.htm

Why did so many go to England? Surely if Britain in that era was only a quarter as bad as some people would portray, very few would have gone there?
Was it solely for economic reasons that so many economic refugees fled over to there, or did people go because of social reasons: it was more tolerant of minorities, gays etc. Was it because there was much less corruption than at home, from the top down? A fairer way of life? Less tax? Less oppressive culture? Practically every family in the country had someone who went to England then : some stayed, some came back.
68% of emigrants going to one country - only the percentage of Cuban emigrants who go to the USA -as opposed to some other country, despite the propoganda -must be higher! Food for thought.

As said here by many - much cheaper to get to London by Slattery's bus - £60 if I remember rightly.

I left Ireland for London in early January 1985 after spending over a year trying to get work. In that year there were barely any employment ads in the provincial papers. I applied for the only secretarial job to appear in Tipp papers in that year for a secretary in the seminary in Thurles. The chap who interviewed me said that he was in the process of doing 150 interviews for the job. I got called back for a second interview (50 of us on the second interview list) and the job went to his niece. That was a time of womb to tomb jobs where people didn't take holidays in case their holiday temp was better then them and they'd lose their job. i know people who got a family member in to cover their holidays because they trusted them not to steal their job more than a stranger coming in.

Got to London on a Friday. Got the Evening Standard and set up an interview for the Monday and started work on the Tuesday. An ok job but with crap money (£4.5K pa). After 5 months and a WP course walked into a job for £7K - ran out of there a week later because the boss was psycho and walked into another job immediately at £7.5k pa. I left after 6 months there, new job at £8.5K and after 6 months there left for another job at £10.5K pa. Two years after that another job paying £15K pa and so on. Within 5 years of arriving in London I had gone from £4.5K to £22K pa. If I'd stayed in Ireland I'd have been unemployable.

The reasons for going to the UK were that it was cheap to get to, with someone to put you up when you went till you got on your feet and easy to get home from. It was next to nigh impossible to get a working visa for the US, Canada or Australia in those days unless you had a good bit of money behind you or one of the few trades or professions that they wanted - the Morrison visas only came later.

Thatcher's Britain was good to me for a long while - lots of work, the opportunity to buy my own place and in spite of IRA activity in and around London not one British person ever said a nasty word to me about it or blamed me or made me feel bad about it.

3ndahalfof6

They taught it was a county outside of Dubliner.

mariaalice

I think it very hard to understands what the economy was like in Ireland in the 1980s unless you were there, there was little jobs here. The opportunities in the UK were so much better you could go to the UK and get very good jobs in banking or the public services or other professional jobs that you could not get here with just you leaving cert. What people do not seem to understand is that people were often grateful for opportunities they got in the UK.

ONeill2013

jmayo wrote: »

Ehh if you knew much about the troubles you would have surely noticed most of the IRA who were involved in the troubles were from Northern Ireland which is part of Great Britain.

Or would you have stopped people travelling from Northern Ireland to mainland UK ?
Or maybe only allowed people who weren't catholics to travel ?

Ireland and UK have for many years a relaxed attitude to travel between the two countries.
Believe it or not there is a huge chunk of British population with Irish roots and connections.


To answer OP and any posters who keep asking why people from Ireland went to UK during thatchers rule.
It is the same bloody reason why people from the likes of Wales, Scotland, Northern England went to London even though they may not have been fans of thatcher.

It was for work and a better standard of living.

And not some defacto support for the leader as some might make out.

N.Ireland is part of the UK not Great Britain

true

WayneMolloy wrote: »

Why did the British not revoke the common travel area when the Irish started bombing the f*ck out of their cities?

Because
(a) The British are a very tolerant people : look how tolerant the British were in the decade in question
(b) The British knew most Irish people did not support the PIRA.
(c) the impractilities of trying to seal the border between the UK and Ireland : not on when it had a common land border. I know the likes of the USA has a big fence between it and Mexico, and I saw a programme on the TV recently about how Saudi Arabia has a 1000 mile long fence, but imagine the furore if Maggie suggested that in Ireland? It would not have worked anyway. She wanted more security co-operation from the Irish government in the fight against the IRA, and did'nt get all she wanted as it was.

Obviously British peoples reaction / attitude to the Irish in general was very tolerant, or 68% of Irish emigrants in the 80's would not have gone to Britain. It must have been a great country and economy to be able to attract so many immigrants at the time, all attracted to its shores. And they did not come just from Ireland either. I remember meeting many Aussi and Kiwi immigrants...indeed immigrants from all over the world ...there then.

Even now a lot of Irish are going to Australia, and saying how great Oz is, but not even Australia now is attracting / offering opportunities to 68% of Irish emigrants, the same as Mrs Thatchers Britain did.

fishy fishy

up for anything wrote: »

As said here by many - much cheaper to get to London by Slattery's bus - £60 if I remember rightly.

I left Ireland for London in early January 1985 after spending over a year trying to get work. In that year there were barely any employment ads in the provincial papers. I applied for the only secretarial job to appear in Tipp papers in that year for a secretary in the seminary in Thurles. The chap who interviewed me said that he was in the process of doing 150 interviews for the job. I got called back for a second interview (50 of us on the second interview list) and the job went to his niece. That was a time of womb to tomb jobs where people didn't take holidays in case their holiday temp was better then them and they'd lose their job. i know people who got a family member in to cover their holidays because they trusted them not to steal their job more than a stranger coming in.

Got to London on a Friday. Got the Evening Standard and set up an interview for the Monday and started work on the Tuesday. An ok job but with crap money (£4.5K pa). After 5 months and a WP course walked into a job for £7K - ran out of there a week later because the boss was psycho and walked into another job immediately at £7.5k pa. I left after 6 months there, new job at £8.5K and after 6 months there left for another job at £10.5K pa. Two years after that another job paying £15K pa and so on. Within 5 years of arriving in London I had gone from £4.5K to £22K pa. If I'd stayed in Ireland I'd have been unemployable.

The reasons for going to the UK were that it was cheap to get to, with someone to put you up when you went till you got on your feet and easy to get home from. It was next to nigh impossible to get a working visa for the US, Canada or Australia in those days unless you had a good bit of money behind you or one of the few trades or professions that they wanted - the Morrison visas only came later.

Thatcher's Britain was good to me for a long while - lots of work, the opportunity to buy my own place and in spite of IRA activity in and around London not one British person ever said a nasty word to me about it or blamed me or made me feel bad about it.

that would be inaccurate - there was visas before the morrisson visa - i think there was a donnellan visa. Lots of irish went to the states on this visa. lots didn't have money behind them.