THE IRISH INVASION
By L. T. FLEMING
SUNDAY evening at the Marble Arch provides one of the most curious sights in London, and one of the most significant. On that night, the meeting-place for cranks becomes something more ; it is the meeting-place for the Irish exiles. They stand around the Hyde Park orators talking among themselves in the soft accents of Munster or Connaught ; young men and women who are in London, but assuredly are not yet of London. Their faces still have the glow that comes from farm-work, and their whole appearance—the heavy boots, the cap tilted askew, and the peculiar Irish walk that is half slouch and half swagger —belongs more to a fair-day at Clonakilty than to the West End.
There have always been Irishmen in England, but there are grounds for thinking that the last few years have witnessed a totally new development. The Marble Arch Irishmen are significant because they are part of an invasion such as England has not known before.
In order to appreciate the volume and possible results of this invasion, one must consider the trend of Irish emigra- tion during the last hundred years ; for that factor rules everything. Within a few years of the Famine, emigration had become a firmly established habit in Ireland. Year after year the population fell—emigration amounted to as much as 597,325 in one decade and never was less than a quarter of a million in any ten years—and this fall continued for some time after the Free State was established. Between 1924 and 1929 the volume of emigration varied between 24,000 and 30,000 a year, and, as always, nearly the whole of it went to the United States.
After the Wall Street crash, the whole situation changed. America would take no more emigrants from any country, and within a few years the Irish outflow had been checked completely. It was not until the Free State census figures were published last summer that the truth appeared—Irish emigration had not been checked, as had been hoped, but had merely been diverted. The population had fallen in spite of all the American restrictions, and the fall could be explained only on the theory that Irishmen were now going to Great Britain. In fact, the figures for sea traffic between the two countries show that Great Britain's net " gain " from the Free State rose from 7,919 m 1932 to 12,362 in 1934, and to 28,966 last year, not counting the number of Irishmen who may have crossed the border between the Free State and Northern Ireland before embarking for Scotland.
This is a new situation—it suggests that for the future this country will be called upon to receive roughly the same amount of Irish emigration as formerly was received by America—and it is bound to intensify problems which exist already with regard to Irish immigrants.
In the first place, there is the problem of a minority which refuses to be absorbed. Liverpool, to which one will have to refer more than once as a guide in these matters, has had plenty of experience already of this problem. That city, for several generations, has been a centre for Irish emigration, and it has found that the Irish do not by any means become Liverpudlians The Irish element computed at 200,000 or about a quarter of the city's total population, has formed into a compact " colony " which, while never forgetting that it is Irish, is ready enough to take part in English affairs. Its political influence is very marked. Although the former " Irish Party " in the City Council has been dissolved for some years past, the Irish element now dominates the Labour Party to such an extent, thit, as The -Times pointed out in an article on the subject last year, " the administration of the city may pass to a party the majority of whom have not truly been absorbed into the local life." In other words, Liverpool may possibly be 'ruled by the Irish.
In the meantime, Liverpool has faced other Irish problems, and is still facing them. As long ago as 1931, the University of Liverpool's " Social Survey of Merseyside " noted that 57 per cent. of the Irish immigrants came from the manual labouring class, and that this accounted for the remarkable proportion of unemployment to be found among them. Here, as elsewhere, is to be found the result of the Irish peasant's illusion that all streets outside Ireland are paved with gold. Actually, he had been very nearly right in the case of America. In the old days of emigration, America offered unlimited chances even to the unskilled labourer, but unskilled labour has not been at a premium in England for some time past. The farm-boy continues to emigrate, but almost immediately he finds himself qualifying for relief. Liverpool's bill for public assistance amounts to about zo,000 a week, and (to quote The Times again) an analysis of three recent years shows that 87 per cent. of this amount went to the Liverpool Irish.
This problem is deplored in Ireland no less than in England, and already the virtual certainty of unemployment is being used by the Irish priests and others as a powerful argument against emigration. But the political problem—not to speak of the religious and cultural problems that arise from it-7 is almost as important. Liverpool, admittedly, is an extreme case at the moment, for her immigrants are part of a compact and growing minority that already wields considerable power. But the new tide of immigration is almost bound to make other Liverpools.
For Great Britain as a whole, the situation should not be without interest. Thirty thousand immigrants a year (which is the present figure for this country, and still is a good deal less than the average annual emigration from Ireland to America in the old days) may not seem a very impressive total in a nation whose population amounts to over forty millions. But the population of Great Britain is due for a fall, there is no reason to think that Irish immigra- tion will do anything but increase, and the figures from Liverpool and Glasgow prove that the Irish immigrant breeds at a far higher rate than does the native Englishman or Scotsman. In Scotland, for example, a-decrease in the total population is going hand in hand with a marked increase in the Irish Roman Catholic population—the latter grew from 327,329 in 1881 to well over 600,000 in 1932, while from 1913-i4 the increase of 28.6 per cent. in Roman Catholic school attendances coincided with a drop in attendances at all other schools.
The reasons for the new flood of emigration are various. In the first place, emigration undoubtedly has become a habit in Ireland. It always has been the custom for the young and energetic to go abroad, and if they are baulked in one direction they will turn to another. In the second place, it is probably true that Mr. de Valera's schemes for social reform, wide as they have been, have not been able to cope with the needs of the working classes in the Free State. Moreover, the political complexion of the country seems to have nothing to do with the question, and there is no reason to think that even a violently republican Ireland would mean a stoppage of emigration to England. Into those points, however, it is not the purpose of this article to explore. The really suggestive point is that the population of this country is now about to decline, and that the Irishman is coming here in numbers which, in the United States, converted him into a national force in less than fifty years.
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