Diane Abbott’s cosy view of the benefits of Irish immigration from “the mid-19th century onwards” (Labour has never had an open-door immigration policy, 7 December) does not accord with the historical facts.
As Cecil Woodham-Smith’s never-bettered The Great Hunger shows, cities like Liverpool simply could not cope with the open-door immigration that saw huge number of starving, typhoid-carrying refugees forced out of their country by a man-made famine and left to flounder as best they might in a strange country. The population of Liverpool tripled within a decade and housing conditions for the new arrivals were squalid beyond belief. Other cities suffered similar problems from unexpected influxes of immigrants and no help from central government.
In time, those Irish refugees who hadn’t succumbed to alcohol, disease and despair got out from under, forgot their Gaelic mother-tongue and in time, did indeed contribute massively to local economies and culture. It came at a price, and as recently as the 1960s, some cities were still seeing the effects of those who never made good and whose descendants were still in dire poverty.
Deirdre Mason
London
• I am glad that Diane Abbott acknowledges the “vital contribution to the economy” made by migrants to this country. However, the example she picks is a poor one. She refers to “Irish immigration from the mid-19th century onwards”, apparently unaware that from 1801 the Irish were not immigrants but legally equal citizens of the UK. She perhaps hits on a deeper truth in that the Irish were always regarded as foreign by many in Britain and treated as such. This may well help explain the struggle for Irish independence that erupted in the early part of the 20th century.
Declan O’Neill
Oldham
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
