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"Emigration is a mirror in which the Irish nation can always see its face.” (Liam Ryan)
In the history of modern Ireland, emigration and Irishness have too often gone hand in hand. By 1851, after the Great Famine, the Irish population had shrunk to 6.5 million. Between 1801 and 1921 eight million Irish men, women and children emigrated. This was followed by a further heavy loss of population in the 1940-50s and then again in the 1980s. Nowhere else in Western Europe has a demographic profile to match this decline or experienced such long-term systemic migration.
During the 20th century, Britain has been the main destination for people leaving Ireland.
Between 1951 and 1961 over 500,000 Irish migrants came to Britain. The rate of emigration even outstripped the birthrate. In 1961 the Irish Government’s Education budget was £14 million. That year alone, Irish emigrants’ in the UK sent home £13.5 million in remittances to family and friends helping to sustain the Irish economy in very difficult times.
To respond to this dramatic haemorrhaging of its people, the Irish Catholic Church set up our charity with a remit to seek out and care for Irish people arriving in the UK in search of a new life. The work that began with this generation in 1957 continues even today through our Older Person’s Project. Today, there are approximately 44,530 older Irish people in London alone. There is no other ethnic group in London with a higher age profile. We continue to journey with this generation.
By 1971 the Irish population resident in Britain had climbed to 957,830 (including those from Northern Ireland) and represented the largest migrant minority in the country. The best estimate is that in the 1980s about 60 per cent who migrated from the Republic of Ireland came over to Britain.
However, since 1995 Ireland visibly underwent a rapid, concentrated economic modernisation process that in many other European countries took a number of decades. There was a period of net return migration to Ireland. With a booming Celtic tiger economy Ireland became a country associated with mass immigration, not emigration.
Today, after a decade or so of decline in Irish emigration, the numbers of Irish people coming to Britain have started to rise again in the last eighteen months. It is still too early to say whether this is the beginning of another major wave of Irish migration as witnessed in the 1950s and 1980s. It is likely to have very different features to previous waves in the context of the current worldwide recession.
Whatever attendant social and economic pressures facing our Irish emigrants in the future, the Irish Chaplaincy is determined to continue travelling in hope with our Irish emigrants.
LATEST NEWS: Look out for Patricia Kennedy’s new book which traces the history of the Irish Chaplaincy in Britain as it responded to these varying patterns of emigration (to be published 2010)
