"My comfort balloon was punctured and
a different horizon began to appear..."

Bobbie Gilmore SSC [Migrants Rights Centre Ireland]

Every time a young immigrant comes into the office of the Migrant Rights Centre Dublin inquiring about family reunification I am reminded of a disturbing experience I had in my last year at high school in 1956. Returning to high school that September having little interest in academics and solely concentrated in sports I was shocked out of my complacency by the visit of Cliff Morgan to our school. At that time he had just returned from a British and Irish Lion's tour of South Africa and was the best rugby player in the world. He came to show us a film of the Lion's rugby tour in which many of my heroes excelled.

After showing the film he indicated that he would like to talk to members of the college rugby team about rugby generally and answer any questions of interest about the tour. This was an era in high schools when there was little if any guidance counselling particularly in relation to life after school. Anyway, towards the end of the talk one of my colleagues asked Cliff Morgan where rugby came in the scale of interests in his life. He began with his own health, family, job, music, friends and then rugby. It came as a surprise to me that the best rugby player in the world was stating that rugby was at the bottom of his life priorities. Indeed, it was a shock to me for whom rugby was my highest priority .All of a sudden a switch was flicked that got me thinking about things other than rugby and sport generally. My comfort balloon was punctured and a different horizon began to appear - Life in a world after school and an awareness of the tensions of life generally as they happened around me, opening my emotional pores. To an extent I became emotionally porous and events happening around me were being noticed and touched me below my neck.

It was in this mood that I happened to be at Galway Railway Station a few weeks later. Having arrived at the station early after playing a rugby match to return to Ballinasloe by train I wandered about the station watching as people gathering on the platform waiting for the next train that was being announced. It was the Dublin train that called at all the stops and finished in Dun Laoire connecting with the mail boat to Hollyhead in North Wales.

There were many people waiting on the platform, but one group unexplainably captured my attention. It was comprised of a man, a woman and three small children whom I assumed were a family. It was obvious from the dress of the man and the small suitcase that he held in his hand that he was the one travelling. Eventually, the train reversed into its place alongside the platform and the announcer advised those intending to travel to board the train. The little group locked my attention, I wasn't aware of any of the others around me. The man, taking off his cap, hugged the woman and then each 0f the children, two girls and a boy. He said in Gaelic, Dia Libh and the woman responded Dia Leath. They stood isolated, watched and waived as the train pulled out of the station. The woman silently wiped the tears from her eyes before leaving the station as the train disappeared into the October gloom.

Our teacher in the national school' talked about the curse of emigration. I didn't understand what he meant by the words the curse of emigration because all the emigrants that I knew among my neighbours returning on holidays from the United States and Britain looked well dressed and affluent. I think in using the word curse he was substituting it for word pain, because that is what I was feeling as a result in the breach of primary relations that was happening in front of me. If I as an onlooker was feeling pain what must be the pain being felt by that man, that woman and those children who had just lost each other and would have to begin life in a new experience of separation. As the train noisily pulled out of the grey, damp October Galway gloom, I still see and feel the scene. It was a turning point in my life. I think it started the movement from adolescence in the direction of adulthood and with it began a widening of horizons.

In the 1970s having returned on holidays from the Philippines I was requested to work with Irish immigrants in Britain. I ignored the letters from my superiors in this regard as I was on an internal, personal journey of my own at the time. Eventually, I happened to meet the then director of The Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy in Britain, Fr. Pat O'Herlihy. He was accompanied by Bishop Eamon Casey, secretary of the Irish Bishop's Commission for Emigrants. They cornered me and wondered why I wasn't answering their letters. I answered that I was not interested in immigration. They persuaded me to go and think about it and give them an answer in three weeks. I promised to do just that.

As I thought about immigration many of our neighbours and relatives flashed across my mind. But the one incident that kept returning was my experience in Galway railway station twenty years before. As I reflected this incident helped me many times over the years in coping with and understanding my own migration, homelessness and loneliness. Also, another related incident the result of a throwaway sentence used by one of the college lecturers many years previously surfaced now and then. It was "well you know you won't be at home anymore". Both the incident in Galway and this statement of one the lecturers in college both dealing with the break-up of primary relationships began to interest me in immigration and immigrants.

Another incident that came to mind was one that happened while visiting my brother and his family in New Zealand. I was sitting outside an ice cream parlour in Wellington with my two young nieces one Saturday afternoon. People of many different origins were passing up and down the street. This variety of people caught my eye having arrived from a remote town in the Philippines where I was the only foreigner. I remarked to my nieces of the many different nationalities that lived in New Zealand and wondered where they all came from. One of my nieces answered: "there are three different nationalities in our house". I asked who they were? She replied, "Dad is Irish, Mom is Australian and we are Kiwis".

So, between the three instances I had plenty of material to reflect on as to whither I should take on the task of working with Irish immigrants in Britain. The three instances that I reflected on covered a wide swath of migration issues ranging from a personal feeling of not being at home anymore, to a breach in primary relationships witnessed at Galway railway station, to adjustment and integration in Wellington.

As a result of my reflection on these issues I decided to work in. the world of migration and I am still there. Every time an immigrant comes into the Migrant Rights Centre in Dublin requesting help with adjustment, family reunification and integration all these incidents are reawakened. Migration for the individual is just as great a risk on a journey of hope now as it was in the past. It is probably a greater risk because in the present global security atmosphere the immigrant is seen as a risk to the security of the state, social cohesion and the comfort zones of set cultures. But what is more disturbing is the attitude of an older generation of pious people of faith in Ireland that are racist and carry deep-seated prejudice in relation to immigrants whom they encounter in every aspect of their lives today. This makes me wonder if these people's attitudes reflect a position held in regard to their own immigrant kin settled in the four corners of the world.

Or is this negative attitude newly acquired from anti-immigrant, misinformed sections of the media and the use of the issue of immigration in all European Union member state's election campaigns by politicians to invigorate a lethargic public estranged from and indifferent to the present political culture?

It seems that Ireland and the European Union need new political horizons that all people can relate to and be nourished by. But, is European political egotism ready for a new political Moses to begin the search for that horizon reflected in institutions that connect people and give them a sense of belonging and inclusiveness? Presently, it seems that European leaders are more at home in the comfort of old nightmares that sanction a self-interested status quo than be invigorated by the challenge of new dreams and visions.

Bobbie Gilmore SSC

Migrants Rights Centre,
Migrant Rights Centre,
55, Parnell Square West,
DUBLIN 1