IF it’s any consolation to today’s emigrants and their families, the sad, bitter experience has nothing of the same desolation and heartbreak that hung over the great exodus to Britain in the 1950s.
During that dreadful era, day after day, week after week, thousands left the country. The demoralisation of the people was far worse than today. One of the most commonly used phrases of disillusionment was “Sure, there’s nothing for anyone in this country”. It was fully accepted that most young women and men would have to go to England to find work. Many had no more than the minimum education. Menial and labouring jobs were all that they were qualified to do. There were scarce job prospects even for those whose parents had scrimped to put them through secondary school.
I’m reminded of that sad era every time I stand in Pearse railway station waiting to catch the Dart to Killiney. Alongside the high red-brick wall is a tarmacademed area. That’s where the Boat Train Platform once was. Some two years ago the old wooden sleepers and rusty brown tracks were taken up and the ground filled in. This was, apparently, part of preliminary work related to an electrified line planned to pass underneath the station from the Docklands to St Stephen’s Green and onwards.
In the 1950s the Boat Train Platform was one of the busiest in the Irish railway system. Few could afford air travel. The trains from here went directly to the Carlisle pier in Dún Laoghaire.
The fresh-faced emigrants came off provincial trains and buses, wearing thick coats, hauling heavy suitcases, anxiously asking anyone in railway uniform where the boat train platform could be found. They came from every part of the country. Many had never been in Dublin before.
The men looked awkward in their plain suits. The girls wore little make-up; a ribbon or a small modest hat was all that adorned their hair.
They were unsure of what lay ahead. They hurried onto the platform and boarded the waiting train. I was among them, going to Britain to join ships as a seafarer.
They sat in the compartments with their cases on the racks or, for better safekeeping, on their knees. They exchanged questions. “What part are you from? Where are you heading for? Have you someone to meet you?” The hopes of youth showed itself in light-hearted banter. Yet there was an unease too as they wondered what lay ahead in a land they really knew little about.
Behind smiles there was sadness. The recent goodbyes to loved ones at little railway stations or by the side of the road when the bus appeared was still in their minds. And, as the train began to move away, amidst the chatter was a strain of bitterness that their country could not offer them any kind of living.
At the Carlisle pier they shuffled up the gangways of grubby, uncomfortable passenger ships waiting to carry them across the Irish Sea to the port of Holyhead. From there they caught crowded trains to various cities in England.
When they finally arrived at their destination, feeling tired and scruffy, they were glad to find digs, some room where they could stow their cases under a bed. This was usually in some run-down area. Their sense of self-esteem would not have been helped if they saw “No Irish” handwritten signs on boarding house windows. I saw those notices as I looked for lodgings in Brixton, a seedy suburb of London. While most English were friendly and tolerant, there were some who looked down on the Irish as inferior beings who frequently got drunk and took full advantage of the enlightened, well-funded health and social services that were minimal back home.
The Irish emigrant was glad to get any kind of job and to work hard at it. She or he was not inclined to be self-assertive. Our sense of national identity took a denting when we walked about the bustling streets of the big wealthy capital of a leading world power and thought about the impoverished land we had left behind.
It was easy to feel strange in this country that offered us work. Irish clubs and organisations sprang up everywhere, places where the newly-arrived Irish could feel comfortable. Yet many emigrants became equally alienated from the land of their birth. They slowly realised how suffocating the political, social and religious influences were in the poverty-stricken country that had offered them so little.
Few would return to settle back in Ireland. They would come on holidays, to meet their families. And for funerals.
They earned a reputation for hard and conscientious work. Many laboured in the building industry. Some did very well in other jobs. But not all.
Loneliness and estrangement were challenges not everyone could handle; some turned to alcohol or turned away from life.
One thing can be said for the emigrants of the 1950s. Many sent money home to help their families at a time when hardship was widespread. The platform where they boarded those trains is now gone. Perhaps a plaque to their memory should be fixed to the red-brick wall? The inscription might read “From this place departed many young Irish men and women who had no alternative but to seek work abroad. They were faithful to their kith and kin. Their contributions helped the country through a difficult time.”