Irish Diaspora in Britain

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) on securing the debate, which is an excellent opportunity to pay tribute to our friends from the island of Ireland and recognise their valuable contributions to mainland Britain.

The contributions of the Irish span every corner of Britain and every industry, so it is easy to forget the anti-Irish sentiment that was rife throughout even recent history, despite two former British Prime Ministers being born in Ireland. Even today, the Irish are not always painted in a positive light in the media. They are often portrayed comically as an outdated stereotype. It is shameful. Shameful too is the continuing and prevalent prejudice and racism aimed at the Irish Traveller community. The reasons behind those issues are for another debate on another day. I would like to keep my speech positive and celebratory, but I felt it was important to give that acknowledgement.

I start with contributions to the arts and ballet. Dame Ninette de Valois was born as Edris Stannus in County Wicklow, the garden of Ireland, in 1898. In 1905, she moved to Kent, England to live with her grandmother. At 10, she began to take ballet lessons. Her love for dance was apparent early on at a party with other children. Having watched another little girl dance, she demanded that she be allowed to perform an Irish jig. Edris took the name Ninette de Valois at the age of 13 as she began her professional training and made her debut in the west end. The name change reflected a public expectation of the kind of exotic name a dancer should have. In 1919, at just 21, she became the principal dancer for the Beecham Opera, which was at the time the resident company at the Royal Opera House. At 23, she joined the Russian Ballet, where she mentored Alicia Markova who would go on to become prima ballerina assoluta and one of the most famous British dancers of her time.

Ninette became the driving force behind ballet in Britain, establishing dance schools in London and Dublin. In 1956, they were granted the royal charter, so the schools became the royal ballet. She also, quite surprisingly, became very influential in the development of Turkish ballet and helped to establish the Turkish state ballet at the invitation of Turkey’s Government. Ninette is known as the mother of English ballet, despite her Irish nationality. She died in 2001 at the grand old age of 102 and with a legacy most dancers could only dream of.

Another woman who offered much to Britain, although in a different field, is Mary Morris. She left Ireland at 18 to come to London to train as a nurse at Guy’s Hospital in 1939. Mary was a prolific diarist and in her diary recorded much of the war. She dated the “real war” as starting on 31 May 1940, when ambulances came filled with dirty and wounded soldiers from Dunkirk. Mary witnessed the battle of Britain in the sky, and nursed the wounds of pilots hurt in the battle. She also tended to the German prisoners of war.

It was during her time as a nurse that she met a Frenchman named Pierre, whom she described in her diary as

“slim and dark, with beautiful brown eyes and masses of Gallic charm”.

Pierre invited Mary out to dinner and, despite strict rules around the fraternisation with patients, she accepted. She was reprimanded by her matron, but that did not stop Mary from spending more and more time with Pierre, visiting London and witnessing air raids. In 1944, Mary joined thousands of her fellow Irish nurses as a volunteer for the armed forces, where she was posted to Normandy and treated the wounded soldiers of the D-day landings. She described her ward as a

“multi-national microcosm of a Europe at war”.

When the war was over, she settled in Britain with her husband.

Ninette and Mary were two very different women, with two very different stories but a common thread. What they offered to Britain, through their services to the arts or to the war effort, helped form the Britain we live in today.

A little closer to home, the migration of Irish workers to Glasgow and the surrounding towns changed our corner of Scotland substantially. Even before the great famine, fares to Glasgow from Ireland were cheap and there was a lot of work and jobs to be filled: labour jobs, mining jobs and a thriving shipbuilding industry. There were also jobs for skilled workers, too, such as in the handloom weaving industry. The Irish workers were right at the forefront of trade union activity, something often forgotten. The contributions of those workers shaped the city and areas like Lanarkshire where my constituency sits, and that should be recognised.

Most of us will have some Irish roots in our heritage. It is not uncommon and it is something we are all proud of. The Irish who came here contributed to our society in more ways than we can possibly cover. I am pleased that we have this debate today to give it recognition. There is no day more fitting than today, and I wish everyone a happy St Patrick’s day.