Table Of ContentList of tables
Stafford Irish: Interviewees and Families 232
List of illustrations
Goan Palms, by the artist Melanie Carvalho 167
vii
Acknowledgements
This volume originates from a conference which occurred on the subject of
'Immigration, History and Memory in Britain' at De Montfort University on
6-7 September 2003 convened by the editors. The event was made possible
with the help of a number of individuals and organisations. First, David
Sadler, then Head of the School of Historical and International Studies, who
supported the idea from the outset. Other members of the School who
demonstrated their support included Ian Jackson. Most important, however,
we must single out Margaret Barton of the Conferences and Short Courses
Unit of De Montfort Expertise, who organised and publicised the
conference with immaculate efficiency. In addition, we would also like to
thank the bodies who supported the event, including the British Academy,
the Royal Historical Society and the School of Historical and International
Studies of De Montfort University.
ix
Preface
This book, originating from the 2003 De Montfort University conference on
'Immigration, History and Memory in Britain', is inspired by wide-ranging
debates on the relationship between immigration, history and memory. It
incorporates contributions from a variety of academic disciplines and
perspectives (five from History, two from both Geography and Modern
Languages, and one each from Politics, Social Policy, Education, Sports
Studies and Art and Design), and carries work done by both new and more
established researchers. While it endeavours to cover a range of different
views and experiences, it cannot include all immigrant groups in this
coverage. What this book does offer, however, is a genuinely
interdisciplinary attempt to work through the issues of immigration, history
and memory in Britain on a variety of different scales, ranging from the
national to the individual.
The first section of this book, 'Introduction: Immigration and British
History', begins with an overview chapter 'Immigration, History and
Memory in Britain' by Kathy Burrell and Panikos Panayi. This chapter
considers three broad ways in which the experiences of immigrant groups
have been 'remembered' in Britain. Firstly, it charts the development of an
academic historiography on the topic of immigration history, highlighting, in
particular, the continued strength of Jewish history writing. While there is a
growing field of immigration history, however, it is noted that in mainstream
British history writing, immigration still tends to be a peripheral topic.
Secondly, the popularisation of immigration history and memory is
addressed, using examples ranging from local heritage projects to the
construction of ethnic minority 'communities'. It finds that while this
increased interest in remembering is to be generally welcomed, the
presentation of ethnic memory is not straightforward, and can be distorted
or contested. Finally, the importance of personal memories of home and
migration is explored, showing how oral history interviewing especially can
reveal, and even create, a different type of immigration history, and a
different type of remembering. The subsequent chapters in this section
xii PREFACE
focus specifically on the larger scale issues of remembering immigration in
British history. In the first of these contributions, 'Great Britons:
Immigration, History and Memory', Tony Kushner openly confronts the
problems associated with the production of immigration histories, noting
the two opposing traditions of immigration and native racism in British
history, and underlining the difficulty of introducing counter narratives to
established notions of Britain's liberal attitude to newcomers. While progress
has been made in questioning these assumptions, he focuses on the recent
production of the 'Great Britons' list to show how marginalised immigration
and ethnic minorities remain in the wider sweep of British history and the
historical imagination of the British public. Including a discussion on the
role of Black History Month, his chapter raises interesting questions about
how Britain sees itself and its contemporary ethnic profile. Kushner also
discusses the recording of community history by the Jewish population,
demonstrating the difficulties that arise from creating histories from within
immigrant groups, and highlighting similar issues of representation, silencing
and dissent. Concluding this section, Kevin Myers, in 'Historical Practice in
the Age of Pluralism: Educating and Celebrating Identities', continues with a
similar stance, warning both of the narrowness of accepted narratives of
English national identity and history, and of the dangers of
misrepresentation in public constructions of immigration history. Although
an increased interest in heritage and minority history projects is to be
welcomed, he observes that a wider understanding of immigration can be
undermined by overly celebratory depictions of immigrant life, exemplified
here by the case of the Irish in Birmingham, influenced by the desire to
produce comforting, easy histories that fit a prevailing political purpose. He
also highlights the problem of overdependence on history and the desire to
use it to stabilise contemporary identities, a pitfall of heritage projects that
can inadvertently work to trap young people especially in a past that lacks
present relevance.
The second section of the book, 'Histories and Narratives', concentrates
on case-studies of different groups and orientates around the themes of
settlement and establishment, change and 'home' in the histories of
immigrant communities. In his contribution, 'Italian Immigrants in Britain:
Perceptions and Self-Perceptions', Lucio Sponza offers an insight into the
changing characteristics of the British Italian community from the
nineteenth century onwards, highlighting the internal regional, class and
occupational divisions within the population, the relationship of the
community with Italy, but also charting the different perceptions and
attitudes which have been historically directed at Italian immigrants. Italian
settlement developed in the face of both popular and official suspicion – a
hostility which culminated in the internment of British Italians during the
PREFACE xiii
Second World War, and a history which does not fit comfortably with the
narrative of Britain as a historically inclusive nation. Using both original and
pre-recorded interviews with East European wartime 'Displaced Persons', in
her chapter on 'Narratives of Settlement: East Europeans in Post-War
Britain', Inge Weber-Newth focuses predominantly on the difficulties faced
by post-war European Volunteer Workers during their settlement in Britain,
while also drawing attention to the politically motivated nature of the
selection of traumatised labour immigrants, chosen for their perceived
assimilability in British society. Here another type of history is unearthed –
that provided by the interviewees themselves as they narrate their
experiences of adjusting to life in a new and strange environment, trying to
embrace the present without forgetting the past. This desire to hold on to
what came before forms the central strand of Anne Kershen's contribution
on 'The Migrant at Home and in Spitalfields: Memory, Myth and Reality',
examining Huguenot, Jewish and Bengali reconstructions of 'home' in
Spitalfields. Using the 'cultural tools' of language, religion and food, all three
groups have been able to transport some of the surroundings of their
respective homelands into their everyday lives in London – a phenomenon
both important internally and visible externally. By using pieces of the past
to furnish their new lives, not only did these immigrants manage to ease,
with varying success, some of the emotional dislocation caused by migration,
they also forged a new identity for the Spitalfields area. The final chapter of
this section, 'Reinventing the Myth of Return: Older Italians in Nottingham',
by Deianira Ganga, focuses on some of the ambiguities of this pull back
home and the issue of Italian return migration. Caught between the need to
succeed in Britain and the often unrealised expectation of an eventual return
to Italy, the respondents in this chapter illustrate the difficulty in dividing
'history' too neatly along national lines. Here the life-histories of the
interviewees effortlessly span the two countries, bringing British and Italian
history together. The transnationalism of the Nottingham Italian community
serves as an important reminder that settlement in the UK does not
necessarily signal the end of the migrant journey, and that immigrant
histories and realities are as much about 'there' as they are about 'here'.
The penultimate section, 'Memory, Metaphor and Material Culture',
takes this last concept further, investigating the uses and mechanisms of
remembering the migrant past. In her contribution on 'Migration, Memory
and Metaphor: Life Stories of South Asians in Leicester', Joanna Herbert
illustrates how life-story interviews collected with South Asian immigrants in
Leicester reveal not only the details of migrant histories, but also hold
messages about how these histories are viewed and how they are
represented, offering an indication of how different people frame and 'tell'
their lives in contrasting ways. Seemingly straightforward narratives of food
xiv PREFACE
and descriptions of home, therefore, are fused with other meanings of
gendered identities, social standing, migratory expectations and issues of
inclusion and exclusion in Britain, harnessing memory and metaphor to
reconnect the past with the present. For Divya Tolia-Kelly in 'A Journey
Through the Material Geographies of Diaspora Cultures: Four Modes of
Environmental Memory', the British South Asian past is communicated less
through chronologies, and more through the material cultures of home, film
and landscape and the stories attached to them. In her chapter, she uses
interviews undertaken with South Asian women in North London to show
how remembering is an intrinsic part of the home environment, from the
woman who keeps a suitcase full of memories from India and Kenya, to the
African elephant foot used as a telephone seat in the home. By embedding
these artefacts in the everyday, the home and the past together, as signifiers
of life before migration, are safely incorporated into the current context of
Britain, again easing the possible disjuncture between the two. Continuity
and rupture are also important themes in the final chapter of the section,
'Hidden Objects in the World of Cultural Migrants: Significant Objects Used
by European Migrants to Layer Thoughts and Memories', by Caroline Attan.
Here these themes are investigated through the objects which are kept by
European, predominantly Jewish, migrants in their homes, objects which are
often either purposely hidden away, or have hidden meanings attached to
them. For survivors of forced migration in particular, the ownership of
certain objects holds a powerful ability to invoke painful memories which
are not always easy to confront on a daily basis. While material reminders of
traumatic migration experiences can be put aside, however, they also form
an important part of the transmission of cultural memory to the next
generation, allowing younger family members to build a picture of their
parents' lives.
The book concludes with 'Irish Remembrances and Representations', a
selection of chapters which incorporate many of the themes already
discussed, considering them from the perspective of Irish immigration to
England and Scotland. In the first chapter of this section, 'Passing Time:
Irish Women Remembering and Re-Telling Stories of Migration to Britain',
Louise Ryan discusses the different narrations offered by Irish women of
their journeys to England and their lives before migration. Just as with the
material culture of the previous contributions, the life stories produced by
these women work to reconnect their Irish lives with their English ones,
allowing them to move, metaphorically, more easily between the two, and to
use one to justify the other. The process of talking about remembering is
considered here too, with the interviewees offering a variety of stories and
'memories' which on the one hand appear to be well rehearsed, and on the
other fail to conform to standardised life-cycle chronologies. If these
PREFACE xv
women's memories seem omnipresent, in his chapter on 'Family History and
Memory in Irish Immigrant Families', John Herson investigates the apparent
loss of Irish memory in Stafford. While the presence of an Irish population
dating from the nineteenth century is clear from historical records, there
appears to be little folklore or family history left to accompany it. It is this
significant, if unfashionable, discovery that reminds us of the fragility of
memory. The transmission of cultural knowledge is not automatic, and
ethnic remembering is ultimately a pragmatic endeavour, strongest when the
memory of the past has a designated use in the present and weakest when
the here and now does not seem to need any historical reinforcement.
Joseph Bradley, in the final chapter 'Marginal Voices: Football and Identity
in a Contested Space', explores a different manifestation of Irish memory
again – that of the role of Celtic Football Club as a symbol and mainstay of
Irish cultural identity in Scotland. As the interviews used in his contribution
demonstrate, Celtic provides a means of talking about being Irish in
Scotland that allows wider issues of hostility and marginalisation to be
discussed indirectly. The trust invested in Celtic and its historical and
contemporary relevance to Irish identity is made very clear: the continued
popularity of the football club, moreover, has ensured that a cultural space
has been created where Irish memory can be safeguarded, a resource for
future generations to use in remembering their Irish ancestry and an
enduring marker of the Irish presence in Scotland.
The contributions as a whole therefore introduce scholars and students
to the various ways in which immigration has been remembered in Britain.
This has happened in tangible ways, through academic writing, community
and heritage projects and the establishment of institutional structures such as
churches, schools and clubs. Just as importantly, it has happened through
the individual transportation of memories to Britain by the migrants
themselves, who have then gone on to nurture these memories through the
personal spheres of home and family. One thing all of the contributors make
clear is that this remembering of immigration history can never be neutral.
While on the one hand it is vulnerable to simplification or neglect in its
public and academic construction, on the other, the histories and memories
that are commemorated by immigrants are also inevitably distorted, this time
by the migration process itself.
1
Immigration, History and Memory
in Britain
Kathy Burrell and Panikos Panayi
Introduction
In his impressive work on 'sites of memory' in France, Pierre Nora makes a
distinction between history and memory. In his words:
Memory is life, always embodied in living societies and as such in
permanent evolution, subject to the dialect of remembering and
forgetting, unconscious of the distortions to which it is subject,
vulnerable in various ways to appropriation and manipulation, and
capable of lying dormant for long periods only to be suddenly
reawakened. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction,
always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer.1
History and memory signal two different approaches to the uses and
presentations of the past – the desire to write official historical chronologies,
and the need to bring selected aspects of the past into the present to
strengthen group and individual identities. The study of the place of
immigration in British history and memory highlights this distinction. On
the one hand, immigration history has been recorded to some extent in
academic accounts of British history, providing a standard version of the
history of inward migration movements to the nation. On the other hand,
there has also been an increased desire to focus on the 'memories' of the
immigrants themselves, to provide alternative histories of immigration, and
to open up understandings of the past beyond official national narratives.2
It is generally accepted that the writing and production of ordered
histories has been a foundation of nationhood and national identity in the
modern era.3 Since the emergence of history as an academic discipline
4 HISTORIES AND MEMORIES
during the nineteenth century, the most important identified 'groups' have
been national, and history has been largely written, understood and
recognised through the prism of the nation.4 British historians, for example,
have written mostly about their own history, partly due to the implicit
influence of nationalism5, and partly due to a lack of linguistic training which
limits the possibility of a wider geographical focus. But, while these histories
have often embraced historical aspects of the British Empire, with regards to
immigration, the standard histories of Britain have, until more recently,
tended to exclude minorities, whether based on class, gender or ethnicity.
The combined influence of academic Marxism and the more recent 'turn'
towards postmodernism, however, has ensured that this situation has
altered. Within academic writing more generally there is now a much greater
interest in 'alternative' histories that stress these previously neglected areas of
class, gender and ethnicity6 – in short a focus on multiple histories rather than
one overarching history.
But attempts to uncover and commemorate the past are not only
restricted to an academic process of producing scholarly publications.
Historical recovery can also involve public heritage initiatives designed to
record local histories7, often in collaboration with migrants who actively
contribute to the collective remembering of their own communities. In
addition to this, immigrants nurture their own individual memories, passing
on stories to future generations and making histories which are ultimately
destined never to reach any sort of academic or public arena. With all this
remembering taking place, it could be argued that the influence of various
academic and heritage projects, combined with a growing recognition of the
evolution of a multicultural Britain, have worked together to give the
experiences of immigrants a heightened presence in everyday national
discourse.
This chapter will focus on three different ways in which the history of
immigration in Britain is 'remembered' – that is researched, recorded,
selected and presented for current and future consumption. Firstly, it will
focus on the development of 'professional' immigration history, a process
dating back to the nineteenth century, and a movement largely led by
historians with immigrant roots themselves. Secondly, it will trace the more
recent popularisation of the experiences of immigrants and their memories,
assessing the positive attributes of this development, but also the potential
dangers of misrepresentation. This section will also consider how the
reconstruction of ethnicity itself can be viewed as a means of conserving
immigrant group memory in Britain. Finally, this chapter will investigate a
further area where immigration, history and memory coincide – the
increased interest in memory studies and oral history and how individual
memories of migration are constructed and communicated.
