Sally Hayden on We Came By Sea: Stories of a Greater Britain - ‘It feels comforting and right to have a writer of Clare's skill turn attention to this topic'

Irish Times

13 hours ago

We Came By Sea: Stories of a Greater Britain
Author
:
Horatio Clare
ISBN-13
:
978-1915068453
Publisher
:
Little Toller
Guideline Price
:
£20
Last month, UK prime minister
Keir Starmer declared that the UK risks becoming an 'island of strangers'
if it does not tighten its immigration controls. Critics pointed out that his speech had similarities to an inflammatory 1968 one by Conservative politician Enoch Powell, who spoke about white British people finding 'themselves made strangers in their own country'.
What this argument sidesteps is that a 'stranger' is simply someone you do not know yet: making an effort to know them makes them not a stranger any more. Horatio Clare's new book is full of people who are doing just that.
Close to the beginning, Clare refers to 'the same old story' being reported 'in the same old way'. 'There seemed to be just one story: 'migrants' were coming 'here', and this was taken to be a threatening, frightening thing.'
Media coverage of what has become known as the UK's 'small boats crisis' situation has overly focused on political soundbites and reductive 'debates', rather than speaking to people making these journeys. When British reporters do venture further, they often seem ignorant of basic facts. An example is Patrick Christys of GB News, who recently went to Calais to produce a
report
in which he seemed to display no awareness that Eritrea and Ethiopia are different countries.
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In the period when I reported a lot from Calais, between mid-2015 and late 2016, I remember asking people there why they didn't attempt to use boats to get to the UK. At the time, it was much more common to hide in trucks, or jump on trains. 'Too dangerous,' was the usual reply.
The first 'small boats' crossed the Channel from France in 2018. That this became so commonplace afterwards shows how desperate people have become. In 2024, more than 36,800 crossed to the UK this way; in 2022 it was over 45,000. In 2023, those who came in so-called 'small boats' numbered 29,000, roughly 4 per cent of net migration to the UK.
Clare is already an acclaimed memoir, travel and nature writer. His book's reiterated theme is questioning the overall framing of the situation, while praising those who 'run towards the fire to help' rather than turning away. More than 12 million people in England - more than one quarter of the population - volunteer to help others at least once a month, Clare points out - a signifier of the 'greater Britain' his subtitle references.
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'There is no answer, in this account, to all the questions of migrations and refugees, but there are truths here which contradict the way these events have been framed,' Clare writes. 'You could see it, as the press and politicians do, and as the British people are being taught to see it, as a crisis, a disaster, an intractable knot of problems with no clear solutions. Or you could see it as one of the greatest search-and-rescue success stories of all time… Would we feel differently about this country, about the people in the small boats, and about ourselves, if we were reading this every day? And the fact is, it is true… This is us.'
It feels comforting and right to have a writer of Clare's skill turn attention to this topic, and he does not avoid referencing corruption and other wrongdoing by those in power
He includes impressions and interviewees gleaned from three trips to Calais; to Falmouth, Portland; and England's northwest, talking to a range of people playing various roles, including a 'newspaper man', a security guard at a 'processing' centre, and a jet ski team from Border Force who seem excited about carrying out pushbacks.
This short book is not necessarily the best one to read for numerous sources and in-depth information on the particulars of these journeys or policies, including refugees' and asylum seekers' personal stories, or the British government's response.
For a more detail-focused, nonfiction exposition, try Anywhere But Here by Nicola Kelly, a journalist and former Home Office employee (full disclosure: she is also a friend of mine). Another relevant recent release is Vincent Delecroix's novel Small Boat, translated from French by Helen Stevenson, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.
It feels comforting and right to have a writer of Clare's skill turn attention to this topic, and he does not avoid referencing corruption and other wrongdoing by those in power. He also writes beautifully ('high gorse bushes by the track are in flower, a tiny riddling of summer gold').
Observing the situation in Calais, he notes 'the poverty of the political imagination' to move beyond policies that securitise borders.
While Britons have been shown to be open to resettling or welcoming refugees, 'years of political aggression and condemnation, years of demonisation of 'migrants'… years of photographs of huddled, anonymous figures in dinghies, years of denigration and hostility poured on them by some in the right-wing media' has led to a mostly negative view of those crossing the Channel from France to the UK. And, as Clare notes, 'populism thrives by distorting the national understanding'.
Sally Hayden is author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned, Irish Book of the Year and winner of the Orwell Prize