The Anonymous Widower

The Purfleet Ro-Ro Terminal

This article on the BBC is entitled Essex Lorry Deaths: 39 Found Dead Were Chinese Nationals.

The tragedy has got me wondering, where did the lorry enter the UK.

So I drew this Google Map of Purfleet.

Note.

1. The c2c rail line between Fenchurch Street and Southend via Grays, that runs West-East across the top of the map.
2. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link runs diagonally across the corner of the map.
3. The approach roads to the Dartford Crossing running North-South at the East of the map.

The Purfleet Ro-Ro Terminal lies to the South-west of these railways and road, with piers for the ships strewtching out into the River Thames.

If you enlarge the map by clickjing on it, you’ll see rows of trailers parked ready to cross the Channel or having just arrived.

You canm also see it from Eurostar and other high speed trains or when going South on the Dartford Bridge.

Immigration

Illegal or legal, there is always a lot of strong views about immgration.

• In Did The Tailor Of Bexley Come From Koningsberg?, I discuss how my paternal great-great-great-grandfather came to the UK from Konigsberg in Germany, which is now Kaliningrad in Russia!!
• On my mother’s side my family were French Huguenot and probably came over some decades earlier.

So I tend to have a variety of views about immigration depending on the point being discussed.

• For instance, is it right to deny those who were persecuted like my ancestors for religious reasons, the right to come to the UK. I’d be a hypocrite.
• On the other hand, those who want t come for criminal reasons should be turned away.

The Chinese, a number of whom perished in the Purfleet trgedy are a difficult group to think about. China is a place, where I would not want to live and if I had the money to get out, I would want to leave, as many have over the years. Twenty years ago, I met a Chinese lady of my age, who’d escaped by swimming into Hong Kong.

Darwin talked of natural selection and in some way immigration is natural selection at work.

The intelligent, ambitious and resourceful ones, are the immigrants who tend to get to their preferred destination. The ones who lack these character traits either stay put or don’t make it.

I often think of my Jewish great-great-grandfather, who at eighteen had just qualified as a tailor after serving his apprenticeship. The law in the City was that if you were a Jewish male of eighteen and not one of the privileged families you had to leave.

So he jumped on a ship and ended up Bexley. No doubt, being a tailor, he was able to find a small space for his tools.

I certainly, think I inherited some of his good genes along with those for coeliac disease.

But was my ancestor any different to the skilled Iraqis, Brazilians or Ethiopians today?

October 24, 2019 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Immigration, Judaism, Kaliningrad, purfleet R-Ro Terminal, The Tailor Of Bexley