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CLIFTONVILLE VOICES
NEW ARRIVALS
"There was an organised escape route through the coal mines…letting you out on the Polish side where a car was waiting to take you to London."
"First time I came, I thought,
‘wow!’ I love this city!"
"I arrived in the back of a lorry with no family, and I couldn’t speak English. I was sent to Cliftonville, which became my home for a long time."
"That feeling, that word foreign,
I think it’s quite negative here in the UK."
"I saw so many people,
different nationalities,
Cliftonville was doing well.
It was a busy, nice place"
"I’d seen people very friendly, and they’d been also very helpful"
"When Brexit happened, …
I’d hear people telling me,
‘you’re taking our jobs’
or,
‘why don’t you go back to your country?’ [laughs]"
"When you get a huge influx of any one nation, of course they band together, and people feel isolated from them, and they feel isolated from the world, it’s very hard to break down those barriers… it takes two or three generations."
"I feel this is my home [laughing] but I’m still foreign obviously, but I respect the law here, pay my taxes and everything."
"I became
friends with everyone!
It doesn’t mean if you are in a war
with someone that everybody is bad."
"How it feels to left alone in a big house when all your friends go. That time I understand may be I am alone to be all time so
I have to be strong"
"They didn’t understand
you had to go through this.
"I hadn’t brought anything with me
[laughs]
so I slept under my coat."
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