{"id":9078,"date":"2016-06-22T13:13:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T12:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=9078"},"modified":"2016-06-22T13:13:12","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T12:13:12","slug":"freedom-of-movement-changed-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=9078","title":{"rendered":"Freedom of movement changed my life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In UNITElive’s third and final instalment of our series talking to members about what the EU has meant to them, Unite’s Myles Derbyshire explains how freedom of movement helped him find work.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Most of us will have never known what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually like to be a migrant \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what it means to be suddenly living in a country far from friends and family, to be in some cases unable to communicate, to be dropped into a strange land whose customs and cultures are not your own.<\/p>\n

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Unite member and electrician Myles Derbyshire, originally from Liverpool, did just that for more than half his life.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been an economic migrant for 23 years,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he explained. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI was a teenager in the 80s and early 90s when you couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a job in Liverpool no matter how hard you tried. Nearly everyone I knew who lived in Liverpool back then was unemployed.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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‘I struggled’<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

When he was 20, Myles moved to London, worked for a time in Australia and, taking advantage of the freedom of movement afforded to all EU citizens, he eventually ended up in Spain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe first few months were really hard because I struggled learning the language. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hold down a job for long, not because I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I was doing, but because I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand what was being asked of me.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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A year later, it all started to come together and Myles could speak Spanish well. Finally able to understand his bosses, he found work servicing fire alarms and later in a factory making wind turbines. He stayed for 10 years.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThose years I lived in Spain were some of the most personally rewarding years of my life,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI was welcomed with open arms by the Spanish people who I lived and worked with; my daughter was born there and I had the opportunity to learn a language fluently and be immersed in another culture.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIf it weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for our membership in the European Union \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for freedom of movement \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I would not have had that opportunity. And I want my daughter to grow up to live in a world where she has the same opportunities to work hard, earn money and learn about other cultures.<\/p>\n

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‘We all want the same thing’<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bGenerally most people in the UK don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t take advantage of freedom of movement unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to go on holiday or retire. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had it pretty good here economically. But what if it all goes bendy here at home and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re no longer in the EU? We won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be able to go find work easily in other European countries like we can now.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Having been a migrant himself for several years, Myles rejects the anti-migrant rhetoric that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dominated the press in the run-up to the EU referendum.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOne thing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned about travelling and living in other countries is that there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t huge differences between people \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you might speak another language but we all want the same thing,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe all want to be able to earn a bit of money, to have a roof over our heads and to be able to support our families and contribute to society. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true whether you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re English, Spanish or Polish.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Myles fears what the consequences of a Brexit might mean for his five-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m divorced now, and my daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother is Spanish. They both live here in London near me and thanks to being in the EU, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m able to spend time with my daughter regularly. If they decided to go back to Spain and the UK leaves the EU, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t simply pack up and go with them.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine how I would cope without being able to see my daughter anymore. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the single most important thing that motivates me. \u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Anger<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Myles understands why so many working-class people feel let down by the political establishment and why, out of anger and frustration, they may vote Leave.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI grew up in a working-class family in the era of Thatcher in Liverpool \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one of the cities which suffered most from that government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies. I know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to feel angry and to feel betrayed by the system which is supposed to serve you and not beat you down.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBut voting to Leave the EU is not the answer,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Myles argues. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhen the Leave campaign, when people like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, say \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take back control\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean control for us ordinary working people. When have we ever been given control from the powers that be?<\/p>\n

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Myles believes voters should hold on to what the EU already gives us, instead of the empty promises that leaders of the Leave campaign have made that may never materialise.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThey say they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll use the money we save from what we put into the EU to fund the NHS, but how can we really believe that? These are the same people who have been behind cuts to public services for years. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way of knowing whether the money we save is going to go to improve our local councils, our schools, or our infrastructure \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely that it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhat we can be sure of is that aspects of EU that do benefit the little man \u00e2\u20ac\u201c workplace rights, a higher court to go to if justice isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t served in a British court \u00e2\u20ac\u201c these things we actually have now,\u00c2\u00a0 and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll all be gone if we vote to Leave.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care if we can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have bendy cucumbers,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Myles added.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m voting to remain for my daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future, one in which she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free to live and work elsewhere, where she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part of a more open world with more opportunities. Who wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want that for their children?\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In UNITElive’s third and final instalment of our series talking to members about what the EU has meant to them, Unite’s Myles Derbyshire explains how freedom of movement helped him find work.   Most of us will have never known what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually like to be a migrant \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what it means to be suddenly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"wps_subtitle":"Unite's Myles Derbyshire explains why he's voting to Remain","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9078"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9079,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9078\/revisions\/9079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}