The Chinese Cockle Pickers 100-Day Memorial

On 13 May 2004, about 100 people came to the foreshore at Hest Bank to honour the Chinese cockle pickers who lost their lives in the tragedy on the night of 5 February, when they were cut off and drowned by the incoming tide whilst working in the bay.

21 bodies have been found. Three are still missing. Many cermonies have taken place to honour their memory and to mark the cruel circumstances that led to the tragedy. We are still trying to resolve the issues we've been forced to confront by this tragedy: the unregulated nature of our employment practices that leave migrant workers vulnerable to slavery and exploitation. The hostility against foreign workers that led to them to wait for cover of darkness before they left to work. We've tried to honour their memories in our way. Now we came to the beach to honour them in theirs.

Gina Tan is an ordinary Morecambe woman who has suddenly found herself pushed into prominence by events that leave her shaking with sadness. Not only has she lost her friends in the most painful way - but she's had to draw on all her strength to defend them and to help people understand how isolated, naive and caring they were, taking on freezing, dangerous work at extortionately low levels of pay in order to help support their families back in China. She's not a politician or a public speaker. She's just a good Lancashire woman doing her best to find a way through what's got be done.

Her son is helping her, as are some friends. They've built a most beautiful shrine - flowers and a sign written in Chinese calligraphy, wading boots and cockle nets. They've laid a table with fruit, food and drink set out in cups - clearly this has some symbolic significance though we're not sure what it means. In the background I can hear Geraldine Smith, the local MP chatting to her consituents "if 20 people had died in a factory or a power station everyone would be demanding its closure" she's making a fair point. Newly appointed Mayor John Day arrives and stands by discreetly. People from the emergency services, involved in the search for survivers - and then for bodies, stand out in their yellow coats. We have formed a wide circle, in which Gina and her team hurry to finish their preparations. We'd help but we aren't sure what needs doing - what if we did something wrong by mistake?

Gina takes some incense sticks and lights them, holds them in a prayer and places them them in a holder. She is handing out sticks to all the people in the circle. They take them. It dawns on us that we should do what she did - say a prayer and plant our sticks in the holder. An elderly lady standing near me asks her neigbour 'Has it started yet?' I tell her it has started now and help her with the incense. 'Can we say a prayer then?' She asks. Yes. 'It's not what I expected' she confides. 'No, it's a bit different' I say. 'Never mind, if you say your prayer and go with the flow, it will all come out right.' She's been through two world wars, she can pray anywhere, I'd guess, and sure enough, she does.

Laid out on the floor in a graceful fan-shape are neatly wrapped paper packets. A young woman who teaches English as a Second Language at the local college explains that these contain paper clothes and other useful items made from paper that will be burnt, the idea being that those who have died will have the use of them in their afterlife. An oil drum has been painted and vented to use for burning them in. The teacher tells us that they didn't like to make a fire in case it made a mess and left bits of burnt paper blowing over the fields and inconveniencing the farmers. At that point I feel a raging desire to go and gather driftwood and make a huge fire - but it's not my right to do it. They have held themselves back, trying not to cause any offense. If they can do it, so can I. Respect and dignity will be our fire. Tim, the reporter from Radio Lancashire, is recording silence on his microphone.

I take a picture as the young men are feeding the coloured paper packets and the wads of paper money to the flames. Paper clothes, paper money, paper houses, paper cars. Now they are dead they can have all these things, I think, and it's too much.

I'm not the only one. Up and down the shore there are people who've had to go and look at the sea for a while, while they get their feelings under control again. It's a great sweep of sky and bay. Beautiful and like all wild places, sometimes deadly. More beautiful this week because the scouts and brownies and cubs and many volunteers came out at the weekend to tidy it all up and clear away litter and make it good.

When the paper is burnt, I hear Gina say 'They are happy now'. She gives us candles to light at the shrine and invites us to join with her at the Dome where there will be a reception. Local restaurants have donated food especially. I'm shaking and my friend Sally tells me it's time to go home.

A good friend of mine has also died this week and it's all a bit mixed together for me. I don't want to wallow around in tragedy. I want to celebrate their lives. You can't just judge people by their last few hours. I want to think of them as strong, vital people - you'd have to be to pick cockles in February I reckon. I try to imagine them. It's a bit late now. The fact is, you've got to appreciate people when they're alive. Buy me a drink now and you can skip my funeral, I'm thinking.

We can't let this happen again. Every person who's in our community should be safe here. It's not just the bay, Geraldine. A Chinese worker died this year from an embolism - from being made to work straight 48-hour factory shifts on his feet. The law isn't shielding them so until it's changed we have to try to. The people who look different and don't speak much English aren't a threat to us. They may be struggling and we need to be watching out for them. We can't leave it all to Gina.