How a musical about Morecambe Bay’s tragic Chinese cockle-pickers has split the British seaside town
A musical about the deaths of 23 migrant workers in 2004 brings back bad memories for a British seaside town, pitting locals against the project’s creators
IT sounds like a plot to rival The Producers, but a musical based on the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking disaster has struck the wrong note with relatives of those who lost their lives.
On the night of 5 February 2004, 23 illegal Chinese immigrants perished in the treacherous waters of the bay in northwest England.
The unlikely folk musical Sinking Water, written by Craig Adams and Daniel York Loh, has been in development for more than a year.
But after fierce opposition from Morecambe residents, who lived through the events of that night, the writers are now working without the co-operation of those closest to the victims. The majority of the families of the dead have made it clear to the writers they are not interested in the controversial project. So far it has been supported by a £12,000 prize from production company Perfect Pitch and London’s Theatre Royal Stratford East.
The musical will focus on the events before and after the deaths of the cocklers, who drowned in the bay as they worked in the dark facing an incoming tide. The Chinese had been trafficked illegally in containers into Liverpool and were hired out through local criminal agents of international triad gangsters, who paid them just £5 for every 25kg of cockles.