It's time we acknowledged the legacy of Irish emigrants to Britain in the 1950s, writes Catherine Dunne, author of 'An Unconsidered People'.
The late James Plunkett found himself at the centre of a national controversy on his return to Ireland in 1955. He had just been on a cultural visit to the then Soviet Union, along with a delegation of writers, journalists and artists. The Cold War was at its height. Back home, he immediately faced the outrage of his critics, some of whom demanded he be sacked from his post with the WUI (Workers' Union of Ireland). What could he possibly have learned of such a vast country, they demanded to know, during such a short visit? "Not much," he is reported to have said, "but I learned a hell of a lot about Ireland."
My book, An Unconsidered People, which looks at the lives of Irish emigrants in Britain some 50 years ago, could well give rise to the same question: what could I possibly have learned of such a complex topic over a dozen or so visits to London? Well, quite a bit, as it happens - but I learned a hell of a lot more about Ireland.
I learned, for example, that out of every 10 children born here between 1931 and 1941, eight of them were forced to take the boat; that half a million people left these shores in the 1950s, following the half-million who left in the 1890s; that those who left in the 1890s had, in turn, followed the million and a half who fled the Famine. Those who went in search of survival in the 1950s, mostly to the UK, all express variations on the same theme: "There was nothing else for it but to take the boat"; "There was no back door, nothing to come back to"; "There was no choice - I had to leave".
Kathleen Morrissey from Co Galway remembers following her brother, John, to London after her mother died. He had left, she says, because "there were already two brothers on the farm" and he had to go away "in order to have any life for himself".
When Kathleen was 14 she followed John and her sister, Bridie. By the time she was 15 she was living on her own in a room in Kilburn, working at three jobs to pay the rent, and dancing her way through every weekend at one or other of London's numerous Irish dancehalls.
Kevin Casey from Ennis recalls realising that the family home would never be his: his sister "had married in there" so he knew that he "had to move out". He remembers wanting to go, too, that there was more money in England. For Tony Maher, from Co Kildare, the decision was a simple one: "snaggin' turnips for three ha'pence a drill didn't appeal to me". In his case, it was the cattle boat or the Irish army: the boat won.
What is so striking about all these stories of economic need - desperation in many cases - is how their viewpoint differs from that of the "official Ireland" of the time.
De Valera, for example, was of the opinion that the emigrants had somehow brought the hardships of emigration upon themselves through their own selfishness. At a speech in Galway in 1951, de Valera told his listeners: "There is no doubt that many of those who emigrate could find employment at home at as good, or better, wages - and with living conditions far better - than they find in Britain." The reality was, however, that throughout the 1950s, 40,000 people left Ireland each year, their numbers reaching a peak of 80,000 in 1956.
Both Anne O'Neill and Stephen Croghan have vivid memories of what drove people out of their native Roscommon. "We had nothing in those days," says Anne, recalling that gathering sticks and going to the well for water were among her childhood chores. Later on, in Dublin, Anne's working life began "serving fish and chips in the Miami Café in Dún Laoghaire". She was 12 years old. Stephen Croghan remembers that, due to the War, "all work on the building had stopped" in Roscommon. The result was "all these skilled people queuing to go to England for the construction. It was that or starvation". In a memory shared by Kevin Casey, he remembers the dismal lines of men waiting for the train, with tags on their coats, detailing their destination and the name of their employer: "same as you'd tie a parcel".
The urban experience seems to have been little different. Joe Dunne from Bluebell, Dublin, joined CIÉ at 15, as an apprentice wood machinist. At 21, with all the other "boys", he was let go. "Everybody went like that. You knew there was nothing, so you took the boat." For those who secured employment in and around London, who settled, married and had families, the attitude towards their host country is almost universally a positive one. "The English are a most tolerant people" is a refrain repeated over and over again. Joe Dunne, Anne O'Neill, Kevin Casey and others make the point specifically that neither their Irishness nor their religion ever went against them in their jobs. They feel that England has been good to them.
The experience of the marginalised Irish, however, is a very different one. Men working "on the lump" often fell into the chasm of neglect, suffering on the one hand from "official" ignorance and prejudice, and on the other hand, from exploitation, often at the hands of their own countrymen. Many of those who worked all their lives on the buildings now have nothing. Stories abound of tyrannical ganger-men, unscrupulous landlords and thieving employers - most of them Irish. And there were others, like Sheila Dillon, who couldn't bear to see the suffering of young, frightened Irish girls as they arrived at Euston station. Her "mission in life" became, she says, to help those newly-pregnant young women cope with the loss of home, family - and their babies' adoption.
Many emigrants hoped the economic imperative which drove them from Ireland would be a short-lived one. Now, some 50 years later, most admit, with some reluctance, that the time for returning has passed them by. Phyllis Izzard voices the fears of many of her contemporaries: that for many of those returning to Ireland "the reality has not lived up to the dream". Kevin Casey agrees, citing examples of returning emigrants who "were not allowed settle" back into their community of choice. He believes that "begrudgery" is at the root of that - that those who stayed behind cannot bear to see those who went away enjoying any measure of success.
Father Jerry Kivlehan of the Camden Irish Centre puts it even more trenchantly. "Ireland hasn't even begun the debate about emigration," he says. "In the same family, you can have two brothers - one forced to emigrate, the other forced to stay at home. Both end their lives feeling bitter, both feeling they got the bad end of the stick."
And perhaps they did. Without exception, everyone I spoke to remembered the weekly 10 shillings that they sent home. Those who remained at home remember waiting anxiously for the money to arrive. Those were the days when a few shillings extra made a great deal of difference. What are now called the "emigrant remittances" - those 10-shilling notes from Kilburn and Cricklewood, or the more costly postal orders - became the foundations of our so-called "Celtic tiger" economy. In one year alone, 1961, the costs to the Irish State of providing primary and secondary education for its citizens totalled £14 million. In that same year, the value of the "emigrant remittances" to the Irish State was £13.5 million. In this, as in many other things, many elderly emigrants feel that their significant contribution to modern Ireland has been sidelined, ignored, unconsidered. It is hard to disagree with them.
These people tell the stories of ordinary lives lived away from the homeplace. They recount their experiences with, for the most part, humour, resignation and a surprising lack of bitterness. They feel strongly, however, that it is time for what Father Jerry Kivlehan calls the Irish "conspiracy of denial" around emigration to be addressed. It is time for Ireland to "acknowledge the reality of emigration", time for the emigrant contribution to be not only considered, but debated, valued and honoured.
© Catherine Dunne 2003.
An Unconsidered People is now available from New Island Books, (€11.99)