Now and then a book, an article, or maybe a piece of film will jolt you back into the past. Photographs are perhaps the most evocative of all for reviving memories. If you are of a certain age and spent time in London as an emigrant, a book of photographs called Irish Lon- doners will certainly propel you back to the time when London was known as Ireland's 33rd county.
The photographs are part of the Paddy Fahey collection and are a fascinating chronicle of London Irish life from around the 1940s until the mid-1970s.
Paddy Fahey was a young Waterford man who, like so many of his contemporaries, emigrated to Britain in the 1940s. He was a trained photographer but initially found work on the building sites.
He started to take photographs of Irish people in London and sold them to Irish newspapers. Because there was such a huge emigrant community, the Irish Press, Irish In- dependent and Cork Examiner published a special English edition of their papers. And it was for these editions that Paddy worked.
He was seen at almost every social event around the London Irish scene from the mid-1940s until the early 1970s. And he was a studio photographer as well, covering weddings, christenings, Holy Communions. He rarely photographed the unpleasant aspects of emigrant life: poverty, homelessness or anti-Irish signs. He was part of the community he photographed. In 1992, Paddy Fahey showed his archive to a young Irish-born curator at the Grange Museum of Community History in Brent, London. Finbarr Whooley recognised the wealth of social history and documentary it offered and was determined to preserve it. Unfortunately, Paddy died two years later but his wife, Peggy, generously passed on the collection to the Grange Museum.
5,000 negatives
At that stage, the collection consisted of more than 5,000 negatives, rolled into tight bundles. They had to be washed, pressed and literally hung out to dry. They have all been contactprinted and are now accessible to anyone who wants to look at them.
Finbarr Whooley has categorised the photographs under different headings. For example, "Ourselves Alone" contains photographs of county associations. These were the forerunners of modern-day networks, helping people find jobs, accommodation and even partners.
The 1950s were the glory days of the GAA in London: among the thousands of emigrants were many hurling and football stars. When you see the crowds who attended New Eltham you would wonder if there were any people left at home in Ireland at all. Paddy's pictures show teams, spectators and priests and parades.
Palace garden party
Even back in the 1950s, the London Irish were making their way into English society. One image captures a group from the National University of Ireland on their way to a Buckingham Palace garden party. And another shows a young militant, Gerry Lawless, later to become a Labour councillor, taking part in a civil rights protest.
Most of Paddy's photographs, however, concentrate on the lives of ordinary young emigrants. As in the Ireland of the 1950s, the Catholic Church was an omnipresent influence on the Irish in London. Sodalities, missions, devotions and fraternities were all well attended. Catholic nuns educated the children of emigrants. Irish nurses trained in Catholic hospitals. The priests were natural leaders of the community and offered an institution that cared for the well-being of the emigrants.
Eamon Casey, as a young cleric in 1969, was an active campaigner for the homeless in London and was photographed regularly among the Irish community.
But by far the most nostalgic of Paddy's photographs are those of the dance halls. Finbarr Whooley believes there is enough material to produce another book on them alone. They served the needs of a population starved of contact with home. Every weekend, people crowded into them to dance to the Irish stars of the day. They featured both ceili bands and showbands. Paddy Fahey roved around taking random picture of couples. Since the publication of the book people who featured in the photographs have been in touch with Finbarr Whooley to identify themselves.
Irish celebrities visited the dancehalls regularly and Fr Michael Cleary, known as the "singing priest", was photographed in the Galtymore Club in 1965 singing to thousands of young emigrants. A young Val Doonican is shown singing at the Innisfree club before he was discovered by the BBC and Eamonn Andrews must have attended every possible Irish function for he appears in countless pictures. A handsome Joe Lynch is seen entertaining the crowds at the Banba Club in 1955.
Finbarr Whooley hopes the book will whet the appetite of students about a largely undocumented era. The museum in which he works concentrates on the history of Brent and we are indeed lucky that the interests of the museum coincide with this project. He thanks the Cultural Affairs Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish Lottery for their financial help.
Travelling display
Last year, the museum mounted an exhibition of about 30 of the photographs as a travelling display and it has been touring libraries in the southeast. It is currently is in Wexford.
As I turned the pages I was excited to discover a photograph of my own father, the late Donal Foley. He was a journalist in London at the time Paddy Fahey was plying his trade. He appears in the book as an unidentified judge of the Rose of Tralee contest.
The book, published by Sutton Publishing Ltd, can be obtained from Finbarr Whooley, Grange Museum of Community History, Neasden Lane, London NW10 1QB. It costs £9.99.