PATRICK HANSHAW,
Sir, - On Friday, July 12th, in the small dockland town of Wapping on the banks of the river Thames, about a quarter-of-a-mile from London's Tower Bridge, St Patrick's School was forcibly closed by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor and the Diocese of Westminster, bringing to an end over 100 years of Catholic education in Wapping. Contrary to the popular and long-held belief that Kilburn in West London is the spiritual home of the Irish in the capital, a large part of the post-Famine diaspora settled in Wapping and the surrounding East End of London.
They took an active part in the 1889 "Dockers' Tanner Strike" - a strike that acted as the catalyst for the setting up of active trade unionism as we know it today. Their dockside collections and contributions for the purchasing of a brick for a penny, the method by which they built their schools and church, are both legion and legendary in local folklore.
Inadvertently, all those years ago, these early Irish settlers built their schools and church on land that, at the present time, forms some of the most prime property in the whole of London. Unfortunately, the Catholics of Wapping and the surrounding East End are being abandoned by the cardinal. Just over a year ago he used the full panoply of the Church, including the threat of High Court litigation, to oust the 400 members of the Vaughan Catholic Club in nearby Stepney to sell the site for £1 million.
Surely the direct descendants of those early Irish emigrants deserve a better fate than to have to stand helplessly by as they watch their birthright, culture and heritage being sold off to entrepreneurs by a cardinal? - Yours, etc.,
PATRICK HANSHAW, Albert Gardens, Stepney, London E1.