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I saw a very interesting documentary on Monday about the Irish labourer experience in London in the 1950's and 60's, it was on BBC1 Northern Ireland (Sky ch. 973) which I can get here in London. It focused on Europe's biggest men's hostel, Arlington House in Camden Town, which housed just under one thousand two hundred (1,200) men, and looks like a large Victorian asylum.

Largely against their own wishes, vast numbers of Irish men moved to London to get work. They worked digging ditches and pushing wheelbarrows around on building sites. They interviewed a few of the men concerned, now old guys obviously, and one said that he originally liked a beer a couple of nights a week, but because of the tradition amongst these Irish labourers to spend every evening in the pub, he started drinking every night and became a full blown alcoholic. He spent over 20 years barely knowing what was going on, he said, and has since been able to stop drinking. As he said: "we worked hard, we drank hard, and we fought hard".

I felt quite sorry for these men, they left their families and their country not by choice. One was saying they were reluctant to contact their families back home often because of the way their lives had become - with all of their spare time spent drinking. I've known Camden my whole life, I grew up not far from there, and this old guy said on the programme that the area basically became "Irish town" in the 50's and 60's. He said most pubs were Irish pubs, and Irish music could be heard playing out of windows all over the area. He recited an old phrase: "Camden Town, where paddy lies down" - referring to how many of them had hostel accommodation in the area.

I have a bit of Irish in my background but I don't view myself as Irish at all. I felt sorry for these men. Many couldn't, or didn't want to, go back home, even to visit, and a scheme was set up by the Camden Irish centre some years later to help these men organise trips to see their families. Some of these men still live in the hostel, and have been there for over 50 years.

The saddest thing on the programme was when they visited a cemetery in north London where hundreds, if not thousands, of men who had lived at Arlington House over the years were buried. They died penny-less, and no one knew them apart from their buddies in the hostel. Camden council paid for them to be buried in paupers graves, with just a couple of sticks to commemorate them. Most didn't even get that: this cemetery is full of mass graves of bodies piled up on each other in the paupers plot. Men who helped build this city and died as virtual loners, skint, and with no one to miss them apart from their drinking buddies at the hostel.

It was an interesting programme, but very sad too. People's views please.

Arlington House, Camden Town:

You may like to read this...

Didn't Madness write a song about Arlington House ?

There's an Irish link with Arsenal and Spurs too isn't there ? Pat Rice, Liam Brady, Frank Stapleton, Pat Jennings.

There might be a few on the forum horrified that you can live a dissolute, profligate life and still get buried at the taxpayer's expense !

Looks like thing have improved somewhat these days...

My Southern Irish friend, now 74, came here from Ireland in 1953 with ?10. Got a job and never looked back and was never out of work up to his retirement 10 years ago. He made a small fortune in the drilling business all around the UK. He has nothing but praise for his adopted country and though he travels back to see family he has no intention of ever moving back. He is extremely grateful that England gave him a chance and an extremely good living. If he hadn't come here he would have been a nobody in his own country.
I feel that this country owes a debt to the many Irish, both from the South and North who settled here and made their living. Without them this country would be the poorer.

The lot of the Irish Labourer in London was, in some cases, a sad one - as shown in this programme. I do wonder why though a significant number of them appeared to pass away quite lonely and in the same circumstances they stepped into when they arrived all those years earlier, and I can only put this down to drink. An Irish friend of mine, who is quite a historian on Irish issues, said to me that the plan was, years ago, for men to come here, earn the best living they could, and send some money home on a regular basis - but he said this happened less often than originally intended because, as he put it: "so much of their earnings was spent on alcohol". They were discriminated against in housing, just like many other communities were, but there seemed to be regular work for them. Some did very well, but many were lost in a haze of ale. Quite sad really. I mentioned earlier that I have some Irish in my background and I might investigate this further, it would be interesting to see what my Irish forebare did when first arriving in England.

I am not especially fond of the Irish. You say twice in your article, Max, that
they were forced to come to Britain for work, as if they were press-ganged
or sold into slavery, which I do not believe. Also, the old man`s tale that,
with nothing much to do he was almost forced into drinking every night,
strikes me as the kind of self-pitying blarney the Irish have come up with
centuries.
But, when all that is said and done, when we forget the fist-fights and the
drinking, Irish gypsies and everything else, it must be said - and I totally
agree with you - that the Irish navvy or labourer is owed a huge debt by us
all. Its sometimes forgotten today that the great British rail system - great
before Dr Beeching in the Sixties axed half of it away - was created with the
sweat of thousands of Irishmen who toiled on the viaducts, tunnels and
track-laying all over Britain. And there is not one single municipal building -
from the mammoth Victorian city halls to the tower blocks of modern housing
that were not done without a goodly army of Irish workers.
Thats why, ignoring the Irish love of booze and rowdyness, those old
workers, in my opinion, deserve our respect and support in old age.

Frank,

The Irish were not forced to come here in the way slaves and people press-ganged are forced to do things (to use your two examples) but they had little choice as they were so poor and this was a way of making a living. Vast numbers of Irish people emigrated to America, Britain, and to other places over the years, when they didn't really want to move, because of the dire economic situation they were in, and because the only place they could get work was in one of those other places. If you look at Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow - the three biggest cities located across the sea that are the closest to Ireland - all three of those cities have large populations with an Irish background. I think about 25% of those three cities have Irish forebares, and about 7% of London does. So no one forced them to move, but they had little choice but to move. As far as alcohol is concerned, I find it strange that the wealthiest people in Ireland for years, namely the Guinness family, don't seem to ever have been criticised for effectively enslaving a race of people with their product.