Nice little piece and quite personal to me. My dad (born 1949), the son of barefoot mill workers, ran away from Northern Ireland when he was 13 with his mate to find work in England. His dad (my grandad), who died from asbestosis before I was born, literally working himself to death in the mills. After working in factories in Manchester, my dad returned home at 16/17 to get his parents to sign his papers for the British army. My aforementioned grandad was Irish fiddling champion and, as well as boxing at local fairgrounds, he at one time or another played fiddle with, and sometimes against (in competition) some very famous Irish folk players, including Paddy Riley and members of the Furies.
My family, who even in the 60s still lived in two-room houses provided by the mill owners, literally worked themselves to death in mills and factories, for a pittance. My grandmother widowed, poor, and with 8 children (yes, in a two-room house), was given money by the famous Paddy Riley when he saw the dire poverty she and her relatives were living in (this is now the 70s). He simply couldn't believe that Protestants in the North (a group he had always been taught were privileged) were living in such poverty.
All that to say, your piece really resonated with me mate. You said, "If the English toiled away sustaining the Empire, the Irish story is one of struggling even to have a state." I would just highlight to your readers that the Irish also toiled away for the Empire. During the time period stated, the 19th century, Irishmen sometimes made up, up to 40% of the British army, and the Irish economy (even during famine) provided much to the cause of empire, especially Belfast, which became an industrial hub right up to and including the Second World War.
Thanks again for the piece and for allowing me to share a bit of my own history, which ties in well with it.
Traveling around Ireland, north and south, what struck me most, as well as a friend from the North East, was an almost total absence of industrial scarring. You see it in Belfast, of course, which looks more like an English city. But mainly, the landscape and housing are rural, spacious, and lacking that sardine squashed terracing of council estate drabness of England
My first thoughts upon visiting last year was ''Why don't we live like this?''.
You should try to visit Cork. A city with a country town feel. A great mix of the best of old Empire and Ireland. In fact someone unwittingly used old footage of Cork in this Bowden video to rightly extoll the virtue of a lost Britian.
Yes we tumbled most of those old two by two rows, my family's old square, owned and rented out by the mill owners was demolished in the 80's and new private homes built there. Our towns are full of old mills, and also a fair amount of council estates, perhaps you just missed them, obviously we do not have the massive population density of England, and thus this helps with the look of the place. Many of our old Mills have been transformed into nice little apartments, so I reckon this and our population density covers up much of the scarring.
Lovely piece of writing Morgoth. The images painted by Lowry could just as easily have been the scenes at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, when the workers poured out at the end of the day. Generations of men in my family worked there. At the shipyard’s peak 30,000 were employed there - my great-grandfather worked on Titanic as a very young welder. I grew up in a terraced house that still had the old outside toilet - this was the 80s. The industrial scarring on Belfast was atrophied by the Troubles - the modernisation that came for cities in England just didn’t happen in Belfast until much later.
My grandparents used to listen to The Fureys and Davey Arthur a fair bit and the Dubliners. ‘Fields of Athenry’ was another classic that all us kids knew by heart. A big favourite was the legendary ‘Catch Me If You Can’ by Brendan Shine. Lisdoonvarna, County Clare is mentioned in that song, a town famous for hosting an annual match-making event (also referred to in the song). I have relatives who live there. Sadly, it’s now famous for its large migrant centre, inflicted on the local residents by the globalist Irish government. Changed times. https://youtu.be/qkvUbgmzDB8?si=0yXAcdl0hLex0jDk
A beautiful piece of writing. I conduct a brass band in Yorkshire and once a year in the summer we play on the station platform of a local steam railway. You can see the longing for the past in the faces of the old to the very young as they step off the trains and stop to listen to the band for a while. The young kids, in particular often stand there mesmerised. The smell and sounds of the steam engines, coupled with the stirring music takes you back to a more wholesome time (I like to think). The Masterplan is also my favourite Oasis song - thanks for reminding me it exists.
Beautiful column. Thank you for introducing me to a painter whose work is so evocative and to a new song and performers from the era that is my personal favorite, folk/ progressive rock music.
Just mentioning Alan Parsons and Al Stewart- their collaboration made the very best of Stewart’s albums from a technical point of view. I had a boyfriend in college who made bootleg tapes for me of all Al Stewart’s albums, most of which were not available in the US at that time. We have always referred to Roads to Moscow as “the wargamer’s song” because my husband plays complicated WWII tabletop games.
America’s industrial scars and past were totally different, a short era and small pieces gouged out of a huge country. Still I grew up in the part of Pennsylvania most associated with steel, coal, and railroads. My grandfather emigrated here from England to work at Baldwin Locomotive Works where an engine eventually took off one of his legs. People have lost all sense of this past, and of what they come from, and are completely adrift.
One of my favourite pieces by you this one. A cracker. I’m currently sat in a grandiose, 3 story red brick pub (which has seen better days), after a shift in a mundane warehouse, around 5 miles outside of Ancoats, a place which Lowry wouldn’t recognise, a place that has been completely gentrified. You won’t find a working men’s club there anymore. You’d be hard pressed to find a working, northern man there now.
The song evokes a strange pride in me. There is glory in the misery, similar to Lowry’s paintings. The grey skies, the tattered clothing, the kids without shoes, the faceless figures who all have a story to tell in their own right. The critics who turned their noses up only to come running back when the time was right. Similar to how they will be when our side turns the political tide.
It was those proud northerners who built all we have today in Manchester and Salford. All to be gifted, on a platter, to those who will never understand. To those who could never understand. Quiet contemplation is the order of the day. Thanks for this one mate.
I remember my first adult (I was 19) trip in 1986 to England and Ireland and the profound difference in atmosphere and tempo. Ireland was a lot more laid back in those days, I haven’t been in 20 years. I can’t imagine anyone but an Irishman composing the following: “I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler, I’m a longways from home and if you don’t like me well lave (leave) me alone. I’ll et (eat) when I’m hungry and I’ll drink when I’m dry and if moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live til I die.”
Nice little piece and quite personal to me. My dad (born 1949), the son of barefoot mill workers, ran away from Northern Ireland when he was 13 with his mate to find work in England. His dad (my grandad), who died from asbestosis before I was born, literally working himself to death in the mills. After working in factories in Manchester, my dad returned home at 16/17 to get his parents to sign his papers for the British army. My aforementioned grandad was Irish fiddling champion and, as well as boxing at local fairgrounds, he at one time or another played fiddle with, and sometimes against (in competition) some very famous Irish folk players, including Paddy Riley and members of the Furies.
My family, who even in the 60s still lived in two-room houses provided by the mill owners, literally worked themselves to death in mills and factories, for a pittance. My grandmother widowed, poor, and with 8 children (yes, in a two-room house), was given money by the famous Paddy Riley when he saw the dire poverty she and her relatives were living in (this is now the 70s). He simply couldn't believe that Protestants in the North (a group he had always been taught were privileged) were living in such poverty.
All that to say, your piece really resonated with me mate. You said, "If the English toiled away sustaining the Empire, the Irish story is one of struggling even to have a state." I would just highlight to your readers that the Irish also toiled away for the Empire. During the time period stated, the 19th century, Irishmen sometimes made up, up to 40% of the British army, and the Irish economy (even during famine) provided much to the cause of empire, especially Belfast, which became an industrial hub right up to and including the Second World War.
Thanks again for the piece and for allowing me to share a bit of my own history, which ties in well with it.
Traveling around Ireland, north and south, what struck me most, as well as a friend from the North East, was an almost total absence of industrial scarring. You see it in Belfast, of course, which looks more like an English city. But mainly, the landscape and housing are rural, spacious, and lacking that sardine squashed terracing of council estate drabness of England
My first thoughts upon visiting last year was ''Why don't we live like this?''.
You should try to visit Cork. A city with a country town feel. A great mix of the best of old Empire and Ireland. In fact someone unwittingly used old footage of Cork in this Bowden video to rightly extoll the virtue of a lost Britian.
https://youtu.be/aR4MvD9IEAE?si=-ZMTqX-ykmCqEaBT
Thanks for that link. Good to hear JB in full flow and on point.
Yes we tumbled most of those old two by two rows, my family's old square, owned and rented out by the mill owners was demolished in the 80's and new private homes built there. Our towns are full of old mills, and also a fair amount of council estates, perhaps you just missed them, obviously we do not have the massive population density of England, and thus this helps with the look of the place. Many of our old Mills have been transformed into nice little apartments, so I reckon this and our population density covers up much of the scarring.
Lovely piece of writing Morgoth. The images painted by Lowry could just as easily have been the scenes at Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, when the workers poured out at the end of the day. Generations of men in my family worked there. At the shipyard’s peak 30,000 were employed there - my great-grandfather worked on Titanic as a very young welder. I grew up in a terraced house that still had the old outside toilet - this was the 80s. The industrial scarring on Belfast was atrophied by the Troubles - the modernisation that came for cities in England just didn’t happen in Belfast until much later.
My grandparents used to listen to The Fureys and Davey Arthur a fair bit and the Dubliners. ‘Fields of Athenry’ was another classic that all us kids knew by heart. A big favourite was the legendary ‘Catch Me If You Can’ by Brendan Shine. Lisdoonvarna, County Clare is mentioned in that song, a town famous for hosting an annual match-making event (also referred to in the song). I have relatives who live there. Sadly, it’s now famous for its large migrant centre, inflicted on the local residents by the globalist Irish government. Changed times. https://youtu.be/qkvUbgmzDB8?si=0yXAcdl0hLex0jDk
A beautiful piece of writing. I conduct a brass band in Yorkshire and once a year in the summer we play on the station platform of a local steam railway. You can see the longing for the past in the faces of the old to the very young as they step off the trains and stop to listen to the band for a while. The young kids, in particular often stand there mesmerised. The smell and sounds of the steam engines, coupled with the stirring music takes you back to a more wholesome time (I like to think). The Masterplan is also my favourite Oasis song - thanks for reminding me it exists.
Beautiful column. Thank you for introducing me to a painter whose work is so evocative and to a new song and performers from the era that is my personal favorite, folk/ progressive rock music.
Just mentioning Alan Parsons and Al Stewart- their collaboration made the very best of Stewart’s albums from a technical point of view. I had a boyfriend in college who made bootleg tapes for me of all Al Stewart’s albums, most of which were not available in the US at that time. We have always referred to Roads to Moscow as “the wargamer’s song” because my husband plays complicated WWII tabletop games.
America’s industrial scars and past were totally different, a short era and small pieces gouged out of a huge country. Still I grew up in the part of Pennsylvania most associated with steel, coal, and railroads. My grandfather emigrated here from England to work at Baldwin Locomotive Works where an engine eventually took off one of his legs. People have lost all sense of this past, and of what they come from, and are completely adrift.
One of my favourite pieces by you this one. A cracker. I’m currently sat in a grandiose, 3 story red brick pub (which has seen better days), after a shift in a mundane warehouse, around 5 miles outside of Ancoats, a place which Lowry wouldn’t recognise, a place that has been completely gentrified. You won’t find a working men’s club there anymore. You’d be hard pressed to find a working, northern man there now.
The song evokes a strange pride in me. There is glory in the misery, similar to Lowry’s paintings. The grey skies, the tattered clothing, the kids without shoes, the faceless figures who all have a story to tell in their own right. The critics who turned their noses up only to come running back when the time was right. Similar to how they will be when our side turns the political tide.
It was those proud northerners who built all we have today in Manchester and Salford. All to be gifted, on a platter, to those who will never understand. To those who could never understand. Quiet contemplation is the order of the day. Thanks for this one mate.
Lovely piece. There's a twilight zone between English and Irish folk music with the like of Ralph McTell and Ewan McColl that I always liked
funny enough I once rented an apartment in Newcastle quayside with an original Lowry on the wall, a German fellow owned it
I have a fondness for the song by Brian and Michael but have never heard the Fureys version tbh
Celtic fans have a song called Willie Maley to the tune which is very much a happy and joyous song so perhaps thats where the Fureys heard it
Very thoughtful and on point.
I remember my first adult (I was 19) trip in 1986 to England and Ireland and the profound difference in atmosphere and tempo. Ireland was a lot more laid back in those days, I haven’t been in 20 years. I can’t imagine anyone but an Irishman composing the following: “I’m a rambler, I’m a gambler, I’m a longways from home and if you don’t like me well lave (leave) me alone. I’ll et (eat) when I’m hungry and I’ll drink when I’m dry and if moonshine don’t kill me, I’ll live til I die.”
Weird to think that song was a counterpoint to bands like the Stranglers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAikcQtuz4
Hanging Around