What do you think Irishness means to people
in the West Midlands? Tell us your story in The Harp.
Article by Pete Millington May 2014
In 1967 a research study was carried out in
Birmingham as part of a five year project called The Survey of Race Relations
in Britain. The study in Birmingham was led by Professor John Rex and Robert
Moore who were social theorists. The Survey as a whole was concerned with the
implications for British society of “the presence of Commonwealth immigrants”.
The study in Birmingham was focussed on Sparkbrook having been identified as “a
decaying area in a city which except for post-war London has attracted a
greater number of migrants than any other in England”.
In particular, the study looked at the
experiences of four main sections of the Sparkbrook community, these were
English born people, Irish immigrants, people from the West Indies and people
from Pakistan. Of the major immigrant groups in Sparkbrook in 1967, the Irish
were described as the largest and longest established, although not as a fixed
population. By this, the researchers meant that for Irish immigrants,
Sparkbrook was a reception area – a place where Irish people arriving in
Birmingham lived in temporary lodgings before moving further out into the
suburbs. Sparkbrook was also a popular lodging-place for single Irish people.
The researchers describe how some of the earlier
Irish immigrants that they surveyed had become “completely anglicized. Such a
man, for example, is Mr. F. He came from Dublin with his parents in 1934 and he
and his father both served in the British Army in the Second World War. He
married an English girl and now has a son at the Grammar school who, he hopes,
will go to university”.
From the outset of the study, Sparkbrook is
referred to as a ‘twilight zone’, a curious description of the area that I have
heard repeated in common language between Brummies over many years and often
wondered about its meaning and origin. Was it a term coined by racists to
describe an area of high immigrant population or an area of perceived alien
faiths and cultures? Does it refer to a real or perceived local crime rate
perhaps? Or even to the chaotic car driving and pedestrian behaviour one might
encounter in a built up shopping area like Stratford Road?
In actual fact, at least according to this
study of 1967, the term twilight zone in this context was coined by social
theorists to describe areas of housing which, in the word of the authors “have
not yet reached the night of slumdom and are aptly called twilight zones, a
term which has come to be applied not only to a certain type of housing but to
a type of tenure, multi-occupation, which prevails within areas of immigrant
settlement”.
The authors continue: “The inhabitants of
these twilight zones are not there by choice. They are the newcomers to the
city who have been forced to find accommodation by a society which denies them
the opportunities of the market or the shelter of the welfare state. Where
neither mortgages nor council housing are available to them the immigrant finds
shelter with the middlemen who while they may exploit the situation are filling
a yawning gap left by the system. These landlords play an indispensable role;
they are the safety net under the safety net of the welfare state.”
The study further divides the Irish community
into three main sub-groups: (1) the Dubliners; (2) the countrymen, known as
‘Culchies’ to the Dubliners’ and (3) the tinkers, or ‘travelling people’ as
they call themselves. The Irish interviewees in the study identified their own
fourth small sub-group, described as people who lived by petty thieving and off
casual earnings and sharp practices.
In this 1967 study, Sparkbrook and
neighbouring Sparkhill were identified as primarily ‘Culchie’ settlements,
neighbourhoods where country people predominated. But wherever their place of
origin, most Irish people living in Sparkbrook in the late 1960s expressed a
wish to move out of their present accommodation. Many identifying areas such as
Hall Green, Acocks Green, Sheldon, Shirley and Moseley as the places they would
like to move to. The most frequent reason for wanting to move was to enjoy a
better environment. Interestingly, a large percentage of Irish immigrants in
the survey did not intend to return to Ireland, in the words of the authors:
“We
may say that most Irishmen suffering the hardships of life in Sparkbrook hope
for a better future for their children in England. Before they or their
children finally become anglicized they must succeed financially and rehouse
themselves. In the meanwhile, their aspirations remain confused, as they live
balanced between an Irish society in an English urban setting and a totally
English society.”
I am certain that many people reading this
article will recognise their own conflicts, dilemmas and choices, past and
present, in this social balancing act (or that of your parents or
grand-parents). Where did your family find themselves after they emerged from
the twilight zone, proverbial or otherwise? Has the balance of diaspora come to
rest? Do write and let us know.
The study is called ‘Race Community and
Conflict – A Study of Sparkbrook’ by John Rex and Robert Moore. Published by
Oxford University Press 1967.
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