Patrick Pearse and how Irish history was influenced by Birmingham radicalism

Patrick Pearse

As we welcome in the New Year, Irish people all over the world will begin to recognise 2016 as a special year, marking the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising.

The Easter Rising was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was organised by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood with the aim of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing an independent Irish Republic. The Rising began on Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, and lasted for six days. Members of the Irish Volunteers, led by schoolmaster and Irish language champion Patrick Pearse, joined by the Irish Citizen Army of James Connolly and 200 members of Cumann na mBan — captured key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic.

With hugely superior weaponry and troop numbers, the British army swiftly suppressed the Rising, and Pearse agreed to an unconditional surrender on Saturday 29 April. Most of the leaders were executed following courts-martial, but the Rising kick-started a momentum for Irish independence which led to the formation of the first Dáil in January 1919 and thus to the Irish War of Independence.

Patrick Henry Pearse was an Irish teacher, poet, writer, barrister, nationalist and political activist who became the most prominent leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. Following his execution along with fifteen other leaders, Pearse came to be seen by many as the personification of the rebellion. Patrick Pearse was born in Dublin on 10 November 1879. His father James was a successful stonemason and monumental sculptor, born in London in 1839 but brought up in Birmingham. James came from a Unitarian family and was self-educated, but sufficiently so that Patrick and his siblings grew up in a comfortable Dublin house, surrounded by books and an abundance of knowledge.

Patrick’s mother, Margaret Brady, was the second wife of James Pearse and was from Dublin. Her father’s family were from County Meath and were native Irish speakers. It is said that the Irish-speaking influence of Patrick Pearse's great-aunt Margaret, together with his schooling at the CBS Westland Row, instilled in him an early love for the Irish language. In his autobiography, Patrick Pearse described the duel influence gained from the union of his parents upon his own famously idealistic and passionate character: 

“ For the present I have said enough to indicate that when my father and mother married there came together two very widely remote traditions—English and Puritan and mechanic on the one hand, Gaelic and Catholic and peasant on the other: freedom loving both, and neither without its strain of poetry and its experience of spiritual and other adventure. And these two traditions worked in me and fused together by a certain fire proper to myself . . . made me the strange thing I am.”

In the 1851 census, the Pearse family from Middlesex can be found living at Ellis Street, close to the horse fair at Holloway Head in the very heart of Birmingham. These were the grandparents of Patrick Pearse and his father and uncle as boys. The family included James Pearse aged 32, a picture frame maker (journeyman) and his wife Mary aged 38. They had two sons, James aged 11 and Henry aged 10, both scholars.

Ten years on in the 1861 census, the Pearse family can be found still residing in Lee Bank, though this time just up the hill in Gough Street in the parish of St Thomas. James senior is still working as a picture frame maker, as is his 20 year old son Henry. Though by this time, the other son James (aged 21) is working as a stone carver in marble.

In 1863, James Pearse (a sculptor) married his first wife, Susan Emily Fox (who may have been Irish) at St Thomas’s, Lee Bank and in the same year, his brother Henry married Sarah Ann Orchard at St Philip’s church. James and Susan moved to Ireland in the 1860s and converted to Catholicism, probably for business reasons as James had been an atheist since childhood. Susan Emily died in 1876, leaving James a widower with two young children. He remarried his second wife, Margaret Brady the following year and set up home over his premises in 27 Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street. Patrick was born in November 1879, the second of their four children.

James Pearse was interested in the ‘free thought’ movement and an avid reader of books on art and architecture, history, theology, philosophy and current affairs. He also had many books on religion. His own father before him, also named James, and his father’s brothers had been members of the artistic radical wing of Birmingham’s artesian intelligentsia during the mid-1800s, a movement of working class men and women who wanted to break the upper-class monopoly on education and knowledge by self-study and group participation. Many were Quakers, Unitarians and radical liberals. It was this radical Birmingham heritage which helped to form the young Patrick Pearse into ‘that strange thing’ he became and the idealistic and passionate leadership he gave to the 1916 Rising.   

James Pearse died on 5 September 1900, while staying in his brother’s home at Back 185 Great Russell Street, Saint George, Birmingham. He left an estate valued at £1,470–17s–6d. Pearse and Sons in Dublin was wound up in 1910 and the capital was used to fund Patrick’s school, St Enda’s, which had recently moved to new premises in Rathfarnham. In November 1913 Pearse was invited to the inaugural meeting of the Irish Volunteers.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Ernie Mush Callaghan - the hero who lived at Villa Park

Ernie "Mush" Callaghan was a Birmingham football player who played for Aston Villa from 1930 until 1947. The much-loved defender played 125 league games for the Villa and held the record for having been their oldest player - he was 39 years and 257 days old when he played his last game in the claret and blue shirt in April 1947. The record stood for 64 years until a new record was set by American goalkeeper Brad Friedel who was 39 years and 259 days old when he played against Manchester United in 2011.

Ernie was born on 29 July 1907 in Newtown. In the 1911 census he was recorded with his parents, in-laws and his sister Hilda living at 6 Sun Street West which was in the Lee Bank area near Holloway Head. His father, Ernest Edward Callaghan, was a lamplighter from Birmingham.

We have to go back two further generations to discover the Irish origins of the family name Callaghan. Ernie’s great grandfather, James Callaghan, was a tailor in Bordesley Street in the 1851 census, he came from Navan in County Meath probably during the period of the Irish famine. It’s not clear how much the family remained within Birmingham’s Irish community, though certainly their subsequent addresses in Newtown (near St Chad’s) and Sun Street West (near St Catherine’s) might suggest the connections continued in to the 20th century.

Ernie started his football career as a youngster playing for Dartmouth Street Council School before progressing to the prestigious city pub leagues with spells playing for The Barton Arms and The Rose Villa. He also played for Walmer Athletic, Hinckley Athletic, Atherstone Town and Cradley Heath. Ernie had trials for both the Baggies and the Blues, but it was finally Villa who signed him up and he repaid them with his lifelong service, including 17 years as a first team player followed by many years working as the head grounds man. Ernie may also be one of a select few people who have actually lived at Villa Park, as in the 1955 polling register his address was The Cottage, Villa Park which was located near Trinity Road on the club’s grounds.

Ernie’s long playing career at Villa Park was only interrupted by the Second World War, during which period the Football Association League was suspended. There is evidence that Ernie, now in his mid-thirties, continued to play for Villa in the regional league and also guested for Solihull Town, but these games do not count in players’ official records and the regional leagues themselves were heavily disrupted by the war.

But not content to sit out the war whilst younger players were being signed up for army duty, Ernie became a probationary police officer for the duration of WW2. On the night of 28th July 1942 (the day before his 35th birthday) Police Constable Ernest Callaghan of 50 Nelson Road, Aston (the road linking Trinity Road with Witton Road at the rear of Villa Park), took part in a courageous rescue of trapped workers at a factory in Birmingham. The rescue was so dangerous that the small rescue party, including police officers and civilians were all recommended for bravery medals.

The full description of the rescue at Gabriel’s Ltd on Coleshill Street in Birmingham, which had been bombed by German planes, is contained in witness statements under files for WWII Defence Gallantry Awards 1940-1949, but briefly, Callaghan and a police officer named Sergeant Harold Wood arrived at the scene of the bombed building to learn that some workers were trapped in a shelter under the factory. Attempting to reach the shelter through the burning building with water escaping from pipes onto live electrical cables all around them, the pair assisted two people but could not reach the door to the shelter as the ceiling collapsed in front of them.

As they battled to clear debris, four storeys of heavy industrial machinery, some hanging precariously on steel frames and smashed masonry above their heads were burning out of control and in danger of total collapse. Unable to get to the workers through the factory because of the burning debris, Callaghan and Wood retreated outside and managed to clear a grate in the pavement to reach the basement shelter.         

Smashing in the cast iron exit, Callaghan and Wood then climbed down into the shelter and, assisted by a civilian named James Hughes, between them passed injured people up to waiting firewatchers. All the injured were removed to the First Aid Post at Woodcock Street Baths. In the report on the rescue Sergeant John Champkin said:

“I have visited this scene and find there was very grave danger of the remaining portions of building collapsing on top of the rescuers and I respectfully submit that the action of the two Police Officers and James Hughes, by totally disregarding their personal safety, set to work, with the danger of being trapped by falling masonry, also with the knowledge that there was a danger of flooding and contact with live wires in the shelter, and after a great deal of hard work, were responsible at this great personal risk, for the rescue of three living and one dead casualty. Only by their prompt action and determined efforts were the lives of these three persons saved.”

Ernie “Mush” Callaghan received the British Empire Medal for his part in the rescue at the Gabriel’s factory in July 1942. He went on to finish his playing career defending the Villa box before becoming the club’s head grounds man, residing in his cottage at Villa Park. Ernie died in Castle Vale on 8 March 1972 aged 64. A Holte End hero for more than one reason.

 

Mark Radcliffe’s Galleon Blast - The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton: Thursday 17th March 2016

 

Press ganged into service by an unscrupulous gangmaster from the Spanish Main (well....Knutsford actually), the swarthy seadogs of Galleon Blast occasionally get shore leave to ply their raggle-taggle trade. With a selection of rum-soaked songs and shanties, the Blasters whip up a squally strumming storm with traditional tunes, original songs and many a seafaring classic from The Dubliners, The Waterboys, The Pogues,  The Fisherman's Friends and Ewan MacColl. Galleon Blast feature banjos, whistles, accordions and fiddles from members of The Family Mahone, Full House, The Bad Shepherds, The Incredible String Band and Thea Gilmore, including the pirate dj himself Mark Radcliffe - the Jack Sparrow of the Radio 2 Folk Show. Actually, make that the Jack Duckworth of the Radio 2 Folk Show. So, it's all aboard the good ship Blast for a full-on broadside of buccaneering beat.

 

Official website: https://www.facebook.com/galleonblast/

 

Tickets priced: £13.75 (£12.50 Ticket + £1.25 Booking Fee), are available from Midland Box Office: 0870 320 7000 or online at www.wolvescivic.co.uk

Anthony Monaghan Gets Worldwide Film Distribution Deal for Rednecks & Culchies Documentary

St. Louisan from County Mayo, Ireland, Anthony Monaghan, has landed a worldwide distribution deal for his documentary film, Rednecks & Culchies. Monaghan has accomplished something very rare in the film industry, and that is being given a distribution deal with a Hollywood heavyweight like Brinkvision, without a celebrity presence in the film.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151105/284421

 

"Anthony's film is incredibly unique, so it makes up for the lack of a known actor on film. Brinkvision is banking on Tony Monaghan because he's done something no one else has done with this movie, and we're excited about it," says an executive with Apothecary Films.

 

Running his own business in construction, two worlds collided as Monaghan became acquainted with a very different part of American society, and cultural barriers softened as the men worked together.  As a self-proclaimed 'culchie' from poor beginnings in Ireland, he is accepting of the men on his crews and everything that comes along with it. Rednecks & Culchies portrays the irony of a working class Irishman in America who becomes successful, yet is surrounded by working class American men with drug and alcohol addictions. The film examines the American working class from the perspective of Irish working men. While Monaghan is often baffled by the lifestyle of his construction workers, he sees promise in them, befriends them and continues to give them a chance.

 

Rednecks & Culchies is a riveting account of the harsh way of life for those battling drug addictions, as it peers into a raw, hidden world. It is equally compelling in its humor and good-hearted nature as it weaves into the working days and moments of these rednecks and culchies, from the curious perspective of Anthony Monaghan. The film will be available on Amazon, Netflix and many other online sources early next year. For more information visit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3257064/

 

Watch Trailer | Facebook | http://www.theirishconstruction.com

 

About Anthony Monaghan

 

Anthony Monaghan has worked and travelled all over the world, and has lived in the United States for many years, spending the last 10 years in St. Louis with his three daughters: Toni, Ursula, and Ciara. Tony owns a successful residential construction business in St. Louis. Rednecks & Culchies is Monaghan's first film and he will begin his second film in 2016.  

Interview with Gary O'Dea - part 2

Jack and Shane - cultural icons

In last month’s edition we published the first part of an interview with Black Country born singer-songwriter and guitarist, Gary O’Dea. In the first part of the interview, Gary talked about the generation of his Irish and English grandparents and how the family’s sense of identity was influenced by their Black Country surroundings and experiences in the 2nd world war.

 I asked Gary how his musical interests developed:

“I grew up a lot at my nan’s house listening to my uncle’s records in the 60s and 70s. He was into the groups like the Small Faces, Jimi Hendrix and the Stones, all that kind of thing. Around the time I left school in 1978 I was influenced a lot by punk music, but mainly I was a big soul music fan, I loved Northern Soul, Tamla and Stax. I liked The Jam as I felt they were doing soul music stuff and The Clash too as there was a reggae influence in stuff like White Man in Hammersmith Palais, which was about white kids being into reggae. Reggae was big around these parts because of Steel Pulse and their album Handsworth Revolution and ska-revival stuff like Gangsters by The Specials from Coventry. There were great things going on in music in this area and UB40 were also something else.”

Some interesting musical influences, but did Irish heritage have any influence for you as a young musician in the Black Country?

“My old man was actually a big Elvis fan and there was always a lot of rock ‘n’ roll and country being played in our house, but also some of the Irish stuff like Fields of Athenry would get sung every now and then, especially if there was a family get-together at Christmas. But I do remember when The Pogues came out, that was a magic moment.”

“I saw them live at the Fleadh Festival in Finsbury Park in London. I took my lads when they were kids, they were only little tackers and when The Pogues came on stage I got them up by the mixing desk. It was in a great big circus tent and people were climbing up the poles, people were going bananas and my kids had their mouths wide open saying “Dad, look at him …look at him!” They’ll mention it to this day as “that nuts’ party where The Pogues played in that park”. Later I saw them at Aston Villa Leisure Centre when Joe Strummer stepped in for Shane MacGowan when he became too ill. That was brilliant with Joe too.”

Another significant area of Gary’s life where his Irish heritage was to have an influence was as a sports fan:

“I remember when I went to see Celtic feeling this is my football club. I just love that football club, the fans and what they’re about. That’s my international team if you like. I do follow the Republic of Ireland team more so than any other, I ain’t really bothered about England as much now, I used to like to see them do alright but I think over the last number of years I’ve lost all interest. I think it was the Jack Charlton thing that was brilliant. I remember the one game when they played England in the European Championships in West Germany, I think it was 1-0 to Ireland and if they played that game again it might be a different result as England hit the bar and had a couple cleared off the line, the Republic would probably lose 3-1.”

“I remember going into a pub in Tipton called The Rose and Crown and some of my mates going “who yow gonna support then, I bet yow following the Paddies ay yer?” and I remember saying “have I got two horns come out o’ me head?” but they wanted someone to be the opposition and I remember having this conversation and saying “well I think they’ve got a great chance” and them saying “what d’you mean they got a great chance?” But you know, they were drawn from the same teams and Ireland had Paul McGrath from the Villa at that time, he was the best centre half in Europe, and I bet some money with them and they were all “I’ll have some of that, I’ll have some of that” and I was broke and I thought “oh no, I’m going to be about 40 quid out here” Then I remember watching the game and about 7 o clock of the night when the pub opened, I was over there. Two seconds past seven I was in that boozer, “come on!” and they’ve never let me forget that.”

Events like winning a football match or getting excited about a new band may not seem quite so culturally significant in 2015, but Gary reminds us that supporting Ireland in an English pub (on your own) was once a ground breaking, if risky, thing to do. My thanks to Gary O’Dea for his memories.  

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Ariel takes the rocky road: A novella by Paul Murphy

Ariel takes the rocky road is a short novel by Paul Murphy. The story follows the journey of two young men from Belfast, Pierre, a trainee Catholic priest and Sammy, a young loyalist band leader. Paul describes the novella as: 

"a 'coming of age' novella set on the road between Belfast and Dublin, in the summer of 1965. It is about crisis and responsibility, conscience and conformity but ultimately about being true to yourself."

Belfast born Paul Murphy is a well-known writer and musician based in Cotteridge in Birmingham, his creative, musical and literary works go back to the 1960s when he first arrived in England from his Ulster home, at that point on the cusp of the sectarian and political war which became known as 'the Troubles'.

The book title references the popular song Rocky road to Dublin written by D.K. Gavan, for the English music hall performer Harry Clifton (1824-1872). The song describes the many troubles and travails that a 19th century traveller encounters on this travels through the Irish countryside. Murphy's relatively more contemporary protagonists encounter their own troubles and travails as they hitchhike across the border from the unfairly divided north into the  church dominated Republic. On a journey that is often intensely trying, physically, emotionally and spiritually, the two young men grapple with their own inner doubt, frustration, angst and contradiction as they encounter the highs and lows of this uniquely Irish rite of passage.

Paul summaries the plot:

"Sammy Wilson, a young loyalist band leader, isn't marching anymore. Folk music and CND have replaced his sectarian certainties and he's forced to run from home. While selling 'Sanity', he meets the enigmatic Sweeney, a trainee priest in crisis, hiding behind his alter-ego, Pierre Rascal, a fast tongued prankster. Inspired by the mysterious Ariel they travel across 'the border'. Sammy has never been to the Republic before. But it is the ill-defined border between Sweeney and Rascal that proves most contentious. After a night among the destitute and demented in the County Home, Rascal crash lands and Sammy finally understands his dark secret. Unburdened, Sweeney turns to face the future and Sammy's resolve is vindicated. 'I ain't marchin' anymore'."

This is a beautifully told and compelling story which, sometimes gently, sometimes shockingly but always powerfully interrogates and reveals the century-old dynamics of faith, politics and human psychology in the Ireland of 1965. Through captivating descriptive scenes and the gradually building relationship, Paul Murphy is honest, insightful and critically fair as he unpicks and unravels the traditions of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter on the island of Ireland.

A strong theological theme runs through the novella, as Pierre Rascal wrestles with the contradictions of his Catholic faith, whilst Sweeney attempts to rationalise the cultural traditions of his family's Orange conviction. Murphy's deep theological knowledge is evident though always relevant and meaningful for the reader. The book is refreshing in it's honest and fair approach, he is not judging, apologising or blaming, both men are victims and heroes of their respective traditions as well as the cultural and political dynamic which existed between them in 1965 and still exists to a large extent for young people in Ireland fifty years later.

A great read for anyone seeking a balanced and insightful perspective on the traditions of Irish culture and a beautifully descriptive and entertaining story.

Download the e-book for your Kindle at an incredible £1.99
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ariel-takes-rocky-road-novella-ebook/dp/B011WJIP40


  
 

October 2015 article - an interview with Gary O'Dea part 1

Photo of Gary O'Dea at The Blue Piano by Mike Prowse

This month we start the first part of an interview with Black Country born singer-songwriter and guitarist, Gary O’Dea. Born into a small local Irish community in Tipton in the early 1960s, Gary talks candidly about his memories of his grand-parents and how his own identity and life-view have been formed by the merger of both English and Irish working class heritage. Thank you to Jonathan Harris for his technical support recording the interview and to Lisa Travers for hosting the interview at the Blue Piano bar in Edgbaston.

Gary O’Dea grew up in Tipton in the industrial Black Country borough of Sandwell, his grandparents were part of the wave of economic migrants from Ireland who arrived in England during the 1930s: 

“My grandparents were both from Ireland, my granddad was from Nenagh in Tipperary and my nan was from across the Shannon in Killaloe, County Clare. These were my dad’s parents but on my mom’s side, my granddad was from Plymouth and it was only my nan on my mother’s side who was from Tipton, all the other three ended up in the area through work”.

“My Irish grandparents came over in the 30s, they were in Liverpool first and then moved to the Black Country drawn by the local industry. My dad’s oldest brother was born in Ireland, but the rest were all born here. There was at that time and even when I was a kid in Tipton, a small Irish community round the Catholic church and there was the Catholic school, Sacred Heart, but it wasn’t such a strong identity as you’d get in Birmingham or Wolverhampton for the Irishness.”

“There is a story that when my grandparents came over here and moved to Tipton, they moved with the kids to just off Bell Street into an old terraced house, sharing the yard and the communal wash-house which in Tipton we called the brewus. The first day there the kids went out to play and this one woman who was living in the yard, seeing a new family had moved in (my nan and granddad and the kids), the woman gets a bucket of water and throws it all over the kids, cursing them for being Irish. It was something which struck me deeply when I heard the story when I was a kid, which is why I always hate and detest racism.”

I agreed with Gary that this sort of prejudice was nasty and unnecessary, though he suggested that Irish people weren’t the only target:

“Well it’s offensive and disgusting, but you know, it’s always gone on. You can imagine in the industrial revolution round here when people came in from the countryside they experienced the same thing. My granddad from Plymouth, when he came up here, he used to get told to bugger off back to where he came from.”

“But my Irish granddad, when the second world war started, he was from Nenagh in Tipperary, which had a reputation for being rebel country in Ireland and he joined the British army and became a Redcap. I don’t really know for certain, but what I’ve heard is that there was a certain pressure to be accepted in England, because in the Republic at the time you’d got De Valera courting the Germans, the Nazis. Anyway he joined the army and became a Redcap and got sent to Singapore where he was captured by the Japanese and was imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp.”

“Granddad survived the POW camp, but he became very bitter after this experiences and I think the consensus was that it was because he had come to England with good intentions, looking for work, he’s treated like a Paddy so joins the British army to fight in a war he feels isn’t his war. He must have experienced some really traumatic things in the camp and then comes back out of the army to more of the same, “alright Paddy, here’s a shovel, get digging and then sweep that up…”

“But he didn’t talk about it. You’d just pick up the stories from within the family. I think people would talk about it in this day and age but back then, Irish people just had to put up with that type of thing”.

I asked Gary about his own sense of Irish identity, growing up in a town with its own distinctive Black Country heritage. He answered my question with some interesting observations about English identity:

“No to be fair, I think the Irish population was certainly well integrated into Tipton and I think because at whatever time they became accepted there was perhaps not the need to be so strong, I think that may have been one of the things, but in saying that I found that as I got older I connected more with Irishness. I think the thing is for me that Englishness has been stolen, we have had a marketing job done on us because to be English you have to be “Rule Britannia, God Save the Queen” and all that kind of thing. Which is a shame because in any other country if they had people like the Chartists and the Suffragettes and Tolpuddle Martyrs and the massacre of reformists at Peterloo, these people would be celebrated and to the fore and although they are ‘known’, I feel the average English person doesn’t know who they are. English people have done some fantastic things, fighting for social and civil rights but it is not celebrated.”

In the next edition we continue the interview with Gary O’Dea, with some personal memories about his musical influences, seeing The Pogues and winning a bet when Jack Charlton’s Irish soccer team beat England.

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September 2015 article - a tribute to Val and Cilla

 

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and early 1970s, the names Val and Cilla were synonymous with Saturday evening family television. Both Val and Cilla had Irish heritage and, sadly, we have lost them both this summer.

Try telling the young people of today that Val Doonican, the relaxed crooner with the friendly Waterford brogue sitting in a rocking chair with a cuddly cardigan and a glint in his eye singing about Paddy McGinty’s Goat and O’Rafferty’s Motor Car was once a massive star of popular entertainment. Yet at its peak the Val Doonican Show attracted audiences of 19 million viewers every week. Compare this with X-Factor which attracts an average of around 9 million viewers per show with only two blockbusting X-Factor final shows ever having equalled Val’s normal weekly figure. Or consider for a moment that Doonican’s third album, the truly inspired Val Doonican Rocks, But Gently actually knocked the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper off the top of the charts in 1968 and without even a hint of LSD!

Michael Valentine Doonican, born in Waterford in 1927, was the youngest child of eight. His family were very musical and young Val played in the local school band from the age of six. Tired of working in factories in Waterford he teamed up with his pal Bruce Clarke to form a singing duo and during the 1950s he toured England with a group called The Four Ramblers. Doonican’s career in popular entertainment really kicked off in 1963 when he appeared on Sunday Night at the Palladium and the rest, as they say, is history.

But if Saturday evening in front of the television was incomplete without Mr Doonican, exactly the same can be said of Cilla Black who also hosted her own variety show between 1968 and 1976, albeit without the jumper and rocking chair but still with those smiling Irish eyes. Cilla, born in Liverpool in 1943 of Irish roots, became Britain’s biggest selling female pop artist of the Sixties.

Those of us who watched the excellent 2014 drama, Cilla, featuring Sheridan Smith were no doubt fascinated by the story of her rise to fame from the poverty stricken Scotland Road area of Liverpool, and her relationship with Bobby Willis. In the drama, Bobby, who was from a working-class Protestant background, rejects his father’s sectarian prejudices about mixed relationships to follow his love for the effervescent Priscilla, whose great-grandparents were Roman Catholics from Ireland.

After working as a part-time cloakroom attendant at Liverpool’s Cavern Club, where she became friends with the Beatles, Cilla began performing as Swinging Cilla and was signed by Brian Epstein in September 1963, his only female act. Her second single, Anyone Who Had a Heart by Burt Bacharach and Hal David reached number 1 in Britain in February 1964 and sold 800,000 UK copies. In the recent television drama there is a great scene where Cilla has to wait by a telephone box near her Scotland Road home to receive the news about the success of her single from Epstein. A real ‘rags-to-riches’ tale.

But sadly, television in the Sixties wasn’t all glitzy young ladies in mini-skirts and charming old crooners in rocking chairs, as the evening news began to bring us the terrible images of sectarian and political violence on the streets of Northern Ireland. Black and white television was still the norm in working class homes in 1969, even so, the scenes of escalating violence on the 9 o-clock News were shocking and brutal in their bloodiest extreme.

For Irish people in England during this period, there was a well-documented tendency to ‘put their heads down and keep their mouths shut’, particularly when outside of the closely knit Irish neighbourhoods of British cities or when employed in an open workplace. Public opinion was largely formed by the popular press and British newspapers made certain that only one side of the story was ever told.

Amazingly, Irish role models still flourished in Britain, especially in sport and light entertainment. How many of us can recall the whole family whooping joyfully at the television set during that sublime moment when sweet-as-sugar Irish school girl Dana won the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest with All Kinds of Everything? Or every school boy in the land, attempting to emulate the legendary Georgie Best as they dribbled their caser-ball along the playground? Women of every creed and culture, religiously tuning their radios to BBC Radio 2 for Terry Wogan’s breakfast show and their husbands showing equal allegiance to Alex ‘The Hurricane’ Higgins as he won the World Snooker Championship in 1972. Frank Carson, Dave Allen, The Dubliners, Johnny Giles, Van Morrison, Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy …the list suddenly starts to fill up, I am certain that our readers can add many others.

So as we say a fond farewell and offer our prayer of thanks for Val and Cilla, let us also spare a thought for all of the great entertainers of Irish heritage who carried the torch of the diaspora during the 50s, 60s and 70s. For breaking down the barriers of pervasive prejudice and for letting those of us in the younger generations know, through those years of flickering and fuzzy black and white images, that being of Irish descent was something to celebrate not hide away.

Articles - July and August 2015 - The story of Mary Jane Payne

Article – July 2015

In the last edition of The Harp, Professor Carl Chinn wrote about the increase in the number of Irish people recorded in Birmingham in the early 19^th century and how, from the mid-1820s many of these travelled to England from Connacht and the counties west of the Shannon where social, political and economic pressures were becoming worse for the poorest class.

Elsewhere, Carl and other historians have written extensively about the wave of migrants who came to England in still greater numbers during the decade following the Great Hunger. Many modern citizens of Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country can trace ancestors back to their arrival here in the 1850s. The census records of 1851 and 1861 are a very good starting point for finding those big families who came mainly from the western counties during this period, settling in poor neighbourhoods like Newtown in Birmingham and Caribee Island in Wolverhampton.

Unlike British cities like Liverpool and Glasgow, Irish communities in the West Midlands did not close ranks in sectarian based districts for very long and our local cities and towns (to our great credit) are characterised by mixed marriages, mixed workplaces and mixed communities. Having said this, Irish migrants in the West Midlands did often pass down their culture, heritage and values through the generations. In my family for instance, some of my 19^th century ancestors described to me by elders as having been Irish, I subsequently discovered from birth records were actually born here in Birmingham, but it shows that their Irish identity was so strong that their descendants presumed that they were the first generation to arrive even when some of them never even got to visit Ireland in their entire lives.

For many families, the Irish aspects of their identity became watered down through mixed marriage and eventually hidden almost completely. Sometimes all that remained after three or four generations was an Irish surname, sometimes not even that. There are many examples of English surnames taken to Ireland in Elizabethan and Cromwellian times which then, ironically, returned on the travel permits of those fleeing the ravages of the 1847 hunger. My point being that Irish ancestors weren’t always limited to having Irish surnames. 

As a keen genealogist I have discovered Irish ancestors for many of my friends and work colleagues which they had no idea they even had and on this basis I would speculate that many more West Midlanders have Irish ancestors they don’t know about. This may of course become more apparent following the recent promotion of DNA testing kits to reveal genealogical roots.

British boxing champion Bert Kirby

The Payne family of Aston, for example, might have looked on the surface like a typical English working class family - their 19^th century origins were in Stoke in Coventry and the father of the family, Fred Payne born in 1871, became a glass cutter by trade. In the late 1800s the family moved from Coventry to the Newtown area of Birmingham where Fred’s sister Mary Ann Payne married James Kirby of Southampton and this couple had 10 children – including 8 boys, of whom at least 3 became professional boxers. The Kirby family had a reputation for being tough men around Aston and Newtown and their youngest son, Bert Kirby, became the British Flyweight Boxing Champion in 1930.

Fred Payne married Mary Jane Finn, whose Irish parents had arrived in Birmingham from Galway in the early 1850s. A story passed down through the Payne family says that Mary’s father James Finn and his younger brother Thomas walked to Birmingham from Liverpool, which would have been a very common experience for Irish people arriving in the country at that time. But in spite of being brought up in harsh conditions in the courtyard housing of inner city Birmingham, Mary Jane and her sister-in-law, Rose Mary Payne (another of Fred’s sisters) became very wealthy when a relation in New York left them a large amount of money.

This incredible inheritance helped Mary Jane to set up various businesses in the Summer Lane area of the city, including the rental of houses to tenants. Mary Jane’s grandson, Leo Payne wrote in his memoirs how some of Mary’s nephews, the aforementioned Kirby brothers, helped to collect in the rents from those reluctant to pay up on time.

Mary Jane Payne, nee. Finn, also used her money to set up a coach company in Aston in the 1920s which she called Danny Boy Coaches, a name no doubt chosen for its Irish sentiments. In Leo Payne’s memoir, titled Back to Back and Beyond: Memories of a Birmingham childhood he tells how two of Mary Jane’s sons, Fred and Patrick inherited the coach company and eventually split it into two separate companies called Payne’s Comfort Luxury Coaches and Ashted Coaches.

Leo also writes about how his grandmother, Mary Jane Payne, in spite of becoming immersed in the cut and thrust of being a successful female Brummagem entrepreneur, never broke from the Irish culture and values of her parents.

In the next edition of The Harp I will tell more of the story of Mary Jane Payne and her family’s contribution to the Irish community of Birmingham as well as to wider working class life. Read how further research has built on Leo Payne’s memoirs with the discovery of how a Catholic parish in Weoley Castle benefitted indirectly from the New York inheritance.

Article – August 2015

In the last edition of The Harp, I wrote about a Birmingham family named Payne who ran a motor coach company in the city called Danny Boy Coaches. The owner of the company, Mary Jane Payne, nee. Finn, was the daughter of migrants who came to Birmingham from Galway in the 1850s. Like hundreds of other Irish families who came to the city at that time, the Finns had migrated to England to escape the poverty, disease and famine which swept through Ireland during the late 1840s. They settled in the back streets of Newtown close to St Chad’s cathedral, where conditions were harsh but opportunity for folk willing to graft was more plentiful than back home in rural Connaught.

Mary Jane married a Coventry born glass-cutter named Frederick Payne and the couple brought up a large family in Newtown in the 1890s and early 1900s. In the late 1890s the family’s fortunes changed when Mary apparently inherited a lot of money from a relative in America. In his memoirs Back To Back And Beyond, Mary Jane’s grandson Leo John Payne said that the inheritance money was left to Mary and her sister Rose who had to go to Rhode Island to substantiate their claim on the deceased person’s estate.

Leo said that “great generosity was shown by both sisters with regard to donations to the church (St Chad’s). Rose bought or had a house with a large amount of spare ground. She donated the ground to the Catholic church to build a church (a small one). She and my g

Laying the foundation stone of St Rose of Lima

randmother then helped to furnish it. When built, the church was called St Rose of Lima”.

During my subsequent research I discovered that on the website of St Rose of Lima church in Weoley Castle there are some copies of legal letters about the legacy of Rose Mary Smith who left £1000 in 1947 to benefit the church. Another letter from Arthur Gately solicitors to Rev F de Capitain refers to the purchase of 10,725 square yards of land at Gregory Avenue for use as the Weoley Castle School site. It seems likely that some of Rose Smith’s legacy went to these building projects, though the foundation stone for St Rose of Lima Church was not layed until July 1959.

Another interesting discovery in my research was that Rose Mary Smith was not Mary Jane’s sister after all, but her sister-in-law. Rose Mary was the sister of Mary Jane’s husband, Fred Payne, the glasscutter of Coventry.

With her part of the inheritance from the deceased relative on Rhode Island, Mary Jane became somewhat of a business woman in and around Newtown, establishing an early motor bus company. Her Irish roots were evident in her name for the company which she called Danny Boy Coaches. She would eventually leave the company to two of her sons, Frederick and Patrick, who split the business in two and each ran a new coach company which were called Ashted Coaches (due to its location) and Payne’s Coaches.

Like many working class women, Mary Jane was somewhat of a matriarch and as well as her commitment to the family and to the church, she ensured that the Irish traditions of her migrant parents were kept alive in her children. One of her sons, Michael Gerrard was blind and a talented musician. Michael played an astonishing array of instruments including the piano, accordion, bagpipes, organ, mouth organ, clavioline and flute. He played on the radio, at the Paramount (later the Odeon) and at the Queensbury Club in Hurst Street.

Fed and Patrick Payne with friends outside a Hockley pub

But Michael was not the only musical member of the Payne family. In 1935 his brothers Fred and Patrick formed an Irish pipe and drum band with two of their cousins, Jack and Mack. In his memoirs, Leo Payne remembered his grandmother funding the band by buying their instruments and magnificent bandsmen tunics and full regalia. Leo recalled how one March evening the men walked from Tower Street in Newtown to Birmingham city centre wearing their kilted uniforms and carrying their instruments for a St Patrick’s Day concert at the Town Hall.

It must have been a proud night for Mary Jane Payne, nee. Finn, the daughter of poor immigrants from western Ireland who had made her name as a business woman in the back streets of industrial Birmingham. The band played at the same concert a year later in 1936, but this time Mary Jane was too ill to attend and she died of diabetic related illness just one month later, in April that year.

The story of Mary Jane Payne is one of intrigue, endeavour, community spirit, piety and generosity. She was dedicated to her family, faithful to her Catholic beliefs and determined to build success in tough surroundings. Her personal good fortune might not have been typical of the thousands of Irish immigrants who settled the inner city areas of the West Midlands in the 19^th century, but her sense of pride in being Irish undoubtedly was.           

 

Rich by name, rich by nature: Celebrating the legacy of Rich McMahon

With great sadness and shock we have learnt of the death of Rich McMahon on Monday 18 May, a well-known and much loved songwriter and performer from the Irish community of the West Midlands. Born in Coventry, raised in Wicklow but in recent years an adoptive son of Birmingham, Rich was a talented and vibrant performer who was lead singer of The Father Teds for some years before starting a solo career which was bringing him wide acclaim both locally and internationally.

Rich died just days after playing a successful gig at the Hare and Hounds pub in Kings Heath and was due to play a gig in Nuneaton with Sean Cannon of the Dubliners in early July. His death also comes just weeks after the release of his second solo album, Songs of Exile, Love & Dissent, produced by award winning producer Gerry Diver, whose credits include Sam Lee, Lisa Knapp, Christy Moore and Shane MacGowan.

I first saw Rich McMahon playing at the Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath in 2013 and wrote about his gig in my April article that year. What interested me most about Rich McMahon that night was that this was much more than a pub gig by an Irish folk singer. McMahon’s show that night was called ‘The Imagined Nation: Inventing Ireland Through Words, Images and Songs'. Through a sequence of stories and songs with images and words projected on a screen behind him, he told a story of the Irish diaspora which struck a chord for many of us who belong to the second, third, even fourth generations of Irish migration to the UK in that celebrated Year of The Gathering. Nothing against anyone out there who ‘gigs’, but this was more of a social history through story and performing art and coming shortly after I started these regular articles about Irish diaspora and identity in The Harp, it had a strong resonance.

But neither was Rich McMahon high-brow or academic. His performances were musically raw and simple, in the long tradition of Irish folk singing but with contemporary themes and new perspectives. He could get the intimate audience of a back-street bar clapping and stomping and delivered his music with a broad smile and a cheeky glint in the eye. Just like Paul Murphy whom I wrote about last month, McMahon was another contender for our local title of ‘seanchai’ (Celtic storyteller).

Another place where I had the pleasure of watching Rich McMahon enchant an audience was at Moseley Day Centre where social worker Mick Lynch invited him to play for and work with people with learning disability on such a frequent basis and with such impact that, according to Mick, Friday became known to the service users as ‘Rich Day’. Indeed, here was a man who was truly rich by name and rich by nature – rich I mean in generosity, warmth and inspiration.

I am sad that I will never get to interview Rich McMahon for this spot in The Harp, as was my intention. Prior to this news of his death, his wife Maggie had recently sent me a link to one of Rich’s songs on You Tube called Mansion By The River which explored the theme of the colonial relationship between the poor tenant farmers and their protestant landlord who lived in the big mansion. The video on You Tube features Maggie’s father Bob Matthews wandering poignantly through the ruins of one of these said buildings back home in Ireland. Once again, McMahon’s lyrics look deeper than the factual telling of Anglo-Irish history in contemporary history books and touch upon the memories and emotions of real people and communities who lived near to or on these big estates of the past and built long-established relationships with some of these English or even Anglo-Irish landed gentry. McMahon asks the powerful question, a bit like an old building going to rack and ruin, has there been a wholesale neglect of those parts of our past which are most uncomfortable to recall and discuss?

With great sadness we have to acknowledge never being able to see this beaming face again or hear his passionate voice and guitar live. But unlike the mansion by the river, my wish is that McMahon’s rich body of creative work is not forgotten and that we continue to celebrate and enjoy the artistic legacy left to us by this great West Midlands seanchai.

Numbskull - the latest story from Brum's seanchai Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy with David Squire in Numbskull

The tradition of storytelling in Ireland has a long and colourful history. It is embedded in ancient Celtic culture, where the traditional Irish storyteller was known as a seanchai, translated as ‘the bearer of old lore’. Even today the art of the seanchai is thriving in Ireland and there are regional competitions every summer to find out which county has the best local storyteller.

Scratch beneath the surface in Ireland and seanchaithe are to be found in every family and every town in the land, often in bars where they enthral and entertain both visitors and locals with their stories, myths, poems and histories (especially when the dark stuff begins to flow). Some seanchaithe are poets, some are musicians or bards, but all share both a passion and a wild imagination when it comes to transmitting the wisdom, legend and folk-lore through story which is known as glefisa or ‘the bright knowledge’.

A citizen of Birmingham who I believe is a contender for our local title of seanchai is Paul Murphy of Cotteridge. I first met Paul in the early 1980s, shortly after he had given up his teaching job at Holy Trinity school in Small Heath and was carving out a new role as a community educator working for NAME, the National Anti-Racist Movement in Education.

Paul had been living in England since the 1960s and his journey from Belfast and early life in the UK is captured in the verses of one of his own songs where he describes his beatnik lifestyle in the midst of the British hippy movement with nostalgic wit. Paul also has the distinction of being mentioned in the autobiography of heavy metal icon Lemmy from the band Motorhead, with whom he shared digs around that period.

Very often Irish people who lived in Britain during the 1970s will speak of how the community “kept their heads down”, especially in cities like Birmingham which experienced some of the darkest events of the so-called ‘Troubles’. On first meeting Paul one is immediately struck by his gentle and pacifist character, but in front of an audience he is certainly not a man to keep his head down for very long. Paul’s performances are known for his driving energy, he is by no means a rebel rouser but I have witnessed him lift the roof off many a back-street Digbeth public house with just a guitar and the human voice.

In the true bardic style all of Paul’s poems, plays, stories and songs are self-penned and his songs range in style from the roguish stomping megafolk for which he was known when fronting the 12 piece Birmingham band The Destroyers to more tender and haunting acoustic melodies about Dark Rosaleen, The Glen and the Lagan.

Paul’s latest piece of work is not a song but a collaborative feature movie made with David Squire and Birmingham based film director John Humphries. Rather aptly perhaps for our Brummie seanchai, the movie Numbskull is about the skull of the region’s greatest story teller William Shakespeare. Based around the murky legend of how Shakespeare’s skull was stolen from his Stratford grave in the late 1700s and reputedly ended up in a crypt at Beoley, the movie tells the story of two men searching for the skull with the unsettling assistance of a talking beetle.

Shot in locations around Birmingham and surrounding areas, the movie uses powerful imagery and minimal dialogue to tell this strange story exploring local mythology in a contemporary setting. The movie is a beautifully shot, art house production which has used, to quote Paul “a punk methodology to create something of appeal to anyone who loves off-kilter films”.

Paul told me how their small production crew, Compact Cinema, set out with minimal resources to make a feature movie. Having worked on various film based projects with John Humphries over the last couple of decades, Paul was acutely aware of John’s huge technical and artistic talent both behind a camera and sat in the editing seat. Fed up with the customary process of traipsing around grant making bodies to try and get funding for such a venture, the team decided to quite literally ‘do it themselves’ (hence the use of “a punk methodology”) and Compact Cinema and Numbskull were thus born.

Numbskull was premiered in March this year at the Electric Cinema in Station Street, Birmingham as part of the Flat Pack Film Festival. From beginning to end it is an engaging and entertaining piece of cinema, an intriguing study of a very odd relationship powerfully told with moments of comedy, pathos and beautiful locational photography. The two main parts played by Paul and David Squire were quite brilliant and their unfolding relationship was captivating as the psychological power of Shakespeare’s gravestone curse took hold in the most interesting ways. In the style of a Roald Dahl short story, this tale has more than one unexpected twist.

I am hoping that Compact Cinema will get the movie screened at more local film festivals in the future as this is one movie I would like to watch again. I am also pleased to affirm that the art of the seanchai is alive and well in the urban West Midlands!

Echoes of the 1798 Rebellion still heard in Wexford

In the last edition of The Harp I reproduced some short oral history interviews sent via email by Margaret Gilbert of Gorey in Co. Wexford. The interviews were carried out by teachers and children from Wexford schools in the 1930s, part of the ‘Schools Collection’ which was a countrywide exercise carried out under the direction of the Department of Education at that time. Even these short extracts, one about the Land League and one about a local eviction, show us the importance of gathering stories from people in their communities.

During the past few weeks I have carried out some more research into the history of the county of Wexford and have been amazed at the powerful way that social memory has been transmitted very accurately in the area by word of mouth for many generations, in some instances for over 200 years. History books tell us that Wexford was one of the main areas of the 1798 Rebellion, an uprising led by Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen which affected large parts of Ireland but was probably most fiercely experienced in Wexford.

The brutality of the 1798 Rebellion in Wexford is comparable to some of the worst modern conflicts we see on the world news today, though it is difficult to imagine such events taking place in the tranquil rural surroundings of this beautiful Irish county, with its friendly market towns and picturesque seaside villages. Yet thousands of poor Irish farmers rose up against the oppressive tyranny of British rule and, fighting with long picks against soldiers with guns, they took control of the whole county.

But the victory of the Wexford rebels was short lived and retribution was swift and brutal. Rebels underwent such tortures and punishments as ‘half-hangings’ and ‘pitch-capping’, the latter meaning that a prisoner had hot pitch poured over his head and was then left in a public place as it dried. Many were simply rounded-up and shot in the fields and town squares. It has to be recognised that the atrocities occurred on both sides and the local Protestant community of Wexford also became victims of the violence. But as one digs deeper and discovers the full impact of this short but awful period on the people of Wexford, it is hardly surprising that the echoes of 1798 can still be heard today.                

For the people of Wexford, the events of the 1798 Rebellion have a similar importance in terms of local heritage as the 1847 Hunger has in Connaught or the 1916 Easter Rising has in Dublin. But whilst it seems that every village and town in Wexford has a monument to the Rebellion and a local written account, what is more significant is the stream of transmitted memory where local people of the older generation still talk of local people and events as if they happened in their own lifetimes, not 200 years ago.

My correspondent Margaret Gilbert, who is a local historian in Wexford, told me the seeds of some stories, like the story of John Mellon from Monaseed who frequented the market in Gorey in the late 1790s, using the opportunity to circulate information about the whereabouts of the enemy. Margaret told me that John was shot at the Battle of Ballyellis but nothing is written of him.

She suggested I telephoned a gentleman named Aiden McDonald who is 85 years old and lives with his daughter at the post office in Camolin. I duly called Mr McDonald who told me he was a descendant of the John Melon in the eviction story we published last month and also the John Melon of the 1798 Rebellion, the first man mentioned probably being the grandson of the second. Mr McDonald told me: 

“John Mellon, the man who was threatened with eviction, was my great grandfather. He lived at Monaseed near Gorey on a small farm. He was out in the Land League. He was living on an estate that belonged to William Foster. The estate was divided up and they started to evict all the tenants. The tenants at Monaseed were evicted and 5 farms built on it.”

I asked Mr McDonald about the man named John Mellon who was shot in the 1798 rebellion. He said that this man used to go to the markets at Gorey where they sold pigs on Fayre Day. Mr McDonald told me that John Mellon made mats to sell at the fayre. He said that he learnt to make mats whilst in prison. It was at the fayres that he watched the English landlords and picked up information. Mr McDonald spoke of his ancestor John Melon almost as if he actually knew him, which I felt reinforced the power of the storytelling tradition in rural Ireland – if the rich have fine oil paintings by which to remember their ancestors, the poor have constructed their portraits through the spoken word. I would wish to thank Margaret Gilbert and Aiden McDonald for sharing these fascinating social memories with us.