A new project underway in London is archiving the stories of Britain's largest ethnic minority - Irish people, many of whom will never return home, writes Anne Flaherty
LISTENING TO Glenn Cumiskey describe his work, he can seem more like a man conducting an emotional excavation than a trained archivist recording the stories of Irish emigrants in Britain. But his subject is profound and often painful, detailing the experience of an Irish generation who have long remained unheard. For the past four months, he has travelled with his tape recorder from one Irish centre to another in south London to help give them a voice.
"Capturing a moment in time," is how the 39-year-old from south Armagh describes his work. He asks his subjects - all pensioners in their 70s or 80s - to remember long-buried memories from childhood, of taking the boat to England and the difficulties of adapting to life in their new environment. The majority left Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s to escape harsh economic circumstances. But every narrative of exile is different.
"When I first start I find they have a little 10-minute biography in their heads as to what they think I would like to know," he says. "But then the real life story comes out. If there is anything too personal I check if they want to include it and they generally say 'Yes, it's part of the story'."
The oral archive is a pilot project funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, and encouraged by David Cooney, the Irish ambassador, who will be the next secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs and who is also the child of Irish emigrants to London.
Cumiskey, who worked with the traditional Irish music archive in Dublin before moving to London five years ago, aims to conduct up to 200 interviews in the first year.
It is often said that the Irish are the largest ethnic group in Britain. There are at least 1.7 million people born to Irish parents but some estimates put the number of Irish descent in Britain at six million. This first phase of the oral archive will record only first-generation Irish but has the potential to expand.
"It's groundbreaking. I think it has got the potential to be one of the most important oral-history projects in the history of the State. In years to come [it] might be able to expand to include second-generation Irish in Britain, the Irish who return home, even the Irish in America."
Travelling to the homes of some emigrants, he has often encountered a physical environment far removed from the Ireland they left behind.
"I recently interviewed a woman from Glenties who retained her soft Donegal lilt but the sound outside was from teenagers driving by with blaring rap music. Yet that is part of her story, the physical environment in which she lives is a council flat in south London."
The majority of those who emigrated to Britain retain a strong sense of their Irish identity, even after 50 years away, although occasionally they lapse into an English phrase or intonation. And there are some common themes and experiences; women frequently describe a family member's struggle with alcohol, for example. There is also the pain of separation from loved ones who, in the days before cheap flights, were seen only once or twice a year.
Coming to Britain was also a culture shock. "Nearly everyone remembers seeing a black person on the streets in England for the first time," says Cumiskey. "And people find it very upsetting to talk about the death of their parents back home."
While they feel very strongly Irish, when asked if they would move home, the vast majority say no, citing better healthcare, transport and the absence of living family members in Ireland.
Next year, Cumiskey hopes to expand the project around Britain and to put together a touring exhibition to publicise the project. Ultimately he hopes that the material will be in a national archive in the UK and Ireland, and available on the web.
THE MAISONETTE Michael Hopkins shared with his brother for nearly 40 years bears a few reminders of their Irish origins. Two holy pictures sit on the mantelpiece alongside an ornament of a thatched cottage and a black and white photograph of their mother. She died of tuberculosis in 1931 when Hopkins was six.
Outside is the urban sprawl of south London - office blocks and council high-rise buildings, the roar of traffic on the Walworth Road. Beyond the balcony, a squirrel flits through the bare branches of a tree.
Hopkins (83) emigrated from Dublin just after the second World War and is one of the many people Cumiskey has interviewed. Poverty and a miserable childhood drove him to take the boat.
After his mother's death he and his two siblings, Patrick and Maureen, were put into care by their father, who went to England and remarried. Michael and Patrick ended up at the Artane boys' home. The cruelty he witnessed there turned him away from the Catholic church and he also believes that his fractured childhood made it difficult to form long-term relationships with women. "I did have girlfriends, but, you know . . . marriage wasn't for me. I think it was just the circumstances."
His brother and sister also emigrated to England.
Hopkins got his "exit" from Ireland when he heard there was a manpower shortage in the Royal Air Force just after the war. He enlisted and served for several years, but his main career was as a tailor, a trade he learned in the boys' home in Artane. A succession of jobs and flats in post-war Manchester and London followed until the two brothers set up home in the third-floor council flat in Elephant and Castle where Michael still lives. He has no great pull towards the "old land", and no desire to go back. "I've visited on holidays but I wouldn't move back now - who would I go to?"
His sister Maureen died some years ago, divorced and battling alcohol addiction. The police had to break into the house to recover her body.
For many years, Hopkins worked for a uniform company and was the manager of a branch. At one point, a plan was mooted to move back to Dublin and for all three siblings to live together. But his brother Paddy refused to go, and Michael wouldn't leave without him.
But with both now in their 80s, their own fragile family unit is all but sundered. Two years ago, having nursed him at home with the help of carers, Michael was forced to admit Paddy to a nursing home due to multiple health problems.
"The Irish Centre helped me relocate him from the first place, which was awful, but now that's closed and he's shifted to Lambeth. Some days I feel he's slipping - he gets agitated and now they've put him on tablets to sleep. He's lost a lot of weight."
Some nights Michael visits the local pub for company, and he is visited at home by a volunteer from the local Irish centre. Things have changed in his neighbourhood. Now the neighbours are from Nigeria and Bangladesh. Most of his Irish friends are dead or returned home when they retired. He doesn't fear his own death. "The only thing I worry about is dying in the street. You'd want it to be in your own place."
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