This is a picture of me in 1977 picketing Hull Irish Catholic MP Kevin McNamara’s surgery alongside other women and men in the local National Abortion Campaign branch. Later, he was as useless for the Irish community in Britain as he was for women. Returning to my Irish Mancunian and Catholic working- class family I did not get the response I expected.
When I returned home proudly wearing my NAC badge to my amazement my parents told me they supported abortion because they had seen so many terrible things happen to women in Ireland. They were also probably secretly happy that I was not involved in Irish politics… but that would come later.
My politics were shaped by those of my family. Overtly by my dad’s (Patrick) Republican and socialist ones, and covertly by my mother’s (Betty) more subliminal ones of “don’t get married,” “make sure you earn your own money – and keep it!” They were part of the generation that had escaped Ireland after the Second World War and were wanted over here for their labour – but not otherwise valued.
My mum told me she was free here, she had been able to live with her friends, get a job (and be paid) and was able to do what she wanted outside of work hours. She probably did have more freedom than most of the working -class women she worked with.
Getting married changed all that for her; but like many families we benefited from the post war Welfare State. I represented that “advancement” when I got a place at university in 1976.
But as I grew up, I became aware of the real world my parents inhabited. Around us in Manchester in the 1970s Irish homes were being raided by the police, innocent political activists such as the Gillespie sisters were framed and sent to prison and the Irish community retreated from voicing their views about Britain’s continuing colonial presence in the North of Ireland.
During the summer holidays I went to work at the local factory where my mother worked part time. For the first time I heard people making anti-Irish comments. When I told the women I worked with that I was making money to go to Ireland to see my family there they were horrified. They told me I would be blown up because that is what happened to English people who went to Ireland. I suddenly realised what my mother must have been experiencing as she had an Irish accent., though I do not think I talked to her about it.
Later, I found out that Irish women experienced racism differently from men. My father worked (or rather was exploited) by an Irish firm with mainly Irish workers but Irish women, like my mum, were vulnerable after an IRA bombing, and might be abused verbally or as happened to a friend’s mother, might be refused service in a shop.
Working in Liverpool in 1982 it was through my involvement in my union, National Association of Local Government Officers, that I came across women who were pushing for better terms and conditions for women members: not just equal pay but negotiating time off for women to have a raft of health checks.
Over the years I have been a trade union activist and been inspired by and written about many women from history, who were active in the trade union and labour movement.
In 1985 I was living in Bolton and came across a branch of the Irish in Britain Representation Group. IBRG was a group of working-class women and men who were part of a grassroots, national organisation that had been set up 1981 to raise the issue of Britain’s colonial role in the north of Ireland; campaign against anti-Irish racism and discrimination; and promote Irish culture, history, and language.
IBRG reflected not just a more politicised generation of Irish born in this country, but an organisation that was 50/50 women and men. From 1981-2003 there was a female president (Maire O’Shea), two female chairs (Bernadette Hyland and Virginia Moyles) as well a Women’s Subcommittee, a Women’s Officer, IBRG women’s meetings, while in common to many radical organisations at that time, crèches were provided for all national meetings.
IBRG was an organisation that ensured that it took up issues affecting women in Britain and Ireland. This included sisters in Britain taking up issues including strip searching, divorce, abortion, and contraception.
Women and progressive men dominated the organisation and few arguments took place at meetings around these issues. But in my branch in Manchester a group of reactionary men had dominated the organisation until I joined in 1986.
Moving the meetings away from a Catholic club which was not easy for women to get to (or want to get to) and recruiting women drove these men out. Our branch had women with children, working class women as well as students and professionals such as myself.
The sexism came from the traditional Irish community organisations; particularly from (and well named!) the Council of Irish Associations – the CIA. They tried to get our women’s day excluded from the council-run Manchester Irish Festival as well as an event on the Birmingham 6 campaign.
The Council was run by a left -wing Labour group that had adopted many progressive policies on Ireland due to the activity of the Labour Committee on Ireland locally and nationally.
The Council made sure we were involved in all the events and initiatives that they rolled out to the Irish community. They also took up the issue of anti-Irish racism and were prepared to challenge organisations that included Irish jokes or slurs in their material.
IBRG, like many community- based organisations, offered experience and opportunity to women to become active on many issues. Working-class women benefited the most because it gave them the confidence to change their lives which also meant they changed society. Today, those women are absent from many organisations and society is poorer because of it.
Reading this book reminded me when I joined on a protest sometimes in the 1980s outside the West Midlands Police HQ for the Birmingham 6. I remember the children and grandchildren of the imprisoned men who stood alongside campaigners. They too, have an important story to tell.
Of course, unlike the people in this book, they were not the children of combatants, but survivors of a conflict that affected the Irish community in Britain in different ways.
Written in 2011 Bill Rolston’s book is groundbreaking in giving a voice to the children of the war in Ireland. He is the right person to produce the book, coming from Republican West Belfast where he worked as a youth worker and personally knew many of the families. I think this insight is invaluable in any research and missing from much of the academic books produced about working-class history. To quote my friend, historian and communist Eddie Frow, “there is bosses’ history and workers’ history.” This is definitely workers’ history.
Many books have been written about the Northern Ireland conflict but, as Bill says: “towards the bottom of the narrative ladder is the story of the children and the conflict, and within that, the direct voice of children of combatants has barely been heard at all. To tell at least part of that story is the reason for this book.”
The combatants were members of Republican and Loyalist militarised groups in the North during the thirty years of the conflict; chiefly, the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army one side and the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association on the other side, although there some small groups.
Of the 20 children interviewed by Bill only two had parents who were not combatants.
Reading their stories makes for an emotional experience, even though as an activist in the Irish in Britain Representation Group and having been involved with prisoners’ campaigns, I was aware of some of their experiences.
Their stories are the stories of childhoods lived out in a war zone and the constant presence of police and army in their homes and on their streets; of parents taken away for long absences; of journeys to prison; and of broken up relationships.
One of the issues that struck me is that of class. Most of the families were from poor families and the impact of their father (and sometimes their mother, too) being incarcerated was not just a devastating emotional blow but an economic one.
Jeanette Keenan, daughter of lifelong Republican Brian Keenan, had a very different life, even from other Republican children. She says; “we did live in poverty in that mammy had to sustain six children with virtually no money.” Brian was in prison in England and money had to be found if they were to visit him there. Her mother got together with the mother of framed prisoner Paul Hill of the Guildford 4 who was also trekking across to England to visit him and together jointly forced the Department of Health and Social Security to provide the money for a monthly visit to the men. Over the years in this country prisoners support groups were started up to support the prisoners and their families.
But, on a visit to London by herself, her mother was arrested and held in prison for a year whilst awaiting trial. Jeanette was now 15 and her brother 17 so they stayed in the family home , looking after themselves. “When my mammy went on family visits, we all knew how to run the house; she had taught us that.”
Jeanette went on to become involved in Tar Anall, a youth project to support the children of republican prisoners.
Speaking to children from the Loyalist community proved more difficult for Bill. “Republican ex-prisoners have been traditionally more rooted in their community and less likely to be wary of breaking cover.” Some of the children he interviewed from the Loyalist community did not want to their names or the names of their fathers to be used.
John Lyttle, son of Tommy “Tucker” Lyttle a leading member of the UDA West Belfast Brigade, was happy to use his name and talk freely about his relationship with his father. He grew up in a household where one night he went downstairs to find his father torturing a man in his kitchen.
John had a secret life. “Thank God I was gay. I was able to stand outside, live in parallel and look in. I never bought it.” When he was 18 years old, he left Ireland and has lived and worked as a journalist over here since then.
This is an important book. There are few books that allow the children of activists, including those who were active in the Irish community in this country, to tell their story and to explain how it has affected them in their lives.
My overwhelming response to the stories is one of admiration for the children and their amazing fortitude in growing up in a society with so much violence. As Bill says :“In the end, some individuals were clearly traumatised by their experience, but all display a remarkable level of resilience in the face of what violent conflict brought their way.”
In the history of the Irish in Britain Representation Group many women were active; but, as in other organisations, their role has been often marginalised and underestimated.
One of those women was Margaret Mullarkey of Bolton IBRG. Sadly, she is now dead, so I turned to her daughters, Bernadette and Nuala, to find out more about her life and activity within IBRG, in the Bolton community and as their mother and Joe’s wife.
Margaret was born in Bolton with no Irish connections until she met and married Joe Mullarkey.
She was born on 24 April 1945 into a family of seven children. Her father was an alcoholic while her mother died when she was 13 years old. And Margaret then became responsible for bringing up her two younger brothers. She finished secondary school and then gained catering qualifications through a job at a local Army barracks where she met her first husband. They had 2 children – Tracy and George – but the marriage failed and her brothers helped her escape.
Looking for a new relationship she wrote a letter to the local paper and Joe Mullarkey replied. In 1972 they married and had two children; Bernadette born that year and Nuala in 1974. On marriage Joe adopted Margaret’s children by her first marriage.
Joe worked in a local factory; Margaret would work at night in various places, including a cinema and a bingo hall.
In 1981 Joe was one of the founders of the IBRG. Their life would change when he started a Bolton branch in 1983. He recalled: “My motivation in convening the inaugural meeting of the Bolton branch of IBRG in 1983 was to give a voice to Irish people like myself whose views and concerns particularly in relating to events in Northern Ireland were never heard as a community and we were treated with derision, grossly stereotyped by the media as drunken, stupid, bigoted, and sectarian.”
Joe was an activist in his trade union, a republican and socialist. His politics would dominate the life of the family.
Margaret’s politics according to her daughter Nuala, were “grounded in coming from a poor, unequal community. She cared for people; in the local youth club, in the older people’s group.”
Margaret and Joe wanted their children to have a better education than themselves. Bernadette remembers how she wanted to learn the flute but there were no peripatetic teachers in her school. “Mum would pick me up from school and we would spend an hour on the bus so that I could get to a music lesson.”
Typically, Margaret and Joe lobbied the local Council for music lessons for all children and by the time Nuala wanted to learn the violin the Council was employing music teachers in the schools across the borough.
Bolton IBRG revived Irish culture in the local area and Margaret was involved in creating Irish dances and encouraged Bernadette and Nuala to get involved with Irish dance and music.
Bernadette was in her school orchestra and when they were scheduled to play for the local Freemasons Joe asked her not to take part and she agreed. “He used to pick me up after the concerts but would not come in until after the National Anthem had been played!”
I asked them if they remember any problems they had as young people with Joe having a prominent local profile. Nuala says “We were not unique. We went to school with the children of Paula and Noel Spencer who were IBRG members and Labour councillors. We knew Neil Duffield’s (chair of Bolton Trades Council and Bolton Socialist Club) children .”
Nuala does remember going around to an English friend’s house and the news was on with an item about the IRA. “The reaction was ‘put them all against the wall and shoot them.’ I was shocked that people did not have a clue. We were more informed than our English friends. But I was young and just kept quiet.”
Nuala went to work for Bolton Council , and with her father’s prominence locally, she says: “I was tested by them, asking my opinion but I just kept out of it.”
Looking back, Nuala reflects: “Growing up Irish in England there was a responsibility to get involved. Mum and Dad wanted us to keep the connection through going to GAA matches and Irish dancing and music.”
Bernadette says: “Mum was always 100% supportive of Dad’s politics. She expressed her politics through her compassion for vulnerable people and would do anything to help people.”
The work that women do in groups such as IBRG is often unrecognised. Margaret for instance only attended one national meeting in Manchester where she ran the creche.
In 1986 She went on the annual International Women’s Delegation to the North of Ireland, Coming from a similar background she could relate to the poverty and oppression of the family she stayed with on a West Belfast council estate. She kept in touch with the family, and when she returned, she encouraged other women to go on the delegation.
The Mullarkeys were very active in the cultural life of the Irish in Bolton: activities that in the 1980s was seen as political. Margaret and Joe were harassed locally through smears about their Bolton Irish Festival being a “fundraiser for the IRA” which was a headline in the local paper.
In previous eras it could have meant the whole family arrested and charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. IBRG existed so that Irish people could express their Irishness in everything from a cultural festival to an opinion on Britain’s role in Ireland.
In the 2000s IBRG folded. Joe and Margaret retired to Ireland. Joe kept up his activity for disabled people while Margaret created a new life for herself in Mayo.
Margaret died in 2019, Joe in 2022.
Bernadette, now married with her own children, is proud of her Irish heritage. “After Joe left, I took over his role as chair of Comhaltas in Bolton and today I am still a member.” Nuala now lives in Ireland with her husband and children and is not involved in politics. “We are living in different times, and although my children were born in England, they see themselves as Irish.”
The lives and commitment of Margaret and Joe show how working-class people can change their own lives and their community for the better.
Madeline Linford (1895-1975) was born and brought up in Manchester until she was sent to a boarding school in Surrey. At the age of 18 she started working in the advertising department of the Manchester Guardian where promotion led to a job in the editorial department, In 1919 the editor, CP Scott, asked her to go to Europe to report on the post-war conditions in Austri and Poland, and on her return she became the paper’s first Women’s Page editor. Madeline also wrote a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and five novels, the last of which, Out of the Window, was published in 1930.
Essentially a story about class, Madeline brings together the two protagonists, Ursula and Kenneth, at house of a friend who has asked Kenneth, a trade unionist and engineer, to speak about a local strike.
Ursula, a middle-class young woman from the leafy suburbs, is taken with the good-looking working-class speaker, very different from Charles, a friend who wants to marry her : “a young man and quite dreadfully rich.”
Madeline is writing about the social class she comes from and that is where the strength of the novel lies. In the character of Kenneth and the other working-class characters she flounders, reverting to stereotypes. We have no idea why Kenneth is a speaker at the house, other than a passing mention of trade unions and a strike. His life at work does not exist in the book, neither his job nor his involvement in his union.
I feel that Madeline did not know many working -class people, nor visited their homes , nor understood their way of life. There is little written in her novel that is positive about Kenneth, his mother ora local woman, Dorothy.
Yet in 1930 in Manchester, which is where I am assuming she based the novel, there was a thriving leftwing and working -class community. Women were active in the trade unions, they went on strike and marched for equality and justice.
Manchester 1932 Spinworkers strike.
As a character Ursula reflects the social class that Madeline came from herself, except that Madeline started working at 18. Ursula does not work, amuses herself with voluntary work but her life is totally centred around herself and her privileged lifestyle.
The novel really only comes alive when Ursula and Kenneth marry and start life together in a corporation house. Without servants and with no real experience of cooking, cleaning, and managing on her husband’s wage, Ursula struggles to to adapt to her new role. To her unmarried aunt who visits her , Ursula laments:“You know, there ought to be some other solution for girls in love…The marriage service should be postponed until they had lived together for a while and the glamorous side of it had got less interesting.”
In Out of the Window East Manchester meets East Didsbury, and while it is a well written novel, for me it lacks authenticity in its descriptions of working- class people in the 1930s.
Lorenza Mazzetti (1927-2020) was a writer, filmmaker, and theatre puppeteer who wrote this, her first novel, in 1962, published as II Cielo cade. It was only published in this country in 2022.
“The Sky is Falling” is a fictionalised account of the early years of her life. Born in Italy, Lorenza’s mother died when she was a child and her father sent her, and her younger sister, to live with his sister and her husband on a farm in Tuscany. Lorenza was brought up in a highly cultured family: her uncle was Robert, the cousin of Albert Einstein. We know little about her aunt. She had two cousins, Anna Maria, and Luce.
In the novel it is Penny (much younger than Lorenza at the time) who is the main character, and drives the narrative of the book. Together with her younger sister (whom she calls Baby) they are taken to school in a chauffeur-driven car. A Catholic school, Jesus and Mussolini dominate the life of the school and the students.
Lorenza expresses this as each chapter begins with a brief statement called a pensierino inwhich Italian students are expected to write to practise their spelling etc. One exercise reads : “We love Mussolini as if he were our own father.”
Penny and Baby lap up the organised militarisation of the school, singing fascist hymns, dressing up as little fascists, and becoming a part of the seamless marriage of Mussolini and Catholicism.
But Penny and her sister are constantly attacked by the teachers and the Catholic priests as the uncle they live with is a Jew, while they do not attend church. She agonises: “I had to save Uncle Wilhem, Aunt Katchen, Marie and Annie along with the guests and the Pekingese dog. And then, of course I had to save myself and Baby.”
Outside of the school Penny plays with the local kids, hanging upside from the trees and doing back flips. Upset by her cousins, she seeks a motherly figure in the cook: “I’d cried a lot and then I’d gone to stand between Elsa’s knees so she would comfort me, and Baby had followed.”
We know what happens in Italy in the 1930s and, although there is much joy in the story, the war dominates their lives, bringing hatred and death to her family. Her life is shattered when the Germans invade her home and kill her Jewish family. Penny and Baby are saved because they have Italian names. “What can a child do to change the rules or the choices of grownups. Nothing.”
Lorenza dedicated the book to her uncle, aunt and cousins. “This book attempts to describe the joy and happiness that their family gave me during my childhood, welcoming me as an “equal” though I was only “equal” to them in joy and “different” at the moment of death.”
After the war Lorenza came to England to work on a farm, like many displaced people. Her story is taken up in her book “London Diary.” Life changes again when she becomes part of the Free Cinema movement of the 1950s in London.One of her most powerful films, completed with the assistance of Lindsay Anderson, is called “Together.” Made in 1950s London, and shot in black and white, it follows two men – who are deaf and dumb – as they navigate working on the docks, living in a boarding house, and drinking in the local pub. And the local children are there, racing after the men, pulling faces, and using the docks as a giant playground.
Buy the “Sky is Falling” from women’s cooperative News from Nowhere.
The Working Class Movement Library collects badges as part of archiving the history of the labour movement. Recently a new collection of Irish badges was donated.
As a member of the Irish in Britain Representation Group whose archive (and badge collection) is now in the WCML I immediately wanted to view the collection and see if I recognised them. I was unable to find out who donated them and therefore the story, so far, about how and why they were collected is a mystery.
This new collection records the Irish struggle in Ireland; none of the badges refer to campaigns in this country. It is hard to find, in the labour movement, few badges that record women’s struggles and it is a similar story in the history of Ireland.
This badge (above) is unusual in recording the campaign of Irish women political prisoners in Armagh Jail. Armagh was the only women’s prison for political prisoners. Most women were under 25 and the population of the prison varied from 60-120.
When the British Government withdrew Special Category Status ( being treated as political prisoners) alongside the men in Long Kesh Prison (their protest had started in 1978) the women responded by a “No work protest” and the women refused to wash, use the toilet, empty chamber pots or clean their cell. The worsening sanitary conditions led to abuse by the prison guards. In 1980 three women took part in the Long Kesh Hunger Strike. There are many badges about the men’s Hunger Strike but this is the only one that I have seen that records the women’s protest.
The Hunger Strikes of 1981 sparked protests across the world- and in the Irish community over here. It led to a group of people, from different generations of the Irish community, to decide to set up an organisation that would give a voice to the demands of Irish people and make the link between British colonialism in Ireland and the state and status of the Irish in Britain. This organisation was the Irish in Britain Representation Group.
Between 1980 and 1986 the strip searching of female republican women prisoners in Armagh Prison became a local, national, and international issue. The women interpreted its use as a weapon of war against them personally and the wider republican community.
Three years after IBRG was set up the Minutes record at the Ard Feis/AGM that a motion was passed, sponsored by Manchester IBRG calling for “The ending of strip searching in Armagh Jail and the organisation of a campaign in Britain against strip-searching.”
A national campaign against strip searching was set up in Britain and meetings were held across the country. Organisations that were involved included the IBRG, Women and Ireland Groups, Troops Out Movement, London Irish Women’s Centre, and Labour Women for Ireland.
On 23 March 1985 the IBRG held their AGM/Ard Fheis at Brent Town Hall, Wembley. It agreed to affiliate to the National Committee to Stop the Strip Searches.
1985 was the year when IBRG President Moira O’Shea and others were arrested. It was the year when IBRG member Bernadette Hyland attended the annual Women’s Delegation to the North of Ireland and spoke about the use of strip searching at Armagh Prison on a local BBC Manchester community radio programme called Irish Line and run by Manchester IBRG. It led to the replacement of the programme by a more docile show and presenters in a new Irish community programme called Come Into the Parlour.
1985 Women’s Delegation to Ireland
The use of strip searching of Irish women did not just happen in the North of Ireland. It was used against other Irish women prisoners in England including Moira O’Shea and many women active on Ireland.
In 1985 at a regional IBRG meeting (Ard Choiste) in London a motion protesting the strip searching of Irish political prisoners in Brixton Jail of Ella O’Dwyer and Martina Anderson was passed.
In 1987 a Women’s Committee was set up in IBRG. Women were prominent in the organisation from its beginnings but were not represented in officer roles.
Women from IBRG went on the annual Women and Ireland delegations to the North of Ireland to stand with the women at Armagh Prison and extend solidarity with the republican community. Bolton working class IBRG member Margaret Mullarkey went on the delegation in 1986. Here is her report.
Strip searching was an issue that was constantly on the agenda in IBRG national and local meetings. Members were asked to join the campaign and attend the pickets of Brixton prison where Irish political prisoners Martina Anderson and Ella O’Dwyer were being held.
On 20th March 1988 the IBRG March for Justice went from Hyde Park to Kilburn with over 1,000 marchers. The speakers at the rally included Teresa McCann from the Strip Search campaign.
March for Justice 1988
In the same year the IBRG magazine an pobal eirithe featured an article by National Officer Virginia Moyles on a conference she had attended on the “Campaign against Strip Searching”. Organised by the London Strategic Policy Unit on 5 December 1987 at Lambeth Town Hall. Speakers highlighted the way in which it was now being used against many individuals and groups.
A resolution was passed saying “It is a technique of repression used systematically against Irish republican women and it is now being used increasingly against Black and Asian women, Black youth, political activists, lesbians and gay men, and against people in prisons and at customs, in police custody at military establishments and even in the streets.”
In 2023 the use of strip searching is widespread – even against children. In March 2023 a report by the Children’s Commissioner highlighted that ‘strip searches of children under stop and search powers have a pronounced and deeply concerning ethnic disproportionality’.
The formation of the Irish in Britain Representation Group, a national grassroots-based community organisation in the 1980s, challenged the traditional Irish organisation – the Federation of Irish Societies – and its toadying to the Irish Government over the relationship between Britain and Ireland.
In 1984 on the lead up to an anti-internment march IBRG issued a press release calling ‘on all Irish organisations and individuals to give full support to the Rally. We (IBRG) call on Irish people to stand up for their rights in Britain and join us on the march to show clearly that the PTA will not intimidate us or silence our voice. We ask them to remember the previous generations of the Irish in Britain who stood up and marched for Irish unity and freedom, and we ask them to march in that proud tradition. Let us all march together to show that we stand with the Irish people against British oppression and colonial rule in Ireland.’
IBRG March for Justice. credit T.Shelly
In this groundbreaking new book Patrick Anderson shows what we as an organisation (and those who supported us) were up against. He examines the British media’s role during the war by comparing how it reported the “Troubles” with a similar conflict in Algeria. He shows how the British press were ( and are) intrinsically conservative and pro- establishment and were quite happy to take on the British government’s narrative with little questioning. He also shows how most of the British Left, with some honourable exceptions, ignored human rights abuses in Ireland.
The British Army’s media campaign began in 1969. According to Anderson: “…by 1972 some 262 civilians and police and 1,858 army officers had received media training”. Reporters who went to Ireland and tried to report the reality of the War were threatened, harassed, and even told that they would face legal action for challenging the Army’s version of events and killings. “Bernard Falk was imprisoned for four days under contempt legislation: Duncan Campbell was tried for treason under the Official Secrets Act.”
This is a complex and compelling study of the war in the North of Ireland and the comparisons with France’s war in Algeria. Many activists on Ireland, like myself, will be surprised to find that politicians in Paris described Algeria as France’s Ireland and that a British cabinet discussed withdrawal under the code word “Algeria.” It is not a surprise that the British portrayed themselves as pursuing a policy of “restraint” in their war while the French in Algeria were seen as “ruthless.”
But this policy of “restraint” is exposed by Anderson. “Accusations of British torture were rejected as IRA propaganda or unavoidable excesses, even schoolboy antics. Official British sources were accepted and defended.”
Reviewing this book and looking at IBRG history I see a major gap in that it fails to acknowledge the work of our organisation (and others) in challenging the British narrative of acting as a referee between two warring communities and in exposing how the war in Ireland impacted and undermined the human rights of the Irish on both sides of the water, as well as the democratic institutions in both countries.
“Rewriting the Troubles” is a pioneering book, telling a complex and yet recurrent story of imperialism in the Irish context. Britain is still involved in Ireland, the story is not over, even though most people on this side of the water may think /hope it is. This book is an important contribution to understanding the complex story between the two islands.
Chris Searle is a poet and a teacher. This is his autobiography, spread over two books. In the first book he writes about his greatest influence the East London Jewish poet Isaac Rosenberg. Chris, unlike Isaac, came from a lower middleclass English family, but failed the 11+ exam and went to the secondary modern school which in those days, the mid-1950s, and for most working-class children was a sealed fate for their place in society.
For Chris it was the opposite as he met an English teacher (with no degree but a certificate) who opened his the world. “I felt that I needed no other teacher but him, that he was teaching me everything, that he was opening up a world to me that I had to dive into.”
Chris’s story is one that is intertwined with the history of one of the most radical eras in this country. In these two memoirs he captures the history of the period running from the 1960s to the 2000s. It is an era of revolutions and as a teacher and poet he plays a role in places as diverse as the East End of London, Trinidad, Grenada, and Mozambique. Over the years he has written or edited fifty books, set up a community publishing initiative and much more.
Eddie Frow, communist and co-founder of the WCML with Ruth used to say; there is bosses’ history and workers’ history. I would like to add that there is also children’s history. And that is theme running through these books as Chris through poetry that he gives his students, many of them poor and working class, the power to speak about their lives, their hopes, and dreams and live a freer life.
In the 1970s, in Stepney, Chris with his students discussed how four Catholic 15-year-old boys in Belfast had been arrested at school by the British Army and interned. Some of the students were from Irish families and some had family who were soldiers in the North of Ireland. This discussion led to this poem.
Everyone should share this sacred land
Run children, run before the bomb hits you,
Run children, run before the soldiers get you!
You think we’re unlucky, well look at them, this is misery.
Chris, in his band “Two Fingers” wrote the powerful “No Recruiting Song” which includes the verse
“For Alex, Kevin, Seamus are your schoolmates
And they have got troops against them night and day
So, give them your support and free their people
And get the soldiers out their country’s way.
In 1971 Chris was sacked after publishing a book of his student’s poems “Stepney Words”. His students went on strike and took their outrage onto the streets and into the national press. Two years later Chris was reinstated.
Chris has taken the words of Bob Marley “None but ourselves can free our minds.” and lived them and shared them with his students and the communities he has worked in. His memoirs are an inspiration to everyone today that opposes the increasingly right- wing agenda that is being forced on every aspect of society. He says;
“If life has taught me anything it has taught me this: that with struggle, perseverance, imagination and optimism, there will be a new and more just day for all of us, the ordinary and working people of our world.”
You can buy Chris’s books here https://fiveleaves.co.uk/ They are also available in Manchester Public Libraries.
How many novels have been written about Korea, communism, and trade unions? Few, if any. This award-winning novel by HSY is a revelation to many of us in the west who, like me, might be trade unionists, have worked alongside communists in the labour movement but know very little about the history of Korea and its place in the global labour movement.
HSY is an activist and socialist. He has been imprisoned in South Korea for his political activities and his novel is both personal and political. It is an important novel because it gives the rest of the world an insight into the history of the ordinary Korean and their fight for an independent and democratic country.
The novel begins in modern day Seoul as Jino is staging a sit in at the top of a chimney on a power plant standing 45 metres high. He is in his mid-50s and has worked in factories for 25 years. His protest is to get his and the other union members jobs back. His company, like many others regularly shut their factories down and sell it off to other companies. But he, and his comrades have refused to accept this and now at the company’s headquarters in Seoul they are fighting to get their jobs back.
Hwang takes us back through the history of Korea and the lives of the working class as they live through Japanese colonial rule. As he recounts in 1910 “the country was officially swallowed whole by Japan.”
The consequences for working class Koreans are dire as they struggle to find work and make a living. Japanese domination is reflected in the way they build a railway line through the country; devastating villages, forcing Koreans to build the track and killing and raping any protestors.
But Japan faces opposition from an Independence Movement and a Joseon Communist Party which was set up in 1925. Koreans took part in labour and agrarian disputes all over the country and hand to hand fighting in the border areas of Joseon and China.
Hwang weaves the history of Korean resistance through a series of characters. He shows how women play an important role in the labour movement. Many women work in the textile factories, learn about communism through book clubs but are radicalised by their slave working conditions. They were the lucky ones as many Korean women end up in forced labour or in brothels.
This resistance has a price and Hwang details not just the brutal response of the Japanese to labour activists (women and men) but also the way that Koreans are used to inform on their comrades.
I have to keep reminding myself that this is a novel but Hwang insists on educating the reader on the real lives of Koreans over a century of struggle for a united country. His aim is to fill a gap in Korean literature and put industrial workers centre stage.
His novel is also unique, unlike many western novels, he puts socialism as at the centre of the labour movement during Japanese colonialism and afterwards. There is a great deal of hope in this book and Hwang believes in a better future. “Whether this period of suffering will be short or long is entirely up to the efforts of those of us living in the present. The traces of our lives and the time we lived in may be no more than a few specks of dust compared to the life of the vast universe. And though change happens slowly – very, very slowly – I don’t want to abandon my hope that it changes for the better.”
If you live in Greater Manchester you can borrow it from our wonderful public libraries. Or buy it from News from Nowhere here.
Kath with Phil Turner at Rotherham Advertiser dispute 2015
Kath is from a Lancashire radical working-class tradition. Born in Rochdale in 1950, she spent her first five years living with her parents and grandfather in “The Mount”, the Irish area in the centre of the town. Her grandparents were Irish and Scottish.
Her parents were active in the trade unions in the factories and mills in the town. Her mother, Annie, took part in the cotton strikes of the 1930s. Her father, Jim, was blacklisted as a union activist in the 1930s and had to leave the town and go south to get work. Sympathetic to communist politics he did not join the British Army until the Soviet Union joined in the war in 1941. Posted to Europe he was part of the liberation forces at the Belsen concentration camp – something he never spoke about.
After returning to Rochdale, he was elected as union representative at Turner and Newall, a company that would become notorious for its use of asbestos in its manufacturing process, resulting in a campaign to expose it. Kath remembers union members visiting their house for advice from her father.
In 1955 the family moved to a new council house – part of the post war housing expansion – where her sister was born. Kath decided at the age of 11 that she wanted to be a journalist, although her teachers told her “it is not a job for a girl.” Leaving school at 16 with academic qualifications and shorthand and typing she became a clerk. For the next two years Kath attended night school, improving her shorthand, and typing and obtaining A ‘levels in English and History.
Becoming a journalist
She borrowed an employer’s directory from the library and started writing to newspapers asking about jobs as a journalist. Eventually the Heart of England group responded and offered her a traineeship at the Banbury Guardian. Kath was now indentured for three years to the paper where they gave her on-the-job training as well as sending her off to college in Preston for block release and to obtain her professional qualifications i.e. National Council for the Training of Journalists.
One of her features was about the shooting dead of 10 innocent people by the Parachute Regiment on a council estate in Ballymurphy, Belfast in 1971. (It has become known as the Ballymurphy Massacre.) Kath spoke to a social worker who had observed the events. “I had to argue with my editor to get it printed but I had a photographer with me who backed up the story.” Fifty years later, in May 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson apologised to the families of Ballymurphy. Kath’s article was probably one of the first in the English press about the Ballymurphy Massacre.
In 1974, when working for the Eccles Journal, a feature she wrote about the discrimination facing gays and lesbians was pulled by the printer. Kath says “I argued with the editor. He was happy to take paid advertisements from the gay community.”
Working on the alternative press
Disillusioned over the censorship of her article about gay people she started working voluntary for the Rochdale Alternative Paper and did agency office work to pay her bills.
RAP Ltd was a workers cooperative, set up in 1973, which published Rochdale Alternative Paper, and also printed and published newspapers, magazines, books, and pamphlets with left wing sympathies.
One of the co-founders Dave Bartlett summed up the role of RAP as to “upset the establishment, challenge the powerful, and support and be the voice of the ordinary man”
In 1977 RAP used the Government’s Job Creation Programme to employ Kath for a year: she covered issues including landlord racketeering, the National Front standing in local elections and Turner and Newall.
RAP was taking up the issue of asbestos and its effect on the workforce at Turner &Newall’s. Kath’s father showed her the paper. He later died from the symptoms of asbestos and Kath wanted to expose how hazardous the conditions were at a major firm in Rochdale. At that time death by asbestos was not a recognised workplace condition. The company knew from the 1950s about the link between asbestos and cancer – but hid the research – and continued to use it in the production process until the 1970s. Kath’s research would be used in a ground-breaking documentary by Yorkshire TV called Alice A Fight for Life in 1982.
Political work
In the 1970s Kath was involved in some of the big issues of the day. She took part in an anti-National Front march in Bradford and was arrested. Refusing to pay the fine she was prepared to go to prison, but her mother stepped in and paid the fine because she wanted Kath to attend a family do that weekend.
Kath joined the Troops Out Movement who were calling for British troops to be withdrawn from Ireland and for a united Ireland. Kath says, “I always saw Ireland as an important issue.” As part of a broad left grouping, she organised a meeting where an Irish trade unionist would speak in Manchester Town Hall with the aim of building up support with local trade unions.
The National Front flooded the meeting and, after they were asked to leave, they laid siege to the building. Kath had to call on the Anti-Nazi League, who were also holding a meeting in the same building, to disperse the NF.
NUJ Branch Secretary
In 1979 she moved to the Stockport Advertiser where she was branch secretary of the National Union of Journalists – a position she has held in different workplaces over the years. A proposed merger between the Advertiser and Express led to a nine-week dispute between the union and management. This was a time when all members of the workforce were in the union. Through joint union action across all papers in the group all the NUJ members threatened with redundancy were offered a job or redundancy on favourable terms.
In her next job at the Wilmslow Express and Advertiser Kath took up the issue of women in prison. She wrote six articles about Styal Prison and the lives of the women there.
Changing Times
The 1980s saw massive changes in the relationship between unions and management in the newspaper industry. A dispute at the Stockport Messenger owned by Eddie Shah saw a major industrial dispute begin a process that would affect all trade unions in the UK. He wanted to break the closed shop agreement that existed across the provincial papers in the newspaper industry. Six National Graphical members took strike action in July 1983 and were sacked. NUJ members refused to cross the picket lines and were also sacked. The company used the new anti-trade union laws – 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts – to make illegal the boycotting of work and advertising and secondary picketing at Bury and Warrington.
Many trade unionists saw this as an attack on all trade unions and they organised across the country to join the NGA and NUJ on the picket lines. In November 1983 over 4000 union members confronted a large police force including riot squads. Kath was there and recounts, “It was very scary. It was the middle of the night and we were chased across the fields by riot police. I saw people being arrested for doing nothing and, although I gave evidence to support this in court cases, they were still found guilty.” The strike finally ended in May 1984 and the sacked workers were found work elsewhere.
Kath, like many trade unionists, believed this was a trial run for further disputes which involved unions trying to build solidarity across the labour movement. She says, “It was a test for all unions from Wapping and News International to the Miners Strikes in later years.” The NUJ was derecognised in most big papers and a new individualistic culture replaced one of union membership and collective action.
She was then working on the Leigh Journal and covered the Miners’ Strike 1984-5. One of the miners’ wives alerted her to the presence of police officers on the picket lines who were not wearing police identification. Kath rang the Police press office for a comment and then wrote the article.
The next thing that happened was that the Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, John Stalker, was on the phone to her editor. He accused her of not getting a police response before printing which was not true. But Kath remembers, “The editor caved in and gave Stalker a right of reply where he denied the accusation.”
Return to education…and union activities
In the 1980s Kath went to Bolton Institute of Higher Education to get a degree in English Literature and Philosophy. She was lucky: during the course her Mature student grant was abolished.
Kath met her partner Mick in 1978 and in 1991 their son Sean was born. She now worked freelance and was able to work from home and around her childcare responsibilities.
By 1994 she was back involved with her union activities and in the post of treasurer and then secretary.
In the early 2000s the Manchester and Salford NUJ branch took up the case of exiled journalist Mansoor Hassan who was forced to flee Pakistan with his family when he received death threats as a result of his exposure of political corruption. It took six years until Mansoor and his family were given settled status in the UK.
Kath’s branch worked with local organisation RAPAR ( Refugee and Asylum Participatory Action Research) to help negotiate the complicated asylum system. She says, “We have around 10 branch members who have come to the UK to seek asylum over the last 20 years. Most of them now have refugee status but we have two members who are still going through the asylum system. There are other exiled journalists in NUJ branches throughout the UK. The Branch has run campaigns for journalists seeking asylum and supported others – who did not want a public campaign to protect family – through the asylum system.”
Kath with three chairs of RAPAR that she worked with over the years – Barly, Mansoor (who is also an NUJ colleague) and Manjeet.
Looking back
The media is very different from when Kath started as an apprentice , which do not exist today. Journalists are more likely to start their training on a degree course. It also means that the opportunities for women like Kath, who came from a working-class background, are more limited.
It is now dominated by the internet, not print. Gone is the security of a union organised workplace. A deregulated media means that journalists are now expected not only write copy but film, edit etc and work across various media platforms.
Kath says, “It has always been hard for young people who are black and/or working class to get into journalism and this is still the case. Young people from working class backgrounds simply cannot afford to take the freelance, unpaid or intern routes into journalism. There are some newer schemes like the Local Democracy Reporters, a partnership between the BBC and regional news organisations, which have provided extra opportunities for young (and older) people to work as journalists. The LDR scheme should be extended to include independent media. It would have made an enormous difference to the Salford Star for example.”
Kath thinks that younger people are now seeing the benefits of being in a union. “As far as the union is concerned, we are now getting more applications from young journalists at the big regional news groups like Reach and Newsquest, from the BBC staff and freelances, other broadcasting areas, magazine groups and websites. Interest in joining the Union is often the result of low pay, stressful working conditions, redundancies etc So not much change there!”
The job may have changed but the challenges are still there with Issues such as the use of Artificial Intelligence and the work of photographers. Threats to journalists have become more widespread due to the use of social media while the freedom of the press has become a big issue across the world. Recently she was heartened to see the collective action of new, young journalists out on the picket line opposing the cuts in BBC local radio.
Kath loves being a journalist. “It is a great job. I have worked with great people – most of them NUJ activists. Originally my ambition was to get a job on the Observer’s Insight Team but I am glad I stuck with regional news. Working on local press has meant that I was able to take up an issue and report on it positively.”
Kath with Sean, Sophie, and Manjeet.
For more information about joining Manchester and Salford NUJ contact Kath at kath.northernstories@googlemail.com
lipstick socialist 