Ultan Cowley: June 2010

Monday 14 June 2010

McAlpine’s Men: Irish Stories from the Sites

Based on first-hand accounts taken from personal interviews and correspondence over the last decade, and illustrated with black and white photographs, this insightful and entertaining collection spans the decades from World War Two through to the Nineteen Eighties.

I am currently in the process of identifying each of the men featured in the wonderfully atmospheric cover photograph, which was taken around 1958, and I hope to publish a short biography of each of them in an effort to bring what is fast becoming an iconic image back to life...

This book has been produced in association with the Ireland Fund of Great Britain and a percentage of the profits from each copy sold will be donated to the IFGB’s Forgotten Irish Campaign.

The Ireland Fund of Great Britain’s Forgotten Irish Campaign supports the vulnerable and elderly Irish community in the UK. Your support will be greatly appreciated.

McAlpine’s Men is available on Amazon. For a signed copy please telephone 00 353 (0)51 563377, email ultan.cowley@gmail.com, or write to:

The Potter’s Yard
Duncormick

Co. Wexford

The story so far...

'Paddy and the Big Ditch: Irish Labour on the Manchester Ship Canal, 1887-1893, was commissioned by the Irish World Heritage Centre, Manchester, in 1993 to mark the first centenary of the opening of the Ship Canal.

It was followed by The Men who built Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy, in 2001. This book was researched in Britain over three years, from 1994 to 1997, and writen over the following two years in Ireland. I amassed over sixty hours' of recorded interviews with labourers, tradesmen, middle management and family members. The black and white illustrations, many never previously published, were collected from public archives, company records, and private individuals.

It puts the history of Irish male migrant labour in Britain's contruction industry in the 19th and 20th centuries in the contexts of Irish emigratiion and British civil engineering, in the written histories of which the navvy had been no more than a footnote.

I still collect first-hand accounts of that way of life on an on-going basis and, as the older veterans get fewer, men from the 'Eighties exodus come into greater prominence and a new chapter takes shape.

At the same time musician Joe Giltrap and I continue to tour our Show, The Craic was good in Cricklewood: Songs & Stories of the men who built Britain.

This features songs and poems of the navvy life, together with first-hand accounts of life on site and in the dancehalls, pubs, and bed-sits of Camden Town, Cricklewood, and elsewhere.

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Monday 14 June 2010