Final Edition NOW AVAILABLE by direct order!
VOICES OF THE MEN WHO BUILT BRITAIN
These first-hand accounts of life in Britain’s construction industry in the last century are taken from my archive of recorded interviews and convey a vivid picture of the lives of Irish labourers both before and after leaving Ireland.Men speak freely about ‘getting the start and jumping on wagons, about gangermen good and bad, about dogging out muck, tunnelling, and pulling cable, about sinking pints, courting women, surviving in lonely bed-sits and dreaming foolishly of ‘going home’.
Others who didn’t either emigrate or do the work, but observed the consequences, speak hard truths about the price paid in health and relationships and the indifference of many at home who perhaps profited from the labours of those who left.
Songs such as Uncle John and The Mountains of Mourne, Cricklewood, Crooked Jack, The Sick Note, Tunnel Tigers and McAlpine’s Fusiliers, although not the music that the navvies themselves might have played or danced to, express those moods of sadness, defiance, or elation which the navvies knew well but needed others to put into words.
These interviews were conducted mainly between 1993 and 1999. Sadly, a number of the contributors have since passed on, and their world can never come again. Essentially a layered slice of social history, and not just an entertainment, this unique CD offers listeners a rare chance to share the ‘living history’ of those who were there – the men who built Britain!
