Some people hadn’t many options unfortunately.
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Ah shtop.
17.30 per cent unemployment at the end of 1985.
Mortgage rates about 14% to boot. A dark, depressing decade.
That’s possibly why, to loosely paraphrase Richard Nixon, it’s only when you’ve been to the depths of the valley that you appreciate the peaks of the mountains.
Hard to blame any lad who endured those years if he let his hair down in the Tiger era.
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Great post. 
The sense of community was far greater back then I’d imagine?
Fianna Fail are like Jim Gavin. Like Jim being enlisted to fix football, only the architects of the destruction of something can be entrusted to fix it again and why the party that banjoed the country so many times were able to engineer our halcyon days 
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The decade was further mired in the endless, mindless tit for tat executions in the North. Communities pulled together mainly because we all were as well off as each other - potless.
This Meitheal spirit quickly evaporated when the local championship started and long parked indiscretions were recalled in hushed tones.
The GAA and bitterness sustained many rural communities as a mishmash of Governments floundered from crisis to disaster.
I’ll never forget the anger of the ordinary folk as they attacked the Taoiseach’s car on the road out to Semple Stadium on the hurling final day. Naturally Mr.Haughey had opted to walk, ‘like the common man’ and came upon the scene. A wave of the hands and peace was restored followed by a burst of profanities from all including himself.
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I’m sure that’s true, I’ve seen that clip a number of times and was thinking specifically of the people on the clip, it would make a good documentary because you have that footage.
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Forget that Curtis chancer - you’re the real sage.
Some worked upon the railroads, and rid the streets of crime.
When they went back to their empty rooms, I suppose they must have cried.
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I was thinking that myself.
Wher’ere we go
We celebrate
The land that makes us refugees.
I had a job here in 1986 (one of the few) but headed to London. I’d met an English bird in the Canaries in the summer, so could stay in her flat. Within a week of arriving, I was temping in Texaco Oil HQ in Knightsbridge.
Start of ’87, got a room in a house with mates, started full-time in Virgin, and had great times in London until returning in 1998. The lads I was with had good times too, and in the main it worked out well for them.
I think the older generation of ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ had it much harder.
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Luckily that was before the sex-for-rent ban came in.
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My wife’s uncle went to Birmingham in late 60’s. He’s crippled now physically due to the overly physical nature of the work.
Different set up back then in terms of digs. He’s an unofficial partner now of his land lady. Spends his days having a few pints in the Irish centre but he’s happy out. One of the luckier ones - I have heard of many who ended up as down and outs. Simple country folk trust into city life - ‘that’s not the wallet inspector’.
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There is some good books and plays written about the Irish emigrant experience in England. Tuam’s finest Tom Murphy in particular. ‘A Whistle in the Dark’ is a great play on the subject set in Coventry i think
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Used to meet an old Cavan man, living on his own. He’d go to the pub on a Sunday to watch the gaa on Setanta, but mainly for the company. He told me the money he sent home helped educate his brothers and sisters, but after his parents died he lost touch completely with his siblings and any other family members.
It was desperately sad, but the Sunday GAA & pints kept his spirit up.
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I stayed in a boarding house in Cricklewood for a while in the 80s. Grim. Three to a room, shared toilets and communal breakfast and dinners. Off to the Crown or Biddy Mulligans then for the night. It was still the era of the hiring fair outside the Crown every Monday morning. You’d line up outside the pub and various foremen would survey the labourers and picked the ones they liked the look of and the rest would go back to the boarding house with no work for the week. I was young it was ok for me but there were lads in their 50s and 60s on this hamster wheel.
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There’s still lots of older lads in the UK that worked tough jobs all their lives and never really integrated over there. They’ve more or less lost touch with home and returning is impossible, and even if it wasn’t they’d have no connection with the place to move back to. They’re not able to navigate the services available over there and they don’t fit in with UK day centres. There’s some great charities looking after them.
Christ that sounds grim.
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