Through the Copper Mill - and Down the Tunnels.   Peter is an enthusiastic voluntary worker around the House - not that he would ever describe himself in such terms, think twice about it, or expect any credit. No, he just helps his mates out, along the landing, and calls in on the ‘oul ones who can’t manage to get up and about much, anymore. When I called in to see him, he proudly showed me around his small but comfortable room, immaculately clean, furnished with tv and a fridge, which was stuffed with about a month’s supply of food, and which he was especially pleased with. As he made me a cup of tea, he grumbled that one of his compatriots had went out and got himself the Daily Mail... and sure didn’t he know that Peter would’ve already bought it for him, as he did every other morning ? Used to a lifetime getting up early and getting out to hard work, Peter likes to keep himself busy, and seems to feel some guilt about not going out to " graft on the buildings", although in fact, he is no longer fit to do so. Preferring not to drink anymore, he looks forward to a new life for himself, moving out of the house, back to Ireland, and back into an extended family environment.   Peter’s Story. " I was born in 1939. I come from Co. Kildare. I have two sisters and one brother. I came over here [England] when I was fifteen years of age. That would have been 1954. I came over to me father. I wasn’t even [quite] fifteen, so I wasn’t old enough to look for a job. My father had been here [London] since 1940. He was a television engineer. He was on night-work. He worked for the government during the war, that’s how he didn’t have to go in the army. We lived in Enfield, Middlesex. I got a job in a factory, on a machine, stayed a year; and then, I went back home [to Ireland]. I didn’t like it here at the time. Well, I was brought up in the country and when you’re brought up in the country, you can’t get used to the city here. [In Ireland] You’re going out with greyhounds, you’re going out with ferrets and you’re going catching rabbits, and fox-hunting, and chasing hares with greyhounds - you don’t get that here in London. You don’t. But, when I went back [to Ireland], I didn’t like it. I stayed a year in Ireland, got fed up, came back to England. You get a taste of London. We used to go roller-skating. And we had air-guns, and we’d go shooting up in Epping Forest, and this, that and t’other. It was a different life, again. I got fed up over in the bog and I came back again. I settled here when I was 17. Then I got married when I was 20, had four children and brought them up. It was 1960 when I got married. We lived in Enfield. I had a three bedroom house, three sons and a daughter.... Got divorced. That was it, again. That was after 12 years of married life. Working 12 hours a day, 12 hours a night. Saturday, Sunday and the lot, and that still wasn’t good enough for her. She met somebody else.... and that’s it. A man can’t be everywhere when he’s working and bringing up a family. There was plenty of work. I was in the Enfield roller mills, making copper. That was a dangerous job. There was many a man killed. The furnace can blow up - a ton of copper, in the same state as boiling water. There was no second chance. It was all Irish. A few Scotsmen, one or two Poles, but out of 1,000, there were 950 Irish. From the west. Emigration, of course, that’s what it was. Very few emigrated from Kildare because it was farming country, and most people had land and cattle. They didn’t have to work for nobody. They were born rich - put it that way - or near enough. My work-mates were mostly from Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, especially Galway, especially Mayo, Connemara - I’ve met lots of Connemara men. And Clare men - I’ve met a few Clare men, not many. Plenty of Dublin men, but you wouldn’t get many of them working - "O Jasus, no! Only fools work..." [Laughs] It’s true though. I worked a couple of years in a timber yard. From that, I went on building sites. And the tunnels, which wasn’t bad either. Well, the first one was in Enfield. It was sewers, 3’ in diameter. It was a mini-tunnel - sewers - you put it in, in three sections. You could go down as deep as you want. We went down 70’. You go down in a 9’ shaft - that’s a big ring, concrete segments all around, and you go down, down, down as far as you like, then you drive from there, come up at the mixer. Dangerous. You could be drownded. You could be gassed. There were two men burned to death, in Norwich, and we had to go out there, and take over that job. There was methane gas in there, in that tunnel. They were in about 2-300’ and -as you can kick a stone in gravelly ground, the stone hit the track, and sparked and... They [the tunnellers] should have had a miner’s lamp which would turn red for danger, if gas had come... But they didn’t, and they paid for it with their lives, the two of them. Burned to death. In a 3’ 6" pipe. You build it in 2’ sections: put one there, and one there, and one there. You had to crawl along on a little rail track to get the skip out. You had a 4’ skip [trolley], 18" wide, to take the muck out. You were bent over on your hands and knees like a monkey. Well, it was price-work they were getting; we started at half seven. and be finished by about two o’clock. But you WORKED for them hours! The money wasn’t bad. We were getting about three times as much, as on a normal building site. But it was danger money. You could be drownded or burnt to death at any given minute. Drownded if the river came in. There’s men would be scared of their life, to go down there. There was plenty of work. You’d walk off one job onto another. Subbys would be pulling up here, and there, looking you. You’d go into a pub and - " O, the very man I want. Come out, come out, come out wi’ [ work for] me ". If you were any good at all you were working seven days of the week. I worked for John Murphy, R.S. Kennedys’, Lowerys, the whole lot. I could take me pick of them, anywhere. There were thousands of men. Camden Town was full of them. A thousand men was here, every morning, to work. Nightlife? Well, we weren’t bothered too much about nightlife. When I was married, I could go home to the wife and watch the television and have a few drinks at the weekend or something like that. Didn’t go out much. You had to be up at six or seven o’clock for your work. In 1980, I was working in Birmingham. A man had come around for me - "Will you come up? We’ve got another job to do, going under a canal in Birmingham ". He went looking for men. You couldn’t get the right men - miners and miners’ labourers. You couldn’t just pick up any clown up off the street. I was a miner’s labourer. The miner was at the front. You [the miner] do the digging, and I get the skips in and out to ye. And the crane driver, he’ll drop down and take them [the skips] up. Three in a gang - that’s all. The miner was in the front. But if he gets burnt, I’ll get burnt too, for the gas will be in the whole place, the whole tunnel will be full of gas. Nobody could get out...you couldn’t get out. You’d be burned to bits, wherever you spark it. You could kick a stone - you ever kick a stone of a dry day? You’ll see a spark... Of course, we had the miners’ lamps. It was my job to go down and check for gas every morning. But - the simple thing - get a cement bag [piece of paper], put a match to it, and throw that down... That was it. If there was gas there, it’d BANG. The whole place would blow up. So, if there was no gas, I’d go down and put the lamps up at the front, in case you get a leak during the day. Maybe you could go in - we might do 13’ or 14’ in one day. But, you could come across a gas leak in 15’, y’know. It’s a long way in. If you’re going through that much, and if it’s blue clay, it’s SOLID; there’s nothing to tell you what’s ahead, and you go into it and maybe you go into an underground river. There’s plenty of water under the ground. You’d never get out. How would you get out - if a fucking river came in? You’d run, but you’d run on your hands and knees. YOU’D NEVER GET OUT !! That water would be in BLUGGHHH !!!! A million gallons. You wouldn’t get out. That’s what happened down at Cook’s Ferry. Three of them [Irish miners] went down there, and the three of them were DROWNDED. They never got out. The river Lee they went in under... they mustn’t have been deep enough. It was the engineers, or somebody, [made a mistake]. You weaken the ground and the water will find the weak spot. And it’ll start zum-zum-zuming and the next fucking thing, THE WHOLE LOT WILL COME IN. The river Lee is not as big as the Thames, but you can imagine that coming in on top of you. Fill a tunnel in ten seconds flat. Most of the sewers, the deep ones, the tunnels, the Underground ones, were done by the Irish. A friend of mine, a big Donegal man, he was a leading miner, and he was a leading miner on the Victoria line, at one time. And he had three sons, and his three sons grew up, and he took his three sons with him. I met him in Plumsted. He was going in, under a big block of flats about 100’ down in a sewer, with his three sons. He was training them, so that they could take over. So that’s the way it goes. From one Irishman to another. Father to son. A dangerous game, but there you go. It’s mostly Donegal men, because one will bring the other [over from Ireland]. It’s dangerous work, and you’d be killed straight away, if you didn’t know what you were doing. And he [the miner] could do some heavy digging. When you’re going down maybe 20’ or 30’ you could do some very heavy work, as well, not just 18". When he was putting down the big main line, I seen him 40’ deep. And them men knew what they were doing, going under a road, or going under a by-pass. True. You had to be a miner. You couldn’t let an ordinary man near it. He’d be killed stone dead. If it wasn’t for the Irish, there wouldn’t be any tunnels. And not many roads either. Or not many houses, if it wasn’t for McAlpine, or Fitzpatrick, or various other contractors. Tubes? Yes, John Scathcrow, he’s a Cork man, he done plenty of them. Mullen is a well known contractor in England and Africa, which is true. John Murphy did all the electric cables throughout England. And Wales. And Scotland. Two thousand men, one thousand lorries, one thousand compressors. He had the men, he had the plant. And he had the contracts. As John Murphy and his brother Joe - he done all the Post Office [telephone lines and cables] work for England, Scotland and Wales. And Lowery, that’s a Connemara crowd. And they’re still going today. Picking up their men at Camden Town tube station, at six o’clock every morning. McNicholas - a Mayo man, two or three brothers. A good crowd to work for. Although, years ago, when I was working, there was no such thing as "wet time" [stopping work, or getting paid extra, for working in the rain] and this and that. It was either work with John Murphy, WORK, or get out of the job altogether : " NEVER MIND THE RAIN, IT’LL RUN OFF YE !". But, it give the men rheumatism, arthritis, lumbago... The finest of Irishmen going around crippled, from [because of] the like of them bastards of contractors. That’s from : " Oh no, get out there. Never mind a drop of rain ". And no protective clothing, or nothing. Down in 6’ trenches, and the water running off the road in on top of ye. Crippled the finest of men. And no compensation for it. NOTHING. Today, they [the sub-contractors] would deny that you ever worked for them. They’d DENY you. You try getting money out of a millionaire. Never in a lifetime. It’s alright them Englishmen saying: " Look at them thick paddies with their rubber boots " ...If it was left to the English, there’d be NOTHING here. You’d have no electric, you’d have no gas pipe or water pipe, no roads or bridges, if it was left to the Englishman. That’s alright, going around laughing at thick Paddy with rubber boots, with muck on his head, but if it wasn’t for the Paddy, there’d be no houses, either. Yes, I was lucky. I could walk off and on to any building site. I knew the gaffers and the foremen - " When are you coming out with us ?" I used to be concrete levelling on four, twenty-storey, blocks of flats. There was only four of us, and we done the lot between the four of us. I could always get work. I was never out of work. Never. I wouldn’t actually say work is drying up. To my opinion, and what I see of this House [hostel], alone, there is men getting too much easy money. They won’t go to work because they’re getting money for nothing. That’s true. Well, without mentioning any names, there was two contractors in here last week looking for men and asked me to go to work. And only because I didn’t have steel toe-capped boots... I could have went to work. But you must have them [boots] for insurance on a job today, or you can’t go on a job. That’s the only thing that stopped me going last week. I’m 57 years of age and I’m registered disabled. I get a disability pension - so I don’t get that for nothing. I would like to go to work, but am I fit enough? I’d like to... I’m here in Arlington House four years. And it’s alright for me. I’ve got my own room. I don’t interfere with nobody. And I’ve got good neighbours here on the landing, and the staff is genuine. I’ve no complaints But, I’ve met a woman and uh, ... uh, we might make a go of things, together, if I get my own flat. My care-worker is doing his best, and he’ll get me one. It might take eight months, nine months, fifteen months, but he says it’s in the picture. Which is true - Paddy [the care-worker] said so. Would I think about going back to Ireland? I would. Because this House [Housing Association] is supposed to be getting property over in Dublin, to send over people that would like to return to Ireland, to their own accommodation over there. From this House here. Which would be very nice. I said, yes, I’ll take a place in Dublin. Because, it’s only an hour down to my sister’s house in Kildare and a big family. Nephews and nieces and grandnephews and grandnieces. It’d be FANTASTIC. My sister and brother-in-law, and the whole lot - about twenty of a family, maybe more. We could be together every weekend. Anybody [in the hostel] who is drinking won’t go [back to Ireland]. Because the drink, here, is the beginning and the end of the world to them. Which is true. Being as how I don’t drink now, I’m pulling myself together. And I went down and visited my 82 year-old father, yesterday. Had a few hours with him. And I told him that if he ever wanted any shopping or anything - I gave him my phone number - that all he had to do was ring, and I’d be down there to help him. I know he gets home help and this help and that help, but it’s not the same. If he ever wants anything, I’m here and I’m sober. OTHER INTERVIEWS