Losing My Religion - Part Three

My father’s family grew up in Ladywood and attended St Peter’s church and school near Broad Street in the centre of Birmingham, which stood on a site now occupied by the city’s prestigious International Convention Centre. St Peter’s was the first Catholic church to be built in Birmingham after the passing of the "Relief Acts", towards the end of the 18th century, which allowed Catholics in Britain to practice their faith and religion freely following years of persecution. St Peters was built by a Franciscan Father named Father Pacificus Nutt in 1786, only a short time after anti-Catholic riots had disrupted the town of Birmingham. Mindful of local zeal and tension, Father Pacificus disguised the appearance of the church so that it looked liked a factory from the outside. The building of St Peter’s established the first foothold for Catholicism in Birmingham and it stood until 1970, at which time it was the oldest Catholic church in Birmingham at 194 years old.

My 86 year old godmother, Aunty Anne, recalled to me the strong influence that St Peter’s had upon their young lives in the 1920s and 1930s:

“The priests were well respected in those days. Father O’Reilly was an Irish man, he was a very handsome man who carried a silver topped walking cane and wore an Anthony Eden trilby hat and a long dark overcoat. Canon Wheatley was the Father, he took us for singing lessons and taught us the responses to the Mass. We all loved him dearly. I used to go to Mass every Sunday with Granny, St Peter’s had a beautiful altar with a picture of Our Lady which had come from Rome and been blessed by the Pope”.

“On our way to school we had to pass by Nelson Street and the kids there would shout out “Catholics!” as we passed by. St Peter’s was a mixed school and my mother would make sure we were immaculate, I always wore my hair pinned back with two slides. The headmistress, Miss Bagnall once asked me “Miss Millington, how do you keep your hair so well? It’s lovely, never a hair out”. She wanted me to work as her house maid but my mother wouldn’t allow it, she thought that Miss Bagnell was too religious”.

“Every year there was a procession to St Chad’s Cathedral for all the Catholic schools and churches. Miss Bagnell would inspect us before the procession and she kept a big box full of veils and dresses for those who couldn’t afford them. My dad went out of his way to get us white socks and pumps, he was very proud of me and my sister Kath. The boys wore yellow and white belts and the girls carried wicker baskets full of flowers and we would chant as we walked through the city streets - it was a sight for sore eyes when it was all arranged”

Catholicism was much more than a religious belief for the Anglo Irish working class in the British inner cities. It was their deeply ingrained heritage passed down through generations along with the orally conveyed tales of hardship and perseverance going back to Famine tormented Connacht. It was their culture, their identity and the purpose for holding their heads high and struggling on through the years of poverty and discrimination. Just as Christ himself had triumphed over death, with his mother Mary eternally by his side, and just as the saints and martyrs of ancient times had illuminated the rugged path of humility, poverty and charity, so these generations of working class Catholics devoted themselves to the Romanised Christian doctrine.

If I have inherited any of this devotional conviction myself, it is perhaps within a deeply ingrained affinity to the idea of Mary as a female religious icon, the archetypal spiritual mother figure. For me, if religion claims to explain the universe and the forces of creation in proverbial and metaphysical terms, then it must give equal importance to the female aspects of the creation/creator alongside the male aspects. In it’s adoration of Mary to the point that she has become deity-like herself, Roman Catholicism has clearly taken a different path to other branches of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition and in this respect has much in common with Eastern religions such as Hinduism where female deities such as Sita, Laxmi, Sarasvati and Parvati are venerated, or even like Tao Buddhism, where the creative force flowing through the universe is accorded duel gender – the yin and the yang.

Advocates of the contemporary ‘New Age’ school of religious and philosophical thinking argue that it has been the historical superiority of the male Godhead figure and the dominance therefore of male values throughout Western society which have led to many of our modern day problems. Austrian physicist and philosopher Fritjof Capra claimed that it is not just our religious thinking that has been dominated by male values but the scientific models on which we have based our theories of physics, psychology, economics, biology, ecology, medicine and even political science. In his 1982 book ‘The Turning Point’, Capra argued that the influence of the ‘Cartesian-Newtonian’ mechanistic view of life is finally being outmoded by a new vision of reality based on the ‘Systems’ view of space and time, a view in which feminism is a major force. Where Capra was most radical though is in arguing that men can be feminists too:

“from the earliest times of Chinese culture, yin was associated with the feminine and yang with the masculine. This ancient association is extremely difficult to assess today because of its reinterpretation and distortion in subsequent patriarchal eras. In human biology masculine and feminine characteristics are not neatly separated but occur, in varying proportions, in both sexes. Similarly, the Chinese ancients believed that all people, whether men or women, go through yin and yang phases. The personality of each man and each woman is not a static entity but a dynamic phenomenon resulting from the interplay between feminine and masculine elements. This view of human nature is in sharp contrast to that of patriarchal culture, which has established a rigid order in which all men are supposed to be masculine and all women feminine, and has distorted the meaning of those terms by giving men the leading roles and most of society’s privileges”. (1)

Within the Roman Catholic tradition, feminine values such as love, self-sacrifice, humility, submission, kindness, sweetness, thoughtfulness and peace have become embodied in ‘the work’ of individuals such as Mother Teresa, an Albanian nun whose life was dedicated to supporting poor and dying people on the streets of Calcutta. Wherever one stands in the debate around charity versus empowerment, rights and justice, i.e. don’t just give the poor a sack of grain, but a plot of land and the tools to grow their own, nonetheless, the commitment of people like Mother Teresa to the fundamental message of Christ, “When I was hungry, you gave me to eat, When I was thirsty, you gave me to drink, whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me” remains as challenging a message as all of our politically correct intellectualising about social inclusion and equal opportunities.

In 1971, BBC broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge made a BBC documentary about Mother Teresa and wrote an accompanying book in which he referred to the strong sense of equality and the value of every life, embodied within her work:

“If God counts the hairs of each of their heads, if none are excluded from the salvation the Crucifixion offers, who will venture to exclude them from earthly blessings and esteem; pronounce this life unnecessary, that one better terminated or never begun? I never experienced so perfect a sense of human equality as with Mother Teresa among her poor”. (2)

In this part of the Roman Catholic church’s ministry lives the original message of Christ. The message of Christ the radical and by Capra’s definition, Christ the feminist, whose example was through simple prayer and peaceful, loving activity, as opposed to ritual, dogma and institutional power.

If the pomp and officialdom of the Rome based church itself was far removed from Christ’s original message that the meek will inherit the kingdom of God and that the Holy Spirit is experienced through detachment from the material world and through the expression of love to other human beings, then the priests of 19th century Britain and Ireland did at least as individuals appear to follow a path closer to the teachings of the humble carpenter from Nazareth who lived amongst the ‘socially excluded’ communities of his day. Perhaps then, it was their own example as individuals that gave strength, relevance and meaning to peasant Catholics emerging from the yoke of oppression.

Part of what has drawn me to engage with Roman Catholic practice during recent years, as I approach my late-forties and after years in the wilderness of religious abstinence, has been a search for my own cultural heritage. On many occasions while travelling through the Irish countryside I am struck by the simple beauty of the solitary painted statues of Our lady, which stand at the roadside, often surrounded by barren rocks and, seemingly, miles from the nearest settlement. It is this devotion to the female icon, which one might argue is an echo of the ancient Celtic cult of the Goddess, that I find so spiritually irresistible. Re-dressing the gender balance in how we perceive our creation and creator(s) makes perfect sense and devotion to a powerful female icon is a symbolic step towards the balanced yin-yang view that Capra has described.

In the traditional Irish song An Raibh Tu Ag An Gcarraig?, translated as Were You At The Rock? the lyrics recount a time in Irish history when the celebration of the Catholic Mass was forbidden, compelling worshippers to hold open air Mass in remote parts of the Irish countryside. The altar was often a large stone and the location for the Mass was strategically chosen so that worshippers could be forewarned of approaching English soldiers, allowing them to disappear quickly into the countryside. The words of the song, recently arranged and produced by Paddy Moloney of the Irish folk band The Chieftans recalls a vision of Our Lady in almost mystical terms, once again reminding us of the ancient Celtic derived metaphor of Ireland as a woman, pure and innocent like Mary the mother of Christ:

Did you go then to the grey rocks,
and behind a wind-swept crevice there,
did you find our Mary gently waiting,
Our Lady, sweet and fair?

Did the sun shine brightly ‘round her
making gold darts through her hair?
and will you stay silent as the day
when the wind has left the air?

Oh, my Mary, long we wait here
while the hunter combs the mountains high,
and the soft wind whispers “Guard her”,
‘though as hunted we must die.

Oh the dawn is long time coming,
and the long night clings with care,
but they shall not find with their chains to bind
My Mary, pure and fair. (3)

Today, whilst congregations are said to be dropping, the Republic of Ireland resolutely remains a devout Roman Catholic nation. There is for me an irony here that one of the largest areas of the British Isles not conquered by the Roman invaders of ancient times, is nowadays the only area of our Celtic lands which so completely adheres to the ‘enduring cultural tradition’ directly derived from early Roman Christendom. If the identity and heritage of our ancient Celtic ancestors, the people who built deep womb-like places of worship like Newgrange in Ireland with it’s narrow entrance into the dark inner sanctum under the earth and it’s circular maternal patterns painted on the internal walls, was derived from a matriarchal culture, or at least a more balanced one in terms of gender equality, it is interesting that the apparently patriarchal Christian religion which was foisted upon the ancient Irish Celts by the missionaries and saints from Roman Europe, has provided in the past two centuries an enduring matriarchal symbolism so potent it has affected the identity of an entire nation and it’s children dispersed around the globe.

(1) Fritjof Capra/The Turning Point-Science, Society and the Rising Culture/ page 19/ Wildwood House 1982
(2) Malcolm Muggeridge/Something Beautiful For God/ page 23/Fontana Books 1972

(3) An Raibh Tu Ag An Gcarraig? / Traditional song / Long Journey Home Paddy Moloney & Brian Keane/ Unisphere Records 1998

Losing My Religion - Part 2

The history of the Roman Catholic church in Britain and Ireland over the past 500 or so years is both complex and traumatic. Having been the dominant religion in Europe since Norman times and the medieval era of crusades, heretics and inquisitors, Catholicism had become a persecuted faith when King Henry VIII embraced the European Reformation movement with the First Act of Supremacy in 1534. Though the Reformation was originally based on Martin Luther's theological challenge to the orthodoxy of the medieval Roman Catholic church, establishing the Protestant Church as an alternative new approach to Christian worship across Europe, Henry VIII’s conversion was arguably for more practical, rather than theological reasons. After failed attempts by two of his chancellors, Wolsey and Sir Thomas Moore, to secure papal annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII secretly married Anne Boleyn in 1533. The demanding and dissatisfied monarch quickly appointed a sympathetic Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer who agreed to annul the king's first marriage. With the 1534 Act of Supremacy, Henry then established himself, instead of the Pope, as the head of the Church of England.

But Henry VIII's pragmatic introduction of the Protestant Reformation was soon followed by a process of more profound changes and royal injunctions that were to significantly alter religious worship in England and Scotland. Catholic monasteries were dissolved, the cults of many local saints were suppressed, the number of minor holy days was reduced and local churches were given a long list of orders which included extinguishing all candles and lights that burned before the images of saints and the removal of images and relics that had been 'abused with pilgrimages or offerings'. (1)

During the 17th and 18th Centuries things went from bad to worse for the Roman Catholic church in Ireland and Britain. Subsequent Protestant monarchs and leaders, like Edward VI, Queen Elizabeth 1st, James 1st and even the republican Oliver Cromwell took their turn at bashing the Catholic church and oppressing the majority Catholic population of Ireland, culminating in the infamous defeat of the Catholic monarch James II by the Protestant Prince William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Catholics in both England and Ireland henceforth suffered persecution and discrimination on a cruel and ruthless scale right up until the turning of the tide when, after a long campaign of agitation, defiance of landlords and negotiations with the government of Wellington and Peel, Daniel O'Connel's Catholic Association finally won full Catholic emancipation on 13th April 1829.

The mid-19th century augmented a new era for the Roman Catholic church in both Ireland and in Britain, from the mid-1800s onwards the Catholic church began to regain it’s power and influence. In England the re-generation was led by celebrated Catholic thinkers such as Cardinal John Henry Newman who established the Birmingham Oratory in Edgbaston. In Ireland the so-called devotional revolution was led and influenced by a contemporary of Newman, Cardinal Paul Cullen whose zeal for disciplined progress changed the whole nature of the church in Ireland. A regular visitor to Rome, Cullen brought back to Ireland many of the religious rituals, structures and practices which still dominate the modern Catholic church in both Britain and Ireland. Writing about Cullen in 1878, the Dominican Father Thomas N. Burke wrote:

"The guiding spirit animating, encouraging and directing the wonderful work of the Irish Catholic Church for the last twenty eight years was Paul, Cardinal Cullen, and history will record the events of his administration as, perhaps, the most wonderful and glorious epoch in the whole ecclesiastical history of Ireland. The result of his labours was the wonderful revival of Catholic devotion and piety which in our day was restored so much of our ancient glory of sanctity to the land once called the 'Island of Saints'". (2)

Journalist and author Tim Pat Coogan describes Cullen as a towering rector of the Irish College in Rome whose clerical influence stretched to the far corners of the Irish influenced world:

“He was such a Romanist, and so able, that it was widely said that had Pius IX died a decade or so earlier, Cullen would have become Pope. From the time he was sent back to Ireland as papal legate in 1850, until his death in 1878, the shadow of Paul Cullen stretched from Maynooth to Australia” (3)

During the past two hundred years then there was a very clear transformation within the Roman Catholic church in Britain and Ireland not only aimed at rebuilding the church after centuries of oppression, but to actually come out even stronger and more loyal to the traditions of the church’s early origins in Rome, the capital of the early Christian empire. In the late 1800s this movement took the form of a powerful revolution of devotional zeal led by Cullen and many other priests who journeyed back and forth between Ireland and Rome, bringing home with them the directives and protocol of the Vatican based Papacy, transforming the Catholic church from the status of an oppressed and secretive underground cult religion, back into a strong orthodox institution with all of the authority and doctrine of Constantine’s state-run religious empire of the 4th century.

The transformation of the 19th century laid the foundations for much of what we recognise as the Catholic church in Ireland and Britain today. The Irish author James Joyce, comparing the ritual of the Roman Catholic church with another early branch of Christianity, the Greek Orthodox church, cynically described the latter as being “amateurish” compared with the Roman offshoot of the religion he was more familiar with in Ireland. (4) We should remind ourselves that the ministry and ultimate martyrdom through crucifixion of the founder of Christianity himself, was in marked defiance of most things that could have been described in his time as professional, official or orthodox. Joyce was also scathing of the control and wealth of the Catholic church in 19th and early 20th century Ireland:

“And almost as if to set in relief this depopulation there is a long parade of churches, cathedrals, convents, monasteries and seminaries to tend to the spiritual needs of those who have been unable to find courage or money to undertake the voyage from Queenstown to New York. Ireland, weighed down by multiple duties, has fulfilled what has hitherto been considered an impossible task – serving both God and Mammon, letting herself be milked by England and yet increasing Peter’s pence…” (5)

But obviously there must have been another side of the coin, why did so many working class people remain so utterly loyal to the same Roman church which intellectuals like Joyce so vehemently rejected? Perhaps the answer is partly that many Roman Catholic priests themselves did actually live in poverty with their flocks, especially those who followed the peasant immigrants to England and to other countries. No where else in Europe were the priesthood so poor, literally dependant on the goodwill of their parishioners to feed them. In return the priests would commonly involve themselves in social and political disputes, advocating on behalf of and even championing the struggles of their parishioners. Social historian E.P.Thompson describes the close relationship between Catholic priests and 19th century Irish migrants in England:

“Indeed, for many of the migrants the power of the priest increased. Torn up by their roots, the priest was the last point of orientation with their old way of life. Literate but not far removed in social class, free from identification with English employers and authorities, sometimes knowing the Gaelic, the priest passed more frequently between England and Ireland, brought news of home and sometimes of relatives, could be entrusted with remittances, savings or messages. Hence it followed that the most enduring cultural tradition which the Irish peasantry brought – to the third and fourth generation – into England was that of a semi-feudal nationalist Church”. (6)

Whilst the Roman Catholic church continues to play a defining role for modern Irish and Anglo-Irish people, for the working class immigrants from Ireland to Britain in the 19th century it gave fundamental meaning and purpose to their lives, providing the spiritual bricks and mortar with which their lives and communities were built.

Like many Anglo-Irish families who trace their origins back to the immigrants of the 19th century, the cultural-religious characteristics of my own family probably date back to the period around the 1870s, the era of Cullen’s ‘devotional revolution’ and the time when visions of the Blessed Virgin were common occurrences at places like Knock in County Mayo (1879). In the absence of literacy, television, cinema, computers, radio and the information driven world of mass media, the sense of community and purpose provided by the church must have been immense. Their commitment to the faith and the influence it had on them is difficult for us to comprehend in the modern age, but even so, this influence has continued to affect the behaviour and consciousness of subsequent generations of Anglo-Irish Brummies.

(1) The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History/David Hey/page 3898/Oxford University Press 1996
(2) The Catholic Encyclopedia Online
(3) Tim Pat Coogan/Wherever Green is Worn/page 445/Arrow Books 2002
(4) James Joyce/Ellmann, Richard/page195/Oxford University Press, 1983
(5) James Joyce/Ellmann, Richard/page256/Oxford University Press, 1983
(6) The Making of the English Working Class/ E.P.Thompson/ page 480 /The Open University, 1975

Losing My Religion - Part One

I was baptised a Roman Catholic at St Mary’s church in Harborne shortly after my birth on Christmas Day 1961, probably about a mile from the site of the ancient Roman fort at Metchley. With strangely familiar echoes of the birth of Christ himself in Bethlehem some two thousand years earlier, my own mother still claims that there was a bright star shining over our Victorian terraced house in Station Road, Harborne on the night that I was born. Such claims can have a powerful effect on one’s developmental psychology, though in recent years I have been both relieved and disappointed to learn that Christ was more likely to have been born on 17th April (probably in 6BC - the disappointment just gets bigger) and, I have also been told that people born on December 25th are more disposed to being werewolves than messiahs. Once again, lines of Monty Python’s memorable Life of Brian drift into my mind at this apt point, notably: “He’s not the Messiah” Brian’s mom screeches at the multitude who have followed him home, “he’s a very naughty boy!”

But in fairness to my Brummie Irish Catholic mother, she resisted the predictable temptation to name me Noel or Christopher in obvious celebration of being a Christmas day child, and instead chose for me the names of two of the Lord’s favourite disciples, Peter and John. In retrospect, this was an apt choice and I have always felt an affinity with Peter especially, the humble fisherman whom Jesus called ‘the rock’ because of his steadfast faith, the closest person to Jesus excepting perhaps the women in his life, both named Mary. Peter, incidentally is celebrated as the first ever Pope, not because he was ever head of the Catholic church in the modern sense, but because he was martyred in Rome by being crucified upside down.

I was born and grew up in Station Road in the Birmingham suburb of Harborne, just up the road from the Chad Valley Toy Company. At the time that I was a child during the 1960s and 1970s, the Chad Valley Toy Company was winding down it’s activities in Harborne, even so, I have clear memories of following my older brother Den and his friends on urban guerrilla-style raiding missions into the deteriorating sheds still used by the company to store their old stocks of toys. We would stealthily break in through the fences which had been erected around the former site of both the toy factory and the old Harborne railway station. Then crawling and running in a crouched-posture like commandos through the broken concrete, weeds, glass and mounds of rubble, we would make our way to the big wooden sheds, entering through holes which had been made increasingly larger by countless other local children, eventually arriving at what remained of dwindling stocks of bagatelle games in tatty cardboard boxes, mountains of tiny coloured dice meant for board games and bundles of celluloid strips from Walt Disney slide projectors.

Of course, it was all total rubbish, why else would the company have left it all behind but to be destroyed by the demolition men and pilfered by local kids? Even so, our parents would be extremely unimpressed that we had broken into a dangerous demolition site to steal boxes of trash – all except for the mother of a local lad named Dicky, who apparently sent him back to the Chad Valley site with an order for half a dozen bagatelle games for his cousins’ Christmas presents.

The Chad Valley Works had been based in Harborne since 1897 when Joseph and Alfred Johnson, a father and son stationery trading firm, relocated their business from George Street in the centre of Birmingham. At that time Harborne was a quiet village and made an ideal location for an expanding business. The new factory was built next to a small stream called the Chad, from which the company got it’s name. Although they continued to sell stationery, the Johnsons also started to produce a range of toys and games. When the import of toys into Britain stopped during the First World War, Chad Valley exploited the opportunity to start a rapid expansion and by the early 1930s were gaining an international reputation for their teddy-bears and other soft toys. By 1953 the company had gained a Royal Warrant of Appointment from the Queen Mother (then Queen Elizabeth). By the mid-1970s toy production at the original Harborne site had finished. In 1978 the Chad Valley trade name was acquired by Leicester based Palitoy and ten years later by Woolworth’s.

Growing up so close to a toy factory might have been every small child’s dream and I remember each Christmas being able to see the bright lights of the Christmas Tree on top of the factory as we stood outside our house at the top of Station Road. Such sights might have temporarily evoked feelings akin to Roald Dahl’s hero ‘Charlie’ gazing in wonder at the walls of Mr Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but actually, apart from the adrenaline rush of the warehouse raids, my childhood memories of the Chad Valley Toy Company are minimal. My memories of the adjacent stream, meadows and woods are however greater.

The Staffordshire village of Harborne had been swallowed up by the expanding new city of Birmingham in 1891. During the 19th century it’s population had grown from 1500 to 10,000 inhabitants and in 1874 a railway line had been opened to serve the growing population of this increasingly popular suburb. A thriving shopping centre began to develop around Harborne High Street, with new churches, pubs and schools as well as shops selling every type of essential provision, especially those preferred by the Victorian middle classes who lived in nearby Edgbaston. Although the traditional occupations of Harborne inhabitants had been focused around agricultural work with a small nail making community, with the advent of a railway link the influence of the big city was no longer so far away.

The Harborne railway line, a branch of the London and North Western Railway with stations at Monument Lane, Rotton Park and Hagley Road as well as it’s terminus at Harborne, was closed to passengers in 1934 and to freight in 1963. The tracks were pulled up and many of the old sleepers used to make steps, benches and fences along what was now turned into a hidden walkway known only to Harbornites and keen ramblers. As children growing up in the UK’s 2nd largest conurbation in the 60s and 70s, the disused route of the old line running from Harborne all the way through Edgbaston, passing under the Hagley Road to Summerfield Park, and the adjacent woods and meadows on either side of the line were like a huge natural playground in the midst of the noisy, bustling city. Nowadays, I often think how ironic it is that the first areas of the city to become industrialised, around the canals and railways of the 19th century, are now some of our most precious and peaceful sanctuaries of wildlife and solitude, rare oases of nature hidden away in a landscape of speed, stress, noise, metal, concrete and brick.

My father worked for most of his life at the Austin works at Longbridge (which at a later date became British Leyland and later still Rover). During the long school holidays it was down to my mom to think of creative ways of keeping her six children entertained. My brother Den was the oldest and I was third in line after my sister Sue. Den and I were the only boys out of six, he was three years my senior so it generally fell on him to begrudgingly take his little brother with him when he went off to explore and, like most 10 -12 year olds, to find mischief. Our favourite venues included Grove Park on Harborne Park Road, the river down at Metchley, the Moor Pool estate area because there were lots of patches of grass and resident’s garages and of course Chad Valley and the old railway line. I remember as a small boy feeling very grown up, but also utterly terrified as I followed my older brother along the route of the railway line far beyond the boundaries which had been stipulated by our mother. Den was a risk taker and an adventurer – in complete contrast I was quiet and obedient.

We attended school at Harborne primary and infant school in Station Road. Being a secular school this was an unusual choice for Roman Catholic parents, especially as the RC church school of St Mary’s was within 5 minutes walking distance of our house. In fact, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s no one in the family even attended Mass, which again was unusual because both my mother and father had been brought up as practising Catholics. For me there was never an issue around this, if I had even considered it I would have just assumed that my parents sent us to the school in Station Road simply because it was closest to our house. Retrospectively I am glad of the benefits of being educated in a secular and to a larger degree, inclusive environment. On the other hand I have some regrets at the lack of exposure to the culture of my parents and ancestors – I have discovered my Irish Catholic roots in adulthood which inevitably leads to some sense of it being foreign territory.

But if we were primarily sent across the road to the non-Catholic school purely for reasons of practical convenience and in fairness also because Harborne Infant and Junior had good academic standards back then as it still does today, these were far from satisfactory reasons as far as the local priests were concerned and they made their thoughts on the matter evident – all Catholic children should have a Catholic education, Q.E.D. Without disclosing the detail of her exchanges, these days mother simply tells us that at some point she had a difference of opinion with the order of Priests who presided over St Marys during the 1960s and early 1970s, the Passionists, which culminated in the Millington family of Station Road detaching itself from parish life, until in 1973 the Augustinians took over at St Mary’s and it became business as usual for my parents who thence forward became practising Catholics once again.

Many years later my youngest sister Fiona experienced an echo of this rigid approach to Roman Catholicism when, having qualified as a teacher at Birmingham’s renowned and greatly respected Catholic training college, Newman College in Bartley Green, she was offered a teaching position by the headmistress of a Catholic school in Birmingham. A final unceremonious meeting with the parish priest promised to be a mere formality, until he began probing her about her own schooling. My sister was quite open, why shouldn’t she be, she was a qualified teacher and a practising Catholic? But on learning that she had not attended Catholic primary or secondary schools herself, the said gentleman pulled rank and without further ado the job offer was withdrawn. In the words of a well known Irish advert…. “just like the Murphy’s, we’re not bitter”.

To understand the significance of the Roman Catholic church in Britain and Ireland and it’s impact on ordinary people in recent generations, and I am especially interested here in the people of the Irish diaspora whom we introduced at the start of the book, there is no getting away from the fact that we have to look back through history for a few answers – about 500 years of it to be more precise.

When the Romans came to Brummagem - Part 2

During the last century BC, the Roman consul Gaius Julius Caesar set out from Gaul (better known today as France) on one of history’s great ‘careers of conquest’. At that time the Roman Empire was already vast, it’s control covering the whole of the Mediterranean basin, including large parts of Greece, Spain, North Africa and the Middle East into Syria and Egypt.

As the celebrated three wise Magi (or physician-astrologers) from the East were following their mysterious star toward Bethlehem in search of the prophesised Messiah, Roman armies in southern Europe were battling against tribes of Teutones and Celts to advance the control of the great empire ever northward into colder climes. The Celts in particular were a perpetual pain up the proverbial tunic for the expansionist Romans. Considered to be a barbarian people living beyond the northern fringes of proper civilisation, the Celts presented a major force of opposition to the dominance of the relentlessly conquering Roman war machine. According to classical writers of the era, the Celts were feared and loathed, their lands representing the final frontier for the mighty Roman Empire.

Modern anthropologists describe the Celts primarily as a cultural rather than a racial group – there were many tribes of Celtic people and at the time of the Roman empire they were one of Europe’s most widespread peoples, dominating a vast tract of the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. Classical literature tells us that the Celtic tribes mainly spoke very similar languages and that they also had in common a proud warrior tradition with a powerful priesthood (1) . If Caesar’s gains in central Europe were to be held onto, let alone his plans to control the entire continent, it was crucial for him to defeat and subdue the Celtic people of the north. In about 58 BC he sent expeditions into Germany and Britain in order to lay the foundations for an all-out invasion. But unfortunately for Caesar he did not live long enough to see a full conquest - murdered in 31 BC, Caesar had however paved the way for emperor Claudius to invade Britain properly and establish it as a new Roman province. In 43 AD Claudius ordered the invasion of Britain by an army of 40,000 troops.

But even with the best-equipped military forces in the world, the job of a conqueror two thousand years ago was no easy business. Unlike today’s expansionist empires, naming no names, which appear able with precision bombing to completely subdue entire nations within an average time frame of about 2 weeks, invasions in the early centuries AD could take decades, if not centuries. In Britain the legions of Claudius initially made quick gains, within 4 years the conquest of south east Britain was complete and the strategically superior Latin continentals were soon pushing on through the region of Cornovii (modern day Shropshire and North Worcestershire) towards Wales. But from here on in things became a lot harder as they slowly tried to force their way northwards and westwards. It took a further 30 years to conquer Wales and some 80 years later they finally called it a day on plans to subdue the more robust tribes of southern Scotland and beyond. This time span was equivalent to the passing of at least eight generations (180 years) since Caesar’s original decision to invade Britain – a bit like an army today carrying out the orders of our five times great grandparents!

In 122 AD a certain pragmatist named Hadrian ordered the construction of a certain well-known boundary fence which, in the style of all great planners, he subsequently had named after himself. Incidentally, the wall was highly successful in it’s function for nearly two whole Millennia after Hadrian, in fact, some experts claim right up until the England versus Scotland soccer match at Wembley in 1977 finally made it obsolete. Following that memorable game, the so-called Tartan Army invaded the sassanack pitch in scenes reminiscent of the Battle of Banock Burn, taking away the coveted Wembley goal posts as souvenirs. The incident was followed by calls in the English tabloid press to strengthen Hadrians Wall once again – which didn’t quite happen although England Scotland matches were more or less banned for the next 20 years. Except of course for another inadvisably termed ‘friendly match’ between Aston Villa and Glasgow Rangers when the hallowed home supporters terraced-end became a sea of blue and white, whilst the claret and blue banners of the Holte End brigades were vanquished to the lowly and uncovered hill at Witton Road for the first time in proud Villa history. But maybe that’s a story for another time, let us for now return to the Romans.

On their way to Wales, in AD 48, one particular foot-sore Roman legion arrived at an unremarkable wooded plateau next to a shallow river in an obscure little place that was thence named by the Romans ‘Metchley’. Deciding to set up camp, the Romans liked Metchley so much that they stopped there for the next 150 years, constructing an impressive ramparted garrison fort with an adjacent and extensive civilian trading settlement. Strangely, the Brummie Romans of Metchley chose a location for their fort which, some 2000 years later became engulfed by the Edgbaston campus of Birmingham University, the irony being that just about the only significant scheduled Roman monument in Birmingham was conveniently situated in remarkably close proximity to Birmingham University’s Field Archaeology Unit – no doubt saving the department a fortune in student travel expenses. Obviously a people with much foresight were these Brummie Romans.

On the Roman map of the West Midlands (had one existed), Metchley would in fact have been the only place in Birmingham with a mention, excepting perhaps a rather less important pottery-manufacturing site at Perry Barr. It’s location was strategic, the fort being laid out near an important road junction, with routes leading to Salinae (Droitwich) and Alcester in the south and to Letocetum or Wall (Lichfield) in the north. Rather aptly perhaps, Birmingham’s original Latin quarter at Metchley was in fact at the Spaghetti Junction of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, a busy military encampment with overnight lodging facilities for weary merchants to boot. The Travel Lodge of it’s day.

But was our distant Celtic and Roman ancestry really just a fleeting moment in ancient history? What possible relevance could the people and events of that far off part of our heritage have on modern day life? Was the legacy of Roman and Celtic Britain anything more than a good excuse for a snooze in school history lessons?

Returning to the Monty Python sketches allured to earlier on, the answer to this question is probably along the lines of that brilliant and clever scene in the movie The Life of Brian where the leader of the Judean People’s Popular Front (aka John Cleese) asks his fellow radicals “what have the Romans ever done for us?” and is thence inundated by a long list of the great improvements brought by the Romans to Judean society, with various Pythons calling out things like “law and order”, “clean water supply”, “decent housing”, etc.. When one comes to actually examine the legacy of both the Celts and the Romans – two quite polarised cultures one might believe - it is amazing just how strong the influence of both of these civilisations still is, even today.

Let’s start with the under-dogs, the poor old Celts. It is always widely suggested for instance that the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants of the British Isles were literally pushed, firstly by the Romans and then by subsequent invaders such as the Saxons and the Normans, into Wales, Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. On the surface the evidence for this might seem quite obvious – these are the areas where the language and the culture of the Celts has survived most strongly, if on the fringes. Many anthropologists however, offer a different perspective and say that describing the racial origins of modern day English people as being Anglo Saxon is not actually accurate.

Writing as far back as 1899 in his book ‘The Story of the British Race’ Victorian social scientist John Munro wrote:

‘ We have been told this so often and so well that we hardly think of questioning it. We learn it at school and college. We read it in the journals and the best authors. We hear it from the platform and the rostrum. The “Celtic Fringe” is a catchword in politics and the “Celtic Renaissance” is a title in literature. When the Gordon Highlands stormed the heights of Dargai they were described as “brawny Celts” and claimed by Irishmen as kinsmen. “Brawny” is a popular distinction of the “Scottish Celt”. The doctrine, in short, has entered deeply into the social, political and literary life of the nation. It might be supposed that if we know anything, we know that the inhabitants of these islands are “Celts” and “Saxons.” ’ (2)

Munro argued that actually the ancestry of every British person is in fact extremely diverse; that it is superficial to describe the character of an entire nation in a few stereotypical traits; that the average English person is as likely to have Celtic ancestry as the average Welsh, Irish or Scotsman (in fact Munro says that the term Anglo-Celtic is a more accurate description of the majority of modern day inhabitants of the British Isles); and that the average Welsh, Irish and Scotsman is as likely to have Norman, Viking or even Saxon blood as they are to be pure blooded Celtic. Modern anthropologists and archaeologists would undoubtedly consider Munro’s theories as accepted fact, but in the populist mind-set it still seems a very radical idea.

The modern day stereotype of the Celts as being an otherworldly and mythical race, the New Age travellers of the ancient world, is also largely dismissed as a fallacy by modern historians. In 1963, Birmingham’s most celebrated writer, J.R.R.Tolkien, a man extremely well qualified to discern between well-researched historical fact and romantic fantasy-fiction, wrote:

‘ To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the great scholars, past and present, ‘Celtic’ of any sort is … a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which anything may come… Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason’. (3)

The myth of the Celts as an ethereal race of handsome barbarian warriors and beautiful goddess-like women with laurel crowns, may actually have been more the product of the Romantic movement of late 18th century Europe – a rebellion against the rise of scientific rationalism. Archaeologists believe that the people that we nowadays lump together under the romantic umbrella of ‘the Celts’ actually represented a diverse range of different peoples across the European continent. Historians tell us that in many places their society was as advanced and sophisticated as that of the conquering Romans, with exchange-based trade, literacy, coinage, well-planned towns, political institutions and elected assemblies. Their technologies were so advanced that the Romans even adopted many of their innovations such as barrels, saddles, shipbuilding techniques, chain mail and helmet design.

Rather than being pushed to the fringes of the British Isles, the vast majority of Celts more than likely stayed put and actually continued to live alongside their new Roman rulers – a bit like the people of India living under British rule in the early 20th century or Iraqi people under American occupation in the 21st century. It would be plain daft to suggest that the entire population of India simply fled en mass to the remotest fringes of their country on the mere arrival of a bunch of opportunist British entrepreneurs backed up by some, yes well ok, well-tooled up regiments of working class squaddies. It’s a scenario which simply never ever happens on the scale we assume it did in more ancient times.

Could it actually have been the sophistication of our Celtic Brummie ancestors which enhanced the rapid assimilation of Roman culture down at Metchley, as opposed to any great blood letting around the woods and meadows of ancient Selly Oak and Harborne?

(1) The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World/Brian M. Fagan/ page 184/Thames & Hudson 2001
(2) The Story of the British Race/ John Munro/ page 11/ George Newnes Limited 1899

(3) The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World/Brian M. Fagan/ page 182/Thames & Hudson 2001

When the Romans came to Brummagem - Part 1

Before her retirement at the age of sixty in 2002, my mother Joan worked for over thirty years as a nursing assistant on the delivery suites at Birmingham’s Women’s Hospital in Edgbaston. During that time she witnessed and supported the births of probably thousands of new born Brummies from all races, classes, faiths and cultures. Throughout her time at the Women’s Hospital, formerly called Birmingham Maternity Hospital, my mom always worked nights – which in most hospitals is generally the quietest shift to work, but in a maternity hospital is actually the busiest. In the rare intervals between the uniquely miraculous arrival of each new baby; doctors, midwives and other staff occasionally manage to grab the odd five minutes to take a break – I remember those moments very clearly myself when I worked nights as a nurse at various Birmingham hospitals such as the Queen Elizabeth, the Children’s Hospital when it used to be in Ladywood, East Birmingham (now Heartlands) and Dudley Road (now City Hospital).

It’s a strange feeling, sitting in the peace and tranquillity of some tiny kitchen or rest room, tucked away at the end of a long hospital ward. The hum of the hospital generators somewhere in the distance, the distant snores of patients, the echo of squeaky footsteps along an adjacent corridor and other night time noises from dimly lit waiting rooms, theatres and wards. With a well-earned cup of coffee, a book or a magazine you’ve borrowed from the end of someone’s bed, it could be both a peaceful and profound moment – when you’ve worked the night shift in a busy city hospital, you know you’ve had a finger on the pulse of life at it’s most basic level. And what also always struck me about night time in hospitals was the strong sense of the past. Pondering on how many thousands of people have passed through these places, especially in the old Victorian hospitals like Dudley Road. How many have struggled into life in these buildings and how many others have slipped out of life here too?

Every hospital I have worked at in Birmingham has it’s ghost stories. Usually these ghosts are the souls of deceased patients, sometimes the misty apparitions of long-gone doctors and nurses, always spotted at night time drifting down deserted hospital corridors or sailing down windy stairwells, scaring the life out of unsuspecting porters and domestics on their nightly rounds. During my 5 or 6 years working at Moseley Hall Hospital on the Alcester Road during the late 1980s, I heard numerous stories from fellow staff of ghosts who lived in the old part of the hospital, originally a mansion house some two hundred years old and nowadays the administration wing of the hospital. These were the spirits of a by-gone age, servants and house-maids from the 18th and 19th centuries.

During a recent conversation my mom recalled how one night a colleague of hers at the Women’s Hospital experienced an encounter with the other world (and I don’t mean the Hospital management) which was actually quite different from the usual spectres of Edwardian matrons with oil lamps and gaunt looking paupers from the Victorian TB wards. One particular night she was on duty with a midwife who was new to Birmingham. It had been a busy shift with several ladies in the final throes of labour all arriving at the delivery unit at the same time. Staff running here, there and everywhere, anxious husbands getting under everyone’s feet, the sounds of women breathing and pushing, breathing and pushing from behind every door, the voices of midwives raised in encouragement and, eventually, the tiny high pitched squeals of new born infants.

It was about 4 o clock in the morning before any of the staff got a chance of respite that night. Returning from a well-earned half-hour break, my mother’s colleague was looking slightly bewildered, even shocked. Joan (my mother) asked her if she was all right and her ashen-faced colleague replied that she had just seen the ghost of a Roman soldier standing in the staff rest room. Even in her confused state of mind, she could only have expected a patronising but sceptical response at best, “never mind, there’s only a couple of hours left to go my dear and then you’ll be able to go back to the nurses home and have a good long sleep. A Roman soldier in the staff rest room!” But her bewilderment must have turned to incredulity when my mother calmly acknowledged her experience and told her that this wasn’t too surprising an apparition as the hospital grounds used to be the site of Birmingham’s most notable ancient monument – a Roman fort of the 1st century AD.

The vision of Roman soldiers in full battle regalia, walking around the modern day site of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital seems utterly ludicrous – like something out of a Monty Python sketch. The era of the Romans is after all ancient history – what could have brought these world-renowned warriors of antiquity to the wilds of primitive Birmingham?

Mahatma Gandhi and The Mountains of Mourne - Part 3

And so, at the end of the 20th century I would regularly sit in Kath and Harry’s cosy Bartley Green maisonette, supping sweet tea off an occasional table loaded with Cadbury’s chocolate cakes and plates of ham or salmon rolls, once again assuaging my hunger for oral history. Kath had definitely inherited the art form from her mother. Her recall of characters, places and events was both detailed and inspiring – an ability to describe situations from yesteryear with great colour and depth, painting mental portraits of people long gone and embellishing her tales with intrigue and humour.

Kath’s memory of the family tree going back to the generation of her own grandparents and even her great grandparents, was the equivalent to hours of research at somewhere like the local history department at Birmingham Central Library. Detailed factual information about who married who, the streets they lived in, the factories they laboured at and the schools their children attended would have been difficult, if not even impossible in cases, to discover even through the laboured study of reels and micro fiches. For similar levels of information, commercial family research websites on the internet would have charged hundreds of pounds.

It was Kath who first told me the tale of Miss O’Hagan, the spinster aunt of my great grandfather Terence Millington – a simple family tale that opened up a wealth of otherwise hidden information about our family roots. In particular, a story concerning Miss O’Hagan’s Will.Miss O’Hagan was the unmarried sister of my great-great grandmother, Alice Millington (nee. O’Hagan). Her first name was Mary and she lived in William Street in Lee Bank. Family anecdote described Mary O’Hagan as a devout and religious lady who had strong links to St Patrick’s RC church on Dudley Road. Remaining a spinster all of her life Mary O’Hagan spent most of her life working as a domestic cook, allowing her to save up sufficient money to buy her cottage in William Street and when she died of cancer in 1907 at the age of 68, Mary was able to leave a modest amount of money for her nephews and nieces in her Will.

Seven Drunken Ancestors:
Great Grandpa Terence turned gold soveriegns into beer

Terence's grandfather was Patrick O'Hagan, a salt hawker from Newry

My great grandfather, Terence, one of the said beneficiaries of his dear aunt’s Will, was a man well acquainted with many of the pubs of early 20th century Lee Bank and Ladywood. Aunty Kath’s story relates how, shortly after the reading of his aunt’s Will, Terence took a bag of gold sovereigns into a public house on Dudley Road which he accidentally dropped on the floor of the bar, causing mayhem as fellow punters scrambled for their own share of Mary O’Hagan’s benefaction.

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Thankfully, Terence may not have lost all of his inheritance or spent it on booze, because there is a post script to the story which tells how he did at least hang onto sufficient to take his children (including my grandfather William – then just 6 years old) on a rare day-trip to the sea side at Scarborough.For my great grandfather, Terence Millington, drinking was a full time occupation outside of his dirty work in the foundries and factories of Birmingham. It was a lifestyle common to many, if not most working class men from all cultures in those days, not just people from an Irish background. The pub was an escape from the hardships of life in the inner city slums. Most members of my father’s generation, now in their 70s and 80s recall Terence in fairly blunt terms, describing him as a ‘drunkard’ and it is clear that he never had time in his life for much else beyond working and drinking.

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The simple tale of Grandpa Terence and his squandered inheritance opened the door to even more interesting gems of information about both the Millingtons, who originated from a line of small villages to the north of Wellington in Shropshire and the O’Hagan sisters, Mary and Alice, whose father was a traveller who came from Newry in the north of Ireland sometime prior to the early 1840s. Along my own journey back through time, I made fruitful visits to public record offices in Lichfield, Shrewsbury and Dublin and looked through numerous census documents, birth, marriage and death certificates, two Wills and even records from magistrates court hearings at Wellington in the 1830s.

My great-great-great grandfather, a humble traveller named Patrick O’Hagan originated from Newry in Ireland in the early 1800s. Nowadays a busy market town on the north east coast of Ireland, Newry nestles between the celebrated Mountains of Mourne in South Down and the Ring of Gullion in Armagh. But Newry’s tranquil and scenic location belies a long, traumatic history stretching back to the legends of the Celts when the hero Cuchulainn defended Armagh and Ulster against raiders sent by Queen Maeve of Connacht.When Ireland’s patron saint, St Patrick planted a Yew Tree close to the Clanatrye River, as a symbol of Christianity’s growth in Ireland, his gesture led to the naming of Newry, “Iubhair Cinn Tragh” (the Yew Tree at the head of the strand).

A few Centuries later, Viking longships would sail up the Clanrye to raid the churches and monastries which had quickly grown up in this devoutly Christian area, just as they did at Clonmacnoise down on the Shannon. The Norman invasion of Ireland started with John De Courcey’s arrival in Down in 1167 and Newry was at the forefront of struggle and warfare for hundreds of years afterwards.

At the centre of Hugh O’Neill’s unsuccessful rebellion against the armies of Queen Elizabeth I, which led to the historic Flight of the Earls in the early 1600s, Newry’s tactical location made it a significant gain in the plantation strategy of both Elizabeth and her successor King James. Land across Ulster was thus taken from the Irish and given to new plantation settlers from England and Scotland, although Newry itself remained a predominantly Catholic town.

In the 1700s Newry became the busiest port in the north of Ireland and later that century became a stronghold of the United Irishmen following a visit to the town by Theobald Wolf Tone, leader of the 1798 rebellion. Following the defeat of the uprising and the Act of Union of 1800, Newry continued to grow as an important trade centre.Whilst Catholics remained the poorest section of the population of Ulster, as they were throughout Ireland, the province was not badly affected by the Great Famine of the 1840s which led to mass emigration from the country’s western counties.

My ancestor Patrick O’Hagan left Newry before the late 1840s, I know this because his second daughter Alice was born in Bromsgrove in about 1845. It is therefore more likely that O’Hagan was a travelling labourer or artisan, an economic migrant making his way across rural Britain and arriving in Birmingham before 1871. According to one census Patrick was working as a salt hawker and this could have been the travelling trade that brought him from the salt producing area of North Worcestershire up to the urban areas of Birmingham and the Black Country(Droitwich, just a few miles from Bromsgrove, was one of the biggest salt producing areas in Europe - famous for it's healing brine baths dating back to Roman times).


Close to Patrick's home town of Newry are the beautiful Mountains of Mourne, made famous around the world by the poignant words of William Percy French’s moving ballad:


“Oh Mary this London’s a wonderful sight,
With the people here working by day and by night,
They don’t sow potatoes nor barley nor wheat
But there’s gangs of them digging for gold in the street.
At least when I asked them that’s what I was told
So I just took a hand at this digging for gold.
But for all that I found there I might as well be
Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.”


William Percy French (1854 – 1920)
Melody – W.Houston Collison


Patrick O’Hagan the humble traveller from Newry was, as far as I can tell, the first of my Irish ancestors to arrive in Birmingham. He most likely never heard the evocative verses of William French’s song and if he had would perhaps have replaced the word 'gold' with 'salt', but even so, I wonder did the vision of the sweeping Mountains of Mourne ever haunt his dreams?

As for Kath and Harry? Uncle Harry died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston on the 8th May 2000. He was 80 years old. His darling wife Kathleen died just 8 days later on the 16th May 2000 aged 78. She died on the hospital ward next to the one from which her dearly beloved husband Harry had departed the world in the previous week.

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A few weeks afterwards, my wife Theresa and our children were back in Ireland, once again visiting Theresa’s mom, Kitty Dwyer at Tubber on the Offaly side of Moate. During our visit we drove with Kitty up to Knock in Mayo to the place of pilgrimage where a vision of the Virgin Mary was reported by fifteen local people on 21st August 1879.

Knock is a peaceful place and whatever one’s views on visions and miracles, or religion generally, the sense one feels of the healing power of prayer and meditation at Knock is overwhelming. Whilst at Knock that bright sunny afternoon I prayed and gave thanks for the souls of Kath and Harry and all those that had gone before them in our family. Acknowledging that the good Lord is generally not susceptible to being tested by the doubting Thomas’s of this world, even so I asked for a sign to let me know that Kath and Harry were with him in heaven.


Minutes later we were walking by the stream that runs through the gardens of Knock when sure enough I saw two cheeky red breasted robins darting along the waters edge – it was a strong enough sign for me that the Robinsons were quite clearly back together again.


So it is that family story has become deeply entwined for me with the wider context of history, whether local or national or even international. The oral traditions of my English and Irish working class ancestors have begun to give meaning for me as to who I am and where I am from, illuminating my path and helping me to form an identity in a diverse and rapidly changing world.

As Chief Seattle so eloquently put it in 1885, “To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors and it is written in the hearts of our people”.

Mahatma Gandhi and the Mountains of Mourne - part 2

A lady selling flowers and other offerings outside a Hindu temple in Goa. I took this photo in 1996, nearly 80 years after my grandparents lived in India. Has much altered in India I wonder?

Today, Ahmedabad is the capital city of Gujarat, a state only formed in 1960 during an era when the Indian government was re-organising the country and drawing out new states on a cultural and linguistic basis. Under the British, Gujarat had been part of the Bombay Presidency, with India’s most populous city, Bombay as it’s capital. Ahmedabad was and still is a Gujarati speaking city where the Hindu majority, whose local legends tell of how Lord Krishna founded his kingdom on the nearby coastline of Saurashtra, live alongside their minority neighbours such as the Muslim Bohris and the Parsi Zoroashtrians originally from Iran, in a cosmopolitan mosaic of cultural influences typical of so many Indian cities.

Modern Ahmedabad has a population of about 3.3 million people, more than three times that of Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city. Even with a population size approaching that of several European countries, Ahmedabad is only ranked 7th in the list of India’s most populous cities. Delhi is in third place with a population of 8.4 million, whilst Calcutta is second with 10.9 million and Bombay the most populated city in India has about 12.6 million people.India as a country has the second largest population in the world, exceeded only by China. A forecast from the Indian Government estimated that there will be above 1.3 billion Indians by the year 2050 – this estimate has been criticised for being too ambitious in terms of the government’s population control policy. In the 1990s, the average per capita income was 2830 rupees per annum, equivalent to about £61 a year. Perhaps this gives us some indication as to the conditions that might have existed for the general populace of Ahmedabad in the early 1920s.

The British had taken over the administration of Ahmedabad in 1918, less than two years before my granddad’s posting. Prior to the imposition of British governance in Ahmedabad, the city had been under the rule of the Gaekwad and Peshwa factions who had in turn won it from Mughal rule in 1753. Modern Indian commentators credit the British for improving and developing the city, founding a Municipality Committee and establishing a railway link. (1) Even so, times were changing quickly for British rule in India and Ahmedabad was the place where Mahatma Gandhi’s massive peaceful disobedience movement first originated, a movement which eventually brought about independence for India in 1947. Gandhi had arrived in Ahmedabad from South Africa in 1915, setting up an Ashram on the banks of the river Sabarmati in 1917. Close to the Ashram, Gandhi lived a simple life in his small cottage and from here he orchestrated the greatest freedom movement the world has ever known.

By 1919 the mighty British Raj was already becoming edgy and a government act called the Rowlatt Act which allowed arrest without trial was drawing strong protest all over India. In that same year British soldiers under the command of General Dyer opened fire on peaceful protestors at Amritsar in the northern region of Punjab, killing an unimaginable 5000 people (2) It was a turning point in the independence movement which had hitherto been based entirely around peaceful non co-operation. Violent incidents began to increase, culminating in a number of brutal killings in Utter Pradesh in 1922. Angered and disillusioned by the outbreaks of violence, Gandhi called off his peaceful independence movement.

Some years later, Mahatma Gandhi’s famous 26 day Dandi march which started on March 12th 1930 from his Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandi on the coast, a symbolic protest at the British government’s unfair Salt Law, was the impetus for a renewed and prolonged ‘Brits out!’ movement which eventually saw the Union Jack officially lowered for the last time in India on August 15th 1947.

As a child in Harborne in Birmingham during the 1960s, I had my first exposure to the wondrous art of oral history through story. At the age of about 5 or 6 I would snuggle tightly up to my Nanny Mill on the big setee in our front room at 107 Station Road, transfixed and listening with bated breath on her every next word as she told us her tales from long-ago India. I could have no conception of the sheer magnitude of the wider context in which her Kippling-esque tales were set – the events that led to the end of the great British Raj and to the partition of India. Like Kippling, Florence’s stories of India were not of politics, revolutions and radicals, but of elephants, monkeys and mamsaabs.Stories of how she met an Indian Cobra on a wooded path one afternoon and successfully stared the deadly reptile out until he slithered away back into the jungle. How monkeys would climb into the open windows to steal bread from the kitchen. How my grandfather got locked in a room with an unhappy wild cat and had to trap the angry beast by throwing a mosquito net over him. The sound of the wild dogs laughing in the Indian moon light and turning over the bins like demons in the night.

Forty years later I remember each adventure as clearly as though I lived it myself, yearning to revisit my grandmother’s memories as if they were my own.

As children we would chuckle at my Nan’s random recall of the Hindustani language. As if talking to a simple servant she would say “mamsaab idero, kis wasti, tum bolo, jao jaldi”. For years we joked that she must have been making it up. Thirty years later, whilst attending a night school class at Bournville College, learning Hindi and Urdu from a Brummie Irish tutor named Sean, I began to discover what those old colonialist phrases really meant: “servant boy, come here, what is this? You speak. Go quickly”.

My grandparents returned to their humble abode in Ladywood in 1922 – although not without firstly missing the ship they were meant to sail on which apparently sank with great loss of life in the Indian ocean – bringing home with them their second baby, Kathleen Mary with her white hair and ‘no nose to speak of’ and my grandmother harbouring an illegally imported parrot named Polly up her skirts as she passed through customs. The novelty of having a genuine Indian parrot in the back-to-backs of Garbett Street quickly wore off and poor Polly was soon sold when Florence needed a few extra bob, just a couple of months later.

So the little sisters finally got to meet and thence grew up together in Garbett Street, attending St Peter’s RC school in their Daily Mail boots and later on blossoming into two of the loveliest ‘Honeys’ in War time Ladywood. As the air raid sirens wailed out over the slate roofs of Hockley and Winson Green, beautiful Annie would dance the night away to the smooth jazz of the American big bands in the infamous Palais in Monument Road, whilst her snow-haired Indian sister Kathleen kissed goodnight to her dashing sweetheart Harry on the corner of Ledsam and Blythe Street.

The story-telling tradition was thus passed on to both Kathleen and Nance and so, when I decided to start researching my family’s genealogy in the mid-1990s, Aunty Kath was the most obvious person to go to first. At that point in time Kath and her husband Harry Robinson lived in a small maisonette in Bartley Green. They had lived in Bartley Green for about thirty years - like many thousands of people from their generation they had relocated to the new estates on the outskirts of the city during the inner city slum clearances of the 1960s. Huge areas of old Ladywood were bulldozed during this period including the labyrinth of Victorian streets, houses, factories and shops that stretched from the top end of Monument Road, round the corner at the graceful Springhill Library, along Sandpits to the western edge of the city centre.

Kath married Harry Robinson at St Peter's RC in Ladywood. The strong loyalty to Roman Catholicism was passed down through the Irish side of the family

Harry was born in his family’s pub, the Vesper Bell in Ledsam Street, Ladywood in 1920. His grandfather, Albert Lee, was licensee of the pub from 1901 until his death in 1961 at the age of 81, after which, Harry’s father, Edwin Robinson took over the license and ran it right up to the day it closed. The pub was so named because it was situated within hearing distance of the vesper bells of the Oratory church on Hagley Road – the church founded by the great Cardinal Newman himself. A fine old Victorian pub with 2 smoke rooms, 2 bars and an outdoor, it was a Peter Walker pub selling Burton Ales, before being taken over by Atkinsons and finally by M&B.

Throughout the long period that Albert Lee and later his son-in-law were in charge of the Vesper Bell, it wasn’t just the license that stayed in the family. In fact, Harry told me that nobody outside of family was ever employed behind the bar. Like many pubs of the old days, the Vesper Bell had sawdust on the floor of the bar and spitoons under the tables - even so, when she wasn’t enjoying a game of darts, Harry’s grandmother Emily Lee, along with cousin Nell, worked hard to keep a well polished and clean establishment. Respectability was the name of the game for Victorian ladies like Emily Lee.During the war years of the early 1940s, the big cellar under the Vesper Bell made an ideal air raid shelter for the whole family, along with pub customers and the giant cockroaches and beetles who normally lived down there.

If the Vesper Bell eventually survived the relentless assault of German bombing missions, it wasn’t so fortunate when it came to the onslaught of Corporation demolition squads twenty years later.But it wasn’t just mountains of broken bricks and mortar dust that were carted away from Ladywood in the back of builder’s lorries back in the 1960s. With the slum clearance, the district’s fundamental sense of community spirit had also been swept away over night. The very soul of old Ladywood was ripped out as individuals and families that had lived and struggled together in the area for generations were randomly dispersed to the outer edges of the expanding metropolis.

References:

(1) http://www.cityofahmedabad.com/

(2) http://www.countrywatch.com/