Confronting shame, the unseen enemy: London Lives

In the year of The Gathering, Anglo-Celt reporter SEAMUS ENRIGHT visited London and spent four days with the Kilnaleck man Brian Boylan who devotes his life to easing the burdens of the marginalised emigrant Irish community in the English capital. In the first of a series of articles which began in this week's paper, Seamus finds that many suffer from an identity crisis and are crippled by shame.

 

A young man from Ireland sits across the table. From near the border, he looks older than he is. He says he’s spent four of the last seven days sleeping rough, taking up whatever couch or floor space comes available. He tries to stay away from drink but, “When you’re bored and you’ve nothing else to do, it’s something. Isn’t it?”
We’re at St Gabriel’s Community Centre just off Holloway Road near Archway, North London. It’s in the Borough of Islington, and alongside some of the better known names like Kilburn, Cricklewood and Kentish Town acted as a magnet for the Irish community emigrating to London in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
The influence is clear to see, within several hundred yards there is at least two, if not three well-known Irish bars; they all have their regulars. Further down the Holloway Road use to be The Gresham dancehall, a beacon like The Galteemore and others like it, all of which played home to hundreds of Irish ex-pats on Friday pay-night, happy to dance the night away, meet friends and perhaps make new ones. There used to be 13 such dancehalls in London. Now there are none. Today The Gresham is a Sainsbury’s and like so many other things, life has moved on.
The man The Anglo-Celt speaks with across the table is partly the reason we’ve come to London. We’re at a daily breakfast morning at St Gabriel’s Community Centre, organised through the local church of the same name, and maintained by Kilnaleck-native Brian Boylan and other dedicated volunteers. Here, people who need it most can get a sandwich and a cup of tea or coffee. The morning meal offers nourishment for the mind and soul, as much as for the body.

Uncertainty
There is life to the face sitting across the table. It’s evident the good has come with the bad and looking back are the markings of it. Right now, it’s not bad or so he says, but it’s not good. A sense of uncertainty is clearly burdening him. “Tonight I’ve got a place to stay. Tomorrow? We’ll have to wait and see”.
This man, like so many other Irish people, also faces an uncertainty of a whole other kind. It’s not just in terms of their physical surrounds, their very identity is beginning to be challenged. How they cope with it, not to mention what, if anything is being done to protect it is what concerns Brian from Cavan most. He says a malaise has set in among some sections of the Irish community, a sense of defeat or a resignation not applied to circumstance but rather themselves.

A problem unseen
When he first came to The Anglo-Celt some months back suggesting we to come to London, Brian wanted to make one thing clear from the start. “This is not a guilt trip. We have had a belly full of guilt over the years. If money was a problem, we could throw money at it, if it was housing - build them houses. If it was just alcohol or anything else then of course whatever treatment was needed could be provided. But the problem facing the Irish community in London right now, especially the older generations goes deeper than all of that. It’s unseen, it’s from within and it goes right to the very sense of belonging.”
Brian’s message simply put: “Don’t forget about us. Don’t forget about those in danger of being forgotten”.

The life of Brian
The second eldest of four, from a house on the town’s Main Street, Brian’s father Bernard worked as a teacher in the local school, while his mother Gerty cared at home for him and his siblings - Noel, a curate in the parish of Kill, Gary, who owns The Tank Bar in Denn, and sisters Carol and Grainne.
Educated at St Patrick’s College, Cavan, Brian played a part in the McRory Cup winning team of 1961 alongside such future county stalwarts like Jimmy Stafford, Ray Carolan and Peter Pritchard. The other landmark from his time at the school was a visit from a missionary priest whose influence would see Brian aim to pursue a similar path in life.
“Did I want to be a missionary, oh God yes. Of course I did. Why? Because it embodied the Republican spirit. It was the best thing you could do with your life… or so I thought”.
Joining the Columbans, Brian was ordained in the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin in 1967 and soon after embarked on a life of missionary work in Philippines. A little over a decade later he had abandoned his vestments, left the order and moved to London. Once there, almost immediately Brian began working with the Irish community at a hostel for homeless people. Ten years ago he came to St Gabriel’s and has been here since.
“Brian? He’s a great man, he’d do anything for you”, the man across the table at St Gabriel’s Centre tells us. “If you’ve a form needs filling out, a problem with the Council or whatever. If you need a reference for something or you find yourself stuck trying to pay the gas bill, he’s there. He’s always there, he’ll always help you if he can. He doesn’t have to, but he does it anyway. He’s a bit like a guardian angel for a lot of people who come in here”.

The London Irish
There are an estimated 18,000 Irish-born people in the Brent-Kilburn area, 10,000 plus in the Islington-Camden areas, populations far in excess of some of Ireland’s largest towns. Despite living in an area of about 10 miles, Brian says the Irish community has become scattered. Brian acknowledges his experiences for the most part only represent a small section of society, but he says with certainty that what he’s seen is replicated right across the city, across England and the UK, and most likely in many parts of the world.
“The Irish people are separated,” says Brian. “The community is becoming more and more fractured. They’ve become disenfranchised from each other. It’s not that they might slip through the cracks, a lot already have. The beautifully tragic thing about ourselves is no matter how much we might try to deny it, Irish people need each other, and we’re less of ourselves without them. We need to know we belong but we only value ourselves through their eyes. Through our own people’s eyes.”
Shame
Brian says there’s no debate within the Irish community on the matter, either in Ireland or England.
“The English are no longer the enemy. If anything, if we’re sick over here they look after us,” he says, pointing to his left eye from which he recently had a cataract removed. “This enemy is unseen. The problem is within every one of us. The shame we feel. We’re ashamed of our own, and that becomes a shame we then feel for ourselves. People are being looked after phyisically over here, but there is a section within which is now, or becoming, emotionally empty. There is a deep, deep loneliness there.”
In the few days we are in London we go to the places Brian goes, and meet and speak with many of the people Brian works with. It’s not just a working relationship, apart from “keeping him young” the 71-year-old says, these people are Brian’s friends too. On one occasion we meet several Irish among a group taking up a regular placement in one of the nearby park areas. They are not an anti-social element, on the contrary, they are here for the company they afford each other.
 If they don’t meet in the parks, they meet in someone’s house, or in a room off the street. Like the daily breakfast for some, it’s their way of dealing with the onset of abject loneliness. Without this they’re alone, prone to getting themselves into trouble, sometimes as an unheard cry for help.
“London is a great city to live in, be a part of… but it can be a hard city when you’re feeling lost”, he states.
Funerals are a key part in bringing the Irish community together he adds. The loss of one of their own often ties them together. There is no pressure involved, no one wonders for what reason or ask why a person is there. There is understanding, they are all united, if only for those few hours.
We visit Jim Doyle, a Cork-man and interestingly also a former Columban missionary priest who now acts as area manager for Mental Health in Camden with St Mungo’s. He’s dedicated to helping those with complex problems, including mental health problems, alcohol addiction and challenging behaviour, unable or perhaps unsuitable to engage with other such supports. Jim says it can be a cycle in which people can fall into, and sometimes never get out of.
On another occasion we embark on one of Brian’s daily visits to Joe in a care home. He’s there waiting for us. One-legged, the body might be frail but the mind is still bright. Joe lived a hard life having been brought up in a Christian Brother’s orphanage, his mother a Magdalene Laundry worker. He left Ireland to escape his past and never went back.
Brian assists Joe by lighting one of two-cigarettes, which are puffed in quick succession by Joe. We also meet David and Sheila there too, both proud Kerry people. Similarly, we call and speak with several others, the stories of some will be told in the pages of this newspaper in the coming weeks. We say hello. The gesture, Brian comments “may be small, but the connection is great”.
Armed with his free travel-pass and good nature, Brian has a list of about 150 people he regularly visits. His efforts otherwise are supported by the local St Gabriel’s community with parish priest Fr Kevin McDevitt, while donations regularly arrive from the Galway Association London with which he has strong ties.

Family
Brian counts himself lucky. In Cavan he has what he calls: “the greatest family in God’s creation. They are there for me when I come home, when I fly over one of them is there to greet me and drive me back to Cavan. There I have a choice of where to stay, there is no asking. There is a car left for me and when I offer any form of contribution I’m told to get lost. But I know my family is there for me, and in those few days I visit I will visit more people the length and breadth of Kilnaleck than most people will visit in a year.
“My DNA is there, my home no matter where I am is there and nobody can take that of me. I am not ashamed. But I am the exception rather than the rule,” he insists. Of the many people Brian knows in London, some have been disowned by their families, others believe Ireland no longer holds store for them after being away so long. Most, saddest of all Brian attests, are those who have an opportunity to go back but don’t because of some debilitating fear.
Brian’s other family, apart from his wife Agnes and 26-year-old son is the very Irish community in London he works with. “I don’t really do anything for them, I might fill in a form here or there. They’re not related to me in the family sense but they are my family. I care for their well-being, I suffer when they suffer, I’m happy when they are safe. I show solidarity with them. We share an identity and because I’m Irish, and I feel privileged to sit down with them.”

The Scattering
Flying over to London, the tables at the airport are dressed with the logo ‘The Gathering - Ireland 2013 ‘Be part of it’’. The 2013 celebration has irked Brian who says “it’s great if you can afford it” asking, “what about the people who can’t?
“What about the Irish people who aren’t going home this year, or probably won’t ever? What about them? Are they any less Irish because of it?”
Many of the Irish people the Celt spoke with while in London had never even heard of the The Gathering celebration, this despite it being widely publicised - the invitation never came in the post.
“If you have this glorious Gathering” Brian says, “this welcoming call to everyone from all corners of the earth, tourists and kin alike but ignore the scattered, the so-called forgotten, we are offended. Now we won’t be able to say it, you won’t know because we don’t have a voice to say it with. Everybody else seems to have found theirs, from the undocumented in America to the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries. But no one yet has given us ours, and we continue to suffer, being ignored in silence. That cuts deep, deeper than bone, so deep it cuts to the very fabric of our very being, to our identity and it harms it. It harms us.”

Leadership
As a community Brian says leadership is lacking. “If you go round the counties you see Irish towns twinned with those in the US, France Spain and across the continent of Europe. Despite the huge Irish communities here I have yet to see one twinned with CamdenTown, Kilburn or Cricklewood.
“Many of these people will never go home to Ireland. But the tragedy is within themselves - they never left. They still walk up and down the very roads they grew up on, sit on the walls they sat on and smell the grass they walked on. But those memories are all the more attractive because of the people they meet along those roads. If those people turn their back on them, what next?”

See next week's paper, on shelves Wednesday June 25 for the next in the series of 'London Lives'