Come Here To Me!

Bill Haley and his Comets, stars of ‘Rock Around the Clock’, discussed below. Via http://www.fanpop.com

When researching Dublin’s ‘Animal Gangs’ of the 1930s and 40s recently, the story and mythology of Garda James ‘Lugs’ Branigan came into play, with Dubliners of a certain age not only considering Lugs the downfall of the ‘Animal Gangs’, but also crediting him with taking the fight to the Teddy Boys of the 1950s. Like so many youth subcultures which would take hold in twentieth century Ireland, the Teddy Boys had originated in Britain, where working class youths took to dressing in a style which had been popular with dandies in the Edwardian period, and taking to rock and roll as their music of choice. Much of the reputation of the Teddy Boys in Dublin came from the hugely popular film screenings of Rock Around the Clock in 1957, a film Branigan would claim to have seen almost sixty times, though not voluntarily!

In Bernard Neary’s biography of the famous Garda, he claims that:

When the film Rock Around the Clock, commenced showing in Dublin cinemas, it hit the headlines and remained there during much of 1957…. not the film itself, but the antics of the Teddy Boys, who flocked, en masse and often, to see their very own movie. The Teddy Boys would riot in the cinemas, ripping up seats with flick knives,throwing bottles and other missiles from the balconies and engaging in fist and sometimes chain fights, causing great consternation.

Garda James Branigan. In Dublin folklore, Branigan is said to have battled the Teddy Boys.

The common perception was that these young Irish men were not alone being influenced by British fashion and trends, but were also “returned Irish emigrants from Britain”, according to Gardaí. One Dublin tailor told The Irish Times that “no reputable Irish tailoring establishment would undertake to make an Edwardian costume”, but one suburban Garda brilliantly told the paper that “if I had to be going around investigating all the outlandishly dressed young people in this area to see if they were Teddy Boys when would I ever get time to be a policeman!”

“Eccentrically dressed” youngsters were denounced in the same newspaper for causing a row at a disco in Malahide in 1954, one of the earliest references to the youths in Irish media. Noting that the Dublin youths are “said to be more peaceful than their London counterparts”, the paper still reported that their “extreme” jitterbug dancing and attitude had resulted in local young men in Malahide taking it upon themselves to inform the youths that they were not welcome.

One columnist in The Irish Times blamed the Teddy Boys for spoiling New Years’ Eve leading into 1955, when trouble in the city saw a police baton charge near Christchurch Cathedral. Six people were injured and shop windows broken by Dublin youths, but high spirits and even violence on the night was nothing new in the city. The newspaper columnist defended the Gardaí, and noted that

Knowing the Guards as I do, I don’t believe that either the older ones or the younger ones are baton happy. Having seen some of the Teddy Boys I feel they are just the type that would provoke a riot. The Teddy Boys are all for liberty, their kind of liberty.

Denunciation of the youths was particularly strong in the Dáil, though like today the hysteric language of politicians seemed a million miles removed from the realities of life at the time. P.J Bourke, a longstanding Fianna Fáil TD, rose in July of 1956 to condemn the Teddy Boys, claiming that “lack of parental control is the whole cause of the trouble; parents let these boys out to make a disgrace of themselves.”

I hold that the Department should put 40 or 50 policemen into plain clothes to clean up the city and county of these brats and bring them under control. There is no use in using plámás when dealing with these people. It is a terrible thing that a decent boy and girl cannot go to a dance hall without having a knife or bottle pulled on them by people going around in gangs. These youths are now going into the country because they have been banished from a lot of places in the city. They have a special haircut and a kind of uniform.

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Today saw the unveiling of a plaque and historical mural in honour of East Wall residents who found themselves evicted during the 1913 Lockout a century ago. 62 workers and their families were evicted from company owned houses on Merchants Road in December 1913, with their only crime being their commitment to their union and their class.

Those evicted were replaced by scab labourers and their families, leading to the street becoming known as ‘Scabs Road’ in local lore. Many local people and others from across the city came together today for a moving and important commemorative event. Our thanks to Bas Ó Curraoin for permission to reproduce the images below on Come Here To Me. All images are his.

The mural commemorating the evictions. This mural is based on a real newspaper image from the time.

Joe Mooney of the local historical society spoke of the symbolism and imagery of this powerful mural, highlighting the lyrics which come from New York band Black 47. Joe noted the importance of the symbolism of the red hand, though hijacked by sectarian and reactionary loyalist elements, this symbol was proudly worn a hundred years ago by ITGWU and Irish Citizen Army members.

The plaque in honour of the evicted families.

The plaque gives great detail on the story of the evictions, and indeed the construction of the houses on the street. Workers were forced to move into the homes at the time they were constructed, leading James Connolly and others to label the street “Compulsory Row.” Far from the Iveagh Trust and other such schemes, it is important to stress that while these houses were superior to much of the substandard housing in Dublin at the time, they were still built with profit in mind and were imposed on families.

A nice feature of the event today was the fact it began and ended at the nearby St Joseph’s Co-Ed School. Children from this school had gone on strike in 1911, demanding shorter hours, cheaper books and an end to canings, with the influence of the emerging militant trade union movement obvious in their campaign. The presence of so many relatives of the evicted today really made the event, and reminded us that in the context of history a century really isn’t that long.

Marching back to the school.

Congratulations to the East Wall History Group who organised the events today. You can learn more about them here.

The word ‘joyrider’ is of North American origin and became popular as a term in Britain and Ireland in the early 1910s. It was defined as a ‘ride at high speed’ and initially applied to all those who took their cars out for recreational drives. It was later used negatively to describe car owners who took non-essential rides at the time of petrol shortages during World War One.

Car Wreck in Washington D.C, 1921 (via Reddit)

During the interwar period (1918-1939), the term took on its modern connotation of a ‘fast and dangerous ride in a stolen vehicle’ . Dublin, along with London, Manchester and other large cities, started to develop a problem with joyriding in the mid 1920s. At the time, it was considered as mainly frowned-upon high-jinks and pranks as opposed to dangerous anti-social behaviour. Historian Claire Millis described it, in an Irish context, as a ‘mild enough outlet for underemployed and envious youth’. She also points to the fact that many newspapers, especially provincial ones, used ‘joyriding’ as a barely disguised euphemism for sex.

The Irish Times reported on 24 September 1923:

A Bedford two-seater motor car, belonging to Mr. Erley, Rockview, Coliemore Road, Dalkey … which had been stolen … late on Saturday night was found abandoned at Harbour Road, Dalkey yesterday morning. It was badly damaged and evidently ran against the harbour wall.

A ‘well dressed American visitor’ Christopher Harrison and a friend James Bradley, a carpenter of South Circular Road, were fined £6 in total in August 1929 for taking a car from Waterloo Road for a joyride.

21 August 1929. The Irish Times.

In September 1929, Reginald McCoy from Elinton in Dundrum was charged with stealing a motor cycle from Molesworth Street. In court, he said that he had ‘only taken it for a joyride’. He drove it to Mayor Street where he hit a pothole and damaged the machine to the extent of £10. McCoy said he willing to pay for the damage caused. (Indo, 19 Sep ’29)

Three teenagers in January 1930 robbed a Morris Cowley car worth £60 from outside an office on Middle Abbey Street and were caught in Drumcondra after going at a speed of over 45 miles per hour. Eugene Caldwell (17), Patrick Hughes (17), both of Lower Dominic Street, and Patrick Scully (16) of O’Daly Road in Drumcondra were first spotted by a Garda driving on the wrong side of the road by Sir John Rogerson’s quay. Two Garda on motor cycles gave chase and followed the stolen car around Drumcondra, Marino and Drumcondra before they managed to get in front it causing a collision. (IT, 8 Jan ’30)

Two young men – John Walshe of Reginald Street and Peter Borgan of Parnell Street – were remanded on bail in May 1930 for driving a car through Capel Street and Parliament Street in a reckless manner, injuring three children in the process. Their lawyer said the charge was the outcome of a ‘joyride’ gone wrong. (IT, 20 May ’30)

26 November 1930. The Irish Times.

By the end of 1930, the police announced that an average of three cars a day were being stolen by joy riders in Dublin city. The vast majority of which were found abandoned and undamaged twenty four hours later. Often they were found within a few miles of the city, having been driven until the petrol supply is exhausted. Interestingly The Irish Times of 26 November 1930 said that a ‘large proportion’ of the joyriders ‘are young people in good positions’ with the minority belonging to the ‘poorer classes’.

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While the destruction of British symbolism was a common occurrence here in the decades following independence, it was largely confined to statues and monuments of individuals that republicans objected to, like Horatio Nelson or King William of Orange. In the 1950s however there were two attempts made on the War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge. Neither succeeded in doing any lasting long-term damage to the gardens, although the Cenotaph was damaged by the blasts. A blast on Christmas Day in 1956 was sufficiently loud to wake up people in Finglas and Castleknock, according to The Irish Times.

Poppy wreaths at the War Memorial Gardens, Islandbridge.

The War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge are the work of Edwin Lutyens, a celebrated London architect. While largely completed by 1939, there is a certain irony in the fact a memorial garden constructed to remember those who perished in the First World War had its opening delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War and the political instability it caused. Incredibly, it was not until 1988 that the Gardens were formally dedicated and formally opened to the public, though it had long been a place of commemoration and remembrance by then.

On 25 December 1956, a blast at 1am at the War Memorial Gardens occurred when a charge of high explosive was placed on the granite base of the large memorial cross. The blast may have awoken people in suburbs well beyond the memorial, but it failed to do any real lasting damage to the memorial itself. The British Legion condemned the attack as “a most disgraceful affair, particularly at Christmas.” The cross, made of granite from Wicklow, withstood the power of the explosion, with Gardaí believing the people responsible for the explosion “were not used to handling charges.” Despite not succeeding in doing any real damage, the bomb attempt did succeed in attracting considerable media attention, with the New York Times and other international outlets reporting on the Christmas Day attack. This wasn’t the first time republicans had attacked such symbols on Christmas Day, as on Christmas morning 1944 the statue of Lord Gough in the Phoenix Park was beheaded, though the head would later be found in the Liffey!

A young boy playing in the grounds of the War Memorial Gardens, early 1960s (NLI, Wiltshire Photographic Collection)

While the explosion in Dublin had been a failure, the following year a British Legion memorial at Pery Square in Limerick would be shattered by the force of an explosion. On 8 August 1957 it was reported that “the 20ft high memorial, which was erected in 1932, was shattered, and houses in the vicinity suffered damage when windows were blown in.” Condemning the attack, The Irish Times asked “what kind of mentality can justify to itself these childish conspiracies to remove from our midst symbols of what is, after all, our own history?” The attack was unclaimed by any republican group at the time.

Despite the attack on Christmas Day 1956, the gardens remained a focal point for Remembrance Sunday events in Dublin, and in November 1957 huge numbers of British Army veterans paraded in the memorial gardens, while it was noted former soldiers also paraded “via Parnell St. and O’Connell St. to Bachelor’s Walk.” There were no reports of clashes, something which had been rather common during such parades in the 1920s and 1930s. The laying of wreaths at Islandbridge became an annual event.

Independent photo showing parading veterans in the Memorial Gardens, November 1957.

A follow-up attempt on the Dublin gardens took place in October 1958, and it was reported that “the flash of the explosion was seen in Rialto, almost two miles away.” Once more, the huge cross withstood a republican bomb with only minor damage to show. The Irish Republican Publicity Bureau denied any involvement in the attack. Five men were later arrested and questioned about the explosion, though it remained an unsolved incident.

In 1961, the issue of attacks on the War Memorial Gardens and other memorials and monuments was raised in the Dáil. Asked to give an idea of the extent of damage to monuments in recent years, Minister Joseph Brennan gave the following details. It looks like the Duke of Wellington got a particularly hard time!

Via http://www.oireachtas.ie/

The Islandbridge memorial is not the only WWI memorial in Dublin, and readers may be interested in a previous CHTM article looking at the Trinity College Dublin war memorial.

The Cobblestone has become the favourite haunt of those with an interest in social and political history, with the Stoneybatter & Smithfield People’s History Project and others hosting meetings there. Another group of individuals have organised a great talk there for this Thursday, looking at radical politics in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

The organisers of this meeting have been doing brilliant work in recent times recording the memories of some who were active in radical politics at the time, for example interviewing veteran republican Liam Sutcliffe, who participated in the explosion which destroyed the O’Connell Street monument of Admiral Nelson. They have also interviewed Jim Lane, who has a long history of activism in socialist-republican politics in Cork. These interviews are an invaluable resource to those interested in this aspect of Irish history.

The Red Bank Restaurant (19-20 D’Olier Street) was one of the city’s most famous and long-running restaurants, open from 1845 – 1969.

Culinary historian Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire wrote that it was:

…established by Burton Bindon on the site of a famous city hostelry (and) known originally as ‘Burton Bindon’s’. (It) took its current name from the famous ‘Red Bank’ oysters which grew on beds owned by Bindon in Co. Clare and were available in season in his Dublin establishment [1]

Taken over by the Montgomery family at the turn of the century, by 1934 it boasted a ground floor with a grill room and luncheon bar, two further floors of dining rooms and some of the best food in the city.

Sadly, it perhaps best known for being a popular meeting place for pro-Axis supporters. American historian R. M. Douglas described it as a ‘well known haunt of ultra-nationalist and extremist bodies owned by a German-born member of the Dublin Nazi Party’. [2]

It was a regular meeting place before the war of Adolph Mahr’s ‘German Association’. Mahr had been a leading Nazi official in Dublin, and also the Director of the Irish National Museum. The ‘German Association’ would often invite sympathetic Irish men to these dinners where the table was draped with a Swastika flag.

The Irish Press (Apr 22, 1939)

In February 1940, 1916 Rising veteran and long-serving fascist organiser WJ Brennan-Whitmore invited a select group of ‘Celtic Confederation of Occupational Guilds’ (CCOG) veterans, most of whom he had known from his Blueshirt days, to the Red Bank restaurant to sound them out for a new group called ‘Clann na Saoirse’ (‘Tribe of Freedom’). [3]

In May 1940, the ‘Irish Friends of Germany’ (aka the National Club) held a meeting in the restaurant that was attended by 50 people. George Griffin, veteran anti-Semite and ex Blueshirt, spoke on the subject of the ‘The Jewish Stranglehold on Ireland’. Griffin mentioned many Jews by name and went onto advocate that ‘… we should never pass a Jew on the street without openly insulting him’. [4]

In 1942, the restaurant was host to a number of meeting from the ‘Aontacht na gCeilteach’ (Pan Celtic Union), a front group for ‘Ailtri na hAiseirghe’ (‘Architects of the Resurrection’). [5]

Images from Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire’s ‘The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral History’

As aforementioned, RM Douglas is of the opinion that the restaurant was owned by a German Nazi party member. Historian Gerry Mullins (author of Dublin’s Nazi No. 1) supports this theory and names the Schubert family as owning the restaurant.

However, respected culinary historian Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire has said that he has ‘found no evidence of the Red Bank leaving the Montgomery family ownership from the beginning of the twentieth century until its sale in the late 1960s’ and that the Mr Schubert referenced was actually the manager of the Solus factory in Bray. Mac Con Iomaire also seriously questions the claim by David O’Donoghue (author of ‘Hitler’s Irish Voices’) that newspaper advertisements for a new lounge in The Red Bank Restaurant were coded messages for Nazi meetings.

The standard of food at The Red Bank declined over the war years, when it became a late night drinking establishment. It closed in 1948 but was reopened under new management. A fire in 1961 gutted the place and the restaurant finally closed its doors in 1969.

–

Notes:
[1] Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire, ‘The Emergence, Development and Influence of French Haute Cuisine on Public Dining in Dublin Restaurants 1900-2000: An Oral History’ (DIT, 2009), 100
[2] RM Douglas, ‘Architects of the Resurrection: Ailtirí na hAiséirghe and the Fascist ‘New Order’ in Ireland’ (Manchester, 2009), 66
[3] ibid
[4] Martin White, The Greenshirts:Fascism in the Irish Free State 1935-45, (Queen Mary University of London, 2004), 245
[5] Douglas, 271

All are invited to attend the launch of ‘Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life’ on 19 September in Liberty Hall. Diarmaid Ferriter (UCD) will be on-hand to launch the book, which contains essays looking at the history of the Irish working-class in the hundred years since the 1913 Lockout. I have contributed a chapter to the book on the ‘Animal Gang’ and gang violence in 1930s Dublin. The launch will be followed by music and (most importantly of all!) there’ll be a bar on the night 😉

Recently my brother pointed me towards a priceless archive of Dublin images online, hosted by NUI Galway.

Known as the ‘Pickow Collection’, the archive contains hundreds of priceless images of Ireland, with great emphasis on the capital. Some familiar faces and locations feature, with piper Seamus Ennis for example shown playing to an audience of young children in the Phoenix Park. Elephants giving people lifts around the zoo and masses of cyclists crossing O’Connell Bridge are among other once common Dublin scenes in the collection.

Some background information on the collection is provided by NUIG:

Jean Ritchie, singer, folklorist and dulcimer player was born on 8 December 1922 in Viper, Kentucky. She was the youngest of a family of 14 children, known as .The Singing Ritchies.. Jean graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1946 and taught for a time. In 1952 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to enable her to research the origins of her family.s songs in Great Britain and Ireland. Her husband George Pickow, a photographer, accompanied her and they spent approximately eighteen months recording folk songs and traditional musicians and taking photographs

A selection of images from http://archives.library.nuigalway.ie

You can view and browse the Dublin photos in the collection here.

I think my favourite image in the collection is this one below, showing two once familiar Dublin sights. While Horatio Nelson looks down towards the O’Connell Bridge, a Guinness barge passes under it!

George Pickow Image Collection (NUIG)

Acclaimed novelist Joseph O’Connor, from Glenageary in Dublin, who won international  recognition with ‘Star of the Sea’ (2002) and ‘Redemption Falls’ (2006) wrote a special poem for Philip Chevron’s testimonial on 24 August.

I doubt that many people know that Joseph O’Connor’s first non-fiction book (and second book published) was a biography of the Tyrone Republican Socialist and poet Charles Donnelly who was killed in the defence of the Spanish Republic with the International Brigades. It was based on his MA thesis, for which he was awarded a First Class Honours, in Anglo-Irish Literature at UCD. He completed this Masters after returning from a five month trip to Nicaragua where he had reported on the aftermath of the Sandinista revolution for various Dublin publications. ‘Even the Olives are Bleeding – the life and times of Charles Donnelly’ was published by New Island Books in 1992.

Novelist Joseph O’Connor at Philip Chevron’s testimonial. Credit – theradiators.tv

Here is the text of the beautiful poem that Joesph wrote for Philip.
Note: It can’t be reproduced further without his permission.

A BRIDGE FOR PHILIP CHEVRON

On his sixteenth Christmas Eve, a boy in wintry Dublin
Bought an album he’d heard on a pirate-station show.
‘TV Tube Heart’. Maybe you know it.
As he took the bus homeward the streets filled with snow
And late that night, alone in his room
He played those songs over and the world burst alive
In the voice of a city on the cold Irish Sea.
Passionate. Eloquent. Longing to be free.

THUNDER in the drumming and the punk rock guitars
Like Molly Malone meets the Spiders from Mars.
Lyrics with a BLAZE and a beauty hard and fine
From a poet. And a Dubliner. Name of Philip Ryan.
CHEVRON they called him. Cool as a knife.
Smoothest Irish writer ever seen in your life.
SPARKIN images together till they scorched off the paper.
NO ONE told a story like that Chevron shaper.

Martyrs on the banknotes. Liars on the box
Killers on the altar rails, shadows on the docks.
Pearse on his pedestal, still dreamin’ a dream.
He’d like to stick a Telecaster
Through the television screen.

Then Brother Brophy caught me outside a the class
Listenin to Philip when I shoulda been at Mass.
Big stew-eatin’ bollocks from Upper Drumcondra
And he’s not a huge admirer of the….punk rock…genre
Says Wheredjathinkyou’rgoinWiththatlookuponyerface
Whothehelldjethinkyeare?
I said:
A Radiator.
From Space.

Well his eyes are kinda flashin and his lips are turnin blue
Says Get in there to Confession or I’ll radiator YOU.
Father O’Reilly says Bless you, my child,
And how long has it been since you last…reconciled?
I said, Bless me, Father, been nearly a year.
See….I got the ticket and the bus stops here.

You see, I saw you there, Philip,
In hushed Dublin streets,
Walking at dawn past a shuttered store
Or pausing a moment to look at the statues
Of Wilde. Larkin. Joyce. Thomas Moore.
Grey gulls above Christchurch
The old city sleeping
McGonagles closed and a rumour of snow
And there’s little to hear but the dawn alleluia
Of a garda-car siren down Portland Row.

Your mind raining melodies, nighttowns of humour,
Cabaret, greasepaint, heart-aching wrong,
Your heroes, inconvenient people in corners,
People that rarely get put in a song.
Early-house ghosts in the hunger of morning
Five-o-clock shadowmen shook by the fates,
Huers and bogeymen waiting for openings.
People unnoticed by cold eyed Yeats.

I saw you there, Philip, walking lost Dublin theatres.
Brunswick Street, Francis Street, down towards the Coombe,
City of actors, in all of her vagaries,
Wandering back to her lonely room,
Loving her streelings and early-hour homecomings
The LASH of her wit and her dirtyfaced talk
You and the spirit of Micheal MacLiammoir
Talkin of Bowie
On Bachelor’s Walk.

I saw you there, Philip, drifting past Trinity,
Cobbles of history moistened by mist
Head full of powerchords, thunderstorm images
Lovers you kissed.
Your shy smile by Bewleys.
Your handshake to Duke Street
Some evening when August had glittered the town.
The windows all shining in glorious cadence
With your stubblecheek grin and your beautiful frown.

You pause on the bridges
Named for our poets.
I saw you there, Philip.
You always knew –
A song is a bridge on
Uncrossable rivers.
I saw you there, Philip.
This bridge is for you –

And the thousands gone sailing
While Kitty Ricketts weeps.
‘Cross the street from Clery’s clock
The G.P.O. sleeps.
Johnny Jukebox in the Ghosttown
Still paintin up his lips.
‘Stranger than fiction,’
Sighed the girls in the kips.
Thank you, Philip Chevron.
I’ll sing no more.
Million dollar hero
In a five and ten cent store.

© Joseph O’Connor, August 2013

The one and only Philip Chevron at his testimonial in the Olympia last month Credit – Daragh Owens from theradiators.tv

Earlier tonight I was on Monday Night Soccer (RTE) discussing the Ringsend Riot in 1913 with Tony O’Donoghue. ANU productions also featured with their Dublin Tenement Experience scene dealing with the clash included. Larkin’s paper the Irish Worker denounced two footballers as scabs (Jack Millar and Jack Lowry, both appearing to be pseudonyms) and there was trouble in Ringsend when locked-out workers attempted to prevent a football match from taking place. This story featured recently on Newstalk, and thankfully with the centenary here at last this forgotten part of the story has been given plenty of attention. Our article is available to read here.