The Royal Society of Edinburgh RSE @ Lochaber

The Navvy, the Priests and the King

Owen Dudley Edwards FRSE, University of Edinburgh Tuesday 30 October 2012, Mallaig High School Report by Kate Kennedy

Owen Dudley Edwards discusses the author Patrick McGill and how King George V helped him write his masterpiece, Children of the Dead End. Mr Dudley Edwards started by drawing the audiences attention to a lecture delivered at the Kinlochleven Literary Society in 1920 by Dr Lachlan Grant entitled Is life worth living? Despite its remote, rural location, Kinlochleven was central to the industrialisation of Scotland. Only ten years prior to Dr Grants lecture, the small Highland village was populated by 3,000 navvies who were building the local reservoir and adjoining railroads. The Kinlochleven navvys life was arduous; they worked at least 55 hours per week and were paid only 5d6d per hour. Gambling was rife amongst the navvy community and they found themselves time and again in conditions of apparent hopelessness. Additionally, the harsh physical nature of the work meant workplace death was a frequent occurrence. However, many had travelled long distances to work in Kinlochleven, considering the role of the navvy to be a much better job than many others available to them in their situation. Despite the navvies major and relatively recent contribution to the local area, Dr Grant of the Kinlochleven Literary Society made no mention of them in his 1920 lecture; Mr Dudley Edwards considered why this might be. Kinlochlevens greatest and, in many ways only literary witness, the author Patrick McGill, would not necessarily have been surprised about the lack of mention of the navvies in Dr Grants lecture. Having worked as a navvy himself, he would have been grimly aware of the realities of life there and indeed wrote poems and prose about it; his most well known work Children of the Dead End is a largely autobiographical account of his life working in Kinlochleven. Dudley Edwards stated, although the navvies were creating great advancements for civilisation, there was a general perception of them as not really human; they did a very necessary job but nobody wanted to hear about them. The scant accounts of the lives of navvies over the previous 150 years depicted them with a sense of demonisationmoreover, children were taken to see the navvies at work in the same way one would visit the zoo today. The best account of the navvys life, other than Children of the Dead End, was written by James E Handley The Navvy in Scotland (1970). Handleys other books primarily focus on the history of the Irish in Scotland and promote the sense of the self-pitying, persecuted Irish Catholic. Dudley Edwards is of the opinion that there is little justification for this mindset and, indeed, that the Irish Catholics were just as capable of persecution as any other nation; albeit, he does consider The Navvy in Scotland to contain invaluable research about the subject. Furthermore, Dudley Edwards commented that a very interesting factor in accounts relating to the history

of the navvies is that whilst, as to be expected, there was a certain amount of clashing of different cultures reported, it is difficult to determine whether there was any ethnic or religious basis for this, or whether reasons for disputes could simply be reduced to the difficult economic situation. When the navvies from Ireland started working in Scotland, there were some clashes with Highland navvies coming to work in the Central Belt. These groups were mutually comprehensible to each other; both spoke Gaelic (the Irish Gaelic of Donegal is understood by speakers of Scots Gaelic). However, mutual comprehension very often did little to alleviate hostility. All the navvies were fighting for the lowest jobs on the economic ladder; it cant even be said that the hostilities were between the Protestants and Catholics. By the time Patrick McGill, a Catholic from Donegal, described the navvies in Kinlochleven in Children of the Dead End, he reports no religious hostility between the navvies; they fight about everything else but not religion or ethnicity. Dudley Edwards suggested that perhaps they were too uncultured to understand football. Although at this time in the early 20th Century Celtic and Rangers were known for being the two clubs that were friendliest to each other in Scotland they were looked down on by the other clubs for being too obviously clubs of the people having been devised by local pastors to keep the boys off the streets. The writings of Patrick McGill tell us that it is quite true that navvies in this time were largely despised, but not for their Irish heritage or their religion. Suggesting another reason for this dislike of the navvies, Dudley Edwards drew a comparison to the relationship between the cowboy and farmer in Rodgers & Hammersteins Oklahoma; the cowboy as the short-lived pioneer and the steadfast farmer representing unwelcome development and change, ultimately bringing about the demise of the cowboy. The young pioneers time is very short; he breaks the frontier and forms associations both hostile and friendly with the locals, but civilisation marches on and is at odds with the long-established ways. This is paralleled in the story of the navvies; they are making civilisation and industrialisation possible, but are largely bitterly resented and, where possible, forgotten in history. Dudley Edwards recognises that Patrick McGill is our greatest witness to the story of the navvies and it is largely due to him that they are not lost in history. Patrick McGill was born in Donegal in 1890 to a poor Catholic family. He was bilingual in Irish Gaelic and English at an early age and was active on the fringes of national politics; he considered that the poorer people in society were restrained and advantages were given to local capitalists, particularly by the church dignitaries and officials. McGill was sold into slavery at about the age of 11. This was common at the time; poor Catholic families would sell a child to work for six or seven years as an agricultural labourer or maid. Patrick McGill ran away from his owners and took a ship from Derry to Scotland. As a refugee, he continued labouring in Scotland in various capacities. In Children of the Dead End, he writes about many of the people he works with and describes in detail working as a railway man and working on the Kinlochleven reservoir. He describes in his books and poems the different types of people who work there, but doesnt particularly describe their ethnicity, other than mentioning an English persons death, of which there were relatively few working as navvies. The Irish workers he met were sufficiently numerous that he didnt feel the need to describe their ethnic origin; they all blended in together in their variety of gangs. In the period between1912 and 1914, Dudley Edwards noted, there are many examples in literature of a lusting for war the zeitgeist of the time. A magazine entitled The English Review published many stories containing considerable violence at this time and Patrick McGill produced work for them, depicting a brutal society of navvies, which was both authentic witness and much more savage than anything in

Children of the Dead End. Dudley Edwards suggested that there is a question about Children of the Dead Ends authenticity whilst McGill most definitely wrote the book and in that respect it is an authentic testimony, Dudley Edwards commented that it is necessary to look at the circumstances of its composition; for example, publishers and printers always require elements to be changed to fit with their ethos. What started McGill writing? He started by writing poems and, having left school aged ten, he was very much an autodidact. He read widely and educated himself in his craft through reading and studying the work of other authors and poets, including works by Montaigne and Victor Hugo. McGill started writing poetry whilst working as a navvy and certainly wrote whilst labouring in Kinlochleven; indeed, he dedicated his collection of poetry Songs of the Dead End to his pick and shovel, which he described as his friends. Furthering his career as a writer, he gained a job with the Daily Express as a journalist and worked in London, interviewing many interesting people. Amongst these was George Bernard Shaw, who asked McGill what caused you to decline in the world that you entered this profession in place of the honourable one in which you had been? McGill did not stay in the journalistic profession for very long. Whilst working for the Daily Express, he was already working on developing his masterpiece Children of the Dead End. This book is largely autobiographical, with the invented character Dermod Flynn representing McGill. Additionally, he describes several navvies as specific characters within the novel, most notably Moleskin Joe, who was to appear in a later book of McGills, with the title Moleskin Joe. McGills excellent publisher, Herbert Jenkins, was central to McGills success and recognition as an author. Jenkins, who also made a best-selling author of PG Wodehouse, was devoted to his authors and was a genius at generating publicity and getting books reviewed widely. Meanwhile, Patrick McGill had made an interesting friend. He met Canon John Neale Dalton, the father of the future Chancellor of the Exchequer, at a Turkish bath. Canon Dalton had been tutor to the royal princes, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York, sons of the Prince of Wales, latterly Edward VII. Canon Dalton was very fond of the Duke of York and accompanied him around the world. They retained this friendship when the Duke of York became King George V in 1910. King George V enjoyed a quiet life with his wife, Queen Mary, and spent a lot of time talking and consulting with the Canon. Canon Dalton introduced the King to Patrick McGill who, following their meeting, had been employed by the Canon as his Secretary and on the premise of helping with his work researching mediaeval charters. However, Dudley Edwards commented that McGill spent much of this time writing Children of the Dead End, with the encouragement and advice of Canon Dalton. Dudley Edwards suspects that Canon Dalton, as an Anglican clergyman, encouraged McGills particularly strongly unfavourable description of Father McFadden, the Irish Roman Catholic priest from his earlier life in Ireland. We are looking at what is our best source of information of the navvies of Kinlochleven, but at the same time an account which had been supervised somewhat by Canon Dalton, the Kings private tutor. Dudley Edwards commented that King George V would have been briefed regularly by the Canon regarding McGills writing and that they had a comradely association. In its first week of publication, Children of the Dead End sold over 30,000 copies and constitutes an invaluable portrait of a time and from a place where there was virtually nothing. McGill went on to write a companion piece, The Rat Pit, covering the same period but told from the point of view of a woman. Children of the Dead End had introduced various figures, including the principal female character, Rose. McGill later said that Rose was devised from several girls he had known and their fates. In The Rat Pit he tells the story from her point of view, and this is not an autobiographical work but a

novel. It was reviewed in the New Statesman, alongside a novel by Virginia Woolf; the New Statesman considered The Rat Pit to be the better of the two. Dudley Edwards described The Rat Pit as a great moment of the feminist novel, particularly in its readiness to deal with the full horrors of the way in which women were destroyed in the industrialisation process. At the outbreak of the First World War, Patrick McGill promptly and willingly entered the army. Dudley Edwards described McGill as Windsor Castles contribution to the Irish Rifles. He continued to write poetry during his war experience and also contributed to journals. McGill wrote a series of essays which Jenkins published as The Amateur Army; a description of the mobilisation of the army in the first days of WWI, seen from the point of view of Privates. McGill was subsequently arrested and put on a charge of espionage. Dudley Edwards suggested that the reason behind this was because he was a Private who was also a human being; Privates in the First World War were dehumanised even more than the navvies of Kinlochleven. The notion of a Private actually writing was, for the superior officers, contrary to all possible regulations. McGill was put on trial but, due to his friends in Windsor Castle, was reprieved. From the armys point of view, the discovery by the other soldiers that they were entitled to make judgements was abhorrent. The army described his crime as one against the United Kingdoms security and then subsequently posted him to intelligence! McGill went on to write several more books about the army whilst the War was still ongoing. When the War was over, he wrote his far less famous novel, Fear; a much more explicit novel about life in the army, with the title of the book revealing the extent to which the fear of death hung over the troops. McGill returned from the War and married his wife, Margaret. He continued to produce novels, the most remarkable being Lanty Hanlon and Maureen. McGill went to the United States with his family with the hope that his wife could make a living as a dance teacher in Hollywood, but this was at the start of the Great Depression and, as such, money for luxuries was scarce. He developed multiple sclerosis and lived the rest of his life with most people having forgotten his existence. He died in 1963 in Massachussetts in reduced financial circumstances. Today, he is remembered through a revival of his work published by Caliban Books and Birlinn. Dudley Edwards summed up McGills life and work: while so much of McGills story is a tragic one, he brought a lot of laughter into it and he wanted us to recognise that what he was saying was a witness to laughter amidst suffering and privation in all sorts of ways. We dont have to be simple solemn opponents of economic oppression; we should also be able to know the joy of laughter, the celebration of human existence and the respect for God, not only in the sense of suffering but also in the rejoicing. A Vote of Thanks was delivered by Professor Jan McDonald FRSE.

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