Hulme Mural: From Tranquil Pastures To A High-Rise Age

The 84-foot long mural at Hulme Library is an impressive work of public art which chronicles the history of Hulme from Roman times up until the present. Capturing the constant battle for decent homes, immigration following World War Two and the tumultuous periods of regeneration, the mural is a reminder of the transformation of Hulme across the ages.

The Hulme mural was designed and made by the staff and students of the pottery classes at Adult Education Services, which is currently located in the same building as Hulme Library on Stretford Road.. They originally wanted to make a sculpture to display inside the building but they decided that a mural on the outside wall would have a greater impact. The mural took two years (from 2000-2002) to complete and the history was carefully researched to make the mural factually accurate.

Brigitte Soltau, a local pottery instructor who was involved in the mural, explains why they chose to record the history of the city. “There was a lot of changes happening in Hulme as we were planning the mural. New housing was being built opposite the education centre and we felt that we were in the middle of an important time of change for the community. So recording a longer period of other significant changes for Hulme felt like an obvious subject matter for us.” The mural consists of six panels and is accompanied by a poem commemorating the changes that Hulme has been through.

From Hulme all blessings flow, in this valley there is scope for motion… flowing forwards from tranquil pastures to angry winding rivers…
Hulme received its name from the Norse (Scandinavian) word for a small island surrounded by water or marshland as it was encircled with water on three sides during the time of the Norman invasion of 1066. In fact, Hulme was a separate community from Manchester in the 15th century and was a predominately farming community until the 18th century. This is depicted in the first panel of the mural which shows Hulme as rural community with cottages surrounded by water, trees and nature.

When shadows danced like leaves across childhood…And angel raged across glittery moon… when silver cloud shadowed steel heartbeats…
Industrialisation swept into Hulme in the 18th century when the Bridgewater Canal brought trade into the surrounding neighbourhoods of Castlefield. This is illustrated in the second panel of the mural that shows the expansion of the village into a town with a library, factories, shops and inns. The canal supported the rising textile industry, which boomed at the time, bringing people into the city to work. The number of people living in Hulme multiplied 50-fold in the first half of the 19th century as they flocked to the mills and homes were built rapidly to help accommodate the rising population. However, many of the homes were of extremely low standard and poor sanitation meant that diseases such as cholera were rampant.

The situation got so bad that Manchester Borough Council (now Manchester City Council) passed a law in 1844 banning the construction of any more houses in Hulme. Even so, homes which were more accurately described as slums continued to exist and were inhabited up until the mid 20th century. Hulme’s link to the Rolls-Royce company is also depicted in the mural with a model of the car in the second panel. In 1904, Henry Royce and Charles Stewart Rolls met in the Midland Hotel in central Manchester and decided to start their own company making a unique version of a new invention – the motor car. They opened the first Rolls-Royce factory in Hulme and many nearby streets now commemorate this bit of history, including Royce Road and Rolls Crescent.

Remembering wartime, endless years of hot fire… Safe houses ‘homes fit for heroes’…
The third panel of the mural looks at the Second World War and calls for decent homes following an extended period of austerity as well as the rise in immigration and the development of a multicultural Hulme. There was a concerted effort to clear slums in the post-war period and Hulme’s slums were eventually demolished in the 1960s after local resistance delayed their clearance by a generation. Once again, however, a rush to build the homes meant that they ended up with a unique variant of the high-rise tower blocks named the Crescents. Four sets of curved low-rise buildings, the Crescents were completed in the 1971 and were architecturally based on terraced housing in Bath and Bloomsbury. More than 5,000 housing units had been built in less than eight years and the redevelopment of Hulme was said to be on a scale surpassed only in Rotterdam, Warsaw or Hiroshima.

From the sea, a rush wind blowing…Embers turn to carnival glow, universe spinning strong below our feet…
The fourth panel of the mural is of the annual carnival that paraded through Hulme following the Second World War. Migrants from the West Indies and Asia came to the UK and settled in the large cities such as Manchester and in particular areas such as Rusholme, Moss Side, Cheetham Hill and Hulme. “Immigration after the Second World War had a huge impact on the area and we wanted to show that in a positive sense…” remarks Soltau, who helped to design and make the mural. “The carnival scene was important to us as it showed the resilient and positive aspects of Hulme and I think lots of people had many fond memories of the carnival procession. Loads of local people were involved in the planning of it so we wanted to show that and the creative sense of community during the 70s and 80s, before the redevelopment phase.”

In a high-rise age, in a delicate rage, we do not shrink before them… Demolition like thunder, all ears stiffen to the vast flooding scream…
The fifth panel records the rising concerns around housing, demolition and the regeneration of Hulme in the 1990s. Housing is a recurring issue in the mural and reflects the fact that Hulme became is widely known for its social and economic decline during the 1970s and 80s and (questionably) more successful regeneration in the 1990s. As Soltau explains: “Hulme was re-developed three times in a short period of time, so that means that buildings were razed to the ground three times which is a significant amount of upheaval for such a tiny place. To be wiped out and reinvented that many times over is quite unusual.”

Shortly after residents began moving into the Crescents in 1971, it became apparent that the buildings were poorly designed (cutting Hulme off from the rest of the city), the workmanship of low quality and the houses required a level of maintenance that was not forthcoming. The oil crisis of the 1970s made the homes almost impossible to heat for the low-income residents, families moved out of the Crescents by the 1980s and were replaced by students, artists and travellers as well as drug addicts. The Crescents became notorious for being cold, damp and riddled with cockroaches and crime. In 1977, people living in Hulme were seven times more likely to commit suicide compared to the national average and thirty-one times more likely to be a victim of crime. In 1986, over 59% of adult males in Hulme were unemployed and youth unemployment was recorded at 68%.

The situation got so bad that reports state that “there must have been times when simply abandoning Hulme to the forces of nature would have seemed the easier option.” (cited in Alison Ravetz, Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment, 2001, p230). The sense of community and neighbourhood friendliness of the former slums of Hulme had been lost, to be replaced by a huge social and economic problem. Within a decade of their construction, the Crescents were declared unfit for purpose and new plans were under way to try and resolve the issues that they had thrown up.

In the 1990s it was agreed that the best solution to Hulme’s problems was an extensive programme of physical, economic and social regeneration. Manchester City Council secured £7m from central govermment to raze high-rise buildings and replace them with new Housing Association homes. The Hulme City Challenge was also launched in April 1992 with £37.5 million of government money to bring together the various players in Hulme to help regenerate the town. High-rise flats were replaced with better planned homes (both council and privately-owned) and Hulme’s reputation as a socially deprived area declined. Local amenities such as the Zion Arts Centre and the Hulme Community Garden Centre give the area a friendly community atmosphere and illustrate the important role that locals played in turning the city into a unique and desirable area to live in.

Reconstruct an order on the other side of chaos, there is scope for motion, flowing forwards once more…
The sixth and final panel depicts modern day Hulme at the millennium. As Soltau explains, “there have been a lot of questions about the future of Hulme but we didn’t want to end the mural on a negative and pessimistic note as there is a lot to be hopeful for in Hulme.”

Manchester City Council recently announced that Hulme Library was under consideration for closure due to the difficult financial circumstances and will be replaced with either new or alternative provisions. Many have shown concern that if the library closes, the other remaining tenant in the building – the Adult Education Services – will be put under great financial pressure. As Brigitte Soltau explains: “the Adult Education Service have been struggling massively themselves and they’ve been winding down with cuts to staff and courses already so if the library goes, it does make the others future more difficult…
“If both the library and the Adult Education services leave, the issue is what does the council decide to do with the building. If they let it out to another group than all well and good for building and the mural but if they decide not to, than that would be quite worrying because these days it seems that in Hulme one day a building is closed and then the next day its been demolished. That would be extremely worrying for us.” The £20,000 mural is made out of 2 tonnes of clay cannot be removed from the building without damaging it.
Neil MacInnes, Head of Libraries insisted that no final decision has been made on the future of Hulme library and added that the concerns about the mural are being taken into consideration. Comedian Johnny Vegas, who unveiled the mural back in 2002, has backed a public campaign to save the mural from destruction and Soltau and the team behind the mural are attempting to get the public art piece listed by English Heritage. “We built the mural with every intention that it would be there as a lasting tribute to the community and what Hulme is about,” says Soltau. “We want it to always be there as a record of the city’s history.”

Images of the mural by Arwa Aburawa can be seen in this gallery.

The consultation on the libraries in Manchester, including Hulme Library, is running until midnight on Sunday 5th June 2011. To take part log on to www.manchester.gov.uk/libraryconsultation.

Sources:
Ex-Hulme
Alison Ravetz: Council Housing and Culture: The History of a Social Experiment, 2001, Routledge, London.
Cletus Moobela: From Worst Slum to Best Example of Regeneration: Complexity in the Regeneration of Hulme – Manchester’, 2005, International Journal of Emergence, Coherence and Organisations

Daniel Boyle and Daniel McCabe – Irish local politicians in Manchester

Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century had two wings, the Republican tradition represented by the Fenian movement which sought complete independence for Ireland and a Republic, and the Home Rule movement which sought a limited autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom. With the defeat of the Fenians by the end of the 1860s, the Irish Nationalist Party came to the fore in the last quarter of the nineteenth century under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. Manchester was a particularly strong centre for the Irish Nationalist Party, but its Irish politicians were also important social reformers in the city itself.

Daniel Boyle and Daniel McCabe were Manchester’s most prominent Irish Nationalist politicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both sitting on the City Council as Liberals and representing adjacent wards with large Irish populations.

Daniel McCabe was born in Stockport but spent nearly the whole of his life in Manchester, receiving his education at the Christian Brothers school in Livesey Street and later studying at evening classes in the Mechanics Institution. According to his contemporaries McCabe spoke with an Irish accent, even in middle age, reflecting the close-knit nature of the Irish community in this period. He was a staunch Roman Catholic throughout his life and from a young age was involved with the work of the St Patrick’s parish, an area he lived in himself despite its poverty. He served as Vice President of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, as Superintendent and Registrar at the St Patrick’s Sunday School – possibly the largest Catholic Sunday School in the country – and somehow found time to serve on the committees of a host of other Catholic organisations.

McCabe was also active politically in both the Irish National League, where he was president of the Michael Davitt branch, and in the Liberal party, where he was vice-president of the North Manchester Liberal Association. This dual membership and activity reflected the prevailing political wisdom that only the Liberal party would ever deliver Home Rule for the Irish people. McCabe’s political activity culminated in his election to the City Council in 1889 for the St Michael’s ward, an area with a large Irish population and which part of the parish of St Patrick’s. He served on the Market, Cleansing and Watch committees and in 1892 became a Justice of the Peace, only the second Roman Catholic to be so appointed. He was regarded as a model of what a Catholic public man should be – hard-working, respectable and devoted to both his religion and his public duties.

In November 1913 Daniel became Manchester’s first Catholic Lord Mayor. In his speech to the Council he drew attention to a number of urgent issues facing the city, in particular the need for clean air and the growing housing shortage, which he believed the council must act to solve: “If private enterprise fails to meet the growing demand for houses the Corporation must not stand idly by. The people must be housed and properly housed. Our future as a nation depends upon the health, intelligence and skill of the workers and health cannot be had in full measure without proper house accommodation”. The new Lord Mayor being unmarried, his sister Mrs O’Neill served as Lady Mayoress. The inauguration of the Lord Mayor was traditionally marked with a service at the Cathedral but Daniel was unable to attend, because in those days Catholics were still forbidden to enter Protestant churches. There were some attempts to stir up controversy in the press over this but public opinion was with Daniel in acting in accordance with his beliefs. A service of thanksgiving was held at Salford Cathedral to which his colleagues on the council were invited.

Daniel Boyle was born in January 1859 near Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, the son of a farmer. In 1877 he left his home to come to Manchester where he found employment with the Midland Railway Company, which he stayed with until 1889. He became active in the Irish National League and was Secretary of the branch in the East Manchester constituency. His talents were soon noticed and, after assisting in the organisation of the INL convention in Manchester, he was asked by TP O’Connor to accept the position as representative of the Irish party in Lancashire and Cheshire. He was also very active in the Irish National Foresters – a sick and burial friendly society – travelling in his spare time at weekends to establish branches in the North and Midlands and acting as head of the society on several occasions as well as secretary of the Manchester district. Boyle also found time to act as the Manchester correspondent of the Freemans’ Journal and as vice-president of the Catholic Registration Society.

In 1894 Boyle was elected to the City Council for New Cross ward – adjoining St Michael’s, in present-day Ancoats – which was the largest ward in the city and contained many Irish voters. Soon after his election he lobbied and led delegations against a proposal to build huge lodging-houses and persuaded the Council to build cottage dwellings instead. He was also involved in the re-organisation of the Manchester City Police which had become widely corrupt, a work of some years. In May 1897 the local monthly magazine Manchester Faces and Places described him thus:

“It is as much by character as by speech that Mr Boyle has so soon secured the respect and ear of the assembly. Sound sense, good humour and the wit which is the dower of the Irish race – these are the qualities which tell powerfully for the cause for the cause he may be advocating. On the platform Mr Boyle….. is an orator. His voice is sonorous and musical….and when particularly he speaks on politics he gives the ring and earnestness and even of passion. Just the touch of the accent of his country aids rather than mars the effect of his speech.”

Perhaps Boyle’s most lasting contribution to Manchester was taking on the complex task of organising the replacement of the Corporation’s horse-drawn trams by a modern electric system, which was inaugurated in 1901. Speaking at the banquet to celebrate the opening, he said that the object was to provide a good service with the best possible conditions, and, not least, to give the ratepayers a decent return on their capital. Soon the service was responsible for 140 miles of track with 450 tramcars travelling 30,000 miles a day and carrying 130 million passengers.” Mancunian wits dubbed it “Dan Boyle’s light railway”. Boyle also had a strong interest in the welfare of the workers on the tram system and revolutionised the conditions of service, reducing the hours from 70 to 54, increasing pay and giving a week’s paid holiday while still making enough money on the trams to contribute a large sum in relief of rates. There were some accusations by political opponents that you had to be Irish to get a job on the trams, accusations angrily rejected at a public election meeting in November 1906. That same year he was the only municipal candidate endorsed by the local Trades Union Council.

Both Boyle and McCabe were on the progressive wing of the Liberal party, supporting the municipalisation of essential services and decent working conditions for council employees. Indeed on many issues they had more in common with the emerging Independent Labour Party than many members of their own party. In a speech at Shamrock Hall, Ancoats in July 1895 McCabe told his audience that Nationalists wanted as speedily as possible to bring about the freedom of Ireland and they believed that they could best do this by continuation of their alliance with the Liberals. He recognised, however, that were many at the meeting who were favourable to the labour movement.

He above all others had not one word to say against the Labour party and he believed that, above all other men, the Irishmen of this country had nothing to say against any party that went for the improvement of the condition of the labouring classes. The Irishmen in this country had to earn their bread from the sweat of their brows, and whatever was good for the working people and for the bettering of their condition would be to the advantage of the Irish masses in England. But he for one believed that the Irish alliance with the Liberal party would more certainly bring about the improvement in the condition of labour than by following the Labour party at the present moment.

On 9th September 1910 the Manchester & Salford District of the United Irish League of Great Britain organised a send off for Dan Boyle, which took place in the Marble Hall, Albion Hotel, Manchester and was reported in the Manchester Guardian. Boyle was leaving for the United States on what was described in the programme for the evening as a “mission to the Irish Race of America” in the company of fellow MPs John Redmond, TP O’Connor and Joe Devlin. Boyle was to tour the northern states. The evening was chaired by Daniel McCabe and the programme consisted of familiar songs – “Ireland A Nation”, “Men of the West”, “Paddies Evermore” and “the Boys of Wexford” interspersed by toasts, one of which was made by John Dulanty (later the Irish High Commissioner in London), who described Boyle as “the spearhead of the shaft of the Irish forces in Irish forces in this vicinity”. Replying to the toast Dan Boyle said that he looked upon his selection as one of the mission to the United States as a compliment to the Irishmen of Great Britain, who had shown unswerving fidelity to the Irish cause through trying times:

“I believe that this is a period for the rank and file of the party to stand solidly and united behind their leaders, to do the thinking and working out of the plan of campaign. I believe at the present time we have leaders – I do not say merely a leader – who deserve, command, aye and receive a full measure of the confidence of the Irish people, whether in Ireland, in England or America. As a result of the statesmanship and diplomacy that these leaders have shown I believe our cause is nearer accomplishment than it ever was, and as Mr. Redmond recently said at Kilkenny, even the stars in the courses are working for Home Rule.”

At 10pm the assembled guests were asked by the programme to proceed to Exchange Station “and there a hearty ‘send-off’ will be given to the Envoy on his mission to our kinsmen overseas”. Dinner eaten and toasts drunk, this was duly done, although Boyle and his wife actually set off to Ireland to visit his constituency in Mayo North before joining his companions for the voyage to the United States, where they attended the conference of the National Convention of the United Irish League. The visit was denounced by Sinn Fein. Boyle had been elected as an MP earlier that year and remained one until the Sinn Fein landslide of 1918 when he was defeated by the Sinn Fein candidate Dr Crawley who gained 7,429 votes to Boyle’s 1,761.He died in 1925.

Daniel McCabe was knighted in due course and appointed by the King as Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire. It was in that official capacity that on 29th December 1918 he welcomed Woodrow Wilson to Lancashire when the President of the United States arrived at London Road station at five in the evening on the occasion of his visit to Manchester. McCabe died the following year and was buried in Moston cemetery where his tomb can be seen directly opposite the main entrance. His photograph hangs in Committee Room Four of the Town Hall and he is also remembered in the same building by a bronze relief in the sculpture hall.

Article by Michael Herbert.

Leonard Tilsley – Stalybridge’s noted socialist councillor and World War One Mutineer and Gertie Tilsley – feminist and community activist

In this article, Leonard and Gertie Tilsley are recollected by their grand-daughter Lesley Wade, interviewed by Aidan Jolly:

Leonard & Gertrude Tilsley, 1921

“My name is Lesley Wade, I’m a Lecturer in the School of Nursing at Manchester University. My grandparents were Mr and Mrs Tilsley: they lived at 99 Ridge Hill Lane and had lived there since approximately 1923. They lived with my granddad’s father Ellis Tilsley and Ellis and Leonard were notable Aldermen of Stalybridge and ultimately my grandfather became Mayor of Stalybridge in 1956. I spent many evenings and many holidays with these two charming people and of course in doing so they did reflect about the house they lived in, the nice new Hague estate and the people they’d met and the sort of conditions of Ridge Hill and they looked at it with optimism.

He was a noted Socialist Councillor and that was part of his philosophy as a very young man. My grandmother was a Manx woman, she came from quite a big farm had a very tragic life because her mother died when she was 13: she brought up 5 children. Leonard went to Coneyman’s Camp on the island, on holiday, and they were introduced by her cousin as they walked along the prom in Douglas. He went to the First World War and they wrote beautiful letters to each other for at least 6 or 7 years, and the first thing he did when he came out away from Cyprus was to get a new pair of clothes, go with Ellis Tilsley’s father and go and marry Gertie Kennaugh.

My grandparents were very much average working class people who were Socialists and they insisted about education, education, education: so that my grandmother had insisted, unusually for that time, that her daughter would also get, if she wished, to go to the grammar school. If she was able, they would make sure she went, so they sacrificed a great deal for both of them. There was nothing in the house of real value except books, I remember that even in 1962, 63, but everything was valued regarding education so of course my mother had done very well at what was called the Nursing School then, and she’d said she was determined she wasn’t going to give up her profession. She became the Assistant Director of Nurse Education at Ashton-under-Lyne Hospital.

I remember I was even then able to distinguish that my parents’ house in Denton was quite a modern house with all relatively modern amenities but my grandparents’ house had stayed as though the Second World War had just not even finished. There was little money in the house because my grandfather was a committed Socialist, he was a grocer and he had quite a few shops in Stalybridge. Castle Hall was one of his first shops and ultimately he had the grocers shop in Hanover Street and then in Melbourne Street as well, so he was well known in Stalybridge and he was the manager of the Co-op in that part of Stalybridge. Everybody in Stalybridge knew them that was quite amazing. Just one reflection is that if we had to go in to town, which we did every Thursday and Friday, you had to dress up. I used to polish my granddad’s boots and I loved it because I loved them but Rosie and I (that’s my sister) used to raise our eyebrows because they wouldn’t have got outside the door without people coming to talk to us and ask Leonard about problems, what could we do, could we help them and it was like a procession into Stalybridge. He’d be very nice and directing people, and he’d retired by then, but we’d always end up in the Stalybridge Reporter office. I don’t know why, we always did that and with one of the chief reporters and I think he’d sometimes ask Leonard what he thought about different things. It was great for me because I’d be sitting there as a young girl about 6 or 7 or 8 but it was quite a learning experience I suppose.

Leonard was quite left wing and had said after the First World War he had contemplated going into the Communist Party and then he thought he’d go into the Salvation Army, he was very annoyed and disturbed by things he’d seen. He wasn’t in France he was in Palestine and Basra but he was very annoyed at the class differences. I’ve just read his war record and amusingly it says something like ‘memory very intelligent, writing very intelligent’ and at the bottom it says ‘very intelligent for a working class man’. It was signed by this Lieutenant; whoever was his Officer – he said he actually got on very well with his Officer. The reason was because the troops that were sent to Palestine obviously thought, at the Armistice, that they were going to go home in 1918. As they got on the boat, the boat went left not right. Leonard, who was probably a spokesperson politely asked his Officer excuse me sir why we’ve turned the wrong way, he said ‘because you my boy are going to Cyprus’. He said ‘the new treaty has changed and we’re occupying Cyprus for 2 years’. They got to Cyprus and there’s two things about Cyprus, Grandfather said it was absolutely beautiful and for a boy from Stalybridge in the north of England to be taken to a Greek island like that, if you had some imagination, it was great. But after 2 years they got a bit annoyed and one day they rebelled and they threw their arms down: I only realised that you could do this after I watched ‘The Monocled Mutineer’. They went out on parade and they just put their arms down and said ‘we’re not continuing’. Leonard thought ‘God we’ve really done it now’, I think there were 3 men, Leonard was one of them, and the Officer in charge took them into the office and he listened to them, and he said ‘why did you do that’. Leonard said ‘well we’ve been here 2 years we want to go home and we want to marry our sweethearts’ and the Officer said ‘indeed and so do I so we’ll say nothing of this matter’. So he was lucky.

If you asked me was my grandmother Socialist, I’d say no she was Liberal, but I also suspect that my grandmother was very keenly an early feminist. She was a Manx woman and as you know the Isle of Man had given the vote to females in 1867. She was an educated woman: my grandmother was the real educator, tremendous reader, very quiet lady and she didn’t socialise outside the house except as the Mayoress. She really kept herself to herself, but she used to make some key points to me. ‘Never forget, never forget Churchill wouldn’t give us the vote, he promised he’d give us the vote and he didn’t and it was only until 1928 that people of England could vote’ she says and that was the most shocking thing when she came to Lancashire, was the fact that she felt really annoyed that she couldn’t vote.

They were very much within a working class culture: the free libraries, Stalybridge Library, was the big boon to them – they used to use the library an awful lot. They were stalwarts of the community: to some extent it was a hard act to follow, and I suppose as my mother said, particularly Gertie was quite Victorian in a way but now reflecting on it I’d say Victorian in a good sense. Of course she was very strict but in the sense that there was an expectation of what you did and you just did not misbehave in any way your voice was never raised, there was never any swearing ever in the house and it was a very genteel atmosphere to be brought up in.

I felt I was growing up in a household where you could ask questions. Every evening in 99 in the parlour, Leonard would have these grey envelopes and they were always from Stalybridge Town Hall and Chester, because he used to go to Chester a lot (that was the centre of administration for Stalybridge) and he’d be working till 11 at night on the papers, never paid for anything but worked till eleven at night, until he was about 70.

My nan said that the new houses on Ridgehill were much better than the terraced houses lower down in Stalybridge and the Brushes estate. They were very optimistic about what socialism could do, but I’m not too sure that at the end of his life granddad was actually as optimistic, because he once sat down with me, bought me a book on the TUC, and said ‘we’ve gone all wrong Lesley, all gone wrong’.

I think both my grandparents and my parents maybe, but particularly my grandparents, they actually lived for the future and they were optimists. The old days were not halcyon days, they were difficult days for people to operate as in a humane way. My granddad died in the early 70’s, Nan lived till she was 94, very articulate still, and she said ‘my God’, when I was doing my A-Levels, she came and collected me, and we walked down into Stalybridge, she said ‘this town has been ripped apart, it used to be so wonderful, the Library, the shops were nice, the streets were lovely’, she said ‘there’s nothing, nothing here’, and that was again the late 70s, early 70s, and that was one thing, the actual decay, the loss of civic pride, very very important to them.”

Aidan Jolly adds:

This story inspired me to write this song, which focusses on Leonard’s WW1 experiences. It’s sung to an adapted version of a Cheshire tune called ‘The Rambling Royal’. This tune also tells the story of a man who deserts (several times) rather than fight other people’s wars – notably, he refuses to go and fight in Ireland. Its roots are in an 18th Century Ballad called ‘The Bold Belfast Shoemaker’. It’s unusual in that it takes the side of a deserter rather than a recruited man, and also in that the soldier’s girlfriend encourages him to desert and shelters him, rather than encouraging him to join up. I’m grateful to my friend Roy Clinging (www.royclinging.com) for the use of his research.

The allusion to Tipperary is there because the song ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’, which became a soldiers’ song of WW1, was written by Stalybridge Music Hall Artist Jack Judge in 1912.

Leonard Tilsley
My name is Leonard Tilsley
I’ve a shop in Melbourne Street
My sweetheart’s Gertie Kennaugh
Who in Douglas I did meet
Now I’m called to do my duty
Not for me the Wipers mud
I’m to stand upon the Holy Land
And baptise it with my blood

We fought the Turk in Basra
Advanced the British Line
Left Mr Lawrence and the League
To settle Palestine
I wrote a letter to my sweetheart
Said “We’re on a steamer back”
But Aphrodite’s Isle was calling us
The ship began to tack

Chorus:
And it’s a way to Tipperary
And it’s even further home
And a man gets tired of putting up
When he’s weary to the bone
So I asked too many questions
And refused to let things stand
And they marked my card as
“Intelligent, for a working class man”

So I put it to my officer
As on deck he took the air
And he told me of a change of course
In Government affairs
“My boy, we’re bound for Cyprus
Its beauties to behold
It’s our duty to the Empire
To do as we are told”

Well 1919 came and went
While Russia it turned red
And by Christmas 1920
I was longing to be wed
We came out one day on parade
And said “we can’t go on”
The Armistice is two years old
We laid our rifles down

Repeat first Chorus

Well they could have called it mutiny
And we’d have all been shot
But the C.O. he was tired too
And let the matter drop
I came back home to Stalybridge
Picked up where I’d left off
Married my sweet Douglas lass
In a suit of Sunday Cloth

Chorus:
And it’s a way to Tipperary
And I was seven years from home
And the land that’s fit for heroes
Is yet distant and unknown
So we’ve kept on asking questions
We’ve refused to let things stand
I’ve kept the card they marked for me
To remind me who I am

So come on all you working folk
When slaughter is your school
When next they ask for cannon food
Don’t heed the butcher’s call
You serve your fellow workers best
With ploughshares not with swords
We’ll bring down the ruling class
Not with rifles but with words