Not Fade Away
May
is almost upon us and it’s a month I look on fondly. Not only is the Scottish
winter well and truly over but it is also the time when all the great issues in
Scottish football are resolved and the trophies handed out. As a child, it was also
the month of Mary and my memories of school include singing songs such as ‘I’ll
sing a hymn to Mary’ and the ever popular, ‘Month of Mary.’ It was an
optimistic month, a time to contemplate the imminent arrival of summer and warmer,
lighter days.
May
is also the month that a baby boy was born to John and Elizabeth Kerins in
Ballymote, County Sligo in Ireland. The year was 1840 and population of the
country had reached a peak of 8.2 million. It seems astonishing, but Ireland’s
population then was more than half of that of England, which stood at 15.9
million. (Today Ireland has in total of 6.8 million while England’s population
is almost nine times higher at 56 million.) For the poor, in a country treated
as a colony and exploited by its more dominant neighbour, life was precarious
indeed. Only the abundance of the potato crop allowed this high population to
thrive but of course, that abundance was shattered by the arrival of a fungus
like organism called Phytophthora infestans which caused great swathes of
the potato crop to rot in the fields. As always, the poor were to suffer most.
A
few contemporary records survive from County Sligo to give us a flavour of
conditions in the county during the years of the great hunger. On 24 March
1847 Reverend Michael Spelman wrote to the Relief Commission stating that the
dead in his parish are being buried without coffins and requests coffins should
be provided in future.
"In
this single parish (Geevagh, Co.Sligo) comprising a population of 1,000 souls,
no less than eighty-seven persons have actually died of starvation within the
last twelve days. Many are buried without coffins. This fact is indisputable
and as I feel convinced that numbers will have to be interred with no other
covering but the rags they wore when living.’’
This
lamentable scene was played out all over country. Sligo was to lose
fully a third of its population to death or emigration in the famine years. Imagine
if you will, a virtually full Celtic Park, that is the number of people who
perished or left County Sligo in the hungry years. 57,790 people are recorded
as having died or emigrated between 1847-52 from just one of Ireland’s 32
counties.
It is recorded
in much detail that the British government’s response to a catastrophe
unfolding in a part of the United Kingdom was callously inadequate. Ireland and
Britain were unified under an 1801 Act of Parliament and it’s clear that the
unified parliament in London treated the Irish as less than equals. Charles
Trevelyan believed the famine to be God’s plan to reduce the surplus population
and that to interfere would amount to a sin. His attitude to the Irish would be
considered racist in today's terms and it was ominous that a man holding such beliefs was put
in charge of famine relief. Ships full of grain, oats and livestock continued
to leave Ireland throughout the famine period
and evictions of poor peasants continued on a grand scale. It was a
recipe for disaster.
There are
no contemporary records to help us discover how John and Elizabeth Kerins
managed in those dark times but they did keep their two sons alive through this seminal
period of Irish history. The family would have seen the horrors unfolding
around them in rural Sligo and doubtless worried for their future. It is known
that their youngest son, Andrew, moved to Scotland where he worked as a
teacher. Like many, he would rely on the Church to supply him with an education
denied to so many of the poor. The teaching orders of the church welcomed
dedicated and hard-working young men like Andrew Kerins and he became a Marist Brother.
The
Irish had arrived in Scotland in huge numbers, driven by hunger and destitution
at home and drawn by the industrial revolution which promised the opportunity
of work. From the docks and factories of Glasgow, to the jute mills of Dundee,
they filled the most menial and lowest paid jobs. They helped build the canals,
bridges and roads of Scotland and were exploited as cheap, disposable labour.
They lived in the poorer quarters of Scottish towns and cities and suffered
from the appalling social conditions of Victorian Scotland.
The
overcrowded, insanitary slums of Glasgow they inhabited were among the worst in
Europe. It is recorded that over 11,000 people died in Glasgow in 1888. Of
these, almost 5000 were children under 5 years old. There was no NHS then, no
social housing and only charity for those who fell on hard times. The Catholicism
of the majority of the Irish in Scotland added another layer to the distrust
and often naked hatred they endured. It was into such conditions that Andrew
Kerins chose to work.
Yet
despite the hardship and hostility, in the east end of Glasgow, in Edinburgh’s
Cowgate, in Lochee by the Tay and scores of other places they carved out a life
for themselves. The new sport of football offered them a way to integrate more
into Scottish society and as Brother Walfrid proved in the foundation of
Celtic, it offered a way of raising funds to alleviate the poverty and need he
saw around him on a daily basis.
Celtic’s
most famous captain, Billy McNeill, once said that there was a fairy tale
aspect about the club. Who could have envisioned that on a bright, sunny day in
1967 that a club born into the poverty and squalor of Victorian Scotland’s
poorest community would become Champions of Europe? As McNeill held that gleaming
trophy above his head in the Lisbon sunshine, he was cheered by thousands who
had made their way to Portugal to support Walfrid’s side. Many of those
supporters would have been the grandchildren of the Irish who arrived in
Scotland with nothing and endured much hardship and discrimination to make a
better life for their children.
That
is the triumph and significance of Celtic’s victory in 1967. Celtic is a visual reminder of a people who refused
to fade away, to integrate to the point of invisibility. The human spirit
can fight back from hardship and oppression and that a people can rise and take their place in the world
with dignity and pride.
So
as May begins tomorrow and we remember the birth of Andrew Kerins on the 18th
of the month, it would be somehow fitting if the team he founded to brighten
the lives of a downtrodden community once more fought back to become the
champions we know they are.
