NEITHER HERE NOR THERE (Review)

 

Neither Here nor There (Review)

Having grown up in the beautiful Vale of the Leven in the 60s and having worked there in the 70s, this book was of special interest to me. My father worked as a boilermaker/plater in Dennys’s shipyard, Dumbarton around the same time as one of my brothers once worked for the Lennox Herald as a reporter/sub-editor. My mother was from ‘old’ Bonhill.

The book’s title is self-explanatory of its contents: Neither Here nor There - Migration: Irish and Scots in Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven 1855-1900 by CG Docherty. As one would expect, the book contains lots of numbers and statistics about the influx of migrants to the area, data regarding their housing and housing situations, (ten a room tenements etc.) and commentary on their places of employment, wages and working conditions. Sources include census records from those times.

The fast-flowing River Leven running through the Vale of Leven from Loch Lomond to the River Clyde lent itself well to the textile and shipbuilding industries that were the big attractions for migrants to the area during the years the book deals with – mostly women to the Vale and men to Dumbarton (see e.g., pgs. 169-70). As an oversimplification, it was the cloth of the Vale with its related bleaching, dyeing, printing, weaving, etc. versus the heavy metal industry with its related red-hot forges and furnaces, riveting, pealing hammers, etc. of Dumbarton.

Though the stats can sometimes be a challenge for those who don’t “do” numbers, the author, methodically but eloquently, delightfully adds to the pot pinches of poetic prose, as he intelligently interacts with the voluminous facts and findings. (This book is no slapped together makeshift raft built by weans for sailing doon the Leven on. With intentions of making it to Dumbarton, a mate and I did this onetime and managed to float down the Leven from Balloch to just beyond the ‘Stuckie’ Bridge before overhanging branches capsised our jerry-built raft! Anyway, how were we supposed to get back to the Vale from Dumbarton in only our swimming trunks?!) The book’s garnered information is professionally end noted with tidy references from whence it was sourced and is neatly set at the end of each chapter. There are some old b/w photos and maps, a helpful index and a Bibliography.

Why Vale folk are referred to as ‘jeely eaters’ is explained:

Whether using natural or artificial products, the dyeing process produced harmful liquids and unpleasant, often noxious, vapours. Those who worked in this industry faced hazardous conditions daily – often with serious consequences. Female print workers were known as ‘jeely eaters’ because their hands were stained permanently red. p. 27.  

One of the ‘Sons of the Rock’ went down with the Titanic:
              

Roderick Chisholm, born in Dumbarton 1868 … was one of nine men selected for the ‘Guarantee Team’ that would sail on the Titanic’s maiden voyage, none of whom survived its sinking.” pgs. 119-20.

Referring to an article in the Lennox, we see something of the discouraging disparagements Irish migrants had to contend with:

[I]n 1864, the Lennox Herald reported that Irish illiteracy was the reason why houses had to be given numbers in Renton, the village with the heaviest concentration of Irish in the Vale of Leven. p. 141.

Though I was witness to sectarianism in the 70s, it was mostly in the form of friendly banter regarding the ‘Auld Firm’, i.e., Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic, (with Celtic FC, of course, being equated with the Irish Catholics and Rangers FC with the Scots Protestants). Docherty alerts us that a version of ‘fake news’ was also around way back then. For he goes on to write:

In towns with identifiable ‘Irish areas’, reportage in local newspapers ensured that there was much attention paid to disputes between the Irish and the Scots and amongst the Irish themselves. Whereas evidence of cooperation, particularly amongst industrial labourers who worked and lived beside each other, was not newsworthy. The Scots and Irish were not in constant conflict with each other, even if some newspapers gave the impression otherwise. pgs. 146-47.

Yet, perhaps paradoxically, the author goes on to inform the reader, “There were employers who expressly refused to hire Irish Catholics, a situation that persisted well into the twentieth century.” p. 175. Like the ‘common old working chap’ in the ‘I Belong to Glasgow’ song, perhaps the perspective on sectarianism in the Vale and Dumbarton changed with ‘a couple of drinks on a Saturday’!

The River Leven will be happy now that the bleach and dyes of the textile and print factories no longer mix together with effluence in the eddies of its waters. Though in our own day the closing of the textile and shipbuilding industries along the stagnant backwaters of her banks have left pockets of depression in the Vale and Dumbarton, however, much of the effluence has been transformed into affluence. Having become part of the Scottish diaspora in the mid-Seventies, I am always impressed on return visits when I see how far we have come.

The stats, facts, and figures so capably verbalised in Neither Here nor There for the years of 1855-1900 is, of course, now all water under the bridge. However, it gives us an informed and detailed sense of who we are and where we have come from. This book has done the Vale and Dumbarton a great service and ought to be on the bookshelf of every home there. We may be neither here nor there but we’ve come a long way. Thank you CG Docherty for writing this part of our history so readably.