Episode 3 The Travelling Picture Show

The Travelling Picture Show is giving four Northern Irish towns

the chance to celebrate their past, their stories and their characters,

as captured by local amateur filmmakers and television crews.

Some of the films have lain hidden in attics and archives for decades.

Now we're bringing them back to the heart of the community where they came from.

We're going to meet some of the people who made the films, those who appear in them,

and those with a story to tell.

We've invited them to come and see the past flicker into life on the silver screen

and get a rare glimpse of their town and its people in days gone by.

Today we've pitched our Travelling Picture Show tent in Newry.

We'll see films that show the town's industrial past,

the glory days of the showbands,

school life in the 1960s

and what it was like to be a punk in Newry in the 1980s.

Here we are in McLennan Park right in the centre of Newry,

a place I've been to many times in the past.

Then it was a town, but just as busy and full of life as the city is today.

Now, many people would regard this border city as a shopping destination,

but Newry has a very rich industrial past which still shapes the city and its people.

Although its roots go back centuries, much of Newry was shaped by that industrial heritage,

and built around the canal that runs right through the heart of the city.

Opened in 1742, it was the first summit canal to be built in the UK or Ireland,

and in its heyday carried goods and passengers between Newry and Lough Neagh.

Although the inland section of the canal was abandoned once the railways came in,

it continued to be used in Newry, ferrying goods between the warehouses and businesses

that had grown up around its banks and the busy Newry docks.

Well, I've come out to Victoria Lock where the Newry Ship Canal meets the sea,

and on this beautiful day and everything looking so peaceful,

it's very hard to believe when you look down the waterway that once this was the gateway

to one of the busiest ports in Ireland.

Cargo ships and steamboats came into the bustling port of Newry from all over Northwest Europe,

bringing in coal from England, timber from Sweden, slate from Wales,

and taking out livestock, dairy produce and linen.

On a busy day there'd be lots of noise with livestock.

Coal was being discharged,

the noise of the coal dropping on to the cranes,

the noise of the cranes themselves,

they were powered by electricity

and there was a humming sound came from them.

Then further down

we had a container berth and there was a large crane there for lifting containers

on and off the ship there,

and everything was just a hub of activity.

Many of our audience today have no memory whatsoever of the port in Newry.

They're seeing images of it for the very first time.

For Gabby Curran it's as if it was yesterday.

Gabby, I like the way you've brought along a lot of memorabilia today.

Who did this belong to?

It's mostly related to my father and the Newry docks.

My father was a docker, and so every boat my father worked on...

and now looking back on it, it's actually a history of some of the ships that came up the Newry Canal.

Why did he keep such a diligent record?

The reason being that to get a fortnight's pay in the summer time,

-you had to work and put a stamp on every week.

-This was important to him?

That was his computer, that was everything in there. It's part of Newry's memorabilia.

-Beats computers, eh?

-Ah, they were good people, different times, Gloria.

Not all dockers were cardmen, like Gabby's father.

It was called "getting a score".

And there was maybe 80 people there looking for a job.

Patsy Quinn recalls what it was like for the many casual labourers

who queued from well before dawn to try and get a day's work.

There was a massive big shed and there was a man called Jimmy Coughlan, he was the foreman.

And all the guys looking for occasional work were all lined up in a row,

and he just walked along and said, "You," or "You."

When I was about 16, I was unemployed for about a month

and I got a job working on the steam packet.

I started at 8 in the morning and I went right through till 3 the next morning.

And in those days when I was working, I was earning about £2/10 a week.

And for that one day at the steam packet,

which was carrying hundredweights and two hundredweight bags all day long,

I got over £4, which was a lot of money.

When I finished the steam packet at 3 in the morning,

my chin was hitting my knees, I was that bent over from carrying bags.

The lasting memory that I have was travelling up and down to the locks on the Olaf.

The captain would bring us down to the locks

and we would get a lift home or come back up on another collier.

Sometimes he would let you steer the ship.

We were 12, 13 years of age and this was just top-drawer stuff.

Boats continued to be a source of fascination for boys young and old,

but by the '60s, business on the Newry Canal was in decline.

In 1968, a cargo boat, the Saint William, crashed into the Victoria Lock gates,

ripping them off their hinges. The port was closed for weeks,

and the incident spelled the beginning of the end for the Newry Ship Canal.

Just six years later, a local church group making a film captured the last working day on the canal.

I was fortunate enough to get a reel of film handed to me

by a guy out of one of the schools.

Today, the hoisting of the flag is a signal to the Anna Broere to sail towards Newry

for the last time.

Because the canal which linked Newry with the world since 1742

will close as a navigational waterway.

We are waiting to welcome the last ship.

I was watching and watching and I was just getting fed up,

then all of a sudden this wee boat appeared coming by Narrow Water Castle,

and there was a mist that morning, and it just looked so beautiful,

and then I watched it and watched it,

and then when I seen the name on the ship, I realised...

I'd heard my father speak about the last wee working boat coming up the Newry Canal,

and it was a wee small oil tanker and that was about 1974.

And thank God somebody had the sense to film it,

because it actually was the last working boat on the Newry Canal.

Eilish, I watched you watching the film and enjoying it very much.

Now, just tell me why you were there that day when the last ship left?

Well, it was a film that was being made called Kick Any Stone,

it's an expression, kick any stone and all this history will leap up at you.

So what do you remember of the vision of the ship leaving the canal?

Well, I don't actually think the boat was there.

I think we were just videoed waving and then the boat was edited in.

-No! So you were just acting for the film.

-We were just acting, but I could be wrong.

A lot of very hard work has gone into restoring the canal

to create something of a haven for wildlife, for walkers, for cyclists,

along this 18-mile route all the way to Portadown.

But you know there was a time when nobody seemed to know what to do with it.

No longer viable as a port, Newry turned its back on the ship canal.

For years it was little more than a dumping ground.

There was even talk about building over it.

But there was one annual event when the whole town came down to the canal to have fun.

And by the late 1970s, Newry Canal Festival was proving so popular

that the BBC sent a crew down to find out what it was all about.

The Festival started off on a Saturday with a gigantic parade.

It really was... It surprised the committee, you know.

We knew it was going well, we knew the response was tremendous,

but we were very surprised, especially with the crowds.

It wasn't long before Wendy Austin, a plucky girl,

was getting roped into one of the more unusual events of Festival week.

Do you not think that you might take up a bit of ordinary, sensible mountain climbing?

-Do you not call this sensible?

-I suppose you need it to build your stamina up.

I don't need to build my stamina up!

The Festival was something that the whole community could enjoy and look forward to from year to year.

Those times were hard in Newry, there would have been a lot of unemployment and a lot of people emigrated,

so this was a bit of light relief

and it was maybe a distraction for people, if you like,

for the whole community

to come together and enjoy community events.

The Canal Festival Queen competition added a bit of glamour to the occasion.

It came as a big surprise. Someone nominated me to enter and I still don't know who that was,

but I was excited, and, you know, it was the girly thing too,

but then panic set in. "You know what? Have I got my wardrobe to wear for all these different events?"

At the Canal, a tub race was one of the big events.

There was a slogan, "Don't fall in, join in!"

Unfortunately, everybody did fall in when they were on the canal,

because everybody had to make their own vessel and not all of them were seaworthy!

What about next year? Have you any special plans for that?

I have, but I'm not giving any secrets away.

Now, Maureen, you ran the Canal Festival for a great number of years,

so what was the atmosphere like during those Festivals?

Well, the first couple of Festivals, it was very low key, because we were in the middle of the Troubles,

troubled times, and in those days not too many people went out in the town of Newry

after, say, 5.30, 6 in the evening.

And the whole idea of the Festival was to get the people socialising again and coming out.

So after maybe two, three years, it really began to build.

We had a schools committee... It wasn't just a Festival of street activities...

We had arts, sport, and social events and civic events.

You could have 3,000-4,000 people along the canal.

-And a great atmosphere, presumably?

-Oh, fabulous.

# Up in the morning and off to school

# The teacher is teaching the golden rule... #

Back in the mid-1960s, there was a great feeling of optimism,

not just in Newry, but right across Northern Ireland.

The old was making way for the new,

buildings, motorways, hospitals and schools.

In Newry, the new Ashgrove Intermediate School was the height of modern '60s.

# ..Ring-ring goes the bell... #

Teacher Irwin Major made this short film of a day in the life of two Ashgrove School pupils.

# ..You're fortunate if you get time to eat

# Back in the classroom open your books

# Even the teachers don't know how mean she looks... #

So, Irwin, it's a very interesting piece of film. Why did you decide to make this day in the life of?

Well, a new school had been opened in Newry,

and we were very proud of it.

We decided to follow a boy and a girl through school,

so it was basically to publicise the school to the parents.

# ..Drop the coin right into the slot

# You gotta hear something that's really hot

# With the one you love you're making romance... #

How did you choose those two pupils in particular?

One was very boisterous and one was very good.

I was teaching home economics or as it was called domestic science,

and it was lovely to see it in the film and the little girl

that I literally haven't seen in, I'm sure, 50, 60 years...

there she was, baking away.

-So you enjoyed watching the film today, did you?

-Very much.

And there were a whole lots of faces I recognised which I didn't think I would do.

I must tell you, I really enjoyed watching the film today,

so thank you very much for your expertise all those years ago.

But Ashgrove Intermediate pupils had other things on their minds besides school.

# Yeah, I got the shakes I got the hippy hippy shakes... #

The 1960s was a great time to be young, and Newry was gripped by showband fever.

# ..The hippy hippy shakes... #

The showbands had grown out of the old ballroom orchestras of the 1950s,

but to cater for a new younger audience they had embraced American rock'n'roll, country and pop.

If you could dance to it, the showbands played it.

Newry alone produced dozens of bands including the Hilton, Deirdre And the Defenders,

the Soundtracks and the Epic.

This is the town hall in Newry, very dominant as you come into the town itself.

But not that far away from here was the old Ardmore Hotel owned by Scallen family.

I used to do quite a bit of cabaret there myself, it was great fun.

But, you know, this town has always been oozing with musical talent

and the competition was always very keen,

so anybody who came to perform in the town knew that they had to put on a good show.

# I've been told when a boy meets a girl

# He takes a trip around the world

# Hey, hey, bop doo-wop, bop bop doo-wop... #

The '60s were the magic years for the bands.

In Newry, the town hall

was the place to be on a Saturday night,

and there was bands

from all over Ireland played in the town hall.

Bands like the Cadets from Dublin, the Clipper Carlton from Derry...

every county was represented with bands. It was a magical era.

I sometimes thought that anybody could put together a band and make a living out of it in the '60s.

It wasn't quite that simple, but I sometimes thought that.

# ..Hear me talk about boys and girls... #

Dick Barton was the lead guitarist with the Skyrockets showband.

Here they are doing a gig in Enniskillen in 1960.

It brings me joy. People seem so happy in the film

and enjoy their dancing so much.

In those days, it really was possible to play six and seven nights a week.

That's not an exaggeration.

Because you might go from the Lammas Fair straight down to The Rose of Tralee and play at festivals

that took place.

And in some ways it was like a party

that went on for seven years, it really was.

Because when the night was good and it went well

and people came up or they danced and they enjoyed themselves,

for us it was like being at a really good night ourselves.

It was crazy.

The showbands were part of a bigger music scene in the '60s

that saw huge stars like the Beatles, Cliff Richard and the Rolling Stones

coming to play gigs here.

# Please release me, let me go... #

To actually play on the same bill as, say, somebody like Engelbert Humperdinck was amazing!

To hear him sing Please Release Me and you could almost reach out...

For us, that was as big a thrill as for anybody else in that hall.

And the people would flock up round the stage and listen, and then after that, you know what?

They were satisfied, they wanted to dance again.

And that's where we fitted into the picture.

Not to be outdone by the big names of the UK charts,

some showband members made it on to the international stage for themselves.

# One day

# While I was out walking... #

The Eurovision that year was in the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Pat McGeegan sang Chance Of A Lifetime.

# ..Here I saw... #

Now, you may know him better as the father of the boxer Barry McGuigan,

but Pat McGeegan was the lead singer of Dick's band the Skyrockets.

# ..Summer cloud

# Think of that wonderful evening... #

We played on the recording of it, but we didn't actually get to play in the Royal Albert Hall,

but to have our lead singer there and perform with all his heart, that was enough for us.

# ..Is the chance of a lifetime... #

He finished in fourth place.

Cliff Richard managed to finish second with a tune called Congratulations,

which we've heard at every birthday since.

# ..With you. #

Rosie, it's marvellous to see just a smattering there of the showband era. What do you remember of that?

Oh, absolutely! The Hilton showband I remember,

and Barry McGuigan's father singing as well. What a fabulous voice!

He sang...you know, a voice like Matt Monro. Yeah, so it was lovely to see.

I think what people forget is just how big the showbands were.

-Yes, they were. I wasn't allowed out to see them, you see.

-Why was that?

Because I was too young.

-Were you impressed by the bands so much that you wanted to do it?

-Yes, I wanted to sing with the bands.

But my father used to sort of say, "No! If you want to sing, you can sing by yourself!

"Don't be going out with all the bands!" He must have thought, you know, "Oh, rock'n'roll!"

Of course by the time Rosemarie was making a name for herself,

the heyday of showbands was well and truly over.

It was also the end of an era for the local linen trade,

when Bessbrook Mill closed for business.

Once people flocked out of Newry in their hundreds to work in the linen mill,

which was the centrepiece of this Quaker model village,

a purpose-built mill town which famously had no pub, no pawnshop and no police station.

The electric tram, built in 1885 to bring coal and flax from the wharves in Newry,

continued to bring workers to the mill in Bessbrook until 1948.

I think it only did about 5 or 6mph,

and it went under the 18 Arches, the viaduct.

I think when it was going under it too, the main Dublin train went over this!

This thing overhead, you know!

That's very exciting now,

because it would be only my generation who had ever been near it.

They used to say that if you threw your schoolbag out, you could jump out and get it

and, like, run after the tram and get in again.

There's a magazine about the tram,

and my sister is standing in the tram doorway, getting out of the tram.

Halfway between Newry and Bessbrook, there was an electric dynamo

where the man went in and gave it a shot to take it up the hill.

When the tram was there, I never missed getting the bus.

I think there was only one bus, or maybe two.

With the bus, I would have been in Newry in ten minutes.

The tram might have been there for half an hour.

It was only 20 minutes, but I still then had to walk another mile when I got to Newry.

I lived on the road leading into Newry at the time,

and I remember

the workers coming out in the morning, walking,

early, early in the morning, loads of them walking out of Newry.

-That would have been about three and a half miles, wouldn't it?

-Yes.

To come out to their work. And then some of them in the spinning and everything

worked in their bare feet.

-Because there was a lot of water, you see.

-A lot of water in the spinning.

The water just flowed across their feet all time.

And they'd been standing most of the day and then walking back to Newry.

Linen manufacturing was at its peak in Northern Ireland in the early 1900s.

Believe it or not, Bessbrook Mill alone had around 4,000 workers.

I left school at 14 and started in Bessbrook Mill,

I think it was the day after my 14th birthday.

And I might as well tell you, having never been in a factory

and going into a room about 100 yards long with about 100 machines in it,

and the noise and the heat and the steam, for a young fellow who'd never been there,

I was scared stiff!

But after about a week or two, you found out and got talking to other people,

and the older women were great. They really looked after you well.

Some of them knew my mother and that was a big plus as well.

Then after a while they were giving you sandwiches.

I was that skinny, I think they were trying to build me up a bit!

In the weaving shed where I worked there was over 100 looms, and that noise...

You had to learn to lip-read,

because if one of the others was working away over at the far side of the shed,

and he wanted, say, a 5/8 spanner,

he wasn't walking over.

Instead, he'd go, "Graham, 5/8 spanner."

You had to read the lips and take it over to him.

There as a big alleyway up the centre, clear.

The machines all were longways, facing each other.

Now, a girl would be responsible for those two sides of that.

But down at the end they always had a stool.

And once they had everything running,

they used to just sit and watch to see if something went wrong,

but quite often a couple of them would be talking,

and I would be quite often working at the machine...

And if I looked down they immediately put their hand up their mouth

because they knew I could lip-read.

And I'm not going to go into any of the stories I heard... but it was interesting.

No sooner had the sound of the looms ceased, than Bessbrook reverberated to noise of a very different kind.

John Davis's garden backs on to what at one time was the busiest heliport in Europe.

I'd moved into...I suppose you could call it a military war zone.

It was absolutely buzzing with noise. The noise was horrendous.

There would have been flights every eight minutes,

and that would have been your Lynx or your Gazelles or the Wessex.

John made a virtue out of his home's proximity to the helicopters.

As a keen amateur filmmaker and photographer,

it provided him with plenty to film.

It was my private air show, you could say.

I was in the right place at the right time.

Sitting in the house, I could tell, "Oh, that's a Wessex taking off."

"Oh, that's the Chinook coming in."

We had names for the helicopters.

We called the Chinook the egg-mixer because of its sound coming from two miles away.

You could hear it from two miles away,

so that gave me time to take my photographs and that.

There was days you could tolerate the noise and there was days you couldn't.

Sometimes the noise would be so unbearable, I would put headphones on and cut the grass

and just get on with weeding the garden

and then go and hang the washing out, whatever had to be done, just get on with it.

Nothing was going to stop me, and, er, you just had to get on with your life.

You can't let it hold you up.

It was just part of normal living in Bessbrook.

John knew this wouldn't last for ever,

and when day came that Bessbrook Military Base was to close,

he was there to capture it on camera.

This was the last helicopter to take off from Bessbrook Heliport,

and it's the end of Operation Banner.

I was really delighted that I was granted permission to get the shot,

and it's a super shot because I knew I had to get this one right,

and I was so delighted with the shot, I thought, "Wow! What a shot to get!" I couldn't believe it.

It's history, it's a moment in history.

Seeing the cows grazing here today,

it's very hard to imagine that this field was once part of a major military installation.

PUNK ROCK MUSIC

We have one last reminder of Newry in the 1980s.

Right, Newry. It's a place that's probably better known for its lengthy queues at the border,

and I suppose a town that most people would only get to see if they were travelling through it go down South,

but what's the place like to live in? Well, we thought we'd give our film crew to some people who live there

so as they could tell us what they thought of Newry.

Channel One at the time was a very popular youth culture show for Northern Ireland people,

and a couple of bands that we had liked had been on it,

son that was our gateway. We felt that this was us, this is us on our way.

# It's like you want to go... #

Usually, the singer is the front person in the band, and I suppose they just put my face forward.

Probably it was better-looking than the rest of them anyway!

In your dreams!

In Newry, if you're a punk there's nothing to do,

there's no opportunities and there's no-one going to accept us at all.

Our gathering spot was outside Woolies

where we used to just hang around,

meet up with friends, scoff at passers-by.

If you could afford a couple of albums, into Woolies you went and got a couple of albums and stuff.

For only one punk band in the town,

there was a lot of punks about Newry.

There were plenty of punks about then.

This woman came up to me one day and she says, "You wouldn't happen to have a safety pin?"

And I said yeah.

I'd safety pins all over my jacket

so I gave her one.

She opened it up and stuck it my ass!

I says, "What did you do that for?"

She says, "Just something I've always wanted to do!"

We'd go up to Friar Tuck's for something to eat and we'd just hang about there,

until it's time to go home.

Soap in the hair.

Egg white.

And then all the stuff would get into your eyes

and you'd be trying to get across the road before a car hit you.

Or on a summer's day you'd be getting chased down the street!

So that's Newry. There's nothing to do for a punk.

Nothing's going to change. We're just going to have to get out.

For weeks and months and even years, walking about... "Are you still here? Are you not away yet?"

It's a bit embarrassing, but still very glad we did it.

We didn't do anybody any harm.

We just have a good time and enjoy ourselves, and that's what we did.

# ..And it's like you want to go... #

I love it! What a marvellous reminder of the punk era.

Now, the punks may never have left Newry, but I have to tell you The Travelling Picture Show does.

We're about to pick up our tent and move to another town.

We have more wonderful films to show, great stories to reveal and fabulous people to meet.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd