Men of Arlington

This programme contains some strong language.

When I first arrived in London, in Camden Town here,

it was the early '70s.

I suppose I brought a suitcase.

So here I was, wandering around Camden Town for the first time.

A slight edge of dread, maybe.

"How am I going to manage here?"

You know, in a city this size,

with only me.

And I found myself going into a cafe in Parkway.

I heard these Irish accents,

so I went over and I said to one of them,

"Is there anywhere you can get digs around here?"

And he said to me, "You'll get a lie-down in the big house."

And this is what greeted me.

Arlington House.

I was a country boy. I was gobsmacked looking at this thing,

the size of it.

Now, in the old days, there was no lights.

No lights here, no lights at all.

No showers, no toilets either.

They were all rooms in them days.

There were so many rooms,

if you wanted a shower or bath, you had to go downstairs.

There was only six sitting baths

to share amongst 1,180 men.

It's not too different from a rather run-down public school in the '50s,

which was the sort of environment I was familiar with.

The vast majority of people here

would have kept themselves to themselves.

If they were the sort of people

that would have close relationships

with anybody, regardless of what sex it was,

they probably wouldn't have been in Arlington House in the first place.

Quite a strange feeling to be looking at Arlington again.

It feels like a different life,

a different life back then.

If you could've got into Arlington House, what had you got?

Immediately, you'd got light, you'd got heat,

you'd got companionship.

All of the needs a human being needs were all here in Arlington.

This house gave it the name in Camden Town for "Paddy lies down."

This house here gave them that name,

like, where the Irish lay down.

They had a room and that, and they went to work for a daily wage,

and got paid at the end of the day,

came back, lay down, went out to work the following day.

An Irishman on a shovel in Camden Town now, it's a rare sight.

-NEWSREEL:

-Over 800 Irishmen are working on this enormous London office block.

Even the architect and two engineers are Irish.

Like the M1, the atomic power stations, the Llanwern Steelworks,

this will be another monument to the Irish migration.

Last year, 70,000 sailed across the Irish Channel, looking for work.

Most will stay.

MUSIC: "Navigator" by The Pogues

# The canals and the bridges

# The embankments and cuts

# They blasted and dug with

# Their sweat and their guts... #

My most valuable possession was a pair of working boots.

As long as you were a young, fit, strong man,

had a pair of working boots,

they weren't too worried about whether your clothes had been on

for a day, for two days, for a week.

This is Kentish Town Road.

Just along here, in the '60s and '70s,

lorries would have picked men up here.

This was known as a lorry spot here.

It didn't really matter to a Camden ganger man at that time of the morning.

All he wanted was a skin.

This is the Camden Road side of Camden Town here.

Years ago, again in the '60s, '70s,

stacks of men standing down here, they would be picked up by Murphy,

the green and the grey, you know, all the major contractors like that.

There was so much work at the time,

and there were so many young Irishmen in this town at that time,

you didn't get the idea you were special around here for very long.

I gather that 80% of your labour is Irish.

Why are they so attractive to you, or the job so attractive to them?

Well, I think money is the first.

They like big money.

They don't mind the conditions we work under.

When we move to another job, they'll come with us.

Would English people do that?

Well...I don't think so.

They used to say, like,

"It's not our country, let's dig the fuck out of it."

# Yes, to shift a few tonnes

# Of this earthly delight. #

I was a fit man in those days.

And you have to really work hard, you have to really work hard.

You could be in a trench shovelling muck all day,

maybe...six, eight foot over your head.

And I loved it.

It used to do something for me.

It delayed and distracted a lot of stupid thoughts I had in my head,

a lot of fears.

This is one of the biggest hostels in Europe. 1,180 men lived here.

I first came here in 1960.

There was no lifts when I came here.

No lifts. You had to walk up.

And the gates, you had gates,

and every half-hour from seven o'clock, the gate opens up,

and when you go to bed, you had to go to bed. You can't come back down.

Once you go up, you can't come back down.

You could see the old numbers there.

The old numbers, you can see it.

668.

The room was only...here, like that.

This is two rooms now, look.

That's three rooms now.

See that window? One room, one room, three rooms.

I'll show you, this is my room.

Hmm. More letters.

Yeah, this one here.

It's all right, isn't it? This is my room here.

I've got lots of clothes in there.

All my shirts and trousers and jackets and shoes are in there.

Everything in there.

Eight years in this room.

I used to be over there on the other side.

And then I moved here.

I had a noisy neighbour, so I had to move here.

I was an industrial chemist with ICI after Trinity College Dublin,

and then worked with Kodak for just under three years,

before throwing my hat in and starting as a property dealer.

I did all right as a property developer for a number of years.

In 1974, there were already serious financial problems.

And I had to sell up my various properties in turn,

and by the time I'd finished,

there was virtually nothing left of it all.

I had virtually no cash left over

from having a string of houses.

And I just gravitated here, that's all.

On the 19th, I booked into the Salvation Army.

19th of November.

And then I think I was probably there just the one night.

And then, on the Monday, I got into Arlington house.

What age was I?

I was 37.

It did suit me. I just got used to it.

It had one great advantage, the whole way of life there,

and that was that some people...

not so much need friends, as they need enemies,

and in Arlington house, you had a wide choice

of fairly select people you could hate if you wanted to,

if you were that way inclined.

I don't give a fuck!

Hi! None of this holy water!

Yeah. God bless you.

I don't give a fuck!

First day at work, I walked into Arlington house, and it was...

it was a bit of an experience.

Really loud, that's what I remember well,

walking in the doors and being almost deafened by the sound.

Just people howling.

There was a man with his trousers round his ankles,

standing at reception.

When I was working shifts, I'd start at half-seven in the morning.

First thing I'd do was go and patrol the communal areas.

People would drag chairs out from the other rooms

and sit in the corridor, and I started to realise after a while,

that was because it was like a street,

and people like to be in the street, cos they like to see what's going on.

The place was full of gossip, full of chat,

everyone talking about everyone else,

and the place to be, really, was in one of these seats.

Don't drink, you don't smoke, and all this other shite,

and next thing, bang!

LAUGHTER

Dinner, tea parties, you had dancing.

No experiment had ever been run quite like it.

This was kind of a new idea, this fact that you had a wet hostel,

and certainly one this size, where people were free to drink,

and drink at quite crazy levels,

but they were supported while they were doing it.

These people would have all been on the street otherwise,

because nowhere else would take them.

INDISTINCT

Hello there.

-Long time no see.

-How are you, Joe?

-Oh, I'm...reasonably well.

-Are you still in the house?

Still in the house. But I'm 71 years of age now.

You're looking well, you're looking good.

-You look fantastic.

-Thank you, sir.

-Hello, Seamus, how are you doing?

-Hello, Seamus.

-Get lost.

-Get lost!

Who invited you back in this country in the first place? No-one!

They should never have let me in the first time, Seamus.

-You're not back on the drink, are you?

-No, I'm not, Seamus.

-I've managed to survive pretty well off it.

-How about the smoking?

-Have you given up the smoking yet?

-No, I'm still struggling with that.

I do, every so often, but not as much as I used to.

I don't drink as much as I used to.

Cos I was very heavy one time on that. Did we ever drink together?

Oh, I'm sure in that corridor,

years ago, there would have been stacks of us drinking together.

-There would have been at that time.

-How's the wife shaping up?

-Oh, she's...

-Is she in training?

Yeah, she's training me, Seamus.

Five...

That's six.

And this is it, number seven.

HE KNOCKS

Hello?

Well, the man himself!

Hello, Joe. How are you?

-Hello, Keith, how are you doing?

-Good to see you. Good to see you.

-Pretty good to see you.

-You're looking great.

-I tell you, you haven't aged a day.

-You reckon?

-No Aussie accent?

-No, no.

You're looking well. Come in.

Thank you very much.

-And do you remember that as it used to be?

-That's Bob.

-Yeah.

-That's Bob there.

-And look, some of the older residents.

-Yeah.

God, yeah, look at those faces. That doesn't half bring it back to you.

-Peter.

-Yeah, there's Peter.

He's still there.

-Ah, he's still there?

-I see him walking around Camden Town.

Amazing.

And there's you.

One morning, I was walking into Arlington House,

-walking into the breakfast room.

-Right.

And you were out of this world.

-Oh, right. I was seriously ill, wasn't I?

-Absolutely.

There's no two ways about it, like.

Absolutely. I mean, literally, you couldn't make sense.

-You were falling asleep at the breakfast table.

-Right.

-Saying a few words, going back to sleep again.

-Oh, right.

and eventually we got you round, and got some sense out of you,

-and were able to deal with your problem.

-Yeah.

That's the first time I ever met you.

Oh, my God.

-You remember this?

-Yeah.

Here we are.

What I'd like to do is give it to you

with a view to actually installing it somewhere,

in memory of all those people who died in Arlington

without any recognition,

any grave,

any mark of the fact that they ever lived in Camden.

How many residents must have walked past that in Arlington House?

Thousands.

-Have you not got a home to go to?

-HE LAUGHS

Hello, my friend, how are you?

-All right, Peter?

-Yeah, all right. They all know me, don't they?

I never drank in my life. I didn't let it get to me.

People had a go at me, say, "You must be the richest man in the house.

"You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't go with women.

"What do you do with your money?"

I said, "What's it got to do with you?"

Peter Doyle! He's the longest man in Camden Town.

Hello, Brian.

-Come here!

-Hello, Peter!

-Hello, my old friend. You've still...

-I've known this guy for years.

-You've still got the drink. Look, that's drink.

-No, no, no.

-How are you?

-OK, how are you?

-Are you still in the big house?

-I'm still in the big house, yes.

And you're still in 88?

-Yeah, I'm still there.

-You can't keep away from the drink.

-No, no, I'm still there. I saw Jon Snow the other day.

-Did you?

-Who?

-Jon Snow, you know, the IT... Channel 4 guy.

-Where?

-He lives in Kentish Town.

-Come here, come here.

-He lives in Kentish Town.

-Does he?

-Who?

-Jon Snow.

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

This is a church.

This is, em...

This is...St Teresa and St Patrick.

I was at St Teresa's...

I was at St Teresa's in Blackrock,

Temple Hill,

for three years, with the nuns.

And when I went in, I was only four weeks old.

I'm the only child.

I'm the only child to my mother.

It's a long story. I was brought up by the nuns.

Till I was five.

Then in 1948,

they moved me to St Augustine's,

the brothers of St John of God, in Newtownpark.

And I was there from 1948 to 1956.

500 boys lived in that home.

Every section had a saint.

And then, the case there was... the brothers were evil.

No... Forget that.

This is the holy water.

Bless yourself.

I feel good, just on my own,

but I wouldn't like to see a priest around me.

Bring back memories.

Prize book from Ampleforth.

Physics.

William Price. June, 1956.

Gilling, Mathematics.

Well, I was born in Singapore.

And for a few years I lived in deepest country Ireland,

in Tipperary, before we bought a house and moved up to Dublin.

And in 1950, I started to go to the preparatory school of Ampleforth,

Gilling Castle, as it then was, in England,

so I went backwards and forwards to England several times a year.

But then my mother died when I was 11,

and my father remarried when I was about 20 or 22 or so,

so there wasn't really that connection

with my immediate family in Ireland.

It's relatively unusual to be in the sort of position that I was in.

I mean, I'd actually been reasonably well-off at one stage.

Not that there weren't other people of similar sort of background.

There was one character here who I eventually met, who was...

He'd been in the Hong Kong police, and then he qualified an accountant,

and then he was jailed, and he had a fairly colourful career.

And he was an Irish speaker

in the British Army before that,

and he'd worked in Northern Ireland,

so he had a wide variety of different stories to tell,

at least some of which are probably likely to be true.

I think my first drink in London was in The Good Mixer next door.

Camden Town at that time was basically an Irish town.

There was Irish music blasting out all over the high street.

It was a macho culture.

All the pubs were just full of working men in working clothes,

so I decided I'd behave like them. Which was what?

Well, you drunk hard, you worked hard,

and I suppose, you fought hard.

Maybe I didn't really want to go out drinking

on Monday night or Tuesday night or Wednesday night, whatever.

I found I was doing it for company.

But then, as time went on,

you were picking it up when you weren't going to work.

Oh, I love this old place.

It's home from home, y'know.

As the years progressed, I wasn't as keen or as able

to get up and go out to work seven days a week,

which I would have been able to do at the beginning.

I would have been in the corridors of Arlington house,

drinking on a daily basis.

HE SINGS

There would have been groups of you drank together,

which would have been called a school.

There might have been five or six of youse together in that school.

You would all have been on benefits.

I got paid on Monday.

You spent your money on the school on a Monday.

Somebody spent their money on a Tuesday, and it went on like that.

That had the effect of keeping the thing going.

And I just got myself into this constant cycle

of get up, try and find a drink, get up, drink it,

try and get back to sleep, get up, you know what I mean?

It was a total, total...

exhausting, melancholy experience.

I was actually going nowhere.

I can't remember how many years actually it was,

because a drinking life is a bit of a hazy life.

23, 24 years of, I think it would be fair to call it, a living death.

What did I enjoy about it?

HE SIGHS

HE HUMS A TUNE

This is where I first came.

This was the way in.

In there.

You see, it's still a mess.

Yeah. What can I do about it?

I've got Peter's file here.

With, um, with his birth certificate in the front.

That's the one from the hospital.

This one is from the church.

The woman in the Joyce House in Dublin said,

"Show me your baptism certificate."

This one. It's in a state, but I had it in my pocket too long.

Sorry about that. Look at it.

The state of it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There was only one baby born that day in the Rotunda in 24 hours.

Patrick Joseph. Patrick Joseph Doyle.

My real name is Patrick Joseph Doyle.

But when I got baptised on 22 June, they took that name off me

and named me Peter.

Peter Doyle.

The names, that's my mother's name, Annie Doyle, Kiltegan, County Wicklow.

You see? That's my baptised name. Peter Doyle.

They took Patrick Joseph of me.

And they named me Peter.

They took that name off me.

A flashback is a picture. You see pictures.

You see things what happened in the past.

You can see yourself in it.

It's like a picture.

Like a film.

This is where I first got off.

Right here.

On 12th July. 1973.

I remember going there first, in the pub.

Where the woman...

A woman said, "She's up there."

This is Humewood Lodge.

This is where my mother used to live.

And my family.

She came from there, my mum.

And most of them worked up here, in the castle.

Come in.

This was the way in.

There's no one here no more.

You can't get in, it's locked.

My mother stayed here.

My grandfather, my grandmother, their children's children.

They all stayed here.

This was my room.

And I stayed here, up here.

That was my room.

I remember my first time in this lodge.

My mother, she let me in. She asked me, "Who told you I was here?"

And I said, "On the birth certificate."

And then, "I saw your name, the name of the village."

This was it.

I meant to stay a week, but I had to go.

People asking too many questions, do you know what I mean?

Who am I? Why have you never lived here? I couldn't stand it.

She couldn't stand it. She was getting upset herself.

I didn't want to upset her, so I decided to go the next morning.

You got a bad name when he had children outside marriage in them days, you know.

No one knew she had a child.

Nobody. It was kept quiet.

What can you do about that?

This is where I should have grown up, really.

Now it's empty with nobody in it, just empty.

The house is completely empty.

TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC PLAYS

HE PLAYS SPOONS TO MUSIC

The people living here were a community.

They may not have thought themselves a community, but they were a community.

And what goes on in a community like that actually affects the members of the community.

And this was one thing I did notice.

That when people threw themselves out of windows -

it didn't happen that often, but that sort of thing went on -

one was disturbed not solely after the event, but before the event, as well.

HE PLAYS "DANNY BOY"

This is my father. That's him on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin.

My mother and her sister.

Fourth Baroness, fifth Baroness,

his younger brother, my father,

my mother, um, and this would have been in, probably, 1947.

Well, that's me on a bicycle.

My fundamental position as the great-great-grandnephew

of Daniel O'Connell, of O'Connell Street, in Dublin.

must be determined by whether or not I've managed to pull something out of the hat

and do something really significant with my life,

or whether the truth is that I failed to do that.

At the present time, I don't know which way things are.

You leave home to make your fortune,

you emigrate to become a millionaire.

So why would you want to go and spew your failure all over

maybe your family, or anything like that there?

I think the tactic was, for a lot of us, let's just keep that failure away from our families.

Let's just suffer in our own misery here, like.

I never thought it was impossible to go home,

but to leave Ireland and become

an alcoholic like I did, for want of a better word,

you tended to wind up in this no man's land.

I didn't feel that I belonged anywhere.

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you.

John. Thank you, Alan.

John, good to see you.

-That trip we did to Donegal.

-Yeah. The trip to Donegal. That was '95?

You, Dave, and a few others.

-Martin Devine, a couple of other guys.

-Greg.

-Greg, Jesus, of course, yeah.

We're sitting in the drinking room and you'd been there all night,

you hadn't been to bed or anything.

-"Ah, we're not going to Ireland, no forget that. Forget it."

-That was a trip and a half.

It was. It was indeed. Do you remember much of it?

Bits of it, John, just vaguely bits of it.

Was it a turning point in your life?

It was a turning point, yeah. I had an epiphany in Donegal.

Which I think I'd sort of had.

I can remember walking round, you know, around the town.

-In Bundoran.

-In Bundoran, down around the sea.

And quite clearly thinking, "What is going on with you? What's wrong with you?"

To myself, "What's wrong?"

You're treating yourself - you know what I mean? -

..the way you are.

INDISTINCT

-Hello.

-Hello, Peter.

-Nice to see you again. Happy St Patrick's Day.

-Same to you.

-Did you have a good time?

-Haven't had my shamrock off!

-Have you?

I've never worn one myself in my life.

-Honest.

-Go on in.

-Thank you very much. Thank you.

I only saw my mother less than three times in my life.

And you, too.

I got a letter saying she died.

I remember driving my mother up that night to see you, the night you arrived.

That's right, yes.

1973.

You were a young man then.

That was... That was the first time I had ever heard tell of Peter Doyle.

As I say, she was always minding somebody.

Yeah.

And my mother and the rest of the family would go down almost every Sunday.

-Down to Humewood Lodge?

-Down to Humewood Lodge, yeah.

She always minded us when my mother would be in hospital

having another baby, she was all the time caring for someone.

I didn't know that she ever had a baby.

Neither did my mother ever know.

Until whatever year you came.

I was alone all the time.

I'm happy now I have someone to come to see.

It's nice to have a family. Someone to come to and see and relax.

Talk to.

Very, very lucky.

What do you think of that? Not bad, am I?

CHICKENS CLUCK

Recovery is not an overnight success.

I made many attempts to sober up

at that period of time, maybe a couple of weeks

and slipped back onto it again

and another couple of weeks, stay sober, and slip back onto it again.

All of that stuff which I couldn't address as a teenager

was still there for a man of 40-odd years of age, you know what I mean, like?

There's a built-in wardrobe, made out of plywood, very cheap

and every day Joe would put some kind of lesson he learned

or some kind of phrase he wanted to remember, or even a word.

If I said a word he didn't know,

he'd ask for a definition, could I use it in a sentence!

And he'd write it down on this wardrobe.

Pretty soon the whole door was covered and the inside of the door, as well.

Because I was sober, I started to build my dignity.

I started getting involved here in Arlington with different things.

At the time there was the Tenants' Association

and also the Irish Association.

SUGGS: This is called One Better Day.

# Arlington House

# Address - no fixed abode

# An old man... #

He was just an ordinary resident

and he worked his way through the ranks, basically.

Nobody understands the residents better than somebody who's been there.

# Sees right through the lock... #

Oh, Joe, that's one man, now, I really liked here.

Decent sort of a fella, you know.

I believed in him more than any other lad here.

# The rhythm of your shoes

# Walking round you sometimes

# Hear the sunshine. #

I was asked to sit on the management board

that ran and operated Arlington House.

In 1998, I was nominated to be the chair.

And to actually wake up

and realise that you are the chair of an organisation of that magnitude

at that particular time, it is quite, wow, what's happening here?

The idea is of a skills exchange recognising that everybody has skills that are valuable,

that they can exchange for time credits.

Through mentoring and professional guidance,

staff at the centre will help people become job-ready, providing them

with support they need to access work and training opportunities.

Staff will provide professional advice on punctuality...

Ladies and gentlemen.

Good morning and welcome to the launch of Arlington.

What I particularly admire about this project

is the way you have integrated accommodation

with art studios,

with places where people can pick up skills,

where they can transform their own lives.

APPLAUSE

"Baby on board".

HE HUMS A TUNE

This is the new...

HE MUMBLES

This is the new reception.

Lovely. Beautiful.

This is it.

They've done it all up. Look at it.

The whole building. Do you want to come in?

Nice, isn't it?

Oh, beautiful.

It's nice.

MAN INDISTINCT

My room.

This is my room.

Yeah.

This is my room.

There's my bed, there.

INDISTINCT

Too big.

I want to have a small one.

I'm used to small rooms.

Not used to big rooms.

Too big.

Too big. Much too big.

1,180 men lived here.

The biggest hostel in Europe.

1,180 men.

No.

Never see them days again.

PIGEONS COO

MUSIC: "McAlpine's Fusiliers"

# As down the glen Rode McAlpine's men

# With their shovels slung behind them

# 'Twas in the pub

# That they drank their sub

# And it's up in the spike you'll find them

# Well, they sweated blood

# And washed down mud

# With pints and quarts of beer

# And now we are on the road again

# God damn and blast their ears

# I've worked till sweat

# Has had me bet

# With Russian, Czech and Pole

# On shuddering jams Up in the hydro dams

# And down below the dams in a hole

# I've grafted hard

# And got me cards

# And many a ganger's fist across my ear

# So if you prize your life

# Don't join by Christ

# McAlpine's Fusiliers. #

It was very obvious to anybody working in the hostel during that time

that a lot of the Irish guys in the place

were dying without any kind of families knowing even where they were

and they'll all be buried here by Camden Council,

in unmarked graves stacked up underground.

And there are hundreds, possibly thousands, from Arlington House in this plot here.

I've been to so many funerals, I wouldn't even like to put a number on it.

But it must run to hundreds over the last 15, 20 years.

And it always used to bother me that they were all up here

and there was no recognition or acknowledgement

that they had lived this life.

That they came to London, that they had worked in London,

that they had been part of Camden Town,

they'd been part of Arlington, they'd been part of the community.

And we were part of that community, as well.

This is just a small token, the best we can,

to remember, just to remember those men of Arlington. All of them.

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you, Joe.

OK, all looking through this way for me. OK, everybody, that's great.

That's excellent. Again, everybody.

# One night as I lay on my pillow

# A vision came into my view

# Of a ship sailing out On the ocean

# And the wind it tremendously blew

# On the deck stood

# A lovely young lady

# The equal I never saw before

# And she sighed For the wrongs of her country

# Saying I'm banished From Erin's green shore

# My name is Eileen McMahon

# My age is scarcely 18

# And I thank you kind sir

# For your kindness

# But you don't know

# How lonely I've been. #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd