The Workers Canals: The Making of a Nation


The Workers

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This is the story of how canals changed and shaped our modern world.

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Carrying huge volumes of goods and fuel,

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they were a stimulus to Britain's great Industrial Revolution.

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But they also gave us much more

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and their legacy lives on, often in surprising ways.

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I'm Liz McIvor.

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I've spent my life studying and talking about history

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and now I believe it's time to take a different look

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at our inland waterways.

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In the story of Britain's canals,

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there's a chapter that's barely been told.

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It's the role of the workers, the navvies,

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whose herculean efforts drove waterways across the landscape,

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a nomadic army of hard, resilient men,

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roaming the countryside, seeking work.

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So, who were these forgotten men?

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Unreliable heathens who evolved a lifestyle and culture of their own?

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Social outcasts with a reputation for hard living and hard drinking?

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Or unsung heroes, who used might and muscle to build epic marvels?

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These men of brawn with a huge capacity for work

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would have one last triumph.

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It was this.

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A giant project,

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hailed as one of the greatest feats of Victorian engineering.

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The Manchester Ship Canal.

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By the 1880s, Britain had extensive networks of canals,

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man-made waterways crisscrossing the countryside for nearly 5,000 miles.

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For over a century,

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gangs of navvies had been changing the landscape,

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working on river navigations from where they took their name,

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before moving on to canals and then the railways.

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The Big Ditch, as it was nicknamed,

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was an enormous project, lasting six years.

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It would bring the sea from Liverpool to the inland city of Manchester,

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transforming it into a world-class port.

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SHIP HORN

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Oceangoing vessels could navigate their way from the Atlantic

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and Irish Sea into the industrial heart of Lancashire.

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Engineers got the plaudits and the knighthoods

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for this deep and wide waterway,

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but it was huge gangs of navvies who actually built it...

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..men dedicated to the kind of heavy, manual labour

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that could be traced back over a century

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of canal, road and railway construction.

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Initially, they'd join a navvy gang,

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or the construction work,

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simply because they're fit, strong and healthy

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That's the most important thing for navvies at all times.

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But once you start working in this line of work,

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obviously you acquire all sorts of building skills.

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I mean, some of the work they do,

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a lot of it is just physical work.

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They're just digging trenches.

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But there are some more kind of skilled engineering tasks as well,

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that they will learn, little by little.

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By virtue of being on a construction site,

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they'll learn some of the more skilled work as well.

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The Ship Canal was the navigators' swansong,

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their biggest and boldest achievement.

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Even as construction started in 1887, it was proclaimed as one

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of the most ambitious building projects Britain had ever seen.

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It was led by Thomas Walker,

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a civil engineer who'd spent his life working alongside navvies.

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He was compassionate

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and took an active interest in the welfare of these hard grafters.

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But he also knew that navvies had always been feared as bogeymen.

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Society regarded the navvies with contempt.

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They had an unsavoury reputation for being wild,

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disruptive and sometimes ungodly.

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A Lancashire vicar described navvies as men who...

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"Cheat and steal and drink

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"and swear and fight and do all kinds of mischief

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"to themselves and others."

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The Reverend St George Sargent, working near Lancaster,

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didn't mince his words either.

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"The navigators were the most neglected

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"and spiritually destitute people I ever met,

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"ignorant of Bible religion and gospel truth,

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"infected with infidelity and prone to revolutionary principles."

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In Preston in 1838, a huge fight broke out between

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Irish navvies and agricultural workers.

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SHOUTING

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As the local paper reported it, "About 800 drunken men,

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"armed with guns, pistols and pikes,

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"began a pitched battle which resulted in deaths

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"and serious injuries."

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There's a common misconception that most navvies were Irish.

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When the potato harvest failed in the mid-19th century in Ireland,

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agricultural labourers did come to England

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to work on canals and railways

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and it caused resentment.

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I suppose any band of outsiders who comes into a settled community,

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that's unfamiliar with their neighbours more than

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a mile and a half down the road, are going to be treated with...

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looked on with suspicion.

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You would have had, I suppose...

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vagrants wandering, and beggars, and so on,

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for a long, long time around the English countryside.

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And suddenly these looked rather similar

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but in vastly greater numbers.

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And, yeah, there was natural suspicion and mistrust.

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I suppose people then went on how they found them

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as they worked alongside them.

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Here, on the Manchester Ship Canal, only around 5,000 navvies,

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a third of the workforce, originated from Ireland.

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At the time work started, there was a general hostility towards the navvy,

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irrespective of their background.

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They, in turn, responded to this alienation

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by embracing an identity of their own.

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Navvies had always looked different.

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One contemporary described their colourful fashion.

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"Mustard yellows, periwinkle blues and wine reds were favourites.

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"Thick-set boots, velvety moleskin breaches, scarlet waistcoats,

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"canvas shirts, white spotted silk neckerchiefs

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"and felt hats were the popular choices."

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They used aliases and were more often known by a nickname

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reflecting their personality or place of birth.

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So, you had Warwick Jack,

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Soldier, Rainbow Rattie,

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Tweedle Beak

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and Wingy,

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the last referring to a one-armed navvy.

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For the most part, I think navvies would have been recognisable.

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I mean, very often we will have dozens of these workers entering

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a very, very quiet community where everybody knows everybody,

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so just the sheer fact that there are lots of them

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and that they're strangers will make it quite obvious what they're doing.

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But even outside that, our navvies will have been very muscular,

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very suntanned and weather-beaten.

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They'll be going round in pairs

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and they'll probably cut quite a distinctive figure.

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For navvies who'd come from previous jobs on canals or railways,

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starting on the Ship Canal must have been a jaw-dropping prospect.

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Even with machinery, the scale of digging would be colossal,

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a corridor of excavation 36 miles long,

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120 feet wide and 28 feet deep.

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Sir Bosdin Leech, a former Lord Mayor of Manchester,

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wrote the first history of the canal and reckoned the earth they excavated

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would make a wall around the equator six feet high and two feet wide.

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A sculpture at Halsall in Lancashire illustrates

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the stature of the average navvy,

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over six feet tall, deep-chested,

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broad-backed and weighing 15 stones.

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And that was when the average height of a man in Britain was just

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five feet six inches tall.

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A navvy could shift all sorts,

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from rock and soil to clay and sand.

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And everything was simply called muck.

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And they could shift extraordinary amounts of muck.

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The average navvy would be swinging shovel after shovelful

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over his shoulder and into a wagon.

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It's thought that they could move up to 12 cubic yards a day.

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That's roughly what this pile here represents and it's nearly 18 tonnes.

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All that work in just one day.

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That sort of physical exercise resulted in large appetites.

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Well, looking at all of this on the table, it looks quite inviting,

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but is this the sort of food, Jordan, that navvies would have eaten?

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Yeah, so this is a very typical diet that a person

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working on the canals would eat.

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They consumed roughly about 8,000 calories a day, which is

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an enormous amount of food.

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And just to put that into perspective,

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the average man in the UK today, according to the government

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guidelines, should consume roughly about 2,500 calories.

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A labourer, modern-day labourer, manual work, maybe 3,500 calories.

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And an elite athlete, maybe, like, a triathlon,

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or a Tour de France athlete, would consume anywhere between

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5,000 and 6,000 calories a day,

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so that really puts it into perspective,

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not only how much they were eating

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but how physically demanding the work actually was.

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4,000 of those 8,000 were from bread alone.

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When we actually look at the bread,

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it's very different to the bread of today.

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It would have been much more dense.

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It wouldn't have been made from refined flour.

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And the loaves would have been round, quite brittle,

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easy to break and they certainly wouldn't have been sliced.

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So, that's quite a lot of beer.

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-Is that how much they would have drunk in one day?

-It is, yeah.

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Your typical canal worker would have had

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anywhere between six to eight pints or bottles of beer a day,

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which at first seems quite shocking,

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but when we look back to the time when the canal was being built,

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water quality was terrible

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and drinking beer,

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which was relatively weak, was the best way for you to get clean water.

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So, was there an alternative to beer?

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There was an alternative to beer, which is of course to drink tea,

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but when you actually think of the practicality of it,

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you would have to find a heat source, you would have to

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wait for the kettle to boil,

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and then, of course, you can drink it,

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so, again, beer would have been the best option to get rehydrated.

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And of course, if you wanted to grab a snack as you were going,

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you've got the choice of a baked potato from a vendor,

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or if you've got a bit more money, you're a gang boss, maybe a pork pie.

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Yeah.

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Navvies on the Ship Canal were fortunate in that a long-established

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and long-despised system of exploitation on the canals

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and railways had recently come to an end.

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The practice of paying wages in tokens rather than money

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was known as truck.

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This scheme compelled the navvies to exchange these pay vouchers

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in Tommy shops, or food stores, owned by the contractor.

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The goods available were generally low in quality but high in price.

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Parliament's outlawing of the truck system was finally enforced

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the year the canal started, and as the 19th century headed to a close,

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other reforms were in place to help the welfare of the working classes.

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Although conditions were still hard,

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child labour had been clamped down on,

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working hours reduced and public health practices adopted.

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So, the construction gangs would have been relieved but not surprised

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to find an enlightened man in charge of the Ship Canal.

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Thomas Walker, from Staffordshire, spent his early career building

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a railroad in Canada, where he'd worked side-by-side with British navvies.

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They'd been drafted in for their expertise gained

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in constructing railways at home.

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Walker had also worked on the first section

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of the new London Underground.

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He'd looked after his men

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and his reputation as a good employer followed him to Manchester.

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Walker helped establish one of the world's first

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accident and emergency services here on the Ship Canal.

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It was set up in anticipation of the high toll

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of serious injuries to the navvies.

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After all, health and safety regulations were in their infancy.

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In charge of the hospital service, there was a young doctor

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who'd trained as an orthopaedic surgeon in Liverpool.

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Robert Jones was just 31 and found he now had 17,000 patients.

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He organised hospitals on the route

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and a chain of first-aid stations.

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The hospitals were the first ever to be set up

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to deal purely with accidents and emergencies.

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Each was staffed by a resident doctor and a team of nurses

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and linked to the construction sites by railways.

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Jones, who later became a founding member

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of the British Orthopaedic Society, dealt with hundreds of cases.

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A navvy's life was dangerous in the extreme.

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During construction, there were at least 3,000 accidents and 130 deaths.

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It's very dangerous.

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Essentially, it's a job that requires men using

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just their muscle power to shift a lot of very heavy objects around.

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And so men digging out barrel loads of stone and earth

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and clay to dig the canal itself.

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You've got people lining the canal with stone,

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which is in big blocks, mostly.

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And you've got men to push the canal through hilly areas.

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In all of these things,

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there's always the risk of things going wrong.

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EXPLOSION

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But the health care wasn't free.

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Each navvy had to join a company sick club.

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They would take a small amount out of the workers' wages each week.

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And that would go towards paying for the services of a doctor.

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So if a navvy got injured,

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the company doctor would come and help them.

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And if they were badly enough injured that they needed to go to

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hospital, they could go to hospital.

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The biggest loss of life occurred at Ince, near Ellesmere Port,

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four years into construction.

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23 ballast wagons were accidentally sent into the wrong railway siding.

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They crashed through the buffers,

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and fell onto a gang of navvies working below.

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Six men who were on the train jumped to safety.

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But wagons, burning coal and rock crushed the workers below.

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Ten were killed.

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Another ten had to be dug out by steam crane,

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and treated for serious injuries at the field hospital.

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Here, at the local church, St James the Great at Ince,

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they buried the dead navvies in a common grave.

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The construction gangs lived alongside the route,

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taking lodgings where they could, or in shantytowns like here.

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This is the former site of the aptly named Marshville,

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near Runcorn in Cheshire.

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It sat on Frodsham Marshes, on the banks of the Mersey mudflats.

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Today, sadly, there's nothing left.

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Marshville, the foundations are roughly 30 feet below us now.

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Ahead of us, there would be the Mission Hall cum community centre.

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Just to the left of it would be the shop.

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And over on the far side to the left, there'd be all the workshops,

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because there was engine sheds and workshops here as well.

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Where we're walking now, between the buildings,

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they eventually became flower and vegetable gardens.

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The navvies on the Ship Canal weren't using muscle power alone,

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as their predecessors had on the earlier waterways.

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Technology had advanced,

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and steam shovels similar to this one were now in use.

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The contractor, Thomas Walker, had about 100 of these,

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and each could shift three tonnes a minute.

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These innovative mechanical diggers were

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so efficient that their design hardly changed over the next century.

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But they had a curious and unexpected side effect.

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Their introduction is said to have caused the deterioration

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of the physique of the workers.

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As machines supplemented labour,

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the days of the giant navvy were numbered.

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Steam excavators could chew out the rough outline of a trench,

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but men were still needed to shore up the slopes.

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And as they dug up more and more material,

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it was more difficult to get it to the top of the banks.

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For that they developed the barrow run.

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This was an extraordinarily risky procedure,

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and often resulted in dreadful injuries.

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The navvy and a full barrow would, in effect,

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be winched up a wooden ramp by a rope that extended over

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the embankment and was attached to a pulling horse.

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Once at the top, the barrel would be emptied, but to get back down

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the slope with the barrow, a man faced a perilous journey.

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He pushed it in front of him and used his boots as brakes.

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A really experienced navvy could make two runs a minute, but they ran

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the risk of breaking ropes, toppling wheelbarrows and slippery planks.

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It was such a spectacle that local people used to turn up

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just to watch the barrow runs.

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Traditionally, navvies were a highly mobile and flexible workforce.

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Men would wander around the country between jobs -

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"going on the tramp", as they called it.

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Wages were comparatively good -

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a navvy could earn five times what

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a farm labourer would be paid for a day's work.

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But they belonged nowhere and had few responsibilities.

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The navvies were individualistic,

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they were nomadic, because that's the nature of the work,

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and that didn't lend itself to unionisation

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and where navvies encountered unions,

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they regarded them as almost as parasitic as the employers,

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looking for money from them and offering very little in return.

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A navvy's bargaining power was the ability to

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walk off the site down the road and onto another site -

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as long as a man could do that, he was a free man.

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As the canal headed towards Manchester,

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its construction coincided with the emergence of a nationwide

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labour movement, fighting for better pay and conditions.

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So when one man tried to do what no-one had ever managed before -

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organise the navvies into a powerful group -

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it seemed like a winning idea.

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John Ward was the son of a plasterer.

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He'd had no formal education

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and by the age of 12,

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was working as a navvy on a railway.

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He tramped from job to job

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and endured all the hardships of navvy life.

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On the Manchester Ship Canal, his hands froze to a wagon

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and had to be torn free by his workmates.

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In 1889, a year that would later be recognised as a turning point

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in the history of trade unionism,

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John Ward founded the inelegantly named

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Navvies, Bricklayers, Labourers and General Labourers Union.

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He wanted better wages

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and compensation for those who'd been killed or injured.

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And he had reason to believe that his new union could become powerful.

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Traditionally, unions had represented single professions

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of skilled workers such as engineers, printers and carpenters.

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They were exclusive, and unskilled workers like navvies

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and labourers were kept out.

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But two strikes in 1889 changed that stance and marked

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a milestone in the development of the British labour movement.

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The first was at a gasworks in London

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in a dispute over working hours.

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800 unskilled workers were organised into a union,

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the first time this had ever happened.

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The second strike came a few months later.

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The Port of London was brought to a halt by casual workers

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seeking more pay.

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Significantly, both sets of workers won their demands and from then on,

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trade union membership grew rapidly across the country.

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So Ward believed that the navvies would be fertile ground

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for recruitment into his new union,

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but before he could get properly organised, fate intervened.

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A couple of months after the navvy union was formed,

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the canal's main engineer, Thomas Walker, died.

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The company cancelled the contract and took over the works themselves.

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It would lead to the only recorded incidence of a strike on the canal.

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BELL TOLLS

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Once the navvies realised the contract had been cancelled,

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they saw an opportunity to renegotiate their pay

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and downed tools.

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The company simply hired more men.

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Police had to break up fighting between the strikers

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and the new workers.

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In the centre of Eccles, just half a mile from the canal,

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an angry crowd of 2,000 striking navvies, most of whom were

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not in the union, were addressed by one of Ward's officials.

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He told them the strike was a mistake and they should bide their time.

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With few members, the union didn't have the money for strike pay.

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He urged them to join the union, then they'd be able to call

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an all-out strike and would be more effective.

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The company was more defiant,

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telling the strikers they could work or go away, just as they pleased.

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Shortly afterward, the strike just fizzled out.

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It isn't to say

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they weren't organised,

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they were terribly organised for their own interests

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and they were militant in the true sense of that word

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because they were tough men, used to fighting, hard drinking

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and so forth and they didn't need a formal trade union structure.

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They didn't need branch secretaries, branches, organisers and that sort

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of thing, which was the typical structure of late Victorian unions.

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In truth, navvies were hard to organise into unions.

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They had a powerful sense of freedom and independence.

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If they were unhappy, they could move elsewhere,

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but they knew that if they did leave,

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there would always be someone available to take their place.

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In the end, membership of the navvy union could only be measured

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in the hundreds.

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I think they weren't remotely interested in joining unions

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or going on strike. Going on strike was never an option anyway,

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because there was always a lot more labour than there was demand for it

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and so you kept the job you got until you were tired of it,

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bored with it, irritated by someone or something

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and then you walked off.

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But you certainly didn't attempt to collectivise for...to bargain.

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Not in the 19th century - the 20th century's a different story.

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The Ship Canal changed Manchester and the navvy's way of life.

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Soon after it was opened by Queen Victoria in 1894, work started

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on Trafford Park, the world's first purpose-built industrial estate.

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The newly created port of Manchester

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went on to become the third largest in the country,

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linking the city to the rest of the world.

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With the canal finished and most of the new rail network

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now in place, time was up for the navvy in Britain.

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Some continued on the tramp, to Europe and America,

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where more railways were being constructed.

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But as for the towns they left behind, there was a sense of loss and

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perhaps guilt at the prejudices and misconceptions of the humble navvy.

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In his history of the Ship Canal construction,

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Sir Bosdin Leech wrote,

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"People who anticipated their advent with terror

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"were sorry when the work was done, for they enriched

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"the whole neighbourhood by earning good wages and spending them freely".

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An efficient transport system helped to kick-start

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the Industrial Revolution.

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The canals, railways and the Ship Canal gave the country

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the motorways of their age and changed the map of Britain.

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But it wouldn't have been possible without an army of anonymous workers.

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Elizabeth Garnett, from the Navvy Mission Society,

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summed it all up nicely.

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"Their work will last for ages

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"and if the world remains so long,

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"people will come hundreds of years hence to look at

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"and to wonder at what they have done".

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And she was right - the navvies may be all but forgotten,

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but their legacy lives on.

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