THE IMAGE of the Irish in London has recently become one of ambitious, college-educated twentysomethings, leaving behind a recession for opportunities abroad. Less frequently, it has been about those living rough on the streets.
However, there is an even less-noticed group, often struggling with alcohol and ill-health, living in tiny, council bedsits in communities such as Kilburn that have changed beyond compare since Irish emigrants first arrived.
In one such flat, Gerry sat this week on the side of his single bed, with a radio on the floor and a blister pack of Diazepam anti-anxiety tablets, bought from an illegal street seller, lying beside him, next to row upon row of books. The Fermanagh native has lived in the bedsit for nearly 40 years, enjoying a permanent tenancy under UK rental laws, though his rights to occupation could be threatened because of his habit of bringing back friends for drinking sessions.
Gerry is part of what is known as a “school”: a group of men who have not been able to afford pub prices for years and who satisfy their craving for alcohol with cheap, super lagers, such as Blue Tennants in the past and, more usually today, White Ace super cider.
Each day, he goes to the library. Each day, he drinks. This week, he has not eaten for three days. Efforts to get him into alcohol treatment have failed. So, too, have attempts to persuade him that he now needs sheltered housing. His tiny bedsit is now clean, thanks to a home-help who comes for an hour a day. Soon, the home-help’s hours will be cut.
Leaving his room, Gerry, who is clearly a highly intelligent man, bids farewell quietly and politely, but with eyes of unutterable sadness: “Have a good Christmas,” he says, fingering as he speaks a piece of chocolate – the first sustenance for days.
In his younger years, he was a fine craftsman, well-dressed and one who never drank more than two pints, according to one who remembered him as a new Kilburn arrival. Nobody knows how, or why, alcohol took control.
For John Glynn and Alex McDonnell of the Aisling Foundation, who work with Irish who are “vulnerable, isolated and alone”, the super-strength drinks are a curse: “Everyone
who drank Blue Tennants in the 1990s is dead. Everyone,” says Glynn.
Sitting in a cafe on the Kilburn High Road, the two men tell of “Hill 16”, a gathering of alcoholics – once all Irish, but now just as likely to include Poles, who meet on a green patch hidden by shrubs near the BQ store on Cricklewood Lane in north London.
In the past, such men drank relatively freely on the streets, but London’s boroughs have increasingly declared “controlled drinking zones” (CDZ), where public drinking is forbidden and offenders are moved by community police. “All it does is move the problem on. Because they can’t drink in pubs, or on the street, they tend to go back to each other’s bedsits, which means that they are in danger of breaching their tenancy agreements and getting thrown out,” Glynn says.
The “schools”, which always gather near an off-licence, have their own code. Often, a member will be supplied for weeks with White Ace – 7.5 per cent proof, selling at 59p a tin, cheaper again by the 3 litre bottle – in the sure and certain belief that he will repay when a social security benefit arrives.
Often, the loyalty of the group hinders efforts to wean some off drink: “If any of them try to detox the pressure they will come under from others to go back on it is incredible because that person is breaking up the school,” says Glynn, nursing a coffee as darkness falls outside.
For many of those in the schools, life is a daily exercise in self-deception. “They’ll tell you that they never touch anything from the top shelf. But stuff like super cider didn’t exist a decade ago. You can’t even buy it in a pub,” says McDonnell, originally from Castlemaine, Co Kerry.
Like others, Gerry, a skilled carpenter, dreams of returning to work, occasionally taking out his tools to remind him of better days – though a broken back, suffered during a night of drunkenness, and years of self-neglect militates against him.
Near by, his friend, Danny, who is from “Leinster” but who does not want to give away any more information, lives in a housing association flat, one that is clean and well kept, even if the chimney breast is badly cracked because of subsidence. Today, Danny is “dry” and rightly proud.
Asked about his Christmas Day plans, he is evasive, before finally admitting that he is reluctant to meet up with others who might encourage or tempt him off the wagon. He has fallen many times before. His hold on his flat is not secure since he, too, offered a home for “a school”, before he was stabbed by one of his guests. He spent months in hospital. The flat was boarded up.
Every year, McDonnell and Glynn, along with two other colleagues and 30 volunteers, keep in touch with several hundred vulnerable Irish in London, bringing some back to Ireland for holidays – often the first trip home in decades. Each trip holds its own chapter of personal pain: the woman who made peace with a long-dead mother as she stood at the side of the grave; or the elderly man who would not leave a plastic bag out of his sight.
“We told him that it would be perfectly safe to leave it on the van, not knowing what it was. Later, it turned out that he had £3,000 in it. He wanted to leave the money in Ireland to pay for his funeral,” says Glynn, a native of Ballina living in London since the late 1960s.
The help from Aisling varies, from supplying a replacement bed to interceding with local authorities, who now, because of budget cuts, are cutting services for the vulnerable, often deeply.
Today, there is an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned measure. Because of environmental laws coming into force in the days after Christmas, Aisling’s elderly van will have to be converted to take a catalytic converter, or be taken off the road. The charity is already struggling. “The conversions cost £2,500 and are hard to get because everybody is trying to get them. And buying an older van that complies with the regulations is equally difficult because everybody wants one,” says McDonnell.
The Aisling Foundation website is aisling.org.uk
