Irish Migrant Work in the UK

who the fug · 16-02-2012 02:57PM #1

Am sure we are all familiar with the sugarbeat campaigns of fifties and sixties, was there any other seasonal work that the Irish did in the UK

Why did the beat campaigns die out?

My father was telling me that my mother’s father use to go South Wales and work in the mines once the summer was over, this would have been before 1920

Anyone else hear of this, was it organised like the beat campaigns with agents sending the workers over

Where To · 16-02-2012 03:34PM

The tattie hokers made the annual trek from the north west of west of Ireland to Scotland from the early 19th century up until the 1980s.

An article on their lives and working conditions here;

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/the-praties-and-protests-of-the-tattie-hokers-1.797686

The poet Patrick MacGill (MacGill Summerschool) first went to Scotland as a tattie hoker when he was 15

http://www.declangallagher.utvinternet.com/life.htm

BBC Scotland did a documentary on them a couple of years ago although I haven't seen it

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k3p4d

Of The Arranmore Island Boating tragedy of 1935, in which 19 islanders drowned, fifteen of the victims were potato harvesters returning home for the winter.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donegal/arranmoretragedy.htm

Irish Migrant Work in the UK

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