Monthly Archives: February 2012

Irish Steel, Verolme, Net Nitrate and the Soviet Rust Belt in Cork Harbour. 1961 Verolme Dockyard, Cobh, British Methods will fail here.

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

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I was reading book by Eugene McCague on Kevin McCourt recently and he has an interesting last chapter on McCourt’s tenure as Chairman of Irish Steel in the 1970s onwards.  McCourt was a very talented manager with a great track record at the tobacco company PJ Carrolls, RTE, and Irish Distillers and was asked to become chairman of the State owned company.

The business dated from the late 1930s and was bailed out by Seán Lemass’s Department of Industry and Commerce  in the early 1940s.  By the mid 70s the writing was on the wall and unfortunately instead of shutting it a major redevelopment was embarked upon.  This is documented in the book and the saga of cost overrun, ‘equity injections’, losses and pleas to the then EEC for derogations to continue to make losses makes for grim reading.

 

A toxic combination of politics, Jack Lynch for part of the period was Taoiseach but any local politician wanted to keep it going a stone age union mentality, the financials must have run in the 1980s into hundreds of millions.  In mitigation it was a horrid time for the European steel industry.  The Indian Company Ispat bought the business for a nominal amount and invested some money there they stayed for the minimum 5 years and then shut shop.  This was the only location where they walked away, the bossman said his advisors told him there was no possibility of the plant being turned around.

The cost of remedial work to the site to clean up the toxic residues has been calculated by the Comptroller and Auditor General (September 2013) at €166 million.

Courtesy irish Times 15th december 2018, it reported that due to threatened EU action in 20111 the irish Government approved a clean up plan necessitating the removal of 650,000 cubic metres of slag and waste material.  This accumulated until plant closure in 2001.  IN the interim there is apparently no money to undertake remedial work on  small children’s teeth.

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It brought back to mind other state enterprises in the harbour area engaged in value abstraction on a grand scale.  Verolme dockyard was started by the Dutch in the late 50s and the first ships were built without subsidies.  Their control was relinquished in the mid 60s and thereafter the clients were Irish Shipping, the B&I. the Navy all state owned or foreign orders massively subsidised.

State owned Net Nitrate built at Marino Point, the sole purpose of the plant seemed to be to deplete the Kinsale Gas field as quickly as possible they got the gas for almost nothing and still lost colossal monies.

On the Kinsale Gas I think there was some formula whereby the ESB got the gas cheap and in turn provided cut price electricity to Irish Steel.

It would be an interesting exercise to compute the cost of these ‘enterprises’ from say 1965 to 1990 in present day money terms, to see the drag they imposed on the viable economy, before the property melt down we were well able to shoot ourselves collectively in the foot.  In fairness there is plenty industry in Cork Harbour these days but they are viable businesses able to stand up on their own.

Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), journey from Bandon to Bantry, 1806

19 Sunday Feb 2012

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Arthur Wellesley 1769-1852 journeyed from Bandon to Bantry to inspect defences.  He is credited with the phrase  re nationality  ‘that because a man is born in a stable that does not make him a horse’, in fact this was probably said by Daniel O’Connell.  His paternal grandfather was Richard Colley of an old English or Gaelic family of origin who had conformed to the Established Church.  The grandfather had taken the name of a childless relative Wellesley.

This extract if from the grand Tour of Cork, Cornelius Kelly. Cailleach Books, 2003.

28th (Summer) 1806 set off at half past six and arrived at Bantry and half past four – and very bad road and miserable country after you pass Dunmanna (Dunmanway) – got a boat and went to look at Whiddy Island and the fortification construction there – the island is of greater extent then I had imagined and the formation of it makes it more difficult the I had thought- though the forts are properly placed yet I do not think it has been a wise measure to destroy the battery on Horse Island

Caesar Otway, Publisher Dublin Penny Journal, Skull to Bantry, 1822.

19 Sunday Feb 2012

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Caesar Otway 1780-1842 was a Minister and publisher among others of William Carleton  and co-operated with George Petrie in the first edition of  the Dublin Penny Journal.  They published an article about a journey to Durrus:

https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=373&action=edit

This account is from The Grand Tour of Cork by Cornelius Kelly, Cailleach Books, 2003.

I proceeded to take my leave of Skull…on my way to Bantry I passed the dark and lofty Mount Gabriel to the left, and took my dreary way over a comfortless tract of country, the peninsula of Ivaugh, the ancient territory of O’Mahony Fune; princes these O’Mahonys were of bogs and rocks enough: here the tribe of the O’Mahonys has contrived to increase and multiply, and has replenished these wastes with Paddies, pigs, and potatoes.  Let no one say after looking at these moors, studded over with cabins, and those cabins crowded with children, pigs, goats, cocks and hens, that a poor Irishman is not an industrious creature.  No; look at that string of men, women, boys and girls, toiling up the mountainside with sea-weed and sea-sand, in baskets on their backs.  See them reclaiming, from amidst bogs, patches of ground on which to cultivate their only food, the potato; and no one witnessing the struggle of human industry against nature, but must acknowledge the Irish can be industrious.

As he comes over the crest and onto Dunmanus Bay he observes ‘a druidical circle comprised of a number of upright rocks and at a short distance from the circle are two upright pillars of stone, somewhat like obelisks, about fifteen feet high’

‘Before we hurry on , let me interest you my Protestant reader, in the condition of the poor Protestants of this south-western district of the county of Cork, planted here originally by the piety of the Boyles and other undertakers in the plantation of Munster.  The encouragement, the increase, the cherishing of this Protestant yeomanry formed the pride and honest boast of a Boyle, a Cox, or a Carew’.

Before the Barytes Mine was built in 1840 with a new road from Dunbeacon to Mount Gabriel the people had to scramble up the hills along gullys with sea sand, this is dealt with here:
https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/baryte-mines/

Aaron Lansky and the rescue of Yiddish books, the Irish of the Sperrins in Tyrone.

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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I reread a book recently I had bought in the Strand Bookshop in New York (supposed to be the world’s largest second hand store atmospheric by the bucket).  It is ‘Outwitting History’ the story by Aaron Lansky of the rescue of books in Yiddish.

He was born 1955 and had done a program in Yiddish studies and found it very difficult to get books in the language.  He was then offered volumes in the language and proceeded to gather books in the language.  At the time it was estimated that there were around 70,000 books in existance.  The truth as set out in the book was that there were in excess of 1.5 million and the story of rescuing the volumes from tumbling house and skips is fascinating.  He now heads the National Yiddish Book centre one of the fastest growing Jewish cultural groups i the world.

In one episode they go to retrieve the books from Altran Houe a New York centre for Yiddish studies now closing down.  On the last day when all the books were almost collected he came across avery olm man behind a roll top desk,  he was 92 and his name was Yud Shin Hertz the author of the history of the Jewish Labour Bund in Europe.  Lansky was amazed, he was aware of the author but assumed he was long dead.

The episode brought to mind the book by the Folklore collector, Michael Murphy Tyrone Folk Quests documenting his time in the Sperrins in 1949.  He describes meeting the last native speakers of Irish about 40, in the Glenhull area most had not met together until Murphy introduced them, mainly elderly all were gone when he returned twelve years later.

When he initially reported back to the Folklore Commission the reports were brought to the attention of Heinrich Wagner, a Swiss based at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin.  He refused to believe there were still native speakers in Tyrone and suggested they were immigrants from Donegal which of course they were not.

 

There are similarities between Yiddish and Irish both languages of wandering races.  I don’t know if Yiddish is still spoken but it probably had about the same number of speakers as Irish in 1840 say 4 million.  Both languages since have continued an inexorable decline.  The Yiddish culture still exists in Russia in the descendants of the Yiddish immigrants to the USA.  The Irish have switched to English and it is hard to say if irish can survive as a spoken language.  I suppose we must remember that the Irish have a habit of ditching languages, Irish displaced the pre Celtic language of Ireland about 2,000 years ago.

Císte Mílis, Milk Bar, Barrack Street, Cork. Discussions UCC, 1950s about Guy De Maupassant, Con Houlihan (1925-2012)

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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I see there is a band in Cork called Císte Mílis.  It brought back the cake shop of that name which used to be on Barrack Street.  The street had a dog’s leg at the corner opposite Evergreen Street.  The Císte Mílis was located there, a simple cake shop with a sit down area of formica tables.  Its stock in trade was cakes and glasses of milk.

When the Evening Press was running in Dublin the journalist Con Houlihan had a sports column on the back page.  One of the delights of the column was it strayed over literature on flights of fancy  I think some of the collected articles have been published in book form.

On one occasion Con digressed from the sport he was writing about to recall a date when he was a student in Cork at UCC in the 1950s.  He was on a date with a fellow student of French and the venue was sometime after 6 in the evening at the Císte Mílis, the piece wonderfully captured the era their discussions about Guy De Maupassant but alas for Con nothing came of the encounter.

Sometime in the 1970s the Corporation widened Barrack Street and the green fronted shop of the cakes went together with I think a jeweler’s shop and Kelleher’s potato store at the corner with the quay.  They used to deliver potatoes in an open backed cart pulled by a fast moving pony, later superseded by a van but operated by the same man.

Probably bottom left as the road protruded:

Císte Mílis, just over top right, from Anthony Barry’s Photos, courtesy Cork Archives :

Click to access PH-AB-SK-webalbum3-_Part14.pdf

Potatoes are so cheap now in the supermarkets it’s hard to see how anyone could make a business of supplying them and delivering.

Around this time there was a great interest in stamp collecting, a man called Moss I think he was English had a shop just down French’s Quay, I think he used also buy used stamps. For a period it was a mecca for school boys after school.

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In Mulligans Bar, Dublin

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Some of Con Houlihan’s best words… On GAA supporters: “The hard core of those who follow Dublin Gaelic Football are like a little army. “They stand in the same spot on The Hill and they drink in the same pubs. The pattern has a little changed in recent years: Their favourite pubs used to be in Fairview; now most of that little army converge on Mulligans’, on Poolbeg Street, after Croke Park. After the bigger games, they overflow the old pub and take up much of the street. “This, of course, is illegal but there is nothing wrong with it. Kerry people drink there, too. And Mulligans’ has been known as the pub where many romances begin and where some romances end. Kerry’s followers for years used to drink in The Shakespeare on Parnell Street. “There, after a game you would see a row of pints on the long counter all ready for topping up. The followers now tend to drink in Moran’s on Gardiner Street, or in The Merchant on Merchant’s Quay, or in Chaplin’s on Hawkins Street. “Whether in victory or defeat you can always expect great craic between the two lots of partisans. Dublin’s hard core have become accustomed to losing but they live in hope. What’s another year..? On his profession: “There was far more integrity in newspapers and among writers twenty or thirty years ago. Most reporters in the ’70′s and ’80′s had served their time in a local newspaper, which conditioned them to be honest and fair. “You couldn’t turn someone over in a small town because you would be ostracised. Nowadays in Dublin, as soon as a young pup sees his name in print, he reckons he’s made it. “There’s a few dirt-birds out there, maybe more so in the Sunday newspapers. Some have little talent but an awful lot of neck. 30 years ago, they wouldn’t last a week. I think daily newspaper journalism is a more honest pursuit. The best writers work on the daily beat. “That’s why I’m with the Sunday World.” On writing: “The worst thing for any writer (is) to be ignored.” On language: “Speaking in the company of other Gaelic speakers in West Kerry I’d feel very uninhibited. My pronunciation in English is a bit suspect, but not so in Gaelic. English is a funny language, but I love it of course. I grew up speaking Hiberno English: English woven on a Gaelic loom.” On the Evening Press: “Of course many of my happiest hours were in the context of The Evening Press. I loved that paper. Usually I worked the column out in my head during the night – occasionally in some congenial pub – and got up about four in the morning and wrote it. “By eight o’clock it was in the safe hands of the Sports Editor, Tom O’Shea, and I was in my favourite corner in The White Horse – the corner nearest the quay. “There I loved to read The Sporting Life and I sustained myself with a glass of milk mildly tinctured with brandy. So I had something in common with The Queen Mother: at eight every morning that same paper was brought to her bed accompanied by a large measure of gin and a bottle of tonic water.

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C.O. (Charles) Stanley, Lisselan, Co. Cork, PYE, Unidare, Sunbeam Wolsey.

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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While looking up the origin of the Unidare Company, of Finglas,  Dublin recently and came across C.O. Stanley who seems to have been a larger than life character.

He was born in 1899 in Cappoquin, Co Waterford where his father had a hardware store.      In his late teens he went to London, studied in Technical school, and taught for a short period.  He then left to work in advertising and after a short sojourn there founded his own firm ARKs.  The firm was associated with the radio industry which was rapidly expanding.  In the late 1920s he became involved in the PYE company of Cambridge a maker of radio sets, he was responsible for floating the company and through astute financial engineering ended up having a dominant role in the control of the company.  Shortly after this he acquired the Lisselan Estate outside Clonakilty, Co. Cork.  This formerly belonged to Bence Jones.

Lisselan had been in the ownership of the Bence-Jones family.  Stanley spend a considerable sum on the estate and thereafter spent a large part of the summer there and retired there in the late 60s.  He and his wife were involved in controversy when the Bishop of Cork Dr. Cornelius Lucy called for the estate to be acquired by the Land Commission broken up and distributed to locals.

He was on good terms with William Dwyer who started the Sunbeam works in Blackpool in  Cork.  In the 30s he advanced loans to Dwyer and later encouraged him when Dwyer joined the War effort in London.  He made the introduction to the Wolsey company of England who were clients of his advertising agency.  He remained a director of the company for many years.  By the mid 1960s Sunbeam was one of the largest industrial employers in Ireland.

http://www.corkarchives.ie/merchantcity/home/workers/knittingplantatsunbeamwolseytextilesc1950to1960/

In the 1930s he took over effective control of PYE was heavily involved in their war work and the development of radar.   He famously pressed for the acquisition of vital radar components from the Philips company in Holland, they were taken to the UK the day before the Germans invaded Holland.  At one stage the company employed 35,000 people.

Another interest was the development of independent television which was realised in the 50s.

In Ireland he was associated with the establishment of Unidare in the 50s to supply electrical equipment.  It was managed by people closely associated with him and showed flair and innovation in the mid 60s there were over 2,500 employed in the works.

In 1966 he and his son John fell from grace, the PYE company had over extended  the Stanleys were blamed and removed from control.  Thereafter he spend a lot of his time at Lisselan.

Radio Man: the remarkable rise and fall of C.O. Stanley (IEE History of Technology Series, 30) [Hardcover]

Mark Frankfield