Here is a story printed in the Irish Press on Sept. 7th 1948 about The Tatie Hokers in Scotland, by Anna Kelly. When the tatie hokers have finished their work for the day, there are no lights of home to welcome them, no hearth, no matter how poor, to make a focus for family life. Instead they come back to the bare cheerless bothy, which is the dormitory and living quarters of the Irish farm labourer in Scotland. Nothing could be more depressing. When 10 boys from Achill were burnt to death in a locked bothy in Kirkintilloch eleven years ago, a wave of indignation swept the country. Terrible stories came to light about the conditions in which the workers were housed. Even the Scots were shocked. People said that something must be done and one gathered vaguely that improvements followed the scandal, but as far as I can see, present conditions are good only on comparison to what went before. Here is a typical bothy living room which is said to be a good one. It wasnt a stable but a store room. It had a high rafted roof and rough white washed walls. From the middle hung a single electric bulb high up on an electric flex. Round the walls were wooden tables and at each table a narrow wooden form. There were no cupboards or shelves. Some of the workers had their own trunks and kept their food in them. There was nothing else in the room but the bare necessaries of tables and stools. The sleeping quarters were cow byres. The beds were laid out in the cattle stalls. There was a window in the roof and I was told its a good roof - it didnt leak. The beds consisted of piled up potato boxes with straw mattresses and blankets laid on top. As the partitions between the cattle stalls were wide, two people were able to sleep on each mattress. When you come in from the field especially if youre a picker, the first thing youll need is a good wash. But in one bothy all I saw in the way of water was a cold tap in the yard for twenty to thirty people. There was no fireplace or stove of any kind in the draughty living room. The only fire was in a little cooking shed outside and this was needed to boil the potatoes for their dinner and the kettle for tea. There is nowhere to sit at night and relax, no place to dry wet clothes. Not much chance for those handsome young girls to get scraping some of the muck off themselves. But they consider the money is good, better than they would get at home, they say, and they like the outdoor life. They can save a bit of money. To many, it is a holiday. Mothers bring their children, boys spend their school holidays here. Relatives in Scotland came themselves or sent their children for the fresh air. The girls usually cook their own meals and get the rations every Saturday in the nearest town. The meals are rough, mostly plain boiled potatoes with bread and tea. Meat, of course, doesnt last half the week. Living in stables and camped on the floor, the girls perform miracles in keeping themselves clean and dressed. In the fields, they wear jumpers and slacks or dungarees and heavy boots or wellingtons. They are all tied up against the wind and weather. When they come in they are often muck to the eyebrows and their fingers petrified with cold and picking. How they manage to make up and dress up and look so good and dance when they get the chance is a tribute to womens eternal triumph over the worst of circumstances. It is not the work, but the living conditions that seem degrading. All agricultural workers live hard. No farmer lives soft in the way city people do. Life in Achill for instance is no bed of roses, but life in a Scottish bothy is life without humanity. The system has grown and hardened with the years. The potatoes are auctioned on the stalk to the merchant and it is the merchants business and not the farmers to get them lifted and marketed but it is the farmers responsibility to house the workers. The farmer will retort and with some reason, that it wouldnt pay him to erect and equip special dwellings to house casual workers for only a week or so in the year. Whose responsibility is it? Unity among the workers themselves would help. The workers have the power if they only realised it. Their labour is essential to the Scottish farmer whose profits in potatoes alone, run into thousands of pounds. Wherever the responsibility lies in Scotland, one May well ponder the fact that our own people has as yet provided no alternative or satisfactory way of life at home for the boys and girls of Achill.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:00:15 +0000