Hi All

      Gest brought this discussion to my attention & invited me to comment.

Paul O'Brien is mistaken about the derivation of the Term 'Pincher Kiddie'; it was conferred on 'Pincher' Mac because of his tight-fistedness and sharp practices - i.e., restricting trench shuttering to Two Down & One Across, stealing lorry jacks, stacked on railway sleepers, to demolish to concrete roofs of bomb shelters on contracts after the war, etc., but it long pre-dated him. The inter-changeable use of 'Laddies' is erroneous...

The Pinchers were true Tramp Navvies, in the great Railway Navvy tradition, with a fierce pride and independence unmatched by any of the post-war Irish in British construction. It was said to me by an East End taxi driver who was boy at the time that many amongst the last Pinchers died of exposure sheltering under the railway viaducts in London during the Big Freeze of 1963.

As someone who tramped the roads of Europe as a youth in the early 'Sixties, hitch hiking and sleeping rough, I have a great fondness for such free spirits and I think to some extent it was my empathy with that 'outsider' mentality which persuaded so many navvies to open up to me. Beat, Vagrant, Busker or Navvy -we all knew the joy of free men under an open sky!

My current project is collecting the reminiscences of 20C. UK-based Irish labourers and its interesting to find so many 'younger' men, veterans of the '80s, and Irish-Descent children of first-generation navvies, making contact with their stories and using the internet to do so.

In the Autumn I'm launching a one man multimedia production with the title, 'The Craic was good in Cricklewood: Songs and Stories of the Irish Navvies' - An Entertainment with a Sting in the Tail, which I hope to tour in the UK and maybe elsewhere. Inquiries welcome!

Best to all

Ultan Cowley