Jack Byrne

‘A love letter to Liverpool with a touch of Peaky Blinders’

Story telling is a tradition in many cultures. It becomes a way of passing on the history and culture of a people through legends and myths, often of heroes and villains, sometimes of ordinary people and their way of life. In and around the myth and legend real history and family events could be woven and passed on, from one generation to the next.

You were lucky as you grew up, if you heard stories of earlier times, if you knew your grandparents and they were well and able enough to pass on important incidents in their time. Or they could speak of the daily fabric of their lives, things that are important to us as we look back.

As an adult I heard stories of the struggles on the docks, the Bobbin factory, the tannery, Frank Kett’s the pawnbroker, the bookies runners, who would hang around the pubs on King St before betting on the horses was legalised. I heard about the sailors that would come in off ships in the docks, the range shops on Window Lane, the old ships that were broken up just off shore, and much more.

As kids, we were not lucky I knew only one of my grandparents and that was at an emotional distance. Geographically we were quite close she was in King St in Garston, we were by then in Speke. Some of my older siblings knew her better, there were eight of us kids, and my oldest sister spent a couple of years living with our nan, as a way to help out my mum. My mum’s dad died at sea during the second world war, he was in the merchant navy supplying the forces in Normandy. My dad’s mum was in Wicklow, and I met her once as a five year old, even then she was bedridden and seemed ancient in my young eyes.

Once established in Speke my mum didn’t visit her mum in Garston too often, they had a somewhat strained relationship. As the oldest daughter, growing up, my mum was given many household tasks to help bring up her five siblings. Once she had her own family and returned to Garston she was outraged to be asked to clean, wash, or scrub the floors in my nan’s house and refused. So her trips to Garston were largely shopping in the market, and then for Saturday nights out with my dad in The Dealers.

I never met my dad’s dad, although we did get visitors from Wicklow. Men would come over for work and spend a night or two on the sofa, before moving on to London or wherever the work took them.

The upshot of this, is that the link in family stories was broken. I know all my grandparents came from Wicklow to Liverpool and lived and worked in the city, my mum’s parents stayed, my dad’s went back.

Our family bridged the changes that the post war period brought, as the docks and the shipping on which it depended declined and manufacturing grew. My mum’s family were intimately connected to the docks and seafearing. My dad and his dad worked in construction, and then in the industry that boomed in and around Speke, cars, chemicals, and engineering.

I don’t know if it would have changed anything, but the lack of contact with grandparents was compounded by my dad physically losing his voice and ability to tell stories through cancer.

So I was always fascinated by the ebb and flow of people and lives, their struggles on the docks, and in the factories, the catholic, protestant, the Irish and English communities that lived and worked side by side. That fascination has turned into three books that I hope can help to fill the gap for other people. These books are not about my family, but families like mine. They have been called ‘A love letter to Liverpool with a touch of Peaky Blinders’.

Starting in 1950s Garston, these books flow through time and space, through Ireland and to the 2000s. Dockers’ strikes, gangs and police corruption. Unemployment marches, dead bodies, murders and gun running.

A slice of the life and times of Liverpool.

You can buy the set as a xmas present here

Who would you like to give them to?