Throughout the 1980s, young Irish people left the shores of Ireland for a new life abroad. As the country was in a recession that would last for a decade, high unemployment rates forced many people to search for work in Britain. 

At this time, before low cost airlines such as Ryanair provided cheap flights across Europe, travel costs to Britain from Ireland were extremely expensive and many made huge sacrifices in order to save for a ferry fare from Dublin to Holyhead. Emigration for the Irish wasn't new, but many had hoped that this period of one way tickets for work was over.

The decade started with a weak and unstable government in Ireland, an oil crisis that would impact all parts of the world and inflation worried those with an outstanding mortgage on their home. 

For those who moved to London for work and began to call London home, soon to be known as the London-Irish across Britain, life was not easy in the big Capital City and it brought it's own challenges.

Irish people had to queue for accommodation, jobs and social welfare in order to get started. As emigration increased so did social problems throughout Irish populated parts of London, at one stage, the one hundred bed Conway House Hostel had forty Irish men queuing for each bed there.

Many were not fortunate enough to find a place called home, as they often left Ireland with little or no money and slept rough, in squats or on the streets of London. This image of hardship was never told to those back home, it was a tale of two lives being lived.

Although many young Irish people were drawn to London, the City brought hope to many with an intense nightlife, an embracing culture and a lack of stigma to unmarried cohabiting couples and single unmarried mothers. 

The grim reality of finding work was not easy for this generation as many were forced to work in the building trade not knowing if they would receive a wage.

In this documentary we hear of workers who won't work for Irish foreman, nurses who get jobs on their abilities not who they know and an Irish man working in a Soho sex club.

In 1984, Broadcaster Paddy O'Gorman traveled to London to hear these stories of the young Irish who now called Britain home and for those who were spending their first Christmas away from home.

First Broadcast on RTÉ Radio in 1984

Produced and Presented by Paddy O'Gorman

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