Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
How They Dug the Victoria Line
I stumbled across this charming 1969 BBC documentary on iPlayer the other day and thought that some of you might be interested. Although many of us regularly use the Victoria Line, the interest for me was not so much local as it was in how surprisingly unfamiliar the world I grew up in looks today.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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It is a fab little slice of the recent past - fantastic to see what everyday life looked like in 60s London.
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Permalink Reply by Lesley Ramm on
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I believe my cousin worked on the Victoria Line construction - manual digging i think. He said he had never seen people (Irish navvies) work so hard and move so much earth in his life.
Look forward to viewing this
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Lesley, as I watched I couldn't help wondering how many of those young men of my own age, digging through clinging London clay, busting their gut day after day, were tied into a system of dodgy sub-contractors (often rural Irish like themselves) who encouraged or forced them to "go on the lump", cash in hand, no questions asked, no national insurance, no tax paid, little proof of their existence, on no social welfare or GPs' health service lists, growing old or dying long before their time, crippled with rheumatism, arthritis, old injuries from the tunnels, with chest and lung problems from years of inhaling all sorts of dust - knocking in their premature old age in lonely HMOs or shared rooms in Kilburn, Cricklewood, Camden, Haringey etc. Not the sort of questions London Underground, British Transport Films or this documentary's presenter might want to investigate or guess at either in 1969 or 2015. Questions that David Cameron should be asking about his arrangements for today's migrant workers and provisions for their future. These quibbles apart, a very interesting film from a technical p.o.v.
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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Have you seen I could read the sky? It's a wonderful impressionistic film about one such worker in his dying days, as his mind roams back over his past - extremely moving.
I think they have it in Hornsey Library, if you're interested.
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Permalink Reply by Geoff Amabilino on
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Good find Hugh.
First thing that grabbed me was the complete absence of hi-vis jackets and hard hats. I must look up the stats on injury during the construction!
Second thing was that commuters looked even more grumpy then!
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