From the hills of Glenswilly to 40 metres below England’s earth

" Myself and my schoolmate Michael regularly prayed to the Holy Spirit, asking Him to please take her so that our suffering could end. "

These are the words of Donegal Tunnel Tiger Joe Kelly as he described his 1950s primary school teacher. Born in Glenswilly in 1944 to two loving and caring parents, Joe speaks freely about the worst day of his life, Sept 1948, when he enrolled at Rashedoge Primary School in Glenswilly, and the best day of his life in June 1959, when he finally left that awful place. The teacher, who had also taught his mother, was an abusive brute. One of Joe's, now-deceased, schoolmates, perceived at the time as slow but now understood as a child in need of special attention, was repeatedly beaten until he bled.

While Joe was tortured at Rashedoge School in Glenswilly, his other future Tunnel Tigers friends were suffering similar abuse elsewhere. His close friend Jackie Prendergast was brutalised in Milford Primary School, as was Gonna O'Donnell in Ranafast Primary School. 

Although all survived this savagery, it left its mark and negatively shaped them for the lives and careers they would later follow. Remarkably, all three are now able to recount their stories in a spirit of forgiveness, having fully forgiven their teachers.

At the time, many teachers wrongly believed that learning was best achieved through fear and punishment. We now know the opposite to be true. Unnecessary punishment in school damages a child’s self-confidence and self-worth, and subconsciously conditions them to believe they are undeserving of better treatment, an erroneous belief that can leave them vulnerable to future abuse without resistance.

Joe came from a family of three sisters and one brother. His brother, Michael, himself a Donegal Tunnel Tiger, died in 2001 at 55 years of age from tunnel-related illnesses.

READ NEXT: From Ranafast to the Rock Face: A life carved in darkness, dust and survival

A Pound a Week and a Bicycle: Letterkenny's Laundry Run
After finishing primary school, Joe, not unlike Gonna O'Donnell, was offered the opportunity of further education but declined, firmly believing he could not endure any more brutality. Instead, in 1959, he took up a position on a local laundry van in Letterkenny, earning £1 per week. Every day he cycled from Glenswilly to Letterkenny for work. After six months he was offered a position as a helper on a lorry, with his wages increasing by more than 100% to £2 & 10s per week.

Aged 16, Heading Towards The Tunnel Face
A 1,200% pay rise and four men sharing one chair
In 1961, aged 16, Joe's father was working in a tunnel in Bedford and offered Joe a position alongside him. They travelled by boat from Belfast to Heysham and then onward to Bedford. Joe's wages increased from £2 & 10s to £27 per week, an increase of over 1,200%, and this was the great attraction of tunnelling work.

While home on holidays in July 1962, Joe learned of supposedly better conditions in Scotland. Hence, he boarded the boat from Derry to Glasgow, which he recalls as “Rough as Hell” and beyond description. Along with three other Tigers, he took up residence in a single room on North Frederick Street in Glasgow. There was one chair in the room, and the landlady forbade them from sitting on the bed. The daily riddle was to solve the puzzle of how the four of them would share the single chair.

Alongside the poor and inadequate accommodation, wages had dropped from £27 per week to £13. At that point Joe knew it was time to move on again.

READ NEXT: Generations of Donegal Tunnel Tigers - from hand-drilled rock and gelignite to HS2

No Blacks, No Dogs and No Irish
St. Colmcille’s sacred soil, rosary beads, holy water and woolly socks: How Joe's faith marked him as a terrorist

One of Joe's contacts, Charlie McDevitt, promised him a start in London. At that time Joe, like many other Tigers, travelled with a brown suitcase containing a bottle of holy water, a small sample of St Colmcille's Gartan soil, rosary beads, two pairs of knitted woollen socks, and a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Standing in shock and bewilderment beneath a sign reading

"No Blacks, No Dogs & No Irish" outside a London bed and breakfast, Joe and his friend, perceived as suspicious, were arrested by police who took clear pleasure in belittling and mocking their religious and spiritual artefacts.

These same possessions caused Joe serious trouble later in his career when his Tiger friend Andy Moy asked him to bring a suitcase home on his behalf. Andy's suitcase contained similar religious items, along with two alarm clocks. Stopped by security in Belfast during the height of the Troubles in the early 1970s, army officers mistook the white St Colmcille's Gartan soil for Semtex and the alarm clocks as timing devices. Communications followed between British Army officers, the RUC, and

An Garda Síochána in Glenswilly, who confirmed that Joe had no paramilitary connections. After a lengthy period of interrogation and mild torture, Joe was released and allowed to enjoy his two-week holiday in Donegal.

Heading Underground into the Compressed Darkness
Burst eardrums, cement explosions, 12-hour shifts without daylight, and a knotted handkerchief standing in for safety

Between 1962 and 1976, Joe worked in various tunnels throughout England. He spent time in Dungeness, Kent, alongside fellow Gaoth Dobhair Tiger Ownie McBride. He also worked on the London Underground Victoria Line and the Newcastle upon Tyne Metro. Much of his work was carried out by hand in compressed air chambers, an experience that later resulted in a burst eardrum while working in Newcastle. Today, like many other Tigers, Joe wears two hearing aids.

During Joe's tunnelling career, health and safety barely featured. He fashioned his own safety helmet from a white handkerchief tied with knots at the four corner. He typically worked 12-hour shifts on a week on, week off basis, and during his working weeks he would not see daylight at all.

On one occasion, while working on the Tottenham Court Road to Post Office line, forty metres below ground, one of Joe's Donegal friends asked him if he could help him secure a start. On his first day underground, the newcomer was standing beside an open bag of cement when the air hose between the compressor and the F22 air spade burst, splattering him in cement dust. He walked straight up to Joe and said, "If this is what I have to endure to make a living, I am out of here," and he immediately jacked.

READ NEXT: How Donegal's Tunnel Tigers helped dig the world's greatest engineering project

The Desire to Return Home
Exile, endurance, and the athletics accident that forced his return to Donegal

Like many Tigers, Joe regards his years of tunnelling in England as an endurance rather than a pleasure. Like many Irish people living in exile at the time, he immersed himself in Gaelic sport, playing with London's Tir Conaill Gaels and competing in athletics. 

He achieved a high standard in both and was therefore invited to take part in an athletics competition in Glasgow in 1976. Competing in the long jump, he exceeded both his own expectations and those of the organisers, jumping beyond the safe landing area and landing on the hard edge beyond, breaking his leg in two places. He was treated at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Glasgow. The accident ended his tunnelling career and forced his return to Donegal.

Back Where He Started
From 40 metres underground to Managing Director, Joe survives where his brother Michael didn't.

Once his leg had healed, Joe secured a position with the first dry cleaning firm in Letterkenny. He travelled the length and breadth of the county, a job he enjoyed greatly for its sociable nature and the opportunity to meet friendly, outgoing Donegal people. It was a world away from the thunderous, dangerous, dusty and noisy environment of tunnelling. He remained there from 1976 until 1978, when the owner of the business sadly passed away unexpectedly. Joe then established County Dry Cleaners in Letterkenny, where he remains Managing Director to this day.

When asked if he would do it all over again, Joe, like many Donegal Tunnel Tigers, gives a resounding yes. He views the experience as harsh but character-forming. Unlike his brother Michael, his health survived years of compressed air and dust, and along the way he forged lifelong friendships, remaining in close contact with men such as Jackie Prendergast, Gonna O’Donnell, Conn Gallagher and Ownie McBride.

Today, when Joe observes the extensive personal protective equipment worn by modern push button tunnellers, he reflects quietly on how his own generation ever survived.

Like other Tigers, he tells his story as honestly as he can, while acknowledging that some of the suffering they witnessed remains beyond words. There is sufficient material in Joe's story, as in the stories of other Tigers, for a book.
Eamonn Coyle is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmentalist