Tarquin O’Flaherty ended his last piece talking about how one became a navvy.  Here here talks of ‘the great test’.  ( And ends with a bit of music.)

The Great Test
You were required to consume two pounds of beef, drink a gallon of beer every day and buy your own uniform. The uniform was wonderfully distinctive. A first class pair of moleskin trousers was the first requirement. Then came  hob-nailed boots, double-canvas shirts, a  multi-coloured waistcoat and a velveteen coat. A good felt hat helped complete the ensemble, with a brightly coloured handkerchief stuffed in the pocket.

If you can imagine what it must have been like as the railway diggings surged forward. Hundreds of men, splendidly dressed, with money to spend and in fine physical shape would descend on the local town. Not to put too fine a point on it, but mayhem of all shapes and sizes was the direct result. There was dancing in the streets, appalling drunkeness, huge fights, usually amongst the navvies themselves and endless instances of ladies of the town being persuaded into the shrubbery by a dazzling waistcoat. In many instances, wives abandoned the marital bed, and moved lock stock and barrel to the diggings, and stayed there.

This of course, absolutely scandalized Victorian England.  The navvies didn’t go to church, had an indecent interest in strong drink and were possessed of unspeakably licentious habits. They didn’t wash, gave no thanks to god for their good fortune, used food money donated by the church to entertain girls, and sold their donated bibles for hard liquor. Churchmen despaired of them, were horrified by them, and gave thanks to the Almighty for the compensation involved in sending the railway across their land.

Nevertheless, this Godless, sub-human, drunken crew, when called upon, sailed all the way to Russia with a railway and rescued perhaps a quarter of a million soldiers from under Russia’s nose. This was at precisely the same time when British Army supply ships were either sinking, or failing to leave port, or landing at the wrong spot, or important people in Whitehall had to make important bureaucratic decisions while the flower of English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh manhood died of hypothermia and starvation. When the navvies had built the railway to Sevastopol, the army at Balaclava inexplicably refused to make use it after five in the afternnon or before eight in the morning!

The reality of this was that the navvies were treated  very well by the contractors and were fiercely loyal.

The Army, on the other hand, treated its soldiers like dogs. The reason why they had to be rescued was the soldiers were diseased, malnourished, almost out of food and ammunition and had no winter clothing. At the least excuse, at the slightest sign of insubordination, soldiers could be flogged to death or executed. The food was appalling and there was no esprit de corps at all. All that gung-ho stuff was invented afterwards by people on the sidelines. This is the reason why mutiny was so common in the army and navy.And why, even up to a short time ago, ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy’ was  enough to get you executed.

The usual levels of British hypocrisy and self-importance prevailed throughout the railway building period which began in 1822 and was, to all intents and purposes, over and done with by 1900.

It is impossible not to remember our amazing navvies. Their astonishing work, their ancient monuments, their  Stonehenge and earthworks are all around us and are huge in the landscape.  You just have to start looking.

Hammering the anvil with The Sensational Alex Harvey Band