Michael Laneghan
Michael was born in 1946 in the Nechells district of Birmingham. His dad was an Irishman who came to England in 1936 aged 20, three years before the second world war, together with his wife (Michael’s mum). She was 20 and pregnant with her first child at the time. He was born in 1937. She had two further children (both boys) in 1938 and 1940 and may well have had more in the years between then and the birth of Michael had the war not intervened. She had two further children (one girl, one boy) in 1947 and 1949.
As the oldest of the second wave of children Michael felt excluded from the world of his three older siblings, but also saw himself as the spokesman and defender of the younger group. He wanted to be a hero to his brother and sister.
Michael’s early exposure to music came through the radio, or the music of Elvis Presley coming through the bedroom wall from his brother’s room before he left home and took the only record player the family owned. However, discovering pubs at an earlyish age, he also got into blues and rock. He never liked the Beatles but was into the Rolling Stones from the start and by the late sixties was into Hendrix, Cream and others like them.
Michael was hard working. He didn’t want to live in Nechells all his life and a good job was the way out of there. He started work in a local foundry in 1961 and tried to learn the trade and be as helpful as he could be to his colleagues and bosses. He bristled at some of the jokes about the Irish they came out with, but knew he had to accept it if he wanted to get on. He even started to join in and came to silently resent his parents for their Irish ancestry. He would have left home were it not for him now having a room of his own, after his older brothers left to get married, and for his younger brother and sister still living there.
In 1964 his dad became ill. The illness was related to asbestos on the building sites he had worked on after the war, although they didn’t know this at the time. He died in 1965. A large amount of Michael’s money during this time and afterwards went on keeping the family afloat in the absence of his dad’s wages. Michael was proud to help his mum and step into this upgraded family role, but at the same time, this was stopping him from getting the money that would eventually help him to move into a place of his own. He started to work more and more overtime even if some of the other foundry workers felt he was taking more than his fair share given that they had kids to support.
In 1967 one of his bosses decided to set up his own small steel company and asked Michael to take the job of foreman in the firm. Michael agreed. Joan was the wages clerk at the new firm. Michael liked her and asked her out. They got engaged in Easter 1968 and married almost a year later in 1969.
As a foreman Michael was a little confused as to where his loyalties should lie, to the workers he shared a shop floor with or to the boss who had offered him the early responsibility of the job. He tried to appeal to everyone but did feel that some of the older workers resented him for a job they felt they should have had. The truth was that any that did resent him did so because they felt he was in the pockets of the management. They had a point.
Joan changed jobs, leaving the steel works to work as a clerk for a local firm of solicitors. They decided this was better than workers thinking she was reporting back what he said about them to the bosses.
To be friends with the workers and appear to be one with them, he made jokes about gays and minority ethnic communities. He was not a fan of Larry Grayson, was unsure about Dick Emery and had grown up in a family and society that thought homosexuality was wrong. He had never questioned this view.
He knew some of the workers were worried about Asians taking their jobs or moving into their neighbourhoods and, in spite of coming from an area that already had Asians living there, he could see their concerns. It was a status thing.
As a result, he saw no harm in his jokes and also thought it was better if he did this rather than have them make jokes about the Irish that he would have to join in with. They did this behind his back instead.
At the start of 1970, Michael and Joan brought their first house. It was a small three bed end of terrace. Michael promised Joan that one day they would move into one of the nice semi-detached houses nearer the park.
At the end of 1970, Michael’s mother came to live with them after her youngest son got married and she was in the house by herself. It was the first time that Michael and Joan had an argument. Joan wanted to extend their family with a child not with a mother-in-law.
Six months later his mother met another man and although Michael did not approve of the relationship and the thought of someone taking the place of his dad, he was not really in a position to object when his mother said she was going to move in with the man – separate beds of course – at the start of 1972. They got married at the end of that year. Michael was not happy. Something in him blamed Joan for this, but she never really knew this at the time, she only suspected it when she thought about it several years later.
With the house once more to themselves, Joan again dreamed of the semi-detached and the children. The miners strike and the blackouts of 1974 started to put paid to the former as the factory operated on a three-day week and no overtime so any chance of saving went out of the window at least for now.
Children were still an option. They began trying for a baby, not that they hadn’t really been trying before, or had any real idea what trying for a baby meant other than having sex, which had always seemed to work for Michael’s mother.
When Joan got pregnant with Chris, Michael was delighted. They got the news on 21 November 1974. He was going to tell everyone at work the next day, but that evening the IRA planted bombs in two pubs in Birmingham. The next day that was the only conversation at work. Michael couldn’t share his enjoyment, and the comments he heard all day about Irish bastards, sometimes followed with ‘not you, obviously’ and sometimes not, only made him resent his Irish heritage once again.
Things eventually seemed to settle down at work after the trial of the Birmingham Six brought the matter to a close and saw it slip away from the headlines. After a hot summer in 1976 attention turned back to the state of the economy, the IMF bailout and the rise of unemployment and left wing trade unionists intent on striking as Michael saw it.
He was increasingly out of touch with a militant work force, as he tried to make the case for his bosses. Strikes failed to materialise until the late 1970s when a newly appointed union shop steward worked with colleagues in other steel companies and foundries to argue for better pay and guaranteed overtime.
The loss of income from the strike was again a barrier to moving home. Joan had started to accept that her dream was likely to be over.
The 1980s were a time of troubles for Michael. The factory closed in 1982 around the time of the Falklands War. Michael had a year out of work. When he found a new job in 1983 he was back on the shop floor, remembered in some quarters as a strike breaker. His old boss joined the management board of a small steel conglomerate. Michael hoped to get a job with him, but no offer came. Michael felt betrayed after all the help he had given him. He decided from now on he would only ever look after number one, perhaps failing to realise that this was what he had been doing for large parts of his life before then.
He disliked the rise of left-wing comedians and alternative comedy and became more right-wing in his views. In a divided work place he sided with those who believed that the lack of job security they were now facing was not a result of Government economic policies but of all those daft idiots who sought to strike too much and who had only themselves to blame for what he and they were now facing. He tried to steer clear of conversations about the Birmingham six as demands for an appeal against their sentence grew. He now saw himself as a Brummie first and foremost, Ireland was something associated with his parents. Perhaps all he retained of their Irishness was a belief that Homosexuality was wrong, although that wasn’t just an Irish sentiment and nor was it a view that all Irish people held, so it was a view that probably came as much from the Midlands as from his parents.
He was horrified in 1991 to find out that one of Chris’s teachers was gay, even though he wasn’t, and had been trying to tell kids about how great it was to be gay, even though he hadn’t. He never failed to let Chris know that he was glad the teacher had been suspended and that he would be ‘the first one at the gates of that school protesting if they let that queer teach you that filth again.’
Finding out his son was both a drag artist and a homosexual felt like the biggest personal insult and perceived injustice in a life that had been full of these things in Michael’s opinion. He couldn’t deal with it. He didn’t want to talk about it and wouldn’t have been able to understand it or talk about it even if he tried. It was easier to cut his son off and have no more to do with him.
When Joan was diagnosed with terminal cancer he did think of letting Chris know, but Joan didn’t mention it to him, so he decided it was best to do nothing. When Joan died he decided he did need to tell him. Michael wouldn’t admit it, but it wasn’t just a sense of duty that was the reason for his decision. It was also the sense of loss he was feeling that all the nice words from brothers, sisters, nieces or nephews couldn’t make up for and actually made worse.
In a pre-Facebook age, he sent a letter to the last address he had for Chris. He didn’t know that Chris had moved back to Manchester and so also didn’t know whether the lack of a reply was because Chris hadn’t got the letter or just didn’t want any contact with him. Michael being Michael, his instinct was the latter.
As the oldest of the second wave of children Michael felt excluded from the world of his three older siblings, but also saw himself as the spokesman and defender of the younger group. He wanted to be a hero to his brother and sister.
Michael’s early exposure to music came through the radio, or the music of Elvis Presley coming through the bedroom wall from his brother’s room before he left home and took the only record player the family owned. However, discovering pubs at an earlyish age, he also got into blues and rock. He never liked the Beatles but was into the Rolling Stones from the start and by the late sixties was into Hendrix, Cream and others like them.
Michael was hard working. He didn’t want to live in Nechells all his life and a good job was the way out of there. He started work in a local foundry in 1961 and tried to learn the trade and be as helpful as he could be to his colleagues and bosses. He bristled at some of the jokes about the Irish they came out with, but knew he had to accept it if he wanted to get on. He even started to join in and came to silently resent his parents for their Irish ancestry. He would have left home were it not for him now having a room of his own, after his older brothers left to get married, and for his younger brother and sister still living there.
In 1964 his dad became ill. The illness was related to asbestos on the building sites he had worked on after the war, although they didn’t know this at the time. He died in 1965. A large amount of Michael’s money during this time and afterwards went on keeping the family afloat in the absence of his dad’s wages. Michael was proud to help his mum and step into this upgraded family role, but at the same time, this was stopping him from getting the money that would eventually help him to move into a place of his own. He started to work more and more overtime even if some of the other foundry workers felt he was taking more than his fair share given that they had kids to support.
In 1967 one of his bosses decided to set up his own small steel company and asked Michael to take the job of foreman in the firm. Michael agreed. Joan was the wages clerk at the new firm. Michael liked her and asked her out. They got engaged in Easter 1968 and married almost a year later in 1969.
As a foreman Michael was a little confused as to where his loyalties should lie, to the workers he shared a shop floor with or to the boss who had offered him the early responsibility of the job. He tried to appeal to everyone but did feel that some of the older workers resented him for a job they felt they should have had. The truth was that any that did resent him did so because they felt he was in the pockets of the management. They had a point.
Joan changed jobs, leaving the steel works to work as a clerk for a local firm of solicitors. They decided this was better than workers thinking she was reporting back what he said about them to the bosses.
To be friends with the workers and appear to be one with them, he made jokes about gays and minority ethnic communities. He was not a fan of Larry Grayson, was unsure about Dick Emery and had grown up in a family and society that thought homosexuality was wrong. He had never questioned this view.
He knew some of the workers were worried about Asians taking their jobs or moving into their neighbourhoods and, in spite of coming from an area that already had Asians living there, he could see their concerns. It was a status thing.
As a result, he saw no harm in his jokes and also thought it was better if he did this rather than have them make jokes about the Irish that he would have to join in with. They did this behind his back instead.
At the start of 1970, Michael and Joan brought their first house. It was a small three bed end of terrace. Michael promised Joan that one day they would move into one of the nice semi-detached houses nearer the park.
At the end of 1970, Michael’s mother came to live with them after her youngest son got married and she was in the house by herself. It was the first time that Michael and Joan had an argument. Joan wanted to extend their family with a child not with a mother-in-law.
Six months later his mother met another man and although Michael did not approve of the relationship and the thought of someone taking the place of his dad, he was not really in a position to object when his mother said she was going to move in with the man – separate beds of course – at the start of 1972. They got married at the end of that year. Michael was not happy. Something in him blamed Joan for this, but she never really knew this at the time, she only suspected it when she thought about it several years later.
With the house once more to themselves, Joan again dreamed of the semi-detached and the children. The miners strike and the blackouts of 1974 started to put paid to the former as the factory operated on a three-day week and no overtime so any chance of saving went out of the window at least for now.
Children were still an option. They began trying for a baby, not that they hadn’t really been trying before, or had any real idea what trying for a baby meant other than having sex, which had always seemed to work for Michael’s mother.
When Joan got pregnant with Chris, Michael was delighted. They got the news on 21 November 1974. He was going to tell everyone at work the next day, but that evening the IRA planted bombs in two pubs in Birmingham. The next day that was the only conversation at work. Michael couldn’t share his enjoyment, and the comments he heard all day about Irish bastards, sometimes followed with ‘not you, obviously’ and sometimes not, only made him resent his Irish heritage once again.
Things eventually seemed to settle down at work after the trial of the Birmingham Six brought the matter to a close and saw it slip away from the headlines. After a hot summer in 1976 attention turned back to the state of the economy, the IMF bailout and the rise of unemployment and left wing trade unionists intent on striking as Michael saw it.
He was increasingly out of touch with a militant work force, as he tried to make the case for his bosses. Strikes failed to materialise until the late 1970s when a newly appointed union shop steward worked with colleagues in other steel companies and foundries to argue for better pay and guaranteed overtime.
The loss of income from the strike was again a barrier to moving home. Joan had started to accept that her dream was likely to be over.
The 1980s were a time of troubles for Michael. The factory closed in 1982 around the time of the Falklands War. Michael had a year out of work. When he found a new job in 1983 he was back on the shop floor, remembered in some quarters as a strike breaker. His old boss joined the management board of a small steel conglomerate. Michael hoped to get a job with him, but no offer came. Michael felt betrayed after all the help he had given him. He decided from now on he would only ever look after number one, perhaps failing to realise that this was what he had been doing for large parts of his life before then.
He disliked the rise of left-wing comedians and alternative comedy and became more right-wing in his views. In a divided work place he sided with those who believed that the lack of job security they were now facing was not a result of Government economic policies but of all those daft idiots who sought to strike too much and who had only themselves to blame for what he and they were now facing. He tried to steer clear of conversations about the Birmingham six as demands for an appeal against their sentence grew. He now saw himself as a Brummie first and foremost, Ireland was something associated with his parents. Perhaps all he retained of their Irishness was a belief that Homosexuality was wrong, although that wasn’t just an Irish sentiment and nor was it a view that all Irish people held, so it was a view that probably came as much from the Midlands as from his parents.
He was horrified in 1991 to find out that one of Chris’s teachers was gay, even though he wasn’t, and had been trying to tell kids about how great it was to be gay, even though he hadn’t. He never failed to let Chris know that he was glad the teacher had been suspended and that he would be ‘the first one at the gates of that school protesting if they let that queer teach you that filth again.’
Finding out his son was both a drag artist and a homosexual felt like the biggest personal insult and perceived injustice in a life that had been full of these things in Michael’s opinion. He couldn’t deal with it. He didn’t want to talk about it and wouldn’t have been able to understand it or talk about it even if he tried. It was easier to cut his son off and have no more to do with him.
When Joan was diagnosed with terminal cancer he did think of letting Chris know, but Joan didn’t mention it to him, so he decided it was best to do nothing. When Joan died he decided he did need to tell him. Michael wouldn’t admit it, but it wasn’t just a sense of duty that was the reason for his decision. It was also the sense of loss he was feeling that all the nice words from brothers, sisters, nieces or nephews couldn’t make up for and actually made worse.
In a pre-Facebook age, he sent a letter to the last address he had for Chris. He didn’t know that Chris had moved back to Manchester and so also didn’t know whether the lack of a reply was because Chris hadn’t got the letter or just didn’t want any contact with him. Michael being Michael, his instinct was the latter.
