THE woman who founded a service supporting the Irish community in south London as it faced the backlash of a devastating local IRA bombing campaign will retire from the organisation today.
Eileen Taylor formed the Irish in Greenwich project, now known as Irish Community Services, in 1984, after harnessing support for the community in the borough and acquiring funding for the new organisation.
“I have lived in the borough of Greenwich for more than 40 years now,” the Dublin native told The Irish Post this week.
“It was 1980 when I took a job as a local community development worker, which wasn’t specifically Irish, but it allowed me to help local communities set up groups in the borough,” she added.
Regarding the community at that time, she explained: “Back then the Irish here were pretending to be something else, they were not showing their Irishness at all.
“In this borough we had two bombings - one in 1974, where an off-duty soldier was killed in a pub, and 28 civilians were injured, and another, in December 1983, at the barracks in Woolwich, which injured another three people.
“The community, as you can imagine, just went in on itself. There were remarks, people were refused service in shops, it was a bad time. We don’t like to dwell on it now, because things have moved on, but at the time it did have a big impact and even children were targeted in schools - they were called ‘thick Paddy’, ‘bomber’, ‘murderer’, it wasn’t easy.”
Eileen Taylor cuts the cake at her retirement party ahead of leaving her ICS role this weekInitially Ms Taylor was met with resistance when she approached her fellow countrymen and women in the borough, but she persevered none the less.
“They wanted to keep their heads down,” she admits, “but I continued to ask them if they wanted to set up an Irish group.”
Eventually the community worker found the ears of her peers on Greenwich Council, one of whom was Irish, and began holding small meetings with other Irish people in the community.
As numbers grew Ms Taylor and the group sought to formalise their work promoting the Irish in the borough and looked to Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council, to seek funding.
“Ken agreed to us having funding for a big conference to look at the Irish community in Greenwich, which we had at a local community centre in 1984,” Ms Taylor explains.
“It proved a very important event and what came out of it was the need for Irish people to reclaim their cultural identity in the borough, but also to inform other members of the borough about why we were living there and to highlight the positive achievements of our community.
“So that what where we got started from.”
Shortly after the conference Ms Taylor made applications for council funding for two workers – one cultural and the other covering education and welfare – to serve the Irish community and the Irish in Greenwich project was born.
At this point Ms Taylor stepped away from the group, which quickly grew in size, membership and purpose, continuing her third sector work elsewhere.
By the time she returned – to take a full-time post at the organisation in 2003 - the Irish were firmly back on the map in Greenwich and it was their more vulnerable members that the charity was serving.
Since re-joining the organisation, which became Irish Community Services on its 25th anniversary, Ms Taylor has held posts which supported ICS clients in the community and has also been an elder’s advice worker before taking up the position of Family Carers Manager in 2007, which she retires from this week.
In those years, she has devoted her energies to improving the quality of life for the Irish people connected to the ICS services in Greenwich, Bexley and Lewisham, many of whom are cared for or carers.
“Nobody does things on their own at ICS,” she admits.
“It’s a team effort, it’s about everyone pulling together, it’s about finding out what people want and then them working with you and you working with them to achieve it,” she adds.
Of their many achievements to date, she highlighted some of her most memorable.
“Launching a reminiscence group for our clients with Dementia and working on the Irish in Britain’s Cuimhne Memory Loss Strategy have both been wonderful things," she said.
Ms Taylor added: “Also we were invited to celebrate Family Carers Day at the Irish Embassy in London last year, which was absolutely lovely. I was really pleased for our carers, for the project and for myself and we all had a lovely time. These sorts of things do make doing this type of work even more worthwhile.”
Officially retiring from her ICS role on March 27, Ms Taylor enjoyed some fine farewells from the many colleagues and clients she has worked with over the years this month, before handing over the Family Carers Manager role to newly appointed team member Mary Pegler.
“I think it’s time to pass on the baton,” Ms Taylor admits.
