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Pat Smyth, a civil servant with the National Assistance Board in West Tyrone from the 1930's to the 1950's, recalls his memories, experiences and the larger than life personalities he encountered on the way.
While National assistance and welfare services were a boom and a blessing to the impoverished population of West Tyrone, those services did not provide much needed houses, and squalor remained widespread.
The county and urban councils, which were the housing authorities, were more interested in preserving carefully contrived voting margins in electoral divisions than in putting roofs over people's heads.
Over the period 1919-1939 little more than two thousand new permanent houses had been completed in the whole of Northern Ireland and it was only the destruction of 3000 houses in the air raids of 1941, plus the damaging of more than fifty thousand others, which brought matters to a head
A survey carried out by a government appointed committee revealed an urgent need for one hundred thousand houses and three times that number to eliminate overcrowding and clear slums. It was realised that local housing authorities could not be expected to cope. They had neither the resources nor the will; some like Fermanagh county council were actually opposed to building houses, for ethnic reasons.
At the instigation of Whitehall, and on the strength of a promise of parity funding by the British government, a decision was taken by the Stormont Cabinet to set up an independent corporate housing trust, with members appointed in a voluntary capacity by the Stormont Minister.
The trust was funded by the Exchequer that overcame the opposition mounted by grass roots Unionists. From 1945 rural councils were given the status of housing authorities, then, with subsided private enterprise, and the work of the Housing Trust, the building programme was really speeded up. Between 1945 and 1963 over one hundred and twelve thousand new and permanent houses were provided.
West Tyrone local authorities were slow off the mark and chose their sites very carefully. The first post-war group of 40 council houses was located near the mental hospital in a Unionist stronghold and all the tenancies went to Unionist supporters.
This caused a public outcry by Nationalists, but without avail. Soon after that, the Housing Trust began building at Gortmore Park and Gortrush Park on the Derry Road and allocated tenancies on the basis of need.
With national assistance, welfare services, free access to secondary and third level education, and a start being made with re-housing, the fortunes of the poorer people of the community, mostly nationalist, were immeasurably improved.
Soon after I left Omagh in 1953 compulsory slum-clearances was imposed on local housing authorities, a further much-needed measure, as a high proportion of existing housing stock was beyond repair and, as well, subject to periodic flooding.
Particularly serious flooding of low-lying areas of Omagh, especially Campsie, Bridge Street, the Back Market and Sedan Avenue, occurred on at least two occasions in my experience. Once the Board's Office at Dublin Road had floodwater a yard deep and staff had to don waders to move typewriters and records upstairs. Fortunately the bulk of the records were on the first floor. The telephone line was disrupted as well.
We set up Office temporarily at the town hall, courtesy of John McGale, the Town Clerk and from there we had to deal with an emergency at Fintona where a group of working-class houses at Brunswick Row had been flooded. Occupiers had to flee to Liskey Brae and other areas of high ground.
I wired Head Office for a bank draft and in a joint venture with the newly appointed county welfare officers we mounted a relief scheme but with clothing, bedding and coal rationed we had problems.
Fortunately we held a large emergency stock of brown woollen blankets, which came in handy, but we had to lay on a supply of logs and turf by local vendors. The operation went well and within twenty-four hours we had the victims of the flood fairly comfortable.
Some residents at Liskey Brae who had had to keep roaring fires going all night to dry out clothes for flood victims were vocal, but went to the wall as the assistance scheme contained no provisions for rewarding neighbourly kindness.
The local press was much impressed with the way 'the welfare' and 'the assistance people' had co-operated. Even Head Office was impressed and we got one of the very rare bouquets handed out by the Board at that time.
Frankly, I was very glad that the disruption of phone lines had for once freed us from the trammels of Head Office close control and the inevitable red tape. Local Officers of the Board had wide statutory powers for dealing with sudden and urgent distress and that was one of the rare occasions on which we were left free to get on with a local relief scheme, on the ground, without consultation of the finance branch.
The flooding did teach some people a lesson about travelling people. One such family was camped in the market yard where I had a lock-up garage. When the water began to rise in the wee small hours, the family picked the locks of all the garages, save one, and moved the cars to higher ground. Before that few people had had a good work to say about the particular group of travellers.
The manager of a local Saxone shoe shop had several brass padlocks on his garage door, and when the waters receded his new Morris car interior was enveloped in black sticky glar, up to and over the dashboard.
I was very happy to give the itinerants a small reward. Wasn't it Rabbie Burns who had something to say about the good and bad in all of us?
Pat Smyth, 2001
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