Brian Cox's Jute Journey [DVD]

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The industry endured a steady decline from the 1870s onwards, prompting many workers to migrate from the east coast of Scotland to the south of Asia. The migrants from both places – equally remote, equally poor, equally foreign to the Scottish lowlands – came to “build the roads, to build the canals, to go into the engineering jobs. But the psychological change was so momentous that there was not the ability to adjust to it.”

Calcutta’s first mill opened in 1855; seventy-five years later, the city was producing 70% of the world’s jute products. With a never-ending supply of raw materials right on its doorstep, it made far more economical sense to concentrate the industry in Bengal, rather than half-way around the world in Scotland.Today there are Scottish veterans forming the Calcutta and Mofussil Society: veterans of the Indian jute industry who like to congregate in places like the Monifieth Golf Club, to partake of Indian food, speak Hindi, and reminisce about their days in the East. The majority of Calcutta’s mills were owned by expatriate British businessmen, but they were run by Dundonians. Ambitious jute workers moved from Dundee to Calcutta in the 1850s, and they ran the industry there for the best part of a century. The last ones returned to Scotland in the late sixties, having been made to feel rather uncomfortable and unwelcome in independent India. They joke about it now, of course, but they heard the labourers keeping the rhythm while loading and unloading jute, singing what sounded like ‘hey-ho, the sahib’s a saala’ (meaning, pretty much, that the boss is a bloody bastard). messages and online donations to Parkinson's UK, please visit https://antoniogonsalves.muchloved.com/ May: Times of India. Startups, tourism to figure in June G20 meets… The third meeting of the Startup Engagement Group is planned for June 3-4… The third meeting of the International Financial Architecture Working Group (IFAWG) of the G20 is scheduled from June 5-7 … Supreme Audit Institutions will take place from June 12-14 … 4th tourism Working Group Meeting from June 19-20 … Risteard Cooper’s Finbar is the local who has moved to the town, done well and now brags to hide ever-increasing self-loathing;. Ardal O’Hanlon’s sparse depiction of Jim says more in a gesture than most actors achieve in a night. Peter McDonald’s Brendan – the barman estranged from domineering sisters, unwilling or unable to change – is given, like the other characters on stage, time to breathe in a production that never hurries.Brian says: "My folks followed their parents into the mills but the closest I got was as a wee boy, peering through the open doors of the Eagle Jute Works on a hot summer's day. I recall being dazzled by all the noise, the dust and the activity." But of course that social power was exclusively within their own milieus. As far as the bosses of the mills, the rich upper-class were concerned, the mill-hands were so much cattle. The mills were incredibly noisy and many workers went deaf; the dust and fibre in the air destroyed their lungs. Still generation followed generation into the mills, entire families occupied in creating wealth for Dundee. Top) Brian Cox on the Scottish Cemetery premises. Picture by Aranya Sen. (below) The crew shoot at the Tollygunge Club

The Hooghly was the centrepiece of the world of jute, providing berthing for ships bound for Dundee as well points of disembarkation for the Jutewallahs arriving to take up their new jobs and accommodations along the river banks. The only reason they came to my part of Scotland – the east coast – was because the women could spin and weave; the men didn’t have any employment,” Cox says. “So in the east coast in Dundee, 80 per cent of the population were women. And they were Irish and Highland women: the men became househusbands. They had been farmers and smallholders and literally their whole world had changed overnight.” The evening was far more pleasant with the entire crew heading to the Tollygunge Club. “The idea of filming at the club was to capture what the social life of the Scots living in the city must have been like,” ventured Archer.In this fascinating film, Brian journeys into his past and travels to Calcutta, following in the footsteps of the Dundee jute workers who left the city to seek fortunes in India. Brian says: "The 'jute wallahs' left Dundee for what they hoped would be a better life. My ancestors came from Fermanagh to Dundee to work in the jute mills. So many people in the mills were Scottish crofters or Irish farmers who came to Dundee for work. It is about the disparate nature of Scotland, it’s two faces: the romantic and the realistic,” he said. “I was very interested in the ‘spin’ that Sir Walter Scott gave Scotland in the 1800s. I’m interested in how this is something we’re caught up in, the false history, the romantic extreme. And then there is the other part, the grim, gritty reality, like in Trainspotting and the drug life of Edinburgh.”

They have a cemetery in Calcutta which is full of people from Scotland, and actually has a whole section of people from Dundee who were all buried there." The 63-year-old travelled to Calcutta to make the film, along the way sampling some of the less-obvious uses for the vegetable fibre which kept Dundee working for years. You see that in the people who went out there - they were up for an adventure. For me it was to go south and become an actor. Dundee had one of the best theatres in the country but I didn't properly appreciate that at the time."

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This was the day that the crew in general, and Cox in particular, was looking forward to, as they were to shoot at the jute mills on the outskirts of the city. “We went to a number of mills, from one at Chapadanga to the famous mill at Howrah,” said Cox. Dundee (1939, b/w), The city of Dundee, its people and industries: jute, jam, and journalism. Premiered at a meeting of the British Association in Dundee, September 1939, the screening was abandoned midway owing to the declaration of war. Director: Donald Alexander. The penultimate day saw the crew leave the hotel early, only to spend half the day crammed in their cars in the intense heat. “We got lost! And when we found our way out, there were endless traffic jams. It was really frustrating,” lamented Cox. Finally the crew proceeded to the banks of the Hooghly for a few hours of filming the barges filled with mounds of jute. “Like the other days, the heat sapped all our energy,” rued Archer. After spending the entire morning on the church premises, the crew took a lunch break and then proceeded to the Scottish Cemetery in Park Circus in the hope of finding the graves of Scots who had lived in Calcutta, made it their home for over a hundred years, and were buried in the city. Brian said: "In India, I sampled jute pakora. I had no idea you could eat it. It's actually very nice. They make soup from it too, but I didn't try that.