The Guest Column: Derry’s Factory Girls Deserve Better?

Readers of a certain age will know the phrase ‘A place for everything – and everything in its place’.

It’s a lesson we appear to have lost when celebrating Derry’s history. Take emigration – in which our city was one of the island’s major departure points for over a century. Statues to acknowledge that part of our history are currently found next to Sainsbury’s on the Quayside, rather than in the riverfront area from where the emigrant ships actually sailed.

Our tribute to legendary local singer Josef Locke is inexplicably hidden in bushes beside Queen’s Quay roundabout. And instead of being located next to the water, the impending maritime museum will instead be in a building that doesn’t even face the river in the middle of the Ebrington military site, which for most of its life played host to land rather than sea forces.

All of this runs contrary to the belief that museums and public art should be located in places they have a direct connection with. An ‘authenticity of place’ which feels genuine, and therefore amplifies their impact and appeal.

The latest example of Derry getting its locations wrong is due before the council’s planning committee shortly.

The role that the shirt industry and ‘Factory Girls’ played in Derry’s history is legendary. For decades this city was the world’s largest manufacturer of shirts – with up to 40 factories producing 6 million shirts a year for global export. Most notable was the famous Tillie and Henderson building – the world’s largest shirt factory, that was even referenced by Karl Max in ‘Das Kapital’.

Derry clothed the planet, and the industry’s huge economic impact locally was matched by the significant social influence it had here too. The vast majority of factory employees were female - and with jobs scarce for men locally, that made women the primary bread winners in many households. Which contributed greatly to the matriarchal flavour that Derry has been notable for ever since.

The tradition of strong female influencers in Derry continues to this day – and none more so than ‘The Friends of the Factories’. This award-winning grassroots organisation has worked hard to place recognition of Derry’s shirt factory heritage firmly onto the civic agenda here.

Their main ambition has been to secure a high profile piece of public art as a fitting tribute to the industry and workforce, and in 2006 Cork-born artist Louise Walsh was commissioned by Stormont to produce a sculpture for this purpose. Her proposed piece, titled The Wheel of Sewing, suffered delays and setbacks in the following years – including failure to gain permission to locate it on King Street roundabout in the Waterside.

Harbour Square beside the Guildhall was identified as an alternative location, and Walsh hoped to have it in place for the City of Culture year in 2013. When that didn’t transpire she pulled out of the project, frustrated by “swimming against a tide of bureaucracy”.

Her part-manufactured sculpture never saw the light of day, despite £90,000 of public money being spent on the process.

Undeterred, the Factory Girls have kept the pressure upon both the Council and Stormont. This led to a new artist being appointed in 2022, and his design is due to go before the council’s planning committee any day now.

Most readers will presumably have heard little about this, and fewer still are likely to have seen the proposed artwork. It is nigh-on impossible to find the new design online (though easy to find the previous version), and whilst it is nominally on ‘public display’ in the Guildhall it has been hidden away in a corner that requires effort to locate. I suspect this has been deliberate on behalf of the council, for two reasons.

Firstly they doubtless still bear bruises from the previous abandoned design process. Secondly and most importantly, I suspect it’s because they know and fear that the public will not react kindly to the design. Whilst art is a subjective matter - in my opinion the proposed design to commemorate our city’s shirt history and workers falls very short of the mark.

The piece consists of three large, bronze-coloured spools of thread of varying heights, with their tops designed to make a noise as the wind blows over them. It is a thoroughly under-whelming proposal, reminiscent to me of the unloved sculpture of the three buoys that sat beside Belfast’s St Anne’s Cathedral until moved recently.

When the design was shared with the Friends of the Factories, they rightly complained that it said nothing about the workers. The design was therefore altered belatedly so that the trailing thread from the spools form a couple of quotes along the ground.

The real story of Derry’s proud shirt factory history has never been the thread used to make the shirts (thread that wasn’t even produced locally). The real story was the sheer scale and quality of what was produced here, and the fact a small city on the edge of Europe clothed the world.

Of even greater importance was the human aspect of it all. The stories of those who worked in the factories, the difference it made to their lives and to our city, and the strong bonds and identities which were formed and remain to this day. Derry’s shirt industry heritage can therefore be best summed up in two words - people and product. Unfortunately neither is properly represented in this chosen piece of artwork.

To focus solely on the raw material that went into the shirts - and to do so in a bland and uninspiring way - is to completely miss the point, telling the wrong part of a very important story within our city’s history. I’m told that concerns over the artwork also exist amongst some of the Factory Girls themselves - though many just want to see something done now, and within their lifetimes, after battling for so long. I would urge readers to seek out the design for yourselves and to draw your own conclusion as to whether it is a worthy tribute to our shirt-making heritage or the legendary factory girls.

To add to the missed opportunity of the artwork’s design is a poor choice of location for its installation - in Harbour Square, between the Guildhall and Foyle Expressway. This is an area which had at best a tenuous connection to the city’s shirt industry.

Yes – many of the completed shirts would have been shipped from the port there. But so was everything else produced across the entire region in those days. Harbour Square may be a prominent location within our city, but when it comes to our shirt-making history it unfortunately fails the authenticity test.

And I fear that the sculpture will be lost there within what is already a visually busy and very open area. Instead of being a genuine focal point, it is likely to become little more than a visual footnote between a busy dual carriageway and one of the city’s most prominent buildings.

I believe a sculpture designed to celebrate and highlight Derry’s impressive shirt-making heritage should be located where the magic happened – at the heart of the factory buildings themselves.

Derry was historically a thriving hub for shirtmaking. This mural in the Craft Village, pays tribute to the thousands of Derry girls, the backbone of the city, who worked in Derry's shirt factories.

The factories was where the craic was had and the relationships formed. Where stories and history were spun alongside the garments. By the time the finished shirts reached Derry’s Port, the factory girls had long said goodbye to them and were happily working on the next batch. I believe that the most authentic location in which to mark Derry’s shirt factory heritage would be the roundabout at Carlisle Circus.

It was the beating heart of the city’s textile history – with six shirt factories located a stone’s throw away in all directions (including the world-conquering Tillies). It was the centre of what should really be know as Derry’s ‘Shirt Factory Quarter’, and it is easily the most authentic location from which to pay tribute to our city’s shirt-making heritage.

As for the existing ‘Hands Across the Divide’ sculpture that currently sits atop the roundabout there – perhaps a more appropriate and authentic place to locate that would be in Harbour Square. Opposite the excellent Peace Bridge who’s very design that statue inspired. A place for everything, and everything in its place?

Steve Bradley is a regeneration consultant from Derry. He can be followed on Twitter : @Bradley_Steve