IT is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have at least one Irish grandparent, which is about 10 per cent of the UK population.

No surprises there then, given that Irish migration to the UK has occurred from the earliest recorded history up to the present day.

This stream of migration has ebbed and flowed over the years driven by the social, political and economic conditions obtaining in both countries.

Bradford, though not attracting Irish migrants in the same numbers as say London or Liverpool, has always been a destination of choice for the hard-working men and women of the Emerald Isle drawn to the city by prospects of work in the fields, in the mills and on the building sites of the city.

Indeed, in this 150th anniversary year of Bradford City Hall, Irish efforts in the construction of this fantastic building should be acknowledged and celebrated.

Unfortunately, the Irish contribution to both country and city is seldom remarked upon. Instead, Irish men and women - and their descendants - are often stereotyped and, even worse, caricatured.

We haven’t really helped ourselves, being a thick-skinned bunch we usually laugh off such silliness. Yet it is rare indeed to see the authentic lives of these people, and the culture they brought with them represented in the mainstream.

It was for this reason that I wrote the novel The Long Distance Men (available now on Amazon).

The most recent surge of Irish migrants to the UK came in the 1990s when the call went across the Irish sea for men to help in the building of the infrastructure for the fibre optic cables that would bring internet access to the UK.

Who doesn’t remember those heady days when it seemed that every footpath in the city was being torn up by small gangs of men furiously digging trenches and laying the green ducts that would create this infrastructure?

Their enthusiasm was driven largely by the fact that these men were paid by the meter, so there was no room in these gangs for idle hands.

I had the dubious pleasure of being one of these men, working outside in extremes of heat and cold under a Bradford sky, shovel in hand and hungry for meters.

‘Long distance men’ is a colloquial term coined with typical Irish linguistic flair to describe the itinerant Irish workers who would travel from town to town in pursuit of work.

In my book I delve into the lives of some of these men and the challenges they faced both on and off the work site. Its a tale of what men will do for women and what women will do for their children, a tale of rough men and noble men, of the meaning of work and of the importance of community.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: Sean's book looks at the challenges faced by men and women who came over from Ireland Sean's book looks at the challenges faced by men and women who came over from Ireland (Image: Sean Maguire)

The story is told through the choices faced by a young man of Irish descent, A-Level results in hand and facing a summer of idleness before heading off to university to start a future far removed from the back-breaking labours of his navvi forebears.

Yet he cannot escape from the appeal of the almost mythic quality of the life of these long distance men nurtured within him as a child by his maternal grandfather. So when his father, a large local contractor, offers him the chance to work with these men for the summer he seizes the opportunity with an enthusiasm that risks tearing his family apart, for both his mother and father have secrets and the arrival in the city of a figure from the past risks shattering the established certainties of their comfortable, middle-class lives.

Through this young man the novel explores life within the Irish community and along the way we meet a plethora of characters each of whom has their own distinctive way of approaching this life of the pick, the shovel and the open road. As might be expected, the public house features as a place of community engagement and I happily based my description of this venue on The Harp of Erin pub off Westgate, a pub with long-standing ties to the Bradford Irish community.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: Sean at the Harp of Erin, traditionally an Irish pub in Bradford Sean at the Harp of Erin, traditionally an Irish pub in Bradford (Image: Sean McGuire)

It should go without saying that Irish men and women - and those of Irish descent - have far more to offer the world than just their capacity for hard graft, but for those that ‘drank down mud and sweated blood’, well, their tale deserves to be told.

I hope that I have made a small contribution to this ongoing story in The Long Distance Men.

* The Long Distance Men is available online from Amazon.