My Dad - Joe Clarke - sadly died before I was able to complete any real research into his family to supplement the very little fragments he had told me. He never spoke much about even his immediate family and had been out of touch with them for almost as long as I can remember. On this page I have put down what little I have been able to discover about his life and family history and also, of course, some mention of the books he wrote on labour history and the epic two volume History of Shipbuilding in the North East of England.

Joseph Finbar Clarke - as he was named  - was born on 4th June 1927 in Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Joseph and Mary Clarke and, at that time they lived in one room at the back of the newsagents shop run by his father, on North King Street. His father's brother James had rooms above and his father's parents lived in a room upstairs also. Joe was the second child but the first to survive and it may have been the loss of his elder sibling soon after birth that led to his mother deciding to have her second child away from the cramped living conditions at North King Street. His birth was registered several months after the event by the nurse/midwife who attended at the birth. Her name was was Elizabeth Ledwidge and she lived south of the River Liffey in a more prosperous area of Dublin and it was at her home in the appropriately named Hatch Street that my father Joe Clarke was born.

As his own father was known as Joseph, my Dad was in his early years called Finbar or Finn and relates that he had quite a shock when he first attended school to be told by the teacher that he was actually called Joseph! His days at school do not appear to have been particularly happy - the discipline at the Christian Brothers School was harsh and at times bizarre as he related the struggle he had to learn any Latin that was taught by monks who would speak only Gaelic (which my Dad did not speak himself).

I have been able to discover little about my Dad's father's family despite the fact he grew up among them. They appear to have been reasonably well educated - he said he believed his grandmother had been a teacher in her native Wexford(?). His father fought for the British in both World Wars - in the Pioneer Corps in the 1940s and went to France in this capacity.  He moved to England to live permanently I believe after the War and had already brought my father's two younger sisters Dympna and Esther to live with him, after the death of their mother in 1942/3. 

My Dad's mother Mary, nee Murphy - was a farmer's daughter from County Monaghan. She was one of ten children all of whom survived into adulthood. Her father was Edward Murphy (son of Annie nee McEntee) who ran a farm at Tullyard - a small farm but with pigs, cows and sheep among other animals - expanding his dwelling as his family increased. It is uncertain how Mary met Joseph Clarke snr but my Dad did recall travelling back to the farm as a child on a lorry laden with produce so the families were in contact with other on a regular basis. Sadly it would appear that his mother fell ill - possibly with breast cancer? - and died when my Dad was in his mid-teens. He left school and travelled over to England in 1943 where he had decided to make a new life for himself.

When he arrived in England during the Second World War, as a native of the Republic of Ireland, Joe was classed as an 'alien' and had to register at the police station on a regular basis and keep them informed of his employment status and place of residence. In England he continued his technical education and eventually obtained work as a trainee draughtsman - going on to do well in this capacity at various works. However, what he always wanted to do was to teach and, once he had trained for this profession, that was his career for life. He moved to the North East of England for his first post in higher education at the then Rutherford College of Technology which was to become the Newcastle Polytechnic and is now known as the University of Northumbria! He retired in the late 1980s as Principal Lecturer in the History of Science and Technology.

Although teaching was his love as a profession, my Dad spent a great deal of his time researching and writing books and articles on the history of working people in the North East of England - topics from the Boilermakers Strike to a life of Charles Parsons and his great study of the history of shipbuilding along the North East Coast from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. Before he died, he privately published a selection of his writings in bound volumes to supplement those of his books that had gone out of print and these are lodged at various libraries around the country. Many of his papers have also been deposited at the Tyne and Wear Archives in Newcastle upon Tyne.

It is hard to write objectively about someone who is so close to you - he was a good father - gentle and passionate about learning - encouraging all of his children to achieve the best we could educationally. He was always concerned with anything that would lead to the betterment of humanity and believed education was one of the paths to achieving this. He had in his early adulthood been a Young Communist and later member of the Communist Party but left, with many others, in shock and with a sense of betrayal when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. His political activism had taken a sharp blow then and although he continued to have an active interest in politics he did not involve himself actively in any political party but gave support to charities such as Oxfam and Unicef on a regular basis. He inspired many of his students and others who came into contact with him and I was moved by the comments and letters I received  after his death in 2006 from many who had known him. My Dad's health had been very poor for more than half his life. He became ill in the 1960s and was eventually diagnosed with the rare disease Behcets Syndrome which is a blood disorder requiring medication on a permanent basis. He lived through great pain, ulcerations on his legs and in his later years multiple problems associated not only with the condition but as a result of the long term drugs he took to treat it. His mental determination and courage towards the end were phenomenal - it was heartbreaking for those who loved him to see how wasted his physical body became and yet mentally he was as strong as ever. Joe Clarke, my Dad, passed away in the morning of 22nd July 2006 in his hospital bed - my two brothers, John and Dominic were with me at his side.