Brian Cox's Jute Journey [DVD]

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Brian said: "In the Fifties, there were these people who left Dundee to go and invigorate the jute industry in India. IIT'S a long way to go to die - but that's exactly what happened to many of the women of Dundee who "disappeared" after travelling to India to cash in on the jute industry of Calcutta. 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). He also gives the voice to one of the farmers in the much-anticipated reimagining of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox with Meryl Streep and George Clooney.

Brian Cox: Jute Journey (BBC 4 Tuesday 6 June 2023)

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. 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. It's easy to laugh at that thought but these people had a real go and had interesting lives, and I admire them for that."The jute barons made a fortune out of these people. They gave them work, which allowed them to have houses and so on, but Dundee still had the worst child poverty in history at the time - and these people were living half a mile away from some of the richest people in the world." 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."

Calcutta (Louis Malle) - DocuWiki

The highlight of the day for Cox? Having freshly fried pakoras made with the jute plant! “They were delicious and I gobbled up quite a few of them,” he laughed. It was exhilarating to see Hindus and Muslims working together in such harmony. In fact, jute for me is a metaphor for binding. We even discovered a mosque and a temple standing side by side in the vicinity of one mill,” said Cox. Most of the immigrants were from Ireland, poor and Catholic. The churches that stand there to this day owe much to the indigent Irish jute workers. Yet it wasn’t their religion or nationality that made them stand out. Three quarters of those who worked in the mills were women. And so Dundee became known as ‘She Town.’ Women and children could weave, and an entire matriarchal society was setup. Women became powerful in many ways. To this day, women’s church groups continue the tradition of autonomy and social power. There are still some unanswered questions for me. One of the questions that the programme only touches on is how did these people - most of whom were men - learn to spin and weave? 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.That was a good one - I certainly did not know about the Dundee Calcutta connections. One more tidbit in the crammed brain for some future conversation With India’s partition in 1947, the best quality jute-growing areas fell into East Pakistan (later Bangladesh), tantalisingly out of reach for Calcutta’s jute mills. In the orgy of violence that befell the countries in the wake of that great sundering, the Dundonian Jutewallahs found themselves protected behind their compound walls, defended by stalwart Gurkhas. Shortly thereafter, the Indian government issued directives that more and more locals should be employed in positions that were held by Europeans. Many Jutewallahs thought that the mills would collapse once they left and the Indians took over; the know-how, after all, was with them and not the natives. There was a mass exodus of expatriates out of Bengal, and by the early 1950s, most of Calcutta’s mills had passed into Indian ownership. India needs Congress, Rajasthan assembly polls is also about party's future: Gehlot to party workers On one hand, jute gave people a whole new life, but at the same time it also reduced life for many people, and gave them a really tough time," he said.

Goan Voice Newsletter: Thursday 01 Jun. 2023

Brian said: "My family history is bound up in jute. My parents followed their parents into the mills but the closest I got was as a wee boy, peering through the open doors of the Eagle JuteWorks on a hot summer's day.

The actor remembers the last days of the jute industry, and considers the pioneering spirit of the jute emigrants to be something he has in common with them.