Tish Murtha, photographic chronicler of unemployed youth in England’s north east

 Murtha’s vivid black-and-white photographs acutely capture neglected elements of working class life. Admirers of Murtha’s work have expressed amazement at how she managed to attain such intimacy with her subjects. The answer is bound up with her own background.

Tish –a documentary about the life and extraordinary work of photographer Patricia Anne “Tish” Murtha was recently screened 

Murtha was born in 1956, the third of 10 children of Irish descent, and grew up on a poor council estate in Elswick in the South Shields area of Newcastle in the north east of England. One of Murtha’s sisters recalls how their mother tried her best to encourage her children to be creative in difficult circumstances.

Her early skill with a camera was recognised at college and prompted her in 1976 to go to the University of Wales, Newport. She studied at the School of Documentary Photography, set up by Magnum Photos member and documentary photographer David Hurn. 

Hurn recalls that during her interview, when asked what she wanted to photograph, Murtha replied; “I want to take pictures of policemen kicking children.” Hurn said it was his shortest ever interview because he understood exactly what she meant and knew she would make a good documentary photographer.

Murtha embarked upon the first of a series of documentary projects, Newport Pub (1976), to capture life in poor working class areas. Here, she photographed everyday scenes of regulars at The New Found Out, in a deprived district of Newport. 

In one image, we see a drinker rising to leave while finishing his beer, like a soldier leaving for the battle of everyday life as his comrades look on.

In another, an old man, walking stick in hand, seems to point accusingly at someone/something while a young man looks on over his pint.

Though not exhibited at the time, Elswick Kidsled to Murtha’s employment by a government-funded scheme as a Community Photographer by the Side Gallery in Newcastle.

When Murtha returned from Wales in 1978, Britain was experiencing a wave of industrial militancy. Strikes by one-and-a-half million public sector workers during the “Winter of Discontent” in 1978-79 paralysed the country. But without a mass socialist alternative to the discredited Callaghan Labour government, it was the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher that were able to exploit the situation, culminating in their election win of March 1979 and inaugurating the most right-wing government then seen in post-war Britain.

In 1979, the Scotswood Works at Elswick was slated for closure. The company was founded in 1847 by William Armstrong and through various permutations (including a merger with Vickers Limited) had produced locomotives, ships, aircraft and armaments. Murtha, unemployed and subsisting on a youth training scheme, was commissioned to document the struggle of its workforce against the plant’s closure and the loss of their jobs and livelihoods.

The result, Save Scotswood Works (1979), was a series of photographs Murtha produced for the Tyneside Housing Aid Centre publications; Do You Know What This Is Doing to My Little Girl?--Home Truths in the Year Of The Child (1979) and Burying The Problem (1980), which highlighted child poverty across the Tyneside area.

During this prolific period, Murtha also created the controversial Juvenile Jazz Bands (1979) and Youth Unemployment (1981). The former documents children’s marching bands, then a significant part of social life on council estates and coal towns of the North East, Wales and the Midlands. Murtha initially worked alongside the band organisers, but soon turned against the ethos of the troupes and instead produced images that critically focused on the regimental drills and militaristic nature of the bands. Murtha was drawn to the impromptu Jazz Bands that sprang up, organised by the children themselves who had been rejected from the official troupes and the series pays them equal attention.

Youth Unemployment (1981) is Murtha’s most acclaimed and political body of work. Her obvious interest and focus on the subject grew out of her own experiences. Many of the young lives documented in the series were Murtha’s friends, family and neighbours. This closeness is apparent in many images. The series captures a range of emotions of young people in a world which offers them no future; from lethargic boredom to anger, as well as a sense of being misunderstood and “out of place.”

During this period of mass factory and mine closures, Murtha’s work documents huge social injustices in obvious sympathy with those facing them.