When Ford opened a UK plant in Dagenham in 1931, so many men from Leeside got work in the Essex town that it became known as ’Little Cork’. Cork balladeer Jimmy Crowley remembers his family links to it.

An Irishman held in the Philippines for alleged drug offences spoke yesterday of his ordeal at the hands of a corrupt legal system that has forced him to remain there under effective house arrest for the past two years.