The Irish Diaspora

This book is dedicated to the late Dr. John O'Brien of the Department of
History, UCC, who died in 1999 but is not forgotten.
The Irish Diaspora

edited by
ANDY BIELENBERG
First published 2000 by Pearson Education Limited

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-36997-9 (pbk)

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A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

The Irish diaspora I edited by Andy Bielenberg.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-36998-3 (alk. paper)- ISBN 0-582-36997-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Irish-Great Britain-History. 2. Irish-Commonwealth countries-History. 3.
Ireland-Emigration and immigration. 4. Irish Americans-History. I. Bielenberg, Andy,
1959-

DA125.I7 I72 2000

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 Contents

Acknowledgements Vll

Introduction 1
Piaras Mac Einri

Part One: Great Britain 17

Chapter 1 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 19
Graham Davis
Chapter 2 Revising the Irish in Scotland: The Irish in
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scotland 37
Richard B. McCready
Chapter 3 Emigration from Ireland to Britain During the
Second World War 51
Tracey Connolly
Chapter 4 From 'Ethnicity' to 'Diaspora': 1980s Emigration and
'Multicultural' London 65
Breda Gray
Chapter 5 Who are the Irish in Britain? Evidence from
Large-scale Surveys 89
Brendan Halpin

Part Two: The Americas 109

Chapter 6 Irish Migration to North America, 1800-1920 111
Donald Harman Akenson
Chapter 7 'Scotch-Irish', 'Black Irish' and 'Real Irish': Emigrants
and Identities in the Old South 139
Kerby A. Miller
Chapter 8 Searching for Missing Friends in the Boston Pilot
Newspaper, 1831-1863 158
Ruth-Ann M. Harris
vi Contents

Chapter 9 Immigrants on the Land: A Comparative Study of

Irish Rural Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Minnesota
and New South Wales 176
Malcolm Campbell
Chapter 10 Irish Emigration to Argentina: A Different Model 195
Patrick McKenna

Part Three: The Empire 213

Chapter 11 Irish Emigration to the British Empire, 1700-1914 215
Andy Bielenberg
Chapter 12 The Irish and India: Imperialism, Nationalism and
Internationalism 235
Michael Holmes
Chapter 13 Odd Man Out: The South African Experience 251
Donal P. McCracken
Chapter 14 'The Desired Haven'? Impressions of New Zealand in
Letters to and from Ireland, 1840-1925 272
Angela McCarthy

Part Four: General Studies 285

Chapter 15 A Quantification of Irish Migration with Particular
Emphasis on the 1980s and 1990s 287
Damien Courtney
Chapter 16 Changing Attitudes to 'New Wave' Emigration?
Structuralism versus Voluntarism in the Study of
Irish Emigration 317
Jim Mac Laughlin
Chapter 17 Placing Postwar Irish Migration to Britain in a
Comparative European Perspective, 1945-1981 331
Enda Delaney

Index 357
 Acknowledgements

The genesis of this book emerged from a conference on the Irish Diaspora held
in UCC in the autumn of 1997. It is therefore necessary to thank those who
contributed to the conference, other than those who appear in this book. These
include (in alphabetical order): Verdi Ahern, Pat Coughlan, Jim Devere (the
founding patron of the Irish Centre for Migration Studies at UCC), Marian
Elders, Siobhan Finn, Paddy Fitzgerald, Marita Foster, Prof. D. Keogh, J.J. Kett,
Prof. J.J. Lee, John Lynch, Ruth McDonnell, Mel Mercier, Vic Merriman, Lucette
Murray, Alph O'Brien, Prof. W. Smyth. On the production side I would like
to acknowledge the assistance of Hilary Shaw and Magda Robson of Pearson.
Thank-you one and all.

Andy Bielenberg
November 1999
 Introduction
PIARAS MAC EINRI
(Irish Centre for Migration Studies, University College, Cork)

Migration studies: a rapidly changing field

Migration studies is a catch-all term encompassing a multidisciplinary field.
It includes emigration (often the sole focus in Ireland and other 'exporting'
countries), immigration, internal and return migration. 1 It embraces voluntarist
and structuralist perspectives, labour migration and refugees, assimilation and
expulsion. More recently the increasing use of the term diaspora 2 denotes a
de-centred approach in which migration, migrants and their multi-generational
societies and cultures are seen as phenomena in themselves and not simply in
relation to the countries of origin and reception.
For most of its relatively short life, migration studies has focused dispro-
portionately on immigration. This is not surprising. The immigrant is a real
presence in the receiving society; the question of how natives and newcomers
are to relate to one another is not an abstract one. If one adds to this sheer
numbers and an ideology of openness towards the immigrant, characteristic
of historical attitudes in the United States (especially if the subject in question
is white and European), it is hardly surprising that American scholarship
has long been dominant in migration studies. Even if Ravenstein 3 may be
regarded as its parent, many of its best exponents have worked in the field of
American historical scholarship and many of its paradigms, from the Chicago
School4 to the melting pot and beyond,S from multiculturalism6 and world
systems theories 7 to postmodernist questioning of identity politics, 8 have been
American-inspired or have at least begun on American campuses.
By contrast, it would have been easy, at least until relatively recently, and
especially in the Anglophone world, to underestimate the role of migration in
European society. Yet France, for instance, has attracted large numbers of immig-
rants for centuries. 9 The postwar period saw an upsurge in mass migratory
movements, characterized by south-north flows, the impact of decolonization
and a tendency to see migrants as economic units but not as full members
of society. 10 Unlike the USA, the European nation-state remained for the
most part an ethno-national entity. This has created an ever-growing conflict
between universalist Enlightenment ideals and state ideology, a conflict which
2 The Irish Diaspora

has frequently centred on the place of minorities or immigrants, especially those

of non-European origins,1 1 within the state. In late twentieth-century Europe
the upsurge in global forced migration, as opposed to economic migration, and
the challenge posed by a potentially transnational European Union (EU) cit-
izenship, are helping to define a new agenda. The shape of this new agenda is
far from clear as yet and must regrettably be characterized for now as driven
more by a desire to contain than to embrace.
The entire question of migration, the migrant identity and the place of migrants
in society is the subject of global consideration from within many disciplines.
Issues of multiculturalism, multi-ethnicity and hybridity are being explored; in
the process the supremacy of a unitary, place-based ethnic identity is being called
into question. 12 With globalization and the increasing integration of the world
economic, cultural and information infrastructure, there is an increased danger
of the emergence of a migrant elite on the one hand and a disempowered com-
munity of transients, serving the needs of an implacable globalized economy,
on the other.
Previous assumptions of a discrete Ravensteinian, push-pull universe, divided
between place of origin, intervening variables and place of arrival, reflected
in a one-way assimilationist path, are being challenged by new realities.
Migrancy, to use Chambers's 13 term, is increasingly seen as process, a state of
being in itself, and not as a temporary transitional phase before the subject is
absorbed by the new society. There are many alternatives to assimilation, from
multiculturalism to outright expulsion. Host societies are themselves pro-
foundly challenged and changed by the presence of migrants, and the process
of integration is no longer seen as a one-way path in which the migrant becomes
a member of an unchanged host society through the suppression of his/her own
cultural values. It is no longer a matter of 'them' becoming 'us' . 14 Diasporic
identities, transnational and subversive in character, challenge the security of
identities defined, but also limited, by national boundaries.
There has been a major shift in the terms of the debate and the nature of
the enquiry, hence the new emphasis on life history approaches, discourse ana-
lysis and feminist perspectives. 15 The comparative context of migration studies
is receiving increasing emphasis. The specificities of migration, in terms of region,
gender, class, ethnic and other factors, are receiving attention, as is the global
and interlinked nature of migration. The impact of migration on the person
at the heart of the process is also beginning to be studied. While the role of
historical enquiry continues to be central, social science, legal, literary and behavi-
oural approaches, as well as neo-Marxist and other structuralist perspectives,
are all being brought to bear.
The result has been a remarkable flowering and diversity of research, teach-
ing and publications in the field, accompanying the ever-greater significance
being attached to it at political and social level. That said, and as the present
volume bears out, historical enquiry is still central. The increasing emphasis
on complexity and specificity confers a growing importance and value on local
and regional studies as well as those, for instance, which emphasize longitudinal,
sectoral and gender-based approaches, using a variety of new methodologies.
 Introduction 3

The background to the increasing interest in Irish migration studies

Alan O'Day 16 is probably correct when he suggests that the study of Irish
migration is characterized by a strong emphasis on American sources (US and
Canadian) and when he notes that, apart from certain prominent exceptions
(singling out Doyle 17 and Fitzpatrick 18 ), it is mainly the product of scholarship
from outside Ireland - indeed, in a sense, this is fitting. In his stimulating overview
Revising the Diaspora he is nonetheless critical of the field as a whole, sug-
gesting that there is no conceptuaVtheoretical framework to link the Irish to
international perspectives. He also notes that there is no standard interpreta-
tion of the diaspora (which is probably no bad thing). He pleads for a greater
recognition of the complexity and specificity of Irish migration patterns, while
recognizing the obvious gaps in statistical data, such as the non-availability
of US data on religious affiliation. He notes that 'despite differences of origin,
the chronology and methodology bears a remarkable resemblance to other
areas of Irish history'. He also notes that, in spite of the American dominance,
'recent work on Australia, Britain and Canada suggests that this pre-eminence
is under threat'.
Within post-independence Ireland, emigration was a silent haemorrhage,
treated by denial, and about which only the historians had much to say.
The palpable public silence persisted, with occasional exceptions such as the
monumental Report of the Commission on Emigration and Other Population
Problems 19 of the 1950s. The problem 'disappeared', or so people thought, in
the 1960s and 1970s, only to reappear with renewed vigour in the 1980s. Largely
due to a downturn in the Irish economy and the effect of the baby boom
of the 1960s, the ghost of emigration, forgotten since the 1950s, returned to
haunt the Irish body politic. One upshot of the change was the publication
of only the second extensive official study on the impact of emigration, the
National Economic and Social Council (NESC) report, in 1991.2° Much public
and political attention was paid to Irish undocumented aliens in the USA at
this time, proof of the persistence of traditional choices, the enduring fascina-
tion of America (after all most emigrants were in fact still going to the UK but
they received far less attention) and the new-found political strength of the
emigrant lobby Y This possibly had partly to do with their more middle-class
background in some cases, but partly to do with the opening up of Irish soci-
ety and the fact that with the information revolution and the relative ease of
return it was increasingly impossible to ignore the new generation of migrants.
They would not remain silent and would not disappear.
Partly as a result of the above changes, the study of the Irish diaspora, in
parallel with migration studies in general, has blossomed in recent years and
decades. The context for these changes is multi-faceted and a number of public
and/or political events played a significant role. Apart from the return of
large-scale Irish migration in the late 1980s already mentioned, these included
the bicentennial of the American Revolution in 1976 and the equivalent
Australian celebration in 1988, both of which generated significant new scholar-
ship in their respective fields. 22
4 The Irish Diaspora

In the 1990s, the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine led to a new out-
pouring of interest and much new research into nineteenth-century migration.
As the Famine Museum in Strokestown demonstrates, connections also began
to be made between nineteenth-century Irish famine and forced migration
and the experience of other peoples in other parts of the world in the pre-
sent day.
Ireland has always denied its migrant children the most fundamental
expression of their political rights - the right to vote - and continues to do so.
Nonetheless, the 1980s and 1990s saw a new and remarkable emphasis on the
ties between the Irish at home and those around the world. In part this was
cultural -the new wave of Irish singers, musicians and cultural artists, from
within the country but also from within the diaspora, who put Irish identity
on the map and even made it cool. In part it was the attention paid by newly
elected President Mary Robinson to the global Irish diaspora.
The word diaspora entered public discourse for the first time and, while not
all were comfortable with it, it signified a new willingness to embrace a more
inclusive and less territorially bounded notion of Irishness than heretofore. The
Robinson years (1990-97) were marked by a new stress on the broader Irish
community in the world. Moreover, she sought explicitly to acknowledge this
new reality in her many visits to Irish communities around the world. At the
same time she staked a claim to a broader Irishness by paying equal attention
to the 'new Irish' - those immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees who were
beginning to arrive in some numbers, for the first time in modern history, in
Ireland.
President Mary McAleese, who succeeded President Robinson in 1997, has
continued in the same tradition. Both presidents, although differing in many
ways, have been spectacularly successful in their mission to the diaspora and
have opened a significant dialogue between the Irish at home and those of Irish
descent around the world. There has been an increasing if initially grudging
acceptance that the Irish identity of those within the diaspora is not simply a
pale shadow of 'authentic' Irish identity in Ireland, but has something distinctive
to contribute. Where once the Irish in Ireland laughed at the outlandishness
of Irish-American culture, as they saw it, or claimed that Irish culture could
only exist in bastardized form outside the Motherland, the Irish diaspora increas-
ingly claimed its own place and denied that its culture was inferior. Such
forwardness from the diaspora did not always go down well in Ireland - the
brashness of Riverdance may have offended some who disagreed with its
aesthetic values but it must have offended others because the proponents came
from within the mainstream of Irish culture, but an Irish culture nurtured out-
side Ireland.
One must also pay tribute to the remarkable success of Irish political
lobbying in Washington. This lobbying was successful, not only in placing
Irish immigration high on the agenda in the Congressional debates on new
migrants, but also in promoting Irish interests in the growing debate concerning
the US role in Anglo-Irish affairs. The extraordinary success of Irish diplomats,
lobbyists and politicians was tribute to a new confidence and maturity.
 Introduction 5

Finally, the much-spoken-of Celtic Tiger economy has not benefited all in
Irish society, but it has had a dramatic effect on migration in and out of Ireland.
Many former migrants have returned, while the country is also experiencing,
for the first time, significant inflows of migrants with no Irish background,
including EU citizens and forced migrants from many different countries.H As
a country of significant net migration Ireland is faced with new challenges. 24
So far it is not dealing very successfully with these challenges, but it may
be that a greater historical understanding of the difficulties faced by Irish migrants
in other places may result in a more tolerant and welcoming policy towards
immigrants.

New scholarship in Irish migration and diaspora studies

Well before the 1980s and 1990s, there were signs of a developing interest in
the field. The pioneering work of such scholars as William Forbes Adams, 25
Arnold Schrier26 and Damian Hannan 27 was followed by an upsurge of
research from the 1970s onwards. Donald Akenson/ 8 David Noel Doyle,29
David Fitzpatrick,3 ° Kerby Miller, 31 Cormac 6 Gnida, 32 Brendan Walsh33 and
Patrick O'Farrell34 are among the dominant figures.
At the same time the general emphasis on cultural relativism character-
istic of the post-1960s period and the 'roots' phenomenon associated with
African-American self-awareness engendered a new interest in questions of
ethnicity, identity and difference. The sometimes celebratory, sometimes crit-
ical tone of earlier work (Glazer and Moynihan 35 ) was carried out within an
integrationist framework even while being critical of the limits of that frame-
work, but this gave way to a new interest in the subject's point of view
(for example Handlin36 ). A good example of the new approach is Miller's
monumental Emigrants and Exiles, 37 a controversial hypothesis attempting
to reconstruct the pre-modern world-view of the Irish 'exile', based on an
exhaustive analysis of emigrant letters, folksong and other sources.
Many other scholars entered the field, from many disciplines and many coun-
tries, using new methodologies. Thus, in more recent times, women migrants
have been considered by a range of scholars, including Hasia Diner38 and Janet
Nolan. 39 Perspectives in geography, ethnic studies and sociology have been
employed by such scholars as Mary Hickman, 40 Bronwen Walter41 and Breda
Gray. 42 Local immigration studies are exemplified by the fine New York Irish, 43
edited by Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher, with a significant input by
Marion Casey. Theoretical areas concerning the representation of the migrant
experience are being explored. 44 Longitudinal studies, among the most difficult
of approaches, have been pioneered by Bruce Elliott, 45 while David Fitzpatrick
has broken new ground in his use of discourse analysis and spatially based
approaches to reconstruct kinship networks in Oceans of Consolation. 46 The
new interest in Irish migration has also led to research in previously under-
valued areas of Irish migration, such as the role of the Irish religious diaspora47
(Edmund Hogan) and the Irish in Argentina (Eduardo Coghlan,48 Patrick
McKenna49 and others). Sectoral, local and other specific studies have also been
6 The Irish Diaspora

pioneered in recent years, notably in Patrick O'Sullivan's monumental six-volume

collection on the Irish world-wide. 5° Recent scholarship has also embraced new
critical perspectives, as exemplified by Jim Mac Laughlin's 51 use of world sys-
tems theory to explain the role of Irish emigration and postcolonial perspectives
such as those offered by David Lloyd. 52 The shortcomings of past statistics are
being addressed through the work of demographers such as Damian Courtney. 5 3
Return migration is beginning to be examined for the first time by scholars
such as Elizabeth Malcolm54 and Mary Corcoran, 55 while there have been as
yet only a small number of studies into the 'new' Irish migrants of the 1980s.56
Finally, Irish migration is increasingly being presented in a comparative Euro-
pean (for instance Delaney's work in this volume) and world context or through
long-term enquiry, enabling the old chestnut of Irish 'exceptionalism', to use
Akenson's phrase, to be measured against the experience of other groups. 57
The noticeable increase in research in this field has been encouraged by
the existence of active academic associations for the promotion of Irish
Studies, including ACIS (American Committee for Irish Studies), BAIS (British
Association for Irish Studies), CAIS (Canadian Association for Irish Studies),
EFACIS (European Federation of Associations and Centres for Irish Studies),
SOFEIR (Societe Fran<Jaise d'Etudes Irlandaises) and IASIL (International Asso-
ciation for the Study of Irish Literatures). It is noticeable that the number of
papers on migration-related topics has grown steadily in recent years. New tech-
nologies are also playing a role, exemplified by the quiet but very effective work
of Patrick O'Sullivan's Irish diaspora discussion forum.
Other recent innovative institutional responses include the establishment in
1993 of the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS) by the Ulster-American Folk
Park in Omagh, Northern Ireland, while at the other end of the island the Cobh
Emigration Museum was established about the same time to promote know-
ledge of Irish emigration through a dedicated museum located in the railway
station from which so many had left.
The Irish Centre for Migration Studies (ICMS) was established at the
National University of Ireland, Cork, in 1996. The first centre of its kind in
the state, it aims to draw upon a broad range of interdisciplinary perspectives
to explore the Irish experience of migration, past and present, through inno-
vative programmes of teaching, research, publications, conferences and on-line
databases. The Centre's first major event was 'The Scattering' conference in
September 1997, a global, comparative overview of Irish migration and the
Irish diaspora. This book reflects some of the major themes and some of the
most innovative papers presented at the conference.

The present volume

The Irish Diaspora illustrates some of the themes and changes which have
been outlined above. The contributions of a number of well-known and less
well-known historians are complemented by sociological, geographical, polit-
ical science and demographic perspectives, from several parts of the world as
well as from Ireland. The volume consciously seeks to adopt a comparative
 Introduction 7

world approach to Irish migration, considering the Irish migrant experience

at different periods in Britain, the Americas and the British Empire as well as
offering fresh perspectives on statistical, theoretical and comparative issues.
This serves effectively to explore those aspects which might be supposed to
be common to the Irish migrant experience in different times and places,
while questioning a number of myths about such themes as the religious char-
acter and confessional relations between host community and Irish migrants
and among Irish migrants themselves, the extent or lack of socio-economic
advancement among Irish migrants compared to other migrant communities,
and the underlying question of whether Irish migration may indeed be char-
acterized as 'unique' or may be compared to other migration movements from
other countries.
If there is one point which emerges more clearly than any other, it is the
sheer diversity and complexity of Irish migration. The stereotypical image of
Irish migrants as poorly educated, rural, poor and Catholic, settling in large
numbers in east coast American cities and making their way only slowly in
the host society, is countered by a fascinating range of alternatives. Patrick
McKenna's synthesis of the Irish experience in Argentina is one of the most
startling. Here is a group of midlands farmers and skilled and semi-skilled trades-
people who 'were without doubt the most financially successful group of Irish
emigrants in the world at that time, and certainly the most successful ethnic
group, by a wide margin, in Argentina'. The picture is rendered even more
complex by the origins of this movement, with the arrival as far back as the
sixteenth century of Irish colonists in the service of Spain. McKenna further
makes the point that the Argentine case represents an alternative model to the
individualist 'Anglo-American' migration experience, with a strong community-
based ethos driving the process of migration and a consciously separatist cul-
ture maintaining, for better or for worse, a sense of diasporic identity.
Graham Davis examines pre- and post-Famine Irish migration to Britain. A
nuanced discussion of the specific experiences of different Irish communities
explores the extent to which the Irish were the victims of specific forms of
negative stereotyping and whether they, in turn, developed a general 'oppres-
sion history' to explain their situation. Davis stresses the diversity of migrant
streams, destinations and experiences. Stereotyping and scapegoating in some
areas are contrasted with an absence of such representations, and an absence
of negative relations, in other areas of significant Irish settlement. Davis's
essay rejects any easy generalizations about the Irish experience in Britain.
The Irish in Scotland constituted the most numerically significant element
of the Irish community in Britain for a long period. Richard McCready exam-
ines this experience, pointing to the patchiness of research in the area. The Irish
in eastern Scotland, for instance, are largely ignored, yet almost 20 per cent
of the population of Dundee in 1851 were Irish-born. Moreover, the Irish in
Scotland had a range of socio-economic backgrounds and many were skilled
labourers. McReady identifies the period of the Irish independence struggle and
particularly the subsequent civil war as a key moment in the separation of the
Irish in Scotland from Ireland.
8 The Irish Diaspora

Tracey Connolly's exploration of wartime migration to Britain identifies this

often neglected period as more of a watershed than is often realized. The arrival
of significant numbers of Irish workers and their integration into British soci-
ety through their presence in the armed forces and industry foreshadowed the
massive Irish labour migration of the 1950s. Connolly's chapter also highlights
other lesser-known aspects of this period, such as the significant migration which
took place to Northern Ireland.
The 'new Irish' of the 1980s are the subject of Breda Gray's chapter. She
points to the mediatization of the image of the 'high-flying' emigrant, by infer-
ence a very different kind of migrant from those who had gone before. She
discusses the new Irish in the light of their conscious positioning as an
'ethnic' group in 'multicultural' London and looks in particular at the role of
women. Gray examines the extent to which the term 'diaspora' may now be
a more useful way of evoking the experiences and representations of modern
Irish migrants in Britain, as they negotiate double identities in a contingent,
shifting universe.
Brendan Halpin analyses the current Irish population of Britain in detail,
using the results of the Labour Force Survey and other statistical sources. His
overall conclusion confirms the different characteristics of the 'new Irish' of
the 1980s compared to those of the 1950s, but, as Halpin warns, 'the simple
dichotomy between low-skill 1950s emigration and high-skill 1980s emigra-
tion does not hold entirely: even among more recent migrants, the poorly edu-
cated are well represented'.
Donald Akenson's chapter attacks the entire concept of Irish 'exceptional-
ism' in the field of migration. He disagrees sharply with Kerby Miller's vision,
set out in Emigrants and Exiles, of a premodern Irish culture unable to cope
with migration and change and falling back upon a nostalgic, passive vision
of the past.
Kerby Miller's contribution to this volume is a fascinating examination of
the multiple strands and considerable impact of Irish migration to the 'Old South'
- US states south of the Mason-Dixon line. The eighteenth century is shown
as a period when religious conversion was not uncommon and when many
'Scotch-Irish' - a contested term- were actually converts from Anglicanism or
even Roman Catholicism and many came from the south, not the north, of
Ireland. Yet subsequently they were all labelled as 'Scotch-Irish'. In more recent
times, in a kind of ironic twist, Miller shows that a third of those who describe
themselves as 'Irish' in the 1990 census are from the south- more than triple
the figure in the 1860s- even though the designation 'Scotch-Irish' was an option.
As Miller points out, 'ultimately of course the question of ethnicity is not one
of ancestral birthplace or religious affiliation but one of individual and col-
lective identification, which in turn is subjective and variable, shaped by a mul-
titude of shifting social, political, and psychological circumstances'. Miller's
contribution focuses on the lived experiences of a number of well-documented
individual lives but also successfully invokes the shifting identity politics of multi-
cultural America, suggesting that these may actually have been more flexible
and more inclusive in the earlier, colonial period than subsequently.
 Introduction 9

Ruth-Ann Harris summarizes her extensive work on the Boston Pilot's Missing
Friends column (more than 30,000 persons between 1831 and 1863). Her
approach shows how the social network of Pilot readers functioned as a
virtual network for Irish migrants - well over a century before the Internet.
She also analyses the changing class structure of migration, especially after the
replacement of sail by steam. Diversity again emerges as a theme.
Malcolm Campbell's comparative exploration of Irish migrants in
Minnesota and New South Wales shatters a number of myths. He stresses the
value of cross-cultural analysis at regional level and compares and contrasts
the fortunes of the migrant Irish in rural Minnesota and rural New South Wales.
He points to the clear success of the Irish in New South Wales as proof that
the Irish as migrants were not irredeemably urban - in the Australian case they
were just as likely to be involved in farming as anyone else. In Minnesota,
the ill-thought-out scheme to translate impoverished unskilled migrants from
Connemara into an environment for which they did not have the skills needed
to survive overshadowed other quite successful group migration schemes in which
Archbishop John Ireland played a major role. Campbell suggests that the key
factor in explaining the differential patterns of Irish experience in New South
Wales and Minnesota is not the migrants themselves but the host society.
Moreover, there were considerable similarities between the two groups.
A whole section of the book is rightly devoted to Irish participation in the
building of the British Empire. Comparatively little research has been done on
this area until the recent past. Apart from the dominance of American scholar-
ship in Irish migration studies, this may reflect a certain reluctance in Irish
circles to address the role of the Irish, not as the colonized, but as participants
in the colonizing process. Akenson's trenchant views are well-known and may
have raised hackles in the past, but he has also helped to open valuable new
fields of enquiry.
Andy Bielenberg's point of departure is Akenson's The Irish Diaspora 58
because it is, as he points out, the only comprehensive survey of the topic of
Irish migration and settlement in the British Empire (although not limited to
it). Bielenberg uses Akenson to frame the debate about Irish 'exceptionalism'
and examines the available evidence from a range of sources. He sees Irish migra-
tion as part of a broad European movement and says it has to be appreciated
that the real victims of this movement were not Irish, but native Americans
who lost their land and Africans whose labour was barbarically exploited. He
also discusses the significance of the 'Second British Empire' as a destination
for Irish migration, suggesting that up to 20 per cent of Irish migrants went
there -comparable at the time with the numbers going to Britain itself. In gen-
eral there was a 'skills bias' in favour of the colonies, compared to the United
States, as well as a bias towards migrants from economically developed parts
of Ireland; there were also more Protestants. In discussing relative performances
of Catholic and Protestant migrants in rural and urban contexts, Bielenberg
argues that Akenson is right in saying that Catholic social origin does not explain
the over-representation of Irish Catholics at the lower end of the social urban
scale and suggests that the really significant factors were social status, skills
I0 The Irish Diaspora

and literacy on departure from Ireland. 'Neither lrishness nor Catholicity were
handicaps for Irish migrants moving to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa
or Canada.' Overall, opportunities for Irish migrants in the British Empire were
better than in the USA or Great Britain.
Michael Holmes explores the dual nature of the Irish role in India and paints
a less than flattering picture. The Irish role in the military forces was extremely
prominent and not even confined to the British army; he points out that in the
eighteenth century they were also prominent in the French Indian forces. The
Irish were 'particularly known for brutality'. Holmes points to the strong Irish
presence in the Civil Service and the Medical Service and says their belief in
their own racial superiority was no less than that of their British counterparts.
He is scornful about Irish pretensions to a bridge-building role between the
developed world and post-independence India and other former colonies: 'for
a time the Irish Government had vague ideas of leading the decolonised world,
but they were rapidly disabused of these notions'. In short, the Irish role in
the European imperialist project was little different from that of their British
mentors. Moreover, little is now left to connect Ireland and India and the two
countries have pursued increasingly divergent strategic paths.
Donal McCracken's discussion of the Irish experience in South Africa high-
lights a relatively unknown strand. Irish migrants to South Africa were dis-
proportionately skilled and disproportionately Protestant, compared to Irish
migrants to other places. Although their numbers were never very significant,
they made a strong contribution to administrative life and were prominent in
the professions. Over time they became largely assimilated into the white minor-
ity and little trace of an Irish identity remains in South Africa today.
Angela McCarthy's examination of the Irish in New Zealand also addresses
a subject which has received insufficient attention. There was a strong Irish
presence in the 1860s-1880s, both Catholic and Protestant. McCarthy uses
letters to and from Ireland and demonstrates the role of kinship and local net-
works in migration to New Zealand. In an interesting parallel with seventeenth-
century British policy in Ireland, she points to the practice of granting land
to settlers on condition that they would remain in occupation for a minimum
period (most did not, like their seventeenth-century counterparts). A minority
sympathized with the displaced Maoris and saw parallels with the Land War
in Ireland.
The fourth part of the book address a series of topics of a more general
nature. Damian Courtney discusses the statistical difficulties inherent in estim-
ates of contemporary migration and the inadequacy of the old 'residual' method
of calculating migration flows. He highlights the role of the new Quarterly
National Household Survey in providing new and more accurate data and dis-
cusses a number of other new data sources such as child benefit statistics, the
register of electors and school enrolments.
Jim Mac Laughlin's discussion of voluntarist and structuralist approaches
to recent Irish migration highlights the extent to which a false construction
of recent Irish migration overemphasizes an unrepresentative highly educated
minority. This overlooks a fundamental continuity in migration patterns, in
 Introduction II

which largely disadvantaged migrants with limited opportunities in the 'Celtic

Tiger' economy continue to perform low-skilled tasks in other economies.
Mac Laughlin uses world systems theory, empirical data and comparisons with
other 'emigrant nurseries' to analyse underlying structural and behavioural
syndromes, stressing at the same time that recent changes in Irish society have
been so radical 'that they constitute a ... discontinuity with more traditional
views of Ireland as a self-governing and identifiable territorial community'.
Pessimistically, he sees the tendency of young people to look outside the
country, even if the migration choice is now more likely to be Europe, as a
reflection of a deterioration in national politics and of the emergence of a cul-
ture of dependency.
Enda Delaney places the Irish migration experience of the second half of
the twentieth century in a comparative European perspective, pointing out
that rural depopulation and mass migration are not unique to Ireland in this
period. He identifies strong parallels with southern Europe, especially Italy,
and sees these movements as classic periphery-core flows - 'clearly this is a
movement out of the underdeveloped agricultural economy in to the advanced
capitalist one, albeit across national boundaries'. He also points to the need
for more comparative regional and local studies.
Delaney speculates in an interesting way about outward and return migra-
tion, suggesting that whereas the former is more likely to be for economic
reasons, the latter is often for social and familial motives. This question
should certainly be on the agenda of emerging research issues.

Conclusions
It is hoped that the present volume will constitute a modest addition to the
growing scholarship in the field of Irish migration studies. Much remains to
be done, however, and there are neglected areas of study. Gender has belat-
edly begun to receive a degree of attention but more work needs to be done
in this field. The impact of class on migration is still under-theorized and under-
studied. The changing nature of Irish society itself, and the impact of return
migration and of new immigration in Ireland, has only begun to be studied.
There is a need to attend to marginalized and disadvantaged groups within the
diaspora, such as the elderly Irish in Britain. More comparative and longit-
udinal studies are needed. Much can be gleaned from non-social science per-
spectives, including creative, literary critical and ethnomusicological viewpoints.
The comparative statistics set out in Baines59 (and by Bielenberg in this
volume) suggest that the Irish experience of migration, in terms of volume and
persistence, may fairly be described as unique, at least for the period between
the Great Famine and the mid-twentieth century. While this may give some
comfort to defenders of the 'exceptionalist' viewpoint, Irish migration is none-
theless clearly part of a European pattern. Moreover, the diversity of reasons
for leaving, the destinations chosen and the experience of integration into the
new host society point to the dangers of any generalizations in this most com-
plex field.
12 The Irish Diaspora

Notes
1. See, for example, J.A. Jackson, Migration (London and New York, 1986); S. Douglas,
D.S. Massey, J. Arango, G. Hugo, A. Kouaouci, A. Pellegrino and J.E. Taylor,
'Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal', Population and
Development Review, 19, 3 (1993), pp. 431-66.
2. For an early Irish usage, see J.A. O'Brien, The Vanishing Irish: The Enigma of
the Modern World (London, 1954), p. 8. See also Stuart Hall, 'Cultural Identity
and Diaspora', in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture,
Difference (London, 1990); James Clifford, 'Travelling Cultures', in Cary Nelson,
Paula A. Treichler and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Cultural Studies (New York
and London, 1992); Rey Chow, Writing Diaspora. Tactics of Intervention in
Contemporary Cultural Studies (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1993 ); Matthew
Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and
jewish Immigrants in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Avtar Brah,
Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities (London and New York, 1996);
Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (London, 1997); P. Gilroy,
'Diaspora and the Detours of Identity', in K. Woodward (ed.), Identity and
Difference (London, 1997); S. Lavie and T. Swedenburg (eds), Displacement,
Diaspora and Geographies of Identity (Durham, N.C., 1998).
3. E.G. Ravenstein, 'The Laws of Migration',journal of the Royal Statistical Society,
48, 2 (1885), pp. 167-227; 52, 2 (1889), pp. 241-301.
4. R.E. Park et al., The City (Chicago, 1967).
5. N. Glazer and D.P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans,
jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, Mass., 1970).
6. D.T. Goldberg, Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Oxford and Cambridge
Mass., 1994).
7. I. Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York, 1974).
8. See, for example, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George
Robertson and Lisa Tickner (eds), Travellers' Tales: Narratives of Home and
Displacement (London, 1994); Caren Kaplan, Questions of Travel. Postmodern
Discourses of Displacements (London, 1996). Lavie and Swedenburg (eds),
Displacement.
9. Y. Lequin, La Mosaii]ue France: Histoire des Etrangers et de /'immigration en France
(Paris, 1988). S. Castles et al., Here for Good: Western Europe's New Ethnic
Minorities (London, 1984).
10. S. Castles and J.M. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population
Movements in the Modern World (London, 1993); S. Collinson, Europe and
International Migration (London, 1993); R. King (ed.), Mass Migration in
Europe: The Legacy and the Future (Chichester, 1995).
11. Karmela Liebkind (ed.), New Identities in Europe: Immigrant Ancestry and the Ethnic
Identity of Youth (Aldershot, 1989); Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann and Maykel
Verkuyten (eds), Nationalism, Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in Europe (Utrecht,
1995); P.C. Emmer and M. Momer (eds), European Expansion and Migration: Essays
on the International Migration from Africa, Asia and Europe (Oxford, 1992); Sarah
Collinson, Migration, Visa and Asylum Policies in Europe (London, 1995); S. Spencer,
Strangers and Citizens: A Positive Approach to Migrants and Refugees (Lon-
don, 1994); King (ed.), Mass Migration; David Cesarani and Mary Fulbrook
(eds), Citizenship, Nationality, and Migration in Europe (London, 1996); Daniele
Joly, Haven or Hell? Asylum Policies and Refugees in Europe (Basingstoke, 1996);
 Introduction 13

Adrian Favell, Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship

in France and Britain (New York, 1998).
12. P. Jackson and J. Penrose (eds), Constructions of Race, Place and Nation (London,
1993).
13. I. Chambers, Migrancy, Culture, Identity (London and New York, 1994).
14. A. Zolberg et al., The Challenge of Diversity: Integration and Pluralism m
Societies of Immigration (Aldershot, 1996).
15. For an example, see Kaplan, Questions of Travel.
16. Alan O'Day, 'Revising the Diaspora', in The Making of Modern Irish History:
Revisionism and the Revisionist Controversy (London, 1996).
17. For example, see D.N. Doyle and O.D. Edwards, America and Ireland 1776-
1976 (Westport Conn., 1980); D.N. Doyle, Ireland, Irishmen and Revolutionary
America 1769-1820 (Dublin, 1981).
18. See, for example, D. Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801-1921 (Dublin, 1984);
D. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to
Australia (Cork, 1995).
19. Government of Ireland, Report of the Commission for Emigration and Other
Population Problems (Dublin, 1956).
20. NESC, The Economic and Social Implications of Emigration (Dublin, 1991).
21. R. O'Hanlon, The New Irish-Americans (Niwot, Colo., 1998).
22. Doyle and Edwards, America and Ireland; Doyle, Ireland; P.J. Drudy (ed.), The
Irish in America: Emigration, Assimilation and Impact (Cambridge, 1985);
Patrick O'Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia 1825-1929 (Sydney, 1990). Patrick
O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia (Kensington NSW, 1986). Patrick O'Farrell,
The Irish in Australia (Sydney, 1987). Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia and
New Zealand 1891-1879 (Oxford, 1989). Patrick O'Farrell, Vanished Kingdoms:
The Irish in Australia and New Zealand, A Personal Excursion (Kensington
NSW, 1990).
23. See D. Courtney, present volume; alsoP. Mac Einri, 'Some Recent Demographic
Developments in Ireland', Etudes Irlandaises (Spring, 1997), 22-1, pp. 145-164.
24. Mac Einri, 'Some Recent Demographic Developments'.
25. W.F. Adams, Ireland and the Irish Emigration to the New World from 1815 to
the Famine (Baltimore Md., 1980).
26. A. Schrier, Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850-1900 (Minneapolis, 1958).
27. D. Hannan, Rural Exodus: A Study of the Forces Influencing the Large-Scale
Migration of Irish Rural Youth (London, 1970).
28. See, for example, D.H. Akenson, Being Had: Historians, Evidence and the Irish in
North America (Ontario, 1985); D.H. Akenson, Small Differences: Irish Catholics
and Irish Protestants, 1815-1922, An International Perspective (Montreal, 1988);
D.H. Akenson, Half the World from Home, Perspectives on the Irish in New
Zealand (Wellingtion N.Z., 1990); D.H. Akenson, Reading the Texts of Rural
Immigrants: Letters from the Irish in Australia, New Zealand and North America
(Gananoque, 1990); D.H. Akenson, Occasional Papers on the Irish in South
Africa (Grahamstown, 1991); D.H. Akenson, The Irish Diaspora: A Primer
(Belfast, 1996).
29. See, for example, Doyle and Edwards, Ireland and America; D.N. Doyle, 'The Irish
as Urban Pioneers in the United States 1850-1870', Journal of Ethnic History (Fall
1990-Winter 1991).
30. See, for example, Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801-1921; D. Fitzpatrick, 'A
Share of the Honeycomb: Education, Emigration and Irishwomen', Continuity
14 The Irish Diaspora

and Change, 1, 2 (1986), pp. 217-34. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation;

R. Fitzpatrick, God's Frontiersmen: The Scots-Irish Epic (London, 1989).
31. See, for example, K. Miller, 'Emigrants and Exiles: Irish Cultures and Irish
Emigration to North America 1790-1922', Irish Historical Studies, 22 (1980),
pp. 203-89; K. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North
America (New York, 1985); K. Miller and B. Boling, 'Golden Streets, Bitter Tears:
The Irish Image of America during the Era of Mass Migration', Journal of Ethnic
History, 10 (1990); Kerby Miller, in R. Kearney (ed.), Emigration, Capitalism
and Ideology in Post-Famine Ireland (Dublin, 1990); Kerby Miller, in V. Yans-
McLaughlin (ed.), Class, Culture and Immigrant Group Indentity in the United
States: The Case of Irish-American ethnicity (Oxford, 1990).
32. See, for example, C. 6 Grada, 'Seasonal Migration and Post-Famine Adjustment
in the West of Ireland', Studia Hiberica, 13 (1973), pp. 48-76; K. O'Rourke and
C. 6 Grada, Migration As Disaster Relief: Lessons From The Great Irish Famine
(Dublin, 1996).
33. See, for instance, C. 6 Grada and B.M. Walsh, 'The Economic Effects of
Emigration: Ireland', in B. Asch (ed.), Emigration and its Effects on the Sending
Country (Santa Monica, 1994).
34. O'Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia 1825-1929; O'Farrell, The Irish in
Australia; O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia and New Zealand 1891-1879;
O'Farrell, Vanished Kingdoms.
35. Glazer and Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot.
36. 0. Handlin, Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation (New York, 1968);
0. Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston, 1973).
37. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles.
38. H.A. Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the
Nineteenth Century (Baltimore Md., 1992).
39. Janet Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from Ireland 1885-1920
(Lexington, 1989).
40. M. Hickman, Religion, class and identity: the State, the Catholic Church and the
Education of the Irish in Britain (Aldershot, 1995).
41. Bronwyn Walter, Gender and Irish Migration to Britain (Cambridge, 1988);
Bronwyn Walter, Gender and Recent Irish Migration to Britain (Dublin, 1991).
42. B. Gray, '(Dis)locating Irishness in the 1990s: The Views of Irish Women at Home
and Abroad', in Jim Mac Laughlin (ed.), Location and Dislocation in Irish Society:
Multidisciplinary Essays on Emigration and Irish Identities (Cork, 1997).
43. R. Bayor and T. Meagher, The New York Irish (Baltimore Md., 1996).
44. See, for instance, A. Feldman,' "Gaelic Gotham": Decontextualising the Diaspora',
Eire-Ireland, Spring/Summer 1996, XXXI, 1, pp. 189-201.
45. B.S. Elliott, Irish Migrants in the Canadas: A New Approach (Kingston, 1988).
46. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation.
47. E. Hogan, The Irish Missionary Movement: A Historic Survey 1830-1980
(Dublin, 1990).
48. E.A. Coghlan, Las Irlandeses en Ia Argentina - su actuacion y descendiencia
(Buenos Aires, 1987).
49. See McKenna's article in the present volume.
50. P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: Irish Women and Irish Migration
(Leicester, 1992); P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: Patterns of Migration
(Leicester, 1992); P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: Religion and Identity
(Leicester, 1992); P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: The Creative Migrant
 Introduction IS

(Leicester, 1992); P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: The Irish in the New
Communities (Leicester, 1992); P. O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide: The
Meaning of the Famine (Leicester, 1992).
51. See, for example, J. Mac Laughlin, 'Social Characteristics and Destinations of
Recent Emigrants from Selected Regions in the West of Ireland, Geoforum, 22,
3 (1991), p. 323; ]. Mac Laughlin, Historical and Recent Irish Emigration: A Critique
of Core and Periphery and Behavioural Models (London, 1993); J. Mac Laughlin,
'Ireland: An "Emigrant Nursery" in the World Economy', International Migration,
31, 1 (1993), pp. 149-70; ]. Mac Laughlin, 'Defending the Frontiers: The Political
Geography of Race and Racism in the European Community', in C.H. Williams
(ed.), The Political Geography of the New World Order (London, 1993);
]. Mac Laughlin, Ireland: The Emigrant Nursery and the World Economy (Cork,
1995).
52. D. Lloyd 'Making Sense of the Dispersal' pp. 3-4. The Irish Reporter Issue. 13,
First Quarter 1994.
53. D.A. Courtney, 'Recent Trends in Emigration from Ireland', paper given to
Development Studies Association Annual Conference, QUB Belfast, 1989; also chap-
ter on demography and migration in P. Clancy, et a/., Irish Society: Sociological
Perspectives (Dublin, 1995); also chapter in present volume.
54. E. Malcolm, Elderly Return Migration from Britain to Ireland: A Preliminary Study
(Dublin, 1996).
55. M.P. Corcoran, 'Informalization of Metropolitan Labour Forces: The Case oflrish
Immigrants in the New York Construction Industry', Irish Journal of Sociology,
1, 1 (1991), pp. 31-51; M. Corcoran, Irish Illegals: Transients Between Two Societies
(Westport Conn., 1993).
56. P. Mac Einri, 'The New Europeans: The Irish in Paris today', in J. Mulholland and
D. Keogh (eds), Emigration, Employment and Enterprise (Cork, 1989), pp. 58-
80; P. Mac Einri, The Irish in Paris: an Aberrant Community?' in R. King (ed.),
Contemporary Irish Migration (Maynooth, 1991). 'La migration contemporaine
irlandaise: quelques perspectives', L'Irlande Politique et Socia/e, 4 (1992), pp. 105-15,
Corcoran, 'Informalization of Metropolitan Labour Forces'.
57. See, for instance, D. Baines (1995); W.J. Smyth 'Irish Emigration, 1700-1920', in
P.C. Emmer and M. Moren (eds), European Expansion and Migration (Oxford,
1992).
58. Akenson, Irish Diaspora.
59. D. Baines, Emigration from Europe, 1815-1930 (Cambridge, 1995).
 Part One
Great Britain
 CHAPTER 1

The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939

GRAHAM DAVIS
(Irish Studies Centre, Bath)

Leaving Ireland
The Liverpool Times in reporting emigration from Ireland in 1846 made a dis-
tinction between what it chose to call 'the emigrants of hope' and 'the emig-
rants of despair'. The former consisted principally of small farmers with some
capital 'who go to seek means of improving their condition in Canada and the
States'; while the latter were the poorest of the poor who cannot afford the
trip to America but 'who beg or borrow the trifle which is necessary to bring
them over to this country'. Reporting a very great increase of pauper emigra-
tion in recent months from Ireland to Lancashire, the paper noted that the Irish
tramping the roads from Liverpool to Manchester were of all ages and from
every part of Ireland. When interviewed, 'they all say they cannot get a living
of any sort in Ireland, and that they are coming over to England to see if they
can find work for their children in the factories, and for themselves in any other
way. Many of these poor people are most decent and respectable in their man-
ners and language.' While the tone of the piece was clearly sympathetic to the
plight of 'these poor creatures', there was no mistaking the 'fear that they will
long produce a considerable effect on wages and poor rates in the country' . 1
Here we have the classic British perspective throughout the nineteenth and
most of the twentieth century which continued to associate Irish migrants with
a whole host of problems: social, religious, economic and political. The story
of the Irish in Britain is dominated by details of strikebreakers and slum con-
ditions, sectarian riots, 'poor Paddy' on the railway, and sporadic incidents of
political violence. It is argued in this chapter that what is at work here is a
cultural filter that mirrors the values of the host nation without fully reflect-
ing the variety of Irish migrant experience.
The migration and settlement of the Irish in Britain between the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939
forms part of a wider movement throughout the Irish diaspora, and can be
best understood in its relation to a global network. Before 1841, when mass
migration had already seen an annual exodus of 50,000 from Ireland, Britain
was the major destination ahead of Canada and the United States. From the
20 Great Britain

1840s until the 1920s the United States received about 75 per cent of the
5 million total of Irish migrants, while from 1851 to 1921 the proportion
who settled in Britain was around one-fifth of that total world-wide. Finally,
from 1921 to 1939 Britain resumed its role as the major destination for Irish
migrants and this pattern has continued through to the end of the twentieth
century. 2
More significantly, the British experience remains unique within the Irish
diaspora, firstly because it was 'the nearest place to home', and geographical
proximity induced a sense of temporary presence among all Irish migrants
with the ease of an anticipated return to Ireland. Secondly, Britain received an
annual influx of thousands of seasonal workers, and facilitated the departure
of several million Irish migrants from British ports to Canada, the United
States, Australia and New Zealand. So, as Donald Akenson has argued, Irish
migration to Britain represents 'a very large, very special case' because it was
involved in Irish migration throughout the English-speaking world. 3
Donald Akenson has also pointed to the inadequate statistical basis avail-
able to study the Irish in Britain. Following the Act of Union between Britain
and Ireland in 1801, no adequate figures were kept before 1852 and it was
only from 1876 that a tally was made of Irish migrants to Britain. With the
partition of Ireland in 1920, separate figures were no longer recorded, so para-
doxically the information is least reliable for the periods of highest migration
to Britain. Reliance on census totals of the Irish-born, with all the limitations
of not recording second and subsequent generations, provides the main guide
to the scale of the Irish presence. The common identification of the Irish
with the Catholic population of Britain has also tended to marginalize the
estimated 20 per cent of the total who were, nominally, Irish Protestants. In
1841, the first census to include the Irish-born in Britain recorded a figure of
415,000. By 1861, the peak figure of 806,000 was reached and from then on
the numbers declined so that by 1901 the total of Irish-born was down to
632,000. While the middle decades of the century saw the bulk of mass migra-
tion to Britain, the presence of the second and third generations born of Irish
parents meant that a full definition of the Irish in Britain would place the
numbers at over a million by the end of the century. 4
Contrary to the exclusion of emigrants of hope and the restriction to
emigrants of despair, there is every reason, because of the special relationship
with the rest of the Irish diaspora, to include the Irish in Britain within a broad
analysis of the explanations for all migrants leaving Ireland. These changed
over time subject to changing conditions in Ireland and to new opportunities
abroad.
Traditionally, pre-Famine emigration has been explained in terms of
increasing population pressure and the system of land utilization that left some
3 million poor cottiers and labourers, out of a population of 8.2 million in
1841, vulnerable to a series of poor harvests and food shortages. A chronic
lack of employment in rural Ireland (available for less than half the year in
western counties) was compounded by what proved to be a fatal dependence
on a subsistence agriculture based (especially in the south and west of Ireland)
 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 21

on the monoculture of the potato. 5 Structural change within Irish agriculture

involving a move away from labour-intensive arable farming towards pastoral
farming, in response to good prices available for cattle and dairy products
exported to Britain, provided less employment for the large class of landless
labourers in Ireland.
At the same time, increasingly from the 1820s, peripheral Ireland was los-
ing ground in its textile industry (with the notable exception of linen manu-
facture in the Belfast region) to the core centres of cotton and woollen cloth
manufacture in the industrial belts of Scotland, Lancashire and Yorkshire. The
increasing difficulty of combining domestic textile work with agricultural hus-
bandry in Ireland led textile workers in the north midlands to migrate to Scottish
cities and drew others from Queen's County (Laois) and towns like Bandon,
County Cork, to Bradford in Yorkshire. 6 Distressed weavers found themselves
heading for Lowell, Massachusetts, or the cotton towns of Lancashire.?
Ireland's geographical situation as a relatively underdeveloped and over-
populated economy located between two, dynamic societies in Britain and the
United States created the conditions for the country to become an emigrant
nursery, supplying labour to support the growth of industry and infrastruc-
ture on both sides of the Atlantic. Even before the famine years (1845-52),
emigration became established as a permanent feature of Irish life, with chil-
dren reared in Ireland but destined to settle abroad.
The evidence of an extensive enquiry of 1,500 witnesses in 1835 provides
firm evidence of the reasons for emigration. 8 Local landlords, magistrates
and clergy throughout Ireland identified a number of key, explanatory factors.
What was pushing the main body of small farmers towards the contemplation
of emigration was the pincer effect of high rents and low prices on income
levels. The decline in textiles limited the possibilities of diversification, and
improvements to farmholdings were not compensated by landlords at the
expiration of leases when their renewal inevitably meant still higher rents. So
emigration was considered as a viable alternative to be financed by the sale of
leases and all the farm stock. In the long run, there was a genuine belief in the
prospect of families bettering their condition and securing a future for the next
generation. The most persuasive pressure came in the form of emigrant letters
conveying news of relatives and neighbours abroad with very precise details
of the cost of land, the wages of labourers and servants. Even before the famine
years, successful migrants were sending back remittances to Ireland, a system
that later developed into a huge traffic in pre-paid passage tickets that was to
finance the great majority of voluntary migration. Emigration formed part of
a family strategy of economic betterment, especially for the benefit of the next
generation. 9
A climate that fostered emigration was in place in Ireland during the 1830s
when mass movement spread from the north-east and south-east of Ireland to
affect all classes and both Catholics and Protestants throughout all parts of
Ireland. 1° Cheaper steam navigation and the greater dissemination of appro-
priate knowledge from shipping agents facilitated travel to Britain. Employers
were sending agents to Ireland to recruit labour for the Lancashire cotton mills
22 Great Britain

and the evidence of the Commission into the State of the Irish Poor in Britain
in 1836 points to higher expectations among labourers through emigration.
Samuel Holme, a Liverpool builder, provided one such example:
I had a conversation last week with an Irish labourer, named Christopher Shields:
he said that the reason of his leaving Ireland was, that in the county of Wexford,
his own county, he could only get 6d. a-day and his own meat: that at one time
he rented a small cabin with a potato patch, and worked for the landlord. He
then got 1s. a-day but the landlord charged him £3 for his holding. He told me
that there was a general impression among his countrymen that if they came to
England their fortunes would be made, wages are so much higher here. He told
me that he could get his clothing as cheap here as at home, and generally all
the things he wanted. He now gets 16s. a-week. He stated likewise that it was
a great inducement to them to come here that they can get situations for their
children, which they could not get at home. He told me likewise that he could
more easily get his children educated here than in Ireland. This man lives in a
cellar. He will never return to Ireland: he has no wish to go back."
Taking into account the additional earnings of his children, Christopher
Shields would have probably received at least three times the household income
available to his family in Ireland. More pertinently, we should consider such
labour migration not merely in terms of impersonal economic forces but
accept there was also a process of self-selection among would-be migrants who
made a rational decision about their own economic prospects.
This chapter explores some ideas for moving beyond the cultural filter that
viewed the Irish presence in Britain as a problem. This perspective has been
reinforced with the parallel tradition of 'oppression history', concerned to
demonstrate that Irish migrants were outcast victims and were continually sub-
ject to racial discrimination. It is offered as a complement to other recently
published surveys of the Irish in Britain which contain valuable historio-
graphical summaries. 12

Settlement patterns
An important starting place contests the idea that there was a uniform Irish
migrant experience in Britain, or indeed elsewhere throughout the Irish dias-
pora. As David Fitzpatrick has succinctly put it: 'Irish society was not homo-
geneous, and neither was its emigration'Y In shaping the experience of the
Irish in Britain, it mattered where migrants had come from in Ireland, where
they chose to settle, and the timing and subsequent persistence of their settle-
ment. In its place there is some merit in exploring the diversity of experience
which depended on the interaction between the levels of Irish influx, the dens-
ity of settlement, and the specific economic, political and religious circumstances
found in particular localities.
While economic considerations remained the prime drivers of Irish migration
to Britain, geography and existing coastal shipping lines provided the determinants
of emigrant routes. The northern route linked Ulster and North Connacht to
 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 23

Scotland, the midland route connected Connacht and Leinster to the north of
England and the midlands, and the southern route went from South Leinster
and Munster, often via South Wales or Bristol, to London. In broad terms, the
Famine Irish, made destitute by the destruction of the potato crop in the west,
mostly took passage to North America. The Irish in Britain tended to come
from the more advanced parts of Ireland, especially from the industrialized north-
east. That regional bias, with its higher preponderance of skills in eastern Ireland,
would tend to qualify or even reverse the distinction made between the
'emigrants of hope' to America and the 'emigrants of despair' to Britain.
The distinction becomes even less meaningful with the recognition that the
great majority of the Irish who came to Britain entered on a short-stay basis
as a first step towards emigration to the United States, Canada or to Australia.
While many of those who sailed overseas from Liverpool, Bristol or Plymouth
spent little time in Britain, we know that innocent rural migrants from Ireland
were easily duped by their fellow countrymen, the notorious 'emigrant trap-
pers' who infested the docksides and relieved passengers of their money and
belongings, so ensuring that instead of reaching America, they ended up in a
Liverpool slum. 14
Others continued the old pattern of entering and leaving on a seasonal basis,
working as harvesters in agriculture or recruited on short-term contracts
as railway navvies or as factory operatives. The fluidity of Irish migration
included within the pattern of seasonal migration the cottiers of western
Ireland who sustained their plots from harvest earnings in Scotland and
England, the internal migrants who moved from the south-west of Ireland to
the arable south-east and then further migrated to England, and from the 1860s
the out-migration of the Irish from Leeds, Manchester and Glasgow into the
surrounding harvest fields. Ruth-Ann Harris has argued that the transient nature
of Irish labour migration to Britain before 1845 was often the prelude to
emigration to the United States. Industrial skills and knowledge of political and
trades union organization, plus the value of acquiring the English language,
brought genuine dividends to Irish migrants who had spent time in Britain,
thrust into a modern world, before settling in America. 15
Transience also applied to those who settled permanently in Britain. While
there was a concentration in three main areas in the west of Scotland, the north-
western counties of England, and in London, there was also an increasing
dispersal and mobility among the Irish in Britain. The big four centres,
Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and London, took 48.5 per cent of the Irish
recorded in the census of 1841. 16 The concentrations continued, albeit with
decreasing proportions of the total. In both 1851 and 1861 at least 31 towns
in England and Wales had an Irish-born population of over 1,000. Migration
to Scotland occurred later than to England and concentrations persisted, so
that by 1871 four of the 'top five Irish' towns were to be found in Strathclyde
(Dum barton, Greenock, Glasgow and Airdrie) and the high levels of Irish
settlement helped to shape the character of the region. 17 Indeed, Irish settlers
formed a higher proportion of the total population in Scotland (6.7 per cent)
than in England and Wales (3.1 per cent) in 1861.
24 Great Britain

Although the great majority of Irish were unskilled and were largely drawn
by employment prospects to settle in the greater industrial centres, experiences
varied between cities with an Irish presence. It mattered what skills the Irish
brought with them, and where they came from determined their familiarity with
the English language and the nature of their religious faith. Further variations
occurred in the rate of influx and in the density of settlement in what were
dubbed Irish 'colonies' or 'ghettos'. In turn, the response of the host commun-
ity varied not only in the scale of in-migration but in local conditions of employ-
ment and was shaped by local, religious and political allegiances.
To investigate this diversity of experience one first has to penetrate through
the layers of hostile comment written by contemporaries, among whom the
most influential were J.P: Kay, Friedrich Engels and Thomas Carlyle. 18 Their
disparaging of the poor Irish owed much to the fears of an urban crisis that
threatened to engulf municipal authorities, ill-equipped to cope with the press-
ing problems of rapid population growth, poverty, crime and epidemic disease.
Kay's infamous depiction of 'Little Ireland', Manchester, became the symbol
of the condition of the Irish in Britain during the nineteenth century:
Ireland has poured forth the most destitute of her hordes to supply the constantly
increased demand for labour. This immigration has been, in one important respect,
a serious evil. The Irish have taught the labouring classes of this country a per-
nicious lesson .... Debased alike by ignorance and pauperism they have dis-
covered, with the savage, what is the minimum of the means of life, upon which
existence may be prolonged ... As competition and the restriction and burdens
of trade diminished the profits of capital, and consequently reduced the price of
labour, the contagious example of ignorance and a barbarous disregard of fore-
thought and economy exhibited by the Irish, spread. 19

Kay's pamphlet was written during the panic induced by the cholera epidemic
of 1832 and the Irish became the scapegoat for all the evils associated with
early Victorian slums. The very notion of the urban slum was, in reality, a
Victorian invention to provide a physical representation of the dangerous moral
contagion of the under-class at the base of Victorian society. 20 Within the
mental landscape of the educated middle classes, the 'savage and barbaric Irish'
added human form to their worst fears that civilization itself was threatened
by the contagion of numbers of the labouring poor. Engels, borrowing from
Kay, in a strange, fantasy passage, likened the Irish to the animal condition of
the pigs with whom they lived, ate, played and slept. The Irish fondness for
potatoes, regarded as animal food by the English, confirmed the sub-human
condition of poor, Irish migrants. Carlyle weighed in with his exaggerated prose
style, deriding the wild, Milesian features of Irish vagrants, observed on the
roadside.
Today, these accounts read as a hysterical response to what was seen as an
invasion of destitute Irish who, allegedly, would take the jobs and lower the
standards of the decent English and Scottish working class. Yet, for a long time,
this body of writing was taken at face value as accurate descriptions of the
condition of the Irish in early Victorian Britain. Both English and Irish historians
 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 25

agreed on the Irish in the Victorian ghetto. 21 The framework of the Irish as 'a
problem' complemented the notion of the Irish in Britain continuing the long
history of British oppression of Ireland. Recent research, carried out primarily
by geographers, has undermined confidence in the moral certainties of Victor-
ian commentators and severely qualified the notion of the Irish in the ghetto.
Lynn Lees, in a study of the Irish in mid-Victorian London, found that
although the Irish were commonly identified with some of the vilest slums, they
were not locked into ghettos but were mostly relegated to the back alleys
or courts of their neighbourhoods. They lived close to English and European
migrants, many lived in ordinary working-class districts, and clerks, teachers
and a few middle-class professionals lived in predominantly English areas. Lees
found that the Irish were present in every census district in London. 22 High
concentrations of Irish, forming over 50 per cent of the population of a dis-
trict, were comparatively rare, but these were just the areas of squalid hous-
ing that attracted the attention of sanitary reformers. The Irish who lived quietly
in equal numbers and in lower concentrations in mixed centres of population
went unnoticed. The London Irish were also a highly mobile population,
moving from the riverside districts to the south and returning to traditional
Irish quarters of central London wherever there was a demand for unskilled
labour. Clearly, social class and employment opportunities were more import-
ant than ethnicity in determining the pattern of Irish settlement in London. 23
John Papworth found similar results in studying the Irish in seven wards in
1841, located principally in the north and west of the city of Liverpool. After
1851, a shift in population occurred in the outlying districts of St Anne's and
Scotland wards. Two discernible patterns were identified: a concentration and
dispersal of Irish settlers. Only 50 per cent of the Irish-born lived in enumer-
ation districts with a high concentration of Irish and these rarely contained
more than half Irish. Papworth concluded that the terms 'ghetto' and 'colony'
were not applicable to the Irish in Liverpool.I4 Geographers have identified the
crucial importance of scale for an understanding of the condition of the Irish
in Britain. At the street level, the perception of the Irish presence may have
been alarming to the host community. At the level of the enumeration district,
parish, township or county, in the way official figures were represented in record-
ing only the Irish-born, there appeared less cause for concern.
More recently, the myth of 'Little Ireland', Manchester, has been laid to rest
in the work of Mervyn Busteed. 25 A spacial analysis of the district in the 1851
census identified a degree of segregation between streets, with a predominance
of Irish-born household heads physically separated from non-Irish house-
holds. J.P. Kay's lurid descriptions of the conditions in which the 'debased'
Irish lived proved to be unsubstantiated and overthrown. All the available
evidence pointed to conditions in the Irish part of the district as superior to
the other part. Similar results were found in my own analysis of the notorious
slum, Avon Street, in Bath. Negative press reporting of the Irish in the Bath
Chronicle, particularly in the years of famine migration from County Cork,
formed part of an atmosphere of scapegoating the Irish for the catalogue
of poverty, overcrowding and epidemic disease that was associated with the
26 Great Britain

'plague spot' of Victorian Bath. 26 Lord Ashley, the future Lord Shaftesbury,
philanthropist and champion of the oppressed, as one of the two city MPs,
caught the mood of public anxiety in a speech in the Assembly Rooms in
1848, in proclaiming: 'Was it not found that where the Irish appeared wages
were lowered, respectability disappeared, and slovenliness and filth prevailed?'27
The 1851 census revealed a more sober picture. Firstly, the Irish presence was
significant but not overwhelming. The 230 Irish-born inhabitants formed only
17.9 per cent of Avon Street's population. While concentrated at one end of
the street in close proximity to one another and including an extreme case of
38 Irish out of 58 people in one lodging-house, they were virtually indistin-
guishable in terms of measurable indices from the rest of the working-class
population of the street. Irish children attended school as commonly as their
English neighbours, Irish adults had a high level of specified occupations and
given the plight of famine migrants, remarkably few Irish were resident in the
Bath Union Workhouse in 1851. 28
However, it is as well to recognize that there is much that we do not know
of the Irish in Britain, especially the internal evidence of personal experience.
Apart from the broad surveys by J.E. Handley in Scotland, J.A. Jackson and
K. O'Connor in England, most of what is known is built on the studies of indi-
vidual towns and cities in England, Scotland and Wales. 29 Two very useful
collections (with a third on its way) have been edited by Roger Swift and Sheridan
Gilley which bring together many of the key articles. 30 What is interesting is
the shift in emphasis between the first and second Swift and Gilley volumes
on the Irish in Britain. The first was introduced with the notion of the outcast
Irish, oppressed, alienated, suspected and discriminated against on account
of their poverty, religion and politics. The second, by contrast, explored other
themes and found a more varied picture of the Irish experience, thus casting
doubt on uniform descriptions.

Diversity of the migrant experience

This shift in emphasis can be further developed in the recognition of diversity
as a key concept in describing and explaining the Irish emigrant experience in
Britain. Compare the two provincial cities of York and Bristol for the scale
and character of Irish migration during the famine years. Whereas York experi-
enced a very sharp rise in the numbers of Irish migrants and a concentration
in poor quarters, Bristol experienced only a gradual increase in its Irish popu-
lation, who were to be found in every part of the city. Most of the new migrants
to York were from the decaying textile counties of Mayo and Sligo, while the
Bristol Irish represented a wide variety of trades easily absorbed into the city's
variegated labour market and were predominantly from County Cork, Dublin,
Waterford and Limerick. Not surprisingly, Frances Finnegan found evidence
of famine migrants facing a hostile reception in York in contrast with a more
relaxed atmosphere before 1845. 31 The evidence of the Bristol papers suggests
a contrasting and compassionate attitude to the Irish continued into the
Famine yearsY
 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 27

Irish disorder can also be explained in terms of religious and cultural dif-
ferences between Irish migrants and their place of settlement. The Irish in
Bradford, Leeds and Manchester established a reputation for drunken violent
behaviour, engaging in sectarian conflicts and Irish disputes over loyalty to
different Irish counties. This included a fierce resistance by Irish women in the
form of systematic stone throwing, to prevent the arrest of their menfolk by
the local police. Concentrations of poor Irish, mixed settlement of Catholic
and Protestant, east-west rivalries and the traditional distillation of spirits were
contributing factors in the scale of Saturday night brawling. Yet, as Roger Swift
has demonstrated in his study of the Irish in Wolverhampton, the concentra-
tion of Irish in Carib bee Island, a squalid and insanitary district, and the prac-
tice of illegal distillation and the sale of liquor in 'wabble shops', attracted police
attention. The shops were singled out for special treatment with an aggressive
form of policing aimed at suppressing the Irish population. The military style
of policing was prompted by a proposal to reduce the numbers of police in
W olverhampton. In this case, and one wonders in how many others, the Irish
population was deliberately picked on to provoke scenes of disorder and an
increased level of convictions as a means of justifying and defending the size
of the existing force. 33 The appointment of chief constables with experience of
military-style policing in Ireland was also associated with Chartist activity in
Lancashire towns, so reminding us that fear and alarm amongst the authorities
could have the effect of making the Irish a target as scapegoats for disorder. 34
We should certainly beware of seeing the Irish experience only through the prism
of Victorian middle-class assumptions.
What has attracted less attention than it deserves is the absence of serious
disorder and conflict in places of Irish settlement. The reverse side of the
coin to the pattern of violence observed in Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and
Wolverhampton may be found in the relative tranquillity of Dundee, Hull and
Bristol. Dundee experienced a rapid increase in Irish migration in the middle
decades of the century and possessed at 18.9 per cent in 1851 as high a pro-
portion of Irish settlement as any other Scottish city. The Irish in Dundee were
predominantly Catholic and female and worked successfully in the expanding
jute mills in the city. There was an absence of a distinctive Irish ghetto and of
the sectarian divisions that occurred in Glasgow. Dundee was a staunchly Liberal
town with a proud belief in religious toleration. 35 In Hull, the Irish-born
represented only 3 per cent of its population in 1851. Appallinghousing con-
ditions, a death toll of 1,860 in the cholera epidemic in 1849, together with
the Irish living in the poorest areas and prominent in local disorder, offered
ripe conditions for trouble with the host community. The principal reason for
the lack of serious conflict was the presence of a few key individuals in Hull
who occupied positions of influence and authority. E.F. Collins, the editor of
the Hull Advertiser, championed the cause of good housing, attacked religious
bigotry and ended the deportation of Irish paupers. For 20 years he provided
outstanding public leadership. In the field of public health reform he was sup-
ported by another Irishman, the local surgeon, Edward Owen Daly. Thirdly,
the crucial post of Chief Constable of the Hull Police was held from 1836 to
28 Great Britain

1866 by Andrew McManners, who was drafted in from the Metropolitan Police.
Between them, three Irishmen were able to exercise a sensitive handling of
opinion and policy and ensure that the Irish in Hull were not made the sub-
ject of scapegoat abuse as in some other cities. 36
Part of the fear of the host community lay with the advent of major cholera
and typhoid epidemics in the 1830s and 1840s, which provoked a fervent
hostility to Irish migrants as disseminators of killer diseases. Hard-pressed officials
were tempted to use the Irish as a scapegoat in the face of epidemics that
were beyond their control. The medical officer for the Cardiff Union identified
the main cause of the increase in disease as the 'immense invasion of Irish
destitute labourers, navigators and others, who had been brought over to this
town by public works', and the majority of cases of fever 'may be said to have
been imported direct from Skibbereen and Clonakilty' Y Faced with the same
coincidence of epidemic disease and an Irish presence in the Sandgate area
of Newcaste upon Tyne, Dr Robinson, in making a thorough investigation of
the causes of the epidemic in 1846-47 did not even mention the Irish. The
pattern was again repeated when cholera raged in 1853 and 350 lives were
lost in a single parish. The Irish were not singled out for attack. The only body
of people who tried to implicate the Irish were the outside commissioners for
the Board of Health. 38 A different place evoked a different response.
Religious bigotry was a further cause of hostility to the Catholic Irish in
Britain and sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics appeared to
reinforce the Irish reputation for disorderly behaviour. Dramatic incidents such
as the Stockport Riots in 1852, the Murphy Riots in 1867 and the repeated
sectarian violence in Liverpool from the 1830s have tended to dominate
our understanding of religious ill-treatment of Irish migrants. This has been
explained in terms of a wider phenomenon of an endemic anti-Irish racism in
Britain. 39 It has an obvious appeal to authorities who are attracted to a brand
of oppression history that depicts Irish migrants as hapless victims forever
condemned to a hopeless struggle against cruel adversity. While a blanket
explanation has a particular ideological appeal, it tends to ignore the specific
circumstances that can be found in each of the incidents and glosses over the
fitful character of sporadic violence. It is also problematic in the suggestion of
a uniform continuity of anti-Irish attitudes, suggested over a period of more
than 150 years, based on the occurrence of single incidents at different times
and in different places.
The Stockport Riots of 28-30 June 1852 coincided with the height of the
Famine influx when the Irish were widely represented as a threat to the indigen-
ous working population. Stockport was a one-industry cotton town facing a
10 per cent wage cut at a time of a trade depression. Nationally, the restora-
tion of the Catholic hierarchy in England roused ancient Protestant fears of
'popery' on the march. Local Protestant leaders in Stockport whipped up anti-
Catholic feeling and attacked the Irish community, who, when they retaliated,
found themselves hauled before the magistrates for riot and disorder. 40 The
Irish in Wolverhampton were associated with disease, crime and disorder, and
the presence of militant Protestant preachers; Baron de Camin in 1859 and the
 The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939 29

notorious William Murphy in 1867, was accompanied by disturbances and

rioting, as Irish Catholics protested against public attacks on their faith. The
correspondence in the local press featured a debate over the issue of free speech
versus public order. Moderate Protestants in Wolverhampton condemned the
emotive Catholic baiting of the militants. It was the same with the Murphy
Riots in Birmingham. The scurrilous methods employed to rouse anti-Catholic
feeling served only to bring out the Catholic Irish in strength to demonstrate
their disapproval of Murphy. In fact, moderate English opinion was appalled
by the disorder that accompanied Murphy wherever he went. In truth, the
Murphy Riots were anti-Murphy riots with a wish to preserve property and
order, alongside a rejection of bigotry and prejudice. 41
The Liverpool experience represented an extreme case where sectarian
violence was encouraged by militant Protestants for political ends. 42 The legit-
imacy accorded to racial and religious bigotry by council officials, clergymen,
and in newspaper editorials served to endorse street violence and indiscrim-
inate attacks on Irish Catholics. By playing on fears of unemployment and in
targeting the Irish presence as an explanation of social problems, like housing
and crime, the authorities relieved themselves of the responsibility to find prac-
tical solutions. Even in Liverpool, which suffered from acute urban problems,
militant Protestantism had an uncertain hold over the electorate or even
within the Conservative party. Most Anglicans were neither Evangelical.nor
Tractarian in outlook, but believed in a broad Church and a degree of
religious toleration. The leader of militant Protestantism in Liverpool, an Irish
Anglican priest, Hugh McNeile, was a brilliant, pugnacious orator who revelled
in the theatrical rough-and-tumble of democratic politics. His aggressive anti-
Catholicism won over the crucial votes of Protestant dissenters, away from a
Liberal allegiance, to the Tory side. With the very narrow majorities required
with a limited franchise, it was possible to secure the control of the council
through party organization targeting a small number of votes. So the Liberal
triumph in 1835 based on 58 per cent of the votes cast was replaced by its
disastrous defeat with 47 per cent in 1841. While the Tories remained the
dominant force on Liverpool Council, McNeile's demagoguery was regarded
as bitterly controversial and dangerous to social order, and ultimately as a threat
to property. Humane voices were also raised in support of the plight of the
Irish migrants in Liverpool. The warring factions in Liverpool politics probably
represented a minority of opinion, and the Tory majority was secured as much
by good organization as by an overwhelming hostility to the Catholic Irish.
In Edinburgh, a few instances of sectarian conflicts occurred in the 1850s
and 1860s but rather less than in some other Scottish cities. Aspinwall and
McCaffrey offer a structural explanation. 43 Edinburgh's social composition,
with its rentier and professional classes living and working in a metropolitan
city, attracted a higher number of English than Irish. The city prided itself
on an enlightened Whiggish tradition, which incorporated religious toleration.
Also Irish workers posed a real threat only to the employment of migrant
Highlanders rather than to local labour in Edinburgh. In the longer term,
the Catholic Irish achieved a social advance, assisted by self-help and better