Daniel Boyle and Daniel McCabe – Irish local politicians in Manchester

Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century had two wings, the Republican tradition represented by the Fenian movement which sought complete independence for Ireland and a Republic, and the Home Rule movement which sought a limited autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom. With the defeat of the Fenians by the end of the 1860s, the Irish Nationalist Party came to the fore in the last quarter of the nineteenth century under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. Manchester was a particularly strong centre for the Irish Nationalist Party, but its Irish politicians were also important social reformers in the city itself.

Daniel Boyle and Daniel McCabe were Manchester’s most prominent Irish Nationalist politicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both sitting on the City Council as Liberals and representing adjacent wards with large Irish populations.

Daniel McCabe was born in Stockport but spent nearly the whole of his life in Manchester, receiving his education at the Christian Brothers school in Livesey Street and later studying at evening classes in the Mechanics Institution. According to his contemporaries McCabe spoke with an Irish accent, even in middle age, reflecting the close-knit nature of the Irish community in this period. He was a staunch Roman Catholic throughout his life and from a young age was involved with the work of the St Patrick’s parish, an area he lived in himself despite its poverty. He served as Vice President of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, as Superintendent and Registrar at the St Patrick’s Sunday School – possibly the largest Catholic Sunday School in the country – and somehow found time to serve on the committees of a host of other Catholic organisations.

McCabe was also active politically in both the Irish National League, where he was president of the Michael Davitt branch, and in the Liberal party, where he was vice-president of the North Manchester Liberal Association. This dual membership and activity reflected the prevailing political wisdom that only the Liberal party would ever deliver Home Rule for the Irish people. McCabe’s political activity culminated in his election to the City Council in 1889 for the St Michael’s ward, an area with a large Irish population and which part of the parish of St Patrick’s. He served on the Market, Cleansing and Watch committees and in 1892 became a Justice of the Peace, only the second Roman Catholic to be so appointed. He was regarded as a model of what a Catholic public man should be – hard-working, respectable and devoted to both his religion and his public duties.

In November 1913 Daniel became Manchester’s first Catholic Lord Mayor. In his speech to the Council he drew attention to a number of urgent issues facing the city, in particular the need for clean air and the growing housing shortage, which he believed the council must act to solve: “If private enterprise fails to meet the growing demand for houses the Corporation must not stand idly by. The people must be housed and properly housed. Our future as a nation depends upon the health, intelligence and skill of the workers and health cannot be had in full measure without proper house accommodation”. The new Lord Mayor being unmarried, his sister Mrs O’Neill served as Lady Mayoress. The inauguration of the Lord Mayor was traditionally marked with a service at the Cathedral but Daniel was unable to attend, because in those days Catholics were still forbidden to enter Protestant churches. There were some attempts to stir up controversy in the press over this but public opinion was with Daniel in acting in accordance with his beliefs. A service of thanksgiving was held at Salford Cathedral to which his colleagues on the council were invited.

Daniel Boyle was born in January 1859 near Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, the son of a farmer. In 1877 he left his home to come to Manchester where he found employment with the Midland Railway Company, which he stayed with until 1889. He became active in the Irish National League and was Secretary of the branch in the East Manchester constituency. His talents were soon noticed and, after assisting in the organisation of the INL convention in Manchester, he was asked by TP O’Connor to accept the position as representative of the Irish party in Lancashire and Cheshire. He was also very active in the Irish National Foresters – a sick and burial friendly society – travelling in his spare time at weekends to establish branches in the North and Midlands and acting as head of the society on several occasions as well as secretary of the Manchester district. Boyle also found time to act as the Manchester correspondent of the Freemans’ Journal and as vice-president of the Catholic Registration Society.

In 1894 Boyle was elected to the City Council for New Cross ward – adjoining St Michael’s, in present-day Ancoats – which was the largest ward in the city and contained many Irish voters. Soon after his election he lobbied and led delegations against a proposal to build huge lodging-houses and persuaded the Council to build cottage dwellings instead. He was also involved in the re-organisation of the Manchester City Police which had become widely corrupt, a work of some years. In May 1897 the local monthly magazine Manchester Faces and Places described him thus:

“It is as much by character as by speech that Mr Boyle has so soon secured the respect and ear of the assembly. Sound sense, good humour and the wit which is the dower of the Irish race – these are the qualities which tell powerfully for the cause for the cause he may be advocating. On the platform Mr Boyle….. is an orator. His voice is sonorous and musical….and when particularly he speaks on politics he gives the ring and earnestness and even of passion. Just the touch of the accent of his country aids rather than mars the effect of his speech.”

Perhaps Boyle’s most lasting contribution to Manchester was taking on the complex task of organising the replacement of the Corporation’s horse-drawn trams by a modern electric system, which was inaugurated in 1901. Speaking at the banquet to celebrate the opening, he said that the object was to provide a good service with the best possible conditions, and, not least, to give the ratepayers a decent return on their capital. Soon the service was responsible for 140 miles of track with 450 tramcars travelling 30,000 miles a day and carrying 130 million passengers.” Mancunian wits dubbed it “Dan Boyle’s light railway”. Boyle also had a strong interest in the welfare of the workers on the tram system and revolutionised the conditions of service, reducing the hours from 70 to 54, increasing pay and giving a week’s paid holiday while still making enough money on the trams to contribute a large sum in relief of rates. There were some accusations by political opponents that you had to be Irish to get a job on the trams, accusations angrily rejected at a public election meeting in November 1906. That same year he was the only municipal candidate endorsed by the local Trades Union Council.

Both Boyle and McCabe were on the progressive wing of the Liberal party, supporting the municipalisation of essential services and decent working conditions for council employees. Indeed on many issues they had more in common with the emerging Independent Labour Party than many members of their own party. In a speech at Shamrock Hall, Ancoats in July 1895 McCabe told his audience that Nationalists wanted as speedily as possible to bring about the freedom of Ireland and they believed that they could best do this by continuation of their alliance with the Liberals. He recognised, however, that were many at the meeting who were favourable to the labour movement.

He above all others had not one word to say against the Labour party and he believed that, above all other men, the Irishmen of this country had nothing to say against any party that went for the improvement of the condition of the labouring classes. The Irishmen in this country had to earn their bread from the sweat of their brows, and whatever was good for the working people and for the bettering of their condition would be to the advantage of the Irish masses in England. But he for one believed that the Irish alliance with the Liberal party would more certainly bring about the improvement in the condition of labour than by following the Labour party at the present moment.

On 9th September 1910 the Manchester & Salford District of the United Irish League of Great Britain organised a send off for Dan Boyle, which took place in the Marble Hall, Albion Hotel, Manchester and was reported in the Manchester Guardian. Boyle was leaving for the United States on what was described in the programme for the evening as a “mission to the Irish Race of America” in the company of fellow MPs John Redmond, TP O’Connor and Joe Devlin. Boyle was to tour the northern states. The evening was chaired by Daniel McCabe and the programme consisted of familiar songs – “Ireland A Nation”, “Men of the West”, “Paddies Evermore” and “the Boys of Wexford” interspersed by toasts, one of which was made by John Dulanty (later the Irish High Commissioner in London), who described Boyle as “the spearhead of the shaft of the Irish forces in Irish forces in this vicinity”. Replying to the toast Dan Boyle said that he looked upon his selection as one of the mission to the United States as a compliment to the Irishmen of Great Britain, who had shown unswerving fidelity to the Irish cause through trying times:

“I believe that this is a period for the rank and file of the party to stand solidly and united behind their leaders, to do the thinking and working out of the plan of campaign. I believe at the present time we have leaders – I do not say merely a leader – who deserve, command, aye and receive a full measure of the confidence of the Irish people, whether in Ireland, in England or America. As a result of the statesmanship and diplomacy that these leaders have shown I believe our cause is nearer accomplishment than it ever was, and as Mr. Redmond recently said at Kilkenny, even the stars in the courses are working for Home Rule.”

At 10pm the assembled guests were asked by the programme to proceed to Exchange Station “and there a hearty ‘send-off’ will be given to the Envoy on his mission to our kinsmen overseas”. Dinner eaten and toasts drunk, this was duly done, although Boyle and his wife actually set off to Ireland to visit his constituency in Mayo North before joining his companions for the voyage to the United States, where they attended the conference of the National Convention of the United Irish League. The visit was denounced by Sinn Fein. Boyle had been elected as an MP earlier that year and remained one until the Sinn Fein landslide of 1918 when he was defeated by the Sinn Fein candidate Dr Crawley who gained 7,429 votes to Boyle’s 1,761.He died in 1925.

Daniel McCabe was knighted in due course and appointed by the King as Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire. It was in that official capacity that on 29th December 1918 he welcomed Woodrow Wilson to Lancashire when the President of the United States arrived at London Road station at five in the evening on the occasion of his visit to Manchester. McCabe died the following year and was buried in Moston cemetery where his tomb can be seen directly opposite the main entrance. His photograph hangs in Committee Room Four of the Town Hall and he is also remembered in the same building by a bronze relief in the sculpture hall.

Article by Michael Herbert.

Rioting between the Orange Order and the Irish in Manchester

In the early 19th century Manchester was a major stronghold of the Orange order. There were occasional riots between the Catholic Irish and the Orange order in the first half of the century.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century Manchester was the principal centre for Orangeism in Great Britain. The colour Orange had been adopted by Irish Protestant patriots in memory and honour of the Protestant William of Orange, who seized the throne from Catholic James II in 1688 and defeated him in a series of battles in Ireland, most notably at the Boyne and Aughrim.

Inconveniently for subsequent Protestant Loyalist mythology William was actually backed by the Pope for complicated reasons of European diplomacy and his final victory celebrated with a Te Deum in Rome. It is the myths of history, however, that often turn out to be more potent and long-lasting than the prosaic facts and so it has proved with the Williamite victories which are still commemorated every 12th July in the North of Ireland by Protestants.

In the early 1790s there were clashes in Ulster between Catholics organised in groups known the Defenders and the Ribbonmen and Protestants organised in groups such as the Peep O’Day Boys, who had taken to raiding Catholic homes and farms for arms. In 1793 James Wilson, a Presbyterian farmer in County Tyrone, established the Orange Boys, whose members swore oaths to defend Protestantism and the constitution. On 21st September 1795 there was clash between Catholics and Protestants near Loughgall in County Armagh, in which several dozen Catholic Defenders were killed in an attack on Dan Winter’s Inn and which subsequently became known as the Battle of the Diamond. This led directly to the establishment of the Orange Order, which followed the example of the Freemasons by admitting members after the taking of oaths and organising itself through lodges. The order received the tacit support of Protestant magistrates and gentry and the first Orange parades were held on 12th July 1796. By the following year, faced with the threat from the United Irishmen, the British government was happy and willing to use the Orange Order as a useful ally in its struggle to reimpose its authority across Ireland.

British regiments and militias from Lancashire were sent to in Ireland at this time and a number of soldiers took the oath whilst serving, bringing back Orange warrants to England. In November 1799 Colonel Stanley’s regiment, the First Lancashire Militia, returned to Manchester with warrant number 320. The Manchester & Salford Rifle Volunteers (raised and financed by Colonel Taylor of Moston and commanded by Colonel Sylvester) returned with warrant number 1128. Discharged soldiers seem to have started civilian lodges which spread from Manchester to neighbouring towns such as Oldham, where Orange lodges held a 12th July march as early as 1803.

The first Orange riot in Manchester occurred on 13th July 1807 when Orangemen, carrying banners and marching to Orange tunes, joined a number of English friendly societies in a parade to the Collegiate Church. On leaving the church there was a confrontation with Catholics in Church Street and High Street. The location is significant, being very close to the Catholic meeting place in Roman Entry. The Deputy Chief Constable Nadin had to call for troops to restore order. The Manchester Gazette afterwards claimed that “No Popery” signs had been chalked on walls before the march and that local regiments had been playing Orange tunes when recruiting in the town. It seems that tensions were high even before the Orange march took place.

Local Orangemen Ralph Nixon later claimed that Irish Catholics had attacked the march. In a letter to the British Volunteer newspaper on 25th July he stated that “Orange principles are imperfectly known in England and those who attacked them were misled by an erroneous opinion that our views are hostile and directed against papists. Orangemen are zealously attached to the king and admire our matchless constitution”. Nixon’s letter points to the motivation of the English Orangemen as veering more towards maintenance of the political status quo in Britain than a direct association with the politics of Ireland, although the two were connected. Like the Church and King Clubs of the 1790s the Orange Order was a useful organisation for local magistrates and gentry (often the same people) to deploy against their enemies, the radicals and reformers.

Nixon wrote to Ireland for authority to found a Grand Lodge in Britain and approached Colonel Taylor and Colonel Fletcher of Bolton to act as Grand Masters. Fletcher was particularly assiduous in opposing any hint of radicalism in his home town and had routinely employed spies to infiltrate radical organisations. In May 1808 a meeting at the Star Hotel on Deansgate, where lodges had already been accustomed to meet, established the English Grand Lodge with Taylor as Grand Master, Fletcher as Deputy Grand Master and Nixon as Grand Secretary. The original Irish warrants were now cancelled and henceforth the English lodges obtained their credentials from the new Grand Lodge. By 1811 there were some 68 lodges in the Manchester region – according to The Orange Miscellany and Orange Man’s Guide published in 1815 – and 77 in Lancashire in 1830. Ralph Nixon made an abrupt and permanent exit from the organisation in 1821 when he was sentenced to seven years transportation after being charged with burglary.

There was further trouble in Manchester in 1830. A group of Irishmen, apparently employed at Parker’s factory, attacked a number of public houses where the Orange lodges were meeting to celebrate the 12th July and had hung banners out of the windows. At the Boars Head on Withy Grove they stormed upstairs, seized the flag, tore it to pieces and trampled it in the street. There were similar scenes at the Queen Anne on Long Millgate and at the Union Tavern on Garratt Street. Town constables finally arrived and seized some of the stragglers as the Irishmen were returning home along Bank Top and lodged them in the Market House. When the rest of the party realised what had happened they promptly returned and released the prisoners by smashing open the gates. (These same Irish weavers were involved in a strike at Parker’s in March 1831 when they demanded an increase in the price they received for weaving shirtings and calicos).

In 1834 Manchester Orange lodges celebrated in the usual manner with banquets on the 12th July . On the following day, which was a Sunday, several hundred Orangemen assembled in St Ann’s Square and marched to St George’s Church, Hulme to attend divine service. On the way back they were attacked in Cateaton Street by several hundred Catholics armed with sticks and stones. The fighting was finally stopped by the 5th Dragoons, summoned by the town authorities. There was more trouble later that evening outside the Windmill public house on St George’s Road, which was a meeting place for an Orange lodge. Police arrived and forestalled an attack on the pub. There was further disturbance the following day near the Briton’s Protection public house on Oldham Road when the whole police force had to turn out to stop the sexton of St George’s Church on St George’s Road from being killed. Daniel Hearne subsequently confiscated weapons and appeared in court to speak on behalf of the rioters.

In 1835 the Orangemen assembled in Jackson’s Row and paraded to St James Church. The procession itself passed off with only minor incidents and two arrests, one of them an Orangemen named Solomon Johnson Mackintosh, who claimed in court that he always carried a loaded revolver for self-defence. The Manchester lodge dined the following evening at the Hare and Hounds, Water Street without disturbance. There was trouble the next night, however, when a crowd gathered in the brickfields on St George’s Road and smashed the windows of a house which had recently put up a figure of William of Orange above the door.

That same year the Orange Order in England was investigated by a Commons Select Committee after rumours that its Grand Master, the Duke of Cumberland (a reactionary even by the standards of his own class), intended to use the order to stage a coup and replace the king on the throne. The report condemned the order for provoking trouble between Protestants and Catholics and in response the Cumberland formally dissolved the organisation. It soon reappeared, however, in two forms – the Orange Institution and the Orange Association – which eventually united in 1874. In the wake of the Irish Famine and the huge Irish emigration into Lancashire the heartland of the movement moved to Liverpool, although there continued to be branches in Manchester and nearby towns.

The last riot in Manchester in connection with an Orange procession occurred in 1888. On Sunday 8th July members of Orange lodges gathered at Portland Street and proceeded across Great Ancoats Street and down the Irish area of Canal Street , heading for St Mark’s Church on Holland Street. The Orange marchers claimed that in Canal Street they were subject to a premeditated attack by a hundred youths brandishing hatchets and knives during which two men – Joseph Walmsley and Daniel Ritchie – received serious head wounds and 40 police officers who had been summoned by telephone took a half hour to suppress. A letter in the Manchester Guardian a few days later (whose author gave only the initials J.P.) disputed this version of events and claimed that it had began after a boy had thrown a stone at the march and been followed by a prominent member of the Orange procession. “No-one will sympathise with persons who insult any body of men passing peacefully along the street, but I maintain that …..the organisers of such processions, whether of Orangemen or any other party, are often morally blameable in marching their forces through the midst of a population entirely antagonistic to them.”

Article by Michael Herbert

Manchester and the Death of Terence MacSwiney

The hunger strike and death of the Lord Mayor of Cork,Terence MacSwiney, in 1920 had a profound affect on Irish people, not just in Ireland but in many cities in Britain, including Manchester.

Terence MacSwiney was arrested on 12th August 1920 and sentenced at a British army court-martial to two years in prison. He joined the hunger strike in progress at Cork Gaol, whereupon the government moved him to Brixton prison where he continued his fast. By the end of the second week he seemed to be sinking rapidly and his death was expected at almost any hour.

When he was inaugurated as Lord Mayor of Cork after the murder of Tomas MacCurtain by British forces, MacSwiney had prophesied that “This contest on our side is not one of rivalry or vengeance, but of endurance. It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can suffer the most who will conquer…” He later sent out a message from Brixton prison via Archbishop Mannix. “We must be prepared for casualties in the last battle for Irish independence. Let every man offer his life.” In the end he gave up his own life after 74 days.

A great deal of pressure had been put on Liberal Prime Minister Lloyd George and the cabinet to make concessions in order to get MacSwiney to call off his fast. The British government very quickly decided, however, that this was a political battle it had to win and dug in its heels. The British ruling class understood that Empire was as much a matter of psychology as it was of soldiers and guns. If MacSwiney were to call off his hunger strike it would be a severe a blow to Irish morale. If he died it would be a lesson to the Irish of how ruthless the government was prepared to be, a view reinforced by Lloyd George himself in a controversial speech at Caernavon in early October in which he spoke of the “very strong measures” that needed to be taken in order to defeat “the real murder gang”. The Daily Herald condemned his speech as “coarse, cowardly and cruel”.

A number of organisations and leading citizens in Manchester tried to put pressure on the government to give way. On 26th August a joint meeting of the Manchester & Salford Labour Party and Manchester & Salford Trades Council passed a resolution stating that they were appalled at the callous attitude of the government and requesting that “in the interests of humanity and peace” the Lord Mayor be released forthwith. A number of local women sent a telegram also requesting MacSwiney’s release. Their number included Dr Cathleen Chisholm, Dr Florence Robinson, Annot Robinson and Mabel Hewitt.

On 27th August a meeting of Manchester citizens at Merchants Restaurant in Market Street sent a telegram to the King, asking him to exercise royal prerogative. It was signed by, amongst others, Canon Peter Green, Joe Toole, Councillor William Mellor (secretary of Manchester & Salford Trades Council), Alderman Jackson, Catherine Chisholm of the Women’s International League, Mrs Neal of the Women’s Freedom League, Annot Robinson, Councillor Hugh Lee, Agatha Watts and George Clancy of the Irish Self Determination League.

The government remained unmoved by these and many other protests from Britain and abroad. Instead they skilfully and subtly created the conditions to put maximum pressure on MacSwiney to give up his protest. Thus his friends and relatives were able to visit at any time, nurses and doctors were in attendance and there was always food by the bedside. Journalists from around the world called into Art O’Brien’s office in London where MacSwiney’s sister Mary spoke to them, giving them the latest information. Mary tried every avenue to put pressure on the government. In early September she went to Brighton where the TUC was meeting, hoping to address the assembled delegates. The TUC President J H Thomas refused to let her speak to the Congress, however, claiming that it would be too much of an emotional strain on her, and instead made a token gesture by sending another telegram to Lloyd George.

In New York a spectacular strike broke out on the docks at the end of August when a group of Irish women calling themselves American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America’s War Aims brought out the West Side waterfront for nearly a month. They were protesting both at the arrest of MacSwiney in Ireland and the arrest at sea of Archbishop Daniel Mannix from Melbourne, a fierce critic of British government policy in Ireland, who had sailed for Ireland from New York on the White Star liner Baltic. En route two British destroyers stopped the Baltic and arrested Mannix, landing him in Penzance, where he was handed orders forbidding him from travelling to Ireland, Liverpool, Glasgow or Manchester. In New York the women pickets brought out British stokers, Irish and black longshoremen in a strike which spread rapidly, disrupted some sailings and lasted until 21st September

On 17th October Michael Fitzgerald died on hunger strike in Cork gaol after 67 days, while MacSwiney himself died on the morning of 25th October. The two friends with him in his last hour could never bring themselves to speak of it. The Manchester Guardian commented acidly that his death was “part of a policy, the policy of ruthlessness. Ireland is to be terrorised, opposition is to be crushed.” The Manchester District committee of the ISDL, representing 36 local branches, sent a telegram to MacSwiney’s widow saying that “The Irishmen and Irishwomen of Manchester send their heartfelt sympathy with you in this your great hour of sorrow. However, you will be consoled in your grief, knowing that the Lord Mayor died that the Irish nation might live.”

Fellow Republican political prisoners carried MacSwiney’s body to the prison doors after which it was taken to the Catholic cathedral in Southwark where several hundred attended the brief service, many of them working class Irish women from South London. His body lay in its coffin before the High Altar with many coming to pay their respects. A few days later thousands attended Mass in the cathedral after which the coffin was driven slowly across London to Euston station accompanied by a huge procession, with representatives present from across Ireland and every Irish community in Britain. The train that carried his body also carried several hundred policemen.

On arriving in Holyhead those accompanying MacSwiney’s body were informed that the government had forbidden its passage to Dublin, where the whole city was waiting, and had instead provided a steamer to take the coffin directly to Cork. There was a bitter and emotional argument between Art O’Brien, Mary MacSwiney and government officials but they had no choice but to agree. In Cork nobody would receive the body from the British vessel and eventually it was landed by British soldiers. MacSwiney was finally laid to rest in his home town accompanied by a massive funeral procession. The next day eighteen year old Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin.

In Manchester on Sunday 31st October there was a huge procession in honour of MacSwiney, perhaps the largest march ever organised by the Irish in the city. Thousands assembled in Stevenson Square and walked slowly four a breast to Moston cemetery by way of Oldham Street, Oldham Road, Livesey Street and Rochdale Road with spectators lining the whole route. Sixty taxi-cabs and carriages led the procession followed by a hearse carrying a mock coffin covered with the tricolour and flags.

Despite the cold weather there were many elderly people on the procession as well as many local Catholic priests. A squad of girls and women accompanied the hearse, some in semi-uniform, while an industrial school band played Saul’s Dead March and Chopin’s Funeral March. There were also Irish pipers playing in the march. As many as forty branches of the Irish Self Determination League were present, carrying tricolours, and many marchers wore armbands in the same colour. So great were the numbers on the procession that the tail was still in Stevenson Square by the time that the front of the procession had reached the cemetery and the last mile was unable get in to the graveyard at all. Those that managed recited prayers as wreaths were laid at the Manchester Martyrs memorial.

Article by Michael Herbert

Irish Republican Operations in Manchester 1920-1922

During the Irish War of Independence, Irish Republicans mounted a number of armed operations in British cities, including Manchester, which were intended to cause economic damage and put pressure on the British government to cede independence to Ireland

The Campaign in Manchester 1920-22

In the autumn of 1920 the IRA launched a series of attacks on British cities, including Manchester, London, Liverpool and Glasgow, which were carried out by local Republican units. Peter Hart has estimated the strength of the IRA in Britain as about 1,000 volunteers, of which several hundred took part directly in operations. Almost all IRA volunteers were permanent residents, whether born in Britain or Ireland.

On 24th November 1920 the government announced in the House of Commons that they had captured secret Sinn Fein documents, amongst which were detailed plans to destroy the Stuart Street power station in Bradford, Manchester that proved electricity to many parts of the city including mines and factories. The government alleged that the plans contained maps of the station and details of the shifts worked there and that three raiding parties were to have been used in the attack, comprising 65 men in total. In a newspaper interview Mr SL Pearce, Manchester Corporation’s chief electrical engineer, stated that the information on the workings of the station appeared to have been gathered in October when four men and two women had visited it on a Sunday morning by prior arrangement.

On 2nd January 1921 Police Constable Henry Bowden was patrolling some warehouses on Ordsall Lane when he came across ten men in the vicinity of a large grain warehouse, owned by the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Company. They supplied him with their names and addresses but he still insisted that they accompany him to the police station. When they reached Oldfield Road one of the men suddenly produced a revolver and fired at the policeman. Fortunately for him the bullet passed through his wrist and entered his shoulder. The men ran off.

A fire was later discovered at Baxendale in Miller Street, Shudehill. Police later arrested four men were in connection with the shooting: Patrick Flynn (22), Jeremiah Roddy (20), Daniel O’Connell (25) and Charles Forsythe (32). Forsythe was the landlord of a boarding house at 3 Poole Street , Salford, where the other men were lodgers. They and another man Patrick Waldron were later charged under the Defence of the Realm Act. On 22nd February Flynn was sentenced to ten years penal servitude for attempted murder.

On 13th February the IRA carried out a series of co-ordinated incendiary attacks on factories and warehouses in Manchester, Rochdale, Oldham and Stockport. In Manchester the targets included the wholesale druggists Potter & Clarke, Luna Street, Openshaw; the resin distillers Smith and Forrest, Holt Town; the Union Acid Company, Mitchell Street, Newton Heath and the Premier Waterproof & Rubber Company, Dantzic Street. During the attack on Smith & Forrest the watchman John Duffy was held up by three men armed with revolvers whilst they made preparations to fire the premises. When he made a sudden movement one of them fired at him but missed. One of the other men commented “That was a lucky escape, mate”. Finally Duffy made a run for it and again his luck held for the bullets the men fired after him missed their target.

Six days later the IRA mounted further incendiary attacks against ten farms in the Manchester area. The first outbreak took place shortly before 8pm and the rest followed shortly afterwards. The fires were set by soaking straw and hay with paraffin and setting it alight. The targets were Dairy House Farm, Dunham Massey; Dawson’s Farm, Dunham Massey; Baguley Hall Farm, Baguley; Barlow Hall Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Hardy Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy; Park Road Farm, Stretford; Lostock Farm, Urmston; Grange Farm, Bramhall; Cutter’s Hill Farm, Outwood, Radcliffe; and Hale Mill Farm, Culcheth near Leigh.

There was an eleventh target, namely Ivy Bank Farm, Sale. When the owner Mr. Jackson came out to investigate a disturbance shots were fired at him by a man in the yard. Fortunately for the farmer they went wide. Police later found a Webley revolver and can of paraffin in Dane Road. The cost of damage for the night’s work was estimated at £30,000. The geographical spread and the number of targets in the campaign of arson points to the existence of a well-organised and well-armed network of IRA members in the Manchester area. There was more attacks on 21st February at Poach Bank Farm, Bury and on 22nd February at Mill Hill Farm, Woodley, where a dutch barn was destroyed by fire

On 22nd March a PC Carr disturbed three men in a doorway whilst patrolling outside Manchester United’s football ground. He challenged them and in reply they fired at him but did not hit him. The officer was armed but had no time to fire back. A wallet was later found with a certificate from the Manchester Royal Infirmary in the name of Patrick Fennell and a picture of Terence MacSwiney. Fennell, who lived at 21 Bedford Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, was arrested the following day and appeared in court in early April, charged with the attempted murder of the police officer. His landlady was later fined for failing to register her lodger under the Aliens Restriction Act.

On 18th July Fennell was tried before Justice Rigby Swift. At first he was found guilty of being at the football ground but acquitted by the jury of the actual shooting. Then the judge made an extraordinary intervention. “That is not a verdict”, he told the jury,” If the jury find that Fennell was present with other people taking part in something where shooting might take place he is guilty.” The admonished jury then duly returned a verdict of guilty on the second charge. Sentencing Fennell to seven years penal servitude the judge said that in doing so he was assuming that Fennell’s was not the hand that fired the shot.

The most spectacular series of IRA operations in Manchester took place on 2nd April. The day began with a co-ordinated attacks by the IRA in the heart of the city and ended with the shooting dead of a young Irishman by the police in controversial circumstances. The morning’s attacks all took place between 6.00am and 7.00am. It seems likely that the IRA deliberately chose to strike early on a Saturday morning, knowing that there would be fewer passers-by or policemen and that the chosen targets would have only cleaners in them. At Bridgewater House on Whitworth Street four men armed with revolvers held up the cleaner and nightwatchman. Somehow the cleaner managed to slip out of the building and summoned assistance from a police constable named Boucher. When he challenged the men one of them fired at him, wounding the officer. The men then ran off and the policeman tried to give chase before collapsing in the street and being taken to the Infirmary by tram. Police later recovered a revolver and a can of petrol. At 38 George Street the raiding party held up the cleaner at gunpoint and started a fire while at 33 Portland Street three men held up the cleaner and set fire to the building, using some of the cotton goods lying about. The cleaner, who was trapped inside, raised the alarm and firemen arrived, who quickly put out the blaze.

Two men held up the cleaners at gunpoint in the Lyons State Cafe, Piccadilly, whilst a third member of the party tried to start a fire with paraffin. “We are doing now what you are doing in Ireland” said one of men and as they left they fired a shot above the heads of the staff. There were also attacks on three city centre hotels. At Victoria Hotel on Deansgate two men had spent the night there as visitors. After they left staff discovered a fire in their room which had been started using paraffin. There was a similar attempt at the Albion Hotel on Piccadilly, where a man giving his name as H Wilson from Bristol had spent a night. In the morning a chambermaid discovered him spreading petrol on a second floor staircase and setting fire to it. He managed to escape in the confusion, leaving a bag behind. At Blackfriars Hotel two men who had spent the night there under the names of Kay and Matthews left early in the morning, saying that they would be back for breakfast. Later staff found that their room was on fire. One witness described the attackers as “well-dressed young men, between 20 and 30 years of age, of gentlemanly appearance”. A number spoke with Irish accents.

Later that same evening a large number of armed police raised the Irish Club on Erskine Street, Hulme. As they entered the club there was shooting between police and two Irishmen. Constable Bailey and Detective Bolas later claimed that as they entered the building Sean Morgan had confronted them with a revolver in each hand and that therefore Bolas had shot him dead and also wounded Sean Wickham, after the latter had allegedly wounded Bailey. The police arrested a large number of men at the Irish Club and also picked up others over the weekend, including Paddy O’Donoghue. The death of Sean Morgan was registered on 14th April after an inquest, the cause of death being officially given as “Bullet wound to the head. Due to being shot by a police officer whilst the said John Morgan (sic) was resisting the said police officer in the legal exercise of his duty. Justifiable homicide”. A memorial to Sean Morgan was unveiled in Moston cemetery on the ninth anniversary of his death in 1930.
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Despite the arrests of a number of senior figures, including Paddy O’Donoghue, the IRA campaign in Manchester continued. There were three attacks on 19th June on railway signalboxes in Manchester, similar to attacks that had been occurring in London. A signal box near Woodlands road station and a box near Fallowfield station were set alight. The attack on a signalbox near Marple station was more serious. Just after midnight Signalman Edward Axon was working alone when shots were fired at the box which wounded him in the groin and shoulder. Fortunately he was able to summon help and was taken to hospital.

A Treaty between the Republican Government and Britain was signed on 6 December 1921 and IRA operations halted. After a lengthy and sometimes bitter debate Dail Eireann approved the Treaty on 7th January 1922 with 64 votes in favour and 57 against. Sinn Fein had already effectively split into two camps with De Valera opposing the Treaty and Collins and Griffith supporting it. Most of the leadership of the IRA supported the Treaty, but many rank and file members and field commanders opposed, viewing it as a betrayal of everything they had fought for. De Valera resigned as President of Dail Eireann and was replaced by Arthur Griffith. Civil war broke out in June and lasted 12 months, leading to the defeat of the anti-Treaty forces.

The Civil War had some effect in Britain. On 4th June 1922 there were raids on a number of collieries in the St Helens area – including Bold, Sutton Manor, Clockface, Collins Green and Billinge – during which young men dressed in dark suits, armed with revolvers and seemingly well acquainted with the layout of the collieries stole explosives and detonators. There were similar raids in other parts of the country. In October there was an explosion in the Central Detective Office in a Stockport police station when a detonator that was being examined after a raid went off accidentally, slightly injuring a number of civilians and police, including the Chief Constable. John Mulryan of Wilton Street, Reddish was subsequently charged with being in possession of a quantity of arms and ammunition.

By the end of 1922 Irish Republican operations in Britain had come to an end.

Article by Michael Herbert

Hugh Delargy

Hugh Delargy was born in 1908 and, after going to an elementary school, won a scholarship to study in Paris and Rome. During the Depression he worked as a labourer and insurance agent. He was elected as a Labour Councillor in Manchester in 1937 and remained on the Council until 1946. He was an active supporter of the Connolly Club (later the Connolly association) in its early years, speaking in May 1939 at the James Connolly commemoration organised by the Club in London and writing in the August issue of Irish Freedom on National Unity. He was also active in Manchester in both the Irish Prisoners National Aid Society for whom he raised £50 and the Anti-Partition League in Manchester who published his pamphlet, The Last Quarrel.
During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery, reaching the rank of Captain.

The Friends of Ireland

Hugh Delargy was elected as a Labour MP for Miles Platting in July 1945, inheriting the seat from JR Clynes For the first time the Labour party had an outright majority in the House of Commons and there were hopes that the new government would act on the Irish question. In December 1945 Delargy established the Friends of Ireland, a group of about 50 Labour MPs, and became its first secretary. Henry McGhee, son of the dock workers leader, took over as secretary in April 1946

The new group said that its primary contacts would be with the Irish TUC and Irish Labour parties, both north and south. In January 1946 Delargy spoke at a rally in Belfast while other MPs from the Friends of Ireland group visited the north and south of Ireland. On his return Delargy was welcomed by a social at Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall , organised by Eddie Lenehan and others, at which the entertainment was provided by Tommy Collins and his Ceilidhe band, MacSwiney pipers, Billy Kelly’s troupe of dancers, Kathleen O’Reilly and Margaret Cox.

Following their visit the Friends of Ireland called for an end to partition and said that the Six County government of Basil Brook was completely out of step with the Labour government in Britain and that the unity of North and South could only be achieved by Labour governments in both parts of Ireland. In March Delargy spoke in Dublin at the Mansion House and attacked partition. The group also lobbied the Home Secretary Chuter Ede over the 60 or so Irish prisoners still in jail but he initially refused to reconsider their sentences . Eventually the Home Office made some concessions and the last two prisoners were released from Parkhurst in December 1948.

In 1948 the Irish Free State (established by the treaty of 1921) repealed the 1937 External Relations Act, taking Ireland out of the Commonwealth and declaring it to be a Republic on Easter Monday 1949 (though of course a 26-county Republic). The Labour government responded by passing the Government of Ireland Act , which declared that no change in the status of Northern Ireland could be made without the consent of the government of Northern Ireland. It also decreed that Irish citizens living in Britain would not be treated as foreigners.

In April 1949 the King George VI sent the following message to the President Of Ireland, Sean O’Kelly.

“I send you my sincere good wishes on this day, being well aware of the neighbourly links which hold the people of the Republic of Ireland in close association with my subjects of the United Kingdom. I hold in most grateful memory the services and sacrifices of the men and women of your country who rendered gallant assistance to our cause in the recent war and who made a notable contribution to our victories. I pray that every blessing may be with you today and in the future.” (Signed) GEORGE R.

The Friends naturally opposed the Act but attempts to raise it at the Labour party conference in 1949 were blocked. Labour’s majority was reduced to a handful in the 1950 general election and the Friends group seems to have dissolved with little to show for five years of activity. Partition was still firmly in place, indeed it had strengthened by the Labour government.

The Anti-Partition League

Delargy was initially close to, if not a member of, the Connolly Association but after several years in parliament he moved his support to the Anti-Partition League. This was established by two Irish nationalist MPs in Northern Ireland – Eddie McAteer and Malachy O’Conlon – in November 1945 to bring together Irish nationalists to campaign for a United Ireland. As well as in Ireland, branches were also established in Britain.

The League held a big rally in Manchester in February 1947, a dance in September and a campaign in the autumn during which the nationalist MP Eddie McAteer spoke in Manchester. The Manchester area committee included J E Lyons (chair), Alderman B MacManus (vice-chair) and Mrs S Ogden (treasurer). There was also a branch of the League in Rusholme, where the committee included T Watters, J Garvin, E Lenehan and T Wicksteed. The Central Executive of the League met in Manchester on 11th October. Other branches were formed in Moss Side where the chairman was George Spain, and St Patrick’s, where the dean of St Patrick’s church was elected chair and Hugh Delargy addressed the new branch.

Delargy was elected National Chair at the APL conference in Manchester in June 1948. The conference dinner was provided by the Irish Press, the newspaper founded by Eamon De Valera. That same year De Valera embarked on a campaign of speeches on the partition issue in Britain. In October 1947 he was the guest of Celtic at the annual clash with Rangers and spoke in St Andrew’s Hall.

In November he came to Manchester to attend the annual Manchester Martyrs commemoration, during which he unveiled a tablet in Moston cemetery to the memory of Seamus Barrett, a veteran Manchester Fenian of the1930s, and then went on to addressed a rally at Belle Vue attended by six thousand people who, according to the press, gave him a rapturous welcome. He told his audience that “if you want to be on good terms with your neighbour don’t start by encamping in his garden.” Hugh Delargy also spoke and provoked a great cheer when he described Ireland as “a nation which has suffered more in the cause of justice and freedom than any other nation and heaven.”

In 1949 the Manchester branch of the League called on the Irish to withdraw support from municipal candidates in protest at the Government of Ireland Act introduced by the Labour party. Hugh Delargy resigned from the League at the end of the year when the organisation decided to oppose Labour parliamentary candidates. The League stood four candidates in the 1950 general election in Bootle, Coatbridge, Greenock and Gorbals, (attracting between 2% and 5% of the vote) and a single candidate in the 1951 general election in Bootle, who attracted 1,370 votes, some 2.7% of the vote. The results spelt out that whatever their private political views, the question of partition alone was never going to be of sufficient urgency to attract a mass vote by Irish people in Britain. By the end of the 1950s the League was in terminal decline and in 1962 changed its name to the United Ireland Association. Its organiser Tadgh Feehan took a job in the Irish Embassy.

Hugh Delargy’s seat of Miles Platting was abolished under boundary changes in 1950. He was then elected for Thurrock which he represented until his death in 1976. There is a tablet in his memory in St Mary Roman Catholic cemetery in Kensal Green, London.

O n 5 December 1974 he made the following speech in the House of Commons, a few days after the Birmingham bombings

You will be relieved to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I do not propose to speak for more than a few minutes. The Secretary of State will be equally relieved to hear that I have no solution whatever to offer of the Ulster problem. In fact, I had no intention of speaking in the debate or even of listening to it until about lunchtime today. I consider that at this moment speeches made about Northern Ireland—my speeches, certainly —are a complete waste of time. Then why, if I think so, am I speaking now?
I am speaking now because this morning, through the post, I received a pamphlet which no other hon. Member has received. It is a pamphlet about Ulster’s problems called, “The Ulster Quarrel”, price one old penny—from which it may be deduced that it is not a modern pamphlet. In fact, it was written 36 years ago very hurriedly, to coincide with a meeting called in the Manchester Free Trade Hall at which the principal speaker was a young man called Erskine Childers, who died recently as President of the Republic of Ireland.
On reading the pamphlet, I was surprised to see how much of it was up to date. It touched on social problems, which I regret to say have not been mentioned today, which have been the cause of all the horrors and unrest of the last five years. The pamphlet was written with English people in mind. The author was of the opinion that there was some conspiracy of silence about what was going on in the North of Ireland.
When I heard the mistaken speech today of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr Dalyell), in which he said that a TV and news black-out would assist in solving the Irish problem, I could only reflect that 50 years of silence has helped to create it. We were never allowed to debate Northern Ireland in this House. When we asked questions about injustice, evictions, discrimination and the rest, we were always told that they had nothing to do with us, that they were internal matters which came under the jurisdiction of Stormont.
…… We were told that it was the affair of Stormont and not of this House, in spite of the fact that the Government of Ireland Act said quite specifically that ultimately the responsibility for Northern Ireland rested here. Therefore, the two main parties in this House have a great deal to answer for. They have great guilt on their shoulders for what is happening.
I said that the pamphlet was, in a sense, up to date. We read again from the pamphlet about entry without warrant, detention for any unlimited period, and internment without trial. It was all going on then under the Special Powers Act with the help of the B Specials and the armed police. There was not much difference from what is taking place now.
I can give some of the reasons for the unrest in Northern Ireland. I have quotations here. I said that this was an old pamphlet from men who are now long dead. However, I shall give only three short quotations from three Prime Ministers of Northern Ireland. I start with Lord Craigavon and with his famous slogan Ours is a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people. I cannot remember one Unionist saying anything to the contrary. Then his successor, Mr Andrews—I believe he was his immediate successor—said when he was Minister of Labour that he had heard a rumour that of the 31 porters at Stormont—porters; God help us—28 were Catholics. He also said: I have investigated this matter and have found that there are 30 Protestants and only one Catholic, and he is there only temporarily. We all remember the third Prime Minister I shall quote, Sir Basil Brooke, later Lord Brookeborough. He said: Many in this audience employ Catholics, but I would not have one about my place. A year later, when he had had opportunity to reflect upon it and when he had read what the newspaper editorials had said about that statement, he said: When I made that declaration I did so after careful consideration. What I said was justified. I recommend people not to employ Roman Catholics. I do not wish to resurrect old bones. The whole point of my speech is that what we are debating now we should have been debating years and years ago, because the same conditions applied then as apply now.
I should like to tell hon. Members, in another way, how these same conditions apply. The pamphlet from which I have quoted was written 36 years ago and was a great success. There were only 5,000 copies of the first printing because it had to be printed in a hurry for the meeting about which I spoke. The first printing sold out in two days. But there was never a second printing, because several hours after the meeting in the Manchester Free Trade Hall, in the early hours of the morning a mysterious explosion occurred, which killed a man on his way to work at the market. After a little while it was established that this explosion had been caused by a bomb set by an organisation of which most people in England then had never heard—the IRA.
Other explosions occurred, and other people were killed by bombs set by the IRA. The IRA did not simply kill all those innocent people. The IRA killed hope and the good will of men who were trying to seek a peaceful solution to the problems. The IRA killed the efforts that men of good will were making to enlist the sympathy of the people of England, from whom the truth was being withheld by Parliament and the Press.
The immense harm which the IRA did then it has multiplied since. No one condemns the IRA more strongly than I do. I have been talking about a pamphlet. I may as well tell the House now, of course, that I wrote it. I was a brash young man in those days. I imagined that I could change people’s opinions. I know better now. No one takes the slightest notice of anything I say. I have no need to be reminded of that. When one has been a Member of the House for 30 years, always in the obscurity of the back benches, one has no need to be reminded that one is of no significance. Nevertheless, it is still one’s duty to say what one thinks, and I am saying that now.
I have no solutions to offer. I felt that Sunningdale was a solution. I am still grateful to any pay homage to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr Whitelaw) and all those associated with him who negotiated that agreement.
…..The Sunningdale Agreement was accepted by the Labour Party when it came to power, and we all rejoiced. Although I have always been in favour of a united Ireland, I think that there is something in what was said by the hon. and learned Member for Blackpool, North (Mr Mis-Campbell). If by dropping this talk of an Irish dimension we can get peace in Northern Ireland, I might even go that far. Anything for peace, to save lives.
But Sunningdale was scrapped, largely because of a strike which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr Fitt) said in the best speech of the debate so far, had nothing whatever to do with industrial conditions but was a political strike. The Government did not know how to handle that strike. They should have known how to handle it, and they could have handled it.
….I am sorry that I have spoken for longer than I had intended. I am not very optimistic about the Convention—not after Sunningdale—and I have never been optimistic about Northern Ireland. When my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr Dalyell) said that he originally thought that British troops were going to Northern Ireland as part of a fire brigade operation lasting three or four months I could not help recalling that I told the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr Callaghan) that the troops would probably be there for several years. I also said then that there should be a separate Minister for Northern Ireland and I was sneered at. Now we have four.
Suppose there is a strike after the Convention. What will the Government do then? Will they be blackmailed once again? We have a right to be told. We have a right—and this has been asked from both sides of the House—to know what is the minimum the Government expect to achieve before the Convention meets. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr Gilmour) mentioned the possibility of violent organisations which are not proscribed being called in for consultation. The hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr Dunlop) tackled me over the action of the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr Whitelaw) in consulting the IRA. Are the Government planning to consult these non-proscribed organisations? I am frightened about this, because the last words which were spoken in our 17-hour debate which ended last Friday morning concerned the refusal of the Home Secretary to proscribe in his terrorist Bill the UDA, the UFF and the Red Hand Commandos. Those organisations should have been included and I was in favour of pressing the point in a Division. If there had been one I would have voted for the third time that night against my Government, and I would have done it with a glad heart, because I knew that I was right.
I have always considered my speeches on this subject to be a waste of time. I have no solution to offer, but I should like an answer to my questions. I apologise to the House for having wasted its time.

Article by Michael Herbert

The Connolly Association in Manchester 1938-1962

The Connolly Association – originally the Connolly Club – was founded in 1938 from the ashes of two earlier Irish republican organisations. For nearly thirty years it campaigned from a left-wing perspective for Irish civil rights.

The Connolly Association was originally called the Connolly Club. The organisation emerged from a merger of the London branch of Republican Congress (a political organisation established in April 1934 by left-wing Republicans such as Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell, which called for the creation of a Workers’ Republic) and the Irish section of the League Against Imperialism, an international socialist organisation which had been established in 1927 and disbanded in 1937.

By 1936 the Republican Congress was defunct but activity continued in London leading to the formation of the Connolly Club on 4th September 1938 at a meeting in the AEU Hall, Doughty Street. The first organiser, until his return to Ireland, was Michael McInerney. Other active members in the early years were Jim Prendergast and Patrick Musgrove.

In January 1939 the Club published the first issue of its monthly newspaper Irish Freedom (later renamed the Irish Democrat) which cost twopence. The editorial noted that it was the latest in a long line of papers with the same name and asserted that the demand for Irish freedom “will never be crushed, will never be eliminated except by satisfaction.”

An article in the paper countered the myth that the Irish were “job stealers”, arguing that the question of Irish people living in England could be used by:

“Fascist minded people in the same way as the Jewish people have been used by Hitler. In order to take the minds of the British people away from the real cause of the misery existing in England, campaigns are being organised in such places as the Midlands, Coventry, Birmingham etc where unemployment is high, against the Irish.”

The writer finished by urging the Irish to join trade unions or the National Unemployed Workers Movement. The Connolly Club used Irish Freedom to establish its organisation, gradually building up its sales in major Irish centres around Britain

At the onset of the war in September Irish Freedom proclaimed that the Connolly Club stood for “Freedom Unity and Democracy” but that they had no faith in Chamberlain. “We therefore state that the best manner in which we, as Irish workers, can play our part in this grave struggle is to unite our forces, irrespective of party or political differences, to smash the one barrier that prevents our country being able to play a more effective part in the war against fascist aggression, the partition of Ireland.” The paper also published the statement of the Communist Party of Ireland on the war.

At the annual conference of the Connolly Association in the autumn of 1945 the Manchester delegate was Jimmy McGill, a tunnelling worker from Donegal, who was warmly congratulated by delegates on his lively account of branch activities in the city. Jimmy eventually left the building trade to run a second-hand bookshop in Waterloo Place, Oxford Road. The shop was barely heated but the fortunate visitor might find a whiskey bottle in circulation amongst regulars to fend off the cold. Sadly, after his death, Jimmy’s own very extensive collection of books on Irish history did not find its way to a library. The secretary in Manchester in the late 1940s seems to have been Arthur Gracey, who lived on Talbot Road in Old Trafford.

In the immediate post-war period the organisation continued its campaigns on passports, welfare and conditions in hostels where they held a number of meetings. But as the restrictions on travel were lifted and employment conditions improved it switched its focus back to making propaganda for socialism and to raising the question of partition in the British labour movement as well as lobbying for the release of Irish Republican prisoners in Britain. Whilst there were close links with the Friends of Ireland group in parliament, there was little love lost between the Connolly Association and the Anti-Partition League, because the latter echoed the conservative Catholic nationalism of De Valera and was opposed to socialism.

Desmond Greaves became editor of the Irish Democrat in early 1948 . Greaves had been born in 1913 in Birkenhead into a Protestant family which hailed originally from Newcastle, County Down and studied at Liverpool University where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1934, remaining a member for the rest of his life. He also became interested in Irish politics and sold the paper Republican Congress in Irish districts of Liverpool.

In 1937 he went to London where he became acquainted with leading Communists such as T A Jackson, who had a strong interest in Ireland, having known James Connolly personally. He eventually went on to write the classic Irish history Ireland Her Own. During the war Greaves worked at Woolwich Arsenal and afterwards became chief scientist at Powell Duffryn.

He joined the Connolly Club in 1941 and in 1951 he gave up full-time work to devote himself to the Connolly Association and the Irish Democrat, much of which he wrote himself as well as supervising the printing, distribution and sales. In the course of fifty years of political activity Desmond must have spoken at thousands of meetings, indoors and outdoors, from a packed public hall to a handful of people in a room above a pub.

A voluminous correspondent, he had a huge network of contacts across Ireland and Britain and beyond, which enabled the Connolly Association to wield much more influence than its modest membership might have indicated. In addition to his writing in the Irish Democrat Desmond also wrote pamphlets and somehow found the time to write a number of important history books, most notably The Life and Times of James Connolly, published in 1961, and Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution, published in 1971. He died suddenly in 1988 whilst travelling back on a train from a meeting, a political activist to the end.

In 1955 the Connolly Association adopted a new constitution which expressed two aims; to win support in Britain for a united independent Ireland and to stand for equal treatment for the Irish in Britain. The organisation also pledged itself to continue to publish and make known “the teachings of the great representatives of Irish democratic republicanism, especially of the socialist James Connolly.” A pamphlet published by the Birmingham branch argued that emigration was not just the result of unemployment and low wages at home in Ireland but also caused by partition hindered industrial development. It stated that:

“…a united Ireland would make it easier to get a united working class and this would make for a higher standard of living, which is the great cause of employment.”

The report at the 1958 conference summed up the organisation’s achievements.

“Month by month members have sold the Irish Democrat. Through this means the policy of the Association have been brought before many thousands of Irish people in Britain and important sections of the trade union and labour movement. In addition to this there is readership in Ireland and other parts of the world, principally Canada and Australia. The various campaigns of the association have been publicised and anti-Irish discrimination has been exposed. Many hundreds of public meetings have been held throughout Britain; thousands of leaflets on special topics have been distributed; MPs have been effectively lobbied and regular branch meetings with talks and discussions have been held in the main centres, principally London and Manchester. London and Manchester remain the two strongholds, and organisational difficulties previously hampering the work because of the lack of premises were overcome by the acquisition of a new central office in London and new premises in Manchester.”

In 1958 the Connolly Association sent the English lawyer John Hostettler over to Belfast to cover the trial of Kevin Mallon and Francis Talbot, two Republicans accused of murdering a member of the RUC in Tyrone. Both men claimed that they had been beaten to obtain confessions. There were three trials associated with the case and Hostettler observed them all. Eventually the two men were acquitted. On his return Hostettler spoke at meetings all over Britain, including in Manchester, about what was going on in the North of Ireland and wrote a pamphlet which laid bare the workings of the Special Powers Act.

The branch in Manchester was active throughout most of the 1950s and into the 60s. Membership was boosted by the collapse of the Anti-Partition League, some of whose leading members, such as Daniel Kilcommins, now joined the Connolly Association. Joe Deighan, originally from the Falls Road, became Secretary of the Manchester Connolly Association and also served as national president of the Association. Tommy Watters was also an active member. Many of the leading members of the branch were also active in the trade union movement. Tommy Watters was a printer and Father of the Chapel, Danny Kilcommins was chairman of his ASW branch while Joe Deighan was a delegate to the Manchester Trades Union Council.

The branch had an office at 94/96 Grosvenor Street, All Saints where there was also a hall which they used for socials. There were regular meetings at these premises for members with guest speakers. In March 1961, for instance, Desmond Greaves spoke on “In Search of Connolly” while John Hostettler spoke on “Human Rights in Northern Ireland and Britain’s Responsibility.”

The branch also held meetings every Sunday at Platt Fields. These ran into trouble in April 1954 when an official from the Manchester Corporation told them to take down the Irish tricolour. They refused, so he tore it down. After protests the council eventually backed down over the issue.

In November 1959 the branch issued a manifesto which called for a good turnout for the annual Manchester Martyrs procession on 29th November and also called for the organisation to be allowed to join the memorial committee. It seems likely that they had been kept off because in the climate of the cold-war politics of the1950s they were seen as too left-wing. The manifesto called for a united front of Irish organisations in Britain, arguing that the Connolly Association had a special contribution to make to the Irish cause because of its working class membership. They also said that the involvement of the branch on the Martyrs Committee would add young people to the commemoration, noting that “the Annual Commemoration in Moston has not deeply impressed itself on the Irish who have recently come from Ireland.”

“So isn’t it obvious that the Connolly Association should be represented on the Martyrs committee – along with all other Irish organisations who are prepared to help to keep this historic national commemoration going year by year. Our participation would completely rejuvenate the event, increase the attendance by hundreds, and would not alter its fundamental character to the slightest degree – indeed we should get back to what Seamus Barratt and the original committee stood for, not the affair of some of the Irish but the affair of all the Irish.”

In March 1960 four members – Joe Deighan, Daniel Kilcommins, Michael Rabbitt and Michael Crowe – were arrested whilst selling the Irish Democrat on Oxford Road, a place they had been selling in for seven years with no trouble. The police alleged that they were causing an obstruction and next morning visited their houses, though no charges were brought in the end.

In May 1960 the Association joined with other Irish organisations in Manchester in protesting when a Mr McMillans, Park Superintendent, banned Gaelic games from Manchester parks on the grounds that they were “not a recognised game,” even though hurling had been played in Platt Fields for nearly forty years. Manchester Corporation backed down and agreed that Gaelic games could be played once more after a form had been filled in.

The Manchester branch attempted to stir public interest in what was happening in Northern Ireland by organising a protest march against the continued imposition of internment by the Stormont government. This took place on Sunday 18th September 1960 when about a thousand people walked from Platt Fields to All Saints led by the Kerry pipe band and Kathleen O’Reilly’s girl dancers clad in Irish national costume. Some unions sent banners and messages of support were received from a number of local MPs, including Frank Allaun and Konni Zilliacus.

In November 1963 the branch made a significant contribution to the history of the Irish in Manchester when they published a pamphlet entitled The Story of the Manchester Martyrs, researched and written by two members of the association Jimmy McGill and Tom Redmond. In 1966 Desmond Greaves spoke on The Epic of 1916 and What It Means For Us today at a meeting on Easter Sunday in Chorlton Town Hall.

In the summer of 1961 the Connolly Association organised a national march from London to Birmingham as a way of bringing to public attention their campaign on the Six Counties. They called for the repeal of the Special Powers Act, an enquiry into the Government of Ireland Act, an amnesty for Republican prisoners and recognition by the Stormont government of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. There were fourteen marchers (including a number from Manchester) who set off from London on 25th June carrying a banner which read “Ireland One Country”. They included Tom Redmond, Aine Redmond, Sean Redmond, Desmond Greaves and Chris Sullivan. Walking in temperatures in the mid 80s they spoke at meetings along the way and arrived in Birmingham on 2nd July when, to their great relief, it finally rained.

Planning for a second march began immediately, this time organised by the Manchester branch of the Association, which departed from Liverpool on 25th August after an address by Eric Heffer, vice-president of the Trades Council. The marchers this time were Joe Deighan, Desmond Greaves, Danny Kilcommins, Sean and Aine Redmond.

On the way into Manchester the marchers were given a police motor-cycle escort until they reached Platt Fields. After an outdoor meeting in Hulme the marchers headed north to Oldham, making a slight diversion to Moston cemetery where they intended to place a wreath on the grave of Seamus Barrett. On arrival at the gates of the cemetery they found them guarded by a large posse of police who directed them to the far side of the road. A cemetery official informed them that the grave was the property of the Gaelic League, who had not given permission for a wreath to be placed. The marchers made it clear that they would not leave without laying the wreath. The stand-off was resolved when a Brother John was summoned who said that it had already been agreed that they could lay the wreath. And so they did and departed on their way, arriving at their final destination of Nottingham on 3rd September.

The third and most ambitious of the Connolly Association marches took place in the spring of 1962. This time the route was Liverpool to London, a distance of some 250 miles. The march left Liverpool on 30th March arriving in Manchester the following day where there was a public meeting at Chorlton Town Hall at which Tony Coughlan, Desmond Greaves, Sean Redmond and Joe Deighan spoke. Attempts to hold a factory-gate meeting the next day were defeated by the weather so two marchers went the offices of the Guardian on Cross Street to hand in some information about Northern Ireland, none of which was published. When they arrived in Macclesfield they found the town in uproar over rents and the town hall being barricaded for the second night running. The march arrived in London in mid April.

Looking back nearly 30 years later Tony Coughlan reflected that the marches

“were modest enough affairs, a couple of dozen Irish men and women giving up part of their annual holidays to try to show what the British government were permitting Brookeborough and co to get up to in the Six Counties. Even though they were met with indifference and ridicule rather than brickbats, these can truthfully be said to have been the first Irish civil rights marches.”

Article by Michael Herbert

The Manchester Martyrs

The Manchester Martyrs were three innocent Irishmen hanged in public outside the New Bailey prison in Salford on 23 November 1867. They had been convicted of murdering a police sergeant, killed in the course of a successful raid on Hyde Road, Manchester to free two leading Fenians.

The story of the Manchester Martyrs begins with the founding of the Fenian movement, which encompassed two separate but deeply entwined organisations; the Fenian Brotherhood – founded in New York on 17th March 1858 by John O’Mahon; and the Irish Republican Brotherhood – founded in Dublin by James Stephens, Thomas Luby and others who had taken part in the 1848 Rising.

The Fenians took their name from the Fianna, ancient warriors of Irish myth and legend, and their aim was the establishment of an independent Irish Republic, free from British rule, to be established by an armed uprising. The Fenian Brotherhood was a mass movement which men joined by oaths pledging allegiance to the future Irish Republic, while the IRB was a select and secret organisation which survived until 1922 when it was destroyed by the Irish Civil War.

The Fenians’ bedrock of support was in the United States, where hundreds of thousands of Irish people had emigrated in the wake of the Famine, and where in addition many Irish men served in the Union (and a few in the Confederate) armies of the American Civil War – often in Irish regiments – giving those who survived the bloody conflict valuable military experience. In 1866, for instance, the Fenians made a number of raids across the border into Canada.. They also built up their organisation in Ireland and in Britain. The Royal Irish Constabulary had several detectives permanently based in Lancashire in order to monitor Fenian activities, which they did principally through the traditional device of recruiting informers. RIC detective McHale, based in Liverpool, supported the view that the Fenians had a wide base in England.

“I find the great majority of Irish labourers in this town, London, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds and Newcastle, as well as those residing in towns of less note through this country, if not actually enrolled members of the brotherhood, are strongly impressed with the spirit of Fenianism, and there is another class of Irish resident in this country, who are in comfortable and easy circumstances…and who have the strongest sympathy with the movement & altho’ not enrolled members would, I am quite certain, give active cooperation if it so happened that there was a rising, or any attempt at rebellion in Ireland. There also numerous young Irishmen…who are Fenians. Many of them joined volunteer corps in order to acquire a knowledge of drill and military movements, for the express purpose of using in the Fenian cause…..”

Some arms shipments were made through Liverpool and by 1865 everything seemed in place for a successful rising in Ireland. Tens of thousands had taken the Fenian oath while Irish regiments in the British army had been infiltrated. At this critical juncture the Fenian leadership hesitated and delayed whilst the British government was alerted to the danger and struck first in September 1865, arresting a number of the most prominent leaders in Ireland, such as O’Leary, Luby and O’Donovan Rossa. They all received long sentences. Early in 1866 the government finally realised the extent of Fenian subversion in the army and rushed through a suspension of Habeas Corpus in one day on 17th February, enabling them to arrest thousands and imprison them without trial. The army court-martialled many soldiers, transporting some to Australia in the last convict shipment ever sent there, reaching Western Australia in 1868. Fenian organisation was fatally weakened and by the time the rising finally took place on 5th March 1867 it was easily defeated, despite some initial successes.

After the failure of the rising the Fenians sent two leading figures in the movement to Britain to rally and reorganise their followers . One was Colonel Thomas Kelly from Galway, who had replaced James Stephens as head of the IRB. Kelly had served in an Ohio regiment during the American Civil War, and had been responsible for rescuing Stephens from Richmond Jail, Dublin in November 1865. The other was Captain Timothy Deasy from Clonakilty, County Cork, who had also served in the American Civil War

Both men were arrested in Manchester on 11th September. This was a major coup for the authorities but Edward O’Meagher Condon, another Irish-American civil war veteran who was in charge of re-organising the Fenians in the north of England, immediately set plans in motion to free the two men, procuring arms from Birmingham and organising a party of men to effect a rescue. The two men were being held at Bellevue gaol on Hyde Road and conveyed to and from court in a horse-drawn police-van.

On 18th September Condon’s raiding party attacked the van on its way out of Manchester as it neared a railway bridge on Hyde Road, shooting the off-horse and sending the police escort packing. Then they began to break open the van in the course of which a man named Peter Rice accidentally shot dead Charles Brett, the policeman inside the van. The raiders got Kelly and Deasy out of the van and, despite strenuous efforts by the authorities to recapture them, the Fenian movement successfully smuggled them back to the United States.

The Manchester police arrested some of the rescuers at the scene and dragged in dozens of other Irishmen in the following days as the constabulary ransacked the Irish quarters, enraged by the death of their colleague. The government was equally dismayed. Home Secretary Gathorne-Hardy wrote in his diary, “This at Manchester! What are we coming to…. The Times is as the public will be ready for strong measures. England will never endure that such an event should happen unpunished.” The legal hearings in Manchester began on 27th September. Amongst the lawyers defending the Irishmen was William Prowting Roberts, who lived in Pendleton and had been an active Chartist in the 1840s, when he had even been imprisoned for a time. Roberts had been one of the speakers at the Free Trade Hall meeting on St. Patrick’s Day, 1848.

Twenty eight Irishmen appeared before the stipendiary magistrate and the number eventually rose to fifty. The court was ringed by troops, some of whom actually sat next to the magistrate on the bench. All the prisoners were in shackles and the magistrate refused to order their removal, despite protests from the lawyers. Roberts did his best, gaining the release of some prisoners, but the authorities merely filled the gaps in the ranks with newly arrested men. He was also heckled from the court gallery, which was filled with Manchester’s well-to-do come to watch the spectacle. “How dreadful it is to have to address such a spirit that reigns against these men”, he told the court, “ it paralyses the tongue”. The intimidation even continued outside the court. One evening a mob turned up outside Roberts’ hotel and he had to escape by the back entrance. The Times even devoted an editorial to attacking him, “……the prejudice which Mr. Roberts deprecates is not, we suspect, local as much as national, being no other than a prejudice against organised conspiracies for the defiance of the law and the murder of its authorised agents”. Ernest Jones was another barrister for the men. He had qualified as barrister in 1844 and then joined the Chartist movement, becoming editor of the Northern Star, and also served a term of imprisonment.

The special commission which tried the prisoners started sitting at the Assize Courts in Manchester on 28th October, presided over by Justice Blackburn with the Attorney General Sir Thomas Karslake leading for the prosection. W P Roberts and the other defence lawyers petitioned in an attempt to get the trial moved to London but this was rejected. Manchester was filled with police and troops during the five days of the proceedings. Twenty-six Irishmen were tried, with five of them being found guilty of murder, seven of riot and assault while the remainder were convicted of lesser offences.

The sentence of death on Edward O’Meagher Condon was commuted because of his American citizenship. Another condemned man Thomas Maguire, a Royal Marine home on leave who had been swept up by the police in their raids, was given a free pardon after the press reporters at the trial got together and petitioned the Home Secretary, declaring their belief in his innocence. It was plain that he had played no part in the raid or the death of the policemen, having only just come back to Manchester after ten years away. And yet many witnesses had sworn on oath that Maguire had been a participant. What reliance could now be placed on the evidence given against the other three men?

There was a vociferous campaign for clemency for the three condemned men by Irish and English radicals. On 18th November a deputation went to the Home Office to present a memorial from a meeting held at Clerkenwell Green the previous day. The Home Secretary Gathorne Hardy refused to see them so the men forced their way into the Home Office and held an impromptu “indignation” meeting before leaving just in time to avoid the police. In Manchester a number of citizens met at the Trevelyan Hotel in Corporation Street and drew up a petition which asked the queen to exercise her prerogative of mercy “…..on the ground that the British government can always afford to exercise clemency even to its worst and most misguided prisoners, although not sentenced for a political crime, but solely for the high crime or murder, may be regarded in a sense as political criminals…..” Like all others this petition was turned down. Queen Victoria wrote in a letter to Sir Stafford Northcote at this time that the Irish “are really shocking, abominable people – not like any other civilised nation.”

The campaign for clemency failed and the sentences were carried out in public on 23rd November outside the New Bailey prison on Bridge Street where Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were hanged at day break on a platform built on the walls. Below them was a large, jeering crowd and hundreds of police and the army, ready to prevent any possible rescue attempt. Few Irish attended, having been told by their priests to go to Mass and pray for the souls of the condemned.

After the execution the bodies of the three men were swiftly buried in quicklime in the prison grounds. Frederick Engels wrote to Karl Marx predicting that “yesterday morning the Tories, by the hand of Mr Calcraft, accomplished the final act of separation between England and Ireland. The only thing that the Fenians still lacked were martyrs. They have been provided by Derby and G Hardy. Only the execution of the three has made the liberation of Kelly and Deasy the heroic deed which will now be sung to every Irish babe in the cradle in Ireland, England and America”.

In Ireland tens of thousands paraded in mock funeral processions in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and many other towns, with participants and spectators dressed in mourning and wearing green ribbons and rosettes and other items. Newspapers remarked upon the large numbers of young women who marched in contingents in the parades, something new in Irish political life. Many of the women wept as they walked and in Cork an eyewitness described the women “keening” when the procession reached St Jerome’s cemetery, “the occasion of the gathering rendered this wild cry of sorrow sadly impressive and moving.” As the processions gathered momentum across the country across the country the Lord Lieutenant issued a proclamation banning all future ceremonies under the Party Processions and Party Emblems Act.

Annual commemorations of the executions became part of Nationalist political life, with marches in many Irish towns every November, often in the dramatic form of a torchlight procession.

Many years later Edward O’Meagher Condon returned to Manchester to a hero’s welcome. On 26th September 1909 he crossed the Atlantic from the United States and was received in triumph when he arrived at Exchange Station in Manchester, accompanied by the MP John Dillon and John O’Callaghan, secretary of the United Irish League of America. The party made their way to the Grand Hotel on Aytoun Street, accompanied by a large crowd and the Michael Davitt and Thomas Davis branches of the UIL in Manchester in a torchlit procession. The following day Condon visited the various scenes associated with the events of 1867 and in the evening there was a great meeting at the Free Trade Hall to welcome both him and those who had accompanied him on the visit. Condon was pictured in the papers seated alongside O’Callaghan, F L Crilly (Secretary of the United Irish League of Great Britain) and Stephen Gwynne (MP for Galway).

A veteran Manchester Fenian, Seamus Barrett, formed a Manchester Martyrs Memorial Committee at the beginning of the twentieth century which put up the monument in Moston Catholic cemetery, unveiled by James Stephens, the former Fenian leader. Thereafter an annual commemoration was held, involving a parade from Bexley Square, Salford to St. Patrick’s Church on Livesey Street, where Mass was said. Afterwards the parade, led by an Irish pipe band, would proceed to the Shamrock Hall on Rochdale Road or to Moston cemetery. In 1974 the march was cancelled, following the Birmingham pub bombings, and the memorial was extensively vandalised and defaced. In recent years it has been restored.

Article by Michael Herbert

Paddy O’Donoghue

Paddy O’Donoghue was head of the Irish Republican Army in Manchester 1919-1921, co-ordinating jail escapes and attacks on buildings. He was jailed in 1921 but freed after the treaty was signed between Britain and the Republican government in 1922.

The leader of the IRA in Manchester between 1919 and 1921, Paddy O’Donoghue, was a native of Barraduff, Killarney who ran a grocers shop on Lloyd Street, Greenheys. Before the War of Independence he was best known as the organiser of the annual Irish concert at the Free Trade Hall but he was also intimately involved in the Republican movement in Manchester. O’Donoghue was a close friend of Michael Collins, who had been his best man when Paddy married Violet Gore. Collins apparently brought him into his intelligence and arms-smuggling network in England as early as 1917.

In February 1919 O’Donoghue played a key role in the escape of Eamon De Valera from Lincoln Jail. De Valera was very anxious to get out of jail and go to the United States to present the Irish case for self-determination. A devout Catholic, he served at Mass with the prison chaplain and managed to get an impression in the wax of a candle of the master key . The design was copied onto a Christmas card by Sean Milroy and sent to Sean McGarry’s wife in Ireland but she failed realise the significance of the design. The three prisoners then wrote to Paddy O’Donoghue in Irish and he contacted Collins immediately. A key was then cut to the design and smuggled into the jail in a cake but it did not fit the lock. A further card with the key design was sent to O’Donoghue with the words “ Eocair na Saoirse” (The Key To Freedom”). O’Donoghue had another key cut in Manchester and sent it in but once again it failed to work. Collins now came to England to personally take charge of the operation.

A further key was made inside the jail and on 3rd February, by prior arrangement, three prisoners made their way to the front door of the jail where Michael Collins and his close friend Harry Boland were waiting along with Frank Kelly. Disaster seemed to have struck when Collins’ key broke as he put it in the lock. Fortunately De Valera was able to push the broken key out with his own copy and open the door. The three prisoners made their way to where O’Donoghue was waiting with transport.

Collins and Boland went to London and then back to Dublin. The others journeyed back to Manchester by way of Sheffield. Milroy and McGarry were hidden by leading Manchester IRA commander Liam MacMahon in his own house, while De Valera stayed with a local priest, Father Charles O’Mahony. The police were looking for De Valera, of course, and MacMahon was warned by Thomas Walsh, a sympathetic detective in the Manchester force, that they were getting close. On 18th February, dressed as a priest and escorted by two young Irish women, De Valera travelled back to Dublin. At the beginning of June he went to the United States.

O’Donoghue was involved in another extraordinary episode when he arranged for two young boys to be kidnapped from Barry in South Wales. They were the children of Josephine Marchmont , who worked in the Cork military barracks as a secretary to a senior British officer. She had impeccable security credentials, being the daughter of a Head Constable in the RIC, while her husband had been killed in the war. Her children, however, were in the custody of her mother-in-law in Wales.

Michael Collins learned of this and offered Josephine a deal in which he would arrange for the children to be brought back to Ireland if she would pass information to the IRA. She agreed and with the assistance of Paddy O’Donoghue the two boys were seized and brought to Manchester, where they stayed in his house and were then taken to Cork to be reunited with their mother. Josephine kept her side of the bargain and her information was invaluable to the IRA. Her deception was apparently never uncovered by the British authorities.

In April 1919 a number of IRA prisoners were transferred to Strangeways from Belfast after disturbances there over the issue of political status. Their leader was Austin Stack, Sinn Fein MP for West Kerry, who had commanded the Kerry brigade during the Easter Rising and had been sentenced to death, though this had been commuted to life imprisonment. Also in the prison in Manchester was Piaras Beaslai, Sinn Fein MP for East Kerry.

In August Fionan Lynch, Sinn Fein MP for Kerry South, was released from Strangeways and made contact with Paddy O’Donoghue and Liam MacMahon, who set in motion an escape plan. Violet O’Donoghue arranged for messages and maps to be sent into the prison baked in cakes or buried in butter and jam. Collins followed the development of the plans closely and wrote to Beaslai several times using a code. Rory O’Connor was sent over to examine the plans, followed soon after by Collins himself who actually visited Stack in Strangeways, using a false name and unrecognized.

The escape took place on Saturday 25th October. A dummy pistol already been smuggled into the prison in butter while the prisoners had got hold of handcuffs from a sympathetic Irish policeman in Manchester. They overcame the prison warder on duty, gagging him and placing him in a cell, and then rushed into the prison yard where a rope with a weight was thrown over and, after some mishaps, came within their grasp. The prisoners hauled on the rope, bringing over a rope-ladder, and each in turn climbed up it and over the wall.

Outside the prison some twenty men from Manchester, including Paddy O’Donoghue, held up the street and preventing anyone from passing the prison. Beaslai was taken by a young men named George Lodge in a taxi and then by tram to his house in a Manchester suburb while others made their escape on bicycles. After a week Collins visited Stack and Beaslai and three days later Liam MacMahon and George Lodge escorted them to Liverpool from where they were smuggled home in a steamer to be met by Joe O’Reilly, Collins’ right hand man, at the quayside. The other escapees were Paddy McCarthy (later killed in action), Sean Doran, DP Walsh, and Con Connolly.

According to the report of the escape in the Manchester Guardian the IRA men left behind a letter exonerating the warder from any blame. Sean Doran was later recaptured in Ireland and brought back to Manchester where he was sentenced on 18th July 1921 to two months imprisonment for escaping, to run concurrent with the unexpired sentence of 12 months. Piaras Beaslai played a small but important part in Irish history when on 14th January 1922 he moved the motion to approve the Treaty at a meeting of members of the Southern Irish Parliament, convened by Arthur Griffith as chair of the Irish delegation to London.

The most spectacular series of IRA operations in Manchester took place on 2nd April 1921 when between 6am and 7am a number of Volunteers tried to set fire to offices, hotels and cafes in the city centre. Later that same evening a large number of armed police raided the Irish Club on Erskine Street, Hulme and shot dead Sean Morgan, a member of the IRA. The police arrested a large number of men at the Irish Club and also picked up others over the weekend, including Paddy O’Donoghue (a memorial to Sean Morgan was unveiled in Moston cemetery on the ninth anniversary of his death in 1930.)

The arrested men appeared in court on 4th April with the Chief Constable of Manchester present, accompanied by many officers. The prosecution produced dozens of revolvers and cans of petrol as evidence, claiming that the Irish Club was an arsenal or base of operations from which outrages in Manchester had been planned and carried out.

The twenty-one accused appeared in court again on 26th April before the stipendiary magistrate Edgar Brierley. There was tight security with every entrance to the court guarded by police and even the press having to show cards before they were admitted. A number of men, including Paddy O’Donoghue, were charged with the attempted murder of police officers and there were numerous other charges, including one of “making war against the King”. The police prosecutor claimed that one of the defendants, Daniel McNicholl, had admitted that there were 60 men in the IRA in Manchester, formed into three companies, one based at Albion Street and two at Erskine Street. In a confession to the Chief Constable, McNicholl had also alleged that O’Donoghue held high rank in the IRA and had shot a police officer.

The trial of those charged with treason-felony began on 7th July at the Manchester Assizes before Justice Rigby Swift with the prosecution led by the Attorney General himself, Sir Gordon Hewart. Nineteen men were now charged with treason felony, as well as with arson and shooting with intent to murder. The Attorney General alleged that Paddy O’Donoghue had hired a garage at 67 Upper Chorlton Road, Whalley Range on 13th November of the year before, which had been used to store explosives and firearms. On 25th May the police had arrested a number of men when they came to the garage to retrieve materials, presumably believing that the coast would be clear as some weeks had passed since the arrests of their colleagues. He also alleged that O’Donoghue had shot Constable Boucher at Bridgewater House in the chest and arm.

There was a dramatic incident in court on Monday 11th July. Over the weekend the Irish Republican government and the British government had finally concluded a truce in the armed conflict, which would come into force at noon. At that precise moment one of the defendants Charles Harding gave an order in Gaelic and the rest of the prisoners sprang to their feet and stood to attention for a moment, resuming their seats after another instruction from Harding. That same day, amidst scorching weather, Eamonn De Valera arrived in London to begin talks with the British Government and hundreds of Irish people greeted him at Euston railway station.

On 13th July O’Donoghue made a statement from the dock in which he pleaded guilty to the charge with respect to the garage admitting that the arms had been paid for by him as an officer in the IRA. “It is my firm belief that had the IRA been better equipped negotiations for the settlement now in progress would have long since been held”. He denied however having anything to do with shooting policemen. “I have always fully realised that I was committing an offence against the constitution of this country in smuggling arms to Ireland but at the same time I felt I was morally bound to help my country to regain its freedom”. Sean Wickham also made a speech from the dock, adding that he was an officer in the IRA. Addressing the court he contended that the signing of the truce was virtually a recognition of the claim of the accused to be treated as prisoners of war and he also rejected the Treason Felony Act.

The Manchester trial was raised in the House of Commons by Captain Redmond, Irish Nationalist MP for Waterford, who asked Lloyd George whether the Crown would discontinue the charges of conspiracy against certain Irishmen now being held at Manchester Assizes. In his reply Lloyd George claimed that they had pleaded guilty (which was a lie) and were entitled to a verdict.

Captain Redmond persisted, asking a logical question. “How can the government reconcile their actions in taking proceedings against certain Irishmen in England for conspiring with whom the government themselves are at present entering upon open negotiations during a period of truce?” Lloyd George dodged the question, merely repeating his previous answer.

Only two men – Nicholas Keogh and Daniel Mullen – were acquitted by the jury. The rest were found guilty and sentenced to varying lengths of prison.

The Treaty was finally signed in the early hours of 6th December 1921 but fell well short of the independent Republic the Irish had already proclaimed, conceding only Dominion status to twenty six counties of Ireland within the British Empire under the title of the Irish Free State and confirming the partition of Ireland for six out of nine counties of Ulster under the political and military domination of the Unionist Party.

After a lengthy and sometimes bitter debate Dail Eireann approved the Treaty on 7th January 1922 with 64 votes in favour and 57 against. Sinn Fein had already effectively split into two camps with De Valera opposing the Treaty and Collins and Griffith supporting it.

Republican prisoners in jails in Ireland had been let out as soon as the Treaty was signed, as had those imprisoned in Britain for offences committed in Ireland. Those convicted of offences committed in Britain still remained in jail, however, and on 11th February the Irish Self Determination League organised a demonstration in Trafalgar Square to press for their release. Five columns of Irish people carrying tricolours marched in from different parts of London. and were addressed by Art O’Brien and Alderman John Scurr. There was an unexpected third speaker – Shaun Wickham from Manchester – released that morning from Wandsworth Prison. Still dressed in his prison clothes of a cheap grey coat and striped trousers, he shivered in the February cold. The Manchester Guardian wondered why his friends had not bought him a warm coat.

Wickham had been freed because the previous day the British and Irish governments had simultaneously issued statements of amnesty. Collins’ statement granted amnesty to the British aimed forces and civil service “in respect of all acts committed in the course of the recent hostilities”, while the British statement (issued by the Colonial Office and not the Home Office) granted the immediate release of prisoners now in custody “for offences committed prior to the treaty in Great Britain from Irish political motives”.

Back in Manchester prisoners were also released from Strangeways and the authorities told the Evening Chronicle that all the Irishmen imprisoned there for political offences had now been released. So unexpected was their release that there was no welcoming crowd. The following day, however, thousands marched to London Road station to greet ex-prisoners, although they actually arrived at different stations. Several men eventually did make their way to the station and were given a tumultuous welcome and, Irish band playing, escorted to Central Station. Some sixty other prisoners were released and most went to London.

Paddy O’Donoghue left England for Ireland and in his later years managed a greyhound stadium.

Article by Michael Herbert. Michael is author of The Wearing of the Green: A Political History of the Irish in Manchester (2000), copies of which can be bought by contacting Michael directly at mossley [at] phonecoop.coop.