View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE

provided by Northumbria Research Link

Citation: Shannon, Stephen (2013) Irish Nationalist Organisations in the North East of , 1890 – 1925. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

This version was downloaded from Northumbria Research Link: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/16050/

Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html Irish Nationalist Organisations in the North East of England, 1890 – 1925

Stephen Desmond Shannon

PhD Thesis

2013

Irish Nationalist Organisations in the North East of England, 1890 – 1925

Stephen Desmond Shannon

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Research undertaken in the School of History

June 2013

Abstract

This thesis is the first major study of organised in the North East of

England, set against the wider context of events in Britain and , from the division that followed Parnell’s fall in 1890 until shortly after the foundation of the

Irish Free State and the Irish Civil War. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of the largest ethnic group in Britain before the Second

World War – the Irish. It is also an important regional study, revealing the vitality and diversity of the North East’s expression of Irish nationalism that was probably not equalled anywhere else in England and Wales, other than in . That vitality was manifested in the raising of the Tyneside Irish Brigade for the British Army in

1914. The Tyneside Irish was the crowning achievement of the pre-1918 Irish nationalist organisations in the North East, and arguably in Britain, demonstrating the organisations’ commitment both to and to the region, where so many

Irish migrants had settled. Irish nationalism’s diversity in the North East was embodied in the Irish Labour Party, which, alone in England, took root on Tyneside, and sought to blend class and ethnic issues at a time of national crisis in Ireland. This organisation casts light on the complex issue of the transference of working-class

Irish Catholic allegiance from nationalism to the labour movement in Britain, and, therefore, in the assimilation of that community into the wider British community.

Though none of these nationalist organisations has left any extensive archive, this thesis utilises Irish and English manuscript sources, and a wide array of Catholic, labour, and regional newspapers, to demonstrate that these organisations were not only an important part of the history of the Irish in the North East, but also of the

North East itself. Contents

List of Tables ii

Abbreviations iii

Acknowledgements iv

Declaration v

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 ‘Durham was painted green’: Irish Nationalist Organisations

in