This exhibition highlights books from our collection related to Ireland and the Irish. Its first half features works commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the partition of Ireland, when it became the Irish Free State under the 1922 Anglo-Irish Treaty. Six counties under Unionist control opted out, and the 1937 Irish constitution renamed 'Southern Ireland' to 'Ireland'. The second half focuses on the Irish diaspora in Leeds, exploring what brought Irish immigrants to our city and their effect on it.
Home Rule
The Act of Union united Great Britain and Ireland in 1800. The Home Rule movement was founded in 1870 by Isaac Butt to repeal this act and give Ireland a legislature for domestic affairs. The movement grew under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish Nationalist politician. The movement grew when Parnell aligned his party with the Liberals and Prime Minister Gladstone introduced the Government of Ireland bill in 1886. Home Rule was favoured by the Catholic, Nationalist South but opposed by many in the Protestant, Unionist North. The bill was defeated twice before eventually being passed in 1914. Then, however, it was suspended because of the outbreak of WW1.
Easter Rising
On Easter Monday in 1916, an armed insurrection took place in Dublin against the British Government's rule. The focus was Dublin’s General Post Office and it was led by Patrick Pearse, of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and James Connolly of the Citizen Army. They seized the GPO and declared the establishment of an Irish Republic with Pearse as president. In response, the British Army sent in thousands of reinforcements, artilery, and a gunboat. After 6 days and 260 civilian deaths (many caught in British artilery fire), the British Army suppressed the uprising. Pearse and 15 other rebels were executed, 3500 were arrested, and martial law was imposed. The violence with which the Rising was responded to, and the subsequent murder inquireries leveled against some British troops, contributed to the later rise and success of republican political movements.
Post-Rising Timeline:
1916, Battle of the Somme: Many of those that died were from the 36th Ulster Division made up of members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, formed to prevent Home Rule.
1917: Prime Minister Lloyd George calls for an Irish Convention to find solutions acceptable to all.
1918: World War I ends. Irish Nationalist Constance, Countess of Markiewicz who fought in the Easter Rising, became the first woman to be elected to the British parliament as a Sinn Féin member - though she didn’t take her seat in protest.
1919: The Long Committee led by Walter Long is tasked with the job of deciding how to implement Home Rule.
1920: The Government of Ireland Bill is passed by the British government, giving separate parliaments to North and South Ireland. The North accepted but the South did not, which led to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921
On the 5th December, 1921, negotiations took place. The British side included Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. On the Irish side were Arthur Griffith, Robert Barton, Eamonn Duggan, Gavan Duffy and Michael Collins. Michael Collins was a leading member of Sinn Féin and had been imprisoned for his part in the Easter Rising. It isn’t known why Eamon De Valera refused to go to London to participate, though some thought he didn’t want to be blamed if the talks were unsuccessful. The treaty would allow the creation of an independent Irish Free State within the British Empire, keeping King George V as head of state. The parliament of Northern Ireland presented an address to the King asking permission to opt out of the Free State and remain part of the UK. The Free State was therefore only 26 counties. While Collins believed the Treaty would offer a route towards full independence and the re-unification of Ireland, its opponents (led by De Valera) wanted a 32-county independent republic. On the 19th of December, 1921, the Treaty was approved by the British House of Commons and the House of Lords. Debate in the Dáil lasted 10 days, but the Treaty was eventually passed by 64 votes to 57. Eamon De Valera rejected the terms of the Treaty and in 1926 founded Fianna Fáil. During the Civil war which ensued, Michael Collins was shot by Republicans who opposed the Treaty. In December 1922, The Irish Free State was established.
What Happened Next?
Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Féin, headed the new provisional government and on his death was succeeded by W.T. Cosgrave. Cosgrave was president until 1932, and was one of the four founders of Fine Gael which remains the third-largest political party in Irish government. Led by De Valera the Republican Party united with Labour and the independent members to secure a majority in the Dáil, with De Valera as president. Under his ministry the oath of allegiance was abolished and in 1937 a new constitution renamed the Irish Free State 'Eire'.
What brought the Irish to Leeds?
Irish people had been settling in Britain for many years, but this intensified during the Industrial Revolution as more came looking for work. Some arrived as navvies (construction/excavation labourers) to work on the construction of the Leeds to Liverpool Canal and railways. Many Irish immigrants were handloom weavers and arrived in Leeds to join the expanding textile industry. By the 1830s, two-thirds of the 900 weavers in Leeds were Irish. Then, the Great Hunger (Irish Potato Famine) caused an exodus from Ireland. Between 1841 and 1861, the Irish-born population in Leeds had doubled from 5, 027 to 10,333. As the textile industry began to decline, however, so did Irish immigration into Leeds - until the 1930s when it picked up again, peaking in in the 1950s. The construction of the M1 and M62 motorways in the 1970s provided work once again for Irish labourers. Overall, Leeds has seen two centuries of Irish settlement. The benefits of this can be seen in their contributions to the economic, social cultural and religious fabric of our city.
'Little Ireland' in Leeds
During the inital influx of Irish immigrants during the Industrial Revolution, the Irish population were concentrated in two districts: The Bank and Kirkgate. Together, they formed ‘Little Ireland’. The houses were back-to-backs in streets that were seldom cleaned by day or lit by night, with no gardens and poor drainage and sanitation. An 1839 report stated that for a hundred dwellings inhabited by over 450 people, there were only two privies. Added to this was the smoke emanating from the mills and factories. In an 1842 report that reveals the extent of both the poverty and discrimination the Irish immigrants experienced, Leeds physician Robert Baker stated:
‘In the houses of the Irish poor.. there is a general state of desolation and misery. Whether it is the improvidence of the Irish character, or that their natural habits are filthy, or both, or whether there exists the real destitution which is apparent in their dwellings, I know not ; but in the there is more penury, and starvation, and dirt, than in any class of people I have ever seen’.
By 1861, 85% of the population of Harehills and Richmond Hill were Irish - a number reflected into the 1950s and '60s. Gradually, this population spread into Moortown, Roundhill, Rothwell, and Beeston. To this day, an estimated 50,000 Leeds citizens can trace an Irish connection in their family histories.
The Irish and Religion
The influx of Irish Catholics during theearly 1800s also brought a growing demand for more Catholic churches. St. Patrick’s Chapel, which had been erected in 1831 on York Road, was now proving to be inadequate. In 1851, a group of Catholics from The Bank area formed a thriving mission to raise money for a new church. In 1857, Mount St. Mary’s Church (now unused) was completed. It became known as the Famine Church because many of the families who had suffered the effects of starvation after the Potato Famine found a home in this new parish. The continued expansion of the Irish Catholic population then led to the construction of 9 more churches throughout Leeds, many still present today.
Irish Community in Leeds
By the 1880s, a number of Irish clubs had already been established, including an Irish National Club and an Irish National League Club. The influx of Irish people also meant there was great support for Home Rule in Leeds and an Irish Home Rule Association was set up in Kirkgate. In 1885, realizing the importance of the Irish vote, the head of the Home Rule Party (Charles Stewart Parnell) urged all mainland Irishmen to vote against Gladstone’s Liberals. In the East Leeds constituency the result was the election of the Conservative candidate, R. Dawson. After losing the election, Gladstone became a supporter of Home Rule. Parnell allied his party with the Liberals and the East Leeds seat, helped by the Irish vote, was won by the Liberal candidate, J.L. Gane. The Bank and 'Little Ireland' remained the centre of the community for much of the latter 19th and early 20th Centuries, until extensive slum clearences in the 1930s dispersed the community. Revitalised by the upsurge of emigration in the 1940s and '50s, the community thrived in the inner-city areas and by 1971 there were more Irish people in Leeds by square kilometer than there was in County Mayo, Ireland. There is still a strong and proud Irish diaspora in Leeds, brought together by organisations like the Irish Arts Foundation (based in Chapel Allerton) and the Untold Stories project.
With thanks to ...
Exhibition: Jane Riley, Helen Holdsworth, and Niimi Day-Gough
Digital: Niimi Day-Gough and Molly Magrath
Bibliography:
Images: Townsend, Charles, 'The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independance, 1918-1923', London: Allen Lane, 2013. McGarry, Fearghal, 'The Rising - Ireland: Easter 1916', Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2010, MacKay, James, 'Michael Collins: A Life', Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1996, McGowan, Brendan, 'Taking the boat: The Irish in Leeds, 1931-81', Mayo: Brendan McGowan, 2009, Rogers, Ian A., 'The Bank', Leeds: CoMMaG, 1973, Corinne Silva, 'Róisín Bán: The Irish Diaspora in Leeds', Leeds: Leeds Irish Health & Homes, 2006.
Information: O'Malley, Chris, 'Punching Above Its Weight' (2008), Leeds Museums & Galleries, 'Leeds Migration Stories' (2018), Untold Stories, 'The Irish in Leeds' (2017).