Southern Irish Loyalism in Context

Framing the overlapping networks of unionism, conservatism and loyalism in pre-revolutionary Ireland is a challenge. This becomes more acute the closer one gets to the twentieth century and the disappearance of political power from the unionist class. ‘Hard’ power became replaced with ‘soft’ power (much to the chagrin of diverse characters such as Lord Barrymore and DP Moran). The nostalgia of prudent management and benevolent dispersal of money and services became more acute as the acien regime was swept from their bastions of power following the passage of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. In the sphere of the press, conservatism, loyalism and unionism were quite obviously a minority taste, and only served by a few daily newspapers. The majority of these, however, only spoke to the commercial unionists and loyalists. Few newspapers took a stance in favour of nostalgic prudence, and loyalty to the government of the day. One such (as I will argue in this paper) was the eccentric Skibbereen Eagle. The Eagle was first and foremost an outlet for the foibles and viewpoints of its founder, Fred Potter. Conservative viewpoints and loyalist outlooks were common, even more so after 1898 and during the first turbulent years of the twentieth century. Yet even after Potter’s death in 1907 the Eagle (under Catholic nationalist ownership) continued to transmit a modified version its founders’ outlook. This paper will examine the Eagle’s worldview through its commentary on issues central to the shrinking loyalist population of its hinterland. It will argue that the paper deserves to be studied as the agent of a different kind of loyalism than that preached by its heavyweight counterpart, the Cork Constitution. John O’Donovan works part-time at University College Cork, and holds a BA and MA in History from the university. He has published a number of articles and book chapters, including “The All-for-Ireland League and the Home Rule Debate, 1910-1914 (G. Doherty (ed.): The Home Rule Crisis 1910-1914 (Cork Studies in the Irish Revolution (Cork, 2014)) and “The United Irish League in Cork 1898-1918: Resistance and Counter-Resistance”, Studi Irelandesi: a Journal of Irish Studies 4 (2017). His PhD Thesis, which he hopes to commence in autumn 2017, will focus on the All-for-Ireland League in a number of Irish and international contexts.

From the 1860s nationalists gradually came to dominate Dublin Corporation. In 1898 new legislation dramatically expanded the municipal franchise and the arrival of Labour and Sinn Féin in the early twentieth century radicalized city politics. Throughout this period, however, a small but solid bloc of unionists were consistently returned to City Hall. Meanwhile, in Dublin’s suburbs unionist enjoyed secure majorities, administering the daily affairs of Rathmines and Pembroke Urban District Councils. How did this long-established, resilient and influential electorate fare as Home Rule loomed and revolution erupted? Local government played a crucial, and intimate, role in the lives of the electorate - it really mattered who ran your local council. Slums, poor drainage, high taxes and allegations of municipal waste and inefficiency plagued Dublin Corporation. Unionists highlighted these nationalist failings in City Hall to show the likely outcome of Home Rule. Suburban life, in contrast, ran far more smoothly thanks to unionist councillors being ‘better men of business’, or so the argument went. But how accurate was this depiction of life on either side of the municipal boundary? Who were these unionist men of business? Was a typical unionist councillor just like his nationalist, Labour or Sinn Féin opponent? How did the emergence of women as municipal voters and candidates affect the selection or activity of Dublin’s unionist councillors? As a permanent minority, what local alliances did they seek? What compromises did they make? This paper will look at unionist responses to nationalist dominance in the Dublin region in the first two decades of the twentieth century. By examining their electoral performances in the city and suburbs, and identifying their political concerns and strategies, it will attempt to measure how successful they were in pursuing their goals. And, following the revolutionary events of 1916 – 1923, it will suggest where this resilient electorate, and their municipal activism, may have ended up. Dr Ciarán Wallace completed his PhD on Local politics and government in Dublin city and suburbs 1899-1914 in 2010 at Trinity College, Dublin. His research interests include civil society, Irish urban history and its placement in a wider United Kingdom framework. He has taught on British and Irish history, Irish studies, Culture & Heritage studies and historiography. He is currently an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow working on a monograph Divided City: Dublin and its unionist townships 1899-1916.

Most of the large manufacturing firms in the Irish Free State in 1922 had been established by Protestant unionist families and remained under Protestant ownership and management. These included Guinness, Jacobs, Goodbody’s (jute), the Cleeve Brothers’ Condensed Milk Company of Ireland, Goulding’s (fertiliser), Smyth & Co. (hosiery), Denny’s (bacon), the Limerick Clothing Co., and a number of linen manufacturers. These firms were export-oriented and fully integrated into the British and colonial markets. The large Catholic/nationalist-owned firms of the time, by contrast – in sectors such as clothing, bread, printing and agricultural implements – were largely oriented towards the domestic market. The political orientation and economic interests of Protestant manufacturers (quite apart from loss of privilege and fear of potential religious discrimination under the new dispensation) were thus aligned, since independence and partition would be particularly detrimental to export-oriented firms. The moderate protectionism of the 1920s and the much more extensive protectionism of the 1930s would also have been damaging to export-oriented firms. The paper documents the sale of a number of Protestant-owned businesses to British “tariff-jumping” firms that established in the Free State to avoid the newly erected protectionist barriers. It has been suggested that protectionism also resulted in "positive discrimination in favour of Catholic firms", as import substitution favoured newly established Catholic manufacturing businesses. The paper analyses the differential experiences of the large Protestant and Catholic-owned firms over the first two decades of independence. The paper therefore aims: to identify the different degrees of internationalisation of the leading Protestant/unionist and Catholic/nationalist manufacturers of the immediate pre-independence era, to assess the extent to which these divergent economic interests were explicitly recognised in political discourse, to chart the exit of Protestant-owned manufacturing businesses over the 1920s and 1930s, and to chart the relative growth of the leading Protestant and Catholic-owned manufacturing businesses over these decades. Frank Barry is Professor of International Business and Economic Development at Trinity College Dublin. His main work in recent years has been on the transition from protectionism to outward orientation in the 1950s and beyond. He is currently working on a book on Manufacturing Firms and Manufacturing Interests in the Irish Free State Area, 1922-1948.

In this paper the experiences of southern protestants during the period 1919-23 will be charted through eye witness accounts in the form of speeches from annual synods of the Church of Ireland, a source which has hitherto been ignored. Members of the Church of Ireland comprised the largest section of the protestant population in the 26 counties which became the Irish Free State. In 1911 members numbered just under 250,000, nearly 8 per cent of the population, but in 1926 they numbered 164,000, a decline of 34 per cent. Throughout these turbulent years, a general synod of church members continued to meet in Dublin each May, after which local synods were held in various locations covering the whole country. Consisting of elected lay and clerical members, the synods were concerned primarily with general church matters, but during this time contemporary political matters intruded. These events began with a speech by the bishop, who acted as president, and it is their speeches which were recorded in the press, especially the Irish Times. For this study all available speeches have been copied and then studied and analysed. As both leaders and observers of their dioceses, the bishops in these speeches reflected many of the concerns and anxieties of their community. Through the testimonies of these key witnesses we can gain a valuable insight into the experiences of southern protestants during the revolutionary period. Afterwards, histories of the Church of Ireland, such as that edited by W.A. Phillips, preferred to a draw a veil of silence over what happened at this time. These contemporary personal accounts allow us to get a better understanding of what occurred. Brian M. Walker is Professor Emeritus of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He is an historian and political scientist. His research and writing interests cover a wide range of areas. Recently he was a consultant editor of the 400 page Illustrated history of the Church of Ireland, with its information on every parish. His History of St George’s Church Belfast was published last year. His volume, A political history of the two Irelands: from partition to peace, appeared in 2012. New research is underway into the experiences of southern protestants, 1919-23.

Throughout the course of the Second World War the position of the southern Irish Protestant community was decidedly pro-British. Nevertheless, the ideological stance of members of the remnant Irish unionist faction within the Irish state was tempered by a general respect for the policy of neutrality initiated by Eamon de Valera’s government in 1939. In addition, notable champions of the Irish unionist interest registered strong objections against the antagonism of the Stormont government towards neutral Eire. They defended the right of southern Ireland to remain neutral and criticized Belfast for stirring up sectarian animosity. They also adverted to the fact that tens of thousands of southern Irish volunteers had joined the British forces. At the fore of the Irish contingent that served in the British forces were southern Irish Protestant volunteers. The majority were following a family military tradition of service that, for some, stretched back for centuries. Their motives for joining verify a presumption of pro-British affiliation. However, Irish Protestant service personnel in the British forces proudly retained their identity; some even assumed the popular wartime nickname of ‘Paddy’. Irish Protestant officers who served in Irish regiments of the British army, often following in the footsteps of fathers and grandfathers, would lead and encouraged distinctive Irish regimental traditions and encouraged cultural activities to reinforce the Irish character of these units. Many Irish Protestant veterans later recalled the various factors which had led them to serve. Some would regard it merely as ‘the done thing’ within their community while others rationalized it as a duty owed to their family. This paper shall explore the attitudes of the Irish Protestant community in neutral Ireland during the war and will delve into the motivations of southern Protestants who volunteered for the British forces. In so doing, it will unveil the impact of the First World War and the Irish Revolution upon their families. Lastly, with the aid of oral history testimonies, it will evaluate their wartime experiences and their opinions on Irish neutrality and perceptions of their place within the pre-war Irish state. Dr. Joseph Quinn completed his PhD thesis in the Center for Contemporary Irish History at TCD, graduating in June 2016. The object of his research was a study of the Irish volunteers serving in the British forces during the Second World War, but he now focuses more broadly on the connection between migration and military recruitment, specifically regarding the role of Irish personnel in the armed forces of Allied nations throughout the world wars. He is a contributor to The Irish Times and The Revolution Papers. He currently assists the Somme Association and Museum with an ongoing all-island oral history project, and has worked as a research assistant on two documentary productions. He works as an Academic Tutor at the School of History in University College Dublin.

Ireland provided a rich recruitment ground for the British overseas services in the latter half of the long nineteenth century with the result that, by 1919, Irish administrators, doctors, lawyers, policemen, educationalists, and engineers were to be found working in every corner of the colonial empire. Recent research has exploded the notion that Irish nationalism and British imperialism were, by their definitions, dichotomous. Nonetheless, the great majority of Irish colonial servants recruited during this period were drawn from what the Colonial Office termed Ireland’s ‘loyalist class' – Protestants and so-called ‘Castle Catholics’ who supported the constitutional status quo. This paper, which takes as its subject loyalists recruited into the British colonial services during the Irish Revolution and its aftermath, has a twofold focus. First, it assesses the impact of the Irish Revolution on their decisions to enlist, arguing that British imperial service provided a convenient route out of Ireland for loyalists unwilling or unable to remake their lives under the new dispensation in Dublin. Secondly, it scrutinizes these recruits’ loyalist credentials, assessing the extent to which they were born loyalists, became loyalists by conviction, or had loyalty thrust upon them through circumstance. As part of these processes, the paper examines the targeting by Irish Republican elements during the revolutionary period of both Irish colonial officials on home leave, and Irish Crown servants themselves, and draws comparisons between the fates of Irish loyalists and colonial loyalist communities (for example, those in Cyprus, Palestine, and Kenya) in their post-independence periods. Dr. Seán Gannon, IRC Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin.

On 28th Sept 1912 over 400,000 loyal men and women across the nine counties of Ulster appended their names to either the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant or the Ulster Declaration. In doing so they pledged their loyalty to the King, their allegiance to the United Kingdom and vociferously proclaimed their opposition to the planned creation of a home rule parliament in Dublin. While the majority of historiography focuses on events at the key signing centres in Belfast, the documents were actually signed at over one thousand separate locations across the nine counties of Ulster overseen by 1546 organising agents. Utilising a digital humanities approach we have traced these agents and mapped these locations from the digitised signing sheets and agents folders (made available online by PRONI (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland)) and the 1911 Census Returns. This paper will interrogate this geography of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant / Declaration to chart the differential experience of Ulster Day in the soon to be ‘lost counties’ of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan. The extent of these differences will be further examined, in order to determine whether or not the minority status of unionism in these counties was sufficiently influential to allow these individuals be identified as southern loyalists as early as 1912. This paper will also argue that the consequences of Ulster Day in relation to the mobilisation of a grassroots unionist movement in these three counties is such that 1912 must be included in the temporal scope of the Irish revolutionary period in order to fully understand the entire spectrum of southern loyalist experiences. Dr Arlene Crampsie is an historical geographer in the School of Geography, UCD. Her research interests lie at the intersection of historical, social and cultural geographies with her main research to date focussing on the social, cultural and political landscapes of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Ireland. She is particularly interested in the role of colonial and post-colonial processes in shaping local geographies of power and identity and the operation of governmentality on and in local communities. She is Chairperson of the Oral History Network of Ireland and co-editor with Francis Ludlow of Meath History and Society (2015). Dr Jonathan Cherry is a lecturer in Geography in the School of History and Geography, DCU. His main research interests are in historical and cultural geography, with a particular focus on the role of the landowning elite in Irish society and their influence on the Irish landscape over the past four centuries. As holder of the NLI Studentship in Irish History (2004-05) he catalogued the Farnham Papers held in the Manuscripts Department, NLI. He co-edited Cavan History and Society (Geography Publications, 2014) and is Book Review Editor for Irish Geography since 2016.

This paper sets out to identify areas of significant Unionist electoral support in ‘Southern’ Ireland. This paper is deliberately refraining from an examination of the six predominantly Unionist counties in Ulster, and will instead examine Unionist support in the rest of Ireland. This paper will start in 1885 as the controversy over the Home Rule bill, 1886 led to a significant change in how candidates identified themselves in elections in Ireland. Prior to 1885, electoral candidates did not use the term ‘Unionist’ but instead were divided between Liberals, Conservatives, and the Irish Parliamentary Party / Home Rule. After 1885 the term ‘Unionist’ became increasingly used by electoral candidates throughout Ireland in subsequent elections. Due to the changes between the different voting systems utilised in Ireland between 1885 and 1932, it is necessary to divide this paper into three distinct sections; the eight UK general elections between 1885 and 1918, the five Irish general elections for Dáil Éireann between 1922 and 1932, and the two Séanad Éireann elections of 1922 and 1925. The main outcomes for this paper can be summarised in the following questions: - Did areas with significant Unionist voters switch over and vote for pro-Treaty candidates in the Irish Free State period, 1922 - 1932 - Are the areas of significant Unionist voters also areas with a large minority of Protestant / non-Catholic voters - Did the short-lived elected Séanad Éireann provide an electoral outlet for Loyalist / Unionist voters during the Irish Free State period - Using the statistical programming language R is it possible to visualise the different results chronologically and provide greater clarity on the levels of support of Unionist candidates even if they did not win the general election. The maps utilised in this talk are available at the following link https://rpubs.com/jackakav/291516 in addition to the R code utilised to create the map projections. Neale Rooney (BA History and Media Studies, MA Digital Humanities) is a researcher based with the Letters of 1916 project. His previous experience with Digital Humanities includes work done on the Contested Memories: Battle of Mount Street Bridge and The Woodman Diary projects. Jack Kavanagh (BA History, MPhil Public History and Cultural Heritage) is a PhD candidate at An Foras Feasa, Maynooth University. His previous experience includes the ‘1916 Necrology’ at Glasnevin Trust and the ‘St Andrews School Books Project’ a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin and the St. Andrews Resource Centre. Martin Charlton is currently Senior Research Associate in the National Centre for Geocomputation at Maynooth University. He previously worked at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, as Research Associate and Senior Research in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, and then as Lecturer in the Department of Geography. He is a graduate of Newcastle University. He is one of the co-developers of Geographically Weighted Regression.

In January 2002 at the residual house clearance auction at Farnham House, county Cavan Lot 53 described as “including four coronet shields; flags etc” was sold for €70. It was by no means the most valuable lot but the flags, a few tattered and faded Union Jacks, were symbolic remnants of the fervent loyalism of the Maxwell family of Farnham during the opening decades of the 20th century. This paper traces the changing career of Arthur Kenlis Maxwell, Lord Farnham (1879-1957) from one of the key leaders of southern unionism to life as a member of a minority in the aftermath of Independence. The seismic political changes experienced in Ireland in the early decades of the 20th century, coupled with a revolution in landownership, dismantled the socio-economic basis upon which families such as the Farnhams had built and augmented their significance. After partition Lord Farnham concentrated on carving out a new role and career for himself, initially in England where he and his family had retreated in April 1922 and from 1927 back in Cavan. Although Farnham never formally entered politics in the Irish Free State he remained an important leadership figure within Cavan’s Protestant community taking an active interest in a range of civic and charitable organisations and the diocesan and general synods of the Church of Ireland. It also appears that he enjoyed a good level of local cross-community support and goodwill suggesting the family had successfully adapted to their new position within changed political and cultural circumstances. The paper outlines the hybrid loyalties and identities of former southern unionists such as Lord Farnham, exemplified through his attendance at two particular events, one in London and another in Cavan in 1953. These illustrate his personal experience of adaptive co-existence within a new state and the complexity of southern Unionist identities in the Irish Free State. Jonathan Cherry is a lecturer in Geography in the School of History and Geography, DCU. His main research interests are in historical and cultural geography, with a particular focus on the role of the landowning elite in Irish society and their influence on the Irish landscape over the past four centuries. As holder of the NLI Studentship in Irish History (2004-05) he catalogued the Farnham Papers held in the Manuscripts Department, NLI. He co-edited Cavan History and Society (Geography Publications, 2014) and is Book Review Editor for Irish Geography since 2016

Were British ex-servicemen in Ireland viewed only as ‘British loyalists’ or those who had fought for or were still associated with ‘the enemy’ in the wake of the Great War and Irish Revolution? To date the works of Taylor, Fitzpatrick and Robinson have gone a long way to address that question and to show the scale and nature of hostility faced by those men and their families during the period of 1920-23, and thereafter, as well as the benefits that they received from the British State. But what other options did they have or could they have? Could they turn to charity after 1922 and if so which charities? In the latter part of the long nineteenth century the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland witnessed a popular explosion in charity and philanthropy. This also saw the burgeoning of military-specific charities – one hundred by 1900. While Ireland remained within the union things were simple: British soldiers and their families could often receive assistance throughout the British Isles, but once Ireland was partitioned things got complicated. A question that effectively loomed large in 1922 was: would the new Irish State prevent those old charities continue to support such men and their families as they had done for decades before. This paper seeks to answer this overarching question by using the 1923-29 transnational legal dispute over the legacies of two particular British military charities based in Ireland as a prism through which to view and analyse those developments and address three specific questions. Namely the place of British ex-serviceman and his family (as well as Protestants) in the new State, that State’s policy towards all things formerly owned or administered by the British state, and the policy of the new State in relation to its subordination to the law. Dr Paul Huddie completed his doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast in 2014. He is the author of several peer-reviewed publications including The Crimean War and Irish society (2015) and an executive member of the IAPH. His general interest is war and society (Britain and Ireland) in the long 19C, but his specialism is British military welfare: charity, philanthropy and the state. In 2017 he will present papers on this theme at New York and Bucharest. His invited chapter on the role of the charity SSAFA in ex-service families’ welfare provision in 1919-21 is presently under review by Manchester University Press.

During the First World War thousands of women in Ireland performed a parallel war service to that of men in the British Army. The women joined the Red Cross, St John Ambulance Association, the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot and many other voluntary organisations, offering their time and labour for free. They did so for a variety of motives: personal, political and associational. Many felt a strong identification with the British war effort and a desire to prove their loyalty to Britain, when it was coming under question from Ulster unionists and many of those in Britain, particularly after the Easter Rising. Much of this war service took place through parish organisations connected to the various Protestant denominations or through the pre-existing Anglican women’s organisations: the Mothers’ Union, Girls’ Friendly Society and Young Women’s Christian Association. Although many catholic and nationalist (and catholic nationalist) women supported the war effort, the membership of organisations like the Red Cross was dominated by Protestants. The imbalance in participation levels became even more pronounced after the Easter Rising when war service became even more associated with a British or imperial identity. The relationships between Catholics and Protestants, and between unionist Ulster and southern Ireland became increasingly strained during the war, with women’s war service acting as both a catalyst and a prism for viewing these divisions. This paper uses the war service of women in southern Ireland as a means of exploring southern loyalist identity during this tumultuous period. Dr Fionnuala Walsh is an Irish Research Council postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin. She completed her PhD in 2015 and held the 2015-2016 Research Studentship in the National Library of Ireland. She is currently writing a monograph on the impact of the First World War on women in Ireland. Dr Walsh is the membership secretary of the Women’s History Association of Ireland.

The conference keynote was delivered by Dr Tim Wilson, Director of the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews. Dr Wilson is the author of a range of publications on political violence, ethnic violence, and terrorism, including Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia, 1918-22 (Oxford, 2010) and ‘The Strange Death of Loyalist Monaghan, 1912–1921’ in S. Paseta (ed.), Uncertain Futures: Essays about the Irish Past for Roy Foster (Oxford, 2016).

This paper focuses on the loyalist community in Cavan and Monaghan from the signing of the Ulster Covenant through to the establishment of the Irish Free State and the Civil War. In particular, it focuses on the awkward questions of identity faced by the community after the partition of Ireland in 1921 (and by the growing likelihood of this event in the years previous). Cavan and Monaghan, along with Donegal, represented the three Ulster counties with the lowest Protestant populations. Cavan and Monaghan existed on the edges of Ulster itself with loyalist social networks overlapping with the distinctly non-Ulster counties of Meath, Louth, Longford and Leitrim. Despite this, these counties claimed to profess as strong an “Ulster Unionist” identity as their more Northerly neighbours. This was supported in 1912 with their enthusiastic support for the Ulster Covenant. In signing this the Cavan and Monaghan Unionists effectively sundered their own political future from that of their southern coreligionists. However, the three counties were to be similarly cast adrift from the North just a few years later when the Ulster Unionist Council accepted the principle of six county partition. This represented a severe identity crisis for the Unionists of Cavan and Monaghan. This paper examines both how prevalent an “Ulster” identity can be said to be in these two counties before then moving on to explore the ways in which this community successfully and unsuccessfully recast themselves as southern Unionists. In doing so it touches on important questions such as what it the idea of Ulster and an Ulster identity actually mean, how intertwined Southern and Ulster Unionism were in the border region and how the new Northern state functioned as a cultural symbol for southern loyalists. Daniel Purcell is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the History Department of Trinity College, supervised by David Fitzpatrick and Anne Dolan. He completed his undergraduate degree in Somerville College Oxford before returning to Trinity College for his MPhil and PhD. His research focuses on Southern Irish Protestantism in the Irish Revolution. Specifically, he is interested in the Irish border region and how the narrative and understanding of the Revolution is impacted by the overlap of different identities (Protestant, loyalist, Ulsterman) within the community. He has been published in the Breifne Historical Journal and Irish Lives Remembered.

This paper will highlight the continued leadership that southern unionists gave to the unionist position across Ireland during 1919-1922, not least by acting in an advisory capacity to the British cabinet. Highlighting the active role played by the Earl of Midleton upon replacing Sir Edward Carson as the leader of Irish unionism, it will demonstrate how continued influence over Irish financial institutions allowed southern unionists to play a critical role in the negotiation of a truce during the spring and summer 1921, in turn limiting the potential of the Dáil’s initial revolutionary programme of nationalisation. The Sinn Féin programme of consolidating the authority of the Dáil as a national government by means of affiliating local government bodies was altered in the summer of 1921 by the creation of a liaison arrangement of joint policing by the Royal Irish Constabulary and Irish Volunteers with equal responsibility for maintaining the peace. The significance of this development will be assessed according to the contrasting perspectives, or propagandas, of the Sinn Féin government and its unionist critics since 1919, while it will also be considered how it impacted upon the ‘army unity’ negotiations of 1922 when efforts were made to turn the Irish volunteer movement into a regular territorial army. Although not a party to articles of agreement for a treaty in December 1921, southern unionists continued to act as key intermediaries with the British cabinet during 1922. This paper will conclude by assessing the degree to which southern unionists were able to capitalise upon nationalist divisions during 1922 and if guaranteed southern unionist representation in the proposed Irish Free State Senate was or was not a potential significant counterbalance to the powers that the Dáil was to assume as a legislative assembly in December 1922. Dr. Owen McGee is a history graduate of UCD and the author of well-received books on Arthur Griffith (Merrion Press, 2015) and The IRB (Four Courts Press, 2005), which won the NUI Centennial Prize for Irish History. In addition to being a qualified archivist, he is currently completing a degree in digital humanities at University College Cork for which he is working on data visualisations of Irish historical records dating from 1919 to 1925.

I discuss the differing reasons put forward by academics for the sharp decline between 1911 and 1926 of the Protestant population of the twenty six counties that formed the Irish Free State. Census reports from the 1871-1911 period are used to question theories of long term Protestant natural decline. I argue that, up to 1911, Protestant natural change was either neutral or positive and all Protestant decline was due to emigration. I analyse the detailed information from the 1911 censuses that is now available to cast some new light on the nature of 1911-26 decline and questions some of the conclusions of more recent papers on the subject notably the Methodist membership study of Professor Fitzpatrick, where he argues that infertility was really the main agent of decline. Using data from 1911 census in conjunction with 1926 census reports, cohort depletion analysis is used to demonstrate that most 1911-26 Methodist decline occurred in the younger age groups – a characteristic associated with high emigration rather than low fertility.I contend that there is little or no evidence in the 1911 census of the sort of demographic collapse of child numbers that might have resulted in a chronic decline in Methodist membership numbers during the succeeding 15 years. I conclude that exceptionally high Protestant emigration did occur during this period, most of it in the period 1920-26, indicating that revolutionary violence and regime change might well have influenced the outflow. Declining Catholic emigration during this period suggests high exceptionally high Protestant emigration was not primarily economic driven. The mathematics behind Andrew Bielenberg’s 2013 estimate of between 2000 and 16000 involuntary Protestant emigrants is questioned. Had his methodology been correctly applied, his numbers would have been significantly higher. Donald Wood is an amateur historian who has taken a deep interest in Irish history, particularly the turbulent years surrounding Irish independence. I grew up in a Protestant farming community in West Cork in the decade following World War II. My family emigrated to England in the late 1950s (for economic reasons) and I pursued a career in the IT industry, mostly in the UK. Following my retirement, I have been applying my analytical skills to some of the contested issues surrounding the war of independence in general and, in particular, Protestant population change.

After 1968, Northern Ireland experienced nearly thirty years of civil war. Though some denied it, the so-called ‘Long War’ influenced aspects of professional historical writing on Ireland. This paper addresses historical interpretations of the ‘exodus’ of Protestants from southern Ireland between 1911 and 1926. It argues explanations of ethnic conflict in 1920-1923 in the 1990s mirrored interpretations of contemporary violence in Northern Ireland 1968-1998.    In the 1980s and 1990s, the dominant narratives of the war in contemporary Northern Ireland modified. The story of nationalist armed struggle for a united Ireland was sometimes replaced by so-called ‘primitivist’ interpretations. These said the conflict in Ulster was an ancient and intractable sectarian war between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Coinciding with this turn, in the early 1990s, some journalists and historians reported the Provisional IRA’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Protestants on Northern Ireland’s margins. In 1993 Canadian born historian, Peter Hart, claimed the IRA attempted to ‘exterminate’ and ‘expel’ the Protestant minority in county Cork in 1922. In 1996, Hart said in the early 1920s what might be described as ‘ethnic cleansing’ had been widespread in southern Ireland. These revelations, Hart argued, explained the 34% decline in the minority southern Protestant population between 1911 and 1926 (as much as 45% in some southern counties), with ‘almost all’ being forced to leave by the IRA during the revolutionary years of 1920-23. ‘The timing and context of population loss turn the census figures in to a political and social event’, wrote Hart in 1996, ‘and turn Protestant decline into a Protestant exodus’. In the furore following the publication of Hart’s prize-winning monograph, The IRA and its enemies (Oxford, 1998), the liberal academy sided with Hart against detractors. Re-examining Hart’s statistical analysis it is now clear he miscalculated multiple datasets. These miscalculations supposedly enumerated a false statistical premise – tens of thousands of Protestants experienced forced migration in 1920-23. Hart found anecdotal evidence to support his false statistical premise, but this evidence suffered from a selection bias. That southern Irish Protestants did not experience forced migration associated with intimidation and violence because of their religion on the scale Hart claimed is now accepted by many historians. Nevertheless, Hart’s ethnic conflict thesis still informs some historical interpretation.     John M Regan lectures in history at the University of Dundee, Scotland. After completing a doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast in 1994, Dr Regan became the Irish Government’s Senior Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford. He was later elected to a Research Fellowship at Wolfson College Oxford and awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 1999, he published The Irish Counter-Revolution 1921-36, (Gill & Macmillan) and in 2013 Myth and the Irish State: Historical Problems and Other Essays (Irish Academic Press). He has published extensively in Historical Journal, Irish Historical Studies, History, Reviews in History and The Journal of British Studies.

“I had been brought up under the union jack and had no desire to live under any other emblem.” The words of C.P. Crane, a Tipperary R.M., in 1923, would have found an echo in the hearts of many of Waterford’s loyalist community. By 1926 their population had declined by 40% compared to 1911 and those who survived now lived in a different environment. In 1912 the small but influential loyalist community in Waterford had been vocal in their opposition to Home Rule. Led by Sir William Goff-Davis Goff and Dr Henry Stuart O’Hara, Church of Ireland bishop of the united dioceses of Waterford, Lismore, Cashel and Emly, they had publicly protested against the Home Rule Bill. On October 2 that year Dr O’Hara had led a prayer service in Christchurch which concluded with a signing of the Ulster Covenant by some of his flock – possibly a unique event in Munster. By 1914 they were very much aware that Home Rule for at least three provinces was inevitable and that in the event of a civil war they were extremely vulnerable. Those who attended an anti-Home Rule event had their names noted by a local newspaper which led to sharp exchanges in the House of Commons between the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar-Law and John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party and MP for Waterford. The outbreak of WW1 changed that, at least temporarily, and they responded enthusiastically to the call to arms. They paid a high price for their loyalty to King and Empire. After the war, they again found themselves vulnerable, especially between the Truce (July 1921) and the end of the Civil War (May 1923), a period in which they were subject to opportunistic violence, a republican campaign of ‘Big House’ burnings and social disorder. This paper looks at the experiences of Waterford’s loyalist community during the revolutionary decade. Pat McCarthy, a native of Waterford city, holds a PhD and an MBA from UCD and worked for many years in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. He is the author of The Irish Revolution 1912-23, Waterford (Four Courts Press, 2015), Waterford and the 1916 Rising (Waterford city and county council 2016) and has published extensively in the Irish Sword (journal of the Military History Society of Ireland) and Decies (journal of the Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society).

The proposed paper is a study of the Southern Unionist community in County Kildare in a time of social and political upheaval. Kildare, in contrast to other counties outside Ulster, was different due to the presence of substantial British army garrisons stationed in the county. With the military at times peaking at ten percent of the population, Unionists in Kildare at all levels in society forged strong connections with the army. During the revolutionary period until the departure of the British army in 1922 the community enjoyed the security associated with living in a garrison county where violence so prevalent elsewhere in the country was at a minimum. The tiny community enjoyed strong representation in the House of Lords, and also at the Irish Convention of 1917, they also held a dominant influence in the local judiciary and police. While organising and participating in opposition to home rule in 1912, Unionist political involvement particularly in a public manner diminished. The strong commitment of Protestants and Unionists to the war effort weakened the Unionist community in Kildare which included a large Catholic membership. The inability of the Kildare Unionists to reactivate their movement after the war effectively isolated them from a political future although attempts were made to reach accommodation with moderate nationalists when partition seemed a reality. Unionists in Kildare did not experience the same level of violence that loyalists in neighbouring counties suffered, although some high-profile incidents occurred during the Civil War. In post-independence Kildare while the Unionist population declined individuals from a Unionist background continued to play a disproportionate role in the economy, large scale farming and the professions. Seamus Cullen is a historian and author who has published a number of books including ‘Fugitive Warfare’ a history of the 1798 Rising and The Emmet Rising in Kildare. Throughout his career as a historian, Seamus has studied many areas of history, archaeology and geography and holds an M Phil on Modern History from TCD. He is at present a research student at St Patrick’s DCU and his area of study is the Irish Revolution in Kildare. Seamus Cullen’s personal web-site includes more than fifty history articles, written and previously published by S. Cullen. http://seamuscullen.net/index.html.

This paper rests conceptually on a borrowing from sociology, principally a 2011  article by Evelyn Nakano Glenn,  'Constructing citizenship: exclusion, subordination and resistance'.  The talk examines examines how, in post-1922 Ireland, southern Irish Protestants approached acquiring a sense of citizenship in the new Ireland.  In this, they had to bridge a potentially disastrous disconnection with Ireland, complicated by a genuine geographical patriotism, an inherent uneasiness with an ascendant 'National Catholicism', and a strong sense of otherness.  It is argued, though, that, culturally, Protestants had a rather generous a la carte menu of 'belongingness' to draw upon.  This allowed them to construct a sense of congenial citizenship through a mixture of 'real' and 'imagined' communities in appropriate and acceptable proportions as circumstances demanded.  In this, it will also be argued that this facility to construct a 'mix-and-match' notion of Irishness gave Protestants a much greater flexibility in determining their own sense of citizenship than those who had perforce to exist within a straitjacket of rigid Catholic-nationalist orthodoxy.  The overspill from this has been a somewhat surprising ability for Protestants to come to a relatively comfortable accommodation with Irishness, and a sense of civitas that has been better able to adapt to the modern world.  Ian d’Alton, MA (NUI), PhD (Cambridge), FRHistS, FRNS is a historian who has been researching southern Irish Protestantism for over forty years, latterly through the medium of the literary. He has given numerous papers to learned bodies He is the author of Protestant Society and Politics in Cork, 1812-1844 (Cork UP, 1980). His latest attempt to synthesise the southern Protestant experience is ‘A first voice: Henry Windsor Villiers Stuart and the agricultural labourers’ in Brian Casey (ed.), Defying the law of the land: agrarian radicals in Irish history (Dublin, The History Press, 2013). He is working on a book about the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize, and its influence on British historiography, 1897-2005 (he was a recipient of the Prize in 1972). He was a contributor and editorial advisor to the Royal Irish Academy/Cambridge University Press Dictionary of Irish Biography (2009), and wrote the entries, amongst others, for Thomas Lipton (he of the tea), the ‘Ponsonby estate’ landlord A.H. Smith Barry, and the writers Elizabeth Bowen, Iris Murdoch and Molly Keane. In 2011-12 he was an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool; in 2014 a Visiting Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and in 2014-15, a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Dublin. At end-February 2012, he retired from the positon of Chief Executive Officer of the Housing Finance Agency, an Irish state-owned company.

In 1928, a wealthy Protestant landowner moved his family from their ancestral home in Kilderry, County Donegal, where the family had long been associated with the area, to Ballynagard, County Londonderry. Although Ballynagard was just a few miles along the road from Kilderry crucially they crossed the border. The differences between the two homes were extensive; Ballynagard was not the luxury the family had experienced. Hart, writing in 1924 stated ‘there is no comparison between this place [Kilderry] and Ballynagard […] the latter is on a steep slope, which, […] it is safe to say that the condition of the land has been put back 100 years, & is now in much the same state in which my grandfather found it on his return from India!’ Despite this Colonel John George Vaughan Hart felt the move was necessary because he felt at home in Northern Ireland. Hart’s move holds its roots in his religion. Hart was a Southern Ulster Unionist who felt alienated by the separation of Donegal from Northern Ireland. The main primary source and focus of this paper is found in The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and is Colonel J.G.V Hart’s carbon out letters, of which there are letter books. This paper is concerned particularly with what Hart’s letters can tell us about ordinary life as a Protestant landowner, trying to raise a family against the backdrop that is the Irish Revolutionary period. The letters are varied in nature including correspondence to family members, doctors, and fellow Unionists. Hart mentions his fear of the possibility of a divided country, his involvement with the Boundary Commission, his help in establishing a Unionist organisation as well as his anger towards the result and ultimately his decision to leave. In 1925 Hart gave evidence before the Boundary Commission, outlining the problems Unionists were facing, which Leary explains as ‘Unionist leaders in the Southern border counties had […] seen their old ties of identity, power and patronage severed in dramatic fashion. Many moved north. Leaving behind homes, farms and livelihoods.’ The Hart papers take us on a journey of how he himself decided this fate for his family, and they even have the benefit of giving us some hindsight after the move, as the letters continue until 1944. Katherine Magee is from Derry, Northern Ireland, currently completing a one year Masters in Irish History at NUI Maynooth. I studied History at Ulster University, Coleraine for my undergraduate degree and found myself becoming particularly interested in Border Protestants, especially East Donegal Unionists. I therefore wrote my dissertation entitled ‘A Feeling of Abandonment: East Donegal Unionists during the Boundary Commission.’ I decided to pursue my interest in this topic, moving to Maynooth to complete my Masters and write my thesis on the Hart family of Donegal, on which this paper is based.

In his influential work Crisis and Decline, R.B. McDowell referred to Henry Lawrence Tivy as ‘an extremely proud and sensitive man.’ Born into a patrician family in Cork, Tivy was a merchant prince who acquired the Cork Constitution newspaper in 1882 and later launched the weekly edition, the Cork Weekly News. In 1915 he purchased the Dublin Evening Mail and Daily Express. These newspapers served as a vehicle for the espousal of Tivy’s unionist politics, of which this pugnacious proprietor remained an unshakeable proponent from the 1880s up to his retreat from public life in 1922. While Tivy’s sensitivity was confined to a host of philanthropic endeavours in Cork City, his pride manifested itself in a range of political and social pursuits. Tivy served as the first president and financier of the Cork Constitution Rugby Club and served as a committee member for the Cork Industrial Exhibitions of 1883, 1902 and 1903. He was a committed supporter of the war effort during the Great War and a committed opponent of the suffragette movement, as well as the republican movement, resulting in extensive harassment by the latter during the War of Independence and the ultimate destruction of the offices of the Cork Constitution during the Civil War. This research aims to trace Tivy’s life and career in broad terms, highlighting his extra-newspaper activities as a key component of the production processes of his newspaper group. It seeks to chart the uneasy transition of a unionist like Tivy into the new Free State, considering also his attempts to obtain compensation from the Irish Grants Commission for losses during the Civil War, and ultimately seeks to engage with the duality of Tivy’s public life as a proud citizen of Cork and dedicated supporter of the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland. Alan McCarthy is Head Tutor and College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences PhD Scholar at the School of History, UCC. His research interests include media, censorship, sport, and labour history in 20th century Ireland, with a particular focus on Cork during 1912-1923. His doctoral thesis examines the experience of Cork’s nationalist and loyalist newspapers during the revolutionary period, and is being supervised by Dr Donal Ó Drisceoil. Alan has also served as a historical advisor to the Michael Collins House Museum project in Clonakilty, and Dunmanway’s forthcoming Sam Maguire mini-museum.

Voting to maintain the Union in 1918: ‘the strongest pillars upon which they stood’ Tom Garvin in The Evolution of Irish Nationalist Politics stated that ‘the general election of December 1918 was, in the language of political science, a critical election.’ It was the dawn of intense electioneering and the creation of adroit propaganda campaigns aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the electorate. Southern unionists, like their nationalist counterparts, sought to persuade (and at times manipulate) opinion to draw support for their manifestos and policies during these elections. This paper will examine how and where unionist candidates were nominated and geographically located in 1918. Analysis on the methods of propaganda (such as newspapers, advertisements, symbols, ballads and so on) that were utilised will be conducted; and an examination into the themes and content of unionist political messages will demonstrate how they aimed to secure votes. The threat of partition loomed and fears were raised among southern unionists that key politicians in Ulster, such as Edward Carson, perceived the island as ‘consisting of two parties only – Ulster Unionists and Southern Nationalists’ (Irish Times, 18 November 1918). Therefore, an answer as to how these concerns and the everyday issues of taxation, rates, pensions and farming were addressed in unionist propaganda will be provided. Finally, the results of southern unionist candidates in the 1918 general election will be discussed to ascertain how they fared in their constituencies by comparison to nationalist competitors, and to determine who cast their votes in favour of the union. Alongside a range of secondary sources, some of the primary sources in this paper includes: Parliamentary Debates of the House of Commons, reports from national and regional newspapers, and private papers and Ulster Unionist Council minutes from the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. Elaine Callinan attained a BA honours degree in Humanities from Carlow College and an MPhil from Trinity College Dublin. She will complete her PhD thesis titled ‘Propaganda and Electioneering, 1917-1920’ in Trinity College Dublin this year. Her research explores the propaganda campaigns and electioneering methods of unionists, nationalists and labour for the by-elections of 1917-18, the 1918 general election and the local government elections of 1920. Elaine is a history lecturer in modern Irish, European and transatlantic history at Carlow College, St Patrick’s.

This paper argues that the Irish Senate of 1922–28 is a rare case of a non-partisan chamber in a bicameral system which effectively occupied the role traditionally assigned to the opposition within a unicameral parliamentary system. In some respects it was the de-facto opposition. In many ways, particularly in those early years, it was a model second chamber. The reasons for this atypical role are in themselves unusual. The quality of the Senate’s membership, the rules underpinning its establishment and the ways in which Senators exercised those rules may have enabled it to be particularly persuasive in amending legislation. The willingness of the new government to keep those with Unionist sympathies within the fold as part of the State building exercise was particularly important.   The inaugural 1922 Senate was constituted by two separate nomination procedures, each with an exceptionally narrow franchise. W. T. Cosgrave, President of the Executive (1922-32) directly appointed thirty individuals. His nominees numbered sixteen former Southern Unionists, including ‘seven peers, a dowager countess, five baronets and knights, literary, professional and business men.’ This deliberate appointment process to the Senate warranted the consolidation of the Anglo-Irish and Unionist traditions to the Irish Free State. Aside from engineering the political and symbolic reconciliation of the ancien regime with the new Free State, the Upper House had the significant purpose of bringing political and administrative expertise into the legislature, noticeably absent within Dáil membership. Consideration is given to why the Senate came to exert the influence it did by exploring the practical realities of parliamentary representation in the new state. Finally, the contribution of the Senate is analysed with particular reference to its involvement in wholesale structural judicial reform which remains the basis for the judicial system through the Courts of Justice Act 1924. Dr Elaine Byrne is the author of A Crooked Harp: Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010 (Manchester University Press, 2012). She has held academic appointments at the University of Limerick, Trinity College Dublin and the University of New South Wales. Elaine is a columnist with the Sunday Business Post and will be called to the Bar in 2017.

This podcast is a collection of conference papers delivered at the Southern Irish Loyalism in Context Conference in July 21st - 22nd at Maynooth University. The conference was generously funded by the Irish Research Council and hosted at An Foras Feasa, Maynooth University. For more information about the conference use the following link: https://southernirishloyalism.wordpress.com