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Author/s: Kent Fedorowich ON 2 September 1922, the Weekly Irish Independent printed a letter from Patrick Kennedy, a former constable of the recently disbanded Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Writing from Perth, Western Australia, Kennedy complained bitterly that he and several confreres, who, upon disbandment had taken the British government's advice and had emigrated from Ireland, had been unable to find work of any kind ever since their arrival in the Antipodes. Disheartened, the former constable protested that what little pension money he had been able to commute barely covered his daily expenditure on food and accommodation. Employment prospects remained grim, and, he commented sardonically, `some of us are thinking of going back to Ireland, as we might as well be shot there as die here in Australia'.(1) Although an extreme example, such despondency was commonplace in the annals of migration history and was not the monopoly of any one ethnic group or emigrant community. Like the experiences of their ancestors, the trials and tribulations of most Irish emigrants during the inter-war period varied little from those of the estimated five million people who left the Emerald Isle for overseas destinations, including Britain, between 1820 and 1914.(2) The plethora of scholarly material on Irish migration patterns and the establishment of Irish communities in Britain and overseas prior to partition in 1921 is in stark contrast to the paucity of material on post-partition Irish migration.(3) Although some work has appeared on aspects of the Irish diaspora after World War II, and in particular on the Irish in Britain, little is known about those Irish emigrants who embarked upon a new life in the United States, Britain and her far-flung empire between 1919 and 1939. This is not altogether surprising. With the exception of lan Drummond's pioneering work it has only been within the last decade that scholars have focused their attention on the complexities of British post-World War I migration policy, empire settlement and assisted passage.(1) Even here, although there are several conspicuous exceptions, the Irish have not received specific attention or detailed analysis from imperial, Irish or migration historians. Rather, Irish emigrants have either been subsumed or, more often than not, ignored in the larger studies of inter-war `British' overseas migration.(2) Two key problems are that the archival material is patchy and the statistical evidence sketchy. According to Donald H. Akenson, one of the leading scholars of the Irish diaspora, `the database [of the Irish in South Africa] is striking chiefly for its shaky, or frequently nonexistent character'.(3) This statement manifestly applies to Irish emigration in general throughout the inter-war period. While the lack of a comprehensive set of inter-war Irish migration statistics from both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State is particularly frustrating, the overall trends of Irish overseas migration during this period are apparent. Although the rate of net emigration from the twenty-six southern counties ebbed to its lowest post-Famine level in the decade between 1926 and 1936, the United States of America remained the most favoured overseas destination, accounting for 54 per cent of the total. This compared unfavourably with the 70-80 per cent of Irish emigrants from all thirty-two counties who correspondingly made a fresh start there between 1876 and 1921.(4) In stark contrast, while on average only 8 per cent of Irish migrants went to Great Britain between 1876 and 1921, between 1926 and 1936 this increased to a dramatic 40 per cent. Britain, and increasingly England, was the second preferred `overseas' destination for Irish immigrants. This trend continued after World War II, and by the end of 1951 Britain had replaced the United States as the main destination, with over 80 per cent of all Irish emigrants settling in the United Kingdom. Between 1926 and 1936 the remaining 6 per cent travelled to other overseas destinations, mainly to Canada and Australia.(1) |
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The modest numbers and incomplete figures available for the inter-war period should not belittle the significance of this latter phase of the Irish diaspora, for important shifts and new migration patterns did emerge. The violent domestic scene within Ireland, especially between 1916 and 1923, culminating in partition and then civil war, seriously affected the migration process. As Sean Glynn argues, after 1923 Irish migration to Britain `became relatively more important and popular, being cheaper and easier to contemplate and less drastic and final than transatlantic movement'.(2) This, coupled with the improvement in Anglo-Irish political relations after 1921, undoubtedly put Britain, and perhaps her empire, in a more positive light for Irish migrants. At the same time, between 1921 and 1930, the United States introduced quota restrictions and other increasingly rigorous measures designed to exclude large numbers of immigrants. Despite the fact that Irish quotas remained relatively generous, many prospective Irish migrants were deterred by the anti-immigrant sentiment of isolationist America after 1921.(3) Another contributory factor which made imperial rather than US destinations more appealing was the British government's large-scale promotion of state-assisted empire migration and overseas settlement, incorporated as it was in the landmark Empire Settlement Act of 1922. Despite the exclusion of the Irish Free State from this legislation after 1922, residency requirements were often waived and privileges extended to southern Irish citizens, provided that they embarked from ports in Northern Ireland or Britain. `In effect', carped one cynical Treasury official, `they have only to set foot on these [United Kingdom] shores in order to take their passage to the Dominions'.(4) The politicization of overseas migration after 1918 within both an Irish and imperial context is perhaps the most intriguing, but at the same time under-researched aspect of the Irish diaspora. The purpose of this article is to redress the imbalance. It will concentrate on the issue of `forced' migration; forced because many former policemen, ex-servicemen and southern Irish Unionists, fearful of intimidation and assassination, dared not remain in Ireland. Equally important was the plight of the isolated and beleaguered Protestant community in the southern twenty-six counties whose population declined by 34 per cent between 1911 and 1926. This included 20,000 Irish refugees who fled to the United Kingdom in 1922 to find sanctuary from continuous and sometimes violent nationalist persecution.(1) The article will also focus on the provisions within the overseas settlement legislation which were utilized by Whitehall to extricate these people. In addition, it explores the attitudes of Sinn Fein, the revolutionary government (1919-21) and, after January 1922, the Provisional Government led by William T. Cosgrave, to overseas migration with particular reference to the British government's strategy of state-assisted migration, which these parties wrongly condemned as a ruse conceived to deprive the nationalist movement of its younger, more productive generations; especially those eligible for military service. The numbers game was also an important facet of the migration debate in Northern Ireland. Some Ulster Unionists, especially in constituencies where there was a large Catholic minority, were fearful that if too many Protestant voters emigrated overseas the political balance would inevitably swing in favour of the local republican and nationalist forces. The dilemma for the Belfast government was to reconcile this threat of political dilution at home with its ardent determination that Northern Ireland should play an active role within imperial affairs.(2) Finally, the article examines the reactions of Canada and Australia to the politics of Irish migration in the 1920s, the policies which their governments pursued, the numbers involved and the problems encountered. |
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The Anglo-Irish War began in January 1919. Subsequently, the British government proved incapable of recognizing the capabilities of its enemy, as it signified by its unconvincing attempts to dismiss the Irish Republican Army (IRA) as ruffians, common criminals or gangsters. For many British politicians and Irish Unionists, Sinn Fein and the murder gangs were (and still are) one and the same. This failure to differentiate between the various strands of republicanism, coupled with the sporadic violence and the light casualties suffered by the security forces in 1919, reinforced the view that it was just a matter of time before the extremists were eliminated. For instance, the Lord Lieutenant and later Viceroy of Ireland, Field Marshal Lord French, informed Prime Minister David Lloyd George in May 1919 that he was confident that the real power of Sinn Fein was declining every day and that Sinn Fein's greatest weapon -- terrorism -- would be knocked out of its hands.(1) The Viceroy's over-optimistic assessment proved grossly inaccurate and entirely misplaced. Others, such as the experienced Irish nationalist politician and later first governor-general of the Irish Free State, Tim Healy, were more realistic: `No doubt before long the soldiers will scatter the 1919 class of volunteers, but the 1920 will come along and the 1940 are in the womb.'(2) Healy's words were indeed prophetic. In 1920 and 1921 the IRA mounted a determined campaign of violence. When the truce between the British government and Sinn Fein was implemented in July 1921, 405 policemen had been killed and 682 wounded; 150 soldiers had been killed and 345 wounded; and 522 vacated RIC barracks had been destroyed and 121 damaged. Ireland was becoming ungovernable, and the police forces, which consisted of the 10,000 regular RIC and the 1,500-strong Dublin Metropolitan Police, were cracking under the strain.(3) Between 1919 and 1921 civil disorder deepened throughout Ireland, resulting in the implementation of harsh and often brutal anti-terrorist policies. The reinforcement and militarization of the RIC over the winter of 1919-20 -- which included the introduction of between three and five thousand externally recruited ex-servicemen and ex-officers from England and Wales, better known as the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries -- temporarily restored the morale and fighting efficiency of the police forces in Ireland.(4) Nevertheless, as the British counter -insurgency campaign intensified, so did the methods of republican intimidation. Ambushes, bombings, snipings, arson and assassination were major components of the IRA's daily routine of terror inflicted upon the regular RIC -- an organization predominantly Catholic and Irish, but nevertheless seen by many Irish citizens as an agent of foreign tyranny. It was even alleged that the rebels employed poison on occasion. Although aspersions have been cast on the validity of this claim, security personnel were warned not to accept potentially lethal gifts of apples or chocolates from unknown civilians. (1) More subtle but equally effective forms of intimidation -- or `petty aggression' -- were also used to undermine the morale and strength of the RIC. In fact, emotional blackmail, boycotting and other forms of social ostracism became increasingly effective weapons in the hands of republican extremists and had a profound impact on RIC recruitment.(2) Even more disconcerting to those still in the RIC were `hints' that members who had resigned during the `struggle' would be reinstated by the IRA in a reformed police service in acknowledgement of their `actions to [sic] bowing to the prevailing [nationalist] sentiment'.(3) The rumours were well-founded. In August 1920 a republican and former RIC sergeant, T. J. McElligott, reported to the IRA's Chief of Staff, Richard Mulcahy, that over 500 RIC had already resigned and that they were `being looked after'.(4) |
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Emigration was a quick and efficient method employed by the British authorities to help those disbanded RIC who sought refuge and a new life overseas. A total of 1,436 ex-Rig personnel sought sanctuary by emigrating between 1919 and December 1923 (a figure which may have reached 2,000 by the end of the decade). From the sketchy information which has survived it is clear that most, if not all, commuted part of their pension to establish themselves and their families mainly in Australia, Canada and the United States. A `considerable' but unspecified number emigrated to New Zealand, South Africa, India and the West Indies, while a handful sought fresh opportunities in countries as diverse as Belgium, China, Egypt, France, Germany and Italy. According to Francis Hemming, the director of the RIC resettlement branch, the large majority were British enlistments -- ex-soldiers who had fought as Black and Tans or Auxiliaries -- and he noted that there was an undisclosed but sizeable number of Irish-born RIC veterans who benefited from the emigration provisions.(1) This did not necessarily mean that emigration was a popular option with all of the men. In September 1921 an editorial in the weekly RIC magazine, the Constabulary Gazette, commented that it was grievous to see this `band of gallant Irishmen' resorting to emigration. Yet `we are constrained to recognize that emigration ... is a contingency that may have to be confronted by many, at least, of the retiring members of the RIC'.(2) Dismissing the United States as `an unpromising field,(3) the editors of the Constabulary Gazette and the Weekly Irish Times, in the months leading up to the formal disbandment of the force, directed their readers' attention to land settlement schemes offered in several of the dominions. These included the Million Farms scheme in New South Wales, a proposed soldier colony in the Northern Territory of Australia, fruit farms and irrigation properties near Kamloops in the Okanagan Valley of British Colombia, ready-made farms built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in Alberta, and homesteads in Ontario.(4) These men, argued the Constabulary Gazette, who had lived for years in the open spaces and fresh air of rural Ireland, would be quite capable of making good on the land.(5) There were others who were less enthusiastic. One former County Inspector was scathing about the entire emigration package. I shall do what I can to get men for that Ontario scheme but ... it is no great thing. The men are expected to pay their passage out and work for Canadian farmers at wages which no white man in Canada would look at. A country servant boy in Ireland of a much lower type than our fine ex R.I.C. gets more. If these colonial governments want decent settlers they must come out with a straight-forward scheme. So far none of them has done so. Our men are not fools. What I fear most of them want is cheap labour. In short, they are treating our men as niggers and it won't do.(6) |
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The dominions' response to the British request for assistance was mixed. One fact was inescapable. Ex-RIC would not be welcomed in the various police establishments or the permanent military forces of the dominions. Although the most heinous atrocities committed by British forces in Ireland were largely conducted by ill-disciplined and externally recruited Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, people in the dominions could not or would not differentiate between these forces and the locally recruited RIC. Moreover, dominion officials did not want their police forces tainted by members of a paramilitary unit which had been associated with a particularly violent crisis. Unfortunately for many of these hard-pressed men of the old RIC, they had been unfairly associated with the brutality and barbarity committed by others. Therefore, at least in the early stages, employment opportunities in the dominions for ex-RIC would be confined strictly to homesteading.(1) Percy Hunter, director of the Australian government's migration and settlement office based at its High Commission in London, suggested that, if necessary, arrangements would be made to send a representative to Dublin to interview men who contemplated proceeding to Australia.(2) The Agent-General for Tasmania was more guarded. He stated that, owing to the difficulty in placing inexperienced British and Australian veterans on the land under its post-war soldier settlement programme, entry had now been restricted to nominated immigrants or men with farming experience and capital. Although recognizing that ex-RIC were entitled to commute part of their pension for migration purposes, he warned that each case would have to be examined on its merits. As the amounts that these men were allowed to commute would vary, the all-important financial criteria would therefore affect their eligibility for entry.(3) The response from Western Australia was more encouraging, but it too struck a cautious note. Premier James Mitchell, a keen advocate of empire migration and agrarian development, replied that he would be glad to take some RIC veterans, but, hinting at the political sensitivity needed in dealing with this particular group of men, he wanted to be absolutely certain that they would be welcomed in Australia before making a final decision.(4) The story was similar in Canada. J. Obed Smith, the assistant superintendent of emigration in London, was supportive of disbanded RIC making a new home there. `It seems quite clear', he commented, `that those who were members of such Police Forces [in Ireland] are "marked men" and there is general[ly] an open threat of their murder.' Naturally, the imperial authorities were anxious to `dispose' of some of these men in the dominions; men who the Canadian High Commissioner, Peter C. Larkin, firmly believed were in danger of losing their lives if they remained in Ireland. (1) Obed Smith, in his appraisal to his superior in Ottawa, F. C. Blair, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Colonization, focused his attention on those members of the old RIC, `an excellent body of men, nearly all of whom were brought up on farms'.(2) Unfortunately for Obed Smith, he was unable to offer a helping hand. There were simply no openings on any federal government land settlement schemes because Ottawa was still immersed in resettling the 25,000 Canadian veterans who had opted for assistance under the Soldier Settlement Act of 1919. |
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There were several other problems. First, the British government was not prepared at this stage to allow these men to commute their pensions to meet the substantial costs involved in establishing a homestead overseas. This policy was changed in 1923. Even then, although many ex-RIC had farming experience and had been raised in country districts, Ottawa was not prepared to classify them as experienced agricultural workers. Categorized as unskilled, those who were interested in migrating had the alternative of being placed on farms as apprentices, where they would work as hired hands for one to two years and gain the necessary experience before being allowed to establish their own operation. The problem with this option was that there was a surplus of farm labour in Canada. The sharp fall in agricultural commodity prices, such as those for wheat and dairy products, which began in 1920, had been reflected in a parallel reduction in the wages for farm workers. Demand for unskilled farm labour was therefore soft and was compounded by the fact that most Canadian farmers had already recruited labour for the spring work. Would it not be wiser, suggested the Canadian Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King, to defer their arrival until next spring? One senior Ottawa official lamented that it was unfortunate that such an opportunity of getting settlers who were an undoubted asset (and in real danger) had to be passed by. But `we have to meet [the economic] conditions as they exist'.(3) If the federal government could not help, some provincial governments took notice. Nova Scotia expressed an interest, while, intriguingly enough, Quebec was ready to undertake the placement of twenty-five single ex-RIC as settlers in the Eastern Townships. The New Brunswick government, on the other hand, despite its keenness to promote British immigration, decided that the province had nothing to offer these men. Only Ontario was prepared to create openings for large numbers of former RIC. Provided they met the government's selection criteria, the Ontario Agent-General, William C. Noxon, offered to take a hundred men immediately. If the first batch proved satisfactory a second hundred would be taken. On 18 May 1922 the first party of twenty left England for farm work in Ontario.(1) The predicament of Irish ex-servicemen after the Armistice was equally difficult for British officials. Like their colleagues in the RIC, ex-servicemen too were boycotted, ostracized and relentlessly targeted by Sinn Fein and the IRA. This was by no means a new phenomenon. Within republican circles there had been an abiding intolerance and resentment of Irishmen who had joined the British armed forces well before World War I. The real difference after 1918, however, was the intensity and ruthlessness of the nationalist campaign, coupled with the high number of ex-service casualties.(2) Between 1 January 1920 and 1 April 1921, Jane Leonard has calculated that 150 ex-servicemen were killed by the IRA, most of whom were murdered in the spring and summer of 1921. Interestingly, only 40 of these were civilians -- 80 had enlisted or re-enlisted with the RIC while the remaining 30 had been Auxiliaries. Figures are unavailable for those Irish veterans who were slain while fighting with regular British units in Ireland prior to the truce in July 1921.(3) Similarly, there are no comprehensive statistics for those Irish veterans murdered by the IRA between July 1921 and the cessation of the Irish civil war in 1923. |
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The tactics employed against Irish veterans and the intensity of the campaign directed against them varied depending upon the region, as it had with the RIC. Leonard has ably demonstrated the forces at work and the reasons why Irish ex-servicemen were victimized. `Within the nationalist community ex-soldiers weakened the revolution's effectiveness by refusing to join Sinn Fein, subscribe to its funds, or obey the rulings of its courts; and also by maintaining economic and social contacts with the British administration and its security forces.' Those deemed British spies were summarily executed; although many of the confirmed spies came from within the IRA itself.(1) Even associating with serving soldiers and police, or having a family member in the British Army or the RIC, was enough for the IRA to send threatening letters warning ex-servicemen that reprisals would be taken if such contact continued. Expulsion orders were also utilized. In some extreme cases, ex-soldiers such as Harry Murray from Co. Louth, were attacked and killed when the IRA learned that these men had offered themselves as candidates for the RIC.(2) There is no question that senior British commanders and politicians saw Irish veterans as an important counterweight in their campaign against republican extremism. Accordingly, one of the best ways to ensure continued loyalty was guaranteed civil employment.(3) Failure to `push' ex-servicemen's interests using preferential employment schemes might deliver a windfall to republican propaganda. The exploitation of veteran discontent by Sinn Fein had to be forestalled or else these men would lose heart, change allegiance and add strength to the republican cause. In mid-December 1918, a secret memorandum on demobilization and resettlement in Ireland was submitted to the War Cabinet by the `thorough going and consistent Home Ruler', Sir Ian Macpherson, the recently appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland (1919).(4) The memorandum, which had been written by Macpherson's Liberal predecessor, Sir Edward Shortt, and Sir Stephenson Kent, Controller-General of Demobilization and Resettlement, pointed out that these two questions were incomparably greater than those arising in other parts of the United Kingdom; no less so because the political considerations were greater and much more far reaching. An estimated 120,000 (later revised to over 200,000) Irish soldiers, sailors, munitions workers and prisoners of war would be returning home in the next few months. Although the Irish numbers were not large compared to the four million British soldiers awaiting demobilization, the political gravity of the situation necessitated immediate action: In the present state of unrest it would be highly dangerous to have a large number of [Irish] men standing about idle, however generous ... the unemployed grants; and for that reason it is essential that work of some kind should be found for them without delay. It is also [an] undoubted fact that returned soldiers and sailors will not receive the patriotic welcome in Ireland which they will receive in England, Scotland and Wales and it is of the highest importance that everything should be done to let it be known that those who have done their duty are receiving proper assistance.(1) |
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An employment strategy was needed to provide the requisite skills and opportunities to find work for these men, to counter Sinn Fein propaganda, and to prevent them from drifting towards republicanism. This was particularly important for those ex-servicemen who were returning to the rural districts and the small country towns in the south and west of Ireland.(2) Lord French was eager to help returning Irish veterans. In late November 1918, he and Shortt proposed to the British cabinet that the Dublin Castle administration be authorized to use 2 million [pounds sterling] for the industrial and agricultural development of Ireland which would include small grants of land to returning Irish veterans. This had been uppermost in French's mind ever since he had become Lord Lieutenant for Ireland in May 1918. French also advocated a decentralization of the existing demobilization machinery because it would improve efficiency and allow his administrators a freer hand in dealing with returning Irish veterans. He suggested that the Irish Recruiting Council could be easily transformed into an employment council by using the existing network of employment exchanges and integrating demobilization with the Irish branch of the Ministry of Labour. Unfortunately for the Irish Recruiting Council, although the Treasury was generally supportive of the concept of helping Irish veterans and was sensitive to the political ramifications involved, decentralization was ruled out because the delegation of financial responsibilities that this entailed was a significant departure from `ordinary' Treasury practice. The cabinet sanctioned a postponement. According to Stephen Gwynn, the veteran and MP for Galway City, who was a member of the Irish Recruiting Council, urgent action was essential because they would `be let into the fire [only] when the house is well in flames'.(3) Clearly, something concrete had to be done in the interim to help these returning veterans. Walter Long, the influential Tory die-hard and leading spokesman of English Unionism, persuaded French to apply for a 250,000 [pounds sterling] grant from the Treasury to assist in the repatriation and employment of discharged Irish soldiers and sailors. This was achieved.(1) However, in the first six months there were monumental problems with the entire demobilization process. Officials, swamped by men eager to return home, were unable to keep up with the demand for repatriation and civil re-establishment. Priority was based not on length of service but on utility to the economy, so that in many cases men who had only just enlisted were being demobilized before those who had served since the beginning of the war. Naturally, this caused resentment and unrest among service personnel. As government machinery stalled, impatience grew and discontent was rife. Demonstrations were held throughout the United Kingdom and the political temperature rose as riots broke out among British soldiers in several camps in England and France. Worried by the unexpected ferocity of the protest, and fearful that Bolshevism would find fertile ground, the Secretary of State for War and Air, Winston Churchill, swiftly defused a potentially revolutionary situation within the armed forces.(2) |
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The acceleration of demobilization brought about by the abandonment of labour selectivity intensified the problem of helping Irish veterans upon their return. According to French, Ireland was `superficially quiet [but underneath] it was seething with discontent and rebellious intentions'.(3) In the tense political atmosphere it was uncertain how Ireland's ex-servicemen -- condemned as traitors by nationalist propaganda -- would respond. What was certain was that the government had to act swiftly to reassure these men. For French and his advisers satisfying the educational and employment needs of these veterans was paramount. But this proved far from straightforward. Republican propagandists were more than capable of manipulating unsubstantiated reports in order to undermine the government's reconstruction programmes. One such report appeared in the Irish Times, which claimed that the recent land settlement scheme had been abandoned in Ireland. According to the report, soldiers of the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions, who were recruited largely from southern Ireland, would be left unprovided for, while their comrades in the 36th (Ulster) Division would be included in the forthcoming legislation because they would be deemed as men from Great Britain and therefore eligible to participate. Although the claims made by this `mischievous' article were obviously inaccurate, in the words of the Attorney General for Ireland, Arthur Samuels, it re-emphasized the need for Dublin Castle to provide returning Irish veterans with up-to-date information and tangible proof that their interests were being looked after.(1) When the Irish Land (Provision for Sailors and Soldiers) Act of 1919 was enacted it proved inadequate, for while the demand for `land fit for heroes' was intense, its suitability and availability were limited. At the same time, central government was reluctant to release the necessary funds to alleviate a worsening situation. Colonel Edward Saunderson, a leading Unionist and French's private secretary, lamented: The men are drifting daily into the Sinn Fein camp. I cannot understand why it is not realised how serious the question is ... the regular soldiers the other day at Maryboro refused to sing God Save the King because they said nothing was being done for the demobilised men. All through the holders of the purse strings [are] not ... able to make up their minds.(2) In a report on the employment of ex-soldiers in Ireland submitted to French by a special committee of his Advisory Council, it was revealed that there were 5,000 disabled and 31,000 demobilized men already on the books of the Ministry of Labour in Ireland for whom little work was available. Employment prospects, already grim, would become acute, as thousands more still awaited demobilization. Compounding the problem was a surplus of 100,000 unemployed or under-employed civilians in the Irish labour market. More ex-servicemen could be absorbed, provided the government took positive action and opened up new avenues of employment through the vigorous `promotion of new industries, new factories and new enterprises'.(3) But procedural issues, especially over financial control, continued to impede the decision-making process. |
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Growing impatient, the veterans' lobby increased the pressure on the Irish authorities. In May 1919 a three-man deputation from the Irish National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers laid before Admiral Sir Reginald Tupper, Commander-in-Chief of the Coast of Ireland, an application for all unskilled labour jobs and a proportion of those for clerical staff employed by all branches of government throughout Ireland to be reserved for ex-service personnel.(4) The Federation also demanded protection for those men currently employed in the naval dockyard at Queenstown. Reports were circulating that a large group of avowed republicans and Sinn Feiners was attempting to displace all ex-service personnel working in the dockyard. The Federation feared that without immediate government support, including preferential employment, its members would be forced to accept less favourable conditions; that is, they would be compelled to join Sinn Fein or the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union. Long, French and the staunch Unionist and Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, all experienced unease. Wilson, for his part, encouraged the Irish command to employ ex-soldiers in the barracks, thus relieving regular soldiers and police of tedious clerical and manual work. Freed from these burdens, manpower levels would increase, allowing the authorities to concentrate more men in the field against republican extremism. The downside for those ex-soldiers who participated in this type of work was that it made them more vulnerable to IRA reprisals.(1) In September 1919, as a response to the worsening domestic situation in Ireland, French tabled a series of proposals designed to strengthen the government's hand. Most of his recommendations put forward measures to increase the complement of and powers available to the police and secret services. However, the final two dealt with the crucial provision of assistance to ex-servicemen and the passage `without delay' of a soldiers' land bill.(2) Although the cabinet approved all French's proposals, progress on this front was painfully slow, not least because the British government, which had embarked upon a rigorous fiscal retrenchment policy under Sir Eric Geddes in 1921-2, simply lacked the necessary funds for large-scale capital intensive public works programmes.(3) Meanwhile, some Irish veterans received help, but on a vastly reduced scale. In 1920 an additional 100,000 [pounds sterling] was earmarked to assist Irish ex-servicemen find work, to be administered by the Ministry of Transport in repairing road works, upgrading harbour facilities and maintaining railways.(4) The total number of ex-servicemen who received employment under various work projects is difficult to ascertain because various agencies funded different projects. For example, only 474 ex-servicemen were employed through funds provided by the Ireland Development Grant Vote for 1921-2. Of the twelve incomplete projects which were transferred to the Provisional Government at the end of March 1922, all but two were in an advanced stage of completion. A total of 30,470 [pounds sterling] had been given to county and urban district councils for road building, quarrying and urban improvement schemes; 75 per cent of which had been expended before the British Treasury abruptly stopped the work.(1) |
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The statistics are woefully incomplete for the number of ex-servicemen employed on these reconstruction projects. Generous approximations would put the figure no higher than 1,000. Yet this must be offset by the estimated 28,000 Irish ex-servicemen who were receiving out-of-work donation. This figure, combined with that for men who had already exhausted their benefit allowance and remained unemployed, put the total number of Irish ex-servicemen looking for work at 40,000. More could have been done, argued some officials, if more funding was forthcoming. However, as one senior bureaucrat remarked, a genuine solution to this perplexing problem could only have been achieved if 20,000 ex-servicemen found work;(2) which never occurred. The transfer of power did not mean a complete suspension of Treasury funding. London informed the Provisional Government that it was prepared to provide half the remaining funds to complete eight of these projects if Dublin provided the other half and guaranteed that one half of the men employed were ex-servicemen. Dublin agreed, and each government contributed 4,500 [pounds sterling] to facilitate their completion.(3) Co-operation did not stop here. By late 1923, according to the Colonial Office, which dealt with matters pertaining to the Irish Free State, the British Ministry of Labour had spent 100,000 [pounds sterling] per annum on training schemes since partition for ex-servicemen in the south. Six hundred veterans had been enrolled on a variety of training programmes, while a further 2,000 were awaiting vacancies. Unfortunately, once these courses had been completed placement proved very difficult; not only because of the lack of industry in the new dominion, but also because of the boycotting which many were still experiencing in their own country.(4) This was indeed a severe problem for many ex-servicemen in large parts of Ireland between 1920-21 (and throughout the 1920s). In Clare, Cork and the west of Ireland, ex-soldiers seeking employment, housing and plots of land from local authorities were threatened with intimidation. Indeed, such action was not the monopoly of Irish republicans. In Belfast, Catholic ex-servicemen were expelled from their places of employment by Unionist employers and trades unionists. The shipbuilding firm of Harland and Wolff was the worst offender, according to the distinguished soldier and future Irish senator Colonel Maurice Moore. He calculated that of the 7,410 Catholic workers who had been expelled by Belfast businesses, 700 were ex-servicemen.(1) However, it was land settlement and the provisions under the 1919 Irish Land Bill which was a more contentious issue. The revolutionary government was adamant that the compulsory taking of land by the British government for ex-servicemen was completely unacceptable. This `new Plantation' had to be resisted, declared Robert C. Barton TD, a former Minister of Agriculture.(2) To undermine British policy further, while at the same time reinforcing its own legitimacy, the Dail announced its own land acquisition scheme. The prime objective was not to provide funds to enable occupying tenants to purchase the landlord's interest in their holdings, `but rather to settle upon the land, either as owners or occupying tenants, persons who at present neither own or occupy any land at all or occupy an area of land too small to provide them with a livelihood'. Based on a co-operative system and supported by the establishment of a national land mortgage bank, this strategy of assisting peasant farmers with uneconomic holdings and landless man with agricultural experience but no capital was set up in direct opposition to the British government's legislation. Another crucial motive underlining this ambitious policy was to provide an alternative to the emigration of agricultural labourers and farmers' sons.(3) |
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It is difficult to assess how successful the revolutionary and later the Provisional Government were in thwarting British attempts to settle ex-servicemen on the land in Ireland. The combination of republican intimidation and the provision of an alternative policy actively to discriminate against `enemy' soldiers must have had some impact. However, the economic downturn experienced throughout the British Isles after the spring of 1920, and the pressure this put on government resources on both sides of the Irish Sea, probably did more to explain the lack of success in settling a `sturdy yeomanry' on Irish soil. In 1925 it was estimated by Sir John Anderson, formerly joint under-secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (1920-2) and now Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, that out of the unspecified total of ex-service applicants in Northern Ireland who had applied for land, no more than 200 had been found suitable. Current funding also dictated that no more than 388 holdings would be provided for ex-servicemen in the Irish Free State under the 1919 legislation, and only 154 in Northern Ireland.(1) What prospect did emigration hold for these veterans? When British ministers, including Leo Amery, the architect of empire settlement, met in May 1920 to discuss the options available to assist Irish ex-servicemen it was agreed unanimously `that any steps taken to encourage the emigration of ex-Service men from Ireland ought to be regarded as a measure of despair and should not be entertained at this stage'.(2) Growing unemployment, the escalation of violence and intimidation between 1920 and 1922, and the subsequent British withdrawal from Ireland overturned London's initial reluctance to assist these men and help relieve them from their perilous circumstances. The expulsion of loyalists from southern Ireland after partition was yet another dimension of `forced' migration which added to the politicization of Irish migration at this time -- though this did not become a bone of contention between Britain and the Provisional Government. If the imperial authorities were prepared to bear the cost and subsidize under existing free passage legislation those ex-servicemen, former RIC and southern Unionists who had remained loyal to London, then Dublin did not object to their departure.(3) Rather, the battle lines on this issue were within Whitehall, drawn up between the Colonial Office who pushed for a liberal interpretation of the existing assisted migration legislation, and the Treasury who raised objections on financial and jurisdictional grounds. In late January 1921, T. C. Macnaghten, vice-chairman of the Colonial Office's Overseas Settlement Committee (OSC), stated that as far as claims for free passage from ex-servicemen and loyalist refugees in southern Ireland were concerned the British government were duty-bound to help these people. To renege on promises made before the Irish settlement would be construed as a breach of those pledges. Overseas settlement was perhaps the `best and happiest solution', if not the only option left for many still domiciled in the south who now found it necessary to leave because of the changed political circumstances.(1) The Treasury took a different view. Its senior figures were unanimous that the Irish Free State should be excluded from the benefits of the Empire Settlement Act, unless this was considered vital for Anglo-Irish relations. As the Act applied only to migrants from the United Kingdom, Irish Free State citizens were ineligible for passage subsidization. Besides, argued one Treasury knight, `Our main interest in Empire settlement is the relief of unemployment in this Country and we should of course derive no benefit in that behalf from the migration of people from Ireland'.(2) Between August 1922 and March 1923 the Colonial and Irish Offices wore down Treasury resistance. G. F. Plant, secretary of the OSC, firmly believed that people who had special claims to assistance should be considered under the provisions of the Empire Settlement Act of 1922. Moreover, argued Geoffrey Whiskard of the Irish Office, if ex-RIC had been given special status under the 1919 ex-servicemen's free passage scheme for the purposes of emigration, surely, with the extension of free passage legislation to civilians under the Empire Settlement Act, similar assistance had to be extended to southern Irish loyalists who had been threatened with expulsion from Ireland'.(22) The Treasury eventually relented, waived the residence requirement and allowed bona fide refugees and Irish ex-servicemen still domiciled in the south to apply for free passage from the British government.(3) |
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Between January and September 1919 the foundations of the `visionary republic' were laid. The first meeting of the Dail in January witnessed the establishment of parallel ministries and alternative administrative structures, such as courts, which contested the legitimacy and function of those barricaded behind the thick walls of Dublin Castle. However, overall control and authority was uneven, since Sinn Fein dominated the local political scene in many rural constituencies. As R. F. Foster has so poignantly remarked, this uncertain distribution of civil authority between the Dail, Sinn Fein and the IRA throughout 1919 and 1920 introduced unwanted confusion, division and confrontation at a crucial time within the nationalist movement.(4) None the less, there were no apparent divisions on the issue of emigration, its conduct or administration. The promotion of emigration was seen by many leading republicans as a deliberate tactic undertaken by the imperial authorities to undermine nationalist strength. In May 1920, one troubled nationalist, William Murphy from Queenstown, Co. Cork, pleaded with the Finance Minister, Michael Collins, demanding that `drastic measures' be implemented to stop emigration from Ireland. Impatient with the slowness of the new Irish executive to act, he implored Collins to place `a ban on this vicious traffic, that drains the country of its life-blood and lowers the vitality of the nation'.(1) Even now, wrote Murphy, nearly 300 men and women were awaiting the arrival of an outward-bound ocean liner, `to the unbounded satisfaction' of those who, like the lodging-house keeper and booking agent, `enrich themselves out of a nation's agony'. This extortion from `unsophisticated emigrants' had to stop, as did the immoral `export of human cattle' which these `sharks' wanted to continue indefinitely.(2) Murphy's impassioned plea did not fall on deaf ears. The following month, Cathal Brugha, the Minister for Defence issued a manifesto: The enemy has declared that there are too many young men in Ireland, and he is anxious to clear them out. It suited his purpose to refuse them passports during the war, but he will now give them every facility to emigrate. Those facilities must not be availed of. Ireland wants all her young men. Their presence in the country is more necessary now than ever. Commenting that the British Army was in a `state of disorganisation', the manifesto also decreed that `cunning and brute force' had availed nothing. `There is just one chance left for him [sic], that is, to stimulate emigration.' The young men of Ireland were urged to stand fast: `To leave their country at this supreme crisis would be nothing less than base desertion in the face of the enemy.' Arguing that the lack of employment was not a reason to leave, the manifesto added that all that was needed was `a little more patience, and then a bracing-up for the final tussle'.(3) The plea of forbearance was reinforced by Eamon de Valera, the President of the Dail, who was fund-raising in the United States. He advocated that all young people in Ireland should take an anti-emigration pledge. While his cabinet colleagues mulled over this idea, they instructed de Valera to appeal to America's Irish community not to purchase tickets for intending emigrants from home.(4) |
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Brugha's proclamation was immediately followed by an order from IRA General Headquarters forbidding any Volunteer to leave the country or apply for a passport for the purpose of emigrating without first transmitting the particulars of the case to their superior officers. Only after the appropriate documentation had been received by GHQ from the regional command would a decision be made. If successful, the individual concerned could only leave the country upon receipt of formal written permission from GHQ. To emphasize the importance of following these simple procedures, General Order No. 10 reinforced the Minister for Defence's admonition that emigration was regarded as desertion in the face of the enemy. A stark warning was also issued to emigration agents and their prospective clients: `touting for emigrants ... shall not be allowed, and cases of this occurring shall be reported, at once to Headquarters'.(1) For those emigration and shipping agents who refused to acknowledge the authority of the revolutionary government and who continued to flout the new emigration regulations, it was suggested that republican police forces be given the authority to seize all their books, correspondence and literature. Transgressors would be held in custody and fined. If these agents resumed their `illegal' activities and continued to defy republican authorities the only alternative was the destruction of their premises.(2) The need to seek official permission to emigrate was reiterated once again in July, this time by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Any citizen wanting to leave Ireland after 24 July 1920 had to have written sanction from the revolutionary government. Every application had to be authenticated by a Justice and the registrar of the District Court in which the applicant resided. Submissions from IRA soldiers had to be accompanied by their service records and authenticated by their brigade commandant. Birth and baptismal certificates were also obligatory. Several weeks later this decree prohibiting emigration was confirmed by the Dail.(3) In October, the Ministry of Home Affairs reinforced its pledge to stop emigration by taking the extraordinary step of enlisting the assistance of Irish organizations abroad in its efforts `to prevent the depopulation of our beloved country'. Commenting on the undoubted success which the summer proclamations had in stemming the flow of young people out of Ireland, it requested its countrymen overseas to undertake the following: to discourage their kindred from leaving Ireland; not to pay or contribute towards the cost of sending any relative or friend out of Ireland; not to assist in any way in procuring employment for persons who had left Ireland without government sanction; not to admit persons who had left Ireland without an official permit into the membership of any Irish organization and to inform the relevant authorities of the existence of such deserters; and, finally to ostracize such persons where possible.(1) This last item was deleted from the draft memorandum, but it does demonstrate the revolutionary government's determination to use every means at its disposal not only to defend its authority as a government, but also to ensure that its military strength was not depleted. For as Michael Collins reminded Art O'Brien, president of the London-based Irish Self-Determination League and Sinn Fein's representative in Britain between 1919 and 1924, the issue of emigration permits was `another step in establishing the acceptance of the Government of Ireland'.(2) Moreover, an emigration system controlled by the revolutionary government protected these organizations from infiltration by British security forces and prevented such bodies from being exploited by impostors, frauds or secret agents.(3) |
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The question of citizenship, and the continual tightening of the revolutionary and later the Provisional Government's emigration regulations and procedures,(4) combined with the outbreak of the civil war in the summer of 1922, had a significant impact on both the desire and ability of the dominions to recruit suitable settlers from Ireland. Even for those Irish emigrants who had successfully received the revolutionary government's permission to leave, further delays and inconveniences were encountered when, first, the seal used to stamp the emigration permits fell into British hands, and, secondly, the temporary replacement was continually in need of repair. The result, grumbled the Assistant Minister of Home Affairs, was that a considerable (but unspecified) number of applications were inevitably delayed. Frustrated, some of these prospective emigrants descended on the office, assuming a most `aggressive attitude'. In many cases they had already booked their passages and were only awaiting the issue of a permit. This was a cause of `serious and constant annoyance' to staff within the emigration office, and the junior minister implored his superiors to find a proper seal.(5) In August 1923 the assistant to the Canadian government's emigration agent in Dublin, William Storey, informed J. Obed Smith in London, that with the cessation of the civil war emigration from the Irish Free State was on a much larger scale than it had been for many seasons past. He reported that the bulk of these people were from the poorer farming areas, in particular from the mountainous regions along the south and west coasts where traditionally small holdings had been worked by the farmer and his family without the aid of hired labour. Although encouraged by the increase in numbers, Storey warned London that the booking agents in Ireland remained wary about launching a full-blown publicity campaign. Storey commented that many booking agents, afraid of intimidation, feared that they could not safely conduct the `usual methods of propaganda' beyond the display of posters in their shop windows, advertisements in the daily newspapers and the `judicious' distribution of handbills and emigration literature, without first seeking Dublin's approval.(1) Two months later, the Irish government cancelled its objections to propaganda work conducted by Canadian emigration officials and their proxies in the Irish Free State. The resumption of emigration work in southern Ireland was welcome news for Canadian ministers in Ottawa. A devout Catholic and of Irish descent, W. J. Egan, the Deputy Minister of Immigration, informed the Minister of Immigration, J. A. Robb, that in the past much of the emigration work in Ireland had been transacted in Belfast. This had had a bad effect on Canada's abilities to secure people from the twenty-six southern counties. He recommended that the status of the Dublin office, under the `energetic' Storey, be raised; and more resources should be forthcoming if Canadian emigration efforts in the south were to be improved. Only then could Canada secure `a great deal' of the Irish emigration which was still flowing to the United States.(2) Canada's High Commissioner in London put his weight behind the need to improve emigration between the two dominions. Writing to James McNeill, the newly appointed High Commissioner for the Irish Free State in London, Larkin was anxious to see Ireland quickly `blossom out as a rose ... for I am quite confident that she will eventually do so ... and if you or any of your friends can see any way in which we could join hands to help, I know that our Prime Minister and indeed all his colleagues, would be only too glad to have some suggestion'.(3) |
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The lifting of the Irish government's emigration ban in October 1923, combined with a renewed and vigorous publicity campaign by Canadian emigration agents, had an immediate impact on the numbers of Irish men and women leaving Ireland for Canada. In May 1924 Obed Smith recorded that the number of persons travelling to Canada on the Cunard and White Star lines from Queenstown since I January had been the `magnificent' total of 2,056. The Northern Irish statistics were even more impressive. In the first six months of 1924, 4,326 emigrants had embarked for Canada from that province: 3,768 from Belfast and 558 from Londonderry. Of that total, 599 were unaccompanied women, 54 of who were from Londonderry. More continued to arrive in Canada over the summer; the men looking for work as agricultural labourers and the women for positions as domestic servants. By the end of 1924, 8,160 British emigrants previously resident in Ireland (and exclusive of emigrants from the Irish Free State and of emigrants from Great Britain or Northern Ireland who may have embarked at Irish Free State ports) had departed for overseas destinations: 6,637 for British empire countries, 1,477 for the United States and 46 for other foreign countries. Canada received the largest proportion, 5,034, followed by Australia with 920; and New Zealand with 449, while South Africa obtained a paltry 128. Finally, in southern Ireland between July and October, 518 Irish men, women and children left Queenstown (renamed Cobh), and disembarked in Canada.(1) It must be assumed that the majority comprehended in the Queenstown figures were Protestants seeking sanctuary overseas. Obviously more statistical work needs to be undertaken to determine their exact number, and their social standing and religious affiliations. Nevertheless, the picture in the south reflected the irreconcilable political differences which existed between many Protestants and Catholics in the Irish Free State. Work by Kurt Bowen and Peter Hart suggests that the largest exodus from Ireland of southern Unionists occurred between 1921 and 1926. Patchy Home Office figures also indicate that potentially one of the larger components of those Protestants expelled from the Irish Free State were farmers or men with agricultural experience. Although the largest number of Protestant loyalists resettled in England, a significant number travelled overseas and had received help from the Irish branches of the British Legion and the Irish Distress Committee (reconstituted as the Irish Grants Committee in 1923) and the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA).(2) With regard to Irish migration, Canada's performance was much better than Australia's during the 1920s. Although the statistics for migration to Australia are even less complete than those for Canada, three general observations can be made. Numbers were substantially smaller, the migrants were predominantly Catholic, and the politicization of this issue had a greater impact on the Australian domestic scene than it did in Canada. Michael Roe has estimated that approximately 1,000 people from the Irish Free State emigrated annually to Australia in the 1920s. For example, according to the British government's monthly publication, the Ministry of Labour Gazette, in 1924 and 1925 respectively, 1,138 and 1,076 Free State citizens arrived in Australia.(1) This is about half the Canadian figure for the same period. According to Roe, only an unspecified handful of emigrants had arrived in Australia from Northern Ireland. It is true that emigrants from Northern Ireland were fewer than those from the Irish Free State. Yet the figures themselves are somewhat misleading. Board of Trade statistics reveal that in 1925 Australia received 1,398 emigrants from Northern Ireland. What the figures do not tell is how many of these were emigrants or refugees from the Irish Free State who had travelled north to embark upon ships leaving Belfast or Londonderry for Australia. Therefore the vagaries of these official tabulations must be taken into account once again, although the number of Northern Irish migrants bound for Australia might be higher than the official records suggest. Nevertheless, in light of Canada's rejuvenated emigration strategy after 1923, the long-standing connection between Ulster and Canada, and the success of Canadian operations on both sides of the Irish border, the smaller numbers emigrating to Australia from Northern Ireland are less startling than they might first appear.(2) |
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The low numbers of post-war Irish migrants in Australia can also be attributed to the intense confrontation between the Irish Catholic community in this Pacific dominion, led by the political firebrand Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne, and ultra-patriotic Protestants marshalled under the leadership of the pugnacious Prime Minister W. M. Hughes. The Easter Rising of 1916 and the Australian conscription referenda of 1916 and 1917 had pitted these two elements firmly against each other in the domestic arena during the war. For Hughes, the Easter Rising revealed the truly treacherous nature of extreme Irish nationalism. The Irish community in Australia, which was predominantly urban, Catholic, anti-war and anti-imperial, largely supported the increasingly militant Australian labour movement, which, as the war progressed, began to question Australia's growing participation in the conflict. This was political heresy to Hughes and his supporters who were determined to do all they could for the war effort and the survival of the British empire. Their policies included the introduction of conscription to maintain Australia's manpower levels for her military forces overseas. The two conscription crises therefore became tests of `national' and imperial loyalty. In the end, Hughes lost both referenda: a defeat which not only split the country but forced him to leave the Labor Party and form a Nationalist administration in 1917 from cross-party elements determined to prosecute the war to its bloody conclusion. This factionalism continued after the war and had an indirect impact on Australian post-war immigration policy.(1) Australia's participation in the overseas migration schemes initiated by the British government after 1919 were permeated by the `political odour' which had lingered on since 1916-17. The Irish-Catholic community, entwined as it was with Australian Labor, continued its decidedly anti-empire and therefore anti-migration stance.(2) On the other hand, some Australian politicians and British policy makers saw the political advantages which a state-assisted migration programme could bring to this domestic conflict. Empire migration using hardy Anglo-Saxon stock was an effective countermeasure in the fight against Bolshevism and Sinn Fein which, British race patriots argued, threatened Australia's social and political fabric. Although it is still difficult to measure the full impact of this distrust of Irish Catholics on Irish migration to Australia, the wariness of some senior Australian officials in actively promoting migration from this quarter explains the small number of Irish migrants who did travel to Australia in the 1920s. Undoubtedly, in the immediate aftermath of the Irish settlement, Australia's response to the plight of exiled RIC, Irish loyalists and ex-servicemen was cool. E. L. Cuthbertson, the Treasury representative on the OSC, noted that Australian officials were definitely anxious not to encourage or recruit southern Irish emigrants. For them, it was not `a very big question'. Instead, they preferred to toe the legalistic (and convenient) line outlined by the British Treasury -- that as the Irish Free State was now a dominion its citizens were outside the jurisdiction of the Empire Settlement Act and therefore ineligible for passage subsidization. Moreover, reported Sir Percy Hunter from the Australian High Commission in London, `there has been no demand from that quarter'.(3) Here the issue lapsed until the Imperial Conference of 1926. |
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When the issue of free passage for Irish ex-servicemen was again raised with the dominions at the Imperial Conference in 1926, the Australian response remained singularly negative. H. W. Gepp, chairman of the Australian government's newly established Development and Migration Commission, refused to discuss the matter on a `serious plane' with his British counterparts. It quickly emerged that these men were not welcome in Australia: a fact which Plant later confirmed in private conversations with Gepp.(1) The chilly reception given to this particular scheme by Australian officials is explained, in part, by the longstanding and ongoing tension between the Irish Catholic community and the Australian government initiated during the war. British officials noted that in 1924 Australia had refused to promote migration from the Irish Free State on the grounds that it might pose grave problems domestically. Sensitive to Australian domestic constraints, British officials argued that friction over this issue had to be avoided at all costs. For `if it became known that a section of the population of the Irish Free State, to wit, ex-servicemen, were being granted assisted passages for which other residents of the Irish Free State were not eligible', the resulting political malestrom would be unbearable for both parties.(2) As far as Prime Minister Stanley Bruce's government was concerned, only nominated emigrants from the Irish Free State were eligible for entry; but even here they would only be accepted as special cases. The political risks associated with accepting large numbers of Irish veterans were too great, no matter how deserving of assistance these men may have been. Such intolerance for the Irish within some Australian government circles remained deeply entrenched throughout the 1920s. In 1929, the Earl of Crawford, a former cabinet minister in Lloyd George's wartime coalition, explained to his close friend Lord Stonehaven, Australia's Governor-General: `I notice a modicum of Irish names [in the Australian cabinet]. I remember Hughes telling me soon after the War, that he could always tell how far an Australian was loyal by his name: an Irish name always spelt disloyalty.'(3) Canada, as we have seen, took a more positive approach, and its desire to help Irish ex-servicemen was confirmation that immigration officials in Ottawa saw these men as the right type for Canadian conditions. When the subject of free passage for Irish ex-servicemen resurfaced at the Imperial Conference, Blair, now Canada's Assistant Deputy Minister of Immigration and Colonization, discussed with J. J. Hearne, the Irish Free State's parliamentary draughtsman and sole representative on the overseas settlement special sub-committee, the possibility of their two governments entering into an arrangement under which Canada would take a number of ex-servicemen from southern Ireland for agricultural employment. The idea arose during discussions between Blair and the Earl of Clarendon, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions (1925-7) and chairman of the OSC. Clarendon minuted that Blair was `most sympathetic' to the idea and had stated that Canada could take an unlimited number of single Irish ex-soldiers with agricultural experience.(1) Blair was under the impression that the newest dominion was especially concerned with its surplus population, specifically the plight of its ex-servicemen. An agreement, if struck, would relieve the Irish Free State of large maintenance costs and, according to Blair, `secure for Canada a type of settler that would be a real asset to us'. The junior minister also believed that Great Britain would be disposed to contribute financially and he left no doubt that Canada would welcome this. He also hoped the Irish Free State government would contribute towards passage subsidization.(2) The British government was encouraged by Blair's interest and initiative. Direct co-operation between the two dominions would not only generate salutary political goodwill between the Irish and British governments, but it would also highlight the ideal of inter-dominion co-operation and understanding that London had been trying to foster since the Armistice. Moreover, the migration agreement between the two dominions would assuage the politically sensitive issue of direct British sponsorship or involvement.(3) |
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Dublin was not prepared to participate financially, nor was it disposed to embark upon any scheme of state-aided emigration; a policy which was vigorously maintained throughout the inter-war period. However, it had no objection if an agreement was struck with the British Legion to act as the go-between with the Canadian authorities and Irish ex-servicemen. The Canadian government was also left room to manoeuvre. Dublin informed Leo Amery, Secretary of State for the Dominions (1924-9), that `we do not consider that we would be justified, in the face of our employment problem, in objecting to any inducements to emigration which another Government might see fit to offer'.(4) Amery was anxious to get the Irish government more involved, but the Dominions Office strongly maintained that it was up to Canada to approach formally the Irish Free State and work out a suitable migration agreement.(5) Determined not to leave the Canadian initiative unsupported, Amery informed Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the British government had to let Canada know privately that if the formal move was made to negotiate an agreement, the British government would be prepared to assist financially. This meant either incorporating the proposed agreement within the current empire settlement legislation, or extending the existing provisions to cover that agreement. Nevertheless, Amery sounded a cautionary note. He was aware of the pressure being exerted by southern Irish loyalists and ex-servicemen for the redress of compensation claims against the British and Irish governments. In 1925 the Irish Claims Compensation Association released a report demanding that the British government set up a committee of inquiry to investigate and recommend compensation for Irish loyalists who had suffered, owing to their patriotism, after the withdrawal of British forces from southern Ireland. A committee presided over by Lord Dunedin was duly established and submitted its report in July 1926.(2) Meanwhile, serious unemployment amongst Irish ex-soldiers prompted the Dail to establish a claims committee to explore two important areas of grievance. Claims were lodged by ex-servicemen against the British government for compensation in respect of past service. Its second function was to examine alleged discrimination against these men by the Irish Free State government regarding employment on relief and public works projects. The Committee on Claims of British Ex-Servicemen was appointed on 29 November 1927 and submitted its report in December 1929. The significance of this report (named after its chairman Cecil Lavery) was that it refused to recognize the 150,000 `British' ex-servicemen still resident in the south as a separate class. It failed to find `that such ex-Servicemen form a class with grievances or disabilities common to them as a class'. The report argued that the problems which ex-servicemen complained about were in no way characteristic of British ex-servicemen alone, `but were the result of the setting up of the Free State as a distinct entity'.(3) Ex-servicemen were members of every social strata in the Irish Free State and the social and economic problems which plagued the new dominion were being endured by all. Special status or preferential treatment was therefore out of the question. |
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The Dominions Office expected that emigration facilities were bound to come up before the Lavery Committee. In the end, its recommendations were extremely disappointing to the ex-service lobby, but were not unexpected. Questions of policy were clearly a matter for the British government under the Empire Settlement Act of 1922. The committee concluded that there was no evidence of a marked demand for the application of the legislation to veterans still resident in the Irish Free State.(1) Amery privately concurred, admitting that the demand from Irish veterans for passage subsidization would be small and would come primarily from unemployed veterans residing in urban centres such as Dublin and Cork. As a result, they would be unacceptable to the dominions, which wanted men from rural districts possessing agricultural experience. This point was reinforced during his visit to Canada in 1928. It was also confirmed by Canadian authorities that despite Ottawa's willingness to help Irish settlers, assisted migration from Ireland had only amounted to a trickle. Migration patterns had also changed. In the past, the majority of Irish immigrants had come from the poverty-stricken and agricultural western counties; but the large proportion of Irish ex-servicemen seeking assistance came from the cities and towns of the eastern and southern counties. As far as Ottawa was concerned, they had done everything humanly possible to help these men within the confines of the empire migration legislation. Ottawa was disappointed with the response, and its patience was wearing thin. Indeed, evidence suggests that Blair's initiative over Irish migration at the 1926 Imperial Conference had not been welcomed by all sections of the Department of Immigration because it had to a certain degree committed Canada to assisting Irish emigrants. The Colonial Office noted that not long after the conference, Blair's superiors began showing a tendency to reject the commitments made by him in London. Nevertheless, in 1928 the Canadian government reaffirmed its willingness to continue helping these veterans `provided it was kept quiet'.(2) The deciding factor which governed the small number of ex-soldier migrants leaving Ireland was that the situation after 1926 had changed dramatically since the turbulent years prior to 1923. Ex-servicemen had been more desperate to leave in the early part of the decade, but time was beginning to heal old wounds. The animosity which had been directed against ex-servicemen in Ireland after the Armistice, remarked Whiskard, `has very largely disappeared, [therefore] the number of men who will apply and would thereafter be found eligible for assisted passages is likely to be very small'.(3) This did not dampen attempts by the Dominions Office to offer further assistance by extending the benefits of the Empire Settlement Act to more people in southern Ireland. Through the implementation of an order-in-council, and without involving additional expenditure, the Dominions Office wanted to extend the provisions of the Empire Settlement Act to the Irish Free State government and allow it to participate in training schemes which were being drafted. Moreover, Dublin would be asked to make financial contributions to the settlement of its deserving citizens.(1) |
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The Dominions Office sought the necessary Treasury consent. It was refused. The Treasury questioned both the legality and the propriety of such a move. The Empire Settlement Act was not included in the Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act of 1922 which defined the legal and jurisdictional areas between the British and Irish governments.(2) Moreover, concluded Treasury officials, the proposal, however meritorious, would not further British settlement in the overseas dominions because the small and limited number of possible immigrants did not warrant the extension of present-day statutes. `I think the D [ominions] O[ffice] in their zeal for ... emigration are confusing the issues', minuted one Treasury official, `owing to the accidental circumstances that they are also responsible for ex-service men in [the] I.F.S.'.(3) Into the breach stepped the British Legion. The Legion had always been seen as a possible intermediary between the British government and Irish ex-servicemen. The setting up of the Lavery Committee spurred it into action. It vigorously pressed compensation claims for its Irish members and backed its campaign by announcing it would contribute [pounds sterling] 100 per family for the training and settlement of deserving applicants. Lord Lovat, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions (1927-9) and Clarendon's successor as chairman of the OSC, welcomed the news, for he was planning the establishment of a private training scheme for ex-servicemen in Ireland.(4) Anticipated Irish funding from a [pounds sterling] 60,000 memorial fund fell through, however, and the Lovat scheme was abandoned. Soon after, Lovat was forced to resign because of ill-health and the scheme was never revived.(5) As it turned out, the numbers did not warrant increased government activity on either side of the Atlantic, despite the Dominions Office's attempts to do something constructive, however small, for loyal Irish ex-servicemen. With an impending general election in Britain in 1929, the Dominions Office dropped the issue. It hoped to take up the matter after the election but it never did. `Fate seems to fight against our reaching any solution of this question', lamented Macnaghten.(6) And so it remained. In contrast to southern Ireland, little is known about the discussions, concerns and attitudes of Ulster politicians to the migration of their fellow countrymen overseas, except that the Northern Ireland Ministry of Labour was given jurisdiction over empire migration. Some tantalizing documents held in Belfast concerning the application to Northern Ireland of the Empire Settlement Act are still closed to historians.(1) Nevertheless, from the available information in both London and Ottawa it is clear that Ulster migration to Canada, at least, continued apace, as it had prior to World War I. Moreover, there is no doubt that Canadian officials were pleased with Ulster's response.(2) The Australian story is much less straightforward, but again, despite efforts to stimulate emigration from this quarter in 1923-4, Australia's policies were on a smaller scale, poorly organized in comparison with Canada's, and less effective, resulting in uncertain but miniscule numbers. |
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Yet the politicization of migration was never far from the surface when it was discussed in public. For instance, in August--September 1926 Sir James Craig, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, accompanied by his wife and two of their children, toured Canada. Huge crowds greeted them wherever they went, especially in Winnipeg and Toronto, `a great Ulster and Orange centre'. One of the more amusing events occurred while the Craigs were en route between Edmonton and Jasper, Alberta. Lady Craig noted that she and her husband were constantly having to get out at almost every railway station to meet Irish people of largely Ulster extraction. `It was pathetic sometimes the eagerness they displayed in asking questions about the old country', she noted in her diary, but none the less it was `one of the features we enjoyed most on our trip ... these little informal gatherings with natives of our own homeland'.(3) Such rapturous welcomes in the senior dominion were indeed manipulated by Irish nationalist elements within Ulster. To support the principle of overseas migration and development was one thing. However, for the Stormont government to endorse large-scale emigration from Ulster itself was another matter entirely; one that contained a number of potential pitfalls, of which a politician as shrewd as Craig was all too aware. Just prior to his return home, the Prime Minister was warned by his private secretary that the staunchly nationalist Irish News, Belfast's oldest republican newspaper, was attempting to cause trouble in Unionist ranks with reports that Craig had endorsed wholeheartedly Ulster's participation in the dispatch of large numbers of Ulster Protestants to Canada in order to help populate this vast dominion. Acknowledging the benefits which state-assisted migration was bringing to the empire as a whole, the statement released from Stormont on Craig's behalf flatly denied the claims made by the Irish News, and instead focused on Prime Minister Craig's endorsement of Canada as a premier holiday destination!(1) Craig's preferred strategy was to concentrate Ulster's human and financial resources on building a strong and prosperous export-oriented agricultural sector.(2) With the onset of the Great Depression in the autumn of 1929, Irish migration overseas from all thirty-two counties tapered off for almost a decade: a trend which mirrored British migration patterns for the same period. Those Irish emigrants who could not find work, or had become disillusioned with their poor prospects overseas, returned home. As James Meenan has illustrated for southern Ireland, between 1931 and 1938 the inward flow of returning migrants was almost double the much reduced outward trickle: 15,859 as opposed to 8,480. By 1938, rejuvenated interest in overseas migration resulted in the number of people leaving Ireland returning to their pre-1929 levels; only for migration to be curtailed once again by the outbreak of war in September 1939.(3) Northern Ireland experienced a similar trend. |
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Unquestionably, the overall number of Irish migrants from all thirty-two counties who embarked for new lives overseas during the inter-war period was substantially lower than at any time since the Great Famine. None the less, the intense politicization of the migration issue within Ireland during the early 1920s means that their departure cannot be dismissed as unimportant or inconsequential. The forced migration of many former RIC, ex-servicemen, southern Protestants and their families was unheralded in the annals of the Irish diaspora. This contention is open to challenge from those who firmly believe that much of Irish migration was `forced', due to the political, economic and religious oppression many Irish-Catholics suffered at the hands of Protestant landlords and, after the Act of Union in 1801, the Dublin Castle administration. But for a number of reasons the 1920s stand out as a unique episode in Irish migration: for the way in which migration impacted on Anglo-Irish and Anglo-dominion relations; for the shift away from the United States towards Britain and her empire as the favoured destination for a growing number of Irish people; and for the dramatic reduction of the Protestant community in southern Ireland, especially between 1918 and 1923. The determination of Sinn Fein and the revolutionary government to prevent a haemorrhaging of their support through emigration was indeed a serious concern between 1919 and 1922. But to say that emigration was deliberately encouraged by London and subsidized by the Treasury as part of an imperial strategy designed solely to undermine republicanism is unjustified. Undoubtedly, the threat did exist. Hence the nationalists' resolve first to deter emigration through IRA standing orders and edicts from the Dail prohibiting unauthorized emigration, and then to assert their new-found authority over the emigration process through the creation of parallel machinery to channel prospective migrants through republican agencies. But at no time during this turbulent period did the British government privately contemplate or publicly advocate the use of voluntary or state-aided emigration as a weapon in its fight against Irish nationalism. The real success of the revolutionary government was therefore its ability to politicize the emigration issue. Imperial assistance, however begrudged in some official quarters, was directed at those small numbers of loyalist refugees -- both Protestant and Catholic -- who had no alternative but to leave their beloved Ireland because of continued persecution by their former countrymen. The same principle applied to assistance granted to Irish ex-servicemen. If southern Ireland was to be rebuilt, then it was the responsibility of Sinn Fein, the revolutionary government and later the Provisional Government, not London. Hence Michael Collins's resolve in 1920 to thwart British reconstruction policies aimed at helping returning veterans to find employment, purchase land or establish a business. Benefits would accrue to nationalist supporters, not to enemies of the republican state. In fact, it was the reconstruction programme in Ireland, not state-assisted imperial migration, which had the greatest potential to undermine the authority of the new Irish government. Amery's comment that emigration for returning veterans was an act of despair is a telling one. For it was clear in some departments of Whitehall that Irish veterans, if properly handled and rewarded, could act as a leaven in the nationalist lump: a consideration that was not lost on Dominions Office officials during World War II when the demobilization and resettlement of Irish personnel who had served in British forces was discussed.(1) |
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As for Australia and Canada, there were not only similarities in approach to the issue of Irish migration in the 1920s, but also, and more markedly, noticeable differences. Between 1918 and 1923, both dominions were unanimous in not promoting (or wanting) Irish migrants. Nevertheless, the door was left slightly ajar to allow those determined few, who were eager to settle on the land or who could be nominated by a family member, an opportunity for a fresh start overseas. But it was the political violence in Ireland which forced both dominion governments to shy away from actively promoting emigration propaganda until the conflict had been resolved. Eager not to become involved in or tainted by what was perceived to be strictly an Anglo-Irish matter, both dominions bided their time. Australia's stance was particularly noteworthy because of the intense hostility which was directed by Prime Minister Hughes's pro-war faction against that dominion's Irish Catholic community during 1915-18. Aligned with the trades' union movement, most Irish Catholics in Australia had become increasingly critical of Australian participation during the Great War. These fissures widened with the Easter Rising of 1916 and the conscription referenda of 1916-17, as Hughes's National government continued to battle against these so-called `anti-imperial' and `Sinn Fein' elements. The animosity between these factions continued well into the 1920s and was, in turn, reflected in the Australian government's lack of interest in Irish migration throughout the decade. Lip-service was paid to the plight of Protestant refugees and ex-RIC, but the fires of political sectarianism whipped up by the war continued to cast a pall of smoke over Australian participation in the promotion of Irish migration, even with Hughes's electoral defeat and the conclusion of the Irish civil war in 1923. As a result, the number of Irish migrants embarking for Australia in the 1920s remained small. Canada's response to Irish migration was equally lukewarm between 1918 and 1923, despite attempts by several junior immigration officials to press their superiors for greater action. With the end of the civil war and the lifting of the ban on migration propaganda, Canadian officials successfully relaunched their migration work. Determined to tap what had traditionally been an important source of settlers, they produced encouraging initial results in all thirty-two counties between 1924 and 1926. Unfortunately, the patchy statistics fail to distinguish between different religious affiliations or to disclose whether this renewed interest in migration to Canada was due to political factors (such as Protestants fleeing republican intimidation in the south), economic pressures within Ireland, or the opportunities within the senior dominion itself. What is clear -- and this reflects British migration trends -- is that the post-Armistice numbers never came close to returning to the pre-1914 levels. As numbers declined after 1926, so too did Canadian efforts in Ireland, despite the personal interest of Deputy Minister Egan, and the energetic F. C. Blair. Although not an intense political issue in Canada, as it remained in Australia, Irish migration was a sensitive one with some senior Canadian politicians, including the Liberal Prime Minister, Mackenzie King; a man who had little interest in empire migration at the best of times. The preferred status granted to needy RIC and Protestant refugees, combined with the extra effort which failed to produce a steady and sustained stream of Irish settlers of the right type, convinced most immigration officials in Ottawa that events had run their course. |
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Finally, emigration remained a sensitive issue in Northern Ireland. For many Protestants, Unionism had to remain strong and that meant strength in numbers. Like the republicans in the south, Sir James Craig and his Unionist supporters could ill afford to lose too many of their Protestant brethren to emigration agents. Keen to promote imperial co-operation, Craig emphasized the development of Northern Ireland and its economy by its people and within an imperial framework. Always ready though he was to strengthen ties with the dominions, especially Canada, neither he nor his government were prepared to undermine Unionism by encouraging Protestants from Northern Ireland to emigrate en masse, even to the dominions. Participation in seasonal labour migration projects, such as the Canadian harvester scheme of 1928, was acceptable because these men were contracted to return to Northern Ireland after the harvest. A large-scale movement of permanent settlers overseas was another matter, for it could not be tolerated if Northern Ireland was to survive politically. Small though the numbers were of Irish emigrants from all thirty-two counties who made a new life for themselves in Australia and Canada during the 1920s, the politicization of this issue remains an important and fascinating feature of the Irish diaspora. KENT FEDOROWICH University of the West England (*) The author wishes to thank the Nuffield Foundation for a grant in aid of research for this project. He is grateful to the Trustees of the L[iddell] H[art] C[entre] for M[ilitary] A[rchives], King's College London, for permission to quote from the papers of Major-General C. H. Foulkes. He is equally grateful to the I[mperial] W[ar] M[useum] for permission to quote from the private papers and diaries of Sir Henry Wilson and Field Marshal Lord French. Finally, he would like to thank Ged Martin, Philip Ollerenshaw, Glyn Stone, Martin Thomas and Donal Lowry for timely editorial advice on earlier drafts. (1.) Quotation cited in Mary Denise Moran, `A Force Beleaguered: The Royal Irish Constabulary, 1900-1922' (University College Galway, MA thesis, 1989), p. 226. (2.) Roger Swift, `The Historiography of the Irish in Nineteenth-century Britain', in Patrick O'Sullivan (ed.), The Irish World Wide, ii (London, 1992), p. 53. (3.) The vast amount of literature on the Irish migrant experience in nineteenth-century Britain, the United States and overseas prohibits the compilation of a detailed list. The following are cited not only because of their incisive analysis, but also because of their superb bibliographies and/or coverage: R. E. Kennedy, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage and Fertility (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 110-38; David Fitzpatrick, `Irish Emigration in the Later Nineteenth Century', I[rish] H[istorical] S[tudies], xxii (1980), 126-43, and his chapter in W. E. Vaughan (ed.), A New History of Ireland, vi (Oxford, 1996), pp. 606-52; Kerby A. Miller, Bruce Boling and David N. Doyle, `Emigrants and Exiles: Irish Cultures and Irish Emigration to North America, 1790-1922', IHS, xxii (1980), 97-123; Janet A. Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from Ireland, 1885-1920 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1989); Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia (rev. edn., Sydney, 1993); Donald H. Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Montreal, 1984); id., Half the World from Home: Perspectives of the Irish in New Zealand, 1860-1939 (Wellington, 1990); id., Small Differences: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, 1815-1922: An International Perspective (Dublin, 1988); Bruce S. Elliot, Irish Migrants in the Canadas: A New Approach (Montreal, 1988). |
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(1.) Ian M. Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy, 1917-1939 (London, 1974). Three recent studies which reflect this new scholarship on inter-war British migration and its impact on Anglo-dominion relations are: Stephen Constantine (ed.), Emigrants and Empire (Manchester, 1990); Kent Fedorowich, Unfit for Heroes: Reconstruction and Soldier Settlement in the Empire between the Wars (Manchester, 1995); Michael Roe, Australia, Britain, and Migration, 1915-1940: A Study in Desperate Hopes (Cambridge, 1995). (2.) Sean Glynn, `Irish Immigration to Britain, 1911-51: Patterns and Policy', Irish Economic and Social History, viii (1981), 50-69; P. J. Drudy, `Migration between Ireland and Britain since Independence', in P. J. Drudy (ed.), Irish Studies 5. Ireland and Britain since 1922 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 107-23; John A. Jackson, `The Irish in Britain', in ibid., pp. 125-38; Steven Fielding, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880-1939 (Buckingham, 1993), pp. 19-37. (3.) Donald H. Akenson, Occasional Papers on the Irish in South Africa (Grahamstown, 1991), p. 51. (4.) Cormac O Grada, `A Note on Nineteenth-Century Emigration Statistics', Population Studies, xxix (1975), 143-49; id., Ireland. A New Economic History, 180-1939 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 213-35; James Meenan, The Irish Economy since 1922 (Liverpool, 1970), pp. 180-1, 204-12; W. E. Vaughan and A. J. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Irish Historical Statistics.' Population, 1821-1971 (Dublin, 1978), pp. 261-8. A survey of the following two journals for the mid-1920s reveal additional emigration statistics, including occupational, gender and age profiles; but they also demonstrate how difficult it is to distinguish an emigrant from a holiday-maker: Board of Trade Journal, cxiv, 30 Apr. 1925, 471-3; Ministry of Labour Gazette, xxxiii, 9 Sept. 1925, 311-12, and xxxiv, 5 May 1926, 162. (1.) Drudy, `Migration between Ireland and Britain', pp. 112-3; Deirdre MacMahon, Republicans and Imperialists: Anglo-Irish Relations in the 1930s (New Haven, 1988), p. 147, makes the same point about the inter-war statistics. (2.) Glynn, `Irish Immigration to Britain', 51. (3.) Ibid. In 1924 the quota for the Irish Free State was 28,567; in 1929 it had fallen to 17,853: Meenan, Irish Economy, p. 208. (4.) P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], Dominions Office papers, DO 57/77/1755, E. L. Cuthbertson, Treasury representative on O[verseas] S[ettlement] C[ommittee], to D[ominions] O[ffice], 8 Aug. 1928. (1.) Kennedy, The Irish, 110-38; Peter Hart, `The Protestant Experience of Revolution in Southern Ireland', in Richard English and Graham Walker (ed.), Unionism in Modern Ireland. New Perspectives on Politics and Culture (London, 1996), pp. 81-98; id., `The Geography of Revolution in Ireland, 1917-1923', Past and Present, clv (1997), 142-76; Niamh Brennan, `A Political Minefield: Southern Loyalists, the Irish Grants Committee and the British Government, 1922-31', IHS, xxxi (1997), 406-19. |
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(2.) David H. Hume, `Empire Day in Ireland, 1896-1962', in Keith Jeffery (ed.), `An Irish Empire'? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), pp. 149-68; Philip Ollerenshaw, `Businessmen in Northern Ireland and the Imperial Connection, 1886-1939', ibid., pp. 169-90. (1.) IWM, 75/46/11, Field Marshal Lord French papers, French to Lloyd George, 19 May 1919. (2.) British Library, Walter Long papers, Add. MS 62425, Healy to Moreton Frewen, 15 May 1920, copy sent to Long by Healy. (3.) Figures vary but the statistics were gleaned from Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism, Vol. I: The Anglo-Irish and the New Ireland, 1885-1922 (Dublin, 1972), p. 201; C. Townshend, The British Campaign in Ireland, 1919-21 (Oxford, 1975), p. 42 and appendices iii and v, pp. 211-12, 214. The abandonment and reduction of the RIC barracks throughout Ireland was a `crying mistake', according to one ex-RIC, because it advertised a defeat early on in the conflict when in fact there was no such thing: N[ational] L[ibrary of] I[reland], Dublin, MS 17785, G. H. Orpen papers, P. Lyons to Orpen, 1 Nov. 1931. (4.) The precise figures for the various police forces in Ireland are not known. For an insight into the discussions behind the reinforcement of the military and civilian forces in Ireland, see Townshend, British Campaign, pp. 33-72; id., `Policing Insurgency in Ireland, 1914-23', in David M. Anderson and David Killingray (ed.), Policing and Decolonisation: Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-65 (Manchester, 1992), pp. 22-41. (1.) R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 (London, 1988), p. 494. Sir Hamar Greenwood, Chief Secretary of Ireland (1920-2), reported to Philip Kerr, Lloyd George's private secretary, that until recruiting from the United Kingdom was conceived in the spring of 1920 the RIC had been 99 per cent Irish and 82 per cent Catholic: H[ouse] of L[ords] R[ecord] O[ffice], David Lloyd George papers, F/19/3/12, Greenwood to Kerr, 13 Apr. 1921; IWM, DS/Misc/80, Sir Henry Wilson Diaries, 2 Dec. 1921; I[rish] M[ilitary] A[rchives], Dublin, Michael Collins papers, A/0622, British military documents captured by the IRA, Captain J. Hickey, 6th Division Artillery, Cork, to artillery field units, 17 Feb. 1921. I am grateful to Jane Leonard for suggesting that the accusation was part of the British government's propaganda war orchestrated from Dublin Castle. (2.) LHCMA, Major-General C. H. Foulkes papers, epitomes of secret IRA documents seized in Dublin by British security forces, 26 May 1921, epitome 5469, operational orders for Nadd Flying Column, Cork No. 2 Brigade, 30 Oct. 1920. Foulkes was appointed director of Irish Propaganda by the British government in 1921; PRO, Home Office papers, HO 45/24754/428736/1, Trindes to Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, 28 Sept. 1920; N[ational] A[rchives of] I[reland], DE 2/125, minute by Diarmuid O'Hegarty, secretary of the Dail's Executive Council, II June 1920. Examples of IRA intimidation of ex-RIC after partition can be found in the rich records of the Irish Grants Committee in PRO, Colonial Office papers, CO 762. The index for these relatively untapped sources can be found in CO 905/21. Cf. Townshend, British Campaign, pp. 44-6, 209. |
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(3.) Constabulary Gazette, 20 Aug. 1921. (4.) PRO, HO 184/37; Constabulary Gazette, autumn issues of 1921; University College, Dublin, Archives, Richard Mulcahy papers, P7/A/40, circular drafted by McElligott, Aug. 1920. (1.) The first figure is cited in David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish Life, 1913-1921 (Dublin, 1977), P. 45. For a more in-depth analysis of the disbandment process, compensation allowances and migration, see Kent Fedorowich, `The Problem of Disbandment: The Royal Irish Constabulary and Imperial Migration, 1919-29', IHS, xxx (1996), 88-110. (2.) Constabulary Gazette, 17 Sept. 1921. (3.) Ibid. (4.) Ibid., 17 Sept. and 1 Oct. 1921; Weekly Irish Times, 27 May and 22 July 1922. A former Divisional Commissioner, R. F. Cruise, was keen to advertise the investment potential of Kamloops, British Columbia, for ex-RIC personnel: see W[iltshire] R[ecord] O[ffice], Walter Long papers, WRO 947/194, Cruise correspondence with Long. For the Million Farms scheme see Gary Lewis,` "Million Farms" Campaign, N.S.W. 1919-25', L[abour] H[istory], xlvii (1984), 55-72. (5.) Constabulary Gazette, 17 Sept. 1921; N[ational] A[rchives of] C[anada], R[ecord] G[roup] 76, reel C-7337, vol. 182, fo. 65067, F. C. Blair, Secretary, Department of Immigration and Colonisation, Ottawa, to Thomas Gelley, Commissioner of Immigration, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 10 and 25 Nov. 1922; Blair to G. R. Naden, Deputy Minister of Lands, British Columbia, 21 Nov. 1921. (6.) WRO 947/430, copy of a letter forwarded to Long and originally sent to a Mrs Waller Sawyer by an anonymous County Inspector, June 1922. (1.) Fedorowich, `Problems of Disbandment', 98-104. Many former RIC did find employment in a variety of dominion and colonial police forces throughout the British empire despite official discrimination in the early 1920s. (2.) PRO, CO 721/42/1753, Hunter to G. F. Plant, secretary of OSC, 28 Feb. 1922. (3.) Ibid., secretary of the Agent-General for Tasmania to CO, 25 Apr. 1922. (4.) Ibid., Mitchell to L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Admiralty, 8 Apr. 1922. (1.) NAC, RG 76, reel C-7337, vol. 182, fo. 65067, Smith to Blair, 11 Apr. 1922; Larkin to Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King, 19 Apr. 1922. (2.) Ibid., Smith to Blair, 11 Apr. 1922. (3.) Ibid., King to Larkin, 22 Apr. 1922; confidential memorandum by W. D. Scott, Assistant Deputy Minister of Immigration, 21 Apr. 1922. The integration of Irish-Catholics into Canadian society prior to World War I was less fraught than it had been in Australia. In Toronto, for example, where Protestant Orangeism was supposedly strongest, many Irish-Catholics eagerly subscribed to an autonomous Canadian identity within an imperial framework. See Mark G. McGowan, `The Degreening of the Irish: Toronto's Irish-Catholic Press, Imperialism, and the Forging of a New Identity, 1887-1914', Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers (1989), 118-45. |
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(1.) PRO, CO 721/43/1753, C. H. Verge, assistant Agent-General for Quebec, to Malcolm Jones, chief clerk of O[verseas] S[ettlement] O[ffice], 13 Apr. 1922; New Brunswick government emigration agent to OSO, 25 Apr. 1922; Noxon to Plant, 4 May 1922; Weekly Irish Times, 27 May 1922. (2.) Peter Karsten, `Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792-1922: Suborned or Subordinate?', Journal of Social History, xvii (1983), 31-64; David Fitzpatrick, `Militarism in Ireland, 1900-1922', in Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (ed.), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 379-406. (3.) Jane Leonard, `Getting Them At Last: The I.R.A. and Ex-servicemen', in David Fitzpatrick (ed.), Revolution? Ireland, 1917-1923 (Dublin, 1990), p. 120. (1.) Ibid., pp. 119, 129. (2.) PRO, CO 904/114-16, Inspector-General's confidential reports, Jan.-Sept. 1921, are littered with cases where ex-servicemen were attacked by republican forces; PRO, HO 45/11992/465017, list of loyalists expelled from the Irish Free State, 8 Aug. 1922. The Murray case is in CO 904/114, Feb. 1921. (3.) As early as 1886, W. H. Smith, a former Chief Secretary for Ireland and Secretary of State for War in Lord Salisbury's Conservative government firmly believed that the loyalty of men being transferred from the British Army to the reserves in Ireland would be maintained if these personnel obtained good employment in civilian life. Otherwise, they would add strength to any rebel or anti-government movement in Ireland: PRO, War Office papers, WO 110/5, fo. 849, Smith to Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Chief Secretary for Ireland, 15 Nov. 1886. (4.) HLRO, Lloyd George papers, F/46/1/2, Macpherson to Lloyd George, 14 Apr. 1919. (1.) Bodleian Library, Oxford, Lord Strathcarron papers, MS Eng. Hist. c.490, memo by Macpherson, 19 Dec. 1918; PRO, Cabinet Office papers, CAB 24/72/GT 6527, joint memo by Shortt and Kent, 19 Dec. 1918. For the ostracism and hostility many Irish veterans faced when they returned home after World War I, see Jane Leonard, `Facing "the Finger of Scorn": Veterans' Memories of Ireland after the Great War', in Martin Evans and Ken Lunn (ed.), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1997), pp. 59-72; id., `The Twinge of Memory: Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in Dublin since 1919', in English and Walker (ed.), Unionism, pp. 99-114; A more complete set of demobilization figures will be found in Fitzpatrick, `Militarism in Ireland'. (2.) PRO, CO 739/5/22495, petition from deputation of British Legion members representing Irish ex-servicemen submitted to Colonial Office, 11 May 1922; CAB 24/72/GT 6527, 19 Dec. 1918. (3.) PRO, CAB 23/8/WC 505, minute 10, 21 Nov. 1918. The paper submitted by French and Shortt was GT 5858. WRO 947/229, French to Long, 28 May 1918; IWM, Lord French diaries, 10 Dec. 1918 and 10 Jan. 1919; French papers, 75/46/12, memo by Irish Recruiting Council, 17 Jan. 1919; Gwynn to Long, 6 Jan. 1919. |
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(1.) IWM, French diaries, 10 Dec. 1918 and 10 Jan. 1919. For an excellent analysis of Long's political relationship with Ireland see John Kendle, Walter Long, Ireland, and the Union, 1905-1920 (Montreal, 1992). (2.) S. R. Graubard, `Military Demobilisation in Great Britain following the First World War', Journal of Modern History, xix (1947), 297-311. (3.) PRO, CAB 23/8/WC 505, 21 Nov. 1918. (1.) Bodleian Library, Strathcarron papers, Lieutenant-Colonel R. C. A. McCalmont, Unionist MP for Antrim East, to Samuels, 12 Jan. 1919; Samuels to Samuel Watt, private secretary to Chief Secretary, 15 Jan. 1919. (2.) WRO, 947/347, Saunderson to Long, 12 June 1919. (3.) WRO, 947/379, report of the Special Advisory Committee for the employment of ex-soldiers in Ireland, signed by W. A. Tilney, C. H. Haig and E. White and presented to Lord French, n.d. (probably May--June 1919). For an insight into the inner workings of French's administration and the stormy relationship between himself and Saunderson, see Alvin Jackson, Colonel Edward Saunderson (Oxford, 1995), pp. 235-42. (4.) WRO, 947/379, minutes of meeting between the deputation from the Federation of Discharged and Demobilised Sailors and Soldiers and Admiral Tupper, 13 May 1919. (1.) Ibid., Long to Tupper, 2 June 1919. Commenting in May 1920, Lord French believed that the haemorrhage of ex-servicemen to the ranks of Sinn Fein was well under way: IWM, French diaries, 10 May 1920; Leonard, `Getting Them At Last', p. 126. (2.) PRO, CAB 23/12/WC624, 25 Sept. 1919; CAB 24/89/GT 8215, memo by Long, 24 Sept. 1919; GT 8227, memo by French and Macpherson, 25 Sept. 1919; CAB 23/12/WC 628, 7 Oct. 1919. (3.) WRO, 947/320, Lieutenant R. M. O'Hanrahan, president of the Land Settlement Association for Irish Ex-servicemen, to Long, 3 June 1920; C. J. Gregg, junior Dublin Castle official, to George Dunn, Long's private secretary, n.d.; IWM, French diaries, 30 Mar. 1920. (4.) NAI, R 13/1924, Dr. T. J. Macnamara, Minister of Labour, to Sir Hamar Greenwood, Chief Secretary for Ireland, 16 Apr. 1920. (1.) NAI, R 13/1924, H. H. Piggott, assistant secretary, Roads Department, Ministry of Transport, to James MacMahon, Under-Secretary, Irish Office, 19 May 1920; NAI, Ministry of Finance papers, FIN 1/18/4, Ministry of Works to Ministry of Finance, 4 May 1922; NAI, FIN 1/18/4, Joseph Brennan to secretaries in the Ministry of Transport, Congested District Boards, Department of Agriculture, Board of Works, and Estate Commissioners, 28 Apr. 1922; statement of ex-service employment schemes supplied to Provisional Government by Chief Secretary's Office, 3 May 1922; minute initialled by W. Doolin, private secretary to Under Secretary, Irish Office, 15 May 1922. Conflicting figures were supplied to Dublin Castle in Sept. 1920 when it was reported that 54 local authorities had assisted 675 ex-servicemen at a cost of 76,380,616 [pounds sterling] of whom had been employed on road work. See NAI, R 13/1924, W. J. Blake and a Mr Hart, HM Customs and Excise, to MacMahon, 13 Oct. 1920 and 11 Nov. 1920. |
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(2.) NAI, R 13/1924, Ministry of Transport (Ireland) to Anderson, 28 May 1920; minutes by G. C. Duggan, clerk, Chief Secretary's Office, 29 May 1920. (3.) NAI, FIN 1/18/4, B. B. Blackett, Treasury, to secretary of Irish Ministry of Finance, 17 May 1922; undated memo. from Provisional Government to Assistant Secretary, Treasury, London. (4.) PRO, CO 739/20/56341, minute by Freeston, 21 Nov. 1923. For the outline of the Ministry of Labour's policy, see CO 739/4/13490, Jan.-Mar. 1922. (1.) NLI, Dublin, MS 10556/1, Colonel Maurice Moore papers, `Lists of Atrocities on Catholics in Belfast', n.d. (July 1920). It is alleged that over 8,000 Roman Catholics were expelled from their jobs in one week during July 1920, primarily in engineering and some sectors of the linen industry. One of the most effective pressure groups in this campaign was formed by unemployed Protestant ex-servicemen: Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921-1996: Political Forces and Social Classes (rev. ed., London, 1996), pp. 23-7; Henry Patterson, Class Conflict and Sectarianism (Dublin, 1980), pp. 114-42; Graham S. Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester, 1985), pp. 14-27. (2.) Leonard, `Getting Them At Last', p. 120; NAI, DE 2/428, Art O'Connor, Minister of Agriculture to Robert C. Barton TD, 29 Nov. 1921. (3.) NLI, MS 11404, circulars issued by the Dail, 1919-21, `Explanatory Statement on Land Acquisition Scheme', n.d. (1.) PRO, HO 45/11994/466337, Land Purchase Commission of Northern Ireland, memo by Sir John Anderson, 21 Jan. 1925. (2.) NAI, R 13/1924, F. B. Sutherland, private secretary to Minister of Labour, to Watt, 6 May 1920. Sutherland's emphasis. (3.) PRO, CO 721/39/1755, H. J. Wilson, principal assistant secretary, Wages and Arbitration Department, Ministry of Labour, to C. H. Gordon Campbell, secretary, Irish Department, Ministry of Labour, 6 Feb. 1922, and Campbell's reply, 8 Feb. 1922. (1.) PRO, CO 721/39/1755, minute by Macnaghten, 26 Jan. 1922. (2.) PRO, Treasury papers, T 161/184/8 16952, minute by F. Skevington, Treasury, 17 Aug. 1922. (3.) PRO, T 161/184/S 16952, Plant to Irish Office, 4 Oct. 1922; Whiskard to Cuthbertson, 7 Oct. 1922 and Cuthbertson's reply, 4 Oct. 1922; Cuthbertson to William Bankes Amery, finance officer, O[verseas] S[ettlement] D[epartment], 26 Mar. 1923. (4.) Foster, Modern Ireland, pp. 494-7; Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (Dublin, 1992), pp. 6-8. The most impressive study of republican counter-government to date is Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary Government in Ireland: Dail Eireann, 1919-22 (Dublin, 1995), pp. 42-224. Insights into the Irish administration at this time can be found in Eunan O'Halpin, The Decline of the Union: British Government in Ireland, 1892-1920 (Dublin, 1987); John McColgan, British Policy and the Irish Administration, 1920-22 (London, 1983); Bryan A. Follis, A State Under Siege: The Establishment of Northern Ireland, 1920-1925 (Oxford, 1995). |
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(1.) NAI, DE 2/37, Murphy to Collins, 25 May 1920. (2.) Ibid. (3.) NLI, MS 8415, IRA General Orders (1920-21), Dail Eireann, manifesto by Minister for Defence, 5 June 1920. The concern that if emigration was left unchecked it would damage recruitment to republican ranks and weaken the IRA's military strength, especially in less committed areas of Ireland, is reinforced in Hopkinson, Green Against Green, p. 10. (4.) Mitchell, Revolutionary Government, p. 240. (1.) IMA, Joseph Flynn papers, A/0772, Leix Brigade, 3rd Southern Division, item 3, General Orders, No. 10, issued by GHQ, 19 June 1920. (2.) NLI, MS 11,404, Republican Chief of Police, Dublin, to Austin Stack, Minister of Home Affairs, 28 June 1921. (3.) NAI, DE 2/8:27, `Emigration from Ireland', decree No. 27 by order of the Department of Home Affairs, 24 July 1920; minutes of proceedings of the first Parliament of the Republic of Ireland (1919-21), 6 Aug. 1920, pp. 206-7. (1.) Ibid., draft decree initialled by O'Hegarty, 26 Oct. 1920. (2.) Ibid., Collins to O'Brien, 6 June and 29 May 1921; IMA, Collins papers, A/0499, item 46, Adjutant, Cork No. 2 Brigade, to Adjutant-General IRA, 24 June 1920. (3.) NAI, DE 2/8:27, Collins to O'Brien, 17 May 1921; Paul Canning, British Policy Towards Ireland, 1921-194, (Oxford, 1985), pp. 79-80. (4.) Joseph P. O'Grady, `The Irish Free State Passport and the Question of Citizenship, 1921-4', IHS, xxvi (1989), 396-405; IMA, Flynn papers, A/0772, item II, Dail Eireann emigration regulation issued by Department for Home Affairs, 8 Apr. 1921. (5.) NAI, DE 2/8:27, Minister of Home Affairs to General Secretariat, 29 Apr. 1921; DE 4/11/70, Assistant Minister of Home Affairs to Secretariat, 27 May 1922. (1.) NAC, RG 76, reel C-7334, vol. 179, fo. 62366, Storey to Smith, 3 Aug. 1923. (2.) Ibid., Egan to Robb, 17 and 22 Oct. 1923. During the Imperial Conference of 1926, Macnaghten confided to his superiors that although he had developed a very personal friendship with Egan, at the official level Egan was difficult to argue with and `seems to me rather obstinate, and perhaps inclined to be jealous and vain': PRO, DO 57/66/OSO 8094, minute by Macnaghten, 7 Oct. 1926. (3.) NAC, RG 76, reel C-7334, vol. 179, fo. 62366, Larkin to McNeill, 19 Oct. 1923. (1.) Ibid., W. R. Little, Director of Emigration in London, to Egan, 28 June, 8 Aug., 5 Sept., 5 Oct. and 5 Nov. 41924; Board of Trade Journal, cxiv, 26 Mar. 1925, 344. (2.) Kurt Bowen, Protestants in a Catholic State, Ireland's Privileged Minority (Montreal, 1983), pp. 20-40; PRO, CO 739/13/57978, memo by Plant, 17 Nov. 1922; HO 45/11992/465017, list of loyalists expelled from the Irish Free State, 8 Aug. 1922; P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice of], N[orthern] I[reland], D.989/B/2/6, case papers for the SILRA, 1926-9, and D.989/B/3/5, correspondence between the SILRA and the British Legion, 1925-9; Hart, `Protestant Experience', and Brennan, `Irish Grants Committee'. |
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(1.) Roe, Australia, Britain, and Migration, pp. 211, 289. These figures approximate to those 1924 Board of Trade figures tabled in November at the 1926 Imperial Conference by the special sub-committee on overseas migration: PRO, CAB 32/62B, table attached to a draft report on the standardization of Imperial social insurance schemes. (2.) Board of Trade Journal, cxvi, 1 Apr. 1926, 377. Irish emigrants who embarked in Northern Ireland for Canada in 1925 totalled 3,342. (1.) Michael McKernan, `Catholics, Conscription and Archbishop Mannix', Australian Historical Studies, xvii (1976-77), 299-314; D. J. Murphy, `Religion, Race and Conscription in World War I', Australian Journal of Politics and History, xx (1974), 151-63; Bobbie Oliver, `"Rats", "Scabs", "Soolers" and "Sinn Feiners": A Re-assessment of the Role of the Labour Movement in the Conscription Crisis in Western Australia, 1916-17', LH, lviii (1990), 48-64; O'Farrell, Irish in Australia, pp. 252-88. (2.) Roe, Australia, Britain, and Migration, pp. 29, 51. (3.) PRO, T 161/184/S 16592, Cuthbertson to Whiskard, 11 Oct. 1922; Australian Archives, Canberra, Commonwealth Record Series, A458/1, item H154/16, Acting Superintendent of Immigration to Secretary, Prime Minister's Department, Melbourne, 14 Sept. 1922; High Commissioner's Office to Prime Minister's Department, 24 Sept. 1923. Migration from Ulster was a different matter. After some initial confusion caused by indecision within Australian immigration circles, the dissemination of literature and recruiting within the province began in earnest by early 1923. (1.) PRO, DO 35/11, minute by E. T. Crutchley, finance officer, OSC, 28 Nov. 192.6; DO 35/15/D.9535, memo by W. J. Garnett, assistant principal, OSD, 30 Aug. 1926; DO 57/46/1755, minute by Plant, 3 Dec. 1926. (2.) PRO, DO 57/46/1755, unauthored memo, 15 Dec. 1927. (3.) National Library of Australia, Lord Stonehaven papers, MS 2127/1/ Folder 5, fos. 333-8, Crawford to Stonehaven, 11 Nov. 1929. (1.) PRO, DO 35/11, minute by Crutchley, 28 Nov. 1926. (2.) PRO, DO 57/66/1755, Blair to Kevin O'Higgins, Irish Minister for Internal Affairs, 26 Nov. 1926; DO 35/11, minute by Whiskard, 2 Dec. 1926. (3.) PRO, DO 35/11, minute by Whiskard, 2 Dec. 1926. (4.) PRO, DO 35/26, letters from O'Higgins to Amery and Blair, 8 Feb. 1927. (5.) PRO, DO 57/66/1755, Amery to Robert Forke, Canadian Minister of Immigration and Colonisation, 20 June 1927; DO 35/26, minute by E. J. Harding, Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Dominions Office, 28 Mar. 1927. (1.) PRO, DO 35/26, draft, Amery to Churchill, n.d. (c. 1927); DO 190/2, Macnaghten to William Bankes Amery, British government migration representative in Australia, 28 July 1927. (2.) Report of the Claims of Southern Irish Loyalists to Compensation, 29 June 1925; British Parliamentary Papers, Cmd. 2478, Irish Free State. Compensation. Report of a Committee presided over by Lord Dunedin (1926). |
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(3.) Report of the Committee on Claims of British Ex-Servicemen, 3 Dec. 1929 (Dublin, 1929), p. 2. Hereafter cited as the Lavery Report. (1.) PRO, DO 57/66/1755, Harding to Whiskard, 13 Dec. 1927; Lavery Report, p. 35. (2.) PRO, DO 35/26, draft, Amery to Churchill, n.d. (c. 1927); DO 57/71/OSO 241, Crutchley's brief for his visit to Canada in 1928 (Dec. 1927); DO 35/26, minute by Whiskard, assistant secretary, Dominions Office, 7 June 1927; DO 57/67/1755, extract from Crutchley diary on his visit to Canada (Jan.-Feb. 1928). (3.) PRO, DO 57/77/1755, A. P. Waterfield, assistant secretary, Treasury, to Macnaghten, 28 Aug. 1928; minute by Whiskard, 23 May 1929. (1.) PRO, DO 57/19/1755, minute by Plant, 1 Dec. 1926. (2.) PRO, T 161/184/S 16952, minute initialled by S. D. W., 24 Aug. 1928. (3.) PRO, DO 57/77/1755, Waterfield to Macnaghten, 28 Aug. 1928; Cuthbertson to Macnaghten, 8 Aug. 1928; T 161/184/S 16952, minute by Waterfield, 27 Aug. 1928. (4.) PRO, DO 57/73/1755, Macnaghten to T. K. Bewley, principal, Treasury, 31 July 1928. (5.) PRO, DO 57/77/1755, minute by Macnaghten, 22 Mar. 1929; DO 57/71/OSO 241, Crutchley brief for his visit to Canada. (6.) PRO, DO 57/77/1755, minute by Macnaghten, 22 Mar. 1929. (1.) PRONI, CAB 4/59/2, cabinet agenda, 5 Dec. 1922; CAB 4/59/3 and 24, draft conclusion of cabinet meeting and final conclusions, 7 Dec. 1922; CAB 4/65/2 and 19, cabinet agenda and final conclusions, 9 Jan. 1923; HO 267/336, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfrid B. Spender, secretary to the Northern Irish Cabinet, to CO, 6 Feb. 1923; Department of Home Affairs, HA 5/1057, was to be opened under the seventy-five year rule in 1997, but sadly remains closed: Mrs Aileen McClintock, Access Section, to author, 13 May 1997. (2.) PRONI in fact possesses a large number of emigration handbills from the Cunard Steamship line and the Canadian National Railway, c. 1926-30. See D.2607/Box 6/folder 5. (3.) PRONI, D.1415/B/38, fos. 173 and 170, Canadian travel diary of Lady Craigavon, 2 Sept. 1926; St John Ervine, Craigavon: Ulsterman (London, 1949), pp. 512, 519-21. (1.) PRONI, PM 6/12/3, press statements on Craig's visit to Canada in 1926. (2.) PRONI, CAB 9E/23/1, Henry B. Thomson, Ulsterman and former director of food supplies in Canada during World War I, to Spender, 6 Nov. 1924; PRO, DO 190/5, Crutchley to Whiskard, 26 Oct. 1929, in which the former was not only impressed with Craig's views on empire migration, but also the Ulsterman's account of the intensive economic development in the province. (3.) Meenan, Irish Economy, pp. 208-9. (1.) PRO, DO 35/1229/WX 132/39 and/41, Sir John Maffey, British representative to Eire, to Sir Eric Machtig, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions, 8 Nov. 1944; Paul Emrys-Evans, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Dominions, to Brigadier-General Lord Henry Page Croft, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for War (Military), 18 July 1945. |
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