Framing the overlapping networks of unionism, conservatism and loyalism in pre-revolutionary Ireland is a challenge. This becomes more acute the closer one gets to the twentieth century and the disappearance of political power from the unionist class. ‘Hard’ power became replaced with ‘soft’ power (much to the chagrin of diverse characters such as Lord Barrymore and DP Moran). The nostalgia of prudent management and benevolent dispersal of money and services became more acute as the acien regime was swept from their bastions of power following the passage of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898.

In the sphere of the press, conservatism, loyalism and unionism were quite obviously a minority taste, and only served by a few daily newspapers. The majority of these, however, only spoke to the commercial unionists and loyalists. Few newspapers took a stance in favour of nostalgic prudence, and loyalty to the government of the day. One such (as I will argue in this paper) was the eccentric Skibbereen Eagle.

The Eagle was first and foremost an outlet for the foibles and viewpoints of its founder, Fred Potter. Conservative viewpoints and loyalist outlooks were common, even more so after 1898 and during the first turbulent years of the twentieth century. Yet even after Potter’s death in 1907 the Eagle (under Catholic nationalist ownership) continued to transmit a modified version its founders’ outlook.

This paper will examine the Eagle’s worldview through its commentary on issues central to the shrinking loyalist population of its hinterland. It will argue that the paper deserves to be studied as the agent of a different kind of loyalism than that preached by its heavyweight counterpart, the Cork Constitution.

John O’Donovan works part-time at University College Cork, and holds a BA and MA in History from the university. He has published a number of articles and book chapters, including “The All-for-Ireland League and the Home Rule Debate, 1910-1914 (G. Doherty (ed.): The Home Rule Crisis 1910-1914 (Cork Studies in the Irish Revolution (Cork, 2014)) and “The United Irish League in Cork 1898-1918: Resistance and Counter-Resistance”, Studi Irelandesi: a Journal of Irish Studies 4 (2017). His PhD Thesis, which he hopes to commence in autumn 2017, will focus on the All-for-Ireland League in a number of Irish and international contexts.

From the 1860s nationalists gradually came to dominate Dublin Corporation. In 1898 new legislation dramatically expanded the municipal franchise and the arrival of Labour and Sinn Féin in the early twentieth century radicalized city politics. Throughout this period, however, a small but solid bloc of unionists were consistently returned to City Hall. Meanwhile, in Dublin’s suburbs unionist enjoyed secure majorities, administering the daily affairs of Rathmines and Pembroke Urban District Councils. How did this long-established, resilient and influential electorate fare as Home Rule loomed and revolution erupted?

Local government played a crucial, and intimate, role in the lives of the electorate - it really mattered who ran your local council. Slums, poor drainage, high taxes and allegations of municipal waste and inefficiency plagued Dublin Corporation. Unionists highlighted these nationalist failings in City Hall to show the likely outcome of Home Rule. Suburban life, in contrast, ran far more smoothly thanks to unionist councillors being ‘better men of business’, or so the argument went. But how accurate was this depiction of life on either side of the municipal boundary? Who were these unionist men of business? Was a typical unionist councillor just like his nationalist, Labour or Sinn Féin opponent? How did the emergence of women as municipal voters and candidates affect the selection or activity of Dublin’s unionist councillors? As a permanent minority, what local alliances did they seek? What compromises did they make?

This paper will look at unionist responses to nationalist dominance in the Dublin region in the first two decades of the twentieth century. By examining their electoral performances in the city and suburbs, and identifying their political concerns and strategies, it will attempt to measure how successful they were in pursuing their goals. And, following the revolutionary events of 1916 – 1923, it will suggest where this resilient electorate, and their municipal activism, may have ended up.

Dr Ciarán Wallace completed his PhD on Local politics and government in Dublin city and suburbs 1899-1914 in 2010 at Trinity College, Dublin. His research interests include civil society, Irish urban history and its placement in a wider United Kingdom framework. He has taught on British and Irish history, Irish studies, Culture & Heritage studies and historiography. He is currently an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow working on a monograph Divided City: Dublin and its unionist townships 1899-1916.

Most of the large manufacturing firms in the Irish Free State in 1922 had been established by Protestant unionist families and remained under Protestant ownership and management. These included Guinness, Jacobs, Goodbody’s (jute), the Cleeve Brothers’ Condensed Milk Company of Ireland, Goulding’s (fertiliser), Smyth & Co. (hosiery), Denny’s (bacon), the Limerick Clothing Co., and a number of linen manufacturers. These firms were export-oriented and fully integrated into the British and colonial markets.

The large Catholic/nationalist-owned firms of the time, by contrast – in sectors such as clothing, bread, printing and agricultural implements – were largely oriented towards the domestic market.

The political orientation and economic interests of Protestant manufacturers (quite apart from loss of privilege and fear of potential religious discrimination under the new dispensation) were thus aligned, since independence and partition would be particularly detrimental to export-oriented firms.

The moderate protectionism of the 1920s and the much more extensive protectionism of the 1930s would also have been damaging to export-oriented firms. The paper documents the sale of a number of Protestant-owned businesses to British “tariff-jumping” firms that established in the Free State to avoid the newly erected protectionist barriers.

It has been suggested that protectionism also resulted in "positive discrimination in favour of Catholic firms", as import substitution favoured newly established Catholic manufacturing businesses. The paper analyses the differential experiences of the large Protestant and Catholic-owned firms over the first two decades of independence.

The paper therefore aims:

to identify the different degrees of internationalisation of the leading Protestant/unionist and Catholic/nationalist manufacturers of the immediate pre-independence era,

to assess the extent to which these divergent economic interests were explicitly recognised in political discourse,

to chart the exit of Protestant-owned manufacturing businesses over the 1920s and 1930s, and

to chart the relative growth of the leading Protestant and Catholic-owned manufacturing businesses over these decades.

Frank Barry is Professor of International Business and Economic Development at Trinity College Dublin. His main work in recent years has been on the transition from protectionism to outward orientation in the 1950s and beyond. He is currently working on a book on Manufacturing Firms and Manufacturing Interests in the Irish Free State Area, 1922-1948.

In this paper the experiences of southern protestants during the period 1919-23 will be charted through eye witness accounts in the form of speeches from annual synods of the Church of Ireland, a source which has hitherto been ignored. Members of the Church of Ireland comprised the largest section of the protestant population in the 26 counties which became the Irish Free State. In 1911 members numbered just under 250,000, nearly 8 per cent of the population, but in 1926 they numbered 164,000, a decline of 34 per cent. Throughout these turbulent years, a general synod of church members continued to meet in Dublin each May, after which local synods were held in various locations covering the whole country. Consisting of elected lay and clerical members, the synods were concerned primarily with general church matters, but during this time contemporary political matters intruded. These events began with a speech by the bishop, who acted as president, and it is their speeches which were recorded in the press, especially the Irish Times. For this study all available speeches have been copied and then studied and analysed. As both leaders and observers of their dioceses, the bishops in these speeches reflected many of the concerns and anxieties of their community. Through the testimonies of these key witnesses we can gain a valuable insight into the experiences of southern protestants during the revolutionary period. Afterwards, histories of the Church of Ireland, such as that edited by W.A. Phillips, preferred to a draw a veil of silence over what happened at this time. These contemporary personal accounts allow us to get a better understanding of what occurred.

Brian M. Walker is Professor Emeritus of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. He is an historian and political scientist. His research and writing interests cover a wide range of areas. Recently he was a consultant editor of the 400 page Illustrated history of the Church of Ireland, with its information on every parish. His History of St George’s Church Belfast was published last year. His volume, A political history of the two Irelands: from partition to peace, appeared in 2012. New research is underway into the experiences of southern protestants, 1919-23.

Throughout the course of the Second World War the position of the southern Irish Protestant community was decidedly pro-British. Nevertheless, the ideological stance of members of the remnant Irish unionist faction within the Irish state was tempered by a general respect for the policy of neutrality initiated by Eamon de Valera’s government in 1939. In addition, notable champions of the Irish unionist interest registered strong objections against the antagonism of the Stormont government towards neutral Eire. They defended the right of southern Ireland to remain neutral and criticized Belfast for stirring up sectarian animosity. They also adverted to the fact that tens of thousands of southern Irish volunteers had joined the British forces.

At the fore of the Irish contingent that served in the British forces were southern Irish Protestant volunteers. The majority were following a family military tradition of service that, for some, stretched back for centuries. Their motives for joining verify a presumption of pro-British affiliation. However, Irish Protestant service personnel in the British forces proudly retained their identity; some even assumed the popular wartime nickname of ‘Paddy’. Irish Protestant officers who served in Irish regiments of the British army, often following in the footsteps of fathers and grandfathers, would lead and encouraged distinctive Irish regimental traditions and encouraged cultural activities to reinforce the Irish character of these units.

Many Irish Protestant veterans later recalled the various factors which had led them to serve. Some would regard it merely as ‘the done thing’ within their community while others rationalized it as a duty owed to their family. This paper shall explore the attitudes of the Irish Protestant community in neutral Ireland during the war and will delve into the motivations of southern Protestants who volunteered for the British forces. In so doing, it will unveil the impact of the First World War and the Irish Revolution upon their families. Lastly, with the aid of oral history testimonies, it will evaluate their wartime experiences and their opinions on Irish neutrality and perceptions of their place within the pre-war Irish state.

Dr. Joseph Quinn completed his PhD thesis in the Center for Contemporary Irish History at TCD, graduating in June 2016. The object of his research was a study of the Irish volunteers serving in the British forces during the Second World War, but he now focuses more broadly on the connection between migration and military recruitment, specifically regarding the role of Irish personnel in the armed forces of Allied nations throughout the world wars. He is a contributor to The Irish Times and The Revolution Papers. He currently assists the Somme Association and Museum with an ongoing all-island oral history project, and has worked as a research assistant on two documentary productions. He works as an Academic Tutor at the School of History in University College Dublin.

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

Dr. Seán Gannon,

IRC Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow,

Centre for Contemporary Irish History,

Trinity College, Dublin.

On 28th Sept 1912 over 400,000 loyal men and women across the nine counties of Ulster appended their names to either the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant or the Ulster Declaration. In doing so they pledged their loyalty to the King, their allegiance to the United Kingdom and vociferously proclaimed their opposition to the planned creation of a home rule parliament in Dublin. While the majority of historiography focuses on events at the key signing centres in Belfast, the documents were actually signed at over one thousand separate locations across the nine counties of Ulster overseen by 1546 organising agents. Utilising a digital humanities approach we have traced these agents and mapped these locations from the digitised signing sheets and agents folders (made available online by PRONI (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland)) and the 1911 Census Returns. This paper will interrogate this geography of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant / Declaration to chart the differential experience of Ulster Day in the soon to be ‘lost counties’ of Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan. The extent of these differences will be further examined, in order to determine whether or not the minority status of unionism in these counties was sufficiently influential to allow these individuals be identified as southern loyalists as early as 1912. This paper will also argue that the consequences of Ulster Day in relation to the mobilisation of a grassroots unionist movement in these three counties is such that 1912 must be included in the temporal scope of the Irish revolutionary period in order to fully understand the entire spectrum of southern loyalist experiences.

Dr Arlene Crampsie is an historical geographer in the School of Geography, UCD. Her research interests lie at the intersection of historical, social and cultural geographies with her main research to date focussing on the social, cultural and political landscapes of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Ireland. She is particularly interested in the role of colonial and post-colonial processes in shaping local geographies of power and identity and the operation of governmentality on and in local communities. She is Chairperson of the Oral History Network of Ireland and co-editor with Francis Ludlow of Meath History and Society (2015).

Dr Jonathan Cherry is a lecturer in Geography in the School of History and Geography, DCU. His main research interests are in historical and cultural geography, with a particular focus on the role of the landowning elite in Irish society and their influence on the Irish landscape over the past four centuries. As holder of the NLI Studentship in Irish History (2004-05) he catalogued the Farnham Papers held in the Manuscripts Department, NLI. He co-edited Cavan History and Society (Geography Publications, 2014) and is Book Review Editor for Irish Geography since 2016.

This paper sets out to identify areas of significant Unionist electoral support in ‘Southern’ Ireland. This paper is deliberately refraining from an examination of the six predominantly Unionist counties in Ulster, and will instead examine Unionist support in the rest of Ireland. This paper will start in 1885 as the controversy over the Home Rule bill, 1886 led to a significant change in how candidates identified themselves in elections in Ireland. Prior to 1885, electoral candidates did not use the term ‘Unionist’ but instead were divided between Liberals, Conservatives, and the Irish Parliamentary Party / Home Rule. After 1885 the term ‘Unionist’ became increasingly used by electoral candidates throughout Ireland in subsequent elections. Due to the changes between the different voting systems utilised in Ireland between 1885 and 1932, it is necessary to divide this paper into three distinct sections; the eight UK general elections between 1885 and 1918, the five Irish general elections for Dáil Éireann between 1922 and 1932, and the two Séanad Éireann elections of 1922 and 1925. The main outcomes for this paper can be summarised in the following questions:

- Did areas with significant Unionist voters switch over and vote for pro-Treaty candidates in the Irish Free State period, 1922 - 1932

- Are the areas of significant Unionist voters also areas with a large minority of Protestant / non-Catholic voters

- Did the short-lived elected Séanad Éireann provide an electoral outlet for Loyalist / Unionist voters during the Irish Free State period

- Using the statistical programming language R is it possible to visualise the different results chronologically and provide greater clarity on the levels of support of Unionist candidates even if they did not win the general election.

The maps utilised in this talk are available at the following link https://rpubs.com/jackakav/291516 in addition to the R code utilised to create the map projections.

Neale Rooney (BA History and Media Studies, MA Digital Humanities) is a researcher based with the Letters of 1916 project. His previous experience with Digital Humanities includes work done on the Contested Memories: Battle of Mount Street Bridge and The Woodman Diary projects.

Jack Kavanagh (BA History, MPhil Public History and Cultural Heritage) is a PhD candidate at An Foras Feasa, Maynooth University. His previous experience includes the ‘1916 Necrology’ at Glasnevin Trust and the ‘St Andrews School Books Project’ a collaboration between Trinity College Dublin and the St. Andrews Resource Centre.

Martin Charlton is currently Senior Research Associate in the National Centre for Geocomputation at Maynooth University. He previously worked at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, as Research Associate and Senior Research in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, and then as Lecturer in the Department of Geography. He is a graduate of Newcastle University. He is one of the co-developers of Geographically Weighted Regression.

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

Jonathan Cherry is a lecturer in Geography in the School of History and Geography, DCU. His main research interests are in historical and cultural geography, with a particular focus on the role of the landowning elite in Irish society and their influence on the Irish landscape over the past four centuries. As holder of the NLI Studentship in Irish History (2004-05) he catalogued the Farnham Papers held in the Manuscripts Department, NLI. He co-edited Cavan History and Society (Geography Publications, 2014) and is Book Review Editor for Irish Geography since 2016

Were British ex-servicemen in Ireland viewed only as ‘British loyalists’ or those who had fought for or were still associated with ‘the enemy’ in the wake of the Great War and Irish Revolution? To date the works of Taylor, Fitzpatrick and Robinson have gone a long way to address that question and to show the scale and nature of hostility faced by those men and their families during the period of 1920-23, and thereafter, as well as the benefits that they received from the British State. But what other options did they have or could they have? Could they turn to charity after 1922 and if so which charities?

In the latter part of the long nineteenth century the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland witnessed a popular explosion in charity and philanthropy. This also saw the burgeoning of military-specific charities – one hundred by 1900. While Ireland remained within the union things were simple: British soldiers and their families could often receive assistance throughout the British Isles, but once Ireland was partitioned things got complicated. A question that effectively loomed large in 1922 was: would the new Irish State prevent those old charities continue to support such men and their families as they had done for decades before.

This paper seeks to answer this overarching question by using the 1923-29 transnational legal dispute over the legacies of two particular British military charities based in Ireland as a prism through which to view and analyse those developments and address three specific questions. Namely the place of British ex-serviceman and his family (as well as Protestants) in the new State, that State’s policy towards all things formerly owned or administered by the British state, and the policy of the new State in relation to its subordination to the law.

Dr Paul Huddie completed his doctorate at Queen’s University Belfast in 2014. He is the author of several peer-reviewed publications including The Crimean War and Irish society (2015) and an executive member of the IAPH. His general interest is war and society (Britain and Ireland) in the long 19C, but his specialism is British military welfare: charity, philanthropy and the state. In 2017 he will present papers on this theme at New York and Bucharest. His invited chapter on the role of the charity SSAFA in ex-service families’ welfare provision in 1919-21 is presently under review by Manchester University Press.