In the North East of England, during the Irish War of Independence, a nun and several school teachers actively supported the Tyneside Brigade of the Irish Republican Army. This post will tell the story of these remarkable women. No women were allowed in the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, in contrast to the Irish Citizen […]
Across the North East of England from the 1850s to the 1920s, wherever the Irish lived and worked, men, usually unskilled and poorly educated, dedicated themselves to the cause of Irish nationalism. This post looks at the life of one of these men, Stephen Bannon from Jarrow. On Monday 19 February 1883, newspaper readers across […]
Introduction.[1] The story of Mary Gunn and the Irish Labour Party has featured in a previous post on this website Mary Gunn: Gateshead’s Irish nationalist and Labour activist.[2] This post sets that story against the background of Irish Catholic settlement in Gateshead from the mid-nineteenth century, and shows how, by the late 1920s, the Labour […]
Before the Great War, Irish audiences across the North East of England packed local theatres to enjoy nationally-themed plays such as The Wearing of the Green, Robert Emmet, and Erin go Bragh, written by nationally-minded playwrights. This post will examine this phenomenon and consider what impact these plays may have had on the North East […]
Was Middlesbrough’s John Walsh part of the conspiracy that planned and executed the brutal Phoenix Park killings that so shocked Britain and Ireland in 1882? This post will examine the life of this ‘extreme Irish nationalist’, who died in exile in New York in 1891. The assassination of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick […]
In 1860 and again in 1870, young Irish Catholic men from the North East of England went to Rome to fight for the Pope in his struggle with Italian nationalist forces. This post will explore the background to this extraordinary episode and look at six of the Papal soldiers, all coal miners from Crook, whose […]
This post was originally presented as an on-line talk to the Tyneside Irish Cultural Society in Newcastle upon Tyne on 2 December 2021 to mark the centenary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. As the talk was illustrated, some changes have been made to the following text. 100 years ago next week, on 6 […]
This post tells the story of two young ‘Tyneside Irishmen’ caught up in a British Army raid on a Dublin hotel in June 1920. After the Great War, though in severe financial difficulties following the collapse of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the 1918 general election, Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal still regularly reported Irish nationalist […]
Between 1903 and 1914, Irish nationalists in the North East of England held an annual gala in Wharton Park in Durham City. These galas, a mix of political demonstration, family day-out, sports day, and a celebration of the Gaelic revival, were, along with the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, a key element in the Irish nationalist […]
In 1870, Fenians, always short of weapons and ammunition, smuggled cases of revolvers by train to Newcastle upon Tyne. This post tells the story of this daring venture and reveals the involvement of Michael Davitt and John Barry, two of the leading Fenians active in England at the time. In early February 1866, ‘Yankee Irishmen’ […]
exiles in england 