In 1938, Dr Mark Ryan, who had joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Lancashire in 1865, declared in the foreword to his book ‘Fenian Memories’, that ‘next to my religion, Fenianism has been the greatest thing in my life’. Not all Irish nationalists, however, who had enthusiastically embraced Fenianism as young men remained loyal to […]
Tag: Newcastle upon Tyne
Born in County Durham in 1895, John Joseph King served as secretary to Newcastle’s branch of the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) from early 1920, helped raise and then command ‘C’ Company of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the North East of England, was a sworn member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and was […]
The Tyneside Irish Brigade, the only Irish corps raised in Britain during the Great War, was the crowning achievement of the pre-1916 Irish nationalist organisations in Britain. This post, which was originally given as a paper at the ‘Minorities and the First World War’ conference organised in 2014 by the University of Chester, tells the […]
In March 1919, against a background of escalating violence in Ireland, a new nationalist political organisation, the Irish Self-Determination League of Great Britain (ISDL), was created by Sinn Féin to mobilise the support of the Irish living in Britain. And, in the industrial towns and colliery villages of the North East of England, from Ashington […]
exiles in england 