The Irish in the West of Scotland, 1797-1848 E-Book

Martin Mitchell

• Herausgeber: John Donald
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2001

Seitenzahl: 597

Beschreibung

The prevailing historical view of the Catholic Irish in the first half of nineteenth-century Scotland is that they were despised by native workers because of their religion and because most were employed as strike-breakers or low-wage labour. As a result of this hostility, the Catholic immigrants were viewed as a separate isolated community, concerned mainly with Irish and Catholic issues and unable or unwilling to participate in trade unions, strikes and radical reform movements. The Protestant Irish immigrants, on the other hand, were believed to have integrated with little difficulty, mainly because of religious, families and cultural ties with the Scots. This study presents a radically different view. It demonstrates that, whereas some Irish workers were used as a blackleg or cheap labour, others participated in trade unions and strikes alongside native workers, most notably in spinning, weaving and mining industries. The various agitations for political change in the region are analysed, revealing that the Irish – Catholic and Protestant – were significantly involved in all of them. It is also shown that Scottish reformers welcomed, and indeed actively sought, Catholic Irish participation. The campaigns for Catholic emancipation and the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 are reviewed, as are the attitudes of the Scottish Catholic clergy to the political activities of their overwhelmingly Irish congregations.

Leseprobe

THE IRISH IN THE WEST OF SCOTLAND 1797–1848

Trade Unions, Strikes and Political Movements

For my Mother and Father

THE IRISH IN THE WEST OF SCOTLAND 1797–1848

Trade Unions, Strikes and Political Movements

Martin J. Mitchell

This eBook was published in Great Britain in 2021 by John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

Birlinn LtdWest Newington House10 Newington RoadEdinburghEH9 1QS

First published in Great Britain in 1998 by John Donald

Copyright © Martin J. Mitchell, 1998

eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 411 5

The right of Martin J. Mitchell to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the support of the Strathmartine Trust towards the publication of this book

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Acknowledgements

This book is based on my 1996 University of Strathclyde doctoral thesis. Professor Tom Devine supervised my postgraduate work and I would like to express my gratitude to him for his guidance and encouragement. I would like to thank Professor Jim McMillan of the Department of History at the University of Strathclyde for appointing me to the post of Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department for term 1995–6, and I am indebted to his colleague Professor Hamish Fraser for providing me with a number of references, transcripts and materials. Many thanks are also due to Mrs Margaret Hastie for typing both the thesis and this book. The University of Strathclyde awarded me a studentship for the period 1992–5 and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland provided financial assistance towards the costs of travel. I wish to thank both institutions. The staff at the following archives and libraries provided much help and assistance: the Scottish Catholic Archives; the Glasgow Archdiocesan Archives; the Mitchell Library; the National Library of Scotland; and the Scottish Record Office (General Register House and West Register House). Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my parents for their support and encouragement. This book is dedicated to them with love and thanks.

Martin J. Mitchell

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: IRISH WORKERS

Chapter One: Trade Unions and Strikes

PART TWO: INSURRECTIONARY ACTIVITIES

Chapter Two: The United Scotsmen, 1797–1803

Chapter Three: The Radical Years, 1816–1820

PART THREE: EMANCIPATION AND REFORM

Chapter Four: The Glasgow Catholic Association, 1823–29

Chapter Five: The Reform Agitations, 1830–37

PART FOUR: CHARTISM AND REPEAL

Chapter Six: Chartism, 1838–41

Chapter Seven: Chartism, Repeal and Complete Suffragism in Glasgow, 1841–42

Chapter Eight: Repeal, 1843–48

CONCLUSION

Bibliography

Index

Abbreviations

PP

Parliamentary Papers

SCA

Scottish Catholic Archives

SRA

Strathclyde Regional Archives

SRO

Scottish Record Office

WRH

West Register House

Introduction

I

In the early 1790s there were very few people of Irish birth in Scotland, of whom almost all lived in the counties of Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Dumfriesshire and Ayrshire. The bulk of these immigrants were employed as agricultural labourers. The rest were mostly vagrants and beggars.1

Fifty years later this picture of Irish immigration had changed beyond recognition. The census of 1841, the first which gave the numbers of Irish-born inhabitants of all the counties of Scotland, revealed that there were 126,321 people of Irish birth in the country, or 4.8 per cent of the total population of 2,620,184.2 However, as the historian of the Irish in Scotland, James Handley, noted:

The census is concerned only with the Irish-born immigrants and takes no account of the Scottish-born children of such, except to enter them as Scots. Yet by 1840 immigration into the industrial areas had persisted long enough to establish a second and even a third generation among a race of manual workers...3

He argued that there was little inter-marriage between the Irish and the Scots and therefore immigrants’ children born in Scotland ‘were of purely Irish blood’.4 Handley suggested that because of this, ‘Probably a percentage of ten to represent the proportion of Irish in Scotland in 1840 would be nearer the truth...’.5 The census of 1851 showed that the proportion of Irish immigrants in Scotland had increased over the decade. At the time of the census there were 207,367 people of Irish birth in the country; this represented 7.17 per cent of the total population of 2,888,742. Once again, because of second and third generation Irish the figure for the Irish-born in Scotland in 1851 greatly under-represents the actual number of Irish in the country in that year.6

The overwhelming majority of Irish immigrants in Scotland from the second half of the 1790s to 1851 were from the nine counties of Ulster.7 The troubles in Ireland during the late 1790s and early 1800s, and in particular the Rebellion of 1798, were chiefly responsible for the first great wave of Irish emigration to Scotland as refugees fled the province to escape the violence or the authorities. Most settled in the west of the country and were employed as weavers, labourers or as operatives in cotton factories.8 The return of relative social and political stability to Ireland did not, however, stem the outflow from Ulster. Over the next four decades the linen industry in the province went into decline and eventually collapsed. This development coincided with the rapid expansion of manufacturing industry in Scotland. As a result, many redundant weavers and spinners left the north of Ireland and moved to Scotland to find work. Entire families emigrated as well.9 From the mid-1840s onwards the pace of emigration to Scotland from Ulster accelerated rapidly on account of the poverty caused by the failure of the potato crop.10

The majority of the Irish population in Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century lived in the west central region, namely the counties of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. The census of 1841 showed that 88,367, or almost 70 per cent, of the 126,321 Irish immigrants in the country lived in this region;11 ten years later the total was 135,975 out of the Irish-born population of 207,367 (65.6 per cent).12 The figures for the three counties, hereafter termed the west of Scotland, are given in more detail in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1: The Irish in the West of Scotland, 1841.

Counties

Total Population

Irish-born Population

Percentage of Irish-born

Ayrshire

164,356

12,035

  7.3

Lanarkshire

426,972

55,915

13.1

Renfrewshire

155,072

20,417

13.2

W. Scotland

746,400

88,367

11.8

Source: James Handley, The Irish in Scotland (2nd edition, Cork, 1945), p.89.

Table 2: The Irish in the West of Scotland, 1851.

Counties

Total Population

Irish-born Population

Percentage of Irish-born

Ayrshire

189,858

20,967

11.0

Lanarkshire

530,169

89,330

16.8

Renfrewshire

161,091

25,678

15.9

W. Scotland

881,118

135,975

15.4

Source: James Handley, The Irish in Modern Scotland (Cork, 1947), p.44.

The majority of Irish immigrants settled in the west of Scotland because this was the region of the country in which the greatest expansion of industry occurred and most employment opportunities were found.

Like the Irish elsewhere in Scotland during this period, and like the Irish who lived in England and Wales, those in the west of the country were overwhelmingly working class. This is apparent from evidence given to a number of parliamentary inquiries in the 1830s and 1840s13, and from studies of information collected for the census of 1851.14 In the mid-1830s most of the Irish in Lanarkshire lived in and around Glasgow.15 Here Irish male workers were employed chiefly as handloom weavers or as labourers who made roads or railways, cut canals and served tradesmen such as masons and bricklayers. Indeed, in the city and its vicinity most of the labourers and probably the majority of the weavers were of Irish birth or descent. Furthermore, around one-half of the dyers, two-thirds of the dock labourers and most of the male workforce in the cotton mills were Irishmen. So too were the majority of workers in Dixon’s large colliery at Govan. Female Irish workers in Glasgow and its neighbourhood were employed mainly in the cotton factories.16 Most of the remainder of the Irish in Lanarkshire at this time lived in the parishes of New Monkland, Hamilton and Blantyre:17 in New Monkland the men worked chiefly as weavers in the village of Airdrie or as colliers or labourers in the surrounding coal mines and iron works;18 in Hamilton most Irishmen were probably weavers or labourers;19 and in Blantyre Irish workers, both male and female, were employed mainly in cotton mills.20 Irishmen in the towns and villages of Ayrshire were mostly weavers or labourers and Irish women in these places flowered muslin, tamboured or wove at the loom. There were also a number of Irishmen employed in some of the collieries in the county.21 In Renfrewshire Irish male workers were chiefly labourers. In Paisley and surrounding towns and villages they cut canals, deepened rivers and served tradesmen in the building industry; in Greenock they constituted most of those employed as labourers in the sugar houses and in the building industry, and probably the majority of those who worked at the docks. In and around Paisley there were some Irishmen who were weavers of plain cotton. Furthermore, in the cotton mills of the town the bulk of the labour force was composed of Irish males and females. Indeed, it was in these establishments that most of Paisley’s female Irish workers were employed.22

By 1851 there had been a number of significant changes in the employment pattern of Irish male workers in the west of Scotland. During the 1840s the country’s handloom weaving population declined rapidly as a result of two severe trade depressions and the increasing availability of work in the expanding heavy industry sector of the economy. In 1838 there were an estimated 84,560 weavers in the whole of Scotland; by 1850 the number had fallen to around 25,000.23 However, from the mid-1830s onwards the coal and iron industries in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire expanded rapidly and attracted a large influx of Irish workers.24 Moreover, the rapid development of the shipbuilding, metalworking and engineering industries in and around Glasgow during the same period led to a large increase in the number of Irishmen working in these sectors. For example, in Anderston in 1851 29.3 per cent of Irish-born male workers were employed in the metal, machine and shipbuilding sector; 13.1 per cent were in textiles; 12.7 per cent were in transport (including dock labour); and 11.5 per cent were employed in the construction industry.25

Those among the Irish population in the west of Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century who were not members of the labouring classes were mainly small shopkeepers, such as grocers, spirit dealers, pawnbrokers, fishmongers and brokers.26 Their numbers were not great. For example, in December 1835 John Murdoch, the Catholic Bishop in Glasgow, reported that of the 43–44,000 Irish Catholics in and around the city only 200 or 300 persons were not ‘of the poor or working classes’. They were mostly ‘petty shopkeepers’.27 Such a group of Irish Catholic businessmen had existed in the city since at least the 1800s.28 Among the Irish in the towns and villages of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire in the mid-1830s there were only a few who were small shopkeepers.29 Finally, most of the itinerant hawkers and pedlars in the region were Irish.30

Irish immigration fundamentally altered the pattern of Roman Catholicism in Scotland. In the mid-1790s there were around 30,000 Catholics in the country, the vast bulk of whom resided in the western Highlands and Islands and in the north-east Lowlands. Only between 500 and 600 lived in and around Glasgow, of whom most had arrived recently from the Highlands. Elsewhere in the west of Scotland there were few Catholics. Four decades later the number of Catholics in the region had risen spectacularly to between 65,000 and 70,000.31 Almost all were of Irish birth or descent.32

However, as most Irish immigrants in Scotland during this period (c.1790–1851) came from the nine counties of Ulster a considerable number were Protestants. Historians differ in their estimates of the extent of this immigration. Gallagher suggests that 20 per cent of the total number of Irish immigrants in Scotland during the nineteenth century were Protestants;33 Walker favours a figure of 25 per cent and claims that this is ‘the generally accepted estimate’;34 Brown suggests that the proportion was at least one-third,35 as does McFarland.36 However, at certain times during the first half of the nineteenth century the proportion of Protestants of the total Irish population in certain areas in the west of Scotland appears to have been considerably greater. For example, in 1831 the number of Catholics in the Calton-Mile End district of Glasgow was 2,688. There were, however, 6,890 Irish residents in the area; this suggests that over 4,000 members of the Irish population were Protestants.37 In early 1834 the manager of a cotton mill at Blantyre stated that ‘almost all’ of the Irish in the parish were Protestants.38 The minister of Girvan revealed around this time that more than one-half of the Irish population of the town were non-Catholic.39

II

Historians have been aware for some time of the important role which Irish immigrants and Irish issues played in the various movements for political reform in England from the Jacobin organisations of the 1790s to the Chartist agitation of the late 1830s and 1840s.40 The dominant view in Scottish historiography, however, is that there was little or no participation by the Irish in Scotland in the campaigns for political change during the same period. In his history of the Irish in Scotland, first published in 1943, James Handley argued that

from the end of the Napoleonic War to the Chartist Risings the Irish immigrant had little active part in the political questions that agitated the bosom of the Scottish working class.41

According to Handley the immigrants simply did not wish to involve themselves in the reform movements of the time, as ‘The fight for Catholic Emancipation and the agitation for the repeal of the Union were more important to those who still regarded themselves as exiles than the grievances of their neighbours...’.42 He explained this attachment to Irish and Catholic issues at the expense of interest in Scottish and British affairs as being a consequence of the immigrants’ belief that their stay in Scotland was only temporary. Handley argued that many crossed the Irish Sea solely to earn enough money to enable them to either depart for the New World or return home to purchase land: therefore they saw no reason to concern themselves with the political agitations of Scottish workers, except on those occasions when there could be benefits for Ireland or the Catholic Church.43 He concluded:

it was not until a generation of Irish, born in Scotland, had grown up to manhood that identification with the political aims of their co-workers — as, for example, during the Chartist movement of the ‘forties — became a normal line of action.44

Leslie Wright and Norman Murray accepted Handley’s argument that it was not until the final phase of Chartism, in 1847–48, that the Irish in Scotland became involved in a political campaign with native workers.45

Other historians have argued that the Irish — or to be exact the Catholic Irish — did not, or could not, participate in the political reform campaigns because Scottish workers were hostile towards the immigrants. For example, in his survey of the experience of the Scottish working class between 1830 and 1914, William Knox stated that ‘Religious bigotry saw the Irish Catholics retreat from the embrace of the Scottish labour movement’, although he acknowledged that they joined forces with the Chartists in 1847, after the death of the great Irish political leader Daniel O’Connell.46 Elaine McFarland also accepted that Irish Catholics were involved in the final stages of the Chartist movement,47 but argued that Scottish workers were not so friendly earlier in the century: she wrote of ‘the hostile reaction of various sections of the early Scottish labour movement’ to Irish immigrants which ‘was based on opposition to their religion as much as economic grievances...’. According to McFarland, this ‘situation was greatly exacerbated by the serious fall in real wages after 1815 and by the employment of Irish blackleg labour after 1817, particularly in the coalfields’.48

Despite the fact that these and other historians49 have noted or discussed the involvement of Irish workers in Chartism in Scotland in the late 1840s, others have maintained that Irish Catholics were prevented by native hostility from participating in Scottish political reform campaigns throughout most of the nineteenth century. For example, Tom Gallagher, in his major study of the Catholic community in Glasgow during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, argued that the Catholic Irish in nineteenth century Scotland were despised because of their religion and because they worked for lower rates of pay.50 As a result:

Working-class solidarity was not a strong enough impulse to bring Irish and Scottish wage labourers together even though, during the 1830s and 1840s, they were already toiling in close proximity at a time when radical movements like the Chartists enjoyed a mass following in Britain.51

He concluded:

Finding religious intolerance and sectarian hate in many areas of nineteenth century Scottish life, the immigrants preferred to remain expatriate Irish rather than strive to make common cause with the Scots in their midst.52

Callum Brown, in The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730, argued that ‘partly through the use of immigrants as strike-breakers and partly through sectarianism, Catholics were generally isolated from the trades-union and Labour movements before 1890.’53 (The overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics in lowland Scotland throughout the nineteenth century were Irish or of Irish descent.)

This view that Catholic Irish immigrants and their progeny were employed mainly as low wage labour or as strike-breakers, and were unwilling or unable to participate in strikes or trade unions during the first half of the nineteenth century, dominates historical thinking on the Irish in Scotland. In his contribution to the first volume in the People and Society in Scotland series Callum Brown stated that from the 1780s

sectarian feelings strengthened amongst skilled workers in the west of Scotland. Though approximately one-third of new arrivals from Ireland were Protestant (presbyterians, episcopalians and Methodists), it was the Catholic Irish who were identified as threatening the jobs and status of native Scots.54

In the second volume, which examined the period 1830–1914, he asserted that ‘trade unions were often overtly anti-Catholic, and Protestant workingclass hostility was exacerbated when Catholics worked as strike-breakers’.55 Tom Gallagher has argued:

It was the Irishman’s readiness to toil longer, harder, and for less remuneration which elicited the bitterest response from Scottish and English workers... the Irish undoubtedly helped to depress real wages and conditions by working longer for lower rates of pay. In Scotland, this was particularly true of the Lanarkshire coalfields... where antagonism between Scottish and Irish workers was possibly at its worst in the nineteenth century.56

Gallagher highlighted the role of Irish workers as strike-breakers in mining disputes and stated that ‘Well into the nineteenth century, plenty of Irish were to be found in those parts of the Scottish coalfields where non-union labour predominated’.57 Furthermore, he claimed that Scottish trade unions ‘were for a long time, hostile to Irish immigration’, and that Irish Catholic workers played little part in trade unionism for most of the nineteenth century.58 In his volume in the Edinburgh History of Scotland, William Ferguson discussed the use of Irish workers as strike-breakers in mining areas and the immigrants’ role in adding greatly to the number of handloom weavers which, he argued, contributed to the decline in wages for those who worked at the loom. He stated that this ‘economic rivalry gave rise to bitter resentment’ which ‘might well have been lost in a common struggle for improved conditions of labour but for the fierce antagonisms roused by the settlement of a large Roman Catholic population in a strongly Protestant country’.59

Gallagher concluded that ‘The widespread hostility of the host community to their presence’ contributed to the formation by the Irish Catholics of a distinct community isolated from the rest of Scottish society:60

The community preserved its separate identity because it was a form of psychological protection. Priests and other community leaders encouraged what amounted to voluntary segregation in all the big areas of Irish settlement and in many of the smaller ones where the conditions existed for a distinct enclave community.61

Callum Brown has expressed similar views. He argued that ‘native sectarianism helped to sustain Catholic cultural identity’ during the first three decades of the nineteenth century62, and that from 1830–1914 the Catholic church ‘was a refuge in what was frequently a hostile host society’.63 In his survey of Glasgow working class politics between 1750 and 1914 Ian Hutchison claimed that the Irish Catholics formed a group apart:

Throughout the nineteenth century the Irish Catholic portion of the population of Glasgow constituted a separate community within the city’s social system, segregated by a whole bundle of distinguishing characteristics — race, accent, religion, occupations, residence and politics.64

Hutchison, however, did not state whether he believed this segregation to have been voluntary or instead a consequence of native hostility.

In several other general texts and specialised studies historians have not distinguished between Catholics and Protestants in their discussion of the effects of Irish immigration on Scottish workers, trade unionism and industrial action. For example, the Checklands, in their history of Scotland between 1832 and 1914, highlighted the role of the Irish as strike-breakers, and also stated that immigrant labour was ‘so often used by employers to make effective unionism impossible’.65 When T.C. Smout discussed the Irish in the context of industrial relations during the first half of the nineteenth century in his social histories he too focused solely on those groups of immigrants who were used as blackleg labour,66 as did Hamish Fraser in his major study of the development of Scottish trade unionism in the period from 1700 to 1838.67 Indeed, in another work Fraser argued that by the late 1840s, ‘the Irish... were already present in such numbers as to be perceived as a major threat, and... were already identified as blacklegs and strike-breakers’ by Scottish workers.68 Clarke and Dickson in their examination of the emergence of the Scottish working class between 1760 and 1830 mentioned Irish workers twice. On the first occasion they commented on the immigrants’ contribution to the labour surplus after 1815 and the problems this caused for the ‘artisanal trades’ in their attempts to control entry to their crafts. Clarke and Dickson then identified the ‘main threat’ faced by colliers unions in the 1830s — ‘the influx of Irish labour used particularly as “nob” or “blackleg” labour during strikes...’.69 Slaven and Campbell in their economic histories did not comment on Irish strike-breakers but focused instead on those Irish workers who contributed to the lowering of labour costs in the iron and textile industries.70 Similarly, Mitchison commented on the willingness of the immigrants to accept low wages and argued that the influx of Irish workers into handloom weaving after 1816 contributed to the decline in wage-rates and working conditions in that trade.71

Therefore certain views dominate historical thinking on the Irish in Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century (and beyond): Irish immigrants, or the Catholics among them depending on which historian is being consulted, were employed mainly as low wage labour or as strikebreakers; they were despised by native workers; they played little part in political agitations alongside Scottish reformers; they were not significantly involved in trade unions or industrial action to protect or improve their wages and conditions. As has been shown, these images of Irish workers are to be found in most of the general texts on Scotland in this period and in a number of specialised works.

Yet it is surprising that such views dominate Scottish historiography. It will be recalled that Brown and Gallagher appear to have ignored the evidence of Irish participation in the final stages of the Chartist movement in Scotland. What is also strange is that they did not take into account evidence of immigrant involvement in reform agitations in Scotland prior to Chartism. The same is true of several of those who have acknowledged that the Irish were active in Scottish Chartism in the late 1840s. In a work published over eighty years ago, Henry Meikle argued that Irish immigrants were involved in the establishment and membership of the secret revolutionary United Scotsmen Society of 1797–1803,72 and since then a number of historians including Burns, Thomis and Holt, Wells, Brims and most recently McFarland, have produced evidence of Irish involvement in this organisation.73 Indeed, Handley, in the standard work on the Irish in Scotland, accepted Meikle’s arguments and concluded that it was ‘probable that many United Irishmen who had emigrated to Scotland were to be found in the ranks of the Scottish rebel society...’.74 Furthermore, despite having argued that the Irish played little part in Scottish reform movements from 1815 to 1848, Handley stated that during the political radicalism in the west of Scotland between 1816 and 1820 ‘the Irish immigrant seems to have taken his share in the agitation’.75 One of the sources he used to form this conclusion was Tom Johnston’s History of the Working Classes in Scotland. In this book, published in 1920, the future Secretary of State for Scotland argued that during the post-Napoleonic War agitation, ‘The immigrant Irish rebels were in “the troubles”— the advanced left wing of them, almost to a man...’.76 Ellis and Mac a’Ghobhain also maintained that Irish workers played a significant part in the radicalism of these years although they, like Johnston, did not produce any evidence to support their assertions nor provide references to the sources used to advance them.77 William Roach provided evidence in his study of the radical movements of 1816–22 in the west of Scotland which suggests that the Irish might have been supporters of them,78 and showed that two Irish weavers resident in Calton, a suburb of Glasgow, were heavily involved in a secret revolutionary society in 1817.79 W.H. Fraser also noted their role,80 but neither historian went on to examine the significance of this involvement for an understanding of the immigrant experience in Scotland at that time. In her recent study of Scottish radicalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Elaine McFarland argued that these two weavers, Andrew McKinlay and Hugh Dickson, were Protestants and that their society was anti-Catholic.81 However, she also produced evidence which suggests that Irish Catholics might have participated in the agitation of 1819–20.82

Furthermore, there is evidence which is at odds with the view advocated by Brown and Gallagher that Scottish political reform movements were hostile to the Catholic Irish. Handley argued that the Scottish radicals ‘were inclined to show themselves friendly towards the Catholic immigrants’ during the 1820s and 1830s83 and Alexander Wilson stated in his study of the Chartist movement in Scotland, published in 1970, that, ‘Towards their much abused brethren, the Irish Catholics, there was a good deal of fellow feeling amongst the Chartists, but this feeling was seldom reciprocated, and it was only in the later stages of the movement that the “Irish” Catholics played any significant part.’84 More recently, John McCaffrey has argued that the Catholic Irish ‘political element’ in the west of Scotland between the 1820s and 1840s established firm links with native radical movements in the region.85

It is also surprising that the image of the Irish as strike-breakers or workers who were content with low wages, and who were unwilling or unable to participate in trade unions or strikes, is to be found in a considerable number of major studies in Scottish history. Consider the issue of strike-breaking. It is clear from the secondary sources that immigrant workers were used as blackleg labour during the first half of the nineteenth century. The evidence of this, however, relates almost exclusively to the mining areas of Lanarkshire and Ayrshire, and mainly from the late 1830s onwards. The vast majority of Irish workers during this period were not employed in the mines and were not used as blackleg labour.86 Treble’s statement concerning the issue of the Irish and strike-breaking in the north of England is equally true of the immigrants north of the border:

the majority of Irish newcomers... had been drawn there by the ‘pull’ factor of higher wages and greater continuity in employment rather than recruited for the specific purpose of strike-breaking. Irish ‘blacklegs’ formed only an insignificant proportion of the total immigrant influx in any given year.87

Furthermore, it has been established that whereas some Irish workers were used as strike-breakers or as cheap labour in the north of England, others participated in strikes and trade unions, particularly in the textile industries. Indeed some immigrants, the most notable being John Doherty in Lancashire, played leading roles in workers’ organisations in that region.88 In 1963 J.A. Jackson argued that although particular economic circumstances might have made some immigrants eschew strikes and trade unions, ‘given equal conditions [the Irish] were at least as active and capable as the majority of British workmen’.89 After reviewing such evidence Dorothy Thompson stressed that, ‘There is clearly... a difference between the use of fresh immigrant labour, or of labour deliberately imported to replace or dilute a difficult labour-force, and the behaviour of immigrants already a part of that force.’90 It would appear that many writers of Scottish history have not recognised this distinction.

What is most surprising, however, is that there is evidence available in secondary sources which demonstrates or suggests that Irish workers in Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century were involved in trade unions and strikes. D.F. McDonald in 1937, L.C. Wright in 1953, W.H. Marwick in 1967, Z.G. Brassey in 1974 and W.H. Fraser in 1976 all argued that Irish workers were heavily involved in the union of cotton spinners in Glasgow.91 Norman Murray, the historian of the handloom weavers in Scotland, stated that Irish weavers took part in strikes and possibly trade unions as well.92 In his study of the Lanarkshire miners Alan Campbell discussed the use of the Irish as blackleg labour but also argued that some participated in industrial action.93 Moreover, Handley provided examples which show or suggest immigrant involvement in trade unions and strikes in a number of occupations.94

It is clear, therefore, that there is evidence which demonstrates that the dominant view of Irish immigrants, industrial action and political radicalism in Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century is in great need of revision. It is strange that the examples of Irish involvement in these activities have not been incorporated into the general or specialised works of the historians discussed earlier. Nor has this evidence been brought together — until now — to suggest that the immigrant experience was perhaps somewhat different to the standard view and was in fact much like that of the Irish in England.

This book will examine in detail the issue of the Irish in Scottish political and industrial agitations. Although several historians have noted an Irish presence in these activities most mention it only in passing. The exceptions are McFarland, in her study of Scottish radicalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and Campbell, in his work on the Lanarkshire miners. The study will concentrate on the west of Scotland, as this was the region in which the majority of Irish immigrants settled during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was also the part of the country which experienced most strikes, trade union organisation and political agitation. Furthermore, as has been noted, several historians have already provided examples of Irish participation in these activities in the region.

The political campaigns which were almost exclusively the preserve of the Irish community in Scotland, in particular the agitations for Catholic Emancipation and repeal of the British-Irish legislative union, will also be examined. Handley did not deal with these movements in any great detail and Montgomery and Leitch, in their theses on radicalism between 1830 and 1848 in Glasgow and Paisley respectively, did not discuss Repeal at all.95 By examining both the ‘Irish’ and the ‘Scottish’ political movements a complete picture of immigrant political activity in this period will be given.

All the principal sources for studies of Scottish radicalism, trade unions and strikes in the first half of the nineteenth century have been consulted. These are the newspapers of the period and other contemporary publications; the parliamentary papers from the mid-1820s to the 1850s; the correspondence of government and local officials; and the legal records pertaining to arrested radicals, trade unionists, strikers and rioters. The press is also essential for the examination of the political movements dominated by the Irish in Scotland. The correspondence and papers of the Catholic clergy in the west of Scotland have been examined as well. These contain extremely valuable information on the political activities of the immigrants and on the attitudes of the priests towards them. The quality of these sources and the problems associated with them in attempting to determine the nature and extent of Irish participation in radical and industrial agitations will be considered throughout the text.

The book contains four sections. The first examines the role of Irish workers in trade unions and strikes throughout the period. The remainder of the study is concerned with the Irish and political campaigns. The first of these sections deals with insurrectionary activities, namely the United Scotsmen movement of 1797–1803 and the radical agitations of 1816–20. The chapters on these movements were originally completed before the publication of Elaine McFarland’s study of Scottish radicalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although McFarland has produced a full account of the United Scotsmen society there is nothing in her work which has led me to alter my conclusions concerning this secret organisation or the extent and nature of Irish involvement in it. Furthermore, there are aspects of her discussion of the agitations of 1816–20 with which I disagree and I have included my criticisms in the text. The second section in this part of the book examines the peaceful campaigns for Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bills. The demands for further political change in the years following the passing of the Reform Acts are also discussed. The final section is concerned with the period 1838–48 and examines the role of the Irish in the west of Scotland in the Chartist movement and in the campaign for Repeal of Union.

Notes

1. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp. iv, 154–5; James Handley, The Irish in Scotland 1798–1845 (2nd edition, Cork, 1945), pp.81–5.

2. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.89.

3.Ibid, p.90.

4.Ibid.

5.Ibid, p.91.

6. James Handley, The Irish in Modern Scotland (Cork, 1947), pp.44–6.

7. Brenda Collins, ‘The Origins of Irish Immigration to Scotland in Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, in T.M. Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Edinburgh, 1991), pp.5–6; Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.108.

8. Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.86–87; PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, p. v. See also Chapter 2.

9. Collins, ‘Origins of Irish Immigration’, pp.1–10; ‘Irish Emigration to Dundee and Paisley during the first half of the Nineteenth Century’, in J.M. Goldstrom and L.A. Clarkson (eds.), Irish Population, Economy and Society (Oxford, 1981), pp.202–6; Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.106; PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp. iii, vi, vii.

10. Handley, Irish in Modern Scotland, Chapter 2; Collins, ‘Origins of Irish Immigration’, pp.8–10.

11. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.89.

12. Handley, Irish in Modern Scotland, p.44.

13. See Handley, Irish in Scotland, Chapter 4.

14. See Collins, ‘Irish Emigration to Dundee and Paisley’, pp. 195–212; R.D. Lobban, ‘The Irish Community in Greenock in the Nineteenth Century’, Irish Geography, VI (1971), pp.270–81; William Sloan, ‘Employment Opportunities and Migrant Group Assimilation: the Highlanders and Irish in Glasgow, 1840–1860’, in A.J.G. Cummings and T.M. Devine (eds.), Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1700: Essays Presented to Professor John Butt (Edinburgh, 1994), pp. 197–217; Alan B. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners:A Social History of their Trade Unions, 1775–1874 (Edinburgh, 1979), Chapter 7.

15. The 1841 census revealed that of the 55,915 Irish-born inhabitants of Lanarkshire 44,345, or 79.3%, resided in Glasgow and its suburbs. In the mid-1830s the proportion of Irish in and around the city would undoubtedly have been greater, because at that time the rapid expansion of the coal and iron industries in the county, which attracted large numbers of Irish workers, had only just begun. See Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.89–90, 118–21.

16. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp. 105–17.

17.Ibid; PP, 1837–1838, Reports from the Commissioners of Religious Instruction, Scotland. Second Report, Appendix III, pp.275, 278; Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.105–27.

18. SCA, Presholme Letters, PL3/120/5, Andrew Scott to James Kyle, 26 February 1827; PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp.113–5.

19. Martin J. Mitchell, ‘The Catholic Community in Hamilton, c.1800–1914’, in T.M. Devine (ed.), St Mary’s Hamilton: A Social History, 1846–1996 (Edinburgh, 1995), p.31.

20. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp.107–8.

21.Ibid, pp.146–9, 158.

22.Ibid, pp.131–3, 139–41.

23. Norman Murray, The Scottish Handloom Weavers, 1790–1850:A Social History (Edinburgh, 1978), pp.21–3, 48; Anthony Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland: 1750–1960 (London, 1975), pp. 103–5.

24. Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.96–7, 118–21; Alan B. Campbell, The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of their Trade Unions, 1775–1874 (Edinburgh, 1979), especially Chapter 7; Gordon M. Wilson, Alexander McDonald, Leader of the Miners (Aberdeen, 1982), Chapter 2.

25. Sloan, ‘Employment Opportunities and Migrant Group Assimilation’, pp. 198–206.

26. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp.104–5, 139, 146; PP, 1837–1838, Reports from the Commissioners of Religious Instruction, Scotland: Second Report, Appendix III, p.275; Eighth Report, Appendix I, pp.208, 316; PP, 1843, (115), VII, Select Committee on Distress in Paisley, p.120; Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.274–5; Sloan, ‘Employment Opportunities and Migrant Group Assimilation’, p.210.

27. PP, 1837–1838, Reports from the Commissioners of Religious Instruction, Scotland. Second Report, Appendix III, p.275.

28. Christine Johnson, Developments in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, 1789–1829 (Edinburgh, 1983), pp.176–77; SCA, Presholme Letters, PL3/28/11, William Rattray to Alexander Cameron, 19 March 1810; Blairs Letters, BL4/396/6, William Rattray to Alexander Cameron, 31 March 1812.

29. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp.139, 146; PP, 1837–1838, Reports from the Commissioners of Religious Instruction, Scotland. Eighth Report, Appendix I, pp.208, 316.

30. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, p. viii.

31. Martin J. Mitchell, ‘The Establishment and Early Years of the Hamilton Mission’, in Devine (ed.), St Mary’s Hamilton, pp.1–4.

32.Ibid. See also PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, pp.101, 139; PP, 1843 (115), VII, Select Committee on Distress in Paisley, p.120.

33. Tom Gallagher, ‘The Catholic Irish in Scotland: in search of identity’ in Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants, p.20.

34. Graham Walker, ‘The Protestant Irish in Scotland’, in Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants, p.49.

35. Callum Brown, The People in the Pews: Religion and Society in Scotland since 1780 (The Economic and Social History Society of Scotland, 1993), p.34. See also Callum Brown, ‘Religion and Social Change’, in T.M. Devine and Rosalind Mitchison (eds.), People and Society in Scotland Volume I, 1760–1830 (Edinburgh, 1988), p.154.

36. Elaine McFarland, Protestants First: Orangeism in Nineteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 104.

37. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.108.

38. PP, 1836, (40), XXXIV, Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, p.108.

39.Ibid, p.149.

40. John Belcham, ‘England Working-Class Radicalism and the Irish, 1815–50’, in Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds.), The Irish in the Victorian City (London, 1985), pp.130–57; Marianne Elliott, ‘Irish Republicanism in England; the first phase 1797–9’, in T. Bartlett and D.W. Hayton (eds.), Penal Era and Golden Age (Belfast, 1979), pp.204–22; Graham Davis, The Irish in Britain, 1815–1914 (Dublin, 1991), chapter 5; A.W Smith, ‘Irish Rebels and English Radicals, 1798–1829’, Past and Present, 7 (1955), pp.78–85; Dorothy Thompson, ‘Ireland and the Irish in English Radicalism before 1850’ in James Epstein and Dorothy Thomspon (eds.), The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–1860 (London, 1982), pp. 120–51; E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Paperback edition, London, 1968), pp.183–88, 523–28; J.H. Treble, ‘O’Connor, O’Connell and the Attitudes of Irish Immigrants towards Chartism in the North of England 1838–1848’, in J. Butt and I.F. Clarke (eds.), The Victorians and Social Protest: a Symposium (Newton Abbott, 1973), pp.33–70; Rachel O’Higgins, ‘The Irish Influence in the Chartist Movement’, Past and Present,20 (1961), pp.83–96; Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience, 1795– 1803 (Gloucester, 1983).

41. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.145. For his discussion of the immigrants and politics see pp. 145–6, 313–23.

42.Ibid, p.313.

43.Ibid, pp.145–6, 313.

44.Ibid, p.313.

45. Leslie C. Wright, Scottish Chartism (Edinburgh, 1953), p. 19; Murray, Scottish Handloom Weavers, p.233.

46. W. Knox, ‘The Political and Workplace Culture of the Scottish Working Class, 1832–1914’, in W. Hamish Fraser and R.J. Morris (eds.), People and Society in Scotland Volume II, 1830–1914 (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 156.

47. McFarland, Protestants First, p.102.

48.Ibid, p.52. See also E. McFarland, Ireland and Scotland in the Age of Revolution (Edinburgh, 1994), p.244.

49. See, for example, Alexander Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland (Manchester, 1970), p. 141, 222.

50. Tom Gallagher, Glasgow:The Uneasy Peace: Religious Tension in Modern Scotland (Manchester, 1987), chapter 1.

51.Ibid, p.13.

52.Ibid, p.32.

53. Callum G. Brown, The Social History of Religion in Scotland since 1730 (London, 1987), p. 164.

54. Brown, ‘Religion and Social Change’, p. 154.

55. Callum G. Brown, ‘Religion, Class and Church Growth’, in Fraser and Morris (eds.), People and Society Volume II, p.322.

56. Gallagher, Uneasy Peace, pp.13–4.

57.Ibid, p.14.

58.Ibid, p.31.

59. William Ferguson, Scotland 1689 to the Present (Paperback edition, Edinburgh, 1978), pp.292–3.

60. Gallagher, Uneasy Peace, p.33

61.Ibid, p.18.

62. Brown, ‘Religion and Social Change’, p. 159.

63. Brown, ‘Religion, Class and Church Growth’, p.322.

64. I.G.C. Hutchison, ‘Glasgow Working-Class Politics’, in R.A. Cage (ed.), The Working Class in Glasgow, 1750–1914 (London, 1987), p. 130.

65. Olive and Sydney Checkland, Industry and Ethos: Scotland, 1832–1914 (2nd edition, Edinburgh, 1989), pp.17, 25, 125.

66. T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830 (Paperback edition, London, 4972), p.407; A Century of the Scottish People (Paperback edition, London, 1987), p.19.

67. W. Hamish Fraser, Conflict and Class: Scottish Workers 1700–1838 (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 122–3, 151.

68. W. Hamish Fraser, ‘The Scottish Context of Chartism’, in Terry Brotherstone (ed.), Covenant, Charter and Party: Traditions of Protest and Revolt in Modern Scottish History (Aberdeen, 1989), p.74.

69. Tony Clarke and Tony Dickson, ‘The Birth of Class’, in Devine and Mitchison, People & Society Volume I, pp.300–1.

70. R.H. Campbell, Scotland since 1707: The Rise of an Industrial Society (2nd edition, Edinburgh, 1985), pp.89, 97, 141; Slaven, Development of the West of Scotland, pp.104, 106, 117–8.

71. Rosalind Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London, 1970), pp.367, 381.

72. Henry Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow, 1912), p. 186.

73. C.M. Burns, Industrial Labour and Radical Movements in Scotland in the 1790s, University of Strathclyde M.Sc. (1971), pp.205–8, 215; M.I. Thomis and P. Holt, Threats of Revolution in Britain 1789–1848 (London, 1977), p.19; Wells, Insurrection, pp.72–4, 205; John Brims, ‘Scottish Radicalism and the United Irishmen’, in David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds.), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), pp. 163–4; McFarland, Ireland and Scotland, chapters 5–8.

74. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.145. See also pp.313–4.

75.Ibid, p.314.

76. Tom Johnston, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland (Glasgow, 1920), p.234.

77. Peter Berresford Ellis and Seamus Mac a’Ghobhain, The Scottish Insurrection of 1820 (Paperback edition, London, 1989), pp.85, 114.

78. W.M. Roach, Radical Reform Movements in Scotland from 1815–1822 with Particular Reference to Events in the West of Scotland, University of Glasgow, Ph.D. (1970), pp.188, 205.

79.Ibid, pp.90, 100.

80. Fraser, Conflict and Class, pp. 103–4.

81. McFarland, Ireland and Scotland, pp.238, 244.

82.Ibid, p.240.

83. Handley, Irish in Scotland, p.308.

84. Wilson, Chartist Movement, p.141.

85. John F. McCaffrey, ‘Irish Issues in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century: Radicalism in a Scottish Context?’, in T.M. Devine (ed.), Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 123–25. See also J. McCaffrey, ‘Irish Immigrants and Radical Movements in the West of Scotland in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Innes Review, XXXIX (1988), pp.46–60. McCaffrey’s views on the Irish and radical movements in this period have been accepted by Michael Lynch in his Scotland: A New History (London, 1991), p.395.

86. Handley, Irish in Scotland, Chapter 4; Irish in Modern Scotland, Chapter 5.

87. J.H. Treble, ‘The Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards Trade Unionism in the North of England, 1833–1842’, Northern History, 5 (1970), p.96.

88. See for example, Thompson, ‘Ireland and the Irish’, pp. 130–2; Davis, Irish in Britain, pp. 104–5; John Archer Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London, 1963), pp.116–8; Duncan Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study of the English Cotton Industry During the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1969), p.184; E.H. Hunt, British Labour History 1815–1914 (London, 1981), pp.167–8; Treble, ‘Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church’, passim; Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, pp.384, 472, 483–4.

89. Jackson, Irish in Britain, p.118.

90. Thompson, ‘Ireland and the Irish’, p.130.

91. D.F. MacDonald, Scotland’s Shifting Population, 1770–1850 (Glasgow, 1937), p.83; Wright, Scottish Chartism, p.17;WH. Marwick, A Short History of Labour in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1967), p.10; Z.G. Brassey, The Cotton Spinners in Glasgow and the West of Scotland c.1790–1840: A Study in early industrial relations, University of Strathclyde, M. Litt. (1974), pp.21–5; W. Hamish Fraser, ‘The Glasgow Cotton Spinners, 1837’, in John Butt and J.T. Ward (eds.), Scottish Themes: Essays in honour of S.G.E. Lythe (Edinburgh, 1976), pp.83, 87.

92. Murray, Scottish Handloom Weavers, pp.201–2.

93. Campbell, Lanarkshire Miners, esp. chapter 7.

94. Handley, Irish in Scotland, pp.72–3, 77, 114, 116–7.

95. Fiona Ann Montgomery, Glasgow Radicalism 1830–1848, University of Glasgow, Ph.D. (1974); Archibald Leitch, Radicalism in Paisley, 1830–48: and its economic, political, cultural background, University of Glasgow, M.Litt. (1993).

PART ONEIRISH WORKERS

1Trade Unions and Strikes

This chapter will examine the role of Irish workers in trade unions and strikes in the west of Scotland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Most of the discussion will deal with cotton spinning, handloom weaving and mining, as these were occupations in which the Irish formed a large proportion of the workforce and were also those which saw most trade union activity and industrial action in this period. Furthermore, as the introduction to this study has shown, some historians have noted an Irish presence in these unions and disputes. This chapter will consider the issue in detail. Evidence concerning the Irish in several other occupations will also be presented.

I

The first cotton mills in Scotland were driven by water power and were located mostly in relatively isolated rural areas beside those rivers and streams which provided sufficient supplies of water. From the early 1790s onwards the industry was transformed by the introduction of steam-powered engines, which enabled mills to be erected in urban areas.1 This was of great significance to cotton masters because, as Slaven states, by the early 1790s ‘all the most convenient and economic water-power sites had been exploited, and only steam power, employing Watt’s new rotative engine, could break the limitation on growth imposed by a shortage of power’.2 Most of the water-powered mills had been built in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire in order to be as close as possible to the cotton yarn merchants and weavers of Glasgow and Paisley who were so essential to the success of the industry. Glasgow, with its commercial and financial infrastructure, was particularly vital for cotton spinning. The application of the steam engine to spinning allowed new mills to be constructed in and around Paisley and Glasgow. For example, by 1833 seventy-two of the seventy-four cotton mills in Lanarkshire were in the city and its immediate vicinity.3

Adult workers in the urban areas in which cotton mills were constructed in the 1790s were not, however, willing to work in such establishments nor did they wish their children to be employed in them. Other work was readily available in this period and often at higher rates of remuneration, for example in handloom weaving.4 There was also a strong aversion among the native population to working in factories. In 1834 George Miller, the manager of a cotton works at Blantyre, recalled that in those early years, Tew Scotch families could be prevailed on to go into a cotton mill; they looked upon it as a sort of degradation’.5

It was fortunate for the master cotton spinners that the construction of their urban steam-powered mills in the 1790s coincided with the beginning of large scale Irish emigration to the west of Scotland. The new arrivals were not opposed to factory labour.6 According to George Miller: ‘They were glad... to take work in the cotton mills that were erecting and in course of operation, and they took their children in along with them. As the trade increased, fresh lots of the Irish came over, and were employed at once.’7 As the cotton industry grew and the number of cotton spinning factories increased, Irish immigrants and their progeny continued to form the largest group in the labour force. For example, Miller stated in early 1834 that, ‘The Irish, or descendants of Irish, are found to predominate in all spinning and weaving mills.’8 Around this time John Orr recalled that when he opened his spinning mill in Paisley in 1810 his workforce was Irish, because the immigrants ‘were the only people that asked for employment... Those who apply for work in the cotton mills are still chiefly Irish. Generally in the neighbourhood the great majority of the hands in the cotton mills are Irish’. Orr employed 279 workers in his factory in early 1834, 199 of whom were Irish.9 A year earlier Henry Houldsworth, one of Scotland’s leading cotton manufacturers, had informed a Parliamentary Select Committee that although ‘a considerable number of Scotch... send their children to the mills... the greater proportion of the hands in the mills of Glasgow are either Irish themselves or of Irish parents, born in Scotland’. He added that ‘a great proportion of [the spinners]... are from Irish famflies...’.10 An account of the workforce in Houldsworth’s spinning mills at Anderston in Glasgow in March 1834 shows that 291 of his 429 employees were of Irish birth or parentage.11

Given that the Irish constituted the majority of the spinning workforce in the cotton mills of Glasgow and Paisley during this period it is not surprising that there is evidence of their involvement in the Cotton Spinners’ Association, which from 1816 to 1837 was the most powerful and active workers’ organisation in Scotland.12 For example, in his Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, published in 1836, George Cornewall Lewis stated:

In Glasgow and its neighbourhood, the formidable union of the cottonspinners was first organised by the Irish, who... were at first almost exclusively employed in the cotton factories of Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire.13

John Orr informed Lewis that ‘There were many turn-outs among the hands in the cotton mills, from 1818 down to 1828 or 1829’ and added: ‘The Scotch now are just as keen in combinations as the Irish’.14 George Miller, in his evidence to the same Inquiry, stated:

It is believed... that the union could never have acquired that degree of consistence that it now possesses had it not been for the daring character of the Irish, who scrupled at little in accomplishing their ends, even to the destruction of life and property, of which there are many miserable instances on record.15

By 1834, when the evidence for the Irish Poor Report was collected, the cotton spinners had indeed established a reputation for violence. During several disputes in Glasgow and Renfrewshire between 1818 and 1828 strike-breakers were threatened, intimidated and attacked. Some had vitriol thrown at them: others were shot. It is not clear, however, whether such outrages were committed by individuals or groups of spinners acting on their own, or occurred under the direction of the leadership of the union.16 Nevertheless, there is evidence to support George Miller’s claim that Irish spinners were prominent in such attacks. For example, between September 1824 and February 1825 there was a general stoppage of Glasgow spinners. After the return to work by the strikers, the new men employed during the dispute continued to be harassed. One of them, John Graham of Dunlop’s Broomward Mill, was shot on 30 March 1825. John Kean, an unemployed spinner and a native of Ireland, was captured immediately and eventually found guilty of the assault. He was publicly whipped and then transported for life. Prior to the attack on Graham, Kean had attempted to shoot another strike-breaker.17

Four years before the attack on Graham another Irish spinner, Patrick Mellon, stood trial in Glasgow accused of the assault and burning (with vitriol) of James Cairney in late September 1820. Mellon was born in Belfast and had moved to Scotland at the age of six. He was a spinner in the mill of Robert Humphries and Co. in Hutchesontown. Cairney, who was seventeen-years-old, had been a strike-breaker at the mill for three weeks before the attack which blinded him in one eye and left his face badly disfigured. In his precognition to the authorities Cairney identified Mellon as his assailant, but at the trial the case against him was found not proven.18 Mellon, however, was named by Thomas Stewart, a member of the Spinners’ Association, as being one of a number of spinners who had been involved in assaults on strike-breakers in Glasgow and surrounding districts during the period from 1816 or 1817 to early 1821. Stewart also named the other spinners whom he believed to be prominent members of this group, including several whose surnames suggest that they were of Irish birth or descent: Owen Callaghan, Hugh Lafferty, Bernard McGeary, John McGowan and two men whose surnames only were given, Messrs. McBride and McConnell.19 The last named was probably Henry McConnell, who, along with Callaghan, Lafferty and one Malcolm Cameron, was tried for the attempted assassination in December 1820 of John Orr, managing partner of the Underwood Mill in Paisley. The charge against Lafferty was found not proven, McConnell and Cameron were found guilty, and Callaghan was found guilty art and part. The three men were transported for life, but not before being whipped through Paisley as part of their sentence. On 5 April 1821 they each received seventy-five lashes, which were given in groups of fifteen at five different spots in the town.20

Malcolm Cameron was one of those spinners identified by Stewart in January 1821 as being trade unionists who participated in assaults against strike-breakers. Stewart named a number of other such activists who, like Cameron, did not have indigenous Irish names, for example Kennedy Baxter, Robert Brown, James Campbell, Paton Dunlop, John Gow, James McIntyre, Daniel Montgomery, Douglas Morrison and Robert Watson.21 Another combined spinner, Nathaniel Donald, in a precognition given to the authorities around this time, named a number of spinners who he claimed were ‘the most active in encouraging and promoting the combination about Glasgow’. He identified nineteen in total of whom three — William Burke, William Darroch and William Docharty — had recognisably Irish surnames. The surnames of the other spinners included Barclay, Blackburn, Henderson, Kee, McDonald, McKenzie, McMillan, McQuarry, Mellon, Paterson and Smith.22 Unfortunately, nothing is known about the background of those listed by Stewart and Donald. However, given that the Irish appear to have been the predominant group in the spinning workforce in the mills during these years it is not unreasonable to assume that a number of the spinners named as being prominent union activists were Irish or of Irish descent.

After the dispute of 1824–25 it was not until 1837 that there was another general stoppage in the cotton spinning industry. In early April that year the leading cotton masters in Glasgow agreed to reduce the wage rates of their spinners and this resulted in the Spinners’ Association calling out all its members. On 22 July, the one hundred and sixth day of the strike, John Smith, a strike-breaker at Honldsworth’s Mill, was shot. He died three days later. The committee of the Association was soon arrested and the strike quickly collapsed. At a meeting on 3 August the spinners agreed to resume work ‘unconditionally’. All but four of the committee members were eventually released. These men —Thomas Hunter, Peter Hacket, Richard McNeil and James Gibb — along with William McLean, a combined spinner who the authorities believed was the actual murderer, were charged with a number of offences. These included conspiracy to increase wages by the use of threats against workers, strike-breakers and employers; arson; assault; and the murder of John Smith. At their trial in Edinburgh in January 1838 the charges involving murder were found not proven. The five spinners were, however, found guilty of being members of a conspiracy which used ‘intimidation, molestation and threats’ against strike-breakers and of organising pickets to further these activities. Each was sentenced to seven years transportation to Botany Bay. However, they all remained on a prison ship on the River Thames until August 1840 when they were pardoned.23

As has been shown, in 1834 Irish workers were said to have formed the majority of the labour force in the cotton spinning mills in Glasgow. There is no reason to believe that this situation was any different three years later. Then there were almost a 1000 spinners in and around the city, of whom between 850 and 900 were members of the Association. Around 800 spinners stopped work in April 1837.24