Catholic Irish Australia and the Labour Movement: Race in Australia and Nationalism in
Ireland, 1880s-1920s
Dianne Hall and Elizabeth Malcolm
Introduction
There were many similarities between the Irish-Australian and the Irish-American experience during
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but within these broad similarities there was also a world
of difference. The Irish who immigrated to Australia and the United States (USA) were mainly
working class and in both countries many became involved in the labour movement. Historians of
Catholic Irish Australia and of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) have long recognised that there were
close links between the two, but at the same time these links were often problematic; and the problems
they generated were different from those existing in the Irish-American labour relationship.1 This
article, drawing especially on newspapers, aims to explore the links between Catholic Irish Australia
and labour by examining particular issues of deep concern to each during the period from the 1880s to
the 1920s: one issue is race in Australia, the other nationalism in Ireland.
The article is divided into three broad sections: the first provides context by sketching key
characteristics of the Irish-Australian community, especially as compared to the Irish-American
community; the second examines attitudes towards 'coloured' immigration and the White Australia
policy as expressed by the Catholic community, its church and its press, before and during the year
1901; and the third section turns to the labour press and considers how it reported violent events in
Ireland between 1914 and 1922. The study asks how did Catholic Irish Australians, given that they
were sometimes subjected to racial vilification themselves, view efforts to exclude 'coloured' people
from Australia; did they line up on the 'white' or on the 'coloured' side of the race divide? Conversely, it
also asks how did labour, which in the main supported the British Empire, view attempts by Irish
nationalists first to loosen and then, after 1916, to break the political union between Ireland and Britain.
The split which occurred during the early and mid 1950s, both within and between organised labour
and the Australian Catholic community, has attracted considerable scholarly attention.2 This article,
however, aims to interrogate some of the complex fissures which were evident in that relationship long
before the 1950s.
Context: Irish Catholic Immigration to Australia
Irish immigration to Australia during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had features that were
unique and that set it apart from immigration to other major destination countries like the USA. Most
obviously, the first Irish to arrive in Australia were convicts, along with some of the officials and
soldiers who ran the penal colonies. In total about 48,000 Irish-born convicts were transported to
Australia between 1788 and 1868, who together composed roughly 25 per cent of all convicts. But Irish
women were even more significant for they made up around 47 per cent of the female convict
population.3 In addition, from at least the 1830s large numbers of free settlers, again including many
women, also began to make the long voyage from Ireland to Australia. These immigrants, like those
going to the USA, were mainly young, single Catholics from rural areas, and they often came as part of
extended networks or chains of family and friends. The voyage was not only long, it was also
expensive. And this gave rise to another distinctive feature of Irish immigration to Australia: many free
settlers had the cost of their passages subsidised by various private and government assistance
1
For the few comparative studies, see Malcolm Campbell, Ireland's New Worlds: Immigrants,
Politics and Society in the United States and Australia, 1815-1922 (Madison, WN: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2008); David N. Doyle, 'The Irish in Australia and the United States: Some
Comparisons', Irish Economic and Social History, 16 (1989), pp. 73-94.
2
For some examples, see Robert Murray, The Split: Australian Labor in the Fifties
(Melbourne: Cheshire, 1970); John Warhurst, 'Catholics, Communism and the Australian Party
System', Politics, 14:2 (1979), pp. 222-42; Brian Costar, Peter Love and Paul Strangio (eds), The Great
Labor Schism: a Retrospective (Melbourne: Scribe, 2005).
3
L.L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press,
1965), p. 74; Deborah Oxley, Convict Maids: the Forced Migration of Women to Australia
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 129-45.
schemes.4 While the peak period of assisted immigration and free settlement included the Famine years
of the late 1840s and early 1850s, unlike the USA, few Famine refugees reached Australia. They
simply did not have the financial, and perhaps also the physical, resources to undertake such a long and
arduous journey. Irish immigration continued at substantial levels during the gold-rush years of the
1850s and also during the early 1860s, the late 1870s and the early 1880s, all of which were periods of
economic hardship in Ireland. But by 1900 the major wave of free Irish immigration to colonial
Australia was over.5
All in all, from the 1790s up to the 1920s, perhaps around 400,000 Irish-born people reached Australia
- some as convicts, but most as free immigrants - of whom about 80 per cent were Catholics.6 While
this figure is certainly dwarfed by the numbers leaving Ireland for the USA and Britain, the Irish and
their descendants actually formed a larger portion of the population in Australia. In 1861, for instance,
some 15 per cent of the total colonial population was Irish born. Although after 1891 the numbers of
Irish born declined markedly, they were increasingly outnumbered and replaced by their children. We
cannot be certain about the size of the first Australian-born generations as censuses did not record Irish
parentage. Historians, as a result, have been forced to use the number of Catholics in the population as
a measure of those of Irish descent. This calculation should be reasonably accurate however, because
only a small number of non-Irish Catholics arrived in Australia before 1945. On the basis of this proxy
measure, we can say that up until 1870s most Catholics were Irish born - 52 per cent in 1871 – but, just
forty years later, in 1911 a substantial majority (86 per cent) were Australian born. And, by the
beginning of the twentieth century, nearly a quarter of all Australians had an Irish-Catholic family
background.7
Irish Catholic immigrants joined English, Scottish and Welsh immigrants, who were overwhelmingly
Protestant, to form the vast majority of the white settler population of Australia, with little significant
continental European migration until after the Second World War. This demographic profile is of
course in marked contrast to that of the USA, where during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries there were successive waves of European arrivals, who tended to be confined, like many of
the Irish, to the inner cities and to unskilled employment.8 In Australia, unlike the USA, the Irish and
their children were virtually the only Catholics and, as a consequence, the church that served them was
overwhelmingly Irish as well. This situation of large numbers of Irish and Catholics in colonies that
were otherwise strongly British and Protestant led inevitably to ethnic, sectarian and political tensions,
with the Irish often being accused of disloyalty to the British crown and empire.9
Irish-born immigrants, unlike many of their American counterparts, spread widely throughout the
colonies. Yet, at the same time, clusters of Irish emerged in certain rural areas, in some country towns
and also in the inner working-class suburbs of cities like Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, where they
lived close to the factories, workshops, railways and docks that offered employment to many of the
men. 10 Irish Catholic women in Australia, as in the USA, often worked in factories, but they also made
up a significant proportion of the domestic servant labour force.11
4
Richard E. Reid, Farewell My Children: Irish Assisted Emigration to Australia, 1848-70
(Sydney: Anchor Books Australia, 2011).
5
David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to
Australia (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 11.
6
Commission on Emigration and Other Population Problems, 1948-54: Reports (Dublin:
Stationery Office, n.d.), pp. 124-5; Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press,
1987), pp. 23, 63.
7
Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics (Sydney: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon
Associates, 1987), pp. 8, 11, 421-6.
8
Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: a History (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2000), pp. 185-92.
9
Margaret M. Pawsey, The Popish Plot: Culture Clashes in Victoria, 1860-63 (Sydney:
Studies in the Christian Movement, 1983); Keith Amos, The Fenians in Australia, 1865-80 (Sydney:
UNSW Press, 1988.
10
Chris McConville, Croppies, Celts and Catholics: the Irish in Australia (Melbourne: Edward
Arnold Australia, 1987), pp. 47-54, 85-9.
11
J.R. Barrett, The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City (New York: Penguin
Books, 2012), pp. 126-32; B.W. Higman, Domestic Service in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 2002), pp. 62-4.
Catholic Irish Australia and the Labour Movement
Again like the USA, Irish Catholic men were at first disproportionately represented among unskilled
workers12 and thus they did not play a major role in the early craft unions in Australia. But, as mass
trade unionism developed especially from the 1880s, then these men, and increasingly their sons, were
drawn into the labour movement in all the colonies and, indeed, many rose to leadership positions in
both the unions and the emerging labour parties.13 But, unlike the USA, the role and impact of the Irish
in Australian trade unionism has been little studied. In the USA Irish women, as well as men, were
prominent in the union movement.14 In Australia, again little research has been done, but it appears that
the same may well have been the case. Raelene Frances, for instance, in a study of the entries for
female trade-union leaders in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, found that among the pre-1939
cohort at least 58 per cent had an Irish-Australian family background; and she speculated that this
background may have been important in providing them with the skills and interests necessary for the
prominent roles they played.15
By the 1890s broad support in principle for organised labour was apparent in both the Catholic Church
and Catholic press. Sometimes reservations were expressed concerning the use of strikes, but even
these were by no means always ruled out. This was especially evident when, during the 1890 maritime
strike, the Irish-born cardinal archbishop of Sydney, Patrick Moran, spoke out strongly in support of
striking of seamen and wharf labourers.16 In 1901 Moran told his flock that the only party which 'at
present appears to be above religious prejudice is the Labor Party', and he expressed confidence that
once in power Labor would 'legislate to the advantage of all citizens'.17 In 1911 he went even further,
alarming some leading Irish members of the American hierarchy, by supporting a referendum proposed
by a federal Labor government to nationalise monopolies. At least two senior American archbishops
wrote to him seeking assurances that the Australian church was not in 'alliance' with socialists.18 Moran
defended his position by a selective reading of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum,
which combined criticism of socialism and also capitalism with a degree of support for trade
unionism.19 Modern historians, as well as some of his contemporary colleagues, have queried Moran's
tactics. For instance, Patrick O'Farrell, the leading historian of the Irish in Australia, attacked him for
aligning Catholics too closely with Labor and thereby, according to O'Farrell, reducing them to the
'confines of political party' and leaving them 'bivouacked on the outskirts of a hostile civilisation'.20
Whereas in the USA from the mid nineteenth century, Irish Catholic immigrants had made themselves
a powerful force within the Democratic Party,21 in Australia by the end of the century, Catholics had
turned to the labour movement to represent, not just their economic interests, but their political ones as
well. Despite his strictures on Moran and despite Rome's rejection of socialism, O'Farrell has
nevertheless characterised this trend as a 'natural drift'. According to him, 'Catholics were not only
being pulled towards Labor by their self-interest as workers, but pushed towards it by the anti-
12
David N. Doyle, 'The Irish and American Labour, 1880-1920', Saothar, 1:1 (1975), pp. 4253; Barrett, The Irish Way, pp. 108-11.
13
Keith Pescod, 'Irish Participation in Victoria's Union Movement, 1850-1900', Australasian
Journal of Irish Studies, 11 (2011), pp. 7-27; Ross McMullin, The Light on the Hill: the Australian
Labor Party, 1891-1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 19, 23, 29, 31, 35-6, 42, 44.
14 Barrett, The Irish Way, pp. 139-43.
15
Raelene Frances, 'Authentic Leaders: Women and Leadership in Australian Unions before
World War II', Labour History, 104 (May 2013), pp. 9-30.
16
Celia Hamilton, 'Irish Catholics of New South Wales and the Labor Party, 1890-1910',
Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand, 8:31 (November 1958), p. 257.
17
Catholic Press, 6 July 1901, p. 13.
18
A.E. Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran's Politics', Journal of Religious History, 15:4 (December
1989), pp. 527-8; Philip Ayres, Prince of the Church: Patrick Francis Moran, 1830-1911 (Melbourne:
Miegunyah Press, 2007), pp. 274-8.
19
Michael Hogan, The Sectarian Strand: Religion in Australian Society (Melbourne: Penguin
Books, 1987), p. 189.
20
Patrick O'Farrell, The Catholic Church and Community in Australia: a History (Melbourne:
Nelson, 1977), pp. 285, 296; Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran's Politics', pp. 529-31.
21
Kenny, The American Irish, pp. 82-3, 116-21; Reginald Byron, Irish America (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 165-7.
Catholicism of non-Labor'.22 There may well have been such a 'natural' push-pull process in operation,
nevertheless, there were still tensions within the Labor Party between Catholics and Protestants, with
for instance allegations in 1896 that the New South Wales party was controlled by Orangemen who
were 'squeezing out' Catholics.23 Conservatism in Australia, on the other hand, was overwhelmingly
Protestant and British and thus fundamentally hostile to all things Catholic and Irish. Thus even
upwardly-mobile Catholic Irish Australians found themselves barred from the strongholds of
conservatism. Conservative hostility manifested itself in various ways. From the 1870s onwards it was
widely apparent in opposition to the restoration of state aid to Catholic schools; while, from the 1880s,
in terms of Ireland itself, it took the form of opposition to proposals for Irish home rule. Such hostility
was of course not lost on the Catholic press, with Melbourne's Tribune claiming in 1907 that
conservative strategies were 'driving Catholics and Labourites into one corner'.24
Yet, as Moran's experience demonstrates, Catholic involvement in a class-based movement and party,
and especially one that espoused socialism as its ideology, created problems for those whose church
regarded left-wing political ideologies like socialism as atheistic and thus anathema. Matters were
further complicated by the fact that the Labor Party, despite promises to the contrary, failed to address
an issue, which, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned, was absolutely crucial: that is state aid to
church schools. Therefore, although a strong bond had been forged by the Catholic Irish-Australian
community and its church with organised labour in the years between 1880 and 1914, it was by no
means a comfortable relationship, but rather one characterised by tension and frustration centred on a
range of religious, political, ethnic and educational issues.
To what extent these tensions and frustrations impacted how Irish Australians actually voted in
elections has never been thoroughly investigated. But it is no doubt significant that when, especially
during 1911-23, the church made strenuous efforts to get Catholics to vote for candidates in favour of
state aid, regardless of their party affiliation, it largely failed.25 This suggests that working-class
Catholic Australians were less concerned about education than was their church and that the state aid
issue did not significantly damage their loyalty to the Labor Party. The Sydney Freeman's Journal put
the matter bluntly in 1915 when it said that, although Catholics might be disappointed by the ALP's
failure to endorse state aid, the truth was that 'as a whole their claims have received more sympathy and
support [from the Labor Party] than from any other political body in the country'.26 In other words,
Catholics really could not afford to bite the hand that fed them, even if some amongst them, notably
their clerical leaders, believed it did not feed them enough.
In considering Catholic Irish-Australian relations with organised labour, it is important therefore to
recognise that the Catholic Church and community were by no means always in agreement. On
occasion large gaps could open up between the imperatives of the hierarchy, on the one hand, and of
the laity, on the other. As a consequence, the level of church control exercised over the different
Catholic newspapers needs to be taken into account when reading the Catholic press in order to
determine to what extent papers reflected the views of the priests or of the people.
Although in Sydney the lay-controlled Freeman’s Journal and church-controlled Catholic Press waxed
and waned in their support for the nascent ALP, both joined with Cardinal Moran in enthusiastically
endorsing Federation.27 Moran's long episcopacy (1884-1911) marked the decisive shift from a largely
Irish-born Catholic community to an overwhelmingly Australian-born one, and Moran actively sought
to reflect this transition. In 1897, for instance, he took the unusual step of standing as a candidate for
22
O'Farrell, The Catholic Church and Community in Australia, p. 288. For a similar argument,
see Judith Brett, 'Religion and the Foundation of the Australian Party System: a Revisionist
Interpretation', Australian Journal of Political Science, 37:1 (2002), pp. 39-56.
23
Interestingly, the article claiming this in the Freeman's Journal was headlined 'The Labor
Party's “Colour Line”': it appeared to be equating the sectarian divide with a racial one. See Tomahawk
cited in Freeman's Journal, 21 November 1896, pp. 14, 22.
24
Tribune, 2 March 1907 cited in Frank Bongiorno, The People's Party: Victorian Labor and
the Radical Tradition, 1875-1914 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1996), p. 169.
25
Jeff Kildea, Tearing the Fabric: Sectarianism in Australia, 1910-25 (Sydney: Citadel
Books, 2002), pp. 208-11.
26
Freeman's Journal, 4 November 1915, p. 18; Bongiorno, The People's Party, p. 187.
27
Hamilton, 'Irish Catholics', p. 261; A.E. Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran and Australian Federation',
Australasian Catholic Record, 78:1 (2001), pp. 3-15.
the Federal Convention, thus sparking sectarian outrage from many Protestants and even annoying
leaders of the Labor Party. His candidature failed, but he did attract a sizable vote.28 The strong support
offered by Catholic Irish Australians, and by most of their church and press, to Federation signalled
their embrace of a developing Australian identity. This identity offered them a weapon with which they
could, to some extent at least, deflect accusations of disloyalty to Britain and the empire by arguing that
they were simply putting Australia's interests first. Moran in particular was to use this weapon
creatively during debates over the White Australia policy.29
Irish Australians in a White Australia
Restricting ‘coloured' migration was a major and controversial political issue in colonial Australia from
the 1850s onwards, made more pressing by the economic problems of the 1890s. Initially sparked by
fear of the Chinese, the issue expanded to include indentured Pacific-island workers, known as
'kanakas', and later the Japanese as well.30 Although at first there had been considerable disagreement
over restrictions, by 1901 dissent had become muted, or was relegated to radical groups, and a general
consensus had emerged strongly favouring, not just restrictions on non-white immigration, but in fact a
complete ban.31
Unlike the USA, the question of how far an Irish Catholic background was a factor influencing
individuals’ reactions to race and to immigration restriction has never been thoroughly examined in
Australia. Certainly there are examples of Catholics opposing restrictions on 'coloured' immigrants. For
instance, the lawyer William Bede Daley, the son of convict parents, who was acting premier of New
South Wales in 1884-5, had fought against an 1881 bill aimed at denying basic civil rights to the
Chinese.32 Some socialists and labour activists who were Irish or Irish Australian, such as Bernard
O’Dowd, poet and editor of the Melbourne Tocsin, voiced concerns over the undemocratic nature of
immigration restriction. In 1912 O'Dowd made clear that he in fact considered 'colour...one of the least
important distinctions between man and man'33 Irish Catholics, such as James O. Moroney, general
secretary of the Socialist Labour Party, spoke out in support of the principle that labour solidarity
should encompass all workers, regardless of skin colour; while Galway-born Tom Glynn wrote articles
against racial discrimination when he edited the Sydney-based paper Direct Action, which was
published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).34 The main influences on the socialist
opposition to White Australia appear to have come from the American IWW and also from elements
within the British labour movement.35 This opposition would therefore seem not to have had any Irish
roots. But there has been little if any serious study of what influence Irish socialists, like Michael
Davitt, who made an extensive speaking tour of Australia in 1895 and was a regular contributor to
Australian Catholic newspapers, or James Connolly, an IWW supporter whose writings were popular in
Australia, had on the country's labour movement.36 In the absence of such study, no definite
conclusions are possible.
28
Ayres, Prince of the Church, pp. 194-204; McMullin, The Light on the Hill, p. 20.
29
Mark Hearn, 'Containing “Contamination”: Cardinal Moran and Fin de Siècle Australian
National Identity, 1888-1911', Journal of Religious History, 34:1 (March 2010), pp. 20-21.
30
Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries
and the Question of Racial Equality (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2008), pp. 15-45;
Tracey Banivanua-Mar, Violence and Colonial Dialogue: the Australian-Pacific Indentured Labor
Trade (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007).
31
Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California, 1850-1901 (Sydney:
Hale and Iremonger, 1979), p. 228.
32
Robert Lehane, William Bede Daley (Canberra: Ginninderra Press, 2007), pp. 210, 231-3,
370-72.
33
Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in
Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002) pp. 125-6; Frank Bongiorno, 'Bernard
O'Dowd's Socialism', Labour History, 77 (November 1999), pp. 97-116.
34
People, 11 December 1909, p. 4; Verity Burgmann, 'Racism, Socialism and the Labour
Movement, 1887-1917', Labour History, 47 (November 1984), p. 50.
35
Burgmann, ‘Racism, Socialism and the Labour Movement', p. 54.
36
Davitt devoted a chapter of his tour book to criticising the use of indentured labour in
Queensland. His rationale, however, was not racist, but simply that nearly all the Pacific islanders he
spoke to told him that they wanted to go home. Michael Davitt, Life and Progress in Australasia
(London: Methuen, 1898), pp. 269-80.
More can be said, however, regarding White Australia and the Irish-led Catholic Church. Cardinal
Moran, at least during his early years in Australia when he was eager to use the country as a base for a
Catholic mission to China, spoke publicly in favour of Chinese immigration. During an interview with
a journalist in Adelaide in 1888, he said he thought it 'arbitrary and unchristian' of the colonies to
prohibit Chinese immigrants from landing. According to him, the Chinese were 'models of industry and
thrift', from whom 'many of our own race might...take a lesson'. Moreover, they were capable of
employment in tropical parts of Queensland and the Northern Territory where no white man could
work due to the climate and where they were preferable to 'kanakas', who were little more than slaves.37
Moran's advocacy of Chinese immigration provoked a storm of criticism, with the Sydney Bulletin in
particular labelling him the 'Chow's patron' and ridiculing him in several striking cartoons that raised
the old spectre of Irish-Chinese miscegenation.38 After this hostile reaction Moran appears to have
become less willing to speak publicly about immigration, although the Catholic Press, which he helped
establish in 1895, when attacking the Jews, found occasion to praise the Chinese as honest and hard
working by comparison.39
Nevertheless, when the 1901 Immigration Restriction Bill was being debated in the new federal
parliament, it received strong support from the Catholic Church and press. But the rationale behind this
support was far from straightforward. Moran and the Catholic Press in particular pursued an outspoken
nationalist line, trying to turn the issue into one involving Australia's rights versus Britain's 'despotic
policies'. Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and something of an Irish bête noire due to
his staunch opposition to home rule, had opposed an outright ban on Asian immigrants for fear of
offending the governments of Japan and China. In response the Australian government proposed a
dictation test in a European language that intending immigrants would be required to pass. Moran
reacted to Chamberlain's stance with a speech in October 1901 'denouncing' such interference in
'Australia's affairs' and comparing it to the sort of British actions that had driven the American colonies
into rebellion more than a century earlier. Australians would stand up to 'Imperial jingoism', he
asserted, because they 'knew best in Australia what Australia wanted'; and if Britain attempted to
'trample upon' their rights, the Colonial Office might find itself 'startled' by the sudden emergence of an
'independent Australia'.40
Such bellicose rhetoric seems a far cry from the sentiments Moran had expressed in 1888. But then he
had been speaking as one of the leaders of a church with a world-wide evangelical mission, whereas by
1901 he was talking like an Australian nationalist and, moreover, one with a distinctly anti-British
bent. Yet, it is doubtless significant that in 1901 his attacks were directed against the British
government and those Australian politicians who, as the Catholic Press put it, had 'kowtowed' to
Chamberlain. Moran did not directly assail Asian immigrants themselves. This was probably because
he had not totally abandoned his hopes of spearheading a Catholic mission to China.41 But, in the
thirteen years since 1888, he had obviously recognised the strength of Irish-Australian working-class
feeling against 'coloured' immigration. In fact, throughout 1901, many letters to Catholic newspapers
and reports of meetings of Catholic clubs and societies indicated widespread support for a White
Australia policy. Moran clearly felt obliged to cater to this sentiment even if it posed a threat to his
evangelical ambitions.42 So the Catholic Press trod a rather fine line, focusing its attacks on the British
government and its Australian political supporters, labelled by the paper 'apostles of grovel'. The Press
supported restrictions on 'coloured' immigration, but it also argued strongly for an independent
37
South Australian Advertiser, 14 May 1888, p. 6; A.E. Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran and the
Chinese', Manna, 6 (1963), pp. 97-107.
38
Pauline Rule, 'Challenging Conventions: Irish-Chinese Marriages in Colonial Victoria', in
Irish-Australian Studies, eds Tadhg Foley and Fiona Bateman (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2000), pp. 20516.
39
Catholic Press, 9 November 1895, p. 13; 1 September 1900, p. 5.
40 Catholic Press, 5 October 1901, p. 17.
41
An Irish Catholic mission to China was finally established in 1916, but then, though it
received financial support from Australia, it was led by missionaries sent directly from Ireland. Patrick
Comerford and Richard O'Leary, '”Heroism and Zeal”: Pioneers of Irish Christian Missions to China',
in China and the Irish, ed. Jerusha McCormack (Dublin: New Island, 2009), pp. 74-8; O'Farrell, The
Catholic Church and Community in Australia, pp. 266-7.
42
Freeman's Journal, 3 October 1896, p. 13; 27 November 1897, p.13; Catholic Press, 28
September 1901, p. 15; 26 October 1901, p. 13.
Australian defence force and foreign policy, so that Australians could defend themselves, without a
slavish reliance on the Royal Navy or having to sacrifice their strategic interests to those of Britain.43
During these debates the question of race and the Irish was also raised on occasion: were the Irish who
had settled Australia a different race from their fellow British settlers or were both groups essentially
the same, that is both 'white'? The racialisation of the Irish is another issue that has attracted much
scholarly attention in the USA, but little thus far in Australia.44 In 1903 Scottish-born, federal MP
George Reid, formerly premier of New South Wales, floated the notion that the Irish could be barred
from Australia under the new immigration dictation test. This suggestion attracted a sharp rebuke from
the Sydney Freeman's Journal, which pointed out that as the Irish were not 'coloured immigrants' they
could not be subjected to the test.45 Cardinal Moran, by embracing an Australian identity during the
immigration debates, was clearly attempting to supersede the old Irish-British divide and the racial
arguments that had long surrounded it and to posit a new and united people, 'white' Australians.
But some continued to argue for Irish racial difference, although from a positive rather than a negative
angle. An interesting article in the Brisbane Worker, published in September 1914, soon after the
outbreak of war, managed to combine a racial analysis of the Irish with a class one, and include as well
an attack on Germany. The writer argued that the Celts, the original inhabitants of Europe, had been
conquered and reduced to servitude by the invading Teutonic race. Only in Ireland did Celtic
civilisation survive relatively intact; and it was a civilisation based upon communal property and upon
principles that were basically socialist. In the rest of Europe, over time, the descendants of the Celts
had become the working class, while the descendants of their Teutonic conquerors constituted the
ruling class. Capitalism was, in fact, the 'last product of Teutonic oppression'. It was therefore no
surprise that the Irish were to the fore in labour movements everywhere; or, as the writer put it, they
were 'powerful in the councils of the most enlightened millions of the White Race today'. Thus it
followed that the 'cause of Ireland should be...the sacred cause of Labour wherever a White Labour
party exists, for it is in very deed the cause of Labour itself'.46 The labour movement in Australia did
support the 'cause of Ireland', but the circumstances were a good deal more complicated than this writer
seemed to imagine.
Irish Home Rule and the Ulster Crisis, 1914
Turning to the labour press and the issue of Irish nationalism, again the picture that emerges is
complex. The Labor Party faced the difficult task of accommodating support for Irish demands for
greater political autonomy within a framework of empire loyalty.47 This was a very different situation
from that prevailing in the USA, where many Irish republican groups operated freely and where the
labour movement and the Democratic Party enjoyed much greater licence to attack Britain and its
policies towards Ireland.48 In Australia the Catholic press was more constrained by the ties of empire
than was its American counterpart, but, unlike the Australian labour press, Catholic papers did feel able
on occasion to indulge in outbursts of Irish nationalism and anglophobia.49
Between the 1880s and the First World War significant support for Irish home rule developed amongst
the Catholic Irish-Australian community, but there was also vociferous opposition in some quarters,
especially amongst empire loyalists, fundamentalist Protestants and of course the Orange Order.50
43 Catholic Press, 12 October 1901, p. 9.
44
Bruce Nelson, Irish Nationalists and the Making of the Irish Race (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012); Dianne Hall, '”Him now white man”: Images of the Irish in Colonial
Australia', History Australia, 11:2 (August 2014), pp. 167-95.
45 Freeman's Journal, 28 November 1903, p. 23.
46 Worker, 24 September 1914, p. 11.
47
For the difficult relationship between the ALP and empire after 1916, see Neville Kirk,
'”Australians for Australia”: the Right, the Labor Party and Contested Loyalties to Nation and Empire
in Australia, 1917 to the early 1930s', Labour History, 91 (November 2006), pp. 102-4.
48 Barrett, The Irish Way, pp. 243-8; Campbell, Ireland's New Worlds, pp. 55-6, 164-5.
49
This was especially true in Melbourne after the arrival of Archbishop Daniel Mannix in
1913. Advocate, 1 August 1914, p. 18; 13 May 1916, pp. 22-3; 23 March 1918, pp. 9-10. James
Griffin, Daniel Mannix: Beyond the Myths (Melbourne: Garratt Publishing, 2012), pp. 198-217.
50
John Poynter, Doubts and Certainties: a Life of Alexander Leeper (Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 1997), pp. 364-70.
Under home rule, Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom (UK), as it had been since 1801,
but would elect MPs to sit in a Dublin parliament responsible for managing local affairs throughout the
whole island.51 As the Westminster parliament debated the third Irish Home Rule Bill during 1913-14,
Ulster unionist opponents of home rule, led by Sir Edward Carson, and Irish nationalist supporters, led
by John Redmond, established militias, which began training and illegally importing arms, mainly from
Germany. Many feared that Ireland was on the brink of civil war and that when home rule became law
- as seemed inevitable sometime in late 1914 - then the country was likely to descend into bloody
sectarian conflict.52
Whereas the Australian labour movement was generally sympathetic to Irish home rule, it did have
problems with Irish nationalism, especially when advanced nationalists condemned all things British
and when republicans advocated rebellion against British rule and the establishment of an independent
Irish state. Labor Party members of the federal parliament had voted solidly for resolutions in favour
of Irish home rule in 1905 and 1914. But such motions were carefully worded to emphasis that home
rule was calculated to strengthen the British Empire, not to weaken it.53 Most ALP and trade union
leaders, many of whom were of Irish birth or descent, were in agreement with most Australian
conservatives in not wanting to see an end to the political union between Ireland and Britain. They
feared that separation would undermine the UK and, by extension, the empire, with an independent
Ireland potentially coming under German influence. However, unlike most conservatives, labour did
advocate a degree of self-government for Ireland, seeing in home rule a solution to the country's
endemic political unrest and hopefully also its notorious poverty.
During 1914 Melbourne's Labor Call carried a number of articles about the progress of the Home Rule
Bill at Westminster and the growth of militias in Ireland, with many of them aimed at attacking Ulster
and English unionism, rather than actually supporting Irish nationalism. In April 1914 the paper
cautioned that all the arguments over home rule would 'not lighten [the worker's] burden', and it
advised the Irish 'working class' not to 'be sidetracked on a question that has resolved itself into a
purely sectarian war'. Many labour newspapers, like some of the Catholic press, suspected a Tory plot
behind Ulster opposition to home rule and unionist claims that home rule would amount to 'Rome rule'.
Labor Call believed that Tories, funded by Ulster industrialists, Anglo-Irish landlords and British
capitalists, were determined to bring down the reforming British Liberal government, which had curbed
the power of the House of Lords, raised taxes on the wealthy and introduced major welfare reforms.
Inciting sectarian strife to the point of civil war in Ireland was intended to force the government into a
general election that Tories believed they would win.54
As the Ulster crisis deepened during June and July 1914, the IWW's Direct Action, unlike most other
labour newspapers, had nothing at all to say about the matter. Later articles, however, made its attitude
very plain. Some of Direct Action's main contributors were Irish born, like Tom Glynn55 and Peter
Larkin,56 brother of Irish trade union leaders Jim Larkin and Delia Larkin. In an article published in
May 1916, in the wake of the Easter Rising, Glynn lumped 'Carsonites' and 'Redmondites' together as
'class enemies' of Irish workers.57 Another article appearing in July summed up the home rule struggle
in 1914 thus: the 'Westminster mountain laboured and brought forth a Home Rule mouse'.58 The
IWW was scornful of home rule. Like much of the labour press, Direct Action applied
a class rather than a nationalist analysis to the Irish situation, but, according to its
reading of events, unionists and home rulers were in fact both on the same side. Home
rule was not a genuine expression of the wishes of the Irish working class, but rather a
51
Alvin Jackson, Home Rule: an Irish History, 1800-2000 (London: Phoenix, 2004), pp. 12631.
52
The classic account of the crisis remains A.T.Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (London: Faber
and Faber, 1967).
53
O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, pp. 241-2; Advocate, 4 July 1914, p. 30.
54
Labor Call, 2 April 1914, p. 3; 7 May 1914, p. 3.
55
P.J. Rushton, 'Revolutionary Ideology of the I.W.W. in Australia', Historical Studies, 15:59
(October 1972), p. 427.
56
Ian Turner, Sydney's Burning: an Australian Political Conspiracy, rev. ed. (Sydney: Alpha
Books, 1969), p. 30; Direct Action, 13 May 1916, p. 2; 30 September 1916, p. 2.
57
Direct Action, 13 May 1916, p. 2.
58 Direct Action, 22 July 1916, p. 3.
demand concocted by Irish capitalists aimed to serve their own narrow and selfish
interests.
The Dublin Easter Rising and James Connolly, 1916
In trying to explain to their readers the motives behind the Easter Rising in Dublin during the last week
of April 1916, Australian labour newspapers continued to apply, in varying degrees, the class analysis
that many had developed in the context of the Ulster crisis of 1914. Yet, the Rising had been staged in
support of an Irish republic totally independent of the UK, not of a home rule Ireland that would remain
within the UK.59 This made a sympathetic analysis much more difficult for a media that essentially
favoured crown and empire. Efforts to understand exactly what had occurred were also hampered by
censorship. The Brisbane Worker, for instance, complained in an article about the Rising published on
11 May that it was 'working, thinking and analysing largely in the dark'.60
As early as 4 May, however, the editor of Sydney's Australian Worker, Henry Boote, produced a
powerful and perceptive commentary on the Rising, just as the executions of its leaders, which
stretched over a ten-day period, were beginning and before news of them had reached Australia. Boote,
who grew up in Liverpool, a city with a large Irish population that from 1885 to 1929 returned an Irish
nationalist MP to the British parliament, began forcefully by writing: 'I am sorry for the Sinn Feiners
[Irish republicans]. I do not loathe them. I pity them'. According to him, they had been 'corrupted' by
the violent tenor of the times. But, as well as the madness of the current war, Boote also identified the
roots of the rebellion in the extraordinary treatment accorded the Ulster unionist rebels of 1914. Not
only had the British government 'tolerated' their threats of rebellion, but their leader Carson was now in
the ministry with 'power over the people he had plotted to betray'. Boote was convinced that if home
rule, which enjoyed the support of the 'overwhelming majority of the Irish people', had been granted in
1914, the rebellion 'would not have taken place'. To his mind then, it was the British government and
the Ulster unionists who, by thwarting Irish democracy, were ultimately responsible for the Rising.61
After details of the fifteen executions became known, and especially the news that a wounded James
Connolly had been shot sitting down because he was too seriously injured to stand, comparisons with
the lenient treatment accorded the rebellious Ulster unionists just two years earlier became much
angrier. The socialist Connolly was a particular hero in the eyes of the IWW as, while in the USA
during 1903-7, he had joined the organisation soon after its establishment in 1905 and acted as an
effective propagandist and recruiter for it among Irish and Italian workers in New York city.62 For
Direct Action his execution was on a par with 'German atrocities', except the paper doubted that there
was anything in recent German history 'equalling this act for sheer inhuman brutality'.63 Tom Glynn
saw the Rising as part of a 'Class War in Ireland': a war reflecting the 'desperation of a hungry,
outraged and exploited proletariat'. And this particular war would not end with the 'murder' of a few
leaders like Connolly; on the contrary: 'Every act of oppression is but the seed of future revolt'.64
Contributors to other labour papers were also obviously familiar with Connolly and his writings.
Melbourne's Labor Call, for example, had published an article in July 1915 praising his efforts to keep
a labour press alive in Ireland in the face of his papers being regularly suppressed by the government.65
Connolly's participation in the Rising was a major factor encouraging the labour press's class reading of
the event, but, like Boote, others drew contrasts with the events of 1914. The Brisbane Worker reported
in May 1916, what it termed, 'well-founded rumours of German money and arms' having been supplied
to the 'Ulster rebels' in 1914. Yet, unlike Carson and his ilk, the 'rebel leaders in the recent revolt were
not raised to Cabinet rank...they were shot'. In seeking an explanation for this remarkable difference,
59
For a recent scholarly study of the Rising, see Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: the Irish
Rebellion (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
60
Worker, 11 May 1916, p. 14.
61
In a speech in Melbourne the week before, Coadjutor Archbishop Daniel Mannix echoed
Boote's argument. Advocate, 6 May 1916, p. 25.
62
Fergus A. D'Arcy, 'James Connolly (1868-1916)', in Dictionary of Irish Biography, eds
James Quinn and James Maguire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), ii, 759; Barrett, The
Irish Way, pp. 143-4.
63
Direct Action, 27 May 1916, p. 1.
64
Direct Action, 13 May 1916, p. 2.
65
Labor Call, 15 July 1915, p. 11.
the paper suggested cynically that perhaps it was because the 1916 men were not 'aristocrats'. The
Worker went on in the same article to point out that although the words Sinn Féin meant 'Ourselves
Alone', thus suggesting a nationalist agenda, 'Connolly, one of the leaders, was a big-brained, bighearted Internationalist'. This led the paper to suspect the Rising was actually an 'industrial revolt, with
Socialism as its objective'.66 Like Direct Action, the Worker continued to highlight Connolly's role,
claiming in late June that he, a 'well-known Socialist', was 'at the head of affairs', while Patrick Pearse
was described vaguely as his 'associate' and a 'man of letters'.67
Even when more information was to hand, the Australian labour press seemed reluctant to abandon its
initial reading of the Rising as a socialist revolt led by James Connolly. But in this it was mistaken, for
the Rising had been largely organised by anti-British Fenians, who were reliant for success on IrishAmerican money and German-supplied arms. The Rising's leaders were determined to break all links
with Britain and its empire and to establish an Irish republic. Moreover, most of them were middleclass intellectuals and devout Catholics, who, despite Connolly's presence among them, harboured little
if any sympathy for socialism.68
The Irish War of Independence and the Black-and-Tans, 1919-22
When a guerrilla war broke out in Ireland in 1919, pitting the nationalist militia established in 1914,
now calling itself the Irish Republican Army (IRA), against the Royal Irish Constabulary, reinforced
from early 1920 by contingents of former British soldiers known as the 'Black-and-Tans', the
Australian labour press was once more confronted with the problem of Irish republicanism. As already
pointed out, most papers did not want to see Ireland abandon the union with Britain and possibly also
leave the empire, yet at the same time, their sympathies were largely on the side of the Irish insurgents.
Given this dilemma, reporting was again, as in 1914 and 1916, highly selective.
Whereas the culpability of Tories and unionists had been emphasised in the past, during 1920 and 1921
blame was firmly fixed on the Black-and-Tans and also on the policies pursued by the British prime
minister, David Lloyd George. The 'atrocities' of the 'Tans' were highlighted, while the aims of the
IRA, which entailed the break-up of the UK and Catholic-nationalist rule of Protestant-unionist Ulster,
did not attract anywhere near as much attention. Headlines over stories about Black-and-Tan reprisal
raids on Irish cities and towns capture the general tenor of labour press reporting: 'White Terror in
Ireland'; 'A Corps of Bandits'; 'Military Even Disgusted'; 'Hell Let Loose in Ireland'; 'Worse than the
Germans'; 'Worse than Belgium'; 'How Irish Women are Terrorised'; and 'The Terror in Ireland'.69 The
Black-and-Tans were labelled 'True Brit-Huns' and 'Lloyd George's Bashi-Bazouks' – the latter a
Turkish term describing brutal and ill-disciplined troops or police. 70
However, a new and interesting note was also sounded in the labour press's Irish reporting. The
violence in Ireland was now portrayed against the backdrop of other post-war upheavals, especially in
India, the Middle East, Russia and parts of Europe. This reportage differed from that of 1914 and 1916,
when Ireland was seen in narrowly UK terms; after 1918 the Irish conflict was framed in the context of
broader post-war struggles around nationalism, socialism and anti-colonialism, some of which even
extended as far as Australia.
This new note is evident in the reporting of the events of 'Bloody Sunday', 21 November 1920, when,
in retaliation for the shooting of twelve British army intelligence officers by the IRA, police and
soldiers stormed Dublin's Croke Park football stadium during a game, firing indiscriminately on
players and spectators and, in the process, killing a further twelve people.71 This incident was
characterised by the Brisbane Worker in January 1921 as an 'Irish Amritsar'. 'To machine gun a
66
Worker, 11 May 1916, p. 14.
67
Worker, 29 June 1916, p. 6.
68
For a recent analysis of the backgrounds and beliefs of many of the Rising's leaders, see R.F.
Foster, Vivid Faces: the Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 (London: Allen Lane, 2014).
69
Worker, 30 August 1920, p. 19; 14 October 1920, p. 4; 24 February 1921, p. 15; Australian
Worker, 2 December 1920, p. 15; 9 December 1920, p. 17; 23 December 1920, p. 17; 10 March 1921,
p. 17; 28 July 1921, p. 17.
70
Worker, 6 January 1921, p. 11; Australian Worker, 9 December 1920, p. 17.
71
Charles Townshend, The Republic: the Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-23 (London:
Penguin Books, 2014), pp. 201-10.
defenceless crowd is just an abomination', the paper wrote, and 'nor is assassination any excuse
whatever for reprisals of such a hellish character as mowing down civilians at a football match.'72 The
Amritsar massacre had taken place in the Punjab in April 1919, when an Irish-educated British general,
Reginald Dyer, ordered his men to open fire on a large nationalist crowd, killing at least 400 people.
Parallels between Amritsar and Black-and-Tan reprisals in Ireland during 1920-21 were not by any
means restricted to the Australian labour press. In the USA, for example, both Irish and Indian
nationalist publications regularly made similar connections.73
But it was not only India to which the labour press turned in search of parallels in order to help its
readers understand the conflict raging in Ireland during the early 1920s. The use of the terms 'White
Terror' and 'White Guards' in headlines points to other common parallels drawn: with massacres
committed by anti-communist, ultra-nationalist forces during the civil wars that had broken out in
Russia (1917-23), Finland (1918) and Hungary (1919-21).74 Comparisons were also made between the
Irish and the Arabs, especially in terms of the revolt in Iraq (1920) against the imposition of a British
mandate, during which the Royal Air Force was used to bomb and terrorise civilians.75 In drawing such
parallels, the labour press was portraying the Black-and-Tans as a bloodthirsty paramilitary force,
unleashed upon the defenceless working-class inhabitants of Ireland by an unscrupulous Welsh leader –
a leader rather in the mould Australia's own Welsh prime minister. And, indeed, comparisons with
William Morris Hughes were explicitly made.
Such reporting certainly avoided the hazard of appearing too anti-British and blaming the British
people as a whole for what was happening in Ireland, but at the same time it was intended to highlight
for Australians that they, like the British, were governed by a prime minister who had shown himself
very ready to adopt extreme measures in order to get his own way. At the beginning of 1921 the
Australian Worker was calling the newly-established federal police force 'Hughes's “Black and Tans”'.
Reprisals 'appear imminent', it claimed, and a 'second Ireland' it believed was 'possible' in Australia.76
Little wonder then that when, in 1922, after an Anglo-Irish treaty had been signed and Britain was
seeking employment for thousands of disbanded Irish policemen, the labour press was adamant that
none should be allowed into Australia, especially as it was feared that their ranks contained many
former Black-and-Tans.77 The Brisbane Worker for one insisted that the 'Tans' had been 'forged in
Ireland, for use against...workers', certainly in Ireland and England and perhaps in Australia as well.78
Conclusion
Disentangling the threads of the relationship between organised labour, on the one hand, and the
Catholic Irish-Australian working class and its church, on the other, reveals many points of similarity,
but substantive differences as well; and even some of the similarities are by no means straightforward.
The Catholic press was generally in favour of the White Australia policy, which clearly also enjoyed
widespread support among the Irish-Australian working class. Yet, at the same time, White Australia
posed significant difficulties for the Catholic Church. Cardinal Moran tried to deflect criticism away
from 'coloured' immigrants themselves and onto the British government, yet ironically the church
shared some of the imperial government's basic problems with White Australia. Like the British
Empire, the Catholic Church was an expansionist, international organisation and, in order to continue
to proselytise in Asia, it could not afford to offend rising powers like Japan or populous ones like
72
Worker, 6 January 1921, p. 7.
73
Michael Silvestri, '”315 million of India with Ireland to the last”: Irish and Indian
Nationalists in North America', in Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire, eds Tadhg Foley
and Maureen O'Connor (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic Press, 2006), p. 249.
74 Worker, 30 September 1920, p. 19; 14 October 1920, p. 4.
75
Australian Worker, 9 December 1920, p. 17. Charles Townshend, When God Made Hell: the
British Invasion of Mesopotamia and the Creation of Iraq, 1914-21 (London: Faber and Faber, 2010),
pp. 475-6.
76
Australian Worker, 6 January 1921, p. 11.
77
Australian Worker, 26 April 1922, p. 11.
78
Worker, 7 April 1921, p. 9. In the end many ex-policemen from Ireland were sent to join the
constabulary of the new British mandate established in Palestine. Kent Fedorowich, 'The Problems of
Disbandment: the Royal Irish Constabulary and Imperial Migration, 1919-29', Irish Historical Studies,
30:117 (May 1996), pp. 88-110.
China. Moran sought to manage this dilemma by playing an Australian nationalist card in preference to
a racist one in 1901, hoping thereby to placate the Australian Catholic working class, while at the same
time not alienating the authorities in Japan and China and making Catholic missions to those countries
even more difficult than they already were.
At the same time the Australian labour press, reflecting the views of the Catholic working class, fairly
consistently supported a measure of self government or self determination for Ireland. But this stance
created problems, in particular when, after 1916, Irish nationalism veered strongly in the direction of
republicanism. The ALP and the mainstream labour press did not endorse republicanism, either for
Ireland or for Australia, and neither did most of the Catholic hierarchy and laity. This particular
dilemma the labour press sought to manage by imposing a class analysis on events in Ireland and,
through highly selective reporting, limiting its attacks to particular groups and individuals. Thus it
conveniently avoided a full-frontal assault on Britain and was also able to sidestep some of the more
unpalatable goals of Irish republicanism.
Then there was the perennial question of state aid to church schools, which remained the most
persistent problem for the Catholic-labour relationship, at least as far as the Catholic Church was
concerned. By 1919 the Australian Catholic Federation, a political lobby group established with church
support in 1911, had become so thoroughly disillusioned with the ALP that it set up its own political
party, the Democratic Party, aimed to garner Catholic votes and elect candidates supportive of state aid.
Although this initiative failed comprehensively, it was nevertheless a further sign of the continuing
strains between the Catholic Church and the Labor Party.79 Thus when a major split finally did occur
during the early and mid 1950s, and a far more successful Catholic party emerged, these developments
need to be seen against the backdrop of decades of simmering tensions between the Catholic Church
and community and organised labour. The issue of communism proved the final breaking point, but
other issues like state aid, race and nationalism had served to create significant strains in the alliance
from its very outset.
79 Kildea, Tearing the Fabric, pp. 204-13, 230-42