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Abstract
In 1925, the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA), originally founded for the relief of southern Irish loyalist refugees in Britain, created a fund for ex-servicemen resident in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated primarily from among the ‘diehard’ right of the British Conservative Party, SILRA’s charitable work was inevitably influenced by the world view of its membership and their audience. But it also had a Dublin sub-committee that operated in very different circumstances in the IFS. This study of SILRA’s efforts to provide welfare to southern Irish veterans of the First World War highlights the extent to which conditions in Ireland – real or perceived – continued to animate British Conservatives long after the Irish Revolution (1916–23). It also adds to the growing literature on ex-servicemen in post-revolutionary Ireland through the lens of SILRA’s lobbying and fundraising.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Dr Amy Carney and Dr Paul Huddie for the opportunity to contribute to this special issue and for their care and attention with various drafts of the article. Dr Huddie, Dr Carney, and the anonymous peer reviewers also provided valuable, constructive feedback for which I am most grateful. The majority of the research for this article was facilitated by a National University of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, held at Maynooth University, and I wish to acknowledge the support of the NUI, Maynooth University, and Mary Immaculate College.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 ‘Report by the Relief Secretary on his Visit to Ireland in March 1929’, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Irish Unionists Alliance Papers, D989/B/5/2. White had made an earlier tour in 1924.
2 SILRA pamphlet, ‘This is Poverty? Will you Help?’, n.d., PRONI D989/B/5/2; Northumberland, Letter to the Editor: ‘Plight of Ex-Soldiers’, Daily Mail, 2 February 1925, 9; ‘Southern Irish Loyalists: Lord Carson’s Plea’, Irish Times, 15 July 1926, 8; ‘Plight of ex-Service Men in Free State: Shameful Abandonment’, Belfast News-letter, 10 June 1927, 15; ‘Loyalists’ Plight’, Daily Mail, 10 June 1927, 4.
3 ‘Ex-servicemen in the Irish Free State. Their terrible sufferings.’, n.d., PRONI D989/B/3/6.
4 For some of the earliest work on this: Jane Leonard, ‘The Twinge of Memory: Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday in Dublin Since 1919’, in Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture, ed. by Richard English and Graham Walker (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1996); Jane Leonard, ‘Facing “The Finger of Scorn”: Veterans’ Memories of Ireland after the Great War’, War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Martin Evans and Ken Lunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). More recently, Shannon Monaghan, ‘Whose country? Whose soldiers? Whose responsibility? First World War Ex-servicemen and the Development of the Irish Free State, 1923–1939’, Contemporary European History 23, no. 1 (2014), 75–94; Paul Taylor, Heroes or Traitors? Experiences of Southern Irish Soldiers Returning to the Great War (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015); Paul Huddie, ‘Ex-servicemen and the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association, 1919 − 1921’ in Veterans of the First World War: Ex-servicemen and Ex-servicewomen in Post-War Britain and Ireland ed. by David Swift and Oliver Wilkinson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019); Mandy Link, Remembrance of the Great War in the Irish Free State, 1914–1937 (Cham: Palgrave, 2019); Michael Robinson, Shell-Shocked British Army Veterans in Ireland, 1918–39: A difficult homecoming (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020); Emmanuel Destenay, Shadows From the Trenches: Veterans of the Great War and the Irish Revolution (1918–1923) (Dublin: UCD Press, 2021).
5 The Legion was the principal ex-servicemen’s representative organisation, which also undertook philanthropic and charitable functions: Niall Barr, The Lion and the Poppy: British veterans, politics and society, 1921 − 1939 (Westport, CA and London: Praeger, 2005).
6 General committee minutes, 1 March 1923, 4 May 1923, 18 May 1923, PRONI D989/B/1/3.
7 Markku Ruotsila, ‘The Antisemitism of the Eight Duke of Northumberland’s the Patriot, 1922–1930’, Journal of Contemporary History 39, 1 (2004), 71–2; C.M. Headlam, ‘Percy, Ian Alan’ in J.H.R. Weaver (ed), The Dictionary of National Biography, 1922–1930 (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 662–3; Philip Williamson, ‘Percy, Ian Alan, eight Duke of Northumberland (1880 − 1930), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.
8 N.C. Fleming, Britannia’s Zealots: Volume 1: Tradition, Empire, and the Forging of the Conservative Right (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 114.
9 Niamh Brennan, ‘A political minefield: southern loyalists, the Irish Grants Committee and the British government, 1922–31’, Irish Historical Studies 30, no. 119 (1997), 406 − 19. In 1927 the Treasury resolved to limit payments to 60 per cent of the excess of any award over £1,000, but this policy was reversed in February 1929.
10 Fleming, 151.
11 R.B. McDowell, Crisis and Decline: The Fate of the Southern Unionists (Dublin: Lilliput, 1997), 132.
12 Fleming, 5–7, 121–9.
13 D.M. Leeson, ‘British Conspiracy Theories and the Irish War of Independence’, Éire-Ireland 56, no. 1–2 (2021), 188–91; ‘Ireland’, The Patriot, supplement, 9 February 1922.
14 Paul Stocker, Lost Imperium: Far Right Visions of the British Empire, c. 1920–1980 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021), 61.
15 Kevin Matthews, ‘Stanley Baldwin’s “Irish Question”’, The Historical Journal 43, no. 4 (2000), 1030.
16 McDowell, 111 − 2.
17 Irish Unionist Alliance. First Annual Meeting of the General Council under the Amended Constitution held the 24th January, 1919, National Library of Ireland, Ms. 49,708/6.
18 Minutes of meeting, 30 May 1922, PRONI D989/B/1/1; McDowell, 112, 132.
19 McDowell, 71–2.
20 See for example, speeches by William quoted in Leeson, ‘Conspiracy Theories’, 91; Padraig Yeates, A City in Turmoil: Dublin, 1919–21 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2012), 254.
21 Minutes of meeting, 30 May 1922, PRONI D989/B/1/1.
22 For fundraising events: minutes of the ladies’ general and executive committees, 1924–36, PRONI D989/B/1/4. For clothing branches in Scotland: ‘Letters to the Editor’, Aberdeen Press and Journal, 3 January 1923, 5 and ‘Southern Irish Loyalist Relief Association’, St. Andrew’s Citizen, 31 March 1923, 3.
23 ‘Assisting Ex-Servicemen’, Irish Times, 25 February 1921, 6; ‘Relief for Ex-Servicemen. New Plan of Co-ordination. Guide for Applicants’, Irish Times, 28 July 1921, 5.
24 ‘The Men who Fought’, Irish Times, 29 August 1921, 2.
25 White to Walsh, 23 June 1923, White to Walsh, 17 April 1924 and Walsh to White, 28 June 1923, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
26 Dublin advisory committee minutes, 26 March 1924, PRONI D989/B/1/2. It is not clear why it was deemed suitable to assist men who had been part of what was by then known as the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, significantly enlarged and reorganised during the war and tasked with the supply and later repair of arms, ammunition, and equipment.
27 Walsh to White, 17 April 1924, PRONI D989/B/3/5; ‘United Services Fund: Useful Work in the Irish Area’, Irish Times, 30 January 1926, 5.
28 White to Walsh, 27 October 1924, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
29 Dublin advisory committee minutes, 29 October 1924, PRONI D989/B/1/2.
30 C. Fox, Letter to the Editor: ‘Irish Ex-service Men’, Daily Mail, 16 December 1924, 8; Northumberland, Letter to the Editor: ‘Irish Ex-service Men’, Daily Mail, 17 December 1924, 8.
31 White to Walsh, 16 December 1924 PRONI D989/B/3/6; Northumberland, ‘Plight of Ex-soldiers’, Daily Mail, 2 February 1925, 9.
32 White to Hamilton, 19 December 1924 and White to Hamilton, 23 December 1924, PRONI D989/B/3/5. Modern currency calculated using <www.measuringworth.com> [accessed 14 September 2022].
33 Northumberland, ‘Plight of Ex-soldiers’, Daily Mail, 2 February 1925, 9.
34 Quoted in ‘“Daily Mail’s” Donation of 1,000 Guineas to Relief Fund’, Evening Herald, 4 February 1925, 7.
35 White to Walsh, 5 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
36 ‘Ex-Service Men’s Plight’, Daily Mail, 29 April 1926, 6.
37 Robinson, 79; HC Debate, 10 November 1919, Vol. 21, Col. 77.
38 Robinson, 81.
39 Preston to Hamilton, 18 November 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5 [references for emigrants to Canada]; Walsh to White, 25 October 1925 [‘the only way for them to deal with the problem effectively is an extensive scheme of emigration’], PRONI D989/B/3/5: ‘Report by the Relief Secretary on his Visit to Ireland in March, 1929’ [‘restrictions now placed by the various Governments on emigration are so severe that emigration can be ruled out’], PRONI D989/B/5/2.
40 ‘Ex-Service Men in the Irish Free State. Appeal to Imperial Conference for Help’, Belfast News-Letter, 15 November 1926, 9; Imperial Conference, 1926. Summary of Proceedings Presented to Both Houses of the Oireachtas by Order of the Executive Council (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1926).
41 Walsh to White, 10 February 1925; Walsh to White, 13 February 1925 and Walsh to Preston, 26 February 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
42 Dublin advisory committee minutes, 18 February 1925, PRONI D989/B/1/5; White to Walsh, 5 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
43 The Soldiers’, and Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association, in co-operation with the United Services Fund, Post-War Circular No. 5, May 1921 in Annual Report, 1920 − 1921, 1142. I am grateful to Dr Paul Huddie for alerting me to this source.
44 For similar logic within the SSAFA: Huddie, ‘Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association’, 39.
45 Walsh to White, 12 June 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
46 Preston to Walsh, 2 July 1925, Preston to Walsh, 8 July 1925 and Walsh to White, 13 December 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
47 Walsh to White, 4 October 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
48 I.H.G. White, Letter to the editor: ‘Distressed Ex-service Men’, Irish Times, 17 October 1930, 6.
49 Report of a meeting of the Dublin committee, 30 October 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/6; Pamphlet for SILRA ball to be held 12 June 1930, PRONI D989/B/5/2.
50 ‘Earl Jellicoe in Dublin’, Irish Times, 13 October 1930, 9. In January 1925, the Legion of Irish Ex-Servicemen agreed to change its name to the British Legion in Ireland (Southern Area) and, along with the British Legion of Northern Ireland became an administrative area of the British Legion: ‘Ex-Service Men: the British Legion in Ireland’, Irish Times, 27 January 1925, 7.
51 I.H.G. White, Letter to the editor: ‘Distressed Ex-service Men’, Irish Times, 17 October 1930, 6.
52 Leonard, ‘Twinge of Memory’, 102–5; Monaghan, 86–7; Taylor, 241; Link, 148–57.
53 Walsh to White, 5 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
54 Dublin advisory committee minutes, 20 June 1923, PRONI D989/B/1/2.
55 White to Walsh, 13 February 1925 and White to Walsh, 2 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
56 Walsh to White, 2 October 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
57 Walsh to White, 10 February 1925; Walsh to White, 13 February 1925; and Walsh to Preston, 26 February 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
58 White to Walsh, 5 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
59 White to Walsh, 9 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
60 Ibid.
61 Walsh to White, 30 April 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5; White to Walsh, 6 May 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
62 Minutes of advisory committee, 18 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/1/3; Walsh to White, 13 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
63 For a substantial collection of correspondence on the relationship from SILRA’s side: PRONI D989/B/3/5 and D989/B/3/6. For relationships with other organisations, see acknowledgments of donations to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society: ‘Assisting the Ex-Service Men: Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society’, Irish Times, 21 July 1928, 10 and ‘Ex-Service Men in Ireland’, Irish Times, 25 May 1929, 6.
64 ‘Obituary: Mr. W.P. Walker’, Irish Times, 10 September 1925, 8.
65 Unsigned copy of a letter to White, 25 June 1925 and White to Walsh, 6 May 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5. Denis Gwynn, for instance, suggested that a SILRA meeting was ‘little more than an English “Die-hard” stunt’: Denis Gwynn, ‘London Letter’, Freeman’s Journal, 19 June 1923, 4. See also ‘Nailing of a Lie: Sir Bryan Mahon’s Reply’, Irish Independent, 4 February 1925, 7.
66 Walsh to White, 29 January 1925 and Walsh to White, 23 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/6. For British Legion membership in Ireland: Leonard, ‘Survivors’, 218; Robinson, 128; ‘British Legion in Free State’, Weekly Irish Times, 28 February 1931, 1, 10. The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Help Society confirmed that non-members were helped by the Legion in some rare cases.
67 Walsh to White, 10 February 1925 and Walsh to White, 19 November 1925; Walker to Hamilton, 13 May 1925 and Memo by Walsh, 9 December 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
68 White to Walsh, 6 May 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
69 ‘Loyalists’ Plight’, Daily Mail, 10 June 1927, 4.
70 White to Walsh, 9 November 1927, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
71 White to Walsh, 28 September 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/5. See also correspondence March to October 1925 and September to October 1929 in PRONI D989/B/3/5 and D989/B/3/6.
72 Robinson, 128.
73 Dudley, Nenagh, to Administrative Agent, Small Business Loans and Migration Department, British Legion and United Services Fund, London, 29 November 1930, PRONI D989/B/3/5. White forwarded the letter to Doris Murray of the Dublin committee (who later married John E. Walsh), suggesting she ‘keep a copy to chuckle over’.
74 Report of meeting of the Dublin committee, 30 October 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/6; letter from N. Walsh, secretary of Callan branch of the British Legion, 8 June 1929, Walsh to White, 26 September 1929; Walsh to White, 10 October 1929; and Corry, Kilrush, to ‘Hon. Sec. S.I.L.A. 109 Grafton St’, 1 December 1929, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
75 Minutes of the Dublin committee, 1925–1930, PRONI D989/B/1/2.
76 Coverage in the Freeman’s Journal, including ‘Shemus’ cartoons (by Ernest Forbes): 23 November 1921, 17 May 1922, 28 June 1923, 11 January 1924, 7 July 1923, 19 January 1924, 29 January 1924, and 9 February 1924.
77 Walsh to White, 30 April 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
78 ‘Southern Loyalists: Tax on Second-Hand Clothes for Ex-Service Men’, Belfast News-letter, 12 October 1927, 7.
79 Irish Independent, 10 February 1928.
80 ‘Report by the Relief Secretary on his Visit to Ireland in March, 1929.’, PRONI D989/B/5/2; ‘Ex-servicemen in southern Ireland. Their terrible sufferings’, n.d., PRONI D989/B/3/6.
81 Dublin advisory committee minutes, 23 January 1924, PRONI D989/B/1/2.
82 Walsh to White, 30 April 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
83 Walsh to White, 12 June 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
84 Walsh to White, 26 March 1928, PRONI D989/B/3/6.
85 Taylor, 88, 247.
86 Walsh to White, 9 March 1925, PRONI D989/B/3/5.
87 Constitution and Rules of SILRA, 1931, PRONI D989/B/5/6.
88 For Irish recruitment during the Great War: David Fitzpatrick, ‘The logic of collective sacrifice: Ireland and the British army, 1914–1918,’ The Historical Journal 38, no. 4 (1995), 1017–30; more recently Timothy Bowman, William Butler, Michael Wheatley, eds, The Disparity of Sacrifice: Irish Recruitment to the British Armed forces (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020). For ‘imperial’ recruitment in an Irish context: Monaghan, ‘Whose Country?,’ 80–3.
89 White to Walsh, 14 June 1924, PRONI D989/B/5/6.
90 Brian Hughes and Connor Morrissey, ‘Southern Irish Loyalism from Home Rule Crisis to Republic: An Introduction,’ in Southern Irish Loyalism, 1912 − 1949, Brian Hughes and Connor Morrissey, eds, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 2–4.
91 Two surviving application forms for the SILRA Ex-Service Fund, 1927, PRONI D989/B/2/5.
92 Denis Gwynn, ‘London Lottery’, Freeman’s Journal, 11 January 1924, 6.
93 I.H.G. White, ‘An Armistice Day Appeal’, Church of Ireland Gazette, 11 November 1932, 664; I.H.G. White, ‘Armistice Day’, 20 October 1933, 602.
94 General committee minutes, 5 April 1938, 17 May 1938, and 27 July 1938; Annual meeting minutes, 22 November 1938, PRONI D989/B/1/3.
95 Derived from minutes and correspondence contained in the minute book of the London committees, 1938–1956, PRONI D989/B/1/3 and McDowell, 133–4. Ultimately, the London office closed first.
96 Patrick Buckland, Irish Unionism I: The Anglo-Irish and the New Ireland, 1885 − 1922 (Dublin: Gill & MacMillan, 1972), 291.
97 See letters from ex-servicemen to SILRA in PRONI D989/B/3/5 and D989/B/3/6; Leonard, ‘Facing “The Finger of Scorn”’; Robinson, 113–14.
98 Brian Hughes, ‘“Our own people”: the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association in interwar Britain and Ireland’, Contemporary European History 1–19. DOI: <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777322000789>.
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Brian Hughes
Brian Hughes is an assistant professor in History at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick and director of the Irish Association of Professional Historians. Among other publications on the Irish Revolution and its aftermath, he is the author of Defying the IRA? Intimidation, Coercion, and Communities During the Irish Revolution (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016, paperback, 2018) and, with Conor Morrissey, editor of Southern Irish Loyalism, 1912 − 1949 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020, paperback, 2021).