Irish Labour and Working Class History

[This is an edited version of an article I wrote which first appeared in Football Studies 11, 1 (2008). The article itself is based on a paper I presented at the 2005 Irish Sport History Conference.]

In 1955 the Irish political, cultural, and religious establishment found itself challenged by an unusual and reluctant opponent: The Football Association of Ireland (FAI). The clash arose over a friendly soccer game between the Republic of Ireland and Yugoslavia, which was played at Dalymount Park on 19 October of that year. The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Dr. John Charles McQuaid, one of the dominant figures in Irish 20th century life, called for the cancellation of the game. This was echoed by various government ministers, senior civil servants, and Catholic lay organisations. The Irish national broadcasting service Radio Televis Éireann (RTE) declined to cover the game after its main sports commentator, Phil Greene, pulled out of the broadcast.

The protests arose out of the continued persecution of the Catholic Church in communist Yugoslavia, and were similar in tone to other protests held in Ireland over the previous seven years. The fact that the game went ahead with an attendance of around 21,400 has been read by some as a counter-protest against the forces of conservative Ireland, especially the public influence of archbishop McQuaid. Indeed, the archbishop’s biographer, John Cooney, wrote that the Yugoslavia game was ‘a populist revolt against McQuaid’s iron rule; the first of his reign.’ (Cooney, p.309.)

This article will argue that the controversy reveals a clash of culture in 1950s Ireland, rather than one over politics or ideology. This is not to say that 1950s Ireland was bereft of clashes over politics or ideology, but that the Ireland v Yugoslavia game became a protest against an attempt by the dominant Irish conservative forces to interfere with the most popular cultural activity of working class Dublin, rather than one energised by a desire on the part of the working class to confront the government, the Catholic Church, or the permanent secretaries of the Irish civil service. The game also provides an entry into Irish working class life – an area often neglected by Irish historians, and one with a culture that, on this occasion at least, found itself in uneasy conflict with the Irish establishment.

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(This is the fourth post in a six-part series of articles originally written as part of the North West Spanish Civil War Memorial Project, and which appeared in the Derry newspaper, Sunday Journal, in April-May 2006. They are reproduced here with kind permission of the author. All photos courtesy of Ciaran Crossey)

Below is a list of men from Donegal and Tyrone who served in defence of the Spanish Republic. The information is drawn from the same sources cited in part 3 of this series. Again, all additional information and corrections from readers will be gratefully received and acknowledged. I am obliged to Conal Houston for details on Hugh Bonner, and to Brian Curragh for details on his great-uncle, Ben Murray.

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By far the definitive book on the establishment of the FAI is Neal Garnham’s Association Football and Society in Pre-Partition Ireland. The reasons behind the IFA split were many – and included a received Belfast bias within the organisation.

As early as 1893 footballers in Dublin voiced their belief that they were being excluded from international honours by an IFA dominated by the representatives of the larger northern clubs… In 1899 a Leinster delegate to the IFA annual general meeting was reported as speaking of sectional warfare and interecine strife between the provinces, and the perception that “the Irish Association existed for Belfast alone”. Similarly, the Dublin authorities had earlier been aggrieved by IFA decisions not to stage international matches in the capital. It had also occasionally been suggested that the IFA tended to favour Belfast clubs in its decisions regarding the running of its competitions. (Garnham, p.162)

Garnham makes the point that the two main centres for soccer in Ireland in the 1880 – Belfast and Dublin – developed from different social and class bases.

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