Irish Labour and Working Class History

I found this in The Secret Book and Record Store, wicklow Street, Dublin 2.

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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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The second Irish anarchist bookfair was held on Saturday, 3rd March, 2007. Alongside the fair, a series of lectures were organised. One of the lectures, by Dr. Emmet O’Connor, was recorded by the Workers’ solidarity Movement and posted on the web as a podcast. Dr. Emmet O’Connor is a senior lecturer in politics at Magee College, University of Ulster, and has written extensively on the Irish trade union and labour movement.

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