JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

92 SAOTHAR 13socialists of Irish origin often developed a dual-identity, they owed their basic loyalty to the politicalobjectives of the Scottish labour movement as they understood them.Far from Roman Catholic historians challenging the dominant Scottish historiographical orthodoxy,they have usually, if unwittingly, reinforced it. Thus in The Irish in Modern Scotland. Handleysaid: 'Even in the mining industry ~ where grading according to skill did not enter and where theimmigrants were numerically very strong, they failed to make their voice heard and left the leadershipto Scotsmen such as Alexander MacDonald, Keir Hardie and Robert Smillie' .18 He was factually wrongabout Smillie. An Ulster Protestant who wasbom in Belfast in 1856, Smillie came to live and workin Lanarkshire when he was fifteen years of age. 19The renaissance of Scottish working class radicalism took place against an immediate backdrop ofracial tensions and ethnic conflict within most working class communities. This was particularly thecase in Lanarkshire. In July 1877 Alexander MacDonald attempted to re-organise the miners' tradeunion branches in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. Reporting on MacDonald's failure, the editor of theGlasgow Sentinel. the Scottish miners' newspaper, said that 'a large number of the men had gone to theOrange demonstrations'.20 In moving a vote of thanks to Alexander MacDonald, the veteran Labourleader, ata miners' meeting in Larkhall in 1879, the young Keir Hardie compared MacDonald's workfor the Scottish miners to that of 'Martin Luther at the rise of Protestantism '. Most of the miners presentwere Roman Catholics and the meeting ended in uproar. As William Stewart explained: 'There wereloud murmurs of disapprobation, and Hardie had actually to be protected from assault' YIn a pioneering essay on 'Irish nationalism and radical politics in Scotland, 1880-1906' , Ian S. Woodsays that 'modem work on Irish-American nationalism serves to underline the fact that people with nodirect personal memories of the homeland may develop even deeper politically expressed loyality toit, whether as a result of parental example or the influence of an immigrant sub-culture'.22 While theUlster Protestants appear to have integrated themselves into the dominant culture without too muchdifficulty, the hostility directed at the Irish-Catholic immigrants stimulated them to create their ownsub-culture in Scottish working class communities. This immigrant sub-culture overlapped with andimpinged on a predominantly Presbyterian culture throughout working class Scotland. Significantly,Roman Catholicism in Scotland was, as Anthony Ross argued, austere and puritanical. But the Irish­Catholic immigrant'" sub-culture was most visible in the sphere of Scottish working class politics.Born of Irish immigrant parents in a slum in 'Little Ireland', John Leslie (1861-1921) became themost prominent socialist in Edinburgh. This role was held initially by the erratic John L. Mahon. Thelatter left the SDF in 1884 to join the breakaway Socialist League founded by William Morris, thoughhe re-joined the SDF later on. A socialist missionary in the Scottish coalfields, Mahon did not attachso much importance to the Irish Question as John Leslie or R. Chisholm Robertson. Like Leslie andConnolly, Mahon was born in the Cowgate or 'Little Ireland' area of Edinburgh. As David Roberts.the Catholic historian, wrote: 'He was baptisedatSt. Mary'sRC Cathedral on 2July, 1865. The additionof the name Lincoln is interesting and one presumes it derives from Abraham Lincoln assassinated on15 April ofthat year. This shows that McMahon's parents were very politically minded because it wasnot usual for Catholic children to receive such names in the nineteenth century'. Later on, he droppedthe Mc from his name. Unlike other Irish-Catholics who were prominent in Scottish working classpolitics, Mahon, though a practising Catholic in the late nineteenth century, did not lecture on the IrishQuestionYWhile the sons of Irish immigrants such as ConnoUy, Leslie, Mahon and Douglas 24 were active inEdinburgh, Chisholm Robertson and Hugh Murin25 in Stirlingshire, J. Shaw Maxwell, Pete Curran andJohn Wheatley in Glasgow, the real political stronghold of the Irish-Catholic immigrants was alwaysin Lanarkshire. 26 A key figure in the Lanarkshire coalfields was the miners' leader, Andrew McCowie;and in the 1870s the Glasgow Sentinel and the North British Daily Mail were constantly reporting thespeeches and activities of the man they depicted as 'the Scoto-Irishman'. McCowie - sometimes speltMcCowey - worked amongst the Irish immigrants in the Lanarkshire coalfields with another Irish­Catholic miners' agent, James Roden.