JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

:. -,,'.' ',. .~.,:.ESSAYS 95Although the Catholic Socialist Society was founded in Glasgow by John Wheatley and WilliamRegan, it attracted as much sympathetic publicity in the American as in the Scottish socialist press. 48In reconstructing the Scottish context, RaphaelSamuel says: 'Scottish socialism in this period seemsto have been particularly militant in its atheism, and for many of those who came to it - whether throughthe !LP, the SDF orthe SLP - religion and the Church were (as Tom Bell recalls) 'the big enemy". Thepolitical attitudes of Wheatley and Regan were made crystal-clear in a letter that Regan sent to CarlThompson, the Secretary of the American Socialist Party in July 1914:'One piece of advice I would venture to o.ur American comrades, .Do not meet the Catholic attack by acounter attack on the priests and the Church. That may be the temptmg way, but that way lies failure. TheCatholic workingman will not be attracted to you when you attack institutions he holds dear. '49In glancing back to the growth of the labour movement in Scotland before the First World War,David Lowe argued that 'the appearance of the Catholic Socialist Societies' was 'altogether inspiring'in so far as the Irish immigrants had become less hostile to organised labour' .50 IfConnolly, ChisholmRobertson, John Leslie and others had not previously developed a dual-identity as Irish patriots andScottish citizens, the Catholic Socialist organisations would not have found the space in which theycould grow and flourish. In acknow ledging Connoll y' s dual-identity, Owen Dudley Ed wards said: 'Hewas an Irishman, and we rightly claim him as ours; but he was born in Edinburgh, and the magnitudeand pain of his struggle there gave him every right to Scottish nationality also' .51 But the forcesunleashed by the First World War played a contradictory role in the history of the Irish in Scotland.While the Easter Rising in 1916 created the pre-conditions in which a mass Labour vote could developamongst the Irish immigrants, the execution of Connolly initially re-kindled sectarian strife in someScottish working class communities. 52In depicting the impact of the Easter Rising on the Fife coalfield, Bob Selkirk wrote: 'Widespreadanger at the cowardly shooting of Connolly, the wounded leader of the 1916 Irish uprising, intenseindignation at the tactics of the Black and Tans in Ireland, a big sale of Connolly's pamphlets, madeit inevitable that 'help' should be organised for the Sinn Feiners and their tactics imitated under differentconditions'. In reinforcing what Selkirk said, John McArthur gave a similar account: 'We took a closeinterest in the Irish struggle. There were quite a number of Irish militants in Fife with whom we had theclosest association because in those days Irishmen were expected to be' agin the Government' and forthe trade union and labour movement' .53In 1921 Sinn Feiners in Fife started a series of 'farm fires'. When the culprits were charged in theDunfermline Sheriff Court, a sympathiser' called upon them to keep 'the Red Flag flying' '. Some Irishimmigrants joined the Comm unist Party in Fife, Glasgow, Edinburgh and elsewhere, and the Sinn Hin,organisation in Fife co-operated with the. local communists during the bitter coal strike of 1921. An. editorial in the conservative D unfermline Journal asserted that: 'A plot to establish a ScottishCommunist Republic was seriously projected, while the Scots were referred to in a leaflet as 'bloodytools of the English against our brother Celts of Erin'. A week later the editor said:'In Fife the revolutionary spirit is widespread and it would be dangerous to minimise it. Extreme socialismas known in 1914, has given place to communism, and Irishmen have been swept into Sinn Feinism ...Reviewing the incidents of the last fourteen days, when at times mob rule ruled supreme, conclusions areaccepted indicating that had the authorities not acted with promptitude Fife would ere now have been ina rebellious state. '54Although the aggressiveness amongst the Irish immigrants in places like Fife gave a new impetusto Orangeism, the growth of a mass Labour vote could not bestopped. The fact that many of the Irish­Catholics in the Gorbals constituency voted for George Bames, a right -wing leader of the Labour Party,rather than John Maclean, the friend of Connolly, in the'general election of 1918 was not decisive