Steven Fielding:
Class and Ethnicity
Irish Catholics in England 1880-1939
(Buckingham, 1993)

Book Review by Roger Swift

The title of this concise volume is to some extent misleading, for the real focus of the book comprises a detailed analysis of the social, cultural, religious and political experiences of the Irish Catholic working class in Manchester, set within the broader context of Irish settlement in England between 1880 and 1939. Dr. Fielding justifies this approach on the grounds that Manchester was one of the most important centres of Irish settlement and yet has been relatively neglected by those who have written about the Irish in England, which is undoubtedly the case. He also argues that a focus on one specific location has the benefit of illuminating in human detail some of the most common forms of the Irish Catholic immigrant experience, although this of course raises the question as to how representative Manchester was of the Irish Catholic experience in England during the period.

In essence, Fielding argues that Irish Catholics formed a viable and distinct culture that was a compound of class and ethnic influences in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century England and, moreover, that this culture was intrinsically dynamic in that being Irish, Catholic and working class forced individuals to reconcile different demands and particular identities. As such, this study challenges the views of those historians who have argued that a growing sense of working-class consciousness had largely transcended the remnants of a separate Irish Catholic ethnic identity in Britain's industrial towns and cities during the period, outside the sectarian redoubts of Liverpool and Glasgow.

Dr. Fielding provides a lucid overview of the recent historiography of the Irish in England during the period, examining such themes as England's cultural bias, class and ethnicity, and the Irish as an 'awkward' minority. In particular, he argues that the so-called 'problem' with Irish Catholic immigrants is that they neither wanted full assimilation nor complete separation from English society and that, for many of them, class and ethnicity formed a continuum rather than mutually exclusive poles of attraction. Yet he also shows that the Irish Catholic working class was far from homogeneous: relations between the Irish-born and the culturally Irish were not always amicable; there was sometimes animosity between long-established emigrant families and new arrivals; and Irishness was itself a contested concept, with those who lived outside Ireland often perceived as distinct from, and inferior to, those who remained.

In his analysis of the social and cultural context of the Irish Catholic experience, Fielding explores the extent to which the Manchester Irish differed from counterparts who lived elsewhere and suggests that Manchester found more echoes in the wider Irish Catholic experience than did Liverpool, which has long (and mistakenly) been regarded as the archetypal Irish Catholic city. He observes the ways in which an Irish identity survived in a long-settled and far from static community and provides a vivid exploration of Irish neighbourhood culture, with its own internal characteristics and conflicts. The Roman Catholic Church played an important role in sustaining an Irish identity in Manchester and the Church was an organic, accepted feature of Irish Catholic working-class life in the city. However, Fielding suggests that although most Irish Catholic immigrants felt some sort of attachment to the Church, this sentiment owed more to loyalties of family and national origin than doctrine. He also shows, by reference to the themes of the Catholic family, the parish school, the control of adolescents, retaining adults, mixed marriages, and Catholic processions and ceremonial, that relationships between the Church and the Irish population did not always run smooth and were not without their tensions.

Fielding's examination of the role of the Irish in Liberal and then in Labour politics in Manchester during the period is particularly valuable and challenges the view that Irish Nationalism competed with, and indeed impeded the growth of, socialism within working-class Irish communities. Indeed, Fielding argues that the extent to which class determined political allegiances among non-Irish workers has been exaggerated and, moreover, that Irish national and class loyalties were not as exclusive as some historians have suggested. Yet, in exploring the relationship between Labour and the Church, by reference to the politics of Catholicism, the activities of the Catholic Federation, and Labour's Catholic dissidents, Fielding also suggests that whilst the Irish were one of the most consistently pro-Labour elements within the working class during the inter-war period, this was a qualified allegiance and Labour was unable to win complete political ascendancy over the Irish Catholic electorate.

In contrast, the conclusion is somewhat disappointing and does not do justice to an otherwise well-researched and well-presented study. Indeed, rather than providing an effective synthesis it takes the form of an addendum which examines some aspects of the Irish experience in England since 1939. For example, Fielding notes that the destruction of Irish Catholic communities established in the nineteenth century was deferred until the 1950s and 1960s in consequence of inner-city slum clearance programmes but that when it came, dispersal was - as in Manchester - on a scale impossible to envisage before 1939 and the cultural props which had supported a sense of Irish apartness were fatally shattered. Yet he also observes that whilst old Irish communities declined, so others emerged, within which those of Irish ancestry or birth sought to maintain their own distinctive identity, often in the face of continuing anti-Irish Catholic prejudice and the manifestation of attitudes more commonly associated with the mid-Victorian period. In this context it could well be argued that the terminal date of this study could have been extended to 1980 - or even to the present day - in order to incorporate a specific chapter on the Irish in England during the post-war period, thereby providing a more coherent treatment of the important contemporary issues touched upon in the erstwhile conclusion.

This said, the book represents a significant contribution to the historiography of the Irish in Britain. First, and in contrast with most recent studies of Irish settlement in Britain (which have continued to focus on the nineteenth century), it extends substantially our understanding of the Irish experience in the relatively uncharted waters of the twentieth century. Second, it illustrates the value of a detailed local study of Irish communities in exploring the concepts of ethnic identity, integration and assimilation. Indeed, more such studies are required if the veil of anonymity which often surrounds the experiences of Irish immigrants in modern British society is to be penetrated effectively.

Roger Swift
University College Chester
Chester
England

This review originally appeared in Irish Historical Studies, XXVII, 108 (November 1991), 379-380, and appears here with the permission of Roger Swift.