FACTSHEET 4: IRISH IMMIGRATION
Immigration and Scottish society (1)
Irish emigration to Scotland in the 19th and 20th centuries
Early emigration
With fares from as little as 6d for a deck passage from Ireland to Greenock,
emigration to Scotland was a regular feature of Irish life befo re 1840. Most of
the emigration, however, was on a temporary basis, peaking during important
times in the farming calendar, such as harvest. In the summer of 1841, 57,651
Irish, mainly male labourers, crossed to England and Scotland to work on the
harvest. There was no attempt to form permanent settlements, although with
the development of cotton weaving, the construction of railways and the
general expansion of the economy, Irish roots were beginning to be laid in
Scotland. Prior to the great famine of 1846–7, emigration from Ireland could
best be described as a trickle. After the famine it became a flood.
The impact of the Irish famine
According to the census, the Irish-born population of Scotland stood at
126,321 out of a total of 2,620,184 in 1841, or 4.8 per cent. Ten years later it
stood at 207,367, or 7.2 per cent, out of a total of 2,888,742. This compared
to 2.9 per cent for England and Wales. During 1848, the average weekly
inflow of Irish into Glasgow was estimated at over 1000, and the figure for
January to April of that year was put at 42,860. Between 1841 and 1851 the
Irish population of Scotland increased by 90 per cent. The census figures,
however, underestimate the total strength of the Irish community in Scotland.
They record only those people who were Irish-born because the children of
Irish immigrants born in Scotland were classified as Scottish.
Settlement of the Irish
Because of their poverty and poor state of health, Irish immigrants tended to
settle in or around their point of disemba rkation which, in practical terms,
meant the west coast of Scotland. The nearest counties to Ireland,
Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire, had substantial Irish populations by
1841. The famine pushed the numbers up to 16.5 per cent of the population in
Wigtown. Even Dumfriesshire saw its Irish -born population stand at 5.9 per
cent in 1851. The Irish also made their way to the east coast, particularly to
Dundee, where a large female Irish community established itself. Edinburgh
had only a small Irish community of 6.5 per cent of the total population in
1851.
However, it was the industrial areas of the west of Scotland which saw the
largest concentrations of Irish immigrants. Almost 29 per cent of all Irish
migrants settled in Glasgow but the smaller industri al towns of the west also
had substantial Irish communities. The population of Coatbridge in 1851 was
35.8 per cent Irish.
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FACTSHEET 4: IRISH IMMIGRATION
Occupational structure
On the whole, the Irish settled wherever muscle and strength was in demand,
and as such they found their way into coalmining, dock work and labouring of
all kinds. It was estimated in 1851 that somewhere between a half to three quarters of all dock labourers and two-thirds of miners were Irish. Many also
found their way into the less skilled jobs of handloom wea ving and other
textile work. Irish women, for instance, made up 44.3 per cent of female
textile workers in Greenock in 1851. However, due to the operation of
sectarianism, their lack of education and, in many cases, their language
(which was Gaelic), the Irish were under-represented in the more highly paid
skilled trades.
Religious divisions and tensions
Their lowly occupational status and their willingness to work for less than the
going rate did not endear the Irish to the Scottish working class. Their
religion was also a factor that gave rise to discrimination from all sections of
Scottish society. Since the Reformation, Scotland had been a Protestant
country and Catholicism was largely frowned upon. The popery of the Irish
was, therefore, detested by the Presbyterians of Scotland. Attacks on the Irish
became commonplace in newspapers, pulpits and on the streets. As late as
1923 the Church of Scotland could still publish a pamphlet entitled ‘The
menace of the Irish race to our Scottish Nationality’. The I rish were seen as
drunken, idle, uncivilised and undermining the moral fibre of Scottish
society. They were also seen as carriers of disease. Typhus, for example, was
known as ‘Irish fever’. Although the accusation had some force, it had
nothing to do with ethnicity, and more to do with poverty. The incidence of
fever among the Irish was due to their unsanitary housing. It was also because
many of the immigrants who arrived fleeing the famine were so weak that
their resistance to disease was low. The Irish -born in Dundee constituted 20
per cent of all burials in 1848, whereas seven years earlier they had only
constituted 5 per cent.
Irish communities
In spite of the hostility of the host society and their poverty, the Irish
Catholics showed a tremendous capacity to build sustainable local
communities. One study of Dundee showed that, in the early 1860s, there
were only two Catholic churches and three schools, one of which the Dundee
Advertiser described as a ‘cellar under the Chapel’, serving a community of
around 20,000. Within 10 years the number of churches and schools had
doubled, all financed to a large degree out of the contributions of low -paid
workers. The Church provided other services of a recreational and social
kind. Indeed, there was little need for Catholics to go beyond the bounds of
the Church since all their needs were catered for. Even the working class
obsession for professional football was catered for by the setting up of
Hibernian FC in Edinburgh and Celtic FC in Glasgow. The Irish Cathol ics
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FACTSHEET 4: IRISH IMMIGRATION
had become a community within a community and this was strengthened by
the degree of inter-marriage. In Greenock it was found that in 1851 80.6 per
cent of Irish men and women had found marriage partners amongst their own
numbers. Forty years later the numbers were still high at 72.4 per cent. Such
a situation made it difficult for the Irish Catholic to assimilate into the
mainstream of Scottish society.
Irish protestant emigration
The same charge could not be levelled at the Protestant Irish. As Catho lic
Irish immigrants declined in number in the late 1870s and 1880s the
Protestant Irish took up the slack. Most of these new immigrants came from
the most Orange counties of the north, such as Armagh. There had been
historic links of an economic and religious kind between the west of Scotland
and Ulster. Even the Church of Scotland recognised in their 1923 attack on
the Catholic Irish that ‘[no complaint can be made about] the presence of an
Orange population in Scotland. They are of the same race as ourse lves and of
the same Faith, and are readily assimilated to the Scottish race’. Thus the
Protestant Irish did not face the same degree of discrimination endured by the
Catholic Irish.
Sectarian rivalry
The arrival of Ulster Protestants with their Orange tr aditions increased the
tempo of sectarian rivalries. The Catholic Irish had, of course, borne the
brunt of attacks from all quarters of Scottish society since the 18th century
but the assaults tended to be unsystematic and random. Even the arrival of the
Irish in large numbers after 1846 only provoked occasional skirmishes
between the rival communities at sensitive moments in the religious calendar,
rather than full-scale conflict. As the Irish made few inroads into skilled
employment and kept themselves very much to themselves, there was little
for the native population to fear. Although certain parts of Glasgow and other
towns became associated with Irish Catholics there was never the creation of
‘ghettos’ (which has been the case in Belfast and Derry). Re sidential mixing
created a shared sense of grievance among slum dwellers, whether Catholic or
Protestant, and this did much to reduce tensions. Moreover, there was little
political danger from the Irish in the 19th century. Most Irish males did not
qualify for the vote as they failed to put down roots long enough in any one
constituency to satisfy residential qualifications. Disqualified in large
numbers from voting until reform of the franchise in 1918, the Irish, with the
encouragement of the Catholic hierarchy, directed their political energies
towards Home Rule for Ireland. Those that could vote gave it to the Liberal
Party as the only party which might deliver on the subject of Home Rule.
With the partition of Ireland in 1921 the Irish became more embr oiled in the
politics of their adopted country. They overwhelmingly supported the Labour
Party and this allowed them access to mainstream political life in Scotland.
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FACTSHEET 4: IRISH IMMIGRATION
As part of this concord, the state provided for segregated religious schooling
out of income from the rates, which led to numerous protests from Protestant
churches about putting ‘Rome on the rates’. In the 1930s Protestant extremist
groups, such as the Scottish Protestant League (SPL) in Glasgow and the
Protestant Action Society (PAS) in Edinburgh, made significant short-lived
political capital out of sectarian rivalries. In Glasgow, the SPL won 23 per
cent of the total votes cast in the 1933 local elections, and similar impressive
gains were made in Edinburgh by the PAS a few years later.
Sectarian rivalries still exist in Scottish society, but on a much reduced scale.
However, the assimilation of Irish immigrants into Scottish society has taken
place without the level of violence found in other places, such as Liverpool,
and this remains one of the major achievements of modern social history.
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