Episode 19 - Panel 5b - "My Colonial Office pass would have proved a pass to the next world": Irish colonial servants and the Irish Revolution - Dr. Seán Gannon

Southern Irish Loyalism in Context

Ireland provided a rich recruitment ground for the British overseas services in the latter half of the long nineteenth century with the result that, by 1919, Irish administrators, doctors, lawyers, policemen, educationalists, and engineers were to be found working in every corner of the colonial empire. Recent research has exploded the notion that Irish nationalism and British imperialism were, by their definitions, dichotomous. Nonetheless, the great majority of Irish colonial servants recruited during this period were drawn from what the Colonial Office termed Ireland’s ‘loyalist class' – Protestants and so-called ‘Castle Catholics’ who supported the constitutional status quo. This paper, which takes as its subject loyalists recruited into the British colonial services during the Irish Revolution and its aftermath, has a twofold focus. First, it assesses the impact of the Irish Revolution on their decisions to enlist, arguing that British imperial service provided a convenient route out of Ireland for loyalists unwilling or unable to remake their lives under the new dispensation in Dublin. Secondly, it scrutinizes these recruits’ loyalist credentials, assessing the extent to which they were born loyalists, became loyalists by conviction, or had loyalty thrust upon them through circumstance. As part of these processes, the paper examines the targeting by Irish Republican elements during the revolutionary period of both Irish colonial officials on home leave, and Irish Crown servants themselves, and draws comparisons between the fates of Irish loyalists and colonial loyalist communities (for example, those in Cyprus, Palestine, and Kenya) in their post-independence periods. Dr. Seán Gannon, IRC Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin.