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The Belfast Boycott: consumerism and gender in revolutionary Ireland (1920–1922)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2022

Katie Omans
Katie Omans*
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
*
*katie.omans@gmail.com
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Abstract

The Belfast Boycott was a protest designed to dislodge loyalism in Northern Ireland, punish its adherents for perceived intolerance toward Catholics and end Irish partition. The boycott was set off by the expulsion of several thousand Catholic workers from employment in Belfast in July 1920. A total boycott of all goods coming from Belfast was implemented by the Dáil in September 1920. Boycotting provided Irish nationalists with an alternative to violent retaliation that allowed for the participation of a wider segment of the Irish population and diaspora in the revolutionary movement. However, such mass mobilisation meant that nationalists had to entrust their plan for an independent Ireland to a segment of the population that they overwhelmingly viewed as politically and economically uninformed: Irish women. The boycott offers a new vantage point from which to view the actions of and attitudes towards women and the role of mass mobilisation during the revolution. This article explores nationalists’ conceptions of Irish identity, the intersection between consumerism and patriotism, and the role that women played as both political and economic actors throughout the Irish revolutionary period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 169 , May 2022 , pp. 101 - 118
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

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References

1 Dáil Éireann deb., f, no. 21, 10 May 1921.

2 Emilie Berthillot has written on the significance of covert acts performed by revolutionaries, particularly those of Collins's squad: see Berthillot, ‘Le Château de Dublin de 1880 à 1922: repaire de traîtres ou d'agents doubles?’ in Études Irlandaises, xl, no. 1 (2016), p. 26.

3 Rappaport, Erika, Shopping for pleasure: women in the making of London's West End (Princeton, NJ, 2001), pp 11–13Google Scholar.

4 Tiersten, Lisa, ‘Marianne in the department store: gender and the politics of consumption in turn-of-the-century Paris’ in Crossick, Geoffrey and Jaumain, Serge (eds), Cathedrals of consumption: the European department store, 1850–1939 (Farnham, 1999), p. 126Google Scholar.

5 Ward, Margaret, Unmanageable revolutionaries: women and Irish nationalism (London, 1995), p. 2Google Scholar.

6 McCarthy, Cal, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution (Cork, 2014)Google Scholar; Matthews, Ann, Renegades: Irish republican women, 1900–1922 (Cork, 2010), p. 9Google Scholar.

7 Lane, Leeann, Dorothy Macardle (Dublin, 2017)Google Scholar; eadem, Rosamond Jacob. Third person singular (Dublin, 2010).

8 Breathnach, Ciara, ‘The role of women in the economy of the west of Ireland, 1891–1923’ in New Hibernia Review, viii, no. 1 (spring 2004), pp 80–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Higgins, Padhraig, A nation of politicians: gender, patriotism, and political culture in late eighteenth-century Ireland (Madison, 2010), pp 90–92Google Scholar; also see Mary O'Dowd, A history of women in Ireland, 1500–1800 (Harlow, 2005), pp 55–61.

10 Shonk, Kenneth L., ‘“Fashion's latest whims need not alarm us!”: femininity and consumption in the Irish Press, 1931–37’ in New Hibernia Review, xix, no. 3 (autumn 2015), pp 35–50Google Scholar.

11 Rappaport, Shopping for pleasure, pp 11–13.

12 Jarvis, Katie, Politics in the marketplace: work, gender, and citizenship in revolutionary France (Oxford, 2019), p. 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Tiersten, ‘Marianne in the department store’, pp 116–34.

14 Ward, Unmanageable revolutionaries, p. 186.

15 Moore, Cormac, Birth of the border: the impact of partition in Ireland (Newbridge, 2019)Google Scholar.

16 David Fitzpatrick, Politics and Irish life 1913–21: provincial experiences of war and revolution (2nd ed., Cork, 1998), pp 143, 215; Michael Hopkinson, Green against green: the Irish Civil War (Dublin, 1988), pp 22, 82, 90, 117. In addition, Robert Lynch notes the role of the boycott in augmenting partition, though he derided the blockade itself as a ‘half-hearted’ effort. Arthur Mitchell devotes several pages to coverage of the boycott, in which he highlighted the historical use of boycotts in Ireland: see Robert Lynch, The partition of Ireland: 1918–1925 (Cambridge, 2019) p. 123; Arthur Mitchell, Revolutionary government in Ireland: Dáil Éireann, 1919–22 (Dublin, 1995), p. 168.

17 Terence A. M. Dooley, ‘From the Belfast boycott to the boundary commission: fears and hopes in county Monaghan, 1920–26’ in Clogher Historical Society, xv, no. 1 (1994), pp 90, 93.

18 Gemma Clark, Everyday violence in the Irish Civil War (Cambridge, 2014), p. 13.

19 Brian Hughes, Defying the IRA? Intimidation, coercion, and communities during the Irish revolution (Liverpool, 2016), p. 88.

20 Peter Hart, The I.R.A. and its enemies: violence and community in Cork 1916–1923 (Oxford, 1998), p. 102.

21 Hart, The I.R.A. and its enemies, p. 314; Emilie Berthillot has also explored the violent nature of boycotting in a nineteenth-century context : Berthillot, ‘Le Château de Dublin’, p. 13.

22 Berthillot, ‘Le Château de Dublin’, p. 26.

23 Captain Charles Boycott was the first land agent targeted by the Land League's campaign.

24 Dáil Éireann deb., f, no. 6, 10 Apr. 1919.

25 Alan Parkinson, Belfast's unholy war: the troubles of the 1920s (Dublin, 2004), p. 33.

26 Motherwell Times, 23 July 1920.

27 Jane G. V. McGaughey, Ulster's men: Protestant Unionist masculinities and militarization in the north of Ireland, 1912–1923 (Montreal, 2012), p. 143.

28 Memo on approximate number of workers expelled, Oct. 1921 (U.C.D.A., Desmond FitzGerald papers, P80/361, p. 5).

29 Letter from Desmond FitzGerald to the editor of The Times (London), 25 Apr. 1922 (U.C.D.A., Desmond and Mabel FitzGerald papers, P80/366, p. 1).

30 Dáil Éireann deb., f, no. 16, 6 Aug. 1920.

31 Owen McGee, Arthur Griffith (Newbridge, 2015), p. 231.

32 Dáil Éireann deb., f, no. 20, 11 Mar. 1921.

33 Jason Knirck, Imagining Ireland's independence: the debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (Lanham, 2006), p. 15.

34 Éamon de Valera to Ernest Blythe, 2 Mar. 1921 (U.C.D.A., Éamon de Valera papers, P150/1378).

35 Cumann na mBan materials, 1921–3, 1950 (John J. Burns Library, Boston College, Loretta Clarke Murray collection, MS.2016.016, box 4, folder 2).

36 Timothy G. McMahon, Grand opportunity: the Gaelic revival and Irish society, 1893–1910 (Syracuse, 2008), pp 100, 144.

37 Belinda Davis, ‘Food scarcity and the empowerment of the female consumer in World War I Berlin’ in Victoria de Grazia with Ellen Furlough (eds), The sex of things: gender and consumption in historical perspective (Berkeley, 1996), p. 288.

38 Irish Times, 1 Apr. 1921.

39 Irish Products League, University College, Cork (Cork, 1922).

40 Irish Society (Dublin), 2 Apr. 1921; Freeman's Journal, 29 Mar. 1921.

41 Freeman's Journal, 29 May 1922.

42 Cork Examiner, 11 Nov. 1921.

43 Rappaport, Shopping for pleasure, pp 11–13; Tiersten, ‘Marianne in the department store’, p. 126.

44 Tiersten, ‘Marianne in the department store’, p. 126.

45 Cork Examiner, 27 Feb. 1922.

46 Irish Newspaper Archives, ‘The Sinn Feiner’ (www.irishnewsarchive.com/the-sinn-feiner) (28 Jan. 2022).

47 The Sinn Féiner, 25 June 1921. No further information is available on June (this may have been a pseudonym).

48 Evening Telegraph (Dublin), 5 Mar. 1921.

49 As have recent scholars: see Keith Jeffrey, 1916: a global history (London, 2015).

50 Áine Ceannt witness statement, (M.A.I., B.M.H., W.S. 264).

51 Michael Silvestri, Ireland and India: nationalism, empire and memory (London, 2009), p. 47.

52 Voice of Labour, 1 Apr. 1922.

53 The Sinn Féiner, 5 Mar. 1921.

54 Dáil Éireann deb., s, no. 3, 18 Aug. 1921.

55 Áine Ceannt statement (M.A.I., B.M.H., W.S.264).

56 The Sinn Féiner, 25 June 1921.

57 Ibid., 12 Nov. 1921.

58 Ibid., 16 Apr. 1921.

59 John Bull was dressed so deceivingly that I did not initially recognise him. I am thankful to Timothy McMahon for his critical eye in helping me analyse this cartoon.

60 The Sinn Féiner, 25 June 1921.

61 Ibid., 30 Apr. 1921.

62 Marie O'Neill, ‘The Ladies’ Land League’ in Dublin Historical Record, xxxv, no. 4 (Sept. 1982), pp 122–4.

63 Eilis Bean Ui Chonaill (Ni Riain), statement (M.A.I., B.M.H., W.S. 568).

64 Moira Kennedy O'Byrne statement (M.A.I., B.M.H., W.S.1029).

65 Diarmuid O hEigceartuigh, secretary to the provisional government to Michael Staines, 8 Feb. 1922 (U.C.D.A., Seán MacEntee papers, P67/66).

66 Two notes concerning a meeting between Michael Collins and a Mr McCormack of the Boycott staff, 6 Aug. 1921 (U.C.D.A., Seán MacEntee papers, P67/62).

67 Ceannt witness statement, p. 61.

68 Replies to questionnaires, Nov. 1972–Feb. 1973 (U.C.D.A., Eithne Coyle O'Donnell papers, P61/4).

69 Cutting from an unidentified newspaper reporting the wedding of Seán and Margaret MacEntee, May 1921 (U.C.D.A., MacEntee papers, P67/809); Máire Cruise O'Brien, The same age as the state (Madison, WI, 2004), pp 60–61.

70 Receipt from Mrs Margaret (Brown) MacEntee for £469 16s. 9d. [balance of the boycott's account at Land Bank], 4 Mar. 1922 (U.C.D.A., Seán MacEntee papers, P67/67).

71 Cruise O'Brien, Same age as the state, pp 60–61.

72 Dáil Éireann deb., f, no. 21, 10 May 1921.

73 Replies to questionnaires, Nov. 1972–Feb. 1973 (U.C.D.A., Eithne Coyle O'Donnell papers, P61/4); Ward, Unmanageable revolutionaries, p. 171.

74 I am grateful to Jason Knirck for his help with many aspects of this article, particularly his assistance with the analysis of this questionnaire.

75 Freeman's Journal, 30 Jan. 1922.

76 Boycott of Northern Ireland goods, July 1921–Dec. 1922 (P.R.O.N.I., CAB/6/23).

77 Ibid.

78 Joan Landes, Visualizing the nation: gender, representation, and revolution in eighteenth-century France (Ithaca, 2001), p. 43.

79 Boycott of Northern Ireland goods, July 1921–Dec. 1922 (P.R.O.N.I., CAB/6/23).

80 Belfast News Letter, 30 May 1922; Boycott of Northern Ireland Goods, July 1921–Dec. 1922.

81 See also Nicholas Canny, ‘The ideology of English colonization: from Ireland to America’ in The William and Mary Quarterly, xxx, no. 4 (Oct. 1973), pp 575–98; Michael de Nie, The eternal Paddy: Irish identity and the British press, 1798–1882 (Madison, WI, 2004), pp 235, 250.

82 Belfast News Letter, 16 Jan. 1922.

83 Letter from Miss Isobel M. Hegarty, Belfast, 17–20 May 1922 (P.R.O.N.I., PM/2/8/137, p. 2).

84 Letter from Marie Stewart to Sir James Craig, 24 Apr. 1922 (P.R.O.N.I., CAB/6/23).

85 Letter from Sir Wilfrid Bliss Spender to Marie Stewart, 26 Apr. 1922 (ibid.).

86 Ceannt witness statement, p. 62.

87 This article was funded in large part due to the generous support of the School of Graduate Studies and Research at Central Washington University. Additional travel funding was also provided by Central Washington University's Department of History.