"our People"; the Church of Ireland in Dublin and the culture of community since Disestablishment.
Martin Maguire
A group of two hundred young men and women of Clontarf parish, attending a talk in 1957 on mixed marriages, were warned that 'once we begin to get involved in the question of a mixed marriage, we are immediately dealing with the Roman Church's standards, which are very different from, and lower, than our own; and as we enter into arguments and negotiations we must come down to the lower standard so losing the "Protestant Integrity" which is our birthright'.[1] The answer, the young adults were advised, was to make your friends exclusively amongst 'our people and within the church community'.[2] This essay explores the various meanings and cultural forms which attached to 'our people' and 'community' within the Church of Ireland.
The Church of Ireland community enjoyed an assured sense of its own superiority, derived in part from the evangelical tradition which formed a central part of its Protestantism and in part from its success in surviving disestablishment and creating an effective structure for a self-governing community of laity and clergy.[3] It was also a community which took its religion seriously. For most people religious identity is less a matter of precise beliefs than one of different social practices. What was most distinctive about the Church of Ireland community was its very solemn approach to Sunday, when mornings were spent at a service of worship of prayer more often than Eucharist, and afternoons at gospel halls and Sunday school. In the early years of the twentieth century Dublin had eight gospel halls the most popular of which was the Merrion Hall of the Plymouth Brethren, its central pulpit facing the tiered galleries, seating a congregation of over two thousand.[4] The Merrion Hall Sunday afternoon drew in a predominantly Church of Ireland congregation attracted by the Plymouth Brethren emphasis on an essentially pessimistic though inspirational preaching of the gospel. More than any arcane theological dispute it was the sombre Church of Ireland Sunday, shunning the frivolities of sports and picture-houses, which marked it out as a distinct, and more serious, community. Whereas issues of morality and authority have fuelled divisions within Roman Catholicism, it is liturgical revision that has fuelled most controversy within the Church of Ireland.[5]
The self-confidence thus nurtured enabled the Church of Ireland to overcome the rapid erosion of its formal status in Ireland. After disestablishment removed its state under-pinning the Church of Ireland was sustained, as a community, not only by the formal structures of synodal government but also by the informal networks of charitable, social and cultural organisations. The Church of Ireland parishes in Dublin generated an array of political, social and religious organisations, societies and clubs. Many of those who were members of these various societies regarded some, or all, of them as agents of a divine will. However, in this essay they are framed in terms of an entirely human function and agency. Through an examination of these complex networks and their operation within the parishes of Dublin, this essay seeks to reconstruct the communal culture of the Church of Ireland; 'our people'; and the sense of concerted human lives which attaches to 'community'. The city has been chosen because it was there that life is most sociable and community most elaborate. In Dublin city voluntary organisations linked social classes, churches, neighbourhoods and workplaces in networks of often elaborate complexity. Also, the Church of Ireland, despite the cultivation of an image of eccentric rural gentility, was primarily an urbanised culture.[6]
Unlike Belfast, Dublin did not have recognisably Catholic or Protestant areas. A comparison of the Catholic and Protestant residents in each of Dublin city's twenty wards between 1891 and 1926 shows quite a high degree of similarity in the distribution of the two population groups. What Dublin did have however were recognisably middle class areas in the suburbs and working class areas in the inner city. The differences in the dispersal of the two population groups are the result of socio-economic rather than sectarian forces; middle class Protestants lived in middle class areas along with middle class Catholics. Working class Protestants lived in working class areas with working class Catholics. In Dublin a person's address would give no clue to religion but could reveal socio-economic class.[7] In order to focus in on the functioning of these community organisations at the local level several of the Dublin parishes are considered in detail, with occasionally reference to other parishes. These parishes are St Jude's in Inchicore, a skilled working class suburb in Kilmainham to the south of the city; St Matthew's in Irishtown in the Pembroke township, a mix of working class and middle class; St George's in the north inner city, formerly well-off middle class but by the end of the nineteenth century a centre of working class poverty and decline; St Kevin's in the south inner city, a strongly low-church parish with again a mix of working and middle class; and the parish of St John the Baptist in Clontarf in the middle class northern suburbs. Thus the contrast is between poorer working class parishes and the better-off middle class parishes. Clontarf was the only one of these parishes to experience growth in the hundred years after disestablishment. Between the census of 1901 and the census of 1926 the Church of Ireland population of Clontarf virtually doubled from 1,187 persons to 2,024 persons.[8] By 1928 the parish facilities were barely coping with the pressure of the rising parish population.[9] By contrast the inner city parishes had to cope with a decline in the number of their members, particularly the better-off. This reflects the migration of the middle classes to the outer suburbs. In 1891 St Michans 'formerly a rich parish' had withered into a parish of the 'struggling poor' Protestants.[10] In 1899 the parish of St Matthew in Irishtown was suffering the drain of its middle class parishioners to Rathmines, leading to recurring problems of poor collections.[11]
Where Church of Ireland parishes were virtually all self-governing republics in their finances the flight to the suburbs of the middle classes undermined the ability of the inner city parishes to sustain the communal organisations which were vital to their survival. This is reflected in the quality of the ubiquitous parish magazine. Clontarf parish magazine was a substantial, quality production with illustrations, on good paper, printed in letterpress which, even in the shortages of the "Emergency", was maintained as a monthly issue. In the poorer parishes, like St James' or St Matthew's, the magazine were far less substantial, often only one or two pages, which were bulked out by being inserted into church or missionary magazines such as Home Words, a Church of England magazine featuring daring deeds by plucky missionaries in exotic corners of the Empire. During the early 1920s St Matthew's parish magazine was actually hand-written and reproduced on a rotary duplicator. These magazines were the messengers to the community, recording not only the cycle of the church year and the work of the parish organisations, but also the achievements of parish children in exams, prize winners in Sunday school, the movement in and out of the district of the parishioners, weddings and births and funerals, and detailed listing of the parish contributors to parochial funds.
As a political community the Church of Ireland in Dublin was Conservative and Unionist. However Dublin Conservatism was not an exclusively middle and upper class phenomenon. After changes in the electoral law increased the numbers of those qualified to vote, and also restricted the opportunities for corrupt practices, Dublin Conservatives organised, in 1883, the City and County of Dublin Conservative Workingmen's Club to mobilise the Protestant working class of the city. The Dublin Protestant working class, Church of Ireland for the most part, were 'rough' rather than 'respectable' both in their politics and in their recreation. The clubhouse in York street off St Stephen's Green was the scene of a spectacular riot in the election campaign of November 1885. In preparation for election night the club had been draped in Union flags and bunting. As a crowd of nationalists besieged the club, demanding the lowering of the flag, the members within responded with a hail of bricks, bottles and, ultimately, gunfire. Time and again the club membership showed that it preferred the excitement of mobilising the Protestant community to the drab tedium of electoral canvassing. Though the club did have as its object the 'provision of rational recreation' for the Protestant working class, for the membership leisure meant beer and billiards. Gambling was a passion that led to frequent disorder and fighting. However this working class club did see itself primarily in terms of creed rather than class, identifying with a wider Protestant community which embraced the Orange Order, the YMCA, the Church of Ireland, and the various political organisations of Conservatism (always Conservatism and not Unionism, interestingly). The club refused membership to Catholics and remained suspicious of any contact with Catholic workingmen's clubs. At the core of its sense of the political community to which it belonged was not conservatism but a militant and uncompromising assertion of Protestantism, especially an evangelical and low-church Protestantism.[12] Hence members willingly turned from heckling nationalists in the ward elections to Dublin corporation to barracking 'Ritualists' in All Saints church, Grangegorman; in St Bartholomew's, Ballsbridge; or the notorious Anglo-Catholic Fletcher le Fanu of St John's, Sandymount.[13]
Partition was a severe challenge to the concept of who exactly were, within the Irish Protestant community, 'our people'. Although the creation of the Ulster Unionist Council in 1905 had already effectively partitioned Unionism, Dublin saw itself as the organisational and cultural centre of the Church of Ireland political community.[14] The City and County Conservative Club in Dawson Street, the Dublin Constitutional Club and the City of Dublin Unionist Registration Association in Leinster Street, and the Unionist Association in Grafton Street all reflected a rich and continuing tradition of political organisation and activism.[15] Ulster Covenant day and the attitude of Ulster loyalists to their fellow Protestants in the rest of Ireland had led to a very heated debate in the Sandymount and Irishtown Christian Association.[16] That exclusion from home rule was not a tactic by the Ulster Unionists but was in fact their objective was finally brought home at a Dublin loyalist rally in November 1913 when, in speech after speech, Bonar Law, Carson and the other leaders of Ulster Unionism emphasised that Ulster would go it alone. Momentarily cowed by the enraged response of the Dublin loyalists (the Ulster leaders were reportedly drenched in spittle as they left the hall) Carson merely repeated his meaningless assurances that Ulster would not sell out southern loyalists.[17] The Conservative Workingmen's Club were active supporters of the Southern Unionists Committee (reputedly the wild men of Dublin Unionism), formed during the Convention of 1918 in a final desperate bid to reaffirm the Union and prevent partition.[18]
The eclipse of the Church of Ireland as a political community in Dublin was not as total as Buckland suggests.[19] Even before the third Home Rule Bill Dublin Unionism had begun to re-invent itself as a middle class 'Municipal Reform Party', under which banner it had some success in the Dublin corporation elections but was especially successful in the suburban townships.[20] This prepared the ground for the re-emergence of ex-Unionists, after the establishment of the Irish Free State, as independents and Businessmen's Party TDS. Major Bryan Ricco Cooper was an independent TD for Dublin South from 1923 until his death in 1930. This same constituency also returned J.P Good (formerly the Unionist MP for Rathmines) as the Businessmen's party TD from 1923 to 1937. In the senate the ex-Unionists formed an independent group under the leadership of Senator Jameson.[21] The Businessmen's Party was never electorally significant. But it was an important indication of the political development of the Church of Ireland community. Most members of the Businessmen's Party ended up in the Fine Gael party. The Dockrells became a political dynasty within Dublin, representing various south city consitituencies from 1918 through to 1977 and moving from Unionism via the Businessmen's Party to Fine Gael. Not all Protestants were Fine Gael supporters and Fianna Fáil The Republican Party had its attractions. The emphasis that Fianna Fáil gave to nuturing indigenous manufacturers through protectionism certainly won it some supporters in the commerical and business world and amongst the working class Protestants. In Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown consituency Lionel Booth was the Fianna Fáil candidate and TD from 1954 to 1969. Booth's background lay in motorcar assembly, one of the protected industries. Another Protestant candidate run by Fianna Fáil in the same constituency was Neville Keery who later went on to serve in the European commission. Fianna Fáil may have calculated that running Protestant candidates would undermine Protestant support for the Fine Gael candidates, the Protestant Percy Dockrell and the conservative and pious Catholic Liam Cosgrave.
This evolution of the Dublin's Protestant political community from Unionism to a non-sectarian middle class 'value for money and sound business principles' political culture underlines the genius of the middle class for compromise and, in the context of Dublin's Church of Ireland community, the fact that the period of the war of independence was not one of overwhelming crisis. From 1920 a curfew curtailed social activity whilst being Protestant and loyal was little protection in the escalating war of terror and counter-terror. The meeting of the St Matthew's registered vestry men in April 1921 ended abruptly at 7.45 p.m. as 'all hurried home being urged forward along the road by fear of the Black and Tans'.[22] With the truce and treaty normal life returned. St Matthew's parish magazine featured a witty article (with a hint of bravado perhaps) on which public building of the city would be most appropriate for the Free State parliament.[23] Across the city in Clontarf the early summer months of 1922, as civil war erupted, were spent in planning the parish fete and the Church Association outing to the Featherbed mountains.[24] Holy Trinity Church Rathmines announced proudly in 1924 that it was 'free of debt and encumbrances, pulsing with parochial life and organised in every detail'.[25] The Conservative Workingmen's Club, rapidly shedding its working class name and identity, spent 1922 on improving its facilities and amusements in order to make the premises more congenial to wives and 'our lady friends'. The club remained an exclusively Protestant establishment, though less fervently evangelical, and as it declined into a middle class club became social rather than political in its activity.[26] though still conservative in their politics the Church of Ireland could be proud of the role "our people" played in the state. That the first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde, should be Church of Ireland was regarded with a quiet pride even if many were less than happy with the new state.
In 1887 it was estimated that were four thousand Orangemen in Dublin, organised in ten lodges.[27] In 1911, despite the presence of the Grand Lodge and about seventeen lodges, including the elite Trinity College Dublin lodge, Orangeism was inert. The yearly submission of the same figure for the affiliation fees of the Dublin Orange Order lodges (about the same as the Derry city lodges) suggest a stagnant membership. The same Grand Officers are returned, the same Dublin Church of Ireland parish clergy are listed as Grand Chaplains. Political activity was fitful and desultory. In 1904 an attempt by the Dublin city lodges to organise a political committee to work the voter register and consolidate the Orange vote never got off the ground.[28] Though politically impotent Orangeism survived in Dublin after independence, perhaps as social and welfare centres. The Grand Orange Lodge had already withdrawn northwards, consolidating its political power within the Ulster Unionist Council, and also reinforcing the Dublin view that Orangeism was an 'Ulster' rather than an all-Ireland Protestant movement. In the Irishtown area the Loyal Orange Lodge 566 and the Royal Black Perceptory lodges 55 and 980 were still meeting in 1930.[29]
As might be expected the main social organisation of liberal middle class (male) Protestant opinion, the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ireland, continued to thrive. Despite the political presence of the leading Freemasons J.H.M. Campbell Lord Glenavy, Chairman of the Senate, and Maurice Dockrell in the Dáil, it could no longer expect the easy access to political power that it had in the years of the British regime, when it succeeded in amending the third home rule bill to prevent any national administration acting against Freemasonry.[30] In the years 1919 to 1923 there was an unprecedented surge in the number of new members and new lodges being formed, shades perhaps of hatches being battened down. Despite the occupation of the Grand Lodge by republicans during the civil war the Freemasons could note in the 1923 report on the 'great improvement in the state of things in the last year'. The bi-centenary year of 1925 was celebrated by a service in St Patrick's Cathedral attended by three thousand Freemasons, and addressed by D'Arcy, lord primate of All-Ireland. By now the main worry was not the authorities in the Free State but rather an incipient partition of Freemasonry. The majority of Freemason lodges were now in Northern Ireland and they objected that the Board was 'too much a Dublin crowd'. There were also reports that the Antrim Freemasons, forgetful perhaps of which organisation they had joined, were staging public parades in their masonic regalia. The Board was reorganised, though their continued to be complaints that the northern members were poor contributors to Masonic charities based in Dublin, preferring to fund their own.[31]