THE COMPLEX SUCCESSION of events in Ireland between 1916 and 1923, conveniently condensed by Peter Hart into the single heading of ‘revolution’ – a rising, an election, a war of independence (with various alternate names), a truce, a treaty, another election and then a civil war – elicited a bewildering array of responses in Irish Liverpool. The various forms of expatriate nationalist activity and expression were all apparent in accentuated form, reinvigorated and fused in a ‘revolutionary’ compound of competing, occasionally complementary, elements. Having played a relatively minor participatory role in the Easter Rising, the Liverpool-Irish revolutionary underground came to the fore in the Irish wars, drawing upon lengthy experience, stretching back beyond Fenian times, of gun-running, rescue and refuge, simultaneous and diversionary activity. Separatist republican forms of politics, previously overshadowed by repeal and Home Rule formulations, gained new purchase through the Irish Self-Determination League and its first national president, the former Harfordite P.J. Kelly. Co-ordinated and energised by the Council of Irish Societies, there was a resurgence of cultural nationalism with aims and aspirations beyond the ethnic purity and stultifying censorship of the Edwardian years. Thus, there was over-arching cover for underground and other forms of ‘revolutionary’ activism, including a significant female contribution through the Cumann na mBan. Throughout all this, however, T.P. O'Connor and the INP, seemingly relics of the pre-revolutionary past, consolidated their electoral hold, but with little prospect either of extending their resonance beyond the Liverpool-Irish enclave or of long-term political survival once the ‘revolution’ in Ireland had run its course.

As noted already, by no means all the Liverpool Irish were enthusiastic participants in the imperial war effort applauded by O'Connor, Harford and the dockers’ leaders. A hard core of nationalists, ably supported by the Cumann na mBan, stuck firm to the Irish Volunteers, shunning any contact with the rival Liverpool Irish National Volunteer Force sponsored by ‘so-called Nationalist leaders’ such as Harford to ‘hoodwink’ young Irishmen into joining the British army: