INTRODUCTION

The significance to the Catholic Church in Britain of Irish immigration cannot be overestimated. The rapid growth in the size of the English Catholic population in the century following the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850 is largely due to the influx of successive waves of mostly working-class Irish migrants coming in search of greater economic security particularly in the industrial towns in the north of England (Gwynn, 1950; Hickey, 1967; Lees, 1979: 164–212; Ling, 1973; McLeod, 1974: 72–80; 1981: 128–31; Norman, 1984: 216–20). For well over a century the Irish have been the largest immigrant community in Britain. Given this fact and the continuing conflict in Northern Ireland, it is extraordinary that there has been no major study of the Irish in Britain since John Jackson wrote his book over two decades ago (Jackson, 1963).

One of the consequences of the continuous influx of Irish immigrants has been the over-optimistic assumption that the Catholic Church in England and Wales has uniquely been able to retain the allegiance of working-class adherents (Holmes, 1978: 163; Norman, 1984: 6). With the decline of Irish immigration since the 1950s as a result of changes in the Irish economy attendant upon the accession of the Irish Republic to the European Economic Community (E.E.C.), any such association seems more likely to have been spurious and dependent upon the continuation of large-scale migration of mainly working-class Irish which suppressed or postponed high rates of ‘leakage’ or apostacy.