‘Violence’, Ian Gilmour argues, ‘appears inseparable from the human condition, though its degree is subject to wild fluctuations.’ The violence of any society depends upon its culture, history and institutions. These factors, as well as questions of class and ethnicity, were clearly central to the tradition of violence which welcomed Irish settlers in Britain in the last century. Economically, for example, Irish migrants were perceived by the indigenous working class as a threat to native living standards, while their utility to employers allegedly weakened the class project of the emerging industrial proletariat. Culturally, anti-Catholicism set the majority of migrants apart from the host group; at the same time, the conflicting politics of nationalism and unionism strained Anglo- Irish relations at all levels of society. The Irish and British, drawn together by geography, were separated by centuries of mutual antipathy, and Ireland struggled to maintain a distinct identity in the shadow of its powerful neighbour. In an ironic twist of fate, however, large-scale migration meant that by the 1830s the colony had seemingly turned coloniser, which Carlyle saw as recompense for six centuries of injustice. By any standard measure of ethnic difference—religion, culture, habit, custom, politics—the Irish were seen as different. Each of these factors of difference, moreover, carried the risk of violent repercussions in the new communities. It was a heady brew of politics and religion, interspersed with economic, cultural and social factors, which propagated anti-Irishness in the towns of Victorian Britain. Indeed, as one Irish newspaper in 1868 commented, ‘Nowhere in England can our countrymen consider themselves safe from English mob violence …’.

The background to this material on Cumbrian violence is provided by the conditions and attitudes of Victorian life which were discussed in Chapter 1. From the cessation of hostilities against Napoleon, native workers expressed increasing unease at the threat posed by Irish workers. From Clydeside and Northumberland to London and Birmingham, where Irish settlers clustered, violent reprisals became endemic.