Sir,—The two articles in the May/June 2024 issue dealing with aspects of the Irish in Britain and the Troubles are valuable. One dealt with the Birmingham and London Irish centres, the other with the work of Desmond Greaves and the Connolly Association. However, it is important to record that, even taken together, this is only a relatively small part of the story of the political intervention of the diaspora in Britain during the Troubles.
The role of the Anti-Internment League, the Troops Out Movement, the Labour Committee on Ireland (LCI), the London Irish Women’s Centre, Labour Women and Ireland and the Irish in Britain Representation Group (IBRG) should be acknowledged. It was they who, often working in tandem, were the leading political agitators in Britain against British policy in the North in these years, and who lobbied not just for ‘troops out’ but on issues such as the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Prevention of Terrorism Act and strip-searching. It was they who organised the largest demonstrations. It was the LCI who persuaded the Labour Party to support a ‘unity by consent’ policy. It was the IBRG who campaigned for the Irish in Britain to be recognised, for the first time, as an ethnic minority, a campaign that had many successes.
In doing so, we (yes, I was a participant in some of this) often fought against the conservative and ‘keep-your-heads-down’ tendencies of the longer-established Irish organisations, such as the Federation of Irish Societies. We also worked with many on the British left, and indeed with the Young Liberals, to ‘make Ireland an issue’. The full story of this has yet to be told, although there are some important chapters in Dawson, Dover and Hopkins (eds), The Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain (Manchester University Press, 2017).—Yours etc.,
GEOFFREY BELL
London