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W. M. Walker- “Irish Immigrants in Scotland: their priests, politics and parochial life”- Historical Journal 15:4 (1972) 649-667

This chapter aims to explain to what extent the Irish failed to fulfil Friedrich Engels expectations of them. Engels was convinced in 1845 that Irish immigrants in Britain had added an explosive force that would have significant consequences in British society. The chapter does this by looking at the religion of the immigrants, and the communities they created for themselves, looking particularly at Dundee.

The chapter says that while it is often considered how some of the British did not want the Irish to mix with British working class society, it is often not taken into account how the Irish in Britain also did not always wish to mix with the British population. The chapter says this was common among Irish Catholic, and was endorsed by Irish Catholic priests. Irish Churches, church halls and schools were built to create this exclusive and intensive Irish community.

For example, in Dundee in the early 1860s the physical signs for Irish Catholic presence were 2 churches and 3 Catholic schools (which the Dundee Advertiser described as “a cellar under the chapel”. These buildings served a community of around 20,000. In the next 10 years the size of the Irish Catholic community stayed roughly the same, but the number of churches and schools doubled, and Catholic church properties continued to be added up to the end of the century.

The Irish Catholic parochial life encompassed religious, political, economic, educational and recreational elements, and it was therefore very difficult to move away from.

The chapter summarises that the Irish did not have the impact on British society that Friedrich Engels thought it would have, because he did not take into account the religion of the immigrants and the community that they had while in Britain, which this chapter calls “the cult of the priest”.

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