Temperance and Home Rule

The influence of Ireland on Liverpool for the century after Catholic Emancipation was unquestionably enormous. The Irish population remained constant at around 150,000 for much of the nineteenth century. Though more Irish people lived in London, the concentration of the community and its relative size were far less. The Liverpool Irish were overwhelmingly but not exclusively Catholic. They conformed to the typical immigrant pattern and settled in a limited number of districts, in Liverpool’s case the older urban areas, especially in the central and northern wards. Both the Catholic and an influential section of the Protestant leadership, clerical and secular, kept a close eye on developments in Ireland. ¹ In the 1860’s, two issues had particularly exercised the Irish both at home and in Liverpool - disestablishment and education. An interesting parallel is found in the attitudes of the Irish diaspora in Australia. ² For the Catholic Irish of Liverpool, the link with Liberalism was strong even before the Catholic bishops in Ireland threw their support behind Gladstone in the late 1860s on the promise of reforms in the Church of Ireland, denominational education and land tenure in Ireland.