The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott by Tim Fanning

Author:Tim Fanning [Fanning, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography, General, Europe, Ireland, Religion, Christianity, Catholic, Social Science, Sociology of Religion
ISBN: 9781848890497
Google: BQiWDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Gill & Macmillan Ltd
Published: 2010-03-03T00:33:22+00:00

10

Knights and Bishops

The Knights of Saint Columbanus had a quasi-mythical aura in 1950s’ Ireland. Membership of the secretive lay Catholic order was deemed by the Catholic middle classes to confer certain advantages. This was hardly surprising. At least four members of the first Inter-Party government, which was hit by the Mother-and-Child controversy in the early part of the decade, were Knights: the Tánaiste, Minister for Industry and Commerce and long-serving leader of the Labour Party, William Norton; the Minister for Lands, Joseph Blowick; the Minister for Education and leader of Fine Gael, Richard Mulcahy; and the Minister for Justice, Seán MacEoin.1 The President, Seán T. O’Kelly, was also a Knight.

The Knights were founded by a Belfast parish priest in 1915 as a lay organisation ‘to develop a practical Catholicity among its members, to promote and foster the cause of the Catholic faith and Catholic education’.2 The early proponents of the Northern-based organisation saw the Knights as spearheading lay Catholic action against the twin evils of ‘Orange Ascendancy and British Socialism’.3 By 1917, the first Dublin council of the Knights was in existence and five years later the order moved its base of operations from Belfast to Dublin. By 1923, the Knights took possession of Ely House in Ely Place – formerly part of the magnificent Georgian mansion owned by the Earl of Ely, Henry Loftus – which became their national headquarters.

Throughout the 1920s, the Knights were linked to the hierarchy’s campaign against indecent literature and the evils of the motion picture, the radio, the dance halls and intemperance, and were involved in organisations campaigning against ‘evil’ literature such as the Vigilance Association and the Catholic Truth Society. Evelyn Bolster, the Knights’ official historian, notes that the archives of Ely House contain ‘countless efforts made by the Knights to alert Church and State alike to the recurring crises provoked by the media’4 regarding perceived obscenities. By the latter half of the 1950s, the Knights were in ‘virtual control’ of the Censorship Board and banning about 600 publications a year. The board banned the work of Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Dylan Thomas, André Malraux and John Steinbeck, as well as Irish writers such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Seán O’Casey, Liam O’Flaherty, Sean O’Faolain and Frank O’Connor.5

Alongside their work in protecting the public’s moral virtue, the Knights’ primary objective was to counter what they regarded as discriminatory employment practices against Catholics. As far as the Knights were concerned, much of the business and economic life of the Republic was still disproportionately in the hands of Protestants. Combating ‘the anti-Catholic activities of certain commercial firms in the country who excluded Catholics from their employment whenever possible’ was among the Knights’ main fields of endeavour. In 1943 a resolution was passed that ‘we must make a close study of actual conditions, social activities and services where a very determined drive is being made by non-Catholics to take over’. According to Evelyn Bolster: ‘Alien, non-cooperating Protestant and other

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