Kevin Dixon: The Irish in Torbay

There has been a strong interrelationship between Ireland and England’s far south-west from our earliest recorded history up to the present.

We have evidence of fifth century Irish colonisation into Devon and Cornwall while the Gregorian mission of 596AD saw Irish Christians begin the conversion of what was to become England.

In the other direction were the Normans who invaded Ireland in the late twelfth century, marking the beginning of 700 years of shared though often bloody history between our neighbouring islands.

English rule in Ireland was characterised by oppression, which included land confiscations, political disenfranchisement, and attempts to suppress Irish culture and religion. This intensified in the Tudor period with, for example. Sir George Cary of Torre Abbey coming to Ireland in 1599 tasked with “putting down rebellion and organising government”. The Cary family remained landlords in Ireland until losing their property in the Irish Land Act of 1882.

One event that had a long-lasting impact on English-Irish relations was the arrival of William of Orange at Brixham on 5 November 1688, an event that marked the beginning of his replacement of James II in the so-called Glorious Revolution.

In 1801 the Irish Parliament was abolished, with Ireland becoming a part of the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. This loss of independence was not accepted by all, however, and would be the cause of conflict over the succeeding centuries.

Irish manpower became essential to the defence and expansion of Empire. Torbay was an anchoring ground for the Royal Navy’s Channel Fleet, a quarter of the crews being Irish in the nineteenth century; and on land their countrymen made up more than 40% of Victorian army personnel.

Nevertheless, the Irish were often treated with contempt and seen as “rude and barbarous”, innately criminal, and the core of the "dangerous classes". Religious differences were accentuated by the often-desperate incomers being prepared to work for less money, thereby lowering wages for other workers. They consequently faced prejudice and discrimination in housing and employment.

While Irish immigration rates varied in response to politics, economics and social conditions of both places, the largest single exodus followed potato crop failures in the 1840s known as the Great Irish Famine.  It is estimated that more than one million people died and almost the same again emigrated to escape severe poverty and starvation.

What brought significant numbers of Irish folk to the Bay was the construction of the railways. The workforce were the navvies; shortened from ‘navigators’, the eighteenth-century canal-builders. Most navvies were English, although the Irish comprised about 30% of the workforce.

A railway station serving Torquay was opened in 1848, with a new station near Abbey Sands in 1859. The resort then hosted a large community of men with a liking for alcohol living in a shanty town at Torre, with little fear of authority, speaking their own dialect, and with many from Catholic Ireland.

The potato blight that ravaged Ireland also affected Devon. Social unrest increased and in May 1847 Bread Riots broke with several thousand fighting with local traders and raiding shops in Fleet Street and Torre. After a number were arrested, the navvies of Torre made their presence known. Some had joined forces with rioting locals and been detained, and from their encampment their comrades marched on the Town Hall to free them. 60 navvies armed themselves with “pickaxes, crow bars and shovels, with the avowed purpose of pulling down the Town Hall”.

To restore order, a revenue cutter and a government steamer brought a detachment of coastguards. Forty troops arrived from Exeter while 300 special constables were sworn in. Eventually, 27 rioters were jailed. Yet the prisoners had to be sent to Exeter by sea, instead of by road, as a plot to rescue them had been discovered.

Alarmed by both local uprisings and foreign threats, in February 1853 a public meeting was held in the Town Hall. It was resolved to set up a company of volunteers, and 80 men were armed and given uniforms.

In Ireland, meanwhile, there was a growing belief that armed struggle was the only way to achieve independence. In 1867 there was a rebellion, the Fenian Rising, followed by a bombing campaign in London which caused many deaths and injuries. Fearful of subversion and even revolution, in December 1867 “in consequence of Fenian agitators” a force of 300 special constables was raised in Torquay.

Though the journey towards an independent Ireland was long and troubled, the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent War of Independence did ultimately lead to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

It also saw the partition of Ireland.

In 1912 thousands supporting the maintenance of the union, led by the barrister Sir Edward Carson, signed the Ulster Covenant pledging to resist Home Rule. Carson’s message had as much resonance in Britain as in ‘Protestant Ulster’ and huge crowds turned out throughout Britain out to reject Irish independence.

In Torquay local people took sides and the newspapers were full of letters supporting either Home Rule or the Ulster Unionists. Often this division was along party lines: the pro-Home Rule Liberals; and the Conservatives and Unionists who, as the name suggests, wanted a continued union between Britain and Ireland. From Torquay a telegram was sent to Belfast that read: “Torquay Division Unionists send best wishes for your success.”

On 9 December 1912 Sir Edward Carson arrived in Torquay to speak from the balcony of the Conservative Club. He was barracked by a party of Torquay Liberals when he came to address a torchlight procession of Devon Unionists. Lampooning the supposed solemnity of the occasion, the Liberals arrived “attired in helmets and carrying dummy rifles”, holding aloft banners that read ‘King Carson’s Braves’ and, in a reference to local suffragettes, ‘Carson’s Unionettes’.

The pro-Unionist local paper called these “disgraceful scenes in Union Street” and described “gangs of hooligans with banners and tin trumpets in mockery of the Ulster Day demonstration at Belfast”. The demonstrators “howled Carson down” and he “gave up the attempt to speak.”

Never reconciled to the division of their nation were the paramilitaries of the Irish Republican Army who carried out decades of attacks in Ireland and the British mainland. On 26 June 1985 police evacuated six local hotels after an IRA team was found with a cache of bombs and a list of 12 seaside resorts, including Torquay. A five-strong terrorist cell had been staying at the Palm Court Hotel and traces of explosives were found.

At the same time, far right groups in Torbay were in correspondence with Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Those days of conflict are thankfully now behind us.

Today we recognise the past and present contributions made by Irish residents and visitors. Their influence on local culture is all around and includes that of those many writers and artists with Irish heritage including Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey. Incomers further promoted the reemergence of the Catholic Church which accelerated tolerance and freedom of religion; the Assumption of Our Lady was built on Abbey Road in 1853.

The Irish have always been a part of the evolution of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham and they remain with us still. In the 2021 Census 714 people identified themselves as Irish residents of Torbay.