The Secular and the Radical in Irish Associational Culture of Mid-Victorian Glasgow

It will be argued in this article that, in engaging with a diasporic network centred on the Dublin-centred National Brotherhood of St Patrick, a more public and confident Irish Catholic leadership emerged in Glasgow during the 1860s. The self-improving reading room culture that the Brotherhood was at pains to provide for also, however, proved attractive to Irish-Scots workers and gave them important formal associational experience. When the local Catholic hierarchy portrayed this as secret society nationalism in disguise, leading Irish Catholic worthies reacted by publicly associating themselves with more militant nationalists in expressions of an Irishness that was both secular and, at times, radical.