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- Title
The 'Miracle of Coalisland': Class and sectarianism in the Tyrone Coalfield, 1922-26.
- Authors
Bhloscaidh, Fearghal Mac
- Abstract
This article uses the forgotten prospect of an industrial revolution in mid-Ulster to examine the nature of the Unionist administration and deploys 'history from below' to examine and understand the tensions and contradictions at the intersection between class and sectarianism. The analysis centres on the 'Coalisland Miracle', when Unionist insider, Sir Samuel Kelly, purchased a coal mine and various other local businesses in East Tyrone during the consolidation of James Craig's Protestant Parliament. Ultimately, Unionist dreams of a new industrial revolution resembled fevered delusions as the new polity endured precarious finances and interminable economic decline. The article also analyses how complex issues of class and sectarianism played out on the ground when Ulster's leading capitalist confronted a majority nationalist workforce in an area whose constitutional future appeared to hang in the balance, demonstrating how workers struggled to secure their meagre slice of the pie, while employers, managers and the state strove to defeat organised labour. An analysis of four labour disputes linked to Kelly's scheme reveals how sectarianism worked in employment practices, a subject much talked about but seldom supported by hard evidence. The article concludes by examining an extraordinary lockout at the Tyrone Colliery itself and a subsequent and unprecedented display of working-class solidarity in 1926, when Protestant and Catholic workers united after the much-heralded Coalisland miracle turned out to be little more than pie in the sky.
- Subjects
ULSTER (Northern Ireland &; Ireland); SECTARIANISM; COALFIELDS; MIRACLES; EMPLOYMENT practices; COAL mining; EXPECTATION (Psychology)
- Publication
Socialist History, 2023, Issue 64, p25
- ISSN
0969-4331
- Publication type
Article