The Irish league club in Huddersfield started in 1881 in Corporation Street at the top side of the Town Hall where Ramsden House is now. It was a branch of the Irish National Land League - a national movement to mobilise the small tenant farmers and farm labourers in Ireland, and the large numbers of Irish emigrants from a similar background recently exiled in Britain and America into an active, organised, coherent pressure group dedicated to breaking the power of the landlords in Ireland.
The Irish National Land League was founded in Dublin on 21st October 1879. It had its origins in the land agitation launched by Michael Davitt at a mass meeting at Irishtown Co Mayo on 20th April 1879 called to try to avert the local threat of mass evictions on a scale reminiscent of the Great Hunger of recent memory. Twenty-nine years earlier as a four year old his family were evicted from their small farm in Co Mayo and came to live in Haslington in Lancashire in England. Two months after the meeting in Irishtown, on 8th June, Charles Stewart Parnell delivered a speech at a mass meeting in Westport Co Mayo where he set the tone of the ensuing land war with the banner headline “hold a firm grip of your homesteads and lands”.
On Sunday 23rd November 1879 over 2000 Irish people from Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Batley and Birstall met on waste ground at Dawgreen in Dewsbury to protest at the distressed state of tenant farmers in Ireland. One of the speakers at the meeting was John Monaghan of Huddersfield. The Monaghan family lived at Almondbury. John and Tom were master blacksmiths and farriers. Tom became president of the Huddersfield branch of the Irish National League. In 1880 Parnell became leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons. Among his supporters were T P O’Connor - Irish Party MP for Galway and later for the Scotland Road area of Liverpool and John Monaghan. In 1881 John Monaghan chaired the meeting when T P O’Connor came to talk in Huddersfield.
In the same year the Irish National Land League of Great Britain was established in London and at an Irish National Land League conference in Leeds John Monaghan was made National Organiser for England and Wales. It is said that he could easily have been elected MP for an Irish constituency but Parnell felt that he was much more important to the Party as the organiser in Britain. In 1882 he presided when Michael Davitt spoke at Batley Town Hall. Willie Cosgrove - a former secretary of the Huddersfield branch wrote of John Monaghan “He was one of the greatest orators I have ever heard…. however big the crowd his voice could be heard quite distinctly by all”. He emigrated to America in 1884. (One wonders why?)
When you observe how quickly the Irish National Land League became established in Huddersfield and the other Irish communities in the northern towns it is very likely that there were organisations already in place, which merely changed their names. This happened quite regularly as organisations were proscribed (banned) by the authorities or as their focus changed. They tended to continue, or re-emerge under a new name. We know for definite that there was an established Catholic Association Club in Huddersfield before 1880. We know that the better off Irish organised the Catholic Ball each year on St Patrick’s Day from 1856 right through to the 1930’s. From the mid 1870’s there were Confederate Clubs supporting the parliamentary party under Isaac Butt. Michael Davitt was a Fenian organiser and activist in the late 1860’s. He clearly had contacts with the Irish communities in the different towns. It is thought that the Brotherhood of St Patrick - a popular national organisation of the time was a front for Fenian activity. It is also thought that many of the Confederate Clubs were infiltrated by the Fenians of the time. Further research is clearly required to establish how the Irish organised themselves in the period prior to 1880.

The Early Days - 1880 to 1923

1923 to Present