Between the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, a bewildering array of social and political movements drew support from the Irish in Britain.1 Indeed, the number and range of indigenous and Irish organisations that at various times reached out to the Irish suggests that the migrants’ often-cited marginality obscures their considerable political potential. Despite a record of wide participation, however, Irish migrants are often viewed as a people isolated by their culture and nationality. Labour historians in particular blame the iron grip of the Catholic Church, or the distraction of Home Rule politics, when arguing that ordinary Irish migrants were largely unmoved by the economic and social imperatives of class-based organisations. However, more recent research has questioned the formulation of ‘ethnicity’ and ‘class’ as distinct phenomena. Fielding, for example, considered that Irish migrants in Britain were subject to influences of both ethnic and class types. ‘That this produced what, from the outside, appeared a confusing, incoherent cultural amalgam is’, he added perceptively, ‘due to the preconception of the observer and not the culture itself.’2