‘Our Own People’: The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association in Interwar Britain and Ireland

Abstract

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA) was originally founded in London in 1922 to aid ‘refugees’ in Britain. It also had an Irish sub-committee, and soon focussed its attention almost exclusively on those loyalists who remained in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated by diehard Conservatives and Irish unionists, SILRA demonstrates the longevity of the afterlife of the Irish Revolution for both of these groups – though both had experienced it very differently. As a non-violent reactionary movement that spanned Britain, Ireland, and the dominions, SILRA offers a useful transnational case-study of interwar counter-revolution in a British context. Moreover, SILRA's Irish committee highlights some of the ways in which the sternest southern loyalists and unionists – who found themselves among the ‘losers’ of the Irish Revolution – preserved allegiances and social solidarity in the IFS.