Mervyn Busteed, a founder member of the British Association of Irish Studies, has long immersed himself in the historical study of Manchester's Irish population, and this book bears testimony to the success of his endeavors. As Busteed observes in his introduction to The Irish in Manchester c. 1750–1921: Resistance, Adaptation and Identity, it is somewhat puzzling that the Manchester Irish have received relatively little scrutiny from historians of the Irish in Britain, given that Manchester, the pioneer city of the industrial revolution, possessed the fourth largest Irish population of all British cities during the nineteenth century and also became the focus during the early Victorian years for social investigations that scapegoated Irish migrants for many of the social problems associated with the “Condition of England Question.”

In seeking to redress this anomaly, this book—which, as Busteed admits, is not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of all aspects of the Irish experience in Manchester between 1750 and 1921—focuses on the place which the largely (but not exclusively) Catholic Irish devised for themselves in the city, often against a background of anti-Irish sentiment. In particular, by reference to the themes of communal social solidarity, residential clustering, religious loyalties, communal celebrations, and political aspirations, Busteed explores the extent to which the Manchester Irish retained an Irish identity (which, as he acknowledges, is in itself a malleable social construct, subject to renewal and reinvention) while also adapting, for distinctive purposes, to the mores and institutions of the host society.

Thus Busteed traces the development of seasonal and commercial links between Manchester and Ireland during the late eighteenth century that resulted in a substantial resident Irish-born population in Manchester even prior to the famine influx of the 1840s and its concentration in specific residential districts. These included the short-lived “Little Ireland” enclave on the banks of the River Medlock near Oxford Street and the more enduring Angel Meadow or “Irish Town” district on the banks of the River Irk to the north of the city, the subject of an admirable examination of residential clustering. As Busteed shows, the bulk of the Irish population subsequently developed a vibrant communal life, often centered on the public house and the Catholic Church, in Irish-dominated, but never totally homogenous, neighborhoods. This in part reflected a defensive reaction to a hostile urban and cultural environment that was exacerbated by periodic manifestations of anti-Irish sentiment. Indeed, James Phillips Kay's study of the Irish poor in Manchester (1832), which held that the Irish in Britain lowered the values and standards of the working classes in general, helped to engender a national debate on the dangers of Irish immigration. The revival of anti-Catholic sentiment during the mid-Victorian years also contributed to defensive ethnicity, although, as Busteed observes, sectarian conflict was never as widespread or enduring in Manchester, where many migrants hailed from the intensely Catholic counties of northwest Ireland, as in Liverpool or Glasgow, whose Irish-born populations included significant numbers of Ulster Protestants as well as Catholics. Other factors which kept the Manchester Irish apart and helped them to preserve a distinctive identity included St. Patrick's Day celebrations, commemorations for the Manchester Martyrs (members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood who were executed for the murder of a police officer in 1867), and Irish nationalist aspirations and organizations (evident not only in the local campaign for Home Rule but also in sporadic manifestations of the tradition of violent separatism), all of which receive discrete and detailed examination.

Yet, as Busteed shows, there were also factors which engaged the Irish with Mancunian society. Trade union rights, parliamentary reform, Corn Law repeal, Chartism, and the “New Unionism” of the late nineteenth century were all reform campaigns in which the local Irish made common cause with their working-class English neighbors. During the late Victorian period, the Irish also increasingly participated in municipal life, electing second-generation Irish councilors and school board representatives who, while accepting the norms of civic life, were also able to argue for, and protect, distinctive Irish and Catholic concerns. Moreover, under the influence of the Catholic Church, the celebration of St. Patrick's Day and the commemoration of the Manchester Martyrs became increasingly structured and respectable according to the norms and mores of a city which had developed a distinct and confident civic identity. Thus, the Irish in Manchester were in an ambivalent position, to some extent living a life apart yet simultaneously increasingly engaging with the native population. Indeed, as Busteed illustrates, it is surprising that the Manchester Irish remained so Irish and, in preserving their Irishness, that they also made compromises, developing a hybrid sense of identity in order to not only reassure an Irish audience that Irish issues were being addressed but also to reassure a critical local English audience that Irish issues did not seriously threaten British norms of civic and constitutional propriety.

This is a well-written and informative study that makes excellent use of a wide range of local sources, including contemporary newspapers and Diocesan archives, and is placed firmly within the historiography of the subject. Although some of the material is familiar, having been published previously in academic journals, it not only complements but also extends Steven Fielding's pioneering study, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939 (1992), which used the Irish in Manchester as an exemplar. Busteed might have explored some themes more fully, notably the policing of Irish communities and local responses to it, and the broader issue of the nature and extent of Irish economic and social mobility in late-Victorian and Edwardian Manchester. Nevertheless, by examining the processes working for interaction, inclusion, differentiation and the compromises involved therein, Busteed offers a succinct local illustration of the issues involved in approaching and understanding the complex and vexed question of Irish identity—indeed identities—raised in recent scholarship, including by the contributors to Irish Identities in Victorian Britain (2011), edited by Sheridan Gilley and me. As such, it represents a welcome addition to the burgeoning historiography of the Irish in Britain.