HISTORIAN Kieran Glennon will launch his new book ‘Pogrom and Partition: Belfast’s Market Area 1920-22’ in St George’s Market this Friday at 7pm.
The book, which is the first in a planned series of books titled ‘The Market: A People’s History’, will examine the effects partition and the Belfast pogroms had on the people of the area.
The series, which has been commissioned by the Market Development Association, will feature many aspects of the history of the people who lived in Belfast’s historic Market area, looking at a diverse range of topics such as the history of boxing, industry, women, the Famine and the figures involved in both the 1798 Rebellion and the creation of Ulster unionism.
The book is a brilliant read and Kieran Glennon’s research delves into one of the bloodiest periods in recent Irish history, when it is estimated around 500 people died in Belfast alone.
Glennon’s work shines a light on many of the horrific events at that time, focusing on the lead-up to the McMahon family massacre, in which an RIC murder gang led by DI Nixon and CI Harrison and operating out of Brown Square Barracks killed five members of the McMahon family and a lodger. Kieran’s research suggests the atrocity was in retaliation to the IRA shooting dead two Specials in May Street earlier that day.
HISTORY: Floral Hall (on left) was one of the buildings burned down by the IRA after plans were discovered to billet police and Specials there
Kieran's research is able to show that despite the horrific sectarian violence which was engulfing Belfast at the time, the Market area itself was somewhat immune to the violence raging elsewhere in the likes of Short Strand, North Belfast, Clonard and the Shankill. Around the time of the pogrom, the Market was predominantly Catholic, but around a quarter of those who lived there were Protestant, and they lived peacefully with their neighbours. Kieran is able to show that most of the people from the Market who died in the pogrom were actually killed outside the area.
However, this is not to say the area escaped totally from the violence, and the IRA Brigade in the Markets was one of the most active in Belfast during the period. Kieran highlights the testimonies of volunteers such as Séamus Timoney and Joe McPeake who were key figures in keeping the IRA’s northern offensive going against the newly formed northern Irish state.
With the help of a spy inside the newly formed government, the Market volunteers were able to obtain plans drawn up by the government and police to commandeer buildings in nationalist areas to use as bases to enforce the law of the new government. The IRA subsquently burned the buildings down, including the Floral Hall in Cromac Square.
Kieran Glennon also highlights the decline of the IRA in the Market, with mass internment taking its toll as men were crammed into the prison ship the SS Argenta. But the biggest blow came when Volunteer Henry Crofton was captured with documents leading the police right to the IRA Belfast Brigade’s headquarters, situated in the St Malachy’s Irish War Pipe Band’s hall in Rathbone Street.
Speaking on the history series, Fionntán Hargey of the Market Development Association said: “So far we’ve commissioned eight historians to do different micro-histories of the Market. Forthcoming books in the People’s History series will be looking at the boxing history,written by Barry Flynn, dealing with bare-knuckle boxing and the St George’s Boxing Club, which is the oldest boxing club in Belfast.
"Gerard McAtasney is going to work on a piece about the Famine in the Market, as he is the leading historian of the Famine in Ulster. There will be a book on the Irish language history in the area, the 1798 Rebellion and individual biographies of famous people from the area.
"Our ambition is to publish a different book in this series every quarter. We aim to have books on industrial, social, political and cultural history. It should be really fascinating as so many different people from both communities have lived and worked in the area. On one end of Joy Street you have Henry Joy McCracken, one of the fathers of Irish republicanism, and on the other you have the Presbyterian Minister Henry Cooke, who is one of the fathers of Irish Unionism. The Market isn’t only geographically in the centre of Belfast, but it’s also at the centre of a number of intersectional narratives in the city as well.”
Author Kieran Glennon said: “I conducted my research using old newspaper reports at the time, from the Belfast Telegraph, the Northern Whig, the News Letter and the Irish News. I was able to make extensive use of the military archives in Dublin, as many of the volunteers from the Market applied for pensions in the Irish Free State and extensively listed their records of service.
"I also used the Public Records Office Northern Ireland (PRONI) and was able to see all of the very detailed police reports from the time. It made for very interesting reading, seeing the differences in the same events coming from the pension records and the police reports.
"You had the police saying I know this man did this, and was responsible for that, but in the pension records I could see there was also a lot of stuff they did which the police had no knowledge of. I also saw a few examples of the volunteers over-egging the pudding, so to speak, and saying for instance they killed six Specials in an engagement when only one might have been killed and a few wounded. However, those taking note of this weren’t sending people up North to check, so there was a bit of embellishment going on.”
'Pogrom and Partition' looks at some of the most dramatic and important years in the history of Belfast.
— Market Development Association (@MDABelfast) October 24, 2022
Kieran Glennon tells the story of the of the men and women who lived in the Market at the time and also those who opposed, policed and interned them. pic.twitter.com/SMs9xSuTJS
Kieran spokes of the significant number of Protestants who lived in the Market at the time.
“What I saw was that the Catholics and Protestants who lived in the area got along rather harmoniously for the time, considering what was happening at division points in the North and West of Belfast. There were a lot of examples of people voluntarily swapping houses, and this was done through the clergy. A priest would ring up a minister and say, ‘I have a family looking to move, is there anyone from your area who wants to swap?’ My own great-grandparents moved in this way, and when the pogrom happened they swapped with a Protestant family and moved from Whitehall Gardens to over near Celtic Park in the West.
VOLUNTEER: Séamus Timoney, originally from Co Donegal was the O/C of the IRA's 2nd Battalion and lived in Eliza Street in the Market. Many of his Brigade's daring exploits were carried out in the area.
"The sectarian violence which was inflicted on the Market came from outside, and I call it the choreography of sectarian violence as you can find examples of these sectarian attacks going back long into Belfast’s history. In 1864 there was sectarian rioting which happened at these flashpoints. In the 1920s the first instances were in Bombay Street, this is also where the first instances happened again in 1969. The ground is well travelled in that area, you also have places such as St Matthew's on the Newtownards Road by Short Strand, which was attacked repeatedly in the 1920s, and was also the site of the Battle of St Matthew's in 1970, and onwards to the present day.
"The sectarian violence that was directed at the Market didn’t come from within, it came from outside. It was an external threat rather than an internal eruption between the Protestants and Catholics in the area, who seemed to have got on fairly peaceably.
"There were a few instances of robberies, and a few sectarian killings, one being a Catholic woman who was killed in a grenade attack, and one wherein a Protestant bakery worker was shot, but compared to elsewhere in Belfast it wasn’t as bad as elsewhere. Most of the people who were killed in the Market area were combatants, so to speak, in the conflict, such as policemen, Specials, soldiers and IRA volunteers.”
The launch of Kieran’s book, ‘Pogrom and Partition: Belfast’s Market Area 1920-22’ will be held in St George’s Market this Friday at 7pm where Kieran will give a talk on the book on the history contained in the work.
