The Brian Boru Club and Irish Political Identity

At the centre of this story stands the historic Brian Boru Irish Club, founded in the late nineteenth century by members of Ashton’s Irish community. The club traces its origins to around 1889, with evidence of activity from the mid-1880s, and is widely regarded as one of the oldest surviving Irish clubs in Britain.

Named after Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland who defeated Viking forces at Clontarf in 1014, the club emerged during a period of intense political mobilisation among the Irish diaspora. Initially associated with the Irish Democratic League, it provided a forum where emigrants could discuss developments in Ireland and support nationalist causes from abroad. Many members had family connections to farmers affected by eviction and land agitation, making the campaigns of Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell particularly resonant. 

Like Irish communities throughout Britain, the men and women of Ashton participated in what historians have described as "long-distance nationalism". Fundraising events, political meetings and community gatherings enabled emigrants to maintain a practical and emotional involvement in Irish affairs while building new lives in Lancashire. 

Faith and the Gerard Legacy

Religion was equally important in maintaining a distinct Irish identity. Long before the major waves of nineteenth-century immigration, Ashton was associated with the Gerard family, prominent Lancashire recusants who remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith during periods when Catholic worship faced legal restrictions in England. 

The family's support for local Catholic institutions helped lay the foundations for the development of Ashton’s Catholic community. Following Catholic emancipation, a chapel established in the early nineteenth century paved the way for the construction of St Oswald's Roman Catholic Church, completed in 1930. Built during the economic difficulties of the interwar years, the church became both a religious centre and an important symbol of community cohesion. 

For generations of Irish families, St Oswald's served not only as a place of worship but also as a social and cultural anchor, marking baptisms, weddings and funerals that linked successive generations to both Lancashire and Ireland. 

From the Coalface to Westminster

The Irish community of Ashton produced a number of figures who achieved prominence in public life.

Among them was Stephen Walsh MP, who arrived in Ashton as a young teenager and worked in the mines before becoming active in the labour movement. Elected to local government and later to Parliament, Walsh became Secretary of State for War in the first Labour Government of 1924. His career reflected the opportunities that emerged for some members of Britain's Irish working class through trade unionism and democratic politics. [

Another notable figure was William Kenealy VC, who attended St Oswald's School and worked as a pit boy before joining the Lancashire Fusiliers. During the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 he received the Victoria Cross for exceptional bravery, becoming one of the most decorated sons of the town. 

The town also produced Joe Gormley, later Baron Gormley, who rose from the local mines to become President of the National Union of Mineworkers. As one of the most influential trade union leaders of the twentieth century, Gormley embodied the close relationship between Irish migration, industrial labour and political activism that characterised much of Ashton’s history. 

The Transatlantic Contradiction: Owney Madden

Not every story emerging from Ashton-in-Makerfield's Irish community followed the path of politics, military service or organised labour. One of the most colourful and controversial figures linked to the wider Wigan district was Owen Vincent "Owney" Madden, who would become one of the most notorious Irish-American figures of the Prohibition era.

Born to Irish immigrant parents from Mayo and Sligo, Madden spent part of his childhood in the Wigan area before emigrating with his family to New York in 1902. The industrial landscape of Lancashire, crowded with mills, collieries and immigrant families seeking opportunity, formed the backdrop to his earliest years. 

In New York, Madden rose from poverty to become one of the most powerful gangland figures of the twentieth century. Known as*"Owney the Killer"*, he became associated with organised crime during Prohibition, controlled lucrative bootlegging operations and acquired a significant interest in Harlem's famous Cotton Club. He also became involved in professional boxing promotion and developed political connections that extended well beyond the criminal underworld. 

Madden's story stands in sharp contrast to those of Walsh, Kenealy and Gormley. Yet all four men were products, directly or indirectly, of the same wider Irish diaspora that transformed communities across Lancashire, Britain and the United States. Their lives demonstrate the diverse and often unpredictable paths followed by the sons and daughters of Irish emigrants.

What makes Madden particularly intriguing is that, despite his notoriety in America, he reportedly retained elements of the culture of his youth, including a fondness for the flat cap and homing pigeons that were familiar sights in the industrial communities of Lancashire. His life serves as a reminder that the Irish diaspora produced not only politicians, soldiers and trade union leaders, but also larger-than-life figures whose stories became part of twentieth-century folklore.

An Irish Lancashire

The legacy of Ashton’s Irish community extends beyond politics and religion. Over more than a century, institutions such as the Brian Boru Irish Club have provided space for traditional music, dance and social gatherings. Programmes associated with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and local dance schools have helped pass cultural traditions from one generation to the next. 

Unlike larger cities, where Irish communities were often dispersed across extensive urban areas, Ashton concentrated much of its Irish social and cultural life within a relatively small geographical area. The result was a distinctive local identity shaped by both Lancashire industrial culture and enduring Irish traditions.

That influence can still be detected in family histories, community organisations, local accents and the built environment. Journalist Hayley Flynn, who grew up in Ashton, has described the town's cultural character as a blend of Lancashire, Liverpool and Irish influences, reflecting generations of migration and exchange. 

A Community that Endured

The story of Ashton-in-Makerfield illustrates how Irish identity could survive and adapt far from Ireland itself. The town's churches, clubs, trade unions and families created institutions capable of carrying cultural traditions across generations. What emerged was neither wholly Irish nor wholly English, but a distinctive diaspora culture rooted in both places. 

From Cabinet ministers and Victoria Cross recipients to trade union leaders and even a future New York crime boss, the descendants of Ashton’s Irish community left their mark on history in strikingly different ways. Their stories reveal the extraordinary influence that a relatively small industrial town exerted far beyond the coalfields of Lancashire. 

Today, that legacy remains visible in the continued life of the Brian Boru Irish Club, the presence of St Oswald's Church, and the enduring family ties linking Lancashire and Ireland. Often overlooked in broader accounts of the diaspora, Ashton-in-Makerfield stands as a compelling example of how migrant communities preserved identity, built institutions and shaped the social, political and cultural life of the modern English-speaking world. 

About the Author

Tim Flynn (T.S. Flynn) spent part of his early childhood in Ashton-in-Makerfield, surrounded by a large extended family whose roots ran deep within the town's Irish and Lancashire communities. Those formative years inspired a lifelong interest in Irish history, migration, family heritage and the wider story of the global Irish diaspora.

Now based in Australia, Flynn is a writer, researcher and historical novelist whose work explores Irish history, diaspora identity, labour heritage and public policy. Through both historical research and personal family connections, his work seeks to recover overlooked stories and examine the enduring links between Ireland and communities around the world.

The Fire of Erin in the Coalfields reflects that enduring interest, examining how a small Lancashire town preserved a distinctive Irish identity across generations through faith, community organisations, political activism and family networks.

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