ABSTRACT
On a blustery Sunday afternoon in November, 1909, the Catholic Socialist, John Wheatley, debated the Catholic littérateur and Liberal M. P., Hilaire Belloc. To educate the Catholic workers in the West of Scotland about Socialism, Wheatley had organized the Catholic Socialist Society, written Catholic Socialist pamphlets and articles, and debated local priests. The Liberal Party was especially strong in the mining districts, the slums of large cities, and among the Scottish and Welsh Nonconformists and Irish Catholics. The teachings of the Catholic Church and press were, however, often irrelevant and always inimical to the Orangemen and Scotch Protestants within the working class. The operative difference appears to have been the Irish workers’ continuing obedience to both the exhortations of their nationalist leaders who demanded supreme loyalty to the Home Rule cause and the admonitions of Catholic priests who condemned Socialism.
