ABSTRACT
The Scottish mining communities were fractured by ethnicity and religion. The expansion of the western coalfields in the middle decades of the nineteenth century had coincided with the peak years of post-famine Irish immigration and by the 1870s there were significant numbers of Irish miners and miners of Irish extraction. This chapter examines the distribution and the cultural institutions of this Irish presence, and considers its significance for trade unionism and politics in the coalfields. If Irish immigrants and their descendants saw the national question as paramount in the parliamentary sphere until its 'solution' in 1921, their identity as Catholics was the principal focus at the level of parochial politics. The sharply differentiated religious composition of the Lanarkshire survey districts accords with impressionistic evidence concerning the West Central region. Levels of Irish immigration and Roman Catholicism were highest in the West Central region, but these were unevenly distributed and there were enduring tendencies towards religious segregation.
