Friends of Ireland

Friends of Ireland, a backbench group in the British Labour Party, 1945–51, who supported the Catholic/Nationalist cause in Northern Ireland. Numbering perhaps 100 MPs at its height, it failed to persuade Attlee's government to intervene. On two occasions, the Northern Ireland bill (1947) and the Ireland Act (1949), it circumvented the ‘speaker's convention’ and debated Northern Ireland issues. Friends like Geoffrey Bing saw British intervention and socialist politics as necessary precursors of Irish unity, but Hugh Delargy, chairman of the British wing of the Anti‐Partition League, argued that amelioration could only follow an ending of partition. The Ireland bill flushed out these contradictions as the government guaranteed the position of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. The Anti‐Partition League broke with Labour and opposed four of its candidates in the 1950 general election, losing Delargy in the process. The Friends faded away. Several, including Bing and Delargy, re‐emerged as Bevanites.

A. C. Hepburn