Dossier 24 - Circular letter from Seosamh Mac Donnchadha (Joseph MacDonagh), Minister for Labour, Dáil Ėireann

Circular letter from Seosamh Mac Donnchadha (Joseph MacDonagh), Minister for Labour, Dáil Ėireann, to the Superiors of all Religious Houses in Ireland, enclosing a copy statement, written by a Belfast priest, detailing ‘the Orange atrocities committed on Catholic workers and others last July and August’. MacDonagh asks the Religious Superiors to use ‘their wide influence to assist in the rigid enforcement and maintenance of the Belfast Trade Boycott’. MacDonagh was elected unopposed as a Sinn Féin MP for the Tipperary North constituency at the 1918 general election. He was Director of the ‘Belfast Boycott’, an attempt in 1920–21 to boycott goods from Ulster that were being imported into the south of Ireland. With a printed flier titled ‘Black list, Belfast Economic Boycott’ listing the principal firms acting as distributors for ‘Belfast goods’ in Dublin and in other parts of Ireland.