Qualla: 1933 Dublin Riot

1933 Dublin Riot: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. St Patrick's Day, 17 March 1933. Cardinal Joseph MacRory, Primate of All Ireland, delivered a sermon from the pulpit of the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street condemning communism and calling for a united Catholic front to oppose 'those enemies of God who pose as friends of men.' A few hundred parishioners did exactly what the sermon implied they should. They walked east, crossed Marlborough Street, and made their way to Connolly House on Great Strand Street - the headquarters of the tiny Communist Party of Ireland. The riot that followed lasted several nights, ended with the building burned out, and involved one of the most surreal escape stories in Irish political history: while the mob tried to set the place on fire, the people they were trying to kill slipped next door and sat down to a meal of fish and chips.

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1933 Dublin Riot: The Sermon and the March

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. MacRory's St Patrick's Day sermon was not unusual in its substance. The Catholic Church across Europe was alarmed by the rise of communism in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and Irish bishops had been preaching against it for years. What was unusual was the timing - a nationa...

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1933 Dublin Riot: Aston Quay

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. The first violence happened away from the main target. On Aston Quay, on the south bank of the Liffey, a smaller crowd identified two men they believed to be communists and beat them. The Irish Times reported that the mob attempted to throw both men into the river and that Garda ...

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1933 Dublin Riot: The Siege of Connolly House

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. By 10.30 pm the main body of the mob had reached Connolly House. According to Eugene Dowling, one of the defenders inside, the attackers broke through an iron gate into a furniture store next door before forcing their way into the back of the building. Several of the people shelt...

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1933 Dublin Riot: Who Was in the Crowd

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 4.0. The standard later telling of the riot - that this was a poor, lumpenproletariat mob whipped up by clerical rhetoric - has been challenged by more recent historians, including Donal Fallon, who points out that much of the crowd appears to have been respectably middle-class. The 1...

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