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There were no other Irish Jews who occupied as prominent a position as Briscoe, though evidence is emerging of involvement at other levels. In March 1922 an article in the Jewish Chronicle claimed that ‘it is needless, of course, to point out that the Jews of Dublin and other centres under the new regime have always been in hearty sympathy with Young Ireland in its struggle for political and national emancipation … their hearts were ever with those who aspired to revive and resurrect Irish nationhood’.

It also claimed that a Jewish student had fought in 1916, and that ‘it was common knowledge in Dublin that another Jew in a passive way has contributed materially to the bringing about of Irish self-government, and that he is still a prominent figure behind the scenes, and in the confidence of the leaders of the present Provisional Government’. Despite his own prejudices, even Count Plunkett conceded to de Valera that ‘in Dublin the Jews are friendly, indeed sympathetic with us’.

Contact between republicans and Jews was often more likely to occur outside Ireland, within societies where both were part of diasporas. Some co-operation was subterranean in nature. London IRA man James Delaney worked with ‘a Jewman named Ginger Barnett in Petticoat Lane in the East End and a half-caste named Darby the C**n’ (probably ‘Darkie the C**n’ a Jewish gang leader whose real name was Isaac Bogarde). Both men accompanied Delaney when he purchased arms from Chinese and African sailors in Limehouse and Cable Street.

Cork IRA gunrunner Denis Kelleher also dealt with a ‘Jew named “Ginger”’ from the East End who was his ‘main source of supply’. Another Jewish gunsmith based on the Hackney Road sold Kelleher ‘any amount of stuff- – Webleys … rifles and any amount of .303 and 45 ammunition. Most of our stuff came from these two sources.’ In Glasgow Seamus Reader ‘was in touch with Mr. Keisler … a Russian Jew’ who facilitated arms purchases. In June 1921 British intelligence reported that ‘war material reaches Ireland from Manchester in considerable quantities and Jews are said to be active in sending these consignments’.

Other contacts involved sympathetic radicals. Hostile commentators noted that when Hannah Sheehy Skeffington spoke ‘under the Sinn Fein flag’ to the Workers’ Socialist Federation in London, her audience was ‘largely composed of Russian Jews’. Indeed the labour movement was another channel for connections. Jewish trade unionist Simon Greenspon had been a key figure in the 1919 engineering strike in Belfast. By late 1920 he was touring England in support of the workers expelled from the shipyards in Belfast. Glaswegian trade unionist Emmanuel (‘Manny’) Shinwell, a Jewish tailor, was a fraternal delegate to the Irish Trade Union Congress in Cork during August 1920.

This co-operation was even more evident in the United States where many Jewish socialists expressed sympathy with the Irish cause. In 1917 Sheehy-Skeffington told a meeting in New York that ‘the Irish, the Russians and the Jews’ were the ‘three elements that are going to smash English imperialism and all other kinds of imperialism.’ She asserted that ‘there is something in persecution, which keeps the soul free. That is why the Russian, the Jew and the Irishman love freedom so.’

Maurice Feinstone of the United Hebrew Trades was one of the speakers at an Irish solidarity rally in New York in May 1919. The audience was ‘composed largely of laboring men and women not only of Irish descent, but of every race. The men, largely in the majority, came dressed in their working clothes. Italians, Irish, Jews, Americans and a sprinkling of Hindus made up the audience.’

Jewish socialist leader Morris Hillquit believed there would be ‘no difficulty at all in obtaining numerous and substantial contributions’ for the Irish cause from ‘representatives of labor and Jewish organisations if the matter is properly presented to them’.

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