Irish National Association of Australasia
When the Home Rule Bill was deferred at the outbreak of the First World War, Albert Thomas Dryer, the 27-year-old Australian-born son of an Irish mother and a part-German, part-Irish father decided that it was time to rally Irish-Australian opinion to assist Ireland to achieve her national destiny.
The first Irish National Concert was held in the Sydney Town Hall on 23 November 1915, and by January 1916 the INA had 211 financial members.
The nationalist aims of the INA became even more important in 1916, as Dryer and the rest of the Irish community watched helplessly while Britain crushed the Easter Rising and proceeded to execute sixteen of its leaders.
In a war-time British colony, already bitterly divided over the conscription issue, it was inevitable that Irish nationalists would be regarded as sinister subversives.
While the INA carried on its cultural and social activities and offered what support it could to the struggle for Irish independence, it was inevitable that the division of opinion over the Treaty would be reflected on the Australian scene.
The forces against the Anglo-Irish Treaty, including the INA, continued their political campaign in Australia with protest meetings, leaflets and newspapers, as well as collecting money to send home to Ireland.
On Monday, 30 April 1923, when two Republican speakers arrived to address a meeting at Waverley in Sydney's Eastern suburbs, they were arrested.
Despite the Envoys incident, the Irish community in Australia was increasingly divided, and showed little interest in the INA's political activism.
The first stage of Minogue's vision for the INA, was to purchase land in Devonshire St, Surry Hills to establish a cultural centre for the Irish in Sydney.
He and the Committee worked hard to raise the money to build the centre and in develop a cohesive Irish community to patronise it.
Deputy federal leader of the Australian Labor Party, and one-time Prime Minister, Frank Forde, was also a member of the INA.
Nearly thirty years later, the INA again came up against the Church when it tried to use the proceeds of the 1944 St Patrick's Day sports carnival to build a hail for the Irish people in Sydney.
Proceeds of St Patrick's Day activities had traditionally gone to the Catholic orphanages and the next year the Church took over the organisation of the sports carnival from the INA.
In that year, the former Taoiseach and 1916 veteran Éamon de Valera made a controversial visit to Australia to campaign for an end to the partition of Ireland.
In 1953, the existing terrace houses in Devonshire Street were demolished, and as well as the céilís and other cultural events the first issue of the newspaper "Sydney Gael" was published.
Other activities of the INA included an annual lecture at Sydney University, housie, Irish dancing, the pipe band, and the upkeep of the 1798 Memorial at Waverley Cemetery.
There was a grand opening on 16 September by Minogue in the presence of Albert Dryer, the Irish chargé d'affaires and the mayor of Sydney, and a crowd of over two thousand.
Nevertheless, action grew from conflict, and in the late 1970s a Reform Committee emerged from the young, more recent Irish immigrants, bringing new ideas.
Patrick O'Farrell, (1966), 1916–1966, 50th Anniversary Easter Rebellion: Report to the Irish National Association of Australasia Padraig Pearse Branch 3.
