American Committee for Relief in Ireland

The American Committee for Relief in Ireland was formed through the initiative of Dr. William J. Maloney and others in 1920, with the intention of giving financial assistance to civilians in Ireland who had been injured or suffered severe financial hardship due to the ongoing Irish War of Independence. It was only one of several US based philanthropic organisations that emerged following World War I with a view to influencing the post-war settlement from their perspective of social justice, economic development and long term stability in Europe. Some of them concentrated their efforts on events in Ireland, and while activists of Irish ethnicity were well represented, membership was far from confined to Americans of Irish heritage. Apart from the ACRI, bodies such as the American Commission on Irish Independence and the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland raised money and attempted to influence US foreign policy in a manner sympathetic to the goal of Irish secession from the United Kingdom.

This period of Irish political radicalism coincided with a Red Scare in the United States. Jim Larkin, an Irish trade unionist, who had been closely associated with James Connolly in Ireland and with the Wobblies in the USA, was serving a five-year sentence in Sing Sing prison for promoting his socialist agenda. While his political views differed fundamentally from most of the Sinn Féin leadership, Irish republicanism was seen by many of the American establishment as based on a questionable ideology. During the Irish war of independence, the activities of Irish-American fund-raising organisations were viewed with suspicion and kept under close scrutiny by the intelligence services including J. Edgar Hoover, head of the General Intelligence Division of the Bureau of Investigation. US policy towards Irish concerns, initially hostile or at best indifferent, became somewhat less so following the 1920 U.S. presidential election and the landslide victory of Warren G. Harding over James M. Cox.

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