LEINSTER LEADER – CHAMPION OF LOCAL INTERESTS SINCE 1880. LOOKING BACK SERIES 335, 10 JUNE 2013

Leinster Leader – champion of local interests since it first rolled off the printing press in 1880.

By Liam Kenny

The Leinster Leader first rolled off the presses in August 1880. It was one of a generation of new provincial newspapers which caught the rising nationalist mood of the time — the activities of the Land League were among its major editorial crusades; so too was the advancement of the long-held aspiration for an independent Ireland free from British rule.

In this fast-changing context the columns of the paper represent the period often referred to as the “Celtic revival” (1880-1920) with much prominence being given to activities of associations such as the Gaelic League and the GAA. The paper was in its early years published at Naas and at Maryborough (Portlaoise) and for many decades carried material from a wide sweep of mid-Leinster incorporating all of County Kildare and large swathes of Counties Meath, Offaly, Wicklow (west of the mountains), and south county Dublin.  

Home Rule meetings, Land League campaigns and other movements associated with the resurgence of Irish culture
filled its news pages. But it was not entirely a campaigning newspaper as it fulfilled the function of local reportage by carrying full reports of the meetings of local public bodies such as the Town Commissioners and the Poor Law Guardians.

At a time of change in 21st century local government structures it is interesting to consider the number and variety of local government bodies in Ireland under British Rule. Their number included the Rural District Councils and the Poor Law Guardians, and a plethora of boards and committees and other local elected bodies long disappeared from local administration but which occupied many column inches of reportage in the Leinster Leader of the era. The detail in such reports with the meetings being reported with verbatim accuracy has left a rich legacy for historians to mine in later years.

The newspaper had to look after its commercial interests and for many years its front page was comprised entirely of advertisements — the prominent merchants’ houses in the chief towns of Leinster were among the major advertisers. The newspaper sailed close to the wind of controversy in its early years with its first editor, Laois man Patrick Cahill, being jailed by the Dublin Castle authorities for publishing what they viewed as treasonable material.

Another editor of outstanding note was John Wyse Power who was one of that iconic band who met in Thurles in November 1884 to found the Gaelic Athletic Association. Indeed one of the earliest reports of that meeting appeared in the Leinster Leader later that month.

Wyse Power’s tenure in the editor’s chair at the Leader offices was short but it straddled that crucial period when the GAA was founded. A plaque has been erected outside of Leinster Leader house in South Main Street Naas to mark the paper’s association with one of the founders of a sporting organisation which has survived all the vicissitudes of politics and economics to remain the largest sporting movement on the island of Ireland.

In the early 20th century the Leader editorial desk was occupied by Galway man Seumas O’Kelly who achieved national repute for his output of short stories, poetry and drama with some of his theatre scripts being performed by the fledgling Abbey Theatre. He also co-wrote a play with Casimir Markievicz, husband of Countess Markievicz, heroine of the 1916 Rising. Seumas O’Kelly too is remembered with a plaque on Leinster Leader house on which there is inscribed the tribute “A gentle revolutionary” reflecting his belief that the pen was mightier than the sword as an instrument of revolution.

His brother Michael O’Kelly had a more militant role in the nationalist movement and was one of the many nationalist sympathisers rounded up and interned by the British in the weeks after the 1916 rising. The controlling shareholder in Leinster Leader company in its early years was James Laurence Carew, MP for North Kildare. A significant figure on the Irish political stage of the time he was close to Parnell and sided with the latter in the split of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was an outspoken political leader and entrepreneur and was one of the key influences in positioning the Leader as preferred reading for Irish people of nationalist sympathies in mid Leinster.

From a technical point of view the Leinster Leader print works at South Main Street Naas was always at the forefront of printing technology. The paper was initially typeset by hand but by 1898 the company had acquired its first Linotype machine for setting full lines of type. In the early 1900s state-of-the-art Monotype machines were installed mainly for dealing with the considerable printing business which the company had built up in parallel with the newspaper proper.

In later years the printing business flourished with printing jobs undertaken for a variety of local and national publishers. At one stage the Leader printing works must have been the most ecumenical printing house in Ireland because it printed in the one year the Maynooth pastoral journal The Furrow, the Church of Ireland quarterly Search, and the Jewish Yearbook!

The Leader continued to be at the centre of coverage of local news in Co. Kildare and its adjoining counties right through the twentieth century adapting to innovations such as photography and computer typesetting to ensure its place as one of the province’s leading weekly journals.

 In modern times the challenges have changed. The Leinster Leader pioneers of the 1880s were operating in an environment where the local newspaper was effectively the only form of communication available to a public who were prepared to wait for the weekly production cycle to read the local news.

Little did early managers and editors visualise that one day media with names such as “Facebook” and “Twitter” would deliver a stream of news on a twenty-four and seven days a week basis with people expecting to be updated by the minute never mind waiting a week for the news.

Nor could they have imagined how computers would harvest vast quantities of information and deliver them through applications such as “Google” and “Wikipedia” at the touch of a button. 

Such modern methods of information gathering and of communicating present challenges for local newspapers established in the 19th century. But the local press has proven itself to have a particular place in the weekly routine of many households. The “Leinster Leader” has established itself as a household newspaper since those heady days when it first rolled off the presses in 1880. And now with another renewal of its popular content of news, sports and features, it is set to look forward to maintaining that position throughout the 21st century.