Diamond, Charles (1858–1934), newspaperman and politician, was born 17 November 1858 in Gortade parish, Maghera, Co. Londonderry, third among six children of a farmer and his wife (née O'Neill); his parents’ other names are not known. Allegedly there were ‘local leaders not of the politician but of the patriot type’ (i.e. Ribbonmen or Fenians) on both sides of the family (Catholic Herald, 10 Mar. 1934, p. 6). A cousin, also from Gortade and called Charles Diamond, became secretary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. According to a school contemporary Diamond's father was ‘rack-rented and evicted’. The family then moved to Upperlands parish, where Diamond was educated at the local national school, then at a neighbouring classical school, ‘Tirgarvil School’, run by one John McCloskey; other graduates included John Tohill (1855–1914; bishop of Down and Connor 1908–14) and several future monsignors. This suggests he was intended for the priesthood; an obituarist claimed that when asked about a relic of the founder of a religious order on his bedside table, Diamond replied: ‘They wouldn't take me.’ The school contemporary claimed the Diamond family left the county after a relative was killed during an attack by Orangemen on catholic railway workers at Upperlands on 12 July 1878.
At some point in the late 1870s Diamond moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, England, where he first encountered T. M. Healy (qv) in a local debating society and was first secretary, then president of the Newcastle branch of the Land League. His nationalist activities brought him into association with the pro-Irish Liberal MP and newspaper proprietor Joseph Cowan, who was a major role model. After initially working as a spirit traveller (though in later life he was a strong temperance advocate) Diamond went into business as a stationer and paper merchant in 1880, making paper bags and boxes, then moving on to printing almanacs and stationery. He married (1882) Jeannie McCarthy of Newcastle, whose brother James William McCarthy (1853–1943) was a priest of the Glasgow diocese 1879–1914 and bishop of Galloway 1914–43. The marriage was childless.
Journalism and newspaper ownership
On 13 December 1884 Diamond established the low-priced Irish Tribune (later the Catholic Tyneside Advocate; it also became the basis for the Catholic Times in 1897), which rapidly achieved a weekly circulation of 20,000 and within a year had spawned local editions in several major cities. It was the first of a network of local catholic newspapers Diamond established throughout Britain, the most prominent of which were the Glasgow Observer (later Scottish Catholic Observer, purchased soon after the Tribune) and the London Catholic Herald, which he founded in 1888.
At one time or another Diamond established some fifty newspapers, whose locations ranged from Aberdeen to the south coast of England. Thirty-seven were still in operation at his death; these combined local news (a Leeds-based canon recalled on his death that for many readers Diamond's papers were the catholic parish weekly, which thought no event too small to record) with shared political coverage (heavily oriented towards the Irish nationalist cause) and editorial material, much of it written in Diamond's aggressively outspoken style. He also published ten actual parish magazines and the Catholic Home Journal. In 1889 Diamond launched the Catholic Educator as a forum for catholic teachers and school proprietors. Diamond came to be known as ‘the catholic Harmsworth’ (Gallagher, 186). His papers were grouped under two companies, the New Catholic Press Ltd in England and the Scottish Catholic Printing Co. Diamond's papers were strongly endorsed by the pro-nationalist catholic bishop of Nottingham, Edward Bagshawe (Diamond initially backed his support for the creation of a specifically catholic party, though after Gladstone's endorsement of home rule he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Liberal alliance) and by Cardinal Manning, and received much church-related advertising. Diamond maintained good relations with the Scottish catholic hierarchy throughout his career, though his fierce attacks on catholic tory aristocrats complicated relations with Manning's successors. During the home rule controversies the Catholic Herald regularly denounced catholic Conservative peers, and Diamond's views on the Irish war of independence led to an open breach with Cardinal Bourne of Westminster.
Diamond settled in London in the late 1880s. He was associated with Michael Davitt (qv) and wrote for his Labour World, strongly criticising C. S. Parnell (qv) during the split, on the grounds that ‘the politics of a nation are the morals of the people writ large’ (Callanan, Healy, 362). Diamond was frequently critical of the Irish party's links to the drink trade (his catholic credentials included strong temperance views), and this involved him in a long-running dispute with the Home Government Branch of the Irish National League in Glasgow.
Parliament and business
From 1892 to 1895 Diamond was anti-Parnellite MP for Monaghan North; his first utterance in the house of commons, addressed to E. J. Saunderson (qv), who had referred to certain Irish catholic priests as ruffians, was ‘Ruffian to you, sir’. At this time some catholic critics thought his home rule views brought him too close to the Liberal party; however, in the education controversies of the early twentieth century he denounced Liberal advocacy of non-denominational education (seen, with some reason, as covertly protestant). He was strongly identified with the Dillonite wing of the party and vigorously opposed Healyism both in parliament and in the Irish organisation in Britain; the strength of Healyism in Monaghan, as much as the demands of his business interests and his characteristic refusal to be an organisation man, led to Diamond's deselection in favour of the Healyite Daniel McAleese (qv) in 1895.
In addition to his newspapers, Diamond participated in several other business enterprises. The most prominent were the English Sewing Cotton Co. of Manchester (he led a shareholder revolt against under-performing directors and restored profitability), the English Insurance Co. (which he founded; it merged with an older-established firm) and the Yorkshire Paper Mills, Barnsley (Diamond formed a company to acquire it and later sold it to a continental firm). In 1900 he organised a combine which attempted to rationalise the printing trade in New York and Albany.
War and politics in Britain and Ireland
Diamond was an enthusiastic supporter of the commitment of John Redmond (qv) to the British war effort and actively called for Irish catholics in Britain to join up – though he was nearly arrested because of a pointed reference to the British royal family's German origins. At the same time he opposed calls for a separate Irish organisation to be maintained in Britain after home rule, declaring that Irish activists should join the Labour party after the war. Diamond initially denounced the Easter rising – which he blamed on Edward Carson (qv) – as a ‘pro-German riot’ but shortly thereafter broke with Redmond over the Irish leader's willingness to accept a partition-based compromise. Soon thereafter Diamond proclaimed his support for Sinn Féin.
In 1920 Diamond was prosecuted for incitement to murder, having published a Catholic Herald editorial, ‘Killing no murder’ (presented as a reflection on tyrannicide), a fortnight after an assassination attempt on Lord French (qv), lord lieutenant of Ireland. Despite character references from several commercial associates, Diamond was found guilty and served six months’ imprisonment in Pentonville. He supported the Anglo-Irish treaty and thereafter was an outspoken supporter of W. T. Cosgrave (qv) in Irish politics; he described Éamon de Valera (qv) as ‘a hybrid Spaniard of alleged Jewish extraction’ (Gallagher, 97). Diamond was noticeably anti-Semitic; he declared that a Jewish state in Palestine would be dominated by Masons and communists, who would persecute Christianity (Catholic Herald, 6 January 1934), and though he condemned Nazi persecution of the Jews he declared that the internationally organised Jewish boycott of German goods was equally unjustified.
Diamond unsuccessfully contested the constituencies of Camberwell–Peckham (1918), Bermondsey–Rotherhithe (1922) where he was defeated by forty-six votes, and Wandsworth–Clapham (1924) as a Labour candidate, paying his own costs. During these contests Diamond emphasised that he was not a socialist but that he considered the Labour party's policies to amount to a generalised fairness which was in accordance with catholic social teaching. (He attracted considerable mockery by conducting his Clapham campaign from a Rolls-Royce.) He was, however, violently hostile to the general strike of 1926 and the widespread support for birth control and easier divorce expressed by Labour activists. (Diamond regarded Nazi eugenics, with its compulsory sterilisation of the ‘unfit’, as the logical end result of birth control). His papers campaigned against the 1929–31 Labour government's refusal to subsidise catholic schools, and claimed that Labour had succumbed to communist influence. In Scotland, however, his papers favoured the ultra-left Independent Labour party because its leaders were prepared to support catholic education for pragmatic reasons. His attitude towards Labour politics was similar to that of the Catholic Social Guild, which he constantly and munificently supported. His obituarists claimed that he was a generous employer in relation to wages and working hours; he insisted all catholic employees attend mass on holydays of obligation.
Final years; death; assessment
Diamond retained close ties with former Irish parliamentary party members, including Joseph Devlin (qv) and John Dillon (qv); when told on his deathbed of Devlin's death, he commented: ‘How thoughtless of Joe not to wait for me’ (Catholic Herald, 27 January 1934). He attended the funeral of William O'Brien (qv) (1852–1928) in London. While noting (as much by inference as by direct statement) his opinionated volatility and refusal to act as an organisation man, his obituarists state that Diamond possessed great personal charm. He has been compared to the famously aggressive French catholic ultramontane journalist Louis Veuillot, who combined ultramontanism, fierce political commitment, and the promotion of catholic devotionalism. His vitriolic and often erratic editorials habitually failed to distinguish between the views and personalities of opponents, yet he appears to have been surprised when the targets of his excoriations took them personally. Perhaps it is not surprising that his last years are described as lonely except for his close relationship with his wife, and that in his last years the profits of his papers were drained by a series of costly libel actions – Art O'Brien (qv), target of a particularly bitter Diamond vendetta, successfully sued him in 1926. Financial depression caused him to dispose of his Rolls-Royce in 1930.
On a visit to Glasgow at the beginning of 1934 Diamond fell ill and was discovered to be suffering from kidney trouble. He returned to London to recuperate, but deteriorated rapidly. In his last weeks he consciously sought to realise the catholic model of a ‘good death’, privately expressing regret for his ‘tempestuous and violent attacks’ (Goffin, Watkin, 159) and composing a general statement of faith, repentance, and forgiveness and of gratitude for the support he had received from the English people over the years; it was published in his papers after his death. Diamond died at his residence, 22 Prince's Gate Court, South Kensington, London, on 19 February 1934; he had received numerous expressions of goodwill from catholics of all backgrounds, including a widely publicised papal blessing. Shortly before Diamond's death he had made plans to form an editorial board on which the catholic philosopher E. I. Watkin, whom he admired, would have an important role. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, London, close to the graves of T. P. O'Connor (qv) and ‘Long John’ O'Connor (qv).
In the last issue of the Catholic Herald for which Diamond wrote (20 January 1934) he included an editorial note insinuating that Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (qv), who had been an occasional contributor to his papers, was a communist and in receipt of a British government pension. Sheehy Skeffington sued for libel; the paper pleaded fair comment, arguing that the piece was a mere query rather than a positive falsehood, and that her general outlook might legitimately be described as communist. Despite its counsel's reminder to the Dublin jury that ‘Mr Diamond had died honoured by the church, and was comforted on his deathbed by a message from the pope’, Sheehy Skeffington was awarded £750 plus costs. She subsequently applied for a compulsory winding-up of Diamond's company, which was sold for £12,000 to new and less populist owners, including Tom Jones, private secretary to Lloyd George when he was prime minister. After passing through various hands the Catholic Herald and Scottish Catholic Observer titles survived into the twenty-first century as semi-official English and Scottish catholic papers.
‘Rough Diamond’ (Goffin, 159), ‘the stormy petrel of catholic journalism’ (Gallagher, 199), played an important role in the maintenance of Irish and working-class catholic identity in the Britain of his day. In 1978 Owen Dudley Edwards described him as the most important influence on Scottish catholic journalism in the previous hundred years (O. D. Edwards, ‘The catholic press in Scotland since the restoration of the hierarchy’, David McRoberts (ed.), Modern Scottish catholicism 1878–1978 (Glasgow, 1979)). His achievements, passions, and prejudices resembled those of Irish émigré politicians and entrepreneurs elsewhere in the Irish diaspora.