Henry Dixon

Who is Henry Dixon?

Henry Dixon was an Irish nationalist at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. He was a key member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Féin, and was active in organisations such as the Young Ireland League, the Celtic Literary Society and the Sinn Féin Printing & Publishing Company.

Dixon appears for the first time in open political activity in the spring of 1885 when he gave a lecture on the need to protect Irish industry to a meeting of the Dublin Young Ireland Society.

Between then and the end of the century he was active in nationalist organisations, most with overlapping memberships, all controlled by the IRB. He ran the National Club Literary Society with Patrick Lavelle. He was the only non Dublin city councillor on the Charles Stuart Parnell Leadership committee established by the National Club to create an alliance between local government officials across the country to consolidate Parnell’s support base. He was also on the executive of the Parnell Leadership Fund with Fred Allan. The purpose of this fund was to raise money to maintain a Parnellite presence in the press.