Nixie Boran  & The Castlecomer mine & quarry Union  

In the nineteen twenties a miners' leader named Nicholas (Nixie) Boran emerged. Boran was born at Massford, the site of the Jarrow coal seam, in 1903. Like the children of other mining families, he was sent into the pits while still a child and began work as a trammer's assistant at the Modubeagh colliery, Co. Laois, at the age of fourteen. From 1919 to 1921 Boran was tending pumps in the pits at Glenmullen. Boran leamed the art of "gunning a tram" at  the Modubeagh colliery for 4 shillings a day. When he went to work at Glenmullen he was earning 4s 3d for a ten-hour day. 

In his teens he joined the I.R.A. and took the republican side in the Civil War in which he was wounded and hospitalised in Limerick. He was admitted to hospital under an assumed name and was said to be suffering from wounds sustained in an accident involving a hay knife. The Catholic Bishop of Limerick visited the hospital, spoke to him and discovered he was not who he said he was. Boran had to be rescued from hospital by Dan Breen and Dinny Lacy. So, although still a very young man in 1930, in the Castlecomer area he was something of a folk hero. Boran was a man of intelligence, courage and determination, a man with a mission, to improve the working and living conditions of the Kilkenny miners. 

In the late nineteen twenties he was attracted towards communism and a branch of the Revolutionary Workers' Group was formed in the mines in 1930. The first members were Boran himself, Paddy O'Carroll and Jimmy and Tom Walshe. The miners were invited to send a delegate to the Congress of the Red International of Labour Unions, held in Moscow in August 1930. Boran was selected as a delegate but was refused a visa by the Government, against which he had fought during the Civil War. However, he was smuggled out of the country, on a ship with a cargo of cement and succeeded in reaching Russia where he stayed for three months. During these months he travelled extensively in the country, up to the great mineral centre of the Urals, to Samara where he visited collective, state and commune farms and then down to the coal mining area in the Donetz Basin. In between he lived in either Moscow or Leningrad where he met and talked to revolutionaries, including Irish students at the Lenin School in Moscow. 

After three months he left Russia for Ireland. Boran returned from Moscow at the end of November. When the bus in which he was traveling came to Crettyard, Co. Kilkenny, it was boarded by two guards, one of them a Sergeant. They told him they were taking him for questioning to the Police Barracks at Massford. Boran's followers and supporters had gathered at Railyard to welcome him, and he was cheered and applauded when the bus stopped. The crowd protested at his detention, jeered the police and followed the bus to Massford. In the barracks he was searched, all his belongings were carefully scrutinized and his passport was examined. Detective Officer Spain questioned him about his absence and on how he had traveled to Russia and back. Boran refused to answer any questions. The miners had waited outside and when he emerged they cheered and then walked him home. He told them of his adventures and of the difficulties he had encountered on his journey to and from Russia.

On the following Sunday Fr. Cavanagh, the parish priest of Clogh, preached during Mass against communism in Moneenroe. He referred to Boran and his trip to Moscow which he said had been paid for in "red gold". In the week that followed the priests visited the schools of the parish and spoke to the children on the evils of Russian communism. Boran had a meeting of his own on the following Sunday and gave a detailed account of what he saw and heard during his three months in Russia. After his return, Boran began directing his energies to the foundation of a miners' union. 

Up to then the unionised miners  in the pits - many of the colliery workers belonged to no union- were members of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. The general feeling about the Transport Union at the time was, that it knew little about mining and did not understand miners' problems. Across the channel the British miners had their own union, and some of the Kilkenny miners felt that they also should have a union of their own. The communist leaders encouraged and supported this idea, seeing in it a possibility for Ireland's  first red union: Boran himself was familiar with the United Mine Workers Union in Scotland and is believed to have used it as the prototype for the Kilkenny union. 

Bob Stewart, a prominent member of the British Communist Party, and a leader of the Scottish miners with a wide knowledge of mining and miners' unions was in Moneenroe in December 1930 to give advice and help in setting up the new union. He told them to expect total opposition from the combined forces of Church and State, congratulated them on their fighting spirit and encouraged them to be ambitious, pointing out that there was a wide field of un-organized workers in mining,  and quarrying,  and that these could become a base on which to build a really big union.

The union was officially launched on the evening of Wednesday December 3, 1930 in Moneenroe - the heart of the mining district. The first item on the agenda was the forming and naming of the new union. On the motion of J. Buggy it was decided that it was to be known as the Castlecomer Workers' Union. This was to subsequently cause some confusion, with Boran having to write to the Kilkenny Journal to point out that they were not affiliated in any way to the Workers' Union of Ireland, Larkin's union. Probably because of this,  the union was later renamed and came to be known as the Irish Mine and Quarry Workers' Union or the Irish Mine Quarry and Allied Workers' Union. People in the area called it simply the Mine and Quarry Union.

From the beginning there was no attempt made to pretend that the  New union was politically non-aligned. The two other items on the agenda were the formation of a Revolutionary Workers' group and local sales of the “Workers Voice”. Speaking at the meeting Boran dealt with local opposition to the paper, the difficulties in distribution and its importance in the overall scheme of what was to be done. To increase sales the area was divided into districts. Again on Boran's advice it was decided to set up a Branch of the R.W.G.  to give political guidance to the union. So from the beginning it was publicly seen to be a communist union and as such could expect total opposition from the clergy and  the majority of the local population.

The Church and State continued to oppose the Union , so in 1933 the miners had to go back to the ITGWU. Years of unrest followed and so this began the setting up of the Welfare Society , which was guided by the 1908 Agenda of the Kilkenny Miners Federation.