Days of brave music at Jimmy’s Hall

I FIRST heard of Jimmy Gralton in the early 1980s when his surname was used as the title for a short-lived socialist magazine.

I remember the shock when I read about his expulsion — the only Irish person ever deported from this country (made possible because he was a naturalised US citizen).

His ‘crime’? Running a dancehall in the face of Catholic Church disapproval and ‘preaching’ socialist politics. When I went searching for the files relating to his deportation in the National Archives a decade later, they were listed but could not be found. It seemed as if someone did not want this story to be told.