George A. Birmingham was the pen name of James Owen Hannay (16 July 1865 – 2 February 1950), Irish clergyman and prolific novelist. He was active in the Gaelic League, but strained his relations with Irish nationalists by supporting Robert Lindsay Crawford in his opposition to clerical control of education.
Protestant Churchman and Gaelic Leaguer
Hannay was born in Belfast and educated at Methodist College Belfast from 1883 to 1884 before attending Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1889 as a Church of Ireland (Anglican) minister and from 1904 served as rector of Holy Trinity Church, Westport in County Mayo.
Participation in language revival activities in Mayo and defence of the Gaelic League in the Church of Ireland Gazette led to Hannay being co-opted onto the League's national executive body in December 1904. His personal network of Irish Irelanders included Gaelic League President Douglas Hyde and the principal ideologue of the emergent Sinn Féin movement, United Irishman editor Arthur Griffith. They were sympathetic to Hannay's desire for a "union of the two Irish democracies", Catholic in the south and Protestant in the north. In the north, in Ulster, he saw a potential ally in Lindsay Crawford, Grand Master of the new Independent Orange Order. He regarded the breakaway Order, like the Gaelic League as "profoundly democratic in spirit" and independent of "the rich and the patronage of the great".
Hannay's defence of Crawford's opposition to the clerical control of education in Ireland, however, strained his relations with Irish nationalists, and it was a position that had little support in their own church. The Church of Ireland Gazette dubbed Crawford "the solitary champion of secularism in the Synod". Hannay withdrew from the Gaelic League in the wake of ongoing protests about the tour of his successful play General John Regan.
