"On 8 March 1868 a priest and an editor led a mock funeral of Irish miners into Hokitika cemetery to plant a Celtic cross. They were honouring the "Manchester Martyrs", three Fenians hanged in Britain the previous November. The procession confirmed the worst fears of the British authorities, that Fenian agitation to free Ireland had been imported into New Zealand. News that a Fenian has shot the Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney threw the Government into a panic. The procession's ringleaders were arrested on charges of inciting riot and publishing seditious libel and troops were sent in to help local volunteer militia maintain law and order. The Irish made up a good quarter of the 26,000 miners on the West Coast goldfields ... The Protestant merchants who ran these boom towns welcomed excess profits but not adversarial politics. When loyalists returning from celebrating the Duke's survival were attacked by Irish miners at Addison's Flat, it looked as if the Irish had boiled over.The Hokitika authorities prepared for war. From newspaper and official accounts, from coded Government cables and correspondence, and with a selection of fascinating illustrations, David McGill has recreated those stirring times when the West Coast was a powder keg of conflicting loyalties and the authorities seemed determined to ignite it. [This book] also recounts the splendidly libellous and vitriolic newspaper war between the Celt and the West Coast Times and describes the trial of the West Coast Fenians, who were defended by Australia's most famous criminal lawyer, the colourful R. D. Ireland. The events of 1868 are set in the context of the Irish cause in New Zealand, both then and now ..." -- [Preface]