John Saunders’ outstanding BritBase website provides a constant stream of newly discovered games, aided by contributions from a set of regular contributors at the English Chess Forum, and some of these involve Irish players.
One game, added there today, is from the Major Open section in the British Championship 1951, and features perhaps the first known game by “the Irish writer, activist, and tramp” Jim Phelan.
I was not familiar with Phelan, but his unusual life story is very thoroughly covered, by Patrick Maume, in the Dictionary of Irish Biography and, from the chess point of view, by Edward Winter (“Convict, Vagabond, and Chessplayer”).
James Leo (Jim) Phelan was born in Inchicore, Co. Dublin in 1895. On March 11, 1923, he joined Seán McAteer, a member of the Communist Party of Ireland, in holding up a family-run post office in Liverpool, where Phelan was living. Though Phelan always maintained that the motive was non-political, Maume asserts that the robbery was undertaken for the IRA. The robbery went bad, and McAteer shot dead one of the family. McAteer escaped to the Soviet Union, where he was later killed in the 1937 purges, but Phelan was captured, and as an accomplice in the robbery was legally responsible for the murder. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was soon commuted to life imprisonment. He spent 15 years in Winson Green, Maidstone, Dartmoor, and Parkhurst. During his captivity, he took a creative writing class, and compiled notes on his experiences, which he later used as the basis for 23 books.
Phelan played chess in prison, and was a founder member of a chess club at Parkhurst. His novel Jail Journey (London, 1940) describes a simultaneous exhibition there by Sir George Thomas in which he played (cf. Winter’s article).
The game added today at BritBase is, unfortunately, a loss. Phelan fell behind in development and had a difficult position out of the opening.
Position after 19… Qxd6
White has a significant advantage but Black is still in the game. After further twists and turns, White won.
[Click to replay the full game.]
Phelan scored 2½/11, finishing in 30th-31st place, tied with Peach, out of 32. John J. O’Hanlon played in the same section, scoring 5½/11 for joint 16th-18th places. This event had “a strong “Swiss” field of 32” (BCF Yearbook 1950-51) and the winner qualified for the following year’s British Championship.