The Clare Champion Newspaper Archive 

The Clare Champion newspaper was founded in 1903 emerging from the ruins of another paper; The Clareman. The Clareman newspaper had much of its equipment sized due to a libel case and sold the same day to a member of the Landlord’s Defence Association. Thousands of nationalists marched on the town, bands played; it was the sale of the twentieth century as far as Ennis was concerned. Tom Galvin, owner, and editor of the Clareman, put in an unsuccessful bid for what had been his own property. The night before the sale, one of the comps and his friends, climbed through the window and rescued bags of type. With this type and meagre equipment, the Clare Champion was born within a couple of days of the enforced demise of the Clareman.  The Clare Champion was printed in Limerick; editor Tom Galvin said in the first edition;

“The Clare Champion will stand as the inveterate foe of landlordism, shoneenism, grabbers and Castle hacks.”