The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 5

Scab labour being escorted to work by RIC officers during the 1911 Wexford lockout. Picture from Independent.ie.

Continued from previous post.

The Evidence

The Church and socialism

The Dublin Lockout of 1913 is rightly remembered as a crucial struggle between various Dublin employers and their workers, essentially over the question of whether or not workers had the right to join the trade union of their choice (it was the unionisation of unskilled workers - alongside the skilled and semi-skilled - by the ITGWU to which employers like William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Tram Company objected). But lockouts in general had become a not infrequent occurrence during the second decade of the twentieth century. One important example was a lockout which took place in Wexford in 1911 when various foundry and engineering companies decided to lock out all employees who had become members of the ITGWU. The union had only recently begun to recruit in the area, and its success in this regard is indicated by the fact that, according to the Dublin Evening Herald, of the almost 200 iron foundry workers employed by the Wexford Engineering Company, all but one had joined the ITGWU.[1] The same edition also carries an article about the threat of a "labour war" over the demand by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain for "a minimum wage for miners to be secured by means of a general strike". Clearly, the mood of industrial militancy during this period was not limited to Ireland. Indeed, the previous day's Irish Sunday Independent had carried an article about "the upheaval in the entire industrial world" caused by various strikes over the preceding fortnight.[2]

 The preponderance of agitation for better wages and conditions, and of a willingness to undertake strike action, does not necessarily, however, indicate a widespread belief in the ideological tenets of socialism. While many strikes did involve large numbers of participants, there was also no shortage of 'scab' labour, although some blacklegs were imported from mainland Britain. Neither did the popularity and mass membership of the ITGWU at this time necessarily indicate a commitment to socialist ideals on the part of those members, despite the radicalism of its leadership in terms of the socialist and syndicalist views of figures such as Larkin and Connolly. The restrictions on the franchise in regard to elections at national level meant that parties such as the Irish Parliamentary Party, which dominated the Irish political landscape before 1917, had little electoral incentive to address the poor living and working conditions of most working-class people in Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century. In the absence of electoral power, the idea of "one big union" must have seemed like one of the most effective ways for workers to achieve a sense of power and influence over their own situations, whether or not they shared the socialistic intellectual outlook of the union leadership. 

In his article 'No good Catholic can be a true Socialist’: The Labour Party and the Catholic Church, 1922-52, Diarmaid Ferriter described the Church's opposition to socialism, beginning in the 1920s. This contrasts with Adrian Grant's claim that the Catholic Church in Ireland only began preaching against communism in 1929.[3] Niamh Puirseil had also argued, in an article written in 2007 that, during the 1930s, the Irish Labour Party had begun to move further towards the political left in order to distinguish its own policies from those of Fianna Fáil, only to move back again in response to an outbreak of criticism from the Catholic Church.[4] However, the ideology of socialism had been condemned by the top echelons of the Catholic Church from at least as early 1891, when the Papal encyclical Rerum Novarum had been issued by Pope Leo XIII. This letter, addressed to "All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops and Bishops of the Catholic World",[5] declared that "the main tenet of Socialism, the community of goods, must be utterly rejected; for it would injure those whom it is intended to benefit, it would be contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and it would introduce confusion, and disorder into the commonwealth" (italics in original).[6] It recommended, instead, social reforms aimed at widening property ownership and promoting better working conditions and fair wages, regulated by "Societies or Boards" set up for the purpose.[7] 

Evidence from the first two decades of the twentieth century shows that the influence of this encyclical had certainly begun to be felt in Ireland and that many within the Church concurred with the Pope's contention that to profess a commitment to socialism was not in keeping with the Roman Catholic faith and way of life. For example, in October 1909 a conference of the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland took place in Dublin, presided over by Cardinal Logue, the Primate of All Ireland, in which the subject of socialism was discussed. At the conference, a paper was read by Canon Langan of Abbeylara in Granard, explaining to the assembled clergy and laity that socialism was "condemned by the Catholic Church...because it destroys the natural and divine right of private property, recognises no lawful form of authority, and tears asunder the holy bonds of matrimony".[8]  

In November 1913, at the height of the Dublin lockout, the Southern Star carried an article by Reverend Michael Phelan of the Society of Jesus, condemning the "anti-Christian propaganda and history of ghastly ruin" associated with socialism and arguing that "every Catholic must regard socialism as an unmitigated curse". Rev. Phelan draws a distinction between what he sees as the just cause of social reform espoused by "the toilers in the field" during the land wars of the nineteenth century (which he describes as a "bloodless revolution") and the socialism of the "workers in the city".[9] If this reflects a genuine distinction in political outlook between agricultural and urban workers in Ireland at this time then, bearing in mind that the majority of the population lived in rural areas, it could suggest another reason for the failure of republican socialist ideas to take root in Ireland during the revolutionary period.

TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST

---

[1] 'Another Wexford lockout: 200 men affected', Evening Herald (Dublin), 28 August 1911.

[2] 'Cost of the strikes', Sunday Independent, 27 August 1911.

[3] Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, pp. 160, 227.

[4] N. Puirseil, The Irish Labour Party 1922-73 (Dublin, 2007), pp. 48-66.

[5] Leo XIII, Pope, 'Rerum Novarum – Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Conditions of Labor' (1891), https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/catholic_documents/13/ (Accessed 23 July 2018), p. 1.

[6] Ibid., p. 8.

[7] Ibid. P. 26.

[8] 'Church and Socialism: interesting paper', Ulster Herald, 23 October 1909.

[9] M.J. Phelan, 'Socialism and social reform', Southern Star, 29 November 1913.