The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 7


William O'Brien (left) with Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. From 'Stories from 1916'.

Continued from previous post.

Unionism and the Labour movement

At the Irish Trade Unions’ annual congress in Derry in 1917, the President of the ITUC, Thomas McPartlin, in his opening day speech, said that since all parties now engaged in the world war claimed to be doing so “on behalf of the freedom of small nations”, it was clear that Ireland’s claim to independence would be honoured as part of the post-war settlement. This, he said, would “remove every obstacle to the onward march of the workers to their rightful place in the counsels of the country”. McPartlin apparently saw Irish self-government as a necessary step on the road to securing the rights of Irish workers. He also acknowledged that, while the national question remained unresolved, “it was almost impossible to organise on a class conscious basis” and that the question had split the workers “into different political sections”. Clearly, division amongst those members of the working-classes who supported independence from Britain and those who opposed it made it difficult for the Labour movement across Ireland as a whole to speak with a united voice on the issue, at least when it came to the views of rank and file members. McPartlin went on to speak, however, about the need to keep the Labour movement “independent” and able to fight “tyranny, no matter under what flag it sailed”.[1] This, perhaps, was a foreshadowing of the approach that led Labour to abstain from fighting the 1918 general election – it seems to involve both a belief, on the part of the Labour leadership, in the necessity of Irish self-government, and a simultaneous desire to stay out of (perhaps even above) that battle, in order to remain ready to fight as a united organisation in the cause of workers’ rights and the interests of Labour generally, once the national question had been resolved.

The divisive effect of the national question was, of course, particularly keenly felt in the north-east of the country, but it was not just Irish nationalism that was controversial in this part of the Island. Socialism was vilified by many in Northern Ireland during the revolutionary period and its aftermath, as a search through the archives of the Northern Irish local press will quickly attest. Articles with headlines like “Pro-German socialists”,[2] “Socialist peril”,[3] and “Growing danger of socialism”[4] abound. This may have been, at least in part, a reaction to the policy of the Irish Labour Party in supporting self-determination for Ireland. It may also have been a reaction to a similar stance taken by the British Labour Party. The issues of socialism and nationalism had become closely entwined in the perception of the unionist communities in Ulster. An alternative Labour movement, the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, had been set up by Sir Edward Carson not only as a unionist alternative to the mainstream Labour movement in Ireland but also as an anti-Socialist movement. As such, it was difficult for radical Labour politics to make much headway within these communities.

In September 1918 at a meeting held in Belfast Old Town Hall, the Ulster Unionist Labour Association adopted a resolution in which it claimed to be “representing the overwhelming majority of the trade unionists in Ireland” (a claim presumably based on the preponderance of industry and of industrial labour based in the north-east of Ulster). The resolution began by deploring the British Trades Union Congress’s support for home rule in Ireland, describing Irish nationalists as “the most reactionary and unprogressive forces in the United Kingdom”. It claimed that, under a Dublin Parliament, “the privileges won for the workers by trade unionism would be endangered”, leading to “the degradation of labour in Ireland”, and appealed to British trade unionists to “maintain…the unity of our joint labour movement”.[5]

The resolution went on to state that the “events which have occurred in Ireland since the commencement of the war further emphasize the danger to the Empire which would be incurred by the establishment of a Parliament in Dublin”.[6] This appears to be a reference to the Easter rising, and highlights how that event, while it may have ultimately led to an increase in advanced nationalist sentiment across much of Ireland, had precisely the opposite effect on many in the unionist community.

The Ulster Unionist Labour Association had a strong influence on the trade union movement in north-east Ulster, particularly amongst those workers who belonged to unions that were based in Britain (in spite of the fact that the British Trade Union Congress was a target of much of the organisation’s anger, due to its support for home rule). In 1920, J.Baird, a protestant member of the Belfast Trade Council, speaking against the “Belfast pogrom”, in which acts of violence and expulsions from the workforce had been carried out against Catholic and nationalist workers in Belfast, particularly in the shipyards, claimed that “The Irish representatives on the executives of the English Unions were Carsonites from Belfast, who acted as their Carsonite masters wished them”.[7]

Although the issue of home rule, and other forms of Irish independence, was a divisive one for the working-class during the revolutionary period in Ireland, it would seem that the question of partition - at least at the beginning of the revolutionary period - was one on which the Labour movement was able to present a unified front. According to Thomas McPartlin, in his speech at the annual Irish Trade Union Congress in 1917, as recorded by the Ulster Herald, “the workers in every part of Ireland had time and again expressed their abhorrence of partition, in any shape or form”. McPartlin backed up his claim that even the workers of Ulster were opposed to partition by pointing out that “with the exception of two delegates, all the workers’ representatives voted against partition at the Congress in 1914, although some of them were in opposition to Home Rule”.[8]

The following day, a new motion, intended “to reiterate the resolutions they had already adopted”, was introduced by Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (ITUCLP) treasurer William O’Brien. In bringing forward the motion, which condemned “any attempt to divide the workers of Ireland by the introduction of any proposal for partition, temporary or permanent”, O’Brien described the idea of partition as “a dead horse” and, in similar fashion to that of Thomas McPartlin on the previous day, declared that despite any differences they might have on other questions, workers were “unanimous in saying that Ireland should not have partition in any shape or form”. He had made similar assertions at Count Plunkett’s ‘National Assembly’ in Dublin’s Mansion House a few months previously, claiming that the Labour movement was “absolutely united” on the question of partition and that northern trade unionists who were against the idea of self-government for Ireland were “unanimous in declaring that no matter what rule they had they would not be separated from their fellow trade unionists in other parts of Ireland”.[9]  O’Brien’s motion opposing partition was passed unanimously.[10]

Apparently, the political differences between unionist and nationalist workers, while certainly a threat to the unity of the Labour movement, had not – at least by August 1917 - completely divided it. The Labour movement, in turn, seemed keen to focus, where possible, on those issues where unity existed. Nevertheless, it is equally clear that the leadership of the ITUCLP regarded self-determination for Ireland as desirable and, as we shall see, was not afraid to say so.

TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
[1] ‘Irish Trades’ Congress: assembly in Derry’, Ulster Herald, 11 August 1917.
[2] ‘Pro-German socialists’, Belfast Newsletter, 04 June 1917.
[3] ‘The socialist peril’, Derry Journal, 03 March 1919
[4] ‘Growing danger of socialism’, Belfast Newsletter, 15 February 1929.
[5] ‘Ulster Unionist Labour Association: an important resolution’, Belfast Newsletter, 10 September 1918.
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘Belfast pogrom and Labour: Protestant T.C. on situation’, Donegal News, 13 November 1920.
[8] ‘Irish Trades’ Congress: assembly in Derry’, Ulster Herald, 11 August 1917.
[9] ‘Over 100 priests: overflow crowds at Plunkett conference’, Evening Herald, 19 April 1917.
[10] ‘Workers condemn partition’, Ulster Herald, 11 August 1917.

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