Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell’Antichità Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Scienze Storiche The Irish Labour Party. From its origins to 1938 Relatori: Chiar.mo Prof. Matteo Millan Prof. Diarmaid Ferriter Laureando: Luca Bertolani Azeredo Matricola: 1172244 ANNO ACCADEMICO 2019/2020 CONTENTS Abbreviations 5 Glossary 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 13 Chapter I – From the Prehistory of Labour to 1922 19 The Labour Party before the Labour Party 19 Irish Politics between 19th and 20th Century 22 1912 Congress and Third Home Rule 26 The Great War 30 Easter Rising 32 Sinn Féin 36 1918 Elections 38 Independence War 39 Chapter II – A Decade of Opposition (1922 – 1932) 45 The 1922 Elections, the Third Dáil, and the Civil War 45 The 1923 Elections, the Fourth Dáil and the Return of Larkin 53 The June 1927 Elections, the Fifth Dáil and the Fianna Fail Palace Conspiracy 56 The September 1927 Elections and the Sixth Dáil 61 The 1932 Elections, the Seventh Dáil and the Government Transition 65 Chapter III – Government and Decline (1932 – 1938) 69 The Seventh Dáil – Fianna Fail in Power 69 The 1933 Elections and the Eight Dáil 72 Ireland between Communism and Reaction 74 The Irish Right: from the Blueshirts to Fine Gael 78 The Irish Left: the Republican Congress and the Labour “Workers’ Republic” 82 The Spanish Civil War 85 The End of the Eight Dáil and the 1937 New Constitution 88 3 The 1937 Election, the Constitutional Referendum and the Ninth Dáil Chapter IV – Epilogue (1938–) 90 95 1938 – 1948, a Decade of Fianna Fail Government 95 1948 – 1957, the Inter-Party Governments 100 1957 – Today, the Difficult Transformation of Ireland 103 Chapter V – Conclusions 109 The Electoral Acts and the Labour Electoral Participation 110 The Relationships of the Irish and British Labour Parties with the Union Movement 116 Irish Left and British Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism and the Catholic Clergy 122 The Irish Labour Doctrine: Country above Party 127 Appendix – Labour Participation in General Elections (1922-1938) 133 Bibliography 137 Primary Sources 137 Secondary Sources 140 Websites 151 4 ABBREVIATIONS AC Administrative Council ACA Army Comrades Association BLP British Labour Party BTUC British Trades Union Congress CIU Congress of Irish Unions CnB Cumann na mBam CPI Communist Party of Ireland DCU Dublin City University DD Dáil Debates DoA Department of Agriculture DoJ Department of Justice DoT Department of the Taoiseach GPO General Post Office ICA Irish Citizen Army ICTU Irish Congress of Trade Unions ILP&TUC Irish Labour Party and Trades Union Congress INTO Irish National Teachers’ Organisation IPP Irish Parliamentary Party IRA Irish Republican Army IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union ITUC Irish Trades Union Congress ITUC&LP Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party IWL Irish Workers’ League LP Labour Party 5 LRC Labour Representation Committee NAI National Archives of Ireland NILP Northern Ireland Labour Party NLI National Library of Ireland NLP National Labour Party NUI National University of Ireland OBU One Big Union POWU Post Office Workers Union RIC Royal Irish Constabulary RWG Revolutionary Workers’ Groups SPI Socialist Party of Ireland TCD Trinity College Dublin TD Teachta Dála UCC University College Cork UCD University College Dublin UCDA University College Dublin Archives UVF Ulster Volunteers Force UUP Ulster Unionist Party WUI Workers' Union of Ireland 6 GLOSSARY Ard-Fheis Annual party conference Oireachtas Irish legislature comprising the President, the Dáil and the Seanad Dáil (plural Dálaí) Lower house of the Oireachtas Seanad Upper house of the Oireachtas Ceann Comhairle Chairman of the Dáil Garda Síochána Lit. “Guardian of the Peace” – Police Príomh Aire President of Dáil Éireann Tánaiste Lit. “Heir of the Taoiseach” – Deputy head of the government Taoiseach Lit. “Leader” – Head of the Government or Prime Minister Teachta Dála Member of the Dáil PARTIES AND ASSOCIATIONS Clann Éireann Family of Ireland Clann na Poblachta Family of the Republic Clann na Talmhan Family of the Land Cumann na mBam The Women’s Council Cumann na nGaedheal Society of the Gaels Cumann na Poblachta League of the Republic Fianna Fail Soldiers of Destiny Fine Gael Tribe of the Irish Fianna Éireann Soldiers of Ireland Saor Éire Free Ireland Sinn Féin We Ourselves 7 And I say to my people's masters: Beware, Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people, who shall take what ye would not give. Did ye think to conquer the people, Or that Law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free? Pádraic Pearse, April 1916 Don’t forget that, whilst you may nationalize the railways in one afternoon, it will take a long time to transform all the third-class carriages and all the first-class carriages into second-class carriages Bernard Shaw Those who can blow their own trumpet not only sound louder than those who cannot but automatically provide material for music critics E. J. Hobsbawn, 1964 11 12 INTRODUCTION Walking through the streets of Dublin the visitor is often impressed by the large number of statues that decorate the city. At the very centre, in front of the General Post Office and near the recently built Spire, there is one human figure on a high square base that keeps its hands up. This monument, unveiled in 1979, is dedicated to James (Big Jim) Larkin, a socialist and trade union leader who was born in Liverpool and died in Dublin, where he had moved to in 1908. Larkin had been during his life the most loved and most hated man in Ireland and his commemorative statue is even more unusual if his own former comrades’ words are considered: “In Ireland we were always talking of dead heroes, and of the past and of the future, but we rarely talked of the present. Some people considered that all they needed was to quote from the writings of James Connolly, and then tap themselves on the back. There was another gentleman who worked with James Connolly, and the combination was always described as «James Larkin and Connolly». Larkin always coming first. Connolly had died, but Larkin lived, and to-day there were «none so poor to do him reverence». The chances were that if Connolly lived, he would be in the very same position.”1 In the land of saints, scholars and martyrs 2, the unionist and socialist movement has indeed a problematic relationship with its history and its two leaders: Connolly had died as a martyr when the Labour Party was not yet fully created, and thus “it has been [his] fate, as it has been the fate of Pearse and others, to become so historical, that there is a grave danger that nobody bothers very much about 1 J. T. O’Farrell, LP Annual Report, 1936, p. 104; 2 Mozley John and Charles, The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the English Church, Vol. III, 1852, p. 215; 13 the facts of his career, what he really stood for and whether he has a message for us to-day”3. Larkin on the other hand, as just described, spent most of his life fighting the movement he had managed to organise. Today however they are both considered “legendary figures, almost canonised by an establishment that has named schools, railway stations, and hospitals after them”4. During the last years new studies on the Irish Labour Party had been published, starting from the 2007 The Irish Labour Party, 1922-1973 by Niamh Puirséil, to the 2009 No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967 by Barry Desmond, A Labour History of Ireland. 1824-2000 by Emmet O’Connor published in 2011, Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, edited by Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán and Rouse Paul for the 100 th anniversary of the party, and Locked Out. A Century of Irish Working-Class Life, edited by Convery David for the 100 th anniversary of the Dublin Lock-Out organised by Larkin himself. The latter two had been published during the Decade of Centenaries, a programme started in 2012 whose objective is “to ensure that [that] complex period in [Irish] history, including the Struggle for Independence, the Civil War, the Foundation of the State and Partition, is remembered appropriately, proportionately, respectfully and with sensitivity”5. The Irish Labour Party however does not seem to have dealt with its history and its skeletons in the cupboard. This is exemplified by the differing opinions on “when” to pinpoint the beginning of the Irish Labour Party history. The historiographical debate opposes two different sides: the first one, the classic view, starts from 1912, when during the Irish Trade Unions Congress a motion to establish a labour party in Ireland was finally approved. The second one, that sees Puirséil as the main defender, places the beginning and the cornerstone of the party’s history one decade later, in 1922, when the party firstly participated in the Irish general elections 6. Though, this is not the most unusual subject of discussion in the history of the oldest party in Ireland: Eamon Gilmore (at the time leader of the ILP) concluded the book commissioned by his party7, with a look at its past, focusing on the leaders that have preceded him, remembering James Connolly (who had died long before the participation of the 3 UCDA LA10/387, Ryan Desmond, James Connolly, 1916-1940, 4 Kieran Allen, Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour. 1926 to the Present, p. 1; 5 www.decadeofcentenaries.com/about/ 6 Following this theory, as proposed by Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, the imminent 2022 should be taken as 100 th anniversary. Ó Cathasaigh Aindrias, Labour’s love lost, p. 18; 14 party in national elections), Thomas Johnson (that had guided the party for 10 years, from 1917 to 1927, 5 of which still outside the Dáil, the Irish lower parliamentary chamber), skipping to Dick Spring (leader from 1982 to 1997), Ruairi Quinn (1997-2002) and Pat Rabbitte (2002-07). Gilmore omitted both William Norton and Brendan Corish, two of the most important leaders of the party, that had guided it for 44 of its 100 years of history (44 out of 85, the 52%, if considering only the years spent in the Dáil before Gilmore). This had not been the first time that the years after Johnson's leadership had been omitted or neglected: in the fundamental Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930 Arthur Mitchell ended his book with the separation of the party from its union, affirming that in 1927 a decade of decay for the Labour Party started, and leaving aside the fact that during those years the party managed to become vital for the change of governance, and almost took part in the administration 8. Even Maurice Manning, Fine Gael politician and historian, is rather surprised by how the Ninety-Thirties are often not taken into account in favour of a deeper interest in the previous decades9. Niamh Puirséil, despite recognising the self-censorship of the years from 1927 to the early NinetySixties by the same Labour Party, almost embarrassed by its own history 10, does not resolve this problem and although promising to narrate the first 50 years of the Irish Labour Party in the Dáil, she slightly extended her doctoral thesis11, dedicating only two chapters to the Ninety-Twenties and NinetyThirties. The study that follows tried to better analyse the years that, after the separation from the ITUC, let the Labour Party to build its own future, creating an informal alliance with Fianna Fail, supporting its government in 1932 and, arriving at its political nadir, tried to present itself as a true socialist party with its 1936 new Workers’ Republic Constitution. The conclusion will be preceded by a brief description of the later major events, from the Second World War, the first and second inter-party governments, the long second half of the 20 th Century, until the most recent news. The aim of this 7 Gilmore Eamon, The Second Century of Labour, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (ed.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 189; 8 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 270; 9 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, p. ix; 10 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 1-2; 11 That covered the period from the first inter-party government to the 1969 socialist turning point. Ivi, pp. ix-xi; 15 research is to overcome the already disputed historiography, proposed by Arthur Mitchell in his PhD thesis and book, that identified the 1918 elections as the ultimate struggle between socialism and nationalism – with the latter as winner – and therefore the cause of Labour’s defeat. This theory has already proved deceitful: if in the 1918 elections the Labour Party had failed, this mistake consisted in still considering possible to preserve the island unity (when it was already clear that the partition could be the only political solution); the ILP did not support with all its strength the nationalist movement in order not to alienate the northern unionist labour members and prevent an internal secession12. Mitchell does not however take into account the excellent results in the 1922 elections and the role that the Labour Party had had in the Irish democratic development until the 1932 general elections, when the national party system finally became instituted. In the following pages the attempt will be to move further the defeatism which affirms that, after the 1925 separation of the Irish Free State from the Northern Ireland – with the loss of the industrial and unionised north – and the missed participation in 1918 general elections, a southern Labour Party was not possible. Better analysing the years before the Second World War, it will be discussed how a mass and majority Labour Party could still be achievable and how this was hindered by factors of three different origins: causes pre-existent to the foundation of the party (such as the death of Connolly, the departure of Larkin towards the USA, the non-participation in the 1918 general elections), structural causes (such as the electoral law and the influence of the Catholic Church) and political causes (such as the unions influence or the failure to organise local branches and a national structure). To study the history of the Irish Labour Party, in addition to the texts already mentioned before, some essential general history books are Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society by John Joseph Lee, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond by Alvin Jackson, and the major The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 by Diarmaid Ferriter. The political developments of the Irish Free State are described in The Years of the Great Test edited by Francis MacManus, and Political Parties in the Irish Free State by Warner Moss. Two studies that focus of the two main Irish parties are Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour. 1926 to the Present by Allen Kieran, and The Blueshirts, a study not yet matched, by Maurice Manning. On the Labour Party, two main studies are The Irish Labour Party 1927-1933, an unpublished thesis by Enda Gerald McKay, and the PhD thesis of John William Boyle, founder of the 12 McDermott Noel, The one that got away. Labour and the 1918 election; 16 Irish labour historiography, The Rise of the Irish Labour Movement, later expanded and published as The Irish Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century. The primary bibliography of this work is composed by three main categories: the Labour Party and Congress (in its various acronyms), and ITGWU’s annual reports are crucial sources that show annually the development of the organisations, the faced problems and the figured solutions, supplying the voices of the true protagonists and the economic and membership data. Most of these documents are excellently conserved and the ITUC reports from the first quarter of the 20 th Century have been digitalised by the National Archives13 within the Decade of Centenaries project. The UCD Library and Archives, together with the NLI, store most of the remaining documents. The newspapers are the second most important source: in a country where already by 1911 87.6% of the population on nine years and over could read and write (with 3.2% more that could only read) 14 there were dozens of papers, published nationally or locally, by parties, organisations and stakeholders. The most important ones, such as the Irish Times, the Irish Independent and the Irish Press, have been digitalised and are available online15. Parties’ and organisations’ radical newspapers – as Labour News, Poblacht na hÉireann, The United Irishman, The Vanguard and The Watchword – are conserved as microfilms in the UCD Library and are very valuable to understand how each movement depicted itself and its opponents. The third main sources are the private papers, conserved in public and private archives. The NLI stores most of the documents relating to Labour History in the Thomas Johnson's and William O’Brien’s papers. There the Labour Party’s Archive is conserved too, at least what has survived the “spring cleaning”16 that destroyed most of the records during the 1967 change in personnel. In the UCDA are conserved mainly private papers from Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (and Cumann na nGaedheal) and their deputies (together with the huge collection of de Valera’s papers). Information regarding the relationship between the government, the labour movement and the unions, can also be found in the NAI. 13 And are now freely available at this link: centenaries-ituc.nationalarchives.ie/annual-reports/ 14 Lyons F. S. L., Ireland Since the Famine, p. 88 15 www.irishnewsarchive.com and www.proquest.com/ 16 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 4; 17 All the transcripts volumes of the debates and acts of the Dáil and the Seanad, are available in paper at the UCD Library, but can also be consulted online on the Oireachtas website 17 and on the electronic Irish Statute Book18. For all the electoral information, the Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, edited by Brian M. Walker, has now been overtaken by Christopher Took and Seán Donnelly’s online database19. Most of the primary and secondary bibliography had been read, copied and digitalised during my stay in Dublin, however the consequences of the COVID-19 lock-down have precluded the consultation of some documents that would have otherwise been useful to better analyse certain issues. The aim of this research, as already stated, is to fill the vacuum left by the Irish Labour historiography regarding those years from the party’s separation from the Congress to the beginning of the Second World War. However this is only a tile in the overall mosaic. Starting from the researches of Puirséil, O’Connor and Michael Gallagher20, a complete synthesis of the Irish labour movement – from its origins in the 19th Century, until the beginning of the 21st Century – is still unwritten and could be useful indeed while the second Labour Party’s Decade of Centenaries (starting in 2022) is approaching. Padua, September 2020 17 www.oireachtas.ie 18 www.irishstatutebook.ie/ 19 electionsireland.org 20 Gallagher Michael, The Irish Labour Party in Transition, 1957-82, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1982; 18 CHAPTER I – FROM THE PREHISTORY OF LABOUR TO 1922 The Labour Party before the Labour Party “The Labour Party was founded in 1912 in Clonmel, County Tipperary, by James Connolly, James Larkin and William O’Brien as the political wing of the Irish Trade Union Congress” 1 The Irish Labour Party uses to tell its history in this way, starting from the very beginning and finding strength in its long past and in the great founder names that have become Irish heroes and whose lives are part of popular heritage. But as most legends, this simple story has its parts of truth and fiction that in the early beginning blended together making soon difficult to distinguish one from the other. So to fully understand what had really happened we have to go back to 1912 and before. In A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, Emmet O’Connor starts his story from the system of trade representation in companies of gilds that was granted to Anglo-Norman towns after the partial conquest of Ireland in the late 12th Century. The gilds regulated working practices and apprenticeships and offered a mutual agreement to masters and journeymen, subordinating both to the common welfare, protecting the former by controlling the wages, and the latter’s employment and salary by restricting apprenticeships and fixing prices2. During the centuries, with the emergence of capitalism and liberalism, mechanisation and specialisation, the gilds’ purpose was in decline and employers asked the 1 A Brief History of The Labour Party, www.labour.ie/party/ 2 Pelling Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism, p. 7; 19 Parliament for help to legislate on the matter. In 1729 the Irish Parliament made combination of masters or men illegal and restricted the possibilities of wage requests 3; however the penal measures were not effective enough and it became necessary to pass more acts in 1731, 1743 and 1780 4. The economic boom of the late 18th Century saw an intense industrial stress and the Parliament responded with even more acts that made illegal to belong to a journeymen’s association, to make wage demands and it extended the death penalty to those convicted for attacks on workshops, tools or materials 5. In 1799 and 1800 the British Parliament passed the Combination Acts. The anti-Jacobin and landowner deputies, fearing the events in France, were mainly concerned with the intimidating political legislation6. The two acts forbade societies or combination of persons for the purpose of political reform as the improvement of working conditions or wages but were not applied to Ireland for two years, until a special Act7 was passed, with heavier penalties for combination offences than the ones imposed in Great Britain in previous years. However unions continued more or less unperturbed, with evidence of even new trades and the first attempts at general unionism. When it became obvious that the legislation was not efficient but had only brought together illegal Jacobin and trade union, giving a “violent character to the combinations”, it was revoked with the Repeal of the Combination Acts 18248. The ‘70s of the 19th Century saw different acts that decriminalised the trade unions in all the United Kingdom, legalised peaceful picketing and made possible to protect the unions’ funds by registering under the law. The number of unions and of their members grew rapidly and with them the clashes with employees. After this first phase a new unionism appeared, distinguished by the focus on the unskilled and its aim for a legislative reform and political representation9. 3 1729 (3 Geo. 2 c. 14); 4 Webb Sidney, Webb Beatrice, The History of Trade Unionism, pp. 68-69; Park Patrick, The Combination Acts in Ireland, 1727-1825, pp. 345-348; 5 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 2-3; 6 Thompson E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, p. 504; Pelling Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism, p. 3; 7 Pluralities of Living, etc. Act 1802, 43 Geo. III, c. 86; 8 Thompson E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 181, 500-504; 9 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 50-51; 20 From 1868 unions in Ireland were represented by the British Trades Union Congress (BTUC). Since the very beginning the difference between the Irish and the British economies was obvious: wage rates were much lower in Ireland and working conditions worse, only Belfast and Ulster had seen the first and second industrial revolution; in 1911 Belfast with its 387.000 citizens was the biggest city in the island, with 8.8% of the total population and 21% of industrial workers, while the rest of Ulster had 30% and the other three provinces had 50% combined. It was here where in 1885 the first trade unionist candidate stood for Parliament. In 1892 the trades council organised the first local Labour Party in Ireland and elected their representatives in local bodies in 1898, thanks to the democratisation of local government10. It was not a surprise when in 1894, after three previous attempts, consulting with other trades councils, Dublin Trades Council convened the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC), a miniature version of the BTUC11. The frustration, both of nationalists and unionists 12, towards the lack of Irish issues in the British Congress, was the main cause of the ITUC foundation, which soon grew rapidly: if the British Unions had represented about 100.000 members, after the first year the ITUC had some 50.000 members13. At the beginning – copying the BTUC – the ITUC was conceived as an industrial rather than a political body, following the philosophy of syndicalism arguing that politicians had failed to destroy capitalism, because corrupted by power and dominated by elites. From this moment, it was obvious that the best way to represent workers’ power was the federation of unions, idealistically a One Big Union. When James Larkin (1876 – 1947) – after his experience in the 1907 Belfast Dock Strike14 – founded the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in 1909, organising the unskilled workers for the first time, he had in mind to create an Irish OBU that aimed to declare a general strike, the final attack against the united front of employers 15. Larkinism became the 10 Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 (61 & 62 Vict. c. 37); Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 1, in “The Irish Times”, 27 February 1967, p. 10; 11 A Short History of Congress, www.ictu.ie/about/history.html; O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 18242000, p. 63; 12 NLI MS 15,704/7/10; O’Brien Rónán, A Divided House: The Irish Trades Union Congress and the origins of the Irish Labour Party, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 19122012, p. 18; 13 UCDA LA10/367; 14 Patterson Henry, James Larkin and the Belfast Dockers’ and Carters’ Strike of 1907; 15 NLI MS 15,704/20, James Connolly, The Irish Times, 25 November 1911; O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 76; Hobsbawm E. J., Labouring Men. Studies in the History of Labour, p. 224; 21 Irish version of revolutionary syndicalism, a movement that argued that workers should win socialism through actions instead of waiting for parliamentary representatives to deliver socialism to the working class from above16. Irish Politics between 19th and 20th Century When on 16 January 1922 Michael Collins (1890 – 1922) took control of the Dublin Castle on behalf of the Provisional Government after the Anglo-Irish War, it is reported that he replied to the blame of being seven minutes late with the words “We've been waiting over seven hundred years, you can have the extra seven minutes”17. The dominion of Great Britain on Ireland can be brought back to 1177, to the Norman occupation of most of the island, when the Lordship of Ireland felt under the rule of the King of England. From 1541 to 1801 the Kingdom of Ireland was in personal union with England and, later, the United Kingdom of Great Britain; during most of these centuries Ireland had had its own parliament with legislative limitations. Thanks to the Constitution of 1782 Ireland gained legislative independence but this situation did not last long: in 1798 a rebellion led by the United Irishmen – a republican movement inspired by the ideals of the American and French revolutions – forced the United Kingdom to abolish the Irish Parliament and absorb the country with the 1801 Act of Union: the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had been created18. The Irish Parliament was amalgamated into the British one and from then the Irish deputies took their seats in the Palace of Westminster. After the Act of Union three more rebellions were attempted 19 but they all failed and during the 19th Century the Irish deputies started to take place in the House of Commons and participate to the policy of the United Kingdom. After the last uprising of 1867 the Liberal Governments legislated on two main issues that concerned Ireland: the Church and the Land Acts. The Irish Church Act of 1869 separated the Church of Ireland from the State and from the Church of England, with whom it had been united since the Act of Union 16 Kieran Allen, The fiery cross of Larkinism, p. 3; 17 Coogan Tim Pat, Michael Collins, p. 451; 18 Fanning Ronan, Small States, Large Neighbours: Ireland and the United Kingdom, p. 22; 19 The Irish rebellion of 23 July 1803 led by Robert Emmet, the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, and the Fenian Rising of 1867 organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood. 22 of 1800. The following year the first Land Act was passed and more followed with the beginning of the 20th Century and later with the Irish Free State. These acts were thought by the Liberal Government of William Gladstone (1809 – 1898) to distribute the Irish lands between the population and in this way end the rebellions, to prevent a new famine after the Great Hunger of 1845-49, and later to answer to the economic depression of the late 1870s. This acts granted the three “f’s”: fair rent, free sale and fixity of tenure20. Even if the distribution of land was improved and the tenants passed from 97% down to less than 3% in 60 years21 part of the problem was solved by mass emigration to Great Britain and the USA. The Irish deputies, even if over-representing the Irish population 22, were low in number and in the beginning did not have the possibility to influence in a great way the decisions of the governments nor even the discussion of the Parliament; but in the last decades of the century, their role became strategic. In 1873 Isaac Butt (1813 – 1879) founded the first real party of Ireland, the Irish Parliamentary Party – also known as Home Rule Party – that grew thanks to Charles S. Parnell (1846 – 1891) and Michael Davitt (1846 – 1906). The IPP had the support of the Irish Clergy 23 but needed the support of one other big party and this occurred the first time in 1885 when the Liberal Party of Gladstone won the elections, returning fewer deputies then the previous elections and needed the support of the Irish deputies. In exchange for its support the IPP asked for the Home Rule, an act that would have moved the Irish representation from Westminster to a unicameral Irish legislation. The bill, supported by the radical Liberals, was however opposed by 93 pro-Union deputies of the Gladstone’s own party and it was defeated in the House of Common in 188624. After this division fifty deputies, mostly from the old Whig faction, broke away from the Liberal Party and founded the Liberal Unionist Party together with a small radical faction guided by Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), whose hostility against Parnell and 20 Comerford R. V., The Land War and the Politics of Distress, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, p. 47; 21 Ferriter Diarmaid, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, p. 63; Bull Philip, Land, Politics and Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question, pp. 195-200 quoted in Bew Paul, Ireland. The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, p. 568; 22 The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 had introduced the concept of equally populated constituencies but the total number of Irish deputies did not changed even if the population had declined due to emigration and famine; 23 Comerford R. V., The Parnell Era, 1883-91, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, pp. 54-55; 24 Cawood Ian, A ‘distinction without a difference’?, pp. 14-16; Fair John D., From Liberal to Conservative: The Flight of the Liberal Unionists after 1886, p. 293; 23 the Irish Home Rule made him leave the party25. Gladstone dissolved the Parliament to take the issue to the country but the electors voted in favour of the Union: the Conservative Party won the elections in alliance with the Liberal-Unionists26. A second Irish Home Rule was introduced in 1893, one year after the Gladstone’s Liberal Party had come back with a minority government supported by the Irish deputies now led by John Redmond (1856 – 1918)27. This time the bill passed to the House of Lords where it was rejected. At the end of the 19 th Century, with a new Conservative government that preferred a constructive unionism that could “kill the home rule with kindness” and a Liberal Party still wary after the split in the party, the chance of a Home Rule disappeared for more than a decade28. In 1906 the Liberal Party won the elections with a huge majority but in 1910 the House of Lords, contrary to normal convention, rejected the People’s Budget that introduced higher taxes on the most riches to fund national insurance29. H. H. Asquith (1852 – 1928) – the Liberal Party leader from 1908 – found an understanding with King Edward VII (1841 – 1910): if the Upper House had blocked the budget after a second general election, the monarch would have created sufficient Liberal peers to force the budget through it30. After the January 1910 elections the IPP and the newborn Labour Party supported the Liberals allowing them to regain the majority: the budget had again electoral support and was approved by the House of Lords, however Asquith was now determined to break the upper house’s veto power31. When his constitutional reforms were blocked by the Lords, the Prime Minister obtained a new agreement with the King: if after a second election he had retained the majority and his reforms were blocked for a second time, King George V (1865 – 1936), recently ascended the throne after the death of his father, would have swamped the house with new peers 32. Threatened by Asquith’s promise to 25 Webb R. K., Modern England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, pp. 364-365; Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 422; 26 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, pp. 129-130; 27 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 1; Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, pp. 88-90; 28 Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 5-6; 29 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 161; 30 Lyons F. S. L., The developing crisis, 1907-14, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, pp. 126-128; 31 Cummins Edward R., The Curragh Incident, March, 1914, causes and effects, pp. 6-7; 32 Webb R. K., Modern England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, pp. 459-460; 24 otherwise resign with his Government, George had accepted. A second general election was held in December 1910, the last before the Great War, and again the Liberals, supported by the Irish Nationalists and the British Labour, gained a majority33. With no more resistance from the Lords, on 18 August 1911 the Parliament Act 34 received the royal assent and the major obstacle to the Home Rule was removed. In return for the support to the constitutional amendment the Liberal Government pledged to grant Ireland self government and on 11 April 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was introduced. According to the Parliament Act it was meant to become effective in 1914. Before this date a solution for the Protestant and Unionist Ulster was to be found. The IPP tried to generate nationalist enthusiasm with a demonstration held in Dublin on 31 March and a convention on 24 April but it kept lacking a dynamism of popular support. It did not have a strong connection with its electors since it was common for many deputies to return unopposed for decades: in the elections of December 1910, 53 of the 84 seats saw just one candidate 35. Perhaps, as it is said, the main problem was that “[the Irish people] had much on their minds besides the historic struggle for independence”36. The idea that Ireland could not afford the luxury of class struggle was already present before the Third Home Rule: Parnell considered “trades unionism […] a landlordism of labour” that tried to protect the workers in a less efficient way compared to his party. Capitalist liberals could be frightened and lead to believe that a parliament in Dublin might be used to further some kind of Irish socialism 37. Later the creation of the Labour Party was strongly criticised by the IPP that saw it as a distraction from the 33 The constitutional reform was seen by the Irish Nationalists as the only instrument to overcome the Lord’s veto on the Home Rule; 34 This act limited the powers of the upper House and in particularly it permitted to present directly to the King any bills that had been passed by the House of Commons in three successive sessions and rejected three times by the House of Lords, thus becoming an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent. Parliament Act., 1911 (1 & 2 Geo.5 c. 13); Webb Sidney, The Reform of the House of Lords, pp. 3-4; 35 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 107, 119; 36 Curtis L. P. Jr., Ireland in 1914, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 18701921, p. 188; 37 UCDA LA10/367; 25 principal aim. The idea that unity against Britain was meant to be maintained was shared by both moderate and radical Irish nationalists38. With the new century during the Trade Unions Congress many motions for the creation of a party were moved; in 1903 there was even a motion recommending to affiliate with the British Labour Representation Committee founded in 1900, a precursor of the British Labour Party that will be established six years later. The Congress was not a republican or nationalist organisation but it reflected the many opinions of its workers. Among it there were three different factions regarding the workers’ political representation: the first one supported independent Labour representation within the United Kingdom, advocating an affiliation with the BLP: this proposal was supported by the unions of Ulster where, due to the industrialisation of Belfast, the economy was strongly connected with Great Britain 39. The second one believed that the IPP sufficed and still was the labours’ best mean to achieve their purposes. The third one, the victorious faction, wanted an independent Irish Labour Party. This was for example the intention of James Connolly (1868 – 1916), who started from the assumption that Irish and British Unions were not affiliated40. The fact that many trade unions supported the IPP – which claimed to be the workers’ party41 – delayed the foundation of the Labour Party. 1912 Congress and Third Home Rule During the Nineteenth ITUC of 1912, held in the Town Hall of Clonmel from 27 and 29 May, Connolly (representing the Belfast Branch Irish Transport Workers’ Union) proposed a motion to include amongst the objects of the Congress “the independent representation of Labour upon all public boards”. As the British trade unions had been motivated by the Taff Vale case to organise and 38 Laffan Michael, In the Shadow of the National Question, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 33; 39 Ivi, p. 32; 40 Forward 1 July 1911, quoted in O’Brien Rónán, A Divided House, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 22; 41 A questionable claim discussed in McConnel James, The Irish Parliamentary Party, Industrial Relations and the 1913 Dublin Lockout; 26 strengthen the LRC, now the Irish trade unions looked for a political representation for the improvement of workers conditions42. Some members criticised this kind of motion convinced that it could divide the Congress and that it was too premature, but on the second day of discussion, the motion was voted: 49 for, 18 against, and 20 abstentions43. Ironically the same year saw also the establishment of the Independent Labour Party of Ireland44 and the Dublin Trades Council-sponsored labour candidates for Dublin Corporation began to be called the Dublin Labour Party 45. In 1912 the labour candidates won five seats in the Dublin Corporation in the municipal elections (two other candidates did not win) and were victorious also in Sligo, Waterford and Drogheda. The following year during the Congress the decision was reaffirmed and instructions were given to proceed with the preparation of a party constitution on which William X. O’Brien (1881 – 1968), Connolly and Johnson worked, the latter being the main author 46; during the same year six labour candidates ran for Dublin Corporation and gained two seats, losing one. The following months saw many distractions for the ITUC, starting from the lock-out of 1913-14. Due to a period of rising profits and falling real wages 47 the years 1912 and 1913 saw the greatest number of working days lost in strikes in all the United Kingdom since 1898. In 1913 the number of disputes was 42 In this case a British trade union, the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, was sued for damages when its members had gone on strike against the Taff Vale Railway Company. This verdict meant that strikes could severely damaged the unions. The Trade Disputes Act of 1906 was written to reverse that decision providing unions with complete immunity from liability for civil damages. Saville John, Trade Unions and Free Labour: the Background to the Taff Vale Decision, in Briggs Asa, Saville John (eds.), Essays in Labour History – In memory of G. D. H. Cole; Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/; Hobsbawm E. J., Labouring Men. Studies in the History of Labour, p. 386; Edgerton David, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. A Twentieth-Century History, p. 206; 43 ITUC Annual Report, 1912, pp. 12-19; 44 An amalgamate between the Socialist Party of Ireland – the latest manifestation of Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party, founded in 1896 – and Irish branches of UK-based Independent Labour Party, in which both O’Brien and Connolly were involved. O’Connor Emmet, True Bolsheviks? The rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Ireland, 191721, in Boyce D. George, O’Day Alan (eds.), Ireland in Transition, 1867-1921, p. 210; 45 O’Brien Rónán, A Divided House: The Irish Trades Union Congress and the origins of the Irish Labour Party, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 26; 46 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 18; 47 The cost of living rose between 1909 and 1913 by almost 9%. Pelling Henry, A History of British Trade Unionism, p. 131; Moran Bill, 1913, Jim Larkin and the British Labour Movement, p. 35; 27 more than double the average of the previous twenty years and most of them were successful 48. The following year instead recorded a sharp decline due to the beginning of the Great War49. While Ireland population was declining Dublin was growing and in the twenty years from 1891 to 1911 it had 20.000 new citizens, for a total population of 300.000. However the city did not develop along with its population and only 2.600 new dwellings were built turning Dublin in a slum city with thousands of families – almost one-quarter of the total population – living in one room, a large proportion of men in casual employment, and the highest crime rate in the island 50. The unions strikes that could have improved the workers’ situation were damaged by thousands of unemployed and underemployed workers that easily scabbed the unskilled striking workers 51. Things started to change after the arrival of Larkin in Dublin when he began to unionising the unskilled in his ITGWU managing to obtain the first successes gaining substantial pay rises for the dockers and the agricultural labourers and growing its membership to 10.00052. The ITGWU later affiliated in the ITUC and gained 20.000 new members. In July 1913 William Martin Murphy (1845 – 1919)53 – promising the Waterloo of Larkin54 – decided to act against the ITGWU with other 300 employers, and dismissed hundreds of workers suspected of ITGWU membership. It was not a dispute on wages, hours or working conditions but a battle against the principle of trade unionism. Each employer had to decide to be dismissed or to sign a document 48 Bagwell Philip S., The Triple Industrial Alliance, 1913-1922, in Briggs Asa, Saville John (eds.), Essays in Labour History 1886-1923, p. 97; Cronin James E., Strikes and power in Britain, 1870-1920, in Haimson Leopold H., Tilly Charles (eds.), Strikes, wars, and revolutions in an international perspective, pp. 82-97; 49 Tilly Charles, Introduction, in Haimson Leopold H., Tilly Charles (eds.), Strikes, wars, and revolutions in an international perspective, p. 443; 50 Russell George W. (Æ), The Dublin Strike; Ferriter Diarmaid, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, pp. 51-52; Pimley Adrian, The Working-class Movement and the Irish Revolution, 1896-1923, in Boyce D. G. (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, 1879-1923, p. 199; Curtis L. P. Jr, Ireland in 1914, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, p. 170; 51 Newsinger John, Rebel City, Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement, pp. 3-6; 52 Lyons F. S. L., Ireland Since the Famine, pp. 281-282; 53 One of the wealthiest and best respected men in Dublin, Chairman of the Dublin United Tramway Company and controller of the Irish Independent, Evening Herald, and Irish Catholic newspapers. Keogh Dermot, William Martin Murphy and the origins of the 1913 Lock-Out, p. 15; 54 Keogh Dermot, William Martin Murphy and the origins of the 1913 Lock-Out, p. 22; 28 stating: “I hereby undertake to carry out all instructions given to me by or on behalf of my employers, and, further, I agree to immediately resign my membership of the IT&GWU (if a member); and I further undertake that I will not join or in any way support this Union”55. In response the biggest strike in Ireland history started56; it began on 26 August with a tram workers’ strike and thanks to the sympathetic strikes quickly spread to the port, lasting for six months and seeing 20.000 wage earners directly involved and 100.000 men, women and children – ⅓ of the city population – directly affected by the struggle57. Larkin was arrested and sentenced to seven months but when Dublin degenerated in a riot he was rapidly released58. During the Bloody Sunday of 31 August 1913 a large crowd that was listening Jim Larkin, speaking from a room of the Murphy’s Imperial Hotel in O’Connell Street, was charged by the Dublin Metropolitan Police that injured 460 person, arrested 210, and killed 2, sending 600 to the hospital 59. The strike ended with a defeat for the workers and the ITGWU. The last strikers returned to work on January 1914, often with humiliating terms or worse: hundreds fell victim to the blacklist and lost their jobs60. After these events James Connolly founded the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a military body whose purpose was to defend the striking workers, while James Larkin left for the USA the following year to raise funds for the union. The Dublin municipal elections of 1914 were seen as a public opinion test: in these elections only two of the eleven labour candidates were elected (Unionist won three seats while Home Rulers twenty-five). Only in this year’s Congress a formal structure was created for the party – now officially called Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party (ITUC&LP) – and a quite radical programme, with the aim to obtain a labour representation in “any Parliament to be elected in Ireland”61, was launched. 55 UCDA LA10/367; 56 Clegg Hugh Armstrong, A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889. Volume II 1911-1933, pp. 60-64; 57 O’Brien William, Nineteen-Thirteen – Its Significance, p. 2; 58 Fraser W. Hamish, A History of British Trade Unionism 1700-1998, p. 118; 59 Derwin Des, The Taming of Jim Larkin, p. 8; Yeates Padraig, The Dublin 1913 Lockout, p. 32; Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 19; O’Brien Paul, The 1913 Lockout, p. 2; 60 Newsinger John, Rebel City, Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement, p. 105; 61 Extract from a manifesto of the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party National Executive, originally published in Irish Worker, 8 August 1914, NLI, MS 17,108/1; 29 Even though the year before it had been defeated at the Dublin elections the ITUC&LP contested a byelection in the College Green constituency of Dublin; the labour candidate, Thomas Farren (1879 – 1955), strongly attacked by his opponent for the danger of “anarchy and syndicalism combined with pro-German intrigue”62, was defeated by 2.455 votes to 1.816. This was the first time that the Labour Party tried to contest a parliamentary seat, and it was also the last one until the 1922 elections. The Great War With the beginning of the Great War Ireland found itself divided between supporters of the British war effort (included both Ulster unionists and most of the IPP with its leader John Redmond), pacifists and revolutionaries. The newborn ITUC&LP was the only party that refused to take sides in what was in its opinion a “war for the aggrandisement of the capitalist class”63. While Irish deputies were in favour of intervention from the beginning, the BLP started to support the war only when it became clear that the public opinion was also in favour of it. When the hostilities began the war effort was supported by all Westminster’s parties64. The outbreak of the war meant for Ireland the suspension of the Home Rule until the end of the conflict – with the provision that part of Ulster inhabited by a Protestant majority would be somehow excluded – but also benefited its agricultural economic due to the Great Britain’s food demand. In 1914 the United Kingdom was the only major European power with an army composed by professionals and not conscripted men. The military service was seen as an unjust impost on youth and a danger to freedom, not a civic duty. However this new total war changed everything65. On January 1916 the first Military Service Act, applying only to single man, was passed; it was followed in May by a second one, applying to married man too. All exemptions were cancelled later in 1918. Ireland never had compulsory conscription, still many participated in the war with great discomfort of the new nationalist party, Sinn Féin. 10.7% of the male population volunteered (in contrast with the 62 Freeman’s Journal, 9 June 1915, cited in Laffan Michael, In the Shadow of the National Question, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 35; 63 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 60; 64 Pelling Henry, Reid Alastair J., A Short History of the Labour Party, p. 33; 65 Edgerton David, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. A Twentieth-Century History, p. 46; 30 24.2% of the English and Welsh or 26.9% Scottish male population) and only 1.6 conscripted. This meant that not more than ⅛ of the male population (mostly from Ulster and Leinster) participated in the war while almost half of the British population did66. 200.000 Irishmen fought in the war but most of them enlisted in 1914 and 1915 (44 and 46.000 respectively) with a following drastic drop when the horror of the war became clear and from 1916 to the end of the war fewer and fewer men enlisted. Roughly 40.000 Irish men were killed67. During the war the Irish left retreated back from politics and revolution. The drift to nationalism was so halted that even if the Easter Rising of 1916 counted on the participation of many members of the unions (Connolly it’s the most famous example) the Labour Party did not gained any sympathy from it68 and instead lost its greatest thinker, saw the Liberty Hall destroyed by combats and many nationalist sympathisers arrested and deported. The energies that could have been used to create the party were focused on expanding its trade union base69 (the ITGWU saw its membership rose between 1916 and 1920 from 5.000 to 120.000 70 and with hundreds of new branches), on achieving some wage requests (with the ICA weapons used to picket as in the successful Burns Laird line strike71) and fighting in the anti-conscription campaign of 1918 as well as in the war of independence, but this time aside from the political fray72. The ITUC&LP was vital for the campaign against conscription that started with a general strike on 23 April 1918. In this struggle the Labour leadership demonstrated its capacity for national management. This general strike, supported by the Catholic Hierarchy and nationalists, is considered the first successful general strike in Western Europe73. 66 Winter J. M., Britain's `Lost Generation' of the First World War, p. 451; 67 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 86; 68 Laffan Michael, In the Shadow of the National Question, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 36; 69 NLI MS 15,704/7/3; 70 O'Connor Emmet, Labour and Politics 1830-1945: Colonisation and Mental Colonisation, in Lane Fintan, ò Drisceoil Donal (eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945, p. 34; Brief history of Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, NLI, MS 33,718/G(196); 71 Leddin Jeffrey, The “Labour Hercules”. The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913-23, p. 102; 72 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1937, p. 8; 73 Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 1, in “The Irish Times”, 27 February 1967, p. 10 31 Easter Rising As stated above the IPP did not manage to create a national movement in support of the Home Rule. Despite most of the population did not mobilise for the Home Rule, the more this was deferred the more bellicose unionists became. In response to this opposition the radical expressions of Irish nationalism found fertile ground. The Irish Republican Brotherhood – a secret oath-bound society founded from the ashes of the 1848 Young Irelander Rebellion in 1858 by James Stephens (1825 – 1901)74 – reorganised itself after sixty years of staying in the shadows. The IRB wanted an Irish republic and was favourable of revolutionary means in order to achieve its aim. With its newspaper, the Irish Freedom, it advocated the establishment of a republican party, whereas the status quo was defended by the pro-unionist Irish Time newspaper that opposed the Home Rule75. With the start of the Great War the IRB decided that Ireland had to rise before the end of the war, seeing it as a favourable situation. The Home Rulers were not the only ones active: since the mid 1880s the unionists had revived the Orange Order (a Protestant fraternal order first established in 1795) after the threat of the first and second Home Rule. In 1912 the opposition to the Third Home Rule was much stronger. The Irish Party that represented the unionists was led from 1910 by Edward Carson (1854 – 1935) and it supported the British Conservative Party of Andrew Bonar Law (1858 – 1923). From the unionists point of view since the Parliament Act had been illegitimately and revolutionary imposed against their constitutional means, they were entitled to react with extra-parliamentary agitation76. They started to drill and to import guns, and in Ulster Day, 28 September 1912, signed the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, a pact with God, to resist to Home Rule. A second covenant was signed by Ulster women and in total 470.000 people signed. The importation of guns to Ireland became soon a problem with the authorities worried about “persons likely to use them for unlawful purposes”77 74 Finn Daniel, One Man’s Terrorist. A Political History of the IRA, p. 10; 75 Irish Time 12 April 1912, cited in Laffan Michael, In the Shadow of the National Question, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012 p. 32; 76 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 463; Rast M. C., Shaping Ireland’s Independence. Nationalist, Unionist, and British Solutions to the Irish Question, 1909-1925, p. 27; 77 United Kingdom National Archives, CO, 904/23, Chief Secretary’s Office to Undersecretary, 23 February 1912, quoted in Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 126; 32 and in 1913 a royal proclamation prohibited the importation of arms into Ireland. However thousands of rifles had already been imported by then (often with the complicity of the German Empire) and the Ulster Volunteers Force (UVF) claimed 100.000 members. Such a great people’s army created a scandal for the government with the Curragh Mutiny of March 1914 when 59 of the 70 officers menaced to resign if they were ordered to take action against the unionists. The UVF had been tolerated by the Government since it was a branch of the Orange Order, that had been revived by the landlords in opposition to both the Home Rule and the Land Acts78. However when the British Army, seen but the contemporaries as apolitical, took sides on a strictly partisan issues 79 this became not just a local problem but a national one, almost a coup d’etat, as described by political scientist Iain McLean 80: of the 26.251 soldiers and non-commissioned officers and the 2.208 army officers stationed in Ireland only 6.400 and 304 of them were Catholics81. In response to the army that unionist were assembling, the Irish Volunteers organisation was founded on 25 November 1913. It is thought that about 200.000 men took part as volunteers, many could not be enlisted because there were not enough weapons: on 4 December 1913 a Royal Proclamation, under the Customs Control Act of 1877, had forbidden to import of weapons and munitions in Ireland. This paramilitary corp had the same difficult relationship with the political authorities that the UVF had. Eoin MacNeill (1867 – 1945), founder and Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Volunteers, had to include Redmond in the organisation but a split in the movement became inevitable when in September 1914 the leader of the IPP invited the Volunteers to enlist in the British army for the Great War. 90% of the volunteers passed with him to the National Volunteers while only 9.000 men stayed with MacNeill and his followers82. 78 Boyce D. George, O’Day Alan (eds.), Defenders of the Union. A survey of British and Irish unionism since 1801, p. 119; 79 A similar threat had been made in 1886 during the First Home Rule debate. Kee Robert, The Green Flag. A History of Irish Nationalism, p. 486; 80 Rast M. C., Shaping Ireland’s Independence. Nationalist, Unionist, and British Solutions to the Irish Question, 19091925, pp. 121-122, 142; 81 One of this disproportion causes can be found in the Land Acts: many Anglo-Irish families saw their fortunes decline and many younger sons of these families turned to the army for a career. Cummins Edward R., The Curragh Incident, March, 1914, causes and effects, p. 15; Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 18; 82 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, pp. 143-144; 33 After the first year of war some leaders of the IRB, after doing entryism in the Volunteers, started to secretly organise an uprising for the Easter day of 1916. Patrick Pearse (1879 – 1916), director of the military organisation, was one of those IRB leaders and ordered his men to be ready for the insurrection. However when MacNeill was informed of the plans a split in the Volunteers occurred. Having discovered that the Volunteers were really in the hands of the IRB 83, he opposed the Rising thinking it was not the right moment and that an uprising could be justified only if the disarmament of the organisation was announced84. Trying to prevent the action, MacNeill published newspaper advertisements with different orders for the Volunteers. Most men were not ready for a violent uprising and his message was accepted with relief 85. Nevertheless about a thousand volunteers fought in the rising, with about 220 of the 250-300 ICA members against many thousands of British soldiers from different parts of the city and the country. Cumann na mBam, the female auxiliary corps launched in 1914, and Fianna Éireann, the national boy scouts founded by Bulmer Hobson (1883 – 1969) and Countess Markievicz (1868 – 1927) in 1909, participated in the Rising, too86. Knowing that they were going to be defeated, the plan saw the occupation of important and strategic buildings of the city and the resistance to the bitter end to show that the British law and order were not bearable anymore87. The authorities did not know anything until the first group of Volunteers attacked the Dublin Castle at 12:15 Monday 24 April. At 12:30 all telegraphic connections were cut. The first day was a success for the protesters that managed to occupy most of their targets while the authorities panicked and requested huge amount of reinforcements from all the country and England. Although at the time the British forces were already five more times bigger than the Irish ones, their number kept growing until it exceeded it by twenty times88. 83 Lyons F. S. L., The revolution in train, 1914-16, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, p. 204; 84 Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 18-19; Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, pp. 150-151; 85 Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 119; 86 Charles Townshend, Easter 1916. The Irish Rebellion, p. 164; Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 2223; 87 Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 123; 88 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, pp. 154-155; Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 160; 34 The theory that the Germans were behind this chaos started to spread: the Volunteers had actually tried to buy old Russian rifles from them, but they had been discovered and the rifles destroyed; there was no German plan to land on Ireland or Great Britain89. The Volunteers had their Head Quarter in the GPO (General Post Office, in Sackville Street, now called O'Connell Street), and had occupied strategic locations in the Four Courts (Ireland's main courts building, located in Dublin) and St Stephen’s Green, but failed to conquest the Dublin Castle even if it was only defended by no more than a dozen men. Most of the next generation of great men in Irish history fought in the Rising: Eamon de Valera (1882 – 1975), Michael Collins, William T. Cosgrave (1880 – 1965) and Seán Lemass (1899 – 1971) 90. This revolutionary youth would soon become the backbone of the Irish leadership until 1973 when for the first time the Government had no former participants in the revolutionary period91. During combats Liberty Hall, the seat of ITUC&LP and of ITGWU, was destroyed by British forces; there were no rebel inside but it was known to be the Head Quarters of the ICA 92. Soon the citizens of Dublin had no food and water while the British bombs destroyed many houses and ignited many fires in the city93. The Volunteers fought with great strength until the very end even against a much larger number of enemies, but after a week of struggle Pearse decided to surrender in the afternoon of Saturday 29. The first published data reported 300 kills during those six days (120 soldiers, and 180 victims difficult to distinguish between civilians and rebels) and more than 600 wounded. The material loss was about £2.500.000, a huge loss for such a poor country as Ireland was at the time 94. Fifteen of the seventeen rebel chiefs were sentenced to death and killed between the 3 and 12 of May, included James Connolly who was still recovering in hospital and was not even able to stand. 89 Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 17-22; 90 Taoiseach of three continuous Fianna Fail governments from 1959 to 1966; 91 Cohan A. S., Continuity and Change in the Irish Political Elite: A Comment on the 1973 Elections, p. 250; 92 Charles Townshend, Easter 1916. The Irish Rebellion, p. 191; Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 171; 93 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 158; 94 Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook. Easter, 1916, p. 33; Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 209; 35 3.266 between rebels, civilians and women were interned in Richmond Barracks, a number that was much bigger than the possible amount of participants in the uprising. Many were transported to England prisons where they were sentenced to many years of detention. Ireland was kept under martial law until early November95. Just as after the 1867 Fenian Rising, the executions of the leaders turned them in martyrs and in the following months the nationalist movement found new strength96. Sinn Féin Sinn Féin was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith (1871 – 1922) with a fifteen-points national programme, with the idea not of a separate republic but of a dual monarchy similar to the AustrianHungarian one97. It was much less revolutionary than the IRB and preferred the tactic of abstentionism to achieve its aim. The left-wing Sinn Féin was guided by Eamonn Ceannt (1881-1916) and defended the workers; Griffith instead did not agree with the strike as a form of fight and denounced both socialism and unionism as English ideas, hence anti-Irish morally and culturally98. The party had a rapid growth from 1907 to 1909 then declined and in 1912 it was near to extinction 99. At this time Sinn Féin had just a couple of members in public offices while Labour had representatives in local governments in most cities and larger towns; if the Sinn Féin newspaper sold about 2.000 copies, the Irish Worker sold 20-30.000 copies a week, though mostly concentrated in Dublin, where it was read by the entire working class100. 95 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 164; 96 Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, p. 110; 97 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 3; 98 McCarthy Terry, Labour v. Sinn Fein. The Dublin General Strike 1913/14. The Lost Revolution, p. 20; 99 Laffan Michael, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party 1916-1923, pp. 21-32; 100 Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 1, in “The Irish Times”, 27 February 1967, p. 10; Newsinger John, ’A Lamp to Guide Your Feet’: Jim Larkin, the Irish Worker and the Dublin Working Class, p. 65; 36 Although Griffith opposed violence and his party did not participated in the Rising, it was nevertheless disarranged by the events that followed and many Sinn Féiners were interned 101. However new strength was found after the Easter Rising with a nascent popular opposition to British government102. Part of the Irish prisoners were released at the end of 1916 to appease Irish mood. Michael Collins was among them (since it had not been possible to determine if he fought in the Rising) and soon became one of the movement leaders, in a moment when there was a lack of guidance103. The party became rapidly popular during 1917, involving both supporters that had never been interested in politics, and former Home Rule Party voters. It was not just a party but the political wing of a military and constitutional movement104. The nationalist movement acquired thousands of new members and started a different form of guerrilla against the United Kingdom from 1917-18 with a better drill and organisation105. On 25 October 1917, during the Ard-Fheis of Sinn Féin in Mansion House, Dublin, more than 1.000 representatives of Sinn Féin clubs participated; with everyone’s great surprise Arthur Griffith left his position to support the candidature of Eamon de Valera as president 106. De Valera, the only Easter Rising leader not executed (maybe due to his American citizenship), had been recently released from prison; he was still unknown by the most, but supported by the IRB men 107. He was elected also president of the Volunteers, blurring the differences between the political and paramilitary movement108. At the same time Griffith became the vice-president of his own party. The second important decision taken during the assembly was to participate in all political elections. 101 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, pp. 107, 157; Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, p. 27; 102 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 3; Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, p. 16 103 Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 252; 104 Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, pp. 110-11; 105 Comerford R. V., Introduction. Ireland, 1870-1921, in Vaughan W. E. (ed.), A New History of Ireland VI Ireland Under the Union, II 1870-1921, p. lvii; 106 Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 256; 107 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, pp. 170-171; 108 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 38; 37 On 18 May 1918 many Sinn Féin members were arrested (included de Valera, Griffith and Cosgrave, while Collins was the main survivor) and deported to England accused of conspiring with Germany 109; however everybody knew that the real cause was their fight against conscription: Irish men were not required to serve yet but David Lloyd George (1863 – 1945), now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had passed a Military Service Act in April that conscripted also the Irish population. The vast opposition to this policy became an embarrassment for the Government, that never applied it, and thousands of new members joined Sinn Féin and other republican organisations 110. Sinn Féin remained without a strong leadership but managed to use this imprisonment as a weapon to increase its position111. 1918 Elections In August 1918, during the annual congress the ITUC&LP decided to contest the forthcoming elections – the first since 1910 due to the Great War – with fifteen candidates. In September a radical and socialist manifesto was published; it included securing workers’ democratic management and control of all industries and services. The party lacked a real leader (Connolly was dead while Larkin was still in the USA to raise fund for the ITGWU), weak and divided on the national question. The best solution was found in a compromise between Sinn Féin and Home Rule positions: the Labour Party would have abstained from Westminster with the reserve to change this position. This perspective was strongly attacked by the other two parties. At a special conference the ITUC&LP decided to abstain from the elections 112, after having tried to negotiate with Sinn Féin over the allocation of seats113, and seeing the change of international state of affairs and the sudden end of the war. This decision – criticised by delegates from the north that 109 Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 39-40; 110 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 39-40; 111 Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, pp. 258-259; 112 NLI MS15,704/7/9; ILP&TUC Report of a Special Conference held in the Mansion House, Dublin on Friday and Saturday November, 1st and 2nd, 1918, in ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1918, pp. 93-122; during this Conference the name was officially changed to Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (ILP&TUC); 113 A possible compromise between the two parties reserved four seats in Dublin left unopposed for the Labour candidates, who in exchange promise not to contest elsewhere, and later to abstained from Westminster. O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 112; 38 considered it a gift for the nationalists and the unionists – favoured Sinn Féin. De Valera’s party won the plebiscitarian elections and swiped away most of the IPP, gaining 73 seats with the former main party crumbled to just 6 seats, and the unionists with 26 seats. Sinn Féin took 70% of the seats but less then half of the votes; this was due to the first-past-the-post electoral system and due to the fact that the IPP did not manage to contest 25 seats, where Sinn Féin candidates won unopposed. The result was a surprise because even if the IPP had lost its leader – Redmond had died on 6 March and had been replaced by John Dillon (1851 – 1927) – it still managed to win the by-elections in South Armagh, Waterford and East Tyrone114. These elections was the first one with a near-universal suffrage: the Representation of the People Act 1918 had given active power to all men over the age of 21 and women over the age of 30. The Irish electoral base passed from 700.000 to 1.930.000115. IPP lost votes to Sinn Féin both from those which had gained land thanks to the land reforms and now were irritated by its concessions to the rural poor, and both from those rural poor farmers that thought that IPP was not doing enough for them. Sinn Féin could be their alternative116. It is quite probably that if the Labour Party had decided to contest these elections the result would have been meagre as it intended to contest fifteen seats but was not able to find enough candidates, particularly outside Dublin117. Independence War The Sinn Féin deputies – elected with the democratic British law – refused to occupy their seats in Westminster and formed a new Irish Parliament, the Dáil Éireann, which opened for the first time on 21 January. On this day four constitutional documents were adopted: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Message to the Free Nations of the World, and the Democratic Programme. The latter, whose “astonishing vagueness allowed it to be associated with any one of a hounded brands of 114 South Armagh: Patrick Donnelly (IPP) 63.34%, Patrick McCartan (Sinn Féin) 35.57%, Thomas Wakefield Richardson (Independent Unionist) 1.09%; Waterford: William Redmond (IPP) 61.9%, Vincent White (Sinn Féin) 38.1%; East Tyrone: Thomas Harbison (IPP) 59.6%, Seán Milroy (Sinn Féin) 40.4%; 115 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 180; 116 Bew Paul, Hazelkorn Ellen, Patterson Henry, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, pp. 20-21; 117 Ferriter Diarmaid, The Transformation of Ireland: 1900-2000, p. 751; 39 modern Socialism, or with them all”118, was written by Thomas Johnson (1872 – 1963) but recast by the Secretary of Sinn Féin, Seán T. O’Kelly (1882 – 1966) 119. This programme was approved with Richard Mulcahy (1886 – 1971) speaking in favour of: “A nation cannot live and live as long as any of the people are denied their rightful share of the property and wealth that God has given us all to live, and to sustain life in us.”120 Since Eamon de Valera was still in prison, during the second Dáil meeting, on 22 January, Cathal Brugha (1874 – 1922) was elected as the first Príomh Aire. When de Valera escaped from prison in February, he was elected president during the third meeting, on 1 April. It was not long until, on 3 July 1918, Sinn Féin and all the connected organisations were suppressed by the British Government, and their leaders arrested. During the following months the strength of the Volunteers (from 1919 mostly referred as Irish Republican Army, IRA) decreased, and during the fight period they did not have more than 3.000 men, with bad or worse equipment. For the United Kingdom the problem of how much strength to dispose against these rebels was serious: being too soft would not have solved the problem, and being too harsh could worsen it. During the spring of 1920 it was decided to increase the fight against the IRA, and two new corps were recruited in Britain to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Irish police force. The RIC had 25.000 men at the start of the Independence War, but during the summer of 1920 had lost 1.300 men through resignation or retirement, and by the autumn had less than 10.000 officers. These newly recruited corps were the “Black and Tans” – mostly enlisted in London, Glasgow and Liverpool – and the Auxiliaries of Sir 118 The Irish Times, 22 January 1919; 119 Half of the draft was omitted and one third of the Programme as approved was written by O’Kelly. Ó Cathasaigh Aindrias, Getting with the programme. Labour, the Dáil and the Democratic Programme of 1919; O’Shannon Cathal, The 1919 “Democratic Programme”. A comparison between the two versions of the Democratic Programme – as written by Johnson and as approved – can be found in O’Connor Emmet, Neither democratic nor a programme: the Democratic Programme of 1919, pp. 106-109; 120 His original speech, in Gaelic, was:“Ní féidir le náisiún bheith beo agus 'na bheathaidh an fhaid agus a dhiúltuighthear d'aon chuid des na daoine a gcion ceart féin den mhaoin agus den tsaidhbhreas a bhronn Dia orainn go léir chun sinn a dheunamh beo, agus chun na beatha bhuanú ionainn.” DD, 21 January 1919; 40 Henry Tudor (1871 – 1965) – most of them former soldiers of the Great War. In total about 10.000 men served in these two corps in the eighteen months from January 1919 to the truce121. British authorities did not know how many men the IRA had, some speculated even 100.000 122. This confusion, along with the brutal behaviour of the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, helped the IRA to promote its ideals and present itself as a para-state army or a pre-military force rather than a paramilitary one123. The Labour Party, not having taken part in the elections, was still present to defend the Irish people: in a conference with the Irish Department of Agriculture it insisted that even in a moment of general shortage of food, Ireland had to maintain a policy of price control and of exports limitation, in order to grant enough provision and affordable prices124. The 1920 local elections proved that the Labour Party could still have a role even after its abstention in 1918. To participate in these elections would have helped to find a political space, firstly because the local government councils could have been recognised legitimately by both the British government and the nationalists, and secondly because this reformism would placate the more revolutionary wing of the Labour movement. In the elections held in January for the urban areas, the Labour Party managed to get (at least) 329 seats125 and 18% of the first preference votes (Sinn Féin – weakened by the war – secured just 27%); in Dublin Corporation it was by far the largest opposition party. In the rural areas, where the party was poorly organised and Sinn Féin and the Volunteers could be more intimidating, it managed to win only one seat every nine seats won by Sinn Féin, that took control of 25 out of the 33 121 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 193-197; Lee J. J., Ireland 19121985. Politics and Society, p. 43; Dolan Anne, The British Culture of Paramilitary Violence in the Irish War of Independence, in Gerwarth Robert, Horne John (eds.), War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, pp. 202-204; Harvey A. D., Who Were the Auxiliaries?, pp. 665-669; 122 Lord French. Duff Charles, La Rivolta Irlandese. I Sei Giorni che Sconvolsero l’Impero Britannico, p. 279; 123 This mean that it believed to represent the new national army against the old and foreign British army. Eichenberg Julia, The Dark Side of Independence: Paramilitary Violence in Ireland and Poland after the First World War, p. 236; Eichenberg Julia, Soldiers to Civilians, Civilians to Soldiers: Poland and Ireland after the First World War, in Gerwarth Robert, Horne John (eds.), War in Peace. Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War, pp. 189-199; 124 NAI DoA 92/2/525; 125 McCabe Conor, The Irish Labour Party and the 1920 local elections, p. 7; 41 county councils126 and 172 of 206 rural district councils. With the words of the Watchword, “for the first time in history Labour in all parts of Ireland [had] made a bold and independent bid for power”127. David Lloyd George found a solution for the Irish problem with the Fourth Home Rule 128 that was supposed to follow the maxima divide et impera. This bill was meant to build an Irish Council and two different parliaments, one in Dublin and one in Belfast for the six Ulster counties; both would have sent deputies at Westminster but fewer than before. The war between the IRA and the British corps continued with many brutal events 129, such as the infamous Bloody Sunday of 21 November 1920, but it found an unexpected truce on 11 July 1921. During this period a peace conference took place. The Irish delegation was composed by Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins and four others, while the British delegation was composed by David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) and Lord Birkenhead (1872 – 1930). Collins and his men did not have great negotiation experience, however they knew their aims, and they had been picked directly by Eamon de Valera and the Dáil with the authority to negotiate and sign the treaty. The commission discussed from 11 October until 6 December, when it proposed the final draft: the Irish Free State was created, a dominion separated from the Northern Ireland (whose border would have to be discussed by a Border Commission) but bound with the United Kingdom and the Crown (to which the Irish deputies owed an oath of fidelity). The new Irish state had also to keep a portion of the British public debt and had to yield four strategic ports of military value130. Since the Labour Party did not contest the 1918 elections and took a neutral position during the AngloIrish War to prevent a division of the front against Britain, it had no role in the Treaty of 1921. It preferred to maintain unity and refrain from taking sides, although this meant public humiliation: “I 126 The County Tipperary was divided between North and South, in this way the total count of the counties councils was 33 and not 32. 127 Watchword of Labour, 31 January 1920, quoted in McCabe Conor, The Irish Labour Party and the 1920 local elections, p. 17; 128 Government of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5 c. 67); 129 It is interesting that Oswald Mosley, future founder of British Union of Fascists, broke with the Conservative Party and joined Labour over the use of political violence in Ireland. Gregory Adrian, Peculiarities of the English? War, Violence and Politics: 1900–1939, p. 44; 130 Foster Gavin, Res Publica na hÉireann? Republican Liberty and the Irish Civil War, pp. 20-42; 42 feel humiliated – said Alexander Stewart (Belfast Trades Council, 1854 – 1926) – that in all we read about this great peace movement we appear nowhere in the negotiations”131. In the elections of 13 May 1921 the Labour Party stood down again, after a formal but empty protest, “calling upon all workers, North and South, to demonstrate their loyalty to Ireland and Freedom”132 allowing Sinn Féin to win uncontested every seat for the new southern Irish parliament (apart from those reserved for Trinity College)133. Few days later, on 24 May, during the first Northern Ireland elections, the result was much different: the voters had to decide between the self-government or a united Ireland and preferred the former. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) won 40 of the 52 seats while Sinn Féin and the nationalists won 6 seats each, with the Sinn Féiners abstaining from taking their seats. The treaty, known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was ratified by the British Parliament on 16 December, while the Dáil started the discussion on 14 December and voted on 7 January 1922. 64 deputies voted in favour while 57 voted against; among the latter was the president Eamon de Valera, who was later replaced by Arthur Griffith, with Collins as Chairman134. 131 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1921, p. 80; 132 Typed copy declaration by the Irish Labour Party announcing decision not to participate in the general election of 1921, May 1921, NLI, MS 17,132; 133 It is often forgotten that one Labour candidate, Richard Corish (1886 – 1945), contested in defiance with the directive and was elected as a Sinn Féin deputy in Wexford, where he was the local ITGWU Branch Secretary. He contested in the same constituency for the Labour Party for more than 22 years, until the 1944 election, always managing to win. Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 78; Richard Corish, in “www.electionsireland.org”; 134 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 54-55; 43 44 CHAPTER II – A DECADE OF OPPOSITION (1922 – 1932) The 1922 Elections, the Third Dáil, and the Civil War With the 1922 elections, the first one after the end of the Independence War, the Labour Party had finally the possibility to contest a national election and to stop a “decade [in which it had been] a delicate and neglected creature, vulnerable, and totally lacking in self-confidence”1. It is of great interest the fact that still today, when the Labour Party writes its history, the quarter of century from his first successful elections until its participation in the 1948 Inter-Party Government, is totally omitted2. The “Labour's proud history” is almost a prove of self-censorship of the most intense and important period of the party’s life. Having spent its first decade of history focusing mainly on industrial activity and not building an electoral machinery, the ILP&TUC was not ready for an election yet. It was a party with a programme, with leaders, with national influence, but no network throughout the country. Time had come to take on its political role because – while the trade unions acquired members – in the absence of an effective Labour Party, Sinn Féin acquired voters3. On 11 January a party delegation spoke in front of the Dáil and with this speech, Thomas Johnson, Secretary of the National Executive, signalled his party’s intention to contest the following elections: 1 Ferriter Diarmaid, “No good Catholic can be a true Socialist”: The Labour Party and the Catholic Church, 1922-52, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (ed.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 96; 2 Labour's proud history, www.labour.ie/party/; 3 Laffan Michael, “Labour must Wait” Ireland's Conservative Revolution, pp. 206-208; 45 “We feel that we are, perhaps, in a somewhat exceptional position, inasmuch as we might have had the right to address the assembly had we considered, at the last election and the previous election, it was in the interests of Ireland that we should have gone forward as a Labour Party to seek representation in this Dáil […] we had refrained from contesting elections in the interests, as we thought —as we know—of national solidarity in the face of the enemy. […] There are at this time probably one hundred and thirty thousand men and women walking the streets, unemployed […] We were in the position that we could not agitate with the British Government on such matters as social conditions. We dared not agitate because of the critical nature of the situation—we dared not agitate against the Irish Government. The times have developed; circumstances have developed. Those times have passed and we are in the situation to-day that a very large proportion of the population is at its wits' end to know how things are going to move […] These are social problems that must be dealt with at once. We realise fully all the difficulties of the situation. We are fully aware of them, and are prepared to make every allowance for those difficulties.”4 At a special conference in February it was discussed whether keeping abstaining or contesting the forthcoming elections. The National Executive urged that they could no longer afford to remain in the background, in fact many delegates regretted the 1918 abstention, however this decision was not unanimously supported: Helena Moloney (1883 – 1967) – representing the republican group which argued that Labour ought to permit Sinn Féin a clear run once again – moved a counterproposal that was defeated by a narrow margin of 115 to 825. Two factors came in help to the Labour Party, craving to contest the elections: the postponement of the vote until June – that gave it more time to prepare – and the Collins-de Valera pact. The agreement between the nationalists could help the Labour Party to show its policies as less irrelevant. In few weeks the ILP&TUC managed to find 22 candidates to contest in just over half of the potential 28 constituencies. It was not a bad starting point for a party with no local roots or organisation, but the number seems small compared to the leaders’ confidence of popular support. This was due firstly to caution reasons since the economic cost of the elections had a huge impact: under the electoral law inherited by the United Kingdom6 every candidate wishing to contest an election had to deposit the sum 4 DD, 10 January 1922; 5 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1922, pp. 69-80; Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 10; 6 As discussed later, the Representation of the People Act 1918 (7 & 8 George 5 c.64) was partially maintained by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 George 5 Ch. 67); 46 of £150 that, considering inflation, can be converted to present-day £8.500. The deposit was refunded if the candidate’s votes were at least one-eighth of the number of votes polled divided by the number of members to be elected7. This could be a limit to democracy – as stated by Sinn Féiner Count Plunkett (1851 – 1948) in his motion to abolish it8 – but also a heavy burden for a small party such as the ILP&TUC, which main income were the affiliation fees, and the election funds, given voluntarily by some unions9. Taking part in elections made clear the reformist nature of the party. Socialism and Marxism of its militants, such as Connolly and Larkin, had had a great role in its origin 10, but the Labour Party had refused its revolutionary call. It had taken no part or advantage from the so-called soviets that were established between 1919 and 1921 in different locations, describing them as “strikes”11. The trade unions were labourist12 and syndicalist, and pursued workers’ rights, rather than socialism; they did not allow individual membership or membership of socialist or cooperative societies as it was permitted by the BLP. The idea behind this interdiction was to prevent careerist politicians (that in Johnson’s mind was doing as much harm as good in the British movement 13) to take over the trade unions’ control on the industrial questions. The first sparks of the imminent civil war started on 14 April, when the IRA’s Dublin Brigade, led by Rory O’Connor (1883 – 1922), occupied the Four Courts. The anti-treaties took hold of several other buildings, both in the capital and in the country, in response to this act. The Labour Party tried to calm things down unsuccessfully: a delegation was sent to the men occupying the Four Courts with the purpose of persuading them to vacate the building and avoid confrontation; a Strike Against Militarism was called for 24 April. 7 www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator. In 1922 elections eight candidates (two independents, two farmers and four pro-treaty candidates) lost their deposit. 8 The motion was defeated, the voting being 40 for and 50 against; DD, 1 March 1922; 9 The Statement of Accounts, presented during the 1922 Congress, declared an income of £4.368 with a total expenditure of £2.117. ILP&TUC, Annual Report, 1922, pp. 53-53, 89-90; 10 This “road to socialism” was synthetically and effectively described in Webb Sidney, The Labour Party on the Threshold, pp. 11-12; 11 Kemmy James, The Limerick Soviet, p. 35; 12 Pursuing the development of a collective organisation of working people to campaign for better working conditions and treatment. Ó Cathasaigh Aindrias, Labour’s love lost, p. 19; 13 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics 1890-1930, p. 38; 47 It was with general surprise that on 20 May Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera announced the pact between their respective sides in the forthcoming elections. This pact presented a panel with both pro and anti-treaty delegates in equal numbers, with the intention of forming a coalition government after the vote. Therefore it was declared that the treaty should not be an issue in the elections to prevent division on the topic; the two factions of Sinn Féin (the one leaded by Collins in favour of the treaty, and the one in favour of a Republic, leaded by de Valera 14 and supported by CnB) contested the elections together and under the same title with as many candidates as the number of TDs they had had15: 118 of the 124 candidates elected in 1921 were re-selected16. Both sides had interest in preserving Sinn Féin’s monopoly of political power, and the anti-treaty faction was aware that it was stronger in the Dáil than in the country (as later shown by the results of the elections). With the exception of a couple of constituencies the pact was effective everywhere and most of the voters gave first preference to Sinn Féin candidates of their favourite faction, and the next preferences to the other faction. The Government of Ireland Act had replaced the first-past-the-post British electoral system with a proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote with multi-member constituencies; this was in line with the democratic view of the post-Versailles policy, and diluted the concentration on the treaty issue and gave the opportunity to focus on other questions. Nevertheless de Valera tried to convince the ILP&TUC to stand aside, bringing as evidence the transitional period and the same shared love for the country and desire to see it free17. He was not successful: this time the Labour Party was ready to claim its seats in the whole country 18. The ILP&TUC was not completely ready yet when the elections occurred, and its candidates were moderate in their demands; most of them supported the treaty, although one of them (Patrick Gaffney, 1892 – 1943) later refused to take the oath to the king19. 14 Who had set up his new party, Cumann na Poblachta, on 15 March. Gallagher Michael, The Pact General Election of 1922, p. 404; 15 National Coalition Panel Joint Statement, DD. 20 May 1922; 16 Of the other six, two had died, one (Richard Corish) now stood for Labour, and three had a complicated position between the two sides. Gallagher Michael, The Pact General Election of 1922, p. 407; 17 The Irish Times, 12 January 1922; 18 The Irish Times, 6 June 1922; 19 Known from 1923 as Pádraig MacGamhna. It has been claimed (see Laffan Michael, In the Shadow of the National Question, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 41) that he refused to take his seat, but as proved he was present during the debates of the 3 rd Dáil and spoke many 48 Republicans kept pressurising non-Sinn Féin candidates to withdraw in order to maintain national unity: their interests were already represented in the Dáil therefore there was no need for them to become TDs. This strategy was partially effective: seven of the twenty-six constituencies had only Sinn Féin candidates that in this way won 34 seats (17 pro-treaty and 17 against-treaty) without real democratic elections20. Many Farmers’ Party21 and four of the Labour candidates withdrew22, but the other eighteen ran for elections, even if threatened23. The results of the elections were the following: 40% of the votes went to non-Sinn Féin candidates. Pro-treaty candidates received almost 40%, while republicans got only 20%; the panel proposed by the Collins-de Valera pact managed to elect 94 of its 128 candidates, but only four of the contested times, but became an abstained just before 8 December 1922, when the Saorstát Éireann Constitution came into effect (his name is listed among the Teachtaí nár thóg a suidheachán, the deputies who did not take their seats). Callan Charles, Desmond Barry, Irish Labour Lives. A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Labour Party Deputies, Senators, MPs and MEPs, p. 109 20 The Irish Times, 14 June 1922; Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, p. 101-108; 21 This was the political wing of the Farmers Union. It was the only small party to participate in every election from 1922 (when it participated with 64 candidates and won 15 seats all in rural constituencies) supporting the pro-Treaty party and later Cosgrave’s Government, losing power and seats during the ‘20s with the polarization between Fianna Fail and Cumann na nGaedheal. Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, pp. 93-96; 22 Patrick Hogan (Clare, 1885 – 1969) withdrew when he met a republican mob on the steps of Ennis Courthouse where he was going to register his candidature. The legal assessor even turned his hands back on his watch to let him more time to decide. With him also the other three non-panel candidates withdrew, leaving only the Sinn Féiner candidates to contest the seat of Clare. It is thought that had he run, he would have probably won, since he was elected in Clare on the next election, and kept his seat for almost thirty years (apart from two elections) before becoming Ceann Comhairle and been elected unopposed until 1967. Gallagher Michael, The Pact General Election of 1922, p. 409; Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 12; 23 Dan Morrissey (1895 – 1981, Tipperary Mid-North and South, where he won with 27.30% of share, the only non-panel candidate against one pro-treaty and three anti-treaty, one losing, candidates) had Dan Breen (1894 – 1969, IRA – candidate by both the pro- and anti-treaty sides, in the Waterford–Tipperary East constituency, where he lost with 9.24% of share) pointing a gun levelled at his temple, but refused to stand down “in the interest of national unity”. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 12; Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, p. 107; 49 constituencies returned intact Sinn Féin panels: the party lost one seat in 7 constituencies, 2 seats in 4 constituencies and 3 seats in 5 constituencies24. The Labour Party elected seventeen candidates. Five topped the polls, six placed second and the other four were elected as third25. The party won 21.4% of the first preference votes 26 and gained the higher number of votes per candidate27. With these results it became clear that if it had run more candidates the outcome would have been even better28. Labour Party gained much support from the protest vote against Sinn Féin, and was very successful in those constituencies where it was the only alternative (5 of the 19 constituencies that had more candidates then possible winners); it benefited from the republican losses and from the anger against the two rival factions that were drifting the country towards civil war29. In general non-nationalists benefited from an anti-nationalist mood30. On 27 June the first meeting of the Dáil was announced for 1 July, two weeks after the elections. However the following day saw the end of the truce between the two factions of Sinn Féin, and the 24 Gallagher Michael, The Pact General Election of 1922, pp. 414-15; 25 The eighteenth candidate was supposed to be James Larkin, at the time in prison in the USA, but he had refused to stand on the elections eve, answering with great disdain: “damn politics, politicians especially careerists”. NLI MS 15,679/4/9. Thomas O'Farrell (1887 – 1971), nominated instead of Larkin, took 5.193 votes of the 27.775 in Dublin North West, 18.70%, but the four seats of the constituency were won by pro-treaty candidates. He would have been elected with only 361 more first preference votes (or thirteen total votes as stated in Meehan Ciara, Labour and Dáil Éireann, 1922-32, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 44), the 1.3%, Callan Charles, Desmond Barry, Irish Labour Lives. A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Labour Party Deputies, Senators, MPs and MEPs, p. 218; Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, p. 105; 26 This result was never repeated, not even in 2011 elections when – after the 2008 financial crisis – the Labour Party won thirty-seven seats. With the 19.5% of first preference votes – the greatest achievement for the party until now – it surpassed Fianna Fail and became the second biggest party in the Dáil, after Fine Gael. 27 7.365 votes per candidate, while pro-treaty got 5.174, anti-treaty 3.372, Farmers 3.748, Independents 4.334, with an average of 4.689. Gallagher Michael, The Pact General Election of 1922, p. 415; 28 Two candidates, Cathal O’Shannon (1893 – 1969, Louth-Meath) and William Davin (1890 – 1956, Leix Offaly), were the only Labour candidates in their constituency and were elected with 13.944 (38.33%) and 15.167 (46.54%) votes, more than twice the quota. Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, p. 106; 29 In the nine constituencies where Labour or Labour plus Farmers’ Party were the only ones that challenged Sinn Féin, its result was 31.1% while where it had a valid alternative vote, in the form of an independent candidate, the result was lower: 22.7%. Sinnott Richard, Irish Voters Decide. Voting behaviour in elections and referendums since 1918, p. 97; 30 Laffan Michael, “Labour must Wait” Ireland’s Conservative Revolution, p. 218; 50 beginning of the Civil War, when the Government troops began bombarding the anti-treaty forces. After having occupied the Four Courts for two months, they surrendered after three days of fights. One more time the Labour leadership tried to prevent the conflict meeting with both sides, but without any success. During the 1922 Congress the “unnecessary” Civil War was strongly criticised by Cathal O'Shannon, acting Chairman of the National Executive, calling upon “the organised workers to take no part”31 in it. The Provisional Government postponed the first meeting of the new Dáil five times, with great concern of the Labour Party that, after five weeks of delays, threaten to resign its seats if the Dáil would not have met by 26 August. This deadline was missed but after the deaths of Arthur Griffith (president of Dáil Éireann, died of cerebral haemorrhage on 12 August) and Michael Collins (Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, killed in an ambush in Béal na Bláth, ten days later), and the promise of Cosgrave, successor of Collins, that the Dáil would meet on 9 September, the Labour abandoned its threat. The Labour Party finally entered in the Dáil32 under the leadership of Tom Johnson (author of the Democratic Programme) and Cathal O’Shannon as first Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. With the 36 republican anti-treaty deputies refusing to take the oath to the King required by the Treaty, and enter the Dáil, the Labour Party became the second biggest party and the only opposition: the seven Farmer’s Party and the ten Independents all supported the government. The 58 pro-treaty deputies – more than the 60% of the present 92 deputies – could rule without any interference from the opposition. The last weeks of 1922 were dedicated to discuss the Constitution, drafted by the provisional government in accordance with the terms of the Treaty. During the debates, the party deputies committed to its principles and were portrayed by Liam de Róiste (1882 – 1959, a disaffected Sinn Féin pro-treaty deputy from Cork) as the most “compact bloc”, with a definite programme, and confidence in what they wanted to achieve33. 31 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1922, p. 106; 32 This legislation was the first legitimately elected by the new Irish Free State, however it is usually recalled as the “third Dáil”, starting the count from the first Dáil, when the Sinn Féin deputies elected for Westminster Parliament abstained from taking their seats and assembled in the Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin; 33 Meehan Ciara, Labour and Dáil Éireann, 1922-32, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 44; 51 The Article 1034 was heartily discussed by the Labour Party that wanted to include “food, clothing and shelter” as fundamental rights for children35, while on the economical side its agenda focused on selfsufficiency and protectionism. In this decision, it opposed the others European socialist parties that favoured free trade in order to reduce food prices, reinforce the industries and strengthen the bonds of peace36. The opposition work was seriously undertook by Johnson, O’Shannon, O’Brien and T. J. O’Connell (1882 – 1969) but the government managed to pass the Constitution (which from the Labour deputies’ point of view diluted the state’s sovereignty and did not fulfil the promises of the Democratic Programme) without amendments. The Government, with the Public Safety Act, established at the end of September military courts that had the power to inflict sentences of death, penal servitude, imprisonment or fine on persons tried before them and convicted of attack upon the national forces, looting, arson and other destruction or damage to property, possession of explosives or firearm, or the breach of any general order or regulation made by the Army council37. Executions started on 17 November and by the end of the Civil War, 77 republicans had been killed, 24 more than the British had executed during the Anglo-Irish War. It is estimated that 11.480 republicans were jailed38. The Labour Party found itself crashed between the Government and the republicans; the former did not listen to its comments and protests, and begun with its policy of executing republican prisoners, starting with Erskine Childers (1870 – 1922) in November, whereas the latter saw in it a collaborator, since its deputies sat in the Dáil. The Civil War ended with the victory of the pro-treaties in May 1923. No negotiation or truce was needed: when Liam Lynch (1892 – 1923), IRA Chief-of-Staff, was killed in action, he was succeeded by Frank Aiken (1898 – 1983), that ordered a ceasefire on 24 May, ending the IRA campaign and melting away the organisation. Three months later a new general election was held. 34 “All citizens of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Eireann) have the right to free elementary education”; 35 Tomas O'Connell, DD, 25 September 1922; 36 Mulligan William, Forging a Better World: Socialists and International Politics in the Early Twentieth Century, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 55; 37 Defence Forces (Temporary Provisions) Act., 1923; Gaughan J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson 1872-1963, pp. 107-108; 38 Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 280-287; 52 The 1923 Elections, the Fourth Dáil and the Return of Larkin The 1923 elections, set for 27 August, was meant to be the great opportunity for the Labour Party: it was now confident on its strength and on workers’ discontent about the government’s failure to address their economic needs39. The number of contesting candidates was doubled compared to just ten months before, and many predicted the elections of 30 to 35 Labour deputies presented in 27 of the 30 constituencies. However the results were much worse: only 14 of the 44 candidates won a seat, the first preference votes were halved and the party did not top in any constituencies. The unique situation of the previous year had ended and now the Labour Party was not any more the only possible vote for the electors that opposed the Sinn Féin panels. Moreover there were other considerable changes: with no panel the number of candidates doubled; the franchise had been enlarged and now women could vote from the age of 21 (and not any more 30 as before); the seats of the Dáil had been increased from 128 to 153. The anti-treaties managed to win 44 seats despite prisons were filled with over 12.000 republican prisoners, including Eamon de Valera, arrested during the campaign with other 63 of the 85 candidates. The return after nine year of James Larkin in April from the USA (where he was paid full salary and his family was supported by union funds) could be seen as one of the causes that influenced the final results. Larkin was still the General Secretary of the ITGWU, but during his long absence his powers had been devolved to a five-man group that had restored the union’s finances and grown up its membership close to 100.000. Now the union opposed his return to his old position. At his arrive in Dublin 4.000 supporters welcomed him and lead him towards Liberty Hall; here he spoke both against the ITGWU and the Labour Party due to its relationship with the former: “a movement that emanated from O’Brien and Labour Leader Tom Johnson had to be destroyed, simply because he could not claim credit for it”40. 39 Unemployment 1922–1924 The Record of the Government’s Failure analyze the Labour Party struggle against unemployment in opposition to the Government that did not considered itself “responsible for the provision of work in the country”. NLI, MS 33,718/B(26). The quote was by Patrick McGillan, Minister for Industry and Commerce, DD 30 October 1924; 40 O’Connor Emmet, Jim Larkin, p. 70; 53 On 10 June Larkin decided to move from words to action and with about a hundred followers seized the Transport Union’s headquarters in Liberty Hall and Parnell Square 41. It was a strong act in a time when the occupation of a strategic building was a precursor of open war, but the seizure did not last long. His re-launched Irish Worker newspaper kept publishing his attacks addressed against his Union and the Labour Party, and at the annual congress his followers tried to block delegates from entering the building to attest. In 1924 Peter Larkin (1880 – 1931) founded the Workers' Union of Ireland (WUI) against his brother’s advice42. This internal collision detached many workers that could have become the backbone of Labour organisation in Dublin, where Larkin status and influence was great and where he was still regarded as a “working-class messiah”. 16.000 members left the ITGWU for the WUI 43, right when it was time for the Labour Party to establish roots in the city 44. Even if Larkinites attacks were surely one of the causes of the Labour debacle, two more factors must be considered: the first one is the voters’ rejection of its role during the strikes after the ceasefire 45, the second one is that capable deputies such as O’Brien and O’Shannon lacked of personal touch and charisma, and failed to be re-elected. These personality traits were even more important in that particular moment, when the constituents saw their deputies as power-broking intermediaries. When the Labour deputies entered in the fourth Dáil their strength was undermined not only by the loss of three seats (the only ones that lost seats while all the other main parties gained) but also by the increase of the total seats of the Dáil (the number was increase from 128 to 153). Johnson was the only high-profile deputy that managed to be re-elected, while O'Brien and O’Shannon failed (the latter was replaced by O'Connell in his role of Deputy Leader). He had to compensate the loss of his two active colleagues, during the frustrating opposition against the huge majority 46 of the pro-treaty Sinn Féin 41 MS 33,718/B(64); Larkin Emmet, James Larkin: Irish Labour leader 1876-1947, p. 228; 42 Farmer Mark, James Larkin and the Workers' Union of Ireland, p. 101; 43 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 69; 44 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 16; 45 This is the argument of the contemporary observers. A new interpretation suggests that the party had done too little for the striking workers who had it abandoned it as a result. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 17; 46 Cumann na nGaedheal had 63 deputies, enough to govern in the Dáil where without the Republicans the total number of deputies was 109; 54 government, now officially called Cumann na nGaedheal 47. His great role in the Dáil was both criticised and approved by his comrades. “Johnson usually said all that was to be said, and left little for anybody else to say”, complained William Davin48, pointing out the need for a better political organisation, as most of the deputies “never knew what the Party policy was until Deputy Johnson had spoken”49; on the other side Gilbert Lynch (1892 – 1969, first elected in June 1927) admired the help that he gave to the new elected deputies and his great effort in his job 50. The sense of impotence against the government brought Johnson at last to tender his resignation as Leader of the party and Secretary of the ILP&TUC during the summer of 192551; his offer was not accepted and he was recommended instead to go on holiday. Even with their difficulties, Labour deputies kept a strong opposition during the legislation, checking the government, exposing mistakes or possible problematic or neglected areas, and focusing on economical issues52. In their mind the electorate was not interested into constitutional or security critics against the government. After his return to duty, Johnson was dominated by the conviction that the only path to country reconciliation was to persuade de Valera and his followers to enter the Dáil; this was essential for the continuance of democratic institutions53. While he failed to bring de Valera on the Boundary Commission discussion on December 1925, the foundations had been laid and the next year de Valera left Sinn Féin and founded his own party: Fianna Fail, a republican party that accepted the possibility of entering the Dáil. This new party took over most of the Labour key issues as unemployment, housing, and poverty: Johnson argued that twelve of the fifteen items in the Fianna Fail programme were identical to the Labour programme at the last elections. There were however two important differences: de Valera 47 The pro-treaties formally launched their new party in April 1923 during a meeting in the Mansion House in Dublin. The name was inspired by one of the early group of Sinn Féin. Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 10; 48 Railway Clerks' Association, Dublin, elected deputy of Leix Offaly constituency continuously from 1922 to 1954; 49 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1925, pp. 114-116; 50 Lynch Gilbert, unpublished memoir, p. 98, quoted in Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 19; 51 Copy letter from Thomas Johnson to William O'Brien regarding Johnson's retirement from the leadership of the Labour Party, NLI, MS 17/230/1; 52 The Irish Times, 9 June 1927; 53 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 19; Gaughan, J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson 1872-1963: first leader of the Labour Party in Dáil Eireann, p. 284-288; 55 wanted a total tariff war against Great Britain to stimulate economic growth; furthermore he proposed to withdraw from the land annuities payment54. During this legislation a split inside Cumann na nGaedheal occurred: in October 1924 nine TDs – guided by Joseph McGrath (1888 – 1966) – left their party and the Dáil due to dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the army mutiny of that year 55. They created the National Party which took part in the mini-general election of March 1925 that had followed their resignation. Cumann na nGaedheal won 7 seats, while Sinn Féin 2. With no seats won, the National Party ended its brief history. The June 1927 Elections, the Fifth Dáil and the Fianna Fail Palace Conspiracy The fourth Dáil was dissolved on 20 May 1927 and the next elections were set on 9 June, after only three weeks. The Labour Party had recovered its confidence thanks to the success in the local elections of 1925 and its first by-election success when William Norton (1900 – 1963, General Secretary of the Post Office Workers’ Union) had won the seat in Dublin County56. The party was also able to go on the offensive against the government rather than defend itself from the Larkinites attacks that had peaked the previous summer and now were simmering down. 54 These annuities found their origin in the 1890 land purchase acts. With these acts the British Government had bought Irish land that was sold to the tenants that had been occupying them with the payment of an annual sum. After the birth of the Irish Free State, Cosgrave Government had agreed to pay £3.000.000 per year to the British Government. Other £2.000.000 were paid yearly for the RIC pensions, to compensate for damages inflicted during the Anglo-Irish War, and to pay a share of the deficit of the Unemployment Fund in the United Kingdom. De Valera did not oppose the annuities payment but proposed to keep this sum in the treasury of the Irish Free State, which was not bound to give it to a foreign country. Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 244, Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, p. 27; Kieran Allen, Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour. 1926 to the Present, p. 19; 55 This was moved by the suspect that the Government was demobilizing part of the army on the base of political discrimination; 56 In this by-election of 18 February 1926, William Norton (11.797 first preference votes), defeated both Thomas Heaky (Cumann na nGaedheal, 12.279) and Patrick Belton (Independent, 8.974) thanks to the second preference votes given by independent voters; 56 These elections saw three new parties: Fianna Fail57 (with 87 candidates while Sinn Féin had only 15), the National League58 (with 30 candidates, of whom 12 former Nationalist MPs) and Clann Éireann59. Cumann na nGaedheal lost electoral support in almost every constituencies and lost 12% of the popular vote, with greater losses in Leinster and South Ulster in favour of Fianna Fail 60. With only 47 candidates elected, it found itself without a sitting majority in the Dáil whereas Fianna Fail found itself with 44 seats, Sinn Féin 5, and the National League 8. The Labour Party managed to get 22 seats, even though its election machine was not established in all constituencies and it was able to contest and fund only 44 candidates (3 fewer than in 1923 but the third largest number after the Government party and Fianna Fail). It managed to elect two candidates in the Dublin constituency, where in the previous elections had none due to Larkin’s attacks. Fianna Fail deputies tried to enter the Dáil and take their seats without taking the oath, but after the clerks rebuff they withdrew. On 29 July they announced that they were going to get the 75.000 signatures needed to propose a referendum to remove the oath from the Constitution 61; the text was presented on 1 July.62. Without the main opposition party, Cumann na nGaedheal re-elected W. T. Cosgrave as president63. 57 During the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis de Valera had proposed to enter the Dáil after the removal of the oath. When his motion was defeated 223 to 218 he resigned as President of the party. His new party was founded in May 1926 in La Scala Theatre, Dublin. Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 37, The Irish Times, 17 May 1926, p. 5; 58 Founded in 1926 by Thomas O’Donnell (1871 – 1943) and William Redmond (1886 – 1932), John Redmond’s son, in attempt to appeal to the old Irish Parliamentary Party supporters. It did not survive two general elections in four months and in 1928 it declared bankruptcy. It was disbanded in 1931 and the two deputies elected in September 1927 – Redmond (Waterford) and James Coburn (1889 – 1953, Louth) – joined different parties. 59 Founded on 15 January 1926 as a result of a split from Cumann na nGaedheal on the topic of the Boundary Commission report. It had an agenda which agreed – in policies like trade protectionism and the abolition of the Oath of Allegiance – with de Valera. In the June 1927 elections, it failed to elect its 7 candidates and on 28 August, after a statement supporting Fianna Fail, ceased political activities. Professor William Magennis (1867 – 1946, TD of the National University of Ireland constituency) was the leader of the party and in 1937 and 1938 was appointed to the Senate as one of de Valera’s nominees. The Irish Times, 26 January 1926, 29 August 1927; Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 89; 60 Bew Paul, Hazelkorn Ellen, Patterson Henry, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, pp. 30-31; 61 The Irish Times, 30 June 1927, pp. 6-7; 62 The Irish Times, 2 July 1927, p. 7; 63 68 votes in favour and 22 (Labour Party) against. The National League abstained; 57 After these great results, the Labour Party started hoping for a Labour government for the next general election64; however, the events happened during the summer, changed everything. On 10 July Kevin O’Higgins (1892 – 1927, Minister for Justice, Minister for External Affairs and VicePresident of the Executive Council) was killed. Although the IRA made an official statement soon after, repudiating any responsibility for the act 65, it was later found out that the three killers – Timothy Coughlan (1906-1928), Bill Gannon (1902 – 1965) and Archie Doyle (died 1980) – were all IRA members. Thomas Johnson and T. J. O’Connell met with Cosgrave to offer from their party sympathy and support for the government; Cosgrave declined the possibility of a government of broad alliances to safeguard national security. The subsequently introduction of the Public Safety Act 66 and two bills designated to amend the electoral laws67 and Constitution68 – meant to destroy the republican party – blew up the possibility of a cross-party unity. Reinterpreting the oath as an “empty formula” de Valera and Fianna Fáil deputies decided to enter the Dáil69. 64 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1927, pp. 41-43; 65 The Irish Times, 11 July 1927, p. 8; 66 Public Safety Act, 1927, provided military courts with the power to enforce the death penalty for treason, murder or the unlawful possession of a firearm. Random searches of persons were also introduced and any individual found to be in possession of documents relating to illegal associations were to be arrested and such documents taken as proof of membership, unless proved contrary. The Labour Party thought it was not necessary nor efficient, since it gave powers to the Executive which no Government ought to have in time of peace. Memorandum on present political situation and Labour Policy in relation thereto, 9 August 1927, NLI, MS 17,618/7(2); 67 Electoral (Amendment No. 2) Act, 1927 required candidates running for election to Dáil Éireann or Seanad Éireann to declare on oath that they intended to take their seats therein and the oath required by article 17 of the Constitution, before their nomination. If failed to do so, the candidate would have been declared disqualified and its seat vacated; 68 Constitution (Amendment No. 10) Act, 1928 repealed Article 47 of the Constitution which allowed for reference of Bills to referendum following a petition of one-twentieth of the electorate. It also repealed Article 48 which allowed proposals for legislation or constitutional amendment to be commenced by petition. All provisions for direct democracy were virtually abolished; 69 It is ironic that Patrick Belton (1884 – 1945, Dublin County) had been expelled from the party no longer than one month before, when he had broken Fianna Fail policy and had taken the Oath and his seat in the Dáil. Official Declaration, by Fianna Fail Deputies, 10 August 1927, NLI MS 17,168/9; DD, 12 August 1927; 58 This decision was welcomed by the Labour Party, with which it had been corresponded in advance after long and difficult negotiations70, and that had proposed a similar point of view on the oath when it had entered the Dáil on 1922. On that occasion this condition was accepted to fulfil the desire of its electors71. Four days after the entry in the Dáil of Fianna Fáil deputies, Johnson moved that “the Executive Council has ceased to retain the support of the majority in Dáil Éireann”72. The combined vote of Labour, Fianna Fáil, the National League, and some independent deputies was such 73 that everyone, the “conspiring” parties, the newspapers, and even Cumann na nGaedheal, predicted a defeat for the government. The Labour Party had foreseen a defeat of the government by two or three votes 74, considering both defections and possible Independent votes in favour of the Government; Johnson was so confident that he did not recall O’Connell from the teachers’ conference he was attending in Toronto75; during a meeting between Labour leaders, hosted in Enniskerry on 13 August 1927, the configuration of the next cabinet was drafted 76. After days of consultation between the three parties, the only solution found was a Labour-National League coalition77, with Fianna Fáil (which any direct involvement was opposed by Redmond) as a supporter from the opposition benches. Johnson thought that “the important thing for this country at the moment [was] that there should be a party or a combination of parties in office which [would] exclude from office for a time both those parties who [had] been in fierce contention one with the other during the last two years”78. 70 Typescript copies of correspondence and documents relating to Fianna Fáil's entry into Dáil, 1927, NLI, 17,168; 71 DD, 12 December 1922; 72 DD, 16 August 1927; 73 The three parties could count on 22, 44, and 8 deputies, while the Independents were 16, with a total of 90 votes. After the death of O’Higgins and Countess de Markievicz (first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1918), there were 153 deputies. With 5 Sinn Féin deputies still abstentionist, the majority was 74; 74 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1928, p. 25; 75 Callan Charles, Desmond Barry, Irish Labour Lives. A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Labour Party Deputies, Senators, MPs and MEPs, p. 215; 76 The draft, thrown-away in a bin, was discovered and pieced together by the Irish Times, that printed it, The Irish Times, 15 August 1927, p. 7; 77 National League motion to vote for the pending motion of “no confidence” to be proposed by the Labour Party, NLI, MS 17,165/3; W. A. Redmond letter to Johnson, 15 August 1927, NLI, MS 17,165/9; 78 DD, 16 August 1927; Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 2, in “The Irish Times”, 28 February 1967, p. 10; 59 The contrast between the first two allies and Fianna Fáil was evident when during the debate both Johnson and Redmond affirmed their intent to maintain the Treaty and the Constitution which de Valera clearly wanted to counteract. The stability of the new possible government was really questionable before it even started. At the moment of the vote the unexpected happened: Vincent Rice (1875 – 1959, having resigned from the National League to support the government79) voted against; John Jinks (1871 – 1934, National League) left the Dáil before the vote80; only two independent deputies voted in favour (Patrick Belton and Daniel Corkery, 1883–1961) but not those intended for cabinet by the Labour Party; on the contrary John O’Hanlon (1872–1956, intended as Minister for Agriculture) attacked Johnson for his nationality, stating that he could not “give [his] vote to put at the head of this State an Englishman”81. The absence of O’Connell became vital and the vote resulted a draw. Following the procedure the casting vote fell to Michael Hayes (1889–1976), the Ceann Comhairle, who supported the government and voted against the motion, stating that a “motion of no confidence in any Executive Council should be affirmed by a majority of Deputies”82. After years of attacks against Cosgrave and his party, the Labour – presented with the chance – had to try to take power, even if this meant to work with the National League which was socially and economically on opposite position and defended the interests of the bourgeoisie. Had they managed to pass the motion their government would have not lasted long. As expected83, just after having survived the motion, Cosgrave adjourned the Dáil until 11 October, with the premise that if the government’s candidates were defeated at the by-elections held on 24 August, the Dáil would reconvene within one week. When both Cumann na nGaedheal candidates won 79 UCDA P74/1, McEnery P.J., Ireland 1900 to 1950. Glimpses in retrospect (unpublished autobiographical memoir), p. 108; Maume Patrick, Rice Vincent, in “Dictionary of Irish Biography – dib.cambridge.org/”; 80 He was found walking in O’Connell Street. He did not want to choose between his loyalty to the country and to Redmond and the party. He resigned from the party two days later. Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, p. 168; Weekly Irish Times, 27 August 1927, p. 6; Brennan Cathal, John Jinks and the collapse of the Fifth Dail; 81 DD, 16 August 1927; 82 Ibidem; 83 The Irish Times, 15 August 1927, p. 7; 60 the elections84, Cosgrave considered these votes as a popular mandate and requested the dissolution of the Dáil on the day after the elections. The September 1927 Elections and the Sixth Dáil The elections of 15 September saw a good result for the two main parties that nominated the same number of candidates of the previous elections: Cumann na nGaedheal won 15 more seats compared to the previous elections on the same year (now 62), while Fianna Fáil won 13 more (now 57). The smaller parties, National League and the Labour Party, having expended their meagre resources in June, were the losers: Redmond’s party won only two seats 85 while Labour Party (which had not enough money and then decided that only the outgoing deputies should stand again 86) financed a handful of more contestants, for a total of just 28 candidates, and lost 9 seats, included all the seats won in Dublin. It came back with fewer deputies then the elections of 1923, and without its leader: Johnson was punished by the electors for the summer events, and failed to regain his seat in the Dublin County constituency; T. J. O’Connell, Secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, became the new party leader. This was the result of the alienation of voters who had supported the only two constitutional alternatives to the government in the previous elections and were resented by the alliance made with Fianna Fáil. Larkin87 and the radical left attacked incessantly the “Englishness” of the Labour party leader and its support to the Free State. These attacks shifted away many working class votes towards Fianna Fail, a republican, Irish and self-defined “real Labour Party”, instead of benefiting the radical 84 Dublin South: Thomas Hennessy (Cumann na nGaedheal) 54.99%, Robert Briscoe (1894–1969, Fianna Fail) 42.48%, Charles Murphy (1880 – 1958, Sinn Féin) 2.54%. Dublin County: General Gerald O’Sullivan (1888–1915, Cumann na nGaedheal) 69.60%, Robert Brennan (1881 – 1964, Fianna Fail) 28.08%, Kathleen Lynn (1874 – 1955, Sinn Féin) 2.32%; 85 William Redmond won in the Waterford constituency, while James Coburn won in Louth. Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, pp. 125-131; 86 Lynch Gilbert, unpublished memoirs, p. 105 cited in Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 25; 87 He contested and won a seat in Dublin North constituency under the banner of the Irish Workers’ League, while his eldest son, Young Jim (1904 – 1969), contested in Dublin County, and John Lawlor, general president of the IWL, contested in Dublin South; 61 left88. In the meantime Cumann na nGaedheal, untouched by the critics of the communists, attacked the Labour Party from the right, with Cosgrave accusing it of socialism89. The Labour Party interpreted the defeat as the consequence of lack of funds, imperfect organisation and distraction from the relevant issues for voters’ everyday lives 90; one real problem was that the Party had to change its structure: as William Norton (who did not contest in these elections) told at the 1929 Congress: “not one of the thirteen deputies held his seat with trade unions votes”91. This was proved by the defeat of Johnson, who had contested in a constituency where the trade unions’ votes would have been sufficient to elect at least two candidates 92, but had seen his votes halved from the elections of June. Without the full support from the members of the unions, the party needed to find its voters somewhere else, abandoning the narrow union appeal. The establishment of a separate organisation had been an assumption for long but it was intended to occur when the party had become strong. The separation happened in different circumstances, and the proposal of Norton to establish a committee to consider the breakup of the two bodies found no opposition 93. During the special conference held from 28 February to 1 March 1930, the division was achieved with almost unanimity (only two delegates were against) and the following months saw the establishment of a “real life Labour Party”94; luckily that year was politically quiet – the Dáil sit for only 59 days – and no controversial legislation was discussed. The desire of broadening the party’s appeal risked to dilute its message, creating a “pale pink, bourgeois object that anybody could subscribe to”95. This new path of the party was attacked from the left by republican leftists and communist groups, that were proliferating in Dublin in this period; 88 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 70; 89 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics 1890-1930, p. 272; 90 ILP&TUC Annual Report, 1928, p. 26; 91 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 280; 92 Dublin County, here he took only 5.02% of the total votes. An Dion, October 1927, cited in Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 30; 93 Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 1, in “The Irish Times”, 27 February 1967, p. 10; Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 280; 94 The Irishmen, 8 March 1930, p. 7; 95 William McMullen, quoted in Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 31; 62 politically insignificant groups that found easier to attack the Labour Party than the more appropriate enemy, Cumann na nGaedheal. Cathal O’Shannon96 complained on The Irishman – the party’s newspaper – that now the party was “too apologetic” and socialism had been eliminated even from the vocabulary. The split from Congress – in a period when even the trade union movement was losing members – failed to attract active supporters to the party, and with lazy deputies, an ineffectual organisation, and a vague programme, the work of establishing branches was not easy: in the same period while Fianna Fail was increasing its branches from 550 to 759, Labour had only 124 fully paid affiliated branches, only one in Dublin, where there was no sitting deputy at the moment. During the sixth Dáil the Labour Party moved closer to Fianna Fail against the conservatism of Cumann na nGaedheal, but lost its role of true opposition party, to its ally after the first months. Small in number, the Labour Party suffered because of internal lack of discipline – “strictly speaking there was not a Labour Party […] no two of them would agree even on fundamentals”97 – and often the Labour deputies dealt with issues on the basis of personal preferences rather than the party line. Before the end of the legislation five more seats were lost: two deputies contested the 1932 elections as Independents, two deputies were expelled for breaches of discipline, and one seat was lost after the death of Hugh Colohan (1869 – 1931, Kildare) and the by-election won by Fianna Fail98. Cosgrave, though he did not have a working majority, was elected president 99 with the help of the Farmers’ Party and Independents, and kept this position until 28 March 1930. When Fianna Fail proposed to alter the Old Age Pensions Bill with a new method of reckoning – supported although 96 Elected only once in 1922 (Louth Meath), contested also in 1923 (Louth) and September 1927 (Meath), always for the Labour Party; 97 Johnson to Duffy, quoted in Gaughan J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson: 1872-1963: First Leader of the Labour Party in Dáil Éireann, p. 309; 98 Edward Doyle (1888 – 1973, Carlow Kilkenny) and Patrick Clancy (1877 – 1947, Limerick) were not supported by the Administrative Council. Both failed to be elected. Daniel Morrissey (Tipperary) and Richard Anthony (Cork, 1875– 1962), the two that voted in favour of the Public Safety Act, were expelled by the AC with a vote of 12 to 3. Kildare byelection, 1 July 1931, Thomas Harris (1895 – 1974, Fianna Fail) 40.03%, John Curton (Cumann na nGaedheal) 33.38%, William Norton (Labour) 26.59%. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 28; Gallagher Michael (ed.), Irish Elections 1922-33: Results and Analysis, p. 153; 99 76 votes in favour and 70 against; 63 criticised by the Labour Party because considered not enough incisive – and in spite of the Government opposition it passed the second reading, Cosgrave resigned 100. He meant to use the menace of a Fianna Fail Government to strengthen his hold on those independent deputies that had voted against him 101. During the debate for the following presidential vote the Labour Party and Fianna Fail attacked each others and were not able to find a common candidate. Cosgrave was re-elected with a comfortable majority102. One of the first main topic discussed in the new Dáil was introduced by the labour TD Daniel Morrissey (Tipperary) and it was about unemployment. He hoped that the Dáil could discussed it all together and without political divisions103. Johnson was delighted to see that de Valera seemed to share an akin point of view on the economy. The collaboration between the two parties showed “the Left Alternative” to the government104. Since its economic policy did not permit to gain popular support105, Cumann na nGaedheal focused again on law and order politics: after the end of the civil war the rise of the republican left was a target for the government and its policy. In 1931 the political arm of the IRA founded one party, Saor Éire, with a boldly socialist programme and the aim of a thirty-two counties Irish republic106. This new party was denounced as communist by the Catholic Church and few weeks after its first Congress, in September the Government outlawed it. 100 LP Annual Report, 1931, p. 14; DD, 27 March 1930; 101 Manning Maurice, «The New York Times» and Irish Politics in the 1920's, p. 226; 102 De Valera was defeated 93 to 54, while O’Connell 78 to 13. Cumann na nGaedheal, the Farmers’ Party and some Independents voted for Cosgrave, with a result of 80 to 65 votes. DD, 2 April 1930; 103 DD, 26 October 1927; 104 McKay Enda Gerald, The Irish Labour Party 1927-1933, p. 7; 105 Town Tenants’ Bill, Housing Bill (1931), Road Traffic Bill, and more bills were encouraged by the Labour Party but were always found as not sufficient or ineffective; 106 Nowlan Kevin B., President Cosgrave’s Last Administration, in MacManus Francis (ed.), The Years of the Great Test, pp. 16-17; 64 The Public Safety Act107, proposed by the Government in October, was the best result of its new policy; this was a drastic measure in response to the IRA increment of violence in the previous year that had been caused by the new limitation of the Immigration Act in the USA 108. The Labour Party sought to oppose it, looking for a cross-party consensus, but failed to keep its own delegates in order: Daniel Morrissey (Tipperary) and Richard Anthony (Cork) declared that they would support the government with any powers it asked for, regardless of the party’s position. In the clash between Fianna Fail and Labour, and the Government and some single deputies, with the former attacking the Government in constitutional and liberal terms, suggesting to just establish a dictatorship 109, and the latter defending “the lives of that humble labourer and that superintendent of the Civic Guard who were murdered”110, the legislation was passed comfortably in just two days. The security of the country and the lives of its people “were more sacred than every Article of [the] Constitution”111. With this achievement the Government dissolved the Dáil in January 1932 and set 16 February 1932 as polling day. The 1932 Elections, the Seventh Dáil and the Government Transition This campaign was a strong two-horse race: Cumann na nGaedheal insisted on a liberal economy, free by the State intervention112, and attacked Fianna Fail as a “communistic, pro-IRA, state socialist party intent upon Bolshevising the structures of the Irish state”113; de Valera focused more on positive 107 Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act 1931. It inserted the Article 2A that empowered the Executive Council to declare a state of emergency during which most provisions of the constitution could be suspended and extra security measures taken. This included the use of a military tribunal to try civilians for political crimes, granting extra powers of search and arrest to the Garda Síochána, and the prohibition of organisations deemed a threat to the state's security. 108 The Immigration Act of 1924 was amended in 1929 with a limit of 150.000 new immigrants per year. Encyclopedia Britannica www.britannica.com; Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 157; 109 “It would be far more honest, in my opinion, if the Government set up a dictatorship pure and simple and told us all to go about our business and that they would run the affairs of the country”, Tomas O'Connell, DD, 14 October 1931; 110 Richard Anthony, DD, 15 October 1931; 111 Ibidem; 112 UCDA LA60/116; UCDA P35C/129; 113 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 36; Hanley Brian, Fianna Fáil and the IRA: lessons from the 1930s, p. 47; 65 messages, talking about economic improvement, the removal of the oath of allegiance and the annuities, while bidding for the support of teachers, civil servants and the railway men, upon whom the Labour Party depended114. The land annuities had become one of the most discussed topics during these years; if the Labour Party had taken the defence of those who were struggling to meet the cost of these, it had not actively engaged with the anti-annuities movement. At the moment of voting in favour or against the abolishment of the annuities, the party had found itself divided and refused to take a side in the following months. Fianna Fail became the dominant voice on the matter and eroded Labour’s electoral base stealing the support of the small farmers. The Labour Party was left behind, too small and insignificant to be a threat. With similar platform but weaker structure, newspaper115 and support base, it was outmanoeuvred by Fianna Fail 116 but yet it believed to be able to improve its position117. Even after a come back to the Democratic Programme, it knew its status as a minor party and supported Fianna Fail (which reciprocated 118) with the voters lower preferences. A small but not insignificant threat came from two former TDs: Morrissey and Anthony had voted in favour of the Public Safety Act and had been expelled from the party. Both stood in their constituencies as Independents, attacking the official candidates. Both were elected at the expense of the Labour Party. The results were predictable: Cumann na nGaedheal lost five seats and now had 57; Fianna Fail (which had won two of the last three by-elections119) raised its vote by almost ten points to 44.5% (the first 114 The Irish Press, 15 February 1932, pp. 6-7; Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, pp. 184-185; 115 The Independent and The Irish Times supported Cumann na nGaedheal, The Irish Press (established in 1931) Fianna Fail, while the Labour Party had only the small circulation weekly The Irishman. The role of a strong newspaper as an indispensable ally to win the election is discussed by the Fianna Fail and de Valera point of view in Robbins David, The Irish Press 1919-1948. Origins and Issues; 116 Meehan Ciara, Labour and Dáil Éireann, 1922-32, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 52; 117 William Norton, NLI, MS 17,267/7(1); 118 Irish Press, 15 February 1932, pp. 6-7; 119 Longford Westmeath (previously won by James Killane, 1874 – 1930, Fianna Fail): James Geoghegan (1886 – 1951, Fianna Fail) 53.57%, Vincent Delany (Cumann na nGaedheal) 40.25%, Michael Duffy (1883 – 1957, Labour) 6.18%. Kildare (previously won by Hugh Colohan, Labour): Thomas Harris (Fianna Fail) 40.03%, John Curton (Cumann na nGaedheal) 33.38%, William Norton (Labour) 26.59%; 66 time any party had won over 40% of the general vote) and gained 15 seats so now had 72. This growth, together with the increment of the turnout – from 69% in September 1927 elections, to 77% – was also due to the great success of the Irish Press, the popular newspaper founded by de Valera the previous year120. The smaller parties paid the tribute: the Farmers’ Party elected only 3 deputies and was on the verge of extinction with many of its TDs having defected to Cumann na nGaedheal. The Labour Party elected only seven of the 33 candidates (five of them had been returned continuously since the first elections of 1923121) and just under half of them lost their deposits. The commitment to elect deputies in those constituencies still unrepresented by Labour, had clearly failed: Patrick Curran (1880 – 1953) was the only candidate that managed to win in a constituency not already represented by the Labour Party – Dublin County –, while six constituencies lost their Labour representatives122. The party had finished the legislation with only eight deputies, after two resignations, two expulsions and one death123, and it had actually managed to aggravate its position. With these results the AC, alongside the new elected deputies and senators, decided on 26 February to maintain an independent position and to refuse any office in the new government and the position for Ceann Comhairle. Patrick Hogan was however nominated as Leas-Ceann Comhairle (Deputy-Speaker), the figure that, in the absence of the Ceann Comhairle, performs its duties and exercises its authority in Dáil proceedings124. 120 Robbins David, The Irish Press 1919-1948. Origins and Issues, p. 69; 121 Richard Corish (Wexford), William Davin (Leix Offaly), James Everett (1894 – 1967, Wicklow), Timothy J. Murphy (1893 – 1949, Cork West) and Patrick Hogan (Clare); 122 Cork City, Longford-Westmeath, Donegal, Limerick, Carlow-Kilkenny, Tipperary, see Appendix; LP Annual Report, 1931, p. 6; Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 328; 123 Hugh Colohan (Kildare) died on 15 April 1931; 124 Patrick Hogan had already been nominated as such from 27 October 1927 to 8 March 1928 and kept this position until 27 May 1938, for three different Dáil. He returned as such from 25 February 1948 to 7 May 1951. Constitution of the Irish Free State, 1922, Article 21; LP Annual Report, 1932, p. 6; 67 For the second consecutive time, the party had lost its leader 125 but the new one, William Norton, young126, energetic, confident and determined to succeed127, would have become the longest-serving leader, holding this role for the next twenty-eight years. With this disappointing performance the first phase of the history of the Labour Party inside the Dáil ended and a new one started128. During the first half of this decade it had been the biggest and only opposition party against Sinn Féin (and Cumann na nGaedheal later), often with no real power to impose its issues. The real credit of the party was, with the words of Johnson, that it had “contributed […] to the building up of the idea of Parliamentary institutions”129. During the second phase it finally had a key role in the formation of the new government: Fianna Fail, was five seats short of an overall majority and easily found an agreement with Labour Party, having incorporated many of the Labour’s policy demands into its own election programme130. 125 O’Connell with his 3,085 votes (8.01% first preferences) in the Mayo South constituency had no chance against the four candidates of Fianna Fail (52.14%) and the three Cumann na nGaedheal candidates (35.17%); Walker Brian M. (ed.), Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland 1918-92, p. 136; 126 Born on 2 November 1900, he was 32 years old, the youngest deputy by far in the Dáil; 127 Irish Independent, 26 February 1932, p. 11; 128 The United Irishman, 21 May 1932, p. 1; 129 DD, 9 August 1923; 130 UCDA F56/218, ITGWU Annual Report, 1933, p. 9; 68 CHAPTER III – GOVERNMENT AND DECLINE (1932 – 1938) The Seventh Dáil – Fianna Fail in Power Having won the election Fianna Fail was supposed to create a new government, but a peaceful transfer of power was not given for sure: The Irish Press reported that two government ministers were plotting a coup d'etat, and the Army Comrades Association – a recent group of Cumann na nGaedheal supporters founded in February 1932 for defending against the attacks of IRA – was a possible menace. It has been speculated1 that entering the Dáil on 9 March Fianna Fail deputies had revolvers in their pockets, such was their distrust in Cosgrave and his party. Fianna Fail and the Labour Party now shared most of their agenda. Norton spoke in republican terms in his speech before the nomination of de Valera as President of the Executive Council 2; he emphasised the most urgent topic: unemployment, housing, transport, widows and orphans pensions, but criticised the autocratic economic policy of Fianna Fail. De Valera spoke about the common history and the same founding father, James Connolly3. The two parties started having closer contacts with each other, and Johnson (now a senator) was one of the more inclined figures. Not everybody in the Labour Party was happy about this relationship but after being ignored for years by Cosgrave, they overesteemed their role, and Johnson started speculating even to unite the two parties in a new one4. 1 For example T. Desmond Williams, De Valera in Power, in MacManus F. (ed.), The Year of the Great Test, p. 30; 2 81 votes in favour, 68 against. Three Independents voted in favour. DD, 9 March 1932; 3 DD, 29 April 1932; 4 Mortished papers, quoted in Gaughan J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson 1872-1963, p. 348; 69 One of the first acts introduced by the Government was a bill to remove the oath of allegiance from the Constitution. It was the perfect moment: in those years the British Government was in a difficult situation. After two years of minority Labour Government, Ramsay MacDonald (first Secretary of the BLP from 1900 to 1912, and first Labour Party politician to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1866 – 1937), unable to fight the economic crisis, had resigned on 24 August 1931. However he had remained Prime Minister of a National Government that included the Conservatives and the Liberals5. For this cause he was expelled from his party and had to establish a new one, the National Labour Party. With this new small personal party he was dominated by the other bigger parties. The Irish Labour Party voted compact in favour to “proceed resolutely and rapidly with its programme of social reconstruction”6, knowing that this act would not “provide work for one unemployed man or woman, […] houses for people living in slums […] boots for barefooted children”7, but defending its new republicanism and – putting in class terms as well as nationalist ones – considering the oath a “relic of feudalism”. For this vote the Labour Party became an easy target for the Cumann na nGaedheal attacks for the duration of the whole legislation. With these two questions, the oath and the annuities, the labour parties, the Irish and the British ones, found contact. Thomas Johnson wrote to James Middleton (BLP organiser, 1878–1962) while Norton travelled to London to talk with BLP leaders George Lansbury (1859 – 1940), Clement Attlee (1883 – 1967) and Stafford Cripps (1889 – 1952) to find a settlement, but with no success: the BLP had only 46 MPs against 554 National Government MPs and had no power to stop the new tariffs that were to be imposed against Ireland in retaliation to the withdrawal of the annuities payment 8. Norton kept trying to find a solution and after a meeting with Lansbury, Attlee, Cripps and Arthur Greenwood (1880 – 1954), he met with MacDonald and presented his idea: when the British Government wanted the Imperial Tribunal to examine the annuities, and de Valera wanted an international tribunal held in the Hague, Norton proposed instead as a solution a commission consisting of five members (two representing each country, and a Chairman nominated by the four representatives) whose report would form the basis for negotiations. MacDonald agreed to meet de Valera but during their three-hours meeting no grounds for 5 Webb R. K., Modern England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, pp. 522-524; 6 Johnson to Middleton, 9 April 1932, quoted in Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 42; 7 Norton Edward, DD, 28 April 1932; 8 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 42-43; 70 negotiation were found and the misunderstanding between them was laid on the shoulders of Norton 9. The contact between the two Labour parties ended here and was not resumed for more than a decade. With this diplomatic failure, an economical war started between the United Kingdom and the Irish Free State, with the former imposing prohibitive duties on Irish live-stock, and the latter establishing high tariffs upon British goods, offering subsidies to help the exporters. During 1932 the new Irish government released political prisoners, suspended (but not repealed) the Military Tribunal and lifted the ban on the IRA, whose support had been precious during the elections10, and other organisations such as Saor Éire, Fianna Éireann, Cumann na mBan and some communist groups11. In the seventh Ard Fheis of Fianna Fail a resolution was adopted to give all the “ex-members of the IRA who did not fight against the Republic […] preference in all Governmental appointments if otherwise qualified”12. De Valera introduced many progressive legislations on issues as pensions, price control and housing 13, and a range of progressive tax measures. Fianna Fail took all the credit and the Labour began emphasising the differences between the two parties, with Fianna Fail supporting private enterprise while Labour believed that “the present system” could not work14. With the words and the work of Norton, the party was – at least portrayed as – socialist in all but name. The Labour Party, with its AC, wrote a 14-points list of suggestions for the economic crisis15 but this was ignored by the Government. The friction between the two parties kept growing: during the annual conference in October the Labour Party showed respect for the policy of Fianna Fail but concern too16, 9 The Irish Times, 16 July 1932, p. 7; 10 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 19-20; 11 The Irish Times, 9 March 1932, p. 9; 12 UCDA P176/746 Seventh Ard Fheis – Mansion House: report of proceeding only” 8-9/11/1932; 13 Old Age Pensions Act, 1932; Control of Prices Act, 1932; Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1932 that led to an average of 12.000 houses per year built with public subsidy between 1932 and 1942. Between 1923 and 1931 the number had been 2.000 a year. Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 193; 14 Norton William, The Watchword, 17 September 1932, p. 2; 15 The break up of ranches, the nationalisation of railways, and the indefinitely postponement of the public servants’ pay reduction, were all included in this list. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 45; 16 LP Annual Report, 1932, pp. 30-39; 71 and Norton tried to take advantage from the weekly meetings with de Valera, proposing in advance in his speech, legislations on which the government was already privately working on and had not yet presented to the Dáil, in order to exaggerate the influence of his party. On 15 November Cosgrave proposed a motion of no confidence against de Valera, attacked for his tariff war that was a burden to large farmers. The motion failed thanks to the votes of the Labour Party17 but the majority was not stable any more. When the Labour Party warned that would have voted against the proposed public spending cuts 18, on 2 January 1933, just after Christmas holidays, de Valera called for a snap election for 24 January 1933. No one, not even his ministers had been informed in advance 19. Norton was informed that this had nothing to do with the public service pay, but that a stronger majority was needed to deal with the United Kingdom20. Truth was that de Valera hoped to gain an overall majority without allies, but kept Labour on-side just in case. The 1933 Elections and the Eight Dáil There were few differences in the parties’ platforms in comparison with the elections of the previous year: Fianna Fail wanted to half the annuities, Cumann na nGaedheal promised instead to end the economic war in three days21. The Labour tried to claim that all the Government’s achievements were the result of the acceptance of the Labour’s social and economic programme, but this political opportunism was unsuccessful in finding new electors22. This ineffective rhetoric, with the low resources to invest in the campaign compared to the larger parties, and a small number of candidates (only 19 in 17 constituencies, the smallest number from 1922), meant that the Labour Party was not any more the third largest party in 17 70 to 75. DD, 15 November 1932; 18 The members of Norton’s own POWU would have been among the worst affected. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 45; 19 Interview with G. Bolan, quoted in Manning Maurice, The Bueshirts, p. 46; 20 The Irish Times, 4 January 1933, p. 8; 21 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, p. 47; 22 A complete manifesto addressed to the electors can be find in The Watchword, 6 February 1933, pp. 6-8, or transcribed in Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, pp. 209-216; 72 Ireland. It was clear how much unions mattered in situations like this: of the 19 candidates, 11 were financed by ITGWU, while INTO contributed a large sum23. The true novelty of this general election was the National Centre Party, a conglomeration of anti-Fianna Fail Independents and Farmers, that nominated 26 candidates (6 of whom outgoing TDs). Despite the Labour Party and National Centre Party efforts, it was clear that these elections were a fight between the two main parties, with the two small ones aiming to hold the balance24. In the cold winter of 1933 the most “bitter, turbulent and colourful election in the history of independent Ireland”25 saw violences from Fianna Fail and IRA men against Cumann na nGaedheal supporters, declaring “no free speech for traitors”, and retaliation from ACA members. With a turn-out of 80% the results were the following: Fianna Fail increased its share of votes by 5% (49.7%), the same amount lost by Cumann na nGaedheal (30.5%). The Centre Party won 11 seats (9.2%) while the Labour Party – thanks to the votes transferred by Fianna Fail supporters – won 8 seats (5.7% of the total vote, -2% in compare to 1932), with no deputies elected in Dublin (whose population at the time was about ⅙ of the entire country population 26) and only one in Cork (the second greatest city in the Irish Free State). Despite the result Norton interpreted it as a “definite mandate to carry on the policy pursued throughout the last ten months”27. Fianna Fail had succeeded in its aim: now it had a simple majority of one vote and its government was more secure than the previous one. With the great electoral result for Fianna Fail a formal alliance with the Labour Party was not needed any more, on one side because with most points in common, they were “natural allies”28, on the other because with the Labour poor performance, the votes transferred by Fianna Fail electors were of vital importance for its survival. After a council with the AC, the party decided to support the government on the national and economic policy that was in accordance with its programme, but without a formal 23 LP Annual Report, 1933, pp. 4-5; 24 The Irish Press, 14 January 1933, p. 6; The Irish Times, 19 January 1933, p. 6; 25 Fanning Ronan, Independent Ireland, p. 114; 26 Census of Population 1936. Volume I, p. 16; 27 UCDA P150/2096, Daily Express – Election Summary, 28 January 1933; 28 The Irish Times, 31 January 1933, p. 7; 73 coalition29. On the first meeting of the Dáil, on 8 February, this informal alliance elected de Valera as president by 82 votes to 54. The relationship between the two parties remained however tense. Ireland between Communism and Reaction Ireland communist movement had been growing for more than a decade but was still very small 30. The first Communist Party of Ireland, was founded in September 1921 when Roddy Connolly (the only son of James Connolly, 1901 – 1980) was sent back from Russia, after taking part to the second and third world congress of the Comintern in 1920 and ‘21. His task was to take control of the SPI (revived in 1917 by William O’Brien after the death of Connolly, but with no more than two dozens of active members31), to change its constitutions, and to affiliate the party, now formally known as CPI, to the Communist International32. The CPI was against the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and joined the IRA in the Civil War. Despite the early claim of 300 members, after just two years the number had decreased to 50. Moreover when Roddy proposed to enter in the Dáil as a strong republican opposition, he divided his party that was later dissolved by the Comintern in 1924. In the same year Larkin was elected in the Executive of the Comintern Fifth Congress. Connolly decided to create a new political organisation, the Worker’s Party of Ireland, that lasted only one year, until it was disbanded under pressure from Larkin on Moscow in 192733. In June 1932 one of the many small groups, the Revolutionary Workers’ Groups (RWG), had under 200 members (half of them in Dublin, Belfast and Kilkenny, respectively 73, 50 and 16) but was determined to grow. In November new groups were created in Oola (County Limerick) and Cullen (County Tipperary). RWG had now 339 members, with a group of 30 volunteers in Dublin IRA, with 29 The Irish Times, 4 February 1933, p. 7; 30 NAI DoT 97/9/73; 31 Newsinger John, Rebel City, Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement, p. 164; 32 O’Connor Emmet, True Bolsheviks? The rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Ireland, 1917-21, in Boyce D. George, O’Day Alan (eds.), Ireland in Transition, 1867-1921, p. 210; 33 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 125; 74 the purpose of influencing its policy rather than find new members 34. The RWG wanted to form a communist party during the following year35. This was seen as a threat by the Catholic Church that demanded action and vigilance by the state, and invited its congregation to attack the communists before they burned down the churches 36. This strong clerical condemnation destroyed the rural RWG; in Leitrim their hall was burned down and its owner and group organiser, James Gralton (former IRA, naturalised citizen of the USA, 1886 – 1945), was deported, thus becoming an icon for the Irish left37. The mass hysteria against communism reached its peak in Dublin on 26 March, when a meeting of the Irish Unemployed Workers (the communist front organisation) was violently broken up in O’Connell Street; the RWG headquarters in Connolly House was besieged for three days and nights and the Workers College and the WUI headquarters were attacked. 33 people were injured in the street fighting but no one was killed. The deportation of Gralton, the failure to protect the communists against these actions, and the lack of arrests after these events where a clear evidence of the state collusion in communists’ eyes. In this moment they had no allies, not even the Labour Party – defender of the democracy and the law – took their stand38. Some deputies even attacked them, with T. J. Murphy (Limerick) proposing to deport “the two or three foreign communists who are in the country”39. After all, the communists have been attacking the Labour Party from the left for years, calling them the “social-fascist agent of the British imperialists”40, and now the latter was less inclined to defend them, even when civil and political liberties were involved. 34 O’Connor Emmet, Reds and Green, p. 179; 35 Milotte Mike, Communism in Modern Ireland. The Pursuit of the Worker’s Republic since 1916, p. 116; 36 Hanley Brian, The IRA, 1926-1936, p. 66; 37 Hanley Brian, Fianna Fáil and the IRA: lessons from the 1930s, pp. 48-49; Ryan Stephen, Class Conflict in South Leitrim, in O’Flynn Micheal, et al., Marxist Perspectives on Irish Society, p. 26; 38 A motion presented by P. Holohan (Dublin Central Branch) during the annual conference on the Gralton case was not considered a duty of the party by Norton, who called it “burlesque” because the press had been informed of it before the AC and the other Labour deputies. LP Annual Report, 1933, pp. 64-65; 39 Milotte Mike, Communism in Ireland, p. 117; 40 Gerhard, The Irish Free State and British Imperialism, p. 9; 75 In these first months of 1933 the ACA, founded the previous year and grown thanks to the leadership of Thomas F. O’Higgins (Kevin’ brother, 1890 – 1953), had an incisive role in the reaction to the communists proceedings. In April the group changed its name to National Guard, but more importantly, it elected a new leader: Eoin O’Duffy (1890 – 1944). Just two months before O’Duffy had been dismissed from his position of Commissioner of the Civic Guard he had held for more than a decade 41. He had fought in the AngloIrish War and had been formerly close friend of both Collins and Kevin O’Higgins 42. He had been an efficient organiser but he has seldom been described as the best leader and a competent political performer43. He was considered a poor orator and others had to write his speeches, during which he could lose his mind if someone interrupted with protests44. O’Duffy was also and a suspected alcoholic, it is speculated that women frightened him45, and some historians has advanced his homosexuality46; nevertheless he was strongly supported by his men. Inspired by the Italian and German movements, and seeing it a very useful tool in order not to mistake each other for left-wingers47, the National Guard adopted a new outfit after a couple of months, becoming the first Irish movement with a shirt as a uniform 48. O’Higgins proposed the colour grey, but ultimately it was adopted the St. Patrick’s Blue, proposed by Ernest Blythe (1889 – 1975). St. Patrick’s cross was also incorporated in flags, emblems and badges. Black buttons and a black beret completed the uniform. Typical fascist liturgical elements, such as the cult of the leadership, and the fascist style salute with the cry of “Hoch O’Duffy”, were introduced. All these traits were not a strangeness in European policy environment back then, considering that Hitler and his Sturmabteilung had taken power just three months before, Mussolini and his Camicie Nere had been dictating in Italy for a decade, and Great Britain had seen the birth of Oswald Mosley’s 41 Williams T. Desmond, De Valera in Power, in MacManus Francis (ed.), The Years of the Great Test, p. 34; 42 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, pp. 524-525; 43 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 66-67; 44 Ivi, p. 160; 45 Cronin Mike, The Blueshirt Movement, 1932-5: Ireland’s Fascists?, p. 48; 46 McGarry Fearghal, Eoin O’Duffy. A Self-Made Hero, pp. 164-169; 47 UCDA P24/1942; 48 Cronin Mike, The Blueshirt Movement, 1932-5: Ireland’s Fascists?, p. 315; 76 British Union of Fascists49. The Irish movement, with similar organisation, appearance, a constitution declaring its “commitment to effectively prevent strikes and lock-outs and harmoniously compose industrial differences”, and a leader that considered parliamentarism as “redundant”, was easily compared to Nazism and Fascism. The National Guard, straightforwardly known as “the Blueshirts”, had unarmed parades every Sunday after Mass in every town and village where there was a branch. These public demonstrations, along with their official uniforms, differentiated them from their IRA opponents. O’Duffy was not a strong intellectual and his organisation lacked a solid ideology: he was a convinced Catholic, and he had been fascinated by the fascist corporativism and the use of force against opponents. Although several blueshirts opposed democratic institutions 50, the organisation and most of its members supported however order and law, choosing democracy and parliamentarism. Being in favour of a corporate and vocational state, the Blueshirts had a stronger bond with the Holy See rather than with the Italian Fascism. Nevertheless de Valera, the IRA, socialists, and communists exposed them as fascists. After the first weeks of re-organisation, O’Duffy proposed a commemorating mass march to Glasnevin Cemetery on 13 August. Here there were buried both Michael Collins and Kevin O’Higgins, killed by Sinn Féiners, Fianna Fail and IRA men, that the Blueshirts viewed as communists. 3 to 4.000 blueshirts were expected to participate, someone even speculated an act similar to Mussolini’s March on Rome. The Government reacted confiscating the weapons held under licence by the leaders of the para-militarist organisation and by the former ministers of the Cosgrave Governments51. On the day before the march the Government decided to forbid the Blueshirts parade 52. Fearing it was too late, 300 policemen were placed around Leinster House (the seat of the Oireachtas), 700 men were located along the route of the march, and 100 more at Glasnevin. O’Duffy – being a man of order – protested against the decision and its short notice, but called off his men53. 49 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 122-123; 50 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 549; 51 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 79-80; 52 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985, p. 179; 53 Thornley David, The Blueshirts, in MacManus Francis (ed.), The Years of the Great Test, pp 46-47; 77 The Blueshirts were seen as a possible threat to democracy – opposing the government policy by forceful means and lacking only the open possession of firearms to be considered a military body 54 – and on 21 August they were banned by the Government with the reintroduction of the military tribunal, after its suspension two years before. Later, on February 1934, wearing of uniforms, badges, use of military titles, and carrying of weapons as political meanings, were tried to be prohibited with a bill that was later rejected in the Seanad 55. De Valera in “Weberian style” defended the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. In this occasion he acted against his political enemies, but later, in 1936, the same act was used against his former comrades too, when the IRA was banned for challenging the Government sovereignty56. The Irish Right: from the Blueshirts to Fine Gael Finding himself operating outside the law and facing the possible consequences, O’Duffy decided to seek legitimacy57. Luckily for him, Cumann na nGaedheal and the Centre Party had been discussing the possibility to create a new party with all the anti-Fianna Fail oppositions. This combination could have prevented the competition damages, but had side effects too: the Centre Party was very small and would have been absorbed by the other one; at the same time Cumann na nGaedheal had to yield part of its strength and probably lose its leader. O’Duffy had remained reticent about parliamentary politics, but after the ban against the National Guard, he seized the opportunity. The three groups met between August and September and finally – after the three groups’ own conventions – on 8 September they 54 NAI DoT 97/9/73; UCDA P74/1, McEnery P.J., Ireland 1900 to 1950. Glimpses in retrospect (unpublished autobiographical memoir), p. 119; 55 UCDA P176/444; Wearing of Uniform (Restriction) Bill, 1934; 56 English Richard, Armed Struggle. The History of the IRA, pp. 52-53; Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, p. 134; 57 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 92-95; 78 announced the formation of “United Ireland/Fine Gael”58. It was the first party to have a youth organisation, the League of Youth, a new and formally legal version of the National Guard59. This was a coalition with a common nature in the political life of contemporary Europe: an alliance between the traditional conservative right, and a “fascist-styled” movement that was against communism and class consciousness, too60. The Blueshirts organisation, for its own nature, its fascist traits, its defence of democracy and free speech against the “de Valerian regime”, might fit into Roger Griffin’s description of “para-fascist”, as a movement that: “however ritualistic its style of politics, well-orchestrated its leader cult, palingenetic its rhetoric, ruthless its terror apparatus, fearsome its official para-military league, dynamic its youth organization or monolithic its state party, […] react to genuine fascism as a threat.”61 The occasion to test the political appeal was not far: local elections were held of June 1934. Although Fine Gael had failed to take a victory and managed to win only 8 out of 23 county councils 62, this was also the first time former anti-treaties participated in local elections under a national party banner63. 58 The party was commonly referred to as “United Ireland” in its first days, but from the late thirties and forties “Fine Gael” replaced it. In this work it is used only this second term for the sake of simplicity. Regan John M., The Irish Counter Revolution 1921-1936, p. 341; Coakley John, The Significance of Names: the Evolution of Irish Party Labels, p. 174; 59 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 20; 60 UCDA P24/627; 61 The same definition is used by Griffin to describe the Polish Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego (Camp of National Unity), and the Spanish regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1870 – 1930). A similar definition of para-fascism is given by Kallis: “A larger category of regimes that adapted or aped ‘fascist’ formal and organizational features, but did not share the revolutionary ideological vision of genuine fascism”. Griffin Roger, The Nature of Fascism, p. 122; Kallis Aristotle A., ‘Fascism’, ‘Para-fascism’ and ‘Fascistization’: On the Similarities of Three Conceptual Categories, p. 220; 62 Thornley David, The Blueshirts, in MacManus Francis (ed.), The Years of the Great Test, p. 52; 63 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, p. 128: 79 This new party was a problem from the first day for de Valera and its Government because the weakness of the other three parties had allowed him to hold a balanced position, using the support of the Labour Party for the progressive legislation and of the Centre Party for the cutbacks64. With a new strong opposition in the Dáil, an agreement with the Labour was required in order to secure the Government. One year after the first informal coalition things had changed: the Labour Party and the trade union movement were disenchanted because of the little electoral benefits gained at the last elections, and because of some specific controversial issues of government policy. De Valera and Norton met to talk, and on 12 September the delegations of the two parties 65 gathered in the president’s room in Government Building. After two hours of discussion no official agreement was found and the Labour delegation left the meeting knowing that they had the whip hand 66. The Labour Party was split in two by the possible alliance with Fianna Fail: the deputies Murphy (Cork) and Everett (Wicklow) were the strongest against this scenery but at the end Norton avoided a break inside the party 67. After four hours of meeting between the AC, 6 of the 8 deputies (Murphy and Everett were the two missing), and all the senators, the support to the Government social and economic policy was announced68. From the beginning this agreement had a huge problem on the different positions about the Special Safety Bill: when it had been introduced the Labour Party had opposed it and had expelled two deputies that had voted in favour. Now Fianna Fail, that had opposed the bill against Cosgrave, was enacting it against the Blueshirts movement. When Frank MacDermot (former Chairman of the Centre Party and now vice-president of Fine Gael, Roscommon, 1886 – 1975) presented a censor motion against it on 28 September, Norton allowed his colleagues a free vote, avoiding the embarrassment of having to expel any of his few deputies 69. Even though the motion failed with 65 votes in favour and 80 against, the debate saw a weak defence by Norton, and strong attacks from Anthony (Independent 64 In some cases, like with the amendment on the Land Bill, this was not possible because the Labour Party voted with all the opposition parties against it, and the bill passed with a majority of only three votes. The Irish Times, 2 August 1933, p. 5; 65 De Valera, Lemass (Minister for Industry and Commerce) and James Ryan (Minister for Agriculture, 1891 – 1970) for Fianna Fail, and Norton, Davin, Thomas Foran (senator, 1883 – 1951) and O’Brien (Chairman of the AC) for the Labour Party. Irish Independent, 13 September 1933, p. 5; 66 The Irish Times, 13 September 1933, p. 7; 67 The Irish Times, 14 September 1933, p. 7; 68 The Irish Times, 16 September 1933, p. 7; 69 At the end all the present Labour deputies (Davin and Murphy were absent) voted in favour; 80 Labour, Cork Borough) and Morrissey (Fine Gael, Tipperary), the two former Labour deputies expelled just two years earlier. Fourteen deputies sat in the opposition benches in their Blueshirt uniforms70. The Public Safety Act remained a problem for the Labour Party, and during the annual conference a motion against it was moved by W. P. Green (Dublin Central Branch); the result (31 for and 50 against) proved that the party was still split because of it, but had changed its point of view on the problem71. It was clear from the very first months that the agreement with Fianna Fail had its limits, and that the Labour Party had overesteemed its influence and power in the Dáil. However in a moment when both the far-right and the far-left movements were growing in number and strength, the Labour Party continued to support the Government. The Blueshirt movement was growing in membership and belligerence, and some of its leaders made now clear parallels with Fascism and Nazism, forecasting that as: “the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy and that the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as, assuredly, in spite of this Bill and in spite of the Public Safety Act, the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.”72 If the Labour Party discussed plenty on the topic 73 – the AC together with the “National Executive of the Trade Union and Labour Movement” presented a statement on the “Fascist Danger”, promising to organise public meeting to fight it – six months passed before anything concrete was done, and the new Communist Party, founded for the second time in 1933, took the lead. With its anti-fascist campaign under the “Labour League Against Fascism” front, in early 1934 the CPI exploited the anti-fascism movement finding shelter from the anti-communism violence and tried to find new members 74. In this way when the Labour Party and the ITUC proclaimed a national demonstration on 6 May (the largest one held in College Green, Dublin, involving 10.000 participants) they found a counter-demonstration; 70 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 51; 71 LP Annual Report, 1933, pp. 59-64; 72 John Costello (Fine Gael, Dublin County, 1891 – 1976) during the debate on the Wearing of Uniform (Restriction) Bill, 1934, DD, 28 February 1934; 73 LP Annual Report, 1933, pp. 65-66; LP Annual Report, 1934, pp. 9-14; 74 NAI DoJ JUS-8-388; O’Connor Emmet, Red and the Green, p. 198; 81 here Jim Larkin, with 500 followers, denounced the Labour as a fascist organisation 75. Similar attacks came from the leaders of the CPI, following the Comintern’s policy that compared social democratic reformism to fascism. The Irish Left: the Republican Congress and the Labour “Workers’ Republic” In the same weeks the IRA was undergoing schism: in March 1934 Peadar O’Donnell (1893 – 1986) and George Gilmore (1898–1985) proposed a motion to adopt a left-wing agenda to increase the links between the republicans and the far left. When this motion was defeated by one vote, they left the IRA and worked on the possible union of left wingers and republicans merged in one organisation. The “Republican Congress” was meant to attract radical elements of the IRA, former members of Saor Éire, and disaffected Labourites and Communists76. One of the Republican Congress first members was Roddy Connolly. He had previously joined the Labour Party in 1928, and during the 1934 ITUC’s annual conference moved a motion to bring together the labour movement and this new panel77. His motion failed but he tried again, in October during the Labour Party conference, with two motions, the first one “to take every possible step in conjunction with all forces opposing that reactionary dictatorship to combat this great danger to the Labour movement”78, and the second one “for a truce among all who stand for an Irish Workers’ Republic and a united front”79. Both were defeated: the idea of a popular front that could unite the Labour and the Communist parties failed. The Republican Congress never developed beyond the left-wing IRA, the CPI and its fronts such as the “Labour League Against Fascism” and the “League Against Imperialism”. In a couple of years, it ceased its public activities. 75 Gaughan J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson 1872-1963, p. 360; 76 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 126; Hanley Brian, The IRA and Trade Unionism, 1922-1972, in Devine Francis, Lane Fintan, Puirséil Niamh (eds.), Essays in Irish Labour History. A Festschrift for Elizabeth and John W. Boyle, pp. 164-165; 77 ITUC 1934, pp. 102-106; 78 LP Annual Report, 1934, p. 62; 79 Ivi, p. 119; 82 During the army convention of ICA (the military ancillary group that at the moment had 200 members80) in June 1935, the members and the supporters were instructed to join the Irish and Northern Ireland Labour parties81. The aim of this infiltration was to push for the introduction of the Workers’ Republic in the parties’ new constitutions, and if unsuccessful, to split and form a new organisation, the Republican Brotherhood Party, to unite all republican and labour supporters82. The failed attempt of Connolly to create a republican front did not mean that the Labour Party was not any more interested in socialism: during the same annual conference Luke J. Duffy (General Secretary, 1890 – 1961) on behalf of the AC, moved a strong resolution recognising that the “personal liberty, political freedom and social justice are unattainable under any form of Capitalism Imperialism” and that the aim of the party was “to continue [James] Connolly’s effort for the establishment in Ireland of a Workers’ Republic founded on equal justice and equal opportunities”83. Since Fianna Fail had stolen most of the old programme, a new political manifesto and a revised constitution were needed to find a political appeal and to face the new difficulties. It had come time to be “more extreme and more irresponsible”84 than Fianna Fail, a decision that had not been taken in 1932 but was now needed to find new electors. The party could still be changed and the attempt of Connolly seamed achievable by other ways. With this internal structure renovation, new branches85 were established and the party started to critic the Government’s work. One result of this new policy was the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act, 1935: the Labour Party had been discussing it from two years, but in September 1933 the Government had only prepared a budget provision to finance it. In early 1935 the AC raised a question about it with the 80 D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, The Second rise and fall of the Irish Labour Party from separation to split, 1930-1944, unpublished manuscript, quoted in Puréil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 55; 81 NAI DoJ JUS/8/322; Hanley Brian, The Irish Citizen Army after 1916, pp. 41-45; 82 Report of the ICA Convention at Kilkenny hold on 3 November 1935; Division of Waterford-Kilkenny, District Office, Kilkenny, 6 November 1935, NAI DoJ JUS/8/322; 83 LP Annual Report, 1934, p. 66; 84 NLI MS 17,182/2 Manuscript draft election address by the Labour Party, January 1932; 85 The major activities were noticed in the County Cork Constituencies, Clare, Wexford, East Galway, Kildare, Westmeath, Roscommon, Dublin City and Wicklow. LP Annual Report, 1936, p. 14; 83 Government, and during the Dáil discussions Labour deputies often insisted on this proposal. They finally managed to introduce the act on 11 April 193686. This new idea of a “Workers’ Republic” was meant “to break the chain of connection with foreign domination, and on the economic, social and industrial side […] to break the chain of connection with poverty, misery, squalor and heartlessness […] to ensure […] the maximum possible opportunities to develop the highest possible standard of national life, untrammelled by dictatorship from any other nation, and […] to banish poverty and insecurity.”87 Although some described the new constitution as “the first step towards achieving the leading role in the revolutionary movement in Ireland. […] Not yet a correct revolutionary one, but […] an enormous advance on the previous one. […] An alternative to F[ianna] F[ail]”88, the reality was that there was little that had not been said before. Gilbert Lynch (Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union) said that the new constitution was a very “wishy-washy document” and – if some people suggested that it was only “pale pink” – he thought that they had even washed out the pink, leaving it a pale white89. Others, as John T. O’Farrell (1887 – 1971), did not support it because they did not see any link between the Labour Party and the programme of the Easter Rising of 1916, nor with the Democratic Programme of 1918, and complaining that “if they were seeking to build a programme for the Labour Party from the foundation, they should not build on what some other people had repudiated, but should build on their own foundation”90. With this new facade, the confidence of the party grew. However the public opinion did not see it as an important change and the results in the elections in Wexford (in the by-election on 17 August 1936 Michael Murphy took 9.38% while Denis Allen, Fianna Fail, 1896 – 1961, 51.04%), Cork (one seat won out of seven vacancies) and Dublin (one extra seat in the Dublin Corporation) showed the gap between expectations and reality. 86 LP Annual Report, 1936, p. 41; 87 Ivi, p. 100; 88 Letter of Nora Connolly O’Brien (daughter of James, 1892 – 1981) to Leon Trotsky (1879 – 1940), 28 April 1936. O’Connor Lysaght D. R. (ed.), The Communists and the Irish Revolution, pp. 103-104; 89 LP Annual Report, 1936, pp. 101-102; 90 Ivi, pp. 103-104; 84 The Spanish Civil War The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War during the summer of 1936 reignited the anti-communism in Ireland, with newspapers narrating the fight between the protectors of Christian values, and the atheist communists that desecrated churches and raped nuns91. An Irish Christian Front was founded by Patrick Belton (Cumann na nGaedheal, elected in 1933 in Dublin North) to support Spanish nationalists and “unmask communism in Ireland”. O’Duffy – having left the leadership of Fine Gael in 1935 and having supported the Italian invasion of Abyssinia 92 – formed a Blueshirt Brigade, publicly condemned as fascist, to go to Spain 93. This action was criticised by the Government that – although sympathetic to the nationalist cause – enacted the Non-Intervention Pact that made participation in the Spanish Civil War an offence punishable by jail 94. Nevertheless several hundreds of men managed to leave Ireland for Spain. The Labour Party was not the target of this anti-communism campaign, but it tried anyway to distinguish itself from the communists: when for example the CPI announced that it was not participating in the local election in Dublin but invited its supporters to vote for Labour or Republican candidates, Labour published a statement declaring that the party had “no connection with the Communist Party or any of its members”95. If the BLP readily supported the Spanish Republican front 96, the initial response of the Irish Labour Party was shifty: the party’s new weekly paper, Labour News, ignored the issue97. When Fine Gael proposed a motion to recognise Francisco Franco’s regime, Labour deputies stayed silent and voted against, even after the accusations against the BLP of depicting the Spanish Civil War as a struggle between democracy and Fascism and not, as proposed by John M. O’Sullivan (Fine Gael, 1881 – 91 McGarry Fearghal, 'Catholics First and Politicians Afterwards': The Labour Party and the Workers' Republic, 1936-39, p. 58; 92 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 152, 200; 93 Newsinger John, Blackshirt, Blueshirt, and the Spanish Civil War, p. 841; 94 Manning Maurice, The Blueshirts, pp. 201-202; 95 Irish Independent, 26 June 1936, p. 10; 96 Pelling Henry, Reid Alastair J., A Short History of the Labour Party, p. 75; 97 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 58; McGarry Fearghal, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, p. 183; 85 1948), between Communism and Fascism98. A similar quiet role was taken by Jim Larkin’s WUI, regarded by many as a “red” union, which forbade its officials to speak in favour of the Spanish republicans99. Communists and left-wing republicans were the only ones that openly supported republican forces in Spain and sent a small group of Irish volunteers. The Spanish issue was controversial for the social democratic and socialist parties in Europe, even in Britain the BLP had some problems with its Irish Catholic supporters100. The Labour Party was saved from the attacks against the reds until the end of the year and the beginning of 1937. During the annual conference in January the difficulties to respond to the situation were clear: two representatives (John Breen and Michael Price 101) attacked Michael Keyes (TD elected in Limerick constituency and Vice-Chairman of the AC, 1886 – 1959) because he had spoken on the platform of the Irish Christian Front; he defended himself admitting that he was unaware of its programme. Séamus O’Brien (ex-Republican Congress member) proposed a motion against fascism provoking a strong debate on Fascism and Communism, with Joseph Cahill (Tipperary) calling the latter “more undemocratic than Fascism – Godless Communism”; only with a lengthy speech by Norton, that criticised both the Soviet Union and Germany, the discussion ended; the divisions and tensions within the party had been clearly exposed. Norton made two examples on how a government led by Labour could improve workers’ living conditions: Sweden and New Zealand102. In the two democratic countries “the working class enjoy[ed] a standard of living incomparably higher […] than the German worker enjoy[ed] under Hitler or the 98 DD, 27 November 1936; 99 One of the most important leaders, Jack Carnery, who had spoken for Republican Spain, resigned. McGarry Fearghal, Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War, p. 185; O’Connor Emmet, Jim Larkin, p. 100; 100 McGarry Fearghal, Radical Politics in Interwar Ireland, 1923–39, in Lane Fintan, Ó Drisceoil Donal (eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945, p. 223; 101 Breen was member of the North-West Branch Committee of Labour Party; according to a Department of Justice report he had joined it on the instructions of the CPI. Price was a republican, he had founded the Republican Congress in 1934 and had joined the Labour party when the Congress failed to adopt the workers’ republic as its objective. McGarry Fearghal, 'Catholics First and Politicians Afterwards': The Labour Party and the Workers' Republic, 1936-39, p. 59; 102 The Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti (lit. Social Democratic Workers' Party of Sweden) had won the 1932 elections with 104 out of the 230 seats. Irish Examiner, 20 September 1932, p. 4; The New Zealand Labour Party had won the 1935 elections with 52 out of the 80 seats and the Irish-Australian leader, Michael Joseph Savage (1872 – 1940), had become Prime Minister. Irish Independent, 28 November 1935, p. 9; 86 Russian worker under Stalin”103. This speech was later published as a pamphlet with the title “Cemeteries of Liberty” to “make available in convenient form the authoritative statement of the Labour Party’s attitude towards Communism and Fascism”104. The Spanish Civil War was not discussed until the following year, when a young delegate from the TCD branch, Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917 – 2008), attacked Franco and criticised the party because it had not taken a position against him. His words provoked protests from a section of the delegates: for instance Gerrard L. McGowan (TD, Dublin County) pronounced the later famous phrase, remembering that “they were Catholics first and politicians afterwards”105. The Labour Party had some difficult times both in the Dáil, with Richard Anthony accusing it of refusing to condemn communism, and with the Christian press, with the Irish Catholic and the Vatican Osservatore Romano, accusing the 204.000 workers affiliated to the ITUC to be “tacitly supporters of communism”106. This accusation was strongly repudiated by William Norton in his letter to His Eminence Pacelli, Cardinal Secretary of State and from 1939 Pope Pius XII (1876 – 1958)107. In 1934, during the Annual Conference, Robert Malachy Burke (Tuam Branch, 1907 – 1998) had already moved a criticised and objected resolution to “strongly oppose any attempt to introduce antiChristian communistic doctrines into the movement”108. The problem of faith was clearly of vital importance in the Catholic Ireland where the clergy was also an employer. This had a huge impact on the Labour Party: most of the national schoolteachers were employed by the Church and it was not surprising when the executive of the INTO – one of the largest unions in the ITUC, that funded it more than the largest affiliate, the ITGWU – asked for advice to the Catholic hierarchy on the matter109. 103 LP Annual Report, 1937, pp. 136-137; 104 LP Annual Report, 1938, p. 14; 105 Ivi, pp. 191-193; Whyte John H., Church and State in Modern Ireland, 1923-79, pp. 92-93; 106 Irish Independent, 18 February 1937, p. 14; 107 A copy of the letter, dated 23 February 1937, can be found in LP Annual Report, 1938, pp. 14-16; 108 LP Annual Report, 1934, p. 113; 109 Whyte J. H., Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923-1979, pp. 83-84; McGarry Fearghal, 'Catholics First and Politicians Afterwards': The Labour Party and the Workers' Republic, 1936-39, pp. 61-62; Puirséil Niamh, Labour in Name Only, p. 69; 87 The End of the Eight Dáil and the 1937 New Constitution De Valera and his Government found an agreement with Great Britain to reduce the duties imposed on Irish farm products in exchange for the concession to supply Ireland with millions of tons of coal as exclusive privilege. This increased the number of cattle exported and improved its price. There were four different by-elections and in three occasions (Dublin County, and twice in Galway) the Labour Party Administrative Council decided not to contest110. It contested only the by-election of Wexford, where, as mentioned above, Michael Murphy with 9.38% of the vote had not chances against Denis Allen (Fianna Fail, 51.04%) and lost his deposit. The Government found itself growing bigger and bigger with a net count of 3 more seats in the Dáil. The Labour Party was trying to come prepared for the next elections and in 1935 started to select candidates in each constituency. The results in the local elections of 1936, although considered satisfactory, were not encouraging: in Cork City it managed to get one of the seven vacancies, losing by only 35 votes one of the seats previously occupied by Joseph Bradley in the Corporation 111. In the Dublin municipal elections of 30 June, where the retiring Fine Gael Lord Mayor, Alderman A. Byrne (1882 – 1956), was elected with 52% of the first preferences, the Labour Party won only 2 of the 35 seats in the new corporation (one more than before) with 13.526 out of the 137.749 votes, the 9.81%112. In the meantime, since 1936, de Valera had been working on a new Constitution, and he published the draft on 1 May 1937. The Labour Party was from the very first moment critic on the timing and the matter of a possible constitutional referendum with a simultaneous general election, arguing that there were more pressing social and economical problems at the moment (with raising unemployment, emigration, and cost of living, and lowering wages), and that this new Constitution was more illiberal and innocuous compared with the Democratic Programme of the first Dáil 113. It was clear that in these elections the main target of the Labour campaign was Fianna Fail and its Government and their failure to achieve their electoral promises. 110 LP Annual Report, 1936, p. 23; LP Annual Report, 1937, p. 19; 111 The Irish Times, 11 June 1936, p. 13; The Irish Times, 26 June 1936, p. 7; 112 The Irish Times, 11 July 1936, p. 6; LP Annual Report, 1937, p. 20; 113 The new Constitution made divorce unconstitutional (the ban was not removed until 1996), banned the import or sale of contraceptive devices and regulated dance halls, besides incorporating Catholic teaching on family, education, and private property. Patrick Hogan (Clare), DD, 12 May 1937; Irish Independent, 3 May 1937, p. 11; Irish Independent 17 May 1937, p. 9; Larkin Emmet, Church, State, and Nation in Modern Ireland, p. 1274; 88 The economic field was not the only one on which the Labour Party fought Fianna Fail. Ireland was still part of the British Commonwealth and it took part in the Edward VIII abdication crisis: when Edward decided, against the will of his government, to abdicate to marry Wallys Simpson (1896 – 1986), an American divorcée, under the Statute of Westminster of 1931 it was necessary for the Dáil (and all the dominion governments) to pass legislation on the matter, for the abdication to be effective and for the King’s brother (Prince George, Duke of York) to succeed him114. De Valera seized this opportunity to finally remove the king and its governor general 115 from the Constitution (both the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922 and his new one) while Norton preferred to first “obtain from the British the maximum advantages on such matters as the Economic War, Partition and National Independence”. In constitutional terms there was no time to discuss since a lapse of time between the British and the Irish acts that accepted the abdication could meant that Edward VIII could be considered as still king of Ireland, making it a completely independent monarchy116. At the end it seemed that the Labour Party had decided to vote in favour of the Constitution (Amendment No. 27) Bill117, but during the debate Norton – “asked to appoint a King of Saorstát Éireann under a guillotine motion”118 – protested against the powers that could be conferred to the President, and his immunity to the ordinary law, the absence of the right to work or maintenance to the individual citizens and other authoritarian traits 119. The Labour Party voted with Fine Gael against the motion, but the amendment passed anyway with 79 votes in favour and 54 against120. With Fianna Fail recognising George VI as the new king, the Labour Party could paint the opponent as the new establishment loyal to the British Crown 121 and on the occasion of the coronation protested in the streets of Dublin attracting a crowd of 2.000 people122. 114 Brennan Cathal, The Abdication of Edward VIII and Irish Independence; 115 A figure whose formal role was considered from long time to be abolished without real affects on the legislative body. Moss Warner, Political Parties in the Irish Free State, p. 51. 116 Longford (The Earl of), O’Neill Thomas P., Eamon de Valera, p. 292-293; 117 Monthly Summary for Information of Members of the AC, NLI, Johnson Papers, MS 17,267/12; 118 DD, 11 December 1936; 119 LP Annual Report, 1938, pp. 21-22; 120 DD, 11 December 1936; 121 Irish Independent, 18 June 1937, p. 11; 122 Irish Independent, 13 May 1937, p. 14; 89 The 1937 Election, the Constitutional Referendum and the Ninth Dáil De Valera was ready for the referendum on his new Constitution, having removed any references to the British monarchy, and on 14 June dissolved the Dáil calling for a new general election for the 1 July123. The Labour Party knew that it could only hope in these elections to keep the balance of power with Fianna Fail and prevent a new Cosgrave government, but at the same time attacked Fianna Fail on every possible argument, even those that had never interested it, challenging “their niggardly treatment of the unemployed, the Old IRA, the teachers and lowly-paid public servants”124. The Labour Party worked on its electoral machine, and in few weeks 57 new branches were established, while two new unions affiliated: the “Irish Union of Distributive Workers and Clerks”, and the “Irish Women Workers’ Union”, with combined membership of 15.000125. The schools’ critical conditions and the threats of teachers’ pay cuts moved the Dublin INTO to support the Labour Party with the votes of its members at the end of May 126. At the same time the new Labour Youth Movement in Dublin brought new supporters to the party127. The to-be-elected Dáil was smaller due to the new Electoral Act: this had created new constituencies but lowered the number of seats, from 153 to 138 128. With these changes the outcome could hardly be predicted and even if Fianna Fail was confident in its return with a stronger majority 129, the results were a surprise: Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (that had concentrated its campaign on economic issues 130) lost 5% of their votes and 9 seats (45.2% to 34.8%, and 8 to 1 seats in compare to the pre-dissolution figures) while Labour and Independents gained 5% each, with the former now with 13 seats (+5, including 2 in Dublin)131, and the latter with 8 seats (-1)132. 123 DD, 14 June 1937; 124 Irish Independent, 26 June 1937, p. 12; 125 Labour News, 24 July 1937, p. 1; 126 Irish Independent, 29 May 1937, p. 11; Labour News, 12 June 1937, pp. 7-8; 127 LP Annual Report, 1937, p. 20; 128 Electoral (Revision of Constituencies) Act, 1935; 129 The Irish Times, 8 July 1937, pp. 6-7; 130 UCDA P35/193; 131 Irish Independent, 7 July 1937, p. 9; 90 No other party entered the Dáil, this was the first occurrence that was to be repeated again in the next general election, following a polarisation between the two main parties that left no space for the smaller ones. The result for the referendum on the new Constitution was Fianna Fail’s second small victory: with a turnout of 70%, only 57% of the electors voted in favour, mostly Fianna Fail and ⅔ of the Labour electors133. Only 38.73% of the electors of the twenty-six counties voted for the adoption of the new Constitution, and the majority of the votes against was concentrated in the constituencies of West Cork, Dublin County, Dublin Township, Sligo and Wicklow134. It is still discussed if the Labour’s “flirtation with socialism” with its Workers’ Republic Constitution was the reason of its success or if this was achieved in spite of the party’s new drift. Surely the work during the previous years to find candidates in each constituency helped to grow the chances of victory and comparing to the previous 1933 elections, the party had increased its votes by 71%. It seemed that the Labour Party had managed to keep the power of balance in the new Dáil, ready to support a new Fianna Fail government that focused more on social legislation, however de Valera made no promises and made it clear that he would have pursued only his policy135. The Ninth Dáil was created with such an internal tension and difficulties that an early election was predictable after the first months136 and, even if Norton did not talk about this possibility137, its party was already working on it. By October it had begun the selection process and new branches were established (105 during the year 1937, many of which covered new ground). The communist spectre was fading, leaving the party with one less concern138 and its newspaper, Labour News (published 132 One of the independents was Jim Larkin that won a seat in Dublin North East, where Fine Gael took no seats. He was still an undischarged bankrupt but the relationships with the Labour Party had improved and there was no attempt to debar him; 133 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 210; 134 LP Annual Report, 1938, p. 23; 135 Irish Independent, 8 July 1937, p. 9; 136 The Irish Times, 7 July 1937, p. 7; 137 Labour News, 27 November 1937, p. 6; 138 Irish Independent, 28 February 1938, p. 5; 91 weekly from November 1936 and now edited for the first time by a professional journalist, Christopher O’Sullivan) was a successful work until it had to be suspended for controversial choices. The Labour Party had however at least three main critical issues within. The first was the Workers’ Republic: after the adoption of the new constitution, it seemed that most of the candidates for the election “were careful not to [talk about it] at inappropriate times”139. The second unsolved problem was its stance regarding the Spanish Civil War: as already stated, the 1938 congress saw a heated debate between those who wanted to take a strong position against it and those who considered themselves “Catholics first and politicians afterwards”. The third issue was the Labour Youth Movement, established in 1937, that was hardly controlled by the head office and that was seeing many communist infiltrators in these years, when poverty and anti-fascism led many intellectuals in the direction of communism140. With these disappointing electoral results, and the imminent European War, de Valera focused on finding a settlement to end the economic war with the United Kingdom 141. James H. Thomas (1874 – 1949) had been replaced as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs – a figure instituted in 1925 and responsible for British relations with the Dominions – by Malcolm MacDonald (1901 – 1981), a more docile character142. Negotiations began in January 1938 and an agreement was signed on 25 April. The partition was not changed but de Valera secured the annulment of £100.000.000 in annuities and other payments (with a lump sum of 10%), the return of the three treaty ports (Berehaven, Cobh and Lough Swilly), and other trade provisions including the end to all restrictions on Irish agricultural products 143. De Valera was not any more just the strong leader of Ireland but had made himself the man the Britain could trust and support, too. 139 J. T. O’Farrell (Railway Clerks’ Association), LP Annual Report, 1938, p. 109; 140 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 68; 141 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 211-212; 142 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 65; 143 Meenan J., The Irish Economy Since 1922, p. 78, quoted in Dunphy Richard, The Making of Fianna Fail Power in Ireland 1932-1948, p. 171; Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 214; 92 Just one month after the signature of the agreement, the Government was defeated by a single vote on compulsory arbitration for civil servants144 but two days later de Valera – using the opportunity – called a general election for 17 June145. It had passed less than a year from the last election and the Dáil had sit for only 47 days146. 144 DD, 25 May 1938; 145 Irish Independent, 28 May 1938, p. 11; 146 18 days from 21 July 1937 to the end of the year, and 29 days in 1938; 93 94 CHAPTER IV – EPILOGUE (1938–) 1938 – 1948, a Decade of Fianna Fail Government Fianna Fail entered these new elections with great political capital thanks to the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement. Fine Gael, the main opposition party, was bankrupt in terms of policies: despite feeling quietly optimistic for this new election it managed to contest only 76 candidates (20 fewer than the previous year), just enough for an almost impossible majority. The Labour Party presented 30 candidates (33% more than the previous elections) and contested 25 constituencies, hoping to increase its seats1. Its proposed manifesto was however identical to its last one, without any real differences in national and economical issues from Fianna Fail, which was accused of failing to deal with unemployment. At the same time the Labour Party tried to prove its important role in the balance of government. The Labour Party wanted to keep its position, however this time de Valera sought an opportunity to govern on his own, even considering to abolish proportional representation if failed to win an overall majority2. The attacks against de Valera, accused of aiming for dictatorship 3, did not persuade the voters: Fianna Fail won 52% of the national vote (the first party to achieve this result). Both Fine Gael and Labour lost seats, 3 and 5 respectively, and the latter suffered the loss of transfer votes from Fianna Fail electors, now only at 27.5%, cut down from 42% of the previous election and 91.7% from 1933. 1 Irish Independent, 30 May 1938; 2 The Irish Times, 2 June 1938, p. 7; 3 UCDA P150/1938; 95 This meant that if Fianna Fail and Fine Gael won a seat for every 9-10.000 votes, Labour had to take 14.000 votes for each seat4. The attempt to gain a new strong popular support by attacking its former and much stronger ally appeared to be a ruinous strategy. As there was no other party or coalition with enough seats to create a majority, the Labour Party abstained from the vote, and de Valera was elected Taoiseach for the third time. The newly appointed Government had to face a fundamental decision: which role Ireland had to take during WWII. On 2 September 1938, with the support of all parties, it chose to take a neutrality position on the forecasted European conflict. A war-time coalition Government, considered favourable by the Labour Party5, was however rejected. Despite its professed neutrality, Ireland was closer to the Allies6: 60.000 men enlisted in the British Army – many even defecting from the Irish Army – while hundreds of thousands of workers moved to British factories7. During the war the Government enacted the Emergency Power Bill to handle orders and regulation. Although the economic difficulties had risen the cost of living by two thirds, the Emergency gave new strength to the Government8. During the conflict internal safety was threatened by the IRA that started terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom. De Valera strongly reacted by interning hundreds of republicans. During WWII, six IRA members, including one veteran of the Easter Rising, were executed, while three more died on hunger strikes9. After the meagre results in 1938, when it managed to elect only 9 TDs, failing to take any seats in Dublin, the Labour Party was split and without an effective national organisation it reached its nadir of its fortunes. During the 1939 annual conference, after the declaration from the Catholic clergy – involved in the discussion, as already said, by the INTO – that its Workers’ Republic constitution was 4 LP Annual Report, 1939, p. 21; 5 Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 3, in “The Irish Times”, 1 March 1967, p. 10; 6 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, pp. 560-562; 7 Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, pp. 136-138; 8 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 151; 9 Hanley Brian, Fianna Fáil and the IRA: lessons from the 1930s, p. 50; 96 too similar to Soviet policy, the Labour Party stepped away from this socialist digression 10. With such a small force in the Dáil, Norton’s policy was to focus on not losing any more seats11. During the early ‘40s the party rose again, finding new strength in the opposition to the Trade Unions Act 1941, the first act (later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court 12) to reform and simplify industrial relations by encouraging the growth of industrial unions13. The same year witnessed Larkin’s return too, this time in peaceful means: he rejoined the party with thousands of trade unionists. 750 new party branches were formed in three years and local elections saw encouraging results: Labour mayors were elected both in Cork and in Dublin, where Labour became the largest Corporation’s group14. The tenth Dáil was the second legislation ever to reach its fifth year of mandate, the maximum term expected by the Electoral Amendment Act 1927, and it was also the longest legislation in Irish history, with a total duration of 1.827 days. At the 1943 general election, happening during the war, Fianna Fail for the first time lost votes: after more than a decade in power it had finished its proactive period, and lost 10 seats (now 67). This loss did not benefit Fine Gael, that instead lost 13 seats and now it was reduced to just 32 deputies. In this general election for the first time after almost a decade a new party contested: Clann na Talmhan, the smaller farmers’ new party, was founded in 1938 in Athenry (Galway). Its leader was Michael Donnellan (1900 – 1964), a farmer from Galway. In its first elections it managed to win 10 seats15. 10 Ferriter Diarmaid, ‘No good Catholic can be a true Socialist’: The Labour Party and the Catholic Church, 1922-1952, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, pp. 100101; McGarry Fearghal, 'Catholics First and Politicians Afterwards': The Labour Party and the Workers' Republic, 1936-39, p. 63; 11 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 71; 12 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 290; 13 During the “Emergency” – how is referred the period during the WWII – de Valera introduced the Wages Standstill Order too, an oppressive legislation operating from 1941 to 1946 that removed legal protection for strikers that demanded higher wages. Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 562; Mitchell Arthur, The Irish Labour Party – 4, in “The Irish Times”, 2 March 1967, p. 10; 14 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 164; Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 301; 15 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, pp. 99-101; 97 The Labour Party, being ready for the first time for the general election, nominated 70 candidates, enough to form a Government, but the results were below its expectations: only 17 deputies were elected16. Many city workers and western small farmers’ votes, formerly Labour Party supporters, were lost to Clann na Talmhan. The emigration to the United Kingdom of hundreds of thousands of Irish workers during the war weakened the “potential for radical working class politics”17. During the election of the Taoiseach the Labour Party abstained: it was no more in support of Fianna Fail policy but was not ready to support a Fine Gael candidate yet. Even without a sitting majority de Valera was elected head of Government with the support of independent votes18. One of the Labour elected candidates was Larkin (Dublin North-East), however his nomination was controversial: the AC had not ratified it since only 7 members had voted in favour, while 8 ITGWU representatives had voted against. He had been able to take part in the elections only because the Dublin party executive, together with the city and county candidates, and Norton’s support, had confirmed his nomination19. In response to this situation the ITGWU members in the Labour Party AC proposed to expel the Dublin Executive Secretary and the Chairman, who ironically was James Larkin Jnr. (elected in 1943 in Dublin South). Their motion was defeated and two weeks later the ITGWU, together with the Congress of Irish Unions (CIU) – the faction previously created inside the Congress 20 that supported the rationalisation of industrial unions21 – denounced the infiltration of communists inside the assembly and disaffiliated from it22. Four TDs (Dan Spring, 1910 – 1988, James Pattison, 1886 – 1963, John O’Leary, 1894 – 1959, and Thomas Looney, 1887 – 1953), together with their new leader, James Everett, founded a new party: the National Labour Party. This was not the ITGWU official party, since some of its deputies were not members of that union and part of the union members had stayed in the Labour Party. In response to the 16 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 301; 17 Ó Drisceoil Donal, “Whose emergency is it?” Wartime politics and the Irish working class, 1939-45, in Lane Fintan, Ó Drisceoil Donal (eds.), Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830-1945, p. 270; 18 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 101; 19 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 164; 20 Ivi, p. 167; 21 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 77-78; 22 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 72; 98 accusation moved by the ITGWU, four Labour members were expelled by the AC. They served as scapegoats to prove that the menace had been faced, while preventing a more radical purge. From this moment the left-wing members became more careful not to act against the party leadership23. The Labour Party was not the only one facing difficulties: Fine Gael was changing its leadership, electing in 1944 General Richard Mulcahy (former Chief-of-Staff after the death of Collin) as the new party leader24. After less than a year de Valera called for a snap election in order to consolidate his power, taking advantage of the opposition parties’ crisis 25. Fianna Fail capitalised the situation and returned stronger with 76 deputies (+9). The Labour Party, without the support of its former biggest benefactor, managed to elect only 8 deputies, while the NLP 4 26. Fine Gael kept losing seats, even after the start of the conflict and the consecutive economic austerity, and now returned only 30 deputies. Clann na Talmhan – having no interest in expanding its support base27 – elected 9 TDs, starting its long decline. In 1946 the Government, reacting to the Supreme Court’s declaration against the Trade Union Act, introduced the Industrial Relations Act, which set up the Labour Court (consisting of employers and workers’ representatives) and allowed employees to improve their situation peacefully and without an act of force. Recognising only licensed trade unions, the Industrial Relations Act brought to a rapid expansion of union membership: from 1945 to 1950 the number of members rose from 172.000 to 285.000 and the main beneficiary was the ITGWU28. This legislation saw the creation of a new party: Clann na Poblachta was founded in Dublin in 1946 by a small group of republicans29. Its leader was Seán MacBride (1904 – 1988), former Chief-of-Staff of the IRA. This new possible opposition on the republican front – more radical than Fianna Fail and in support of social reforms – found followers in the younger electors and in those who had supported the 23 Ivi, p. 73; 24 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, pp. 22-23; 25 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 107; 26 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, p. 166; 27 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 119; 28 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 170-173; 29 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 295; 99 IRA during the Ninety-Thirties30. Clann na Poblachta candidates entered firstly in the Dáil with the byelections of 1947, winning 2 out of 3 seats (Tipperary and Dublin County) thanks to the transfer votes received. These by-elections were interpreted by the Fianna Fail Government as a matter of confidence and considering the results de Valera called for a new general election, in which he lost the majority31. 1948 – 1957, the Inter-Party Governments After the introduction of the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1947, the Dáil elected in 1948 was 9 seats bigger (now 147) despite a smaller population32. This was part of the gerrymandering enacted by Fianna Fail in order to reduce the power of the new smaller parties 33: the three 7-seats constituencies (Dublin South, Limerick and Tipperary) were abolished – now no constituency elected more than 5 deputies – and the total number of 3-seats constituencies was increased to foster the bigger parties. This gambit was effective: Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan together received 18.8% of the total vote, however took only 11.56% of the seats. Fianna Fail, on the other hand, was over-represented in the Dáil, with 5% more seats compared to its national vote. Nevertheless this was not enough for de Valera to retain power after 16 years and seven general elections34. Fine Gael, now solidly in the hands of its leader and presenting itself as a valid alternative to Fianna Fail, ended its period of decline, elected 31 deputies, and started a decade of growth during which it increased its total vote by 10%. Both the Labour Party and the NLP gained seats, electing seven more deputies, the former had now 14 TDs and the latter 5. Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan, however affected by the Electoral Act, managed to take 10 and 7 seats. Fianna Fail, although the biggest party by 37, lost 8 seats (now 68) and was 6 seats short to gain a sitting majority. Given that de 30 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 565; 31 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, pp. 302-303; 32 The 1946 census showed a decrease of 13.313 compared to 1936, with a net emigration of 187.111. Census of Population 1946. Volume I, p. 2; Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 295; 33 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 302; 34 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 297; 100 Valera’s party was still against the formation of a formal coalition, no agreement was reached to receive the support of the NLP, and now the opposition found itself having the upper hand35. Mulcahy chose to seize this chance and proposed an inter-party government. Overcoming the differences between the opposition parties36, John A. Costello was selected as a possible leader for the coalition. He was elected Taoiseach with the votes of Fine Gael, the Labour Party, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmhan, the NLP, and 8 Independents. The Government saw the participation of members from all the supporting parties: the Labour Party elected Timothy J. Murphy as Minister for Local Government, and Norton as Tánaiste and Minister for Social Welfare, while the NLP leader James Everett became Minister for Posts and Telegraphs37. Fifteen years had passed from when Norton had promised to never support a Government of Cumann na nGaedheal 38 and now he was becoming the holder of the second-most senior office in a Government with those deputies he had attacked for so long. Under his leadership an agreement with Fine Gael was preferred to a more radical policy; the leaderless party left wing, with James Larkin Jnr. refusing to “lead a revolt”, remained silent until a new leader succeeded Norton39. The inter-party Government lasted for three years, much longer than expected, and before collapsing it managed to obtain two remarkable achievements. The most important event happened on 21 December 1948, when it was passed a bill – previously drafted by de Valera Government but never submitted to the Oireachtas – that declared Ireland a Republic40. It came into force on Easter Monday 1949, on the thirty-third anniversary of the Easter Rising. This development was unexpected, particularly by the Labour Party that had kept relations with its counterpart in Northern Ireland, and had tried to form a new all-Ireland council 41. Considering from the assumption made in 1921 by the British Communist William Paul (1884–1958), who sought the establishment of an Irish Republic in order to accelerate the revolutionary potentialities in Ireland 42, it 35 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 128-131; 36 A study on votes-transfer shows that the electors were already supporting the formation of a Government in opposition to Fianna Fail. Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 298; 37 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 133-134; 38 Irish Press, 14 January 1933, p. 2; 39 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 74; 40 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 566; 41 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, pp. 137-139; 42 Paul William, The Irish Crisis. Ireland and the World Revolution, p. 3; 101 is ironic that this result was achieved by the conservative and formerly reactionary Fine Gael Government. The second most important event occurred during the Thirteenth Dáil in 1950: with O’Brien’s retirement from politics, and Larkin’s death in 1947, after two years of governance cooperation, the wounds had healed and the NLP deputies rejoined the Labour Party, ending the split 43. However it took 8 more years for their two congresses, the ITUC and the CIU, to find a rapprochement. In 1959 the two organisations were dissolved and replaced by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU)44. The third aim, the most important on social policy proposed by the Minister of Health, Noël Browne (1915 – 1997), was meant to be the so-called Mother and Child Scheme, but it was not achieved. The legislation – following the reforms sought by Browne’s predecessor and first Minister of Health, James Ryan45 – would have introduced free ante and post-natal care for mothers and to extend free healthcare to all children under the age of 16 46. However, the hierarchy and the medical profession strongly criticised it, condemning the State interference within their social sphere of influence. Finding himself without support from both his colleagues and the social bodies (even the ITUC failed to endorse his proposal47), Browne resigned divulging the correspondence between the government and the Church, thus exposing the influence of the latter on national policy. After this crisis, and the departure of three independents TDs, the Inter-Party Government fell in May 195148. During the following general election the Labour Party, maintaining its share of votes, lost however 3 seats, Clann na Talmhan lost 1 seat (now had only 6), Clann na Poblachta lost 8 of its 10 seats, while Fine Gael, thanks to the transfer votes by its former allies in the inter-party Government, won 9 more seats49. Fianna Fail gained one seat but its grasp loosened in the west, where it suffered the competition of Clann na Talmhan. Returning to power without any change in his men and programme, de Valera did 43 Puirséil Niamh, Labour in Name Only, p. 71; 44 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 183-186; Nevin Donal (ed.), Trade Union Century, pp. 96-97; 45 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 314-315; 46 Department of Health, Proposals for Improved and Extended Health Services. July, 1952; 47 Kieran Allen, Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour. 1926 to the Present, pp. 96-97; 48 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 308; 49 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 319-320; 102 not manage to keep control of the government for an entire legislation and new elections were called after only 3 years when independent TDs withdrew their support condemning the Government austerity policy50. In the 1954 general elections Fianna Fail hit its lowest point since 1927 with only 65 seats, while Fine Gale gained 10 seats (now 50), its greatest result since 1932. The Labour Party managed to elect 19 deputies51 and once again the opposition parties (Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Clann na Talmhan, with Clann na Poblachta supporting but not joining the Government) created an alliance to keep Fianna Fail on the opposition bench52. The relationship between Fine Gael and the Labour Party established a second inter-party government that survived, like the first one, for only 3 years. The failure of this second alliance was due to foreign policy rather than internal ones: in 1956 the IRA had started the Border Campaign, the first offensive against Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom since WWII 53. When Costello, preoccupied by diplomatic relationships with Britain, started to arrest IRA men (including its Chief-of-Staff), the republican Clann na Poblachta withdrew its support to the Government (where it had no representation) ending the second inter-party government54. This decade of settlement and political instability had failed to improve the fragile post-war Irish economy. With a population at its lowest point and a huge deficit in the balance of payment, the “minimal ideological and policy distinction” between Fianna Fail and the Labour and Fine Gael government, failed to improve the economic management55. 1957 – Today, the Difficult Transformation of Ireland In 1957 Fianna Fail regained power after the electors’ vote of no confidence towards the second interparty Government. The Labour Party received 111.000 fewer votes and won only 12 seats, Fine Gael 50 Ivi, p. 326; 51 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 174; 52 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 326; 53 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 312; 54 McCullagh David, ‘A particular view of what was possible’: Labour in Government, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 111; 55 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, pp. 304-311; 103 lost the 10 seats it had won just 3 years before, while Clann na Poblachta, responsible for the Government fall, lost 2 of its 3 seats 56. After the disappointing experience of two inter-party governments, failing to obtain new popular success and new electors, the Labour Party decided to change its policy, keeping however a cordial relationship with Fine Gael and its new leader James Dillon (1902–1986)57. In 1960, after 28 years, William Norton was succeeded as party leader by Brendan Corish (1918 – 1990), who decided to look for an independent and less conservative strategy58. During the Sixties, Fianna Fail managed to stay at the government without any real problem, and following the Catholic Church that was opening itself to the world with the Second Vatican Council, de Valera made the country and its market accessible to foreign investments, fostering a decade of economic growth59. During this decade the Labour Party grew its seats, gaining 4 in 1961 elections and 6 more in 1965, deciding to stay away from government; this strategy was held even in 1961 when Fianna Fail needed the support of independent votes to gain the majority and to elect Seán Lemass – the new party leader after the election of Eamon de Valera as President of the Republic in 1959 – as Taoiseach. With Lemass, Fianna Fail changed its governance leaving the autarchic, agrarian and conservative economy of de Valera, in favour of liberalism60: in 1960 the Republic of Ireland signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and in 1965 concluded an economic treaty with the United Kingdom61. Thanks to this new policy the Irish economy started to grow, the unemployment dropped, and for the first time since the 1845 Famine the Irish population increased 62. Thanks to the economic growth that lasted for more than a decade, Fianna Fail managed to stay in power63. After the 1965 elections, the Labour Party seemed to go back to its socialist roots and ran in the 1969 elections – when for the first time it nominated at least a candidate in every constituency 64 – with the 56 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, p. 327; 57 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 75; 58 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 226-227; 59 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, pp. 315-316, 327; 60 Lee J. J., Ireland 1912-1985. Politics and Society, pp. 353-360; 61 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 579; 62 Ivi, pp. 579-580; 63 Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, pp. 149-150; 64 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 576; 104 slogan “The Seventies will be Socialist”65. This promise, together with the blossoming of new radical groups and the entry of many enthusiastic leftists in the party, allowed it to obtain the greatest vote share since 1922 (17%) despite the attacks from Fianna Fail66. In 1973, after 16 years of government that had brought economic growth67, Fianna Fail lost the elections after a scandal that had shown a conspiracy between some members of the government and the IRA in Northern Ireland68. In the previous four decades it had maintained power for 34 years, interrupted only by the two three-years long inter-party governments. During the Sixties the Labour Party had moved to the left, remaining out of office and gaining new seats (+4 in 1961 and +6 in 1966, for a total of 22 deputies in a 144-seats Dáil, the greatest number since June 1927 and the biggest percentage since 1943). Fianna Fail's scarce result in the 1969 general election made Labour reconsider the possibility of an agreement with Fine Gael, the centre-right party that had become more centrist under the leadership of Liam Cosgrave, from 1965 to 1977, and Garret FitzGerald, from 1977 to 198769. A formal alliance, without the support of independents or smaller parties, was found with the Labour Party when its anti-coalitionists were silenced. After the brief comeback to socialism – considered as a mistake that had made Labour lose 3 seats in the last elections70 – the party had became more liberal71, starting the fragmentation of the left: during the Ninety-Eighties Sinn Féin-the Workers’ Party eroded the Labour’s support in Dublin72. 65 Daly Paul, Labour and the Pursuit of Power, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 89; 66 Carty R. K., Party and Parish Pump. Electoral Politics in Ireland, pp. 37-44; Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, pp. 75-76; Rafter Kevin, Labour and the Media: The promise of socialism, negative campaigning and The Irish Times, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 135; 67 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 375; 68 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 592; 69 McCullagh David, ‘A particular view of what was possible’: Labour in Government, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 112; 70 Daly Paul, Labour and the Pursuit of Power, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 89; 71 Biagini Eugenio F., Storia dell’Irlanda dal 1845 a oggi, p. 195; 72 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, pp. 78-79; 105 This alliance – apart from a couple of exceptions – lasted for 40 years, during which the elections saw a succession of Fine Gael-Labour Party governments with a Fine Gael Taoiseach and a Labour Tánaiste (1973-77, 1981-82, 1982-87, 1994-97 as the “Rainbow Coalition” that included the Democratic Left too73, 2011-2016) followed by Fianna Fail governments (1977-81, 1982, 1987-89) supported from 198974 by the neo-liberal Progressive Democrats 75 (1989-92, 1997-2002, 2002-07, 2007-11) or the Labour Party (1992-94, in this occasion the party could finally choose between two possible governments and exercised its power to frame the policy terms of the alliance76). After a decade of political stability and economic growth77, with the 2008 financial crisis Fianna Fail saw its votes halved; it never obtained more than 25% of the total votes since then. In the 2011 general election Fine Gael and the Labour Party benefited from Fianna Fail loss but the Dáil counted also the greatest number of independents (15) since 1927, and the growth of Sinn Féin. Once again an alliance with the pro-austerity party made the Labour Party lose many leftist voters that now had different alternatives on the left78. The Dálaí elected in 2016 and 2020 had five parties on the left of the small Labour Party: Sinn Féin (23 and 37 seats), the Green Party (2 and 12 seats), the Social Democrats (founded in 2015, 3 and 6 seats), Independents 4 Change (4 and 1 seats), and the socialist electoral alliance between People Before Profit (established in 2005), Solidarity (established in 2014 and formerly known as the Anti-Austerity Alliance), and other radical groups such as RISE (founded in 2010), an alliance that had won 6 and 5 seats. 73 O’Connor Emmet, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000, pp. 257-259; 74 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 375; 75 Founded on 21 December 1985 by split members from Fianna Fail and Fine Gale, was a conservative-liberal party. In 1987 became the third largest party, surpassing the Labour Party, winning 14 seats. It participated in the Fianna Fail governments from 1989 to 2007. After the last elections it decided to dissolve due to the poor result. Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, pp. 376-377; 76 Daly Paul, Labour and the Pursuit of Power, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 91; 77 Jackson Alvin, Ireland 1798-1998. War, Peace and Beyond, p. 412; 78 Puirséil Niamh, “If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: Labour and the Left, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, pp. 80-81; 106 The political system, that after the last inter-party experience had seen Fianna Fail and Fine GaelLabour Party governments alternating, ended finally in 2016 when Fine Gael governed until 2020 with a minority supported by independent deputies (now 19). The last decade had seen a greater number of new parties – such as the Social Democrats, and the Anti Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit – entering the Dáil. Due to this recent political instability and fragmentation, the three main parties (Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, now the party with more votes and the second biggest party in the Dáil, with 37 seats, one less than Fianna Fail, with 38) struggled to form a government in 2020. The belief advanced by Eamon Gilmore (at the time leader of the Labour Party, b. 1955) in 2011, that Labour should made Irish politics a three-horse race 79, had been achieved by the new true left party, that was however left out of office. After months of negotiation, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have found a compromise: the support of the Green Party and some Independents allowed them create a new government that will see, for the first time, the leaders of the two parties alternating as Taoiseach and Tánaiste after the first half of the legislation80. 79 Gilmore Eamon, The Second Century of Labour, in Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (ed.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 1912-2012, p. 191; 80 The Irish Times, 5 July 2020; 107 108 CHAPTER V – CONCLUSIONS Every history of the Irish Labour Party starts (or ends) with a seemingly simple question: why is Ireland the only Western European country that had never had a strong socialist party 1? Or, what did go wrong with the Irish Labour Party2? These questions come spontaneously when the Gaelic country is confronted with the near but very different United Kingdom, but also if compared to more similar nations, like the early 20th Century underdeveloped Catholic Italy3. It is not possible (or desirable) to discuss the political mistakes made by the Labour Party, nevertheless it can be useful to analyse some factors that affected the evolution and the fortune of the party. Trying to be more specific than the previous studies on the topic 4, it will be here discussed the role taken by the Irish electoral system and its influence on the Labour success; why it took so long for the Labour Party to contest in all the constituencies and what impact this policy had; what were the consequences of the party structure, its connection with the union movement, comparing the similarities and the differences with the United Kingdom; the failure to expand the labour electorate; how the union movement influenced the relationships with Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom and how the labour, socialist and unionist Irish movements’ Britishness became a problematic source of accusations; 1 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 11; 2 Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 308; 3 Cento Michele, Ferrari Roberto, Il socialismo ai margini. Classe e nazione nel Sud Italia e in Irlanda; 4 Puirséil Niamh, in her significant study, could not avoid the “difficult question” of what went wrong, but tried timidly to answer, dedicating only 4 pages to the conclusions and briefly listing the concerning problems: the role of Fianna Fail as an attractor of possible Labour's electors, the failure of Labour’s leaders to inspired admiration (as managed by de Valera – the Chief), and also the role of the Catholic Church. Puirséil Niamh, The Irish Labour Party 1922-1973, p. 308-310; 109 how Labour’s socialism was influenced and attacked by the Irish Catholic Clergy; and how the republicanism influenced the Labour Party’s role in the birth and development of the Irish State. The Electoral Acts and the Labour Electoral Participation It is easy to understand how much an electoral act can influence a nation’s democratic political results and the parties’ fortunes. An analysis on Irish electoral system, its origins and its development can help to better understand the Labour role in the period of time described in the previous chapters. When the Irish Labour Party was founded, Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom and, as Scotland and Wales, it sent its deputies to sit in Westminster House of Commons. The lower chamber of the British Parliament – apart from a couple of exceptions like the plural voting used for the University constituencies – was elected with a first-past-the-post electoral system that assigned the constituency-contested seat to the candidate that gained the most votes with no need of a simple majority. With as many constituencies as many seats in the Parliament, the national vote can be much different from the final outcome because national elections are not the sum of every constituencies results. The main critical problem with this system is that elected parliaments are less representative of the popular vote than those elected with proportional systems5. Moreover this system – still used in the United Kingdom and in the USA – tend to polarize the political spectrum around two main parties which contest all the constituencies, while small, local or sectarian parties may manage to be represented in the Parliament but can not hope to form a majority. When in 1918, before deciding to abstain, the Irish Labour Party was preparing itself to contest the imminent general elections, its aspiration was to finally give representation to the Irish workers that were not politically represented by the Irish Parliamentary Party; to obtain the best result with the less effort, it intended to contest only the Dublin seats, where it was confident to have a chance to be the strongest party. 5 The party with more votes is seldom the strongest party in the Parliament (ex. 1929 United Kingdom general elections, when the Labour Party won 46.7% of the seats with 37.1% of the votes, while the Conservative won 42.3% with 38.1%) but most of the time it just gives a distorted result (ex. 1931 United Kingdom general election, when the National Government coalition led by Ramsay MacDonald won 90.1% of the seats with only 67.2% of the votes); 110 Even after the Anglo-Irish War and the creation of the Irish Free State, the Irish Labour Party kept its aim (representing the workers in the Dáil) without the aspiration to form a government; it never contested enough seats to have a sitting majority until 1943. The consequences of this lack of ambition will be discussed later. The first Dáil, composed only of those Sinn Féin deputies that had abstained from taking seats in Westminster, wrote a new electoral system in 1920. Having considered the points of criticism of the first-past-the-post system, it adopted (and still uses) a proportional system with single transferable vote. In this system each constituencies is represented by 3 or more deputies and the electors can vote the candidates in order of preference. To be elected a candidate needs to reach a quota that is given by dividing the total number of votes by the sum of the number of seats plus one, and adding one: Votes +1 Quota= seats+1 Once those candidates whose first preferences amount to more than the quota are declared elected, the surplus ballots are transferred to the candidates who were designated by the voters as their second preferences. If some candidates reach the quota with this surplus they are declared elected, otherwise if even with these votes no candidate reaches the quota, the candidate with less votes is eliminated and its votes are distributed between the other contestants following the second (or third) preferences. The count goes on until all the contested seats are assigned. For example, in the 1922 general elections, the Dublin County saw 10 candidates (5 Pro-treaty, 1 Antitreaty, 1 Farmer’s Party, 2 Independents and 1 Labour) contesting 6 seats. The total vote was 51.877, this meant that the quota needed to be elected was 7.412. On the first count 2 candidates (Darrell Figgis, Independent, and Thomas Johnson, Labour) reached the quota (15.087 and 8.220 first preferences) and were declared elected. With their surplus George Duffy (Pro-treaty) was elected on the second count, even if he had taken only 6.918 first preferences. During the third count no candidate reached the quota, even after having shared Duffy’s surplus; Peter O’Kelly (Pro-treaty), being the less voted candidate with only 1.644 votes, was eliminated and his votes distributed between the other 6 candidates. Eliminating those candidates with less votes and distributing the surplus of those who were elected, 5 candidates made the quota. When only two candidates remained, failing to reach the quota, 111 Michael Derham (Anti-Treaty) was declared elected thanks to the lower preferences of the other candidates despite having received 1.865 less first preferences than the other candidate. This new Irish electoral system – meant to be more democratic, securing representation for special interests and for the minorities such as the Protestants 6 – had however two critical points from the beginning: the deposit and the system of by-elections. To contest at general elections, each candidate did not need to find a minimum number of signatories but only to deposit £100; this significant pledge was maintained from the former British electoral act, to create an obstacle for the Anti-treaty candidates7. This however became from the very first moment a huge problem for smaller parties, particularly for the Labour Party that was completely financed by the unions’ members and lacked important economic assistance by the Irish elite (as in the case of Cumann na nGaedheal and Fine Gael) or by Irish-Americans (as Fianna Fail 8). Moreover, as already stated, the deposit could be lost if the candidate did not manage to obtain at least ⅓ of the quota9. With the risk of losing that huge sum, smaller parties and Independents contested only where they were sure to reach the bare minimum. This meant that the number of contestants in the general elections was never high: in 1923 there were only 377 candidates for 153 seats, while in 1932 only 279 for 158 seats (2.46 and 1.76 candidates per seat). The second critical problem for this electoral system was the by-elections: bigger parties had much more probabilities to grow their seats’ number in the Dáil at the expense of smaller parties that could show themselves to the voters but were almost sure to lose the election and could easily lose the deposit. In the 36 by-elections happened from 1922 to 1944 (37 if including the Dublin University byelection happened on 13 October 1933 during the 8 th Dáil10) the two main parties (Cumann na nGaedheal/Fine Gael or Republican candidates/Fianna Fail) won 35 of them; the remaining one was the described above 1926 Dublin County by-election in which William Norton won the seat against one independent and one Cumann na nGaedheal candidate. 77% of the by-elections were won by the party at the government (23 by Cumann na nGaedheal/Fine Gael and 5 by Fianna Fail) and 19% by the main 6 McCracken J. L., Representative Government in Ireland. A Study of Dáil Éireann 1919-48, p. 67; 7 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 13; 8 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, pp. 190-191; 9 Electoral Act, 1923; 10 In the two Irish university constituencies (University of Dublin, also known as the Trinity College Constituency, and the National University of Ireland) only the Irish citizens that had graduated there could vote; 112 opposition party (6 by Republican candidates/Fianna Fail and 1 Cumann na nGaedheal). The Labour Party contested in only 8 by-elections, failing to win the seat 7 times (Dublin County 1924, Dublin North 1925, Dublin South 1925, Leix Offaly 1926, Longford Westmeath 1930, Kildare 1931, Wexford 1936) and losing the candidates’ deposits 3 times. Before the 1923 general elections, the Cumann na nGaedheal government wrote a new electoral act that represented the democratic and representative zenith: the number of seats in the Dáil grew from 128 to 153, with more constituencies with an odd number of seats, an average of 5.10 seats per constituencies (+0.53 compared to the 1920 Electoral Act) and, more importantly, more constituencies with 7 or more seats. This new organisation benefited both the bigger and the smaller parties: the government and the republican parties, receiving from 25 to 45% of the total vote, were stronger in the constituencies with 3 and 5 seats11, while in those with the greatest number of seats the smaller parties were advantaged and could elect one deputy even with less than 15% of the vote in that constituency. Electoral Act 1920 nd 1923 rd th th 1935 th 1947 th Dálaí 2 –3 4 –8 9 – 12 13th – 16th 3-seats constituencies 3 8 15 22 4-seats constituencies 16 4 8 9 5-seats constituencies 4 9 8 9 6-seats constituencies 2 - - - 7-seats constituencies 1 5 3 - 8-seats constituencies 2 3 - - 9-seats constituencies - 1 - - Number of constituencies 28 30 34 40 Number of seats 128 153 138 147 Average number of Seats per Constituencies 4.57 5.10 4.05 3.67 However when Fianna Fail took control of the government, it introduced a new electoral act in 1935 meant to gerrymandering the seats distribution to favour itself. The number of seats was lowered to 138 but the number of constituencies was increased reducing those that had 7 or more seats from 9 to just 3. The average constituencies now had 4.05 seats with the bigger parties benefiting the most: in the period 11 McCracken J. L., Representative Government in Ireland. A Study of Dáil Éireann 1919-48, p. 71; 113 1922 – 1938 the Republican Party/Fianna Fail won 3.01% more seats compared to its share of vote, and the Cumann na nGaedheal/Fine Gael won 2.04% more seats, the Labour Party instead lost 2.2% seats. The same difference between bigger and smaller parties can be noticed if the period 1922 – 2020 is considered with these results: +2.99%, +1.95%, -0.77%. It was not a coincidence that in the 1937 and 1938 general elections only three parties (Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Labour Party) managed to win any seat. Difference between the % of seats and % of vote of the main parties (1922 - 2020) 15 10 5 0 -5 -10 -15 Republican – Fianna Fail Cumann na nGaedheal – Fine Gael Labour Party When in the following decade, as described in the previous chapter, new parties (Clann na Talmhan and National Labour Party) entered the Dáil, Fianna Fail introduced a new Electoral Act in 1947. The number of seats grew from 138 to 147 increasing the number of smaller constituencies and at the same time abolishing the bigger ones. No constituency had had more than 5 seats since then. In less than 15 years a system created to prevent the polarization of the political spectrum and improve the representation of the smaller parties and local interests, had been corrupted to create what had been described as an almost perfect two-party system where Fianna Fail or Fine Gael can govern on their own, with the support of a third party (mainly the Labour Party) if needed. This arrangement had been maintained since then by all the governments to hold power and had let the two biggest parties to be almost always over-represented in the Dáil, winning together more than half of the seats. 114 In this hostile political environment all the small parties (Sinn Féin, the National Centre Party, the National League, the Irish Worker League, the National Party, the Farmers' Party, Clann Éireann, Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta) dissolved or conglomerated in one of the bigger parties (usually that in opposition to Fianna Fail) with the exception of the Labour Party that managed to survived the twoparty system. The persistence of the Labour Party is even more remarkable considering the fact that it did not contest all the constituencies until 1969 and rarely had enough candidates to create a government. The simple fact that the party did not contest everywhere means that it was always under-represented, and if this decision was reasonable on the economic point of view, it however deprived the party of a stronger presence in the Dáil (the 1922 elections are often taken as an example of the party’s underestimated strength). More generally the support of a second candidate during the election campaigns and the second choices of the other stronger parties’ candidates could have improved the Labour situation, particularly at the beginning of the Ninety-Thirties, when the informal alliance with Fianna Fail was closer. Due to this policy the party lacked of a strong and local support: particularly in the smaller constituencies the relationship between the candidates and the electors could become really close, forming a bond between the citizens and their representative that lasted for generations 12, and creating partisan allegiances with the local elites. Moreover the scarcity of labour candidates was a clear signal for the electors that the party was not ready nor interested in forming a government by its own but, despite its 1930 detachment from the Congress to broaden the party’s appeal, it was still pleased by representing just its unionised working electors on the opposition benches13. 12 A complete list of the families elected in the Oireachtas would have tens of names, but some of the most recognisable are: John Redmond and his son William (both elected in Waterford), Seán Lemass and his son Noel (both elected in Dublin-South/South-West), Cathal Brugha and his wife Caitlín (both elected in Waterford), Richard Corish and his son Brendan (both elected in Wexford). Wexford saw also the election of Sir Thomas Esmonde, his son Osmond, two of his grandsons (John Lymbrick and Anthony) and his grand-grandson John Grattan Esmonde. Both the Cosgrave and the de Valera families elected three different generations: William, his son Liam, and his grandson Liam T. (the last two both elected in Dún Laoghaire), and Eamon, his son Vivion and his granddaughter Síle (elected in Clare like her grandfather); 13 Irish Independent, 5 September 1927, p. 6; 115 In the Irish electoral system, contrary to a first-past-the-post system, parties benefited more from a weaker presence in all the territory than a stronger one in a small region. It has been analysed how the creation of a cumann in every parish of Ireland and the participation in every local elections had helped Fianna Fail winning the 1932 and later elections14, while Cumann na nGaedheal, being a party based on notables, refused to take part as a formal party and focused mainly in Dublin15. However due to its narrow unionised electorate the Labour Party was stronger in the cities, where the unions were more present and where more labourers and small farmers were concentrated. This was a great disadvantage since the only two great cities in Ireland were not hegemonized by the Labour Party (Belfast had been lost with the Treaty, while Dublin workers were divided due to the Larkin – O’Brien quarrel). The Relationships of the Irish and British Labour Parties with the Union Movement Even after the separation from the party and the Congress during the Ninety-Thirties, it was clear that the former defended the interests of the latter and not those of the all working class: when nonaffiliated unions asked the Labour party for help, they were suggested to first join the Congress since the party was not entitled to promote the interests of a non-member union 16. The overlap between the Congress and the party was so evident that half of the 52 labour deputies elected between 1922 and 1948 were trade union officers and most of the others worked in occupations which were organised in trade unions17. With a party completely funded by the unions, those with the greatest number of members or with the best economic condition, could impose their loyal leaders as labour candidates to later act in the Dáil as independents interested only in their constituents’, unions’ and co-workers’ interests, voting against their own party when needed. This was the result of a weak party’s leadership: Thomas Johnson, the first leader of the party, was strong enough to unite his small group of TDs and decided to expel from the party Morrissey and Anthony after the Public Safety Act debate, but his 14 Carty R. K., Party and Parish Pump. Electoral Politics in Ireland, pp. 104-108; 15 Foster R. F., Modern Ireland 1600-1972, p. 543; 16 LP Annual Report, 1934, p. 3; Lyons F. S. L., Ireland Since the Famine, pp. 524-525; 17 McCracken J. L., Representative Government in Ireland. A Study of Dáil Éireann 1919-48, pp. 114-117; 116 successors, both Thomas J. O'Connell and William Norton, were also officers of two of the biggest unions in the Congress (INTO and POWU) and had less time and energies to guide, influence and rectify their deputies while at the same time managing their unions and keeping a strong relationship with their constituents. Just across the narrow Irish Sea the BLP proved however that a party based on a unions could become the main opposition party (1922), the greatest party in the parliament (1929) and able to form a government with a sitting majority (1945) while the ILP had never left its role of minor party. The two labour parties of the British Isles shared a similar origin: the BLP had been created at the beginning of the 19th Century with the amalgamation of the Trade Union movement together with socialist and labourist parties18 but soon decided that it wanted to be more than just the Trade Unions Party and become a national party. To obtain this result the BLP created an alliance with the Liberal Party: instead of competing against each other and against the Conservative Party – dividing the opposition vote and favouring the Tories – it decided to find an agreement with the former. With this alliance the BLP managed to go from 2 MPs elected in 1900 general elections to 27 in 1906; during the 1910 elections every labour candidate was elected in a seat with no liberal opponents19. This strategy had been already adopted decades before by the Fabian Society that, following Friedrich Engels’s plan, had decided to: “fight the Liberals, not as decided opponents, but to drive them on to socialistic consequences; therefore to trick them, to permeate Liberalism with Socialism, and not to oppose Socialist candidates to Liberal ones, but to palm them off, to thrust them on under some pretext ”20. This possibility had been contemplated by the ILP only once, in 1918, when before retiring from the elections, it had enter into negotiations with Sinn Féin, but this approach was never followed later, even 18 Pelling Henry, Reid Alastair J., A Short History of the Labour Party, pp. 1-5; Gibbons Ivan, The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918-1924, p. 7; Reid J. H. Stewart, The Origins of the British Labour Party, p. 63; 19 Pelling Henry, Reid Alastair J., A Short History of the Labour Party, p. 21; 20 Letter from Engels to Sorge, in “Socialist Review”, 1893, vol. i, p. 31, quoted in Skelton O. D., Socialism. A Critical Analysis, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1911; 117 when Fianna Fail presented itself as the defender of workers’ interests and rights and proposed a manifesto similar to that Labour’s one. If the first-past-the-post electoral system encouraged pacts similar to the Gladstone–MacDonald one, with the single transferable vote different parties could cooperate contesting in less constituencies and encouraging their electors to use their second votes for a specific party. A formal covenant between the ILP and Fianna Fail was never made because when it became clear that the republican party could govern by itself, it preferred to contest tight elections than finding an agreement with the partner that was trying to contest it from the left to grow its share of vote. When this policy was proved as successful it became Fianna Fail’s doctrine to not govern with an ally and find (or create) a sitting majority with the elections, a rule lasted for more than 50 years. Finding itself unable to take part in a government with the akin progressive party, the ILP was forced to sit on the opposition benches and there decide if take part actively in an opposition cabinet – as with the two inter-party governments – or refuse to form a coalition where it was not the strongest party. The party’s history since 1948 had seen a struggle between these two possibilities, with one pragmatic faction, in favour of an agreement with other parties to form a government and manage to introduce new progressive legislations with however disastrous electoral results, and one radical faction against that showed the electoral debacle as proof to emphasize the need to prevent coalition governments. As a matter of fact, if during the opposition years the ILP managed to increase its share of vote and the number of TDs elected, every time it took part in a government, from the external support in 1932, to the inter-party governments at the middle of the century, to the coalitions with Fine Gael during the last decades, it returned indeed after the elections with a net loss of votes and a smaller presence in the Dáil. Comparing the ILP with its big British brother, a clear difference can be found in the ability to increase the share of vote during their first years of history. During the Great War the BLP managed to be identified with the workers’ party21 and, after the end of the war, the idea that the party was wider than the trade union movement and, at the same time, that it was not merely a socialist party but could become a national party, had already thoroughly spread 22; this meant that it became possible to look 21 Gibbons Ivan, The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918-1924, pp. 24-25; 22 Webb R. K., Modern England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, p. 509; 118 forward to a British Labour government23. When in 1924 the BLP managed to expand its electoral base beyond the trade union movement its share of vote naturally increased, while when in the biennium 1931-32 the party split into three, after the secession of MacDonald’s National Labour and Oswald Mosley’s New Party and the disaffiliation of the Independent Labour Party, it found itself once again dominated by the trade unions and lost most of its strength and seats in the parliament24. The ILP, founded as the Congress party, recognised the need of a wider electorate at the end of the Ninety-Twenties and formerly separated itself from the Congress in 1930, with a new constitution and national organisation. However this was never a substantial detachment because, as already stated several times, the unions remained the strongest supporters – financially and politically – of the party, providing it with funds, most of the candidates, and the international, national, and local social networks. The unions’ oversight forbade the party to become the republican socialist alternative to Fianna Fail that the Republican Congress proposed by Connolly could have created, and later neutralised the shift toward the left when socialists and communists joined the party. The ILP never developed to become a socialist organisation nor, as described in Anglo-Saxon politics, a labourist party25, but kept following the syndicalist purpose – representing the unions members in the Irish legislative chamber – with which it had been founded. Both the BLP and the ILP had to face the dilemma between the international socialism – intended as the “free federation of free people”26 and opposed to nationalism – and the defence of the democratic right of self-determination, brought up by Woodrow Wilson and Lenin, and thus supporting the Irish people’s right to decide their own future. Neither of the two labour parties actively picked a side and they both remained passive in a different way: the ILP knew that the support of the nationalist or unionist movement would have meant its own secession and, in order to prevent it, it chose not to withstand any side. The BLP meanwhile, finding no particular interest in Ireland but trying to prevent the loss of Irish votes, attempted to have a foot in both camps and started supporting the unity of the empire but later, after the end of the Anglo-Irish war, following the course of events, it supported the 23 Briggs Asa, Saville John (eds.), Essays in Labour History 1886-1923, pp. 9-11; Reid J. H. Stewart, The Origins of the British Labour Party, p. 92; 24 Edgerton David, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation. A Twentieth-Century History, pp. 214-220; 25 “A political, social, or economic system that favours the dominance of the working classes”, Collins English Dictionary; 26 NLI MS 15,704/20; 119 Treaty proposed by the democratic side. During its brief government experience in 1924, it instituted the Boundary Commission27. With a trade union movement broken in two, however the ILP could not even proclaim itself as the only representative of those unionised workers and could not use its strength to call for a national strike as done before in 1913 and 1918. Had the union movement remained cohesive, it could have worked with the party to improve the workers’ conditions questioning Fianna Fail’s governance and finding new possible electors in those voters disaffected by the republican neglect towards those strike demands previously supported28. The ILP missed all three factors considered by Webb as the tools used by the BLP to improve its role: a strong organisation, a large number of candidates to put into field, and a marked ideological turn from labourist to socialist29. Since its very beginning, the relationship between the party and the ITUC brought the former on an international level: the Congress had kept representing the workers in Northern Ireland even after the partition, and many unions in the organisation were based in the Great Britain. As mentioned earlier, the connection with the unions based in United Kingdom did not become a problem until it was used as an excuse for the 1945 ITGWU secession. The relationship with the Northern Irish union movement, although more peaceful, needs to be considered for its historiographical role. The first modern Irish labour historiography, led by Arthur Mitchell, identified in the Irish partition the foretold death of the Irish Free State Labour Party. According to this thesis, with the loss of the more industrialised and unionised Ulster’s six counties, the ILP had lost its strongest electoral base and therefore was never expected to become a main party. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that the Northern Irish workers would have voted following their class consciousness and not on a nationalist-unionist division. This counterfactual historiography could never be proved or contradicted, but a reflection can be made starting from the later political developments. If the class struggle was present in the Irish island it however never hegemonized the political debate. The structure of the Irish rural society during the late 19 th and early 20th Century was divided between 27 Gibbons Ivan, The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918-1924, pp. 41-58, 84-85; 28 Fianna Fail had in fact supported mainly those strikes against companies owned by British or run by the old Unionist elite. Kieran Allen, Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour. 1926 to the Present, pp. 9, 25-26; 29 Webb R. K., Modern England. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, p. 510; 120 Catholic Irish tenants and Anglo-Irish landlords; as the several rebellions and risings favoured a nationalist interpretation, when the Irish socialist movement started to develop and grow, founding its own party, it was too late and it overlapped with the early 20 th Century European nationalisms resurgence30. Irish socialism had never the chance to guide a national movement: it simply lost a war that it was never even fought31. The Irish workers actually kept voting for Sinn Féin (and the two offspring parties) even after the Anglo-Irish War, the Civil War and the proclamation of the Republic. The ILP could not even count on the unions members’ votes during the Ninety-Twenties (the weak labour presence in Dublin City and County, where most of the workers lived and where the unions had their stronghold, can be taken as a clear example), precisely those electors that the party was supposed to represent. While the ILP failed to receive the votes of the unionised members (already a small fraction of the total population) and expand its electorate beyond workers and farm labourers 32, Fianna Fail, with its take-all policy and populist proposals such as the cut of the administration costs and the building of new houses, was able to grow beyond its natural ideological electorate. The Northern Ireland Labour Party was not in a better situation: crushed between the nationalist and unionist parties, the NILP had managed to win only 3 of the 52 seats in the 1925 Stormont parliament. When however the proportional representation system was abolished in 1929 33 – in order to prevent splinter groups of unionists from securing separate parliamentary representation and reduce the nationalist presence – in favour of a single member constituencies system, the NILP was badly affected. The party never elected more than 2 MPs until 1958 (taking its seats mainly in Belfast and in the Catholic, sadly known during the Troubles, Southern Armagh) and was always significantly underrepresented34. Moreover the Northern Ireland was severely affected by the Great Depression that was not properly managed by the Government, and that created 74.000 registered unemployed in 1932 30 Orridge Andrew, The Irish Labour Party, p. 485; 31 Bartolini Stefano, The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860-1980. The Class Cleavage, p. 451; 32 In 1926 only 8% of the population was engaged in industry and no more than the 9% was a farm labourer. Meenan James, The Irish Economy Since 1922, quoted in Mair Peter, Labour and the Irish Party System Revisited: Party Competition in the 1920s, p. 64; 33 House of Commons (Method of Voting and Redistribution of Seats) Act (Northern Ireland) 1929; 34 The NILP won 1 seat in 1928, 2 in 1933, 1 in 1938 and 2 in 1945. In 1949 and 1953, despite a vote share of 7.1% and 12.1%, it did not win any seat. McCracken J. L., The Political Scene in Northern Ireland, 1926-1937, in MacManus Francis (ed.), The Years of the Great Test, pp. 155-157; 121 (40.000 of them in Belfast35), the 5.8% of the 1.262.000 citizens at the time36, more than twice the percentage of the Irish Free State where there were 75.000 registered unemployed, the 2.52% of the 2.970.000 inhabitants37. The high unemployment rate was however a huge problem for the Irish Free State too, here 33.000 citizens left the country every year from 1921 to 1931. It is possible – according to Professor E. F. Biagini38 and Maurice Manning – that this population loss deprived the ILP of many thousands of electors since those “who left the country were those most likely to have been disaffected and to have least stake in the country – and consequently those most likely to support the party seeking the greatest degree of change”39. When after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 the USA limited the immigration and – as described previously in Chapter II – this relief valve was constrained, those who suffered the most did not join the labourist, socialist or anti-capitalist groups, yet they approached the nationalist movement and the IRA. Irish Left and British Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism and the Catholic Clergy The ILP relationship with Great Britain, with the labour and union movements, had always been tough, from the separation of the ITUC from the British Congress, to the refusal of the ILP to join the BLP as the Scottish Labour Party had done40, and later, during the Economic War induced by de Valera, when the two labour parties had unsuccessfully tried to reconcile. Soon this connection became problematic for the Irish unionist, socialist and labourist movements because it lay itself open to criticism of “imperialism” from the nationalist side. Socialism was accused of being an English philosophy imposed on Ireland, an argument to which James Connolly replied writing his 1897 pamphlet “Erin’s 35 Campbell John (Secretary of the Northern Ireland Labour Party), LP Annual Report, 1932, p. 68; 36 Government of Northern Ireland. The Registrar-General's Annual Report for 1932, p. 24; 37 The Census of 1926 saw a population of 2.971.992 while in 1936 it was 2.968.420. Census of Population 1936. Volume I, p. 3; 38 Biagini Eugenio F., in discussion with the author, Padua, 13 December, 2019; 39 Manning Maurice, Irish political Parties. An Introduction, p. 83; 40 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, pp. 40-41; 122 Hope. The End and the Means”. This described a model of Celtic communism existed long before the intervention of British imperialism41, a novel supported by 1921 MacDonnell’s “The Story of Irish Labour” too42. When the ILP entered the national political confrontation in 1922, it was attacked by the republicans that criticised its support to the Treaty, and sought to discredit it trying to expose the “Labour plot” organised by the British government in order to replace the republicans with loyal men in the Dáil43. The two most important men for the Irish left were smeared due to their origins: Thomas Johnson, being born in Liverpool, was strongly attacked for his nationality during his 1927 motion of no confidence and when, after September’s general elections, he lost his seat, a banner was displayed in Cumann na nGaedheal headquarters reading: “No English President – Johnson Has Gone Out Of The Dáil”44. James Larkin, he too born in Liverpool, was attacked for his nationality although his parents had emigrated there from County Armagh. Larkin had tried to conceal his original sin and had always described himself as a true Ulsterman 45, but during the clash with his former ITGWU comrades, his birth certificate was published to discredit him46. As a matter of fact the ILP was the only main (at least the one that had survived longer) Irish party whose English name reflected the British cultural dominance. Both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael had been founded with their names with an English version, but the translation was dropped sooner or later in favour of the Irish titles, despite being of difficult interpretation for most of the citizens. Analysis show that parties with Irish names had dominated the political history of Ireland: counting the TDs elected from 1923 to 1977, 2.142 of the 2.696 (the 87%) belonged to those parties, while only 330 to parties with English labels (264 Labour Party and 9 National Labour Party deputies)47. The decision of the name language was always motivated: both the Labour and the Farmers’ parties detached themselves from the nationalist movement and wanted to represent a specific electoral portion. This same reason 41 Lane Fintan, Envisaging Labour History: Some Reflections on Irish Historiography and the Working Class, in Devine Francis, Lane Fintan, Puirséil Niamh (eds.), Essays in Irish Labour History. A Festschrift for Elizabeth and John W. Boyle, p. 13; 42 MacDonnell J. M., The Story of Irish Labour, pp. 4-5; 43 Mitchell Arthur, Labour in Irish Politics, 1890-1930, p. 160; 44 Desmond Barry, No Workers’ Republic. Reflections on Labour and Ireland 1913-1967, p. 93; 45 O’Connor Emmet, Jim Larkin, p. 3; 46 Ms 33,718/G(185); 47 Coakley John, The Significance of Names: the Evolution of Irish Party Labels, pp. 171-172; 123 was behind the names of Clann na Talmhan (which wanted to distinguish itself from the earlier Farmer’s Party) and Clann na Poblachta, that opted for Irish names to exploit the nationalist movement. The opposite decision was made by Redmond’s National League, which tried to evoke its ancestor, the Irish National League (the party founded by Parnell and that from 1882 to 1890 was the base of support for the Irish Parliamentary Party), in order to attract unionist voters. While all these parties tried to focus on specific electorates, the nationalist ones preferred to insist on more generic and catch-all names: Sinn Féin, Cumann na nGaedheal, Fianna Fail, Clann Éireann, are all vague names that can represent the unity of a people, the old Gaelic society and a coalition against foreign invaders. The accusations against the Irish unionist, socialist and labourist movements of British cultural dominance might seem out of place simply considering the Irish Free State structure: the Oireachtas, after the brief experience of the first two revolutionary Dálaí, maintained the former British bicameral organisation, with a lower house, the Dáil (Irish for “assemble”), and an upper house, the Seanad (a term that was the literal transcription of the English word). The legislative power and the constitutional framework were not the only matters to be affected by the British dominance and a clear example, to prove that the United Kingdom had a cultural, economic and social hegemony on Ireland, can be the coins: for 6 years the Irish Free State kept using the British Pound and when with the Coinage Act (1926) and the Currency Act (1927) the Irish Pound was introduced, it followed the same £sd (pounds, shillings and pence) system48 and had a fixed exchange rate of 1:1 with the British Pound. Talking about the Labour political nature and ideology can be confusing because it did not follow the path it could be expected to do. This could be caused by the fact that “for much of the twentieth century it [the Labour Party] seemed to have difficulty understanding itself”49. When talking about Irish socialism a distinction, as proposed by Morgan Austen, has to be done between the “red” and “green” socialisms. The former is the classic and reformist socialism, followed by the labour parties, that “employs the class perspective and is largely concerned with the industrial and political unity of the 48 The “£sd” system does not follow the decimal subdivision. The Pound, the major coin, is made of 20 shillings, and a shilling is made of 12 pence (meaning that 1£ is equal to 240d, where the “d” comes from the Carolingian denarius). The Irish coins minted were the Farthing (¼d), the Halfpenny (½d), the Penny, the Threepence (3d, ¼s), the Sixpence (6d, ½s), the Shilling, the Florin (2s) and the Half Crown (2½s, ⅛ £). 49 Ferriter Diarmaid, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, p.17; 124 working class”50. The latter instead derives from the former but is affected by the strong nationalist tradition that recognises socialism as the revolutionary solution for political and economic independence from the foreign imperialist capitalism 51. This green socialism can be identified with James Connolly’s philosophy, with which he found a synthesis in the dialectical dispute to unite socialist and nationalist movements against the common oppressor. This was the idea behind the ICA participation in the national struggle in the 1916 Easter Rising and the War of Independence, and was a belief shared by the left wing of the IRA too. Connolly, as stated previously, could however be misinterpreted (or exploited) by less revolutionary movements, such as the republican Fianna Fail that, even after the switch from a maximalist to a reformist policy, identified the socialist leader as the common father shared with the Labour Party52. Regarding the green socialism, it had been for a long time a source of embarrassment for the party after Connolly’s death. The burden of his heroic legacy weighed on his comrades’ shoulders for decades, having been the most famous Labour martyr but also considered a disowned extremist, and only later reclaimed as a founding father53. The premature death of Connolly casts a shadow on what the party could have been if guided by him, but his legacy lived on in the more reasonable and democratic Labour Party that kept in its mind his, although tamed, teachings. If the ILP soon abandoned the revolutionary call and was often described, compared to the other European labour parties, as socially conservative, nevertheless it became soon targeted by the Catholic Clergy. The “plague of socialism” had already been condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his 1878 Quod Apostolici Muneris and the Catholic Ireland had soon followed his teaching. For most of its modern history, the Irish Catholic Clergy was not identified with the powerful elite – that was mainly British and Protestant – but with the poor rural people. This meant that even at the 50 Morgan Austen, Socialism in Ireland – Red, Green and Orange, in Morgan Austen, Purdie Bob (eds.), Ireland. Divided Nation, Divided Class, p. 174; 51 Ivi, p. 175; 52 DD, 29 April 1932; 53 A path similar to the one followed by Larkin, strongly hated by the Labour Party for most of his life, they both now figured as the only two recognisable characters (together with the revolutionary urban worker boy, often identified with Victor Hugo's “Gavroche”, of the “Liberty Leading the People” painting) on the party sponsored history book for its own centenary, Daly Paul, O’Brien Rónán, Rouse Paul (eds.), Making the Difference? The Irish Labour Party 19122012; 125 beginning of the 20th Century, while in most of the European countries the Clergy was pointed as an oligarchic conservative power that prevented the democratic development, Ireland was proudly Catholic and followed the Pope’s dictates; the Irish Free State became a clerical country 54: even the Protestant minority had do adapt when the divorce and the contraceptives were outlawed and in 1908 when the Ne Temere Papal decree discriminated them, imposing that the child of a Catholic and a nonCatholic had to be raised following the Catholic precepts. The role of the Church can not be underestimated: the 1926 Census shows that 19.000 men and women were members of religious associations55 (6.3‰) and even if they did not take part in the national politics (expect to condemn actions) they could be quite powerful in influencing their communities56. After the Russian Revolution, the Irish Clergy overreacted to the spectre of Communism and attacked the feeble Irish Socialism57 even on national newspapers, with the Irish Independent publishing an article on 3 October 1919 that insisted on how: “There is one form of Socialism which Christianity is opposed in toto. We refer to the doctrines of Marx and Engels, which proclaim the common ownership of the means of production, an idea not only abhorrent to Christianity, but to every natural instinct of mankind. These are the doctrines championed by the Russian Soviets and by the late James Connolly, doctrines which the «Socialist Party of Ireland» distribute amongst the illiterate in Dublin from their headquarters in Liberty Hall.” 58 The Labour and socialist movement had, from the very first moment, to defend itself from this accusation, proving that “A Catholic may be a Socialist”59. James Connolly, himself a proud Catholic, insisted on this point in his 1910 pamphlet “Labour, Nationality and Religion”, showing that it could be possible to be socialist and Catholic together, in fact, that it was impossible to be Catholic and not be 54 Ó hAdhmaill Félim, The Catholic Church and Revolution in Ireland, p. 12; 55 Census of Population 1926. Volume II, Table 2, p. 11; 56 The political and influential role that Catholic priests could have is well shown in a famous scene in the film by Ken Loach,“The Wind That Shakes the Barley”; 57 Larkin Emmet, Socialism and Catholicism in Ireland, p. 481; 58 Irish Independent, 3 October 1919, p. 4; 59 Watchword of Labour, 18 October 1919; 126 Socialist too60, or insisting that “Socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian nor Freethinker, Buddist (sic), Mahometan, nor Jew; it is only HUMAN”61. Larkin – despite being a good Catholic that saw no conflict between the Catholic Church and Marxism, stating that he stood “by the cross and the Marx”, and reaffirming his belonging to the Church62 – was however not preserved by these reactionary attacks. Being the symbol of labour insubordination and having married a protestant woman in a civil ceremony, during the 1913 Lock-Out was accused by the newspaper Liberator of wanting the “ultimate destruction” of the “faithful” Irish people63. Ireland was so religious that even the Communist movement tried to show itself as a fine Catholic organisation, quoting the Acts of the Apostles to prove that even they were Communists indeed, as they “had a common purse […] and had all things common”, just like modern Communists64. While the BLP had found strength in its Catholic nature 65, the Church had however an emasculating role in the proudly Catholic Irish Labour movement. The several attacks against the reds during the first half of the century – that peaked during the period of the Spanish Civil War and, later, when the new Workers’ Republic constitution was adopted – forced the ILP to start a self-censorship policy to prevent attacks from outside (and inside) against its left wing. The Irish Labour Doctrine: Country above Party This behaviour was characteristic of the Labour Party: from its very own origin, the organisation was always divided between those who wanted to act, and those who preferred to wait and concede the first step to other movements or groups. 60 Puirséil Niamh, Catholic Stakhanovites? Religion and the Irish Labour Party, 1922-1973, in Devine Francis, Lane Fintan, Puirséil Niamh (eds.), Essays in Irish Labour History. A Festschrift for Elizabeth and John W. Boyle, p. 179; 61 NLI MS 15,704/20 Connolly James; 62 Gitlow Benjamin, The Whole of their lives, quoted in, Labour v. Sinn Fein. The Dublin General Strike 1913/14. The Lost Revolution, p. 22; 63 The Liberator, 11 October 1913, quoted in Newsinger John, “The Devil it was Who Sent Larkin to Ireland”: the Liberator, Larkinism and the Dublin Lockout of 1913, p. 104; 64 The Irish Times, 7 February 1935, p. 7; 65 Reid J. H. Stewart, The Origins of the British Labour Party, p. 48; 127 The ITUC twice rejected the idea to establish an Irish Labour Party to prevent the inevitable discussion on the future of Ulster in an Ireland separated (or independent) from the United Kingdom. During the Great War, instead of firmly supporting the Easter Rising and taking advantage from it as Sinn Féin was doing, it used most of its energies to expand its unions’ membership, following its old policy and did not tried to organise the party that years before it had approved (and that took years to arrange). The abstention to 1918 general elections had been for a long time identified by the historiography as the first cause of ILP failure to become a mass party, however the famous quote “Labour waited, and that was the great failure of our generation”66 and the idea that that event was the starting and ending point of the Irish democracy67, are considered today outdated and overly pessimistic. As discussed at length at the beginning of this chapter, in Ireland the first-past-the-post electoral system had been dominated for years by the IPP (that often won many uncontested seats); in this political landscape the legitimate consensus to revolutionise the Irish policy needed a national mandate that could be obtained only by a major opponent able to contest the IPP in every election 68, something that the ILP was not yet ready to do, and could be done only by Sinn Féin (together with the Labour Party if the agreement discussed before the elections had been finalised). The Labour Party distinction with Sinn Féin was that the latter insisted much more on revolutionise the system to achieve its aims, while the former stayed more on constitutional terms and accepted the results obtained by the Independence War, the new Dáil, the Treaty and even the partition (that was instead strongly debated by the BLP 69) without having a voice in the matter 70. When the ILP had the chance of taking part to the Irish Democracy founding, with the drafting of the Democratic Programme, 66 George Gilmore (opposed to the Treaty), quoted in Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923. The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, p. 76; 67 The 1918 general elections, the first ones after 8 years that, after the Representation of the People Act 1918, saw the Irish electorate growing from 700.000 to almost 2.000.000, with ⅔ of the citizens voting for the first time (mostly women over 30 years old, young men and less wealthy citizens previously ineligible due to property qualification), are often pointed out as the time when Irish democracy and political allegiances between parties and electors were born (precluding in this way the future of the Labour Party). Farrell Brian, Labour and the Irish Political Party System: a suggested approach to analysis, p. 487; 68 Larkin Emmet, Church, State, and Nation in Modern Ireland, p. 1268; 69 Gibbons Ivan, The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918-1924, p. 18; 70 O’Connor Emmet, The age of the red republic: the Irish left and nationalism, 1909-36, p. 80; 128 this “was listened and discussed for precisely twenty minutes and fifty seconds, and then buried forever”71. The popular support received by the ILP in the following local and general elections showed that the gates were not yet closed72, nevertheless, the role of the republican movement is to be considered: Irish republicanism is often described not as a political theory but as a secular religion 73 that dominated the public debate and precluded the simultaneously development of a mass socialist movement 74. The Labour Party kept putting the country (and the unity of its movement) above itself: after the secession within Sinn Féin and the beginning of the Civil War, its leaders (Johnson, O’Brien and O’Shannon) tried to find an agreement speaking with both the government offices and the men inside the occupied Four Courts; when they understood that nothing could be accomplished due to the high level of suspicion on both sides, they turned their attention on people’s needs, particularly those who had been driven from their homes during the courthouse seizure. Later they spoke with the republican leaders captured in Mountjoy Prison, failing to find a solution to the crisis and trying to call upon the organised workers to take no part in the conflict (where in fact most of them abstained) but were met with hostility from both sides, with strong attacks from the republican newspapers that criticised the Labour Party lack of support in favour of the republican movement: “if a nation is subject, every class in it is subject; nor do they see that though today Republicans are being shot down, tomorrow it will be Labour’s turn”75. In the years where the ILP was the only opposition party against the Cumann na nGaedheal government, it tried to oppose the executions of the republican leaders but was ignored; at the same time the ILP was accused of being a collaborator by the very same republicans due to its decision to sit inside the Dáil: “the continuing participation of your Party in the proceeding of this illegal parliament can only be construed by us as intentional co-operation with enemy forces in the murder of our soldiers”76. The work and the defence of the Irish democracy during the Ninety-Twenties, when 71 Ó Faoláin Seán, Vive Moi!, p. 146, quoted in Ferriter Diarmaid, A Nation and Not a Rabble. The Irish Revolution 19131923, p. 189; 72 Coleman Marie, The Irish Revolution. 1916-1923, pp. 43-44; 73 Garvin Tom, 1922 The Birth of Irish Democracy, p. 144; 74 Charleton Joseph, A study of Irish Labour politics; 75 Poblacht na hÉireann, 11 August 1922; 129 “Labour [stood] for peace and work”77, managing during the 1927 summer to convince de Valera and Fianna Fail in entering the Dáil, were not however profitable from the electoral perspective and many pro-Treaty voters were lost to Cumann na nGaedheal 78. When Fianna Fail obtained power, the Labour Party supported its economic war against the United Kingdom and the Annuities’ payment, starting from the assumption that the country could not be fully independent if the British government could still dictate its policy through the fiscal power exercise 79. This decision, that saw the republican party as the only true possible opponent to British economic imperialism, was however criticised by farmer electors – the most affected by the customs duties – and the ILP lost more votes. Labour conservative and cautious policy brought even more electors to Fianna Fail when this started to share a similar social proposals but with a more radical campaign and a sufficient number of candidates and TDs to realise its programme80. The perfect example of this “Country above the party” policy can be find in the draft election address (later not approved by the National Executive) that in 1932, when neither Cumann na nGaedheal nor Fianna Fail had found themselves with enough deputies to form a government, the Labour Party thought not to find an agreement with Fianna Fail on their common social programs, but to suggest an alliance between the two main parties: an administration whose scope would have been to focus on economic issues rather than constitutional questions 81. Luckily for the Labour Party the formal alliance with Fianna Fail was eventually achieved and during the Ninety-Thirties it had the limited possibility to influence de Valera and his government. A political landscape, such as the Irish one in its first quarter of century of existence, where the government party enacted what is often described as a “dictatorship of the majority” – with changes in the electoral law and in the constitution to undermine the opposition party and limit direct democracy, the abolition of the upper chamber when this had tried to emend and slacken the legislative work, new 76 Liam Lynch to Thomas Johnson, quoted in Gaughan J. Anthony, Thomas Johnson: 1872-1963: First Leader of the Labour Party in Dáil Éireann, p. 215; 77 The Labour Party’s Statement of Policy, 29 August 1927, NLI, MS 17,163/1; 78 Mair Peter, Labour and the Irish Party System Revisited: Party Competition in the 1920s, pp. 67-69; 79 LP Annual Report, 1932, pp. 23-24; 80 Mair Peter, Labour and the Irish Party System Revisited: Party Competition in the 1920s, pp. 67-69; 81 NLI MS 17,182/3; 130 general elections called not at the end of the legislation or after political crisis but whenever they could be more profitable for the government party or when the opposition parties were more in trouble, the new privately written constitution accepted with a plebiscitarian referendum, and the constant menace (for the socialist but especially for the union movement) to do “for Ireland what Fascismo (sic) did for Italy”82 – pressured the circumspect Labour Party to adopt what can be referred as a “parsley policy”, or “to have a finger in every pie”, that is to be present in every circumstance and historical event but at the same time never throwing caution in the wind. From the Easter Rising to the Democratic Programme, from the 1927 motion of no confidence to the 1932 support to Fianna Fail, from the Worker’s Republic constitution to the 1948 first inter-party government, the ILP tried to always be present in the key moments to flavour everything with a socialist aftertaste although never putting all its forces behind. This choice, not brave but effective in the long term, made possible for the party to survive for almost a century (if 1922 is considered as the real date of foundation) but at the cost of continuing representing only its small, fond and loyal unionised electorate and managing to take only minor government roles. The Irish Labour Party was no doubt short on luck, but also on bravery, having followed a path that led to wonder how it had managed to survive so long in such a hostile political environment. 82 Eamon de Valera, Irish Independent, 16 September 1919, p. 7; 131 132 APPENDIX – LABOUR PARTICIPATION IN GENERAL ELECTIONS (1922-1938) Legend: Candidate that lost the elections Candidate that won the election From 1922 to 1938 the Irish constituencies organised with the Government of Ireland Act 1920 were modified twice. After the 1922 general elections, a new Electoral Act (1923) was passed and adopted five times (1923, June and September 1927, 1932 and 1933). In 1935 a new Electoral Act was passed by the Fianna Fail government. 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