Cutlets. With S.P. Sauce. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Home Rule looms large in that vital organ, the public eye. Whether the Bill will kill the Pope or whether the Germans will land at Belfast are questions that agitate the minds of patriotic Britishers. Of course, the Labour Party cannot be left out, and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald gave the Home Rule Bill his sanction and blessing. In view of this, the following extract from the “Labour Leader” of November 10th last, will not be out of place.

In an article entitled “Liberalism and Progress” the writer, Mr. H. Dubery, lets fall this brilliant gem :

“What is ‘the pathway of progress ‘from the Socialist standpoint’ ? ‘The test I bring to every measure introduced in the House of Commons,’ recently said one of our leaders, ‘is this. Will this Bill on the whole increase that share of national wealth and comfort that goes to the working class ? If it does that by even a fractional amount, I will support it. If it does not, then it is to me a non-essential.’

“Taking this statement as a test, let us apply it … to the Home Rule Bill. we shall see that when the smoke of battle has cleared and the horrible din has subsided, not one working man will be a whit the better off, nor will the nation be a step further along the true ‘pathway of progress.’ ”

Yet the Labour Party, whose organ is this self-same “Labour Leader,” support the Home Rule Bill. They are playing the same game of chasing the Will-o’-the-wisp, of leading the workers “up the garden.”

* * *

Mr. A. Henderson, M.P., the P S.A.-tin bethel-monger, speaking at a Brotherhood meeting on April 13th, remarked that Christianity had failed to arrest the masses. From the masters’ point of view it hasn’t : it still does its dirty work well. But one of the leading clerical lights, the Bishop of the Falkland Isles, thinks that its sphere is not large enough, and urges the necessity of a fund to extend the movement in South America.

In an appeal that is being widely circulated among the frauds of Christendom the Bishop says : “The Bishop of the Falkland Islands” Fund. For religious, educational, and medical work in Western South America, which must be carried out before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1913. The future success of British influence depends upon the answer to this appeal.”

The appeal has the support of Lord Northcliffe, the well-known Salvation Army field-officer, and from the accompanying explanation we gather the following extracts :

“The Chairman of the London Chamber of Commerce represents the business men of the capital of the Empire. He asked to be convinced as to the use of the £100,000 for which the Bishop asks. The case was put before him, and at a Mansion House meeting he said : ‘This is the finest commercial investment the traders of this country could make.'”

“The Archbishop of Canterbury writes : ‘I am impressed and interested by the Appeal which the Bishop of the Falkland Islands is now making, and earnestly hope that he may elicit a really adequate response from those who have financial and other interests in South America, and especially on its Western coastline. The conditions are unique, the possibilities are immense, and the Bishop, in addition to his personal gifts as a religious teacher, is eminently well qualified to arrange and control the work wisely. I very cordially wish him God-speed.'”

“The Archbishop of York writes : ‘The cause for which the Bishop of the Falkland Islands appeals is one which ought specially to commend itself to all who care for the welfare of our own people in the vast territory entrusted to his care. I trust that the very large number of persons in this country who have personal interests in that part of the world will be ready to acknowledge its claim.'”

And so Christianity continues, propped up by interested men, supported by the capitalist class as a means whereby they can keep the chains of wage-slavery bound more tightly around you. The position laid down in our pamphlet “Socialism and Religion” has yet to be shaken, and the worthy bishop, in his blindness, comes and amply substantiates that position. Christianity closely reflects modern capitalist interests. We are out to slay capitalism. Look to it that the end is speedily brought about.

* * *

Amidst the turmoil and strife of the last coal strike at least one idea was prominently heralded as the means of salvation for the working class (and let it be quietly known—for the master class). I refer to the “dark horse” known as Co-partnership.

To those who have freely imbibed at the fountain of Co-partnery the following document will serve as a kind of “digestive tablet.”

“SOUTH METROPOLITAN GAS CO.”

“TO ALL CO-PARTNERS.”

“We now know the cost of the coal strike to this Company, and it has been very heavy. A very big price has to be paid (the larger part going out of the country) for coal purchased abroad in substitution for that undelivered to us by reason of the unfortunate disagreement between the owners and men. But our obligations to our consumers could not be set aside at any cost. To have done so would have in some respects irretrievably damaged our business, and as a result seriously harmed the employees who are our partners in it.

“My object in issuing this statement is to urge that all Co-partners will try by special endeavour to replace the lost tens of thousands by zealous working, and scrupulous economy in the materials used in our undertaking. Much has been accomplished, more can be, to avoid waste either of Time or Stores, and I feel sure I shall not ask in vain for the help of all our employees in the very anxious time through which we are passing.

Charles Carpenter, Chairman

April 24th, 1912.”

There is Co-partnership !

Profits are shared,—oh ! yes, and the workman may get a problematical increase (although in comparison with the wealth produced he is poorer), but when it comes to losses, well, one class of Co-partners share that, and that class is called the Working Class, alias “the Great Unwashed.” In spite of the use of the plural (“our” and “we”), when losses are incurred you must “try by special endeavour to replace them by zealous working.”

Co-partnership is merely a narcotic for the working class, to imbue them with the idea that they have an interest in the business, and under its influence they are speeded up, made to economise in materials, and all the sooner driven onto the scrap-heap. No, Socialism is the only hope, and Co-partnership is only—a hope.

* * *

“The B.S.P. Babes” have been at it again. In spite of their frequent protestations of the similar nature of Liberal and Tory, they still play the game of voting “agen the Government.” The following is culled from “Justice” of May 25th, 1912 :

“At South Hackney the Liberals in their panic have rushed the election so as to prevent a three-cornered contest. In that, unfortunately, they have succeeded ; but we hope every Socialist and Labour elector in the division will vote Tory and so deal a blow at the present Government.”

Poor old B.S.P. ! Just as a burglar does not become honest by calling himself King George, so the S.D.P. has not become Socialist by changing its name. That work has still to be done, and we are the Party to do it.

* * *

After a week of revelry, of riotous living, of gay feasting, of nautical cake-walks, and of splashing saucy mermaids, the Sea-King has now returned from seeking his fleet. It is quite possible, nay, probable, judging by the newspaper reports, that he is now able to tell the difference between an aeroplane and a battleship.

* * *

Of interest to race-goers. Just as “White Star” did not come home in the “Two Thousand Guineas,” so the King of Denmark did not come home in the Monarchy Stakes. He was unknown to the police, which is strange for a Royal scion.

A. L. Cox

The Dublin lockout of 1913 (2002)

Book Review from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dublin lockout is an important part of working class history, but there are few accessible sources of information. We review a new book which puts this right

Perhaps only those who have taken a particular interest in the history of the workers’ movement in Britain will have heard of the Dublin lockout of 1913 and then maybe will only know what happened in general terms, for instance that the workers’ leader was called Larkin and that mobs led by Catholic priests prevented workers sending their children to the rest of Britain for the duration of the dispute. Up to now the most accessible source of information about it has been James Plunkett’s 1969 novel Strumpet City but that was a novel. Now Irish Times journalist Padraig Yeates has produced a 600-page account, based on original contemporary sources, called simply Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 19.04 euro). It is an important contribution to working class history, especially as the events in Dublin in 1913 and 1914 raise general issues concerning trade unionism, nationalism, and the role of religion.

Ireland in 1913 was in the midst of yet another Home Rule crisis. A Liberal government was trying for a third time to bring in Home Rule for Ireland in the form of a parliament which would have certain powers within the United Kingdom and the British Empire. The Unionists in Ulster, supported and egged on by the Tory opposition, were mobilising to resist coming under the control of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.

One revealing aspect of Yeates’s book is how the socialist analysis of the Irish Home Rule crises has now become the standard view. We have always attributed the conflict in Ireland between Nationalists and Unionists to a split between two sections of the capitalist class there whose vital interests differred: the developed industrial capitalists of the North who were an integral part of the overall British capitalist class and who wanted to remain a full part of the UK so as to have continued free access to the markets of Britain and its Empire, and the fledgling capitalists of the rest of Ireland who wanted protection from the competition of British products behind a tariff wall. To win popular support for their respective positions the Northern capitalists played the Orange card while the other side played the Catholic card. Hence what was essentially a split in the capitalist class in Ireland appeared as a religious conflict between protestants and catholics.

Yeates takes this for granted and accepts that Irish nationalism was essentially the nationalism of the rising Catholic “middle class” (in the 19th century sense of small business and professional people). One of these was the leading Irish businessman, William Martin Murphy, who was a central figure in the Dublin lockout. The chairman of the company that ran the Dublin trams and owner of the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald, he had been an Irish Party MP on the anti-Parnellite wing, i.e., the wing that was particularly influenced by the Catholic Church which had enjoined the Irish Party MPs to disown Parnell because on his affair with a married woman.

Murphy, Yeates tells us, “saw home rule less as an opportunity to seize the levers of state power and patronage than as a chance to develop Irish industry. His increasing criticism of Redmond’s leadership of the Irish Party had less to do with the fact that Redmond had been a Parnellite than with his inability to gain greater fiscal powers from the Liberals for the proposed home rule parliament” (pp. 4-5).

However, it was not in his capacity as a Nationalist politician that Murphy has earned his notoriety in British and Irish working-class history. It was as the leader of the Dublin employers (most of the bigger ones in fact were not Nationalists but protestants and Unionists). But it did show that workers in Ireland could expect no charge in their condition from a Home Rule – or even an independent – government.

Syndicalism

The whole affair started in July when James Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (and he was a leader with followers, even if he could still be described as a working-class fighter), decided to organise the Dublin tramway workers. Murphy replied by sacking members of the union. The union then got its other members to black the Dublin tram company. It also organised a big protest demonstration in the centre of Dublin on 31 August, which the government banned and which turned into a police riot in which many passers-by were beaten up – yet another bloody Sunday. Murphy’s next move was to get the Dublin employers to agree to require their workers to sign a form stating that they would have nothing to do with the ITGWU; those who refused were sacked, in effect locked out.

Larkin was what was called at the time a “syndicalist”, which meant someone who believed that the way forward for workers was combined industrial action on the basis of “an injury to one is an injury to all”. In practice it meant that other workers – ideally, all other workers – should take action in support of any group of workers on strike by blacking goods produced by or supplied to their employers – the “sympathetic strike”.

People who call themselves syndicalists today tend to be doctrinaire anarcho-syndicalists who repudiate any form of political action and rely on strikes only, including one big final general strike to overthrow capitalism. Larkin and the others were not so doctrinaire; in fact Larkin himself had been elected as a Labour councillor to Dublin City Council in 1910 (but had been disqualified because of a previous criminal conviction). Their position was well summed up by Tom Mann, the most prominent English syndicalist of the time (and former member of the Socialist League and future member of the Communist Party) in a speech he gave to the locked-out workers in Dublin on 27 January 1914, as written up by Yeates quoting a contemporary report:

“‘trades unionism is syndicalism’. His object was ‘to combine all workers in each industry, to raise them all nationally and internationally, so as to take over control of the whole economic system.’ In that way the proletariat ‘could fix the number of working days, the abolition of employers, capitalists and government–which latter is only a functionary of the employers.’ The ‘ideal of the co-operative commonwealth will be realised'” (p. 531).

This was all very well in theory but to be effective it would require a very high degree of class consciousness, so high in fact that, if it existed, workers would be in a position to take direct political action to end capitalism. The syndicalists, however, advocated the use of this tactic by workers who were not fully class-conscious, i. e., not socialist-minded and who still thought in sectional rather than class terms, and while leaving the state in the hands of the representatives of the capitalist class. Another factor working against its success was that under capitalism the employers always have the whiphand. If they so choose they can, because they own so much wealth, always break any strike by starving the workers back to work. This was in fact the choice of the Dublin employers in 1913. Murphy had already insolently, but unfortunately pertinently, reminded his workers of this when he addressed them in July right at the beginning of the dispute:

“Murphy told the tramway men that the company’s shareholders ‘will have three meals a day’, whether the strike succeeded or not. ‘I don’t know if the men who go out can count on this'” (p. 7).

Faced with this tactic by the employers of trying to starve into submission the workers in the ITGWU and those in other unions that had taken action to support them, a sympathetic strike by British transport workers (seamen, railwaymen, dockers) was one option. This was what Larkin favoured. Another option was to enable the workers to hold out longer by providing them with food and/or money. This was the option the TUC chose, and unions and union members contributed considerable amounts of food (carried to Dublin in specially freighted ships) and money. Yeates estimates this at the equivalent today of 10 million Irish pounds (12.5 million euro or £8 million sterling), an impressive display of working-class solidarity, and it did allow the workers to hold out until the end of January 1914.

The Catholic Church

Another initiative in this sense, not from the TUC but from individuals sympathetic to the Dublin workers, was to lodge Dublin workers’ children with sympathisers in England and Scotland while the dispute lasted. This seemed a reasonable tactic, but when they heard of it the Catholic Church went ape. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr William Walsh (who was an Irish Nationalist and had also been one of those who had instigated the campaign to topple Parnell) immediately issued a statement condemning this as a danger to the children’s souls. This was the green light for the most outrageous actions by his priests. Screaming mobs led by priests stopped the children going. The Irish Catholic wrote about protecting “the children whom degraded and dissolute parents would fain surrender to Socialism or to any other Satanic influence” (p. 321).

One of the few to denounce the Catholic Church’s stance on this issue was the poet W. B. Yeats who declared at a public meeting “some day we will have to reckon with those who have fomented fanaticism in Dublin to break up the organisation of the workers” (p. 297).

Both Larkin and James Connolly, the IGTWU’s Belfast organiser who had been called to Dublin to help, were practising Catholics who claimed, contrary to all the evidence, that Socialism and Catholicism were not incompatible. Yeates quotes from a sermon given on 12 September by Father John Condon, a leading Dublin theologian of the time, which raises the intriguing question of what Larkin and Connolly were told when they went to confession:

“I have to tell you, beloved brethren, that the word Socialism connotes a body of doctrine which no Catholic who values his faith can accept; and I say further, that the Catholic who, with his eyes open, gives his sympathy and support to the methods and aims of Socialism is a recreant to his creed” (p. 157).

Archbishop Walsh, addressing a meeting of the St Vincent de Paul Society on 27 October, took up an even worse position preaching that only faith in God providing a better life in heaven could make the poor happy (“pie in the sky when you die”), a reminder of one important reason why socialists oppose religion:

“he dismissed outright the belief of Larkin and his fellow-socialists that the poor could save themselves by some form of social revolution. He believed that happiness was possible in this urban hell only for those willing to accept their lot; ‘holidays’ in England would make the attainment of that spiritual goal far more difficult” (p. 313).

Larkin, to give him his due, told the priests not to interfere. Connolly, too, had replied, in his pamphlet Labour, Nationality and Religion, to an attack on socialism by a Jesuit priest, Father Kane, in his 1910 “Lenten Discourses”. Father Kane, incidentally, had evidently read some SPGB publication as Connolly quotes him as saying at one point: “Now, as to the Socialist system. In the official declaration of the English Socialists we read – the object of Socialism is ‘the establishment of a system of society, based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of the whole community'”.

The Irish Nationalists

The Irish Nationalists and Home Rulers were no more favourable to the workers. Some denounced the aid given by the TUC as “English charity” and even hinted that it was intended to further disadvantage Irish industry by raising wages so as to make it less competitive with English industry. One of these was Arthur Griffith, the narrow-minded founding member and theoretician of Sinn Fein, who, records Yeates, felt that “British trade unionists were exploiting the lockout to undermine Irish business” (p. 353). He also attacked in article in Sinn Fein on 25 October the view that “Capitalism not England is the enemy” by claiming:

“Not Capitalism, but the abuse of Capitalism oppresses Labour . . . Not in the destruction of the Capitalist, but in his subjection to the law of the State, interpreting the conscience and the interests of the Nation, will Labour be delivered from its oppression and restored to all its rights. I affirm that the evils of the social system, as they exist in this country and in Great Britain, are wholly due to English policy and Government . . .” (p. 354).

Fellow narrow nationalist and later Irish Republican hero and martyr, Patrick Pearse, took up a similar position, stating that he believed that “the root of the matter [dire and desperate poverty] lies in foreign domination” (p. 221).

In fact, there weren’t many who were actually saying (correctly) that “Capitalism not England is the enemy”. Connolly, who by now was well on the way to becoming a physical force republican (and, like Pearse, a future republican hero and martyr), argued in effect that “Capitalism and England are the enemy”. Larkin wouldn’t have disagreed but his approach was more down-to-earth: “Home Rule does not put a loaf in anybody’s pocket” (p. 181); Redmond (leader of the Irish Party) and Carson (leader of the Ulster Unionists) were “both simply the mouthpieces of the capitalist class” (p. 254); “Home rule would ‘clear the decks for the workers'” (p. 272).

That’s about all it did. In 1921 Ireland – or 26 of its 32 counties – did get an independence of sorts but capitalism remained—and so, as predicted by socialists, did its problems. The facts themselves – the continuing dire and desperate poverty, unemployment, emigration, slums, and ill-health – were to confirm that it was indeed not “English rule” or “foreign domination”, but capitalism, that had been the cause of the problems the workers in Ireland had had to face in 1913, 1914 and before.

The sympathetic strike – or rather the resistance to the lockout – ended in failure at the end of January in face of the intransigence of the employers and after the TUC had decided it could no longer afford to continue sending food and money. Larkin advised his members to go back while still refusing to sign the anti-union form. The employers took most but by no means all of them back but didn’t insist they sign the form.

Larkin blamed the TUC for not having called a general sympathetic strike of transport workers in Britain. Maybe this would have made the employers bend a little, by perhaps getting them to offer a “no victimisation” clause, i. e., the restoration of the status quo before the dispute. Which could hardly be called a victory. Basically, however, the reason for the failure was that the “syndicalist” tactic wasn’t as effective as its advocates imagined.

Adam Buick

Home Rule in a Nutshell. (1911)

Book Review from the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Home Rule in a Nutshell, by J. MacVeagh, M.P., Price 3d.

It is significant for the members of the working class – in Ireland or elsewhere – that there is no direct mention or statement of their position and problems anywhere in this pamphlet. While as if to emphasise its concern for the chosen class we are told on page 3 that “the impulse of Nationality comes from higher than earthly powers”.

What a consolation to those who find themselves put to so many shifts in endeavouring to account for the shortcomings of Home Rule! All through the plea it is the owning section of the Irish race – whether agricultural or manufacturing – whose interests are considered and argued for on every page.

Perhaps this accounts for the short-sightedness of the author when he tells us, in italics, on page 6, that “The Act of Union has . . . crushed Irish trade and industries”, while on page 7 he says “so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century England began to legislate to destroy Irish industries . . . The great woollen industry was destroyed by an Act of the English Parliament”. And on page 8 we are told that “every industry to which Ireland turned was destroyed by England by the imposition of prohibitive duties or by the closing of ports”.

That fifty years elapsed between the middle of the seventeenth century and the Act of Union hardly seems a sufficient reason for saddling the actions of both periods with the same single result. How much the  Home Rule movement is a capitalist movement is shown when our author boasts that “Ireland gave generals and soldiers to fight for Great Britain in South Africa” (p. 18), and has given to the British Empire some of its greatest statesmen, generals, diplomats – men like Henry Grattan, Edmund Burke, O’Connell, Parnell, Govan Duffy, Duke of Wellington, Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener” – all, be it noted, toadies and lickspittles of the English ruling class.

While reference is made to the famine of 1847, not a word is said regarding the fact that it was not lack of food that caused the dire calamity, but the selling of the foodstuff to pay rent to Irish, as well as English, landlords.

On page 60, however, the truth appears. “The United Irish League is a sort of Farmers’ Trade Union”, we are told. Exactly. Hence its opposition to the agricultural labourers’ attempts to improve their miserable position. And among the chief causes of the so-called improvement that has taken place in late years is given, “five years of Liberal administration”!

Two things, however, are done well in the brochure. One is the showing of the hopelessness of the physical force movement against England – a movement that unfortunately contains a large number of the working class in its ranks. The other is the exposure of the humbug of the self-styled loyalists of Ulster with their threat of civil war if a Home Rule Bill were passed.

The facts and figures given in the latter connection are the most valuable in the pamphlet.

Jack Fitzgerald

The Irish Capitalist Republic (1972)

From the August 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just before he was tied to a chair and shot by a firing squad in May 1916, the injured James Connolly is said to have remarked, “The Socialists will never understand why I am here”. Well might he have felt guilty, from a socialist and working class point of view, about what he had done. For he was being executed for his leading part in the Easter Rising, an armed insurrection aimed at establishing, with aid from imperial Germany, an independent, and unavoidably capitalist, Republic in Ireland.

Before the war Connolly, who was well acquainted with Marxist and Socialist ideas*, had been a prominent and successful trade union organiser. At the time of his execution he was the secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and “commandant” of its armed defensive force, the Irish Citizen Army. This had been formed in the course of the great Dublin lock-out of 1913 to protect union members from police violence and intimidation, but Connolly turned it into a Republican body. He himself was almost certainly admitted to the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood before being appointed commander of its forces in Dublin during the rising.

The 1RB had no social programme and was simply dedicated to using physical force to establish an Irish Republic. The Declaration of the Republic which was proclaimed from the steps of the GPO in Dublin does, it is true, express a few democratic and reformist sentiments, but only in the vaguest terms. Its main concern was obviously “the Republic”. In fact when, only a few years later, it came to adopting a definite social programme the IRB endorsed Arthur Griffith’s long-standing policy of Irish capitalism, stock exchange and all. Connolly had died not for international Socialism, not even for trade unionism, but for an Irish capitalist republic.

The Easter Rising, and the merciless execution of its leaders, did have the effect of transforming the Irish political scene: the Nationalist parliamentary party rapidly lost ground to Sinn Fein. Taking their cue from the Ulster Unionist, the Nationalists and Republicans too had formed an armed militia before the war. Called the Irish National Volunteers, prominent amongst its leaders were secret members of the IRB. On the outbreak of the first world war the movement split, the great majority following the pro-war lead of the Nationalist MP’s. It was the minority, who retained the name Irish Volunteers, that the IRB planned to mobilise for its 1916 insurrection but the plan misfired and only a few of its units actually took part. After the rising the Irish Volunteers were popularly known as the Sinn Fein Volunteers.

Sinn Fein, now republican, began to win by-elections at the expense of the Nationalist parliamentary party. In the 1918 British General Election Sinn Fein won a large majority of Irish seats, 73 compared with 6 for the Nationalists and 26 for the Unionists. In accordance with their abstentionist policy, instead of going to Westminster, they met in Dublin in January 1919, declared themselves to be the parliament (Dail, in Irish) of an independent Irish Republic and appointed a provisional government under De Valera with Griffith as Minister of Home Affairs. This was no idle declaration since behind it stood the armed Sinn Fein Volunteers, to be renamed later that year the Irish Republican Army or IRA.

For two years a brutal war of reprisals and counter-reprisals waged between the IRA and the British Army with its notorious “black and tans” (no-good soldiers) and “auxiliaries” (no-good officers). A truce was arranged in December 1921 and negotiations for a peace treaty started. The British government offered the 26 counties of Southern Ireland political independence as “the Irish Free State”, nominally subject to the British Crown, and threw in the power to impose tariffs to protect Irish industry as an added concession. A majority of the IRA and the Sinn Fein government accepted this; a minority including De Valera, regarding the Treaty as a betrayal of Republican ideals, did not. The new Free State government with Griffith as Prime Minister resolved to crush this minority and eventually did so, but only after a bitter Civil War which didn’t end till 1923 and which killed more people than the previous war with Britain. Although the IRA stopped fighting, they didn’t give up their arms. They hid them and continued to exist as an illegal underground organisation.

The new government settled down to governing Irish capitalism, in the interests of the bigger capitalists and big cattle ranchers who exported to Britain, and with callous indifference to the problems of the working class. “It is no function of government”, one Minister once said when criticised about the level of unemployment, “to provide work for anybody”. Strikes broke out as wages fell; trade union membership declined; poverty, ill-health, slums, unemployment and emigration continued. Independence, in short, had made no difference whatsoever to the position and problems of the working class. They had merely experienced a change of masters from the capitalists of Britain to the capitalists of Southern Ireland.

Civil liberties began to be eroded as Home Rule came to take on some of the features of “Rome Rule”. In 1925 divorce was abolished. Until that time people living in Ireland had been able to get divorced on the same terms, strict as they then were, as people living in England. This was stopped, and it applied to Protestants as well as Catholics. In 1929 a “Censorship of Publications Board” was set up which proceeded to ban the import and sale of books the Catholic hierarchy found offensive. Education in Ireland always had been denominational, but the new government made no attempt to set up non-sectarian State schools. Quite the contrary. It gave the Catholic Church a virtual free hand in the education of those whose parents were Catholics, i.e., the overwhelming majority of Irish school-children. The only price they had to pay for this was the cost of subsidising separate Protestant schools for the small Protestant minority. But the move that was to make the South of Ireland virtually a Catholic State—the 1937 Constitution—was the work not of the pro-Treatyites but of their Republican opponents.

In 1926 De Valera led a group of supporters out of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, after a small majority had refused to endorse his proposal to use the ballot-box and Free State parliament to try to establish (or restore, as he put it) "the Republic”. Thus was founded Fianna Fail, now Ireland’s normal governing party.

Fianna Fail inherited its economic programme from the original Sinn Fein, promising “to encourage native industries that minister to the needs of the people, to protect them by such tariffs, subsidies and other methods as may be necessary”. The new party also promised protection for agriculture and "to break up the large grazing ranches and distribute them amongst young farmers and agricultural labourers”. Fianna Fail in fact was basically the party of the small farmer and its agricultural policy, which included increased tillage in place of raising cattle for export to Britain, opposed their interests to those of the big cattle farmers which the then government (whose political descendants are Fine Gael, the main Irish opposition party) tended to represent.

Fianna Fail made rapid headway and by 1932 was the majority party, with De Valera as Prime Minister. The new government proceeded to do precisely what the Belfast capitalists had always believed a Home Rule government would sooner or later do: erect tariff walls behind which Irish manufacturing industry could grow. Indeed the declared—and quite unrealistic—policy of Fianna Fail at this time was “a self-sufficing Ireland, an Ireland not dependent for its economic life on its external trade” (Fianna Fail 1926-1951).

Steps were taken to emphasise Ireland’s formal independence from Britain—the oath of allegiance was abolished; the Governor General sacked, and a brand new republican constitution enacted—none of which had any relevance whatsoever to the problems the working class of Ireland were facing in the midst of the Great Depression of the thirties.

The new 1937 Constitution was a peculiar blending of Irish Republican ideology and Catholic social and political teaching. It embodied all the aspects of “Rome Rule” which had come to the fore under the Free State. Article 44(2) proclaimed that “the State recognises the special position of the Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church as the guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of its citizens”. Article 40, making censorship constitutional, declared that “publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punished in accordance with law”. And Article 41 baldly stated, “No law shall be enacted providing for the grant of a dissolution of marriage”. So pleased was the Vatican with these arrangements that they have never bothered to draw up a formal agreement with the Irish government about the position of the Catholic Church as they have done with the governments of other Catholic countries. Nor has the Catholic hierarchy ever been bashful about interfering in politics, to denounce some harmless social reform or some luckless politician.

During the 1930’s the IRA rapidly degenerated from a popular movement into the small gang of terrorists it is today. In 1936 the De Valera government banned it. When three years later the IRA launched its notorious bombing campaign in England (whose main achievement was the killing of 5 and the injuring of over fifty innocent workers in Coventry in August 1939) the Irish government took even more drastic action: it introduced the Offences Against the State Act which gave it the power to intern without trial members of any organisation it chose to declare “unlawful”, and which, together with the “special position” of the Catholic Church, is the other great undemocratic feature of the Southern Irish State which survives to this day.

Trade unions in Ireland too have had to suffer from more restrictive laws than in Britain, at least until the introduction of the British Industrial Relations Act.

While Ireland was politically a part of Britain the law on trade unions was the same, though industrial conditions were different. Ireland was largely an agricultural country and, outside Belfast, its towns were commercial rather than industrial centres. Corresponding to this lower level of industrial development the leading Irish trade unions tended to be general rather than industrial, as best typified by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union founded by James Larkin which is still the largest union in Ireland. In 1895 most of the trade unions operating in Ireland, including those with headquarters in England, set up an Irish TUC which in 1912 decided to finance an Irish Labour Party. For years this was only a trade union pressure group trying, none too successfully, to get a few reforms of benefit to the working class and which, since wage workers were till recently a minority of the population of Southern Ireland, never seriously aspired to be an alternative governing party for Irish capitalism. Later, however, on two occasions, in 1948 and again in 1954, it did join with the openly conservative Fine Gael and others in anti-Fianna Fail coalition governments and so has taken part in running capitalism for the benefit of the Irish (and British) capitalist class. The Labour Party now says it won’t enter into a coalition with “capitalist parties” again, but it probably would if the occasion arose—not that it’s not a capitalist party itself of course.

In 1941 the Fianna Fail government brought in a Trade Union Act which largely anticipated, by thirty years, Britain’s Industrial Relations Act. Only trade unions which, in return for a financial deposit, had been granted a “negotiation licence” by the State were to continue to enjoy protection against claims for civil damages arising out of strikes; any other union which tried to negotiate over wages and working conditions not only lost this protection but was to be subject to continuing fines till it stopped. A further section allowed a majority union in a particular industry to claim sole negotiating rights for that industry on application to a special tribunal and subject to an individual ballot of the workers involved. This was later declared unconstitutional, but the rest of the Act remains in force. The Irish Republicans, including the Fianna Fail government, had on nationalist grounds never liked “English” trade unions operating in Ireland and the third section of the Act was partly designed to drive such unions out of Southern Ireland. It didn’t work but for a while nationalism did split the Irish trade union movement. After Partition trade unionists North and South of the Border continued to be united in the Irish TUC, a sound arrangement since the Border was of no relevance to the working class in either part of Ireland. But after the second world war, under nationalist influence, the ITGWU split from the Irish TUC and set up a rival and exclusively Southern Irish Congress of Irish Unions. All-Ireland trade union unity did not come again for twenty years when the two rival centres united to form the present Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU).

Up until 1922 social benefits in Ireland had been the same as in the rest of Britain, but afterwards lagged behind as mainly agricultural Ireland could not afford to pay (or would not have gained much economic advantage from paying), the same level of benefits as industrial Britain. Indeed, paying lower pensions and benefits was one of the reasons given for the 1912 Home Rule Bill. The Primrose Committee set up to examine the financial implications of Home Rule was particularly concerned about “the extravagance and waste that results from too close an assimilation of the scale of expenditure in Ireland to that of Great Britain” and specifically singled out the newly- introduced Old Age Pensions as an example. Paragraph 13 of their Report declared:

   . . . it is impossible not to feel that, if the Government had had to construct a scheme of Old Age Pensions especially for Ireland, they would have devised a much less costly and a much less comprehensive scheme than the one now in operation. But the Act had to be framed to suit the conditions of the industrial workers of Great Britain, and, in consequence of the political connection, had to be extended, unchanged and unadapted, to a population whose conditions were widely dissimilar. If Home Rule had been granted to Ireland before the passage of the Old Age Pensions Act, it is very doubtful indeed if an Irish Parliament would have in that regard followed the example of Great Britain. So much has been almost in terms stated in public speeches by the leading Irish politicians (Report by the Committee on Irish Finance Cd 6153).

The Committee conceded that current pensions should not be reduced, but insisted that an Irish government would have to give priority to cutting expenditure below the level the British government has been forced to shoulder in Ireland adding.

  From what we have said in Paragraph 13 it will be gathered that we regard Old Age Pensions as an item of expenditure on which reduction would be not only legitimate but desirable in the new conditions to be established in Ireland—of course in respect of future pensions only (Report Paragraph 55).

So, from one point of view, “Home Rule” and “Independence” for Ireland was a way of saving the British capitalist class money on unnecessary social reforms. Social benefits in Southern Ireland are still less extensive than in the rest of Britain (including Northern Ireland) but the gap has been closing as Ireland has become more industrialised.

If anything, then, the working class in Ireland suffered—with less political democracy, a divided and more restricted trade union movement, lower social benefits—from so-called independence which was for them, as we said, basically only a change of masters. But for the nascent Southern Irish capitalist class it meant the political power to legislate to further their own economic interests. This their governments did, through protection, during the period 1932- 1959. Then, as protection became increasingly inefficient, the Fianna Fail government completely reversed its previous economic policy, took down the tariff barriers and invited outside capitalists to invest in Ireland. In 1965 an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, providing for full free trade between the two countries by 1975, was signed. And now, along with Britain, Ireland is to join the Common Market (E.E.C.).

When this process of full economic re-integration with Britain is completed Ireland will be back where it was before 1922—and the thousands of young men who sacrificed their (and other people’s) lives “for Ireland” will be clearly seen to have died and killed merely to have got about thirty years of protection for Irish capitalist industry to catch up with the rest of Britain plus a few superficial political changes which, where they weren’t for the worse, amounted to little more than “painting the pillar boxes green” as the popular saying accurately puts it.

Adam Buick

Next month: an exposure of the 
Northern Ireland statelet.

* As a member of the Social Democratic Federation at the turn of the century he [Connolly] had been involved in the “impossibilist revolt” against its undemocratic and reformist nature which led to the founding of the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Connolly had been the chairman of the first SLP Conference.

Parliament and the Army: The Curragh “Mutiny” (1929)

From the February 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arising out of the article “What is the Use of Parliament,” in our January issue, a correspondent writes pointing out that the refusal in 1914 of British Army officers to obey the Asquith Government if ordered to attack the Ulster “rebels” shows that the army can successfully defy Government and Parliament.

Before dealing with the incident in question, it may be as well to restate the claim made by the Socialist Party with regard to control of Parliament. Our view is that control of Parliament, secured by the return of a majority of Socialists in an election fought simply on the issue of Socialism versus Capitalism, implying as of course it does that the big majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, would give effective control of the political machinery, including the armed forces.

Let us see, then, in what way the Curragh “mutiny” bears on our contention. In the first place, our correspondent has his facts all wrong. There was no “mutiny,” no evidence of an intention to mutiny, no defiance of the Government and no defiance of Parliament or the majority of the electors.

Asquith’s Government was not elected on the issue of Home Rule for Ireland and the coercion of Ulster, but predominately on the issue of the House of Lords’ veto. Further, its majority at the December (1910) election was greatly reduced from its majority at the January (1910) election, and it was confidently believed by the Conservatives that the next election would give a majority to them. Asquith’s Government had therefore no direct evidence that the majority of the electorate were behind them on the Ulster question. On the other hand, it was the view of the influential Army officers also that elections at no distant date would put the Liberals out of office. (See “Biography of Sir Henry Wilson” by Sir Charles Callwell, Sunday Times, May 22nd, 1927.)

Even, therefore, if the Curragh officers had decided to disobey orders, they would have done so with good reason to believe that their attitude would be endorsed by the electorate and the new Government. That situation, quite the reverse of the situation which would exist after the return of a Socialist majority at an election fought on the issue of Socialism, invalidates the comparison between the "mutiny” in 1914 and a hypothetical mutiny by anti-Socialist Army officers against the orders of a Government backed by a Socialist Parliamentary majority and a Socialist electorate.

Secondly, and doubtless wholly or partly because of their doubt as to the views of the electorate, Asquith’s Government never showed that it seriously intended to force the issue. On the contrary, its indecisive attitude indicates fairly clearly that it had no such intention.

But whether that was its intention or not, the fact is that it did not order the Army leaders to take action against the Ulster forces. What it did was to offer them the choice between taking such action or resigning their commissions. Given such a choice, and knowing that there was good reason to expect a not far distant return of a Conservative Government, prudence, if nothing else, would naturally suggest to the officers concerned the advisability of taking the course of resigning since it offered them more promising future prospects.

Thus, General Sir Hubert Gough, in an interview (Manchester Guardian, February 4th, 1919), said :—

   I never refused to obey orders. On the contrary, I obeyed them. I was ordered to make a decision—namely, to leave the Army or ‘‘to undertake active operations against Ulster.” These were the very words of the terms offered. As I was given a choice, I accepted it, and chose the first alternative; and, as a matter of fact, I have a letter in existence, written the night before the offer was made toy Sir A. Paget to my brother, saying: ‘‘Something is up” (we had been suddenly ordered to a conference). ‘‘What is it? If I receive orders to march north, of course I will go.”

Mr. Tim Healy, in his memoirs, "Letters and Leaders of My Time,” supports this view. He says :—

  The Curragh mutiny thus occurred through the attempt to "feel the pulse” of the officers privately instead of giving them orders to march—which they would have obeyed. (Quoted in Manchester Guardian, 12th December, 1928.)

We see, then, that the incidents at the Curragh do not in any way conflict with our insistence on the need for the working class to secure the control of Parliament.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Fools and Their Folly. (1919)

Editorial the December 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

There seems to be a determination in certain directions to push the demand for nationalisation to the arbitrament of a national strike. We have dealt with this question of nationalisation on many occasions in these columns, and our views thereon are pretty well known to all old readers ; we do propose to return to them now. Our antagonism to nationalisation in all its forms is as bitter and uncompromising to-day as ever it was. It is not passive and negative— it is active and positive. With such questions as Home Rule for Ireland, while we are hostile critics, we can concede that the sooner the Irish workers get Home Rule the sooner will they discover that the remedy for their miseries must be sought in some other direction. But with nationalisation we cannot associate even that good point, as the political backwardness of all circles of civil servants clearly shows.

The attempt to carry nationalisation of mines by a colossal strike is either the folly of fools or roguery of rogues. Fools are usually led by rogues. These latter, having tasted the sweets of office, are seizing every opportunity of building up their prestige and power, in which game the workers are their pawns.

Obituary: David Boyd (1979)

Obituary from the May 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death occurred in February of Comrade David Boyd, just three weeks short of his celebrating forty years as a party member. His son has provided the following obituary:

David Boyd was born in 1903 in Larne, Northern Ireland. Grandfather was a foreman at the local aluminium works and although a devout Presbyterian he supported Irish Home Rule—an unfashionable if not dangerous viewpoint. His was apparently the only copy of the Daily News to arrive each day on the ferry boat from Stranraer (the republican minority presumably taking more subversive journals). Dad remembered when the windows were tarred over and only my grandfather’s senior position in the local Masonic Lodge preventing real violence and loss of job. Amid the conflict and stupidity of the 1912 Loyalist gun-running, the War and the ‘Troubles’, Dad learned about socialism from a Scottish lodger at their home and from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. The Depression came early to Northern Ireland and Dad came to London. He took a variety of jobs and was sacked in about 1930 by the Co-operative Insurance Society for helping to organise a strike of fellow agents. A flirtation with the CP was followed by Orwellian disillusion and a home in the SPGB which he never left. “I thought about things’’, he told us “that’s why I am a socialist". Dad's ashes will rest in the local cemetery looking towards Mugsborough.

Real socialist journalism (1996)

Book Review from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Journalism, Contributions to Commonweal 1885-1890 by William Morris (Thoemmes. £18.75.)

As is now well known William Morris was a socialist. From 1885-1890 he spoke at indoor and outdoor meetings throughout Britain for the Socialist League. He was also the editor of the League's official journal Commonweal. In this capacity, he not only contributed regular articles but also wrote a weekly column commenting on current events from a socialist point of view. Until now these comments have only been available to those with access to the bound volumes of Commonweal. His articles have already been published separately in a companion volume.

What makes these comments particularly interesting is that they reflect the basic position of the Socialist League, shared by Morris, that as capitalism could not be reformed to benefit the working class socialists should not waste their time campaigning either for reforms or to get people elected to parliament to press for them; they should rather concentrate exclusively on campaigning for socialism, with a view to building up a majority movement for it as rapidly as possible.

Morris’s name has often been hi-jacked by Labour MPs but in fact he was opposed to the whole idea of a parliamentary Labour Party. He thought that such a party would have to resort to unprincipled vote-catching to get into parliament and that once there it wouldn’t be able to do much for the workers and could end up helping the governing classes to govern.

Someone writing from this perspective is bound to throw a different light on the politics of the period 1885-1890 than can be found both in conventional history books and in the works of “Labour historians". It is this that makes this 670-page collection of short articles so fascinating.

The issue which dominated politics for most of this period was the Irish Question. When it opened Gladstone was the Prime Minister but he was twice defeated when he tried to get a Bill giving Home Rule to Ireland through Parliament. His Liberal Party in fact split over the issue with a section going over to the Tories.

The Tories and their Liberal Unionists allies won the July 1886 General Election. Lord Salisbury took over as Prime Minister. The new government which had already "played the Orange card’’ to get elected, proceeded to pursue a policy of "coercion” (the official word for it) in Ireland.

As a socialist Morris was naturally on the side of the exploited (in this case the Irish peasantry) against their exploiters and oppressors (the Anglo-Irish landlords and their protectors, the British government), but that did not mean that he supported the Irish Nationalists. Far from it.

Morris realised that the Irish Nationalists represented Irish capitalism and that, if successful, they would merely impose a "new tyranny" on the peasantry by turning them into "a fresh Irish proletariat to be robbed for the benefit of national capitalists''.

Morris was not opposed to “home rule" as such since the term could be used to describe the high degree of decentralised decision-making and self-administration that people living in a particular area would enjoy in socialism. Home Rule under capitalism, however, he regarded as something quite different; it would merely be a change of masters; "Undoubtedly when there is a parliament in Dublin the struggle of the Irish people for freedom will have to be begun again".

In his view, the most that could be said for it was that it would provide a framework within which the oppressed people in Ireland could come to see more quickly that the real conflict was not between “the Irish" and "the English” but between workers (of whatever nationality) and capitalists (of whatever nationality). It was for this reason (which turned out to be wrong) that Morris and the Socialist League were nevertheless prepared to go along with the proposal for Home Rule for Ireland.

Morris writes here on much else besides Ireland and the manoeuvrings at Westminster in connection with it. This was the period of the first demonstrations of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square, the fight to hold outdoor meetings without being obstructed by the police, the declaration "that we are all Socialists now" (by the Liberal politician. Sir William Harcourt, in August 1887), the execution of the Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago, the Bryant & May matchgirls strike, the strike for the dockers’ tanner, and Jack the Ripper.

Morris comments on all of these as well as on trade unionism, the co-operative movement, Henry George's Single Tax panacea, women's rights ("As long as men are slaves, woman can be no better. Let the women's rights societies adopt that last sentence as a motto—and act on it"), war ("the interests of the workmen are the same in all countries and they can never really be enemies of each other"), vegetarianism (he wasn’t one of course, being more into medieval banquets). Sunday closing (he wasn’t a teetotaller either and was all for workers being able to drink on Sundays as long as it was real ale and not the slop that was all they could normally afford), and prisons (which he repeatedly denounces as barbaric places of torture).

Morris wrote as a Socialist in the SPGB tradition. Those who might be inclined to doubt our claim here should read the book. They will find that no other conclusion is possible. 

Adam Buick

Editorial: The Only Way To Win. (1911)

Editorial from the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The war on the world's workers has been far fiercer and more prolonged recently than for many years past. From the Norwegian fiords to the sunny shores of Spain it has affected capitalism in all its climes. The railwaymen of John Bull’s other island”; the miners of Wales; the cultivators of the grape in “Fair France”; these are but a few of those who have been driven to strike.

From all over the civilised world, too, comes the bitter cry of the toilers against the ever-rising prices of commodities, more particularly of the essential necessaries of life, the items of the working-class fare.

France has abolished the Monarchy, separated Church from State, and parted with her House of Nobles. Portugal has dethroned and exiled her king and installed a capitalist Republic. Germany has Tariff Reform and working class “salvation” in State Insurance. The United States of America have Protection, no conscript army, State Church or House of Peers. Ireland has the “lavish” Land Acts of the Liberal party, and both Eighty Club and ugly Ulster unite in protesting that "Ireland is prosperous.” Yet despite these things ; despite the fact that all the reforms lustily shouted for by the workers here are in operation in one country or another, there is war, bitter, bloody, and brutal, between the toilers and their masters.

The workers, asking for higher wages on account of the famine prices in France, Austria and Belgium are being shot down and massacred by the Gendarmerie. In America the “Trust busters” and the trustifiers have entered into a conspiracy to smash the unions, the latest act being the imprisonment of the union secretary. McNamara, on the trumped-up charge of blowing up the office of the “Los Angeles Times.” In modern Mexico ex-President Diaz finds a worthy successor in the Liberal, Madero, who, true to Liberal traditions everywhere, is drowning every aspiration of the toilers in a torrent of blood.

In England, too, the masters are rallying for a smashing blow at the workers. A new force of mercenaries—a permanent body of special constables with a retaining fee of £5 per annum and a wage when they are actually called upon to do their filthy, black hundred's, work—is being raised. Signs of what the capitalist ghouls contemplate manifest themselves in their persistent demands that picketing shall cease, and perhaps still more definitely in the working-class enslavement Bill recently introduced by that capitalist henchman, Will Crooks. Soldiers and police are being drafted to all parts of Ireland as in Gladstone's “golden” days. The united force of man and gun is being used to conquer the slaves of Erin.

The lesson conveyed by all these cold, staring facts is not a very subtle or elusive one--in fact it is as blatantly, obtrusively plain as the facts themselves. It is this: The only way for the toilers to triumph is by fighting for Revolution, not reform. Social reform is powerless to affect materially the conditions of toil. Social Revolution alone is the remedy. The recent railway strike in Ireland sufficiently proves this contention. Those strikers support the Home Rulers. But under Home Rule they will be sweated and robbed, even as they are now, because they will still be, what they are under the Saxon heel, proletarians—property less.

Home Rule is a question for rulers, not for the ruled—for priests and landlords and capitalists, not for working men and women. How little the Home Rulers help the workers was shown by their eloquent silence during the Belfast massacre in 1907. None of the sturdy independence they boast of was seen upon that occasion, and they showed plainly enough that the Home Rulers’ wind and fury centres around the question of who shall suck the Irish working class orange—that the Irish working class shall be an orange, to be sucked dry by somebody, is an article of faith of Home Ruler and Unionist alike.

Remember, too, that the Irish party’s chief whip. Sir T. G. Esmonde, is a director of the Great Southern and Western Railway—the most bitter against the men. Mr. Willie Redmond also urges the men to go back to work (“Daily Chronicle,” Sept. 26th.)

No, Home Rule, like the other reforms, has proved powerless to help the workers, wherever it has been tried.

Revolution alone is the hope of the toiling masses, and not Reform. For Reform—whether political or social —does not affect the cause of the workers’ troubles. Change the entire conditions of social life and labour by the capture of the political machine by au educated and organised working class, and use it to abolish wage-slavery for ever, and to establish society upon a basis of common ownership in the means and instruments of production and distribution. Thus only can, then only will, the ills and anxieties of the wealth producers cease.

Rally to the ranks of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, for it has one Object—Socialism ;one method—Revolution.