That Independent Presidential Candidate – no, not Gallagher or Davis. It’s the Technical Group one… September 9, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics, The Left.trackback
Following on from IELB’s post last week there’s an article in the Irish Times about the election from the perspective of SF.
Meanwhile the latest polls indicate that Michael D. Higgins is still well ahead of Gay Mitchell.
The Paddy Power/Red C poll sees Mr Higgins on 36 per cent of the first preference vote, with Gay Mitchell next at 24 per cent.
Independent candidates Sean Gallagher and Mary Davis are on 21 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.
Though intriguingly:
Support for Mr Higgins vote has fallen slightly in the last month, down from 39 per cent to 36 per cent while Mr Mitchell and Mr Gallagher’s share appears to be relatively stable.
And yet…
…a third of voters have not made up their mind or have indicated that they would like another candidate in the election.
Are they not satisfied with a stellar array such as that which presents itself to us? For shame.
Actually, you’d have to laugh at Fine Gael, finally, finally, allowing their councillors free rein in nominating Independents. That’s right, now that the strongest potential Independent candidate is long gone from the field they’re all for openness and inclusion. Impressive.
And still there are rumours David Norris might reenter the race.
So, it’s interesting to read the following snippet:
Separately, Independent TD Finian McGrath is continuing discussions with a view to the technical group backing an Independent candidate.
Some will remember the bould Finian looking positively buoyant in the wake of withdrawing support from his then candidate of choice, David Norris, and hinting sot voce that already there was a potential Independent Presidential candidate or two waiting in the wings all but ready to be unleashed upon a grateful Irish electorate.
To date, though, this hasn’t happened. And perhaps the SF candidate, whoever he or she may be may upset any number of applecarts…
It’s telling that McGrath is working through the Technical Group [which by the way a visit to wiki suggests is an invention entirely unique to this island - I guess it's the juxtaposition of Technical and Group], which has 16 members.
Ignore, if one can, the Seanad Independent Group composed of the Taoiseach’s nominees and consider the remaining Independents in the Seanad – the real Independent group – as some would put it and one has the crucial 20 Oireachtas nominations, with one to spare. And sure there’s also those non-members of the TG, Lowry, Grealish and Healy-Rae to call upon if things get tight.
Given the disparity of views extant within the Technical Group, from further left to further economic and social right [if we thrown in a Senator or two] one can only look forward to the day the candidate is unveiled.
So who might it be? Any suggestions?
Didn’t McGrath mention Dana, Justin Kilcullen and Mary Davis as being the people the Group had been discussing?
Yeah, I see that he mentioned that now.
Hardly a stellar line up…
Dana? What the hell? Have they been skipping their Olanzapine.
Yep, it’s hard to understand how McGrath thinks Dana… or indeed Davis or anyone named would be good fits for the Technical Group to support.
I could imagine myself throwing a good preference to Kilcullen but really it seems like McGrath is just clutching at straws at this stage. I doubt it’ll come to pass – Maureen O’S has pledged her support for Higins, I doubt some of those Taoiseach’s nominnee’s are going to be backing anyone now since the Norris debacle and I think most of the other Technical Group TD’s will want to sink their teeth into other issues when the Dail comes back.
Wonder how McGrath’s standing within the TG has been affected by the whole Presidential campaign.
I think its a case of having (in the interest of democracy) lined the troops up to back Norris and then seeing the publicity some of them got out of it.
Justin Kilcullen doesn’t sound like a bad candidate although other than Trocaire I wouldn’t know much about him.
The last time ,who would have thought that Adi Roche (another prominent Charity figure) would be the subject of a smear campaign. God knows but there may be some disgruntled ex Trocaire people more than willing to badmouth Kilcullen. Already I notice on google if you enter the name Justin Kilcullen , ‘justin kilcullen salary’ is a suggested search term. He reputedly earns 150k a year.
Isn’t there something repulsive about the head of a Christian 3rd world charity that fundraises on the basis of €5 can change a child’s life style emotiveness raking in 150 grand? These captains of the poverty industry make me sick.
the poverty industry
+1000
How the Irish get to make it up to themselves for never having had an Empire.
McGrath is a publicity hunger gobshite, he should away play his guitar
One thing I noticed way back in the heyday of the Norris campaign was the absence of Shane Ross’ name from the list of nominees. I don’t know if there’s some history between them, but I would have expected Ross to have had a certain amount of respect for Norris’ record, and he was also a prime mover in getting the TG together in the first place, so why not support an independent candidate? Shane Ross has oodles of what people seem to consider ‘Presidential’ – he’s a little bit posh and speaks with authority and confidence. He also rode a populist wave in the general election. I’d be surprised if no-one thought of him. He wouldn’t get much ULA backing but others might be willing to come out of the woodwork to make him the ‘Official’ independent candidate? Just a thought.
As said elsewhere, SF is not yet guaranteed a nomination – they don’t have many friends outside their own party, unless the ULA team-up is back on the cards. The Norris relaunch campaign is building up steam, meanwhile. Petitioners are out in force this weekend for a final push to convince him how much support he still has. The bigger question is whether or not he has the stomach to go back on his declaration, and to open himself up to yet more salacious headlines. He’s lined up for next week’s Late Late Show, which could be significant.
Just out of curiousity, does the lifting of the ban mean that FG TDs and Senators could also – hypothetically – nominate another candidate?
I am bemused at Joe Higgins finding it possible to sign for Norris and not for SF. Perhaps Mark P. can help.
Would you say that the electorate would vote for SF in place of Norris or if SF enter the race that Norris’s poll figures would drop.Do you think they’re similar
The SP distinguished between supporting the right of Norris to stand and supporting him. I just wondered why Joe H would not give the same help to a possible SF candidate.My guess is that a SF candidate who decided to be radical would garner a constituency which would include SF and the rest of the non Labour left.Alas, the current line of SF is to show they are “fit” for power, and would not rock anything in power. So I would expect the usual platitudes.
Norris was in the process of being kept off the ballot by a homophobic smear campaign. Nominating him while making it clear that no support was being given was about basic democratic principles.
There is absolutely no prospect under any circumstances of the Socialist Party supporting a Sinn Fein candidate for any position. There are perhaps theoretical circumstances under which one could be nominated but not supported for democratic reasons, if there were a concerted effort to keep them off the ballot. I haven’t really thought about it, as such circumstances seem unlikely to apply.
Without having given the matter any particular consideration, my instinct would be to say that it would be conceivably ok to do so in principle, but I’d still personally be opposed to doing so for tactical reasons – there is no reason to give Sinn Fein a leg up and allow them to posture as a leftish or radical opposition.
Jut out of interest, how would what the SP did or did not do affect whether SF did or did not posture as leftish or radical?
In the circumstances Jim talks about, it would give them a bigger platform to do it from – a national election where they were the most “left” party. SF already have an advantage over the actual left in terms of size, profile and money. An election which they are involved in and we are not is hardly to the advantage of socialists.
So they will actually be allowed to do this then?
I think that if they want to have a candidate, they’ll have the numbers to get one. They are pretty close to the required number of nominations on their own and there are all kinds of flakey independents in the Dail and Seanad who might fall in with them.
I suspect that they will have more of a problem coming up with a viable candidate than with getting the nominations. They won’t want to stand anyone who will take a hiding and they aren’t a party overburdened with talent. Most of their competent and prominent people are already playing important roles. If I had to guess I’d say that they’ll find one though.
Giving the 3 nominations is not political support.Given what you said about Norris. And I think you would agree that whatever our political disagreements with SF we do not want a barrier between us and their voters. Their voters are our natural fishing ground.I would hope that when/if SF goes into a bourgeois coalition then they would/might move to ULA. THus supporting the right of the 4th largest party in the Dail to have a candidate would help remove barriers between us and them, Going on we could challenge SF to go beyond the confines of the other candidates.
Not for here but how is the byelection going on the ground. Are you rallying a broader left for the fight.
I do not agree that having a Sinn Fein candidate is to the advantage of the ULA. If anything, it’s more likely to get some of our voters used to voting for SF than it is to “break down barriers” with the left leaning section of their vote.
As I’ve already said, if SF were subjected to an anti-democratic campaign to keep them off the ballot, without having given the matter too much thought I wouldn’t personally have a problem in principle with nominating them while vigorously and trenchantly criticising them at every turn and offering them no support at all. Tactically though, I don’t see how it would serve either the goal of building the ULA or building a socialist movement.
As for the election campaign in Dublin West, I’m not involved in the planning at all and haven’t been out there yet, so I don’t know. I presume that there will be a wider mobilisation, but I doubt if it will matter too much – the Socialist Party is well capable of canvassing the whole constituency anyway and if you start hitting the same doors three times in three weeks you just aggravate people.
I’m amazed that anyone on the Irish left would be thinking of giving SF a political leg up. Through out Irish history whenever the left has gravitated to Republicanism, whether that’s the independence struggle, FF in the 30′s, the Provo’s in the 70′s etc it’s been Republicanism that’s gained and the left that’s lost out.
Did the ‘left’ really gravitate to FF in the 1930s or the Provo’s in the 70s?
Surely it was more a case that FF in the 20s and 30s took on a populist leftish streak in order to appeal to the working class and as for Sinn Féin or the IRA in the 70s if you look at the largest [again leftish] formations on the island, the unions, the LP and subsequently the WP it’s hard to believe that they gravitated to PSF. Quite the opposite. Now it’s true that some further left groups tilted towards PSF and the IRA, but they were fairly inconsequential I’d have thought.
Even the war of independence is a tricky one to determine because overwhelmingly it was a struggle predicated on issues of nationalism as those who prosecuted saw it rather than a class struggle albeit there were aspects of that and there were those within the independence movement who saw it to some degree. But even there it’s hard to say that the LP or the unions were unquestioning in their adherence to it, they certainly didn’t fold into SF as part of a broader bloc.
As far as the Provo’s are concerned I was thinking of groups like People’s Democracy who orientated to the Provo’s and ended up with many of their members being subsumed into SF. The case of the WP proves my point. In the 80′s the two largest further left groups , the WP and Militant Tendency were those who put clear blue water between themselves and the Provo’s. I’m not saying they achieved that growth simply because they were independent of the Provo’s mind, but the political program that understands the importance of an independent working class based party, which the WP and Militant both shared, was a factor in their ability to grow in the 80′s.
During the independence struggle the leaders of the LP and the trade unions abdicated their responsibilities to put forward an independent class position by bowing to the demand ‘Labour must wait’. What is that if not gravitating to SF? Naturally SF and their descendants reaped the benefit and not the left.
Don’t forget the first FF government in ’32 was a minority government supported by the Labour Party.
As far as the Provo’s are concerned I was thinking of groups like People’s Democracy who orientated to the Provo’s and ended up with many of their members being subsumed into SF. The case of the WP proves my point. In the 80′s the two largest further left groups , the WP and Militant Tendency were those who put clear blue water between themselves and the Provo’s. I’m not saying they achieved that growth simply because they were independent of the Provo’s mind, but the political program that understands the importance of an independent working class based party, which the WP and Militant both shared, was a factor in their ability to grow in the 80′s.
During the independence struggle the leaders of the LP and the trade unions abdicated their responsibilities to put forward an independent class position by bowing to the demand ‘Labour must wait’. What is that if not gravitating to SF? Naturally SF and their descendants reaped the benefit and not the left.
Don’t forget the first FF government in ’32 was a minority government supported by the Labour Party.
One could make a contrary argument that the left, if we define that term fairly broadly but in the context of those who consider themselves left republican, has actually been larger at all times than the non republican left but smaller than the labour party. Even today though the non republican left is outside the LP and SF larger than the Republican left.
Still, I see where you’re coming from, but I’m unconvinced for a number of reasons.
Firstly the groups you mention, bar the WP, were so relatively small or were nestled in larger parties [with their own identity] that I think it’s very difficult to draw any firm conclusions one way or another as to the dynamics of positioning left discourse separate from republicanism.
No disrespect to PD, but it was a very small grouping by the time it oriented to SF, and one could argue that like other small groups on the left its orientation was precisely because of its size. It wasn’t support for SF that was making it get smaller, but that the overall situation saw its original brand of politics rendered irrelevant. But again they weren’t that consequential, any of them.
The WP considered itself, even during the period of the 1980s when I was a member to be an all-island republican socialist party seeking an all-island republic. The point is not that the WP turned its back on the republic but that it turned its back on violence – and the dynamic of that, married to the fact that it had shared roots with the Provisionals and an history of armed conflict with them led to a deeper and deeper gulf with PSF that could seem to be anti-republican but wasn’t exactly.
Now, that affiliation to an all-island republic became more rhetorical in the face of the Provisional campaign but it was never jettisoned by the party [even if by 1990 de Rossa came bloody close in his Ard Fheis speech] – and tellingly even Democratic Left sought a sort of xerox of that during their time. Moreover following the split that republican aspect came much more sharply into focus again [and note that those who were least happy about it were those who ultimately split to the Labour Party]. In any event, and again no disrespect ot Militant the WP was vastly larger than Militant until the split in the early 1990s so we’re not really comparing like and like in the 1980s, not least because during that period Militant was in the Labour Party and not a separate entity. A Labour Party that saw its worst returns across elections during that period in a generation [12 in 1987].
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to characterise the Labour Party situation in the independence struggle as you do.There was an LP analysis that it was better to get the issue of independence out of the way at 1918 and even 1921 so that economic issues could be persued subsequently. And given the situation on the ground at that point there’s a fair bit to be said that they were correct at that time. Now, in retrospect it doesn’t appear to have been so clever – but, on the other hand say tehy had stood, it’s hard to see how they would have substantially improved their position. The issue of the day was national independence. In the post-1916 context, or more accurately post-1917 context, SF was going to still be the largest party, the dominant politcial force. That’s not gravitating on the part of Labour, that’s realising that the dynamics are playing a certain way. Moreover it’s perhaps glossing over the reality that many inside the LP themselves would want a republic from the word go, those who had any allegiance to Connollyite principles would have. The LP like the people and all other formations and entities in the society wasn’t a monolithic bloc but was made up of people with varying views on these matters.
As for the first FF government. The point is that that proves how weak the left even in the shape of the LP was. Given a free run from 1923 on to 1927 where Republicans abstained it didn’t become the opposition or alternative, but instead lived in a half life whereas once FF was willing to go into the Dáil it [FF] became the efffective opposition. In 1927 Labour returned 12 TDs, in 1932 7. It was effectively a marginal force.
I think it can be appealing but misleading to continually see opportunities missed by the left or the LP, but to be honest the LP was a pretty conservative bunch across the years one way or another, and it was operating in an environment that was uniquely difficult and often downright hostile to leftism of whatever stripe. Given the societal strength of the national struggle for Irish people the remarkable thing is that forces indifferent to it continued to exist.
I also think that you’re underestimating one crucial aspect here. Ideology is all very well, but that’s not what made people in Kilbarrack or whereever vote for the WP in the 1980s, or in Swords vote for the SP in 2011. It’s about work on the ground, being an effective voice for people and so on. Most people, probably most voters for Clare Daly or Richard Boyd Barrett are unaware of or supremely disinterested in the debates which we have here about the SP, about positioning etc. I don’t mean that in a patronising or condescending way. Lives are busy, if you’re not engaged in political activity you’re not engaged in political activity. By contrast what they do notice though is sincerity and abilityand so on. That’s much more important than whether a left group is pro or anti republican. Or whether the group itself is republican or not – evidence for that is how SF has gone from being anathema to having a representation equal now to the LP for much of its time in the space of barely fourteen years.
Tomorrow’s Sindo says that Norris is about to relaunch with the support of some in FF, although they’re short on actual quotes from Norris himself. Elsewhere, apparently the SP, Boyd-Barrett and some independents have said they will also back him.
The Sindo Cover and details of the Norris story are here …
http://www.universitytimes.ie/?p=4147
I don’t understand why Boyd Barrett and Joe Higgins are supporting the candidacy of the Sunday Independent’s favourite contender for the presidency.
Michael D may be a flawed candidate in some respects, but he has a record on liberal issues equal to that of Norris, and he has a better record as a socialist. Some people on this site find MDH pompous, but surely Norris is his equal in this respect also.
It’s hardly surprising that you don’t understand why Boyd Barrett and Joe Higgins are supporting the candidacy of David Norris, when in fact neither were or are supporting him.
They were willing to nominate him, so as to allow him to circumvent the anti-democratic restrictions on ballot access. That was a stand in favour of the basic democratic right of a candidate to participate in an election, particularly in the face of concerted homophobic campaign to prevent him from running, not a stand in favour of the Norris candidacy.
As for Michael D Higgins’ “record as a socialist”, that would only be relevant if he had discovered time travel and was somehow standing in the 1970s or 1980s. His record since then is as a former socialist. It’s like talking about the “record as a socialist” of a Rabbitte, Gilmore or De Rossa. They did have such a thing, and they sold it for office.
I would put a different spin on it. The left ignored the national struggle. Its leadership stood aside in the War of Independence. They were not forced aside. The workers fought the war.
Labour in the 30s. Irrelevant.I like Lemass’s remark ” When Labour wrestles with its conscience, Labour always wins.
I know the SP disagree but the road to Socialism cannot ignore history. The unfinished heritage of struggle cannot be ignored. Irish Workers see the current situation in terms of our limited national sovereignity being given away. This was reflected in the reaction to the reading of teh 1916 proclamation at the ICTU rally last year.We might ignore history but it does not ignore us.I do not have it to hand but Lenins remark about those who seek a pure class struggle comes to mind. Oppression does not totally take the form of simple wage slavery.My problem with SF (now that happily the armed campaign is over) is that they are open to coalition deals. Any left party that goes into them are betraying the hopes of real progress. The anti SF and republicanism of some TU leaders, the LP etc were part and parcel of their coalitionism.The left groups mentioned in passing saw the Provo campaign reflecting a revolt of a section of the Northern masses against oppression.
I would suggest that while a struggle may start on national lines or even for the restoration of normal democracy (the Arab spring) if it does not transcend it and move to the struggle for socialism it is in grave danger of being beaten back.Mellows was groping to an assessment like this as the counter revolution was doing that.
Jim, I like your posts and generally find them interesting. You seem like a comradely sort of fellow but you have this REALLY irritating habit of plucking meaning from people’s statements that just aren’t there.
“I know the SP disagree but the road to Socialism cannot ignore history.” Huh?!? Where did you divine that idea from? I really don’t know what to say to you beyond assuring that the SP is aware of ‘history’ and does not ignore it.
It’s not true to say ‘the left’ ignored’ the independence struggle. What about the railworkers ban on transporting British army troops, or the Limerick Soviet? Even the labour leaders participated in the independence struggle inasmuch as they gave it tacit support. The problem was they didn’t do so from the point of view of putting forward a program independent of SF and the interests they represented. They could have done things like linking the question of independence with rural agitation, cattle drives, landless labourer strikes etc and with the wide scale strike action going on in the towns and cities.
OK nobody put a gun to the labour leaders head and told them no to do so but you’re dreaming if you think there wasn’t tremendous pressure coming from SF in opposition to cattle drives, strike action etc as a distraction from the independence struggle, That was the whole point of the slogan ‘Labour must wait’.
This analysis by Conor McCabe is rather useful…
http://www.irishelection.com/2007/02/irish-labour-history-is-a-strange-fish/
We are both serious people. But I would say that by not explicitely getting involved and insisting on being part of the “national liberation front” (I mean having Labour as part of it rather than giving support from outside) they weakened the socialist aspect. Johnston rather than Connolly. In fact the few who were groping to a synthesis of the 2 struggles came from within republicanism rather than from Labour.Labour then and now settles for municipal socialism.
Obviously the debate is a bit more convoluted and nuanced than this.I feel that a national liberation struggle has a dynamic which can transcend. As Tone said only the poor are republican or words to that effect. The SP and the SWP being Trotskyist do not ignore history. But (a large but) they mechanically apply the program without nuance everywhere. While the SWP on paper are more republican I think that also applies. The class against class line I believe blinds to certain realities which exist.
Two quotes of relevence:
1) ‘1920 was no ordinary outbreak…an immense rise in the value of land and farm products threw into more vivid relief than ever before the high profits of ranchers, and the hopeless outlook of the landless men and uneconomic holders…All this was a grave menace to the Republic. The mind of the people was being diverted from the struggle for freedom by a class war, and there was every likelihood that this class war might be carried into the ranks of the republican army itself which was drawn in the main from the agricultural population and was largely officered by farmer’s sons…’ (Ministry for Home Affairs, The Constructive Work of Dáil Eireann, No.1, The National Police and Courts of Justice, p.12)
2) ‘The Labur vote in Ulster was not Carsonite but clearly internationalist’ (Sinn Fein assessment of the Labour vote in Ulster in 1920 from the National Archives).
During the 1919-1922 period the leadership of Sinn Fein were terrified of the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland. They consciously attempted to split the trade unions by setting up ‘Irish unions for Irish workers’, use the Dail courts to undermine strike action, impose curfews during strikes, protect strike breaking creameries being manned by farmers sons and kidnapping union activists etc.with some even going as far as stating that the defeat of bolshevism in Ireland was a greater priority than independence.
The key factor during this period was the absence of a revolutionary vanguard party. The leading Marxists split from the SPI the week after the Limerick Soviet to establish the Revolutionary Socialist Party in Belfast. However, those who were ITGWU organisers were committed syndicalists and never attempted to build the RSP into a party that could act as a leadership vehicle for the working class in the way Lenin had built the Bolsheviks.
Finally point – Jim you are incorrect to suggest that it was from within republicanism that ‘a synthesis of the 2 struggles came’. The reality is that there was little or no crossover between the republican movement and the labour movement. O’Donnell was pretty much an isolated exception. The main synthesis of the two struggles came from withint the Marxist organisers of the ITGWU (including O’Donnell) and was driven by the RSP. They adopted an overtly socialist outlook – for example – by opposing the Belfast Boycott. They openly rejected nationalism primarily because they spent a lot of time organising strike action against employers who were prominent members of SF. They opposed the Dail courts and organised strike action against republicans who sided against workers during strike activity etc. As I said above – the fundemental mistake that these Marxist activists made was not bulding a revolutionary party while could have potentially led a successful socialist revolution in Ireland during this period.
Two very interesting quotes, JRG, but it’s probably not sufficient to simply take the word of protagonists in a very complex environment as the definitive take on a situation. I think they beg a lot of questions. But more pertinently doesn’t your point in your paragraph starting ‘The key factor…’ somewhat undercut the thesis you make in the preceding ones?
As regards your critique of Jim’s point, I’m not as sure as you that there was no synthesis, albeit one which was tilted towards republicanism rather than socialism.
I think it’s rather too simplistic, Mark P, to lump Michael D. Higgins in with Rabbitte, Gilmore, Howlin, et al. For one thing, if Phoenix was right, the Labour leadership worked quietly to have Finlay rather than Higgins selected as their presidential candidate. They were obliged to work quietly because of the attitude of a large part of the membership. The fact is that Michael D represents still represents ‘Old Labour’ values in the party – values which haven’t been quite extinguished yet. It seems to me that it would be more politically sensible for those on the left to give support to Michael D., and to try to exploit the latent divisions in Labour rather than splitting hairs about the precise nature of their support for the liberal Norris. (And the democratic arguments for facilitating a Norris candidacy surely apply equally to a putative Sinn Fein candidacy, which, I understand the Socialist Party will not oblige).
And the question as to whether Michael D sold out in becoming a government minister in the 1990s is not an entirely straightword one. I was a member of that party at that time, and I recall feeling very isolated as an opponent of coalition. Most of the remaining left at that time (following their CP political mentors) took the view that a coalition with Fianna Fail (because of its republican heritage and its working class base was objectively ‘progressive’ in a way that a coalition with the reactionary lawyers of Fine Gael was not. In ‘selling out,’ if that was what he did, he had plenty of Marx-citing cheerleaders.
I think it’s rather too simplistic, Mark P, to lump Michael D. Higgins in with Rabbitte, Gilmore, Howlin, et al.
You’re right, Clive. It’s totally simplistic to lump the Labour Party candidate – a member of the Labour Party, endorsed, supported and running on behalf of the Labour Party – in with the leadership of the Labour Party.
Exactly, Dublin Dilettante.
No, it’s not “simplistic” to say that Michael D Higgins abandoned his socialist record. That’s precisely what he and his fellow former Labour Leftist Stagg did. As for the notion that coalition with Fianna Fail was somehow more progressive than coalition with Fine Gael and therefore acceptable from a left wing point of view, the very idea is so outrageously stupid that I actually can’t believe that you are putting it forward in apparent seriousness.
And given that there are about 50 leftish members of the Labour Party nationally, confused, isolated, bewildered and nearly useless, the proposition that the left should shape its tactics to win that endangered species over is entirely without merit.
“As for the notion that coalition with Fianna Fail was somehow more progressive than coalition with Fine Gael and therefore acceptable from a left wing point of view, the very idea is so outrageously stupid that I actually can’t believe that you are putting it forward in apparent seriousness”
Mark P, if you’d read what I wrote, you’d see that I wasn’t ‘putting forward’ this idea, but rather I was reporting that this argument was made by Communist Party-influenced people in the Labour Party in the early 1990s (and it was a view that informed the anti-coalitionism of much of the Labour Left in the 1980s also). The argument provided comfort for Higgins and Stagg when did their volte face on coalition in 1992. Because the Militant people had abandoned their struggle to stay in the Labour Party a short time before that, there were few people left in Labour to point out that the CP position was ‘outrageously stupid’ as you so persuasively put it.
Even though I am into obscure groups. I never heard of the RSP of Belfast. You should write it up.Oh Sorry I now see you mean the group that went on to form the Communist Part led by Connolly. But they backed the Republican side in the Civil War. Thus, I would guess you mean a rejection of bourgeois nationalism not of Republicanism.Even the ICA seemed to lapse in inactivism. They ran uuns and cooperated with the IRA but as an independent force they counted for little.
When referring to Labour I was referring to mainstream, Johnston and co. These ended up implicitely backing the most conservative end of SF.
I would still state that the most interesting developments on teh Irish Left emerged from Republicanism, from groups who saw the limits of a “first the Republic and then the Socialist Republic”.Mellows, O’Donnell, Republican Congress, the ferment in Official Republicanism, and now thoise who challenge the trend towrads coalition in SF.
The movement is not republicanism but the search for an accomodation of a pan class alliance to this end and the compromises made to gain this illusory support from bourgeois elements.A free Republic is impossible under capitalism as capitalists do not want it and fear any movement that might lead to it.Thus, Lenihan felt the need to sell Ireland rather than risk a social upheaval which might challenge those who have destroyed it.Better a slave state than a republic which might go red.
The RSP had absolutely nothing to do with Roddy Connolly and those who went on to form the CP. Connolly and others split from the SPI in 1921 – two years after the RSP was formed. By 1921 all the decent socialists had left the SPI. Connolly was left to create the CPI with nothing more than a republican rump in the SPI. The CP adopted an off-the-wall position during the civil war that basically coat-tailed the anti-treaty side without putting forward any independent class position.
The RSP was formed directly as a result of the betrayal of the Limerick Soviet by the leadership of the ILPTUC – who were also the leadership of the SPI. At its formation the RSP brought together most of the leading Marxist figures in Ireland including several ITGWU organisers and Marxists from the leading industrial workplaces in Belfast. The RSP collapsed after the defeat of the Munster Soviets in 1922 and the membership of the RSP were witchhunted out of the ITGWU by O’Brien. I am not aware of any of the leading figures joining the CP subsequently.
I would fundementally disagree with your assessment that the Irish left emerged from republicanism. The CP collapsed in 1924 and the main left-wing group during the 1920′s was Larkin’s IWL which most certainly did not emerge from republicanism. Indeed the only left-group that could trace its formation from left-wing republicanism was the Republican Congress which collapsed withint months because it adopted a popular-front, rather than an independent class, position. Saor Eire did get some mention due to Cosgrave’s overhyped red scare campaign in 1929 but in reality it was the begining rumbles of the RC rather than an independent or seperate group.
It has been a while since I read Lysaght on the Limerick Soviet. The IWL was basically a Larkin fan club. A friend once called Noel Browne the San Andreas fault of the Irish left,couls be siad of Larkin as well. Cannot build with or without him. In my opinion the soviet development (were they real soviets or a proto type workers org) was the beginning of a move that might have gone beyond the limits of the SF program (advanced as the Democratic Program was.) Groups groping towards a permanent revolution type position. I think of St Just who said that those who stop a revolution half way are doomed (forget the exact quote).The revolution in Ireland begins with the uncompleted tasks of teh bourgeois revolution. That is freedom, unity, seperation of church and state etc. But to be successful has to transcend these limits. The counter revolution of 22 to 24 drove back the revolution.
A Workers Party during the war of independence using Connollys insights could have given a program and a reason to fight to the radical element of SF. Alas, while to some degree the republicans knew what they were against, they had little clue as to waht they were for. O’Donnell figured out this before he accepted popular frontism and the later CP.
Give me references on the RSP (incidentally the same name used by the Armstrong/Merrigan/Trench group of the 40s.
Pity that they were not in the first CP. At least they avoided the fate of Breslin who was murdered in the Gulag
Jim – I will have to go back to my notes to get the details of the foundation of the RSP.
While Lysaght’s pamphlet is significantly better than Cahill’s book I would argue that it approaches the topic of the Limerick Soviet from a republican, as opposed to a class, perspective. If I ever find the time I will attempt to write a comprehensive article on the Limerick Soviet and attempt to address many of the aspects that Cahill ignores and Lysaght, in my view, places a wrong emphasis on. The Limerick Soviet itself was a spontaneous affair. The later soviets were without doubt politically planned and motivated (something Lysaght supports) and in the main, driven by members of the RSP, In Limerick the driving individuals were Sean Dowling, Seamus McGrath and Jack Hedley all RSP members. The republican movement actively opposed the soviets. That darling of the left, Markievicz, ordered IRA troops to forceably remove workers participating in workplace soviets on at least two occasions.
The over-riding issue in the 1919-1922 period was the absolute betrayal of every attempt at struggle by O’Brien and his lackeys. The lack of understanding of the RSP in terms of the need to build a revolutionary party was based in their support of syndicalism and was a contributing factor. The counter-revolution of 1922-1924 was facilitated primarily by the complete abandonment of the agri-labourers strikes by O’Brien and the leadership of the ITGWU who simply dumped them (possibly up to 90,000 members) out of the union in late 1922. Yet despite this there was major strike activity right throughout the 1920′s – the most significant being the nine month long strike, involving large sections of the Limerick workers movement, during the building of the Ardnacrusha power station in 1925-1926 – another strike that was sabotaged by O’Brien.
I would suggest that you are being too critical of Larkin. He certainly made mistakes in relation to the ITGWU on his return from the USA and instead of engaging in an ideological struggle within the ITGWU for the hearts and minds of the membership, he resorted to a battle of personalities with O’Brien who had completely embedded himself as head of the union bureaucracy. Whether you like it or not, the IWL was the only game in town during the 1920′s. Roddy Connolly’s incompetence let to the rapid collapse of the CP and the destruction of the Republican Congress in 1934 by Stalinism is forever a blight on the record of the CP.
Finally – the what-ifs of Connolly’s role if he was still alive in the 1919-1922 period is certainly an interesting debate. I would believe that Connolly would have understood the significance of an active and growing revolutionary party and its significance during the Bolshevik revolution and would have adapted his approach accordingly. However, there is always a question mark over his committment to syndicalism. Certainly Connolly would have commanded an authority and respect within the working class that William O’Brien and his cohorts could not have competed with and as a result the likelihood is that the end result of the revolutionary period would have been quite different.
All strands of republicanism opposed the workers movement during this period. During the civil war opposition to strike action emerged from both republican camps. While the Free Staters took action against striking workers, arresting strike leaders, driving occupying workers out of workplaces, guarding scabs etc., the republican side either (in the main) refused to offer any support to such struggles as they felt workers struggles would undermine their support among small farmers or also, on occasion, actively opposed them. Indeed it was this failure on behalf of the anti-treaty side – a failure to engage in a class based struggle – that ultimately led to their defeat.
WbS – republicanism during this period, and indeed since, is by its very nature a cross-class alliance. There is an inevitability of splits within the republican movement as both class and nationalistic tensions come to the fore from time-to-time. The history of republicanism is littered with splits – primarily along class lines. Each of the splinter groups are faced with the same questions posed for the previous movement – whether to continue to engage in a cross-class alliance (popular frontism) or to adopt a class position. To date none of the splits have managed to cross that divide and adopt a class position on the national question. The Republican Congress and the WP came closest – the RC being sabotaged by the CP and the WP suffering from its accomodation with Stalinism, the collapse of Stalinism and the shift of the majority of the leadership to open opportunism.
Republicanism of the 1919-1922 period adopted many counter-revolutionary positions during this period when faced with the class struggle. In response to strike by rural labourers and creamery and mill occupations the sections of the republican movement formed the Farmers Freedom Force, which, in effect, was an embryonic fascist paramilitary movement. Republican troops were repeatedly used to break strikes, impose curfews, kidnap union organisers, protect landlords and large farmers etc. Nationally the leadership attempted to split the trade union movement along national and sectarian lines – despite the fact that many of the most active unions supporting the national struggle were British based , e.g. the NUR.
When faced with a physical confrontation by Free State troops in the run-up to and during the civil war, the fact that the republicans stood by and allowed the assaults to take place is tantamount to siding with the Free Staters in suppressing the class struggle. To have sided with the workers would have forced the anti-treaty republicans to move from a cross-class position to an openly class position of supporting the workers movement.
Conor McCabe is absolutely correct in talking about the potential of the LP in electoral terms between 1920-1923. However, there was significant complicating factors that demonstrate that this was not clear-cut. Take Limerick for example – here ITGWU activists and Marxists attempted to establish a LP only for the ILPTUC to back the local conservative craft union leaders in preventing it happening. The bureaucracy were terrified that if an official LP was formed in Limerick it would fall directly under the control of the Marxists. The local right-wingers then engaged in occasional deals with SF to divide up some of the seats and ran as independent Labour candidates coat-tailing SF. Why the Marxists didn’t say ‘stuff-em’ and also run is likely the result again of syndicalism.
In relation to the potential for the left during this period I suggest you read the second chapter of this book available here which looks at the issue from a Marxist perspective-
http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-3164-2-sample.pdf
Finally in relation to the Soviets. The emergence of workplace soviets was widespread all over the country -the total has never been fully recorded but the last count I have is that there were in excess of 120 different soviets during the period 1919-1922. The most extensive and by far the most important was the Munster Soviets of April-August 1922 when well in excess of 120 workplaces ranging from West Limerick through North Cork, Tipperary and into west Waterford. The Soviets were highly organised by Marxists organisers in the ITGWU and took on a revolutionatry character – their defeat was always going to and eventually did lead to the counter-revolutionary period following the end of the civil war. While the leadership undoubtedly made mistakes the Munster Soviets were sabotaged by O’Brien who actively worked with the Free Staters to break the movement.
The Soviets were organised based on a blueprint drawn up by Marxist organisers in the ITGWU in the aftermath of the general strike against conscription in 1918 when the Brits threatened to impose localised conscription and the blueprint was designed to establish soviets to counter-act such efforts. In the initial stages the soviets were designed purely as a mechanism for getting increased wages and improved working conditions but by the time the world recession was biting in mid-1921 they were begining to take on a revolutionary character. The Soviets had a massive impact everywhere they were established. Following the Knocklong Soviet in 1920 the membership of the ITGWU in East Limerick and parts of Tipperary quadrupled in the space of a few days. The aftermath of the Bruree Soviet was even more pronounced. After Markievicz threated to use republican troops to break the soviet there was widespread reaction right throughotu East Limerick and Tipperary with several other soviets being established in retaliation. Localised general strikes regularly broke out in response to attempts by republican troops to break strikes. When the local IRA around Kilmallock kidnapped strike leaders during the Bulgaden farm labourers strike in December 1921 the workers of Kilmallock called a general strike in the area and 300 workers marched into Kilmallock behind a red banner (that declared ‘workers of the world unite’) and took over the town for two days until the strike leaders were released.
The defeat of the anti-treaty side during the civil war can be almost exclusively placed on those republcians who refused to put forward social demands that would inevitably have seen the class struggle becoming the dominant factor during the civil war. It could have completely undermined the right-wing pro-treaty forces and drawn in support from all sections of the working class North and South.
The real revolutionary history of this period has still to be recorded and told. It is a deep history and would demonstrate enormous revolutionary potential in terms of the working class on this island. Hopefully at some point efforts will be made to correct this deficiency.
A short note on Lysaght. He has a book on this. A far more complete analysis and history. Lysaght is nothing if not thorough.I gave an early manuscript to John Cunningham, UCG.
First up I agree, there’s a deep history here. But I think it’s a very very sporadic one. There remain serious problematic issues.
I think there are real problems using a methodological framework to position this history with terms like ‘popular frontism’ onto these discussions. Firstly they’re anachronistic in the context of the times they’re used to describe, secondly they’re very very particular to a specific political view and for both those reasons they can be inapposite in terms of their descriptive power.
As regards the Republican movement not adopting a class position in 1916 onwards – or earlier, well, yesish, but I think it’s fair to say that it had a submerged class position which was to remove British capital from Ireland. Moreover by your analysis Connolly himself engaged in popular frontism in the most active way possible.
That this then fractured subsequent to the removal, or in part due to the lack of fulfillment of that removal is another matter. It’s surely asking quite a lot from players in a context of conflicting nationalisms to ask that they dip towards outright class struggle.
Republicanism of the 1919-1922 period adopted many counter-revolutionary positions during this period when faced with the class struggle. In response to strike by rural labourers and creamery and mill occupations the sections of the republican movement formed the Farmers Freedom Force, which, in effect, was an embryonic fascist paramilitary movement. Republican troops were repeatedly used to break strikes, impose curfews, kidnap union organisers, protect landlords and large farmers etc. Nationally the leadership attempted to split the trade union movement along national and sectarian lines – despite the fact that many of the most active unions supporting the national struggle were British based , e.g. the NUR.
Perhaps, but I need merely consult Fergus Campbell’s Land and Revolution, p 242-243 [available on Google books here http://books.google.com/books?id=BSReJ8xMDKcC&pg=PA243&dq=he+Sinn+F%C3%A9in+movement+in+other+parts+of+Connacht+also+implemented+a+radical+agrarian+policy.+In+north&hl=en&ei=CVxuTrq1CJCN-wb-rvH7Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false ] to see the following:
Sinn Féin in Galway, then, was an agrarian movement, which aimed to redistribute grazing land among small farmers and landless men … The Sinn Féin movement in other parts of Connacht also implemented a radical agrarian policy. In north Roscommon, the Sinn Féin executive called on all the clubs in the constituency to initiate an agitation that would ‘secure the ranches for the landless men of Ireland’.
The aim of the agitation, the executive explained, was to commence a campaign of boycotting that would leave the ranches ‘derelict and unattended, and thus compel their division’.
Grazing land was forcibly seized by the agitators, who branded their cattle ‘SF’ and flew tricolours above the occupied farms.
According to the Roscommon Herald , by May 1920 the ‘agitation for the division of the grass ranches in the Castlerea district has assumed a victorious aspect for the Sinn Féin party’.
A similar policy was adopted by the south Sligo Sinn Féin executive in 1919. Alex McCabe stated in March 1919 that it was his intention to persuade Dáil Éireann to revise all land transactions made ‘without the consent of the local Sinn Féin club’ since 1917.
In south Mayo, too, Sinn Féin organized cattle drives in order to force the redistribution of grazing land.”
Campbell concludes on p.255, that there was a sense amongst some inside SF that there was a danger of land agitation getting out of hand and constituting a threat to the authority of Dáil Eireann. So he notes:
If the legitimacy of the Dáil was to be re-established it needed to take control of the agitation. There were two main strategies which the leaderhsip could have adopted to resolve the agrarian crisis.Conor Maguire, one of the Land Settlement Commissioners, outlined the options open to SF in 1920. Either the agitation could be forcibly suppressed by the IRA, or land courts could be established to implement the redistribution of land in a gradual and regulated manner. The leaders of SF opted for the latter course… First, many members of national and local leadership of SF supported the agitation, and even those who opposed it were in favourof land redistribution in principle. And second, the extent and violenc of the agitation in 1920 would have made it difficult to suppress, and a protracted struggle between the agitators and the IRA would have undermined the Republican movement, which drew much of its support from small farmers and landless labourers.
This points to a much more mixed picture than your one of FFF, which by the way I’m intrigued as to how representative that was of the struggle as a whole? How many actions did it carry out and so on? But even your point re unions, establishing Irish unions could be seen as progressive in the sense that it localised the struggle in Ireland. Moreover given the nature of the conflict there were clear contradictions with unions based in another country [as distinct from international unions which would have been quite a different matter].
When faced with a physical confrontation by Free State troops in the run-up to and during the civil war, the fact that the republicans stood by and allowed the assaults to take place is tantamount to siding with the Free Staters in suppressing the class struggle. To have sided with the workers would have forced the anti-treaty republicans to move from a cross-class position to an openly class position of supporting the workers movement.
It is true that a Special Infantry Corps was established by the Free State which Campbell notes was established to ‘suppress agrarian agitation, strikes, and other offences against the law’… but this appears to have been restricted – noxious though it was – to that high period of 1922-23. In that year there were 371 arrests by the SIC.
But it is difficult to make a clear sense of this. I’m presuming you are referring to anti-Treaty Republicans? How many incidents do you refer to? Do they represent a broad pattern of such behaviours? What were the contexts? What stage of the run up to the civil war did this represent? Does not the point that the anti-Treaty forces were fighting to retain their own cohesion as a force in opposition to the Free State not strike you as perhaps weighing heavily upon their tactical and strategic decisions in regard to assisting other struggles that for understandable reasons from their immediate perspective they might see as of second order importance? And again, I think if that is the context then it’s a bit of stretch to argue that consequently they were ‘suppressing’ class struggle, any more than one would argue that the lack of effort by the Labour Party to given active support to the struggle for independence indicated an effort to suppress the national struggle. Moreover how representative of the workers movement were these strikes? How many were there? Earlier you suggest that Labour itself didn’t support similar incidents.
Conor McCabe is absolutely correct in talking about the potential of the LP in electoral terms between 1920-1923. However, there was significant complicating factors that demonstrate that this was not clear-cut. Take Limerick for example – here ITGWU activists and Marxists attempted to establish a LP only for the ILPTUC to back the local conservative craft union leaders in preventing it happening. The bureaucracy were terrified that if an official LP was formed in Limerick it would fall directly under the control of the Marxists. The local right-wingers then engaged in occasional deals with SF to divide up some of the seats and ran as independent Labour candidates coat-tailing SF. Why the Marxists didn’t say ‘stuff-em’ and also run is likely the result again of syndicalism.
In relation to the potential for the left during this period I suggest you read the second chapter of this book available here which looks at the issue from a Marxist perspective- http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-3164-2-sample.pdf
The above begs some further questions. You ask the central one yourself, why didn’t the Marxists just run again, or organise separately? And if the did and they didn’t get support doesn’t that suggest a disconnect between them and those they sought to represent? And if that’s the case doesn’t it suggest that the opening for revolutionary potential was actually much more limited?
Finally in relation to the Soviets. The emergence of workplace soviets was widespread all over the country -the total has never been fully recorded but the last count I have is that there were in excess of 120 different soviets during the period 1919-1922. The most extensive and by far the most important was the Munster Soviets of April-August 1922 when well in excess of 120 workplaces ranging from West Limerick through North Cork, Tipperary and into west Waterford. The Soviets were highly organised by Marxists organisers in the ITGWU and took on a revolutionatry character – their defeat was always going to and eventually did lead to the counter-revolutionary period following the end of the civil war. While the leadership undoubtedly made mistakes the Munster Soviets were sabotaged by O’Brien who actively worked with the Free Staters to break the movement.
Again the question arises, what was the nature of these soviets – and I’m a little confused at how there can be both in excess of 120 nationwide and 120 in Munster? That would make them overwhelmingly a Munster entity. It would appear that they ranged from strike actions to much less frequently something more substantive. But a lot depends on who described them as soviets. Was it themselves or others? And if others how seriously can we take their descriptions – anymore than as was put to me about this issue we can take seriously the characterisation by the British and others during this period that Sinn Féin itself was Bolshevik?
I ask these questions not out of capriciousness but because the basic problem is that for all this supposed ferment the poitical outcomes are so minimal. So much so that subsequently Munster was not merely regarded as the center of anti-Treaty republican resistance during the Civil War but that this tradition carried on into the contemporary period.
The Soviets were organised based on a blueprint drawn up by Marxist organisers in the ITGWU in the aftermath of the general strike against conscription in 1918 when the Brits threatened to impose localised conscription and the blueprint was designed to establish soviets to counter-act such efforts. In the initial stages the soviets were designed purely as a mechanism for getting increased wages and improved working conditions but by the time the world recession was biting in mid-1921 they were begining to take on a revolutionary character. The Soviets had a massive impact everywhere they were established. Following the Knocklong Soviet in 1920 the membership of the ITGWU in East Limerick and parts of Tipperary quadrupled in the space of a few days. The aftermath of the Bruree Soviet was even more pronounced. After Markievicz threated to use republican troops to break the soviet there was widespread reaction right throughotu East Limerick and Tipperary with several other soviets being established in retaliation. Localised general strikes regularly broke out in response to attempts by republican troops to break strikes. When the local IRA around Kilmallock kidnapped strike leaders during the Bulgaden farm labourers strike in December 1921 the workers of Kilmallock called a general strike in the area and 300 workers marched into Kilmallock behind a red banner (that declared ‘workers of the world unite’) and took over the town for two days until the strike leaders were released.
Yes but again we need to know how many soviets were established? How many workers were involved? What was their nature? These are crucial questions which the above doesn’t address.
If there was widespread support for them why is it that we see no political manifestation of them subsequently? It can’t be simply that republicans repressed them because we know that left wing groups were able to organise reasonably freely in the aftermath of the Civil War and under the Free State.
In other words the historical record suggests that these were occasional and disparate entities that appeared and then dissipated either organically or under relatively low level threat. Moreover the fact that they were predicated on an aspect of the national struggle, being anti-conscription, suggests that they could extremely easily be co-opted and defused by republicans in the first place. In other words to see them as oppositional to republicanism may be exaggerating their significance in that respect when they might better be regarded as being another manifestation of a generally republican [or nationalist] tilting societal dynamic.
The defeat of the anti-treaty side during the civil war can be almost exclusively placed on those republcians who refused to put forward social demands that would inevitably have seen the class struggle becoming the dominant factor during the civil war. It could have completely undermined the right-wing pro-treaty forces and drawn in support from all sections of the working class North and South.
I find that highly unlikely. What of the issue of war weariness after the WoI? What of the sectarian nature of the North and the consequent fractures in the working class there? What of the distinctive cleavages between urban and rural working classes? What about other cleavages within the working class? What also of the strength of the intrinsic conservatism on the island North and South as exemplified by the nature of the most representative political formations. What finally of the basic imbalance in terms of ability to field men and women and materiel by both sides, one of which was – sotto voce – supported by the British at arms length.
This isn’t to say that more left wing approaches couldn’t have been pursued and a more leftists Labour party was the vehicle to do so, but the prospect of overtly revolutionary approaches seems enormously limited at that time.
The real revolutionary history of this period has still to be recorded and told. It is a deep history and would demonstrate enormous revolutionary potential in terms of the working class on this island. Hopefully at some point efforts will be made to correct this deficiency.
A good starting point would be to detail the spread of actual actions such as ‘soviets’ during the period, and an objective summation as to what each of them represented. Were they actually soviets or where they strikes dressed up as soviets or whatever?
None of this is to dismiss the soviets, they’re fascinating in and of themselves, even in the sense of how the terminology was transplanted westwards from the USSR.
But it doesn’t convince that they were a pivotal force, or even potentially so, during the WOI/Civil War period.
By the way, just to be clear. I’m not trying to say there was no revolutionary consciousness evident during this period. Quite the opposite. There was. What I’m suggesting is that it was limited and constrained by the nature of the conflict it was embedded within.
I will have to come back to the rest of this when I have more time.
Just in relation to the number of Soviets – After I posted it I realised it could cause some confusion. The 120 workplaces occupied included many auxillary creameries attached to larger ones – in the case of Knocklong there was one main creamery and thirteen auxilaries. The 120 workplaces occupied during the Munster Soviets would have included about 20 major creameries and the remainder would have been auxillaries.
Soviets sprang up all over the country I am coming across inforamtion about new ones every few weeks. It really requires going into the national library and reviewing all the local newspapers for this period. In Limerick alone there were Soviets in Knocklong (twice possibly three times – Cleeves appealed for assistance from the IRA to remove a soviet in Knocklong in late 1921 but I can’t find a record of it anywhere else), Bruree (twice), Broadford (twice), Castleconnell, Kilmallock (although it actually was one of the few not called a soviet – 300 workers took over the town for two days in December 1921), Pallaskenry, Ballingarry, Bruff and of course the Liemrick Soviet in 1919.
Soviets also occurred in Cork Harbour, North Cork railways, Tipperary town (at least twice) clothing factory in Rathmines, sawmills in Killarney and Ballinacourty, the Drogheda Iron Foundry, Waterford Gas, mines at Arigna, the Rotunda in Dublin, several flour mills in Cork, Monaghan asylum, Cappoquin, Waterford, Kilkenny, Broadford in Co. Clare, Whitegate, Carrick-on-Suir (at least twice) – and these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
I think WBS makes some important points. It seems likely that the word Soviet has been thrown about with some abandon. To give one example, the Freeman’s Journal referred to the attacks in the Belfast shipyards on Catholics and ‘rotten protestants’/socialists as “the Orange Soviet”.
Looking at what happened in the north in the years before and after 1920, including the numerous independent unionists elected via a mix of anti-establishment language and often sectarian ultra-loyalism, we might wonder if the characterisation of the Labour vote quoted above is accurate, as WBS notes.
There’s also the issue that WBS raises of if there was a potentially revolutionary situation, where that revolutionary consciousness went.
Then we have the issue of the Irish trade unions. The biggest trade union by far was the ITGWU, the foundation of which had nothing to do with SF. There’s also the question of whether the foundation of Irish trade unions might have had something to do with a general policy of fostering Irish institutions. I’m not saying that was the case, but some consideration of such issues is probably worth it.
I don’t think we can just ignore the things that suggest that the picture was not as clear cut as a revolutionary situation frustrated by weak trade union leaders and the absence of a revolutionary party.
“Then we have the issue of the Irish trade unions. The biggest trade union by far was the ITGWU, the foundation of which had nothing to do with SF. There’s also the question of whether the foundation of Irish trade unions might have had something to do with a general policy of fostering Irish institutions. I’m not saying that was the case, but some consideration of such issues is probably worth it.”
Not really arguing this point. But I would add that Sinn Fein was a catchall party really founded in 1918 as an allaince of republican groups. It is usually called the second SF. There are echoes in this debate of the first the republic and then the socialist republic which has being debated downm the years and is still being debated.
If the “marxists” had reinforced the early CPI around the young Connollys and given it that vital extra strenght, then maybe it would have pushed the early Mellows line a bit more left and with a bit more force.
My main point is that the workers saw the Republican struggle as the central one and within it saw no problem with pushing their direct class interests.
I am sceptical about the strength of the “class” line in the shipyards. It was swept away so easily by Orange reaction.
That’s an interesting reading of republicanism, but I’m not fully convinced that it is positioned strongly enough within what republicans themselves sought.
Essentially they sought an independent Republic first and foremost, albeit one, that to differing degrees they saw as progressive [and arguably more progressive than the British state then extant in terms of voting rights for women etc]. So to complain that Republicans didn’t place the class struggle first, or that to find fault in them seeing strike actions etc seems inapposite – although I notice you are somewhat shy of saying they were anti-revolutionary because in general the sentiment of the Republicans was centrist or leftist and instinctively, or intuitively, averse to the right.
I also think it’s a bit of stretch to go from saying that anti-Treaty Republicans refused to support struggles, though IIRC Brian Hanley’s book on the IRA in the 26-36 period seems to indicate that in some instances they did, to asserting that they ‘opposed’ the workers movement. That’s not the same thing in functional terms.
As regards the soviets, there’s a real problem as to the sense of how widespread they were or what their political import was. It seems to me that they were fairly localised and limited and that the descriptor ‘soviet’ was used in many though not all instances in a cosmetic way. If it is correct that they were limited then by definition their utility as a nucleus of revolutionary activity is also limited. In any event they seemed to some degree to be tailing the events initiated by Republicans, not coming in ahead of them. No shame there, but hardly indicative of a force that in and of itself was able to seize the day.
Then there’s the problem with the Labour party. No doubt O’Brien et al didn’t seize the moment either, although Conor McCabe points to the continuing success of the party at local level despite its lamentable national representation but to criticise them for not being revolutionaries seems a little ahistorical. They weren’t really revolutionaries seeking a revolutionary overthrow of Irish society – even if their long term goals were for transformational change. But then this doesn’t appear to have been a classical left revolutionary period.
Indeed I’m very dubious that there was any significant left revolutionary potential on the island between 1916 and 1922. And evidence for that is that there was no significant political expression of revolutionary potential on any great level. All the groups referenced seem to have been marginal, and again even the Labour Party itself was marginalised by the struggle taking place.
I don’t think Jim is far wrong in suggesting that ‘the most interesting developments’… [not 'the Irish left developed from Republicanism], although one could argue that the Irish left has always had a strong association in the main with republicanism, from Connolly onwards, and arguably before that if we ascribe a proto-left aspect to some in 1798 etc…
Certainly some of the most dynamic manifestations of leftism across the century seem to me to have been positioned within a left republican approach, and one could make a strong argument that the most successful ones have equally been [originally] positioned like that – at least in electoral terms [WP, etc…]. There’s a more subtle argument that they’re the ones which have had most influence other than the LP, if we are willing to see in Clann na P and other formations at least some aspect of leftism, which I tend to.
“if we are willing to see in Clann na P and other formations at least some aspect of leftism”
A quick comment on that, having just read Noel Browne’s auto-biography “Against The Tide”, that he didn’t portray CnP as Left in any general sense.
That’s true, as regards his perception, though whether that’s sufficient is another question but functionally in the Irish polity, CnaP was strongly influenced by a model of an expanded and interventionist state that in part it derived from what was happening in the UK under Labour. If one examines the number and the history of semi-state enterprises and Bords set up under the aegis of the first inter-party government its clear that that activism was pushed by CnaP moreover one can argue that this introduced, or reintroduced a sense of interventionism that was later picked up on by FF somewhat later and to a degree by the second inter-party government [though it's also worth pointing out that there was a certain sense of making a virtue of necessity in all this since as per usual indigenous capital was useless in picking up the slack].
This didn’t make it a left wing party per se, though in the stultifying context of the state at that time it was clearly centre left.
“That’s true, as regards his perception”
He certainly didn’t have much good to say about MacBride or many of his party colleagues one way or the other. His personal bitterness at the betrayal by CnaP of himself and the Mother & Child Scheme comes through very strongly in the book. Although clearly not from a privileged background his life’s journey as described in the book does seem to have given him a sense of elitist self-regard that sits awkwardly alongside his socialist (or at least social democratic) political aspirations. Perhaps that’s an unfair reading of the book.
I think that’s precisely it as you describe, he was a very complex person. I’ve met people who knew him reasonably well and found him infuriating though they admired him greatly.
Against the TIde… A very interesting read. I was always intrigued by how he joined FF of all parties after his sojourn in CnaP! But fair dues he got himself expelled!
I would think that Browne was to ecletic to see class.
Sorry WbS – hit the wrong reply button – my reply to your comments are posted above yours.
A general point. Saate enterprise in Ireland was mainly because of a vacuum from private enterprise. It was non ideological. Similar to third world countries where army, party and bureaucratic elites try and do what a native bourgeoisie “should” do. In Ireland (similar0 we have a cmprador bourgeoisie ruling in alliance with various elites, Lawyers, doctors and the so-called professional classes.The relationship between SF and the workingclass and its struggles was very similar to that of the ANC and dare I say it the CP of Vietnam. The absense of a nation wide party doomed the Soviets and by and large condemed them to being side shows. But a Workers Party in alliance with them and giving a cutting edge to the revolution could have created a dynamic that might have saved the revolution by breaking it out of teh straitjacket of just the republic and not the socialist republic.
Larkin may have been the only show in town. In essence he used his prestige to destroy the CPI of the time. This does not mean much as in reality his main aim was to protect what eventually turned out to be a family business. I tend to agree with Emmet O’Connor on Larkin.
The Workers were republican and did not see their activities as being in opposition to the national liberation struggle.I do not think leftwing candidates opposed to an alliance in a National Liberation Front would have done ell. I see the main problem was teh failure of Labour/ITGWU/O’Brien to demand a share of representation in the revolutionary Dail. In the split this representatyion if revolutionary could have had an effect on the emerging split. pushing the republican wing to the left and maybe taking the lead.
Connolly alive would have been a factor, but it would be easy to make too much of this.
I thought the Bass campaign was fairly futile. I am curious as to the alternative suggested by the RSP to the developing pogroms in Belfast.
Seems to be difficult to get a reply post in the desired position, this is in response to World by Storm above re: the ‘Soviets’ movement of the early 1920s –
If there was widespread support for them why is it that we see no political manifestation of them subsequently?
Something like this I imagine – they were defeated, they lost hope and their perspectives narrowed, what seemed possible in 1922 did not seem possible at all in 1928, many people kept their heads down for fear of victimisation, others emigrated, they grew older (one wonders how many of the militants were unmarried youths with relativly little responsibilites). There is a muted continuation in the form of the Labour party vote in rural Leinster & Munster. Is this that different from the other situations – like compare southern Europe circa 1975 with southern Europe circa 1985, or Britain in the early C19th with the late C19th, movements stop moving.
There was a very particular context, especially in rural areas, which did not repeat itself, which included at least at the begining during WW1 untypically high employment levels coupled with the temporary closure of the emigration option, while after the world war was the local war and consquent disruption of the normal functioning of the state.
I think research on the aftermath and on the subsequent popular memory of the ‘Soviets’ would potentially be very interesting.
I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff in this comment. Part of the reason for wondering about the potentially revolutionary situation is that potentially comparable examples I think have tended to leave some form of organisational or cultural impact that marked their presence, despite their failure. The notion of a near-revolutionary situation leaving so little trace is part of the reason for wondering about the suggestion I think.
Tel, again, I’m not disputing that entities styled ‘soviets’ existed. What I’m suggesting is that they were sporadic and marginal to the overall conflict.
The points you make as regards why they didn’t leave a legacy are fine in themselves, but the basic point is that there were simply not enough of them to do so, that they didn’t represent or herald a revolutionary moment.
I would argue that the working class movement of this period did leave a pretty apparent legacy – namely the labour party seats in rural Ireland (pre-dating the Dublin ones AFAIK) what subterranean legacies it left we cannot know (possibly ever know, possibly know something with more research).
This may seem pretty muted for something that is being described as a near-revolutionary situation but I don’t think we should assume a deep profound and widespread movement would necessarily leave much aboveground trace.
I think there is a middle ground between seeing the movement as sporadic and marginal and seeing it as a potential revolution unrealised due to a crisis of leadership.
On the relationship with Sinn Fein I do not see why we need to generalise from the instances cited by WbS or those cited by JRG – rather the relationship was likely different at different moments and in different localities. As I understand it JRG is talking more about golden vale and north & east Munster/south Leinster and WbS more about the West – places which were and are ecologically and socially distinct.
I think it is not just a question of leaving much trace above ground, there is the question of leaving other traces as well, for example in popular memory, in the historical memory of the labour movement, in song etc. Is there a case for saying that every attempted revolution in Ireland – no matter how significant or pathetic) – has left a trace in popular memory and often through some organisational remnant? If so, it seems very odd that a movement on the scale suggested left so little.
I think you’re right about the regional question. Is part of the problem in this discussion that claims are being made for the revolutionary potential of the whole island on the basis of regional activity, the meaning of which is far from clear cut?
We don’t know what popular memory is/was left (localised and fragmented if it exists), it wouldn’t survive hermetically and autonomously sealed from popular anti-communism of mid-C20th anyways. On songs etc.. this is typically the past being reinvented to suit the needs of the present e.g. most of the ’98 songs were written around 1898 not 1798 (for the commemorations), jacobites being reinvented as nationalists and so on. There would be a popular memory, songs, etc.. had the memory been of utility to a movement in the 1940s and 1950s and later decades, there was no such movement, instead there was discontinuities (that said I have heard songs about farm labourers strikes in Kildare – cannot say if they were composed years ago or in this decade though as I do not recall).
Mostly I would say people were defeated, disillusioned and kept their heads down – especially in often suffocating rural environments living cheek by jowl with the big farmers.
Little popular memory occurs of Whiteboyism also (which was unquestionably massive), though the Famine was I would say a large part of that rupture, again they fact there was no one in subsequent decades to pick up on it and romanticise it is crucial.
All very interesting points Tel, but in a sense how can we know, though I do think there’s a persuasive aspect to your point about some of the rural Labour seats. I’ve often wondered about Joe Sherlock’s seat which although Mallow was a significant component seemed to me to draw in his WP days on some other tradition [wroth remembering that OSF initially had a very strong emphasis on organising amongst agricultural workers, something that seemed to fall away in the mid-1970s].
Just to be clear, land courts were found all over the country. My own grandfather was involved in one in Meath.
I’m not suggesting there’s no localised popular memory of these events. I am wondering if the absence of a significant place for these events in popular culture across the island is suggestive about their importance.
I totally take your point about the 98 songs that are best know today. But there was a popular memory, songs, poems etc of that period in both English and Irish in the decades immediately after the 1790s and 1803 which is what I was referring to. I would also say that there was a popular memory of Whiteboyism in the decades after it too (not least in the term cropping up to describe events in the 1780s and 1790s too).
I’m sure what you say about people being disillusioned etc is true too. But it wouldn’t have been unheard of in Irish history for such feelings to go underground into secret societies. Granted there was a secret society in Ireland that people could gravitate too and that many others felt the day for secret societies were gone, but as WBS noted above, open labour politics were possible at the same time.
I meant Whiteboyism as a generic term for similar rural ‘unrest’ from 1760s to 1840s, post-famine and up to today there seems to be little popular memory of it (one novel & one TV mini-series as I recall both re-interpreting it in nationalist terms and the later from British tv anyways) – part of that is down to the Famine for sure, but part of it is down to the fact the memory would have to be kept alive by people continuing to find it relevant i.e. present-day movements using it or find it resonant (present day as in continually over the decades from then to now with little breaks).
Compare with the Carrickshock incident – which is remembered right down to this day for instance in the name of the hurling club the Carrickshock champions – it was not that it was more significant in its time that is the reason for its place in memory but that it could be more easily re-invented for purposes contemporary to the 1890s, 1920s, etc..
I take your point about popular memory that far back (250 years) reaching down to today, but I think that in a world of folklorists, books, newspapers, radio, it would be much more difficult for a major historical event to have disappeared virtually without trace.
There’s another point too about contemporary perceptions and evidence. As far as I can tell, there is very little of all this in the national newspapers. I wonder if there had been something approaching the scale suggested would this have been the case. The coverage of the independence campaign and related events might provide an instructive comparison. There’s a book written about foreign correspondents’ coverage of this period. Might be some interesting stuff in there as we might expect them to jump all over a Bolshevik threat.
“but I think that in a world of folklorists, books, newspapers, radio, it would be much more difficult for a major historical event to have disappeared virtually without trace.”
Why?
I don’t want to cut across G’s response but if I can draw briefly on my own historical research, ESB Archives has an enormous volume of material relating to the period before during and after the establishment of that organisation, newspaper cuttings, company files, interviews both written and on audio, memoirs, materials from the ESb etc. That has profoundly deepened and enriched our understanding of the processes of for example rural electrification on a human and every day level but not I think changed our sense of it’s thrust in socioeconomic terms or in terms of how it was mediated through newspapers, state reports, government minutes etc. Thd events of the soviets took place only shortly
before that in more or less the same broad environment. The idea there is a radically different hidden or suppressed history here appears unlikely. Would by the way that it were otherwise. But none of this does away with the need to deepen and enrich our understanding of the soviets and their legacy. It’s also worth noting that there is no mystery about all this in terms I’d accessing further data. Memoirs both of those involved and those not but referencing them. State reports. Media reports. Interviews with the offspring of those involved. Analysis of public records in regards occupations and where people lived .. So on and so forth….
I don’t think there is at issue the presence of records of the soviets (and the workers movements in rural/Southern Ireland at that time more generally) – obviously JRG is drawing on state records and especially I think media reports in his research on this (as did O’Connor and Kostick before him) – the issue at hand as far as I see it was firstly the apparent lack of a political legacy to this movement and it is now the lack of a public memory of the soviets, fam labourers strikes et al.
You entirely reasonably asked why Garibaldy’s statement might be accurate as regards why a major historical event disappearing didn’t seem likely in a world of media etc. I gave a possible reason.
Now you seem to be striking off to pastures new.
As regards a lack of public memory If we take Kostick’s definition of many of these events as being effectively factory occupations – and if we accept that they were for the most part resolved fairly rapidly after a couple of days or weeks, then it’s not really that strange that there would be a lack of public memory [I can't remember every industrial action I've been involved in or rather I have to make the effort ot remember them and I haven't been in that many].
Perhaps the truth is that many of them simply didn’t mean that much beyond the local even to those involved. That too would explain the possibility of a lack of political legacy and the fact that if we do take the records available these are still a fairly low number of actions.
I am not striking off into pastures new – the full quote from Garibaldy is this “I take your point about popular memory that far back (250 years) reaching down to today, but I think that in a world of folklorists, books, newspapers, radio, it would be much more difficult for a major historical event to have disappeared virtually without trace.”
It is concerned with the memory of these events, either passed down in a locality, re-invented in literature, film, song, interpreted in academic books etc… and the lack thereof.
Taking just the farm labourers strikes I have read of in Waterford, Kildare, etc.. (which I’m actually more interested in than ‘the soviets’) they happened repeatedly over the course of several years, involved a lot of people, some violence, and no overt large scale industrial action happened in those settings much at all for decades afterward or AFAIK beforehand for decades. These were not small emphemeral events.
Whether or not they were my question is please explain why the prevalence or abscence of memory today of events nearly one hundred years ago necessarily says anything about the significance of those events during the period in which they happened.
My sense of your question ‘why’ was in response to his point about how it would be difficult for a major historical event to disappear from record and/or memory. So that’s what I was addressing [tne obvious caveat is that memory diminishes from generation to generation in any event - it's a bit like chinese whispers].
“Whether or not they were my question is please explain why the prevalence or abscence of memory today of events nearly one hundred years ago necessarily says anything about the significance of those events during the period in which they happened.”
It doesn’t. I’m not sure anyone said anything about that one way or the other. But what we can measure is the significance of those events from contemporary and subsequent records or memoirs.
By the way I think it’s important to note that any academic work on an event would have to be grounded in the historical record and supporting memory before an interpretation was made.
The point I was trying to make, obviously not clearly enough although WBS has it right, is not about memory today, but about memory in the years and decades immediately afterwards something happens. We can trace the legacy of the Whiteboys, or the United Irishmen, or Robert Emmet, or Young Ireland or the Fenians or whoever in the years and decades afterwards. In fact, this is what I said earlier, which I still think is fairly clear
“But there was a popular memory, songs, poems etc of that period in both English and Irish in the decades immediately after the 1790s and 1803 which is what I was referring to. I would also say that there was a popular memory of Whiteboyism in the decades after it too (not least in the term cropping up to describe events in the 1780s and 1790s too).”
I haven’t been arguing anything on the basis of memory today. Quite the opposite. What I have said is that in a world with fairly modern media like the 1919-23 period, the chances of a major, near-revolutionary event(s) slipping out of public consciousness to the extent that little trace is left immediately and shortly afterwards seems to me to be unlikely. And that that may or may not in and of itself say something about how close to a social revolution Ireland actually was.
Grand how do you know what popular memory (if any) of the working class movement of 1922 existed in 1932, or 1942, or 1952.
Wouldn’t it be handy if you explained a little more fully what your overall point is? I’m genuinely unsure what you’re trying to get at in relation to the broader discussion.
As regards your last thought a number of possibilities present themselves. Firstly, commemorations. Secondly, publications or memoirs that reference the original events. Thirdly general articles on the original events in various media particularly including left wing media adn that’s just for starters [actually as an aside thinking about the scores of documents I've now read and scanned for the Left Archive I'm pressed to think of one from the 60s onwards that mentions the soviets, let alone goes into any detail. I may well have forgotten one or another, but that's my recollection off the top of my head].
Do you know of any or all of the above in relation to the events we’re generally discussing.
I’ve already said that I am sure there was a memory of this stuff and of the actually existing workers’ movement from 1919-23 on a local level. But what I am also saying is that IF there had been a workers’ movement that was close to being able to bring about a revolution, then we can reasonably have expected it to have left a lot of evidence, judging it by comparison with other events in Irish history.
Looking at Saor Éire and the Republican Congress, and what I’ve seen of their writings and documents, I’m fairly sure that had they felt they lived through a point at which socialist revolution had been possible they would have made a hell of a lot more than that as the lost opportunity. The way that the Republican Congress has been remembered as the great lost opportunity seems to me to support that contention. And the evidence for it isn’t there. I am not saying that there was no workers’ movement, no significance to it, and no memory of it, what I am saying is that there is no demonstrable memory of a great missed opportunity for socialism, even among the socialists and veterans of that time who had the most to gain from making the argument. There was definitely an awareness of the like of the Limerick Soviet, but that’s different than a lament for a lost opportunity in people’s own lifetime.
I’m interested in the memory and legacy of this movement in and of itself, I’m also interested in unpacking the premises behind the idea the extent of the movement would necessarily be reflected in the extent of the memory and the legacy left in its wake.
In regard to the broader discussion I said earlier – “I think there is a middle ground between seeing the movement as sporadic and marginal and seeing it as a potential revolution unrealised due to a crisis of leadership.”
I think the only things I would add to that:
(1) I applaud JRG’s work in being part of the process of rescuing things like the Ardnacrusha strike from being forgotten or obscure, and indeed part of the discussion in regard to legacy and memory underlines that – both in terms of the fact they left little aboveground memory and in that this doesn’t discount their status as important significant struggles.
However he does give the impression of placing too great store in interpretations he held prior to his research, which is I think something of what Garibaldy was driving at.
(2) I don’t think I actually see revolutions generally happening at all in the way other participants in this thread seem to do so some of what is being discussed seems a bit tangential to my concerns (not to mention the fact that looked from one way what is being discussed could be described as a discussion on the nature of a revolution which did happen rather than whether one could have happened).
Commemorations & publications presupposes the existence of a movement fashioning the public memory which sees the commemorated events as somehow relevant to the contemporary time, as far as I can see what was left in the aftermath was the Labour party (and sometimes associated unions) which was conservative in a very very conservative country, I really can’t see folk waving red flags about the place in rural Limerick in 1932, or 1942, or 1952 to commemorate a soviet, which really brings us back to their defeat, the (very) particular circumstance this movement existed in, and their muted legacy.
Memoirs, while also being subject to the same process as above, are likely to come from a different species of phenomenon case in point someparts of the black revolt in late 1960s U.S. seem to be heavily memoired and others not, the former is perhaps roughly described as a highly committed intelligentsia niche (leftist political parties for instance) – in the American case a fair slew of memoirs of BPP members not a whole load from rioters. I think the gist is apparent I do not want to get diverted into elaboration on that here (it is also I would say a relatively rare participant in anything who writes a memoir).
Having not read the press of the late 1920s or 1930s or 1940s, any studies of it, or the far-right press of the same period I do not know if they mention the workers movement of the earlier period.
By the time we get to the material in the left archive we have a discontinuity – it is more likely surely that the appearance of an article on the workers movement in 1921 in a publication in 1975 is predicated on someone doing the archival research, aside from stuff on the Limerick Soviet that doesn’t really start until Emmet O’Connor (first publication on this AFAIK in Saothar in 1980).
We cannot determine the significance of something in the 1920s based on how people in the 1970s and 1980s remember it or do not remember it can we?
“Looking at Saor Éire and the Republican Congress, and what I’ve seen of their writings and documents, I’m fairly sure that had they felt they lived through a point at which socialist revolution had been possible they would have made a hell of a lot more than that as the lost opportunity.”
O.K. this is interesting did Saor Éire or the Republican Congress address the workers movement of 1918 – 1923 at all in their writings?
I might add the presence or abscence of commemorations, publications, memoirs, still less writings in often very obscure leftist publications from the 70s and 80s says little about what memory existed (or didn’t) in subterranean form among people in the localities where the soviets, strikes, etc.. of this period took place.
I’m interested in the memory and legacy of this movement in and of itself, I’m also interested in unpacking the premises behind the idea the extent of the movement would necessarily be reflected in the extent of the memory and the legacy left in its wake.
In regard to the broader discussion I said earlier – “I think there is a middle ground between seeing the movement as sporadic and marginal and seeing it as a potential revolution unrealised due to a crisis of leadership.”
That’s fair enough, but what do you base your middle ground position upon? I’m also hesitant about according the term ‘movement’ to these events.
I think the only things I would add to that:
(1) I applaud JRG’s work in being part of the process of rescuing things like the Ardnacrusha strike from being forgotten or obscure, and indeed part of the discussion in regard to legacy and memory underlines that – both in terms of the fact they left little aboveground memory and in that this doesn’t discount their status as important significant struggles. However he does give the impression of placing too great store in interpretations he held prior to his research, which is I think something of what Garibaldy was driving at.
(2) I don’t think I actually see revolutions generally happening at all in the way other participants in this thread seem to do so some of what is being discussed seems a bit tangential to my concerns (not to mention the fact that looked from one way what is being discussed could be described as a discussion on the nature of a revolution which did happen rather than whether one could have happened).
I too applaud JRGs research, as I have said earlier. Any thing that deepens our understanding is good. I strongly look forward to reading the outcome of it.
I’ve used the ESB archives myself for my own research. Having some knowledge of what is in them I’m not sure it’s fair to say that the Ardnacrusha strike[s] are forgotten, but they might be more obscure than they should be. There is a significant distinction between the two. Then there’s the question as to what is above the ground memory.
As it happens I kind of agree with you re your second point. I’m agnostic as to any specific revolutionary path [I'm not a Leninist, but the idea of a syndicalist revolution is of appeal to me and if there were any evidence at all for it I'd be delighted], but that said it seems to me that one would need some basic building blocs, not least – and here I agree with JRG, a political direction – though I’m unconvinced about hte utility of a vanguard party in the instance we’re discussing here.
Commemorations & publications presupposes the existence of a movement fashioning the public memory which sees the commemorated events as somehow relevant to the contemporary time, as far as I can see what was left in the aftermath was the Labour party (and sometimes associated unions) which was conservative in a very very conservative country, I really can’t see folk waving red flags about the place in rural Limerick in 1932, or 1942, or 1952 to commemorate a soviet, which really brings us back to their defeat, the (very) particular circumstance this movement existed in, and their muted legacy.
I think it points to the emphemeral nature of those events that no movements were fashioned from them. There’s definitely something in what you say about the unlikelihood of red flags being flown in rural Limerick in the 30s/40s/50s, but… nothing at all? And again we have to reconsider what the goals of the soviets were, and in no instances can I see reading Kostick or others any sense that they transcended their own local context – whatever about some rhetorical flourishes. That being the case it would explain perfectly why these didn’t have a purchase on subsequent memory.
Memoirs, while also being subject to the same process as above, are likely to come from a different species of phenomenon case in point someparts of the black revolt in late 1960s U.S. seem to be heavily memoired and others not, the former is perhaps roughly described as a highly committed intelligentsia niche (leftist political parties for instance) – in the American case a fair slew of memoirs of BPP members not a whole load from rioters. I think the gist is apparent I do not want to get diverted into elaboration on that here (it is also I would say a relatively rare participant in anything who writes a memoir).
Perhaps you’d be surprised, unpublished memoirs and accounts from the last century aren’t quite as rare as you propose – at least in my experience, particularly from having some direct knowledge of research into the Civil War. The number of accounts of that period from those involved are sufficient to build up a good picture of what took place. Moreover from research I’ve done myself on events from 1920 to 1960 the knowledge of the offspring of those involved is often reasonably comprehensive and often comes with supporting documents.
But the point is that there is knowledge of the events of the 1960s dynamics in the United States separate to memory. If all those who participated in them were dead we’d still have a record of the events and be able to piece them together. And then inevitably there are interviews with those involved in riots, etc. On a similar level look at the cottage industry in relation to punk, or indeed other musical strands, where you will find numerous oral histories. Going back two decades previously one finds a similar dynamic in relation to rock’n'roll.
There’s another issue too. Sometimes those most closely involved in such events are those least well able to offer a clear view of their significance, their spread and so on.
Having not read the press of the late 1920s or 1930s or 1940s, any studies of it, or the far-right press of the same period I do not know if they mention the workers movement of the earlier period.
Well I’m thinking of left wing publications to be honest more than what is now termed the MSM.
By the time we get to the material in the left archive we have a discontinuity – it is more likely surely that the appearance of an article on the workers movement in 1921 in a publication in 1975 is predicated on someone doing the archival research, aside from stuff on the Limerick Soviet that doesn’t really start until Emmet O’Connor (first publication on this AFAIK in Saothar in 1980). We cannot determine the significance of something in the 1920s based on how people in the 1970s and 1980s remember it or do not remember it can we?
No, but we can assess whether there was a continuity of memory as regards those events on the left – the one area where you’d expect there to be at least some considered interest in them beyond those who were participating in them, or whether they figured highly in the preceding years.
Let’s put it another way and your next question touches on this… if these events had a prominence do you not think that they would have been focused on by left forces in this state as a touchstone of revolutionary activity from soon after they occured. I mean they’re meant to be some expression of leftism, indeed given the different character of the national struggle, perhaps the most significant one since 1913, or at a push the involvement of the ICA in 1916. Yet they don’t really register. I can accept amnesia on the part of the state, perhaps less so by Irish historians from the 1950s onwards, but by the Irish left? A movement which we are told was nationwide, that went toe to toe with SF and the IRA in terms of its hold on people, that contained the potential for revolution, so much so that all that was lacking was a revolutionary party? Don’t you think that any such animal would be taken as the most signficant event of the 1920s if not of the first quarter of the 20th century for the Irish left? Don’t you think there’d be page after page written about it, commemorations, reminiscing, etc, etc? Compare and contrast with the Republican Congress, or 1916, or the Border campaign or… indeed even industrial disputes of the 1970s.
Yesterday I was reading an history of the CPI from 1974 which had no reference at all to the soviets. Nothing, from the party whose identification with them one would imagine be most absolute. I think that has to tell us something about their prominence.
I’m basing my middle ground re: the marginality or otherwise of the workers movement in the 1918 – 1923 period on the memory of reading Emmet O’Connor’s work – particularly the material on farm labourers strikes, nothing at all marginal looking there.
“I’ve used the ESB archives myself for my own research. Having some knowledge of what is in them I’m not sure it’s fair to say that the Ardnacrusha strike[s] are forgotten, but they might be more obscure than they should be. There is a significant distinction between the two. Then there’s the question as to what is above the ground memory.”
I don’t think the presence in archives of records of an event constitues that event being remembered. I am interested in what your own research is.
“in no instances can I see reading Kostick or others any sense that they transcended their own local context – whatever about some rhetorical flourishes. That being the case it would explain perfectly why these didn’t have a purchase on subsequent memory.”
Not really. There is no reason why you would not have commemorations, publications etc.. in that local context and hence a local aboveground public memory except oh yeah there was a completely different socio-political context between 1922 and 1942 – with rampant conservatism in the later time.
On memoirs I am not arguing for an abscence of memoirs in the C20th – that would be nuts (admitidly that paragraph was a bit unclear), certain type of phenomenon are more likely to produce memoirs and others not, e.g. the more mass aspects of the black revolt in the U.S. 1960s does not have the slew of associated memoirs than the much narrower (and less significant IMHO) but more particularly suited to memoir production Black Panther Party. In any case the same process indentified above would also apply to memoirs.
“No, but we can assess whether there was a continuity of memory as regards those events on the left – the one area where you’d expect there to be at least some considered interest in them beyond those who were participating in them, or whether they figured highly in the preceding years.”
“Yesterday I was reading an history of the CPI from 1974 which had no reference at all to the soviets. Nothing, from the party whose identification with them one would imagine be most absolute. I think that has to tell us something about their prominence.”
Maybe it tells us something about the Irish left. I don’t see any necessary connection actually. The (very broadly speaking) left wing forces that (to my knowledge) had a presence in the rural south where most of this had happened had no desire to be harking back to red flag days being fairly conservative in a conservative society. Beyond that was there any organised left wing presence at all for circa fifty years (at least) in the places where the likes of these strikes and soviets and what not were happening – for the most part not.
As an side I believe Jack White was working on the history of a Cork harbour ‘soviet’ (or some such) when he died – but his family burned all his papers. Not that that says anything either way.
“I think it points to the emphemeral nature of those events that no movements were fashioned from them.”
By which I think you mean that there was no movement in 1932 which looked like it had been descended from that in 1922. There sorta was it was just a lot less militant and a lot more conservative – but that is not the point I am aiming to make here. Does being in Italy, Spain or Portugal in 1997 necessarily tell you anything about Italy, Spain or Portugal in 1977. The movements of 1977 did not just continue to grow as if they lived in a vacum, they were defeated, declined, there was a different social context, they became obscure. This is not peculiar, this is normal. A similar process can be seen in the middle of C19th Britain.
I’m basing my middle ground re: the marginality or otherwise of the workers movement in the 1918 – 1923 period on the memory of reading Emmet O’Connor’s work – particularly the material on farm labourers strikes, nothing at all marginal looking there.
Given that the issues that exercised farm labourers were in no small part being dealt with through the 1911 period and through to the new state under the aegis of the Labouerers Acts doesn’t that suggest that even though there was a pointed aspect to their strikes they too were resolved to a greater or lesser degree?
I don’t think the presence in archives of records of an event constitues that event being remembered. I am interested in what your own research is.
It depends in what sense one means. I’d tend to see the ESB archives being crucial to issues of remembrance of the events of that organisation.
My doctoral research was on the identity and presentation of the state[s] in Ireland North and South 1920 – 1960…
“in no instances can I see reading Kostick or others any sense that they transcended their own local context – whatever about some rhetorical flourishes. That being the case it would explain perfectly why these didn’t have a purchase on subsequent memory.”
Not really. There is no reason why you would not have commemorations, publications etc.. in that local context and hence a local aboveground public memory except oh yeah there was a completely different socio-political context between 1922 and 1942 – with rampant conservatism in the later time.
I’m certainly not disputing that. I agreed with you precisely on that point in my previous comment. But I’m not looking for linear connections, ie red flag 1919 = red flag 1921. I’ve never stated that I expected the experience of the soviets whatever we consider them to be would result in groups of Marxist-Leninists across the island ten, twenty or even fifty years later. Indeed as a non-Leninist but something of libertarian socialist I think that’d be absurd given the subsequent history of the 20th century and the relationship with state socilaism, the Cold War, etc. Even if we put to one side the nature of Irish society itself during this period. What I’m looking for, and have said this from the start, is indications of some degree of social radicalism.
Maybe it tells us something about the Irish left. I don’t see any necessary connection actually. The (very broadly speaking) left wing forces that (to my knowledge) had a presence in the rural south where most of this had happened had no desire to be harking back to red flag days being fairly conservative in a conservative society. Beyond that was there any organised left wing presence at all for circa fifty years (at least) in the places where the likes of these strikes and soviets and what not were happening – for the most part not.
As an side I believe Jack White was working on the history of a Cork harbour ‘soviet’ (or some such) when he died – but his family burned all his papers. Not that that says anything either way.
Perhaps it does tell us something about the Irish left, but they’re happy enough to reference the OUtdoor Relief Strike in Belfast in 1932 as a key moment in Irish left wing history when sectarianism was apparently transcended by class. If that why not the soviets which surely are a manifestation of a certain brand of Marxist thinking much closer to their hearts?
If these movements were what JRG presents them as then they’re across the papers, union members are involved, surely there’d be some critical mass as regards their representation sooner or later, sooner I’d have thought. Does it really seem credible to you that there’d be this amnesia?
By which I think you mean that there was no movement in 1932 which looked like it had been descended from that in 1922. There sorta was it was just a lot less militant and a lot more conservative – but that is not the point I am aiming to make here. Does being in Italy, Spain or Portugal in 1997 necessarily tell you anything about Italy, Spain or Portugal in 1977. The movements of 1977 did not just continue to grow as if they lived in a vacum, they were defeated, declined, there was a different social context, they became obscure. This is not peculiar, this is normal. A similar process can be seen in the middle of C19th Britain.
As I note above I’m not suggesting that any successors had to drape themselves in red flags, simply that one mgiht expect some level of political participation, radical political participation subsequently. Does it exist? It appears not to have.
In response to JRG above…
I have Conor Kostick’s book, Revolution in Ireland, and he makes the point on p.188 which I think is crucial to the above JRG [btw I don't think it's available on Google books].
‘Soviet’ activity reached a climazx when the creamery owneres, led by Sir Thomas Cheevers, attempted to obtain a 33 per cent wage reduction. On 12 ay Michael Lennon led workers to the Cleeves factory in Clonmel and took it over, raising the Red Flag…
He then lists another hundred creameries and depots which were seized by workers.
But he makes a further crucial point…
“Although strictly speaking these were factory occupations rather than ‘soviets’, the workers adopted the term for their efforts in a spirit of emulation fo the Russian Revolution and to emphasise their democratic, collective control of the creameries’.
That ‘strictly speaking’ is the central point and it throws the assertion that these were functionally ‘soviets’ in the generally understood sense of that term into serious doubt. Moreover it undermines the sense that they were truly oppositional in the sense you present it.
Paul Bew, in Ireland: The Politics of Enmity [p.440] who would not be unaware of the radical implications, and opportunities, of the conflict makes the following point…
But the deepest horror of all [for the newspapers and others] was reserved for ‘communist’ experiments and land seizures, sometimes facilitated by the chaos of civil war: “The Toorahara Soviet – Bolshevist Ethics of Moscow permeate into Co. Clare” [read a headline of a newspaper]. The truth is that the weakness of the urban working class, combined with the virtual disappearance of the agricultural labourer -in a country that was dominated by farmer proprietors – meant that there was no real possibility of communism.
I am of the opinion that Kostick has over-estimated the situation at certin points in his book and underestimated it in others. Yes the starting point of the Munster Soviets was an attempt by Cleeves to impose a 33% wage cut and a reduction in the workforce across the combine of 25% – with the active support of the Nationalist movement. However, there are repeated references in local newspapers to the workers occupying the workplaces but also ‘controlling the town (or village) in every way possible’. Were these occupations ‘soviets’ in the classic sense – in many cases probably not – but there is no doubt that some were and that for the Marxists who initiated them they were intended to be ‘soviets’.
Lysaght makes the point that by late 1921 the ‘soviets’ were taking on ‘revolutionary significance’ – something which I agree with.
I fundementally disagree with Bew – as early as 1919 RIC reports were indicating that in many parts of the country the ITGWU was surplanting SF as the main concern of the British establishment. The strikes by agricultural labourers and other agricultural workers were the driving force behind much of the radicalisation of the workers movement during this period. In many instances, (very) small farmers actually supported the occupations. Both the SF leadership and the British establishment were of the view that ‘Bolshevism’ was a real threat and took measures to counteract it. Both also recognised that the political outlook among the Irish working class was ‘internationalist’.
I am of the opinion that Kostick has over-estimated the situation at certin points in his book and underestimated it in others. Yes the starting point of the Munster Soviets was an attempt by Cleeves to impose a 33% wage cut and a reduction in the workforce across the combine of 25% – with the active support of the Nationalist movement. However, there are repeated references in local newspapers to the workers occupying the workplaces but also ‘controlling the town (or village) in every way possible’. Were these occupations ‘soviets’ in the classic sense – in many cases probably not – but there is no doubt that some were and that for the Marxists who initiated them they were intended to be ‘soviets’.
But again, what does any of that mean? Was it hyperbole on the part of the newspapers already, as I’ve noted above keen to make any bad situation from their perspective seem worse? And the intentions of those who started them aren’t really the point. Indeed that’s precisely what I’m hoping to direct your attention to… it’s the outcomes that are the key issue here.
Lysaght makes the point that by late 1921 the ‘soviets’ were taking on ‘revolutionary significance’ – something which I agree with.
But what is his basis for making any such statement?
For all Paul Bew’s faults at least the quote I’ve offered you gives some material basis for his conclusion.
I fundementally disagree with Bew – as early as 1919 RIC reports were indicating that in many parts of the country the ITGWU was surplanting SF as the main concern of the British establishment. The strikes by agricultural labourers and other agricultural workers were the driving force behind much of the radicalisation of the workers movement during this period. In many instances, (very) small farmers actually supported the occupations. Both the SF leadership and the British establishment were of the view that ‘Bolshevism’ was a real threat and took measures to counteract it. Both also recognised that the political outlook among the Irish working class was ‘internationalist’.
This is very problematic JRG. On the one hand you say that there was a ‘view’ that there was a Bolshevik threat on the part of the British establishment. But you’ve already argued trenchantly in comments above that one of the reasons for no class revolution was precisely because there was no genuine Bolshevik entity at work or as you put it ‘The key factor during this period was the absence of a revolutionary vanguard party. ‘ and at best a few scattered Marxists of one stripe or another.
That leads to the fundamental conclusion that there were were no Bolsheviks for Ireland to be threatened by. I need hardly expand on the lengthy history of Bolshevism in Russia and how that fed into their ability to seize the day in 1917, but without such a lengthy history in Ireland the idea that an equivalent operation could take place – and I presume this why you point to the centrality of a ‘vanguard party’ – is hard to credit.
You also seem to accept that whatever the British say is the last word, and yet this was in a context where they termed Sinn Féin ‘Bolsheviks’ as well. This suggests their grasp of the situation was pretty poor – to put it mildly, and of course was worsening as the WOI progressed and their military police were forced into retreat in various parts and their intelliegence networks were disassembled.
You say Sinn Féin believed Bolshevism was a real threat, but what real evidence is there for any such conclusion? I’ve already pointed in reference to Campbell’s work to the reality that SF was well on top of land agitation by co-opting it. The Free State – lamentably – was able to suppress with relative ease what industrial agitation there was. None of which suggests a strongly embedded oppositional left force.
As for the workign class being internationalist, in what real as distinct from rhetorical sense and to what extent? I know about the welcome for the October Revolution in Dublin, and the 15 k attendees, etc. But where did that enthusiasm go? What political forces did it underpin? It certainly didn’t go into anything close to the establishment of a mass Leninist party.
I’m dubious about the real prospects for revolution at that time in a society as socially and religiously conservative – not to mention how land reform had defanged, at least to some extent, the land issue, and where it hadn’t Sinn Féin was able to, and as F. Campbell notes more than happy to, step in to adjudicate and further distribute. A spread of genuine ‘soviets’ would, I imagine, have been beaten back fairly sharpish. As I say just above, it took next to nothing for the Free State to quash what residual activism was left over.
So from that reading of it, it wasn’t even a failed revolution in a left sense, because it never started out as a left revolution to begin with.
I don’t think that to state these opinions is to in some way let the left down. What can be noted is that there was considerable courage on the part of many of those who took on employers in the teeth of broader conflict and who began to reach towards some level of class consciousness, however vestigial. Indeed there’s something, to my mind, truly heroic about these activities precisely because they were so limited and sporadic and had so little hope of success.
But it’s essential while recognizing that heroism to simultaneously recognize the flaws and errors – such as they were given the low level of all this – made and that the nature of the broader society they occurred in predicated strongly against them, and to do so in order that next time there is an opening for the left there’s a vastly greater chance of success.
I hesitate to step in to what is a fascinating debate and I see great merit in both of the perspectives outlined by JRG and WbS.
However, I think the last point immediately above represents a critical problem at this particular historical juncture. Events are, clearly, opening up for the Left here. And I think there is a real sense of unpredictability about where politics might go over the next decade.
But my point is that the insistent, though ultimately facile, argument of the Right that left wing ideas have never gained mass traction here is belied, to a degree, by the proto-revolutionary processes at work in Ireland from 1917-1922. That the mere invocation of a ‘Soviet’ by workers in that period can be used as evidence of the depth and persistence of Left wing political actions, if not necessarily ideas. If there were 120 Soviets declared in the period (possibly more according to JRG) then that provides valuable ammunition to undermine the trope that Irish people are congenitally conservative.
Even if the substance, meaning and interpretation of of these ‘Soviets’ can be critiqued, the very fact that they were declared in the first instance is a clear red star in the murky skies of Irish history. Hopefully they’re history will come to the forefront and possibly some filmaker might make a documentary on them.
CMK,
Such a documentary has already been made and broadcast a while back on TG4. Soviet na hÉireann I think it was called, or something similar.
CMK, that’s a fair point and I think that it dovetails neatly with both what JRG is suggesting and what I’m suggesting. Even there are varying views between me and JRG on the revolutionary potential of that period the fact that there was an influence in terms of the concept of ‘soviets’ however deeply understood or even if not at all demonstrates that there was no reason for people to feel that there was an intrinsic antipathy to the left that would overwhelm all else. Now, in some ways I agree strongly with JRG that there was no strongly organised force on the left during the period able to shape the events or at least push them a bit leftwards. That said I think that giventhe fact there wasn’t an organised history of such in the state, and of course more immediately the fact that the national struggle soaked up enthusiasm and activity before class struggle meant that the space for two parallel revolutions, let alone a class based revolution was minimal.
That said I’ve seen the books from Military Archives that contain the lists of anti-Treaty republican prisoners held by the Free State and their class position was in the main working class to judge by the occupations they were listed under so I don’t think they should be dismissed as being beyond either the left or beyond a nascent class consciousness and in some respects a pointed one either. I’ve always felt that the anti-Treaty republicans contained something of a submerged class based revolution, however inchoately.
[b]But again, what does any of that mean? [/b]
We will probably never know definitively – short of an eye-witness account by participants in one of the actual soviets that outlines the political and social motivations and conduct of the occupations. To the best of my knowledge none exist. Some newspaper articles from the time do go into great detail about the operation of the workplace soviets (the Freemans Journal has about 1/3 pf a page outlining ‘a failed experiment’ of the Knocklong Soviet that actually detailed how successful it was and how the workers operated the plant). Again – the entire period requires a major work of research to gather all the evidence that exists for this period. To date the work of O’Connor, McCabe, Kostick and Lysaght have only really been skimming the surface (I have discounted Cahill’s work althogether as the more I learn about this period the poorer opinion I have of his book on the Limerick Soviet).
[b]But what is his basis for making any such statement?[/b]
What is clear is that the inital workplace soviets – e.g. Knocklong in 1920 – were sanctioned by the leadership of the ITGWU and designed (at least by the union leadership) as a vehicle for getting wage increases etc. It is also clear that at this time the Marxist industrial organisers had a different objective, i.e. using the soviets to demonstrate the ability of workers to run society (even if on a small scale). The later soviets at the end of 1921 and into 1922 were of a completely different character. These occupations were established outside official union structures and drew down the wrath of O’Brien and his lackeys.
The industrial organisers and the workers involved knew they were engaged in a life or death struggle given the scale of the crisis and the intent of the establishment (existing business interests and the new Provisional government) to smash the unions and snatch back all the gains (and more) of the previous three years. It is clear that victory to the workers involved would open up a massive chasm in Irish society whereas defeat would open up a period of reaction (which proved to be the case).
At several meetings of activists at Limerick Junction the Marxists involved made it clear that this was the biggest battle that the workers involved had every faced and ever would face and fought for a committment from every attendee to stand their ground and appeal to the wider community for support. It is impossible to know the actual level of consciousness of the entire body of workers involved but they had been through three years of hard battles – mainly against nationalist employers – and it is reasonable to suggest that they had drawn some element of class understanding and conclusions from their struggle.
[b]On the one hand you say that there was a ‘view’ that there was a Bolshevik threat on the part of the British establishment. But you’ve already argued trenchantly in comments above that one of the reasons for no class revolution was precisely because there was no genuine Bolshevik entity at work or as you put it ‘The key factor during this period was the absence of a revolutionary vanguard party. ‘ and at best a few scattered Marxists of one stripe or another. [/b]
Undoubtedly the establishment were attempting to scare the petty-bourgeoisie by claims of ‘Bolshevism’. But remember this – the Bolshevik Party in Russia was not a homogeneous unit. Yes there was a lack of a vanguard party in Ireland – the lack of a Leninist understanding of the need for political organisation – and a belief in syndicalism. But this does not mean that there was an absence of class consciousness.
You mention the Mansion house meeting – but this was one of many. Mayday 1918 15,000 people attended a rally in the Markets Field in Limerick that unanimously declared support for the Russian Revolution praising ‘our Russian comrades who have waged a magnificent struggle for their social and political emancipation’ and declaring a committment to internationalism. In April 1920 during a general strike the local Trades Council took over Tralee and established their own police force. ‘Red Guards’ patrolled the streets of Naas. Several hundred workers attended a mass assembly in Muine Beag in Carlow and later reported “On the second day of the strike we held a
public meeting in the Market Square and publicly proclaimed the establishment of a provisional soviet government…”. The British Military commander MacCready declared “Red murder stalked through the length and breadth of the land”. When republicans set up the Farmers Freedom Force in June 1920 the farmers bodies declared “the F.F.F. is required as a national bulwark against Labour, Socialism and Bolshevism, irrespective of whatever political developments may take place in the country”.
So I would argue that Bew is way off the mark in his assessment and there are clear indications of a growing class consciousness and understanding of the need for revolution.
[b]But again, what does any of that mean? [/b]
We will probably never know definitively – short of an eye-witness account by participants in one of the actual soviets that outlines the political and social motivations and conduct of the occupations. To the best of my knowledge none exist. Some newspaper articles from the time do go into great detail about the operation of the workplace soviets (the Freemans Journal has about 1/3 pf a page outlining ‘a failed experiment’ of the Knocklong Soviet that actually detailed how successful it was and how the workers operated the plant). Again – the entire period requires a major work of research to gather all the evidence that exists for this period. To date the work of O’Connor, McCabe, Kostick and Lysaght have only really been skimming the surface (I have discounted Cahill’s work althogether as the more I learn about this period the poorer opinion I have of his book on the Limerick Soviet).
The problem there is that then it’s almost impossible to attribute the full meaning of the term ‘soviet’ to these outbreaks and perhaps Kostick’s conclusion is a safer one. Certainly I’d be very very hesitant about passing any judgement before considerably greater research was conducted. What seems to also be a factor is that once primary causes of disputes were resolved – ie pay, conditions – the soviets ended. The same is true of those which were linked to issues like conscription, or were linked in one form or fashion to aspects of the national struggle. When these were resolved the soviets dissipated. Obviously this didn’t happen in all cases and some were forcibly put down, particularly later in the period when the SIC etc enters the scene.
[b]But what is his basis for making any such statement?[/b]
What is clear is that the inital workplace soviets – e.g. Knocklong in 1920 – were sanctioned by the leadership of the ITGWU and designed (at least by the union leadership) as a vehicle for getting wage increases etc. It is also clear that at this time the Marxist industrial organisers had a different objective, i.e. using the soviets to demonstrate the ability of workers to run society (even if on a small scale). The later soviets at the end of 1921 and into 1922 were of a completely different character. These occupations were established outside official union structures and drew down the wrath of O’Brien and his lackeys.
The industrial organisers and the workers involved knew they were engaged in a life or death struggle given the scale of the crisis and the intent of the establishment (existing business interests and the new Provisional government) to smash the unions and snatch back all the gains (and more) of the previous three years. It is clear that victory to the workers involved would open up a massive chasm in Irish society whereas defeat would open up a period of reaction (which proved to be the case).
At several meetings of activists at Limerick Junction the Marxists involved made it clear that this was the biggest battle that the workers involved had every faced and ever would face and fought for a committment from every attendee to stand their ground and appeal to the wider community for support. It is impossible to know the actual level of consciousness of the entire body of workers involved but they had been through three years of hard battles – mainly against nationalist employers – and it is reasonable to suggest that they had drawn some element of class understanding and conclusions from their struggle.
Again, we seem to encounter the same problem. We cannot tell precisely what the motivations were, or even if they could genuinely be termed ‘soviets’ in the full sense of the term. Kostick thinks not for most of them. I think not either.
The other point is that it seems to me that the individual lifespan of many of these ‘soviets’ was much shorter than you point to. They seem to have risen and fallen in weeks or months rather than years. By the way is it possible to argue that there was a continual level of activity across the three/four years in Limerick? In other words were the workers addresed at Limerick Junction necessarily all the same as the ones who had been involved in the original Limerick soviet, or the later disputes at Bruree etc, which don’t seem to have a direct continuity even if there was an influence of one dispute upon another?
Re the point about ‘nationalist’ employers, I’d have hoped that the information I’ve provided above gives the lie to the idea that there was an homogenous ‘nationalism’ in opposition to progressive strands. And in truth it seems to me that most employers even of a supposedly ‘nationalist’ inclination would tend towards social conservatism one way or another but would also face radicalised republicans as well.
[b]On the one hand you say that there was a ‘view’ that there was a Bolshevik threat on the part of the British establishment. But you’ve already argued trenchantly in comments above that one of the reasons for no class revolution was precisely because there was no genuine Bolshevik entity at work or as you put it ‘The key factor during this period was the absence of a revolutionary vanguard party. ‘ and at best a few scattered Marxists of one stripe or another. [/b]
Undoubtedly the establishment were attempting to scare the petty-bourgeoisie by claims of ‘Bolshevism’. But remember this – the Bolshevik Party in Russia was not a homogeneous unit. Yes there was a lack of a vanguard party in Ireland – the lack of a Leninist understanding of the need for political organisation – and a belief in syndicalism. But this does not mean that there was an absence of class consciousness.
You mention the Mansion house meeting – but this was one of many. Mayday 1918 15,000 people attended a rally in the Markets Field in Limerick that unanimously declared support for the Russian Revolution praising ‘our Russian comrades who have waged a magnificent struggle for their social and political emancipation’ and declaring a committment to internationalism. In April 1920 during a general strike the local Trades Council took over Tralee and established their own police force. ‘Red Guards’ patrolled the streets of Naas. Several hundred workers attended a mass assembly in Muine Beag in Carlow and later reported “On the second day of the strike we held a public meeting in the Market Square and publicly proclaimed the establishment of a provisional soviet government…”. The British Military commander MacCready declared “Red murder stalked through the length and breadth of the land”. When republicans set up the Farmers Freedom Force in June 1920 the farmers bodies declared “the F.F.F. is required as a national bulwark against Labour, Socialism and Bolshevism, irrespective of whatever political developments may take place in the country”.
So I would argue that Bew is way off the mark in his assessment and there are clear indications of a growing class consciousness and understanding of the need for revolution.
I’d absolutely agree, and indeed I think I say it above, that there was a level of class consciousness, but it still comes back to the point that there was no political manifestation of this consciousness over a protracted length of time as you note yourself. These are enormously intriguing acts, no question about it, but for all the intensity for those directly involved they seem to be marginal to the main dynamics of the WOI/Civil War.
I’m also intrigued by the idea that ‘Republicans’ as an entity set up the FFF. From what I can see it was established from the IFU and the only clear republican link is that one of the founders was an SF councillor. But to be honest it cuts against everythigng we know from the general pattern of actions by Sinn Féin in relation to land distribution during this period [as evidenced by Campbell amongst others]. Unless one can point to a generalised pattern of activity by the FFF across the length and breadth of the state/island then it seems to me to be anomolous in every respect and hardly an appropriate reference except as an exception to the rule [indeed Kostick only refers to it on one page in his entire book].
One further point on ‘conservatism’ – I would argue that the history of the oppressed classes in Ireland is anyhting but.
The nineteenth century is littered with revolutionary upheavals in Ireland – the Caravat/ Shanavest conflict between the landless labourers and the irish tenant farmers that lasted from 1808-1816 – the Rockite Rebellion from 1820-1825 that at least for the first four years was a class based conflicts again primarily between the labourers and tenant farmers (I would dispute Donnelly’s assertion that the Rockite rebellion had a significant sectarian element. My own research would indicate the contrary until 1825 when the labourers had left the scene of battle and the tenant farmers were targetting the landlords) – the Terry Alt uprising of 1831. Again primarily a class based conflict involving estimated numbers in Co. Clare of 20,000 – The Young Ireland Rebellion – the Fenians – the Land War (which again had a labourer v tenant farmer element in the conflict). Coupled with this we had an ongoing simmering class conflict in rural areas between the labourers and tenant farmers that lasted practically the entire century around what Thompson called ‘the moral economy’.
I think the work of Fergus Campbell WBS pointed to above is of great importance here. It seems to challenge significantly the idea that “All strands of republicanism opposed the workers movement during this period”. Never mind the relationship between what was left of the ICA cooperating with the IRA in Dublin and the rest of it.
There’s also a dichotomy being drawn between republicanism and the labour movement or workers’ movement. When you look at this more closely, it seems to mean a (presumably small?) number of people being described as the Marxists within the ITGWU. This seems to me to be an overly restrictive view of what constitutes the workers’ movement or the labour movement generally, and especially in light of Campbell’s argument that the republican movement operated effectively as a movement of agrarian radicalism in Connacht.
There are other issues here, but one is the notion that, on the basis of RIC reports, the British establishment was more concerned with the ITGWU than republicanism in certain areas. I am sure that in certain areas the local cops did see a greater threat from the ITGWU. I’d be interested if anybody knows the extent to which the threat from the ITGWU was being discussed in Dublin Castle or in London in comparison to the threat from SF and the IRA. IIRC, wasn’t the ITGWU committed to independence? Is it possible the RIC or other authorities didn’t draw the same distinction that some are today between it and the independence movement?
The area I know in detail is Limerick – In Limerick there was practically zero cross-over between activists in the ITGWU and IRA/republican activists. The only figure that I can trace was Michael Reddan who was an ITGWU delegate to the Trades Council and a SF councillor. Now the other interesting fact is that the local IRA HQ was in the ITGWU offices in John’s Square in Limerick. But there was an ongoing industrial conflict between the ITGWU and nationalist/republican employers. Several strikes broke out at the tannery owned by Michael O’Callaghan the SF mayor murdered by the Brits in 1921 (indeed there are records of strikes at the tannery going back to the 1840′s). The Castleconnell took place at the fisheries owned by another SF councillor Anthony Mackey. The leading farmers activist who ran an ongoing campaign against the ITGWU was Laffan who was SF chairman of Limerick Co. Council. Right into the late 1920′s Laffan was running a propaganda campaign in an attempt to undermine the influence of the ‘red flag years’ in Limerick and Tipperary. The Free State Government actually carried out a major inquiry into the ‘Red Flag Years’ that lasted for several weeks in 1925 (or possibly 1924) just before the outbreak of the nine month strike at Ardnacrusha during the building of the Shannon Scheme.
The ITGWU organisers, Dowling and MacGrath were openly hostile to republicanism while supporting the independence struggle (all be it from a class perspective). Both were know to have regularly carried revolvers because of an underlying tension between the IRA and union activists and both were known to have used their weapons to treaten IRA/SF men on occasions. Interestingly enough there is no record of the opposite happening and I would suggest that this was because of the standing both men had in the workers movement and the fear the IRA had of provoking a backlash. Of the three ITGWU branches in Liemrick city two (under the leadership of Dowling and MacGrath) opposed the Belfast Boycott in the open teeth of hostility from SF and the local church. yet the boycott was pretty much ineffectual in Limerick in comparison to oher parts of the country because of the position of the ITGWU activists.
As regards the number of Marxists – from recollection the RSP had about 50 members at foundation in 1919 including a number of ITGWU organisers (I know of eight for definite including two in Limerick and one in Tipperary who Michael Collins accused of being a British spy in an attempt to undermine his influence – which backfired spectacularly). There were at least two other members of the RSP in Limerick including an ITGWU branch secretary named John Byrne who fought with the ICA in 1916 and an English Marxist named Jack hedley who subsequently became and ITGWU organiser in South Tipp/Waterford.
What is clear is that the influence of the Marxists significantly outweighed their numbers. Furthermore it must be remembered that the RSP id not attempt to organise or recruit – it didn’t regard its purpose as building a vanguard party.. If it had we would have had a significantly better indication of the number of Marxists active at the time.
Yes there is clearly a regional division in relation to the agitation going on – Connaught appears to have been out of step with the rest of the country. Remember also that the land agitiation/cattle drives in Connaught and other places were suppressed by the IRA in a large number of instances. Certainly in Bruff the IRA suppressed an attempt by some rank-and-file IRA men to take over the estate of one landlord. There is some evidence that this was prompted by the intention of agri-labourers to carryout the action and some IRA men stepped in, in order to maintain some element of control over the situation – but it could just as easily have been a refelction of the class tensions existing within the IRA where the rank-and-file came primarily from the rural poor and the officers from the farming class (as acknowledged by Markievicz).
In relation to the RIC the evidence I have comes from a report by Inspector Yeats in January 1919 where he states that the ITGWU were overshadowing the local active SF clubs and posing a greater threat. This was on the back of a major strike on the docks the previous month which had placed Dowling and the ITGWU firmly in the leadership of the Limerick workers movement at the time.
Now – just to clarify – what I am arguing is that there was a clear potential for socialist revolution in Ireland between 1919-1922 – but there also existed major difficulties, primarily the lack of a vanguard party organised along Leninist lines. The soviets and the major industrial struggles indicate to me a significant and growing level of class consciousness than in reality wasn’t finally crushed until the defeat of the Ardnacrusha strike in 1926 (which led to a rising conservatism within the Limerick workers movement and further afield – two major betrayals in seven years will have that effect). The Irish working class were not immune to what was happening on a Europe wide basis and I would argue that Bew has a very mechanical approach to analysing the situation at the time.
Surely you see the contradiction between your proposal that there was a clear conflict between republicans and socialists [of whatever stripe, and like Garibaldy I think you're narrowing your definition far too tightly] and the fact that the IRA worked out of the ITGWU offices!
You’re also applying a monolithic aspect to republicanism as if every single SF cllr, rep, member and the IRA were of one mind. Any history of the period tells us quite the opposite, as was inevitable in such an heterodox movement, but again as I note from my own knowledge of Military Archives, the data I have seen points to a more rather than less working class face to republicanism, and in particular anti-Treaty republicanism.
bTW, just reading your last paragraph. Isn’t it more plausible that by 22/23 the SIC and the stabilising effect of the end of the Civil War, which sort of went hand in hand, meant that industrial agitation dropped sharply. You may well be right that 1926 marks the last kick of the agitation, but by then it was well defeated.
Actually reading your thoughts on Connacht, am I misreading you, but you seem to be saying precisely the opposite of what Fergus Campbell is saying where he explicitly states that it was SF and IRA members who were responsible for the agitation.
As regards the RIC quote, surely one would need considerably more than one report in the wake of a strike to support that contention. No?
I think for me there remain big questions about whether we can generalise from the situation in Limerick/Munster (about the significance of which there remain a lot of questions).
I’m especially doubtful that the primary obstacle to a socialist revolution was the lack of a vanguard party. It seems to me that this argument cannot be made without at least some attempt to explain why sectarianism and the national question were not the major obstacles.
I have never once suggested that the IRA was a ‘single entity’ – as acknowledged by the leadership of SF itself – the class struggle was on the verge of tearing the IRA assunder in late 1920.
What I have argued is that the cross-class aliiance that republicanism exists as inevitably leads to this type of social conflict with republicanism as an ideology coming down firmly on the side of the establishment. The evidence from this period indicates that this is exactly what happened.
Undoubtedly rank-and-file IRA members impacted by the class struggle were involved in the cattle drives and land agitiation in connaught – however it is also clear from archival material in the National Archives that the leadership of SF acted deciseively in suppressing such actions by rank-and-file IRA men.
Any cross-class alliance is going to be pushed and pulled under the tensions of class-struggle. The Marxists in the Irish workers movement were unable to capitalise on these tensions and draw these IRA elements behind the workers movement on a class basis. I would attribute this to the influence of syndicalism within the movement. However, that does not contradict the fact that class conscious workers had an understanding of the nature of the struggle and the role of the right-wing elements within the nationalist movement.
As for the fact that the IRA had their HQ in the ITGWU offices – I don’t see any contradiction at all. Any Marxist at the time would ahve supported the national liberation struggle – Dowling, McGrath and Hedley certainly did from a class perspective. In fact I would suggest that it demonstrates that the IRA in Limerick was somewhat subservient to the workers movement more than anything else. While the ITGWU allowed the IRA to operateo out of their offices they were still engaged in widespread strike action against employers who were prominent SF members.
As regards the RIC reports – my research has concentratd on Limerick and locally the local establishment were clearly more worried about the workers movement than the IRA. I am not saying that this was reflected country-wide but it certainly was the situation in Limerick.
Post June 1922 it would be incorrect to say that the labour movement was defeated – certainly defeats occurred, specificallyinvolving farm labourers. In July workers at Arnotts in Dublin wnet on strike. Later that month print workers went on strike and at the end of the month council workers in dublin were out. Both the Arnotts and Railway strike lasted into August. At the end of August a building strike broke out in Dublin. The strike spread to Belfast at the begining of September. Tere was also a strike of labourers in Dundalk that resulted in several men being tossed into jail for a number of weeks.
At the begining of September 1922 a major post office strike broke out that lasted three weeks and ended in defeat for the strikers. During the strike soldiers opened fire on pickets wounding one female striker on the picket line. after the defeat of the strike Cosgrave’s government embarked on a major campaign of victimisation against activists in the union. Later in Spetember there was a week long strike in Clones. A strike on the Railways broke out in October 1922. It was settled after two weeks only to break out again days later after the management renaged on the deal. By the negining of November the strike was spreading and having a major impact on the economy. Over 1500 workers had been laid off in several workplaces as the strike hit hard. At the same time bakery workers went on strike in Newry. At the begining of November a strike broke out at Clonmel brewery.
The Railway stike finally ended on 11 November when the management caved into the wrokers demands. The same day gas workers went out on strike. In the middle of November butchers went on strike in Dublin. During the course of the strike shop windows were smashed by striking workers and several of the striking workers were jailed. The Building workers strike that started in August was finally settled at the end of November again in victory for the workers. On the 27 November actors in Dublin took strike action shutting theatres and music halls. The Irish Times called Dublin ‘The City of Strikes’.
In February 1923 strikes broke out at several flour mills and among restaurant workers in Dublin. By the end of that month upholsterers in Dublin were on strike and a major dispute involving farm labourers broke out in Co. Meath. Council workers in Enniskillen struck at the beinging of March. A week later the farm labourers strike spread to north Co. Dublin. Gas workers in Waterford struck on 15 March. The farm labourers strike ended on 24 March and the same day a new strike broke out on Dublin’s building sites.
This is only a flavour of the strike activity following the end of the civil war and the defeat of the munster soviets and the farm labourers strike in the middle of 1922. I would suggest that the scale of strike activity demonstrates that the workers movement had not been completely defeated by mid-1922 and large scale strike action continued in the early period of the new Free State.
SF and the IRA between 1919-1922 was, by its nature as a cross-class allliance, had a mix of classes and was subject to class tensions. The leadership of SF were solidly in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Their attitude to the labour movement varied from indifference to outright hostility.
Maybe you can provide evidence of SF/IRA supporting workers struggles – the only one I am aware of was some support during the Limerick Soviet that turned to open hostility after the end of the Soviet (and I suspect the Monaghan Asylum occupation given the involvement of O’Donnell).
There is ample evidence of the efforts by the leadership of SF/IRA to derail the workers movement during this period. there is also some evidence of local efforts to do likewise.
There is zero evidence (for Limerick anyway) of any cross-over between the workers movement and the IRA. Even Robert Byrne who is portrayed as a trade union activist, in reality, was anything but. If there was a synergy surely there would have been a large number of individuals active in both movements – this was not the case.
In relation to Fergus Campbell’s research – I have done little work on the situation in Connaught – what I have seen is archival material that the leadership of SF were attemtping to suppress such movements.
Finally – on the post-1922 situation – the revolutionary possibilities were defeated with the defeat of the Munster Soviets, the worekrs movement however, was not defeated as can be demonstrated through the wave of strikes that continued right up to 1926 when the Ardnacrusha defeat led to a five year period of little activity (until the victory of the bus workers in 1931). I would also argue that part of the reason why LP never established itself on a par with FF and FG can be traced to this strike. The betrayal in 1926 came at the same time as the foundation of FF and its populism attracted support among the working class.
There’s some element of us going over the same old ground again, but this is a profoundly interesting area.
Firstly your definition of the Labour movement is I believe too narrow as is your definition of Sinn Féin and the IRA. To restate that SF was a cross-class alliance and therefore consequently antithetical to working class struggle with no reference to what actually went on is not, I believe, sufficient. Research in the area which I’ve referenced above indicates the opposite.
You seem averse to noting the support given, passively in some respects, active in others by workers to the national struggle. That this support was given suggests a much more nuanced and complex situation than one predicated on an intrinsic antipathy by republicans to the working class – from which they themselves drew members and which sustained them, not least during the Civil War.
You suggest that of those who were trade unionists only one was a crossover – Robert Byrne. But Kostick on p.153 lists off the following:
The Irish revolutionary left were confused as to the relationship between socialism and republicanism and in the rapidly evolving years of 1918-23 this led to many of them putting their energy into the republican movement. Peadar O’Donnell was one of the many Transport Union organizers who rapidly moved into the republican struggle, resigning from his job as organizer in October 1920. Other IRA members who were also trade union activists were: Eammon Rooney, John Lynch, Tadhg Barry, Dan Sullivan, Archive, heron, Cathal O’Shannon, Michael Symthe, Frank McCabe, Patrick Gaffney, Seamus Dempsey and Tom O’Reilly and there were doubtless many others. Seamus Hughes was at one time an IRB member and Asst. Secretary of the ITGWU.
Kostick continues on the same page to note that hardly a speech at Labour conferences during the period was made without reference to Connolly and the national struggle. He also lists the support that the national struggle was given by the labour movement and workers.
You posit a situation of antipathy towards republicans.
But a perhaps more persuasive thesis is that this was a situation where, as Kostick notes, the republican movement had in some ways stripped away a layer of some of the most able and active left wing activists in the TUs and related organizations – certainly that might account for the dismal passivity that characterized that those latter organizations during the period. And that would mean that far from your point about a republican ‘subserviency’ to labour/working class in that context etc, that there were strong bonds albeit not formal linkages [or rather not exactly because they certainly worked hand in glove on various campaigns] between former TU people and the TU itself which would obviously account for such examples as why the IRA operated out of an ITGWU building etc. These were comrades, friends and so on who would see a common interest [as you yourself note above] in progressing the national struggle whatever issues they might have had – and given the labour movement and workers tended syndicalist during the period probably they didn’t have that many to begin with – with its composition, direction etc.
So rather than an antagonistic relationship, which you propose, there was a complementary one. In some ways, whether we believe it to be a correct perception on their part at this remove, they would have most likely seen the national struggle as an extension of the socialist/syndicalist one and certainly not adversarial, and perhaps viewed it like that as late as the start of the civil war when the reality of the Free State came into view.
Added to this I don’t believe you give sufficient weight to the context of a national struggle within which these industrial and agricultural disputes/soviets were somewhat marginal – not least because the soviets appear to have had no serious agenda to contest either the British state or the successor one led by SF in all its variegated wonder.
This I think is the danger of trying to reify what seem to have almost overwhelmingly been soviets centered on disputes about specific matters into something approaching an existential proto-Bolshevik threat to the bourgeois state of whatever stripe. The fact that the soviets dissipated so rapidly either once the local issues had been resolved or under pressure suggests little embedded oppositionalism to the established order.
That alone would explain why there was what appears to be indifference on the part of republicans as a whole. They – the soviets – weren’t a threat from a republican perspective, and where their activities weren’t supported by Republicans – as they seem to have been much of the time – they were easily [and yes in many instances where this happened - and in the main this seems to have been from the Truce onwards, and increasingly severe with the introduction of the SIC, it is to the shame of republicans] swept aside.
The phrase ‘bigger fish to fry’ from their perspective comes to mind. Where you’ve provided evidence of any ‘republican’ intervention in strikes these have appeared piecemeal and not part of consistent pattern until the Free State – which makes sense because arguably the majority of the most right wing SF elements went that way.
I suspect you are dismissing Campbells work perhaps too easily. His research provides evidence that, contrary to your assertions, there was no attempt to ‘suppress’ such movements there was instead a strong sympathy for and an effort to assist such movements – as he says even where some SF leadership members were strongly antagonistic to the means taken. It says as much in the pieces I quote above.
Again as regards the situation post 1923 I already clarified that my meaning in my previous post that there was a defeat or an ending of the wave of agitations that occurred during the WOI/Civil War period. I’m unsure as to why you wish to address it again as if I hadn’t made that clarification.
I want to draw your thoughts in another direction.
In all of this it’s absolutely essential to grasp how relatively powerful republican forces were during this period – not necessarily in military terms [though it seems clear that for prolonged periods they had strong military capabilities in various parts of the island], but in terms of their hold on aspects of the civil society and administration.
The soviets simply weren’t a match for, weren’t really analogous to, a republican movement that had mass support and deepening legitimacy amongst the people.
There’s some fascinating research done by the likes of Paul McMahon and Eunan O’Halpin on the intelligence wars between the British and the nascent Republic. McMahon notes that for example Republicans didn’t simply manage to assassinate British intelligence officers, but were themselves able to penetrate British military intelligence including its D Branch which was established under the control of the Director of Intelligence in Ireland, Brigadier General Winter.
Now perhaps all this seems esoteric, but the point is that SF was in the 1919-21 period operating as a state like entity against arguably the most powerful imperialism on the planet. It’s simply untenable to assign the same attributes to the Irish soviets for all their efforts. And if that is the case then the likelihood of them having genuine revolutionary potential is almost entirely constrained.
That in a way is why I felt at the start of this discussion that it was necessary to question your thoughts on the revolutionary potential of the period. The revolution was already underway but it wasn’t a left revolution and it wasn’t going to be.
McMahon [p.50] has a very good point I think when he argues the following:
A striking feature was London’s poor understanding of the Irish situation. There was a persistent desire to characterize SF movement as a minor, temporary, unrepresentative phenomenon that could be eradicated… thus during WWI SF was condemned as a ‘German plot’ orchestrated by a foreign enemy. When the war ended Germany was replaced by Bolshevism – SF was now part of the ‘Red menace’ threatening the British empire… the usefulness of these characterizations was that they robbed the SF project of political legitimacy and excused British politicians from having to face up to the reality of Irish nationalism.
Could you elaborate re:Rockism and sectarianism – it is a pretty strong claim to make.
In what respect?
I have never once suggested that the IRA was a ‘single entity’ – as acknowledged by the leadership of SF itself – the class struggle was on the verge of tearing the IRA assunder in late 1920.
But that’s not what I said, if you read my comment. I said ‘You’re also applying a monolithic aspect to republicanism as if every single SF cllr, rep, member and the IRA were of one mind.’
That for a start has a very different meaning to the one you ascribe ot my comment. But more pertinently I’m trying to get across that elide all aspects of republicanism into a single whole as evidence by your undifferentiated use of the term ‘republican’.
On this thread alone you’ve referenced almost all actions by republicans as being almost entirely antagonistic toward the working class. As with the IFF, etc. you generalise from the specific or you paint ‘republicans’ in an entirely negative [or at best diminished] light. Moreover you don’t distinguish between different strands or different approaches within republicanism.
What I have argued is that the cross-class aliiance that republicanism exists as inevitably leads to this type of social conflict with republicanism as an ideology coming down firmly on the side of the establishment. The evidence from this period indicates that this is exactly what happened.
But at best you’ve found a tiny number of incidents of this social conflict. Many of which on further examination simply aren’t proof of a national campaign against the working class by republicans or their leadership but which by contrast appear to be mainly the work of individuals or small groups actually arguably in contradiction to the broader swathe of the republican movement. In other words you’ve decided that since you believe cross-class alliances must bring certain conflicts into being therefore they did whether tehre’s solid evidence or not there.
Undoubtedly rank-and-file IRA members impacted by the class struggle were involved in the cattle drives and land agitiation in connaught – however it is also clear from archival material in the National Archives that the leadership of SF acted deciseively in suppressing such actions by rank-and-file IRA men.
Again I ask are you contradicting the research of Fergus Campbell. As Tel says in a different context no research is beyond question but I think that given the depth of his research on this matter it would need strong proof to counter his basic thesis.
From the off here you’ve referenced your own research, which is laudable, but largely you mention it with no reference to other research in the area, and I find this intriguing given the increasing depth of research by those such as Campbell in the area of reconsidering both the land agitation/the Civil War itself etc, etc.
Given that on an internet site it’s difficult to weigh the virtues of individual research it’s absolutely necessary in order to appreciate the validity or otherwise of arguments being made to see them contextualised in the light of others research. Hence the importance to me, at least, of understanding where you view your thoughts in relation to Campbell et al.
Any cross-class alliance is going to be pushed and pulled under the tensions of class-struggle. The Marxists in the Irish workers movement were unable to capitalise on these tensions and draw these IRA elements behind the workers movement on a class basis. I would attribute this to the influence of syndicalism within the movement. However, that does not contradict the fact that class conscious workers had an understanding of the nature of the struggle and the role of the right-wing elements within the nationalist movement.
This simlply means that in your own words the labour movement, whose membership’s sympathies appear from the historical record to have been oriented towards republicanism as a whole, wasn’t fit for the purpose you seem to ascribe to it. But again you’re trying to find ‘right wing elements’ and then map them onto republicanism [and by the way we would have to parse the term 'nationalism' to a very great degree].
As for the fact that the IRA had their HQ in the ITGWU offices – I don’t see any contradiction at all. Any Marxist at the time would ahve supported the national liberation struggle – Dowling, McGrath and Hedley certainly did from a class perspective. In fact I would suggest that it demonstrates that the IRA in Limerick was somewhat subservient to the workers movement more than anything else. While the ITGWU allowed the IRA to operateo out of their offices they were still engaged in widespread strike action against employers who were prominent SF members.
The obvious conclusion isn’t that the IRA was ‘subservient’ to the workers movement but that they worked well together, that there was a natural synergy. But again here you indicate again that you seek to diminish republicans agency at all points.
As regards the RIC reports – my research has concentratd on Limerick and locally the local establishment were clearly more worried about the workers movement than the IRA. I am not saying that this was reflected country-wide but it certainly was the situation in Limerick.
It’s one report you quote. Is there a pattern of such reports across the years? If not this is another example of arguing the general from the specific.
Post June 1922 it would be incorrect to say that the labour movement was defeated – certainly defeats occurred, specificallyinvolving farm labourers. In July workers at Arnotts in Dublin wnet on strike. Later that month print workers went on strike and at the end of the month council workers in dublin were out. Both the Arnotts and Railway strike lasted into August. At the end of August a building strike broke out in Dublin. The strike spread to Belfast at the begining of September. Tere was also a strike of labourers in Dundalk that resulted in several men being tossed into jail for a number of weeks.
At the begining of September 1922 a major post office strike broke out that lasted three weeks and ended in defeat for the strikers. During the strike soldiers opened fire on pickets wounding one female striker on the picket line. after the defeat of the strike Cosgrave’s government embarked on a major campaign of victimisation against activists in the union. Later in Spetember there was a week long strike in Clones. A strike on the Railways broke out in October 1922. It was settled after two weeks only to break out again days later after the management renaged on the deal. By the negining of November the strike was spreading and having a major impact on the economy. Over 1500 workers had been laid off in several workplaces as the strike hit hard. At the same time bakery workers went on strike in Newry. At the begining of November a strike broke out at Clonmel brewery.
The Railway stike finally ended on 11 November when the management caved into the wrokers demands. The same day gas workers went out on strike. In the middle of November butchers went on strike in Dublin. During the course of the strike shop windows were smashed by striking workers and several of the striking workers were jailed. The Building workers strike that started in August was finally settled at the end of November again in victory for the workers. On the 27 November actors in Dublin took strike action shutting theatres and music halls. The Irish Times called Dublin ‘The City of Strikes’.
In February 1923 strikes broke out at several flour mills and among restaurant workers in Dublin. By the end of that month upholsterers in Dublin were on strike and a major dispute involving farm labourers broke out in Co. Meath. Council workers in Enniskillen struck at the beinging of March. A week later the farm labourers strike spread to north Co. Dublin. Gas workers in Waterford struck on 15 March. The farm labourers strike ended on 24 March and the same day a new strike broke out on Dublin’s building sites.
This is only a flavour of the strike activity following the end of the civil war and the defeat of the munster soviets and the farm labourers strike in the middle of 1922. I would suggest that the scale of strike activity demonstrates that the workers movement had not been completely defeated by mid-1922 and large scale strike action continued in the early period of the new Free State.
But that’s completely ignoring the meaning of my point. When I say it was ‘defeated’ I mean in the respect to your thesis of even a somewhat broader campaign that might have the potential to take on the state – or to put it another way the wave of agitation that took place during the WOI and Civil War period.
You’re presumably not claiming that the number of incidents was equal post 23 to the number during the WOI/CW, so defeated in that context means a diminuition of that wave of activity, not that there was no activity.
It’s very evident that this strike activity was curtailed and was easily containable. If the soviets presented no threat to either the British state or the nascent Irish state, of either pro or anti-Treaty stripe, then it’s clear that these actions presented no significant threat to the Free State. No one disuptes that there was no activity post 23.
In respect of the fact loads of the research on this and related topics has been done by Donnelly (which is not to say that he cannot get it wrong just to say back it up) and in respect of the fact some Rockite notices are full of sectarianism such as the following from Stephen Randolph Gibbons Threatening Letters of Pre-Famine Ireland
. . .
“Lament and mourn ye hereticks for the day of your destruction is come, let no man’s heart be faint on that day – This nation was once a seat of holiness but is now the throne of wickedness, and that since the coming of those devils into our holy nation..” (Gibbons p. 119 – Co. Limerick January 1822)
“This is to let the Protestants know that there is a scourge over them from the almighty God I am the man that will give it John Rock. Let every individual catholic prepare for battle as soon as General Rock encamps let every one from the age of 17 to 50 for to cut down thise tyrants burn churches kill ministers destroy informers – The breed of Luter may know that I will never lay down my sword until I will levil their proud city of London to the ground in revenge of King James”
(Gibbons p. 184, Co.Cork May 1823)
My research in Limerick (and I have carried out extensive research) indicates that sectarianism was not a factor in the Rockite rebellion in Limerick up to the middle of 1924 when the rebellion runs out of steam. It does emerge in 1825 when violence breaks out again. The difference appears to be that in 1825 the main protagonists were tenant farmers against landlords while much of the earlier struggle was primarily labourers against tenant farmers.
Donnelly’s research appears to be primarily focussed on Cork and this may account for the difference. The only evidence of potential sectarianism in Limerick and Clare that I can find is the attack on the Palatine village at Glenosheen in Limerick in 1823 which Donnelly claims was a sectarian attack. My evidence suggests that it could be the result of two non-sectarian factors 1) it was the location of a major store of arms and 2) it was revenge for the Palatine yeomanry’s actions in suppressing the inital stages of the uprising in Newcastle West in 1819.
The only other suggestion of sectarianism that appears from 1819-1824 was in a magistrates report in the State of the Country papers where Vokes claims that the Rockites were planning to murder Protestants. However, a subsequent report suggests that his motivation for this claim was financial. Dublin Castle were insisting that the police were used to suppress the violence. The local establishment were responsible for funding the police and therefore would have to carry the can for the cost of suppressing the uprising. However, if the Magistrates could convince Dublin Castle to deploy the army then the British government would be responsible for the financial cost of the mobilisation of troops.. By claiming an attack was pending on Protestants in the district, Vokes was attempting to prompt Dublin Castle into deploying troops and therefore removing responsibility for the suppressing of the uprising from the local business classes and Protestant ascendancy.
Like I said – there is little evidence that the Rockite rebellion Limerick up to 1824 had any major sectarian component – if it existed at all. Any reports of attacks on churches (and some attacks did take place) are explained by they being a symbol of wealth rather than religion. There are no indications (with the exception of a couple of instances) of Rockite notices containing sectarian language or threatening people on a religious basis. The situation may have been different in Cork but this is the evidence I have from my research in relation to Limerick.
The ‘Pastorini and Captain Rock: Millenarianism and Sectarianism’ chapter in Donnelly’s Captain Rock book has plenty of what he judges to be evidence for sectarianism in Rockism in Clare and Limerick. it is simply wrong to say the only evidence is Glenosheen and Vokes (in fact you later make exceptions…)
It is possible Donnelly is insufficiently critical of his sources, however if we cannot take a cry of ‘sectarianism’ (or to be less anachronistic one of ‘bloodthirsty Popery’) from the authorities/media of the 1820s as unproblematic likewise we cannot take for granted a cry of ‘Bolshevism’ from similar sources in the 1920s.
We will be faced with problems of Orange paranoia and of ulterior motives. The most famous of the former a Roscommon magistrate who saw in conacre protests (circa 1839 I think) a Romanish conspiracy taking in priests, gentlemen, foreign powers and the pope! (admittedly a very extreme example!)
Suitable controls for this I think include:
(1) What are Roman Catholic elites saying? (who do not have an interest in overestimating popular Catholic sectarianism – but quite the opposite).
(2) What is the evidence from the subaltern documentary record? (e.g. notices, songs, whatever snippet from here or there we have of people’s voices).
In regard to R.C. elites the R.C. Bishop of Limerick either sermonises against or issues a pastoral letter against the Pastorini prophecies (I cannot remember which), now he has no reason to invent this as an issue – quite the contrary. Only two R.C. Bishops took this action (including him). For the general reader the Pastorini prophecies referenced above refers to the popular interpretation of those prophecies as meaning the Protestants of Ireland would suffer a severe downfall in the mid 1820s (rebellion, massacre, invasion – that sort of thing was foretold as their fate).
In regard to the second point there are sectarian Rockite notices from Limerick – Gibbon’s book contains at least two.
Any reports on attacks on churches are explained “by they being a symbol of wealth rather than religion” perhaps only if you want to explain away popular sectarianism (and while Donnelly thinks attacks on churches were confined to Rockism – if I remember right – I have came across – in passing – ones connected to the Tithe war – this is quite different to the anti-tithe protests associated with the Rightboys in the 1780s and is indicative of a growing sectarianism in the pre-famine period).
“There’s some element of us going over the same old ground again, but this is a profoundly interesting area.”
It can be difficult to get continuity in the format of comments on a blog like this
“Firstly your definition of the Labour movement is I believe too narrow as is your definition of Sinn Féin and the IRA. To restate that SF was a cross-class alliance and therefore consequently antithetical to working class struggle with no reference to what actually went on is not, I believe, sufficient. Research in the area which I’ve referenced above indicates the opposite.”
What is your understanding of what my definition of the Labour movement?
What is your understanding of what my definition of SF and the IRA?
You state you consider it too narrow yet you do not indicate how. From what I can see you are of the belief that the Labour Movement and the Nationalist movement were intertwined – that there was a synergy. I do not accept this – while undoubtedly the workers movement supported the movement for national liberation and there was undoubtedly some element of joint membership (quite a few SF councillors elected in 1920 were ITGWU members and in some instances the LP andSF divided up the seats between them) – I will stand by my assertion that there is little evidence of a crossover among the activists of both movements. Nationalist activists were not Labour movement activists except for a very small number.
I have argued that the Nationalist movement was a cross-class alliance – all nationalist movement are – and I have argued that the leadership of SF and the IRA during this period with a handful of exceptions fell squarely behind the interests of the native bourgeoisie.
“You seem averse to noting the support given, passively in some respects, active in others by workers to the national struggle. “
No I am not – I fully recognise and have stated this more than once – Support of whatever form from workers does not mean uncritical support or an acceptance of the cross-class nature of the movement. In particular the Marxists that existed within the workers movement adopted a class position, not a nationalist position.
“You suggest that of those who were trade unionists only one was a crossover – Robert Byrne. But Kostick on p.153 lists off the following:”
Actually I am arguing that Byrne was not a union activist – he was an IRA volunteer. He was nominally secretary of the post office clerks branch in Limerick but there is only one single record of him ever having attended a trade union meeting – a meeting of the Trades Council that was discussing his dismissal from the post office for IRA activity. As for the others that you list – with all due respect to Kostick – those names that I recognise could not in most cases be remotely classed as left-wing activists – at best they were social democrats who coat-tailed the nationalist movement with O’Brien, Foran and Fallon and worked to derail the radicalisation that existed.
“Kostick continues on the same page to note that hardly a speech at Labour conferences during the period was made without reference to Connolly and the national struggle. He also lists the support that the national struggle was given by the labour movement and workers. “
Is this a surprise – every trade union bureaucrat in the country was adept at rabble rousing – the leadership of the ITGWU regularly invoked various soviets, including the ones they had sabotaged, to ‘rally the troops’. Furthermore the leadership of the ILPTUC regularly ensured that left-wing organisers were excluded from Congress – Dowling attended once from Limerick in the five years he was an ITGWU organiser and that was in 1918. Measures were consistantly put in place to prevent criticism of the leadership and enormous pressure put on activists not to ‘split the movement’.
“These were comrades, friends and so on who would see a common interest [as you yourself note above] in progressing the national struggle whatever issues they might have had – and given the labour movement and workers tended syndicalist during the period probably they didn’t have that many to begin with – with its composition, direction etc. “
These comrades, friends and so on were facing one another regularly on opposite sides of a picket line – I can give a large list of strike action that occurred in the North Munster region that took place in the businesses of prominent nationalists. I can cite instances of union activists threatening prominent republicans and republicans threatening (and worse) trade union activists. Just because workers, and in particular the activist layer, supported the independence struggle does not automatically equate to uncritical support for nationalists.
“So rather than an antagonistic relationship, which you propose, there was a complementary one. In some ways, whether we believe it to be a correct perception on their part at this remove, they would have most likely seen the national struggle as an extension of the socialist/syndicalist one and certainly not adversarial, and perhaps viewed it like that as late as the start of the civil war when the reality of the Free State came into view.”
I can quote numerous archival documents and interviews with the republican leadership showing their antipathy to the workers movement and their efforts to derail it.
“Added to this I don’t believe you give sufficient weight to the context of a national struggle within which these industrial and agricultural disputes/soviets were somewhat marginal – not least because the soviets appear to have had no serious agenda to contest either the British state or the successor one led by SF in all its variegated wonder.”
I fundamentally disagree with this – in a previous debate on this subject when this issue was raised I pointed out accurately that there was hardly a single incident where the IRA took over and occupied so much as a farmhouse – yet the workers movement repeatedly occupied workplaces, combines and in many cases entire towns and villages for period from a few days to three months in some incidents in relation to the Munster Soviets. To suggest that the British ruling class and the Irish national bourgeoisie felt zero threat from such actions at a time when the entire continent of Europe was in turmoil with emerging soviets and socialist revolutionary uprising is to do the same as Irish historiography has done for decades – to dismiss the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland during this period.
“That alone would explain why there was what appears to be indifference on the part of republicans as a whole. They – the soviets – weren’t a threat from a republican perspective, and where their activities weren’t supported by Republicans – as they seem to have been much of the time – they were easily [and yes in many instances where this happened - and in the main this seems to have been from the Truce onwards, and increasingly severe with the introduction of the SIC, it is to the shame of republicans] swept aside.”
Several points here –
1. If there were not seen as a threat why did the SF leadership order military action against the soviets?
2. If they were not a threat why was O’Brien constantly being harangued by the SF leadership to force their abandonment
3. If they were not a threat why was there enormous pressure put on the workers movement to accept arbitration by the Dail courts?
4. You state that republicans ‘in many instances’ supported the soviets – please provide evidence to back up such an assertion.
5. The key factor in the soviets being ‘swept aside’ lies with the failure of the leadership of the ILPTUC to engage in solidarity action despite repeated promises to do so during this period. The betrayal of the Limerick soviet was repeated on numerous occasions throughout this time. The general strikes of 1918 and 1920 demonstrated that when the workers movement took national action there was not force on the island capable of opposing it.
“The phrase ‘bigger fish to fry’ from their perspective comes to mind. Where you’ve provided evidence of any ‘republican’ intervention in strikes these have appeared piecemeal and not part of consistent pattern until the Free State – which makes sense because arguably the majority of the most right wing SF elements went that way.”
Prior to the Free State republicans ordered the IRA to remove occupying workers at the Bruree soviet, at the Castleconnell soviet and at the Kilmallock general strike. The leadership of republicanism imposed a curfew in Kilmallock and the surrounding districts and protected strikebreakers during the farm labourers strike at Bulgaden in 1921. The IRA kidnapped several strike leaders in East Limerick in the last few months of 1921. The leadership of Sinn Fein consciously attempted to split the trade union movement along national lines and laid plans to shoot members of British trade unions if they worked to prevent this happening – they funded the establishment of the right-wing Irish Engineering Union that engaged in consistent strike breaking activity in the latter half of 1921 and into 1922. Prominent SF members supported the establishment of the Farmers Freedom Force and some even declared the priority was preventing Bolshevism in Ireland.
“I suspect you are dismissing Campbells work perhaps too easily. His research provides evidence that, contrary to your assertions, there was no attempt to ‘suppress’ such movements there was instead a strong sympathy for and an effort to assist such movements – as he says even where some SF leadership members were strongly antagonistic to the means taken. It says as much in the pieces I quote above. “
No I am not – I do not know enough about this episode to pass any judgement – I stated that the leadership of the nationalist movement regarded it as having the potential to tear the IRA apart along class lines and acted to suppress it. There is archival material in existence to back this up.
“In all of this it’s absolutely essential to grasp how relatively powerful republican forces were during this period – not necessarily in military terms [though it seems clear that for prolonged periods they had strong military capabilities in various parts of the island], but in terms of their hold on aspects of the civil society and administration.”
I will attempt to pose this in another way – there has been ample works written about the republican movement during this period – indeed that overwhelming majority of the historiography of this period is about the nationalist struggle. I would argue that it is absolutely essential to grasp how relatively powerful the workers movement was during this period – how it permeated the most isolated rural hinterland – how it developed a class consciousness – how it used every method of class struggle – how it dominated the political and industrial scene across whole swathes of the country – how as Markievicz feared Labour was threatening to ‘swamp SF’. The history of the workers movement during this period has been buried under a mountain of republican/nationalist propaganda for nearly a century and it is time it was brought out into the fresh air.
I have no problem with being accused of over-emphasising the importance of the workers movement during this period. Given the suppression of this history for so long it deserves to be pushed – and pushed unwaveringly. But I would argue that the evidence for a powerful and vibrant workers movement with a radicalised class consciousness and a potential to bring about a successful socialist revolution in Ireland existed and the more research that is done (and I, like others, have barely scratched the surface) the more the evidence will mount that this assessment is accurate. A case in point – the article about the students strike on the East Wall posted two days ago gives a flavour of what is missing from the history of this period.
Final point – the researching and writing of history of the workers movement during this period is, in my opinion, a vital task for the socialist movement in this country. The outlining of this history is capable of contributing to the restoration of a lost tradition of workers struggle in this country and it can demonstrate the vital role that the workers movement played in the defeat of British Imperialism in the period 1919-1922 – a defeat that was only partially concluded because of the sell-out of nationalism – a sell-out that was inevitable because of the nature of nationalism in a colonial country sitting in the lap of its imperial master and a sell-out that continues to this day.
Just to come in on a few of the points raised here.
I’ve already said that it seems that the terms labour movement and workers’ movement are being used to refer to what was actually a fairly small group of people within the ITGWU, and the workers who partook of various strikes. I’m not sure that referring to people as social democrats automatically excludes them from being considered as part of the labour movement/workers’ movement. And any definition that does so for the period 1919-21, when the relationship between social democracy and Marxism was a lot closer than it was to be subsequently, seems to me to be one that people at the time would certainly not have accepted. And what of the trade union leaders? Are they being counted as in or out here?
Above you say “(quite a few SF councillors elected in 1920 were ITGWU members and in some instances the LP andSF divided up the seats between them) – I will stand by my assertion that there is little evidence of a crossover among the activists of both movements. Nationalist activists were not Labour movement activists except for a very small number.”
So almost in the same breath you say quite a few SF councillors were in the ITGWU but that there were only a very small number of nationalist activists who were labour activists. I assume that you are drawing a distinction between members and activists, but we’d need to see a definition for activist to be sure we are all talking about the same thing.
As for the leadership of SF. Campbell demonstrates that there were (at least) two main positions on the question of land redistribution, which all the leaders of SF accepted in principle. One was the wait til we get the other stuff sorted out, or at least manage it closely type line; the other was a much more radical one outlined in a pamphlet published by SF. He also details a long history of agrarian radicalism in the area which SF in the period in question continued to a large extent for a number of years, even though there was a central policy of tightly controlling land redistribution, action against ranchers etc.
These are important arguments, especially when added to Kostick. Referring to the process analysed by Campbell as an episode, and not engaging with the general argument, doesn’t seem to me to be taking it sufficiently seriously, even if one’s intent were to refute it.
No-one is suggesting that there wasn’t a large element of good old-fashioned religious bourgeois Irish nationalism in SF, at both the ordinary membership and leadership level, with the same being true for the IRA. What is being questioned is the extent to which we can write off the idea there were also radical elements at both levels. It seems strange to me to say that the IRA and SF were riddled with class tensions, and then go on to effectively deny that these might have been manifested in ideological or practical terms within the movement at the same time as actions were being taken against strikes etc. For example, David Fitzpatrick is of the opinion that in Clare many IRA actions were actions to seize lands. Where does that idea fit in to all this? It might be fair to say that sympathy for the independence movemnent among workers did not mean uncritical support for nationalism. Equally, it doesn’t seem impossible that one could be left-wing and support SF while being critical of aspects of its social policy or its leaders.
I think there’s still the issue of a need to discuss about whether the legitimacy of generalising from the situation in Limerick/parts of Munster. You’ve said above that you feel that the soviets had changed character by 1921/22 and had become revolutionary. There’s a letter in the Irish Independent on September 20th 1921 under the heading “The Soviets of Drogheda” from the secretary of the Drogheda branch of the Irish Engineering Union which focuses solely on rates of pay being brought down on the basis of them being reduced in England, and links disputes in Drogheda, Dublin and Limerick to this issue. This may or may not have been an issue of a right-wing union official, but I don’t think we can assume that what he was saying was unrepresentative of those in his branch unless we have reasons for thinking otherwise (there’s a letter from “Soviet” the next day saying that labour leaders’ weakness is a problem and thanking the Indepndenent for proving this. I’m tempted to wonder if it isn’t someone stirring the pot).
Regarding hostility to anything that seemed to threaten the integrity of the independence struggle. This could have been fears of class being put before country. But it could also have been for reasons of military need and efficiency, or as part of an overall policy of substituting Dáil for British institutions in every walk of life
or whatever. It seems to me other possibilities need to be addressed, not ignored.
In the trade unions issue, there’s still the issue of by far the biggest one being already a separate Irish union, and being founded as such by the leading lights of the Irish left. Are we so sure that moves to found Irish trade unions were solely the responsibility of a terrified bourgeois nationalist leadership fearful of class war? Is it possible workers themselves wanted this as part of building towards independence, or even that SF wanted it as part of a strategy of creating Irish institutions in all walks of life?
There’s also still the issue of ignoring sectarianism and the north in this debate.
“The outlining of this history is capable of contributing to the restoration of a lost tradition of workers struggle in this country and it can demonstrate the vital role that the workers movement played in the defeat of British Imperialism in the period 1919-1922 – a defeat that was only partially concluded because of the sell-out of nationalism – a sell-out that was inevitable because of the nature of nationalism in a colonial country sitting in the lap of its imperial master and a sell-out that continues to this day.”
I’d have thought that the major reason for the failure to fully defeat British imperialism was the fact that about a fifth or a quarter of the peopulation, heavily concentrated in the north-east and including a high proportion of the modern industrial workers, wanted to remain part of the UK. I have to say that these people have been as absent from certain parts of the discussion as they have been in some of the more unreconstructed nationalist versions of the past, although this could reflect a mentality unconsciously shaped by partition.
There’s not one of us here who doesn’t think labour history or the grasping of the class dynamics of Irish politics is important both historically and politically. We’d all like it if it were true that there was the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland in the period in question. However, if the attempt to build the case is made through ignoring absolutely central issues at the time or in the way people have written about it, while arguing from the contested meaning of specific events in particular places to the general or from certain evidence while ignoring evidence to the contrary, or by shaping events to fit a particular theory of history in a mechanical way, then the danger is that the message about the centrality of class politics gets lost in the scepticism about claims being made.
The ITGWU membership went from about 5,000 in 1916 to in excess of 120,000 by 1922. In Limerick it didn’t exist until September of 1917 and by 1922 has over 6,000 members. It was by far and away the most radical section of the labour movement in Limerick and country-wide. The ITGWU, despite the efforts of O’Brien to emasculate it, was a fighting, combative, left-wing trade union with a layer of Marxist industrial organisers and activists and a wider layer of left-wingers. The ITGWU was in effect the left-wing of the workers movement and by 1921 the autonomy of the local branches was leading to a situation whereby the national leadership were no longer able to control the vast bulk of the rank-and-file, while the most radical of the industrial organisers had huge respect and support. This was demonstrated when O’Brian removed Scanlon as organiser in Tipperary at the behest of Michael Collins. The members of the branch demanded a mass meeting to discuss his removal which O’Brien was forced to concede and when the IRA turned up to intimidate the ITGWU members they were humiliated when hundreds, to a man, publically declared their support for Scanlon who was then re-instated.
The leadership of the ITGWU at the time – O’Brien, Fallon and Foran were, by today’s standard, lef-wing leaders. However, the objective conditions in 1919-1922 were radically different than the presnt day and the betrayal of the movement by O’Brien etc was substantially greater than the behaviour of Begg and his lackeys today.
Now – in relation to the ITGWU members elected as SF councillors. I will address the situation in Liemrick as I know it best. Six ITGWU members were elected as SF councillors in Limerick city – one, Michael Reddan, was a union activist – the rest weren’t. Interestingly none of the Labour councillors were elected were members of the ITGWU who appear to have boycotted (mistakenly) the 1920 locals in protest at Johnson refusing to allow the establishment of a LP in Limerick. In Newcastle West 15 councillors were eleceted unopposed 8 SF and 7 Labour – all of them members of the ITGWU. None of the SF councillors were active in their union – all of the Labour councillors were. I would argue with a fair degree of certainty that the reason for the deal in NCW was that SF recognised the strength of the ITGWU in the area and made the approach for a deal rather than having to fight it out with Labour and possibly lose. For the previous year the local SF reps in the region had been running a relentless campaign of criticism of the ITGWU, attacking strikes and supporting farmers ‘in the national interest’ and condemning the ‘alien ideology of socialism that was being imported from Britain’.
In relation to Cambell’s work all I can do is refer back to the archival material in my first post -
“1920 was no ordinary outbreak…an immense rise in the value of land and farm products threw into more vivid relief than ever before the high profits of ranchers, and the hopeless outlook of the landless men and uneconomic holders…All this was a grave menace to the Republic. The mind of the people was being diverted from the struggle for freedom by a class war, and there was every likelihood that this class war might be carried into the ranks of the republican army itself which was drawn in the main from the agricultural population and was largely officered by farmer’s sons…”(Ministry for Home Affairs, The Constructive Work of Dáil Eireann, No.1, The National Police and Courts of Justice, p.12)
In my opinion this amply demonstrates the fears of the SF leadership and the attitude they had to what was happening. In my opinion it is nonsense to suggest that the SF leadership were not worried about the workers movement and that “it could also have been for reasons of military need and efficiency, or as part of an overall policy of substituting Dáil for British institutions in every walk of life or whatever. It seems to me other possibilities need to be addressed, not ignored.” They were terrified of a class war tearing the IRA asunder and took all necessary measures to stop it.
Yes there were radical elements in the rank-and-file of the IRA – The fears of the leadership that the IRA was on the verge of being pulled apart by class antagonisms sugests that they recognised it too – But – I would suggest you could outline who were the radical elements among the leadership of SF? Markievicz, despite her reputation, was certainly not.
Now one of the failures of the leadership of the labour movement – and the Marxists – is that they did not make a class appeal to the ranks of the IRA and attempt to split them from a cross-class alliance with the bourgeois elements. If they had done so then it is likely that it would have been the ILPTUC rather than SF who assumed the leadership of the struggle for both national and economic liberation.
Was the movement generalised outside of Limerick – absolutely. The focus at the time of the civil war was the Munster soviets – but the radicalisation of the labour movement and in particular the ITGWU was country-wide.
By the way – in your reference to Drogheda – you should be aware that the IEU was a right-wing SF sponsored union designed to break strikes and split the trade union movement along national lines.
Now – I fundementally disagree with the assertion that the soviets were merely workplace occupations. They most definitely had a political component. Recently John O’Callaghan published a book on ‘Revolutionary Limerick’ where he dismisses out of hand the power and influence of the Limerick labour movement. In talking about the Knocklong Soviet he claims that because they flew a tricolour over the creamery it was ‘green-tinted butter’ that was produced. What he conveniently ignored was that the workers also flew the red flag – posted a plaque on the creamery door with the inscription ‘Knocklong Soviet Workers Creamery’ and hung a huge banner across the front of the building with ‘We Make Butter Not Profits’ on it. You could argue that it was merely a factory occupation with green-tinted butter – I would argue that it was a political and industrial action that demonstrated the power of the working class is a small East Limerick village. The Limerick Leader reported that the workers not only controlled the creamery but the entire village and ran the village through the soviet for five days.
In relation to sectarianism and the North – repeatedly during this period the working class in the North demonstrated their support for united class action. The SF leadership itself was of the opinion that ‘Labour in Ulster was not Carsonite, but clearly internationalist’. The pogroms were designed primary to attack the workers movement and split it along religious lines – up to 1/3 of the workers driven out of the shipyards were Protestant trade union activists. Even up to 1922 a united workers movement could have driven sectarianism back if the ILPTUC leadership had organised on a class basis instead of coat-tailing SF.
As for the failure to defeat British Imperialism – that lies squarely at the door of the nationalist movement. The workers movement and the Protestant working class bear absolutely no responsibility for it. The native bourgeois class in this country was too small and far too weak to ever be able to defeat British Imperialism (and the same applies to the republican movement today). It was inevitable that SF (or sections of it) would come to an accomodation with imperialism. In exactly the same way that the current SF ahve come to an accomodation with Imerpialism – it was always going to happen in 1922. While British Imperialism could not destroy the aspirations for self-determination among the Irish working class and small farmers, SF could never defeat the Brits. The only force on the island with the power to defeat British Imperialism was a united working class movement. It demonstrated its power in 1918 against conscription and in 1920 in forcing the release of republican and trade union prisoners. To this day the only force that can defeat imperialism on this island is a movement of a united working class Protestant and Catholic.
Finally – I am ignoring nothing – most importantly the ‘central issues’ as you call them. The potential for a socialist revolution existed in Ireland between 1919-1922. The potential existed for the defeat of British Imperialism but this could only be achieved as part of the process of scoailist revolution. For 90 years the stength, power and role of the wrokers movement during 1919-1922 has been buried – the evidence is there it is time to take it out, dust it off and reclaim the historical legacy of the Irish working class.
PS – quickly in relation to the ESB – the building of the Ardnacrusha power station saw the most vicious battle against the Irish working class that the Irish bourgeoisie has ever waged since independence. It was a strike that was provoked in order to deal a final blow to the power of the working class in this country in the aftermath of the ‘Red Flag’ years. Dozens of workers were killed and hundreds injured during the building of the power station – their suffering has never been recognised. Dozens of families of site workers were forced to live in hay barns and pig-styes paying exhorbitant rents to local farmers. People were forced to travel from all over the country to work on the site and then dumped out of a job within three months and left sleeping on the side of the road in a ditch without a penny to their names. Tens of thousands of workers from all over the country slaved in the most atrocious conditions to build that testament to Cumann na nGaedheal and it is another legacy that should be reclaimed by the workers movement in this country.
JRG, in response to your comment #18
I don’t believe the two movements were entwined, I’d see it as movements running on parallel courses with some points of overlap, some of greater importance and others not so much. Synergy doesn’t imply intertwining, but rather two forces gaining energy from each other.
I believe that you are far too locked into an idea of SF and the IRA as cross class – in regard to the terms that you use, that you are unnecessarily constraining your ability to engage with their complexity. For you they are cross-class and therefore per definition inimical to working class interests. I see it quite differently. I see them as being cross class and therefore displaying different faces at different times depending on who was involved and so on. Hence the pre-Treaty IRA appears to me to have had a much more leftish hue, whereas the pro-Treaty IRA seems to be substantially different to the anti-Treaty IRA. But, I’d also argue that in general terms there was a greater rather than a lesser progressive aspect to both SF and the IRA during the period albeit recognizing that in specific instances they acted in some places and times against working class interests.
I also, as I’ve stated previously think you don’t fully appreciate in your analysis the fact that the national struggle was the central focus of SF and the IRA. And this explains many of the actions which you paint as being anti-working class and therefore evidence of an intrinsic bias against that class by republicans. Because you’re unable to move beyond the framework of your concept of a cross class alliance you’re therefore restricted in understanding that such an alliance could operate both in positive and negative ways, and in a general dynamic could potentially operate more to the good, or the bad… In the case of the IRA and SF I think it is the former, that broadly speaking they were socially more radical rather than less. Of course this reflects our respective political positions – perhaps, but even putting that aside great claims demand great proof.
No I am not – I fully recognise and have stated this more than once – Support of whatever form from workers does not mean uncritical support or an acceptance of the cross-class nature of the movement. In particular the Marxists that existed within the workers movement adopted a class position, not a nationalist position.
This is where your definition of the Labour movement comes into question. You already consider that the movement wasn’t fit for purpose because it was syndicalist. You’ve made that very clear above. You’ve also berated the movement leadership. But then you further restrict your definition by fixing on this tiny handful of ‘Marxists’ as the only true representatives of that movements. But that’s entirely contradictory. The syndicalists [or if you prefer your own anachronistic usage of 'social democrats'] were the ones who were representative of it as it overwhelmingly was, not the ‘Marxists’ and therefore it’s tilting the scales of history on your part to ascribe all virtue to the latter and almost personify them as the movement, when the reality was it was the latter who were truly representative of the movement. For worse in many ways. For worse.
,“You suggest that of those who were trade unionists only one was a crossover – Robert Byrne. But Kostick on p.153 lists off the following:”
Actually I am arguing that Byrne was not a union activist – he was an IRA volunteer. He was nominally secretary of the post office clerks branch in Limerick but there is only one single record of him ever having attended a trade union meeting – a meeting of the Trades Council that was discussing his dismissal from the post office for IRA activity. As for the others that you list – with all due respect to Kostick – those names that I recognise could not in most cases be remotely classed as left-wing activists – at best they were social democrats who coat-tailed the nationalist movement with O’Brien, Foran and Fallon and worked to derail the radicalisation that existed.
Well that’s no respect at all to Kostick. And you introduce two diversions. Firstly you now say you weren’t arguing that Byrne wasn’t a trade unionist. But that makes no sense in the context of your original contribution given that you directly mention him in relation to crossovers between labour and republicanism as the only example you could think of. You introduced his name, not I. Secondly you introduce the terms ‘social democrats’ and ‘left-wing activists’ into this context when they have no relevance to what we were discussing [and I think Garibaldy has reasonably pointed out the problematic aspects of the usage of the former term].
Let me quote you exactly… you said “there was zero evidence (for Limerick anyway) of any cross-over between the workers movement and the IRA.” That’s demonstrably incorrect… however… when I prove that that is incorrect by quoting Kostick’s list of members of the former who were involved in the latter – perfect evidence of precisely that cross-over – you then dismiss them as not really being ‘left-wing activists’ and – the horror – ‘social democrats’. But that’s evading the issue. Who asked for a list of activists? Who mentioned ‘social democrats’ You didn’t, you said there was no evidence of a cross-over and it’s only when it’s proven that there was that you try to shift the ground. Kostick himself notes that those listed ‘were but one of many TU organizers… and there were doubtless many others’.
“Kostick continues on the same page to note that hardly a speech at Labour conferences during the period was made without reference to Connolly and the national struggle. He also lists the support that the national struggle was given by the labour movement and workers. “
Is this a surprise – every trade union bureaucrat in the country was adept at rabble rousing – the leadership of the ITGWU regularly invoked various soviets, including the ones they had sabotaged, to ‘rally the troops’. Furthermore the leadership of the ILPTUC regularly ensured that left-wing organisers were excluded from Congress – Dowling attended once from Limerick in the five years he was an ITGWU organiser and that was in 1918. Measures were consistantly put in place to prevent criticism of the leadership and enormous pressure put on activists not to ‘split the movement’.
But we’re not talking about the relationship within the Labour movement as regards left and right, we’re talking about the relationship between the Labour movement and Republicans. And the historical record is that this was good, and not merely rhetorically but also in terms of activism.
These comrades, friends and so on were facing one another regularly on opposite sides of a picket line – I can give a large list of strike action that occurred in the North Munster region that took place in the businesses of prominent nationalists. I can cite instances of union activists threatening prominent republicans and republicans threatening (and worse) trade union activists. Just because workers, and in particular the activist layer, supported the independence struggle does not automatically equate to uncritical support for nationalists.
No one said it did. What you did say though by contrast is that there was little support or even connections between labour and republicans. I’ve demonstrated through recourse to Kostick that there were clear links between labour and Republicans. You haven’t demonstrated otherwise.
You keep citing Munster as if it were the be all and end of this. You also use extremely narrow and specific instances and make significant generalizations. And further you generalize entirely with you ‘list of strike actions… businesses of prominent nationalists’ – which again elides the two with no differentiation or appreciation of the complexity of the make up of SF, whether these were officially sanctioned SF or IRA actions, etc, etc.
“So rather than an antagonistic relationship, which you propose, there was a complementary one. In some ways, whether we believe it to be a correct perception on their part at this remove, they would have most likely seen the national struggle as an extension of the socialist/syndicalist one and certainly not adversarial, and perhaps viewed it like that as late as the start of the civil war when the reality of the Free State came into view.”
I can quote numerous archival documents and interviews with the republican leadership showing their antipathy to the workers movement and their efforts to derail it.
And equally we have evidence that they also supported workers a la Fergus Campbell’s research. In other words all that can generally be said is that there were mixed views [and again I draw your attention to Campbell's evidence that even where the republican leadership was divided on agitation it was overwhelmingly over the actions taken rather than the agitation itself] but again that in general republicans tended to more rather than less progressive views, at least up to the estb of the Free State when the most conservative elements from the former SF took control.
“Added to this I don’t believe you give sufficient weight to the context of a national struggle within which these industrial and agricultural disputes/soviets were somewhat marginal – not least because the soviets appear to have had no serious agenda to contest either the British state or the successor one led by SF in all its variegated wonder.”
I fundamentally disagree with this – in a previous debate on this subject when this issue was raised I pointed out accurately that there was hardly a single incident where the IRA took over and occupied so much as a farmhouse – yet the workers movement repeatedly occupied workplaces, combines and in many cases entire towns and villages for period from a few days to three months in some incidents in relation to the Munster Soviets. To suggest that the British ruling class and the Irish national bourgeoisie felt zero threat from such actions at a time when the entire continent of Europe was in turmoil with emerging soviets and socialist revolutionary uprising is to do the same as Irish historiography has done for decades – to dismiss the potential for socialist revolution in Ireland during this period.
You yourself admit that you have no evidence as to the scale of these takeovers. The current historical record suggests they were limited. Kostick himself admits that he considers that most were factory disputes. That historical record points to a reality where when the basic reasons for such actions were resolved, mostly by agreement for the first three years, unfortunately by force subsequent to that, they folded. I cannot reiterate this enough times, in part because you continue to offer only your belief rather than any actual evidence or even theoretical construct to explain that inconvenient fact away.
And all this suggests that fundamentally these were not serious threats to state power, that they had no cohesive nationwide plan, that they didn’t act in concert except in highly localized contexts. Try as you may you cannot transcend that and simply reiterating it as if it is fact, and now trying to match it to a pattern of Europe wide agitation , simply isn’t sufficient.
You yourself dismissed the potential for socialist revolution from the off by noting the non-existence of a vanguard party with which to lead it. I genuinely don’t understand why you seek to undercut your own thesis by trying to conceptually smuggle the idea of the soviets as a revolutionary situation or precursor of same in through the back door. By your own logic it wouldn’t have mattered if instead of the couple of hundred disputes and strikes and various actions we know of across the four years under investigation there were tens of thousands because your proposition is that in the absence of a vanguard party they’d have come to naught [by the way, I disagree with that analysis entirely. I think a genuine mass level of politicised strikes/disputes/soviets could have pushed even the syndicalist LP into a more left position giving it greater power and influence in republicanism and in shaping the eventual political outcomes - whether though the British would have allowed such an eventuality or more likely imposed a military regime is an open question. From their perspective a 'Free State' was near unthinkable. A radical left/republic… hmmm…].
Several points here – 1. If there were not seen as a threat why did the SF leadership order military action against the soviets? 2. If they were not a threat why was O’Brien constantly being harangued by the SF leadership to force their abandonment 3. If they were not a threat why was there enormous pressure put on the workers movement to accept arbitration by the Dail courts? 4. You state that republicans ‘in many instances’ supported the soviets – please provide evidence to back up such an assertion. 5. The key factor in the soviets being ‘swept aside’ lies with the failure of the leadership of the ILPTUC to engage in solidarity action despite repeated promises to do so during this period. The betrayal of the Limerick soviet was repeated on numerous occasions throughout this time. The general strikes of 1918 and 1920 demonstrated that when the workers movement took national action there was not force on the island capable of opposing it.
1. This was a situation of guerilla conflict shading into open war, they wanted no diversions from their ultimate goal.
2. See 1.
3. Because Sinn Féin believed they were in charge of the state and Sinn Féin, even as populist nationalists weren’t socialists! Why would they afford legitimacy to entities beyond their control of the state, beyond their control? They were in the state building business, not the class war. That was their goal and their focus. You’re asking them to be that which they weren’t, just as you’re asking the Labour movement which you yourself admit was syndicalist to act as if it were Marxist. We can give out till the cows come home about the failings of the labour movement [and party] during this period, but you’re stetting a standard of ‘Marxism’ which is simply inapposite. The problem wasn’t that they failed to match a ‘Marxist’ standard but they failed to match a syndicalist one.
4. Limerick soviet, IRA assisted in bringing food into the city to the soviet [Kostick p81], support including attacking scabs and raids during railworkers actions in support of soviets 1920, General Strike – individual soviets had ‘strong Labour and SF representation’… etc, etc. And obviously in the pre-Truce period effectively passive support for soviets. Indeed it’s telling that IRA actions against strikes are really only found once the Truce was signed and once the pro-Treaty side took effective control [this is someting Kostick's research is particularly clear on].
5. See 3. But as regards the General Strikes, you ignore the point that the workers weren’t oriented towards a left outcome, they were oriented towards a national one. Again you yourself have accepted much earlier that there was no structure/party to lead them to the former so why do you keep maintaining rhetorically that there was a serious potential for a left outcome?
Prior to the Free State republicans ordered the IRA to remove occupying workers at the Bruree soviet, at the Castleconnell soviet and at the Kilmallock general strike. The leadership of republicanism imposed a curfew in Kilmallock and the surrounding districts and protected strikebreakers during the farm labourers strike at Bulgaden in 1921. The IRA kidnapped several strike leaders in East Limerick in the last few months of 1921. The leadership of Sinn Fein consciously attempted to split the trade union movement along national lines and laid plans to shoot members of British trade unions if they worked to prevent this happening – they funded the establishment of the right-wing Irish Engineering Union that engaged in consistent strike breaking activity in the latter half of 1921 and into 1922. Prominent SF members supported the establishment of the Farmers Freedom Force and some even declared the priority was preventing Bolshevism in Ireland.
During the Truce when the IRA sought to consolidate its power as the state authority. Lamentable, but understandable in the sense that they were attempting to regroup in the face of the British. This is another factor you ignore, that this was a situation of often extreme conflict. Again you’re asking the IRA to operate both as national liberator and on behalf of the working class, but given that it never set itself up as the latter it’s hard to understand why you expect it to do so.
Yet again you drag in the IFF, knowing that it was a creature of the IFU, not of SF – and that in truth its activities were so limited as to be afforded but one reference in Kostick and almost not at all elsewhere. That some SF members were involved simply demonstrates that SF itself was a cross class movement, not that it was proto-fascist or whatever, any more than the involvement of ITGWU members in SF [as noted by Kostick] demonstrates that SF was a syndicalist grouping.
“I suspect you are dismissing Campbells work perhaps too easily. His research provides evidence that, contrary to your assertions, there was no attempt to ‘suppress’ such movements there was instead a strong sympathy for and an effort to assist such movements – as he says even where some SF leadership members were strongly antagonistic to the means taken. It says as much in the pieces I quote above. “
No I am not – I do not know enough about this episode to pass any judgement – I stated that the leadership of the nationalist movement regarded it as having the potential to tear the IRA apart along class lines and acted to suppress it. There is archival material in existence to back this up.
You continually slip away from Campbell – indeed you don’t engage one bit with his research. But given that he has written the essential text on this, and by the way written it from a leftwing position, I’m at a loss to understand why you aren’t referencing his work on the matter – as distinct from references to non-specified archival material. This isn’t simply an academic point, Campbell’s research is fundamental to understanding the complexity of the dynamics extant during this period. If one hasn’t read him then its difficult to grasp that complexity to its fullest extent.
I will attempt to pose this in another way – there has been ample works written about the republican movement during this period – indeed that overwhelming majority of the historiography of this period is about the nationalist struggle. I would argue that it is absolutely essential to grasp how relatively powerful the workers movement was during this period – how it permeated the most isolated rural hinterland – how it developed a class consciousness – how it used every method of class struggle – how it dominated the political and industrial scene across whole swathes of the country – how as Markievicz feared Labour was threatening to ‘swamp SF’. The history of the workers movement during this period has been buried under a mountain of republican/nationalist propaganda for nearly a century and it is time it was brought out into the fresh air.
There’s a reason the overwhelming historiography is about the national struggle, that’s because the national struggle was the predominant dynamic within the society on political, social and economic levels. No one, least of all me, denies there were other forces at work, and I think it’s vital to research these which is why what you have done is so useful, but these were much weaker in terms of the overall context, and why on earth is that a surprise given the power of nationalism [of whatever stripe] to shape events and history, a power which in the local, as in a context such as 1913-1923 is arguably much powerful when itself shaped and in certain contexts than class struggle. This isn’t to deny agency to class struggle, but class struggle appears to me to be more powerful across longer time periods and less so across shorter ones.
This is where I have a fundamental disagreement with your thesis. You’re using scattered events to try to create a tapestry of ‘class struggle’ which you appear to argue is equal to or greater than the national struggle. But, for all the valiant efforts of those involved they simply aren’t equivalent to the protracted nature of the national struggle.
You say it above, a soviet which lasted three months. The national struggle by contrast lasted across a decade. Longer really, but a decade in terms of its most pointed aspect in the near modern period, and labour activity and agitation was – unfortunately – somewhat of a sideshow in all this or was shaped towards national ends [as with the general strike etc].
I have no problem with being accused of over-emphasising the importance of the workers movement during this period. Given the suppression of this history for so long it deserves to be pushed – and pushed unwaveringly. But I would argue that the evidence for a powerful and vibrant workers movement with a radicalised class consciousness and a potential to bring about a successful socialist revolution in Ireland existed and the more research that is done (and I, like others, have barely scratched the surface) the more the evidence will mount that this assessment is accurate. A case in point – the article about the students strike on the East Wall posted two days ago gives a flavour of what is missing from the history of this period.
The East Wall report is fantastic. But… it’s also indicative of the exception that proves the rule. How many school strikes were there? To judge from those commenting and the report itself by Joe, very few and this wasn’t a national phenomenon. So in and of itself it is brilliant, but it’s not evidence of a broader pattern. It’s not that these events are missing from the history but that there weren’t enough of them to build up into a broader history. Does that make them unimportant? Of course not. Just as the school strikes may have fed into a broader class consciousness in Dublin or some level of radicalization, so it is with the soviets – I think Tel’s point earlier about a legacy being perhaps evident in general election candidates is well made, I should when I get the time map the strikes against later local election results. The data from that might be illuminating.
And where is the suppression? And who is doing the suppressing? Historical records are freely available. Newspapers, documents and so on are accessible. Many public records on view from but a decade or less after these events. Few if any that I can think of off the top of my head from my own research in NA have been redacted or kept out of the public domain, of researchers like ourselves. And I’m trying to think how long government papers would have been kept under embargo, and I presume it was a few decades at most in the generality of cases.
There’s one further point. You can talk about suppression, but you yourself admit there were only a handful of what you consider to be ‘Marxists’ in 1919-23. That’s the reality. The left on this island has always been a minority of a minority. That’s why there’s no great history there. There weren’t enough people agitating and insufficient support from workers for such agitation. And as Kostick demonstrates often the left went over to Republicanism because that was a more vital force.
But I think there’s another problem, your critique of the labour movement is, as I noted earlier, not for what they didn’t do as regards their own pronouncements but as regards what you believe they should have done. That’s not in my view a feasible approach. It means that there’s a real danger of slipping into an analysis based on preconceived ideas rather than what is in the evidence available from the actual history.
Final point – the researching and writing of history of the workers movement during this period is, in my opinion, a vital task for the socialist movement in this country. The outlining of this history is capable of contributing to the restoration of a lost tradition of workers struggle in this country and it can demonstrate the vital role that the workers movement played in the defeat of British Imperialism in the period 1919-1922 – a defeat that was only partially concluded because of the sell-out of nationalism – a sell-out that was inevitable because of the nature of nationalism in a colonial country sitting in the lap of its imperial master and a sell-out that continues to this day.
Firstly I think you’re right in terms of pointing to the vital role that the labour movement played, even accepting its own passivity. If labour had been antagonistic to the national struggle it wouldn’t have happened. No question about it. But the chances of that were slim. The sentiment on the island [and by the way I think Garibaldy's points about how so much is left out even in this discussion as regards the cleavages in the working class north and south is well made] was overwhelmingly in favor of national struggle [and arguably nationalisms of either Irish or British varieties].
But I’m enormously dubious about using the term ‘sell-out’. Sell out in what sense? A failure, or a partial failure in terms of partition, absolutely, but a sell out? I think that’s far too harsh a reading of the events that took place in the context in which they did with all the inevitable constraints and limitations that that engendered.
And of course it is important to write an history of the workers movement but it can’t be on the basis of what we want rather than what is actually there. That way only opens us to criticism of replacing what you consider one form of propaganda with another.
I am going to add here rather than make a mess of where my answer ends up above.
In reply to Tel -
I disagree with the assessment that these ‘soviets’ were merely workplace occupations. Were they ‘soviets’ in the classic sense as in revolutionary Russia – no (and I have stated this before) – but then Ireland never reached the same stage of the revolutionary process as Russia. What I have argued is that these soviets involved not just the workplace but the wider community and had a political as well as industrial component.
I have certain issues with Kostick’s book. As I stated earlier, from my own research, I believe he over-emphasises some aspect of the struggle and under-emphasises others. There are also a few glaring inaccuracies – the most obvious being his assertion that the Limerick Labour Movement fell back into passivity after the Limerick Soviet when in fact the scale and intensity of the class struggle actually intensified. I believe he made this mistake because he took what Jim Kemmy wrote at face value rather than carrying out his own research.
Regarding the ITGWU. It’s unclear whether you are arguing that the whole union was as radical as it was in Limerick/parts of Munster or not, apart of course from the leadership. It seems to me that you are also saying that the union leaders had lost control but earlier you were saying they were able to stymie the position of the Marxists. It is of course possible that both are true depending on where you look at, but as far as I can see we are then talking about a much more nuanced picture than the whole country being as radical as Limerick.
I’m happy to take your word on the SF councillors in Limerick (although I’d still like to see how you are separating activists from members) but there were a whole lot of SF councillors elsewhere. What I am less happy to do is to automatically assume that what was true of Limerick was true of everywhere else. Especially when you have people like Campbell making the argument that, in Connacht, there was a substantial agrarian radicalism represented in SF, and that SF policy towards the ranchers was a lot less straightforward than simply supporting them.
60 pages of Campbell’s land and revolution is dedicated to the period 1918-21. In it, he discusses the official SF pamphlet written by Laurence Ginnell that included, among other things, advocating breaking up the ranches. He then recounts different views within SF, and a shift towards more caution, partly because of complaints small farmers were being targeted. He points out, however, that SF still supported actions against graziers, and goes on to detail SF involvement in radical agrarian agitation in the period (while also covering the opposition of some in SF to it). Any one or two archival quotes do not automatically win any argument, especially when counter-arguments can be made on the basis of different archival evidence (as in fact Tel has pointed out in relation to the Rockites).
No-one has suggested that the SF leadership was not worried about the workers’ movement. What I did suggest was that motivations may have been mixed. Maybe you are happy with a monocausal explanation of their motivations, I don’t find it particularly convincing myself.
Just out of curiosity, given the social composition of the IRA, what is the basis for your claim that it is “likely” that had a class appeal been made, then the ILPTUC would have been in the leadership of the movement for independence?
Regarding the Drogheda trade unionist. Is there evidence that he was unrepresentative of the workers in the factory? I’ve no idea whether he was or wasn’t, but I wouldn’t assume that being right-wing made him unrepresentative of a particular bunch of workers. As for the Irish trade unions. I still find it remarkable that with all the praise for the ITGWU, there is no attempt to explain why founding it as a separate Irish trade union was not inherently reactionary, but founding ones later was. I suspect we’re back to the monocausal thing, where any suggestion of mixed motivations or nuance is dismissed out of hand (with or without evidence to support that dismissal).
I’ve already noted that the shipyard pogroms included attacks on socialists and “rotten protestants”. Whether we can argue that the primary aim was to break up the workers’ movement on the grounds that up to 1/3 of those targeted were “rotten prods” I’m not sure. SF certainly didn’t think so. From the Dáil record:
“We, the undersigned, members of the Belfast Corporation, and others, representing the views of Irish Republicans (and many others) in that city, beg to call the earnest attention of the Dáil to the war of extermination now being waged against us, and we appeal to you to stand by us in the struggle.
“We assume that you have read the press reports of the pogrom which started on July 21st with the violent expulsion from work of well over 5,000 people; of the murders wrecking, looting and wholesale eviction of families. The situation for expelled workers grows worse daily, and all signs go to show that the persecution is to be continued with unabated vigour. No one, not being in Belfast can have any adequate idea of what our people are suffering now and must continue to suffer.
“From the first, the promoters of these outrages have been publicly declaring that they are out to fight Sinn Fein, and drive it from the North-Eastern Pale. Already thousands of young men from every county in Ireland have been forced to fly, and thousands of others are idle here with destitution staring them in the face. The only condition on which they will be permitted to work is that they sign a declaration of loyalty to the British Government.
“We earnestly appeal to Sinn Fein, through the Dáil to take up this straight challenge, and fight Belfast—the spear head of British power in Ireland. The ‘Loyalists’ have repeatedly declared at public meetings and in the Town Council that this time they are not fighting Popery as such, but Sinn Fein, so that mere sectarianism does not enter in.
“We suggest that Sinn Fein can strike back with powerful effect by a commercial boycott of Belfast. Drastic action of this kind has already been taken spontaneously in various places, but the movement ought to be made national and thorough. The chief promoters of Orange intolerance here are the heads of the distributing trade throughout Ireland.”
I’d have to go and look for whether the people responsible were saying what they are accused of saying here, but the idea that they were doing it primarily as an expression of opposition to independence sounds plausible to me.
As for the idea that working class unionists bear no responsibility for the failure to defeat British imperialism/partition or however we want to describe it. I find that a somewhat amazing statement, ignoring as it does the fact that Ulster had shown a determination to fight, and that it practically denies them any agency whatsoever.
I said that central issues were being ignored because for much of this thread we have been told that Ireland was on the verge of a socialist revolution, but on the basis of a geographically and numerically limited series of events the meanings of which are open to question, while evidence pointing to other possibilities than the interpretation being offered on a very narrow source base has been ignored, or brushed away with sweeping statements that, with the best will in the world, seem questionable to say the least (especially in relation to the north).
Of course we all agree that it would have/will take a united working class to defeat imperialism in Ireland. But that’s not really the point at issue here, when what we need to do is to be able to take an objective look at the balance of class forces at every stage to shape our political tactics.
I think we are getting to the stage of going around in some circles on this one – certainly I don’t have the time to be repeating the same comments and I don’t think the structure of the blog comments facilitates easy navigation of the arguments.
WbS you seem to be criticising my use of the words ‘opinion’ and ‘belief’. But that all history is – looking at the evidence, interpreting it and outlining an opinion based on that evidence. If history was clear-cut then we would not be having this debate. I most definitely would never claim to know all about everything and what you get from me is my opinion based on my research.
Anyway – in response to WbS
“I believe that you are far too locked into an idea of SF and the IRA as cross class – in regard to the terms that you use, that you are unnecessarily constraining your ability to engage with their complexity.”
I fully understand the complexity – the complexity is clear for Limerick as anywhere else. But you cannot simply dismiss the fact that SF/IRA of this period was a cross-class alliance. As with all nationalist movements it encompassed people from every class in society. Nationalist movements cannot operate if they only base themselves on a single class. And because of the cross class nature one class has to achieve a dominant position – either the bourgeoisie leading to collaboration with imperialism or the working class who will push it in a class direction. The class tensions can at times literally tear the movement asunder. Similar tensions within unionism actually led to the establishment of the Independent Orange Order not long before this period.
SF was ‘progressive’ in nationalist terms but not in class terms from the perspective of the working class. In the situation of the period it could be classed as a progressive movement but one, as was subsequently demonstrated, could very easily flip into reaction.
“I also, as I’ve stated previously think you don’t fully appreciate in your analysis the fact that the national struggle was the central focus of SF and the IRA. And this explains many of the actions which you paint as being anti-working class and therefore evidence of an intrinsic bias against that class by republicans.”
Of course it was the central focus of SF – that is not in dispute – they wanted to establish an independent bourgeois state. As a result, it was necessary for them to adopt anti-working class and anti-socialist measures and propaganda.
“This is where your definition of the Labour movement comes into question. You already consider that the movement wasn’t fit for purpose because it was syndicalist. You’ve made that very clear above. You’ve also berated the movement leadership. But then you further restrict your definition by fixing on this tiny handful of ‘Marxists’ as the only true representatives of that movements.”
The Marxists were the syndicalists – the leadership were singularly focussed on preserving the structure of the ITGWU at all cost. Of course the labour movement was fit for the purpose – it was the leadership that wasn’t and the fact that the Marxists were syndicalist in outlook facilitated the leadership by depriving the class of an organised political opposition. Furthermore, even a ‘tiny handful’ of Marxists (and it was more than that) can have a profound influence in a revolutionary situation.
I am not getting into Byrne as you have completely misinterpreted what I was saying.
“you said “there was zero evidence (for Limerick anyway) of any cross-over between the workers movement and the IRA.” That’s demonstrably incorrect… however… when I prove that that is incorrect by quoting Kostick’s list of members of the former who were involved in the latter – perfect evidence of precisely that cross-over – you then dismiss them as not really being ‘left-wing activists’ and – the horror – ‘social democrats’.”
What I said was that there was no cross-over between the activists in the union and the activists in the IRA. Of course there were many people who were in SF and in trade unions. The people Kostick lists were not activists – they were the union bureaucracy – a bureaucracy that simply handed leadership of the struggle to SF.
“But we’re not talking about the relationship within the Labour movement as regards left and right, we’re talking about the relationship between the Labour movement and Republicans.”
Just like you claim complexity for the nationalist movement – similar complexity existed within the labour movement. Unlike nationalism the tensions within the labour movement were not class based, but political based.
“You keep citing Munster as if it were the be all and end of this. You also use extremely narrow and specific instances and make significant generalizations.”
No I am not – I have listed evidence from all over the country – I have focussed on Limerick because that is where I have carried out detailed research.
“You yourself admit that you have no evidence as to the scale of these takeovers. The current historical record suggests they were limited. Kostick himself admits that he considers that most were factory disputes.”
No, I have not – There is significant evidence that the soviets were much more than mere factory occupations encompassing a political dimension and the community outside of the workplace. Furthermore I do have issues with Kostick’s book, parts of it are very good, but in my opinion parts, of it are written without the necessary research being conducted.
“That historical record points to a reality where when the basic reasons for such actions were resolved, mostly by agreement for the first three years, unfortunately by force subsequent to that, they folded.”
Again not correct – In most instances it was the bosses that completely folded in many circumstances conceding far more than the workers had demanded. One further thing of not is that during the Munster soviets the first act of the Free State troops on entering a town or village was not to round up the irregulars – it was to arrest strike leaders and forcibly remove occupying workers.
One other point of note in relation to ‘factory occupations’ – the soviets did not merely occupy the workplaces – full production was maintained indeed in many instances increased, wages were increased, prices lowered, prices guaranteed to small farmers, agreement reached with workers in other workplaces not to process product normally carried out in the occupying workplaces, arrangements made with co-ops in South Wales to export the produce of the workplaces etc. This is nothing like the normally accepted definition of a factory occupation.
“You yourself dismissed the potential for socialist revolution from the off by noting the non-existence of a vanguard party with which to lead it.”
WbS – you appear not to understand the revolutionary process. Revolutionary potential does not require the existence of a vanguard party. the revolutionary process results from the objective situation – and the objective situation in Ireland in 1919-1922 demonstrates clearly that the potential for socialist revolution existed. What was absent was the subjective factor – the existence of a vanguard party. This does not mean that if such a party existed that it would have resulted in a successful socialist revolution – but the course of the struggle would have been different.
I have covered the other points before –
“ 4. Limerick soviet, IRA assisted in bringing food into the city to the soviet [Kostick p81], support including attacking scabs and raids during railworkers actions in support of soviets 1920, General Strike – individual soviets had ‘strong Labour and SF representation’… etc, etc. And obviously in the pre-Truce period effectively passive support for soviets. Indeed it’s telling that IRA actions against strikes are really only found once the Truce was signed and once the pro-Treaty side took effective control [this is someting Kostick's research is particularly clear on].”
A week before the Limerick Soviet SF were decrying the possibility of workers organising a soviet – for them the workers were too ignorant and too interested in their own individual material outlook to organise all that was needed to run a city. During the Soviet SF worked with the Catholic hierarchy and the British military authorities to bring it to an end and once it ended SF condemned it from on high for bending the knee to the Brits. Some republican elements helped bring food into the city – not to have done so would have completely undermined any standing SF had among the working class in Limerick.
I am not aware of a single incident of SF attacking scabs (I may be wrong). I am not aware of any soviet (with the possible exception of Monaghan) that had SF involvement. IRA actions against strikes began as early as mid-1920 at the time of the Knocklong soviet – and possibly earlier. Yes, the Free State were more repressive – hardly surprising as they were intent on suppressing all opposition.
“5. See 3. But as regards the General Strikes, you ignore the point that the workers weren’t oriented towards a left outcome, they were oriented towards a national one. Again you yourself have accepted much earlier that there was no structure/party to lead them to the former so why do you keep maintaining rhetorically that there was a serious potential for a left outcome?”
I actually disagree – there is a clear indication that the 1918 General Strike against conscription had a class component. Again in relation to Limerick, there were two demonstrations called in opposition to conscription – one by SF with the support of the local Catholic hierarchy that had in the region of 10,000 people and one two days later by the LUTLC which had in excess of 25,000 and a significant class element to it. The main banner had Connolly portrayed and the inscriptions ‘Death Before Conscription’ and ‘Workers of all countries unite’. The protest led into the Mayday protests where 15,000 workers unanimously back a ten point class-based programme for the emancipation of the working class. Certainly the widespread protests of workers in Ulster against conscription could most definitely not be classed as being orientated towards the nationalist movement.
Again in relation to the general strikes against the hunger strikes – one thing that is conveniently ignored is that some of those on hunger strike were actually trade union activists, including Jack Hedley who had been arrested in Belfast on a picket line. Yes the strike was to force the release of republican prisoners – but it was also to force the release of all prisoners arrested under the clampdown by the British authorities. The strike demonstrated the power of the workers movement and gave confidence to the workers movement – much more so than to the nationalist movement who’s leadership were hesitant (even resistant) about the general strike as a weapon for obvious reasons.
“During the Truce when the IRA sought to consolidate its power as the state authority.”
I would argue that this is a misinterpretation of developments. For the previous six months before the truce the workers movement had been subdued because of the scale of repression by the British forces. Once the truce was called it unleashed a massive escalation in strike action. It is a common occurrence in all revolutionary situations where the nationalist elements attempt to stop the movement at a certain point and the working class attempt to drive the movement forward in an attempt to resolve the social and economic contradictions in society as well as the national question. In my opinion the potential for workers revolution posed a serious threat to the national bourgeoisie and they acted to subdue it. They succeeded for a variety of reasons. Furthermore, the IRA campaign was on the verge of collapse when the Truce was called – the workers movement at that time was strong and vibrant and immediately went on the offensive once the opportunity presented itself.
“Yet again you drag in the IFF, knowing that it was a creature of the IFU, not of SF – and that in truth its activities were so limited as to be afforded but one reference in Kostick and almost not at all elsewhere.”
The Watchword of Labour and the Limerick Leader carry repeated references to the FFF patrolling large areas – in the case of Limerick practically the entire west of the country – and regular confrontations occurred between striking workers and farmers sons, including one pitched battle near NCW involving iron bars, pitchforks, shovels and several shots being fired. In Co. Limerick and parts of Tipperary (and I don’t know the evidence from the rest of the country) IRA elements played a significant role in the FFF.
“You continually slip away from Campbell – indeed you don’t engage one bit with his research.”
I have not – I haven’t read Campbell’s book so I cannot comment on its contents. I have no doubt that it is well researched and I will get around to reading it at some point – it does not form part of my current research. What I have done is state repeatedly that I cannot comment on Campbell’s work but I can provide archival material that demonstrates the attitude of the nationalist leadership to cattle drives and land seizures. That is the point – and the only point – that I was making.
“There’s a reason the overwhelming historiography is about the national struggle, that’s because the national struggle was the predominant dynamic within the society on political, social and economic levels.”
I disagree – history is written by the victors and the native bourgeois class had a partial victory in this case. In the decade that followed the bourgeoisie embarked on a major ideological offensive against the forces of socialism and the very idea of socialism itself. In 1925 they carried out a 5 week long show-trial to propagandise against the ‘Red Flag Years’. The Limerick Leader carried page after page of coverage for weeks in condemnation of this ‘alien philosophy and the destruction it causes’.
“You say it above, a soviet which lasted three months. The national struggle by contrast lasted across a decade.”
If you want to be correct about it – the national struggle in its modern form lasted from 1798 until 1922. The workers struggle lasted just as long. Large-scale strike action and workers soviets lasted from 1918-1922 and beyond, longer than the national struggle during this period.
“And where is the suppression? And who is doing the suppressing?”
Labour history in Ireland has been systematically confined to cupboard under the stairs for decades. With a few notable exceptions historians have played the nationalist and revisonist card and all the nonsense that has gone with it. Neither the establishment nor academia, want the history of the Irish working class to be accessible to the Irish working class.
In response to Garibaldy -
“Regarding the ITGWU. It’s unclear whether you are arguing that the whole union was as radical as it was in Limerick/parts of Munster or not, apart of course from the leadership. It seems to me that you are also saying that the union leaders had lost control but earlier you were saying they were able to stymie the position of the Marxists.”
During the period 1919-1922 the membership of the ITGWU ballooned and it was directly as a result of being seen as a radical left-wing union, primarily as a result of the militancy of the industrial organisers – and it was nationwide. It was not the only union – but it was the biggest. The NUR, AEU and the ICWU also showed significant radicalisation. The craft unions, mainly in the building trades were the most conservative.
By 1922 most of the industrial organisers and the rank-and-file were taking action outside of the structures of the ITGWU. O’Brien was tearing his hair out and panicking over the level of strike pay that was consuming the unions funds – to the point where he simply refused to pay strike pay to agricultural labourers because they were engaging in strike action too often. So yes – the leadership had lost control of the rank-and-file and at the same time attempted to sabotage the actions of the rank-and-file. O’Brien’s favourite tactic was declaring to striking workers that he would organise solidarity action and then turn around and claim that other workers refused support and they should give up their strike.
“What I am less happy to do is to automatically assume that what was true of Limerick was true of everywhere else.”
I can only go on the evidence that I have researched. The evidence that I have from Clare, Limerick, North Kerry and parts of Tipperary is that there was little or no cross-over between trade union activists and IRA/SF activists.
“In it, he discusses the official SF pamphlet written by Laurence Ginnell that included, among other things, advocating breaking up the ranches.”
I cannot offer an alternative position in relation to Connaught. I can provide evidence from the national archives that IRA men in Bruff wrote to the leadership requesting permission to take over a landlord’s estate and the leadership ordered them not to. Agri-labourers went ahead anyway and the IRA removed them.
“Just out of curiosity, given the social composition of the IRA, what is the basis for your claim that it is “likely” that had a class appeal been made, then the ILPTUC would have been in the leadership of the movement for independence?”
As you have stated yourself – there was a radical element within the IRA reflecting the class tensions that existed in society. The leadership were worried that it could tear the IRA apart along class lines. I would argue that if the workers movement had a Marxist leadership it could have appealed to the ranks of the IRA on the basis of pursuing the defeat of imperialism, national liberation AND social and economic liberation. I would argue that it could have shown up the limitation of the nationalist movement and split the nationalist movement along class lines. Furthermore I would argue that a similar appeal in the North would have split the Protestant working class from any ties it had to unionism and potentially led a successful socialist revolution.
“Regarding the Drogheda trade unionist. Is there evidence that he was unrepresentative of the workers in the factory?”
I cannot say – I don’t know enough about it. What I can say is that the purpose of the IEU during this period was to undermine the left-ward trajectory of the workers movement, to split the workers movement on national lines in order to reduce its influence and to break strikes. One other interesting point is that very shortly after the defeat of the Munster Soviets, the IEU actually started to lead some strikes against the Free State employers.
“Whether we can argue that the primary aim was to break up the workers’ movement on the grounds that up to 1/3 of those targeted were “rotten prods” I’m not sure. SF certainly didn’t think so.”
Of course SF didn’t think so. Be perfectly clear about this – partition was designed not to divide the island on national grounds – it was designed to divide the island on class grounds – to split the working class and thereby render it impotent. This is an entire other discussion – but it is the reality of the situation. Repeatedly British Imperialism, both here and in other colonial countries, has split the oppressed layers of society on national or religious lines in order to defeat the revolutionary movement that was underway. They did it in Ireland, In India, in Nigeria, etc and every other imperial power followed the same path. It is a strategy of imperialism.
“As for the idea that working class unionists bear no responsibility for the failure to defeat British imperialism/partition or however we want to describe it. I find that a somewhat amazing statement, ignoring as it does the fact that Ulster had shown a determination to fight, and that it practically denies them any agency whatsoever.”
Look at the history of the Protestant working class during this period – it repeatedly took to the streets to advance the cause of the working class. Even when the leadership of the ILPTUC ignored the Protestant working class, they took to the streets. Much is made about the Limerick Soviet, the reality is that the Belfast Engineering strike of the same year was far more significant in terms of the impact and potential. The Protestant working class bear no responsibility for partition or the defeat of the workers movement – that responsibility lies with the nationalist movement, unionism and British imperialism.
“I said that central issues were being ignored because for much of this thread we have been told that Ireland was on the verge of a socialist revolution”
Hold your horses – I never once claimed that Ireland was on the verge of socialist revolution. I have stated and I will repeat, the potential for socialist revolution existed in Ireland during the period 1919-1922. It was not fulfilled primarily because of the betrayal of the leadership of the ILPTUC and was facilitated by the adherence of the Marxists of the period to syndicalism and the failure to build a revolutionary party.
“what we need to do is to be able to take an objective look at the balance of class forces at every stage to shape our political tactics.”
And that is exactly what I have done.
And finally in reply to Tel
“However he does give the impression of placing too great store in interpretations he held prior to his research, which is I think something of what Garibaldy was driving at.”
Believe it or not – before I started conducting my research fro my FYP in 2005 I held the view that the workers movement in Ireland played nothing more than a minor auxiliary role during this period. I too had been convinced by all that was written about the dominance of the nationalist movement. I remember having several discussions over the years with the now deceased northern secretary of the Socialist Party, Peter Hadden, about his view that the potential a socialist revolution existed. These discussions were based around the Divide and Rule pamphlet he wrote in 1980 at the time I was joining the Militant. I was never convinced by his arguments until I started conducting the research myself.
The more research I carry out, in my opinion, the more evidence accumulates to support the view that the workers movement was far more influential during this period than has ever been portrayed in current historiography and that the potential for socialist revolution did exist and was not fulfilled for the reasons I have outlined. I sincerely hope that many others carry out the necessary research to fully tell this story. I am currently not in a position to do so as I am writing my thesis on the history of the Limerick Labour movement. Hopefully someday when I am retired (or buried on the dole) with loads of time on my hands I will contribute further. Until then I can only outline what I have discovered and my interpretation of what it means.
I am sure John Cunningham wouyld share Lysaghts fuller draft of a book with you. No need to reinvent wheels, whatever about arguing about the significance of them.
Here’s a suggestion. You’ve been very gracious and generous in your responses JRG this week and it’s been very interesting in total, certainly a thread which has been fascinating to read and I think to learn new information about.
Perhaps no ones opinions have shifted too far but on the other hand its whetted my appetite to read your research when its finished and Tel and G have raised some thought provoking points too.
So, it’s Friday. Why don’t we call a halt to it until Monday or Tuesday when we can address any outstanding points and relax, though in truth I’ve been dealing with a recalcitrant three year old this week in between the jigs and the reels and this thread has frankly kept my sanity more or less in one piece.
A break it is then until next week. And recalcitrant children should be warned that if they misbehave Kevin O’Higgins will come and get them in the middle of the night.
An offer graciously accepted in a comradely fashion.
Kevin O’Higgins scares me… Not her! Nothing scares her except for the occassional monster!
[...] promised last week here’s a reboot of the discussion on the meaning and legacy of the ‘soviets’ that manifested themselves during the War of Independence. It’s been an good discussion to [...]