The British Labour Party & Twentieth-Century Ireland – Conference NUIG, 8-9 March January 17, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in British Labour Party, Irish History, Irish Politics, The Left, Uncategorized.trackback
Full details in attached file – please click on link.Conference Programme
Looks like it would be of significant interest to many of us.
I am not a fan of Foots. He made a deal with the UUP to cling to power. Davitt was a much nobler person.The decline of British Labour began much earlier.
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The role of the British Labour Party in 20th century Ireland is an important but usually ignored subject. Until the whole edifice collapsed in a bloody mess, Labour hid behind the so-called Constitutional Settlement after 1921 which they cited always to justify a refusal to pass any judgement on the appalling record of the Stormont regime. This – we were told would risk “illegal interference in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland.” I remember efforts made by some of us who were delegates at the LP annual conferences in the early 1960s to force a debate on the denial of basic civil rights, the crooked electoral system and the brutal sectarianism of the police system in the 6 counties. Under both Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson the Labour Party apparatus simply ruled this “out of order.” This was in spite of appeals even by the likes of John Home and Bob Mellish, the right wing Labour MP for Bermondsey, as well as small groups on the left including the Connolly Association. How many lives were needlessly lost as a result of this blind refusal to face reality?
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It’s unquantifiable, but they certainly screwed up big time (though in a way they remind me of governments in the South during much the same period).
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The South had already an ersatz 26 county nationalism. But it was Britains responsibility.
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Oh John, have you read Treacys book on the CPI. You are I think mentioned.
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No Jim I haven’t. In fact this book had escaped me. I will try to get it. Thanks,
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A few events this week at NUI Galway:
Wed. 30 January, 4 pm, Moore Institute, NUI Galway (Graduate Research Seminar series)
Adrian Grant, ‘The Republican Congress, 1934: A Case Study in Irish Socialist Republicanism’
Thurs. 31 January, 7 pm, Dillon Theatre, NUI Galway, (An Cumann Staire lecture series)
Emmet O’Connor, ‘The 1913 Lockout: myth and reality’
Fri. 1 February, 1 – 3 pm. Moore Institute, NUI Galway
Emmet O’Connor, ‘Labour History & the Academy’ followed by inaugural meeting of Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour & Class
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