Irish Labour and Working Class History

Dr. Ann Matthews will give a talk prior to the book launch, entitled, ‘The Widow’s Mite: The Widows of 1916′, from 2.45 to 3.30pm.

Saturday July 31st, 10am – 6pm

AX1, Auxilla House, North Campus, NUI Maynooth

9:30 – 9:45 Registration, Auxilia Foyer

9:45 – 10:00 Welcome; Eoin Flaherty (NUIM) and Terry Dunne (MIC)

10:00am – 11:00am Industry and Proto-Industry

Education in 19th century model villages in Ireland
Elena O’ Brien, Archaeology, (UCC)

Mapping social class in 19th century Ireland: towards a more systematic approach
Dr. Jane Gray, Sociology, (NUI Maynooth)

11:00am – 11:15am Break

11:15am – 12:15pm Health

‘In death there is no remembrance’: The evidence of post-medieval health from human skeletal remains
Linda G. Lynch, Archaeology, (UCC)

The silent voice: Narratives of health at the 19th century watering-place
Dr. Ronan Foley, Geography, (NUIM)

12:15pm – 12:30pm Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm Late Nineteenth Century

Social change in 19th century Ireland: The advent of narrow gauge railways in Munster
Edel Barry, Archaeology, (UCC)

The poorest classes? Language and social class in post-famine Ireland
Dr. Nicholas Wolf, History, (Virginia Commonwealth University)

1:30pm – 2:30pm Lunch

2:30pm – 4:00pm Pre-Famine

Class conflict in the 1830s Tithe War
Noreen Higgins-McHugh, History, (UCC)

Between a rock and a hard place: The reality of being a land agent in Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s
Laura Vickers, Moore Institute, (NUIG)

“No more at present from your friend, Captain Rock”: ‘Threatening letters’ and social attitudes in pre-famine Ireland
Terry Dunne, History, (MIC)

4:00pm – 4:15pm Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm Modes of Production

The rundale system in 19th century Ireland: Conceptualising and exploring the ecological dynamics of primitive communism
Eoin Flaherty, Sociology, (NUIM)

‘Wooden idols triumph and human beings are sacrificed’: Marx on legal theft in the Rhineland and Ireland
Dr. Eamonn Slater, Sociology, (NUIM)

Sponsored by the Comparative-Historical Research Cluster; Department of Sociology, NUI Maynooth.
Co-conveners: Terry Dunne and Eoin Flaherty.

Paper abstracts are available here. Conference registration is available here.

[Protest in Cork against the Vietnam War, 1967. From left to right: Gerry Higgins, Jim Savage, Jim Lane, Jim McCarthy, Derry McCarthy, Noel Lane, Jim Blake, George Sisk, Gerry Madden, Barty Madden, Tom McCarthy.]

What follows deals almost entirely with internal divisions within Cork republicanism and is not meant as a comprehensive outline of republican and left-wing activities in the city during the period covered. Moreover, these notes were put together following specific queries from historical researchers and, hence, the focus at times is on matters that they raised.’ (Miscellaneous Notes, p.1)

We will be covering the various aspects of Jim Lane’s activism as a Socialist and Republican at a later date, but for now, below is a copy of his recollections of the period 1954 to 1969. It touches on his involvement with the IRA campaign of the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the Cork-based Irish Revolutionary Forces, and the publications An Phoblacht (Cork), and People’s Voice. The pamphlet ends with 1969 and the outbreak of the Troubles.

Last September (2009) I interviewed Jim in his home in Cork. We talked for about five hours. Below is a short eighteen-minute extract from that interview, where Jim talks about the Irish Revolutionary Forces (IRF), as well as the attraction which Maoism held for the IRF at that time.

Jim explained this a little further to me in a recent correspondence:

“Sean Daly (ex IRA at the time) and myself met Hardial Bains and the other leaders of the Internationalists in 1968. Sean Daly is the person mentioned several times in my Miscellaneous Notes……. We met with the intention of working together to build a Marxist-Leninist type party in Ireland. We certainly had a great issue with them about their methods of work in Ireland, among other matters. Suffice to say, we didn’t reach an agreement on the way forward. However, we did agree to remain in touch. Prominent in their group then and in the years that followed were; David Vipond,John Dowling, Arthur Allen and Carole Reekes. Hardial Bains of Indian birth was based in Canada.

As I may have said to you in our conversations last year, we were attracted to the line of the Chinese Communist Party, after we had studied the publication, The Polemic on the General Line of the International Communist Movement, (China, 1965). For us here in Ireland in the 1960’s, we saw Mao and his party as advocates of armed revolutionary struggle, whereas the Soviet Union favoured the ‘ peaceful road to Socialism, by Parliamentary means’ . Is it any wonder why Irish Socialist Republicans began to take an interest in the writings of Mao Tse-Tung back in the 1960’s. Mythology has led many students of republican development in the 60’s, to believe that all those who opposed ‘the left-wing drift’, were ‘right-wing red necks’. Not so, many who were conveniently refered to as ‘Maoists’ within and without the Republican fold, were in fact those who were struggling to uphold true socialist revolutionary concepts.”

[Download 'Miscellaneous Notes' pdf here.]

[Please keep in mind that the MP3 below is only a short piece from almost five hours of conversation, and that Jim spoke for all of that time without notes.]

[http://www.irishlabour.com/JimLane/jim-lane.mp3]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

As with the first article in this series, forgotten faces is more of a discussion piece than a finished analysis. It’s only in the later issues of The Ripening of Time, especially nos. 11 and 13 which date from 1979 and 1980 respectively, that we get a full and detailed Marxist analysis of Ireland in the 20th century. As a result, the early articles are more akin to blog pieces than anything else. It’s almost like they should have a collection of comments after them, teasing out and expanding on the analysis.

[Click on image to read online. A pdf of the article is available to download here.]

The introduction states that

in putting this analysis of agriculture and fishing forward, it is intended to redress the tendency among Marxists and socialists in Ireland to focus their attention exclusively on the working class struggles to the detriment of other dominated and exploited classes and layers of the society.

This is as relevant today as it was 34 years ago. The glaring, and somewhat embarrassing, omission from Irish Marxist analysis is an understanding of the capitalist structure and dynamic of agriculture in Ireland. I’m still trying to work out why this is the case, but my suspicions at the moment are falling on the idea in British Marxism that agriculture is a form of proto-capitalism, the stage of accumulation, the precursor to the industrial stage and ‘true’ capitalism. Now, that’s me guessing, but it’s what I’m thinking at the moment. Certainly the strongest influence on Irish Marxism has come from the British left, and conclusions drawn from Manchester may not necessarily work for Tullamore. Both places are different parts of the same machine, but that inter-connectness seems to have been lost over the years. Certainly it was there in the 1930s when Brian O’Neill wrote War for the Land in Ireland, yet Irish Marxists will quote Connolly on agriculture quicker than O’Neill. Why, again, I don’t know.

Forgotten faces places Irish agriculture firmly within modern capitalism. It does not treat it as a stage, or as some form of archaic mode of production, but as the supplier of raw material for the metropolis, in this case, England.

Under generalised commodity production, the small holder and small producer becomes a link in a production process over which he has no control, and inside of which the division of labour allocates him an increasingly smaller part of the process which turns raw material into a processed-ready-packed-frozen consumer good. This fragmented production process ties the calf producer of the west to calf rearers in other regions to the cattle fatteners on the estates of Meath or the grazing plains of England to the meat factory [My emphasis]. A division of labour and production such as this fosters internal regional differences; in a dominated society: a regional underdevelopment. (p.53)

The division of labour in Irish cattle production was highlighted by by Ray Crotty in his 1974 pamphlet, The Cattle Crisis and the Small Farmer, and by Paul Bew in his 1979 book, Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82, yet this simple fact of Irish agricultural production, and what such a system of production says about Irish economic, social and political life, is virtually absent from Irish Marxism, certainly since the 1960s anyway.

Forgotten faces also talks about Irish fishing, highlighting the subservient role it has played in the Irish economy, and asserting that it is due in no small part to the absence of a native bourgeoisie within fishing which could have fought for its place at the table.

Class relations in fishing are somewhat different from those in manufacturing industry or agriculture in Ireland. The ease with which international capital has penetrated the fishing industry is a feature of the lack of a big, native bourgeois class controlling fishing in this country. In agriculture, as we see, there is a definite presence of a big bourgeois or rancher class, fractions of which have certain contradictions with international capitalism.

Again we see The Ripening of Time feeling its way through the dynamics of Irish economic relations, in this case with regard to fishing and agriculture. The journal comes back to these areas later on in the series, expanding and refining the tentative conclusions presented here.

a continuation of Sunday’s post (with background information), the final 25 minutes of Sam Nolan talking about the Unemployment Protest Committee and Jack Murphy.

Part two: the election of Jack Murphy – writing speeches for Murphy – abstaining from the vote for Taoiseach – lack of impact in the Dáil – government cuts the food subsidies – Murphy on hunger strike – Murphy as a religious man – street protests and rallies – Steve Mooney – Summerhill march on the Dáil – Unemployed Committees in Cork and Waterford – The Catholic Church and the Unemployed Protest Committee – Archbishop McQuaid and Murphy – resignation as a TD –

Sam Nolan and the Unemployed Protest Committee, 1957: Part Two from conormccabe on Vimeo.

Last month Tom Redmond of the CPI gave me a large collection of newspapers and pamphlets relating to the Irish left, including all fourteen issues of The Ripening of Time (1976-1982), an Irish Marxist journal produced by the Ripening of Time collective.

Throughout its six-year run, The Ripening of Time provided introductions to Marxist theory, as well as articles which applied those theories to the island of Ireland, its history and society.

The theoretical articles are essentially clear summaries of widely-available, if densely-written, material, but the articles on Ireland are all original and well worth reproducing; and over the next few weeks hopefully I’ll get them all scanned and posted.

The first article in the series on Ireland, from issue one, Introductory Notes on Dominated Ireland, is below.

[Click on image to read online. A pdf of the article is available to download here.]

‘Here is The Ripening of Time‘ the opening editorial said, ‘the collective product and the focus of study-groups, of long drawn-out discussions, of a lot of effort.’

There are many revolutionary organisations and groups in Ireland today. We want to clearly state that The Ripening of Time is built not in opposition to what exists, but on the contrary to complement them. At this time, the unity and consolidation of all the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces around a united programme and strategy for revolutionary action is an urgent and pressing need. We offer The Ripening of Time as our contribution to the unity of action and aim.

The Ripening of Time is a theoretical journal. We see theoretical struggle as an essential part of class struggle, equally important as the economic, the political or the military struggle. Anyone who tries to isolate one or any of those unbreakable aspects of the class struggle is amputating the revolutionary process. As an instrument of theoretical struggle, we do not intend to set up any sectarian principles of our own by which to shape and mould the anti-imperialist and revolutionary movement.

What we aim for is to help militants, and, why not, organisations develop on the basis of our collective effort, work and research, a concrete analysis of the situation – a class analysis; to be used in the interests of the exploited and oppressed masses of the people in our country – north and south.”

Introductory Notes argues that by the mid-1970s the Irish economy had become heavily dependent on International industry and capital, that ‘the decline of the 26 county economy has been accompanied by an increased dependence on the more powerful capitalist countries.’ This dependence manifested itself not only though the significant number of foreign companies which had set up in Ireland since the 1960s, but also through the rise of multinational banking in Ireland, which saw the establishment of American, Dutch and German financial institutions on Irish shores. (It’s interesting to note that Introductory Notes acknowledges the work of ‘Sinn Féin Gardiner Street’ – or Sinn Féin Workers Party – with regard to its analysis of banks and the Irish banking system. The party’s pamphlet, The Banks, was posted here last week.)

The role of these financial and industrial powers in the Irish economy was such that the latter was increasingly run in the interests of the former. The societal functions of the economy were increasingly marginalised in favour of quick and easy profits with the barest of pay-offs for Ireland and its people. And successive Irish governments, particularly those run by Fianna Fáil, were entirely complicit with this set-up. Introductory Notes highlights the so-called ‘merger’ of the Irish semi-state company Erin Foods with the US multinational Heinz as an example of where a multinational simply took over an already-existing, and profitable, company while the government got to chalk it up as foreign investment. It also covers the dubious record of the IDA in bringing jobs to Ireland – in 1974 the IDA ‘created 16,000 new jobs but as 20,000 old jobs got destroyed, all this money did [£66m in grants] was to produce a net loss of 4,000 jobs.’ The policy of handing over sections of Irish economic activity to foreign investors who were out for a quick buck led T.K. Whitaker to sound a word of caution: ‘would there not be a serious risk to employment if large areas of Irish trade and industry came under foreign control in this indirect way?’ Introductory Notes says well, yes, and not only to employment but to Irish society as a whole.

The article ends with a short note on housing and the (1976 economic) crisis. It mentions the serious decline in social housing construction and the huge rise in the mortgage market, fuelled by government tax breaks and more accessible loan and mortgage systems, and argues that such a scenario will lead to a housing shortage as the vast majority of working class families, with no access to private purchase, depend on council housing for accommodation. It’s a tentative conclusion, one surpassed by events in the 1980s and 1990s, but one befitting an introductory article in a series of of same, spread out over six years.

The main articles in The Ripening of Time which deal with Ireland are:

Issue 1 (1976) – Introductory Notes on Dominated Ireland
Issue 2 (1976) – Agriculture and fishing: Two Forgotten Faces of Capitalism in Ireland
Issue 3 (1976) – The State of Ireland pt.1
Issue 4 (1976) – The State of Ireland pt.2
Issue 5 (1976) – The Development of Capitalism in Ireland; Revolt in the North; The Failure of Republicanism; The Economics of Independence
Issue 6 (1977) – Reflections on Agriculture pt.1
Issue 7 (1977) – Reflections on Agriculture pt.2; The Bourgeois Class in Ireland
Issue 9 (1977/78) – Reflections on Agriculture pt.3
Issue 10 (1978) – The Bourgeois Class in Ireland – 18th Century
Issue 11 (1978/79) – Changing Patterns of Domination Since World War II; Irish Republicanism, Socialism and Imperialism
Issue 13 (1980) – Working Class Absenteeism; The Crisis in the 1970s
Issue 14 (1982) – In to the Republic (special edition written by Derry Kelleher)

[Click on image to read the booklet]

I’m putting up this booklet with a couple of caveats, but in spite of them, the booklet does show how the Irish left has pointed out the serious flaws within the Irish banking system for decades, and that the problems are structural, not personal.

Last year’s publication by Shane Ross, talked up the greed, collusion and incompetence of Irish bankers and politicians, arguing that the Irish story was ‘unique’ in its tawdriness. Finian O’Toole pretty much drew the same conclusion in his book, Ship of Fools.

For thousands of left activists across the island, though, the news that some bankers were, *gasp* corrupt and self-serving, came as no surprise as the banking system itself is *gasp* corrupt and self-serving. Even a good man in the wrong place will do bad things.

There is a strong desire on the part of the Right to personalise the failings of the banking system, that all we need are a few good men to ride into town and sort out the problems. The analogy which springs to mind is with The Magnificent Seven, with the Irish as the Mexican peasants gong to town to hire Yul Brynner to get the bandits off their back.

But, the bank crisis wasn’t due to a moral failure on the part of some individuals. The bank system is geared towards the interests of its private owners, not anyone else. Given the systemic importance of banks and banking to a modern economy, it’s one fraught with dangers, but to acknowledge that is to acknowledge the problems associated with the private ownership of critical services. Better to have a moral tale than a structural analysis.

With regard to the Workers’ Party’ booklet, its strengths lie in the data it gives on the structure of banking in Ireland, as well as providing a short history of the sector. It also gives a reasonably simple and succinct overview of the analysis of money as given in volume one of Capital.

The political analysis put forward by The Banks is in line with the conceptual framework of the party’s magnum opus, Irish Industrial Revolution – an incredibly flawed, but equally fascinating, piece of work, and one which I’ll try to make available online soon.

The overall thesis of The Banks falls broadly within state capitalism. The booklet argues that it is the necessary to nationalize the banks in order to further industrialize the economy, and that the banking system is too important to be left in private hands. The ultimate goal is a country where both the banking and industrial sectors are controlled by the state. In simple, broad-stroke terms , the Workers’ Party was arguing that capitalist exploitation is more in the field of output, rather than in how the machine works. Were it possible to socialize output, this would in some way counter-balance the inherent contradictions and endemic exploitation of the capitalist mode of production.

It could be argued, of course, that this is exactly the situation Ireland has today, that the banking and industrial sectors are run in the state’s interests, but that the state’s interests are those of the banking and industrial sectors.

There is a symbiosis between those who run the banks and those to fund the political parties. Irish citizens and their children are given little say in economic matters, and are instead viewed by the state as little more than betting chips for hedge fund managers.

It can also be argued that a form of right-wing state capitalism – or neo-corporatism as it is sometimes called – has been in operation in Ireland since the foundation of the state in 1922. (I make a deeper argument for that type of analysis here.)

Anyway, despite these concerns, the research presented in The Banks is still of use to us today, and certainly it provides a resource to the Irish Left in its attempts to tease out an analysis of Irish economic and social life which doesn’t trip itself up in simplistic morality tales of greed and exploitation.

A pdf of The Banks is available to download here. (2.8MB)

Enjoy.

I was given a box of pamphlets, leaflets and periodicals during the week, by a member of the Communist Party of Ireland who’s doing a bit of spring cleaning at home. ‘They’re just in my shed, Conor, so you can have them if you want. I can leave them in the bookshop for you.’

So I called into Connolly Books on East Essex Street on Thursday morning and Eugene was there and had them ready. I had brought two travel bags with me and the collection just about fitted into them.

When I got home and sorted through the bags, I found this leaflet from March 1941, where the Communist Party calls for the defence of the Free State’s neutrality against not only Britain but also against those in the state who benefit from the economic ties with Britain – namely the ‘bankers and the ranchers, represented by the Fine Gael party in the Dáil.’

The Fianna Fáil government is afraid of this powerful faction and will do nothing to curb it. So cowardly and servile is de Valera to this rich, privileged group that instead of rousing the nation to battle against it, the government of de Valera actually entered into an alliance with it. Cosgrave, Dillon and Mulcahy have been called into a defence council together with the “Labour” leaders and the country is being swindled with statements that all parties are now united in a patriotic unity in face of the national danger.

In another section, the party points to the economic power players in Ireland, and the enormous influence they wield regarding government policy.

The Fianna Fáil government is pursuing a policy of keeping out of the war, but it looks to the bankers and ranchers to carry out this policy, and it aims to make the toiling masses in town and country shoulder the burden of these difficult times. It proclaims as its social policy the keeping down of wages, resists all demands for increased pensions and unemployment assistance and refuses to tax the rich. The entire burden is thrown on to the shoulders of the working people in town and country.

Were it not for the reference to the war, that quote could have been written yesterday. Instead of ‘ranchers’ put ’speculators’ and you have an almost perfect match.

Three months later the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, smashing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and bringing the Communist world directly into the war and on the side of the Allies. This gave the southern Communist movement an awkward choice, as neutrality was accepted by most, while a call to join the Allies would have placed them in league with Dillon and the more extreme elements of Fine Gael.

On 10 July 1941 the party’s national committee met and passed a resolution ‘to suspend independent activity and to apply the forces of the [Dublin] branch to working in the Labour and trade union organisations in order to carry forward the fight against the heavy attacks now being launched against the workers.’ The northern branch of the party re-constituted itself as the Communist Party of Northern Ireland (CPNI) and undertook a policy of active support for the war effort.

This was not without criticism, as communist support included a ban on strike activity. This provided an opportunity for the small number of Trotskyists in Belfast at this time to present an oppositional voice. Certainly by 1944 there’s enough energy around this group for a Trotskyist party to emerge, the Revolutionary Socialist Party. This was a joint north-south venture, and its existence is not entirely down to communist support for the war by any means. However, there is little doubt that it did benefit from the CPNI’s policy, and it is in Belfast rather than Dublin that a lot of its energy was drawn.

But that’s probably for another day.

A pdf of the leaflet is available here. (approx. 4.2MB)

Images are below. Full size approx 2MB each.

CPI March 1941 – side one.

CPI March 1941 – side two.

I was in Seomra Spraoi last night to pick up the latest edition of Loserdom and while I was there I called up to the zine archive. It’s on the first floor and it has a couple of hundred fanzines and alternative media publications from around the world, but mainly Ireland, UK, and USA. They are all sorted and boxed, but there’s no database, so I offered to work on producing one and so hopefully in a couple of months I’ll have it ready and on the web.

I got chatting to one of the guys, Ed, who runs the DIY Irish Hardcore Punk Archive, and who has a zine of his own, The Devil on 45, and I said to him that I’ve been up in the Irish Labour Museum for the last few months, sorting and cataloguing its newspapers and periodicals. “Oh” he said. “You might find this interesting. Niall McGuirk [of the Hope Collective] dropped this into us last week.” It was a copy of Busman from 1978, which seems to have been produced by bus workers in Phibsboro Garage. The issue has contributions from Bill McGamley, and an interview with Ruairi Quinn. I had my digital camera with me and snapped a quick copy. Now it’s a bit blurry, but Ed has a scanner in Seomra Spraoi and so next time I’ll get a proper copy.

Contents:

1. Assaults on busmen
2. Road Traffic Act
3. Inspectors and Discipline
4. Privilege Travel
5. Equal Pay Dialogue
6. Ruairi Quinn T.D.

The look and aesthetic of Busmen is fanzine to the core, but the content is industrial relations in scope and direction. Not that unusual. The Revolutionary Marxist Group, for example, had a publication called Irish Trotskyist (PDF copy here) which could almost pass for a fanzine in look and aesthetics as well. There’s a definite study there on the layout and feel of Irish fanzines and political publications of the 1970s.

Anyways, here’s the link to a somewhat blurry copy of Busmen (7MB).

I met up with Terry Fagan of the Dublin North Inner City Folklore Project on Friday, to hand over to him a USB key of 97 recordings I’ve digitized from the project’s collection of oral history interviews. The original tapes are stored in the Irish Labour Museum, Beggars Bush, and I’ve been working my way through the collection for the last two months now, calling into the museum each morning and taking notes as I convert the analogue recordings into MP3s in real time. It’s a slow process, but as I’m sitting there I’m also sorting out the museum’s fascinating collection of newspapers and pamphlets, some going back to over a hundred years.

What with the interviews and the papers, all relating to Irish working class and organised labour history, it’s such a rich source of material I’m thinking how research careers have been built on less – but, there being no careers in Irish working class and labour studies, I guess that just leaves me with the less part of the equation.

I’m about halfway through digitizing the interviews, which were conducted over a ten-year period, from 1987 to around 1997. The things people talk about include such events and topics as family life, the Spanish civil war, the North Strand bombings, the redevelopment of the docklands, work, music, school, pubs, cinemas and theatres, characters and politics. It’s a fascinating, unique collection.

Anyway, I’m going off the point here. Terry is curator of a small archive himself, one he has built up over the years through private donations from individuals, but also by saving stuff from skips in the area. Included in the material he salvaged is this document here, a copy of Resurgent Ulster from March 1952, which was published by the Republican Publicity Bureau.

A PDF of the document is available here.

Alternatively, it can be read online below.