Irish Labour and Working Class History

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.

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.

[Mike Hehir, leading national spokesman of the CPI M-L, 1970]

When The Internationalists were first set up in Trinity College Dublin in November 1965, it was not as a fully-formed Marxist-Leninist party, but ‘as an exercise in better staff-student relations.’(1) Prominent among the initial group was Hardial Bains, a lecturer in bacteriology who was originally from India, but who had left for Canada in 1959 and had completed his post-graduate studies in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia. Bains was a former member of the Communist Party of India, having resigned in protest at the party’s endorsement of Khrushchev’s criticisms of Stalin. In March 1963 he founded a political group in Vancouver which was called The Internationalists (later the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), and while the November 1965 TCD group may not have been exactly an Irish version at this stage, the choice of name suggests Bains’ strong input from the start.

Also among those involved at the early stages of the group were two African students, David Akerele and Koye Majekodunmi, and staff members Kader Asmal (who was then head of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement), Professor David Webb (Professor of Botany), Dr. Owen Sheehy Skeffington and Dr. R. B. McDowell. Given such participants it is highly unlikely that The Irish Internationalists were at this stage in any way Marxist, or even socialist.

Continue reading

There’s a great post on the 1953 unemployed protest march over on Come Here To Me, which pushed me to finally get around to editing this footage of Sam Nolan talking about the unemployed protests later that decade, in 1957 and 1958.

This is the first thirty minutes of an hour-long clip. It was filmed in Sam’s home in Ballymun in February 2010. The interviewer is Mick O’Reilly. The second clip should be up sometime during the week.

By way of background, below the video is an extract from Communist Party of Ireland: Outline History which deals with the setting up of the committee and the subsequent election of John (Jack) Murphy as the first unemployed T.D. in Ireland.

Part one: Origins – building slump – Werburgh St public meeting – trade union support – Jack Murphy – local authority housing – ‘emigrate, fight or starve’ – the 1957 election – Dublin South Central Constituency – Peadar O’Donnell – selection of candidate – election campaign – Roddy Connolly

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

Early in 1957 a group of building workers came together at the Werburgh Street (Dublin) Labour Exchange and discussed the prospects of finding employment. They decided that the only hope was to organise the unemployed to demand work. They borrowed a chair from a nearby shop and began a public meeting. From that meeting an Unemployed Protest Committee [UPC] was formed which included such persons as Liam O’Meara, Jack Murphy, Sam Nolan, Packey Early, Steve Mooney and Johnny Mooney.

Continue reading

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.

[Joe Deasy giving a speech in Middle Abbey Street, c.1965.]

The following clip is from an interview with Joe Deasy, who was born in 1922 and who met and worked with Jim Larkin Snr in the 1940s. Both were Labour councillors on Dublin Corporation. Joe would later leave the Labour party and join the Irish Workers League, which was a communist organisation, the antecedent to today’s Communist Party of Ireland.

The interview, which was videotaped, was conducted with Mick O’Reilly and myself, and will hopefully form the basis of a programme on Joe Deasy which we’re planning to make in the new year.

In 1963, Joe wrote The Fiery Cross: The Story of Jim Larkin, which was republished in 2004 by the Irish Labour History Society. Francis Devine and Niamh Puirséil wrote an introduction to the pamphlet, giving an outline of Joe Deasy’s life, a highly edited version of which is below:

“Joseph Deasy was born on 12 July 1922 in the Ranch opposite Inchicore Works, Dublin. His father, Richard was was an active member of the Labour party, standing as a candidate in Dublin South West. Joe began working life as a railway clerk in 1941, an occupation that he claimed strengthened his socialist convictions. Outside work, Deasy had joined Conradh na Gaeilge and, in 1941, the New Theatre Group commencing a life-long love of theatre. In April, 1945, Deasy wrote and produced Under the Banner Connolly in the Dining Hall, Inchicore Works, his first writing experience.Not long after joining the Labour Party, Joe was elected chair and then Secretary, Inchicore Branch. Esther McGregor, a veteran communist who was then active in the Labour Party, proposed that Joe run in the 1945 local election. He was elected and became, aged twenty-two, the youngest councillor in the country. Joe campaigned for social housing, improvements for TB patients in Crooksling Sanatorium and in support of the Dublin Trades Council Lower Prices Campaign.

Although Joe supported coalition in 1948, believing that the country needed a change of government, nevertheless it was not long before he became disillusioned with the Labour Party’s performance in government. He did not put himself forward for the 1950 local elections and joined the Irish Workers’ League in 1951, a decision that was painful difficult and demanding of personal courage.

Cold War anti-communism meant that Deasy was precluded from being active in both his trade union and his community. He was forced out of his postion as the Railway Clerks Association’s representative on the Dublin Trades Council, while the Ballyfermot and Inchicore Co-op grocery shop, where Joe and some Irish Workers’ League comrades were central figures, became the target of a Church orchestrated boycott. They were denounced from the local pulpits, and clerical pressure ultimately forced the closure of the shop.

In 1975 Joe was among those who resigned from the Communist Party of Ireland after tensions within the party over Czechoslovakia and the 1968 soviet invasion finally came to a head. Joe became active in the subsequently formed Irish Marxist Society, continuing political discussion and considering which was the best path to follow. Joe’s path was a return to the Labour Party in 1977 and action at branch and constituency level, a path he is still stoically treading.”

Here, Joe is talking about the Inchicore and Ballyfermot Co-Ops, which were set up in the late 1940s, before being forced to close in 1952 due to pressure from the Catholic Church.

Evanne Kilmurray, ‘Joe Deasy: the evolution of an Irish Marxist, 1941-1950′, Saothar 13 (1988), pp.112-119
Joe Deasy, ‘Fiery Cross: The Story of Jim Larkin’, Studies in Irish Labour History 9 (2004)

Note: All photos taken from ‘Fiery Cross’, Studies in Irish Labour History 9 (2004)

[Ballyfermot & Inchicore Co-op Society, some members of the management committee. Joe Deasy is back row, second from right. His closest friend, Tim Graham, is beside him, first on the right.]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Sound is a monthly current affairs programme, made by members of DCTV, Dublin’s public access station. Below is the first edition of The Sound, along with its contents. The programme is 73 minutes long, and is broadcast on DCTV (NTL Channel 802) on Mondays @ 12.30pm and Tuesdays @ 7pm. It is also available here.

1. Paula Geraghty on NATO’s 60th anniversary and its role in the world today. She is joined by Seamus Rattigan of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, and Michael Youlton of the Irish Anti-War Movement.

2. Mick O’Reilly talks to Mick Berney of ICTU about Congress and its role today, follwed by Mick giving his thoughts on the role it should be undertaking at this time.

3. Donnacha O’Briain talks to Nessa Ni Chasaide of Debt and Development Coalition Ireland about the G20 Meeting held last month (April 2009) in London, followed by a general discussion involving Fleachta Phelan of Comhlamh, and Molly Walsh of Climate Camp.

4. Seán Ó Siochru interviews Michael Taft, research officer with UNITE, about the economic crisis. This is followed by a general discussion involving Michael Taft, Mick O’Reilly and Jim Stewart, Trinity College Dublin. Jim also writes for www.progressive-economy.ie

The Sound from DCTV on Vimeo.