The British Labour Party and twentieth-century Ireland: The cause of Ireland, the cause of Labour 9781784997069

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The British Labour Party and twentieth-century Ireland

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The British Labour Party and twentieth-century Ireland The cause of Ireland, the cause of Labour

Edited by Laurence Marley

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2016 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 07190 9601 3 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Note on terminology Introduction Laurence Marley 1 A tangled legacy: the Irish ‘inheritance’ of British Labour Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh 2 Uneasy transitions: Irish nationalism, the rise of Labour and the Catholic Herald, 1888–1918 Joan Allen 3 British Labour, Belfast and home rule, 1900–14 Emmet O’Connor 4 Labour and Irish revolution: from investigation to deportation Ivan Gibbons 5 British Labour and developments in Ireland in the immediate post-war years Peter Collins 6 ‘Where the Tories rule’: Geoffrey Bing MP and partition Bob Purdie 7 The British Labour Party and the tragedy of Northern Ireland Labour Aaron Edwards 8 ‘That link must be preserved, but there are other problems’: the British Labour Party and Derry, 1942–62 Máirtín Ó Catháin

page vii xi xii xiv 1 17 35 55 69 88 104 119 135

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9 Reflections on aspects of Labour’s policy towards Northern Ireland, 1966–70: a personal narrative Kevin McNamara 10 The Labour government and police primacy in Northern Ireland, 1974–79 Stuart C. Aveyard 11 Some intellectual origins of the Labour left’s thought about Ireland, c.1979–97 Stephen Howe 12 The Militant Tendency comes to Ireland, c.1969–89 John Cunningham 13 Anglo-Irish diplomatic relations and the British Labour Party, 1981–94 Melinda Sutton 14 Leaving the sound bites at home? Tony Blair, New Labour and Northern Ireland, 1993–2007 Kevin Bean

Contents

149 164 182 197 216 233

Index 249

Contributors

Joan Allen is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Newcastle University. Her most recent publications include Joseph Cowen and popular radicalism on Tyneside, 1819–1900 (Monmouth, 2007), and Joan Allen and Richard C.  Allen (eds), Faith of our fathers:  popular culture and belief in post-Reformation England, Ireland and Wales (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2009). She has served as Secretary and Vice Chair of the Society for the Study of Labour History, and is a former editor of Labour History Review. Stuart C.  Aveyard is a Lecturer in Modern British History at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). His research interests are in modern British and Irish history, particularly the Northern Ireland conflict and the governance of post-war Britain. In 2011 he completed a doctoral thesis at QUB, entitled ‘No Solution:  British government policy in Northern Ireland under Labour, 1974–79’. He is currently converting this into a monograph. Kevin Bean is a Lecturer in Irish Politics at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. His research interests include Northern Irish politics, developments in contemporary Irish republicanism, state counter-insurgency strategies and the development of nationalism as a political force in contemporary Europe. He is the author of The new politics of Sinn Féin (Liverpool, 2007). He is a member of the Council of the British Association for Irish Studies, the Board of the European Federation of Associations and Centres for Irish Studies, and the College of Assessors of the ESRC. Peter Collins is Senior Lecturer in History at St Mary’s University College, Belfast. He teaches Irish and British history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His doctoral thesis was on the Belfast

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Notes on contributors

labour movement before partition. Among his publications are:  (ed.), Nationalism and Unionism:  conflict in Ireland, 1885–1921 (Belfast, 1994); ‘Remembering 1798’, in Eberhard Bort (ed.), Commemorating Ireland:  history, politics, culture (Dublin, 2003); and, most recently, ‘1932: A case study in polarisation and conflict’, in Alan F. Parkinson and Éamon Phoenix (eds), Conflicts in the north of Ireland, 1900–2000 (Dublin, 2010). John Cunningham is a Lecturer in History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has written extensively on Irish labour and social history. His publications including Labour in the west of Ireland: working life and struggle (Belfast, 1995); ‘A town tormented by the sea’: Galway, 1790–1914 (Dublin, 2004); and Unlikely radicals:  Irish post-primary teachers and the ASTI, 1909–2009 (Cork, 2009). He is a founding member of the Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class (ICHLC) at the Moore Institute, NUI Galway. Aaron Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Defence and International Affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is author or editor of several books, including A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party:  democratic socialism and sectarianism (Manchester, 2009); The Northern Ireland troubles (Oxford, 2011); and Defending the realm? The politics of Britain’s small wars since 1945 (Manchester, 2012). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Higher Education Academy, his most recent book is entitled Mad Mitch’s tribal law: Aden and the end of empire (Edinburgh, 2014). Ivan Gibbons is Head of Irish Studies, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London. He has written extensively on modern Irish history and politics, and is a former editor of Irish Studies in Britain. He is the author of The British Labour Party and the Establishment of the Irish Free State, 1918–1924 (London, 2015). Stephen Howe is Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Bristol, and co-editor of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Author of several books on both British and comparative imperial histories, his most recent published work is the edited collection, The new imperial histories reader (London, 2008). His The intellectual consequences of decolonization is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. On Irish history, his work Ireland and empire:  colonial legacies in Irish history (Oxford, 2000) has been followed by numerous related essays and articles.

Notes on contributors

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Kevin McNamara was elected to the House of Commons as a Labour MP in January 1966, for the key marginal seat of Hull North, which he retained until his retirement from the House in 2005. He held several key appointments during his political career, including that of Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In 2007 he completed his PhD at the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. He is the author of The MacBride principles: Irish-American strikes back (Liverpool, 2009). Laurence Marley is a Lecturer in Modern History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has written on aspects of Irish and British radicalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is author of Michael Davitt: freelance radical and frondeur (Dublin, 2007). He is co-editor of Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society. Máirtín Ó Catháin lectures in modern Irish and European History at the University of Central Lancashire. He is the author of Irish Republicanism in Scotland, 1858–1916 (Dublin, 2007) and has published on aspects of Derry labour history, including work on the Derry unemployed workers’ movement and protests in the city in the inter-war period. Emmet O’Connor is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Ulster. He is an honorary president of the Irish Labour History Society and has published widely on labour history, including James Larkin (Cork, 2002), Reds in the green:  Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43 (Dublin, 2004), and A labour history of Ireland, 1824–2000 (Dublin, 2011). Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, F.R.Hist.S., is Professor Emeritus in Modern History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Educated at NUI Galway, and at Peterhouse, Cambridge, he has held visiting appointments at universities on both sides of the Atlantic. He has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish and British history. Bob Purdie was an Honorary Research Fellow in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen. He studied at Ruskin College, Oxford, 1974–76, and later at the Universities of Warwick and Strathclyde. He subsequently taught at Ruskin College for twenty years. Between 1980 and 1987, he was Assistant National Secretary of the Irish Labour History Society. His PhD thesis on the Northern Ireland Civil Rights movement was published as Politics in the streets (Belfast, 1990). He died in November 2014.

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Notes on contributors

Melinda Sutton was awarded her PhD in History from Newcastle University in 2014, for her dissertation on ‘The Parliamentary Labour Party and Northern Ireland, 1969–2007’. Her research interests are on the Northern Ireland peace process and the politics of reconciliation. She is the author of ‘Political reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Bloody Sunday inquiry’, in Birgit Schwelling (ed.), Reconciliation, civil society and the politics of memory (Bielefeld, 2013).

Acknowledgements

This book emerged from a conference on the ‘British Labour Party and Ireland’ which was hosted at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 2013. I would like to thanks all those who contributed to the event and to acknowledge the support given by the School of Humanities and the Moore Institute (NUIG), by the Irish Labour History Society, and by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs Reconciliation Fund. I must extend a particular word of gratitude to my brother, Joe, and to a number of colleagues in the School of Humanities at NUIG: Caitríona Clear, John Cunningham, Muireann Ó Cinneide, Sean Ryder, and, as always, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh. For their efficiency and patience, my thanks also to the staff at Manchester University Press. Sadly, Bob Purdie, one of the contributors to this collection, died shortly before it was brought to print. Bob was a notable scholar who had a significant influence on many through his writings and his various contributions to debate over the course of many years. His attendance at the conference at NUIG in 2013 was one of his last such contributions, and he brought to it the intellectual rigour and openness for which he was widely known and respected. Laurence Marley

Abbreviations

APL Anti-Partition League BICO British and Irish Communist Organisation CDU Campaign for Democracy in Ulster CLP Constituency Labour Party CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain CSJ Campaign for Social Justice DLP Derry Labour Party EDM Early Day Motion ILP Independent Labour Party INLA Irish National Liberation Army IPP Irish Parliamentary Party IRA Irish Republican Army IrLP Irish Labour Party ISDL Irish Self-Determination League ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union ITUC Irish Trades Union Congress LCI Labour Committee on Ireland LLP Londonderry Labour Party LPYS Labour Party Young Socialists LRC Labour Representation Committee LWR League for a Workers’ Republic NICRA Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association NILP Northern Ireland Labour Party NIO Northern Ireland Office OIRA Official Irish Republican Army PD People’s Democracy PIRA Provisional Irish Republican Army PLP Parliamentary Labour Party RSL Revolutionary Socialist League RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary

Abbreviations

SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party TOM Troops Out Movement TUC Trades Union Congress UDR Ulster Defence Regiment UVF Ulster Volunteer Force UWC Ulster Workers’ Council WIL Workers’ International League WP Workers’ Party

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Note on terminology

The terms Unionist, Nationalist, Loyalist and Republican, as used in the text, are capitalised to indicate political parties or organisations of these names and their members; when used without capitals, they refer to supporters of these organisations or the wider community. The one exception to the rule is in Chapter 3, in which the author uses a capital ‘U’ throughout when referring to supporters of the Union in order to distinguish them from trade unionists.

Introduction Laurence Marley

Shortly after the 1906 general election, the British Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie, set out on a week-long tour of Ireland. Accompanied by newly elected MP George Barnes, he started his tour in Belfast where he was met by William Walker, the labour leader in the city. Belfast, the main centre of industry in Ireland, had expanded rapidly over the previous two decades and its industrial and commercial success was reflected in the confident decision by the city’s leaders to commission the building of a city hall at the cost of £360,000.1 Walker brought Hardie to view the new edifice, as it neared completion behind a grid of scaffolding. With the aid of a workman’s light, they made their way to the upper tier and peered out as dusk descended on Edwardian Belfast.2 Walker himself had become Labour’s new light in the city; only weeks earlier, he had come very close to winning the Belfast North seat for the party. Yet there was a significant political disjunction between him and most of his Labour colleagues: he was a unionist in a party that was broadly supportive of Irish home rule, and most of the workers to whom he appealed in Belfast shared his attitude to the national question. This disjunction in itself highlighted some of the fundamental difficulties of the ‘Irish question’ for Labour, a party that had won twenty-nine seats in the general election of that year and which would, after the First World War, harbour realistic hopes of a place in government. After moving on from Belfast, Hardie’s tour took him to Dublin where he met a number of prominent nationalists, including Michael Davitt, the veteran Land Leaguer and labour activist. Davitt was celebrated for having engineered the Irish Land War that secured Gladstone’s historic Land Act of 1881, and from which further peasant proprietary legislation would follow. Hardie saluted this transfer of land ownership from landlords to peasantry, the signs of which he witnessed in the following days when visiting various parts of provincial Ireland.3 What the Land League had ultimately brought about, though, was a settlement that served the interests of Ireland’s rural petite bourgeoisie, something

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quite different in fact from Labour’s proposed radical solution to the fin de siècle land question as it was being played out in politics in Britain.4 Labour’s elision of Ireland in the formulation of an agrarian policy did not, however, indicate a simple, binary approach to British and Irish issues on Hardie’s part. Of course, realpolitik was a factor: Walker was important to Labour’s electoral ambitions in Belfast, and Hardie would see the importance of expressing solidarity with him on that score in the first of a series of Labour Leader articles on the Irish tour;5 likewise, in his expression of solidarity with the largely nationalist Irish peasantry, he was mindful of the Hibernian vote in Britain, especially at that particular time when the Liberals had won a landslide victory in the general election. Nevertheless, Hardie did have a deeper understanding of the profoundly different historical contexts of Ireland and Britain, and in his dealings with unionists like Walker and nationalists like Davitt, he was juggling, in good faith, multiple affirmations of solidarity in an attempt to align these with a coherent ideological position. He understood that there were outstanding social justice issues in rural Ireland  – housing, congestion and land hunger – but implicit in his celebration of the land settlement was an appreciation of the fact that land politics in Ireland could never be framed only in terms of class or land monopoly; land had become a metaphor for the nation, bound up with the popular memory of what Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh has called the ‘old, unexpiated wrongs’ associated with confiscation and dispossession.6 Davitt himself, a radical who had much in common with Hardie, had wanted to see land nationalisation rather than peasant proprietorship in Ireland; but he, too, celebrated the land settlement for having effected the demise of what he called the ‘landlord garrison’, that symbol of British rule in the country.7 In his concluding Labour Leader article, Hardie acknowledged that some of his Labour colleagues in Britain had grave misgivings about Irish home rule. But the fact remained that the majority of the party was favourably disposed towards such a settlement; and to those who did harbour concerns, Hardie suggested, somewhat flippantly it may be said, that an occasional stay in Ireland would eliminate ‘all fear of Home Rule’.8 The outlook of the nascent Labour Party was shaped by a modern British radical tradition, one that at various points, to varying degrees and for a range of reasons had sought to find common ground with Irish nationalism on a ‘justice’ agenda since the late eighteenth century. By the early years of the twentieth century, then, the party was, naturally enough, engaged in a ‘conversation’ with nationalist Ireland. From the time of the Gladstonian land settlement, Davitt had been openly arguing for an alliance between the democratic masses of Britain and Ireland, though most of his nationalist contemporaries were not

Introduction

3

receptive to his espoused ‘internationalism’.9 Indeed, an Irish nationalist idiom of rural essentialism, which sharply contrasted Ireland with an inferior industrial England, gained currency and would remain a complicating factor in the British–Irish relationship during the first half of the twentieth century. The Irish radical, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, encountered difficulties in distributing his internationalist paper, the National Democrat, when a prospective distributor in Britain, a nationalist who resided there, expressed some misgivings about a journal that, in asserting Ireland’s right to ‘Nationhood’, appealed ‘like a nation of beggars to the English Democracy for help’.10 Later, in 1913, the Irish nationalist and feminist, Rosamund Jacobs, who wrote disdainfully of what she witnessed of life in industrial England during her visits there, took serious issue with the position of labour leader, Jim Larkin, who argued that the British and Irish working classes shared a common interest; this implied, in her view, ‘a revolting unwholesome Englishness’.11 But for Davitt at the turn of the century, the forging of a bond of solidarity between British democracy and Irish nationalism was crucial; and on the eve of the 1906 general election, he actually campaigned for Labour candidates in select constituencies in Britain. He addressed nineteen meetings in total, including in Merthyr Tydfil, Hardie’s constituency, where there was a sizeable Irish community.12 It is noteworthy that following his death in the spring of 1906, Davitt was remembered and honoured in the opening address of the Labour Party’s annual conference in Belfast, in January 1907.13 In an obituary article in 1908, Hardie paid tribute to Davitt’s role in the electoral achievements of Labour in 1906. While recognising the latter’s commitment to the nationalist cause, he remembered him as having ‘desired above all else in British politics to see a strong Labour contingent in the House of Commons’.14 Davitt had certainly left a mark on the early Labour Party. Indeed, at the other end of the twentieth century, the Labour leader, Michael Foot, could stake a claim to having been named after him.15 It is interesting, however, that the father who bestowed that forename on Foot in 1913 was an admirer of Cromwell, and he imparted to his son the cult of the man he considered to have been the people’s tribune in the mid seventeenth century (he himself, it must be said, would not have viewed the choice of name for his son as being at odds with his own Cromwellian loyalties, for both Davitt and Cromwell could be accommodated in the British dissenting tradition with which he identified). The Victorian rehabilitation of Cromwell had peaked by the end of the nineteenth century,16 but Isaac Foot was associated with the Cromwell Association well into the following century. Michael Foot may have joined what Kenneth O. Morgan refers to as ‘a Labour Party of self-proclaimed Levellers’, but his inheritance of a

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Cromwellian creed from his father serves to illustrate the complexity of the historical narratives of Ireland and Britain.17 Davitt, for his part, viewed Cromwell in terms of those ‘unexpiated wrongs’ that gave rise to the ‘social tyranny’ of a ‘buttressed, feudal garrison’ in Ireland.18 The sense of historical injustice, with which the largely Catholic and nationalist majority of Irish farmers keenly identified, did not resonate, however, with the Protestant farmers of Ulster, precisely because the latter, despite their record of agitation – and despite Davitt’s best efforts to harness their agrarian discontent during the Land War years – identified with a different, British narrative.19 As a result, their conflict with landowners in Ulster could not be historicised in the same way. In her reflections on the canonical status of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress – a text in which the pope is represented as one of the main obstacles to the salvation of the common man – Linda Colley makes a valuable point that can be related to narratives, and indeed to the question of relations between ‘these islands’: ‘the book inspired generations of British radicals’, she observes, ‘[but] it also contributed to a more conventional mass [British] patriotism.’20 When Foot wrote in 1983 that he had been named after Davitt, he did so with pride. Yet, by that time, much water had passed under the bridge in relations between the Labour Party and Ireland. Some aspects of this important dimension of British–Irish relations in the last century have been treated in scholarly studies and publications, though much of the literature concentrates on the recent past and on Northern Ireland.21 The dynamics of that relationship, and the trajectory of the ‘conversation’ over the entirety of the century, have therefore been neglected. The aim of this collection is to examine the subject more closely and to identify longer-term dispositions in Labour mentalities towards Ireland (though more so those of policy-makers than of grass-roots Labour activists). This is a perspective that does, in fact, make for a better understanding of the more recent developments. In his opening chapter below, Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh examines Labour’s relationship with Ireland in the context of the British radical tradition in the ‘long’ nineteenth century and the Labour Party’s arguable inheritance of what Eugenio Biagini has termed the Gladstonian ‘politics of humanitarianism’, a popular radical identification of the ‘Irish cause’ with ‘democracy, constitutional freedoms and “the claims of humanity” ’.22 Ó Tuathaigh highlights the challenges for Labour in engaging a largely Catholic and nationalist immigrant community, and in maintaining Irish electoral support once the Liberals began to lose purchase on that constituency from 1914. These early challenges for Labour are also explored in Joan Allen’s chapter on the shifting political

Introduction

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allegiances of Irish nationalists in Britain, as demonstrated in the career of Charles Diamond, the prominent newspaper magnate who supported the Liberals in the interest of the Irish nationalist cause but whose allegiance, and that of many of his readers, gravitated towards Labour after the First World War. Labour supported home rule, but with ambitions of electoral success in Britain, its policy on Ireland was really one of detachment. Ramsay MacDonald, leader of the party from 1911, said as much in the House of Commons in March 1914: ‘We will take the position of a detached party, helping as we have done during the last two years [to have] Home Rule … inscribed on the statute book of this realm.’23 The Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 would, however, change the whole political landscape, and would do so within a fairly short period. Even so, Labour was slow to respond to the changing climate. The mood in nationalist Ireland shifted discernibly when the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, handed control of the country over to General Sir John Maxwell, a man with no understanding of Irish affairs. The Easter rebels were tried in quasi-legal tribunals, at which ‘slapdash’ evidence was presented,24 and a number of them subsequently executed behind closed doors, thus precipitating the dramatic sea-change in opinion that would enable the rise of Sinn Féin.25 Following the introduction of the Military Service bill in April 1918, the Parliamentary Labour Party was divided on the question of the ­extension of conscription to Ireland.26 Generally, Labour ­continued to support the Irish Party, even after Sinn Féin had won a landslide ­victory in the 1918 general election at the end of that year.27 According to Keith Harding, the British left, at that time, was moving towards ‘a fresh understanding of the meaning of anti-imperialism and self-determination in the light of events in Ireland and Russia and a closer reading of the writings of [James] Connolly’.28 Nevertheless, he argues that the Labour Party, ‘reformist and parliamentarian, believing in Dominion Home Rule, found it difficult to deal with Republicanism’.29 At a conference of the International in Berne in 1919, the British Labour delegation, led by MacDonald, reached an agreement with Irish delegates, Tom Johnson and Cathal O’Shannon, that Labour would adopt Irish self-determination as a policy, provided that the Irish did not attempt to secure recognition of the republic at the conference.30 The complexity of the ‘Irish question’ and of Irish allegiances, implicit in Hardie’s written reflections on his Irish tour, and dealt with below in Emmet O’Connor’s chapter on Labour and politics in Edwardian Belfast, became all the more pressing as a political reality for the Labour Party, when out of the revolutionary period in Ireland, a political settlement took shape between 1918 and 1922. Anticipating a place in government,

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Labour was determined to appear strictly constitutional and law-abiding in this tumultuous period, and that was reflected in its response to the immediate and widely reported ‘Troubles’ during the Anglo-Irish War in 1919–21. As Gibbons shows in his chapter below on the period of conflict from 1919, Labour’s response to the unfolding developments was measured and cautious. A Labour Commission was established in 1920 to investigate the scale and nature of the violence in the Anglo-Irish War, and especially the conduct of the British Army and Auxiliary forces. The party made no bones about its commitment to Irish self-determination, but it was equally direct and unequivocal in distancing itself from any association with militant nationalism. It was concerned with the ‘degradation which the British people are now suffering in consequence of the [coalition government’s] policy of repression and coercion’ in Ireland.31 Later, in 1923, when Irish republicans were deported from Britain to the Free State during the Irish Civil War, Labour judiciously framed its opposition around the technical argument that the deportees were British citizens. By that stage, Labour had eclipsed the Liberals as the official opposition, and it would go on to form minority governments in 1924 and 1929–31. Apart from the process of maturing as a mainstream political party, it is also significant that a generational change began to occur in the leadership from the 1930s. The pioneers of the party, born around 1860 and, as Alastair Reid and Henry Pelling put it, ‘influenced by the Gladstonian-Liberal settlement of the controversial domestic issues of the nineteenth century … and [by] the radical-liberal tradition’, were giving way to a new generation, born about 1880 and influenced more by the collectivist Liberalism of Lloyd George and war-time state intervention in the economy.32 There were changes, too, in the social background of the leadership: Clement Attlee, who replaced George Lansbury in 1935, was the first principal spokesman of the party who did not come from a working-class background.33 In the 1930s there was also a more focused interest in foreign policy, particularly as a result of the rise of Hitler in Germany. Lansbury, who was a pacifist with a distrust of the League of Nations, had been increasingly at odds with those of his colleagues who were exercised by such wider developments.34 When Britain subsequently went to war with Germany after Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Labour was unwilling to join the government. But following the German penetration of the Low Countries and France in the spring of the following year, the party agreed to enter a coalition under Winston Churchill. Even before doing so, Labour made sure to send out a clear message that it could step up to the mark, and that the party had ‘never stood for

Introduction

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pacifism and non-resistance’.35 That soon became abundantly clear as senior Labour figures in the war cabinet gave support to aerial bombing campaigns against the Axis powers that resulted in the deaths of many civilians, most of whom were working class. When Dresden was bombed in February 1945, Attlee was actually chairing the cabinet.36 On Labour’s record during this period, Martin Farr has remarked that: The ‘national security’ perspective that had produced [the party’s] muscular position on armaments before the war … was intrinsic to [its] ambition of winning and wielding parliamentary power in the interests of its supporters. The bombing offensive was thus as much a part of Labour’s war as was the Beveridge report; indeed, the strategy could be seen as one that ultimately made implementing Beveridge possible. To that extent, it was less that patriotism had prevailed over class consciousness than Labour fighting the people’s war had reframed patriotism as class consciousness.37

The Second World War certainly marked an important junction in relations between the Labour Party and Ireland, North and South. As discussed by Peter Collins and Bob Purdie below, Éire’s policy of neutrality during the period of the war, and indeed the subsequent reconstitution of the independent Irish state as a republic in 1949, created a deep rift between Labour and mainstream Irish nationalism. Set apart from the war and the war economy, and with labour controls ultimately in place,38 the Irish state under Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, remained firmly committed to neutrality in principle, though in practice it did tend to favour the Allies.39 In fact, the maintenance of a cross-border electricity link throughout the course of the war demonstrated a level of continued, pragmatic co-operation between North and South.40 Nevertheless, the political implications of neutrality, and also the later constitutional changes, were huge. The situation made it very difficult, for example, for the post-war Friends of Ireland lobby group (which consisted of around thirty Labour MPs) to advance an Irish unity agenda and/or critique unionist hegemony in Northern Ireland. The partition of Ireland, and the maintenance of the existing border (and therefore the unionist state), had been recognised and affirmed in the boundary agreement reached between the governments in London, Dublin and Belfast in December 1925, an arrangement effectively facilitated by the conduct of the first, short-lived Labour government of the previous year, and supported as a ‘real and final settlement’ by the Labour leadership in opposition.41 Yet, despite this security, the Unionist government was at pains in the 1930s to differentiate the six-county state from the rest of Ireland, both for economic and political reasons. As a corollary to that, Unionists deemed it extremely important to

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ensure that in the national consciousness in Britain, Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, and in the Empire-Commonwealth, was firmly established.42 A later publicity director of the Unionist government would actually remark: I believe it was a great mistake ever to have included the word Ireland in the title of our new state when it was set up in 1921. It links us forever with the south and with a stage-Irish interpretation of our character of which we feel ashamed … If only it were practicable, one of the biggest steps we could take towards clearing up permanently this confusion … would be to change the title of our state to something that would exclude the word Ireland. This would enable us to propagate our own picture of the Ulster character and of our modern industrial state … ‘Ulster’ is such a title and is already widely known and used though, could it but be found, there would be many advantages in using a name that would imply a connection with Britain. I say this in part because it would emphasise our oneness with the mainland.43

But, since partition, individual Labour MPs had criticised the sectarian nature of the Northern Ireland state and pointed to its separateness from the rest of the United Kingdom. More generally, the Labour Party, despite the role of the leadership in cementing the border, was very much at odds with the conservatism of Unionism. During the economic hardships of the inter-war years, when the party was agitating for the adoption of a more humane welfare regime throughout the United Kingdom, it challenged the Unionist government’s determination to retain the archaic poor law system in Northern Ireland.44 As the tensions between European powers escalated in the late 1930s, the Unionist government was, moreover, not only attacked by sections of Labour for presiding over a regime underpinned by politically motivated discrimination, but also generally condemned by the left in Britain for using an IRA campaign, which was directed mainly against targets in British cities, as a pretext for interning republicans in the North. Following the incarceration of thirty-four men in January 1939, Fenner Brockway of the Independent Labour Party stated that ‘the sincere British anti-Fascist must not be content in condemning the crimes of Hitler and Mussolini. His first duty is to denounce and resist every expression of the Fascist spirit in the British Isles’.45 Northern Ireland’s subsequent role in the British war effort was, however, its saving grace. In the earlier stages of the Second World War, the British were frustrated by the inefficiencies of war production under the Unionist prime ministers James Craig and J. M. Andrews; but in the person of Sir Basil Brooke, who succeeded the latter in May 1943, the

Introduction

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government in Westminster found a more dynamic and effective leader.46 Three years previously, when de Valera had rejected Churchill’s most significant effort to coax Éire to join the Allies, Craig remarked:  ‘We are closing the gates, as our ancestors did at Derry, and maintaining our position at the battlefront.’47 Brooke clearly felt bound to live up to that commitment, though his province did pay a price for its war-time role. As Robert Fisk states, following the German aerial bombing of Belfast in April and May 1941, ‘Even the Luftwaffe [admitted] that they could not believe their eyes when they set fire to [the city]’.48 During the war, Brooke also had serious concerns about the political implications of the upheaval:  Unionists feared that labour migration from the South would prove a factor in the electoral arithmetic in Northern Ireland;49 and while Brooke could, at the end of the war, rejoice in the knowledge that the part played by Northern Ireland had both reinforced partition and identified the region more closely with Britain, and indeed the Empire-Commonwealth, he was nevertheless anxious about the future of the ‘province’ under Labour.50 He need not have worried, though. For the Labour Party leadership, Northern Ireland may have been governed by a Protestant plutocracy, but it had made a sterling contribution to the British war effort, to ‘national security’. For some leading Labour figures such as Herbert Morrison, who had had ‘instinctive prejudices against Unionists’ at the outset of the war, everything was changed by the loyalty shown by ‘Ulster’ in Britain’s hour of need.51 Alan Brooke, uncle of Sir Basil Brooke, was one of the military heroes of the period; and, as Philip Ollerenshaw has noted, he and his Ulster connections ‘gave considerable assistance to Northern Ireland’s place in the Empire-Commonwealth after 1945’.52 It is perhaps worth noting that as the neutral Irish state emerged from its Emergency and subsequently separated from the Commonwealth, the dominant figures in the cabinet of the first majority Labour government (1945–51), including Attlee, Morrison and Ernest Bevin, were acting upon a ‘new imperialist attitude’ that sought to develop the colonies as economic assets. Mary Davis has observed that the development of this ‘ “positive” colonial policy’ during the war ‘was grist to the mill’ of these leaders, ‘who warmed as to the manor born as guardians of Britain’s imperial role’.53 It is also significant, as Purdie states, that home rule for Scotland and Wales was removed from Labour’s programme after 1945. This policy had originated with Hardie’s Scottish Labour Party in 1888 when it called for ‘home rule all round’.54 The post-war Atlee government was not prepared to upset the unionist status quo in Northern Ireland, regardless of the outstanding issues of religious discrimination and social injustice that were highlighted

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by nationalists and a sizeable number of Labour backbenchers. As Paul Rose points out, Morrison ‘continued to keep a protective eye on Ulster’s interests in the Labour Cabinet’.55 Later, in opposition, the party leadership placed the ‘Irish question’ on the backburner, and in this it was served by the convention, established in 1923 by the Speaker of the House of Commons, which ruled that ‘With regard to those subjects which have been delegated to the Government of Northern Ireland, questions must be asked of Ministers of Northern Ireland and not in this House’.56 From the mid-1960s, however, that convention came under considerable pressure, during the first Labour government of Harold Wilson, when a mounting campaign for democratic rights forced Northern Irish issues onto the British political agenda. In his chapter in this volume, Máirtín Ó Catháin points out that a younger generation of labour activists in the largely Catholic and nationalist city of Derry, where much of that campaign gained momentum, were galvanised not by traditional, ‘revanchist’ nationalism but by Labour’s post-war welfare politics. For almost fifty years, the ‘Irish question’ could, for the most part, be sidestepped, but with the rise of the campaign for democracy in Northern Ireland, Wilson and his government were confronted by the legacy of the partition settlement. The tragedy that marked the crisis by the early 1970s, according to Aaron Edwards in his chapter below, was the failure of British Labour to fully engage with its ‘sister’ organisation, the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), in a concerted effort to advance non-sectarian, class-based politics. But for Kevin McNamara, in his reflective piece on Wilson’s first government, such value or importance cannot be attached to the NILP; the real tragedy, in his view, was the failure of the British Labour Party to acknowledge the fundamentally sectarian nature of the Northern Ireland state and to seize the opportunity to address that before the situation spiralled out of control. Certainly, under the Labour governments of Wilson and James Callaghan between 1974 and 1979, there was a crisis of politics and a heavy concentration on a ‘security’ agenda, as discussed in Stuart Aveyard’s chapter. As the violence intensified in the earlier part of that decade, sections of the Labour left campaigned against the deployment of British troops in Ireland. Around thirty Labour MPs gave their support to the position of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) and the British-based Connolly Association. Consistent with a traditional strand of British radicalism that affirmed solidarity with a nationalist Ireland resisting Tory ‘coercion’, Labour MP Joan Maynard warned:  ‘what is happening in Ireland today could easily happen in this country later on … I don’t want to see the British army running through the country.’57

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During its time in government, in this period of escalating conflict in Northern Ireland, Labour had to deal with Irish republican protests in British prisons, and ultimately with hunger strikes that would result in the deaths of Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, in June 1974 and February 1976 respectively. Decades earlier, as the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton prison in 1920, the then nascent Labour Party could make political capital out of the situation as part of its general attack on the conduct of Lloyd George’s coalition government during the Anglo-Irish War; but as a mainstream political party in government, over half a century later, Labour was now in the thick of it. Shortly after the appointment of the new Labour administration in 1974, the hopes of many were dashed when, as Ruán O’Donnell remarks, the government ‘appeared to be as implacable on the issue as the Conservatives they had displaced’.58 One month after Gaughan had commenced his strike, a large rally, led by hunger strikers’ families and supported by elements of the Labour left, marched on the London home of Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, to demand movement on the prisoners’ demands for political status and for transfers to prisons in Ireland.59 The conflict in Northern Ireland would indeed give rise to intense ideological debate among those on the left of Labour. The intellectual roots of the different positions that took shape around that debate, and the Labour left’s impact on and relationship with Militant and other leftist tendencies in Ireland and Britain, are explored below in the respective chapters by Stephen Howe and John Cunningham. The weakness of the British handling of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike in 1974, together with the severity of security policy under Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, left British–Irish relations at a low ebb by the time of Labour’s election defeat in 1979. This was compounded by the party’s position two years later during the Republican hunger strikes in Long Kesh prison, just outside Belfast. Towards the end of the strikes, Michael Foot privately encouraged the Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to make some compromise on the prisoners’ demands; but publicly, Foot, as leader of the opposition, continued to lend support to a government stance that was widely viewed, including among Labour’s Irish support base in Britain, as intransigent.60 As discussed by Melinda Sutton below, it was only as the 1980s progressed that relations improved between the Labour leadership, on the one hand, and the Irish Republic and ‘constitutional’ Northern nationalists on the other. Labour supported both the ‘constitutional’ initiative of the New Ireland Forum in 1983 and the Anglo-Irish Agreement

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between the British and Irish governments in 1985, though with some qualifications in the case of the latter. Significant though these developments were in cross-border political alignments and in Anglo-Irish diplomatic relations, they had no effect in moving the situation forward on the ground. The New Ireland Forum, which had essentially been devised by both the Dublin government and the Social Democratic and Labour Party in the North to marginalise Sinn Féin, had no impact on the republican support base. As Brian Feeney has stated, ‘The … Forum, sitting in Dublin in the ornate surroundings of Dublin Castle, was a long way from Ardoyne’, a working-class, staunchly republican enclave in north Belfast.61 Ultimately, it was through secret talks between the IRA and the British and Irish governments from at least the late 1980s that a framework for an agreement was gradually established, one that would be taken up by the Labour government under Tony Blair in 1997. During the early days of that administration, the newly appointed Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, had an exchange with the Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern which, while inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, was interesting nonetheless, not least because a particular point of Irish grievance seemed to have been lost on Cook. On a courtesy call to the Foreign Secretary’s office, the Taoiseach, on entering the room, made it clear to his host that the Irish delegates were offended by a portrait hanging on the wall, none other than that of Cromwell, ‘that murdering bastard’, as the Taoiseach forthrightly put it, perhaps with a hint of histrionics.62 The business of politics continued, nevertheless, and as tentative negotiations reached their critical phase less than a year after Labour’s election victory, Blair saw occasion to remark: ‘I feel the hand of history on our shoulder.’63 In the concluding chapter in this volume, Kevin Bean examines the basis of the agreement that was reached, the degree to which it enabled ‘these islands’ to ‘fly the nets of history’ as the twentieth century came to a close, and, above all, the nature of the Labour Party that was instrumental in framing it. As we gain a firmer footing in the twenty-first century, the opportunity exists for more work to be undertaken on this important dimension of British–Irish relations during the last century. In dealing with Labour’s relationship with Ireland in the later decades of that century, we must, however, be mindful of the fact that we remain close to events. While evidence in the form of memoirs, state papers and other primary material is becoming available on a continuing basis, it is still the case that both an incomplete documentary record and engaged ideological perspectives make it difficult to offer more than an interim assessment (indeed, some state papers are embargoed). There is no question that the

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Northern conflict has significantly shaped Irish historiography.64 And, of course, issues of the ‘past’ remain contentious in the political process there. One may expect that with the passage of time and the opening of further archives, our understanding of relations in this period will improve. Yet, given the nature of historical inquiry and debate, it is unlikely that even the most dispassionate commentary based on the richest of archival resources will altogether escape the pressing ideological preoccupations operating at any given time in the future. Certainly, it would be misguided to take the view that excavating and documenting the recent past is the preserve of academics. The work ahead, both on the British Labour Party’s relationship with Ireland and on all other aspects of British-Irish studies, requires not only an absolute scruple for historical evidence but also a sharp awareness of one’s own predispositions.

Notes  1 C. E. B. Brett, Buildings of Belfast (London, Littlehampton Book Services, 1967), p. 56.  2 James Keir Hardie, ‘A week in Ireland’ (First Article), Labour Leader, 9  February 1906. Interestingly, in his biography of Keir Hardie, Kenneth O. Morgan makes only a fleeting reference to his subject’s visit in Ireland; Keir Hardie, radical and socialist (repr., London, Phoenix Giant, 1997), p. 153.  3 Hardie, ‘A week in Ireland’ (Fourth Article), Labour Leader, 2 March 1906.  4 Michael Tichelar, ‘Socialists, labour and the land: the response of the Labour Party to the land campaign of Lloyd George before the First World War’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 8, no.  2, 1997, pp.  127–44. See also Clare Griffiths, ‘Socialism and the land question:  public ownership and control in Labour Party policy, 1918–1950s’, in Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (eds), The land question in Britain, 1750–1950 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).  5 Hardie, ‘A week in Ireland’ (First Article), Labour Leader, 9 February 1906.  6 Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, ‘Irish land questions in the state of the Union’, in Fergus Campbell and Tony Varley (eds), Land questions in modern Ireland (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 6.  7 Laurence Marley, Michael Davitt:  freelance radical and frondeur (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007), p. 284.  8 Hardie, ‘A week in Ireland’ (Fourth Article), Labour Leader, 2 March, 1906.  9 See Marley, Michael Davitt, pp. 62–3, 72–3, 182–3. 10 Quoted in R.  F. Foster, Vivid faces:  the revolutionary generation in Ireland, 1890–1923 (London, Allen Lane, 2014), p.  164. For more on Sheehy-Skeffington’s identification of his paper with the politics of Davitt, see Marley, Michael Davitt, p. 127.

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11 Quoted in Foster, Vivid faces, p. 18. 12 Marley, Michael Davitt, p. 217. 13 The first Labour Party conference (Derry, Labour Party Northern Ireland Group, 2007), p. 11. 14 James Keir Hardie, ‘Michael Davitt: the democrat’, Socialist Review, August 1908, p. 415. 15 Michael Foot to John Dunleavy, 4 August 1983, Michael Davitt Museum, Straide, Co. Mayo, MS DV 205. 16 See Blair Worden, ‘The Victorians and Oliver Cromwell’, in Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore and Brian Young (eds), History, religion and culture:  British intellectual history, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 112–35. 17 Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot: a life (London, Harper Perennial, 2007), pp. 7–9. 18 Michael Davitt, The fall of feudalism in Ireland (London and New  York, Harper & Brothers, 1904), pp. xvii–xviii. 19 See Ó Tuathaigh, ‘Irish land questions in the state of the Union’, pp. 16–17. 20 Linda Colley, Britons:  forging the nation, 1707–1837 (3rd edn, London, Vintage, 1996), p. 29. 21 In A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party:  democratic socialism and sectarianism (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2009), Aaron Edwards does examine issues within a broad chronological framework, but as the title indicates, the study is principally concerned with Labour and Northern Ireland. 22 Eugenio F.  Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 377. 23 Quoted in Keith Harding, ‘The Irish issue in the British labour movement, 1900–1922’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1983, p. 37. 24 Charles Townshend, Easter 1916:  the Irish rebellion (London, Penguin, 2006), p. 282. 25 See Michael Laffan, The resurrection of Ireland:  the Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). 26 Ivan Gibbons, ‘The British Labour Party and the establishment of the Irish Free State’, unpublished PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London, 2006, pp. 82–3. 27 Gibbons, ‘The British Labour Party’, p. 85. 28 Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 216. 29 Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 224. 30 Emmet O’Connor, ‘True Bolsheviks? The rise and fall of the Socialist Party of Ireland, 1917–21’, in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), Ireland in transition, 1867–1921 (London, Routledge, 2004), p. 216. 31 Report of the Labour Commission to Ireland (London, The Labour Party, 1921), p. 1. 32 Alastair J. Reid and Henry Pelling, A short history of the Labour Party (12th edn, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 204.

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33 Reid and Pelling, A short history, p. 69. 34 Reid and Pelling, A short history, p. 66. 35 Quoted in Martin Farr, ‘The Labour Party and strategic bombing in the Second World War’, Labour History Review, vol. 77, no.  1, April 2012, p. 135. 36 Farr, ‘The Labour Party’, p. 148. 37 Farr, ‘The Labour Party’, p. 152. 38 Emmet O’Connor, A labour history of Ireland, 1824–1960 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1992), pp. 148–9. 39 Jonathan Bardon, A history of Ulster (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 2007), p. 585. 40 Michael Kennedy, Division and consensus: the politics of cross-border relations in Ireland, 1925–1969 (Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, 2000), pp. 90–1. 41 Quoted in Ivan Gibbons, ‘The first Labour government and the Irish Boundary Commission, 1924’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 98, no. 391, autumn 2009, p. 330. 42 Philip Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland in the Second World War:  politics, economy, mobilisation and society, 1939–45 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013), p. 17. 43 Quoted in David Miller, ‘Colonialism and academic representations of the troubles’, in David Miller (ed.), Rethinking Northern Ireland (Harlow, Longman, 1998), p. 12. 44 Paddy Devlin, Yes we have no bananas: outdoor relief in Belfast, 1920–39 (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1981), pp. 107–8. 45 Quoted in Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland, p. 42. 46 Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland, p. 56. 47 Quoted in Robert Fisk, In time of war: Ireland, Ulster and the price of neutrality, 1939–45 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1983), p. 216. 48 Fisk, In time of war, p. 483. 49 Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland, pp. 191, 216–17. 50 Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland, pp. 216–17. 51 Quoted in Peter Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 1–2. 52 Ollerenshaw, Northern Ireland, p. 227. 53 Mary Davis, ‘Labour, race and empire:  the Trades Union Congress and colonial policy, 1945–51’, in Billy Frank, Craig Horner and David Stewart (eds), The British labour movement and imperialism (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), p.  95. For suggested reasons why the Labour left did not challenge this policy at that time, see Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British politics: the left and the end of empire, 1918–1964 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 147–8. 54 Morgan, Keir Hardie, p. 34. 55 Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland, p. 2. 56 Quoted in Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland, p. 20.

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57 Quoted in Ruán O’Donnell, Special category: the IRA in English prisons, vol. 1: 1968–1978 (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2012), p. 140. 58 O’Donnell, Special category, pp. 164–5. 59 O’Donnell, Special category, p. 165. 60 Eamonn O’Kane, Anglo-Irish relations and the Northern Ireland conflict: the totality of relationships (Abingdon, Routledge, 2007), pp. 21–2. 61 Brian Feeney, Sinn Féin: a hundred turbulent years (Dublin, O’Brien Press, 2002), p. 316. 62 Quoted in Micheál Ó Siochrú, God’s executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the conquest of Ireland (London, Faber & Faber, 2009),  p.  1; see also Irish Times, 10 October, 2008. 63 Jonathan Powell, Great hatred, little room:  making peace in Northern Ireland (London, Vintage, 2008), p. 92. 64 See D. G. Boyce, ‘Revisionism and the Northern Ireland troubles’, in D. G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), The making of modern Irish history: revisionism and the revisionist controversy (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 216–38; Philip Bull, ‘Writing about Irish land against the background of Northern Ireland’, in Fergus Campbell and Tony Varley (eds), Land questions in modern Ireland (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 80–6; John M.  Regan, Myth and the Irish state (Sallins, Co. Kildare, Irish Academic Press, 2013), ch. 4.

1 A tangled legacy: the Irish ‘inheritance’ of British Labour Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh The period from the founding of the British Labour Party to its emergence, by the later 1920s, as a credible alternative party of government, coincided with the decisive phase of the long-standing Irish nationalist demand for self-government. The solutions to Britain’s ‘Irish question’ arrived at during 1918–22 resulted in a controversial partition settlement: a twenty-six-county Irish Free State, with substantial autonomy, and a six-county enclave in the north-east, with a local unionist majority, remaining an integral part of the United Kingdom, though with limited, devolved ‘home rule’. How British Labour responded to the emerging Irish settlement of 1918–22, and its later relations throughout the twentieth century with the independent Irish state (in its foreign policy and in particular in its conduct of British–Irish relations, not least in relation to partition) and with Northern Ireland, is, understandably, a story of considerable complexity, demanding close attention to particular episodes, issues and personalities. However, it is a story that also demands a longer perspective, if it is to be fully comprehended or explained. This chapter suggests an approach to that longer perspective, situating the twentieth-century relationship of British Labour with Ireland within the broader historiography of British radicalism and its understanding of and attitudes towards Ireland and, specifically, to Irish nationalism.1 The chapter considers the nature, the extent and the constancy of British radicalism’s supposed sympathy with the claims of Irish nationalism from the later eighteenth century – from Jacobinism to Chartism, through Gladstonian Liberalism, various socialist groups and the ‘new’ trade unionism, to the pioneers of the early Labour Party itself. The competing claims of class solidarity and ethno-religious communal loyalty are considered, not simply as ideological positions, but as they operated in a developing British industrial society and imperial state, at the heart of which was settled an Irish immigrant community frequently characterised (on ethno-religious grounds) as an alien and resented ‘other’.

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In considering the complexity of attitudes and reforming impulses operating within and between the main political blocs, Liberal and Conservative, with regard to Ireland, throughout the period of the Union, it is vital to stress that for both parties, for long periods and in different areas of policy, the reforming impulse was securely grounded in an underlying commitment to making the Union work: creating a secure base of Irish support for the Union.2 In short, prior to the emergence of the Irish home rule movement in the 1870s, there is little evidence that mainstream British Liberal opinion, any more than its Conservative rival, harboured sympathy with any version of Irish claims to self-government, however modest. The Gladstonian conversion to home rule in the 1880s was, therefore, a fateful moment in the history of British Liberalism’s dealings with Irish nationalism, and indeed in the disposition of the British political establishment as a whole towards the future prospects of the Union:  a largely bipartisan and solid defence of the Union had been breached. The split in the Whig-Liberal Party on the issue of Irish home rule in 1886, and the reconstruction of late Victorian Liberalism in a more progressive direction, initially under Gladstone’s leadership, has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation for several decades.3 A central issue in this historiography has been identifying what role, if any, was played by the home rule split and Liberal reconstruction in the emergence and growth of a separate Labour Party, and its eventual replacement of the Liberal Party, as the party of the ‘left’, the alternative party of government to the Conservatives. However, in tracing the currents of political opinion on Ireland that would nourish the foundations of the British Labour Party of the twentieth century, we must look beyond the binary terms of mainstream political blocs at Westminster. It is within the radical tradition – championed outside Westminster more than within for much of the nineteenth century  – that we may seek a record of more continuous sympathy with Ireland’s popular grievances and ultimately with the claims of Irish nationalism.4 British radical solidarity with the popular cause in Ireland may be traced to the great Atlantic reform wave of the late eighteenth century. It is easy to identify the main shared instincts and concerns that sustained it:  the replacement of oligarchy, inherited privilege and the power-monopoly of the ancien régime with, in politics and government, a more legitimate system of representative government working for the commonweal. Its touchstone of legitimacy was the will of ‘the people’: but this universalist notion had to come to terms with another aggregate, ‘the nation’. This distinction, and the logic of political and

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social solidarity that would flow from it, would shape discourses of class and nation in the centuries that followed. In the ‘age of revolution’, the solidarity between radicals in Ireland and Britain embraced, at its extremity, varieties of Jacobinism, with the United Irishmen finding ‘partners in revolution’ in various centres throughout the archipelago.5 The sharp success of counter-revolution in Ireland at the close of the eighteenth century ushered in the Union of Ireland and Britain as a single United Kingdom. The long period of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, though coinciding with the accelerating emergence of an industrial society in Britain, served to temporarily staunch radical demands for political change, while strengthening the common consciousness of ‘Britishness’ among the Protestant people at war.6 The incorporation of Ireland formally into the British state, with the Union of 1801, took place as rapid population growth, heavily concentrated at the base of the pyramid of Irish rural society, swelled the ranks of the Irish poor. With the resumption of political radicalism in Britain post-Waterloo, the rise of Daniel O’Connell’s politics of mass mobilisation in Ireland in the 1820s brought centre-stage the prospect of a common platform of solidarity for radical reformers in both islands; but it also revealed the strains and fractures that might threaten such solidarity. Ending religious discrimination in political and civic life was, for most reformers, a logical plank in any broad reform agenda. But there was a strong anti-Catholic instinct in British national identity and politics that recoiled from any accommodation with ‘popery’. This antipathy went beyond the high Tory camp of reaction.7 Even solid reform advocates might baulk at the clericalist base to O’Connell’s popular organisation in Ireland. Moreover, if O’Connell’s threatening rhetoric frightened more cautious reformers, his views gave certain working-class radicals more substantial grounds for concern: notably his opposition to trades unions, his general social conservatism on land issues, and what seemed a strongly confessional bias in his reform priorities. Undoubtedly, O’Connell was a staunch advocate of most major causes of philosophical radicalism in the second quarter of the nineteenth century: a trenchant anti-slavery stance, support for full religious freedom and equality before the law. His witness to these mainstream radical causes was recognised and respected by most of the leading radicals in Britain. Again, his steadfast support for franchise reform was a vital and valued component of the movement that led to the great Reform Act of 1832, and he remained committed to the reform of local government in a progressive direction.8

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However, what kept O’Connell and his popular politics at arm’s length from otherwise reform-committed sections of British public opinion was a settled ethno-religious prejudice against the Irish Catholic ‘character’ and its inherent incompatibility with the sturdy independent conscience of the Protestant Briton. This anti-Irish Catholic stereotype was a central issue in the relationship between majority Irish nationalist identity and politics and various strands of British radicalism  – and within a wider British public opinion – throughout most of the Union era. While representations of chronic Irish lawlessness, endemic poverty and popish superstition in Ireland itself were undoubtedly influential in creating and embedding this prejudice, the crux of the matter was the Irish community of immigrants in Britain: it was here that most British people, of all classes, encountered the Irish most directly and most challengingly. There had been population movement within the archipelago since time immemorial, and the Irish migrants had been identified as a distinctive group in Britain for centuries, before the economic transformation of early industrialisation propelled the massive influx of Irish into urbanising industrial Britain at an increasing rate from the later eighteenth century. By the 1841 census there were 415,000 Irish-born in Britain; by 1861 (with the massive influx of the Famine years) this figure peaked at 806,000; by 1901 it had fallen back to 632,000. However, when account is taken of those second and later generations of Irish who continued to cleave to the immigrant community, it is estimated that the effective Irish ‘community’ in late Victorian Britain probably numbered about one million, of which four-fifths were Catholic.9 Settling predominantly in urban centres of industry, by 1841 almost half of the Irish-born were to be found in the four major centres of Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester and London. These would remain major centres of Irish settlement, but later decades would see wider dispersal among a large number of urban centres throughout Britain. Moreover, the Irish as a percentage of local populations would, in time, be proportionately higher in Scotland (6.7 per cent in 1861) than in England and Wales (3.1 per cent), with a still more elevated share in certain towns and cities (for example, Dundee).10 While there was a middle-class component to the Irish influx (one that generally integrated quickly and harmoniously), and a skilled labouring element that negotiated and adjusted its prospects in a changing labour market, the majority of the immigrant Catholic Irish were unskilled. It was these immigrants – notably the poorer among them – that bore the brunt of anti-Irish prejudice in Britain throughout the nineteenth century. The extent, persistence and intensity of anti-Catholic/Irish sentiment in Britain – and its relevance to the British working-class radical response

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to the Irish question (and to the Irish living in Britain) – was marked by considerable variation, geographically and over time, as the burgeoning historiography on this topic in recent decades has richly documented.11 The relevant variables included regional and local economic and social conditions (relating to the labour market, settlement and living conditions); the strength of indigenous Protestant militancy, fortified by the influx of Ulster Orange immigrants and fervour; the sporadic intrusion of militant Irish nationalist activism (notably during the Fenian episode of the mid-1860s). Likewise, the sheer scale and poverty of the Famine influx, in the 1840s and 1850s, greatly amplified existing anti-Irish prejudice among the host community, exciting intense fear and loathing, so that the mid-decades of the century – c.1840–75 – may fairly be described as the peak of anti-Irish prejudices in Victorian Britain.12 Yet, even among the poorer, unskilled Irish, the immigrant experience was not uniform. The complexity and diversity of this experience is evident from research in recent decades. As Graham Davis states: ‘In shaping the experience of the Irish in Britain, it mattered where migrants had come from in Ireland, where they chose to settle, and the timing and subsequent persistence of their settlement  … [and] …  what skills the Irish brought with them.’13 In turn, ‘the response of the host community varied not only in the scale of the in-migration but in local conditions of employment and was shaped by local, religious and political allegiances’.14 Concentrated in poor neighbourhoods of congested, inferior housing (with attendant social problems), the poor Irish in British towns and cities frequently shared these living conditions with the indigenous poor underclass. It is, therefore, more appropriate to speak of strongly Irish neighbourhoods than of ghettos, a term somewhat loosely used in earlier literature (influenced, no doubt, by the more alarmist contemporary voices of the early Victorian decades). Indeed, to the extent that the immigrant Irish maintained ‘a tenacious structure of community … and a resilient sub-culture’ down through several generations,15 this may be attributed more to the distinct matrix of Church-mediated institutions and practices of their associational culture than to any strictly segregated patterns of residence. Sectarian tensions, sporadically erupting into street violence and riots, were a feature of areas of significant Irish Catholic settlement, notoriously when joined with a strong local Orange presence combining Ulster Protestant immigrants with an assertive indigenous tradition of anti-Catholicism. Evangelical Protestantism had its own robust indigenous British base, with the specifically Ulster Orange zeal being more vital in Glasgow and Lanarkshire than on Merseyside or throughout Lancashire. Moreover, while the Orange organisation in Britain generally

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provided a distinct, supportive associational culture for a minority of evangelical Protestants, its eruptions into more overt animosity towards Irish Catholic immigrants were usually triggered by particular incidents or episodes.16 Specifically, any sign or public expression of rising Catholic self-confidence might raise the spectre of resurgent popery and ignite action to avert the danger and to assert the essential Protestant character of Britishness itself.17 Popular Toryism in Lancashire may have been the most obvious political beneficiary of this frequently fraught sectarian climate, but its underlying logic was to privilege communal over class consciousness and organisation, and to inhibit the growth of solidarities that had been present in the Chartist movement and that would be prerequisites for the emergence of the Labour Party in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Indeed, even after the Labour Party had established its electoral foothold, and after the Irish question had found a solution of sorts in the settlements of 1920–22, sectarian divisions still proved intractable and sporadically violent in the traditional hotbeds of Liverpool and Glasgow.18 These contrary forces and complexities become immediately apparent when we consider the relationship between the Irish popular movement and Chartism in the 1840s, a subject that has received scholarly attention in recent decades.19 The opposition to Chartism among sections of the pre-Famine Irish immigrants in Britain – at the behest of O’Connell, his cadre of local branch leaders and Catholic clergy ministering to Irish immigrants – cannot be ignored, but neither should its extent be exaggerated. As Dorothy Thompson and others have demonstrated, not only was there a prominent Irish component to the national leadership of the Chartist movement, but Irish representation among activists at local level was also strong.20 Moreover, many activists among the labouring Irish immigrants saw no incompatibility between supporting O’Connell’s Repeal movement, the Chartist campaigns and the church-centred temperance movement.21 On the other hand, O’Connell’s opposition from the later 1830s to both trade unions and to the Chartist movement itself did not prevent the Chartist leadership from supporting Repeal for Ireland, opposing the defence of Church and other privileges, all forms of coercion, rule by an unrepresentative minority ascendancy and the evils of an oppressive land system. In short, O’Connell’s stance – for all his undoubted authority as the leader of the popular party in Ireland  – did not undermine the conviction of British working-class radicalism that the same forces (landlordism, oligarchy, inherited privilege, corruption) responsible for Irish misgovernment were also those defending the fortress of privilege and resisting the march of justice, liberty and the ‘rights of the people’ in

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Britain. There was a further lesson to be drawn from the sorry condition of Ireland: if the ordinary working people of Britain did not support the cause of Irish self-government (the best option for Ireland’s economic and social revival), then the same oppressive and predatory forces that had reduced the mass of the Irish to poverty would inevitably seek to drive down the living standards of the common people of Britain.22 This matrix of beliefs and commitments of solidarity with Ireland within working-class radicalism in the Chartist era is, it must be acknowledged, only part of the story, though a vital part. That there was suspicion of, and hostility towards, Irish agitation (as it was reported), and specifically towards the ‘swarms’ of poor Irish immigrants, among all sections of British society, including the working class, is beyond argument. The apocalyptic anti-Irish rhetoric of Thomas Carlyle may have represented the wilder extremes of hostility, but there was widespread anxiety and fear of the ill-nourished, disease-carrying and uncivilised Irish not only settling in depressed Irish enclaves in many British towns and cities but, in effect, being the infectious germs of a more general degradation of life at the bottom rungs of the emerging British industrial society.23 That the underlying causes of this Irish influx should be sought in the misgovernment of Ireland may have been the conclusion of more sober analysts. But at the most pressing points of contact and conflict at the bottom of the labour market or in the maelstrom of poor housing, poor sanitation, lawlessness and drink, feelings of anger and prejudice could easily well up against the unwelcome and disruptive ‘other’. These tensions were already evident in the pre-Famine decades, with local spikes in anti-Irish feelings generally triggered by local public health crises (for example, cholera outbreaks) or public order incidents. The huge influx of Famine refugees from Ireland during the late 1840s and immediate post-crisis decades greatly aggravated these fears and intensified anti-Irish prejudices among all sections of the indigenous British population. Moreover, and coinciding with the Famine influx and the hostility it excited, within British political culture itself the collapse of such radical solidarity as Chartism had represented, the fragmentation of working-class radicalism and the growth of evangelical Protestant populism all contributed to a deterioration in the solidarity between the Irish Catholic majority and elements of British working-class radicalism. The bombings and other escapades of the Fenians in Britain itself in the 1860s sharpened the hostility towards the Irish immigrants, and not only towards those among them who were politically active in any pan-Irish nationalist politics. Nevertheless, at no stage was radical sympathy with Ireland altogether ruptured.24

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J. S. Mill, in the aftermath of the calamity of the great Irish Famine of the 1840s, pleaded for Ireland to be governed more in accordance with Irish ideas (notably regarding land and property).25 But this plea for a kind of cultural relativism in arriving at government policies appropriate to Ireland and to the welfare and progress of its people did not translate automatically into support for the concession of Irish self-government. Thus, when the moderate Irish nationalist demand for Irish home rule – limited, devolved self-government  – surfaced from the early 1870s, it had to contend from the outset with a formidable, embedded strain of anti-Irish prejudice across a broad spectrum of British public opinion. Furthermore, when the Irish ‘land war’ began to sweep the country during 1879–82, and the Parnellite version of home rule began to assume a more assertive (and obstructive) form in Westminster, lurid images in the British press of Irish lawlessness again fanned the flames of anti-Irish prejudice.26 It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that when Gladstone ‘converted’ to home rule in 1886, he succeeded in bringing the bulk of British radicalism with him. Eugenio Biagini’s recent analysis of this decisive shift claims that the solidarity of radical support for home rule after 1886 was founded upon ‘the idea that Irish people are qualified for selfgovernment, that they are amenable to reason, and that they, like the great mass of mankind, will under fair conditions organize themselves for common action and a common purpose – the protection of life and property against the selfishness of individuals and the other objects, to be attained by political action’.27 Furthermore, he is adamant that support for home rule, ‘far from being an ephemeral Liberal aberration and the product of Gladstone’s “obsession”, fired the public imagination of the peoples of the United Kingdom and came to dominate their understanding of liberty and citizenship’, and concludes that British radical support for Irish self-government is best understood as a shining example of ‘the politics of humanitarianism’.28 The evidence presented by Biagini is impressive, certainly in demonstrating the steady support of key provincial radicals (notably in mining communities, among nonconformists and in the trade union movement) for Irish home rule as a humanitarian cause, and in elucidating the language of justice and universal democratic rights through which Gladstone carried the bulk of the radical constituency with him on home rule.29 The reshaping of the Liberal Party in the later nineteenth century turned, immediately, on the Irish home rule issue. This, of course, may be read as part of a longer-term, more protracted withdrawal of the Whigs from the side of ‘reform’, from the 1830s, and the steady advance of various strands of radicalism within the Liberal political tent. Irish

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issues – from the 1830s onwards – punctuate this narrative of the passing of the Whigs. And, as the incremental extension of the franchise presented Irish nationalists with an ever-strengthening claim to being considered ‘the voice of the people’, the demand for some form of Irish self-government became increasingly unanswerable. The precise timing of Gladstone’s conversion to home rule was not, of course, predictable, and neither was the precise configuration of radical forces that supported him or, it must be acknowledged, refused to follow him. It is here that one may offer a qualification to Biagini’s analysis. While the majority of British radicals (National Liberal Federation, nonconformity, trade unions and other ‘left’ groups) went with Gladstone, a minority refused to do so. That Joseph Chamberlain would eventually be absorbed into Conservative-led governments should not lead us to ignore the fact that there was working-class (as well as middle-class) opposition to home rule. Neither can we ignore the existence of a working-class Tory vote, with patriotic king-and-country sentiment, popular evangelical Protestantism and personal loyalties in neighbourhood and workplace, among its main determinants.30 It is also necessary to note that support for Irish home rule had a variety of motives. Sympathy for the Irish demand for self-government – on theoretical or strategic grounds, for those seeking broader transformation within the British state and Empire – was not incompatible with an adverse view of the Irish, on ethno-cultural grounds or in terms of moral character, as a succession of familiar commentators clearly demonstrate, from Engels in the early Victorian era to the Webbs at its close.31 Indeed, pace Biagini, one might ask how much radical or liberal support for Gladstonian home rule rested on a desire to be rid of the Irish question (from Westminster and from the British body politic in general); to ‘clear the way’, as it were, for proper attention to be given to pressing domestic British issues.32 The political disposition of the Irish in Britain, as that community matured during the nineteenth century, and its relations with the indigenous working class, is deserving of close attention. In considering the presence of Irish immigrants (or those of Irish extraction) in the British labour and trade union movement, we must always be mindful of patterns of inter-generational dispersal and mobility, social and geographical. After how long  – a generation? two?  – or under what particular circumstances and opportunities (education, employment, domicile, marriage) might the children or grandchildren of Irish immigrant parents become, to all intents and purposes, fully naturalised British, in attitude and accent, with only the faintest residual Irish consciousness or none at all? Clearly, the pull of Catholic Church-based associational culture

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and institutions, stubborn residence patterns and, as in Glasgow and Liverpool, enduring confrontational sectarianism, might well prolong a sense of Irishness through several generations. Likewise, the impact of continuing chain-migration, contacts with ‘home’ (including return visits) and a circulatory flow of labour between the two islands must also be taken into account. But, for all that, it is probably prudent to caution that while surnames might point to Irish origins, they were no guarantee of an engaged or even a residual sympathy with various strains of Irish nationalist sentiment in the homeland.33 This would become clear in the history of Labour in post-1918 Britain, and in particular after 1945. The list of notable Irish names (Irish-born or of Irish origin) in the van of trade union, working-class political and radical movements from at least the second quarter of the nineteenth century is an impressive litany. From John Doherty and early general union organisation to the Chartists and on to the later wave of new unionism of general labour from the later 1880s, the Irish presence is constant and frequently conspicuous. Nor is this confined to the exceptional figures of the top echelon.34 The rank and file of these constituents of the embryonic labour movement is also well sprinkled with Irish surnames. And, on the other hand, there is a formidable body of evidence attesting to the support of a succession of British radical movements (and individual activists) throughout the nineteenth century for whatever the current version of a popularly supported claim for ‘justice for Ireland’. A word of caution is needed in qualification of this assertion. British radical support for ‘Justice for Ireland’, or indeed even for a form of Irish self-government such as home rule, did not necessarily extend to support for complete Irish separatism or even for constitutional ‘independence’. The Chartists did indeed offer steadfast support for Repeal in the 1840s. In the decades that followed, up to the rise and ascendancy of home rule in the 1880s, there was steady British radical support  – both middle-class and working-class – for a slate of reforms proposed to improve the condition of Ireland: tithe, poor law, fair administration of justice and elementary education initiatives during the 1830s, and, especially in the horrific shadow of the Irish Famine of the later 1840s, land reform, disestablishment and, ultimately, radical land reform, democratic local government and home rule. But while Fenian separatism, in its clandestine and violent aspects, may have found cells of support within Irish immigrant enclaves in Britain, it excited fear and hostility among the general mass of the British population, of all classes, not least because of its bombs and other violent episodes conducted in urban Britain. The Punch cartoons may have catered for a largely middle-class readership, but their view of the menace of Fenianism probably reflected

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a wider anxiety, and the adjective ‘Fenian’ would remain in the shorthand of anti-Irish sentiment in Britain well into the twentieth century.35 Attitudes were changing, however, by the end of the nineteenth century. The Liberal embrace of home rule legitimised, in a sense, Irish nationalist political loyalties among the Catholic Irish immigrants, and the ‘union of hearts’ slogan facilitated co-operation between home rule supporters and Liberals in various corners of Britain. But the general absence of riots or public violence did not necessarily mean that there was no hostility to the Irish. Nor did it mean, even in later decades (1880–1914), when overt violent clashes were less frequent and when, organisationally, the now more mature Irish immigrant communities had become embedded in the political as well as in the social fabric of late Victorian urban industrial Britain, that the adverse opinion of Irish ‘character’ (at home or near at hand) had altogether disappeared. In this context, we may point to Robert Roberts’s reflections on the Salford slum of the Edwardian years: Engels pointed out how, in the 1840s, the million or more brutalized Irish immigrants pouring into English slums were depressing native social and economical standards. Little integration, however, seems to have followed upon the influx. Even up to the outbreak of the First World War differences in race, religion, culture and status kept English and Irish apart … With us, of course, as with many cities in the North, until the coming of the coloured people, Irish Roman Catholic immigrants, mostly illiterate, formed the lowest socio-economic stratum. A  slum Protestant marrying into the milieu suffered a severe loss of face. Such unions seldom occurred.36

While the precise significance of such popular attitudes as inhibitors of effective working-class solidarity, in the political or industrial sphere, may require close local calibration, it would be unwise to dismiss them as simply ‘residual’ antipathies. Certainly, the continuing blight of sectarian strife in Liverpool, the resurgence of such hostility in the difficult labour conditions of the inter-war years in Glasgow and its environs, and the tenacity of ethno-religious communal loyalties in general, all feature as inhibitors to the emergence of the kind of class-based solidarity that would be necessary to support and sustain the Labour Party as a potential party of government.37 On the other hand, by the turn of the century the local leadership of a mature Irish community in Britain enjoyed a more confident presence in British life  – in trade union activity, local politics and civic life – than earlier generations. Moreover, Catholicism itself was less of a bogeyman in British life than it had been as late as 1870. Catholic social theory (informed by papal encyclicals) was finding common cause with progressive forces advocating social reform and the

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enhanced rights of workers. Catholic Irish leaders, such as Wheatley in Scotland, were finding ways of accommodating their religious allegiance to their political embrace of socialism.38 In terms of sheer civility, the long-term effort of the Catholic Church (notably its priests) at local level to devise new, more sober forms of associational culture, replacing the older more boisterous customary religious and social practices that earlier immigrants had brought with them from Ireland, was becoming apparent. A  contemporary characterisation of the position of the Irish immigrants in Britain in the early twentieth century as ‘a curious middle place between the nationality to which he belongs and the race among which he now lives’, is suggestive of a culturally intermediate predicament whose political implications were still highly complex as home rule inched towards the statute books in summer 1914.39 What was not predetermined, of course, was the political party within which the emerging Irish immigrant self-confidence would find a secure home, or the long-term political significance of Irish immigrant allegiances. Whatever its political complexion, the electoral significance of the Irish in Britain had only become a matter of close attention from the major political parties (and the press) from the 1870s, in the aftermath of the second Reform Act of 1867 and with the emergence of an organisational framework of support for Irish home rule among the mature Irish immigrant settlements in various centres in Britain. The ‘Irish vote’ – its size, its discipline (in response to direction from the home rule leadership) and its impact – became a feature of political commentary on prospects and outcomes in general elections and by-elections in numerous British constituencies. Its size and significance were regularly exaggerated by the main parties.40 The reconstruction of Gladstonian Liberalism in the 1880s on the issue of Irish home rule had fateful consequences for the emergence and early history of a distinct Labour Party in Britain, and for the level of support that such a party might expect or attract from the Irish working-class immigrant community in Britain. By the early twentieth century home rule for Ireland was a firm policy commitment of both the Liberal and the nascent Labour parties, though there was no uniform level of enthusiasm for it among the several strands of Edwardian Liberalism. But the fact that Irish immigrant electoral support was generally mobilised by its own community leaders and by the Irish nationalist leadership in support of Liberal candidates in British constituencies, based on the calculation that the Liberals in government offered the best prospect for the granting of Irish home rule, undoubtedly impeded the shift of electoral support of such immigrant Irish to their ‘natural’ class position within the new Labour Party.

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Given Labour’s solid support for Irish home rule, this electoral loyalty to the Liberals caused predictable and at times acute frustration among the early leaders of Labour, as the frequent complaints of Keir Hardie and tortuous manoeuvres of Michael Davitt’s later political career richly demonstrate.41 The Irish immigrant presence in the ranks of the new unionism from the 1880s may have pointed towards the future. Yet, even here, trade union relations across the two islands were become increasingly complicated, with the establishment of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, the emergence of Larkinite militancy and the growing prospect of difficult relations between the more militant Irish labour leaders and the bourgeois leadership of the Irish nationalist party  – in effect, the home rule ‘administration in waiting’.42 But right up to the eve of the Great War, the core of the Irish working-class vote in Britain remained tied to the Liberals. In sum, what is striking in any close consideration of the relationship between the early British Labour Party and mainstream (overwhelmingly Catholic) Irish nationalism (notably as it related to the place of Irish immigrants in domestic British life and politics by the later nineteenth century) is the complexity and pervasive ambiguities of that relationship. The war and its aftermath would utterly transform the landscape of British politics and the constitutional frameworks for British–Irish relations. The divisions in the Liberal Party would endure and lead to long-term electoral eclipse. The new post-war world would see Labour emerge as the alternative party of government to the Conservatives. So far as Ireland was concerned, the old radical support for Irish self-determination would fade from urgent relevance in the face of new political realities in the inter-war years. There were certain realities, however, that were long-evident and still needing to be confronted. The complexity of the Ulster (after 1920, Northern Ireland) question, where Unionism enjoyed considerable working-class Protestant support, was one such reality. Randolph Churchill’s opportunism in the 1880s, in playing the Orange card in his whipping up of Ulster opposition to home rule, may have been cynical, but Gladstone’s initiative had sought to ignore or to play down the significance of the Ulster difficulty. In the immediate decades that followed, the Ulster question persisted and ultimately led to the contested partition proposals that lodged on the settlement agenda during 1912–14 and took constitutional form in 1920–21.43 From the 1920s the Labour Party, in opposition and in government, would be faced with two jurisdictions in Ireland:  a nationalist state strongly assertive of its measure of self-government and staunchly

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bourgeois in its socio-economic outlook and policies, and in Northern Ireland a devolved administration in a divided society, riven by sectarian division (placing intolerable strains on working-class solidarity) and a local Unionist leadership of landowning and upper bourgeois elites with strong links to the Tory party. Trade union links became complicated: in Northern Ireland by sectarian strife and economic difficulties; in the Irish Free State by the new constitutional order and the aftermath of Civil War.44 Insofar as Ireland and the Irish in Britain are concerned, the 1920s presented a new political landscape in British politics. How the British Labour Party would handle that new landscape, how it would deal with both old and new elements of the ‘Irish question’, only time would tell. But it was heir to a complex inheritance from the British radical tradition, from the late eighteenth century to the Edwardian twilight and the coming of the Great War. The experience of the Second World War would prove particularly significant in determining the attitudes of the leadership of British Labour towards Ireland. Public opinion registered the British resentment at Éamon de Valera’s adamant insistence on neutrality throughout Britain’s time of greatest danger and, in contrast, the vital participation of Northern Ireland in the war effort. In the post-war world, this experience would affect the attitude of key figures in British Labour (as in British political life as a whole) towards the Irish national state, and its demands, and towards the Unionist political leadership of Northern Ireland, which had proved steadfast in a time of trial. If the Gladstonian ‘politics of humanitarianism’ was part of the inheritance of the new Labour Party in the early twentieth century,45 by the mid-point of that century the interlocking trajectories of Irish history and of British–Irish relations had taken directions that made it a real challenge to ‘read’ what, in practical political terms, this inheritance might now entail or demand. This would become clear when the politics of civil rights began to unsettle Northern Ireland during the later 1960s. Notes  1 The most recent analysis is Eugenio F. Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism 1876–1906 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007).  2 The extensive literature on the main themes considered in this chapter dictates that references must be confined to works directly quoted or that contain bibliographies dealing comprehensively with the issues being discussed.  3 For a critical view of Gladstone’s démarche, see Jonathan Parry, The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1993).

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 4 The original neo-Marxist interpretation was E.  Strauss, Irish nationalism and British democracy (London, 1951; reprint Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1975); Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism; and T.  W. Heyck, The dimensions of British radicalism: the case of Ireland, 1874–1895 (Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 1974).  5 Marianne Elliott, Partners in revolution:  the United Irishmen in France (London, Yale University Press, 1982); and Marianne Elliott, ‘The Kent treason trials of 1798:  a window on the United Irishmen’, in Sabine Wichert (ed.), From the United Irishmen to twentieth-century Unionism; a festschrift for A.T.Q. Stewart (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 48–60.  6 Linda Colley, Britons:  forging the nation, 1707–1837 (London, Vintage, 1996).  7 E.  R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, Allen & Uwin, 1968); D. G. Paz, Popular anti-Catholicism in mid-Victorian England (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1992).  8 Oliver MacDonagh, O’Connell:  the life of Daniel O’Connell 1775–1847 (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991); A. D. Macintyre, ‘O’Connell and British Politics’, in Kevin B. Nowlan and Maurice R. O’Connell (eds), Daniel O’Connell: portrait of a radical (Belfast, Appletree Press, 1984), pp. 87–99.  9 Graham Davis, ‘The Irish in Britain, 1815–1939’, in Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish diaspora (Harlow, Longman, 2000), pp.  19–36; also Graham Davis, The Irish in Britain (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1991). 10 Davis, ‘The Irish in Britain, 1815–1939’; also Richard B.  McCready, ‘Revising the Irish in Scotland’, in Andy Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish diaspora (Harlow, Longman, 2000), p. 39. 11 Donald M.  MacRaild, Irish Migrants in Modern Britain, 1750–1922 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999)  provides a concise overview and contains a useful bibliographical survey of the relevant literature published up to 1999; the flow of publications since the turn of the century may be followed in the journal Immigrants and Minorities (vols 1–32, 1982–2014); in the excellent series of essay collections on the Irish in Britain, edited by Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley – most recently, Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds), Irish identities in Victorian Britain (Abingdon, Routledge, 2010); and in the annual bibliography of the journal Irish Economic and Social History. The Irish in Scotland and Wales have particularly benefited from more recent scholarship: John Belchem, Irish, Catholic and scouse: the history of the Liverpool Irish (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2007); Frank Ferguson and James McConnel (eds), Ireland and Scotland in the nineteenth century (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2009); E. W. McFarland, John Ferguson, 1836–1906: Irish issues in Scottish politics (East Linton, Tuckwell Press, 2003); Martin J.  Mitchell (ed.) New perspectives on the Irish in Scotland (Edinburgh, John Donald Short Run Press, 2008); Paul O’Leary, Immigration and integration:  the Irish in Wales, 1798–1922 (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2000); Paul O’Leary (ed.), Irish migrants in modern Wales (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2004).

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12 For the Fenian episode, see John Newsinger, Fenianism in mid-Victorian Britain (London, Pluto Press, 1994). 13 Davis, ‘The Irish in Britain, 1915–1939’, p. 22. 14 Davis, ‘The Irish in Britain, 1915–1939’, p. 24. 15 Fergus A. D’ Arcy, ‘The London Irish and the Irish in Britain’ (Review Essay), Saothar: Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, vol. 8, 1982, p. 60. 16 E. W. McFarland, Protestants first: Orangeism in nineteenth-century Scotland (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1990); Donald M. MacRaild, Faith, fraternity and fighting:  the Orange Order and Irish migrants in Northern England, c.1850–1920 (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2005). 17 For example, the papal restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England (with diocesan titles), together with papal pronouncements in the 1860s – from the Syllabus of Errors to the Infallibility issue in 1870  – all generated controversy and sporadic anti-Catholic disturbances in various parts of Britain during the 1850s and 1860s. 18 J. Belchem (ed.), Popular politics, riot and labour:  essays in Liverpool history, 1790–1940 (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1992); Tom Gallagher, Glasgow, the uneasy peace: religious tension in modern Scotland (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987); Frank Neal, Sectarian violence:  the Liverpool experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988); P. J. Waller, Democracy and sectarianism: a political and social history of Liverpool, 1868–1939 (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1981); also the works cited in note 11 above. 19 For an accessible overview, see Malcolm Chase, Chartism:  a new history (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007). 20 James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds), The Chartist experience: studies in working-class radicalism and culture, 1830–1860 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982), pp.  120–51; for contrary views, see J.  H. Treble, ‘O’Connor, O’Connell and attitudes of Irish immigrants towards Chartism in the north of England, 1838–1848’, in J. Butt and I. F. Clarke (eds), The Victorians and social protest (Newton Abbot, Archon Books/The Shoe String Press, 1973). 21 Epstein and Thompson (eds), The Chartist experience, p. 120. 22 For contrasting views on the impact of the Irish influx on wages and working conditions, see E. H. Hunt, Regional wage variations in Britain,1815–1914 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973); and Jeffrey Williamson, ‘The impact of the Irish on British labour markets during the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 46, no. 3, 1986, pp. 693–721. 23 The classic statements exciting fear were, J.  P. Kay, The moral and physical condition of the working classes employed in the cotton manufacture in Manchester (1832); Thomas Carlyle, Chartism (1839); and Friederick Engels, The condition of the working classes in England (1845). Roger Swift, ‘Thomas Carlyle and Ireland’, in D. George Boyce and Roger Swift (eds), Problems and perspectives in Irish history since 1800: essays in honour of Patrick Buckland (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2003), pp. 117–46.

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24 Eugenio F. Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992); Royden Harrison, Before the socialists: studies in labour and politics, 1861–81 (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). 25 E.  D. Steele, ‘J.S. Mill and the Irish question:  reform, and the integrity of the Empire, 1865–1870’, in Alan O’Day (ed.), Reactions to Irish nationalism, 1865–1914 (London & Ronveverte, Hambledon Continuum, 1987), pp. 205–36. 26 L.  P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts:  a study of anti-Irish prejudice in Victorian England (New York, University of Bridgeport, 1968); L. P. Curtis, Apes and angels: the Irishman in Victorian caricature (London, Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997). 27 Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, p. 79. 28 Biagini, British democracy and Irish nationalism, pp. 3–4. 29 The price paid for the emotive charge of Gladstone’s ‘politics of humanitarianism’ – namely, the fatal splitting of the Whigs – is rehearsed in Jonathan Parry, The rise and fall of Liberal government, pp. 274–303. 30 Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver, Angels in marble:  working-class Conservatives in urban England (London, Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1968); Alex Windscheffel, Popular Conservatism in imperial London 1868–1906 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007). 31 While on honeymoon in Ireland in July 1892, the Webbs wrote to Graham Wallas:  ‘We will tell you about Ireland when we come back. The people are charming but we detest them, as we should the Hottentots, for their very virtues. Home Rule is an absolute necessity in order to depopulate the country of this detestable race.’ Quoted in A.  M. McBriar, Fabian socialism & English politics 1884–1918 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 119. 32 For a view of home rule as an ‘obstruction’ to a progressive programme of Liberalism in the later nineteenth century, see D. A. Hamer, Liberal politics in the age of Gladstone and Rosebery (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1972). 33 For a well-argued analysis of the Irish in Britain as an example of ‘pluralist integration’ rather than sustained alienation, see the two essays by David Fitzpatrick, ‘ “A peculiar tramping people”: the Irish in Britain, 1801–70’, in W. E. Vaughan (ed.), A new history of Ireland, vol. 5: Ireland under the Union, part 1: 1801–70 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 623–57, and ‘The Irish in Britain, 1871–1921’, A new history of Ireland, vol. 6: Ireland under the Union, part  2:  1870–1921 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 653–702. 34 R.  G. Kirby and A.  E. Musson, The voice of the people (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1975); Andrew Newby, The life and times of Edward McHugh, 1853–1915:  land reformer, trade unionist and labour activist (New  York, Edwin Mellen Press, 2004); Eric Taplin, The dockers’ union:  a study of the national union of dock labourers, 1889–1922

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(Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1985); numerous entries in the first ten volumes of J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds), Dictionary of Labour biography (London, Macmillan, 1972–2000). 35 See, for example, its continued use post-1949, in denouncing Irish immigrants still having a vote in Britain, Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday (eds), Mass conservatism: the Conservatives and the public since the 1880s (London and Portland, OR, Routledge, 2002), p. 170. 36 Robert Roberts, The classic slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century (repr. London, Pelican Books, 1977), pp. 22–3. 37 See note 11 and note 18 above. 38 Sheridan Gilley, ‘Catholics and socialists in Glasgow, 1906–12’, in Kenneth Lunn (ed.), Hosts, immigrants and minorities (New  York, St. Martin’s Press, 1980), pp.  160–200; Ian S.  Wood, ‘John Wheatley, the Irish, and the labour movement in Scotland’, Innes Review, vol. 31, no. 2 (1980), pp. 71–85. 39 The comments are those of the legendary T. P. O’Connor, ‘The Irish in Great Britain’, in Felix Lavery (compiler), Irish heroes in the war (London, Everett, 1917), p. 32. 40 Alan O’Day, The English face of Irish nationalism: Parnellite involvement in British politics, 1880–86 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1977); Henry Pelling, Social geography of British elections 1885–1910 (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1967). 41 Dan McDermott, ‘Labour and Ireland’, in K. D. Brown (ed.), The first labour party 1906–1914 (Beckenham, Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 254–67; Laurence Marley, Michael Davitt:  freelance radical and frondeur (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007), especially the seminal chapter on Davitt and British labour, pp. 165–221; Kenneth O. Morgan, Keir Hardie: radical and socialist (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975). 42 D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), The Ulster crisis, 1885–1921 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); James Loughlin, Gladstone, home rule and the Ulster question, 1882–93 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan 1986). 43 Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, The state in Northern Ireland 1921–72 (Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1979); Austen Morgan, Labour and partition: the Belfast working-class,1905–23 (London, Pluto Press, 1991); Henry Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism:  the Protestant working class and the Belfast labour movement, 1868–1920 (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1980). 44 Morgan, Labour and partition; C.  Desmond Greaves, The Irish transport and general workers union: the formative years (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1982); Emmet O’Connor, A labour history of Ireland 1824–1960 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1992), pp. 46–116. 45 Eugenio Biagini, ‘The enduring power of the Gladstonian tradition and the appeal of the politics of humanitarianism were also evident in the Labour Party’; British democracy and Irish nationalism, p. 376.

2 Uneasy transitions: Irish nationalism, the rise of Labour and the Catholic Herald, 1888–1918 Joan Allen In the early years of the twentieth century a significant percentage of Irish workers in Britain came to privilege their proletarian solidarities at the local level and to regard the nascent Labour Party as best positioned to defend their day-to-day interests. This turn to Labour has been attributed as much to the solidarities of working-class associational life as to a growing reluctance to defer to the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), which had routinely instructed the migrant Irish to prioritise the nationalist cause over the struggle for Catholic education, employment and wages, and welfare provision.1 These political shifts are difficult to disentangle from the eventual breakdown of the ‘progressive alliance’, as trade unionists and a diverse group of socialists sought to express their newfound confidence in an independent political party. As electoral ties with the Liberal Party began to lose purchase, the onset of the First World War accelerated a range of social and political pressures that proved to be particularly acute in working-class communities across Britain.2 Studies of the early Labour Party have tended to rely on institutional sources and on the political papers of key individuals, while the ‘Irish question’ has been viewed all too often from a predominantly Irish domestic perspective.3 This rationale has largely dictated the type and range of sources consulted. Yet, these shifting political allegiances were particularly dynamic in major diasporic cities such as London, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool, which coincidentally were key centres on the distribution map of the Catholic Herald newspaper. This syndicated, weekly newspaper was owned by Charles Diamond (1858–1934), the Irish Nationalist MP for North Monaghan between 1892 and 1895.4 His sway over the Irish population of Britain was so significant that it prompted the authorities to keep his newspapers under constant surveillance during the First World War, and in 1920 he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for publishing an inflammatory article on British rule.5 By the time of his death in 1934, he was the owner of a vast press empire.

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Diamond’s first newspaper, the Irish Tribune: An Irish Journal for England and Scotland, claimed to reach ‘four million Irish and Catholic people in England and Scotland’, and other titles followed in swift succession: syndicated issues of the Catholic Times, the Catholic Educator and, initially for London readers only, the Weekly Herald.6 In 1887 he rescued other journals too, including the Lamp and the most important of these, the struggling Glasgow Observer (later titled the Glasgow Observer and Scottish Catholic Herald) which anchored his power base in Scotland. By the 1890s his Catholic Herald titles were available throughout the British Isles and, endorsed by the Church, Diamond was able to secure the hearts and minds of Irish Catholics to the nationalist cause. In this, his reputation as a republican and committed Roman Catholic was a singular asset. His journals offered an irresistible blend of religious and political commentary at a critical stage in the struggle for home rule, when only a united front could exert the required leverage over Liberal Party policy on Ireland. Even though John Dillon and other leading nationalists appear to have been complicit in obstructing Diamond’s parliamentary career, which never recovered after his time as MP for North Monaghan, they still succeeded in exploiting his flourishing newspaper empire, thereby securing a unique platform from which to steer the Irish vote and raise much-needed revenue. Diamond’s willingness to propagandise the nationalist cause did not blind him to the growing tide of disaffection amongst his readers; on the contrary, he was uniquely placed to identify the risks of imposing a political mandate that focused exclusively on Irish independence. He repeatedly warned the Irish Party that if they failed to address the welfare needs of Irish workers in Britain, they would precipitate a ‘landslide out of the Irish movement’, and the home rule campaign would fail. An avowed teetotaller, he fought and lost several battles with the powerful ‘drink interest’ that largely determined the nominations and elections of nationalist candidates in Ireland.7 Undoubtedly this constant rejection partly explains why he stood as an Independent Labour Party (ILP) candidate after 1918. From 1906 onwards, he was also increasingly at odds with the Liberals over their licensing policies and, most critically of all, the vexed question of education reform. The battle to secure state and municipal finance for Catholic schools under diocesan control proved to be enormously divisive, not just because the Liberals were committed to non-denominational education but because Labour policy too was avowedly secularist. It is notable that the Diamond press did not officially back Labour until after the Education Act 1918 resolved the question. Press historians have long debated the role of the popular press in the shaping of public opinion.8 More specifically for the purposes here,

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Michael de Nie had demonstrated how a study of the press can throw new light on the ‘process of inventing and reinventing’ British and Irish identities in the nineteenth century. As he argues, the ‘mutually dependent triangular relationship between the press, its readers and politicians’ placed the ‘fourth estate’ at the centre of policy-making and opinion formation, and was thus widely regarded as a unique barometer of the public mood.9 This begs the question of whether, or to what extent, the press might be considered propagandist – not in its modern pejorative sense, as a conscious design to sway public opinion one way or another – but as a ‘symbiotic’ process that reinforced pre-existing notions of self-identity through the use of rhetorical and other linguistic devices.10 Certainly, as the cheap popular press expanded and literacy rates improved, its accessibility as a staple household item lined up with its recognisably partisan politics to create communities of shared solidarities. If it is accepted that the provincial press continued to shape the political affiliations of its readers until 1918, when radio and the extended circulation of national newspapers eroded its competitive advantage, the persuasive power of the Diamond press with its simultaneous local and national reach must have been considerable.11 Significantly for the period between 1910 and 1914, evidence suggests that local issues were invariably the determining factor in shaping electoral choices.12 There can be little doubt that Irish cultural identities were nurtured by the press following the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884 – the same year that Diamond launched his Irish Tribune.13 Charles Diamond was born in Maghera, Co. Derry in 1858.14 Like countless others, he and his family were evicted from their tenant farm and in 1878 they eventually left Ireland to make a new life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a thriving commercial town with an unusually dynamic print culture. By the late 1870s, north-east England had an impressively large Irish population, much of it dispersed in strong concentrations in the region’s major towns but with the greatest percentage, some 7,000 or so migrants, living along the industrially buoyant Tyne valley.15 The predominantly Catholic confession of the region’s Irish community protected them from the worst excesses of sectarianism that prevailed elsewhere, in Liverpool and Glasgow, for example, but there were other factors too. A seemingly elastic supply of jobs and a radical political culture all helped to sustain a largely supportive environment. This distinct level of sympathy for the Irish cause was articulated most effectively by Joseph Cowen MP, a renowned republican whose stable of daily and weekly newspapers achieved an international circulation completely at odds with their provincial profile.16 Cowen was instrumental in forging good Anglo-Irish relations in the north-east through

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the pages of his Newcastle Daily Chronicle. In the Commons, too, he sat with the Irish members, opposed a succession of coercive statutes and championed the home rule cause long before the sea change in Gladstone’s policy. Diamond quickly established a lucrative stationery business with a large portfolio of paper products that he proceeded to supply to other Newcastle traders.17 He also made his presence felt as a political activist, as Secretary and then as President of the Newcastle Irish National Land League (INLL). An astute operator, he recognised the advantage of establishing his own newspaper as a natural by-product of his business enterprise and in providing a wider platform for his Land League activities. In the crowded arena of Tyneside publishing, dominated by Cowen’s Chronicle, launching a weekly journal with such a specific readership in mind was a risky venture; securing Cowen’s backing was crucial if it was to be a paying concern.18 He courted Cowen’s friendship by inviting him to INLL events, notably the first national convention which was held in Newcastle in August 1881. Cowen gained a seat on the Irish national executive and Diamond pressed ahead with his plans. By any assessment, it was a remarkably ambitious project. Forty-seven agents across Britain were recruited to distribute the first edition of the Irish Tribune: An Irish Journal for England and Scotland for the launch on 13 December 1884.19 Diamond’s eight-page, penny weekly delivered a carefully pitched diet of local, British and Irish domestic news, alongside coverage of international affairs. The meetings of the forty or so branches of the INLL in Northumberland and Durham were fully reported, together with material that served the pastoral and spiritual needs of the wider Catholic community.20 From the outset, Diamond tried to make his journal relevant beyond its immediate regional constituency; he personalised the paper with his own editorial commentary that called upon ‘all Irishmen’ to ‘work together’.21 By the end of the first quarter, the Tribune had established an enviable market share of 20,000 weekly sales, generating sufficient profit by the end of 1885 to allow him to distribute several special editions, in Newcastle, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester as well as London.22 With a team of journalists on staff, including a parliamentary reporter, the Tribune expanded to twelve pages of newsprint and sixty columns modelled on the populism of other mainstream weeklies:  Irish history and serialised fiction leavened the political content, albeit with an overtly heroic tone, and, in much the same way, the ‘Boys and Girls’ column conducted by a ‘Guardian’ instilled the values of hard work, education and obedience; Irish news by district and county reconnected his readers with their families and friends. The Catholic hierarchy

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immediately recognised the potential of the Tribune and sought to cultivate Diamond’s demonstrably Catholic loyalties. Edward Bagshawe, the Archbishop of Nottingham, for example, persuaded him to publish a special edition for the four towns in the Nottingham diocese.23 With the backing of Cardinal Manning, the Tribune had guaranteed sales and a lucrative stream of advertising revenue from the thriving Catholic business sector. In 1887, when the Tribune’s official circulation rate hit four million readers, the profits were immediately reinvested in sophisticated print technology and in extending Diamond’s press empire. Over time, he set up a network of limited liability companies, initially via the Catholic Press Association Limited, which launched a share issue of 5,000 in July 1887. Although only 2,000 shares were taken up, many of them in half-shares (10s.), and the company’s affairs were soon wound up, the flotation attracted some high-profile investors, including the Marquis of Ripon and a sizeable contingent of Catholic clergymen, underscoring Diamond’s influence among the Catholic hierarchy.24 Having secured prestigious offices at 280 The Strand he was finally able to make an assault on the London market. The St Patrick’s Day celebrations in 1888 were chosen as the perfect time to launch his Weekly Herald:  The Catholic Organ for the Metropolis, an eight-page broadsheet with an uncompromising flagship motto: ‘For Faith and Country, Catholic and Irish’. London was a competitive commercial environment. To succeed against – or alongside – the established English Catholic press, Diamond had to demonstrate why the Herald might offer something distinctive. He targeted the Tablet’s anti-home rule stance, ironically urging his readers to be independent in politics; his mission, he wrote, was ‘to build the church’.25 With its rich blend of nationalist politics, Irish home news, ecclesiastical content as well as sporting fixtures and literary entertainments, the Weekly Herald was a resounding success and eventually its national circulation dictated a change of title to the Catholic Herald. After 1894, he syndicated the Tribune as a raft of locally designated versions of the Catholic News, circulating most heavily in the Lancashire and Yorkshire industrial belt. Before long, his Herald titles were syndicated on the same basis.26 Diamond’s role in guiding the electoral preferences of his readers rested on his close friendships within the IPP. His newspapers had given him a national profile as an outspoken advocate of home rule and his candidature for an Irish seat in 1892 represented an irresistible propagandist opportunity. He was elected with a comfortable majority as the Anti-Parnellite MP for North Monaghan, but his political career proved to be short-lived; he only served one term before losing the seat amidst a

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good deal of rancour.27 In part, this reflected the factionalism of the Irish Nationalist party within which he was identified as a strong supporter of John Dillon and Michael Davitt, and an outspoken critic of Tim Healy. This did not go down well in a constituency where the more conservative elements saw to it that the Healyite candidate, Daniel Macaleese, was selected in 1895. Diamond raised his own electoral funds, but as he wrote to Dillon afterwards, ‘It was Healyism, pure and simple … the people … are thoroughly at my back and but for the rigging of two parishes by hostile clergymen I would have been carried easily.’28 There was, however, rather more to it than this. According to M. J. Kelly, a Belfast wine and spirit merchant, Diamond’s vocal opposition to the powerful liquor business in Monaghan had been deliberately ‘used against him’.29 Local traders were angered when he voted in favour of extending the Local Veto bill to Ireland, which would greatly increase their costs, believing that this contravened his electoral promises.30 Diamond’s withdrawal from official Irish parliamentary politics did not diminish his influence, as his close correspondence with John Dillon between 1892 and 1913 reveals. It is clear that Dillon valued his advice – even if he did not always follow it. In December 1900, when Diamond was pressed to stand again by the Emyvale branch of the United Irish League, he wrote to Dillon, urging him to ‘checkmate these unscrupulous priests’. Although promises were made that Diamond’s election would be a mere formality, he seems to have had no appetite for another fight.31 He called on Dillon to do all he could to resist clerical interference while, for his part, he promised to ‘urge all my friends to go for the nominee of the People, whoever that might be’.32 Throughout this period, Catholic education provision was the critical priority of Church and laity. The nexus between Church and parish community was anchored by the school, funded by the congregation’s subscriptions and staffed by dedicated and committed Catholic teachers, many of whom were women.33 Self-evidently, a good education was the primary mechanism of social mobility and of vital importance to any aspirant migrant community. But also, as migration levels declined in the 1870s, there were real fears that successive generations of English-born Irish migrants might lose their faith if children were not educated in Catholic schools.34 As a consequence, the cost of maintaining school buildings, and of meeting progressive education guidelines on class sizes and teaching materials, constituted an enormous burden on Catholic dioceses.35 School board provision at elementary level had steadily improved throughout the 1890s, and there had been an extensive investment in higher-grade schools. The voluntary schools, on the other hand, had neither the financial resources nor the backing of educational innovators

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needed to deliver to the same standards. It was this ‘sense of impending crisis’ that forced the education question onto the political agenda, placing it at the forefront of negotiations with the Liberal Party and acting as a barrier to any real détente with the emerging Labour Party.36 From the outset, Diamond’s newspaper campaigns on the education question had a salutary impact. While some Catholic critics thought his home rule views brought him too close to the Liberal Party, he did not shrink from berating the Liberals for their commitment to non-denominational education. He made education reform a critical test for all prospective political candidates, whether Liberal, Labour, Tory or Nationalist. Just as the first edition of the Tribune had warned against the dangers of leaving the education of Catholic children to the baneful effects of the English system, the Glasgow Observer’s launching edition was dedicated to attacking the Scottish education system that, Diamond claimed, was ‘pernicious in its influences and more deadly in its intent’.37 Gaining a voice on local School Boards was a crucial objective; both titles, north and south of the border, campaigned and co-ordinated the effort to secure Catholic representation. In Scotland, the strategy was highly effective as three Herald-endorsed candidates were elected in late April 1885.38 In January 1889, he took his educational crusade one step further and launched the Catholic Educator: a weekly journal published simultaneously in Dublin, Manchester, Glasgow, London and, of course, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, dedicated to ‘those engaged in the great work of training the rising generation’.39 Diamond’s Educator, which condemned the ‘godless School Board in England’, appealed directly to the estimated 20,000 teachers engaged in Catholic education. The posting of employment vacancies supported the training and retention of Catholic teachers who could also use the Educator to access model exam papers and answers, lesson plans and information about civil service examinations. Keeping the staff wages bill down was essential as parishes struggled to educate an ever-expanding school population and cover the cost of school buildings and teaching materials.40 The ready supply of female teachers was vital and it is no surprise to find the Educator firmly advocating higher education and teacher training for girls.41 Senior clergy were, moreover, given space to make the argument for separate education and equitable financial support.42 This educational debate was carried on across all of Diamond’s titles and tightly linked to the nationalist cause. As his Herald editorial insisted, ‘we are as bitter foes of the enemies of our Catholic schools as we are the enemies of Ireland’s freedom’.43 Diamond repeatedly criticised the IPP for being too absorbed in its own concerns, warning the leadership that if they did not pay enough

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attention to the ‘rights and interests of the Irish people living in Britain’, they would eventually lose their support. His ominous assessment was based on a deep understanding of the imperceptible shift in urban politics  – on local intelligence that flowed from the radial centres of his press distribution network. The Liverpool Irish were relatively slow to respond to the rise of Labour, not least because of the charismatic authority of T.  P. O’Connor.44 Elsewhere, in cities such as Glasgow, London and Newcastle, where greater proportions of the Irish community were English-born, class solidarities exerted an increasingly powerful hold over those who worked in the most heavily unionised sectors.45 The large numbers of Catholic Irishmen who participated in the 1889 Dock Strike is just one indicator of their increasing involvement in trade union organisation. Equally, the Liberals’ apparent disinclination to take responsibility for rising unemployment or to fully support working-class representation severely tested Irish loyalties at election times.46 As early as February 1897, Diamond urged Dillon to take ‘prompt’ action to counter the machinations of ‘some wire pullers’ who sought to manipulate the Irish vote for the Tories or Labour. He roundly denounced the Catholic Church’s interference in promoting the Conservative Party, most conspicuously in Romford where the Liberal candidate had provided ‘most satisfactory assurances in regard to Catholic schools’ – this, he maintained, would not only render the IPP ‘ridiculous and impotent’, it would leave Irish voters at the ‘mercy of Cardinal Vaughan and his friends’.47 Licensing reform proved to be another key political battleground. In March 1901, as the IPP was considering whether to vote against the budget, Diamond sent a long, strident letter to Dillon, arguing that the party should think long and hard before doing so. Bluntly, he asserted that the Nationalist leader, John Redmond, was being coerced by the Irish whisky trade to do its bidding. At the very least, he expected Dillon to consult the Irish people of Britain: I think the coolest thing I have ever heard is that they should be asked to subscribe funds to enable the Irish people to return candidates who are to vote against the dearest and closest interests of Irish people in this country! … You may not perhaps be fully aware of the enormous difficulty that we experience even now in keeping our people solidly in the ranks. Large numbers of them over the country have already joined the Labour Party … you will have a landslide out of the Irish movement in Great Britain and into the Labour movement … I do not know whether you think you can wage the battle of Home Rule without the sympathy and support of the British democracy. I do not think you can.48

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Diamond’s exchanges with Dillon were always forthright, in keeping with their close relationship and the extent to which he expected the party to act upon his advice. Even as he signed off with his usual good wishes, he warned that he would fight against the policy ‘with all the forces at my disposal’ – an explicit threat that he would mount a vigorous press campaign. Controversies over denominational education continued to dominate the political agenda well into the twentieth century.49 In 1901, as new legislation was passing through the Commons that threatened to replace the locally accountable School Board system with a centrally controlled administration, a majority in the Liberal Party and the Labour movement opposed Tory education policy which they believed would create significant inequalities.50 This consensus, however, masked a good deal of internal conflict over financing Church schools. Officially, Labour was committed to ‘free, compulsory secular education’, but in constituencies with large numbers of working-class Catholics, this was increasingly a tough position to maintain.51 The Roman Catholic community, with Diamond in the vanguard, sought to renegotiate the inequities of the existing arrangements. In early 1902, the Herald newspapers reported that a sub-committee of the Catholic League of South London would monitor government legislation, and appealed for funds so that Catholic children would not be ‘UNINSTRUCTED, NEGLECTED, ABANDONED to the terrible peril of losing their faith’.52 Nonetheless, by mid-October, Diamond had come to view Tory legislation in a more positive light. While it did not go far enough, it did offer significant improvements in that Church schools would finally be financed ‘on the rates’, and in England and Wales a new system of secondary education would be put in place under the jurisdiction of newly created Local Education Authorities. It is all the more instructive, therefore, that even though Diamond viewed the education question as ‘vital’, he was still willing to accept that Nationalists might, with good reason, choose not to support the education bill. As he argued in the Herald, the ‘first duty’ of the IPP was ‘to emancipate the Irish people … if the Irish members who are not in jail decide to support the Government or turn it out, they will continue to have the confidence of the Irish Catholic population of Great Britain’.53 His editorials, calling for a ‘just and equitable settlement of the claims of all parties’, were carefully pitched to avoid antagonising the nonconformist lobby.54 Behind the scenes and in the press, he looked to Redmond to do all he could to save the bill, all the while aware that only a softening of the government’s position on coercion would save the situation.

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In the event, the Irish Nationalists abstained. Diamond’s assessment of the legislation was that it was a ‘tolerable’ compromise but by no means a final settlement.55 Once in power with a liberating majority, the Liberals came under immediate pressure to repeal the 1902 Act on the grounds that ‘it sacrifices Nonconformists who did largely get the Government in, to Lancashire Catholics, who did not’.56 Successive Labour conferences between 1907 and 1909 debated the issue, partly at the behest of the Catholic Federation, but ultimately they were focused on their emerging welfare agenda that prioritised free school meals and served to strengthen the alliance with the Liberals.57 As the election loomed in 1905, the education question assumed critical significance once more. Diamond immediately mounted an aggressive press campaign and harangued the Nationalists to act. This occasion found him drafting a policy document in the form of a special resolution for Redmond to use at the forthcoming United Irish League Convention.58 As he confided to Dillon in the accompanying letter, he was privately ‘at loggerheads’ with the Catholic hierarchy over their electoral support for the Tories. An official policy statement by the party, which could then be reinforced by his own editorials, would greatly strengthen his hand. Arguing that a large percentage of Irish Catholics in Britain were trade unionists, he suggested that the most effective strategy would be to align the education question with working-class interests. Diamond’s carefully crafted ‘Resolution’ praised the ‘fidelity’ of Irish voters and the ‘many sacrifices’ they had made, before drawing attention to their responsibilities as a uniquely powerful voting bloc. Most significantly, he called on them to follow the advice of the party, for this would ‘not only secure the triumph of the Irish cause at home’; they would thereby ‘safeguard their own educational and other interests as British citizens’. It concluded with a firm commitment to ‘their interests as workers, the Irish Party being indeed a real Labour party in the House of Commons’.59 In all of this careful political footwork, Diamond sought to draw a clear distinction between working-class representation – which he supported and which the IPP might provide – and a socialist Labour Party competing for Irish Catholic votes. There is a real sense in all this of Diamond’s Herculean efforts to shore up the IPP by doing all he could to keep working-class Irish voters on side. The statistics that show only a token Roman Catholic presence in the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party before 1914 are indisputable, but they mask the extent to which Irish Catholics were increasingly engaging with labour politics at the grass roots.60 Glasgow was a case in point. By the 1890s, activists like John Ferguson had helped to inculcate a ‘social nationalism’ based on land

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reform that drew many Irishmen into local labour politics  – a baton picked up by Patrick O’Hare who served as a councillor and ‘Watchdog of the Poor’ from 1897 to 1906.61 Most of all, as Gallagher has argued, it was John Wheatley (1869–1930) who forged links between socialism and Catholicism, setting up the Catholic Socialist Society and backing Labour candidates such as George Barnes.62 The Scottish socialist paper, Forward, made great efforts to cultivate Irish workers by bragging that it would ‘shun sectarianism as we shun smallpox’, and publishing a succession of articles on ‘Roman Catholicism and Socialism’.63 Nevertheless, it still struggled to raise its circulation above 10,000 copies, or to secure a loyal following amongst Scottish Catholics who were remarkably well served by not one but two rival weekly papers: the Star (the voice of the United Irish League and owned by a group of publicans) and Diamond’s Glasgow Observer. When Diamond finally bought out the Star in 1908 he strengthened both the temperance cause and his control over the voting preferences of the city’s Irish population.64 Thereafter, both papers gave tentative endorsement to ‘suitable’ Labour candidates  – those Progressists who were prepared to step aside for Nationalist candidates in wards where Irish voters constituted a significant majority.65 The early transition to Labour was also a remarkable feature of Tyneside political life, and given its large cohesive Irish Catholic community this can be linked to its status as one of the key centres of Diamond’s publishing empire. The scale of the Liberal victory in 1906 meant that they were no longer obliged to dance attendance to the Nationalist agenda. At the earliest opportunity, the Liberals moved to nullify those elements of the 1902 Education Act that supported religious education, sparking a swift backlash among Irish Catholic voters who were no less wary of the secularist pronouncements of Labour. These tensions played out at constituency level as the Catholic League fielded their own candidates in the municipal elections. On Tyneside, the death of the popular Liberal MP and shipbuilding magnate, Charles Palmer, prompted a by-election in Jarrow in 1907 at which the Labour and pro-home rule candidate Pete Curran trounced both the Liberal and Tory candidates, and secured more than double the votes cast in favour of the Irish parliamentarian, John O’Hanlon. The contest throws into sharp relief the way the education question at local and national level shaped electoral loyalties as Irish communities were forced to choose between their deep-rooted nationalist instincts and a belief in progressive reform.66 Unrest within the IPP ranks intensified once again between 1908 and 1910, particularly as the Liberals’ Devolution bill (1907) offered so little by way of advancing home rule. Briefly, both Dillon and Diamond courted Churchill’s support as their best hope and made every effort to

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flatter him into a commitment – though this too divided the ranks.67 The lack of progress was intensely frustrating, prompting Diamond to rail against the leadership and ask ‘Is Ireland worth fighting for? Are the people fit for freedom?’68 But there was no question of giving up the fight. The 1908 Licensing bill, which aimed to restrict liquor licences, was deeply unpopular in Ireland and a cabal of publicans and vintners lost no time in pressuring the IPP to oppose the measure. Meanwhile, efforts to persuade Walter Runciman to place voluntary schools on an equal footing with public schools ran into trouble when he ruled the proposals ‘vague and impossible’.69 When the Lords vetoed the ‘People’s Budget’, the ensuing constitutional crisis forced the dissolution of parliament.70 In December 1910, under pressure from Redmond, Asquith publicly pledged his support for home rule.71 As the first of two general elections loomed, the IPP and the Diamond press put all their efforts into mounting a tough campaign. A strident Herald editorial on 1 January, proclaiming that ‘no question but Home Rule should be a deciding issue with Irish voters’, aimed to rally the leadership and marginalise the Conservative and Labour opposition. Diamond lambasted the Tablet’s advice that it was ‘the duty of every Catholic to vote Tory’, arguing that twenty years of Tory rule had ‘availed nothing’ on the schools question and that their best course was to ‘strengthen the Irish Party’. By then, socialism had been gathering strength for some time, in Liverpool where Jim Larkin had recruited strongly among Irish transport workers, and in Scotland too, prompting fears that the vote might be fatally divided.72 Diamond had previously encouraged Wheatley to write occasional articles for the Glasgow Observer.73 However, during the 1910 campaign, Diamond published a series of articles on the ideological roots of socialism, which emphatically declared that it was not for ‘rational beings’.74 Catholic Irish voters in Glasgow were directed towards ‘approved’ candidates in each constituency, and reminded that ‘This is a Home Rule election … God forbid that any vote should be cast against it.’75 When the Liberals secured victory, Diamond was ecstatic, trumpeting that Irish votes had protected food prices, reformed the House of Lords and paved the way for home rule.76 In reality, it had been a very close contest with only two seats separating the Liberals and the Unionists; although their numbers were relatively small, Labour and the IPP held the balance of power.77 Negotiating with the Liberals required skilful diplomacy and careful management, not least because internal wrangling threatened to undermine all that had been achieved. In the aftermath of the election, Diamond was greatly exercised by this, writing to Dillon in a heated exchange: ‘United you may pull through. Divided you all go down for

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a generation.’78 Redmond, he claimed, had been completely ‘shameless’ in supporting the license trade and was ‘not entitled to work the Irish movement on their behalf’.79 Diamond was so concerned that the distillers and publicans were being unduly privileged that he threatened to launch ‘the most uncompromising hostility to the attacks upon the budget’. Insisting that ‘our Irish people in Great Britain ought to be considered in this matter’, he gave notice that he would ‘write and speak with all my energy against a policy … as short sighted as it is selfish’. And, notwithstanding the party’s bargaining strength, he warned Dillon that the achievement of home rule hung in the balance because it was so difficult to keep ‘our people free from Labour entanglements’: ‘Is the Irish Party going to throw itself across the track of the “dearest interests” and even the “very lives” of the people of Great Britain? Do you think that Home Rule will gain thereby? Do you think that Home Rule can be carried by a side wind? Do you think it can be forced through by mere Parliamentary tactics? I venture to think that a graver mistake was never made’.80 Most of all, he argued that the party did not appreciate how hard it was to ‘fight the Irish battle outside Ireland’ against other competing influences: I do not believe that Ireland’s cause can be won by mere ‘tactics’. It can only be won with the assent and the support and the friendship of an overwhelming majority of the British people. For the Irish people to destroy the Budget would be to destroy something which the democracy of this country most highly values, and would be to start a quarrel of which no one could say anything except that it must mean the setting back of the democratic cause, including the cause of Ireland, for at least a quarter of a century.81

In many respects the Dublin Lockout was a critical test of the nationalist movement. In October 1913, as both sides became entrenched and the strike began to bite, Diamond relayed the complaints of the workers that the Irish Party had ‘not done anything in favour of the strikers’, and asked Dillon to persuade the Freeman’s Journal to raise a fund to assist the women and children. He predicted that the British Labour Party would make considerable capital out of their apparent neglect and suggested that if he used the Herald to raise funds it might ‘go a long way to remove the bitterness amongst the nationalists’.82 Jim Larkin’s credibility and political cachet was certainly in the ascendant and both men agreed that the matter was very complex.83 While Diamond professed to have little time for ‘Larkinism, as such’, he understood why the ‘deplorable condition’ of the Irish workers was a key factor in the popularity of the labour leader.

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In 1914, as the Liberals contemplated permitting Ulster to opt out of the proposed home rule settlement, the Irish in Britain began to refocus their political alignments. Increasingly, many had come to believe that their future needs would be better served by the Labour Party.84 The old generational loyalties that had artificially propped up the Liberal vote, particularly in the mining communities of the northern coalfields, were finally a spent force. Trade union membership had doubled from two million in 1906 to four million in 1914, and the Labour Party had developed an organisational structure that could sustain a sizeable parliamentary group and a mass electorate.85 As Hutchinson has so carefully elaborated, Irish political allegiances were subjected to significant competing pressures during the First World War and much of this ‘volatility’ was exemplified by the oscillating political stance of Diamond’s newspapers. Convinced that the home rule question was all but settled, Diamond set out to do all he could to support the war effort. A great volunteer effort, it was thought, would protect the agreement that had been reached and his newspapers all gave stout support to Redmond’s recruitment drive – a campaign that had a considerable impact in London, Liverpool and on Tyneside.86 He also articulated the view that once the war was over the United Irish League should plough their energies and resources into strengthening the popular base of the Labour Party. Diamond’s conspicuous loyalism was such that he even endorsed the plan for conscription in January 1916. When news of the Easter Rising in Dublin first broke, Diamond was not just critical but hostile to the ‘foolish, wicked and unjustifiable actions’ of the leaders – a view shared by many across the ethnic and political divide.87 The summary execution of the leaders was another matter entirely and as the aftershock swept through the Irish communities, Diamond valorised them as heroes of the cause. Thereafter, his newspapers helped to co-ordinate the Irish National Relief Fund.88 Talk of partition fractured the delicate détente between him and Redmond and Diamond crystallised his own position by pledging his support for Sinn Féin.89 Like many of his readers, by 1918 Diamond was counted amongst the ranks of Labour supporters and, as a mark of his commitment, between 1918 and 1922 he stood as an ILP candidate in three East London seats. The first of these attempts came in December 1918 when he contested and lost the Camberwell Peckham seat to A.  H. Richardson, MP. His close friend, D.  J. Mitchel Quin, who was the editor of the Glasgow Observer, suffered a much more humiliating defeat when he bravely stood against Andrew Bonar Law as the Labour candidate for Glasgow Central. Diamond campaigned hard

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and counselled his readers that they were free to vote as they chose. But, as ever, he could not resist giving his own didactic assessment that their best interests lay with ‘The new Labour Party … the people’s party’.90 Both attempts appear to have been more tactical than anything else. Quin could not have expected to defeat Bonar Law, even if a defective electoral register had not robbed him of the support of newly enfranchised Irish voters. After the establishment of the Irish Free State, the Herald formally endorsed the Labour Party in the 1922 election. On that occasion Diamond fared somewhat better, in a close-run fight for the Rotherhithe (Bermondsey) seat. A forced recount showed a mere forty-six votes gave the Conservative challenger his victory, though Diamond did manage to push the Liberal candidate into third place.91 As a seasoned campaigner, Diamond seemed to be well placed in 1924 to secure the Clapham seat, yet despite polling more strongly than ever, securing 8,235 votes, he still failed to win the seat for Labour.92 Undoubtedly, Charles Diamond wielded enormous influence throughout this critical transitional period. He mediated Irish policy in his regular editorials, and behind the scenes he constantly barracked Dillon to heed his advice. All too frequently, the leadership did not see things his way. He tried desperately to revive his political career, but to no avail; in 1909, for example, he agreed to contest the Donegal seat, only to realise that he had been sent ‘on a wild goose chase to save the party’.93 His role as the proprietor of a mass-circulating Irish Catholic press was much too valuable for them to risk diluting its impact.94 However aggrieved he felt, he never failed to deliver the backing they needed. His relationship with the Catholic clergy was equally turbulent, as he never flinched from challenging their close association with the Conservative Party; he was a persistent and hostile critic of the English Catholic press. Neither churchmen nor politicians could ignore him: both groups relied on the propagandist reach of his papers to an extraordinary degree. By binding faith and patriotism together, his newspapers were powerful agents of religious and political socialisation and, for a time, until his own political loyalties shifted to the ILP, a vital bulwark against mass recruitment into the Labour Party. Notes  1 John Hutchinson, ‘Diaspora dilemmas and shifting allegiances: the Irish in London between nationalism, Catholicism and labourism (1900–1922)’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, p. 108.

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 2 There is a vast literature on this transition. Most notably, see Steven Fielding, Class and ethnicity:  Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939 (Buckingham, Open University Press, 1992); Tom Gallagher, Glasgow: the uneasy peace – religious tension in modern Scotland (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987); Dan McDermott, ‘Labour and Ireland’, in K. D. Brown (ed.), The first Labour Party, 1906–1914 (London, Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 254–67; Neil Riddell, ‘The Catholic Church and the Labour Party, 1918–31’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 8, no. 2, 1997, pp. 165–93; David Rubinstein, The Labour Party and British society 1880–2005 (Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 2006), pp. 1–50; Andrew Thorpe, A history of the British Labour Party (3rd edn, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 11–35.  3 Enda Delaney, ‘Directions in historiography: our island story? Towards a transnational history of late modern Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 1, no. 48, 2011, pp. 83–105.  4 Joan Allen, ‘ “Keeping the faith”: The Catholic press and the preservation of Celtic identity in Britain in the late nineteenth century’, in Richard C. Allen and Stephen Regan (eds), Irelands of the mind: memory and identity in modern Irish culture (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), pp.  32–49; Joan Allen, ‘Charles Diamond’, in Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (eds), Dictionary of nineteenth-Century British journalism (London, British Library, 2009); Tom Gallagher, ‘DIAMOND, Charles, Labour politician and newspaper proprietor’, in J.  M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds), Dictionary of labour biography (11 vols) (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1987), vol. 8, pp. 55–9; Patrick Maume, ‘Diamond, Charles’, in Dictionary of Irish biography (Cambridge, Royal Irish Academy/Cambridge University Press, 2009).  5 Diamond’s article, ‘Killing no murder’, was published following the attempted assassination of Lord French, Viceroy of Ireland, and he served six months in Pentonville Jail. See Catholic Herald, 28 December 1918; ‘King’s Bench Division, “Killing no murder”: the “Catholic Herald” case’, The Times, 25 February 1920; National Archives (NA), Home Office 144/1624/400098/ Newspaper Cuttings, 2–13 March 1920.  6 Irish Tribune, 2 January 1886.  7 F.  S. Lyons, The Irish parliamentary party, 1890–1910 (London, Faber & Faber, 1950), pp. 140–7.  8 Most notably Martin Conboy, The press and popular culture (London, Sage, 2002); Mark Hampton, Visions of the press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois, 2004); Aled Jones, Powers of the press newspapers: power and the public nineteenth-century England (Aldershot, Scholar Press, 1996); A. J. Lee, The origins of the popular press 1855–1914 (London, Croom Helm, 1976).  9 Michael de Nie, The eternal paddy:  Irish identity and the British press, 1798–1882 (Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p. 33. 10 Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton, ‘Propaganda:  a misnomer of rhetoric and persuasion?’, in Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton (eds),

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Propaganda:  political rhetoric and identity, 1300–2000 (Stroud, Sutton Publishing, 1999), p.  3; Kevin Rafter (ed.), Irish journalism before independence:  more a disease than a profession (Manchester and New  York, Manchester University Press, 2011), p.  xii. In the same volume, see Paul Rouse ‘Newspapers, journalists and the early years of the Gaelic Athletic Associaton’, pp. 149–59. 11 Michael Dawson, ‘Party politics and the provincial press in early twentieth century England:  the case of the South West’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 9, no. 2, 1998, pp. 201–18; De Nie, The eternal paddy, p. 27. 12 Rubinstein, The Labour Party, p. 26; Adrian Grant, Irish socialist republicanism, 1909–36 (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2012), pp. 16, 46; Brown, The first Labour Party, p. 260. 13 Allen, ‘Keeping the faith’, pp. 40–5. 14 Jim Coffey, ‘Charles Diamond:  a legend in his time’, Scottish Catholic Observer, 19 April 1985. 15 Joan Allen and Richard C.  Allen, ‘Competing identities:  Irish and Welsh migration and the North East of England, 1851–1980’, in Adrian Green and A. J. Pollard (eds), Regional identities in North East England (Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2007), p. 138. 16 Joan Allen, Joseph Cowen and popular radicalism on Tyneside, 1829–1900 (Monmouth, Merlin, 2007). 17 Owen Dudley Edwards and Patricia Storey, ‘The Irish press in Victorian Britain’, in Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian city (London, Croom Helm, 1985), p. 173. 18 Tyne and Wear Archives Service (TWAS), Cowen Papers (CP), Diamond to Cowen, 23 August 1881, 3 September 1881. 19 Irish Tribune, 13 December 1884. His distribution network encompassed England and Scotland, notably in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. 20 Irish Tribune, 14 February 1885. 21 Editorial, Irish Tribune, 13 December 1884. 22 Irish Tribune, 14 March 1885. 23 Irish Tribune, 21 March 1885, 9 January 1886, 16 January 1886. 24 NA, BT31/14877/24839, Memorandum of Association, 28 July 1887. 25 Editorial, Weekly Herald, 16 March 1888. See also Josef L.  Altholz, ‘The redaction of Catholic periodicals’, in Joel H.  Wiener (ed.), Innovators and preachers:  the role of the editor in Victorian England (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 143–60. 26 The first title was the Blackburn Catholic News, swiftly followed by the Wigan Catholic Herald. 27 Editorial, Glasgow Observer, 18 June 1892; ‘The triumphant return of Mr Diamond’, Glasgow Observer, 23 July 1892. 28 Trinity College Dublin, Dillon Papers [DP], Charles Diamond Correspondence [CDC], Ms. 6753/255–301/262, Charles Diamond to John Dillon, 12 July 1895.

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29 DP/JFX O’Brien Correspondence, Ms 6771–3/306. M. J. Kelly to Dillon, 1 January 1894. 30 DP/CDC/7661–3/306. Newspaper cuttings, Irish Times, 1 February 1894. 31 DP/CDC/6753/269. (Enclosure) Arthur Treanor to Diamond, 2 December 1900. 32 DP/CDC/6753/270. Diamond to Dillon, 14 December 1900. 33 Donald MacRaild, Irish migrants in modern Britain, 1750–1922 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), p. 75. 34 Fielding, Class and ethnicity, pp.  61–5; Mary Hickman, ‘Integration or segregation? The education of the Irish in Britain in Roman Catholic voluntary-aided schools’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol. 14, no.  3, 1993, pp. 285–300; Brian Simon, Education and the labour movement, 1870–1920 (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1965). 35 National Archives Scotland (NAS), Secretariat Files (SF), ED7/1/19/149 (2), Archbishop Turner to Sir John Struthers, 27 March 1911. 36 S. Karly Kehoe, Creating a Scottish Church: Catholicism, gender and ethnicity in nineteenth-century Scotland (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2010), pp. 133–43; W. B. Stephens, Education in Britain, 1750–1914 (London, Macmillan Press, 1998), pp. 90–7. 37 Editorial, Glasgow Observer, 18 April 1885. 38 ‘School Board elections’, Observer, 25 April 1885; Observer, 16 January 1886. 39 ‘Education Department’, Catholic Educator, 16 January 1889. 40 NAS, SF/ ED7/1/19, 1886–1917 reveals the constant negotiations between the Scottish hierarchy and the Secretary for Scotland. 41 Editorial, Catholic Educator, 16 January 1889; Catholic Educator, 1 February, 19 April 1889. 42 For example, see a letter from Archbishop William Walsh, Catholic Educator, 1 February 1889. 43 Editorial, Weekly Herald, 2 November 1888. 44 L.  W. Brady, T.P. O’Connor and the Liverpool Irish (London, Boydell & Brewer, 1983), p. 196. 45 Hutchinson, ‘Diaspora dilemmas’, p. 108; John Belchem, Merseypride: essays in Liverpool exceptionalism (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2000), pp. 199–200. 46 E. H. Hunt, British labour history, 1815–1914 (London, Humanities Press, 1981), p. 311. 47 DP/CDC/6753/266. Diamond to Dillon, 6 February 1897. 48 DP/CDC/6753/271. Diamond to Dillon, 15 March 1901. 49 Denis Lawton, Education and Labour Party ideologies 1900–2001 and beyond (London, Routledge Falmer, 2005), pp. 8, 21–4; Paul Sharp, ‘Central and local government’, in Richard Aldrich (ed.), A century of education (London and New York, Routledge, 2002), p. 97. 50 Wendy Robinson, ‘Historiographical reflections on the 1902 Education Act’, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 28, no. 2, 2002, pp. 160–72.

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51 Lawton, Education and Labour Party ideologies, p. 23; Clive Griggs, ‘Labour and education’, in Brown (ed.), The first Labour Party, pp. 169–70. 52 London Catholic Herald, 17 January 1902; Welsh Catholic Herald, 14 February 1902. 53 Editorial, London Catholic Herald, 17 October 1902. 54 Editorial, Welsh Catholic Herald, 24 October 1902. 55 Editorial, London Catholic Herald, 5 December 1902. 56 Hirst Hollowell to A.  Birrell, 22 April 1906, quoted in Stephen Koss, Nonconformity in modern British politics (Hamden, CT, Archon, 1975), p. 80, n. 7. 57 Paul Adelman, The rise of the Labour Party 1880–1945 (3rd edn, Harlow, Pearson Education, 1996), pp.  35, 39; Griggs, ‘Labour and education’, pp. 170–4. 58 Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Walter Hume Long Papers, 947/108, Memorandum, UIL Convention, 6 December 1905. 59 DP/CDC/6753/247. Draft resolution to Redmond, enclosed in a letter from Diamond to Dillon, 2 December 1905. 60 Thorpe, History of the British Labour Party, p. 22, notes that in 1906 there was only one Roman Catholic member of the PLP. 61 Terence McBride, The experience of Irish migrants to Glasgow Scotland, 1863–1891: a new way of being Irish (Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), p. 177. 62 Gallagher, Glasgow: the uneasy peace, pp. 70, 78–9. 63 ‘Editorial’, Forward:  A  Scot’s Weekly Journal of Socialism, Trade Unionism and Democratic Thought, 13 and 20 October, 20 November, 22 December 1906. 64 Iain McLean, The legend of red Clydeside (Edinburgh, John Donald, 1983), p. 185. 65 Sheridan Gilley, ‘Catholics and Socialists in Scotland 1900–30’, in Swift and Gilley (eds), Irish in the Victorian city, pp. 218–35; McLean, The legend of red Clydeside, pp. 184–7. 66 Hutchinson, ‘Diaspora dilemmas’, pp. 112–13. 67 DP/CDC/6753274 and 275. Diamond to Dillon, 18 and 25 April 1908. 68 DP/CDC/6753/275. Diamond to Dillon, 25 April 1908. 69 Cameron Hazelhurst and Christine Woodland (eds), A Liberal chronicle: the journal and papers of J.  A. Pease (London, Historian’s Press, 1964), 16 November 1908. 70 Cornelius O’Leary and Patrick Maume, Controversial issues in Anglo-Irish relations 1910–1921 (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 9–11. 71 Alvin Jackson, Home rule: an Irish history, 1800–2000 (London, Phoenix, 2004), p. 124. 72 Grant, Irish socialist republicanism, pp. 13–14. 73 Gallagher, Glasgow:  the uneasy peace, pp.  78–9. Wheatley was a leading activist in the Glasgow United Irish League until 1903. 74 Editorial, Glasgow Observer, 1 January 1910.

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75 ‘The Irish vote’, Glasgow Observer, 8 January 1910; ‘A last word to Irish voters’, Glasgow Observer, 15 January 1910. 76 Editorial, Glasgow Observer, 22 January 1910. 77 F.  S. Lyons, John Dillon: a biography (London: Routledge, 1968), p. 313; Thorpe, History of the Labour Party, p. 26. 78 DP/CDC/6753/286, Diamond to Dillon, 21 March 1910. 79 DP/CDC/6753/284. Diamond to Dillon, 7 March 1910. 80 DP/CDC/7653/287. Diamond to Dillon, 23 March 1910. 81 DP/CDC/6753/287. Diamond to Dillon, 23 March 1910. 82 DP/CDC/6753/297–8, Diamond to Dillon, 14 and 15 October 2013. 83 Emmett O’Connor, James Larkin (Cork, Cork University Press, 2000); Grant, Irish socialist republicanism, p. 28. 84 Paul Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: the struggle for London, 1885–1914 (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 204. 85 Adelman, Rise of the Labour Party, p.  44; A.  W. Purdue, ‘The ILP in the North East of England’, in David James, Tony Jowitt and Keith Layboun (eds), The centennial history of the Independent Labour Party (Halifax, Keele University Press, 1992), pp. 17, 32. 86 Hutchinson, ‘Diaspora dilemmas’, pp.  116–18; Felix Lavery (ed.), Irish heroes in the War (London, 1917); James McConnell, ‘Recruiting sergeants for John Bull? Irish Nationalist MPS and Enlistment during the early months of the Great War’, War in History, vol. 14, no.  4, 2001, pp. 408–28. 87 Editorial, Catholic Herald, 29 April 1916. 88 NLI, Dublin, MS 8435, Art O’Brian Papers, records a donation of £6.10s. 89 Editorial, Liverpool Catholic Herald, 27 April 1918. 90 Editorial, Glasgow Observer, 26 October 1918; McLean, The legend of red Clydeside, pp. 195–8. 91 South London Observer, 5, 18, 22 November 1922. 92 Clapham Observer, 16, 23, 29 October 1924. 93 DP/CDC/6753/280. Diamond to Dillon, 28 September 1909. 94 DP/CDC/6753/298. Diamond to Dillon, 15 October 1913.

3 British Labour, Belfast and home rule, 1900–14 Emmet O’Connor When the Union Jack stands for Home Rule, as it shortly will do, no part of the United Kingdom will be more proud of it than Ireland. Reynold’s Newspaper, 11 June 19111

The British Labour Party (BLP) was the most successful left-wing party in Ireland until its Irish career was terminated by the third home rule crisis, an experience so bruising that, a century on, the party was still debating whether it should again become active in Ireland. During the 1970s, the fortunes of the party in Belfast, and the history of its leading personality, William Walker, became central to a wider debate on the nature of Unionism and the basis of Protestant working-class politics.2 Walker’s political career also became polemicised by groups campaigning for the BLP to contest elections in Northern Ireland. Essentially, they argued that Walker was not just a pro-Union socialist but a typical British Labourite whose success in creating significant support for the BLP demonstrated that Belfast was, with a few idiosyncrasies, a typical British industrial city with as much potential for class politics as any British city; it was James Connolly’s arrival in Belfast 1911, and his contention that Irish Labour ought to be republican, that divided the trades council, lost it the confidence of Protestant workers and left Labour to be crushed by the third home rule crisis.3 The key weakness in this selective perspective is that it understates the British origins of Belfast Labour’s difficulties. The sectarianism for which Belfast had become notorious by the late nineteenth century was not the primary political problem of the city’s Labour movement. Catholics accounted for less than 25 per cent of the population in the 1901 census, and their under-representation in the skilled trades meant that Belfast’s craft-dominated trade union movement was overwhelmingly Protestant.4 The predicament was the contradiction between Belfast labour and Belfast Labour. Whereas labour was mostly Unionist, and by extension Conservative, Labour was very much a part of the

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British trade union movement, and that movement supported the Liberals, and later the BLP, who in turn were allied intermittently with the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). Engagement with the BLP unavoidably associated Belfast Labour with home rule, however much Walker might protest his own belief in the Union. It was Walker, not Connolly, who set Belfast Labour on collision course with the Unionists. The difficulties intensified after the return of a Liberal government, endorsed by Labour from the backbenches, in 1906. The Liberals’ agenda of social reform became entangled with the national question when it threatened the power of the House of Lords, the last legal bulwark against home rule. As Belfast Trades Council welcomed these reforms, the Unionists became even more intent on depicting Labour as a threat to the Union. Thus, the BLP had entwined Labour and the constitutional question long before Connolly arrived to argue for the interaction of the two; and when the BLP supported the Home Rule bill, Belfast Labour’s position became impossible. There are two other neglected aspects of the story. The first is that many so-called ‘Walkerites’ were keenly aware of the contradiction in their position, regarded Walkerism as more of a stratagem than a strategy and preferred home rule to partition. The second is that the BLP organised in Ireland at all, and had an ambiguous attitude towards the principle of self-determination in Ireland. There was a long history of British radicals championing Irish constitutional nationalism. The Chartists had favoured Repeal. Keir Hardie’s Independent Labour Party (ILP), like the Scottish Labour Party before it, called for ‘Home Rule all round’.5 There was also a tradition in Britain of left mobilisation against Tory coercion in Ireland. Legislation against the Land League, for example, was represented as a threat to trade unionism in England, and led to the formation of the Democratic Federation, later the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the leading Marxist party in Britain up to 1911.6 After the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900, the IPP’s support for progressive legislation led to cordial relations with Labour MPs. The British Trades Union Congress (TUC) was in direct alliance with the IPP between 1904 and 1906 on the Trades Disputes bill.7 Hardie liked to cite the disciplined independence of the IPP as a better option than Liberal-Labourism or a pact with the Liberals.8 In the SDF, Will Thorne commended the IPP to the Irish working class.9 Labour was influenced, too, by the Irish in the British labour movement, almost all of whom were home rulers, and by the desire to win the Irish vote in Britain. At the same time, the BLP had no formal position on home rule, and did not debate the Irish question at its conferences until 1911.10 The Great Famine had been a watershed as Ireland’s subsequent economic

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and demographic decline degraded the relationship between Irish and British radicals from fraternity to dependency. Increasingly, the British left would adopt a more colonial view, however benign, of the Irish question. Arguably, the BLP, which grew out of the Liberals, inherited a Gladstonian position on Ireland. While it saw the politics of devolution in Ireland as a matter of democracy against the landlords and big industrialists, its policy was shaped by British interests rather than Irish will, and it regarded home rule as the ne plus ultra. There was, too, a widespread mentality on the British left that nationalism was an unfortunate distraction from the social question, and that the best reason for implementing home rule was to get rid of it. The inner-most sentiment of the majority of British leftists was probably captured in the first Fabian tract on Ireland, in 1900: The plain reason why Englishmen care so little about the wrongs of Ireland is that they suffer from just about the same wrongs themselves on a much greater scale … what the Fabian Society has to say on the Irish Question is exactly what it has to say on the English Question; and that is, that the workers of a nation have no enemies except the idlers of it; that the poor are always oppressed no matter what government they live under.11

There were also a few issues, notably secular education, on which Labour was at odds with the Catholic Church, and the further left one went, the more one was likely to encounter individuals  – like the Webbs – who were doubtful about giving self-government to a people so much in thrall to the priest, the peasant and the patriot, or anti-Catholics like Henry Hyndman and Harry Quelch of the SDF. The IPP’s response to the Education bill in 1896 led the SDF organ, Justice, to denounce the Catholic Church as ‘the most reactionary, dangerous, and where it has the power, persecuting force in the civilised world’, adding, ‘the Irish MPs are completely under the control of that relentless outcome of Christianised paganism’.12 Some Labourites deeply resented the fact that the bulk of the Irish in Britain voted Liberal up to 1918, if only because a vote for Labour might let the Tory in. Labour’s early electoral failures were often blamed on the Irish, prompting the former Land League leader, Michael Davitt, to write:  ‘I believe Hardie and co. are secret enemies of the Home Rule cause.’13 Davitt’s had been one of the few voices raised in protest at the growing tendency of British Labour to treat Ireland as home ground.14 But the anglicisation of Ireland and the withering of its Labour movement created irresistible opportunities for easy, if slim, pickings. Hardie inaugurated short-lived ILP branches in Belfast, Dublin and Waterford; and Fabian societies were formed in Belfast and Dublin.15 By 1900,

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about 75 per cent of Irish trade unionists were in British-based unions. For a time, Belfast Trades Council applied its own ‘home rule’ policy, responding to the first home rule crisis by distancing itself from the Liberal-Labourism of the TUC in favour of a pointedly local Labourism.16 A mix of push and pull factors caused it to change tack in 1903 and be persuaded by Walker, then Ireland’s best-known trade unionist, to sponsor a branch of the LRC. Sustaining local Labourism was expensive and had created problems of discipline. Belfast was influenced, too, by the politicisation of British unions in reaction to the Law Lords’ restriction of union rights in the Taff Vale judgment and the Quinn v.  Leathem case, in which Belfast was directly involved.17 For the moment, the Conservatives were in government, home rule was off the agenda and the idea that joining a British party offered a way of being anti-Unionist without being anti-Union dazzled like a shimmering mirage. Superficially, the Belfast LRC looked quite British in its mixture of delegates from trade unions, the trades council, the Belfast Co-operative Society, the Belfast Ethical Society, the ILP, the Belfast Socialist Society and the Clarion fellowship. The revisionist portrayal of Walker as an ‘orthodox British socialist’, advancing standard socialist arguments against nationalism, and flawed only in sharing the British tendency to underestimate the power of ethnicity, defies credibility.18 While he never said anything in public on partition, Walker certainly was not an Ulster exclusionist before he left the Labour movement in 1911. Regarding himself as a patriotic Irishman, who wanted all Irish workers to unite in the BLP, he took his message regularly to the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC). In 1903 he arranged for Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, secretary of the LRC, to address Congress and seized the moment to move the adoption of a new policy: ‘That this Congress … recommends to the Trade Unions of this country an immediate affiliation with the Labour Representation Committee to promote the formation of independent labour representation in Ireland.’19 Similar motions were passed at the ITUC each year to 1911, with the exceptions of 1906 and 1910. Whether Walker really believed that one could champion pro-Union Labourism by ­ joining a party largely in favour of home rule, or whether he felt he had no other option if he wanted to be an MP, is an open question. The most likely explanation is that there were two Walkers:  the high-minded, ­‘internationalist’, non-sectarian social democrat he wanted to be, and the expedient, parochial, confessional politician he felt he must be to combat Unionist smears that he was a home ruler. Having set his sights on the Westminster seat of Belfast North, he began cultivating maverick l­ oyalist, Thomas H. Sloan. ‘Tod’ Sloan, a semi-skilled shipyard worker, had

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beaten the Unionists to capture Belfast South in 1902. As head of the stridently sectarian Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order, Sloan offered a city-wide challenge to Unionism, and Walker decided that ‘Sloanism’ was the magic bullet he needed, to do in the north of the city what Sloan himself had done in the south.20 Many comrades had their doubts. The trades council wished to keep its distance from Sloan, while others saw Walker’s pro-Unionism as no more than a holding tactic, pending a resolution of the Irish question.21 Thomas Johnston, founder of the Belfast Socialist Society, explained to MacDonald: ‘I am sorry if I conveyed the idea in my first letter that we were going to confine our attention to lecturers who have no “Home Rule taint”! Of course it is impossible … [we] won’t interfere in the Home Rule question until we are compelled – and then the majority of our members would favour that policy I think.’22 MacDonald was accommodating, as was Hardie. The legendary ‘forward march’ of British Labour had begun with a mere two MPs, and winning Belfast North would be a prize. Both made repeated visits to Belfast, treated it as another British city and emphasised that Walker’s comrades were free to take their own line on the constitution. A  few Labour MPs dismissed home rule in Belfast, saying it was irrelevant or unobtainable, while supporting it in Britain. The Irish News marvelled that Labour could work with the IPP in England, but not in Ireland.23 Walker fought Belfast North thrice. When the Unionists nominated a weak candidate in a by-election in 1905, the scent of a Labour victory created a huge interest throughout the United Kingdom. Walker’s strategy was to mount an intensely personal and parochial campaign. As the official history of his union, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, observed, the by-election was a ‘purely local effort as, except for MacDonald, who was the [election] agent, and Arthur Henderson, who gave four days, the English Labour Leaders, being pledged to home rule, fought shy of supporting Br[other] Walker, who was a declared opponent of that policy’.24 More likely, ‘Brother Walker’ did not want them. ‘For insular prejudices [here] are very strong’, he advised MacDonald.25 Sadly for Walker, the by-election would be remembered for his largely positive response to a questionnaire from the Belfast Protestant Association and for his description of himself as ‘a Unionist in politics’. MacDonald was ‘sickened’ by the former, and reckoned it lost Walker the seat, but he defended the latter from numerous critics in Britain, pleading that home rule was not part of the LRC’s programme.26 Walker had polled 47.2 per cent of the vote and edged tantalisingly close to victory in the 1906 general election, with 48.5 per cent.27 Paradoxically, the big swing against the Conservatives in 1906

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was bad for Belfast Labour. With the Liberals in power, home rule was back in the realm of possibility. Walker’s showing, and the dock strike in Belfast in the summer of 1907, temporarily boosted the BLP in Ireland. Labour’s 1907 annual conference opened in the city on 24 January, and Walker was elected to the party executive. Conference delegates were impressed by the decline of sectarian animosity in the city and congratulated themselves that Labour was the cause.28 The view of Ulster politics as sectarian, and sectarianism as an irrational anachronism, so often attributed exclusively to Connolly, was generic to the left. One of the few things that Connolly and Walker agreed on in their polemic in 1911 was that sectarian violence was no longer a possibility in Belfast.29 Five new ILP branches were formed in Belfast after the 1907 dock strike, and Jim Larkin launched one in Dublin.30 In reality, Belfast Labour was already shipping water. In January 1907, it fielded seven candidates for municipal honours, its biggest slate to date, and all, including Walker, were defeated.31 When another by-election occurred in Belfast North in April, Walker knew he had no chance against a strong Unionist candidate and stood only to please the BLP leadership.32 Walker’s vote slipped to 41 per cent and he began the search for a seat in Britain. Having given up on Belfast, Walker became less nuanced in his anti-Unionism. The social reforms being introduced by the Liberal government to stem the rise of Labour also widened the breach with the Unionists and drew Labour into the increasingly venomous divisions in British politics over constitutional change, especially when the ‘people’s budget’ led to the end of the House of Lords’ veto. The forces that made Belfast Trades Council more ‘British’ made the Unionists more anti-Labour. The council extended the customary invitation to the Lord Mayor and the usual request for a civic reception when the ITUC convened in Belfast in 1898. The courtesies were not repeated when the ITUC next met in Belfast in 1908. Walker himself opposed them.33 On finally winning a nomination for a Westminster seat in Britain, for Leith Burghs in January 1910, he told the electors: ‘The arrogant and presumptuous claim of an irresponsible body of landholders to control and determine the destinies of the people of these islands can have only one answer from an intelligent electorate – THE LORDS MUST GO.’34 At Westminster, the Labour position was consistently in favour of home rule. Supporting the Irish Council bill of 1907, a mild measure of devolution rejected by the IPP as inadequate, David Shackleton assured the House of Commons that Labour members had been ‘strong Home Rulers before we were ever constituted as a separate party’.35 In 1908,

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Labour MPs supported an IPP amendment to the King’s Speech, seeking the inclusion of home rule. At the same time, Labour did not see it as its business to lead on the question, and it was left to individual members to take their own line. Of fifty-one extant election addresses by Labour candidates in 1910, thirty-three endorsed home rule, seventeen ignored it and one was ambiguous.36 The inter-connection of Labour and home rule became overwhelming after the 1910 elections, when Labour and the IPP held the balance of power at Westminster and put the Liberals back into office, the IPP extracting a home rule bill in return. Labour arguments on the subject varied. It asserted that the Irish had a right to self-determination, but did not imagine that this would take Ireland out of the empire. The evidence suggests that this was not just a convenient way of dismissing the contention that home rule was the thin end of the wedge of separation. Labour wanted an empire based on a free federation of white nations, with Britain leading the colonies towards progress. The prevailing racism of the time meant that the conquest of non-whites was not seen as a problem by contemporaries. But the oppression of a white race was widely regarded as a blot on Britain’s imperial record. Then there was the argument that home rule would clear the decks for social issues, and enable the Irish in Britain to vote along class lines. Labour’s 1913 conference captured the party’s attitude in stating that ‘it did its best to get [Home Rule] carried and put out of the way’.37 British Labour’s misgivings about separatism are evident in its attitude to Irish Labour. The British TUC had opposed the formation of the ITUC in 1894, and the British Labour Party regretted the emergence of an Irish Labour Party. Larkin abandoned the ILP and British trade unionism in Ireland after founding the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union; and the rise of Larkinism and the apparent imminence of home rule led Congress to shift its position in 1912 and approve the formation of an Irish Labour Party. Congress never voted on the home rule bill, but it is clear from the speeches that most delegates saw it as an opportunity to build a strong Labour Party in an Irish parliament.38 Relations with the BLP were transformed by the decision to create an Irish Labour Party. Two sets of problems arose. First, now that they were becoming more assertive, the Irish were finding the British less helpful. Larkin and P. T. Daly attended the BLP’s annual conference in London in January 1913, hoping to speak on representation under the Government of Ireland bill, the National Insurance Act and the Feeding of Necessitous School Children Act. They were denied a hearing.39 The 1913 Congress decided to pursue the grievances with the BLP, and at a meeting in the House Commons on 15 July, Larkin and Daly complained of the party’s reluctance to lobby for the ITUC and readiness to

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take counsel on Ireland from the IPP.40 In correspondence with Belfast Trades Council, MacDonald defended Labour’s inaction by stating that their hands were tied by ‘a firm bargain’ between the IPP and the government.41 The implication was that if the Irish voted for the IPP, they had to pay the price. The second problem concerned the finances of the Irish Labour Party. The Irish wanted the remittance of monies paid by Irish members of British-based unions. A joint conference on the subject was held in Dublin on 6 September. The British cited various difficulties, but Arthur Henderson made it clear that were the Irish party to accept a subordinate status to the BLP on matters pertaining to the UK as a whole, then ‘it would be quite easy to find a solution to the money question’.42 The Irish replied that their party would be quite separate. The issue remained unresolved. Meanwhile, Belfast Trades Council was being pulled in three directions. On one side were those drawn to Connolly. Some were socialist republicans; others, notably D.  R. Campbell, were former Walkerites who thought it time to embrace the apparently inevitable and ensure that Belfast played its part in the new Irish Labour movement. On the opposing side were conservatives willing to sever contact with the increasingly nationalist ITUC. In the middle was a dwindling band of procrastinating and dithering Walkerites. Walker wounded his cause when he jumped ship for a job as government insurance inspector in December 1911; and at Easter 1912, four of the city’s five ILP branches joined Connolly’s latest venture, the Independent Labour Party (of Ireland). Belfast North, formerly Walker’s own and by far the largest branch, stayed away, and by 1913 the other Belfast ILP-ers had abandoned Connolly’s party, leaving it moribund.43 Even before the home rule crisis, trade unions were drifting away from the trades council. The number of affiliates fell from sixty-three in 1907 to forty in 1911 and thirty-two in 1913.44 Despite the traditional inclination of the council to support colleagues of prominence, there were just two instances when Campbell carried the council against conservative opposition. The first was in November 1911, when Walker challenged his nomination as a delegate to the BLP’s 1912 annual conference on the ground he had favoured an Irish Labour Party at the previous ITUC.45 He secured a nomination by defeating George Greig, a strong critic of Irish Labourism, by 22–18 votes.46 We can only speculate on how many voted for Campbell for personal reasons. He was, after all, outgoing president of Congress. Campbell’s second victory came on 21 September 1912, when by 11–9 votes the trades council endorsed a circular from the ITUC calling for ‘independent representation of labour upon all public boards’.47 Undoubtedly, Unionists saw the proposal as backing for an

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Irish Labour Party, and, by extension, home rule, but it was not the end of the story. In March 1913 the council resolved not to send delegates to the forthcoming ITUC, ‘on the grounds that the political resolution, passed at last year’s congress, was not acceptable to members of that Council and was impracticable’. The ‘Clonmel decision’, it was felt, had led to a decline in attendance at council meetings.48 When, in February 1914, Campbell proposed participation in an all-Ireland conference on labour representation, the council agreed to a local conference only, which itself was cancelled when the Electrical Trades’ Union threatened to disaffiliate.49 No sooner had Belfast Trades Council opted for self-exclusion from Irish Labour than it was faced with the prospect of Ulster’s exclusion from the Home Rule bill. Characteristically, it avoided the issue until April 1914, when it received an ITUC invitation to a national protest meeting in Dublin. John Murphy, the council’s Walkerite secretary, thought exclusion would leave ‘the workers in North East Ulster … more than ever in the grip of the sweating employer’, but advised caution. The council then voted 14–3 to refer the matter to the executive, which resolved that ‘in the present state of divided public opinion, no meeting should be held’.50 The council re-affiliated to the ITUC, and at the annual congress in June, Connolly’s resolution condemning partition was passed by 84–2 votes. The debate reflected the common opinion that partition would weaken Labour, or was a device to that end. Campbell’s remark that ‘Belfast Trades Council [had] never voted on Home Rule’ (true), ‘but had emphatically protested against Partition’ (untrue), had a rhetorical validity in contrasting divided opinions on the former with near unanimity on the latter.51 Of course, Belfast Labour was not the same as Belfast labour. It never had been, the more so in relation to the ITUC. Belfast residents accounted for only 22 per cent of delegates to the annual congresses between 1894 and 1914. Belfast delegates at the 1914 congress were from thirteen unions with a small membership in the city.52 Why did Belfast Trades Council not defend partition as the democratic choice of Ulster? Labourism was one half of the answer: labour Unionism was the other half. ‘Labour Unionists’ came into common currency during the third home rule crisis to describe Unionist clubs that were predominantly working class. For the Ulster Unionist Council, ‘labour Unionism’ was of use primarily in the propaganda war in Britain, to counter Liberal or Nationalist arguments that Unionism was a movement of landlords and businessmen, and to strengthen Tory demands for a general election. Unionist politicians ignored official Labour, and had repeatedly spurned overtures from the ITUC.53 No fewer than 102 delegations

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of British workingmen visited Ireland in 1914 on ‘Home Rule study tours’. As these tended to come from Conservative Associations, more dedicated efforts were made to reach trade unionists. On 7 April the Unionist press carried an appeal to British trade unionists, signed, ‘On behalf of the overwhelming body of trade unionists in Ulster’, by twenty men, members mainly of trade unions in the shipyards.54 In May, ‘a body of Belfast working men’ was included in a Unionist team dispatched to canvass in the Derbyshire North East by-election.55 Sectarian solidarity was too valuable politically to permit a similar charm offensive in Ireland. In July 1912, some 3,000 workers were expelled from the shipyards and engineering plants. Unlike previous expulsions, radicals of all religions were targeted, and about 600 expelled men were Protestants, victimised for being Labourites, Liberals or Independent Orangemen. Campbell helped to organise an Expelled Workers’ Committee.56 The ITUC made representations to Irish Nationalist leader, John Redmond, and to the BLP.57 But Campbell could not persuade Belfast Trades Council to associate itself with the expellees. Instead it suggested that he act discretely. The council declined to mention the disturbances in its annual report for 1912, deciding that any reference would stir up controversy. The symbolic birth of Labour Unionism took place at a ‘monster demonstration’ in the Ulster Hall on 29 April 1914, convened by former officers of the Shipwrights’ Association and the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The speakers ignored the ITUC, saving their scorn for Belfast Trades Council, and MacDonald and his MPs, growing fat on £400 a year. MacDonald’s parliamentary philippic on the ‘Curragh mutiny’, and his appeal to the government – ‘pass Home Rule as quickly as possible and take the consequences’  – had been reported prominently in Belfast.58 Of the ‘various members’ of the BLP invited to attend, only one had bothered to send an acknowledgement.59 In contrast, with its supine stand on the expulsions, the trades council responded stoutly, as all shades of opinion on the council closed ranks against Labour Unionism. Anticipating the language of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, Murphy wrote to the press, pointing out that the Council had never taken a stand on home rule or exclusion as ‘we never regarded the matter essentially as a labour problem’.60 MacDonald had responded strongly to the Curragh mutiny, telling the House of Commons that Ulster was not entitled to ‘deny the rights of the rest of Ireland’ and that the Commons had the right to settle the question. Labour insisted that Unionist fears were groundless, that if the Unionists had working-class support, they nonetheless represented the interests of the big industrialists, and workers would be better off

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in the long run under a Dublin parliament because home rule would make the religious divisions of Ireland irrelevant and usher in a new era of class politics. In any case, as MacDonald put it, if faced with a choice of backing the Unionist minority or the nationalist majority, one had to go with the majority. Also, one of the core values of the left was to get religion out of politics. Approving the division of Ireland on the basis of religion cut against the grain. But on partition, Labour was more ambiguous. MacDonald said he was not in favour of coercing Ulster, and went on to say of the crisis: ‘It is not our business … we are a detached party.’ He made it clear that if the Commons found a compromise, Labour would not oppose it.61 This was remarkably conciliatory, given the backdrop of the Great Labour Unrest, as historians have called the strike wave between 1911 and 1914, and the collusion between the army, the Conservatives and the Unionists to defy the constitution. When the ITUC’s parliamentary committee protested to Asquith, Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell and the party leaders at Westminster about partition, British Labour replied that party officers were of a like mind with the ITUC on Ulster, adding, ambiguously, that ‘anything the Party may ultimately agree to by way of amendment to the present Home Rule Bill will be agreed to in order to make any measure of Home Rule possible and with a view to creating circumstances that will eventually lead to complete Home Rule’. It was not deemed a satisfactory position, and the parliamentary committee again complained that British Labour was taking its cue on Ireland from counsels other than Irish Labour.62 Northern Labour’s tortuous efforts to avoid the issue persisted until the Northern Ireland Labour Party split between pro- and anti-partitionists in 1949. The BLP’s support for home rule established a tradition of sympathy for Irish nationalism that would persist until Tony Blair rejected it for pro-Unionism in the 1990s. However, Labour’s stance was not grounded absolutely on endorsement of Irish self-determination, much less a rejection of imperialism, though some Labourites held those opinions. For the most part, it was based on humanitarian and democratic values and a liberal view of what was best for Britain. Even against the backdrop of the Great Labour Unrest, the open Unionist–Tory alliance and the Curragh mutiny, Labour clung to these values, and they were further circumscribed by the feeling that it was not Labour’s business to lead on the constitutional question, that the constitutional question was a distraction from social issues and that Labour should facilitate any compromise that resolved the crisis. These qualifications might sound familiar, because they could be applied perfectly to the Irish Labour Party. And

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one of the side effects of the crisis was to create a template for Irish Labour’s position on the national question. Notes  1 Cited in Keith Harding, ‘The Irish issue in the British labour movement, 1900–1922’, PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 1983, p. 307.  2 To distinguish them from trade unionists, the usual convention is adopted here of referring to supporters of the Union with Britain with a capital ‘U’, whether members of the Unionist Party or not. Similarly, to distinguish them from the mass of labour, activists in trade unions, trades councils or Labour political groups are referred to as ‘Labour’ or ‘Labourites’.  3 See, for example, Boyd Black, ‘Reassessing Irish industrial relations and labour history:  the north-east of Ireland up to 1921’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, vol. 14 (autumn, 2002), pp.  45–97; Campaign for Labour Representation in Northern Ireland (CLRNI), The forgotten conference (Belfast, CLRNI, 1982); Peter Gerard Collins, ‘Belfast trades council, 1881–1921’, DPhil, University of Ulster, 1988, pp.  183–218; Austen Morgan, Labour and partition: the Belfast working class, 1905–23 (London, Pluto Press, 1991), pp. 145–78; Henry Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism: the Protestant working class and the Belfast labour movement, 1868–1920 (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1980), pp.  80–1. Patterson’s critique is more scholarly and alive to problems within Walkerism, but nonetheless blames Connolly for Labour’s alienation of the Protestant working class.  4 For the composition of the city’s workforce at this time, see Black, ‘Reassessing Irish industrial relations’, pp. 45–97.  5 Labour Leader, 19 April 1912.  6 Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome business: the Labour Party and the Irish question (London, Pluto Press, 1982), pp. 1–15.  7 The bill was intended to reverse the Taff Vale judgment, 1901. See H.  A. Clegg, Alan Fox and A.  F. Thompson, A history of British trade unions since 1889, vol. 1, 1889–1910 (Oxford, Clarendon, 1964), p.  369; John Saville, ‘The Trade Disputes Act of 1906’, in K. D. Ewing (ed.), The right to strike: from the Trade Disputes Act 1906 to a trade union freedom bill 2006 (Liverpool, Institute of Employment Rights, 2006), p. 76.  8 John W.  Boyle, The Irish labor movement in the nineteenth century (Washington, DC, Catholic University of American Press, 1988), pp. 239–43.  9 For a rare treatment of this theme, see Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 42. 10 Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 37. 11 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, pp. 6–7. 12 Justice, 16 June 1896. 13 Cited in Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 45.

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14 Freeman’s Journal, 2 April 1890; Fintan Lane, The origins of modern Irish socialism, 1881–1896 (Cork, Cork University Press, 1997), pp. 167–8. 15 Emmet O’Connor, A labour history of Ireland, 1824–2000 (Dublin, UCD Press, 2011), p. 68. 16 Boyle, The Irish labor movement, pp. 125–6, 165–8, 276–8. 17 John McIlroy, ‘The Belfast butchers:  Quinn v Leathem after a hundred years’, in K. D. Ewing (ed.), The right to strike, pp. 31–68. 18 See Stephen Howe, Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 187–8; Bob Purdie, ‘An Ulster Labourist in Liberal Scotland: William Walker and the Leith Burghs election of 1910’, in Ian S.  Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster (Edinburgh, Mercat Press, 1994), p. 133. 19 University of Ulster, Magee College (UUMC), Report of the tenth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1903, p. 54. 20 On Sloanism, see John W.  Boyle, ‘The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 13 (1962), pp. 117–52; and Henry Patterson, ‘Independent Orangeism and class conflict in Edwardian Belfast’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 80, section C, 1 (1980), pp. 1–27. For Walker’s efforts to court Sloan, see UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 20 February 1904; Belfast News-Letter, 8 September 1905; and the Irish Protestant, 9 September 1905. 21 UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 6 October 1902, 20 February 1904, 4 May 1905, 13 January 1906. 22 Cited in Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, p. 75. 23 Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 24–26 January 1907; Editorial, ‘Belfast anomalies’, Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 25 January 1907. 24 S. Higginbottam, Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers: our Society’s history (Manchester, Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, 1939), p. 280. 25 Quoted in Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, p. 58. 26 Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, pp. 60–1. 27 For election results, see Brian M. Walker (ed.), Parliamentary election results in Ireland, 1801–1922 (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 1978). 28 From reports in Labour Leader, cited in CLRNI, The forgotten conference. 29 Cork Workers’ Club, The Connolly–Walker controversy: on socialist unity in Ireland (Cork, Cork Workers’ Club, no date), pp. 1, 5. 30 UUMC, Dublin trades council minutes, 28 October 1907; Labour Leader, 24 April 1908. 31 Boyle, The Irish labor movement, pp. 281–5. 32 Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, pp. 73–4. 33 UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 18 April 1908. 34 See Walker’s election address, dated 13 December 1909. I  am obliged to Mike Meachem for this detail. 35 Daniel V. McDermott, ‘The British labour movement and Ireland, 1905–25’, MA dissertation, University College, Galway, 1979, p. 12. 36 Bell, Troublesome business, pp. 22–3.

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37 Bell, Troublesome business, pp. 23–4. 38 See Emmet O’Connor, ‘ “Taking its natural place”:  Labour and the third home rule crisis, 1912–14’, Saothar, vol. 37, 2012, pp. 31–9. 39 UUMC, Report of the twentieth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1913, pp. 22–3. 40 UUMC, Report of the twenty-first Irish Trades Union Congress, 1914, pp. 1–4. 41 UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 7 December 1911. 42 UUMC, Report of the twenty-first Irish Trades Union Congress, 1914, pp. 5–6. 43 Donal Nevin, James Connolly: a full life (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 2005), p. 429. 44 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Belfast Trades Council, balance sheets, 1899–1928, D/1050/6/F1. 45 UUMC, Report of the eighteenth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1911, p. 13. 46 UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 18 November 1911. 47 Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, p. 81. 48 Collins, ‘Belfast trades council, 1881–1921’, p. 191. 49 Morgan, Labour and partition, p. 164. 50 UUMC, Belfast Trades Council minutes, 2 April 1914; Collins, ‘Belfast trades council, 1881–1921’, p. 194. 51 UUMC, Report of the twenty-first Irish Trades Union Congress, 1914, pp. 70–3, 108–10. 52 Based on ITUC annual reports, 1894–1914. 53 UUMC, Report of the ninth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1902, pp. 24–5; Report of the tenth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1903, p. 31; Report of the eighteenth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1911, p. 18; Boyle, The Irish labor movement, pp. 312–14. 54 Belfast News-Letter, 7 April 1914. 55 Morgan, Labour and partition, p. 216. 56 Morgan, Labour and partition, pp.  127–39, provides the most detailed account of the expulsions. 57 UUMC, Report of the twentieth Irish Trades Union Congress, 1913, pp. 11, 13. 58 Northern Whig, 26 March 1914. 59 Belfast News-Letter, Northern Whig, 30 April 1914. 60 Letter to the editor, from John Murphy, Secretary, Belfast Trades and Labour Council, Belfast News-Letter, 5 May 1914. 61 Bell, Troublesome business, pp. 30–1. 62 UUMC, Report of the twenty-first Irish Trades Union Congress, 1914, p. 18.

4 Labour and Irish revolution: from investigation to deportation Ivan Gibbons The British Labour Party’s policy on Ireland in the early 1920s was influenced by its awareness that it was potentially an alternative government in waiting. Before this became apparent after 1918, and when the party was little more than a radical adjunct to the dominant progressive party (the Liberals), Labour could afford to support Irish nationalist demands for home rule in a general, instinctive and positive manner. However, once it became obvious that the Labour Party not only had the opportunity to overtake the Liberal Party as the foremost progressive party in Britain but that it was, in effect, the only viable alternative to the Conservatives, party policy had to become more focused. This change in fortune and the resultant need to re-assess its Irish policy came about in the years immediately after the First World War and exactly at the time when Irish nationalism was undergoing a transformation from a moderate devolutionist variety to a militant separatist philosophy. Although it was on the brink of exercising real political influence, the Labour Party remained an often uneasy coalition of many different interests. Founded in 1900 to represent the political interests of the section of the working class that consisted of trade-unionised male industrial workers, whose interests were interpreted quite narrowly as consisting of improvements in working conditions and wages, the early Labour Party unashamedly represented a limited sectional interest. It soon became apparent, however, that if it were to reach beyond this narrow base, it needed to broaden its appeal to other progressive sections of society. Allied to its trade union base, often uneasily, were the ideological socialists of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and, in particular, after 1918, middle-class former supporters of the Liberal Party who recognised that Labour had now usurped the Liberals’ position as the foremost radical party in Britain. Entrusted with the task of welding these potentially disparate elements together and moulding Labour into a realistic alternative governing party was its leader, Ramsay MacDonald. MacDonald’s reputation and legacy have both been inevitably coloured

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by his decision to lead a national coalition government during the economic crisis of the early 1930s. However, ten years previously he was at the height of his political powers. In addition to being a charismatic public speaker, he was also a versatile writer and journalist. He was clearly the most gifted and talented of the Labour leaders as the party prepared itself for government in the early 1920s. His government colleague, J. H. Thomas, described meeting him for the first time in 1904: ‘MacDonald was an imposing figure with a head like a black-maned lion’s and a soft, musical voice in which the influence of his native Lossiemouth asserted itself in the rolling of the Rs.’1 Although MacDonald was no doctrinaire socialist and possessed a political philosophy that appeared to consist of a charismatic mixture of passion and pragmatism, he appealed across the entire spectrum of the party. This was because he had sacrificed his career and his parliamentary seat as a consequence of his opposition to the First World War. It is significant that when he did return to parliament as MP for Aberavon in 1922 he was supported in his successful bid for the party leadership by the recently elected Clydeside ILP MPs, many of whom, such as David Kirkwood and James Maxton, had also experienced internment and detention in 1916 as a result of their opposition to the war.2 However, MacDonald realised more than most of his colleagues (and at a far earlier stage) that Labour needed to present itself positively to traditionally non-Labour voters if it was ever going to form a government. As a result, his relationship with the Glasgow left-wingers soon became strained. Gordon Brown states that ‘even in the early 1920s MacDonald’s expositions of socialism tended towards the vacuous and platitudinous’, and consequently, the ILP soon grew disillusioned with him.3 MacDonald’s task of attempting to reassure the British electorate that Labour was a responsible, moderate and above all patriotic party was made difficult by the tendency of elements within the party to employ the tactics of direct action as a more effective means of remedying working-class grievances. This could involve, on the trade union front, industrial action in support of Soviet Russia or, in local government, tactics such as ‘Poplarism’. An example of the latter was in 1921, when Labour councillors in the East London borough refused to increase rates to support the London County Council, arguing instead that the finance thus raised was more required in the East End. Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, the antics of the ‘Red Clydesiders’, in continually disrupting the business of the House, caused MacDonald constant frustration and consternation. The Times recorded how MacDonald sat ‘white with anger at the folly of his followers’ during one such episode in 1923.4 Eventually, in government in 1924, the parting of the ways between

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MacDonald and the party’s left wing became final, as the ILP demanded that the government concentrate on social and economic issues while MacDonald, infuriatingly from their perspective, was more comfortable on the international stage in his role as Foreign Secretary as well as prime minister. As William Knox puts it, the ILP believed that ‘the idea that the treatment of one set of foreign nationals by another could influence the outcome of a general election had died with Gladstone in the nineteenth century’.5 On Ireland, MacDonald occasionally came under pressure from Labour backbenchers over his cautious Irish policy, but, in reality, most of the time even the most ardent of left-wingers were about as interested in Ireland as they were in Franco-German relations. Their prime concerns were the appalling social and economic conditions which had propelled them into labour politics in the first place and the seriousness of which had resulted in their election in 1922. Nevertheless, the period of Labour’s early political rise after the First World War was also one that witnessed revolution in Ireland; and determined as it was to demonstrate its fitness to govern Britain, the leadership of the party understood the importance of responding to the crisis prudently, avoiding unchecked militancy but marking Labour out as different from the other parties. In 1920–21, during the war between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and British Crown forces in Ireland, the Labour leadership managed to attack, with considerable effect, the Irish policy of the coalition government under Lloyd George. By sending an investigative team to Ireland at the height of the conflict, to inquire into the conduct of British forces, it embarrassed the coalition by depicting it as an administration out of touch with a British nation, and indeed a wider international opinion, that was increasingly uncomfortable with the reprisals of the ‘Black and Tans’, the hastily recruited ex-army volunteer force drawn into the ranks of the Irish constabulary to augment its capabilities against the IRA. Later still, MacDonald himself exhibited great skill when he successfully channelled the disruptive tactics of the left wing into embarrassing the Conservative government on its Irish policy during the Irish Civil War, 1922–23. This conflict followed the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921, which provided for a twenty-six-county Irish Free State with dominion status, and which ultimately formalised the partition of the country and the existence of Northern Ireland, as earlier constituted under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The terms of the Treaty, which fell far short of an Irish republic, had caused bitter divisions within the Dáil Éireann and within the ranks of the IRA. In the spring of 1923, during the Civil War, the Conservatives aided Free State forces by deporting over one hundred republicans living in Britain

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to prisons in the Irish Free State, deportees who, as Labour would skilfully argue, had rights as British citizens by virtue of their birthplace and residence. The highlighting of the controversial nature of these deportations allowed Clydeside MPs to channel their undeniable ability to create mayhem into ambushing and ridiculing the government for once, rather than embarrassing their own leadership. These tactics enhanced the reputation of their party as a defender of civil liberties without laying the Labour Party open to the jibes and criticisms of its political opponents that it was sympathetic to extreme Irish nationalism. This considerable parliamentary success largely created the Labour Party’s reputation as the defender of civil liberties in the face of authoritarian and high-handed government and was an important factor in its general election success later the same year.6 In addition to broadsides from its own left wing, the Labour Party leadership was also occasionally taken to task by elements of the organised Irish community in Britain, and accused of not being robust enough in its support for militant Irish nationalism. Usually the party hierarchy was well able to fend off such criticism. In the case of the party’s own members, criticism was never sustained and usually only emanated periodically from either backbench MPs representing areas with substantial Irish populations, or from party members living in those areas. The fact was that the party membership, even its more militant elements, was, like the party leadership, far more interested in social and economic issues than in getting involved in unpredictable and apparently irrational problems such as Ireland for any length of time. In the case of the organised Irish community in Britain, the party leadership obviously took into account the fact that the largest Irish support organisation there, the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL), formed in 1919, put itself beyond the pale when, following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, it came down on the side of the anti-Treaty republicans rather than the pro-Treaty element. The Labour Party leadership obviously came to the conclusion at an early stage that any courting of the Irish nationalist vote in Britain, particularly the republican vote, could only be at the expense of undermining the party’s carefully planned long-term strategy of attempting to appeal to the British electorate as a patriotic party that could be trusted in government. By and large, this strategy was successful. The Labour leadership skilfully directed Irish nationalist sympathies and energies inside the party towards, first, total opposition to the one issue that united the party on Ireland – opposition to partition – and then, once the Irish Free State had been established, towards enhancing Labour’s reputation as that defender of basic liberties. In this way the political risks of endangering the Labour Party’s reputation

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by being identified with the excesses of militant Irish nationalism were avoided. The party was certainly on sure ground in its outright opposition to the proposals to partition Ireland, as contained in the Government of Ireland bill (enacted in December 1920). However, during 1920 and 1921, when the military conflict between the IRA and Crown forces was intensifying, Labour’s position on dealing with that immediate crisis was in a state of flux. By 1920, the leadership had undoubtedly been coming under pressure to step up the opposition to the Irish policy of Lloyd George’s coalition government. Throughout the summer of that year, the political situation continued to deteriorate. Tensions were heightened by sectarian rioting in Belfast and by the death of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, in October, after seventy-four days on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Feelings of despair and impotence reached the leadership. MacDonald crystallised the weakness and powerlessness of a party apparently inured to the horrors of Ireland when, in December, he wrote in Forward that ‘the war has blunted our sensibilities. That is it. We have become accustomed to horrors, and our people really do not feel Ireland’.7 The air of demoralisation and impotence deepened as the political and military situation in Ireland continued to deteriorate. The reprisals of the Black and Tans, which had become the government’s response to the IRA campaign, were increasingly making international press headlines. The Labour leadership began to come under even more sustained criticism and attack from within its own ranks for its timidity on Ireland. Indeed, progressive elements in British society (including even Liberal ministers in Lloyd George’s own coalition government) were becoming vocal about Britain’s Irish policy and the damage it was doing to the country’s reputation. Herbert Fisher, President of the Board of Education, wrote to Lloyd George expressing his concerns that reprisals in Ireland would ‘induce Englishmen to say that if we can only govern Ireland by such means, we had better not govern it at all’.8 The prominent Labour figure, Philip Snowden, who had lost his seat in the 1918 general election, often used his columns in Labour Leader (the organ of the Independent Labour Party) to return to the theme of Labour’s abdication on Ireland. He inquired, ‘Is the Labour Party going to leave Mr [Herbert] Asquith the leadership of the campaign against the Irish policy of the government and of the demand for a solution to the Irish question on the lines of self-determination?’9 The need for more assertive action by the Labour Party and movement as a whole was constantly reinforced in the editorial columns of Labour Leader. It was in this climate of political pressure, both internal and

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external, that Arthur Henderson took the lead among the leadership and advanced a new policy in the autumn of 1920 that abandoned a dominion solution for Ireland. Instead, he proposed that Ireland be allowed to solve its own problems and that the British Army should be withdrawn. A constituent assembly would then draw up a constitution for all Ireland with adequate protection for minorities.10 On 17 November, the party’s Executive Committee adopted the plan of action, as proposed, and a strategy was laid out, comprising a Commission of Enquiry on Ireland, a Labour Manifesto on Ireland and a National Campaign for the start of 1921. For his part, the Irish correspondent of Labour Leader was less than overwhelmed. As debate continued to rage inside the party as to the role Labour should play in trying to resolve the Irish problem, the paper was quite clear: although Asquith had done a service in denouncing coercion, his alternative policy of imposing dominion home rule itself involved coercion.11 Amidst all the internal soul-searching, the Labour Commission embarked for Ireland. It was there from 1 to 16 December 1920, and in its investigation it uncovered substantial evidence of government reprisals and outrages. Its members visited Cork immediately after the burning of the city by Crown forces on 11 December. They also visited Killarney and Limerick, but significantly not Belfast. Keith Harding has suggested that they were symbolically ‘preparing themselves for the logical extension of the condition that any Irish assembly must give protection to minorities’.12 The report on the Commission’s findings was published immediately on its return from Ireland. It stated uncompromisingly that: things are being done in the name of Britain which must make her name stink in the nostrils of the whole world. The honour of our people has been gravely compromised. Not only is there a reign of terror in Ireland which should bring a blush of shame to the cheek of every British citizen, but a nation is being held in subjection by an empire which has proudly boasted that it is a friend of small nations.13

Lloyd George remained unmoved, and in response the Executive Committee of the Labour Party decided to hold a special conference on Ireland, to formally receive the Commission’s report. On 28 December, on the day before that event, the Committee resolved ‘that it be announced that the resolution submitted to Conference were [sic] the unanimous findings of the EC [Executive Committee] and that no amendments be allowed’.14 A resolution accepting the report was unanimously carried. This was a damning indictment of government policy. The conference also adopted the resolutions encapsulating the new Labour policy that

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had been laid out in the House of Commons on 11 November by the party Chairman, William Adamson. In his speech, Adamson demanded the withdrawal of the army, the foundation of a constituent assembly and the establishment of a constitution affording protection to minorities, in addition to preventing Ireland from becoming a military or naval rival to Britain. Having stage-managed the conference, by preventing any amendments, the leadership’s success was reinforced when the Executive Committee of the Irish Labour Party and TUC accepted the new British Labour Party position on 8 January 1921. Following the special conference, the next stage of the Labour Party’s strategy was its ‘Campaign for Peace in Ireland’. This involved over 500 public meetings held in January and February 1921, culminating in a rally at the Royal Albert Hall in London on 15 February, which was described by Labour Leader as a ‘fitting climax to the magnificent Irish campaign of the Labour Party’.15 The pressure on the government intensified further when the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Mannix, declared at a meeting in Dundee that ‘Labour was the only party which came out into the open and made some sort of approach towards a settlement of the Irish question’.16 The Labour Party’s Executive Report to its annual conference in Brighton in June 1921, described the national campaign as: one of the most remarkable series of meetings ever held by any political party on any great public question in the history of the country … The moral fervour and deep indignation displayed by the throngs who gathered to the meetings recalled the happier times when the chasm between morality and politics was not as wide as in recent years.17

The party’s belief that it had reinvigorated debate on Ireland was one of the central planks of the conference. The Conference Report referred to seven million leaflets distributed. It highlighted that the first 10,000 copies of the Report of the Labour Commission quickly sold out and that nearly 10,000 copies of the Irish Labour Party’s pamphlet, Who Burnt Cork City?, were sold.18 Labour Leader was breathless in its support, arguing that Henderson’s prediction of the campaign’s success had been aptly realised with ‘fifty great demonstrations and special leaflets distributed by the thousand’.19 As tightly controlled and stage-managed as the campaign was, with ritual denunciations of government policy, the meetings certainly recovered for the Labour Party much of the credibility it had lost amongst Irish Labour, even though the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful in ending the war in Ireland. The credit for the more visible and assertive stance on Ireland almost single-handedly belongs to Henderson, who,

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in the Commons debate on Ireland on 21 February 1921, demanded an inquiry into reprisals, the opening of negotiations with Sinn Féin and the conclusion of a settlement ‘consistent with the aspirations of the Irish people’.20 Undoubtedly, after all the turmoil, in 1921 the leadership of the party avoided the threat of militancy and direct action on Ireland. Lessons had clearly been learnt, for at times during 1920, a militant radical stance seemed to be about to threaten Labour’s policy of cautious, not to say timid, constitutional progress. The party’s craving for political respectability is a recurrent theme between 1921 and 1924. From 1918, it was the official opposition in Britain. On the threshold of power, its leadership became acutely conscious that it was now capable of influencing British public opinion far more effectively than in the past. It had done this very successfully in its campaign against the war in Ireland. During the twelve months between the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the official establishment of the Irish Free State, the party saw its role as a critical but positive opposition during negotiations between the British government and the nascent Irish administration. Its position on Ireland had moved bewilderingly from support for home rule to unqualified self-determination and back to dominion status. However, during the same period, the party’s outright opposition to the Government of Ireland bill and partition in 1920 provided certainty in terms of its Irish policy and served to bind all sections of the party, however much they might have disagreed on other aspects of the Irish policy. Furthermore, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), with its vocal opposition to partition and its set of alternative proposals outlined in the debates on the Government of Ireland bill, in effect determined Labour’s policy in this period and enabled it more easily to accept the constitutional arrangements that resulted from the Anglo-Irish Treaty of the following year. The Treaty, in effect, gave dominion home rule to a partitioned Ireland. Harding has observed that, to the British Labour movement, ‘it came as a welcome relief and a convenient excuse for closing the book on their own tired Irish policies’.21 In this, the Labour Party was not alone. For both Conservatives and Liberals in Lloyd George’s coalition government, the Treaty, on closer inspection, was at odds with both parties’ traditional stances on Ireland:  one defending the unity of the United Kingdom, and the other prepared to advance limited self-government to the island as a whole. However, there was little introverted closer inspection; for both parties, the Treaty was a pragmatic solution to the age-old intractable problem of Ireland, and in the words of historian A. J. P. Taylor, Lloyd George had now magically ‘conjured it out of existence’.22 Given that the Treaty was regarded

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by most British politicians as a settlement of Anglo-Irish difficulties, it is hardly fair to single out the Labour Party for wanting to wash its hands of the whole problem. By any criterion, however, the Treaty fell well short of Labour Party policy, enunciated by Adamson in the House of Commons in November 1920 during the third reading of the Government of Ireland bill, confirmed at the Special Conference in London, December 1920, and repeated at the June 1921 Conference in Brighton. This clearly called for the withdrawal of the army, the establishment of a constituent assembly to draw up a constitution, the protection of minorities and the prevention of Ireland becoming a strategic threat to Britain. The Treaty obviously protected the unionist minority in the North, by reinforcing partition; and a senate in the South was weighted favourably towards former unionists. The Treaty also protected British strategic interests by reserving use of some Irish Free State ports by the Royal Navy. However, there was no mention of a constituent assembly for the whole country, and the proposed Council of Ireland was a pale substitute. Ironically, it can be argued that it was the Labour Party’s retreat from ‘free and absolute self-determination’, as elaborated at its Scarborough conference in 1920, to an insistence on the protection of minorities in 1921, that facilitated partition. However, in the euphoria of the time, the feeling of relief that the ‘Irish question’ was at long last off the British political agenda, and an impatience to concentrate again on British domestic issues, meant that this potentially awkward detail was quickly ignored, if it was recognised at all. In their contributions to the House of Commons debate on the Treaty, Labour MPs hardly ever referred to the outstanding boundary issue, even though anti-partitionism was the one issue that united the entire spectrum of Labour opinion on Ireland. The desire to move back to the safer political ground of traditional party politics in Britain obviously overcame any lingering tendencies (if there were any) to compare in any detail the apparent contradictions between the Treaty and Labour policy on Ireland. However, in supporting the Treaty and, by implication, Article 12 which provided for the Boundary Commission, Labour at least tacitly accepted partition, albeit with the possibility of revision of the boundary. The potential embarrassment caused by the continuation of partition was nothing, however, to the paroxysms of fear that surfaced in British Labour politicians whenever the party was in danger of being associated in the public mind with revolutionary Irish nationalism. This explains why, as noted by D. V. McDermott, ‘the Labour Party, as a constitutional party aware that its day of glory was near, had neither the opportunity nor desire to oppose the treaty’.23

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Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Treaty was overwhelmingly accepted by the PLP, the Independent Labour Party (through Labour Leader), the TUC and the Daily Herald. The justification was that the majority of Irish people had accepted it in the Irish general election of June 1922, that it provided a promise of peace, that it would eventually lead to Irish unity and that it would improve Anglo-Irish relations. The criticism of the Labour Party is not that it did not oppose the Treaty on the grounds that it was imperialistic, as obviously the party either did not interpret it as such, or the party itself was not anti-imperialist (or both). It can be criticised, however, on the grounds that the Treaty, in the context of Lloyd George’s threats to unleash a renewal of the war if it was not signed, did not constitute ‘self-determination’, which was Labour Party policy, even though the definition of this was consistently ambiguous. In early 1922, when Ireland appeared on the brink of civil war over the Treaty, the British Labour Party stood on the threshold of parliamentary success. It was now the largest opposition party ranged against the faltering and increasingly Conservative-dominated coalition government. It had been forced to think and act like an alternative government when rapidly evolving its policy on Ireland, unlike the period before 1914 when it merely fell in behind the Liberals and the Irish Nationalist Party and allowed these two rival parties to, in effect, determine its own Irish policy. The constant and uppermost concern of the Labour Party during this period was that, at all costs, it must maintain its reputation for moderation and parliamentarianism. Fortunately for Labour, it came through the evolution of its Irish policy with this reputation intact. ‘Self-determination’ did not mean sympathy for extremist republicanism, and the party heavily castigated Sinn Féin and the coalition government when it felt that, in the context of the military conflict between the British Army and IRA, both were departing from traditional parliamentary methods by supporting reprisals and counter-reprisals in order to achieve political ends. Even though the Irish problem had been theoretically solved (or at least removed from the domestic political agenda), Labour was correct to be concerned about how the issue might affect the party’s reputation and credibility in the long term. At the third annual conference of the ISDL in London on 1 April 1922, the president, P.  J. Kelly, criticised Labour’s performance on Ireland, stating that ‘The Irish population in Great Britain was predisposed to support Labour, but as far as Irishmen were concerned they had found that the Labour Party, with a few outstanding exceptions, were devoid of principle when it came to applying self-determination to Ireland. The Labour Party was lacking

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in courage in great causes and was as impracticable as the other British parties’.24 It was in the context of its having supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, and in its desperation to avoid involving itself in the politics of the Irish Civil War, that the PLP alighted upon the new issue of the arrest of republicans in Britain – individuals who were, of course, British citizens – and their deportation to the Irish Free State. Deportation had been part of an earlier British policy, after the passage of the Defence of the Realm Act 1915 when Irish suspects were deported to Britain.25 The attraction of the anti-deportation campaign for Labour in 1923 was that it enabled the party to portray itself as the defender of Irish interests, particularly in Britain. This would then send a message to Irish electors at a time when Labour still had work to do to convince that constituency in Britain that it, rather than either wing of the Liberal Party, could most effectively represent their interests. In addition, Labour was able to seize that opportunity to present itself as the champion of civil liberties against the excesses of the new, overweening and authoritarian Conservative government that had finally replaced Lloyd George’s tottering coalition government in November 1922. Labour’s particular opprobrium had been directed against Lloyd George and the coalition Liberals, both in general and on the issue of Ireland, on which Labour believed the coalition government had been unprincipled and opportunistic. MacDonald in particular knew that the immediate electoral struggle was between Labour and Liberals for domination of the progressive wing of British politics. It is arguable that, paradoxically, Labour preferred an exclusively Tory administration rather than a coalition government, given that the battle lines were now clear-cut, as both Tories and Labour wished for a return to a two-party system involving the consequent eradication of the Liberals as a major force in British politics. There was a political risk involved in Labour adopting a strategy of portraying itself as the defender of civil liberties against the incoming Conservative government. This could only be achieved at the cost of being accused of reproaching the newly established Free State government and of providing succour to anti-Treaty republicans. One of the main reasons why the issue was progressed so energetically by the new PLP was that it now contained many of those ILP ‘Red Clydesiders’ who themselves had, of course, been interned without trial during the First World War. Although Labour sincerely believed that there were fundamental civil liberties issues involved, the obvious political benefit to the party was that this was an opportunity to show real concern about the continuing upheaval in Ireland without having to get directly involved in what was happening in that country.

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The arrests and immediate deportation of the republican suspects (in total 110, including 19 women) began in early March 1923, thus giving rise to that issue of civil rights.26 Most were members of the ISDL, including its president, Art O’Brien. The League had tended to support the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War. Immediately, the PLP and the Labour press commenced a campaign for their release. The Daily Herald stated that the decision to protest so vigorously showed that the Labour Party understood its duty as the custodian of the country’s civil liberties. In the Commons, during a heated adjournment debate on the controversy, Labour MPs took turns to pillory the government. West Ham MP, Jack Jones, asked, ‘When has deportation become a British industry? What I am protesting against is the deportation of our own English citizens to another country.’27 He was careful to emphasise that he was moving the adjournment ‘not because he believed in the policy of those who were trying to upset the Free State Government’. He reiterated this later when he claimed that he had been ‘one of the most persistent and consistent opponents of those people ever since they had adopted the policy of trying to defeat the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland’.28 Backbench Labour MP, George Lansbury, then asked, ‘Does the Home Secretary claim the right to deport a British citizen born in this country without trial?’29 Ramsay MacDonald observed that ‘it seems very much a case of hanging a man and trying him afterwards’.30 He then went on to clinically outline the kernel of the Labour case: The Labour Party did not associate themselves with any action of a hostile character taken against the Irish Free State but wanted to know if the government had the power to do what it had done especially as they had acted under regulations drafted in 1920 when the whole of Ireland was under British sovereignty and was in a state of rebellion … But now there was nobody responsible as the Irish Free State was outside British sovereignty.31

MacDonald put forward the more precise legal argument that, as the Irish Free State Constitution Act had established a separate political jurisdiction, this matter was now an internal matter of that jurisdiction with the result that British MPs were disenfranchised from raising the issue on behalf of their deported constituents in the House of Commons.32 The Glasgow ILP MP, James Maxton, was even more exercised about this factor. Referring to one of his constituents, he stated that ‘this man was born in Glasgow and you have handed him over to an enemy Government’.33 This was a noisy affair, with most of the agitation from Labour backbenchers, particularly Jack Jones. The Times was sympathetic to the Labour leader, commenting that ‘Mr Ramsay MacDonald had raised

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this matter in a quiet Parliamentary manner but his followers threw off the trammels of discipline and openly flouted him’.34 Labour MP, Arthur Ponsonby, writing in New Leader, was highly critical of the antics of the Labour backbenchers. He summed them up disparagingly and identified the very real weakness of ill-discipline, still apparent in a party aspiring to govern: Our intervention on the very serious action of the Government with regard to the Irish deportations was well justified, but somehow it was roughly and badly stage-managed. To begin with, Mr Jack Jones, who is always allowed a great deal of licence, went quite beyond his own wide limits at question time, and was positively insulting, not to the Government but to his own leader … It was uncalled for that he should be publicly snubbed by one of his followers and I think the whole party resented it.35

Despite this, The Times was of the view that the Labour Party’s instinct was the correct one and that the Conservative government was on the defensive. In an editorial, it stated that the ‘future of the Irish Free State is not so assured, or its resources so strong, that a helping hand should be withheld from it by Whitehall’; but it did add that ‘at first sight arrests of so summary a kind are suggestive of methods foreign to this country’.36 The editorial did go on, nevertheless, to reprimand Labour for giving succour to republican militarism at a time when the Free State was literally fighting for its very existence. It commented that, ‘After allowing to the Labour Party full scope for their Parliamentary opportunities, it is not altogether easy to understand why, when they one and all declare themselves to be out of sympathy with the disorder in Ireland, they should be so punctilious to those who would foster it.’37 This riposte from the The Times prompted MacDonald to reiterate his objections to what had happened. He stated that the 1920 regulations, passed for the suppression of rebellion in Ireland at that time, could clearly not be used now when Britain was no longer legally responsible for twenty-six of Ireland’s thirty-two counties. If they were now being so used, in 1923, this meant that British citizens were being deported to an independent jurisdiction over which Britain had no control. He concluded by stating, once again, that Labour was ‘in no sense antagonistic to the Irish Free State. [But] I, for one, though anxious to do everything in my power to assist the Irish Free State to establish order within its jurisdiction, am not prepared to render that service at the expense of a destruction of what I regard to be the most elementary rights of British citizens’.38

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A subsequent rowdy debate on the issue, in the Commons on 19 March, was dominated by the Clydeside ILP MPs. It saw George Buchanan, Labour MP for Glasgow, Gorbals, complaining that Scottish members who wanted to go to Ireland to see their detained constituents had not been assisted by the authorities. He also asked, rhetorically, what the position of the British government would be if the detainees were shot in prison.39 In the same debate, James Maxton and fellow Clydeside MP, David Kirkwood, both referred to their own personal war-time experience of arbitrary detention and internment. J. H. Thomas, as a Labour frontbencher, repudiated the contention that this was a vote of censure on the Irish Free State, given that ‘the Labour Party wished it well, and desired to do nothing that would hinder it in its work’.40 Replying for the government, the Attorney-General, Sir Douglas Hogg, added drily that ‘when Mr Thomas said he had no desire to hinder or hamper the Irish Free State one began to wonder whether the Free State would not crave to be saved from its friends’.41 The Daily Herald reported that the annual conference of the London and Southern Counties Divisional Council of the ILP had resolved ‘to protest against the deportations, and to demand the immediate repatriation of the deportees, with adequate compensation’.42 In a similar vein, Croydon ILP registered its ‘emphatic protest’ against the action of the British government in ‘illegally and unconstitutionally’ deporting the men and women.43 The newspaper also announced that ‘the Father Murphy and Roche Club of Greenwich, which is mostly composed of Irish workers, has addressed a letter to Mr J. Ramsay MacDonald MP, congratulating him and the workers’ representatives in Parliament for the stand they are making on behalf of the deportees’.44 This was followed by British Labour MPs, Arthur Greenwood and John Muir, together with Thomas Johnson, leader of the Irish Labour Party, meeting Free State president, W. T. Cosgrave, in Dublin in order to discuss the plight of the deportees. At the same time, the ILP annual conference protested against the unconstitutional conduct of the government and condemned it for handing over British citizens to the government of another country.45 More deportations from Glasgow occurred on 29 April, and this was raised in the Commons by John Muir. This led the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, to utter his famous description of the Labour Clydesider MPs as ‘a number of gentlemen of somewhat advanced description, who sang the “Red Flag” in the House of Commons, and appeared to borrow their manners and political morals from Moscow’.46 Finally, Labour backbencher, William Lunn, speaking at the annual meeting of the Rothwell Labour Party at the end of April, was reported as having gone as far as to predict that the raids and deportations ‘may mean the downfall of this Government’.47

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Eventually, the controversy came to a head on 9 May when the Court of Appeal ruled that the 1920 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (or, more specifically, Regulation 14b, under which the arrests took place) had been repealed by the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. The internment and deportation of Art O’Brien, who had taken this habeas corpus case, was therefore ruled to have been unlawful. This was a substantial political victory for the Labour Party, and the Daily Herald was not slow in emphasising its significance, stressing that ‘The credit of the Labour Party, which strenuously and consistently opposed the deportation policy, stands admittedly higher than ever, and men are saying that Labour is now the only party which can be relied upon as the defender of the constitutional rights of the subject’.48 In the same way that the Labour investigation into the ‘Tan War’ in 1920–21 had wrong-footed the Lloyd George coalition government, so too did this controversy lead to severe embarrassment for the Conservative government. While the government was claiming that the deportees had been arrested and expelled under the 1920 Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, Cosgrave was quoted as saying that ‘under whatever authority these men were deported and detained, it was not under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act which had lapsed in Ireland’. The British legal system affirmed the Cosgrave interpretation,49 though the whole deportation episode had cast Cosgrave’s government in a bad light in any case. The embarrassment for the British government was compounded on 15 May when the House of Lords dismissed an appeal against the original judgment, stating that the Lords had no jurisdiction in the case. Although O’Brien was sent back to London under escort and lodged in Brixton prison, the government had to hurriedly cobble together an Indemnity bill that would give the hapless Home Secretary, W. C. Bridgeman, as well as the Attorney-General, retrospective legal protection for exceeding their authority. This enabled Labour to once more repeat its allegations of incompetence and authoritarianism against the government. It did so with gusto. MacDonald scornfully commented that the House ‘ought to censure the Home Secretary rather than give him an indemnity’. He was followed by Thomas who argued that ‘there was no justification for a bill which proposed to indemnify the Home Secretary for an illegal act which had done monstrous injustice to many citizens’.50 Morgan Jones, Labour MP for Caerphilly, added to the government’s discomfiture when he asked, rhetorically, if the government would ‘consider an appeal to the country’, if it could not appeal to the House of Lords?51 Meanwhile, although O’Brien was re-arrested and charged with seditious conspiracy (for which he was sentenced to two years in prison), many of the released deportees arrived back in Britain and remained

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free. One of them, journalist Charles Diamond, who arrived back in Glasgow, asked the Daily Herald to express the thanks of the deportees for the ‘splendid fight which the Labour Party have put up on their behalf in the House of Commons’.52 In the debate on the Indemnity bill, the Labour Party first proposed its rejection and, when this was defeated, followed up with a series of amendments that, once accepted by the government, substantially changed the terms of the original proposal. The bill was retrospectively limited to apply only as far back as 6 December 1922 (the foundation of the Irish Free State), and no further. In addition, it was limited only to Regulation 14b of the original Restoration of Order in Ireland Act, rather than the whole Act. It did, however, provide for compensation, not only for the deportees but also for the relatives of deceased deportees; and it made provision for the awarding of damages (such as loss of earnings) incurred during imprisonment in Ireland. By any standard, it was a major achievement by an opposition party, and the Labour Party fully deserved the credit it sought and was given, even if grudgingly, by its political opponents. Its success in opposing the arrests and deportations enhanced its reputation, and did it absolutely no harm electorally – in fact, quite the opposite. During the debate on the Indemnity bill, Salford North Labour MP, Ben Tillett, had said that the Labour opposition was not directed personally against the Home Secretary but ‘against the Cabinet for so foolishly interfering with the rights of citizenship’.53 Elsewhere, in a speech at Newton Abbot, J. R. Clynes, Manchester MP and former Labour Party leader, said triumphantly that ‘when next the sneer is used that Labour is not fit to rule, people might well recall what has happened with the Irish deportations and the supreme bungling of the Cabinet on this question’.54 Arthur Greenwood neatly summed up the essence of the Labour argument when he concluded that ‘these people might all be guilty but that in no way minimizes the gravity of the charge we bring against the Government’.55 Much of the credit for the Labour achievement must go to Labour’s Shadow Attorney-General, Patrick Hastings KC, Labour MP for Wallsend, and also Art O’Brien’s defence barrister. Hastings, who later became Attorney-General in the first Labour government of 1924, was a middle-class former Liberal and, as a result, was often denigrated as a class traitor by the non-Labour benches in the Commons. New Leader summed up Hastings’s success in triumphant terms when it concluded that: From the Party standpoint this is undoubtedly the most damaging blow yet administered to the Government … The Appeal Court decision has shown

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the country that even in this department [Government Law Offices] Labour is better equipped … The leading Tory lawyer [Sir Douglas Hogg MP] and the leading Liberal lawyer [Sir John Simon MP] have since been shown to be wrong; the Labour lawyer [Hastings] right.56

The ultimately successful opposition to the deportation of British citizens to the Irish Free State basically constituted British Labour’s Irish policy in 1923. As the Irish Civil War began to peter out and the rule of law reasserted itself in the country, the party took little or no interest in events in Ireland itself. Labour was wary of allowing itself to be re-immersed in the Irish imbroglio once more and resisted attempts both by the Free State and by republicans to seek its support. Forward summed up this wariness succinctly when it stated:  ‘It is for the Irish people in Ireland to determine who shall or shall not govern the country, and, with all respect to the Countess Markievicz or de Valera [republican leaders], it is not the British Government or the British people who are responsible for the chaos, ruin, and starvation at present existing over there.’57 In its weariness with the perceived intractable nature of Irish politics, British Labour was merely reflecting a growing ennui towards the subject throughout the entire British political class. It was rare for a British political party to gain kudos and improve its credibility when dealing with Irish politics; but in its adept parliamentary handling of the Irish question during a period of revolution, the Parliamentary Labour Party, and in particular its leader Ramsay MacDonald, not only outwitted experienced Liberal and Conservative politicians but also clearly indicated in no uncertain terms that it had finally arrived as a truly constitutional rather than an extra-parliamentary party. Without MacDonald’s astute exploitation of parliamentary procedure, the outrage of the ILP ‘Red Clydesiders’ would merely have been incoherent and emotional, which ran the risk of identifying Labour with Irish republican extremists with possible devastating electoral consequences at the following general election. The avoidance of this outcome was MacDonald’s achievement, not the ILP’s. Labour had been desperate to become, and to be perceived as such by the electorate, a parliamentary party rather than as a sectional representative of a minority of British society – the industrial trade unions. Its parliamentary performance in prosecuting the deportees controversy, to the embarrassment of Bonar Law’s Conservative government, was a substantial contributory factor in its success in extending its support beyond the working class, in order to attract middle-class, educated and, in particular, disillusioned former Liberal voters. This would be rewarded in the general election

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of December 1923 and in the consequent formation of the first Labour government in January 1924. Notes  1 Gregory Blaxland, J. H.  Thomas:  a life for unity (London, Muller, 1964), p. 45.  2 R. K. Middlemass, The Clydesiders: a left wing struggle for parliamentary power (London, Hutchinson, 1965), p. 48.  3 Gordon Brown, Maxton: a biography (Edinburgh, Mainstream Publishing, 1986), p. 122.  4 The Times, 28 June 1923.  5 William Knox, James Maxton (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 46.  6 Ivan Gibbons, ‘A Parliamentary victory: the British Labour Party and Irish Republican deportees’, Parliamentary History, vol. 29, pt 2 (2010).  7 Forward, 4 December 1920.  8 Quoted in S.  Lawlor, Britain and Ireland, 1914–23 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1983), p. 70.  9 Labour Leader, 14 October 1920. 10 The Times, 7 October 1920. 11 Labour Leader, 25 November 1920. 12 Keith Harding, ‘The Irish issue in the British labour movement, 1900–1922’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Sussex, 1983, p. 285. 13 Report of the Labour Commission to Ireland (London, The Labour Party, 1921), p. 47. 14 Museum of Labour History, Manchester, Labour Party, National Executive Council minutes, 28 December 1920. 15 Labour Leader, 17 February 1921. 16 Daily Herald, 12 March 1921. 17 Labour Party Conference Report (London, The Labour Party, 1921), p. 24. 18 Labour Party Conference Report, p. 24. 19 Labour Leader, 27 January 1921. 20 Labour Leader, 24 February 1921. 21 Harding, ‘The Irish issue’, p. 299. 22 A.  J.  P. Taylor, English history:  1914–1945 (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965), p. 236. 23 D. V. McDermott, ‘The British labour movement and Ireland 1905–1925’, unpublished MA, University College Galway, National University of Ireland, 1979, p. 483. 24 Daily Herald, 3 April 1922. 25 Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland in the twentieth century (London, Arrow Books, 2003), pp. 46–7. 26 Daily Herald, 27 March 1923.

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27 Daily Herald, 13 March 1923. 28 The Times, 13 March 1923. 29 The Times, 13 March 1923. 30 Daily Herald, 13 March 1923. 31 The Times, 13 March 1923. 32 Hansard, vol. 161, col. 1158, 12 March 1923. 33 Hansard, vol. 161, col. 1552, 14 March 1923. 34 The Times, 13 March 1923. 35 New Leader, 16 March 1923. 36 Editorial, The Times, 13 March 1923. 37 The Times, 13 March 1923. 38 The Times, 15 March 1923. 39 The Times, 20 March 1923. 40 Daily Herald, 20 March 1923. 41 The Times, 20 March 1923. 42 Daily Herald, 22 March 1923. 43 Daily Herald, 27 March 1923. 44 Daily Herald, 31 March 1923. 45 The Times, 4 April 1923; Daily Herald, 5 April 1923. 46 Daily Herald, 23 April 1923. 47 Daily Herald, 30 April 1923. 48 Daily Herald, 10 May 1923. 49 Daily Herald, 21 March 1923. 50 The Times, 29 May 1923. 51 Daily Herald, 15 May 1923. 52 Daily Herald, 18 May 1923. 53 Daily Herald, 18 May 1923. 54 Daily Herald, 21 May 1923. 55 Daily Herald, 29 May 1923. 56 New Leader, 25 May 1923. 57 Forward, 21 July 1923.

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5 British Labour and developments in Ireland in the immediate post-war years Peter Collins In 1920 the British Labour Party resolutely opposed the Government of Ireland bill, first by boycotting it during the Committee and Report stages in parliament, and then by returning during its third reading to make a principled statement of opposition against its main provision:  partition.1 In the same year, a party fact-finding delegation to Ireland, led by Arthur Henderson, Labour’s chief whip, produced a damning indictment of the government’s security policy, especially the activities of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries.2 The delegation’s exposé of this in the Labour Daily Herald, and at some 500 information meetings throughout Britain,3 was undoubtedly a major factor in bringing Lloyd George’s coalition government to the conference table in 1921.4 Labour also called for the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland and the setting up of a constituent assembly. All this reinforced nationalist expectations of a future Labour government. By the 1940s a sympathetic deficit had opened up between British Labour and Ireland. Many Labour MPs supported a united Ireland, particularly if there was a large Irish diaspora presence in their constituency.5 But, equally, MPs were ill-at-ease about the anti-progressive influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere. The Church was mired in association with reactionary regimes. Franco’s Spain, with the blessing of the Church, was still carrying out its cull of progressive elements. Franco retained the support of the majority of Catholics in Ireland. In Éire, the reactionary power and influence of the Church ran counter to much of what the British labour movement stood for. Indeed, the leaders of the Irish Labour Party, William Norton and Brendan Corish, were conservative Catholics; Corish was a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic fraternity, the Knights of St Columbanus.6 This dichotomy between British and Irish Labour would be thrown dramatically into relief by the latter’s complicity in the strangulation, by Church and government, of the ‘Mother and Child’ bill in 1951.7 This in fact was an insipid version of the British National Health Service. Crucially, many

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in the British Labour Party shared the very pervasive, negative attitude that persisted towards Éire over its neutral stance during the then recent world conflict. The corollary of this was a sense of gratitude to Northern Ireland, for its contribution to the Allied war effort. This was despite the fact that the Irish government operated a neutrality that was clearly more favourable to the Allies.8 When Labour came to power in July 1945, under Clement Attlee, there were still great expectations among nationalists, north and south of the Irish border, of positive Westminster intervention over the partition of Ireland. Unionists feared just such an eventuality, as there were strident voices in the Parliamentary Labour Party calling for reform in Northern Ireland and even for the ending of partition. In the event, neither set of expectations came to pass. Several months after the general election of that year, an Anti-Partition League (APL) was set up in Northern Ireland involving most Nationalist elected representatives. Optimistic that their voice would at last be heard, they abandoned their policy of abstentionism, at Stormont and Westminster. They were complemented at Westminster by the Labour ‘Friends of Ireland’, also established in 1945. This was a group of around thirty Labour MPs, fairly loosely associated. Among its more prominent figures, five had an Irish background: Henry McGhee, John Haire, Hugh Delargy, Geoffrey Bing and Valentine McEntee. The Friends did not constitute a homogeneous group, but most were on the left of the party, and their shared aim was to expose the electoral and other malpractices in the North.9 The APL was conservative and Catholic and had little in common with the Friends, and it soon became clear that the logic of co-operation between the two was very tenuous. Ulster Unionists had a right to be worried, at least in the early days of the Attlee government. Ulster Unionist MPs were formally linked to the Conservatives and took the Tory whip. Thus they were against many of the radical reforms being introduced by the Attlee government. Initially, the Unionists saw the welfare state, along with nationalisation and planning, as part of a socialist future to which they were totally opposed. Their tribal hackles were further raised against the welfare state, as they believed it would benefit Northern Catholics more, due to their higher rate of unemployment and larger families. Of course, Stormont government policies bore some responsibility for the former. The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) strongly put the case for the welfare reforms in the 1945 Stormont election. That party’s consequent increase in seats was an indication of the popularity of improved welfare and social services, among Protestant and Catholic voters alike. However, the welfare pill was sweetened for the Unionist government

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when the Treasury agreed to provide additional funding to bring parity with Britain. Between 1945 and 1951 subsidies from Westminster grew sevenfold, whereas local taxation only doubled. The Stormont government soon learned that improved welfare and social services provided them with their greatest anti-partitionist propaganda. Compared to the South, the lot of the less well-off would be much better within the United Kingdom. In addition, by introducing and administering the welfare state in the North, the Unionists could fashion a stick to beat the NILP. Nevertheless, there was concern, on the right of the Unionist Party, and in local business circles, that Northern Ireland was being dragged along the road to socialism. A movement was growing, even among MPs at Stormont, for Ulster dominion status, to cocoon the North from the growing interference of the Labour government. However, the prime minister, Sir Basil Brooke, saw that such a development could lead to dangerous isolation and moved to quash this tendency. In this he was assisted by the benefits accruing from a blossoming rapprochement with the Attlee cabinet. Brooke reassured his colleagues that they were still in control of the essentials while benefiting from the largesse of the Treasury. In a speech in Larne, he told his supporters that ‘the indiscriminate charge of “socialism” is unjustified and absurd … there is a need for a middle course between the extreme philosophy of laissez-faire and the fetish of socialisation’.10 Brooke and his cabinet colleagues developed an effective strategy for their dealings with the Labour government. A senior Northern Ireland civil servant, A. J. Kelly, was seconded to Whitehall as liaison officer.11 He kept Stormont informed of developments at Westminster, which meant that while Brooke knew what was going on there, there was no similar reciprocal arrangement. Kelly advised Brooke to keep his wilder men in check as any intemperate statements and actions could now leave them open to criticism and interference from Westminster. This in turn could jeopardise the Westminster convention of non-interference in Northern Ireland affairs, which had developed since 1923.12 In discussions with Labour ministers, Brooke presented as a moderate. He was beginning to realise that the Labour government was not a threat to Stormont. This feeling was gradually confirmed by ongoing Unionist contact with British Labour ministers and senior Whitehall civil servants. Norman Brook, the cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service, and the department heads of the Home and Dominions Offices, were clearly sympathetic to the Unionist case.13 One strong, early indicator of this growing symbiotic relationship, between Stormont and Westminster, came with the allocation by the Treasury of £137,500 per annum to maintain the ‘B’ Specials, an entirely unionist and Protestant

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part-time police force.14 For nationalists, this was a bad omen of what was to come. This was at a time when no perceivable threat from the IRA was on the radar, and when some Labour MPs were highly critical of Stormont’s repressive approach to security. British governments, of whatever hue, believed that the question of partition should be settled between Irish nationalists and unionists, thus keeping the ‘troublesome business’ of Ireland out of the Westminster arena. Furthermore, some Labour ministers and senior civil servants believed that, even if the Irish agreed to end partition, it should be kept in place by Westminster for strategic considerations. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, was probably the cabinet member most sympathetic to the nationalist position. But he was ruled out of the discussion on partition by his department’s heavy workload, a result of the gathering Cold War. In this scenario, Bevin agreed with colleagues that Northern Ireland might still have a strategic role to play. Thus the maintenance of partition continued to be linked to Britain’s ongoing defence needs. Also, some leading cabinet ministers were unsympathetic to the nationalist case, and in some cases were active friends of unionism. In particular, Herbert Morrison, the deputy prime minister and Leader of the House of Commons, was a supporter, even a friend, of the Ulster Unionists and hostile to nationalists, both North and South. An Irish Times editorial of 28 July 1945, commenting on the outcome of the British general election, stated that Stormont had its defenders in the Labour cabinet, notably Herbert Morrison.15 Jimmy Kelly, doyen of Irish journalists, was present at the Ulster Reform Club in Belfast in 1942 at a luncheon in honour of Morrison. This was hosted by Stormont prime minister, J.  M. Andrews. Morrison, then Labour Home Secretary in Churchill’s war cabinet, had ordered the internment of Cahir Healy, the Nationalist MP. The following pen picture of Morrison, in Kelly’s autobiography, does much to explain his (Morrison’s) subsequent behaviour towards Ireland in the post-war Labour government: A cocky individual who seemed to be revelling in his new-found authority, Morrison was wined and dined by the local Unionists who found his right-wing ultra-Brit attitude to their liking. Old John Andrews [the prime minister] stated … that he could imagine Mr Morrison one day heading the Twelfth of July Orange procession along Royal Avenue! Instead of being affronted at such a dubious honour for a Socialist, Morrison was delighted…16

Kelly further highlighted what he calls Morrison’s servile adulation for what he described as the, ‘gracious hospitality of their graces, the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn’, who entertained him at

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Government House during his stay … I  was told afterwards that while poor old Cahir Healy was whisked off to London by Scotland Yard men, Morrison was seen off by his Unionist hosts with a gift of a case of Bushmills whiskey.17

Morrison made several visits to Northern Ireland while Home Secretary during the war. Following one visit in July 1943, he gave the address at the Thirties Club in London, at a dinner honouring Sir Basil Brooke, who had succeeded Andrews as Northern Ireland prime minister. In 1948, during Anglo-Irish trade discussions in Dublin, Taoiseach John Costello formed the opinion that Morrison had a dislike of Éire. The Labour minister gave the opinion that even if the North agreed to a united Ireland, Britain would still have to consider her own interests. Indeed, Costello later recalled that Morrison left an official reception, stating that he had ‘to visit his friends in the north’.18 The Labour government’s relationship with Northern nationalists was of a very different nature. In cabinet discussions nationalists were seldom mentioned. Their aspirations were not taken into account. It was as if they were invisible, a forgotten people, bearing alone the brunt of an inimical system. What had come to pass with a vengeance was the prediction, made in 1916 by Rev. Philip O’ Doherty, prominent nationalist cleric in Co. Tyrone, that partition would abandon ‘the Catholics of the six counties to … their unsleeping and relentless hereditary enemies’.19 They had no voices to speak for them in government. Even the Dublin government blocked Northern requests when they sought representation in Dáil Éireann.20 British Labour cabinet ministers rarely saw Nationalists when visiting the North. On a visit to Belfast, Morrison was asked by journalist, Jimmy Kelly, why he had not met any Nationalist representatives. The angry reply was, ‘Well, they didn’t come to see me.’21 In Belfast in 1947, the Home Secretary, James Chuter Ede, refused to discuss the Special Powers Act, gerrymandering and other grievances with a Nationalist and NILP deputation.22 Éire had remained neutral during the Second World War, despite all sorts of pressures from the Allies. If anything, this underlined the deep roots of the state’s sovereignty. Despite at least 50,000 Southern Irishmen and women flocking to Britain’s armed forces,23 and massive Irish contributions to the British industrial and agricultural war effort,24 Éire’s neutrality raised a hostile reaction in Britain. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera could not consider joining the Allies as long as Britain continued to operate partition. He even criticised the stationing of US forces in the North as recognition of partition. This brought about a constant drip-feed of anti-de Valera vitriol from David Gray, US Ambassador to Ireland.25 This

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was in spite of the fact that, under de Valera, neutrality was applied in such a way as to, in effect, serve the Allied war effort. The Irish security service co-operated on intelligence matters, for which it received praise from the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the CIA.26 The Éire government even allowed free flight for Allied planes from Fermanagh over the Donegal corridor to the sea.27 Also, de Valera ruthlessly suppressed the IRA, which had been prepared to wage war on Britain. At the end of the Second World War, there was a perfect storm of anti-Irish black propaganda. This included a twisted interpretation of de Valera’s signing of the book of condolence for Hitler at the German embassy, ignoring the fact that this was standard diplomatic practice.28 Churchill’s strident BBC Radio speech at the end of the war, coldly hostile to the South and unctuously laudatory of the North, contrasted sharply with de Valera’s reasoned and measured reply broadcast.29 Naturally, the Unionist government was quick to use this anti-Irish feeling to bolster its case, especially when the constitutional question resurfaced in 1948. Crucially, the Labour cabinet also bought into this version of Éire’s neutral stance in war-time and this was to be a major reason for its desire to maintain partition. Herbert Morrison, now deputy prime minister, continued to go out of his way to praise Northern Ireland’s contribution to the war effort, in contrast to the neutrality of the South, which he speculated was ‘bound to have a permanently modifying effect on many people’s opinions’ in Great Britain.30 In September 1946, Morrison went on holiday to Ireland, during which he met Brooke and de Valera. The result was a memorandum to the cabinet, which was highly influential and indeed might be seen as the founding document of Labour’s post-war policies towards Ireland. In it he was almost gushing in his attitude to the Unionists: ‘Sir Basil is always most reasonable and cooperative … the Unionist party is by no means wholly a Conservative party [sic]. It includes Conservatives, but a large proportion of the members are of a Liberal or radical tradition.’31 It is sufficient to here record that this opinion flies in the face of the evidence. In the same memorandum, Morrison outlined his feelings on partition as he had expressed them to de Valera, who had inevitably raised the issue: my own personal feeling was that the wisest course on all sides was not to hurry the partition issue … but if the issue was raised in any precipitous manner, first class trouble might ensue … from the fairly close knowledge of Northern Ireland I had gained as Home Secretary, I was sure that

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Northern Ireland would not be a consenting party … on the contrary they would be very actively hostile. They had deep feelings about their rights and allegiances … Eire [sic] had remained neutral in the war. As a purely practical matter, British public opinion noted that the Northern Ireland ports and airfields were of greatest value to our war effort. This was altogether apart from the great loyalty of the British people and of Ulster to the Crown … I personally thought that from every point of view much was to be gained and nothing was to be lost by a policy of developing good cooperative relations … but not precipitating the issue of partition … there was plenty of trouble in the world already.32

Morrison, in putting this to the cabinet, was largely pushing against an already open door. He was supported by a second memorandum, from Viscount Addison, the Colonial Secretary: But in our own interests also it seems to me that on strategic grounds we must bear in mind the lessons of the last war. The retention of a base in Northern Ireland for the protection of shipping was one of the principal factors which enabled us to carry on … In the light of this it would be folly on our part to throw away the safeguard of our security provided by our present position in Northern Ireland … Generally, I am sure that we ought to continue the policy which I and my predecessors in the Dominions Office have followed and decline to be drawn on partition.33

Morrison and Addison’s memoranda were discussed at a cabinet meeting on 29 October, when ministers ‘took note with approval’ of what they advised.34 De Valera’s fall from power in 1948 came as a shock. The whole dynamic of Southern politics changed. The first inter-party government was headed by a Fine Gael taoiseach, John Costello, with William Norton of Labour as tánaiste. The Minister for External Affairs, Sean MacBride, a former IRA Chief of Staff, was leader of the new party, Clann na Poblachta, which combined republicanism with social radicalism. To an extent, Clann was walking in the shoes of Fianna Fáil, which had lost the support of many of its supporters over its appalling treatment of internees during the Emergency, as the war was officially described in the South. All the signs had been that Clann would do better in the 1948 election, but largely due to poor vote management, it only gained ten seats. Nevertheless, the new scenario had set the agenda for a fresh assault on partition. In order to reposition himself as the leader of anti-partitionist nationalism, de Valera embarked on a tour of the Irish diaspora.35 Also, a new consensus was emerging among the Southern political class, which was that it was time to take the next step towards full independence.

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This would involve the repeal of the 1936 External Relations Act and the declaration of a republic, which would signal the state’s exit from the Commonwealth. Agitation for the end of partition would follow. Fine Gael, the successor party to the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal, was now heading the charge towards a republic. The irony of this was not lost on friend and foe alike. There are conflicting versions of how Costello came to announce that Éire was moving to set up a republic and leave the Commonwealth. The somewhat startling version, peddled by, among others, Sean MacBride, was that it came about as a result of a series of events when the taoiseach was on an official visit to Canada in September 1948. The custom was for the Governor General to invite such distinguished guests to stay in his official residence. The then holder of that office was Field Marshal Viscount Alexander of Tunis, scion of a noble Ulster house. No such invitation was extended to the taoiseach and Mrs Costello. Furthermore, at the official dinner of welcome, the two statesmen were seated opposite each other. A toast to the king was given, but that scheduled to the president of Ireland did not follow, to the fury of the Irish party. Worse was to come. Alexander posed a miniature replica of Roaring Meg, the iconic cannon of the Siege of Derry of 1689, aiming it at the taoiseach.36 By all accounts, strong drink had been consumed and a verbal altercation ensued between the two in which the taoiseach angrily raised the probability of the declaration of a republic. The details of these altercations may be based on hearsay, but the exchange seems to have had repercussions the morning after. At a press conference, Costello was pressed by a journalist about rumours that Éire was to declare a republic and leave the Commonwealth. The taoiseach confirmed that this was the case, which came as a bolt from the blue to the assembled press. Subsequently, this has been represented as Costello making policy on the hoof, which had to be swiftly ratified on his return by a bewildered cabinet. There is much evidence that Costello’s government had already decided on this course of action. An article, two days previously, in the Sunday Independent, a paper that supported Fine Gael, stated as much.37 This was clearly a leak or a kite from government sources. The government was already minded to repeal the External Relations Act, not least because it had been the work of de Valera. Romantics of course might prefer the MacBride version, despite Costello’s denial that it had happened in that manner. Easter Monday, 18 April 1949, a day laden with symbolism, was announced as the date for the calling into being of the republic, and the government moved swiftly to put in place the necessary legislation.

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However it had come about, the British government had to react swiftly to this new situation, not least because Sir Basil Brooke was on the case. At a meeting of the Labour cabinet on 28 October 1948, Attlee warned ministers that this announcement, by the Irish, was a prelude to the raising of the partition issue: Behind the immediate issue lay the [Irish] government’s determination to end partition and there was little doubt that they would be in a better position to put pressure on the United Kingdom once Eire [sic] had become a foreign country … No further obstacle would be placed in the way of Eire’s [sic] admission to the United Nations and it would be open to her to raise the question of partition in the General Assembly.38

For Brooke, the intention to declare a republic and a subsequent exit from the Commonwealth was manna from heaven. It seemed to validate Unionist suspicions of a grand design by Southern governments, of whatever hue, to end partition.39 Furthermore, it appeared to confirm the Unionist view of the minority community as a disloyal fifth column, and justification of Stormont’s retention of a repressive legal and policing apparatus. With the campaign to end partition, Unionists were faced with, in today’s terminology, a pan-nationalist front, North and South. Brooke immediately took advantage of the heightened tension to call a snap election, which as always would serve as a border poll. He saw it as an opportunity to bring back to the Unionist Party fold the many Protestants who had voted for the NILP at the previous election. He issued a clarion call to the Unionist electorate: ‘Our country is in danger … we fight to defend our very existence and the heritage of our Ulster children … our determination to remain under the Union Jack should be immediately and overwhelmingly reaffirmed. Loyalists must stand united, pledging themselves … that come what may, we shall maintain our province as part and parcel of the United Kingdom.’40 In the South, the main parties came together at a conference, convened by Costello in the Mansion House, to support their fellow Nationalists in the forthcoming Northern election. The outcome was a collection at all churches the following Sunday, which became known as the ‘Chapel Gate’ collection. Naturally, the majority of the £46,000 collected came from outside Catholic churches, and the Unionists made hay with this in their canvassing. Indeed, the Manchester Guardian commented: ‘What the Zinoviev letter did for the English Tories in 1924, the anti-partition fund can be made to do for the Orangemen in 1949. If Mr Costello’s countrymen really want to see the end of partition of Ireland, they are going the longest way about it.’41

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The election campaign was more bitterly fought than in previous years. Nationalist and NILP candidates, and, most violently, the Protestant, anti-partition Labour MP, Jack Beattie, were assaulted during canvassing. Some two hundred British Labour MPs called for a postponement, as free and fair elections were impossible under the circumstances. But it was to no avail. Even Attlee, though not sympathetic to the anti-partitionist cause, remarked to a Unionist MP, ‘I have had news of quite a number of incidents in Northern Ireland which show the elections there are not conducted on quite the same lines as we have over here.’42 Nevertheless, he remained impervious to pleas for an investigation into the political system in the North. Brooke’s subsequent victory in the election brought about what James Craig (Lord Craigavon), the first prime minister of Northern Ireland, had sought with the abolition of PR in 1929:  ‘men who are for the union on the one hand or who are against it and want to go into a Dublin parliament on the other.’43 Unionists gained four extra seats to a total of thirty-seven alongside two independent Unionists. The APL got nine and two anti-partition Labour candidates were elected. The NILP was wiped out. This was one of Brooke’s secondary election aims, and he gloated in his diary: ‘A magnificent victory … all socialists knocked out.’44 His hand strengthened, he now set about wringing from Labour even more concessions, aimed at copper-fastening partition. To that end, he embarked on a speaking tour of Britain in which he put the case for strengthening the Union. The Labour cabinet was stung by the hurried announcement of the republic and exit from the Commonwealth, without the customary prior consultation with the British government. Their initial response was to declare that citizens of the new republic would be designated as foreigners. This would strip them of previous rights and benefits held through membership of the Commonwealth. But Attlee was forced to back down as Canada and Australia supported the retention of the status quo.45 In reality, Ireland and Britain were so closely entwined that the re-designation of the republic as a ‘foreign’ country and its citizens as aliens would have been impossible to implement at a practical level. The minutes of the cabinet meeting on 12 January 1949 concluded with two short but significant sentences, which sum up the Labour government’s attitude to partition: ‘From the point of view of Great Britain, experience in the last war has amply proved that Northern Ireland’s continued adherence to the United Kingdom was essential for her defence. In 1940 Éire had jeopardised her chances of remaining neutral.’46 Attlee quickly set about reassuring Brooke and the Ulster Unionists with regard to their position in the new dispensation. He invited Brooke to stay at Chequers,

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where, as Attlee later reported to the cabinet, the Northern Ireland prime minister said: his (Brooke’s) immediate anxieties would be allayed if he could be given an assurance that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would not be prejudiced by Eire [sic] ceasing to be a member of the Commonwealth. I gave him on behalf of the United Kingdom Government, an assurance that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland would be safeguarded, and I added in reply to a further question, that he was at liberty to say publicly that he had received that assurance.47

In the event, the British legislation that emerged was the Ireland Act of 2 June 1949. Shockingly for nationalists and their supporters on the Labour left, the legislation affirmed that ‘in no event will Northern Ireland or any part thereof cease to be part of His Majesty’s dominions and of the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland’.48 Now, for the first time, the parliament of Northern Ireland (not its people) was vested with a legislative veto over any change to partition. The inclusion of ‘any part thereof’ was to give an answer to those who were calling for Tyrone and Fermanagh and border areas with Catholic majorities to be removed from Northern Ireland. For unionists, it was a triumph and a permanent guarantee of their security. For nationalists and their Labour supporters, the act was a catastrophe tantamount to the division of Ireland in perpetuity. Sixty-six Labour backbenchers and junior ministers had revolted against the bill in May.49 Many could not understand why the Labour cabinet needed or even wanted to insert this veto clause. The answer to this, of course, largely lies in the attitudes of leading members of the cabinet. In the House of Commons, Attlee sought to throw the blame on the Southern government:  ‘I think it is obvious … that the action of the government of Eire [sic] in deciding to leave the Commonwealth would increase the difficulty of arriving at any agreement on the partition question … I pointed out to them that this would inevitably make more difficulties in arriving at their other objective, the unification of Ireland.’50 Herbert Morrison’s imperious British unionism shone out as he wound up the second reading of the bill on behalf of the government: I do not think anybody in this House would be for … urging Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and therefore the Commonwealth. That would be an unthinkable course, which would not be approved by any British electorate … If Irishmen get together and make an agreement among themselves, that is a situation we will consider, but it is no business of this government – and it is not going to be – to diminish the territory of the United Kingdom.51

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There was to be a reckoning for those Labour MPs who voted against the government on the bill, and Morrison led the call for this. Five parliamentary secretaries were sacked. From being the Unionists’ cheerleader in the cabinet, Morrison had now become their attack dog. Speaking for the cabinet at the Labour Party conference in June 1949, he warned delegates against ‘accepting as facts everything that is said to them’.52 Then he put the lid on any possibility of holding Stormont to account: ‘It would be most unwise for us or anybody else to seek to involve the British Labour Party in internal Irish politics … we would advise the conference that it would be inexpedient and unwise for us to be embroiled in all the excitement of internal Irish politics.’53 On 10 May, in an over-heated atmosphere, a full house in Dáil Éireann had debated the Ireland bill, in a motion moved by the taoiseach. There was full agreement to the motion, which included the Dáil’s ‘indignant protest against the introduction in the British Parliament of legislation purporting to endorse and continue the existing partition of Ireland, and calls upon the British Government and people to end the present occupation of our six north-eastern counties and thereby enable the unity of Ireland to be restored and the age-long differences between the two nations brought to an end’.54 Three days later, a large crowd was in attendance at a meeting in O’Connell Street, Dublin, to protest against the Ireland bill. In a rare display of unity, the assembly was addressed by the party leaders, Costello, de Valera, Norton and MacBride.55 But realistically there was nothing more that could be done. The Ireland Act was a response to the Republic of Ireland Act. Partition was now even more solidly established and subject to the will of the Unionist-dominated Stormont parliament. In the South, there was talk of exercising moral force, of internationalising the question of partition, but Ireland’s application to join the United Nations was blocked by a British veto in the Security Council. However, there is considerable evidence that the failure to end partition by constitutional means, and the support given by Labour to Stormont to shore it up, was leading to stirrings in militant republican circles. These would coalesce ultimately in the IRA’s futile ‘border’ campaign from 1956 to 1962. The parties in the South now began turning away from what was clearly the blind alley of partition. The cross-party consensus around partition was giving way to ‘normal’ politics, principally dealing with the parlous state of the economy and timid moves towards welfare and social services. The pallid nature of these measures, especially given the quashing of the Mother and Child bill, only highlighted the economic and social benefits of the welfare state guaranteed for the North, as a result of its remaining within the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the inter-party government,

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including MacBride, was now moving to mend fences with Britain, a process in which the Attlee government was willing to reciprocate. Many on the Labour backbenches were of the opinion that, as the Attlee government had backed Stormont all the way on partition, it had a moral duty to force the subordinate parliament to introduce the same political standards that pertained in Britain.56 With the financial and other aid they provided for the Unionist government, the Labour cabinet could have put greater pressure on them to clear away, or at least mitigate their discriminatory and repressive apparatus. Russell Rees points to some merely cosmetic reforms as a response to occasional mild rebukes from Labour ministers.57 But this is to miss the point. The Unionist cabinet was, by then, well aware that Attlee’s government was not at all minded to go down the route of pressing reform on Stormont. As far as the Labour cabinet was concerned, to posit any criticism of Stormont would place them in the middle of a parliamentary dogfight, with Irish Nationalists, Friends of Ireland and the two Communist MPs on the one side, and Conservatives and Unionists on the other. Given the political scenario at large, they could not afford such an occurrence. By 1948, Labour was exhausted by the events of its annus horribilis of 1947, its exertions in ushering in nationalisation and the welfare state, and in dealing with a number of financial scandals. Furthermore, it was deeply involved in foreign and Commonwealth crises. The list was enormous and included partitioning India and Palestine, counterinsurgency in Malaya and involvement in Cold War hotspots in Greece, Berlin and China. Labour desperately needed a period of calm in which to regroup for the upcoming general election. Accordingly, Attlee and his cabinet were urgently seeking to shut down this latest phase of the evergreen ‘Irish question’. At a meeting of the cabinet on 12 May 1949, there had been a short discussion about the Labour MPs who had abstained from voting on the second reading of the Ireland bill. The least the rebels had been looking for was reform of the electoral system in Northern Ireland. The cabinet came to a conclusion that ‘the general view of ministers [was] that the United Kingdom government would be ill-advised to appear to be interesting themselves in this matter, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Northern Ireland government’.58 A year later, Geoffrey Bing, the most prominent spokesman of the Friends of Ireland, published a damning indictment of the political sewer that was Northern Ireland and the failure of successive governments, including Labour, to deal with it.59 By way of conclusion, it is interesting to note the connections drawn by the seasoned journalist, Jimmy Kelly, when in November 2009, at the age of ninety-eight and still working, he was honoured

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by the Irish News for his contribution to Irish journalism. This took place at a luncheon held in the Ulster Reform Club in central Belfast. Ironically, this was the venue for the luncheon given by the Northern Ireland government for Herbert Morrison in 1942, at which Kelly himself had of course been present. Kelly drew attention to this fact, as he ranged lucidly over his long career as a journalist. He spoke of how Peter Mandelson, Morrison’s grandson and Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1999 to 2001, came under fire from nationalists for his delaying tactics over the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Nationalists were particularly incensed at his blocking the full implementation of the reforms of policing, proposed by the Patten Commission, which had been established under the terms of the Agreement. Using un-complimentary and un-parliamentary language, Kelly drew a line of affinity between grandfather and grandson in condemning the negative effect of their actions on nationalists.60 Nationalists had a more positive attitude to Mandelson’s boss, Tony Blair. For them, he was instrumental in giving them, for the first time, a share in how they were governed. The corollary of this is the prevailing belief in some unionist circles that they have lost control of their destiny in the process of shared government. In a sense, one might discern a parallel in this to nationalist reaction to the policies of the Labour government in the immediate post-war years. Notes 1 Daniel V. McDermott, ‘The British labour movement and Ireland, 1905–1925’, unpublished MA thesis, University College Galway, 1979, pp. 277–8. 2 See Report of the Labour Commission to Ireland (London, The Labour Party, 1921). 3 Labour Leader, 17 February 1921. 4 Cornelius O’Leary and Patrick Maume, Controversial issues in Anglo-Irish relations, 1910–1921 (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2004), p. 111. 5 Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in power, 1945–51 (Oxford, Clarendon, 1981), p. 199. 6 Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922–1973 (Dublin, UCD Press, 2007), pp. 61, 213. 7 The Minister for Health in the first inter-party government, Dr Noël Browne, proposed maternity care for all mothers and free health care for children up to the age of sixteen. He was opposed by the Catholic bishops, the Irish Medical Association and his own cabinet; see Eithne MacDermott, Clann na Poblachta (Cork, Cork University Press, 1998), pp. 156–61. 8 Jonathan Bardon, A history of Ulster (repr. Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 2001), p. 585.

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 9 Bob Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland:  British labourism and Irish nationalism’, in Tom Gallagher and James O’Connell (eds), Contemporary Irish studies (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 81–5. 10 Belfast Newsletter, 14 November 1947, quoted in Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–1996:  political forces and social classes (London, Serif, 1996), p. 103. 11 Russell Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, 1945–1951:  the missed opportunity (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2009), p. 37. 12 Peter Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), p. 20. 13 Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome business: the Labour Party and the Irish question (London, Pluto Press, 1982), p. 87 14 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 93. 15 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 105. 16 James Kelly, Bonfires on the hillside (Belfast, Fountain Publishing, 1995), p. 83. 17 Kelly, Bonfires on the hillside, p. 83. 18 M. McInerney, ‘J. A. Costello Remembers’, Irish Times, 7 September 1967, cited in Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, pp. 123–4. 19 Fr Philip O’Doherty, aka ‘Red Hand’, ‘Through corruption to dismemberment: a story of apostasy and betrayal’ (Derry, c.1916), in E. Phoenix, Northern nationalism: nationalist politics, partition and the catholic minority in Northern Ireland 1890–1940 (Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), p. 40. 20 Stephen Kelly, Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, 1926–1971 (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2013), pp. 112–14. 21 Kelly, Bonfires on the hillside, p. 83. 22 Kelly, Bonfires on the hillside, p. 83. 23 Diarmaid Ferriter, The transformation of Ireland:  1900–2000 (London, Profile Books, 2005), p. 385. 24 Ferriter, The transformation of Ireland, p. 383. 25 Robert Fisk, In time of war:  Ireland, Ulster and the price of neutrality, 1939–45 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1983), pp. 309–10. 26 Denis J. Fodor, The neutrals (WWII) (Illinois, Time Life Education, 1982), p. 185. 27 Bardon, A History of Ulster, pp. 585–6. 28 Fisk, In time of war, pp. 535–7. 29 Fisk, In time of war, pp. 537–41. 30 B. Donoughue and G. W. Jones, Herbert Morrison: portrait of a politician (London, 2001), pp. 307–8, cited in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 73. 31 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 75. 32 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 75 33 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 76. 34 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 77. 35 See Kelly, Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, pp. 116–38.

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36 David McCullagh, The reluctant taoiseach: a biography of John A. Costello (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 2000), pp. 209–11. 37 McCullagh, The reluctant taoiseach, p. 213. 38 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 75. 39 McCullagh, The reluctant taoiseach, p. 224. 40 Belfast Telegraph, 24 January 1949. 41 Manchester Guardian, 30 January 1949, quoted in Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: the Orange state (London, Pluto Press, 1976), p. 185. 42 Quoted in Farrell, The Orange state, p. 187. 43 Quoted in Farrell, The Orange state, p. 111. 44 Quoted in Bew et al., Northern Ireland 1921–1996, p. 107. 45 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 125. 46 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 130. 47 Bell, Troublesome business, p. 80. 48 Quoted in Kelly, Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, pp. 134–5. 49 Morgan, Labour in power, p. 199. 50 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business. p. 90. 51 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 93. 52 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 98. 53 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 98. 54 Dáil Éireann, vol. 115, 10 May 1949, Protest against partition  – motion, pp. 1–24 (http://debates.oireachtas.ie; accessed 10 March 2014). 55 McCullagh, The reluctant taoiseach, p. 225. 56 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 159. 57 Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, p. 159. 58 Quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 98. 59 Geoffrey Bing, John Bull’s other Island (London, Tribune, 1950). 60 Testimony of attendee at the luncheon held on 25 November 2009.

6 ‘Where the Tories rule’: Geoffrey Bing MP and partition Bob Purdie The subject of this chapter is the pamphlet, John Bull’s other Ireland, written by the Labour MP, Geoffrey Bing, KC, and published in 1950 by the British left-wing Labour newspaper, Tribune. At first glance it looks very like the kind of literature that was being produced by the contemporary Irish Anti-Partition League (APL), but actually Bing was not an Irish nationalist. The pamphlet reveals some of the subtleties in the relationship of British socialists to Irish issues. It opens with the following passage: The British Parliament rules not only over England, Scotland and Wales, but over a small portion of Ireland as well … In this little corner of Ireland there exists a Government which encourages and supports vicious religious discrimination, which suppresses civil liberties, which arms its own supporters in the guise of a ‘special constabulary’, buttresses its authority by disenfranchising for local government elections a great part of the working class and tolerates on occasions the grossest election abuses … We should not forget that in all matters affecting the everyday rights of the people of the Six Counties Government it is part of our responsibility.1

Bing was stating that the Stormont parliament was a creature of Westminster legislation, but that the superior parliament had failed to ensure that the subjects of the Crown in Northern Ireland had the same rights as those prevailing in Britain. From such an analysis two conclusions could be drawn: that the Union must be made to work, by driving the necessary reforms through parliament; or that the Union can never work and Westminster must relinquish its sovereignty. All the traditions and instincts of the British Labour Party inclined it towards intervening. As Geoffrey Foote put it: ‘Both Left and Right held fast to the belief that the British state, parliamentary and representative, could be used to change British society … The class tensions within British society were to be resolved by peaceful and gradual change which would respect British institutions while emptying them of

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their class nature.’2 And he quoted from Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary socialism: ‘of political parties claiming socialism as their aim Labour has always been one of the most dogmatic – not about socialism but about the parliamentary system … its leaders have always made devotion to that system their fixed point of reference and the conditioning factor of their political behaviour.’3 Labour revered the House of Commons, which it believed had been vindicated by its role in the victory over the Axis powers. In 1945 Labour had won a landslide majority and had carried through the reforms that laid the basis for the welfare state. So the party wanted to consolidate parliament’s powers, not to fragment them. And discussions of the British Labour Party and Ireland in this period often miss a significant parallel. After 1945, the pledge to create home rule parliaments for Scotland and Wales, which dated back to Keir Hardie’s Scottish Labour Party of 1888, was expunged from Labour’s programme. A  Labour majority at Westminster made devolution an unnecessary diversion from the practical work of transforming, and centralising, Britain.4 This created a fundamental difference of principle:  Labour could either maintain Westminster’s sovereignty over Northern Ireland or cede it to Dublin, as the Anti-Partitionists demanded, but it could not do both at the same time. And Labour was anti-nationalist, not in the crude sense of wanting to ignore or supress national aspirations, but in believing that socialism could transcend nationalist politics at the level of economic interests. Bing’s title echoed Bernard Shaw’s play John Bull’s Other Island. In 1920 Shaw reflected on the unfolding events in Ireland: ‘The Irish policy of the Labour Party is necessarily wider than that of any of the native Irish nationalist parties, because Labour is international. There may be the most violent opposition between the Irish Nationalist and the British Imperialist as such; but the interests of the Irish worker and the British worker are the same; and it is with their interests as workers that the Labour Party is concerned.’5 In Ireland, this way of thinking has often been dubbed ‘Walkerism’, after the early-twentieth-century Belfast socialist, William Walker, who wanted Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom.6 But the term conflates the politics of one Irishman with the philosophy of a mass political movement, and it also suggests that the choice between Irish nationalism and British socialism was necessarily a dichotomous one. Shaw’s formulation explains why Labour could be anti-nationalist but also support Irish home rule and collaborate with the Irish Party at Westminster. In the long run, Labour believed, the common economic interests of the working class would prevail; in the short term, the Irish

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were useful allies against the Tories and the Irish workers in Britain were a pool of potential voters. The Anti-Partition movement was an attempt by the Nationalists in Northern Ireland to compensate for their numerical weakness by allying themselves with the Dublin government and the Labour administration at Westminster. As Thomas Hennessey points out, it was an achievement for the APL to have succeeded in uniting the disparate strands of nationalism:  old Redmondites, Fianna Fáilers and Republicans.7 But, as the campaign progressed, the cross-cutting interests and ideologies within the alliance drastically weakened their position. By this time, Labour’s relationship with Irish nationalism had been weakened by the neutrality of the independent Irish state during the Second World War. And the Catholic ethos of many Irish nationalists was at odds with Labour’s welfare state. But an alliance was forged in the post-war parliament between Irish Anti-Partitionists and Labour MPs in the loose grouping called the Friends of Ireland, of which Bing was a prominent member. They collaborated in harrying the Ulster Unionists and in agitating about the problems of anti-Unionists in Northern Ireland. As Brendan Lynn has observed, the papers of the leading ALP member, Anthony Mulvey, contain regular correspondence from Labour figures like Bing requesting documented evidence of Unionist discrimination and alleged wrongdoing.8 However, in my 1983 essay on the Friends of Ireland, I showed how fragile this alliance between the Friends and the APL actually was. I commented: ‘In the relationship between the rurally based, traditionally nationalist and deeply Catholic APL and the British Labour Party and government, there was a rich potential for conflict.’9 The conflict erupted over Westminster’s Ireland Act 1949. The Anti-Partitionists were outraged when the Ireland Act guaranteed Northern Ireland’s position within the UK by giving the Stormont parliament a veto on change, but the Friends were divided. Hugh Delargy, the Manchester MP who initiated the group, attacked the guarantee for making partition permanent and denying Irish self-determination. At the opposite pole was John Haire who considered that the gulf between welfare policies, north and south of the border, made the continuance of partition necessary, and he also supported the guarantee because it reflected the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland. Henry McGhee attacked the declaration of the Irish Republic in 1948, which, he said, did nothing to improve the wages and social conditions of Irish workers; but he also opposed the Ireland Act guarantee, which would provoke ‘the hotheads’ and give the Unionist government an excuse for repression. John McGovern believed it would stabilise a reactionary regime and block the gradual union of both parts of Ireland within the

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Commonwealth.10 Bing, too, criticised the guarantee, though he did not support its eradication; instead he backed an amendment to delete the words ‘Parliament of Northern Ireland’ from the clause. He criticised the declaration of a republic and the South’s war-time neutrality, but he thought the guarantee would give an excuse for those on both sides of the border who wanted a ‘barren dispute over nationalism’, which would block the social and economic reforms that were the only road to Irish unity. He also foresaw British Army intervention if the Stormont government were to interpret the guarantee as a licence to suppress dissent. The Westminster parliament ought to ensure that British conscripts would not be used to defend a government that had provoked disorder.11 The Ireland Act resulted in a frenetic burst of activity by the Anti-Partition movement, but this only brought about its own demise and the shattering of its links with its Labour allies. Prominent Nationalist politician, Cahir Healy, was of the view that up to two million Irish voters in Britain could be utilised in advancing the anti-partition agenda, in the same way that nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell had connected with the Irish diaspora during the home rule campaign in the 1880s.12 The Anti-Partition movement assumed that the voting power of the Irish in Britain could be mobilised behind select candidates in the 1950 general election. But for most voters the choice seemed to be between Labour and greater equality, or the Tories and an end to austerity; so the electorate polarised, squeezing out the alternatives. The Communist Party vote dropped from the 14.6 per cent of 1945 to 2.0 per cent, and the party lost its two seats. The Independent Labour Party vote fell from 35.2 per cent to 2.7 per cent, and the Scottish nationalist vote declined, from 8.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent.13 So it is not surprising that the four Anti-Partition candidates achieved an average of just 3 per cent of the vote. One of these, Oliver Brown in Greenock, made a twin appeal as a Scottish nationalist and Irish anti-partitionist. One of his letters revealed problems with the campaign. He had to dissuade his Irish allies from putting up a candidate in Motherwell, where Dr Robert MacIntyre of the Scottish National Party (SNP) was trying to regain the seat he had won in a war-time by-election. And Brown was afraid that ‘we might attempt more constituencies than we can tackle as we have no great supply of speakers or organisers’. But he was optimistic about his own campaign:  they were ‘making a real impression, I  only wish the prospects for Scottish nationalism were as bright’.14 He assumed that his double label would increase his vote, but in fact he got a derisory 1.77 per cent. In 1951 the single Anti-Partition candidate in Bootle scored just 2.7 per cent. The Irish workers had turned out in large numbers for

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Anti-Partition rallies, but they used their votes to try to stave off the Tory advance in Britain. The world was also polarising as the Cold War developed. Catholic Ireland was firmly in the anti-communist camp but it thought that its potential contribution to Western defence might be a bargaining chip. The hope was that the Irish in the United States could pressurise their government into persuading Westminster to hand over Northern Ireland to Dublin, against the wishes of the majority community, thus ensuring Irish support for the Western alliance. It should have been obvious that NATO facilities and shipbuilding in Northern Ireland were a much higher priority for Washington than partition. And the State Department had no intentions of alienating its most important ally, Britain, in order to tempt Ireland, a very minor ally, into joining NATO.15 Huge numbers of books, pamphlets and leaflets were produced, but most of it was directed at the already converted, and the Anti-Partition campaign was futile. In fact the English humourist, C.  Northcote Parkinson, made it the basis for one of his laws, ‘propaganda begins and ends at home’.16 Conor Cruise O’Brien, at the time an official in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, called the APL ‘an invertebrate collectivity’, and he noted that its parish-level structure ‘plays into the hands of those who regard the nationalists of the Six Counties as a purely sectarian organisation’.17 Hugh Delargy, as Chairman of the Anti-Partition of Ireland League in Britain, later reflected negatively on the large public meetings at which he had presided, principally because they were not pitched at a wider British audience. But it was not all the fault of the Northerners in the APL. Delargy had been present at most of those meetings addressed by Fianna Fáil leader, Éamon de Valera, during the latter’s anti-partition tour of Britain in 1948–49: ‘They were not political meetings at all’, observed Delargy; ‘They were tribal rallies. Tribesmen met to greet the Old Chieftain. The melodies of 1916 were played. A few IRA veterans, with their Black and Tan medals, formed guards of honour. Sympathetic Englishmen who attended went away bewildered.’18 Moreover, Northerners were victims of jousting by Fianna Fáil and the inter-party government in Dublin, both attempting to grab the nationalist high ground. When the APL was founded, for example, de Valera welcomed the development, especially because, as Stephen Kelly observes, it ‘fitted nicely’ with his attempts to ‘reignite’ an anti-partition campaign; but he was at pains to make it clear that the APL had no affiliation with the Fianna Fáil government, and he was set against Northerners having any hand in shaping Southern policy on the North.19 This political jousting in Dublin resulted in super-heated nationalist rhetoric and ultimately the declaration of the Republic, which made the Ulster Protestants feel

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threatened. The Southern Anti-Partition campaign was responsible for the ‘Chapel Gates Election’. Money collected outside church services in the South was used to finance Anti-Partition candidates in the Stormont election of 1949. The Unionists successfully mobilised Protestant opinion against this Southern and Catholic interference and ‘the election was held in the most viciously sectarian environment since the 1930s’.20 It consolidated Unionist Party control of the Stormont parliament by eliminating the middle ground of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP). This means that John Bull’s other Ireland was published just as the Anti-Partition campaign was going into terminal decline. The author had been born in Craigavad, Holywood, Co. Down, in 1909. His father, also Geoffrey Bing, was an Orangeman and the first headmaster of Rockport School. The young Geoffrey was educated in Tonbridge School, Kent, and Lincoln College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1934 and became an active left-winger and anti-fascist. He helped to found the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers and the National Council for Civil Liberties. During the Second World War, in which he was wounded and mentioned in dispatches, he served as a Signals Officer in the British Army. Bing was elected Labour MP for Hornchurch in Essex in 1945. In parliament he was a supporter of Aneurin Bevan, whose followers urged a more radical degree of public ownership and criticised the UK’s alliance with the USA against the USSR. He was associated with a number of civil libertarian causes, including that of the unfortunate Timothy Evans, hanged and later found to be innocent.21 Bing was a ‘Fellow Traveller’ in the definition offered by David Caute: he could praise the rigours of communist rule elsewhere, but remained ‘wedded to’ the ‘ancient and unalienable liberties’ of the more mature West.22 He frequently expressed sympathy for the People’s Republic of China and the so-called ‘People’s Democracies’ of Eastern Europe and he sympathised with proposals for one-party rule in former colonies, but he remained a British parliamentary socialist. His use of a detailed knowledge of Commons procedure to promote left-wing causes was a testament to his deep attachment to the institution. As a skilled lawyer, he was retained in 1950 as a Treasury Solicitor when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council adjudicated the case of the Rev. J. G. MacManaway, whose election as Ulster Unionist MP for West Belfast had been challenged. Bing’s legal argument resulted in a declaration that the election was invalid, because of a previously unrecognised lacuna in the law, which meant that clergy of the Church of Ireland could not sit in the Commons.23 Hornchurch was a marginal seat with a large Tory vote and he lost it in 1955. He failed to be nominated for a safe Labour seat and this ended his political career in Britain. In 1956, he became Attorney General of

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Ghana, where his reputation was clouded by his support for a move towards one-party rule and incursions on democracy by the Accra government. In 1966, after the overthrow of his patron, Kwame Nkrumah, he returned to England. His name cropped up in left-wing manifestos and statements into the 1970s, but he had no further significant public involvement in British or Irish affairs. He died in 1977.24 In the Commons, many of the propaganda points he made against the Unionists were stock ones also made by Irish Nationalists, but he gave particular emphasis to the grievances of socialists and trade unionists. In June 1947 he claimed that, under the Special Powers Act, possession of a Left Book Club book could lead to imprisonment.25 In April 1948 he protested about an exclusion order against Captain Jack White, the now elderly founder of the Irish Citizen Army.26 He also claimed that the late trade union leader, James Larkin, whom he presumed to have been an Ulsterman, had been barred from his home by such an order.27 Bing referred sarcastically to Unionist election literature that described MacManaway as ‘the fighting parson’.28 His tenacity as a Treasury Solicitor in the case over the validity of MacManaway’s election was probably augmented by the fact that the clergyman had ousted Jack Beattie, the Anti-Partitionist and Federation of Labour MP, and by MacManaway’s vote against steel nationalisation, despite a warning from the Attorney General not to speak or take part in any divisions in the House while his election was still in dispute.29 In another debate, Bing quoted from the Irish News of 14 March 1942 about raids on the homes of NILP secretaries, ‘members of the Labour and Socialist movements’, and an Independent Unionist. He went on: So much for the Northern Ireland Home Minister’s statement in the New Statesman: ‘I aver most positively that no man has ever been affected by the Special Powers Act because of his labour or trade union sympathies.’ That is what is said for the English audience. The real position is that disclosed in the Northern Ireland House of Commons. There the Attorney-General … says that the … ‘Special Powers Act will not be repealed until there is a complete change on the part of a section of the population in their attitude towards this Government’, not [,]‌the House will note [,] in their attitude towards the I.R.A., or their attitude towards the constitution, but in their attitude towards a Tory Government.30

His courtroom skills were useful in harrying the Stormont government. He would cite evidence about specific events, not just make generalised accusations, as the Anti-Partitionists tended to do. An example was his attack on the Unionists for stealing votes by impersonating electors. He said:

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Let me read to the Committee the very terrible account of what happened at this election [the Armagh bye-election for the Westminster parliament, March 1948]. There were two agents there: ‘Immediately these two agents came through the door they were rushed upon by a mob of 200 people. The police were scattered among the mob. One of these boys was thrown on the ground and battered and kicked, and only that two men – whether through mercy or not we do not know – threw him over a wire fence six feet away he would certainly have been killed. The other boy was also kicked to the door of the car. His friends inside the car endeavoured to open it. He was pushed and kicked and battered into the car and the mob gathered in force and threw the car over on its side, broke all the windows, and when the unfortunate men were hanging out through the car one man threw a lighted match on the petrol flowing on the ground. ‘That is how personation agents are treated if they dare to go to the area where impersonation takes place, and the Minister for Home Affairs is indifferent to this thing. All he said was, “This is a matter for the Imperial Parliament, let them deal with it.” I  suggest that this is the time to deal with it’.31

Like the Irish Nationalists, Bing presented incidents of this kind as evidence of Unionist misrule and not as general features of the political culture of Northern Ireland, but his ability to appeal to the values of British Labour made him an especially formidable opponent for the Unionists. Despite this, he did not endorse the central argument of the Anti-Partitionists. In a speech in south Belfast in March 1948, he said that, although he hoped that Ireland, North and South, could be brought together gradually, ‘Once partition occurred there also occurred a series of forces which drew the two parts of Ireland apart. Just to say that the whole situation could be put right by repealing what was done in 1920 was as correct as to suppose that everything could be put right by reproducing the conditions of 1690’.32 Bing was one of the authors of the Bevanite manifesto of 1947, Keep Left. It cited Northern Ireland as one of a group of societies in which Labour’s philosophy was made impracticable by a fundamental social division:  ‘Democratic socialism is possible only in a country which is united in fundamentals and free from outside interference. In South Africa and many southern states of America it is ruled out by the struggle between the black and white races; in Northern Ireland by an ancient war of religion and in Palestine by a triangular struggle between British, Jews and Arabs.’33 Bing did not agree that a war of religion was the problem in Northern Ireland, but he did agree that social unity was a prerequisite for the advance of democratic socialism in the island as a whole. John Bull’s other Ireland was his attempt to find a basis for that unity.

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The pamphlet was cheaply produced and went through three editions. The front cover began with the words, ‘Where the Tories Rule, an exposure of the policies of the Ulster government’. Bing had two targets: the Stormont government and the British Conservatives. He wanted to discredit the latter by linking them to alleged misuses of power by the Ulster Unionists. This was an obvious line of attack, because the Unionists took the Conservative whip at Westminster and regularly voted on matters that were devolved to the Stormont parliament, creating the anomaly that later came to be known as ‘The West Lothian Question’. A  particular grievance voiced by their opponents was that the Unionists voted against the welfare state legislation for Britain but then copied it, financed by Westminster subventions, and used it as an argument against a united Ireland. Bing’s account of the history of partition was much the same as that offered by Irish Nationalists, such as Cahir Healy in his The mutilation of a nation.34 Bing recounted the story of the plantation, the Williamite overthrow of the Stuarts, the creation of the Orange Order and the Ulster Unionist resistance to Irish home rule. He agreed that Protestant working-class sectarianism had been exploited by Ulster’s landed and commercial elite to coerce the British parliament through threats of force. Finally, he repeated the claim that the imposition of partition had been against the will of the overwhelming majority of the Irish people. (And, like the Irish Nationalists, he did not refer to the fact that there was also no consensus about an alternative.) He attacked the targets that regularly featured in Anti-Partition literature: the Orange Order, the Special Powers Act, the B-Specials, gerrymandering and discrimination. He quoted from ‘The Orange terror’ by Ultach, which appeared in the Capuchin Annual of 1943, and Discrimination, published by the Mansion House All Party Anti-Partition Conference in 1949. He also used an older source on which many Anti-Partitionists drew:  T.  J. Campbell’s Fifty years of Ulster.35 He agreed with them that arguments about majority support for partition in Northern Ireland were invalid, because there was only a solid Unionist majority in a small geographical area of the six counties. And he used similar rhetorical devices, such as quotes from Unionist politicians apparently admitting the truth of the accusations against them, or showing an anti-Catholic mind-set. One such borrowing was a Labour Exchange card from 1936, showing that an employer had refused a job application for the baldly stated reason ‘religion’. Bing’s pamphlet did, however, diverge from the Anti-Partition literature in significant ways. As a left-wing anti-fascist, he wrote: ‘The argument is clear, Catholics should be opposed because they are the worst sort of capitalist, they encourage intemperance and finally, of course,

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they are “disloyal”. It is almost to the word the same indictment which Hitler brought against the Jews.’36 And he had a different analysis of what perpetuated sectarianism. For Ultach it was because fear and hatred of Rome were instilled into Protestants from an early age.37 For Healy it was because of Unionist patronage in distributing government jobs to Protestants.38 For the Mansion House Conference it was because the terms ‘loyal’ and ‘disloyal’ were being misused by equating them with religious beliefs.39 But for Bing, ‘the real answer lies not in religion but in the economic situation of the North’.40 He pointed out that agricultural employment in Northern Ireland was about 26 per cent, compared with 7 per cent in Britain. This made its economy much more like that of the South. But agriculture was being stultified because, for sectarian reasons, the Stormont government was failing to build rural housing. The industrial sector in Northern Ireland – construction, shipbuilding, linen – was highly speculative and subject to violent fluctuations. This meant that unemployment during the inter-war years had been much higher than in Britain. It was these characteristics of the jobs market, he claimed, that created the division between Catholics and Protestants. Northern Ireland had an unstable economy, in which linen and shipbuilding were vulnerable to slumps in the US economy. Consequently, ‘The Tories being quite unable or unwilling to devise a scheme which will provide jobs for everyone, have … hit on a simple expedient. When work is scarce it shall go to the Protestant’.41 The Northern Ireland state was built on planned unemployment and the easiest group to choose were the Catholics. Their rural origins meant that they were willing to accept lower standards and this created hostility from the Protestants, fearful of wage cutting. The Unionists exploited this, to persuade workers who ought to be Labour to vote Tory. The system depended on the use of police powers to deal with oppositionists and control of the election machine to prevent the ballot box being used to express discontent; ‘and they must have in reserve the weapon of terrorism to use in the case of an economic crisis which might otherwise lead to a combination of unemployed Protestants and Catholics’.42 In the circumstances of post-war full employment, the B-Specials and the Special Powers Act were not necessary, but ‘A world slump would be … a signal for a bitter religious conflict … The uneven economy of the Six Counties, with the hanging threat of unemployment, fundamentally the source of Tory power, is a threat to our own economic stability. The division of Ireland into two parts prevents planning on an all-Ireland scale upon which the rebuilding of Irish prosperity depends’. In this paragraph, Bing wove together socialist economic determinism, belief in the inherent rationality of government planning,

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anti-Toryism and British self-interest. And he re-emphasised his belief that simply ending partition was not the answer: ‘The real problem is how to cure certain fundamental evils which affect North and South alike and which, though aggravated by Partition, derive from far older social and economic causes. What therefore is needed is the pursuit in both parts of Ireland of a policy which will remove the conditions which make Partition practical politics.’43 The British government, he argued, should help to develop the economy of both parts of Ireland to make it another Denmark, with investment in agriculture leading to an increase in population. This would also stimulate construction, through a greater demand for rural housing. The Unionists had effectively ceded British control of their economy through acceptance of subsidies, and Westminster’s socialist controls and planning meant that unemployment was much lower than pre-war levels. All of this had sapped the economic basis of sectarianism, and ‘this then is the time for a frontal assault on bigotry’.44 Bing asked, rhetorically, ‘Why should not all the religious leaders of all the Faiths in Britain call a conference to denounce bigotry and sectarianism from whatever quarter they come and invite all political leaders to associate themselves with the call? Since the Conservatives have put Christianity in the forefront of their programme surely they would not turn down such an appeal?’ Almost certainly this was disingenuous; he expected the Conservatives to refuse and this would provide valuable fodder for anti-Tory propaganda. He also called for legislation to ensure free elections and a sworn Westminster enquiry into allegations about the Special Powers Act, the B-Specials, ‘Orange terror’ and electoral abuses. In other words, the British parliament should act to sort these problems out and this would then start a process that would lead to the peaceful reunification of Ireland. It was in Britain’s interests for this to happen. While it was regrettable that the South had not taken part in the war against fascism and had withdrawn from the Commonwealth, it was the Sterling Bloc, not military bases, that kept the Commonwealth together and this included both parts of Ireland. The pamphlet was published after the Ireland Act had been passed and the Anti-Partition campaign was descending into new levels of futility. So there was no point in simply attacking the Unionists. That was why his pamphlet moved to a different kind of discourse. When he spoke in Belfast in March 1948, Bing had refused an invitation to address an Anti-Partition rally in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, but he said he would be willing to speak about the socialism of James Connolly. The event had promptly been reorganised as a Connolly commemoration.45 He now quoted Connolly’s claim that Irish Catholic workers were ‘rebels in spirit

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because for hundreds of years they have found no class as lowly paid or as badly treated as themselves’.46 This prompted a new line of thought: When in world affairs today Catholicism is usually the cloak assumed by the dictator of the Franco type to conceal his reaction and despotism it is essential that in the Councils of the Nations there should be heard the voice of a Catholicism which has stood for the working class against its oppressors and for democratic rights against tyranny. If such Liberal Catholicism can be blended, as it was in 1798, with a progressive and a Radical Protestantism Ireland has before her a future as great as her past.47

This is where the pamphlet ends, but its final passage reveals deeper layers of thinking. The social unity that was required for socialism could be achieved, he asserted, through Connolly’s vision of a united Irish working class. Bing was not only an economic determinist, he was a utopian who glimpsed the sunlit uplands lying beyond the current divisions of Irish society. Comparisons of this kind, between an imagined ideal and the shoddy reality of capitalism, were intrinsic to British socialism. It went back to Robert Owen and ran through the old Independent Labour Party. It was also a way of evading the problem that the Anti-Partitionists and their erstwhile Labour allies were now moving onto different political tracks, which would not converge again until the 1960s, and the early stages of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement.48 Some of Bing’s other concerns are also revealed. One of the most acute differences between Anti-Partitionists and the Friends of Ireland was over the Spanish Civil War, in which Catholic Irish nationalists were generally pro-Franco while British socialists had backed the Spanish republicans. Franco was still in power in Madrid and Catholics and secular socialists continued to disagree about Spain. Moreover, the Cold War was at its height in 1950 and the Catholic Church was a powerful redoubt of anti-communism. A breach in that wall would boost peace movements in the West and take pressure off the USSR, which was a major priority for ‘Fellow Travellers’ like Bing. Neither Bing, nor any of the other Bevanites, developed this aspect of the pamphlet further, but it seems unlikely that it could have been the basis for an agreement between Irish nationalists and British socialists; their differences of political philosophy and immediate interests were too profound. And the more closely Bing’s pamphlet is examined, the more clearly it can be seen that he was skilfully disguising how very deep the gulf was between himself and the Irish Anti-Partitionists. So what was its purpose? Why did it appear after the peak of the Anti-Partition campaign had passed? Why did it look so much like the contemporary anti-partition literature and borrow so many of its arguments from

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Irish nationalist polemics? Bing was not a fool and his career in Ghana showed his capacity for ruthlessness. The presentation, the cheap production, the low price were all deliberate. This was socialist propaganda intended to coax Irish nationalists over to the left, which is why it was ‘coldly received by the APL, one of whom dismissed it as a Transport House manoeuvre’.49 The Protestant Irish nationalist, Denis Ireland, was being unjust when he wrote, ‘ “The Friends of Ireland” are friends of Ireland only in order that the Irish may be turned into good little socialists like themselves.’50 Unjust to most of the Friends that is, but not to Geoffrey Bing. Notes  1 Geoffrey Bing KC, MP, John Bull’s other Ireland (London, Tribune, 1950), p. 3.  2 Geoffrey Foote, The Labour Party’s political thought: a history (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), p. 66.  3 Foote, The Labour Party’s political thought, p. 290.  4 See Michael Keating and David Bleiman, Labour and Scottish nationalism (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1979), pp. 137–41.  5 Bernard Shaw, Irish nationalism and labour internationalism (London, The Labour Party, 1920), p. 5.  6 See my entry on Walker in Keith Gildart and David Howell (eds), Dictionary of Labour biography, vol. 12 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).  7 Thomas Hennessey, A history of Northern Ireland, 1920–1996 (Basingstoke and London, Macmillan, 1997), p. 100.  8 Brendan Lynn, Holding the ground:  the Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland, 1945–72 (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997), p. 28.  9 Bob Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland:  British labourism and Irish nationalism’, in Tom Gallagher and James O’Connell (eds), Contemporary Irish studies (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 81–2. 10 See Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland’, p. 91. 11 Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland’, pp. 90–1. 12 Lynn, Holding the ground, p. 31. 13 Figures taken from F.  W.  S. Craig, Minor parties at British parliamentary elections 1945–1974 (London and Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1975), pp. 117–18. The Scottish results usually record only the SNP vote, but in 1950 they had three out of nine nationalist candidates. The above analysis is from Bob Purdie, Hugh MacDiarmid: black, green, red and tartan (Cardiff, Welsh Academic Press, 2012), p. 104. 14 Robert MacIntyre Papers, National Library of Scotland Acc. 10090/28. 15 See Sean Cronin, Washington’s Irish policy 1916–1986 (Dublin, Anvile Books, 1987), p. 227.

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16 John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster question 1917–1973 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 275. 17 Henry Patterson, Ireland since 1939:  the persistence of conflict (Dublin, Penguin Ireland, 2006), p. 131. 18 Quoted in Stephen Kelly, Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, 1926–1971 (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2013), pp. 126–7. 19 Kelly, Fianna Fáil, pp. 112–13. 20 Patterson, Ireland since 1939, p. 131. 21 Timothy Evans was convicted and eventually hanged in 1950 for the murders of his wife and young daughter at their home in London. Three years after the execution, his neighbour was charged with these murders and a string of others. Evans was later granted a posthumous pardon. 22 David Caute, The fellow travellers:  a postscript to the Enlightenment (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973), p. 4. 23 Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: the Orange state (London, Pluto Press, 1980), p. 195. 24 John Platts-Mills, ‘Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing (1909–1977)’, rev., in Oxford dictionary of national biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004). 25 Hansard, 13 June 1947, cols 438, 1478. 26 Hansard, 21 April 1948, cols 449, 1966. 27 Hansard, 21 April 1948, col. 1479. 28 Hansard, 19 October 1950, col. 2258. 29 See Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 195. 30 Hansard, 19 October 1950, col. 1480. 31 Hansard, 20 April 1948, cols 1659–60. 32 Irish Weekly, 27 April 1948. 33 Keep Left, by a group of Labour members of parliament (London, New Statesman and Nation, 1947), p. 34. 34 Cahir Healy, The mutilation of a nation (Derry:  The Derry Journal Ltd, 1945). 35 T.  J. Campbell, Fifty years of Ulster (Belfast, published by Irish News, 1941). 36 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 13. 37 Ultach, ‘The Orange terror’, Capuchin Annual, 1943, p. 14. 38 Healy, The mutilation of a nation, p. 9. 39 Discrimination (Dublin, The Mansion House All Party Anti-Partition Conference, 1949), p. 5. 40 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 6. 41 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 6. 42 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 7. 43 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 20. 44 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 22. 45 Irish Weekly, 27 April 1948. 46 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 23. 47 Bing, John Bull’s other Ireland, p. 23.

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48 See Michael Kennedy, Division and consensus: the politics of cross-border relations in Ireland, 1925–1969 (Dublin, Institute of Public Administration, 2000), p. 230. This is dealt with more fully in Kevin McNamara’s chapter in this volume. 49 Enda Staunton, The nationalists of Northern Ireland 1918–1973 (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Columba Press, 2001), p. 177. (At this time the Labour Party headquarters was in Transport House, Smith Square, the premises of the British Transport and General Workers’ Union.) 50 Quoted in Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland’, p. 82.

7 The British Labour Party and the tragedy of Northern Ireland Labour Aaron Edwards Labour politics is regarded as a minority pursuit in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the recent ‘Troubles’ all but destroyed the electoral prospects of non-sectarian democratic socialism in that deeply divided part of the United Kingdom. However, there is much more to the story than conventional wisdom would care to admit. For instance, the British Labour Party enjoyed long-standing structural ties with the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) from the 1920s until the 1970s. This relationship was vital to Northern Ireland Labour for financial, logistical and fraternal reasons; yet British Labour abandoned its ‘sister party’ just as sectarianism drove a wedge between working-class Protestants and Catholics, who made up the core of the NILP’s membership.1 Even though British Labour turned its back on local labour activists in the early 1970s, it is nonetheless important to examine the dynamics informing the relationship between both parties as it sheds new light on our understanding of Labour’s post-war Irish policy. To point out that the British Labour Party’s policy towards Ireland has not received the attention it deserves is to state the obvious. There are only a handful of studies of the party’s approach to Irish affairs and most of these have focused on discrete phases in the party’s history or on its more extreme tendencies in the right and left of the party. As a result, scholars are left with a one-dimensional understanding of Labour’s policy towards Ireland. If we were to pursue the matter further we would have to confront the empirical evidence that overwhelmingly depicts Labour as having adopted a Janus-faced approach to the handling of the Northern Ireland ‘problem’, in particular; a state of affairs commonly reflected in the memoirs of countless Labour leaders from James Callaghan to Tony Blair.2 While it is common to view the 1990s as a new departure from the party’s unbridled support for Irish unity during the worst years of the ‘Troubles’ in the 1970s and 1980s, the truth is that the party has always preferred to hedge its bets on Ireland lest an Irish problem become an English problem.3

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For seasoned analysts of Labour’s position on Ireland, such as Rumpf and Hepburn, the reason for its prevarication on Irish affairs was a deliberate response to the inability of ‘British socialism … to intervene in Northern Ireland affairs outside the sectarian framework’.4 For some grass-roots Labour activists in Great Britain, the party’s sheer ambivalence on the matter was an unwelcome reaction to the sectarian conflict that re-emerged from 1968: The attitudes and relationships of the British Labour Party to Ireland have been neither honourable, internationalist, nor socialist … Until the British Labour Party can come up with better answers than defending the division of Ireland and its working class, than headshaking over dead hunger strikers and handshaking with its Tory opponents, then Labour’s definition of socialism will remain the most curious of all.5

Although somewhat reflective of the prevarication within the party during the worst years of the ‘Troubles’, these dismissive interpretations betray a more nuanced picture of Labour’s Irish policy. It was in the half-century after the return of the Ramsay MacDonald government in 1924 that the party moved towards a more deliberate articulation of policy that recognised the de facto existence of partition, which saw British Labour support the NILP in its calls for reform within the confines of a semi-detached process of parliamentary democracy in the Stormont parliament.6 Sympathetic though some of Labour’s grandees were to the aspiration of Irish unity, the truth is that the party never really spoke with one voice on the issue, in large part because of practical difficulties involved in removing one million Protestants from the UK without their consent. Closer analysis of the historical record would show that the English political class – whether Conservative or Labour in complexion – sought to weave an intricate constitutional web binding the devolved Stormont regime to a wider constitutional framework while at the same time keeping Irish problems at ‘arm’s length’.7 To tinker with the status quo risked unravelling a complex ethno-national-based conflict that successive British governments worked tirelessly to keep out of domestic politics, lest it become too politically destabilising. One does not have to look far to see the consequences of this policy. Labour politicians from Herbert Morrison and Hugh Gaitskell to George Brown and James Callaghan regularly visited Northern Ireland and inserted their findings into polished debates on the twin evils of unemployment and economic depression that seemed to blight outlying parts of the United Kingdom in the immediate post-war period. On one occasion in 1954 the House of Commons debated

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a Private Members bill on unemployment, sparking minor friction between Labour and Unionist MPs. Callaghan, then an MP for Cardiff Central, challenged government inaction on the issue in a particularly limited way: Has the Leader of the House nothing to offer in the way of hope to these unemployed people in Northern Ireland? If he rejects the idea of a conference, what prospect is there of placing in employment the people in Newry, Londonderry, Coleraine and other areas, where the situation is reminiscent of the depressed areas of this country in the 1930s? What action are [sic] the Government proposing to take to help the Northern Ireland Government to put these people back in work?8

On another notable occasion almost a decade later, George Brown challenged Unionist MP, Stratton Mills, on the state of the Northern Ireland economy. Laying the blame squarely at the door of the Conservative government and their allies in the ruling Ulster Unionist Party at Stormont, Brown said, ‘It is as well that Northern Ireland Conservative Members should recognise that this situation exists and that they should tell the House of Commons about it. But do not let anyone be under any illusion. The responsibility is theirs. It is the responsibility of the Government which they support and of which they are Members, both at Stormont and here.’9 The reason for such sporadic interjections on Northern Ireland was due principally to a parliamentary convention that had been arrived at in the early 1920s. In effect, the convention prevented MPs from debating issues that were judged to have fallen squarely in the purview of the Unionist regime.10 By 1966, sectarian killings and the perceived threat from a rejuvenated Irish Republican Army (IRA) brought Irish affairs back into parliamentary debates at Westminster. The newly formed Campaign for Democracy in Ulster (CDU), a backbench pressure group, sought to raise the issue of Northern Ireland in parliament but was repeatedly thwarted by the so-called ‘Westminster Convention’, debarring debates on Northern Ireland. This was illustrated in rather stark terms when Home Office Minister, Alice Bacon, reminded parliament of the reason why the convention existed: The purpose of Section 75 was to preserve the power of the United Kingdom Parliament to terminate or change the Constitution of Northern Ireland, and it could do that. Successive Governments have taken the view, however, that so long as Northern Ireland retains its present Constitution, it would be wrong for the United Kingdom Government and Parliament to interfere in matters for which responsibility has been delegated to the Northern Ireland Government and Parliament.11

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Despite the determined efforts of some CDU members (particularly Paul Rose) to overturn the convention, it persisted until 1968 when the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) took to the streets to highlight discrimination against Catholics in local government representation, housing and employment. When a NICRA march in Derry was beaten back by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) on 5 October 1968 the floodgates were opened at Westminster for Labour MPs to challenge the convention more resolutely. As Rose told his fellow MPs: That convention is dead. It was killed when my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. [Gerry] Fitt) was seen by millions of television viewers, his head streaming with blood after a vicious batoning while surrounded by a group of members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. If anybody challenges that statement I  have a photograph with me which illustrates the point.12

While the CDU tried all it could to shake the Labour government from the position of defending the convention, the reality was that the English political class continued to collude in keeping Northern Ireland off the political agenda at Westminster. With Harold Wilson’s government refusing to budge on the matter, it would take another three years, and a change in government in Whitehall, for the convention to be overturned and for Downing Street to interfere directly in the affairs of Northern Ireland. Arguably, the prorogation of Stormont in late March 1972 was the by-product not of constitutional change at Westminster, but of the international outcry triggered by events on Bloody Sunday, when soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights marchers on 30 January 1972. For the Labour Party Bloody Sunday was the last straw. When protesters burnt down the British Embassy in Dublin, CDU member, Kevin McNamara, spoke for many Labour MPs when he suggested that ‘the sacking of the Embassy [was just] another terrible milestone on the route of the complete failure of Her Majesty’s Government to find a true and lasting settlement to the Irish problem’.13 Some of McNamara’s colleagues were not so restrained in their criticisms of the handling of events on the ground, with Hugh Delargy commenting that the paratroopers’ actions would be recorded by history as having equalled the heavy-handedness of the ‘black and tans’ half a century earlier.14 The consequence of violent outrages like Bloody Sunday was to drive a further nail into the coffin of Labour’s fraternal partnership with the NILP. By the early 1970s the NILP was complaining that the Labour Party was moving in a more resolutely nationalist direction. With the departure of the NILP’s Stormont MP for West Belfast, Paddy Devlin, to

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the ranks of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), not to mention the inclusion of Gerry Fitt in the Parliamentary Labour Party, British Labour began to gravitate towards a more decidedly anti-partitionist agenda. However, before we can understand the reasons why the party broke off its fraternal relations with the NILP, we need to understand both the reasons for the NILP’s electoral rise and fall and also the acrimonious debate it generated amongst those on the left. Historians wishing to rescue the NILP from the enormous ‘condescension of posterity’ – to borrow E. P. Thompson’s oft-quoted phrase15 – face an unenviable task. To suggest that it is possible to understand Northern Irish politics beyond the sectarian divisions that permeate politics and society in Northern Ireland is to invite reactions ranging from bemusement to outright hostility. Nonetheless, for scholars such as Graham Walker, Terry Cradden, Henry Patterson, Marc Mulholland, Bob Purdie, Simon Prince and Geoffrey Warner, the NILP remains a neglected and poorly understood phenomenon.16 Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, our understanding of the party and the trade union movement in Northern Ireland was heavily swayed by so-called ‘green Marxists’ who were typically more nationalist than socialist in their ideological persuasion. Green Marxists remained unconvinced that the majority Protestant community had the ability to advance a political agenda tethered to democratic socialism.17 This point is further reflected in the work of Irish labour historian, Emmet O’Connor, who wrote that ‘No political party could successfully avoid the constitutional question; Catholics never tolerated Anglo-centrism in politics to the degree that they did in trade unionism; and labour ideology, as distinct from industrial organization, could not digest the sectarian and supremacist character of Unionism’. In O’Connor’s opinion the NILP’s acceptance of the constitutional status quo (i.e. partition and Unionist one-party rule) greatly exposed the weaknesses inherent in the NILP’s political offer to the working classes of Belfast, Derry and other urban centres across Northern Ireland. As he contended, the ‘secular model of trade union organisation was a conceit. It served to camouflage sectarian discrimination, excuse the Protestant working class from confronting the reactionary content of its own politics, and patronize and circumscribe the wishes of Protestant workers’.18 The logical outworking of O’Connor’s assessment, according to another green Marxist commentator, Michael MacDonald, was that Protestant workers could never realise their full potential as long as they had a stake in the continuation of a ‘colonial class structure’, a state of affairs that sapped their revolutionary potential and made them deeply conservative.19 MacDonald’s interpretation of labourism in

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working-class areas of north-east Ireland does not offer a convincing analysis of why the NILP felt compelled to call for closer integration with the British labour movement and, consequently, his work is questionable in providing an adequate explanation for the enduring class identity of working-class Protestants. The idea that Protestants are ethnically prone to hold reactionary and/ or conservative political convictions is found in the work of other green Marxist agitators, like Bernadette Devlin, who views Ulster Protestants as ‘little more than paid dupes of a supremacist regime, unwilling and unable to countenance any sort of class-based radicalism which might undermine the sectarian basis of their local clientelist regime’.20 Such derisory remarks are common in perhaps the most comprehensive espousal of the green Marxist position, Northern Ireland:  the Orange state, written by one-time NILP activist, Michael Farrell.21 This book did much to influence British leftist interpretations of the Irish conflict in the 1970s and 1980s. Its author’s principal criticism of the NILP is that the party’s successful performances at the 1958 Stormont elections, in which it took 37,748 votes (16 per cent of the share) in four of the eight constituencies it contested, unveiled Protestant working-class disgruntlement with Unionism’s inability to pursue a dynamic economic policy in the face of continued unemployment.22 By 1962 it had consolidated its position by gaining 76,842 votes (26 per cent of the total share) and retaining its four Belfast seats. Protestant ‘monopolisation’ of the staple industries, Farrell also claimed, meant that the vast majority of workers had a vested interest in maintaining their ‘prestigious’ positions on the rungs of Ulster’s ‘labour aristocracy’ ladder. At times of economic uncertainty, Farrell maintained, Protestants were inclined to take drastic measures to register their grievances and ‘protest’ against what they perceived to be abhorrent fluctuations in their material standing, often by switching their electoral preferences from Official Unionist to NILP politicians. As far as Farrell is concerned, Protestant workers, persuaded by the NILP’s remedial plans to counter further job losses,23 could quickly and efficiently punish their Orange state bosses without fear of retribution. Moreover, he goes on to assert, the essential ingredients contributing to Labour gains in the ‘once-safe’ Unionist districts of Victoria and Woodvale in March 1958 were undoubtedly the tripartite variables of recession, emigration and large-scale unemployment.24 Unionist government policy weaknesses were certainly compounded by the maintenance of the alliance with grass-roots supporters on polling day; however, this should not be allocated pre-determined significance. The truth was that economic inactivity became a working-class problem, not a Catholic

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one, as Frank Wright suggests:  ‘In the situation that developed in the late 1950’s and reached a peak in 1963, where workers in the skilled trades were increasingly becoming victims of redundancy, the percentage of Protestants amongst the unemployed probably rose considerably. The greater this tendency the less plausible it becomes to represent the unemployment issue as a “Catholic” problem.’25 According to ‘green’ Marxists, the Protestant proletariat, by voting NILP, was by no means risking its ‘affluent position’ for a socially progressive or revolutionary alternative; rather its motivation for indicating a preference was entirely reactionary. In any case, working-class Protestants did not really seek to ‘rock the boat too much’ at a time when they perceived their constitutional standing to be threatened by a rejuvenated IRA threat.26 The need for a strong security response from the Unionist government was still quid pro quo for the electoral allegiance of their working-class supporters. Invariably for those unionists who did wish to vote on the basis of ‘bread and butter’ issues, the NILP’s support for partition was far from transparent; and, in any case, Protestant workers voting on confessional grounds could draw spiritual comfort from the confessional piety of some high-profile Labour candidates.27 If we are to interpret Farrell’s theoretical premise literally, then, NILP candidates ultimately outmanoeuvred their electoral opponents because they sought to present themselves as dyed-in-the-wool loyalists: ‘at least as loyal on the border issue as the Unionist Party.’28 Sheer volte-face on the NILP’s part, contended Farrell, maximised the likelihood of a groundswell in Protestant working-class votes for its candidates. In his opinion, there could be no other adequate explanation for their dissent. While there may be some truth in Farrell’s idea of the Protestant working class registering a protest vote, the NILP’s electoral breakthrough in 1958 and consolidation in the 1960–62 period shows how adept the NILP had become in constructing an alternative political programme to oppose Unionism on the grounds that it was not British enough.29 In the Westminster election of 1964, the NILP attracted a huge number of votes. Of the twelve seats allocated to Northern Ireland, the party fielded ten candidates, pooling 102,759 votes. By 1964 one of the party’s leading lights, Sir Charles Brett, was making the case in two influential articles published in the Guardian newspaper that the NILP was all about winning over Protestants while challenging Catholic vested interests too.30 For much of the 1950s, working-class Catholics in Belfast had tended to vote for candidates from an array of anti-partitionist parties, including the Irish Labour Party (IrLP), the Republican Labour Party and

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Independent Labour candidates.31 By the late 1950s, the IrLP entered a period of terminal retreat, making it easier for the NILP to win over those in the Catholic minority who wished to support a labourist candidate, even if that candidate was a member of a party that tacitly supported the maintenance of the Union. In any case, the NILP’s 1958 manifesto, which reaffirmed unshakeable support for the constitutional status quo, would not have gained succour from minority voters in the ethno-religiously divided Oldpark and Pottinger districts without the party’s stress on the benefits of the British welfare state. The former Falls Labour Party chairman, Brendan Mackin, put it more succinctly: Within the context of that debate [on the welfare state] the NILP was going through a period of renaissance and there was some growth in Derry and Newtownabbey. In Falls, people were listening to what was being said by Paddy Devlin and others [such as] John Deery, Frankie Steenson. Before that the NILP was cul-de-sac’d [sic] as being pro-Union, particularly in Catholic areas, and at that time people were beginning to listen to new discussions. The old politics of the Nationalist right and the Unionist right were being challenged. People were starting to listen to the argument not so much around the Catholic-Protestant thing but more social and economic [issues].32

There can be little doubt that the NILP’s electoral inroads and its subsequent oppositional function at Stormont in the 1960s (though clearly effective in a parliament that had been a poor imitation of ‘the mother of all parliaments’ in London) meant that ‘Stormont came nearer than at any time since 1921 to being a microcosm of Westminster’.33 By 1965 the NILP’s gains were quickly turning to losses when the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Terence O’Neill, personally led a campaign against Labour candidates in East and West Belfast.34 As one party member recalls: ‘O’Neill beat the big drum about us being weak on the border. That meant the NILP could only go so far because the drum was always beaten about our weaknesses. We were more focussed on sewers, etc., not about the border; about bin men, road safety, we did things that were important.’35 Henry Patterson has shown how unionism interpreted the Labour challenge as ‘a threat, a social force that may become a political one and against which an intense ideological campaign is waged using institutions like the Orange Order and the Ulster Unionist Labour Association’.36 For those who flocked to its banner, the NILP was ‘the first party that demonstrated publicly by its membership that interdenominational co-operation was possible’.37 In the words of one of its leading exponents in East Belfast, those who joined and voted for the NILP

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in the 1960s ‘were taking the first timid steps towards independence of thought:  away from the political straightjacket of Bordermania’.38 To secure its long-term survival in the face of a resolute Unionist challenge, the NILP needed the financial, logistical and fraternal support of its sister party in Great Britain. However, even with the return to power of Harold Wilson’s Labour government in October 1964, it was by no means clear whether the Parliamentary Labour Party at Westminster would throw its clout behind local labourists. Harold Wilson’s radical instincts on Ireland bordered on myopia. For much of the 1960s, Labour observed the parliamentary convention that prevented full and frank debate on Northern Ireland affairs. As noted above, with the sustained lobbying by the CDU and the NICRA, Wilson could do little to stem the rising tide of disgruntlement ranging against the Stormont regime. By 1966 Labour’s insistence that nationalists register their complaints at the Unionist government – or the NILP – would not wash with civil rights activists, thereby forcing Labour to become more involved in Northern Ireland. In 1968, Wilson invited O’Neill to London for talks on the implementation of reforms to offset discrimination in the electoral franchise, employment and housing. The initiative failed and, consequently, the pace of reform was slow. However, Labour could not legislate for Unionists who remain steadfast in their unwillingness to bow to what they perceived to be a republican-inspired agenda.39 In any event, Wilson’s party was soon returned to the opposition benches in 1970. Again, acting on his radical instincts, Wilson moved to do everything he could to end the conflict, including advancing the argument of British withdrawal leading to Irish unity (according to his fifteen-point plan) and also meeting with senior commanders of the Provisional IRA on the pretext that they were ‘political leaders’.40 In 1974 the Labour leader demonstrated his flexibility on Irish matters again when he opted to take a hard line in his reaction to the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) strike, which eventually brought down the power-sharing executive established by the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973.41 Although Wilson’s government refused to negotiate with the UWC leaders, they had no compunction with having MI5 meet with Loyalist paramilitaries behind closed doors in a secret location known as Laneside.42 Brendan O’Leary, later a political advisor to Kevin McNamara, would give a somewhat barbed assessment of the Wilson (1974–76) and Callaghan governments (1976–79) at this time. Although it was clear that by 1974 Labour had abandoned any radical designs on withdrawal, it became clear that the watchword was ‘containment’, which would set the future pattern for British governments to act as ‘neutral arbiters’ in the conflict.43

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Even though Labour supported a negotiated settlement  – reflected in its commitment to maintain the new convention of bipartisanship at Westminster – it had held onto unrealistic hopes of a natural alliance developing between Protestants and Catholics. It was unrealistic mainly because the areas where the NILP had been strongest – principally Belfast – was fast becoming a killing ground for rival armed groups. The Provisional IRA’s bombing campaign and the onslaught of loyalist cut-throat murders and feuding made the prospects of cross-community politics based on the common cause of Labour increasingly irrelevant. Every puff of smoke over the Belfast skyline drove a stake into the heart of democratic socialism that suffered in electoral terms by the formation of new political parties in the form of the Democratic Unionist Party, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and Provisional Sinn Féin, and a further split within the Unionist Party, which produced the extremist Vanguard Movement. Amidst all of this, however, came perhaps the single most decisive factor in sapping support from the NILP: the formation of the SDLP. It was the defection of NILP stalwarts like Paddy Devlin and Ivan Cooper, in particular, that caused an irreversible decline within Northern Ireland Labour’s support base within the Catholic working-class community. By 1974, the SDLP’s outmanoeuvring of the NILP was complete. From the heady heights of commanding 100,000 votes in the 1964 and 1970 elections (although it had dipped in 1966 to 49,941 votes, thanks in part to the personal campaign waged by Unionist prime minister Terence O’Neill), the NILP’s support base began to wither on the vine as the Provisional IRA and Loyalist paramilitary groupings unleashed a wave of attacks. When the NILP contested the Westminster election in 1979, it found out the hard way that its cross-community vote had been obliterated – it polled only 4,411 votes, with all three of its candidates forfeiting their deposits.44 British Labour took the poor showing as a sign and finally abandoned the party in favour of the SDLP’s position of Irish unity by consent, something that sat uncomfortably, especially in light of Gerry Fitt’s abstention in the vote of confidence on James Callaghan’s leadership that triggered the election in the first place. Throughout its long years in opposition, the British Labour Party continued to lobby on Northern Ireland inside parliament and beyond. While its left-wing campaign pressure group, the Troops Out Movement (TOM), continued to attract the more nationalist-leaning members of the labour movement to its cause – not to mention a diverse coterie of movie stars, singers and writers  – it made little headway amongst the higher echelons of the party. This was confirmed by Mo Mowlam, who would replace Kevin McNamara as Tony Blair’s Shadow Secretary of

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State for Northern Ireland, when she told the nationalist-leaning Irish News just prior to the 1997 Westminster election: There is now a general acceptance that the future of Northern Ireland must be determined by the consent of the people as set out in the Downing Street Declaration [1993]. Labour recognises that the option of a united Ireland does not command the consent of the unionist tradition nor does the existing status of Northern Ireland command the consent of the nationalist tradition. We are therefore committed to reconciliation between the two traditions and to a new political settlement which can command the support of both.45

However, the recalibration of Labour’s position on Ireland had been set in train three years earlier when Blair unceremoniously sacked McNamara and replaced him with Mowlam.46 The green tendency in Labour may have been side-lined by Blair, but it had deep roots. Its espousal can be found most readily in the speeches of the party’s most ardent left-wingers, like Ken Livingstone, who held a consistent line on Ireland insofar as he opposed violence but dared to ask whether a British withdrawal might prevent it from happening, rather than further military engagement. As Leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) he used the platform to lobby for a united Ireland. In the aftermath of the bombing of Chelsea Barracks in September 1981 he made the following plea: Nobody supports what happened last Saturday in London. But what about stopping it happening? As long as we are in Ireland, people will be letting off bombs in London. I can see that we are a colonial power holding down a colony. For the rest of time, violence will recur again and again as long as we are in Ireland. People in northern [sic] Ireland see themselves as a subject people. If they were just criminals or psychopaths they could be crushed. But they have a motive force which they think is good.47

Writing about Livingstone’s exposure in the press on the subject of Ireland, his early biographer, John Carvel, suggested that Michael Foot was ‘unable to ignore Livingstone’s repeated exposure in the mass circulation dailies over the issue of Ireland’.48 Many Labour members of the GLC were opposed to the Provisional IRA’s armed campaign, yet it did not stop Livingstone from inviting senior Provisional Sinn Féin activists Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison to London for talks. Once he found out about the meeting, Foot immediately sent the GLC leader a letter, which ‘repudiated the Sinn Fein [sic] visit, but fell short of demanding that the invitation be withdrawn’.49

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Livingstone refused to back down. In any case, he would later admit that the debate between Labour members on the GLC would not take place because of the intervention of Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, when he banned Adams and Morrison from entering London.50 Five years later when he was elected as an MP, Livingstone used the occasion of his Maiden Speech to restate his position on Ireland: Like many others, I do not believe that direct rule is a workable option for Ireland. I  believe that nothing short of a united Ireland will bring about an end to the troubles that have assailed our involvement with that island over hundreds of years, with an especial viciousness over the past two decades. Throughout my parliamentary career I shall continue to press at every opportunity for a withdrawal of Britain from Ireland and the opening to a united Ireland in which the Irish people can decide how best to govern themselves.51

Despite Livingstone’s best efforts, the Labour Party never fully committed itself to a coercive removal of unionists from the UK. This was an unpalatable truism that was recognised in the policy paper prepared by Kevin McNamara, Mo Mowlam and Jim Marshal as early as 1987.52 It seemed that whenever there was a danger of Britain becoming too involved in Northern Irish affairs, the instrument of ambivalence would be applied to prevent it from becoming drawn into Ireland’s ‘Troubles’. New Labour’s electoral successes in May 1997 signalled a return of the Labour Party to Downing Street for the first time since 1979. But this was not a party dogmatically tethered to a trade union leash, nor was it a party that necessarily harked back to the glory days of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat’. Like many of its policies, New Labour’s policy on Ireland underwent a complete overhaul. Divergent political schisms within the wider Labour movement were massaged out of existence by a coterie of unelected officials who were convinced that for the party to move on past its tired old policy on Ireland, change was needed. As Tony Blair would later observe in his political memoirs: Even before taking office, I  was working out a strategy. One of the first things I did on becoming Labour leader was to change our longstanding policy on Northern Ireland. The Labour Party policy had for years been to try to negotiate a peace deal between Unionists and Nationalists on the grounds that we believed in a united Ireland and could be a persuader for it. It didn’t take a political mastermind to realise that such a position wholly alienated Unionist opinion, and in doing so disabled any attempt to negotiate a deal based on that premise.53

The overriding imperative as Blair saw it was to change the policy by stealth. Shortly after becoming leader he announced on the Today

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programme that New Labour would adopt a new policy on Ireland – ‘neutrality on the issue of a united Ireland or a United Kingdom’.54 The new Labour leader even went as far as to appeal to unionists that he valued the Union. But as Paul Dixon has argued, this was all part of an ‘honourable deception’ to fool the people of Northern Ireland into believing that decommissioning would precede prisoner releases and Sinn Féin being allowed to sit in government.55 Even though, in the fullness of time, Northern Ireland would come to be seen as Blair’s greatest achievement, it would not advance the cause of those who wished to see membership of the Labour Party extended across the Irish Sea. It was not until 2003 that New Labour grudgingly agreed to the extension of party membership to Northern Ireland, and even then it was largely thanks to the legal challenge levelled by Andy McGivern, a long-time member of the General Municipal and Boilermakers union. A decade later, Labour’s National Executive Council sought to reverse this trend towards involvement in Northern Ireland affairs by preventing the local Labour branch in Belfast from contesting elections. The reaction was predictable, with one local member, Ben Monteith, levelling a moral challenge at Labour leader, Ed Miliband, who ‘spoke the words of Labour’s One Nation Britain’ by asking him to ‘put that into action’. In Montieth’s view, that would be no more appropriate ‘than in the country that firmly rejected the Conservatives when they came calling’ and in a place that ‘needs to move on from its sectarian past’.56 Unfortunately, British Labour does not appear to have the inclination to accept the challenge as thrown down by its Belfast members. Worse still, it is questionable that Labour is fully aware of its own tragic history of abandoning a local, non-sectarian labour alternative to the ethno-national power blocs currently presiding over an enduring ethnic conflict in this part of the UK. The British Labour Party was central to the organisational effectiveness of its ‘sister party’ in Northern Ireland between the late 1920s and early 1970s. At times, senior Labour Party activists travelled to Belfast to receive briefings from their counterparts and, in some cases, even actively endorsed candidates during elections. British Labour may have been working on the assumption that by doing so they might ultimately bolster the Parliamentary Labour Party at Westminster. However, there was much more to it than enhanced electoral voting power in the House of Commons, especially in terms of a shared vision of a labour movement embraced as much by Derry shirt-makers as Clydeside dockers and articulated with as much conviction as Belfast shipwrights as Sheffield steelworkers. It was this brand of British labourism that owed more to the British Labour Party’s belief in the Union than the minority pursuit

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of its Irish nationalist fringe. In this respect, it nourished an acknowledgement that regional identities across the UK had a part to play. The tragedy of Northern Ireland Labour is that its activists were unable to persuade their comrades in England, especially, that a shared vision for a Labour Britain also needed shared responsibility and the commitment to organise and face down ethno-nationalism in the most deeply divided part of the UK. Notes  1 See Aaron Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: democratic socialism and sectarianism (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2009).  2 James Callaghan, A house divided: the dilemma of Northern Ireland (London, HarperCollins, 1973); Tony Blair, A journey (London, Hutchinson, 2010); and see also Jonathan Powell, Great hatred, little room:  making peace in Northern Ireland (London, The Bodley Head, 2008).  3 However, even this bold assertion renders opaque the fact that the party adopted an ambivalent, non-interventionist approach for most of the post-war era.  4 E. Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn, Nationalism and socialism in twentieth-century Ireland (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1977), p. 208.  5 Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome business: the Labour Party and the Irish question (London, Pluto, 1982), p. 150.  6 See Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.  7 For more on this point, see P. Bew, H. Patterson and P. Gibbon, Northern Ireland, 1921–2001: political forces and social classes (revised and updated version, London, Sherif, 2002); and also see Russell Rees, Labour and the Northern Ireland problem, 1945–51: the missed opportunity (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2008).  8 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 24 November 1954, vol. 533, col. 1249.  9 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 30 March 1962, vol. 656, col. 1723. 10 Paul Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000), pp. 20–8. 11 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 8 August 1966, vol. 733, cols 1306–7. 12 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 22 April 1969, vol. 782, col. 263. 13 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 3 February 1972, vol. 830, col. 695. 14 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 31 January 1972, vol. 830, col. 34. 15 E. P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (London, Penguin, 1992), p. 8. 16 Graham Walker, A history of the Ulster Unionist Party: protest, pragmatism and pessimism (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004); T. Cradden, ‘Labour in Britain and the Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1900–1970’,

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in P.  Catterall and S.  McDougal (eds), The Northern Ireland question in British politics (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996); Henry Patterson, ‘Socialism in Ulster’, in Eve Patten (ed.), Returning to ourselves:  second volume of papers from the John Hewitt International Summer School (Belfast, Lagan Press, 1995); Marc Mulholland, ‘Assimilation versus segregation: Unionist strategy in the 1960s’, Twentieth Century British History, vol. 11, no.  3, 2000, pp.  284–307; Bob Purdie, Politics in the streets:  the origins of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1990); Simon Prince and Geoffrey Warner, Belfast and Derry in revolt: a history of the start of the troubles (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2011); see also Aaron Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, and ‘Interpreting New Labour’s political discourse on the peace process’, in K. Hayward and C.  O’Connell (eds), Political discourse and conflict resolution (Abingdon, Routledge, 2010). 17 John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland (Oxford, Blackwell, 1995), p. 70. 18 Emmet O’Connor, A labour history of Ireland, 1824–1960 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1992), p. 206. 19 M. MacDonald, Children of wrath: political violence in Northern Ireland (Cambridge, Polity, 1986), p. 60. 20 Bernadette Devlin, The price of my soul (London, Pan, 1969), p. 156. 21 Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: the Orange state (London, Pluto Press, 1976). Farrell was an Executive Committee member of the NILP between 1965 and 1967. 22 Farrell, Northern Ireland, pp. 25–6. 23 NILP, Policy for progress (Belfast, NILP, 1958); NILP, Labour’s submission to R.A. Butler (Belfast, NILP, 1961); NILP, Ulster Labour and the sixties (Belfast, NILP, 1962); and NILP, Signposts to the new Ulster (Belfast, NILP, 1964). 24 Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 225. 25 Frank Wright, ‘Protestant ideology and politics in Ulster’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 14, no. 2, December 1973, p. 264. 26 Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 228. The IRA launched ‘Operation Harvest’ in December 1956, a campaign that lasted sporadically until February 1962. If one judges the threat in terms of body count, then it paled into insignificance when considered in light of what was to follow from the late 1960s. 27 Some agnostic party members had a habit of labelling the newly elected NILP MPs ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’, because of their private confessional pursuits. 28 Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 225. 29 Mulholland, ‘Assimilation versus segregation’, p. 288. 30 C. E. B. Brett, Long shadows cast before: nine lives in Ulster, 1625–1977 (Edinburgh, John Bartholomew, 1977), p. 85. 31 Politicians who benefited from the banishment of the Nationalist Party from the Belfast urban area included Harry Diamond (later Republican

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Labour), Gerry Fitt (later Republican Labour) and Paddy Devlin (later NILP and SDLP). 32 Interview with Brendan Mackin, 10 January 2006. By the mid-1960s, the Falls Labour Party had 200 people on its books, most of whom were Catholic working-class people from the district. For more, see Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party. 33 R.  J. Lawrence, The government of Northern Ireland:  public finance and public service, 1921–64 (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965), p. 100. 34 J.  A. V. Graham, The consensus-forming strategy of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (Belfast, Queen’s University, 1972), p. 138. 35 Interview with former NILP activist, Anne Foster, 16 August 2005. 36 Patterson, ‘Socialism in Ulster’, p. 155. 37 Interview with former NILP Chairman and Stormont MP, David Bleakley, 21 March 2006. 38 S. McAughtry, ‘A question of politics’, Irish Times, 13 May 1981. 39 For more on this, see Bob Purdie, Politics in the streets, and Graham Walker, A history of the Ulster Unionist Party. 40 Aaron Edwards and Cillian McGrattan, The Northern Ireland conflict:  a beginner’s guide (London, One World Publications, 2010), pp. 25–7. 41 The National Archives (TNA), CJ4/1147, ‘Meeting between the Secretary of State, PUS and NIO Departmental Heads’, 27 May 1974. 42 TNA, CJ4/1147, ‘Meeting with UVF at Laneside on 27 May, 1974’. 43 Brendan O’Leary, ‘The Labour government and Northern Ireland, 1974–9’, in J. McGarry and B. O’Leary (eds), The Northern Ireland conflict: consociational engagements (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 210. 44 Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, p. 221. 45 Irish News, 4 April 1997. 46 See Edwards, ‘Interpreting New Labour’s political discourse’. 47 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 7 July 1987, vol. 119, col. 231. 48 J. Carvel, Citizen Ken (London, The Hogarth Press, 1987 [1984]), p. 157. 49 Carvel, Citizen Ken, p. 185. 50 Ken Livingstone, You can’t say that: memoirs (London, Faber, 2011), p. 224. 51 House of Commons debates, Hansard, 7 July 1987, vol. 119, col. 231. 52 K. McNamara, J. Marshall and M. Mowlam, ‘Towards a new Ireland: reform and harmonisation: a dual strategy for Irish unification’, 1988; see Edwards, ‘Interpreting New Labour’s political discourse’. 53 Blair, A journey, p. 159. 54 Blair, A journey, p. 159. 55 See P.  Dixon ‘ “An honourable deception”? The Labour government, the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland peace process’, British Politics, vol. 8, no. 2, June 2013, see pp. 108–37. 56 B. Monteith, ‘ “A nation and a half”, Labour in Northern Ireland’, dated January 2013, archived at:  www.labourpartyni.org/nation-and-a-half-an -articles-by-lpni-member-ben-monteith (accessed 15 January 2014).

8 ‘That link must be preserved, but there are other problems’1: the British Labour Party and Derry, 1942–62 Máirtín Ó Catháin As a prism through which to examine the British Labour Party’s relationship with Ireland in the mid twentieth century, and as a way of highlighting factors that contributed to civil unrest in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, this chapter will focus on local politics, especially local Labour party politics, in Derry during the Second World War and in the immediate decades that followed. Although the British Labour Party had been sympathetic to Irish nationalism at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was Labour governments, both in 1924 and after the Second World War,2 that consolidated partition and consequently the Unionist status quo, latterly through the Ireland Act 1949, which affirmed the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. In Derry, a city with a majority Catholic and nationalist population on the border between two states, this was less than welcome news to many. There were certainly fissures and ‘problems’, as alluded to by junior Labour shadow cabinet minister, James Callaghan, in 1955 (as cited above). But in Derry, a climate of pragmatism emerged, and sections of organised labour in the city engaged with the progressive social policies of the post-war Labour government, to the point indeed that it fed into a new climate of protest that would set the Labour Party of Harold Wilson on a major course of crisis management in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. The very contemporary confluence of a flags dispute and preparations for a major UK festival thrust Derry into the spotlight in 1951.3 The Festival of Britain was under way, the major economic and cultural showcase of the post-war Labour government. Most of the money was being spent on the suitable decoration of the Guildhall, the town hall in Derry, though the corporation also voted through £245 worth of improvements themed around the Festival for the city’s library.4 In itself, the inclusion of Northern Ireland and its second city in the Festival of Britain was at once an expression of the Labour government’s

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integrationist perspective on the North’s place in the ‘nation’ and an indication of its naivety about the reception this would accord.5 The subsequent tumult over the flying of the Irish national flag at Derry’s St Patrick’s Day parade that year was not part of that reception, but the melee between police and nationalist protesters ably demonstrated the distance between Whitehall and Guildhall.6 While eliciting no response even from sympathetic Labour backbenchers in Westminster, the day’s events may well have had a bearing on the decision of the Irish president, Éamon de Valera, to visit the city, cutting a swathe through streets either bedecked or painted in the Irish national colours later that year.7 Irish nationalism in Derry was at the height of its popularity, appearing ebullient and bellicose; and the careful calibration of anti-partition sentiment, during the flags dispute and at elections, enabled the dominant Nationalist Party figure, Eddie McAteer, to neutralise his own party rivals and to see off the challenge from republicans and the frustrated and divided ranks of the local Derry labour movement. Of course, this had not always been the case, and while the posture of the Nationalist Party disguised the emergence of a practical engagement with the Northern Ireland state, and by association Britain, the city’s cluster of labour activists had been and would again be significant to this engagement in spite of their own national-religious divisions. Like many places, the beginnings of a socialist movement in Derry can be traced to the break with craft exclusivity in the period of new unionism between 1889 and 1891.8 Supporters of the British socialist group, the Socialist League, existed in the city in the 1890s, and the Social Democratic Federation’s paper, Justice, was sold there too.9 Yet the early twentieth century saw the Derry labour movement adopt an implicitly nationalist position that became explicit in the 1919–21 period under the twin pressures of the War of Independence and the creation of Northern Ireland.10 It was into such a fractious environment – capitalising in many ways on a wider current of working-class discontent, rising unemployment and economic decline – that the Londonderry Labour Party (LLP) came into being in 1925. The LLP quickly affiliated to the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) and geared up for its first electoral contest.11 In later years, however, a number of splits in the LLP created a veritable alphabet soup of labour parties in the city:  the Independent Derry Labour Party (IDLP), which broke away in 1938 and led, in 1945, to the nationalist-inclined Derry Labour Party (DLP); a local branch of the unionist-inclined Commonwealth Labour Party, established in 1942 and dissolved in 1943; and a branch of the Irish Labour Party (IrLP) between 1949 and 1952. These various incarnations were obviously driven by objective social and economic conditions in Derry that more

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or less followed a pattern of general decline after the First World War, but they were also governed by the larger constitutional and sectarian politics of the time. The formation of the LLP came at a fortuitous moment in local politics. The Nationalist Party, which had observed a boycott of local government since 1923, had a number of members keen to return to the corporation, and they saw in the appearance of the LLP an opportunity to do so. Although this involvement with Labour was short and difficult and resulted in a split in LLP in 1929, the re-designation of these members as labourists resulted in the return of sixteen Labour councillors.12 However, the following years of in-fighting between a mainly anti-partitionist, Connollyite majority and a smaller integrationist element took its toll. The Connollyite tradition in the LLP ultimately saw the achievement of a united and independent Irish socialist state as the goal and key to the solution of the social and economic decline resulting from partition. The minority tradition, conversely, was one that stressed what it believed to be the mixed blessings of the Union  – greater economic opportunities and collaboration with and support from the stronger labour movement in Britain and the Commonwealth. It is tempting to read this division, creating as it did that range of separate parties between the 1930s and 1950s, as an expression of the nationalist and unionist politics (and demographics) of Derry. But at least one alternative is to see the split as utopian (anti-partitionist) versus pragmatic (partitionist) responses to the challenges imposed by the re-configuration of political boundaries, relationships and priorities in the inter-war years. The story of the nationalist-inclined Derry Labour Party and the unionist-inclined Londonderry Labour Party is one in which, in the 1950s, unlike other such parties in places like west Belfast and Newry, the pragmatists gain ground on the utopians in a way that not only mirrored the growing engagement of the British Labour Party with Northern Ireland but also arguably exerted a powerful influence on the changing mood of the Derry Catholic electorate. More importantly, it is that tendency towards engagement and pragmatism that ironically exerted the greatest pressures eventually on the Unionist regime and contributed to a crisis of international proportions for the British Labour government of the late 1960s. The impact of nationalist and unionist politics on the success or otherwise of the various Derry Labour parties had naturally very little impact on the Labour Party in Britain. The gerrymandered political ward system had received hostile coverage in the Manchester Guardian as early as 1921 and there was equally censorious coverage in the Daily Herald, but it is probably fair to say that Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald,

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was more concerned with and enamoured of Lady Londonderry than the North’s second city.13 His successors, and the wider Labour Party, maintained this ambivalence and the bipartisan approach generally at least until the Clement Attlee administration in 1945; and even then, the over-arching bipartisanship remained, as Dixon and Edwards have noted, the most consistent policy in relation to the North.14 Nevertheless, John Clynes, Arthur Hayday and Ernest Bevin had all visited Derry between 1927 and 1929, and Bevin returned with Arthur Deakin in 1938.15 The focus of these visits was the trade union movement, but they served as grist to the mill for those LLP activists keen to demonstrate their links to the British Labour Party as well as giving some indication of Labour’s recognition that socialism existed outside Belfast. There was a very small Marxist presence in the city around this time, represented in some ways by Thomas Finnegan, Professor of Classics at Magee College, and also by Jack Dorricott and John De Courcy Ireland, both of whom gave regular talks on various facets of Marxist ideology and anti-imperialism via the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC).16 De Courcy Ireland had an influence on the LLP. However, while he engaged in a public row of sorts with the emerging Connollyite, Paddy Fox, over the merits of Fianna Fáil’s social policy, it was clear that their shared anti-partitionism was the basis for the new Independent Derry Labour Party (IDLP) which they founded in 1938 as a breakaway from the LLP. In the local elections of 1938 and 1939, the former uncontested by the LLP, they failed to win any seats, ignored the mainly Protestant and Unionist Waterside ward completely and closed the year in opposition to the Second World War as an imperialist conflict.17 Besides the remnants of those who departed the LLP in the 1929 split, Fox and De Courcy made some advances with republicans around this time, bringing one or two away from the ranks of Sinn Féin and into the IDLP. This may have been as a result of their opposition to Stormont’s internment of republican suspects at the outbreak of the war or their involvement with the Prisoner’s Aid Society in the city.18 The Second World War brought Derry into the limelight as an important strategic post in the Battle of the Atlantic:  the old shipyards once again sprang into life, and the city even faced some aerial bombardment in 1941. The local Catholic bishop, Neil Farren, encouraged support for the war effort, and a great many Catholics joined the British forces alongside their Protestant neighbours.19 Such apparent unity did not extend to the local labour movement, and the main pre-war split between Paddy Fox’s IDLP and the LLP not only continued but suffered another splinter with the emergence of the Londonderry branch of the Commonwealth Labour Party, a more ardently pro-Unionist organisation led by NILP

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veteran, Harry Midgley. The new party lasted less than a year in the city before its remnants re-joined the LLP and re-affiliated to the NILP.20 For a brief time, it appears that there had been no fewer than three different Labour parties in a population not much bigger than that of east Belfast, though De Courcy Ireland remembered the divisions as cordial, if occasionally sectarian in nature, and saw Midgley’s creation in a relatively sanguine, if not supportive, manner.21 Support for the British war effort crystallised in 1942 when the USSR entered the war, though there remained strong opposition to the threat of conscription, despite the support for such a move by Minister for Labour, Ernest Bevin, and most Unionist and Conservative politicians. However, the predictions of Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, of nationalist resistance and serious civil disorder helped persuade the British government not to proceed with the measure.22 Although it seemed that past dissensions might be put to rest towards the end of the war, the gulf between the nationalist and unionist sections of Derry’s labour movement remained and widened in the years afterwards, as the campaign against partition gained prominence. Paddy Fox’s Derry Labour Party (DLP) – the name taken after the IDLP was wound up in 1945  – did not immediately directly challenge the LLP electorally, standing instead against the sitting Nationalist Party MP for the city in the predominantly Catholic Foyle constituency, while on the opposite bank of the river, LLP leader, William Irwin, stood against the Unionist Party candidate, William Lowry.23 But Fox subsequently entered into an electoral pact with the Nationalist Party; and although this cost the DLP two key activists, it also delivered two seats for them on Londonderry Corporation. Stephen McGonagle, one of those activists who resigned, would later re-join Fox in the Derry branch of the Irish Labour Party (IrLP) during the high mark of the anti-partition campaign from 1949 to 1952, but he ultimately yielded to the pragmatic position on the border and followed the British Labour Party lead on closer integration with Britain.24 The nationalist trend in Derry labour politics was paradoxically strengthened rather than weakened by the election of the Labour government under Attlee, as a gap began to open up between, on the one hand, those who adopted a position clearly sympathetic to unionism, such as new Home Secretary James Chuter Ede and Herbert Morrison, the architect of the election victory, and, on the other, Labour’s pro-nationalist ‘Friends of Ireland’ pressure group at Westminster, which began to make common cause with the newly founded Irish Anti-Partition League.25 At the beginning of 1946, McGonagle brought Labour MP for Penistone in West Yorkshire, Henry McGhee, to Derry.26 It was the first significant

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post-war visit by a Labour MP to the city and of considerable importance because of McGhee’s prominent role in the Friends of Ireland. As Purdie has noted, this group often blurred the lines between support for anti-partitionism and support for nationalism, and their linkages with the new Anti-Partition League (APL) was to muddy the waters of Derry labour politics.27 McGhee’s visit, however, reinforced the growing coalescence locally between Fox’s Labour group and the Anti-Partitionists. Paradoxically, this does in some ways match the wider spirit promulgated by the British Labour Party at the time of a form of one-nation politics, even if to the Friends of Ireland that nation was Ireland rather than Britain.28 These diversions did not entirely distract the local labour activists from the burning social and economic issues affecting the people of the city, but there is some evidence that they were in the rearguard rather than the vanguard of working-class politics. In the autumn of 1946, no doubt as a result of the desperate state of post-war housing conditions, and perhaps the example of others in Scotland, a mass squatting campaign quickly gathered pace in Derry. Over the space of a couple of weeks in August, abandoned army Nissen huts were seized by local people in various locations.29 Pauline McClenaghan claims that Fox and the DLP had a key role in this action. Yet, while it is clear that he later personally emerged as spokesperson for the Springtown residents in the former American naval base, his opposition to local demands that the makeshift housing be given to those on the housing list in 1945 was unequivocal.30 Nor is there any evidence of his involvement in the early stages of the occupations. The move and the militancy involved in the campaign seems to have genuinely taken local socialists by surprise, in spite of their repeated campaigning around the issue over the years. Herbert Morrison was on holiday in Ireland at this time and spent a few days in the North before travelling back to Britain. He therefore must have been aware of the controversy when the squatter issue was discussed in the first cabinet meeting he attended on his return. Downing Street issued a statement the day after, on 17 September, which was uncompromising in its view of the squatter movement. It stated that there was no excuse for trespassing and that the police would be used to remove the squatters wherever they were found.31 Morrison himself reinforced this position at the annual meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire Regional Council of the Labour Party soon after. While it may have been the involvement of Communist Party activists with squatting in London that put the Labour government on guard, the solution offered by Morrison of ‘buckling to and making more building materials and putting up more dwellings’ seemed

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remarkably naive and out of touch, given the scale of the post-war housing crisis, not to mention the specific sectarian gerrymander that directed where houses could be build in Derry.32 Only Springtown camp in the politically less sensitive rural ward was allowed to remain. A  mixture of military demands, private property challenges and fears of dramatic changes to the electoral profile of certain Unionist wards combined to produce predictably tragic eviction scenes and numerous prosecutions.33 Housing was very much on the mind of Unionist prime minister, Basil Brooke, when he visited the city in February 1947. However, the beginnings of the Creggan housing estate which he toured could not keep pace with the demand for public housing that the squatters’ campaign had so clearly spotlighted. The city’s Unionists used their annual meeting to declare proudly to their leader that they had effectively seen off the challenge of the LLP in the North Ward the previous year, thereby demonstrating the cohesion of the unionist electorate.34 Yet while the importance of the Springtown camp faded in the early 1950s, it would come to be viewed as a twenty-year indictment of Unionist misgovernment, and would be taken up by a later generation of LLP activists in the mid-1960s.35 Shortly after the Springtown camp dispute, the DLP left the nationalist fold and re-configured its anti-partitionism along more solidly social class lines. The pact between the APL-Nationalist Party and the DLP fell apart over the latter’s continued support for British welfare legislation, something that discomfited Nationalists and their more blatantly sectarian opposition to a grant for ‘Protestant’ Magee College. Also around this time, Geoffrey Bing MP, perhaps the most prominent of the Labour Party’s Friends of Ireland, paid a visit to Derry. This was significant. While he was adamant about his disinterest in the border, he nevertheless spoke of his work in gathering information about gerrymandering.36 This work was somewhat tangential to the anti-partitionist focus of the Friends of Ireland, but the information did prove significant in talks within the NILP about the issue, as it did later during debates on the Northern Ireland bill. Bing was not a traditional supporter of Irish unity, but his visit and his interest in the North did signal a wider re-engagement by a small section of the British Labour Party with the aspiration for a united Ireland.37 He was attractive to the pragmatists of the LLP because he was clear that the link with Britain was, as Purdie has written, ‘the most likely source of progressive political change’. Yet he could also appeal to Fox and company as someone who felt Ireland’s longer-term economic future was best dealt with as a single unit, or at least a re-partitioned one.38 This, of course, was entirely in keeping with the

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NILP’s own chimerical position down to 1949, though the confluence of various nationalist streams, both Irish and British (in terms of the Friends of Ireland), between 1947 and 1952 lends weight to Rumpf and Hepburn’s conclusion that labour could not operate ‘outside of the sectarian framework’ because the constitutional position of Northern Ireland remained a source of division.39 Aaron Edwards has noted that, much to the chagrin of the NILP at times, there was a growing liaison between the Unionist Party and some figures in the British Labour Party, in particular Herbert Morrison, especially after the passing of the Ireland Act in 1949.40 Attlee himself only visited Northern Ireland once around this time in order to dine with Sir Basil Brooke and his wife while he was on holiday in Co. Mayo.41 Chuter Ede’s talk to the London Ulster Association and Club in December 1949 is perhaps another expression of this coming together. In his talk, he praised the ministers for health and local government at Stormont and received in turn the gracious thanks of Dehra Parker, minister and MP for Londonderry South, who described him as ‘Ulster’s friend’ and reflected on the importance of the historic link between the cities of Derry and London.42 Ede in particular would have been in no doubt about the importance and significance of that link, but it was the strategic concerns of the mid twentieth century rather than the seventeenth that underlined the city’s place in the rapidly changing geopolitical map of the region. This has been recognised in part by Ronan Fanning and more recently by Graham Walker but has generally been ignored in much of the Belfast-centric analyses of British–Irish relations.43 Derry had demonstrated its usefulness to Britain and its allies during the Second World War and was the site chosen for NATO’s joint Anti-Submarine Warfare School and Air Sea Warfare Development Unit in the early days of the Cold War. It had been visited by the chief of US naval air operations in April 1949, and the evicted squatters of 1947 gave way to the development of the US Naval Communications Station (later known as NAVCOMMSTA) at Clooney.44 The strategic re-positioning of the city had little or no bearing on the politics and divisions at the heart of the Derry labour movement. The Nationalists saw off the challenge of the IrLP and Sinn Féin at the 1950 general election with relative ease, and Eddie McAteer pushed his abstentionist party rival, Paddy Maxwell, aside in 1953 to take the Foyle seat. Paddy Fox, the IrLP’s sole representative on the corporation, did not contest the 1951 election, and he and Stephen McGonagle wrapped up the branch the following year. McGonagle remembered the city as ‘not as bad as Belfast’ but still marked by people ‘making speeches about all kinds of things not along labour lines’.45 Fox had concentrated much of

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his activities on various sorts of acts of disruption and civil disobedience, and hosted a delegation of women protesters from Springtown camp when they ‘occupied’ the Guildhall, but he left politics disillusioned at the failure of the Connollyite approach and died of tuberculosis in 1954. McGonagle re-joined the LLP and carried on into the later 1950s and early 1960s.46 Meanwhile, the LLP, perhaps as a reaction to the emergence of the IrLP in their midst or in response to the new clarity of the NILP and British Labour’s position on the constitutional status of the North, had proposed a merger with the IrLP at a special conference in Belfast in 1949.47 However, resolutions at the annual conference that year and again in 1950 – on affordable public transport, ground rents and equitable leasehold tenures (‘for students and workers’, interestingly), and speed limits of 20mph in urban areas – gives an indication of some of the more pressing issues for the LLP.48 By the latter year, though, things had obviously gone into decline. The NILP described its organisation in the city and county as ‘in a very bad way’ in April 1951, and the party appears to have continued to decline in spite of visits by James Callaghan and others in 1954, and by Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, in 1959, both of which drew attention to many of the social and economic problems of the city but which were also largely fleeting visits.49 These, however, did tend to throw the spotlight on McGonagle, who stood as an Independent Labour candidate in the Northern Ireland general election in 1958. His electoral challenge to McAteer (5,238 votes to McAteer’s 6,953) showed a rising sense of dissatisfaction among nationalists over the failure of McAteer’s party to engage with the practical realities of government and partition. Desmond Fennell’s 1958 serialised study of Northern Catholics and nationalists showed this developing mood of pragmatism and perhaps the beginnings of a newer discussion focused on rights and equality rather than national sovereignty.50 It is possible that, in part, McGonagle’s support, indeed his own increasingly practical integrationism, reflects an engagement with the Union that formed part of the wider post-war consensus; even though he was more heavily defeated in 1962, his vote actually increased. It is also around this time that McAteer began to explore assuming the position of the official opposition to the Unionist Party at Stormont (not officially adopted until 1965). As part of the new textiles economy, Du Pont, the American chemicals company, came to Derry in 1956, around about the time of the loss of the naval dockyard attached to the Joint Anti-Submarine Warfare School, which transferred to Plymouth. Despite a bitter strike in 1958, Du Pont remained, but other factors began to illustrate an overall pattern

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of economic decline, which neither the NILP nor British Labour seemed willing to address. Birmingham Sound Recordings shut with the loss of over 1,000 jobs in 1960; Monarch Electric followed with a similar number in 1962; and the city’s rail and maritime trade was drastically cut back in the same period. A later LLP activist, the early modern historian, Keith Lindley, who arrived to take up a post at Magee College in 1965, remembered Derry as ‘grim … a city that was dying … which had a general run down feel’.51 This chapter has considered the British Labour Party’s connections with a town whose political, social and economic conditions would grab the world’s attention in 1968 and 1969, catapulting the Labour government into the biggest crisis Britain had seen since Suez. The inability or indeed unwillingness of Labour to foresee this crisis needs to be viewed in the context of its rapprochement with the Ulster Unionist government and the nascent ‘one nation’ approach it increasingly embraced in the post-Ireland Act years. The utopian challenge of the backbench Labour Friends of Ireland group and their Irish allies in the APL during the later 1940s ran up against, and was ultimately unable to overcome, the pragmatic programme of Bevanite socialism, with its tangible advances in health and social welfare provision. That programme also encouraged a newer and younger generation of local labour activists such as Ivan Cooper, Eamonn McCann and Dermie McClenaghan to seek the same civil privileges enjoyed by those in other parts of the United Kingdom. It was, ironically in some ways, the success of the latter over traditional revanchist nationalism that contributed subsequently to the unification of the local labour parties after many years of division under the umbrella of the Londonderry Labour Party (rebranded as the ‘Derry Labour Party’ after a reorganisation in 1965), and the emergence of the civil rights agenda that would ironically prove so difficult for the first Wilson government during the outbreak of widespread civil disorder in 1969.52 Notes 1 James Callaghan, House of Commons Parliamentary Debates, 5 May 1955, vol. 540, cols 2036–7. 2 On the 1924 Labour government’s handling of the Boundary Commission issue, see Ivan Gibbons, ‘The First Labour government and the Irish Boundary Commission’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, vol. 98, no. 391, Autumn 2009. 3 The controversy over the flying of the union flag in Belfast in 2013 and the accompanying civil strife overshadowed in some respects the celebrations surrounding Derry’s nomination as the UK’s first City of Culture.

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 4 Festival of Britain Northern Ireland brochure, http://craftni.org/images/ uploads/Festival_of_Britain_Feature.pdf (accessed 23 February 2013); Derry City Archives (DCA), Londonderry Corporation Minute Book, Parks, Libraries and Museums Committee, 1917–51, 8 January 1951. I am grateful to Bernadette Walsh, archivist at DCA, for her help and assistance. Derry was the first city to be nominated ‘UK City of Culture’ for 2013.  5 Gillian McIntosh, ‘A performance of consensus? The coronation visit of Elizabeth II to Northern Ireland, 1953’, Irish Studies Review, vol. 10, no. 3, 2002, pp. 315–29. McIntosh concludes that the Festival of Britain made no discernible impact on the Catholic community, being greeted largely with indifference.  6 Frank Curran, Derry, countdown to disaster (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1986), p. 12; Henry Patterson, ‘Party versus order: Ulster unionism and the Flags and Emblems Act’, Contemporary British History, vol. 13, no. 4, winter 1999, p. 116. Patterson notes that attempts had been made to fly the flag in St Patrick’s Day parades in the city since 1948, without success.  7 Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town (3rd edn, London, Pluto, 1993), p. 82; Derry Journal, 1 July 2011.  8 Shane McAteer, ‘The “new unionism” in Derry, 1889–1892:  a demonstration of its inclusive nature’, Saothar, vol. 16, 1991, pp. 11–22; Cathal MacManus, ‘The Labour movement in Derry, 1907–1920’, unpublished MA dissertation, University of Ulster at Magee, 2003.  9 Fintan Lane, The origins of modern Irish Socialism 1881–1896 (Cork, Cork University Press, 1997), pp. 91, 112. 10 MacManus, ‘The Labour movement in Derry’, p. 57. 11 Graham Walker, ‘The Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1924–45’, in Fintan Lane and Dónal Ó Drisceoil (eds), Politics and the Irish working class, 1830–1945 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 230–2. The term Derry Labour Party was mostly used in the local press, though the official name was, of course, the ‘Londonderry Labour Party’. The unemployed workers used Londonderry officially as well and displayed it on their banner, the city name not inspiring at this time the same kind of rancour as it would in later years. 12 Irishman, 12 May 1928. Paddy Meenan was the father of Irish-language campaigner, Proinsias Ó Mianáin. 13 Manchester Guardian, 27 May 1921; Daily Herald, 2 September 1921; Kevin Morgan, Ramsay MacDonald (London, Haus Pub, 2006), pp. 103–4. 14 Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: the politics of war and peace (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), p. 49; Aaron Edwards, ‘Social democracy and partition: the British Labour Party and Northern Ireland, 1951–64’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 42, no. 4, 2007, p. 604. 15 Derry Journal, 21 September 1927, 18 January 1929, 27 June 1938. 16 Andrew Boyd, Fermenting elements:  the Labour Colleges in Ireland 1924–1964 (Belfast, Donaldson Archives, 1999), pp. 44, 95; Agnes Finnegan, Reaching for the fruit: growing up in Ulster (Birmingham: Callender Press,

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1991), pp. 101–2, 210. The Derry Labour College opened in 1926 and was run by Bob Molloy until the outbreak of the Second World War, at which point he relocated to east Belfast, continuing to work for the NCLC until 1954. It seems John De Courcy Ireland, Jack Dorricott and Tom Finnegan were regular guest speakers at the college. 17 Pauline McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox:  Derry socialist’, unpublished paper delivered at the 5th October Commemoration Conference, Derry, 1989, p.  5. I  am indebted to Pauline McClenaghan for allowing me to use her valuable research on Paddy Fox, and to Paddy Fox’s son, Colm, for his help in tracking down a copy of the paper; Derry Journal, 4 September and 9, 11, 13 and 18 October 1939. 18 Derry Journal, 13 September and 16 October 1939; Londonderry Sentinel, 15 February 1940. Fox himself came from a republican family, his father having been interned as far back as the 1916 Easter Rising. Republicans who can be identified as converts to Labour include William J. Harley, who had been arrested for republican activities in 1936 (see Derry Journal, 8 January 1936), and Daniel Doherty, former ITGWU shipyard official, who had been a member of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Republican Army and was a close confidant of Peadar O’Donnell during his time in Derry. 19 Brian Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 1995), pp.  50, 123; Curran, Derry, countdown to disaster, pp.  11–12; Robert Gavin, William Kelly and Dolores O’Reilly, Atlantic gateway:  the port and city of Londonderry since 1700 (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 255–6. 20 McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p.  6; Graham Walker, ‘The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942–7’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 93, May 1984, p. 73. 21 John De Courcy Ireland, ‘Reviewing socialism in Derry and Dublin in the 1940s’, correspondence, Saothar, vol. 17, 1993, pp.  11–12. De Courcy Ireland insists that the Derry and Londonderry Labour parties were primarily Larkinite in their politics. This is confirmed in many respects by A labour programme for Ireland (Derry, Derry Labour Party, 1940), produced by the DLP with a foreword from Paddy Fox; see Public Record Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI), D2474/3/16. 22 Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, pp. 52–4. 23 Irish Times, 8 January 1945; Manchester Guardian, 14 June 1945; McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p. 6. 24 Derry Journal, 11 June 1945; Londonderry Sentinel, 12 June 1945; McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p. 7. 25 Brian Barton, ‘Relations between Westminster and Stormont during the Attlee premiership’, Irish Political Studies, vol. 7, no.  1, 1992, pp. 1–20; Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome business:  the Labour Party and the Irish question (London, Pluto, 1982), pp.  73–4; Edwards, ‘Social democracy and partition’, p.  596; Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry ­ Patterson, Northern Ireland, 1921–1994: political forces and social classes

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(London, Sherif, 1995), pp.  101–2; Enda Staunton, The nationalists of Northern Ireland, 1918–1973 (Blackrock, Dublin, Columba Press, 2001), pp. 158–9. 26 Derry Journal, 14 January 1946. A similar visit had been planned by future Labour minister and peer, Lord Longford, Frank Pakenham, when a prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford City in 1939, though at the invitation of local Nationalist Party members rather than the Derry Labour Party; see Manchester Guardian, 11 April 1939. 27 Bob Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland: British Labour and Irish nationalism, 1945–49’, in Tom Gallagher and James O’Connell (eds), Contemporary Irish studies (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 83, 88. 28 McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p. 8; Derry Journal, 16 September and 2, 9, 14 and 16 October 1946. 29 Derry Journal, 23 and 26 August 1946. 30 McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p. 7; Derry Journal, 27 and 30 April 1945. 31 Manchester Guardian, 18 September 1946. 32 Manchester Guardian, 30 September 1946; James Hinton, ‘Self-help and socialism:  the squatters’ movement of 1946’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 1988, pp. 100–26. 33 Derry Journal, 30 August and 18 September 1946. 34 Irish Times, 14 February 1947; Londonderry Sentinel, 18 February 1947. 35 Willie Deery, Springtown camp:  from the inside (Derry, Guildhall Press, 2010); Derry Journal, 6 June 2008. 36 Derry Journal, 9 and 20 June 1947. 37 Christopher Norton, ‘The Irish Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1949–1958’, Saothar, 21, 1996, pp.  48–9; Geoffrey Bing, House of Commons Parliamentary Debates, 16 May 1949, vol. 465, 65–71. 38 Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland’, p. 90. 39 E. Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn, Nationalism and socialism in twentieth-century Ireland (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1977), p. 208. 40 Edwards, ‘Social democracy and partition’, p. 598. 41 C. R. Attlee, As it happened (London, William Heinemann, 1954), p. 185. Herbert Morrison had also visited Brooke after a similar holiday over the border in 1946; see Manchester Guardian, 3 September 1946. 42 Irish Times, 2 December 1949. 43 Ronan Fanning, ‘Small states, large neighbours:  Ireland and the United Kingdom’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 9, 1998, pp.  26–7; Graham Walker, ‘Northern Ireland, British-Irish relations, and American concerns, 1942–56’, Twentieth-Century British History, vol. 18, no. 2, 2007, pp. 194–218. In some ways this is less the case with Russell Rees’s Labour and the Northern Ireland Problem, 1945–1951:  the missed opportunity (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2009), p. 24. 44 Irish Times, 9 April 1949; Londonderry Sentinel, 1 March 2012. 45 Francis Devine, ‘Reminiscence:  navigating a lone channel:  Stephen McGonagle, trade unionism and labour politics in Derry, 1914–1997’, Saothar, vol. 22, 1997, pp. 143–4; Derry Journal, 9 April 1952.

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46 McClenaghan, ‘Paddy Fox’, p.  9; Derry Journal, 11 October 1954; Londonderry Sentinel, 12 October 1954. 47 Irish Times, 1 April 1949. 48 People’s History Museum (PHM), Labour Party Archive (LPA), Box 12 of General Secretary Morgan Phillips’s papers, GS/NI/55iv, resolution no. 20 (September 1949 conference), GS/NI/100iii, v and vi (September 1950 conference). William Irwin and J. Leonard were the 1949 delegates. 49 Irish Times, 4 November 1954 and 2 January 1959; Derry Journal, 8 January 1959. 50 Desmond Fennell, ‘The Northern Catholic, part four:  friends and neighbours’, Irish Times, 8 May 1958, ‘The Northern Catholic, part five: people and politics’, Irish Times, 9 May 1958, and ‘The Northern Catholic, part six: putting politics on a new basis’, Irish Times, 10 May 1958. 51 Interview with Keith Lindley, 6 October 2007. 52 According to Keith Lindley, the LLP was effectively moribund by the early 1960s, and it was not until its reorganisation in 1965 and the injection of a new energy and activism, as well as the adoption of the ‘Derry Labour Party’ name (though officially it remained the LLP), that it began to show growth and focus. He also noted how the Belfast leadership of the NILP and its secretary, Douglas McIldoon, was very suspicious of the Derry Labour Party and felt it to be quite republican or nationalist; interview with Keith Lindley, 6 October 2007.

9 Reflections on aspects of Labour’s policy towards Northern Ireland, 1966–70: a personal narrative1 Kevin McNamara After my victory in the North Hull by-election on 27 January 1966, I took my seat in the House of Commons three days later. The first letter I received on the Message Board in the Members’ Lobby was from Paddy Byrne, the secretary of the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster (CDU), inviting me to join. I immediately accepted. The only mention of Ireland, north or south of the border, in the by-election campaign had come in the candidate’s customary letter from the prime minister, Harold Wilson, a reference to the recently negotiated trade treaty with the Irish Republic. It obviously meant a great deal to Wilson, but throughout the campaign, I never once heard it referred to by my opponents or by any of my prospective constituents. By June 1970, at the end of the next parliament, the riot-ridden six counties of Northern Ireland had dominated the headlines for nearly two years. Again, the Irish situation played little part in the June 1970 election campaign, although the streets of Belfast and Derry had seen major riots, with the British Army deployed to establish order and to preserve peace by separating the two warring communities, nationalist and unionist. Nobody asked why the government had apparently been caught so unaware by the developments in Northern Ireland, whether it should have been aware and whether there was any effective action that it could have taken to prevent the escalation of violence. With a view to addressing those questions, this chapter contains my reflections on the growing crisis in Northern Ireland, as someone who was at that time an idealistic, newly elected backbencher, confident in the ability of a Labour majority government using the democratic process within the United Kingdom to remedy perceived and obvious political and social grievances efficiently and with generosity. The Wilson administration during the 1960s was, without a doubt, culpable for failing to prevent what was to be a running sore in the politics of these islands for over three decades. It is necessary, therefore, to begin by examining how such an intellectually brilliant cabinet, the most outstanding of the twentieth century, could sleepwalk these islands into what are now euphemistically called ‘The Troubles’ – such a

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gentle, almost apologetic phrase, disguising over thirty years of murder, political repression, bombings, maimings, state collusion with ‘terrorists’ against other ‘terrorists’, shoot-to-kill policies, over 3,000 deaths and many thousands scarred mentally and physically. Yet it all stemmed from the refusal by the Wilson government to take early, decisive action and to insist that there should be common political standards throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. How could all of these intellectual giants with acute political antennae have allowed it all to happen? Labour ministers argued that they were unaware of the political discontent in the North, and that not even their civil servants had warned them of any problems on the horizon.2 The argument that the government had insufficient information does not, however, bear close examination. There were myriad sources, both within and without the Labour Party and the wider labour movement that were indicative of the increasing political unrest in Northern Ireland. The long list of political and social grievances was well known and, despite the efforts of the Stormont administration, increasingly well documented. Certainly, there were problems facing the incoming Wilson government: its slim majority; the battle to preserve sterling as a reserve currency and to prevent devaluation of the pound; industrial unrest and reorganisation; Rhodesian UDI; the continuing pressures of the Cold War; US pressure on Britain to become involved in Vietnam; the continuing withdrawal from empire; and the surrogate wars between East and West in Africa. These were all far higher up the agenda than Ulster, for which Walpole’s famous dictum, quieta non movere (‘Do not move ­settled things’), was the order of the day. Unfortunately for the ­government, Ulster was not sleeping, but fast awakening. The memoirs and published diaries of members of the Wilson government are as revealing for what they do not say about Northern Ireland before 1970 as for what they do say, which is very little. In his account of his first ministry, The Labour government 1964 to 1970: a personal record, Harold Wilson makes no mention of any information that he had of the situation in Northern Ireland prior to taking office in 1964;3 nor does his main biographer, Ben Pimlott.4 Yet his correspondence with, for example, the Campaign for Social Justice, show this not to be the case.5 Indeed, his replies actively encouraged those seeking the redress of grievances in Northern Ireland to believe that it would be obtained with the election of a Labour government.6 In Tony Benn’s Out of the wilderness diaries, he makes reference to the remarks made by deputy leader of the Labour Party, George Brown, who during a debate on immigration control and prejudice against foreigners in 1963, stated, ‘Deep down, there is the question of prejudice

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against Jews and I know it, and I know it because I am Irish’.7 Apart from that, there is no evidence of Brown’s having taken an active interest in Northern Irish matters before 1964. In his autobiography, he refers to having been brought up in the mixed community of Southwark, where ‘Irish politics figured large’. He claimed, moreover, that his grandfather came from Cork, and that he could ‘remember vividly being taken by my mother on an orange box to watch the funeral procession of Lord Mayor Terence McSweeney of Cork, who died on hunger strike in Brixton prison in 1919 [sic]’. The autobiography, In my way, makes no mention of the ‘Troubles’.8 Denis Healey, the Secretary of Defence, and the grandson of a Fenian, had long since made up his mind about Northern Ireland. In his autobiography, he recalls that while at Oxford in 1938, ‘I goggled at a debate on Ireland between Arthur Pyper, a pale faced Ulster Protestant and Dan Davin, a shaggy Irish New Zealander; it taught me all I have ever needed to know about the insolubility of Ulster’s problems’. ‘Again and again’ he would recall this undergraduate exchange, but his ignorance of the ‘Irish question’ remained and was later revealed ‘when my father stumped me by asking for the Labour Party’s policy on Irish unity in the 1945 election campaign’.9 Despite his great intellectual curiosity, Healey viewed Ulster’s problems as unsolvable, and best forgotten. Yet it was Healey who complained about the lack of intelligence regarding the situation in Northern Ireland when he, as Defence Secretary, and James Callaghan, the Home Secretary, were the two cabinet ministers best placed to obtain it. Early in 1966 intelligence reports supplied by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stated that 3,000 members or supporters of the IRA were training in thirty-four camps on the Irish Republic’s side of the border and were poised to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 Rising with attacks upon both Northern Ireland and Britain. These attacks did not materialise, but the reliability of such intelligence from the RUC was not questioned and a decision was made that MI5 should not be sent to Northern Ireland but should continue to rely upon the RUC Special Branch for intelligence. Nobody questioned the fact that the mainly Protestant RUC had a continuing vested interest in exaggerating the IRA threat.10 The only member of Wilson’s cabinet who proclaimed his Irishness was Lord Longford. As an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, in the 1920s, his decision to join the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) received much publicity in nationalist circles.11 Despite his great intellect and the network of influential friends that he established on both sides of the Irish Sea during his later career, he had no natural constituency within the Labour Party due to the fact that he was not a

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Commons member. But he was the only one of Wilson’s cabinet warning of the need to attend to Catholic grievances in Northern Ireland. His warnings were not heeded. The greatest disappointment in the cabinet was its only woman member, Barbara Castle. She had a great reputation for campaigning for the underprivileged and oppressed throughout the world. Her one visit to Ireland on a pony-trekking holiday in Kerry made a great impression upon her. After dinner one evening in the local hotel, her husband Ted, ‘daring as ever’, asked ‘the local lass’ sitting at the piano to play ‘The Sash My Father Wore’, which she did, records Castle, ‘without batting an eyelid, quickly parodying the words with their own anti-Orange ones. I  began to understand why people went to Ireland for a holiday’.12 In government, Castle was a member of the cabinet’s Northern Ireland Committee and, as such, had watched the unfolding of events in Northern Ireland; but rather than face up to dealing with the grievances, she preferred with other of her colleagues to put them on the long finger. Even as late as May 1969, when tensions were rising in the North, she believed that, contrary to all the evidence, the role of the government ‘should be to encourage Northern Ireland to solve her own problems and to try and prevent ourselves being saddled with intervention’.13 It would be wrong to belittle Barbara Castle’s many achievements in forwarding the equality agenda, but as with so many of my colleagues, including myself, we were all great at pointing to the beams in other people’s eyes, while neglecting the motes in our own. The further from England, the greater our concerns about the indignities heaped upon others. We could be enraged, if there was cause to be, at the plight of the native population in Tierra del Fuego, campaign against apartheid in South Africa, and yet be oblivious to what was happening in part of the United Kingdom. Castle put it precisely into context, when speaking to Paul Rose MP, the first chairman of the CDU: ‘I can understand a young member [MP] getting involved in Vietnam and Rhodesia, but not Northern Ireland.’14 She warned against ‘indefinite embroilment in Northern Ireland’.15 Of the other two great diarists in the cabinet, Richard Crossman and Tony Benn, only the latter, quoting Brown, mentions Northern Ireland before 1964. Roy Jenkins, Home Secretary and a key member of the cabinet’s Northern Ireland Committee, makes no mention of Northern Ireland before 1970 in his autobiography, A life at the centre.16 He, too, did not wish to become bogged down in Irish affairs. The conclusion must be drawn, therefore, that the majority of Wilson’s cabinet ministers were basically not interested in the Northern Ireland question, because, like Healey, they either believed it to be unsolvable or

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could see no political gain and only grief in being involved. This reluctance to intervene at an early stage and to consequently leave reform initiatives to a reluctant Unionist administration meant that when intervention did occur, successive Westminster administrations were always on the back foot, unable to control events because of the early procrastinations. With the exception of Healey, Jenkins and Lord Longford, all the other cabinet members mentioned were elected annually to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party. The Parliamentary Labour Party was represented on the NEC by its ex officio members, the leader and deputy leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Harold Wilson and George Brown, respectively. About a third of Wilson’s cabinet were members of the NEC. The Home Policy Subcommittee of the NEC was chaired by Wilson until he became Party leader. It received regular reports from the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), which received an annual subsidy from the British Labour Party. It was not affiliated to the Labour Party, although it was invited to attend its annual conference. The secretary of the Home Policy Committee, Peter Shore, when elected to the Commons, became Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Harold Wilson, the new prime minister. Shore was from a Liverpool unionist background. The close relationship between him and Sam Napier, the secretary of the NILP, meant that the Home Policy Subcommittee was not troubled a great deal with Northern Ireland business. With Wilson as prime minister and Shore as his PPS, the NILP had a direct channel of communication with the centre of government. Its cautious approach to reform in the North was in tune with Wilson’s own inclinations. Following a visit to Belfast in May 1965, Shore wrote to Napier, ‘I did report to the Prime Minister the substance of our conversation over dinner last Friday and the points made, to use the phrase, were certainly listened to’.17 After the proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1948, the NILP split, the majority favouring the maintenance of the Union with Great Britain. From that time, the British Labour government’s efforts, in so far as it was interested, were aimed at strengthening the NILP’s organisation, which was never very strong outside Belfast. Its membership was mainly based on the Protestant-dominated trade unions, many of which were affiliated to both the British Trade Union Congress and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. It was a slow and difficult task for the NILP to build up cross-community support, particularly amongst the Catholic working class. Sir Charles Brett, former chairman of the NILP, wrote, ‘If we shouted too little, we should forfeit the support of those moderate constructive Catholics willing to join the party, despite its commitment to partition, in substantial numbers. If we shouted too loud, we should

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arouse Protestants fear, which had been half dormant, and precipitate a speedy return to the politics of violence’.18 Although avowedly non-sectarian, the NILP had been lukewarm in its response to a 1965 conference organised by the Belfast Trades Council to discuss civil rights. Its insistence that any conclusions reached by the conference should be referred back to the party’s executive effectively killed off the initiative. Its policy statements regularly condemned discrimination, but the only major reform upon which it concentrated was a need for a common franchise on the British model for Northern Ireland. It was the single issue upon which both working-class communities could agree. In December 1963, the NILP’s draft manifesto for the 1964 UK general election was considered by the NEC, having been referred to it by the Home Policy Subcommittee. The manifesto declared that the NILP believed in the fundamental rights of human beings, without regard to barriers of religion, race or colour, but it gave no indication of how it was to apply that admirable principle to the economic, social and political scene in Northern Ireland. It had been the failure to support that principle that led to the NILP being crushed by Unionist prime minister, Terence O’Neill, in the 1965 Stormont general elections, losing half its seats. The Sunday opening of parks in Belfast had long been NILP policy. Yet when the issue came before Belfast City Council early in 1964, it was lost by one vote, three Protestant NILP councillors voting against the opening of the swings. Catholic support for the NILP dwindled. In Great Britain, within the wider Labour movement, there was agitation in trade union branches and constituency Labour parties for attention to be paid to discrimination in Northern Ireland. The main protagonists were members of the Connolly Association. The driving force behind that organisation was the Marxist, Desmond Greaves, a Birkenhead-born chemist who gathered about him a group of mainly left-wing Irish men and women, trade unionists, members of the Communist and Labour parties. Greaves argued that the only way to obtain reform in the North was to insist that the Westminster parliament, as distinct from any particular British government at the time, should examine the working of the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Section 75 of which declared that, regardless of the establishment of the parliament of Northern Ireland, ‘the supreme authority of the parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters and things in Ireland, and every part thereof’.19 Using this power, Greaves argued that the Stormont government could be forced by the Westminster parliament to introduce political reform.20 The question not answered, though, was how the

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Westminster parliament could act without the support of the government of the day?21 Greaves argued against the abolition of Stormont because this could lead to the closer integration of Northern Ireland with Great Britain. However, he saw in Article 75 the opportunity to force the issue of reform, despite the convention established in 1923 by the Speaker of the House of Commons, J. H. Whitley, which prohibited questions on Northern Ireland in Westminster.22 Helped by the good offices of Fenner Brockway MP, the Association affiliated to the Movement for Colonial Freedom, which brought it into the mainstream of left-wing politics in Britain. It was also an active member of the National Council for Civil Liberties. Sean Redmond, secretary of the Association, was elected to the executive of both organisations. It was becoming increasingly influential. An Early Day Motion (EDM) appeared on the Commons Order Paper in March 1964, calling for the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into allegations of religious discrimination in Northern Ireland.23 Its principal signatories were Fenner Brockway, Bob Mellish, Alan Fitch and Jeremy Thorpe. It attracted over seventy signatures, mostly Labour. Lobbied by members of the Association, shadow cabinet member Patrick Gordon Walker agreed to raise the matter with his colleagues in the shadow cabinet and to seek approval for an early Commons debate on Northern Ireland. There is no record that he actually did so. However, the Association took the credit when in 1964 a Labour-initiated debate on the Northern Ireland economy did take place. At the onset of the long-delayed general election in October 1964, the Association was pleased at the result of its continuous years of lobbying on Northern Ireland. It felt that it had received an undertaking for comprehensive legislation covering race, religion and gender discrimination and that the new government would intervene actively to promote reform in Northern Ireland. They were to be sorely disappointed. The 1964 Labour manifesto only promised legislation on racial discrimination and racial incitement within Great Britain. The Connolly Association was not the only group to be disappointed. In January 1964, the Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) was formed in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. This was a step change in the politics of the nationalist minority. Essentially a middle-class organisation, it had no confidence in achieving any meaningful reform through the Stormont government. It sought a wider audience outside Ireland to air its evidence-based grievances of religious discrimination in Northern Ireland. It took its campaign to Westminster, the Council of Europe and the United States. Its forensic examination of discrimination in local government was particularly damning. Like the Connolly Association,

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it based its campaign on the overall responsibility of the Westminster parliament for the good government of Northern Ireland under Section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act. Combatting discrimination was ultimately the responsibility of the Westminster parliament; it should shoulder that responsibility. In February 1964, the CSJ published its most influential pamphlet, Northern Ireland: the plain truth. It was distributed widely within the British Isles, Europe and, particularly, North America. That forensic examination of religious discrimination in the North, relying not on anecdotal evidence, but on facts and figures, was devastating. Wilson was aware of this publication, having been contacted by Mrs Patricia McCluskey, the secretary of the CSJ. In a letter to her, he wrote reassuringly, ‘I agree with you as to the importance of the issues with which your campaign is concerned, and I can assure you that a Labour government would do everything in its power to see that infringements of justice are efficiently dealt with’.24 So convinced was she of his good intentions that, following the victory of Labour in the general election later that year, she informed one of his advisors: We have been greatly pleased and encouraged by the achievement of your party at the General Election … Not for generations has there been such hope in this community; and this hope has been created by Mr. Wilson’s actions in recognising the disabilities under which the minority in Northern Ireland has to work. The Prime Minister, in letters to our organisation, has been so sympathetic, and has given us such heart that it is impossible to assess the amount of good will already generated here towards the new Labour Government at Westminster.25

But the devil was in the detail. Wilson’s ultimate reply indicated that to achieve this end, the government would work through the NILP. This presupposed a major breakthrough on the parliamentary scene at either Stormont or Westminster by the NILP, which was never on the cards. The CSJ concentrated on the promise of Labour doing ‘everything in its power’ and ignored the caveat that implicitly accepted the convention of non-interference with the transferred powers. After the 1964 election, struggling with a majority of three, Wilson’s government might be forgiven for not seeing reform in Ulster as its major concern. The evidence shows that what it could not do was to claim ignorance of the quagmire in Northern Ireland. Some might ignore it or tiptoe around it, others think it insoluble, still others think it could be improved by gentle pressure upon the Stormont government, but what cannot be denied is that the gradual breakdown of law and order in

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Northern Ireland started under Wilson’s administration and its refusal to grasp the nettle of challenging the Unionist hegemony. In the period between October 1964 and the general election in June 1966, the Wilson government came under increasing pressure from its restless, mainly newly elected, backbenchers to intervene in Northern Ireland. Early in February 1965, in fulfilment of his pre-election promise, Paul Rose called a meeting in the Commons to establish the CDU. Rose became chairman, Fenner Brockway (who had lost his seat at Slough), president, and the energetic Paddy Byrne, secretary. To make the point that, whatever the opinion of its individual members as to the future of North–South relations on the island of Ireland, the CDU’s sole objective was for civil rights and an end to discrimination in Northern Ireland. And to that end, the Red Hand flag of Ulster was prominently draped over the table behind which the speakers sat, at all meetings at Westminster. Byrne put the organisation’s agenda plainly when he stated that it was concerned Only with obtaining full British democratic standards for the people of Northern Ireland, to which they are entitled as British subjects. We hold that the ‘Border’ is irrelevant to the issue … As far as the CDU is concerned, the Tory-Unionists who rule Northern Ireland can build a wall around the six-counties if they wish, but we do insist that all citizens on the British side of the wall enjoy full British benefits.26

The CDU’s aim was to seek to raise the problems of Ulster in the House and to break the parliamentary convention. It had a very high mountain to climb and was not encouraged by the declaration on unionism made by the new Labour Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice: ‘From England, we watch it, we admire it, and we rejoice in it.’27 This statement was greeted with horror by the young, idealistic Labour intake. Again, more unsuccessful attempts were made to raise the social and political situation in Northern Ireland on the floor of the House. In February 1966 an EDM was tabled headed by Stan Orme, Paul Rose and Michael Maguire calling for a Royal Commission to enquire into the working of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and the Ireland Act 1949. It secured nearly sixty signatures. Rose’s attempts to extend the proposed race relations legislation to Northern Ireland were rebuffed by Soskice. Unionist ministers used this rebuff as evidence that the British government did not believe that there was any discrimination in Northern Ireland. Following the 1966 election, the first encouragement the CDU received was the appearance of the new Republican Labour MP for West Belfast, Gerry Fitt. An ex-seaman, a veteran of the Russian convoys,

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self-educated, Fitt represented the Dock Division in the Stormont parliament and sat on Belfast City Council. Witty, sociable, with a fund of stories, he became an immediate hit with the Labour benches and the Parliamentary Lobby. A man of physical and moral courage, he was a great mixer, but a political loner who lacked the discipline and inclination to act as a team member and build a solid political foundation outside his own Docks constituency. As a founder member and first chairman of the SDLP, he found constraints placed upon his shoulders frustrating. Although urged by many to apply for the Labour whip, even assuming that it would escape the veto of the NILP, he wisely refused to do so. Accepting the whip would have made him just one of over 300 Labour MPs. As an independent, he was a free agent, able to pursue his own agenda. His Maiden Speech’s accounts of discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland were from his own direct experiences, unlike the CDU members whose reports were at best second-hand. It was this authenticity delivered with wit and passion that so infuriated the Ulster Unionists. His maiden speech completely ignored the convention. As parliamentary custom, it could not be interrupted by other members and Fitt took full advantage of the situation. It was not to happen again. He, too, was soon to be gagged by the convention. He used the Members’ Tea Room, the Strangers’ Bar and above all the Division Lobbies to buttonhole ministers and members. Most ministers expressed sympathy with him, but put their trust in the ability of Captain Terence O’Neill to persuade his Unionist party to carry out the necessary reforms. The phrase ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ immediately springs to mind. The skirmishes continued on the floor of the House but the Speaker and ministers stood firm. What the convention did not prohibit, as has already been demonstrated by the employment of EDMs, was the use of the order papers of the House to publicise the grievances of the minority in Northern Ireland. In 1967 an EDM headed by Gerry Fitt, Paul Rose and John Lee, calling for an examination of the uses of the Special Powers Act, gained almost ninety signatures. The 1966 Finance bill, clause 48, made provision for the payment of pensions to senators in the Stormont parliament. I drafted sixteen amendments to it, all of which would have delayed such payments until the grievances outlined in the amendments had been remedied. The significance of these amendments was that they were signed not only by the usual CDU suspects, but by a broad cross-section of backbench members of the parliamentary party. As anticipated, they were not called for debate. The CDU was increasingly frustrated, aware of the gathering storm clouds above Northern Ireland, but with party leaders seemingly unaware and uncaring. In January 1968, the young Nationalist Stormont MP, Austin

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Currie, paid a visit to Westminster and held discussions with Orme, Rose and me. We all expressed despair at making any progress in Westminster, unless events in Northern Ireland forced the government’s hand. Currie agreed with our diagnosis, which matched his own, and he returned to Northern Ireland to look for opportunities for extra-parliamentary activity, public demonstrations and possibly civil disobedience. On 5 October 1968, Fitt effectively broke the convention when the RUC broke his head during a civil rights demonstration in Derry. Photographs of the incident and footage of his face streaming with blood appeared on television screens throughout the world. The Commons could not and would not now be gagged, and over time the Speaker and government accepted the new situation. The government accepted it, but still Wilson chose to act by putting pressure on the Unionist government. Where once early decisive action could have forced the pace of reform, now, as a result of procrastination at Westminster, the battle lines were forming on the streets. Against the wishes of the CDU and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the threat to partition and the future of the Union were raised by Ian Paisley and loyalist extremists who claimed that the demand for civil rights was a subterfuge. It mattered not that the NICRA and the CDU insisted that they were merely looking for equality between the citizens of the North and parity with the rest of United Kingdom; the ground was moving away from under them. Many former Unionist supporters of the civil rights movement began to fall away. When, in the aftermath of the riots that followed the Apprentice Boys’ march in Derry on 12 August 1969, British troops were finally put on the streets, the British government did intervene to accelerate the pace of reform, again using the mechanism of the discredited Unionist administration. But it was too late. The Wilson government fell in June 1970 and the downward spiral of events Northern Ireland accelerated. It all could have been avoided. Granted, there were difficulties for Wilson’s almost minority government of 1964–66, but after the general election in 1966 he had a large enough majority and the moral authority to force through an immediate change in the franchise in Northern Ireland. It was not controversial – he had the support of the NILP – and, while challenging the Unionist domination of Derry, would not have greatly affected the political scene in Northern Ireland. He failed to do so, agreeing that the basic reform be postponed until a complete reform of local government had been carried out in the North. The day that Captain Terence O’Neill resigned was the day the Unionist Party agreed to the reform. Wilson gambled on O’Neill and lost. Despite his overtures to the Republic, O’Neill was not a reformer. He only aimed to make economy more efficient. He could not carry any meaningful civil rights

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reforms through his party. His aim was not to change the status quo, but to bring Catholics and nationalists to accept it. His prejudices were hidden under a veneer of good breeding, and they stereotyped Catholics as much as any Shankill loyalist: It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and good healthcare they will live like Protestants because they will see their neighbours with cars and television sets. They will refuse to have 18 children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear his children on national assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness, they will live like Protestants, in spite of the authoritarian nature of their church.28

Wilson could have justified intervention on at least two other occasions with the support of all the major parties in the Commons and moderate unionist opinion in the North. The first was when the People’s Democracy march from Belfast to Derry was attacked on 4 January 1969 at Burntollet Bridge, near Derry. The route taken by the marchers took them through some heavily populated Protestant areas, and at Burntollet Bridge they were ambushed by a Protestant mob, containing many later identified as B-Specials, police reservists. Members of the RUC some distance away refused to intervene. It was a complete breakdown of law and order by those sworn to uphold the peace on the Queen’s highway. It was a catastrophe for O’Neill’s policies. On television he blamed the marchers and lost his liberal reputation. Those few Catholics who had retained some confidence in the RUC, lost it. The second and most obvious opportunity for intervention, a real turning point, was when British troops were deployed on the streets of Derry after the riots that followed the Apprentice Boys’ march in August of that year. Wilson claimed that he was in favour of the march being prohibited, but ‘unwiser counsels prevailed’.29 He was only the prime minister! Paul Rose, Russell Kerr, Stan Orme and I, at the behest of John Hume, then the recently elected MP for Foyle, had a meeting with Callaghan before the march, during which we urged him to cancel it. We feared bloodshed. Tempers on both sides of the sectarian divide were rising. But Callaghan refused, telling us that Chichester Clark, O’Neill’s successor, had assured him that the march would pass peacefully, and, if not, the RUC could deal with it. We left the meeting depressed and subsequent events confirmed our worst fears. This was the occasion for the Labour government to act decisively. Troops were deployed on the streets of Derry and Belfast, and tear gas was used for the first time in a UK city. The RUC was completely demoralised and discredited. Public opinion throughout the islands would have supported the suspension of Stormont, the imposition

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of direct rule and legislation for a comprehensive reform programme in the North. Wilson and Callaghan again chose not to impose reform but to use as their instrument the discredited Stormont government. Thirty years later, after a military impasse, the British government negotiated with, and legitimised, the ‘men of violence’ who were scarcely on the scene at the inception of the CDU and, at best, were minor players in NICRA; men who had an entirely different agenda from those who had merely wanted similar social and political rights in the North of Ireland as those enjoyed on the island of Great Britain. Refusing to heed the warnings of the moderates, successive British governments were forced to recognise and eventually negotiate with the ‘men of violence’. It need not have been so. In 1899, Michael Davitt, the Fenian turned constitutionalist, resigned from Westminster – or from what he called ‘parliamentary penal servitude’30 – in protest against the British war effort in the second Anglo-Boer war. On leaving the House of Commons, he stated: ‘When I go, I shall tell my boys, “I have been some five years in this House, and the conclusion with which I  leave it is that no cause, however just, will find support, no wrong, however pressing or apparent, will find redress here, unless backed up by force”. This is a message which I shall take from this assembly to my sons.’31 Sadly, that too, with regard to Ireland, has been my message to my children. Notes 1 This chapter is largely based on the First John Kennedy Lecture (unpublished), which I delivered at the Institute of Irish Studies, Liverpool University, on 8 October 2008. 2 James Callaghan, A house divided: the dilemma of Northern Ireland (London, HarperCollins, 1973), p. 1. Callaghan’s account of his time as Home Secretary records that his first red box contained no briefing paper on Northern Ireland. 3 Harold Wilson, The Labour government, 1964–70:  a personal record (London, Michael Joseph, 1971). 4 Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London, HarperCollins, 1993). 5 See Northern Ireland: the plain truth (published by CSJ, February 1964). 6 Thomas Hennessey, A history of Northern Ireland (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1997), p. 134. 7 Tony Benn, Out of the wilderness diaries, 1963–67 (London, Arrow, 1988), p. 77. 8 George Brown, In my way: George Brown memoirs (London, Littlehampton Book Services, 1971), p. 25. Terence MacSwiney, in fact, died in October 1920. 9 Denis Healey, The time of my life (London, Politico’s Publishing, 2006), pp. 30, 342–3.

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10 Peter Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 18–20. 11 ‘Earl joins ISDL’, Liverpool Catholic Herald, 26 November 1921. 12 Barbara Castle, Fighting all the way (London and Basingstoke, Pan Books, 1994), p. 393. 13 Barbara Castle, The Castle diaries (London, Macmillan, 1990), p. 701. 14 Paul Rose, Backbencher’s dilemma (London, Frederick Muller, 1981), p. 179. 15 Castle, The Castle diaries, p. 70. 16 Roy Jenkins, A life at the centre (London, Politico’s Publishing, 2006). 17 London School of Economics (LSE), Shore Papers, MS Shore 6/14. Shore to Napier, 19 May 1965. 18 Sir Charles Brett, Long shadows cast before: nine lives in Ulster, 1625–1977 (Edinburgh, John Bartholomew, 1977), p. 133. 19 Quoted in J.  J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985:  politics and society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 44. 20 For a more detailed discussion on the role of Greaves and the Connolly Association in the civil rights agitation, see Anthony Coughlan, C. Desmond Greaves, 1913–1988:  an obituary essay (Dublin, Irish Labour History Society, 1991); Sean Redmond, Desmond Greaves and the origins of the civil rights movement (London, Connolly Publications, 2000). 21 What was lacking was a parliamentary mechanism independent of the government to examine parliament’s responsibility. A similar provision existed in the Statute of Westminster, whereby the British parliament had exclusive power over the Canadian constitution. This was to protect Canadian provinces from any change in the Canadian constitution being imposed upon them by the federal government. In 1980 the federal government sought to repatriate the residual British powers to Canada. Some provinces objected. By that time in the Commons, the new system of departmental select committees had been introduced. I persuaded Sir Anthony Kershaw, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I  was the senior Labour member, to use the Committee to examine the Canadian government’s proposals and to prevent the British government from just nodding them through without reference to parliament. The decision did not please either the British or Canadian governments. The latter refused to give evidence to the Committee. 22 Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland, p. 20. 23 An EDM is an expression of usually backbench, rarely governmental, opinion on a particular matter deemed by its signatories to be of sufficient importance to be debated at an early day. It is seldom debated, unless it was originally inspired by the government of the day or the official opposition, and is chosen by one of them for debate. 24 Quoted in Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland, p. 11. 25 Quoted in Hennessey, A history of Northern Ireland, p. 134. 26 Quoted in Hennessey, A history of Northern Ireland, p. 135.

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27 Belfast Telegraph, 29 April 1965, quoted in Rose, How the troubles came to Northern Ireland, p. 26. 28 Belfast Telegraph, 10 May 1969. 29 Wilson, The Labour government, p. 692. 30 Quoted in Laurence Marley, Michael Davitt: freelance radical and frondeur (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2007), p. 203. 31 Hansard, House of Commons, 25 October 1899, vol. 77, col. 623.

10 The Labour government and police primacy in Northern Ireland, 1974–79 Stuart C. Aveyard British security policy in Northern Ireland changed substantially under the Labour government of 1974–79. At the heart of this change was an elevating of the role of the police at the expense of the army and a greater focus on operating through the courts, ending detention without trial. Inherent in this shift was a belief that heavy-handed operations by the British Army in the early years of the conflict and the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971 had alienated the Catholic community. The primacy of the police and criminalisation were held to be less alienating and an approach that would undermine support for paramilitary groups, both Republican and Loyalist. These concepts outlasted the Labour government. This raises a series of questions, such as whether the policy arose from a distinct set of Labour values that contrasted with those of their Conservative predecessors, whether the Labour Party was itself united in taking this approach, whether civil servants and other interested groups were major influences on the policy and whether the shifting context and conditions of the conflict played a major part in the change. Also important to address is whether this new policy was an appropriate or successful one. Labour ministers suffered few political constraints at Westminster, with the party’s backbenchers exerting little influence, but the bipartisan relationship was weakened from 1975 once Airey Neave became the Conservatives’ Northern Ireland spokesman. Most important was the interaction between ministers, civil servants and senior members of the British security forces. The army proved particularly resistant to the changes but Northern Ireland Office (NIO) officials reacted with a commitment to the Labour government’s policy that deepened over time. Merlyn Rees, appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in March 1974, told the Commons that the Labour government’s policies would ‘be firmly based on those followed by our predecessors in office’. On the political side, he emphasised his support for the Sunningdale

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Agreement and the power-sharing executive established following it. Privately, doubts were expressed by Rees and the cabinet that the executive could survive the anti-Sunningdale United Ulster Unionist Council success in winning eleven of twelve seats in the February general election. They concluded, however, that the policy inherited from the Conservatives was the least bad option and worth committing to.1 There was, however, a reappraisal of security policy, albeit one that continued the pragmatic line of the Labour frontbench in opposition. Rees circulated proposals for changes in the structure and organisation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the tightening of firearm laws, an inquiry into security legislation by Labour peer Lord Gardiner, a review of the army’s role, phased releases of those detained without trial and the legalisation of Provisional Sinn Féin (PSF) and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). The RUC changes were merely practical and were already in hand. The proposal to legalise PSF and the UVF was justified as a logical extension of the principle behind the Conservatives’ legalisation of Official Sinn Féin.2 These changes may well have occurred regardless of the party in power. Other elements of the proposals reflected the distinct concerns and priorities of the new ministers. After internment without trial was introduced in August 1971, Labour leader, Harold Wilson, merely criticised the nature of the initial swoop rather than the principle behind it, leading backbench MPs to force a parliamentary division in opposition to both the Conservative government and their own party’s frontbench response. One of the leaders of this division was Stanley Orme, appointed Minister of State for Northern Ireland in March 1974. Once in office, Orme was willing to join Rees in signing detention orders because of an expectation that the practice would be gradually brought to an end.3 The gradualist approach was also adopted for security legislation, which the frontbench had also opposed in detail rather than in principle. When the Emergency Provisions bill passed through parliament in 1973, the Labour frontbench opposed certain clauses, preferring, for instance, that non-jury courts be presided over by three judges rather than one and resisting some of the relaxations to rules on admissible evidence.4 Most important for the future was Rees’s emphasis that ‘the cornerstone of security policy should be a progressive increase in the role of the civilian law enforcement agencies in Northern Ireland’.5 This was initially more an aspiration than a policy; little was said about how to reach a point where military forces would have a lesser role. In May 1974 the Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) sought to bring down the power-sharing executive with a campaign of intimidation and strikes in essential services. The Labour government and Rees in

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particular have been criticised for failing to break the strike but they faced serious practical problems with using troops to intervene in skilled professions, as had also been the case during conventional industrial disputes in Great Britain. The scale of intimidation, the number of roadblocks and the army’s preoccupation with defeating republicans contributed to the UWC’s ability to disrupt economic life. Compounding these problems, Wilson made a disastrous speech portraying the strikers as ‘spongers’, provoking unionists further. Sunningdale collapsed and direct rule returned.6 In security policy terms, Westminster did not pose much of a problem. Prior to his appointment, Rees had expressed fears of ‘the powerful forces’ of Catholic Scotland and north-west England in the Labour Party, saying, ‘we would have great difficulty in running Ireland if there were a Labour Government, of that there is not the slightest doubt’.7 In office, however, he experienced very little pressure from Labour backbenchers. In July, Kevin McNamara attacked Rees for continuing detention without trial and opposed the renewal of security legislation. Rees replied that the introduction of internment was a mistake but the system had been changed and many internees released.8 Only eighteen Labour MPs opposed the legislation.9 The low numbers reflect how little concern there was at Westminster about juryless trials and the use of detention in Northern Ireland. The Conservatives took a relatively uncritical position. Ian Gilmour, Rees’s Conservative shadow, spoke very little and merely stated his support for security legislation in a December debate.10 The interviews conducted by the Gardiner commission show cautious support for ending detention on the part of senior civil servants in the NIO, but resistance from the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Northern Ireland, Frank King. For the NIO permanent under-secretary, Frank Cooper, detention could not end at a stroke and political circumstances would have to be taken into account, but ‘one must proceed on the basis of aiming to end detention’ (a cautious approach not dissimilar to that of Rees).11 Frank King, however, told Gardiner that detention was vital to the British Army because of the necessity of catching Provisional IRA (PIRA) leaders, who planned operations but did not carry them out.12 At the annual Twelfth parades Unionists called for a ‘third force’. The Official Unionist, John Taylor, called for a 20,000-strong home guard, while Ian Paisley claimed it was Protestants’ ‘right to arm ourselves and to protect our homes and property’.13 Rees rejected the idea, saying a loyalist militia would bring Northern Ireland closer to civil war.14 The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) was angry with Labour, however, claiming that it was not doing enough to end detention and that

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the army were deliberately harassing the Catholic population in order to build up support for the RUC.15 Despite this, Rees was able to make some, albeit very limited, progress towards his objectives. In June the army opposed large-scale releases but said it would not object to freeing forty particular individuals.16 Between 1 May and 22 December 1974 253 detainees were released but, crucially, 182 new detention orders signed.17 In September, Rees also announced an expansion in the RUC regular force and the RUC Reserve, raising the establishment target for the regulars from 5,500 to 6,500 (a long-term aspiration as the number of regular policemen at this time stood at roughly 4,500) and the reserve force from 2,000 to 4,000, with up to 400 full-time female reserves (a new entity altogether) and an increase in male full-time reserves from 350 to 1,000. Unionists cautiously welcomed the proposals but SDLP member, Seamus Mallon, branded them ‘idiotic’.18 On 20 December the Provisional IRA Army Council ordered a temporary suspension of operations. It promised a permanent ceasefire if the British government responded satisfactorily. After a fortnight extension the ceasefire collapsed but returned again on an indefinite basis after the establishment of dialogue between British representatives and the PIRA. A  number of recent articles have focused on this dialogue.19 Ó Dochartaigh in particular has suggested that it was a missed opportunity for peace. He emphasises both Republican and British flexibility in contemplating radical departures in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland.20 To the contrary, however, the British government remained committed to indefinite direct rule until mainstream Nationalist and Unionist parties were willing to agree a political settlement.21 While ‘withdrawal’ had multiple meanings, the difference between military withdrawal and an internal settlement (the British preference) and unilateral withdrawal leading to an all-Ireland state (the Republican preference) amounts to the difference between defeat and victory for the PIRA. The ambiguity in using the term ‘withdrawal’ in discussions could only serve to be constructive for a limited time. To better understand the dynamics of the ceasefire and the motivations of the Labour government it is necessary to turn to the security context. Republicans went on ceasefire from a position of weakness. The killing of twenty-one people in the PIRA’s bombing of two pubs in Birmingham in November 1974 was a key influence. Before the bombings occurred, however, the NIO were already conscious of the PIRA’s weak position and produced plans for a ceasefire. There were sharp disagreements between NIO officials and the army’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier Garrett. The NIO proposed to respond with a reduced level of military activity, an all-Ireland conference, the end of detention without trial and ‘some

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move’ on special category prisoners. Garrett insisted they should concede less: he proposed a more gradual approach on all of these points alongside a demand that the PIRA cease all violence, accept policing and respond well to an arms amnesty. The NIO view formed the basis of the plan Rees outlined to ministerial colleagues. He wanted to phase out detention within a year, reduce the army’s role by phases, extend policing and end special category status. This formed the basis of security policy for the remainder of the ceasefire and left Rees and the Labour government with the challenge of charting a difficult path between the desires of British Army officers and PIRA leaders supporting the ceasefire.22 While seeking a renewal of the ceasefire, Rees told the Commons: ‘Once I am satisfied that violence has come to a permanent end, I shall be prepared to speed up the rate of releases with a view to releasing all detainees.’23 The use of the word ‘permanent’ implies a tougher line than the one ultimately pursued; for the vast majority of the ceasefire the latter were maintained in spite of Provisional IRA killings because of the Labour government’s keenness to be rid of detention. Differences between senior army officers and the NIO on detention and the profile of the army were exacerbated by the ceasefire. Once it began, troops were instructed to reduce patrols and only make arrests where charges could be brought before the courts, while house searches and head-checks were only to occur when in hot pursuit after a clear break of the ceasefire.24 British soldiers could not help but chafe at such restrictions and their frustration was further compounded by the dialogue with the Provisionals. Of particular concern to the army was the agreement on a mechanism for local contact between the PIRA and the NIO to prevent incidents or localised grievances triggering a collapse of the ceasefire. The British established seven incident centres in February 1975, manned by civil servants who could take phone calls from local Republicans. Combined with the dialogue between the Provisionals and British representatives, this secured an indefinite PIRA ceasefire but at the expense of raising PSF’s position in the community. It meant that the army were told of Republican objections to minor operations, leaving a feeling that civil servants favoured Republicans over British troops. As one NIO official observed, the army ‘were not used to being led by the NIO in an area which so closely affects their interests’.25 PSF, seeing an opportunity to build a community role, established its own centres. The NIO had to persuade the army to ‘lay off’ them to maintain the ceasefire.26 As the ceasefire stumbled, senior army officers were inclined to respond aggressively while the NIO was increasingly converted to a softer approach regardless of the ceasefire. Rees told other Labour

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ministers that if they could hold the ceasefire in place he would progressively end detention and ‘lower the army profile while seeking to politicise the Provisional IRA through indirect talks’. He recognised the limitations on this last point, observing: ‘The Provisional leadership is still fighting the 800-year war against the English and are unlikely ever to abandon their objective of getting us out of Ireland.’ Rather than negotiating an end to the conflict, greater hope lay with playing on the divisions within the PIRA Army Council while removing practices that alienated nationalists.27 Limited as they were, the hopes placed in the ceasefire could be judged optimistic and it certainly appeared farcical to many outside the government. In April 1975 the Provisionals claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Belfast city centre and in May they killed a policeman in Derry, arguing that these attacks were justified by provocation.28 The ceasefire proceeded to fray at the edges with bombings in Derry and the killing of four soldiers and two policemen in July.29 On 1 September the PIRA’s South Armagh Brigade killed five Protestant civilians at an Orange Hall, claiming it under a cover name.30 As a result of the conflict, 267 people were killed in 1975, compared with 304 in the previous year.31 Although the violence was markedly more sectarian and communal, with Loyalist paramilitaries contributing a greater proportion than before, this made a mockery of the ceasefire. Rees continued to release detainees and sought to maintain the army’s lower profile to keep the Provisionals from fully resuming its military campaign. The GOC complained in May that ‘the ceasefire itself was achieving nothing’. He wanted detainee releases slowed and new detentions approved.32 Frank Cooper defended Rees’s policy in strong terms:  ‘the pattern of past security policy – in crude terms the army v the IRA and the RUC v the loyalists with totally different procedures  – has imposed on us a situation which makes a political solution or even political progress difficult if not impossible.’33 The ceasefire also made for a less consensual situation at Westminster, particularly after the fall of Edward Heath as Conservative leader. Airey Neave replaced Ian Gilmour as a reward for managing Margaret Thatcher’s leadership campaign. His elevation saw a more critical tone on Northern Ireland. In May, Neave attacked the release of detainees, and in June he demanded a reaffirmation that the army would stay.34 As the ceasefire deteriorated in the summer and autumn, the Conservatives pressed for a tough response. On 21 and 22 September twenty bomb attacks were carried out by the PIRA and claimed by its Belfast brigade.35 More followed in October and November, with the addition of violent feuding between the Official and Provisional IRA as well as killings by

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Loyalist paramilitaries, leading to the re-proscription of the UVF. Rees stuck to his plans, restating his desire to end detention ‘both because of the present success in bringing people before the courts … and because there is a price to be paid for detention … It is a fertile ground for recruitment to the paramilitaries’. The initial impulses of 1974 calcified into a commitment to treating political violence as criminal violence. Rees insisted that ‘the full processes of the law are a much more effective deterrent’.36 Ending special category status for paramilitary prisoners was a logical extension of this. To treat paramilitaries as ordinary criminals meshed with the emphasis on the police and the courts but it was difficult to implement until the building of new prisons at Maghaberry and the Maze made cellular accommodation possible. Rees initially hoped that the status could be ended by granting most of the privileges to ordinary criminals (though not the right to refuse work).37 This idea was abandoned, however, at least in part because of the problems it might create for the Home Office in dealing with ordinary criminals in Great Britain’s prisons. In November 1975, with the ceasefire essentially over, Rees committed to phasing out the status from 1 March 1976.38 On 24 November, Neave reacted angrily to the PIRA’s killing of three soldiers in South Armagh, blaming Rees for releasing ‘committed and dangerous terrorists’ and demanding to know why the army had not been ‘given clear orders to counter-attack’. Orme dismissively accused him of playing politics with the British Army.39 On 5 December the final forty-six detainees were released with Neave offering ‘very deep misgivings’.40 Hostile exchanges between Labour ministers and their Conservative shadows continued for the remainder of the administration. Senior army officers’ attitudes to Labour’s changes in security policy were somewhat more complicated than Neave’s. The new GOC appointed in August, David House, assured Rees that ‘he agrees with our policies’, leading the minister to privately record that while ordinary soldiers might struggle with the decision to end detention, it was understood ‘almost completely amongst the officers and certainly amongst the generals’.41 When Frank Cooper passed on RUC complaints that the army had recently been rather too aggressive, House admitted that ‘the army was a “blunt instrument” ’ and promised to speak to his brigade commanders.42 Yet as much as this suggests a willingness to adjust to the new security approach, there was strong resistance to the idea that the police could offer a solution. After detention was ended House said the RUC was an inadequate force for dealing with the main enemy and the government should face up to the probable need to return to detention or ‘some other process’.43 Cooper replied, stating that Rees’s strategy was

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‘to bring back the rule of law throughout Northern Ireland to treat all who break it as criminals not potential political martyrs’, adding: ‘If we approach the war on terrorism as simply one aspect of the war against crime we shall avoid two pitfalls; that of concentrating our efforts too exclusively against one community; and that of ignoring forms of lawlessness which are not bombings or shootings.’ If violence rendered the strategy insufficient (a subjective judgement on which House and the NIO continued to differ), then Rees had the power to begin detention anew but, in Cooper’s words, ‘if it has to be, this will be our loss and PIRA’s gain’.44 In December 1975 Rees proposed an investigation into ‘how best to achieve the primacy of the police and the reduction of the army to garrison strength as soon as practicable’.45 During the investigation, chaired by NIO official John Bourn, there was again dissension from army officers. The army’s Chief of Staff protested that the ‘army were not engaged in Northern Ireland to do the work of the police but to fight terrorism’.46 The GOC oscillated between professing support for relying on the courts and complaining that it would have been better if detention was kept in use.47 The police were more enthusiastic about their planned promotion, with new Chief Constable, Kenneth Newman, stating that his first priority was the creation of a ‘strong and efficient crime fighting machine designed to erode and ultimately overthrow the power of the PIRA’.48 The pattern of discussion at Westminster in 1976 was much the same as the previous year. Labour backbenchers exerted very little pressure on ministers but Neave continued to demand tougher measures on behalf of the Conservatives. He said that Labour’s policy ‘towards guerrilla warfare … seems to involve a half-hearted containing operation’. Neave proposed the introduction of ID cards and a unit combining the regular army with the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and RUC.49 Rees dismissed any such integration, arguing that the police should not become a paramilitary force.50 Rees’s articulation of police primacy grew clearer with the assistance of his officials. In May 1976 he told ministerial colleagues of the need to ‘demythologise the cult of the terrorist’ and ‘drive a wedge between the terrorists and the great majority of the people’.51 The report on police primacy (or Bourn report, as it became known) affirmed the principles Rees had set out, recommending specialist RUC teams for murders, fraud, surveillance and bomb disposal, the creation of Special Patrol Groups for handling serious public disorder, improved arrangements for handling intelligence and the expansion of the RUC from 6,500 to 7,500 by 1982. It was hoped that the army would be reduced from thirteen major units to seven-and-a-third, while the full-time section of the

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locally recruited UDR would triple from 800 to 2,400.52 Rees decided that only the principles of the report should be made public, with the details kept secret.53 Rees’s withholding of the specific details of the report and, more importantly, a natural scepticism about the government’s professed intentions meant that the shift that followed the Bourn report has been popularly misunderstood and mislabelled as ‘Ulsterisation’. The term draws parallels with the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam by handing responsibility to local security forces and has usually been regarded as a cynical move to counteract the political consequences of British soldiers’ deaths.54 This overestimates the impact of soldiers’ deaths on parliament and the wider British public as, unlike in the Vietnam War, there was very little popular pressure in Great Britain to withdraw troops. Ministers and their officials were instead convinced of the need to professionalise the RUC and utilise them to a greater extent, believing that this was an effective way of reducing alienation in the nationalist community. One NIO official, lamenting the popular perception, argued that the British were failing to put their case publicly and needed a more positive argument; ‘that the policy is one of a return to normality’ achieved by ‘pursuing terrorists through the normal processes of the law’.55 That the language of Ulsterisation trumped that of normalisation shows that the British had little success in controlling perceptions of policy. The Labour government also faced continuing army distaste for the new strategy. David House continued to press for tougher security measures, suggesting that intelligence material unacceptable to the courts should be utilised through some kind of ‘administrative or executive action’.56 In one of his last acts before moving to the Home Office, Rees passionately defended his position, insisting that internment had been ‘the hated symbol of a negative repressive policy’. To diverge from the emphasis on the courts ‘would take us back into the rut out of which we have broken’.57 Roy Mason’s appointment as Northern Ireland Secretary in September 1976 did not result in any significant change of policy, despite his subsequent reputation as a tough minister.58 When Mason bemoaned that the Conservatives had ‘something to snipe at’, Brian Cubbon (Frank Cooper’s replacement as NIO permanent under-secretary) told him that it was better ‘to face up to the reality that the only solution lay in continuing and increasing police success’.59 Cubbon told a fellow NIO official that they should advise Mason that to modify policy would be ‘seen as vacillation’.60 Mason did not depart from his briefings when the GOC lamented the loss of detention, responding that ‘if it were indicated that detention was even being considered, it would turn the

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clock back’.61 Neave continued to criticise Labour, throughout 1977, demanding ‘a major “search and destroy” operation’ and adding: ‘It was Napoleon who said that the only way to beat guerrillas is by operating as guerrillas.’62 Reassuringly for Mason, however, the GOC and Chief Constable expressed irritation at Neave’s ‘habit of going public with his latest anti-terrorist rostrum before consulting the SF [security forces] and without the real experience or knowledge to develop his ideas’.63 In May, Loyalists held a general strike demanding a return to majority rule and a more aggressive security policy. The strike was defeated mainly because of the differing political context from three years earlier, but it also saw Mason launch a public effort to secure unionists’ confidence.64 Mason’s tough reputation arose from this crucial test and its aftermath. During the strike, he met workers at Ballylumford power station to convince them not to join it. He told them that ‘SAS-type operations’ had been doubled and that ‘this trend will continue’.65 The Ministry of Defence, however, objected angrily that this was untrue.66 After the strike, Mason proposed that the NIO produce an ‘intensification’ package of security measures. The core of the package was drawn from a report by Newman on action already undertaken following the Bourn report.67 Nevertheless, his public presentation of details withheld during Rees’s tenure secured the response he desired. On 8 June The Times reported that Mason had ‘again demonstrated an outwards determination to stamp out terrorism’, while Ulster Unionists said they were ‘delighted, both with the Secretary of State and with his current security policy’.68 More privately, NIO official Anthony Pritchard chaired a review of the Bourn report’s implementation. The Pritchard group reckoned that the RUC regular force could feasibly reach 6,500 by 1982, despite the Bourn committee hope for 7,500. It recognised that an increase in the recruitment rate could not happen without a better response from Catholics, who amounted to only 7.6 per cent of the intake in 1976.69 A further flaw in the Ulsterisation narrative is revealed in conflicting attitudes towards the UDR. The army believed the regiment should be used for urban crowd control and riot situations but NIO officials deemed them unfit ‘for political and operational reasons’.70 It was agreed that the ban on using the UDR for civil disorder should stay. Pritchard himself warned Cubbon of the dangers of using the predominantly Protestant force against Catholics. UDR responsibilities would be extended only in Protestant areas.71 Pritchard’s report gave greater attention to Catholic attitudes towards the police but it kept Bourn’s hope of a virtuous circle of police successes leading to greater acceptance.72 Mason simply accepted the report on the basis of Cubbon’s

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briefings. In November 1977 he agreed with the Defence Secretary that over the next year troop numbers could be reduced from 14,000 to 13,000.73 The process was running slower than hoped, parts of the Bourn report were revealed to be optimistic, but it was felt that the strategy was yielding results. In October 1977 Airey Neave called for the death penalty for paramilitaries convicted of murder.74 Mason responded with bullish rhetoric, telling the Daily Express that ‘We are squeezing the terrorists like rolling up a toothpaste tube.’75 Such statements won unionist support but disgusted moderate nationalists and contributed to the perception of a military-minded approach quite contrary to the reality. Mason seemed to conceive of the presentation of security policy solely in terms of satisfying Ulster Unionists, hardly an approach compatible with the Bourn and Pritchard reports’ desire to secure nationalist support for the RUC.76 He may have thought it politically useful to make such remarks but they gave an over-optimistic impression that entirely contradicted his private correspondence.77 Indeed, it is fair to assert that his repeated private rejection of more aggressive measures on the basis of NIO advice gives us a better estimation of actual security policy than his public statements, even though the latter shaped popular perception of his tenure in Northern Ireland. Cubbon proposed another security review at a meeting in June 1978. The officials present recognised that ‘terrorism was politically motivated and arguably incapable of elimination through ordinary criminal methods’. As their aim was to isolate paramilitaries from the community, relying on the police was still ‘simply the best means of achieving this’, but a new minister after a general election might find their assessment displeasing and demand the eradication of violence.78 Cubbon pitched the review to Mason as having the advantage ‘of flushing out any retrograde ideas which the army may be cooking up’, but it should also be seen as preparation for Neave, or someone similar, arriving at the NIO.79 The task of chairing the review group fell to NIO official James Hannigan. When it met for the first time, NIO officials and the Chief Constable, Jack Hermon, agreed that the biggest change since the Bourn report was a fall in violence and an increase in the effectiveness of the security forces. The army’s Chief of Staff, Brigadier Body, was more sombre:  Loyalist violence had been ‘stamped out’ but the PIRA were still very capable and West Belfast, Derry and South Armagh were ‘particularly intractable’.80 Body’s pessimism was justified. In the areas identified the army was still the leading force, regardless of the police primacy ideal, and he was right to dismiss Hermon’s claim that the timescale for

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achieving peacetime garrison levels in the Bourn report was still achievable.81 Less practical was his proposal for a range of measures including the introduction of identity cards and the proscription of Provisional Sinn Féin. Hannigan’s NIO brief dismissed them as ‘straightforwardly incompatible’ with security policy.82 Hannigan’s report described RUC progress glowingly and judged the army to be operating with ‘increasing sensitivity and selectivity’. It admitted, however, that there was no sign of the PIRA giving up or of nationalist disillusionment with militant republicanism being converted into support for British security forces. The army would remain the dominant force in hard republican areas. Nevertheless, the report was committed to the police primacy ideal.83 Reporting on the discussions, an NIO official felt the army were ‘to some extent paying only lip service’ to police primacy and criminalisation; in nationalist areas they were ‘simply ignoring community sensitivities’, preferring to ‘take a calculated risk on the attitudes of civilians’ inevitably affected by their operations. The RUC, however, was deemed to be ‘too euphoric about the speed of progress’ and exaggerating the extent of Catholic support. Its keenness to expand meant the NIO had to ‘put a brake on the RUC tendency towards developing markedly paramilitary capabilities’.84 David House’s replacement as GOC, Timothy Creasey, complained that the NIO had ‘attempted to paper over differences of which the Secretary of State should be aware’.85 Creasey was a far less agreeable GOC than his predecessor, informing the NIO that his views had been ‘formed as a result of the successes that the multi-national forces under my command achieved in the Dhofar war, where under similar circumstances to those here  – or perhaps even more complex  – we defeated a hydra headed communist attempt to conquer Oman’. The NIO copy is appended with pencilled exclamations of disbelief at the comparison, possibly inserted by Cubbon.86 When Mason was informed of the dissent, he sided with his officials and when news of the dispute reached Downing Street, the Cabinet Secretary’s briefing noted that, while the MOD ‘naturally do not want to appear hard on a good and respected commander’, the two departments were in agreement.87 There were no more significant changes in security policy for the remainder of the Labour government. The security policy bequeathed to the Conservatives when they returned to power in May 1979 had a number of inherent flaws and contradictions. A policy that could bring about the defeat of militant republicanism remained elusive. Between 1976 and 1979 the PIRA showed its capacity to transform itself in the new conditions of the conflict, adopting a ‘long war’ strategy with the creation of a Northern Command and the replacement of its traditional

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army structure with a cell system that increased security and allowed active service units to specialise in particular kinds of operation.88 This allowed the PIRA to sustain its campaign, albeit at a lower level than between 1971 and 1976. While the RUC was transformed into a modern, professional force equipped for the conflict, the hopes of reducing army activity proved too optimistic. The government were still dependent on the army in strong republican areas and relied on units like the SAS to combat the PIRA in a way inconsistent with the police primacy philosophy. Deployed as a knee-jerk response in January 1976 to a series of sectarian killings in County Armagh, the regiment carried out a number of killings in disputed circumstances, which brought into question whether they were adhering to the rules of engagement under the yellow card system.89 Militarily the SAS may have proven useful but they were politically damaging. There was an obvious logic to the idea that depending on a police force rather than soldiers would be less alienating. As Hew Strachan argues, ‘Minimum force is a key feature of British policing: it reinforces the liberal application of the law, and removes any justification for a terrorist backlash. Maximum force is the natural response of the soldier: its rationale in this case is that a show of strength implies resolution and thus constitutes its own deterrent’.90 David House was right in remarking that soldiers ‘are not ballet dancers’, but nor were the RUC.91 It did not fit the model of a typical British force and its Protestant character remained a problem. The police primacy ideal was based on a clear division between military and police forces but the practical application of it blurred the line between the two. The Hannigan report asserted that the RUC ‘should not take on, or be seen by the minority community to be acting in, a paramilitary role’, but it then recognised that for the police to act without army support would require ‘sub-machine guns, high velocity rifles and armoured land rovers’.92 Chief Constable Newman argued that ‘A police force should not anyhow be characterised by the equipment necessary to enable it to discharge its duties but by its training, motivation and objectives. In these respects the RUC is enlightened and socially advanced’.93 The nationalist community, however, was unlikely to share this perception. The process of achieving convictions also caused problems. The existence of non-jury courts and other modifications to the legal system makes it arguable that criminalisation as a principle was only partly implemented.94 Allegations of systematic brutality to obtain confessions were revealed in television documentaries in 1977, and Amnesty International produced a 1978 report calling for an inquiry.95 Mason

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dismissed them with angry hostility, stressing the need to ‘discern the difference between truth and propaganda’.96 He established the Bennett inquiry, which reported in February 1979 that some of those interrogated had been injured but that police officers should not be condemned unheard, and that the burden of proof remained with the prosecution. Although it suggested a number of changes to the procedures for interrogation (such as the installation of closed-circuit television cameras), the emphasis on ‘unpromising circumstances’ and a ‘co-ordinated and extensive campaign to discredit’ the RUC rendered it favourable to the police.97 Mason’s handling of the report angered the SDLP leader, Gerry Fitt, who did not get the detailed debate he wanted, and played a decisive role in his decision to abstain on the vote that brought the Labour government down.98 The ending of special category status, crucial to criminalisation, also created problems in the prisons. As the withdrawal only applied to offences committed after 1 March 1976, the prison protest took time to build momentum. It was not until 14 September 1976 that the first PIRA member, Kieran Nugent, refused to work or wear prison clothing. In March 1978 the protesters, numbering over 300, intensified their efforts. They smashed furniture and poured urine and excreta into the corridors, smearing the remnants on the walls.99 Mason was especially firm in rejecting any compromise in the prisons. When James Hannigan suggested a consideration of small changes on free association or reading materials to assuage the humanitarian concern, Mason argued that offering something ‘to cleanse our conscience’ might only mean that ‘the prisoners gobbled up the concessions and pressed on for more’.100 Labour faced little pressure to change prison policy, but the Conservatives’ continuance of it led to the hunger strikes and the later entry of PSF into electoral politics. Rees arrived in office in 1974 with a desire to remove detention without trial and increase the role of the police, which over the course of the 1975 ceasefire morphed into a more defined policy of criminalisation and police primacy. It led him into conflict with senior army officers, but support from NIO officials overrode this resistance. While Labour backbenchers did not prove as much of a threat to government policy as Rees feared in opposition, the Conservative Party’s more critical approach after Neave’s appointment weakened bipartisanship on Northern Ireland. Mason’s reputation as an aggressive minister who attacked militant republicanism more ruthlessly than any of his predecessors is undeserved. When presented with tougher options by the army, he invariably sided with his officials in rejecting them. The new security policy played an important role in the declining violence of the

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late 1970s and forced the Provisional IRA to restructure and reorganise, but by the end of the decade the NIO had accepted that a long campaign of attrition lay ahead for the British government. Notes  1 Stuart C.  Aveyard, ‘The “English Disease” is to look for a “Solution of the Irish Problem”:  British constitutional policy in Northern Ireland after Sunningdale 1974–76’, Contemporary British History, vol. 26, no.  4, 2012, pp. 529–49; cf. Michael Kerr, The destructors: the story of Northern Ireland’s lost peace process (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2011).  2 The National Archives (TNA), Cabinet Papers (CAB) 134/3778, IRN (74) memo 3, 28 March 1974; TNA, CAB 134/3778, IRN (74) meeting 1, 1 April 1974.  3 Hansard (Commons), 23 September 1971, vol. 823, col. 328; Tam Dalyell, ‘Obituary: Lord Orme’, The Independent, 3 May 2005.  4 Hansard (Commons), 17 April 1973, vol. 855, cols 294–5.  5 Hansard (Commons), 4 April 1974, vol. 871, cols 1463–8.  6 Stuart C. Aveyard, ‘ “We couldn’t do a Prague”: British government responses to loyalist strikes in Northern Ireland 1974–77’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 38, no. 153, May 2014; cf. Brendan O’Leary, ‘The Labour Government and Northern Ireland, 1974–79’, in Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry (eds), The Northern Ireland conflict: consociational engagements (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003).  7 London School of Economics (LSE), MERLYN-REES/1/2, Transcripts of tapes, undated, p. 31.  8 Hansard (Commons), 9 July 1974, vol. 876, cols 1285–9.  9 Hansard (Commons), 9 July 1974, vol. 876, col. 1317. 10 Hansard (Commons), 5 December 1974, vol. 882, col. 2079. 11 TNA, CJ4/1033, Meeting between Gardiner Committee and Cooper, 2 October 1974. 12 TNA, CJ4/674, Meeting between Gardiner Committee and British army, 18 July 1974. 13 Robert Fisk, ‘Protestant politicians demand armed Ulster Home Guard’, The Times, 13 July 1974. 14 George Clark, ‘An Ulster militia would bring civil war nearer, Mr Rees says’, The Times, 18 July 1974. 15 TNA, PREM 16/150, Meeting between Rees and the SDLP, 29 August 1974. 16 TNA, CAB 134/3778, IRN (74) meeting 5, 12 June 1974. 17 TNA, CJ4/1750, Abbott to Janes, 14 August 1975. 18 Walter Ellis, ‘Plan by Rees for expanded RUC criticised’, Irish Times, 3 September 1974. 19 For instance: Freddie Cowper-Coles, ‘ “Anxious for peace”: the Provisional IRA in dialogue with the British government 1972–75’, Irish Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 2012, pp. 223–42; Andrew Mumford, ‘Covert peacemaking:  clandestine negotiations and backchannels with the Provisional

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IRA during the early “Troubles”, 1972–76’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 39, no.  4, 2011, pp.  433–648; Niall Ó Dochartaigh, ‘IRA Ceasefire 1975: a missed opportunity for peace?’, Field Day Review, vol. 7, 2011. 20 Ó Dochartaigh, ‘IRA Ceasefire 1975’. 21 Aveyard, ‘The “English Disease” ’, pp. 529–49. 22 TNA, CJ4/1225, Webster to Garrett, 9 December 1974; TNA, CJ4/1225, Garrett to Webster, 9 December 1974; TNA, CJ4/1225, Bourn to PUS, 12 December 1974; TNA, CAB 134/3778, IRN (74) meeting 11, 17 December 1974. 23 Hansard (Commons), 14 January 1975, vol. 884, cols 201–3. 24 TNA, CJ4/1225, CLF to brigades, 20 December 1974. 25 TNA, CJ4/865, Webster to England, 19 February 1975. 26 TNA, CJ4/865, England to PUS, 24 March 1975. 27 TNA, CAB 134/3921, IRN (75) memo 7, 18 February 1975. 28 Christopher Walker, ‘New Belfast bombing outrage by Provisionals’, The Times, 9 April 1975; Conor O’Clery, ‘Rees slows Maze releases but safeguards ceasefire’, Irish Times, 13 May 1975. 29 Hansard (Commons), 10 July 1975, vol. 895, cols 743–4; Hansard (Commons), 24 July 1975, vol. 896, cols 760–1. 30 David McKittrick, Brian Feeney, Seamus Kelters, David McVea and Chris Thornton, Lost lives: the stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles (Edinburgh, Mainstream, 2008), pp. 571–2. 31 McKittrick et al., Lost lives, p. 1526. 32 TNA, CJ4/1293, Cooper to Rees, 9 May 1975. 33 TNA, CJ4/1293, Cooper to GOC, 7 May 1975. 34 Hansard (Commons), 15 May 1975, vol. 892, col. 644; TNA, CJ4/861, Neave to Rees, 5 June 1975. 35 TNA, CJ4/867, Webster to PS/SSNI and PS/PUS, 23 September 1975. 36 Hansard (Commons), 7 November 1975, vol. 899, cols 233–47. 37 TNA, CAB 134/3921, IRN (74) meeting 1, 8 January 1975. 38 Hansard (Commons), 4 November 1975, vol. 899, col. 240. 39 Hansard (Commons), 24 November 1975, vol. 901, cols 486–9. 40 Hansard (Commons), 8 December 1975, vol. 902, col. 31. 41 TNA, PREM 16/520, Rees to Wilson, 27 August 1975; LSE, MERLYN-REES/1/9, Transcript of tapes, undated, pp. 26–7. 42 TNA, CJ4/1293, Note by Frank Cooper, 22 October 1975. 43 TNA, CJ4/1293, GOC to Rees, 10 December 1975. 44 TNA, CJ4/1293, Cooper to GOC, 12 December 1975. 45 TNA, CAB 134/3921, IRN (75) meeting, 17 December 1975. 46 TNA, CJ4/1208, Webster to Barker, 25 March 1976. 47 TNA, CJ4/1779, GOC to CLF, 7 April 1976. 48 TNA, CJ4/1779, Newman to GOC, 16 April 1976. 49 TNA, CJ4/1198, Neave to Rees, 21 May 1976; Hansard (Commons), 913, cols 37–41. 50 Hansard (Commons), 14 June 1976, vol. 913, cols 46–55.

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51 TNA, CAB 134/4039, IN (76) memo 3, 20 May 1976; TNA, CAB 134/4039, IN (76) memo 7, 24 May 1976. 52 TNA, CJ/1197, MLO meeting, 30 June 1976. 53 Hansard (Commons), 2 July 1976, vol. 914, cols 880–4. 54 Peter Neumann, ‘The myth of Ulsterisation in British security policy in Northern Ireland’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 26, 2003, p. 365. 55 TNA, CJ4/1653, Pritchard to PUS, 25 March 1977. 56 TNA, CJ4/1779, GOC to Cubbon, 22 June 1976. 57 TNA, CJ4/1779, Rees to GOC, 23 August 1976. 58 Peter Neumann, ‘Winning the “war on terror”? Roy Mason’s contribution to counter-terrorism in Northern Ireland’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, vol. 14, no. 3, 2003, pp. 45–64. 59 TNA, CJ4/2521, Stewart to PS/PUS, 6 December 1976. 60 TNA, CJ4/1779, Cubbon to Pritchard, 5 January 1977; TNA, CJ4/1779, Cubbon to Mason, 14 January 1977. 61 TNA, CJ4/1779, Meeting between Mason, GOC and Chief Constable, 22 March 1977. 62 Parliamentary Archive, AN/532, Speech to Abingdon Conservative Club, 23 April 1977. 63 TNA, CJ4/1653, Meeting between PUS, GOC and Chief Constable, 4 April 1977. 64 See Aveyard, ‘ “We couldn’t do a Prague” ’. 65 TNA, CJ4/1567, Meeting between Mason and Ballylumford workers, 5 May 1977. 66 TNA, DEFE 13/1402, Dromgoole to APS/SSDEF, 6 May 1977. 67 TNA, CJ4/1654, Meeting to discuss security policy, 27 May 1977. 68 ‘ “Our correspondent”:  Mr Mason increases undercover role of Army in Ulster’, The Times, 9 June 1977; TNA, CJ4/1655, Neilson to Eliott, 20 June 1977. 69 TNA, CJ4/1781, WG (SF) meeting, 24 May 1977. 70 TNA, CJ4/1780, Meeting to discuss current security work, 17 June 1977. 71 TNA, CJ4/1783, Pritchard to Cubbon, 14 October 1977; TNA, CJ4/1783, Security forces’ capability: UDR, undated. 72 TNA, CJ4/1783, Security forces’ capability: Royal Ulster Constabulary and Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve, undated. 73 TNA, CJ4/1783, Pritchard to Dromgoole, 2 November 1977; TNA, CJ4/1783, Cubbon to Newman, 4 November 1977. 74 PA, AN/532, Speech at Wantage, Oxfordshire, 22 October 1977. 75 Roy Mason,‘Squeezing the life out of the IRA’, Daily Express, 5 December 1977. 76 In January 1978, Mason proposed a meeting with the Ulster Unionists to discuss security policy, adding that he was ‘willing’ to see other parties if they wanted him to; TNA, PREM 16/1721, Mason to Callaghan, 26 January 1978. 77 See, for instance, TNA, CJ4/2295, Mason to Cubbon, 23 November 1978. 78 TNA, CJ4/2290, Meeting to discuss the security/political outlook, 23 June 1978.

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79 TNA, CJ4/2290, Cubbon to Mason, 3 July 1978. 80 TNA, CJ4/2290, WG (PS) 3, 21 July 1978. 81 TNA, CJ4/2290, WG (PS) 10, 3 August 1978. 82 TNA, CJ4/2291, Schulte to Hannigan, 16 August 1978. 83 TNA, CJ4/2294, Report of the working group to consider progress on security, undated. 84 TNA, CJ4/2293, Stephens to PS/PUS, 6 October 1978. 85 TNA, CJ4/2295, Meeting between PUS, GOC and the Chief Constable, 16 October 1978. 86 As with Ulsterisation/Vietnamisation, the temptation to draw parallels with Britain’s colonial conflicts risks over-simplification. There is little indication that other conflicts influenced those formulating Northern Ireland security policy during these years, and the Creasey example reflects how such comparisons were privately dismissed out of hand; TNA, CJ4/2295, Creasey to Cubbon, 20 October 1978. 87 TNA, CJ4/2295, Mason to Cubbon, 23 November 1978; TNA, PREM 16/1722, Hunt to Cartledge, 13 December 1978. 88 Peter Taylor, Provos: the IRA & Sinn Féin (London, Bloomsbury, 1997), pp. 210–17. 89 After Wilson proposed a military initiative, Rees protested that there were only thirty individuals on each side responsible for the violence, but Roy Mason suggested sending in the SAS and Wilson agreed:  Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street diary: with Harold Wilson in No. 10 (London, Pimlico, 2006), pp. 621–2; TNA, CAB 130/908, MISC 115 (76) meeting, 6 January 1976; Mark Urban, Big boys’ rules: the secret struggle against the IRA (London, Faber & Faber, 1992). 90 Hew Strachan, The politics of the British army (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 164. 91 TNA, CJ4/1779, GOC to Rees, 1 September 1976. 92 TNA, CJ4/2294, Report of the working group to consider progress on security, undated. 93 Report of the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary for 1976 (Belfast, 1977), p. ix. 94 Report of the commission to consider legal procedures to deal with terrorist activities in Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 5185, H.C. 1972–3. 95 Report of an Amnesty International Mission to Northern Ireland (London, 1978). 96 Hansard (Commons), 15 June 1978, vol. 951, cols 1165–8. 97 Report of the committee of inquiry into police interrogation procedures in Northern Ireland, Cmnd. 7497, H.C. 1979. 98 Hansard (Commons), 16 March 1979, vol. 964, cols 965–9. 99 TNA, CJ4/2216, Sanderson to Innes, 9 November 1978. 100  TNA, CJ4/2215, Pilling to PS/PUS, 23 October 1978.

11 Some intellectual origins of the Labour left’s thought about Ireland, c.1979–97 Stephen Howe In Ken Livingstone’s 2011 memoir, You can’t say that, he devotes approximately equal space to the two most controversial of his career’s international engagements:  Ireland and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Yet there is an intriguing asymmetry between the two accounts. On the Middle East, Livingstone offers a substantial account of the intellectual background to his much-criticised views and indications of how his reading had influenced these – even giving us an extended précis of the idiosyncratic historical claims of American author, Lenni Brenner. The treatment of his Irish involvement has no parallel to this, and gives very little indication as to how he arrived at his ideas on the subject.1 Elsewhere, earlier, he had several times claimed extensive reading and knowledge on Irish history, once crediting former Lambeth Council leader and veteran Trotskyist, Ted Knight, with guiding his study of the subject, and asserting absurdly that ‘The more I read [about Irish history], the more horrified I  became …  The only thing that is remotely parallel is the holocaust against the Jews’.2 Yet nowhere, it appears, has Livingstone given any indication at all of what he read. Livingstone’s activities and pronouncements, especially his links with Sinn Féin in the 1980s, were among the most noted and divisive of all aspects of the Labour left’s Irish engagements during the long opposition years after 1979. His reticence about the intellectual sources of his stance, though, is rather typical of the elusiveness of this chapter’s subject. In general, writing an intellectual history of almost any aspect of British Labour’s past is a difficult, and may sometimes seem an unrewarding, task. Labour’s political culture has, simply and obviously, never been a very theoretical or intellectually self-conscious one, certainly not when compared either with most other European social-democratic parties or with any of those in the Marxist tradition. Most of the party’s ‘intellectuals’ (itself a term used very promiscuously and, more often than not, pejoratively), across most of its history, have been policy-oriented rather

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than boldly conceptual thinkers; sharply distinct in that from even the most politically engaged of ‘classic’ intellectuals.3 All this remained broadly the case even in the 1980s – although this was surely the era when ideological debate and polarisation were more intense than at any other in the party’s evolution, and when at least aspirations to a stronger internal theoretical culture were widespread – for instance, this was the first and last time the party published a journal of intellectual debate, the sadly short-lived New Socialist. We might say something similar of Northern Ireland’s political history. Richard English has written picturesquely of ‘modern Ulster – where political theory is constantly chased, and often mauled, by engaged political practitioners’, though actually in the milieux examined here it has been more the theorists who have done the chasing.4 Many Irish Republicans have placed great stress on arriving at a ‘correct’ political analysis, especially when prison has given them enforced leisure for thinking and reading. But no major works of political philosophy have emerged, even from the cellblocks of the Maze. The region’s more mainstream politicians, meanwhile, have always included more clever lawyers  – from Edward Carson to David Trimble and Robert McCartney – than subtle political theorists. Partly as a consequence, debate over Ulster’s future, when not merely belligerent, has often been legalistic rather than principled. The conflict’s literary legacy is strong on poetry and song, not on grand theoretical treatises. Still comparatively few Northern Ireland-related histories closely trace their subjects’ intellectual – as opposed to organisational, events-driven or, for some, paramilitary – journeys. For instance, not even the fascinating Hanley and Millar book on the Official IRA gives us much analysis of the ideological transmutations of the party or its key figures.5 Richard English’s work on social republicanism is, surely, stronger on negative critique than on analytical exposition,6 as is Henry Patterson’s.7 Richard Bourke’s 2003 Peace in Ireland: the war of ideas – an unusually sophisticated attempt to show that, despite its being such seemingly unpromising territory for the political theorist, Northern Ireland has indeed been the arena for a major conflict of political ideologies and principles – shares this fault.8 He is, one feels, too inclined to write as if Republicans’ core beliefs were simply a huge blunder, the ‘imperialism’ that they came to see as their main enemy being a meaningless abstraction. Even if we agree that republican assumptions were mistaken, theirs was a more complex and historically interesting mistake than Bourke allows. Writing about Unionism and Loyalism, meanwhile, has been considerably thinner still on those movements’ intellectual and

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ideological dimensions – and sometimes simply asserts or assumes that they have no such things. Either a calendar of events or a map of factions involved in Labour’s, and its left wing’s, Northern Irish involvements after 1979 would be crowded, complex and fast-changing. This chapter does not even begin to offer such a calendar or map:  others have done or are doing that, in a steadily growing archive of research and publication. An intellectual map must be a considerably sketchier affair – though what can be said about it in the space available will nonetheless be all too selective and schematic. And many of its main elements were generated outside the party itself and its formal structures, whether in academic circles or those of small far-left parties, or indeed where those two worlds overlapped. So, here more than in many spheres of political debate, any commentary on the intellectual roots of Labour left activities on Ireland must give considerable attention also to the revolutionary left outside Labour. Naturally, though, one cannot here track the intricacies of those Trotskyist and other micro-parties  – a maze and an alphabet soup far outmatching even those of Ulster’s paramilitary groups in their complexity. The basic if sometimes blurred distinction is between ‘entryist’ groups that operated within the Labour Party, and open ones that maintained a public existence as separate parties. Strictly, only the former are part of this story, but to wholly exclude discussion of the latter would be artificial and misleading. Equally, even the briefest account should keep note of the constant interaction, indeed interpenetration, of British and Irish socialist and Labour worlds. One cannot ignore the Irish family roots of numerous key figures on the Labour left, or among British Marxists – like, in the latter case during the period, Workers’ Revolutionary Party leader, Gerry Healy, Sean Matgamna (alias John O’Mahony) of Socialist Organiser, Gery Lawless, or a little later Redmond O’Neill of Socialist Action, who was for some time important in Ken Livingstone’s circle. Meanwhile some important Republican leaders and thinkers had formerly been resident in Britain and involved in various kinds of left-wing politics there, as with the Officials’ Eamonn Smullen, who had been a Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) member in London for some years.9 The years immediately after Labour’s 1979 election defeat saw the sharpest internal schisms, and the greatest advances for the party’s left wing, of any time in its history. The crucial juncture for our story was the coincidence in 1981 of this peak of left-wing insurgency in Labour with the Provisional IRA/INLA hunger strikes. The peak of leftist influence within the Republican movement came just a little later. As one of the more prolific writers on Northern Ireland in British left-wing

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publications, Geoffrey Bell, said in 1984, there was probably no political current anywhere in Europe so far left, which had so much popular support, as the Provisionals.10 Some within British Labour discerned very strong commonalities. Livingstone, in 1985, believed in ‘the similarity in the position of what you might call the new radical Left in the Labour Party and the radical Left in Sinn Féin … if Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison had been born in London, I’m sure they would have ended up supporting some Left current in the Labour Party like London Labour Briefing’.11 There was a rapid proliferation of lobby and protest groups. These had precursors, notably the ‘Friends of Ireland’ group established in 1945 by Manchester MP, Hugh Delargy, and the later Campaign for Democracy in Ulster.12 But the post-1970s explosion was unprecedented, as was the fact that most of the groups were aligned with or dominated by the far left, from within or outside Labour’s ranks, and moreover were – with varying degrees of explicitness – overwhelmingly pro-Republican. They included the Anti-Internment League and Irish Solidarity Campaign  – both more or less International Marxist Group fronts, says Bob Purdie who was one of their main organisers13  – British–Irish Rights Watch, the Irish in Britain Representation Group (founded 1981)  and more. Apparently largest were the Labour Committee on Ireland (LCI), founded in April 1980, and the Troops Out Movement (TOM), formed in 1973. The former does not appear ever to have been under the control either of Sinn Féin or of any one British far-left group; the latter (which rather surprisingly still exists, as of early 2014), though, seems in practice to have been or become a subsidiary of Sinn Féin. Labour Women for Ireland was effectively a subsidiary of the LCI. Ideologically opposed was the Campaign for Labour Representation (1977–), heavily influenced by the ‘two nations’ ideas of the British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO).14 None of these, of course, was a mass organisation, nor one with a massive organisational presence within Labour. Forty-four constituency Labour parties (CLPs) were represented at LCI’s first conference – which does not necessarily mean of course that all those local parties formally endorsed the group – while just three backbench MPs, Joan Maynard, Ernie Roberts and Jock Stallard, formally sponsored it. For comparison: the Anti-Apartheid Movement at its peak had over 200 CLPs affiliated; the earlier Movement for Colonial Freedom over 130; each had over 100 sponsoring MPs. Nonetheless, the sentiments that LCI and TOM sought to mobilise won, for a time, wider support. Labour’s 1981 conference voted in favour of ‘the unification of Ireland by agreement and consent’ – a historic breach of bipartisan consensus, which was to

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remain Labour policy until 1994; and although motions calling for an immediate British troop withdrawal were defeated, a majority of constituency parties apparently supported one of them. Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley’s large-scale 1989–90 survey of Labour members’ and activists’ views found activists, members and Labour voters all very much in line with one another on this question – 35–36 per cent in all groups favoured pulling British troops out of Northern Ireland ‘immediately’ (the figure among all voters at that time was 26 per cent) – even at a time when these three constituencies held quite divergent views on many other policy issues.15 So what ideas, with what kinds of intellectual roots on or beyond the British left, lay behind these multiple initiatives, lobbies and clashes? It became conventional – if vague – in the early 1980s to differentiate between a ‘hard’ and a ‘soft’ left:  a distinction partly of broad ideology, partly of factional affiliation or tactical perception, sometimes just of how one viewed Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill or Ken Livingstone at particular moments. The schism took parliamentary shape between the ‘hard left’ Campaign Group of Labour MPs and the larger, more ideologically diffuse and ‘soft’ Tribune Group. Outside, on the ‘hard’ side stood Militant and other, smaller, entryist Marxist groups, key activists in the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, the Briefing group that for a time held much sway in London Labour politics, and shorter-lived coalitions like the Rank and File Mobilising Committee. ‘Softs’ embraced organised clusters like Independent Labour Publications, the Clause 4 group – mostly active in student and youth Labour politics – those who ran Tribune newspaper and Chartist magazine, what might be called Labour fellow-travellers with Eurocommunism, and most importantly the Labour Coordinating Committee.16 It was not a schism between Marxists and others  – although most who would call themselves Marxists, and certainly members of organised entryist far-left groups, would be placed on the hard side. In the world of student left-Labour politics, the rather arrogant perception of Clause 4 and allied people was that whereas their Trotskyist opponents, especially in Militant, knew only a very narrow party-line version of Marxism, we had read, or at least could name-drop, a far wider and more sophisticated range of Marxist thinkers. It will immediately be apparent that these lines of division were relevant to, but certainly did not correspond with, those over Northern Ireland policy. Most strikingly, although most Trotskyists were pro-Republican, Militant (which had fairly substantial Irish affiliates north and south of the border, including an active Galway branch) took a sharply opposed line, refusing association with any Nationalist formation and affirming a

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‘pure’ class politics. Militant placed great hopes in trade union action as a solvent for Northern Irish conflicts – for instance, in the Trade Union Congress’s Better Life for All Campaign – as did both British and Irish Communist parties. Militant, in one of its more implausible policies, also argued that if British troops were to be withdrawn they should be replaced by a trade union-based workers’ militia.17 Overlaying and in part crosscutting those general divisions within Labour, and within its left, were thus those specific to Ireland. Their main lines corresponded, naturally, to those found on Ireland’s own left and in global socialist discourse on the subject. On one side stood a constellation of positions broadly describable as anti-imperialist, and enjoining support for Irish Nationalism, and for many on Labour’s left, specifically for Republicanism and of course (though most contentiously and sometimes mutedly) for armed struggle. On the other lay an assemblage of stances that was considerably more diffuse still: ‘two nations’ positions, ‘primacy of class politics’ ones and ‘primacy of peacemaking’ ones. All such positions tended naturally to be characterised by their opponents as Unionist, though few of their adherents on the left accepted that label for themselves. Argument between, and within, these alignments extended across multiple subsidiary questions, ranging from those of tactical alliance to those of broad, indeed global conceptual category. At the tactical end of this spectrum, by 1979 and after the anti-imperialist positions naturally almost always implied support for the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin. Earlier, there had been much sympathy in British far-left circles for the Officials, while in the 1970s some sought to maintain solidarity with both IRA wings, despite their often bloody rivalry. Few, it would appear, aligned overtly with the INLA. With very few exceptions indeed, this support did not go beyond the verbal. Even had more people on the British far left been willing to give active aid to Provisional IRA operations, the IRA’s – and other Republican military groups’  – general attitude was one of distrust for such people. They were not recruited to active service units, and in only a tiny handful of known cases were long-term English residents, let alone ones without Irish birth and roots, employed in any military or direct-support capacity. It may even be that more such people were wrongfully imprisoned for supposed IRA activities, in these years, than were ever actually employed in them. Maybe the most significant known exception was a man widely named online fairly recently, but whose threats of legal action prevented him being named in print: a former Law lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and member of the Revolutionary Communist Group who has

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been alleged to have played a major ‘target-spotting’ role for the IRA in Belfast.18 Another small faction, Red Action (RA), formed in 1981 by people expelled from the Socialist Workers’ Party for direct-action ‘squaddism’, was also marked out by its strong support for Republican violence and the willingness of some members to participate in this.19 Earlier some RA members had apparently been close to the INLA – but supposedly the latter came to believe that RA was heavily infiltrated by Special Branch, who used the contact to spy on the INLA.20 In 1993, Red Action members Patrick Hayes and Jan Taylor (neither of them Irish) were key figures in the IRA’s English bombing campaign.21 Elsewhere, for those rejecting the anti-imperialist perspective, affiliations were more varied. Some, as one would expect, looked to a revived Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), as in the sadly almost stillborn ‘Labour ’87’ initiative. The once-strong appeal of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, formally British Labour’s sister party, among Labour left-wingers diminished over time amidst its ‘greening’, as ever less of its programme and propaganda seemed to accord with the party name. A small but active lobby operated in support of the Workers’ Party (WP) and later Democratic Left; and in 1982 the WP urged/instructed its British-based supporters to join Labour, forming the group Campaign for Peace and Progress. From 1985 the WP started operating at Labour Party conferences – not least with Irish social nights and other ‘non-political events’. From a little later again, some Labour left audiences gave a sympathetic hearing to the most clearly left-wing or ‘Labourist’ Unionist figures, individuals like Chris McGimpsey, briefly Bob McCartney and his UK Unionist Party or, much later, Dawn Purvis, and groups like the Progressive Unionist Party. An important role in facilitating such contacts was played by associates of Independent Labour Publications (a residual legatee of the once-separate Independent Labour Party, though insisting that it was not a quasi-party within Labour as Militant or Socialist Action so evidently were), most prominently Gary Kent. Through associations like these, critics believed, there came to be a substantial role for the ‘Two Nations theory’ in influencing the British left. Pro-Republican antagonists saw it – too simply, of course – as taking over the Labour’s ‘soft left’, Eurocommunists and the CPGB, Althusserian Marxists, what was left of the NILP and its fragments, Tom Nairn and (if by default) New Left Review, and Militant in both Britain and Ireland. On broader and longer-term matters, the issues at stake embraced – this is not, naturally, an exclusive list – attitudes to Unionism and Loyalism; questions of the roots of division in ‘the Irish working class’; the historic role and responsibilities of ‘the British working class’; attitudes to political violence (of course); invocation of theories (especially but not

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only Marxist ones) of nationalism, imperialism and the state, and more. There was long debate between ‘Stageism’ – the orthodox Communist idea of a national democratic revolution, which was influential and for a time dominant among Officials – and belief in the potential imminence of socialist revolution, held by what their enemies called ‘Provo-Trots’ and the Irish Republican Socialist Party as well as some on the British far left. Linked to the latter was sometimes the ‘Foco’ theory, most influentially put forward by Regis Debray and supposedly based on the Cuban example. Seamus Costello and the INLA appeared to adhere to a version of this, as evidently did some dissident IRA volunteers. Less distant from the ken of most British activists, Labour left, as other, anti-imperialist positions, had four main components. First, a belief that capitalists manipulated the Protestant working class into a pro-Union stance, against their own real interests. The standard view saw unionist identities as products of historical circumstances  – mostly deplorable ones – but an Irish nation as somehow natural and pre-given. Rarely was Irish nationalism itself the subject of real enquiry. Second, an adherence, usually, to a ‘Labour aristocracy’ thesis, combined with a notion of historically deliberate British ‘divide and rule’ policies, plus, too often, an unexamined presumption that sectarianism was to be found only among Loyalists. Third, a strong assumption that there remained essential British-imperialist interests in Northern Ireland, albeit with a varied set of arguments over what these interests really were: economic, strategic, ones of prestige, or protection of the integrity of the state itself. Fourth, a Connollyite view of nationalism – that ‘the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour’. Indeed in British left-wing circles interested in Ireland, little less than on the Irish left itself, Connolly’s was by some margin the most constantly invoked name – invoked in pursuit of a bewildering variety of projects. His thought, in that time, was maybe most likely accessed via Peter Berresford Ellis’s Penguin edition of Selected writings, published in 1973 for just 50 pence. Often, fifth, there was an argument that control over and repression in Northern Ireland facilitated and furthered that in Britain – that ‘freeing Ireland’, for British socialists, was a precondition for freeing themselves. It was of course a claim with a lineage going at least as far back as Karl Marx himself, but was I think rarely argued as opposed to asserted in these latter years. The core concept in all this was of course imperialism. Yet on the British left – as was true, on the whole, of the wider international scene in those years – very few of the major analysts of global imperialism, either historically or in the present, engaged at all substantively with Ireland; while conversely few if any writers on Irish history and politics gave close attention to other places or to a non-Irish colonial history.

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Among the few intriguing exceptions was Bill Warren (1935–78), whose engagement with BICO was closely congruent with the sharply revisionary perspective on global empire that he put forward, especially in the posthumously published 1980 book Imperialism, pioneer of capitalism.22 An interesting ‘dog that didn’t bark’ in this regard is Peter Gibbon, third of the influential triumvirate with Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, whose main interests moved from Ireland to Africa and Third World development – and this later work, conducted in Tanzania, then Sweden and Denmark, has existed in a quite separate compartment from the earlier Irish writings, with none of the potentially fascinating comparative reflection in which he might have engaged. Another slightly muffled dog was Fred Halliday, Dundalk-born analyst of the Middle East, of imperialism, nationalism and revolution, who only began publicly reflecting on the pertinence to Ireland of his wider arguments (and indeed the personal Irish roots of some of them) near the end of his remarkable career.23 We might also note here Ronnie (Ronaldo) Munck, whose substantial bodies of work on Irish political economy, and on global questions of development, again exist almost entirely in parallel rather than interconnection with one another.24 Among British leftists, it is intriguing that historical links  – of personnel, organisations, thematics or theories – between the 1950s to 1960s anticolonial campaigning and 1970s to 1990s Irish involvements were not stronger than they were.25 My own broad impression – and I naturally hope this does not too much just reflect my own political predispositions  – would be that whether among academic experts or political activists, the more people really knew about Africa or Asia, and about global patterns of imperialism, colonialism and nationalism, the less likely they were to see Ireland as fitting neatly into these or to accept Republican perspectives on them. To a considerable degree this pattern continued even in the later small explosion of Irish postcolonial theory, remarkably few of whose practitioners showed any close engagement with histories, societies or even literatures elsewhere; though naturally one should again note some important exceptions, such as the work of Joe Cleary.26 Equally, one might validly complain that ‘Ireland’, in the rhetorical mode of most British left debate over those years, meant only Northern Ireland: for much of the British left, the Republic barely seemed to exist. Did anyone on the British left pay really close attention to the vast social and economic changes in the Republic in these years? There is little published evidence that they did.27 Those commentators and groups in and around Labour’s left who adopted ‘anti-imperialist’ positions evinced a strong and regrettable tendency to overlook or scorn the historical

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record of socialist, social-democratic and trade union politics both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. Something similar might be said in relations of feminist and women’s movements: a substantial body of the era’s writing from British Labour and other left-wing feminists seemed virtually to identify armed Irish Republicanism with the cause of women’s liberation.28 Here, though, there is a danger of moving into the mode for which others have here been criticised: negative critique rather than analytical exposition. Rather than pursue it further, let us turn to say more about the derivation of the ideas in play. What were people interested in ideas and in Ireland, among Labour leftists in these years, reading? There has been much lamentation about what they did not or could not read – like the notorious fact that New Left Review did not publish a single article on Ireland between 1970 and October 1994 (after the IRA ceasefire).29 The Socialist Register did a bit better, with major pieces in 1972 – a sharply anti-Republican analysis by Danish peace campaigner Anders Boserup, who also wrote for the Independent Labour Party on Ireland  – and a 1977  ‘dossier’ with some boldly contrasting views by Anthony Arblaster, Michael Farrell and Peter Gibbon. Indeed this latter package quite effectively showcased three of the main currents of opinion on the Marxist left about Northern Ireland’s crisis, with Arblaster arguing that it presaged the break-up of the whole United Kingdom, Farrell proclaiming that Republicans were engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle, Gibbon (adopting a more explicitly Leninist stance than did either Bew or Patterson, or indeed the three writing together, while constantly quoting Lenin) sharply repudiating this and suggesting that ‘progressiveness’ must not be measured by militancy in pursuit of nationalist aims: On the contrary, one of the criteria of progressiveness should be disposition toward democratic accommodation. Others should comprise more universal criteria:  positions on the general class struggle, women’s rights and so on. On this basis elements of the Official Republican movement, the Communist Party of Ireland and the traditional wing of the Northern Ireland Labour Party could be considered more or less progressive, while (amongst others) the bulk of the Provisional Republican movement, Loyalist paramilitary groups and official Unionism could be considered reactionary. The problem for Marxists is to discover a form of political activity in which the former forces could become allied and which at the same time could achieve a mass basis.30

Elsewhere, the relatively small library of readily available texts whose positions became  – directly or indirectly, and very often one

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suspects the latter  – widely diffused would include the following major works: Desmond Greaves’s 1972 The Irish crisis and his studies of Connolly and Liam Mellows (these lay in a tradition of British Communists’ writing on Ireland that could in a sense be traced back to T.  A. Jackson’s 1946 Ireland her own:  itself firmly and surprisingly a nationalist more than a Marxist text);31 Michael Farrell’s ‘anti-imperialist’ but largely narrative The orange state;32 the multiple works of Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson;33 and Belinda Probert’s Beyond orange and green from 1978, which also leans towards a ‘Two Nations’ view and urges taking Protestants’ views more seriously.34 And a place of honour should be given to Bob Purdie, whose 1972 Ireland unfree was maybe the best early exposition of a pro-Republican position from a British leftist, while his later work, including Divided nation, divided class, which he and Austen Morgan co-edited in 1980 (it came out of a 1978 conference at Warwick), pioneered a rethinking of those positions.35 A little later than these, in the last Thatcher years, particularly important relevant texts by British socialists included those by Bob Rowthorn and Naomi Wayne (a detailed empirical analysis especially of economic changes, which, however, ended in an almost incongruously stark political message that ‘Northern Ireland is one of the last remaining relics from Britain’s once mighty empire. Its Protestant community  …  still behaves as a settler community surrounded by hostile natives … Britain should withdraw’) and by Frank Wright with his pioneering comparative study.36 What effects did it all have in the longer term? We would, one suspects, search largely in vain for a powerfully distinctive input on Irish policy of ideas from Labour’s left among ministers in the Wilson and Callaghan governments, or much later those of Blair and Brown. Tony Craig notes intriguingly, however, that in the earlier period, junior Northern Ireland minister, Stan Orme, very much a figure from Labour’s left wing, ‘saw in some elements of loyalist thinking the same working-class solidarity on which he had based his own political career, and one that needed a legitimate channel of communication with the government’. Craig cites Glenn Barr, in particular, as crediting Orme with significant influence in prompting political engagement of a leftist sort among Loyalist paramilitary figures in the 1970s.37 More contentiously and negatively, Paul Dixon has argued that Peter Hain’s stint as Northern Ireland Secretary in 2005–7 was marked by an unprecedented partisanship, deriving from Hain’s previous immersion in left-wing and pro-Republican Labour circles during the opposition years.38 More generally and affirmatively, one might at a minimum say of most British

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left-wing interventions  – though not of that minority that actively cheered Republican violence – what a British diplomat said in 1972 of Communist influence in Ireland: that it ‘was a force for good – i.e. less violence, more scribbling’.39 And maybe in bemoaning a relative lack of high-level theoretical argument, this chapter is itself succumbing to an intellectualist, theoreticist or idealist perspective on current history. Perhaps the emphasis in most of the relevant literature, noted above, on events and personalities rather than theories is not after all so widely mistaken. Perhaps, too, upbringing, experience and emotion always tended to shape British political activists’ views on Ireland more than did ideology – especially, but far from only, among those of Irish descent or Catholic background. The most prominent of all Labour left-wing leaders in the period under discussion, Tony Benn, said in 1985 that ‘I was brought up to believe in Indian independence and Irish independence. It was talked about constantly at home, and the argument entered my bloodstream’.40 And after all, as J. P. Cannon, American Trotskyist leader and indirect mentor of some of the figures mentioned above, once wisely said – there are always two reasons for everything in politics:  a good reason and the real reason. The disputes have continued to echo down the decades: even as late as 2014 neither the internal divisiveness of Northern Ireland as an issue for Labour and the left, nor the appeal to some of the colonial imagery, had gone away. In March 2014 Boyd Black, secretary of the Northern Ireland Constituency Labour Party, accused leader, Ed Miliband, of an ‘undemocratic, 1950s, colonial governor mindset’. He went on: The cumulative effect of Labour’s stance over time is the single most politically destabilising factor in Northern Ireland … We have failing sectarian politics in Northern Ireland, not because of the flags protesters or the dissidents or the on-the-runs, but because the Labour Party suppress grown-up politics …  We in Northern Ireland, both Labour Party members and the wider public, are the Wretched of the Earth – when it comes to our relationship to the leadership of the Labour Party. The Labour Party leadership are our political and psychological oppressors, always putting us down, always being condescending, always keeping us in our place.41

At the height of the ‘Troubles’, some Nationalists and Republicans had been fond of casting themselves in the role of Frantz Fanon’s Damnes de La Terre. Now, a generation later, a Labour activist reached for the same image and identification. However far-fetched such associations seemed to many observers, they at least underlined the unended power of the emotions in play.

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Notes  1 Ken Livingstone, You can’t say that: memoirs (London, Faber, 2011).  2 Untitled contribution to Martin Collins (ed.), Ireland after Britain (London, Pluto, 1985), p. 13. See also John Carvel, Turn again, Livingstone (London, Profile, 1999), pp. 89–90, 138–9.  3 For further elaboration of this claim, see Stephen Howe, ‘Hugh Dalton’, in Kevin Jefferys (ed.), Labour forces (London, I.B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 42–61.  4 Richard English, ‘Reflections on republican socialism in Ireland:  Marxian roots and Irish historical dynamics’, History of Political Thought, vol. 17, no. 4, winter 1996, pp. 555–70, at p. 555.  5 Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The lost revolution: the story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party (Dublin, Penguin Ireland, 2009).  6 Among English’s many relevant works, see especially Radicals and the republic: socialist republicanism in the Irish Free State 1925–1937 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994); Armed struggle:  the history of the IRA (London, Macmillan, 2003).  7 In particular, his fine The politics of illusion: a political history of the IRA (London, Sherif, 1997). The criticism naturally applies at least as strongly to the present author’s own earlier excursions into this territory, for instance in Howe, Ireland and empire: colonial legacies in Irish history and culture (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000).  8 Richard Bourke, Peace in Ireland: the war of ideas (London, Pimlico, 2003).  9 Hanley and Millar, The lost revolution, p.  265. For a wider view of trans-archipelagic – and global – leftist interactions in the civil rights era, see Simon Prince, Northern Ireland’s ’68: civil rights, global revolt and the origins of the troubles (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2007). 10 Geoffrey Bell, The British in Ireland: a suitable case for withdrawal (London, Pluto, 1984). 11 Livingstone in Collins, Ireland after Britain, p. 17. 12 Aaron Edwards, ‘Social democracy and partition:  the British Labour Party and Northern Ireland, 1951–64’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 42, no.  4, October 2007, pp.  595–612; Bob Purdie, ‘The Friends of Ireland: British Labour and Irish nationalism, 1945–49’, in T. Gallagher and J.  O’Connell (eds), Contemporary Irish studies (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 81–94. 13 Personal communication. My debt to Purdie’s work throughout this chapter will be evident to any informed reader. 14 For a sharp critique, see Kevin McNamara, Roger Stott and Bill O’Brien, Oranges or lemons? Should Labour organise in Northern Ireland? (London, Kevin McNamara, 1993). This was actually in the main written by Brendan O’Leary. 15 Patrick Seyd and Paul Whiteley, Labour’s grass roots: the politics of party membership (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 213. 16 In, as they say, the interests of full disclosure: it should maybe be mentioned that this author’s own youthful affiliations at the time would have been with

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the harder end of the softies. He was for a time a member of the LCC and wrote occasionally for Chartist. 17 John Cunningham’s chapter here explores this far more closely. 18 This person is discussed, but not named, in Eamon Collins with Mick McGovern, Killing rage (London, Granta, 1997). 19 Matt Seaton, ‘Charge of the new Red Brigade’, Independent on Sunday, 29 January 1995. 20 Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, INLA: deadly divisions (Dublin, Torc, 1994), p. 345. 21 Seaton, ‘Charge of the new Red Brigade’. 22 Bill Warren, Imperialism, pioneer of capitalism (London, Verso, 1980). It is, however, difficult to trace published writings specifically on Ireland by Warren; it remains unclear which, if any, contributions to BICO’s many pamphlets and occasional journals are his. 23 Fred Halliday, ‘Irish nationalisms in perspective’, 2nd Torkel Opsahl Memorial Lecture, Belfast, 10 December 1997, mimeo, Democratic Dialogue May 1998. See also Stephen Howe, ‘Introduction’, in Fred Halliday, Political journeys: the open democracy essays, 2004–2009 (London, Saqi, 2011). 24 See, among others, Ronaldo Munck, The difficult dialogue:  Marxism and nationalism (London, Zed, 1986), and his The Irish economy: results and prospects (London, Pluto, 1993). 25 See on this Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British politics: the left and the end of empire 1918–1964 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993). 26 Including notably ‘Misplaced ideas? Locating and dislocating Ireland in colonial and postcolonial Studies’, in Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (eds), Marxism, modernity and postcolonial studies (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002), and ‘Amongst empires:  a short history of Ireland and empire studies in international context’, Éire-Ireland, vol. 42, no. 1–2, 2007, pp. 11–57. 27 For a powerful critique of such tendencies to see all of Ireland through Northern eyes, see Francis Mulhern, The present lasts a long time: essays in cultural politics (Cork, Cork University Press, 1998). 28 See, for instance, Eileen Fairweather, Roisin McDonough and Melanie McFadyean, Only the rivers run free: Northern Ireland – the women’s war (London, Pluto, 1984); Claire Hackett, ‘Self-determination: the republican feminist agenda’, Feminist Review, vol. 50, 1995. For a more critical retrospective, see Janou Glencross, How the international women’s movement discovered the ‘Troubles’:  brokered and broken transnational interactions during the Northern Ireland conflict, 1968–1981 (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2011). This theme naturally deserves, but cannot here receive, extended treatment in its own right. 29 For coverage at the outset of the ‘Troubles’, see ‘Discussion on the strategy of People’s Democracy’, New Left Review, vol. 55, 1969; Peter Gibbon, ‘Ireland:  split in Sinn Féin’, New Left Review, vol. 63, 1970; Cathal Goulding, ‘The present course of the IRA’, New Left Review, vol. 64, 1970. The first ‘breaking of the silence’ was Ellen Hazelkorn and Henry Patterson,

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‘The new politics of the Irish Republic’, New Left Review, vol. 207, 1994. Both the latter and the preceding lack of analysis were sharply attacked in Sam Porter and Denis O’Hearn, ‘New left Podsnappery: the British left and Ireland’, with a ‘Reply’ by Hazelkorn and Patterson and a commentary by editor Robin Blackburn, ‘Ireland and the NLR’: all in New Left Review, vol. 212, 1995. 30 Peter Gibbon, ‘Some basic problems of the contemporary situation’, The Socialist Register 1977, p. 83. 31 C. Desmond Greaves, The life and times of James Connolly (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1961); Liam Mellows and the Irish revolution (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971); The Irish crisis (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1972); T.  A. Jackson, Ireland her own (London, Cobbett Press, 1946). 32 Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: the orange state (London, Pluto, 1976; 2nd edn, 1980). 33 Among their many works, individually and collectively, the most relevant to our theme are Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, The state in Northern Ireland, 1921–1972 (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1979); Bew and Patterson, The British state and the Ulster crisis (London, Verso, 1985); and Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–1994:  political forces and social classes (London, Sherif, 1995). These are often called ‘Althusserian’, so it is perhaps surprising to find that Althusser, Balibar and Poulantzas are cited exactly once each in The state in Northern Ireland, and barely anywhere else in the trio’s work. 34 Belinda Probert, Between orange and green:  the political economy of the Northern Ireland crisis (London, Zed, 1978). 35 Austen Morgan and Bob Purdie (eds), Ireland:  divided nation, divided class (London, Ink Links, 1980); Bob Purdie, Ireland unfree (London, IMG Publications, 1972). See also Austen Morgan, James Connolly:  a political biography (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988). Another important, slightly later, leftist critique of colonial models was Hugh Roberts, Northern Ireland and the Algerian analogy:  a suitable case for Gaullism? (Belfast, Atholl Books, 1986). 36 Bob Rowthorn and Naomi Wayne, Northern Ireland:  the political economy of conflict (Cambridge, Polity, 1988), pp.  166, 170; Frank Wright, Northern Ireland:  a comparative analysis (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1987). 37 Tony Craig, ‘Laneside, then left a bit? Britain’s secret political talks with loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, 1973–1976’, Irish Political Studies, iFirst, 2012, pp. 6, 7. 38 Paul Dixon, ‘Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland: valuing the Union?’, Irish Political Studies, 21:2, 2006, pp. 113–36. 39 Quoted in Hanley and Millar, The lost revolution, p. 246. 40 Collins, Ireland after Britain, p. 130. 41 Liam Clarke, Belfast Telegraph, 5 March 2014.

12 The Militant Tendency comes to Ireland, c.1969–89 John Cunningham The Militant Tendency and its Irish offshoot were by several measures – durability, membership, public profile  – the most successful Trotskyist organisations and among the more successful overtly Marxist movements in Britain and/or Ireland in the twentieth century. Yet they have been little studied, and what has been written about them has often been unsatisfactory. Material produced by Militant itself has been celebratory of achievement, and unforthcoming about modus operandi, while commentary from political opponents and disenchanted members has been overly critical.1 This writer will draw on an understanding of documents and strategies derived from a period as a ‘Militant supporter’ to explain the orientation and strategy of Militant in Ireland, to give an indication of its impact and to examine the connections between British and Irish ‘sections’.2 Militant is conventionally dated to 1964, to the founding in London of the paper of that name on the initiative of South African-born veteran Trotskyist, Ted Grant (1913–2006). The formulations ‘Militant Tendency ‘ and ‘Militant supporters’ were adopted to enable Grant and comrades to remain as ‘entrists’ in the British Labour Party – had they acknowledged that they were in fact members of a separate organisation, they would have been liable for expulsion. An Irish section, formed in 1974, was preceded by Militant Irish Monthly in 1972. A regular paper was totemic in Leninist/Trotskyist tradition, at once an ‘open face’, a sign of political vitality and an organising vehicle, so it was significant that the Irish paper anticipated the organisation.3 To understand Militant, it is necessary to know something of the complex and fractious tradition from which it emerged. The fractiousness, it is argued, is traceable to Trotsky’s The death agony of capitalism and the tasks of the Fourth International (1938), the ideology’s founding charter. Believing that a new (Fourth) International was necessary, Trotsky allowed that limited numbers and resources might oblige his followers to strategically join or ‘enter’ parties of the ‘degenerated’ Second (Socialist)

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and Third (Communist) Internationals to more effectively address the working class.4 ‘Entrism’ was hardly novel, since communists had previously pressed for the right to also belong to social democratic parties. (Irish Communists in the southern Irish state, indeed, dissolved their party and operated as a Labour Party faction during the 1940s.)5 A fitful urgency, combined with a perennial emphasis on the forging of a leadership both theoretically sophisticated and practical, meant contention was hard to avoid. There were fleeting Irish contacts with Trotsky and Trotskyism in the 1930s, notably in efforts to secure political asylum for Trotsky himself and in exchanges between English Trotskyists and a resuscitated remnant of the Irish Citizen Army whose leaders included Nora Connolly O’Brien.6 The first substantial Irish encounter with Trotskyism began in the late 1930s, through the (British) Workers’ International League (WIL), then resisting efforts by the Fourth International to unite British Trotskyists in the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL).7 Key WIL figures were Paddy Trench in Dublin and Bob Armstrong in Belfast  – Spanish Civil War veterans both – who were briefly reinforced by five comrades from Britain, sent to carry on WIL work during an anticipated war-time crackdown on radicals in Britain. The five included Jack Haston, close associate of Ted Grant, and Gerry Healy, originally from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, later leader of the Socialist Labour League (SLL) and the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. In Dublin and Belfast, the Trotskyists sought to influence republicans and vied with communists for hegemony on the left of the labour parties of which they were ‘entrist’ members.8 There were occasional differences of opinion within the League, notably in relation to the Irish ‘national question’. Writing in the WIL paper Socialist Appeal in 1940, Bob Armstrong argued that the removal of the border was a prerequisite for the establishment of socialism in Ireland – implying support for republicanism. The alternative view, upheld by the WIL leadership in London, was that it was only through a workers’ movement uniting Catholic and Protestant that Irish unity could be achieved.9 The Irish Trotskyists were WIL members but a nominally independent Irish organisation, the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), arose in the mid-1940s from broader developments. Under pressure from the International, the British movement united in a Revolutionary Communist Party in 1944; its WIL faction wished to have a compliant ‘national’ ally in the International, and the Irish obliged by forming the small RSP. It published a few issues of a paper, the Workers’ Republic, in 1947 but collapsed with Bob Armstrong’s return to Britain for family reasons, ending Ireland’s first significant encounter with Trotskyism.10

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This was a period of intense argument in Trotskyism, crystallising in the division between the International Secretariat for the Fourth International (ISFI) and the International Committee for the Fourth International (ICFI) in 1953. At issue were the likely robustness of the post-war settlement and the proper attitude to the USSR. From analysis flowed political strategy: whether and how to apply ‘entrism’; whether to orient to social-democratic or communist movements. Regarding the USSR, there was disagreement about whether it was a degenerated workers’ state (with features worth defending), or state capitalist (as bad as the capitalist West). There were related debates about the character of regimes in Eastern Europe and former colonies. In the late 1950s, Gerry Healy’s SLL formed a branch in Belfast (though not an Irish section), which won control of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) youth, leading them out of that party to oblivion in 1962. In London, SLL member Gery Lawless formed an Irish Communist Group with proto-Maoists, which split in 1965 into its constituent parts, the British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO) and Lawless’s Irish Workers Group,11 which recruited prominent Derry socialist, Eamonn McCann, before splitting during 1968–69 into the League for a Workers’ Republic (LWR) and People’s Democracy (PD). The LWR won control of the Irish Labour Party youth before being forced out; the PD was an element of the civil rights movement. From division in the PD in 1971 emerged the Socialist Workers’ Movement (SWM), aligned with the (British) Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and including Eamonn McCann.12 Militant, which would compete with these groups, while disparaging them as ‘sects’ and flibbertigibbets, was traditional and profoundly ‘workerist’ – intervening in trade unions before social movements; continuing ‘entrism’ in Labour; scorning its rivals’ efforts to ‘construct a fickle and passing base among the students and petit-bourgeoisie’.13 Out of sympathy with trends in Trotskyism internationally, Ted Grant had led his followers out of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1965,14 having already embarked on his odyssey with Militant, as he rebranded the Revolutionary Socialist League. A significant ally of Grant’s was young Liverpudlian, Peter Taaffe, who became editor of the British Militant paper on its establishment in 1964. Almost a decade later, alongside Peter Hadden, John Throne and Finn Geaney, Taaffe would be central to the founding of an Irish ‘section’ of Militant – the first outside Britain. The key figures require introduction. Throne, the most high-profile figure initially, grew up in Lifford, Co. Donegal, in a small farming family prominent in the Orange Order, and travelled widely after leaving school at the age of sixteen. On his return, he sought out the Derry Labour Party, due to the press coverage

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of its anti-sectarian, socialist prescriptions. Derry Labour was a unit of the NILP, but with outspoken leaders like Nora Harkin and Eamonn McCann it was far from typical of that party. Throne was soon the organiser of its ancillary Young Socialists.15 As disorder swept Northern Ireland, several episodes in which Throne and his comrades were centrally involved attracted attention, notably the civil rights march organised by the Labour-linked Derry Housing Action Committee in October 1968 and the ‘Battle of the Bogside’ of August 1969.16 Watching closely were left groups including Militant, which had only one member in Ireland, Paul Jones, a Derry Protestant graduate of the London School of Economics. Given Militant’s orientation, the stance of Derry Labour had particular significance, and Jones was directed to join.17 Militant’s position on Northern Ireland derived from its interpretation of Trotsky’s writings on ‘permanent revolution’ and ‘individual terror’, and by its general orientation towards ‘official’ labour organisations.18 Its approach to conflicts elsewhere – from South Africa to the Middle East – was strikingly similar, having been shaped by the same ideas. Trotsky’s remarks on ‘terrorism’ were prompted by early-twentieth-century anarchists and Russian socialist revolutionaries, whose actions he criticised along the traditional Marxist lines that dramatic violent acts were elitist in substituting the deed of the individual for the mobilisation of the collective. And acts of terror were counter-productive also in giving states an excuse to introduce laws that might later be used against labour and popular movements. Militant was atypical of Trotskyists in applying the concept to the IRA and liberation movements in other countries. The ‘permanent revolution’ thesis flowed from Marxist theory, which saw the formation of democratic nation states as ‘an historic task’ of the bourgeoisie, a task largely carried out in economically advanced countries.19 Because of the weakness of the bourgeoisie in colonial and economically backward countries, it fell to the working class to solve the national question. But if workers made a national revolution, why should they stop at that? Should they not continue the revolution and impose socialism? For Marxists, the Irish national revolution was incomplete, because the colonial power held part of the national territory. Subservient to British capital, Ireland’s nationalist bourgeoisie could not unite the country. Militant held that only labour could do so, being organised across both border and sectarian divide in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Protestant and Catholic workers could together defeat sectarianism, and while Protestant workers would resist absorption by the priest-ridden South, they might be persuaded to struggle for a non-sectarian socialist Ireland but for the pusillanimity of labour’s leaders.

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When British soldiers were deployed in Northern Ireland in August 1969, they were welcomed as protectors by most nationalists and by much of the political left. The SWM and its parent SWP, for example, raised no objection.20 For Militant, however, the soldiers were sent to protect the ‘interests of British and Ulster big business’. As an alternative, it proposed ‘joint defence committees’ under the auspices ‘of Labour and the Trade Unions’.21 Lacking boots on the ground, however, Militant and its solutions had little impact. Taaffe visited Derry in August 1969 – one of many leftists seeking influence – and was introduced by Jones to Throne, Harkin, and Bernadette Devlin, who was by then Mid-Ulster MP.22 Jones’s early trajectory resembled that of Peter Hadden, son of a Strabane clergyman. Hadden encountered Militant at Sussex University – one of its key recruiting grounds, and extremely important to its expansion, with its Militant graduates spreading the Tendency’s influence throughout Britain.23 Hadden was one of the more significant Militant ‘finds’ at Sussex. Returning to Northern Ireland in 1971, he gained employment with a trade union, the Northern Ireland Public Service Association (NIPSA), where he used opportunities to recruit to Militant. One recruit was Billy Lynn, who recalled that he first met Hadden when, having robustly heckled a speaker, he was ordered to leave a NIPSA conference. The junior official delegated to ensure his removal was Hadden, who engaged him in discussion and soon persuaded him to join Militant.24 At University College Cork, Finn Geaney was involved in student politics, had associated with a small Trotskyist group, the Irish Revolutionary Socialist Alliance, and had campaigned for Labour in the 1969 election. Emigrating to London in 1970, he got a teaching job at Holland Park, where he befriended Roger Silverman, a founder of Militant, and campaigned alongside him for Labour in the 1970 general election. The surprise outcome of that election was the defeat of the Labour government of Harold Wilson, the government that had mismanaged the developing crisis in Northern Ireland. Geaney had been interested in Marxism from his time in Cork, so he was happy to accompany Silverman to meetings of Militant, where he was impressed by Taaffe’s analysis. He felt that English Trotskyists generally had a simplistic view of Ireland, but that Militant was more nuanced, so he joined around the middle of 1970, helping to establish an Irish Bureau comprising Irish Militant sympathisers in England.25 Meanwhile, Throne was having discussions with a variety of groups. He recalls that he found Militant’s approach to be most likely to appeal across the sectarian divide to people of his own backgrounds. Posted to Dublin, he joined the Labour Party.

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Towards the end of 1971, Taaffe, together with Geaney (the only London-based member of the emerging Irish leadership), made preparations to publish an Irish paper. Geaney commissioned articles, passing them for approval to Taaffe, and receiving training in layout. A Militant ‘Irish special issue’ appeared in January 1972, with articles attributed to Hadden, Geaney and Taaffe, as well as to Jerry Lynch and Brian Kinkead, recruited at Essex University before returning to Derry, and to two students at Coleraine, Bridget O’Toole and seasoned activist, Alex Wood, who came to study there and oversaw the development of the first Militant cluster at an Irish university. Taaffe’s centre-page feature was a critique of the ‘two nations theory’ and its main exponents in Ireland – Conor Cruise O’Brien, Labour TD and leading intellectual, and BICO, identified only as ‘a “Marxist” sect’. The Irish question could not be solved on a partitionist basis. Taaffe argued, but on the basis of a ‘socialist united Ireland’. Another ‘special’ was followed by the first Militant Irish Monthly in June 1972, published as ‘Issue No. 3’, retrospectively incorporating the two ‘specials’. Irish Militant, the preferred title, was passed over because it had been claimed by the Irish Workers’ Group in 1966. A front-page article, ‘Introducing the Irish Monthly’, made no bones about the group’s genesis in Britain. And if its design closely resembled the British paper, this was because Finn Geaney followed the only template that he knew.26 Otherwise, an orientation towards the south was signalled in the front-page article responding to the volte-face on coalition by Irish Labour Party leader, Brendan Corish. A piece on the NILP signalled that Militant was already implementing the British Tendency’s entrism strategy on both sides of the border. The paper was useful for prompting political discussion with people encountered at meetings and on demonstrations, but it was also a way of engaging strangers, as Throne recalls:  ‘Every Friday night and Saturday night, I’d get the bus out to the edges of the city, to Finglas, to Tallaght, out the southside, the northside [of Dublin], and I’d get off the bus and walk the main street down to the city centre, selling the paper in every pub. I met a load of people – I met Dermot Connolly, who became the senior person in Militant after I left – I met him in a pub!’27 While Geaney was de facto editor until he returned to Ireland in 1974, Hadden was officially designated editor. The editorial function was collective in any case, with Taaffe as editor-in-chief, checking each issue before it went to press – regarded as helpful by his Irish comrades. The paper, which was laid out in Dublin from the mid-1970s with the acquisition of a Varietype machine, was an important platform for the

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dissemination of the views of this small new organisation, but it was not the only one.28 John Throne, indeed, would make effective use of the Labour Party platform to propagate the politics of Militant. The early and mid-1970s were fractious years in the party, due both to fundamental differences on Northern Ireland and to the reversal of the anti-coalition position of the 1960s.29 Throne established himself as one of the personalities of the party’s left – dominated by the Liaison of the Labour Left – speaking at public meetings alongside prominent rebels.30 In 1972, he and long-ago Health Minister, Noël Browne, were among five signatories to a statement entitled ‘Pre-conditions for Coalition’, listing twelve demands derived from Irish Labour’s policy platform of 1969. The statement was not explicitly anti-coalition, though if Labour had held out for policies such as the nationalisation of financial institutions, participation in government with Fine Gael would have been unlikely.31 When Labour entered government in 1973, Throne articulated a position, firmer than the Liaison group’s, which was anti-coalition in principle. Arguably influential in Labour’s debates into the 1980s, it was set out in a Throne-authored pamphlet of 1975.32 Militant’s principal platform during the period, however, remained the Northern Ireland crisis. At the 1973 Labour Party conference, where he was a Tallaght delegate, Throne caused a stir when he proposed a trade union defence force as a solution. Leading figures, including Conor Cruise O’Brien, poured scorned on his motion, which was defeated.33 Representing Crumlin at the 1974 conference in Galway, Throne was again in the limelight, proposing a resolution advocating a trade union-based successor to the moribund NILP. His accent gave his pronouncements a certain authority, though he objected to being described as a ‘Northern Protestant’: ‘I have been an atheist since the age of 18, and my atheism has assumed a more positive form in the past five years as I have attained an understanding of the ideas of Marxism and dialectical materialism.’34 But if the Irish Labour Party provided an audience for Militant’s propaganda, its key ideological engagement on the North in these years was with BICO, the formerly republican formation that provided the ideological underpinning for ‘two-nations theory’. Hadden wrote a pamphlet in 1974 entitled, Northern Ireland:  for workers’ unity, described as ‘a reply to the Workers Association’, which was a BICO front. For the author’s protection, it was published under a pseudonym.35 In 1974, Hadden (Hunt) engaged BICO members in debate in the letters pages of the Irish Times.36 The implosion of the NILP deprived Militant of a labour party in which to camouflage itself. From

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the remnants, however, it rescued the Labour and Trade Union Group (LTUG), descended from the Derry Labour Party, and ran it as a front organisation. As LTUG Coordinator, Hadden addressed an Irish Forum in Boston in 1975, alongside Tomás Mac Giolla, Séamus Costello and Glenn Barr.37 As Militant raised its profile in the late 1970s and early 1980s, North and South, its secrecy prompted curiosity and speculation about its aims, strategies and procedures. Among the curious was Mike Allen (future general secretary of the Irish Labour Party) who attended a Militant public meeting for a magazine of which he was editor. In a subsequent article, entitled ‘Socialist conscience or “Labour’s Legion of Mary” ’, he recounted hearsay about the Tendency’s internal life: It has been strongly suggested that supporters make weekly contributions and have ideological and organisational meetings run by their own officers … The passing of resolutions at branch and union meetings often seems to be the primary concern of Militant members … According to former supporters, activists are expected to give up most of their free time, ‘What with selling newspapers in Rahoon and meetings, I ended up with one evening a week to myself…’.38

Much of this is confirmed by minutes of a Galway branch, formed by three students in Throne’s presence in July 1976. Officers were elected at the first of the weekly meetings, which were centred on a ‘lead-off’ on a political topic. At the fifth meeting, the ‘lead-off’ on Friedrich Engels’s The housing question was prompted by an imminent policy statement on housing from the constituency Labour Party.39 An examination of the Galway minutes from the week in 1984 in which Allen’s article appeared tells a similar story. There were discussions of ‘contacts’ (i.e. prospective members), of paper sales on a housing estate and at seven workplaces, of tactics for a forthcoming Labour Party meeting, and of forthcoming public events of the local Labour Youth. Under ‘Finance’, the treasurer reported that members had committed to an average subscription of £2.25 a week, but the average collected was only £1.60. The subscription was in addition to an individual fighting fund target of £40.40 By Marc Mulholland’s recollections, things were not so different 200 miles away in Coleraine: A meeting would begin with a political ‘lead-off’ on historical or current issues or a matter of theory. These lead-offs were extraordinary in retrospect, often lasting over an hour … Then we would discuss activity (where to leaflet or poster, the possibility of organising a public meeting), the paper (we would do ‘estate sales’, a dreary trudge around working class housing

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estates, street sales and personal sales to sympathisers; we rarely sold more than 30 to 40 in a month) and finance.41

Minutes and memoir indicate a demanding schedule, corroborating the recollection of the anonymous ex-member who ‘ended up with one evening a week’ to himself. Knowledge of Militant’s internal regime led academic writers  – one a former editor of Irish Tendency’s paper – to characterise Militant as a cult. The concept is nebulous, however, as indicated by the authorial qualification that ‘cults are best viewed as a continuum’ with ‘healthy well-functioning groups in which dissent is respected’ at one end and ‘totalitarian enclaves’ at the other.42 Accusations of cultism were prompted partly by Militant’s system of governance, ‘democratic centralism’ – a model derived from the Bolsheviks and the default system for Leninist groups. Democratic centralism obliged members to publicly advocate the group’s position, even if they disagreed with it, while elections to leading bodies were on a ‘slate’ basis, under which an incoming leadership was selected by the outgoing. To oppose an individual nominee was to reject the entire ‘slate’. This system tended to stifle disagreement, especially where many of the leaders were full-time political workers – as they were in Militant. The British Militant, to the chagrin of the Labour Party leaders, had 130 full-time employees in the early 1980s. There was a similar regime in Ireland, with clusters of ‘full-timers’ in Belfast and Dublin, and a few individuals based in regional centres.43 The cost of maintaining the apparatus – even if full-timers were poorly paid – explains the high subscriptions and the pressure to reach ‘fighting fund’ targets.44 Supporters were always fund-raising:  requesting donations, selling lines, holding collections at their public meetings. Militant supporters were also seen to have a simplistic approach to problems. This was due partly to the fact that young and inexperienced members were encouraged to make political interventions at meetings, and partly to the fact that they were intended to be simplistic. The raising of ‘transitional demands’ was central to the Trotskyist approach to politics: the 35-hour week and the nationalisation of the banks were not raised as ends in themselves but were raised in order to attract workers to Militant. And the sacrifices of time and money need to be placed in context: Militant was self-consciously a ‘cadre organisation’ of revolutionary activists – an officer caste without a rank and file. As indicated by the title of an Irish Militant pamphlet, Socialism or catastrophe, the task in hand was seen as urgent, so great a commitment was required.

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In addition to a sense of comradeship, veterans of the Tendency recall other compensations. Militant developed competencies, and activists quickly found themselves formulating resolutions, writing up reports of labour disputes and meetings, producing posters and leaflets, organising public events. Wide reading in the course of preparation for ‘lead-offs’ gave a satisfying sense of understanding the workings of the world, a sense that was enhanced through encounters with ‘comrades’ from flash-points like East Belfast, Dublin’s north inner city, Toxteth, Handsworth or Brixton. Involvement also gave the sense of playing a useful part in significant events through, for example, the hosting of striking British miners, and of activists and exiles from the world’s trouble spots. It also brought the individual into contact with prominent figures in politics and the trade unions, and even where the engagement was fraught there was evidently some satisfaction in feeling that one was upsetting the machinations of ‘bureaucrats’ and ‘careerists’.45 If Irish Militants were sensitive to the charge that they belonged to a subsidiary of the British organisation, it was only because this might be used against them politically. They were happy to be members of an international movement of anti-imperialist socialists, of which the headquarters happened to be in England. By 1974, when the Irish ‘section’ was officially established, there were cognate groups in Sweden and Germany, and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) was established in the same year at a conference in London where there were representatives and observers from twelve different countries. As the CWI expanded during the next few years, incorporating in the process established groups elsewhere, notably in Sri Lanka, the centre remained in London and it continued to exert great influence.46 Nowhere was London’s influence stronger than in Ireland. The Irish paper continued to be printed in England, and legally this had to be acknowledged on the back page of every issue. The ‘paper is printed in Britain purely for economic reasons’, a rising leader of Irish Militant, Joe Higgins, told a journalist, and the ‘arrangement would cease when the Irish group bought its own press’.47 The relationship, however, went much deeper than that. For example, of the attendance at the 1976 Irish annual conference of eighty, fifteen came from Britain. The political approach was identical, and internal proceedings and nomenclature were adopted willy-nilly from Britain in the early 1970s.48 If the routines in Galway and Coleraine were similar, they would also have been familiar to a putative visitor from Gateshead or Coventry. The three principal areas of Militant endeavour were the political (i.e. Irish Labour), trade union and youth. The objectives of ‘single-issue’ type campaigns, from the achievement of equality for women to the

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abolition of apartheid in South Africa, it considered to be most effectively advanced through trade unionism and ultimately only resolvable under socialism. Working people, when they acted to win political redress, would do so in the first instance through their traditional mass organisations, where revolutionaries should be awaiting them. Youth activism, discussed below, was also channelled towards unions. In the Irish Labour Party, Militant supporters cultivated a reputation as committed activists:  ‘They make a point of canvassing for all Labour candidates, no matter how conservative. In areas where they are strong – like Galway and parts of Dublin – they are the organisational backbone.’49 In rendering ‘entrists’ valuable to the host organisation, the activity was intended to protect them from expulsion. Diligent as they were, Militants despised the party as, in Lenin’s phrase, a ‘bourgeois labour party’, and they anticipated splitting from it at the most opportune moment. A  proper aloofness was difficult to maintain, however, and for some Trotskyist critics, Militant in Britain was contaminated by and rendered unrevolutionary by its long involvement with Labour. For one such, Militant had ‘threaded itself into the trelliswork of [Labour Party] structures, not only organisationally, but also emotionally and intellectually’.50 Trade union work had two elements. First, there was an emphasis on establishing links with workers in their workplaces through paper sales and visiting picket lines. Second, members were expected to be active in the trade union appropriate to their own employment. One former member recalled Peter Hadden insisting that ‘our trade union work in particular could not be opportunist or fly-by-night’.51 Indeed, the expectations of the Militant trade unionist were practically Stakhanovite, as confirmed by an internal document from 1980:  ‘On top of this, comrades must be seen as amongst the best workers on the job. Workers in general will not elect as their representatives individuals who are always arriving late for work, or who are known to be slackers.’52 This document reiterated the position that members should not take full-time appointments in trade unions. Elected positions and functions, whether as shop stewards or delegates, should only be taken without concealing the individual’s viewpoint:  ‘This would not necessarily mean that the workers involved would support the programme of the T[endency], but rather that they would elect the comrade in the full knowledge of the T’s and the comrade’s political position.’53 Militant took a particular interest in workers involved in strikes. Supporters joined pickets, assisted with solidarity and fundraising and covered disputes in their paper. A significant dispute in which Militant played a key role was the Dunnes Stores dispute of 1984–87, which

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ultimately succeeded in securing a ban on the import of South African goods to Ireland. It arose when a small group of young shopworkers, in line with their union policy, refused to handle South African goods, and were disciplined by their employer as a result. There was a marked lack of enthusiasm, at least initially, on the part of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, both doubting the viability of the protest and preferring to use more orthodox channels to convey the anti-apartheid message. For Militant, however, the principled political stand taken independently by young working-class women, was commendable. Through the Labour Youth organisation that it controlled, and a South African exile who was a member, Nimrod Sejake, the Tendency reinforced the picket line on a daily basis, organised speaking tours for the strikers and assisted in publicising the case in other ways. It has been acknowledged by the strikers that this support was vital to the sustenance of the strike, especially in the early period.54 In the North, Militant secured a strong position on the executive of NIPSA during the 1980s, and used its consequent influence to press the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to arrange protests in circumstances where trade unionists had been killed by paramilitaries or indeed intimidated in carrying out their work.55 Reaching 100 members in 1980, Irish Militant grew rapidly thereafter – 130 in August 1981; 304 in August 1983; 380 in November 198456 – with an accompanying shift in the geographical balance. Fighting fund targets indicates that North (Belfast, Derry, Ballymena, Larne, Strabane) and South (Dublin, Galway) had roughly equal memberships at the end of 1978. By late 1981, with branches in Cork, Donegal and Limerick, the balance had shifted decisively, and the financial target for the South was at twice the level of the North.57 Rates and patterns of increase were determined by the major fields of activity in the early 1980s: H-Block campaign; Irish Labour Party; Labour Youth. During the Republican hunger strikes of 1980–81, Militant’s approach was at odds with other Trotskyist groups who supported the H-Block campaign. Accepting that the hunger-strikers’ demands should be conceded, it argued in the labour parties in Ireland and Britain that the concessions should be extended to all prisoners on a human rights basis. Because it was larger and more influential than hitherto, Militant’s position on the North began to attract more scrutiny, and it came to be categorised alongside BICO and the Official Republican movement as ‘two nationist’, a characterisation it rejected. Pro-republican critics focused on Militant’s view that the release of prisoners convicted in the no-jury Diplock courts should be adjudicated by the labour movement, and on its formula for ultimate resolution – ‘a socialist United Ireland within a socialist federation of the British Isles’.58 Overall, Militant was satisfied with its approach: ‘H-Block

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did not damage the tendency. It completely withstood the temporary pressures of mounting sectarianism. Its effect has been to harden the apparatus and the supporters.’59 If conditions in the North made recruitment difficult, Southern circumstances were more favourable. Militant prominence in the Irish Labour Party in the early 1980s was facilitated by the departure of much of the anti-coalition left to the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) of Dr Noël Browne and Matt Merrigan in 1977. Several of its Trotskyist rivals, which abjured entrism in Labour, joined the SLP:  the SWM, for example, became its Socialist Workers Tendency. With three close-run general elections in 1981 and 1982, Labour’s debate on coalition was intense and prolonged, providing Militant with media and party platforms for its uncompromising argument. In this context, Joe Higgins achieved prominence. A  former student for the Catholic priesthood, Higgins did not fit Trotskyist stereotypes. Neat and personable, with a distinctive Kerry accent, and fluent in both Irish and English, he succeeded John Throne on Labour’s ruling Administrative Council in the early 1980s.60 More than any other factor, however, it was Labour Youth that propelled Militant forward in the early 1980s. In this, as in much else, it followed the example of Militant in Britain, which had secured a majority on the national committee of the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) in 1970 and exercised rigorous control over it thereafter.61 In Ireland, Militant supporters pressed strongly through the 1970s for the re-establishment of a youth organisation, and in May 1979 there took place the first national conference, heralded in a centre-page feature of Militant as ‘an event of major historical importance’.62 In 1981, it won a secure majority, and proceeded to run Labour Youth as the LPYS was run in Britain – with Militant full-timers taking officers’ positions.63 Within months, ‘the first ever Labour Youth Summer Camp’ was arranged – a week-long event in Portumna, Co. Galway, modelled on an LPYS antecedent. A programme of ‘interesting socialist education’ was promised, with topics ranging from ‘The Russian Revolution’ to ‘The history of Rock and Roll’, as well as football, quizzes, a nightly ‘disco and social’ and the opportunity to consort with ‘fraternal campers’ from the British LPYS.64 Integration with the British Militant was further encouraged by attendance at the Easter conferences of the LPYS in the Yorkshire resort of Bridlington. Successful entrism could not be pursued indefinitely. In Britain, Militant had been sheltered to some extent through its association with the ‘Bennite’ left and entrist groups. However, at a party conference in July 1982, the Labour leader, Michael Foot, drew a sharp distinction between the Bennite left and entrists. He declared:

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when people say to me that Militant Tendency are [sic] just like Stafford Cripps or Aneurin Bevan, or the Salvation Army … it is not like that at all … There was no secret conspiracy with Stafford Cripps or Aneurin Bevin; they wanted everybody to know what they were doing. [Applause.] There were no false colours about the way in which they went about propagating their views. They were accused of trying to form a party within a party, but it was not true. It was not true, but in this case it is true, and that is a big difference.65

After the election of three Militant ‘supporters’ as MPs in 1983, Militant’s ‘editorial board’ was expelled. Two years later, the high-profile conflict between the Militant-led Liverpool council and Thatcher’s government prompted Neil Kinnock into more decisive action. British developments were being watched in Ireland. Due to the Labour government’s handling of the Northern Ireland conflict in the 1970s, and Foot’s position on the Republican hunger strikes in Long Kesh in 1981, Anglo-Irish relations were strained in that period. But of the areas where British Labour and the Irish Labour Party in government were of one mind in the early 1980s, the ‘Trotskyist threat’ stood out. This was discussed by the Irish Labour Party as early as June 1982, while a raid on Militant’s offices by the police, An Garda Síochána, in 1984 prompted imputations that Irish Labour leader and tánaiste, Dick Spring, had advance knowledge of it.66 Recently expelled Peter Taaffe embarked on an Irish tour ‘against the witch hunt’ in February 1984. It was not until the Irish Labour Party left government in 1987, however, that it was able to attend to its Militant ‘problem’, and the selection of Joe Higgins as a Labour parliamentary candidate in 1988 gave the matter added urgency.67 A determined and widely based effort to wrest control of Labour Youth was successful in the spring of 1988. One veteran considers Militant’s total monopolisation of the youth movement to have been short-sighted in denying it potential allies at the moment of crisis.68 At the party conference of the following year, a resolution providing for the ‘exclusion’ of members of Militant was passed by a two-to-one majority. In commending the motion, Dick Spring insisted, ‘we are not talking about witch-hunts or expulsions but about choice  – whether you belong to the Labour Party or the Militant Tendency’. Significantly, and perhaps cynically, he referred to James Connolly, contrasting his sacrifice for full Irish independence with Militant’s aspiration for ‘a federation between Ireland and Britain’.69 Appeals against the expulsion of ten senior Militants were rejected at the following conference. While Higgins promised that the expelled members would ‘campaign for reinstatement’, the definitive break came with the launch of Militant

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Labour in April 1993 with a claimed membership of 250, North and South.70 The name was the same as that adopted by the British organisation in 1991. By way of conclusion, it might be argued that Irish Militant’s greatest achievement was to lead several hundred out of the Labour Party, via Militant Labour, into a new Socialist Party in 1996.71 Unlike in Britain, there was no split, and less than a handful of erstwhile Militant ‘supporters’ remained behind. Since then, the Socialist Party has led significant campaigns against the imposition of new local taxes, while Higgins and others have been elected to Irish and European parliaments and to local authorities. If the purpose of ‘entrism’ was to marshal a political force capable of standing independently, it may be considered to have been successful. ‘Ethical’ objections to entrism it would have considered invalid, for, like earlier revolutionary groups, Militant considered that labour parties had long been suborned by professional politicians, and subverted to serve capitalism. (Similar processes, it believed, had taken place in trade unions.) Its own right to participate in labour bodies, it followed, was at least equal to that of parasitic ‘careerists’. And while sensitive to accusations of undue British influence, Militant considered itself part of an international working-class movement, one transcending national borders; and it saw nothing inappropriate about following practices and strategies that had proved themselves elsewhere. As for Militant’s political impact during the period it pursued entrism, it is difficult to judge. Within the Irish Labour Party, there are indications that it affected the nature of the debate about coalition but not the outcome of that debate. With regard to Northern Ireland, there is likewise little evidence that it affected the direction of events. Valiant efforts notwithstanding, its impact on general trends within trade unionism, North and South, might likewise be considered limited, even if one must acknowledge its important role in particular disputes, notably the landmark Dunnes Stores dispute of the mid-1980s. Notes  1 Liverpool Black Caucus, The racial politics of Militant in Liverpool (Liverpool, Merseyside Areas Profile Group/The Runnymede Trust, 1986); Peter Taaffe, The rise of Militant: thirty years of Militant (London, Militant Publications, 1995); Peter Taaffe and Tony Mulhern, Liverpool: a city that dared to fight (London, Fortress, 1988). Dennis Tourish, co-author with Tim Wohlforth of On the edge: political cults of the right and left (New York, Routledge, 2000), was editor of Militant Irish Monthly. Poet Kevin Higgins was rueful about his Militant experience in Time gentlemen, please (Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2008), passim. Labour Party figures have been scornful

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of Militant:  John Horgan, Labour:  the price of power (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1986); Ray Kavanagh, Spring, summer and fall:  the rise and fall of the Labour Party (Dublin, Blackwater Press, 2001); Ruairi Quinn, Straight left: a journey in politics (Dublin, Hachette Books, 2005).  2 Minute books for Galway branches of Militant (hereafter referred to as ‘Militant, Galway minutes’) and some internally circulated documents of British and Irish Militant are in the private possession of the author.  3 British Militant, ‘Sales’, (internal) Bulletin, June 1981, pp. 13–14.  4 Stephen Frank Rayner, ‘The classification and dynamics of sectarian forms of organisation’, PhD thesis, University College London, 1979, p. 106.  5 Francis Beckett, Enemy within: the rise and fall of the British Communist Party (London, Merlin Press, 1995), pp. 23–4; Mike Milotte, Communism in modern Ireland:  pursuit of the Workers’ Republic since 1916 (Dublin, Gill & Macmillan, 1984), pp. 191–200.  6 Ciaran Crossey and Jim Monaghan, ‘The origins of Trotskyism in Ireland’, Revolutionary History, vol. 6, no. 2–3, pp. 4–57; D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, ‘Early history of Irish Trotskyism’, mimeographed document held by author, n.d.; Robert Alexander’s section on ‘Ireland’, in his International Trotskyism, 1929–1985: a documented analysis of the movement (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 568–76.  7 Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson, The war and the International:  a history of the Trotskyist movement in Britain, 1937–1949 (London, Socialist Platform, 1986), pp. 1–6.  8 Crossey and Monaghan, ‘The origins’, pp. 6–26; Matt Merrigan, Eggs and rashers: Irish socialist memories (Dublin, Umiskin Press, 2014), pp. 25–33.  9 Crossey and Monaghan, ‘The origins’, pp. 9–10. 10 Crossey and Monaghan, ‘The origins’, pp. 34–47. 11 O’Connor Lysaght, ‘Early history’, pp. 9–12. 12 O’Connor Lysaght, ‘Early history’, pp.  11–12; John Goodwillie, ‘Glossary of the left in Ireland’, Gralton: An Irish Socialist Review, no. 9, August–September 1983, pp. 17–20. 13 Militant, ‘Northern perspectives’, summer 1982, p.  31 (held by author); ‘Introduction’ to Entrism (London, Militant, 1973), pp. 3–8. 14 The United Secretariat was a partially successful effort to unite the ICFI and the ISFI in 1963. 15 John Throne interview with Conor McCabe, 30 September 2009, ‘Dublin Opinion’ website: http://dublinopinion.com/2009/11/07/ john-throne-irish-militant (accessed 10 May 2014). For contemporary detail on Throne’s activities, see Derry People and Donegal News, 15 March 1969, 11 April 1970, 25 September 1971; and the Irish Press, 10 September 1969, 3 March 1971. 16 For account of these events, see Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish town (London, Pluto, 1993). 17 Finn Geaney interview with John Cunningham, 14 March 2014. 18 See articles by Peter Taaffe and Trotsky in Marxism opposes individual terrorism (London, Militant, 1975); also Peter Hadden, Common misery,

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common struggle (Belfast, Labour and Trade Union Group, 1980)  and Beyond the troubles (Dublin, Herald Books, 1994). 19 Alan Woods and Ted Grant, Lenin and Trotsky:  what they really stood for (London, Wellred Books, 1969), ch. 4, ‘The theory of the permanent revolution’. 20 Ian Birchall, The smallest mass party in the world:  building the Socialist Workers Party, 1951–1979 (London, Socialist Workers’ Party, 1981). 21 Militant, September 1969. 22 Taaffe, The rise of Militant, pp. 39–45, 63–71. 23 Finn Geaney interview. 24 Kevin McLoughlin, ‘A tribute to comrade Peter Hadden’s contribution’:  www.socialistworld.net/print/4290 (accessed 12 May 2014). For more on Hadden, see Marc Mulholland, ‘My life as a revolutionist’:  http://ozleft.wordpress.com/category/marc-mulholland (accessed 23 June 2014). 25 Finn Geaney interview. 26 Finn Geaney interview. The title Militant had associations with Trotsky himself. 27 John Throne interview. 28 Finn Geaney interview. 29 Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party, 1922–1973 (Dublin, UCD Press, 2007), pp. 86–107. 30 ‘What’s on today’, Irish Times, 17 October 1972. 31 ‘Pre-conditions for coalition’, Irish Times, 20 November 1972. 32 John Throne, Labour to power: break the coalition and fight for a majority Labour government (Dublin, Militant Irish Monthly, 1975). 33 Dick Cross and Michael Quinn, ‘Bid to back North workers’ force fails’, Irish Independent, 15 October 1973. 34 ‘For the record’, Irish Times, 18 October 1973, 19 May 1975. 35 Peter Hunt, Northern Ireland: for workers’ unity (Dublin, Militant, 1974). It was pseudonymous partly because of Hadden’s trade union post, and partly because BICO, the target of the pamphlet, had connections with loyalist paramilitaries. 36 ‘A Communist view’, Irish Times, 14 August 1974; ‘Divisiveness’, Irish Times, 17 August 1974; ‘An Ulster T.U.C.’, Irish Times, 12 October 1974. 37 James Laird, ‘American illusions and Irish delusions’, Irish Times, 16 September 1975. 38 M. G. Allen and Eamonn Farrell, ‘Militant: “Labour’s Legion of Mary” or socialist conscience’, Irish Progressive, vol. 1, no.  3, 13 March 1984. The Legion of Mary (1921) is an Irish Catholic social action movement. 39 Militant, Galway minutes, 13 July 1976–1 April 1984. 40 Militant, Galway minutes, 13 February, 12 March 1984. 41 Mulholland, ‘Life as a revolutionist’. 42 Tourish and Wohlforth, On the edge, p. 68. 43 Mulholland, ‘My life as a revolutionist’.

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44 Michael Crick, Militant (London, Faber & Faber, 1984), pp.  102–3; Mulholland, ‘My life as a revolutionist’; Militant, Galway minutes, 17 January 1982 and passim, shows there was a Galway-based full-timer. 45 Brian Hanney, personal communication; Mary Glynn, personal communication. 46 Taaffe, The rise of Militant, pp. 85–9. 47 Allen and Farrell, ‘Militant: “Labour’s Legion of Mary”’. 48 Militant, Galway minutes, 12 December 1976; Finn Geaney interview. 49 Allen and Farrell, ‘Militant’, p. 6. 50 Sean Matgamna, ‘The RSL (Militant) in the 1960s’: http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/readings/trots/militant.html (accessed 7 December 2013); see also John Molyneux, ‘The politics of the socialist party’, Irish Marxist Review, vol. 1, no. 2, 2012, pp. 92–102. 51 Mulholland, ‘My life as a revolutionist.’ 52 [John Throne], ‘E.B document on trade union work’, internal document produced by Irish Militant and held by author, n.d. 53 [John Throne], ‘E.B. document on trade union work’. 54 Tom Lodge, ‘  “An boks amach”:  the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement’, History Ireland, vol. 14, no. 4, July–August 2006, pp. 35–9; Anne Dempsey, ‘From the deli counter to the UN’, Irish Times, 13 February 1989; Nimrod Sejake:  tireless activist who spent 30  years in exile’, Irish Times, 19 June 2004; Bill Corcoran, ‘We kept going because of Nimrod’, Irish Times, 13 December 2013; ‘Torthaí na Daoirse’, documentary on Dunnes Stores dispute, broadcast on TG4, 22 October 2014; Emmett Farrell personal communication. 55 Militant Irish Monthly, April, November, December 1989; February 1992; September 1993; Emmett Farrell, personal communication. 56 Militant, Galway minutes: conference report, November 1984. 57 Militant Irish Monthly, February 1979, May 1980, March 1981, April 1982. 58 Molyneux, ‘Politics of the Socialist Party’, p. 96. 59 Militant, ‘Northern perspectives’, summer 1982. 60 Denis Coughlan, ‘Labour divided on allocation of Euro seat’, Irish Times, 3 September 1981; ‘Seosamh Ó hUigínn FPE; Joe Higgins MEP: Sóisialach, Feisire Eorpach’, Beo, Uimh. 117, Eanair 2011. 61 Michelle Walsh, ‘The rise and fall of the Labour League of Youth’, PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2007, pp. 136–45. 62 Militant Irish Monthly, February 1979. 63 Militant, 11 December 1981. 64 Militant Irish Monthly, July–August 1982. 65 Quoted in Kenneth O.  Morgan, Michael Foot:  a life (London, Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 424. 66 ‘O’Leary probe into Trotskyite threat’, Sunday Independent, 6 June 1982; Brian Donagh, ‘Gardaí search offices of “Militant” paper’, Irish Times, 18 January 1984. 67 Militant Irish Monthly, February 1984; Denis Coughlan, ‘Spring may move against Militant after vote’, Irish Times, 26 May 1988.

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68 Finn Geaney interview. 69 Mark Brennock, ‘Militant ousted from Labour’s youth section’, Irish Times, 28 March 1988; Denis Coughlan, ‘Bloodletting behind the “Bread and Roses” ’, ‘Spring calls for unity as Militant expelled’, Irish Times, 13 March 1989. 70 ‘Militant denied readmission’, Irish Times, 6 April 1991; Mark Brennock, ‘New Militant party says Labour has “sold out”  ’, Irish Times, 2 April 1993. 71 Deaglán de Bréadún, ‘Socialist Party labours to shed militant image’, Irish Times, 4 October 1996.

13 Anglo-Irish diplomatic relations and the British Labour Party, 1981–94 Melinda Sutton ‘The Opposition have put forward proposals for advancing towards a united Ireland. We believe that that is the right course that we should travel.’1 With these words, the Labour Party leader, Michael Foot, heralded his party’s commitment to the pursuit of Irish unification by consent, a policy that was welcomed by the Irish government in 1981.2 In the absence of majority consent to unification, Labour sought improvements in Anglo-Irish relations and the expansion of the Irish dimension in addressing the Northern Ireland conflict, in the hope that this would make the border less relevant. At the same time, the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher was engaged in bilateral talks with the Irish government, which culminated in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. While the Labour Party supported the government’s efforts to improve Anglo-Irish relations, it criticised the Conservatives’ emphasis on security policy, and focused on the scope and potential for constitutional and political developments arising from an intergovernmental approach. This chapter begins with an overview of Anglo-Irish relations under the 1974–79 Labour governments, before addressing Labour’s attitude towards Anglo-Irish relations between 1981 and 1994, with particular reference to its response to the New Ireland Forum, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Downing Street Declaration, placing them in the context of Labour’s wider approach to Northern Ireland policy and its relationship with Unionists and the Conservative government. In Northern Ireland, the 1974 UK general election constituted a de facto referendum on the Sunningdale Agreement. This Agreement included provision for an institutional role for the Republic of Ireland in the governance of Northern Ireland in the form of the Council of Ireland. Anti-Agreement Unionists in Northern Ireland fought the ­election with the slogan ‘Dublin is just a Sunningdale away’, and ­ overwhelmingly defeated their pro-Agreement opponents. Opposition to the Sunningdale Agreement and  the Council of Ireland crystallised in May 1974 in the Ulster Workers Council (UWC) strike in which loyalists took to the

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streets and imposed a crippling general strike. Halfway through the UWC strike, Loyalist paramilitaries exploded a number of car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, killing thirty-three civilians. In the wake of the bombings, the taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, wrote to the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, to complain about the British government’s handling of the UWC strike, and requested that the government ‘take immediate action with whatever forces prove necessary’.3 Cosgrave’s letter led the Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees, to wonder what the Irish government would do ‘with the Protestant community in general and the working class in particular if its long-term aim for a united Ireland was ever realised? Use the army to keep East Belfast down?’4 Following the collapse of the power-sharing executive in May 1974, the Irish government became ‘increasingly concerned about the general haziness of British policy in the North’.5 Moreover, Irish ministers were alarmed by rumours that the British cabinet was considering a political and military withdrawal from Northern Ireland. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Garret FitzGerald, sought to ‘ensure that informed British opinion recognised the dangers of any weakening of British resolve, thus creating pressure against any British withdrawal’.6 Despite misgivings about British policy and intentions, a ‘senior Dublin official’ was quoted in The Times as saying that these difficulties ‘have to be seen in the context of a marriage which is going through a bad patch, rather than one which has found itself completely on the rocks’.7 Anglo-Irish relations hit a particularly bad patch in 1976, and failed really to recover until the 1980s. After the torture and ill-treatment of internees in 1971, the Irish government had pursued its case to the European Court of Human Rights. The court’s report in September 1976 was met with hostility from the British government. Merlyn Rees, in one of his last public statements as Northern Ireland Secretary, criticised ‘the Irish Government’s persistence in thus raking over the events of five years ago. The only people who can derive any satisfaction from all this are the terrorists’.8 His successor, Roy Mason, responded to pressure from Dublin in March 1977 for a new political initiative with a request for the Irish government to be ‘more helpful on [the] extradition’ of suspected Republican paramilitaries.9 A year later, he gave a speech in the House of Commons, referring to paramilitaries ‘who spend most of their time south of the border and make frequent rapid forays into the North to attack the security forces and escape back again’, as well as receiving medical treatment in the Republic of Ireland, and home-made explosives and weaponry.10 Continuing problems over extradition and cross-border security co-operation as well as the distinct absence of any political initiative in

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Northern Ireland contributed to the deterioration of relations between the Republic of Ireland and the Labour government in the late 1970s. After Labour’s defeat in the 1979 UK general election, James Callaghan, the Labour leader and former prime minister, conceded in a meeting with Garret FitzGerald that in the future, the Labour Party ‘would have to adopt a somewhat more positive position’ in relation to Northern Ireland;11 two years later, in the context of the 1981 Republican hunger strikes, a Labour Party study group recommended that the party adopt a position of favouring Irish unification in a move that was met with mixed feelings and scepticism in the Republic of Ireland. Labour’s ‘unity by consent’ policy was aimed at fulfilling the medium-term objective of a power-sharing devolved government in Northern Ireland, while building on that settlement to achieve Irish unity. Consequently, ‘all areas of mutual interest should be properly institutionalised to strengthen the links between North and South’.12 This concern was reflected in Labour’s response to the devolution initiative of the Conservative Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Prior, in 1982. Don Concannon, Labour’s Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, suggested that the British Government establish: a committee to deal solely with matters relating to the Irish Republic. Such a committee would be able to have joint discussions with the relevant authorities in the Irish Republic, and, as a result, could make recommendations to the Assembly. If such a committee were established under direct rule, it could supplement the work of the Northern Ireland Ministers. Under devolution it could make suggestions to the Assembly.13

Concannon’s suggestion was linked to the realisation that, in the absence of a significant all-Ireland dimension, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) would not take part in any devolved Assembly, as in fact happened.14 Accordingly, while Labour ‘recognised that Mr Prior was making a genuine attempt to achieve progress’, the party abstained on the Second and Third Readings of the 1982 Northern Ireland Act.15 The New Ireland Forum was convened in March 1983, at the behest of the SDLP, and brought together the main constitutional Nationalist parties in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in discussions about the constitutional options and scenarios for the resolution of the conflict in Northern Ireland. There is no record in the archives of any discussions within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) about the exclusion of Sinn Féin from the Forum; Labour’s Northern Ireland team maintained a fairly consistent degree of opposition to that party throughout the 1980s.

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The British Labour Party was enthusiastic about the new initiative and was the only British political party to officially submit its views to the Forum.16 Clive Soley, a junior Labour Party spokesman on Northern Ireland, outlined his suggestions for the implementation of Irish unification by consent in a contribution that was reproduced in full in Irish newspapers, and included guarantees of joint citizenship, a British–Irish Council, economic harmonisation and the development of an all-Ireland police force.17 As the Forum deliberated, the Labour Party paid close attention to its discussions. In October 1983, Professor Bernard Crick, a political advisor to the new Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, met with the taoiseach Garret FitzGerald to discuss the Forum’s likely recommendations (a unitary Irish state, a federal/confederal arrangement and joint sovereignty) and the ‘need to familiarise British public opinion, particularly the Labour Party, with these options’.18 The Forum’s report, published in May 1984, recommended the three options suggested by FitzGerald in 1983 but, under pressure from Fianna Fáil, it officially favoured a unitary arrangement. In the shadow cabinet discussion of the report, Peter Archer, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary between 1983 and 1987, argued that ‘the democratic process should be seen to respond early to this important initiative in order that the position of the SDLP could be buttressed’.19 Just as the Forum itself had been convened to advance the SDLP’s electoral prospects, so Labour’s response was calculated to demonstrate the value of the Forum exercise to constitutional Nationalists in Northern Ireland. Therefore, Archer wrote to James Prior pressing him to arrange quickly a Commons debate on the Forum report, while Kinnock and the Irish Labour Party leader and tánaiste, Dick Spring, issued a joint statement outlining their parties’ support for the Forum’s recommendations and reaffirming their commitment to Irish unification by consent.20 Even after the Commons considered the Forum report, the British Labour Party continued to work with the Irish government and opposition to seek a more favourable response from the Conservative government. In November 1984, just before a major Anglo-Irish summit, Clive Soley held a series of meetings with Garret FitzGerald, Peter Barry, Charles Haughey, Ruari Quinn and a number of unnamed senior Irish civil servants, after which he concluded that: if the British Government did not make a significant response to the Forum Report at the forthcoming summit it would cause considerable anger and disillusionment in Dublin … economic links combined with some security co-operation and a form of British–Irish Council would not be satisfactory

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unless there was a recognition of an all-Irish dimension, by which they meant power, and not just responsibility, for the southern government. The very minimum that they regarded as acceptable would be some form of joint authority. If movement towards this was not possible immediately then rather than have total failure, they would want a situation where the British government acknowledged the importance of the Forum Report … and offered to continue with more and regular summit meetings to find a way forward.21

At the press conference for the summit, Margaret Thatcher’s response to a question about the New Ireland Forum was indeed significant, though not in the way that Soley and his Irish colleagues had hoped: listing the three constitutional options suggested by the Forum report, Thatcher remarked after each, ‘That’s out.’ Kinnock described her reply as ‘immature and damaging’ and stated that the report ‘would be one of the ingredients of a Labour Government’s approach to the problems of the province’.22 Though Thatcher’s response to the New Ireland Forum report hardly seemed favourable, she and her Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, remained deeply concerned with Anglo-Irish relations in the wake of the IRA bombing of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in October 1984, in which five people were killed, including the deputy chief whip, Sir Anthony Berry. Consequently, they continued bilateral meetings with Garret FitzGerald in the hope of securing closer co-operation in security matters. Their discussions culminated in the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement at Hillsborough Castle on 15 November 1985, which marked a significant development in Anglo-Irish relations, and in the British government’s management of Northern Ireland. The Agreement reiterated the principle of majority consent to constitutional change and recognised the constitutional status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, but it also instituted an intergovernmental conference, where ministers from the UK government and the Republic of Ireland government could discuss matters of common concern. This involved an acceptance by the British government that the Irish government ‘will put forward views and proposals on matters relating to Northern Ireland within the field of activity of the Conference in so far as those matters are not the responsibility of a devolved administration in Northern Ireland’.23 Labour’s debates over the Anglo-Irish Agreement revealed a complex combination of cautious support for the government’s initiative, ambivalence about the contents of the Agreement and criticism of the Agreement’s recognition of Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. An anonymous member of the Labour front bench (though the evidence

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indicates that it was Clive Soley) wrote that the Agreement ‘fits in with the policy we have been arguing for since 1982, namely a joint initiative by London and Dublin which the Unionists cannot veto’. The author suggested that, by signing the Agreement, the Conservative government ‘had ruled out the option of treating Northern Ireland as a normal part of the UK’.24 David Winnick, a Labour backbencher with an interest in Northern Ireland, opened the PLP debate with the suggestion that Labour ‘should wait and see how the Agreement worked and should not vote with the Unionists … [W]‌e should recognise that the Agreement was the work of our sister parties such as the SDLP’.25 Hostility towards voting with the Unionists and the need to be seen to support the SDLP were constant themes in the debate. The deputy Labour leader, Roy Hattersley, argued that it ‘would be bizarre for Labour Members to vote with Enoch Powell and Ian Paisley in the Unionist lobby’. He reminded his colleagues that ‘our sister parties in Northern Ireland supported the Agreement. We could not stand against it’.26 Kinnock reiterated this: ‘we should appreciate that the Irish Labour Party, Fine Gael and the SDLP all welcomed the initiative.’27 The main criticism of the Agreement, however, was that it ‘makes the policy of a united Ireland more difficult because it gives the border a spurious legitimacy and almost entrenches it in international law’.28 The former Northern Ireland Secretary, Roy Mason, however, condemned the Agreement on very different grounds: There is to be intrusion by a foreign state … in almost all Northern Ireland’s affairs … Last week the Prime Minister described the accord as a two-way street, but the Province does not see it that way. It is much more a broad highway, with southern traffic invading all the affairs of the Northern Ireland state and taking away too much of Northern Ireland’s identity.29

Thirteen Labour backbenchers, mainly on the hard left of the Party, rebelled against a two-line whip and joined the Unionists and a number of Conservatives in voting against the Agreement, while a number of others abstained, including Martin Flannery, then Chairman of Labour’s backbench Northern Ireland group. Nevertheless, Labour’s Northern Ireland team recognised the potential of the Anglo-Irish Agreement to normalise cross-border co-operation and improve relations between London, Dublin and Belfast, thereby paving the way to Irish unification by consent. The junior Northern Ireland spokesman, Stuart Bell, reminded his party colleagues in the Commons debate on the Agreement that if they wanted ‘an Ireland united by consent and peaceful means, we must ask ourselves how that unity can be achieved, other than by giving the minority

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community an expression of its identity … The agreement is a modest step in that direction’.30 Moreover, the practical benefits of cross-border co-operation were also emphasised:  ‘one of the most positive things about the agreement, which applies whether one believes in a united Ireland … or takes the Conservative party’s view … is the harmonisation of the social and economic systems, which offers enormous potential to the people of Ireland as a whole.’31 Consequently, Labour’s Northern Ireland team supported the operation of the Anglo-Irish Agreement throughout the late 1980s, viewing it as the framework through which policies leading to consensual Irish unification could be implemented, and criticising the Conservatives for their perceived lack of imagination in using the Agreement’s institutions. Just after his appointment as shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in 1987, Kevin McNamara wrote to Peter Barry, the tánaiste and Minister of Foreign Affairs, seeking advice on ‘flesh[ing] out those parts of the Anglo-Irish Agreement which at the moment seem to have been ignored in the pursuit of more immediate problems on the security situation’.32 McNamara privately mused about the possible uses of the Agreement as a means of furthering Irish unification: ‘the way Clive Soley and I had imagined that it would be done was by the creation of all-Ireland institutions, perhaps used [sic] Maryfield, but with the main impetus coming from Dublin and Westminster. The object of the exercise would be to make Westminster and Whitehall increasingly irrelevant in the affairs of Northern Ireland in particular and the island of Ireland in general’.33 He later criticised those MPs who opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, arguing that ‘the best hope for the island of Ireland and for our relations with the Republic of Ireland – is the proper strengthening and pursuit of the Anglo-Irish Agreement’.34 Moreover, McNamara welcomed the Agreement’s positive impact on Anglo-Irish relations: ‘For all the criticism of the agreement, for all the disappointments of the high hopes which greeted its signing, the agreement has been reasonably successful in its effects on Anglo-Irish relations. That is why I regard suggestions, however well-meaning, that the agreement be suspended with a certain amount of scepticism.’35 Soon after becoming Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, McNamara commenced work on developing unity by consent into a form that a future Labour government might be able to execute, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement provided a foundation for the development of the ‘reform and harmonisation’ approach. In a speech in Belfast in June 1988, he highlighted the impact of the Agreement on Unionists, Nationalists and the Labour Party:

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What the Agreement does do is put Unionists on notice that their veto on constitutional change … is at an end. While reiterating the commitment in the 1973 Northern Ireland Constitution Act to no unification without the consent of the majority of voters in Northern Ireland, it establishes that British governments can and will make changes short of this, even, if necessary, in the face of determined Unionist opposition … What changes on the Nationalist side is that the Irish Government accepts that the reform of Northern Ireland should take precedence in time and priority over the unification of Ireland. It is a de facto acceptance that a unitary, or even federal, Irish state is a long-term prospect which may or may not flow out of the shorter-term reform of the North and the reconciliation which it is hoped will result … The Irish Government’s formal commitment to working with the British for the reform of the North as a step on the route to a united state means that a Labour Government would find that both parties to the Agreement approached it with a common purpose and sought to use its institutions to achieve common ends.36

As indicated by the section of McNamara’s speech that dealt with the Anglo-Irish Agreement’s impact on Unionism, the appeal of harmonisation was that it could be pursued without Unionist consent. Properly implemented, social and economic harmonisation could lay the foundations for unification, while a Labour government worked for the favourable political and social conditions for consent to territorial unity by reforming Northern Ireland’s political, social and economic structures. However, harmonisation required a government in Dublin that shared the same practical commitment to Irish unification. Consequently, McNamara suggested the creation of ‘an expanded Department of Irish Affairs, responsible for both Northern Ireland and Anglo-Irish co-operation … The pursuit of unity by consent will require a high degree of mutual confidence between the British and Irish Governments’.37 He concluded with a reminder that it ‘will obviously be necessary for a Labour government to persistently remind the Irish government that harmonisation, indeed unity itself, is a two-way process’.38 Notwithstanding the potential pitfalls, ‘reform and harmonisation’ underpinned Labour’s Northern Ireland policy through the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s, and formed the foundation of the 1988 policy document, ‘Towards a United Ireland’. The introduction penned by Neil Kinnock set the tone: Labour’s strategy requires action on two complimentary fronts: the political, economic and social institutions of Northern Ireland must be reformed … At the same time, harmonisation of policies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is essential. The conflict cannot be ended simply through changes in internal arrangements in Northern Ireland. There must

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be an all-Ireland dimension. This paper spells out a practical basis for harmonisation which will both extend the rights and improve the conditions of people in both traditions in Northern Ireland and, at the same time, help progress towards gaining a united Ireland by consent. Whilst that consent must by definition be freely given, no group or Party can be allowed to veto advance [sic] in that direction for it is the course of peace for the people of Ireland – North and South of the Border.39

Further indicating the impact of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Labour’s Northern Ireland team suggested that harmonisation would be pursued through institutions based on the intergovernmental conference and the Anglo-Irish Secretariat established by the Agreement. Moreover, in the context of increasing political and economic harmonisation throughout Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, the potential impact of the European Community (EC) became more topical. McNamara argued that ‘the dangers of the single market to the peripheral regions of the European Community necessitate such forms of economic harmonisation’.40 ‘Towards a United Ireland’ anticipated three areas in which the EC could support, motivate and encourage harmonisation: ‘First, the onset of the Single Market has the potential for drawing both parts of Ireland more closely together economically. Secondly, regional aid can be better utilised to assist economic development. Thirdly, the social policy of the EC provides an important foundation on which to build a harmonised social policy for Ireland, North and South.’41 As reform and harmonisation progressed towards territorial unification, the authors expected that the EC would provide financial support ‘for the process of unification and to offset such extra short and medium term costs as may arise from it’.42 Within the remit of reforming Northern Ireland, and consistent with one of the central aims of British policy in the region, would be the negotiation and establishment of ‘an agreed system of devolved government including a power-sharing executive’.43 Although McNamara insisted that the document contained nothing that threatened the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, in the absence of a power-sharing settlement a Labour government would ‘reserve the right to review means for strengthening the institutional and representative provisions of the [Anglo-Irish] Agreement with a view to providing for alternative structures of government’, namely, joint authority.44 In such circumstances, ‘political representatives [in Northern Ireland] will regrettably continue to have no direct role in executive decision-making at any but the most local level’.45 Labour had been contemplating the idea of joint authority for some years, and it had been one of the recommendations of the New Ireland

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Forum. It was an attractive option as it officially maintained British sovereignty over Northern Ireland while extending the role of the Irish government. It also provided for an institutional recognition of the Irish identity of Nationalists in Northern Ireland. Moreover, it was hoped that joint authority might offer an interim form of stable governance while ultimately leading towards a united Ireland. In its private discussions, and as the political talks convened by the Northern Ireland Secretaries, Peter Brooke and Patrick Mayhew, stalled, Labour returned to joint authority. In November 1991, McNamara forwarded a report to Kinnock that outlined the potential options for a Labour government in Northern Ireland: The report has my full support. Two options are presented, shared responsibility between the governments of Britain and Ireland and the peoples of Northern Ireland and reformist direct rule within the framework of an enhanced Anglo-Irish Agreement. I strongly recommend the first option as my first preference as it is wholly within the terms and limitations of current party policy, advances that policy and presents a challenge to the government of the Republic. I also recommend that the Northern Ireland parties to the conflict should be given an early opportunity to participate in the negotiation of an arrangement acceptable to all concerned. In the unfortunate event of the failure of such negotiations … bilateral discussions between the two sovereign governments would be initiated.46

Trilateral power-sharing, with authority shared between London, Dublin and Belfast, was the ideal scenario, but in the (then likely) event of the Northern Ireland parties’ failure to reach an acceptable agreement, an arrangement between London and Dublin would be sought and enforced. The influence of the Anglo-Irish Agreement is evident in the attached report’s first recommendation, which suggested that Unionists ‘might be attracted by the idea that if shared responsibility is justified where there is a Nationalist minority of 35–40%, it would be equally justified when there was a substantial Unionist minority in the North’.47 It should be noted here that shared responsibility was envisaged as continuing even after Irish unification; the British government would continue to have a role in governing a united Ireland, in the same way that the Irish government had a role in governing Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom through the institutions of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Nonetheless, the authors were keen to reassure Unionists that ‘shared responsibility is not an immediate staging-post to Irish unity. We propose that the constitution of Northern Ireland under shared responsibility can only be changed if there is overwhelming support for such

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a proposal’.48 The second option, reformist direct rule, bears striking resemblance to the approach adopted by Labour when it returned to government in May 1997: The objective of reformist direct rule would be to secure the rights, identities, freedoms and opportunities of both ethnic communities, and to create political and other social institutions which enable both to enjoy the benefits of equality without forced assimilation. This policy objective would not entail any efforts by governments to force people to be schooled or housed together, although it would imply a commitment to proportionality in political, legal and economic work-organizations since these areas are the ones in which differences are likely to produce violence, instability and perpetuation of conflict. Naturally, this goal requires a Bill of Rights, fair employment, institutional respect for the two traditions, proportionality in policing, judging and military pacification, and mutual communal vetoes on matters of segmental authority. We would also be seeking the active co-operation and collaboration of the Republic of Ireland in cross-border initiatives. This goal would ideally be accomplished with a voluntary power-sharing settlement within the UK, but with all-Ireland dimensions.49

After the ‘Options for a Labour Government’ document was leaked to the press in the wake of the 1992 general election amid a storm of Unionist protest, a Labour Party spokesman dismissed it as ‘invalid as a policy document … merely a contribution to the discussion. There is no reason to believe our policy is going to change’.50 Instead, McNamara confirmed that the Labour Party would ‘happily accept any agreement freely reached by the parties in Ireland, north and south, which would gain widespread acceptance throughout the island of Ireland’, regardless of whether that agreement fell short of Irish unification.51 Labour’s emphasis on the Irish dimension throughout the 1980s and 1990s inevitably had a negative impact on its relationship with the Unionist parties in Northern Ireland, while efforts to improve that relationship provoked unease amongst Labour backbenchers, particularly in the run-up to the 1987 and 1992 general elections. In November 1986, as rumours circulated about meetings between Neil Kinnock and Unionist leaders, Clare Short, the Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood, wrote to Kinnock, expressing her concerns about the talks: ‘As you know the Unionists are desperate to get rid of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. So far, they have failed miserably. My view is that the Agreement is of little importance. But the exposure of Unionist intransigence and weakness is crucial in making possible progress in Northern Ireland.’52 Dick Clements, Kinnock’s office manager and political adviser, replied tersely, ‘as you will know, Neil’s support for the Anglo-Irish Agreement is very firm’.53

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Disquiet continued, particularly after a speech by Stuart Bell, in which he suggested that ‘if the Unionists are prepared to turn this time of crisis into a time of opportunity they will find a future Labour government willing to respond’.54 When the matter was raised at a party meeting, Kinnock dismissed the concerns about deals with the Ulster Unionists and reaffirmed his party’s support for the Anglo-Irish Agreement:  ‘A Labour Government considering the review of the Agreement due in 1988 would seek to build upon the successes and repair any of the failures in the operation of the Agreement. The Ulster Unionists were fully aware that this was our position.’55 The third consecutive Conservative victory at the 1987 general election did more to shelve the debate over Labour’s relationship with the Unionists than the repeated denials of deals with them. Nevertheless, the same concerns re-emerged during the 1992 election campaign, particularly amid rumours about Labour’s speculation on joint authority and the difficulties surrounding Peter Brooke’s multiparty political talks. In January 1992, it was reported that ‘Ulster Unionists had threatened to pull out of talks on the future of Northern Ireland if Labour won the general election … Mr Paisley hinted at Unionist suspicion of Labour: “We must find out when the election manifesto of the Labour Party is published what their attitude is. The present attitude is by hook or by crook to push us into union with Ireland, and that is not going to happen” ’.56 Although the Labour Party gave ‘undertakings that the post-election talks will continue on exactly the same terms’ as under Brooke,57 the Unionists’ real objections to Labour were revealed in June 1993, when ‘Options for a Labour Government’ was leaked to the press. The Ulster Unionist leader, James Molyneaux, revealed that he had had a copy of the document since before the election and ‘It was for that reason … that I refused to commit myself to continuing the Brooke talks if there was a change of government’.58 The political talks chaired by Brooke had settled into the three-strand framework that would later form the Good Friday Agreement, covering internal arrangements for Northern Ireland politics, all-Ireland arrangements and east–west relationships. The commitment to an institutionalised all-Ireland dimension as part of any settlement contributed to Labour’s support for the 1993 Downing Street Declaration, which reaffirmed the British and Irish governments’ commitment to a political settlement in Northern Ireland while opening up the possibility of Sinn Féin’s inclusion in political talks in the event of an IRA ceasefire. The Labour leader, John Smith, welcomed the Declaration, expressing Labour’s hope that ‘it will be an important first step in a peace process that will lead to a new political settlement … it is vital that the

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constitutional parties in Northern Ireland now take in new discussions which the British Government should promote’.59 McNamara welcomed the inter-governmental approach adopted by the two governments in the Declaration, and argued that ‘it is of vital importance that both Governments should be seen to be acting in concert, that nothing should be seen to be driven between them and that no unilateral action should be taken by either of those parties’.60 Labour’s emphasis on Anglo-Irish relations and an inter-governmental approach to the peace process continued, even after the party distanced itself from unity by consent under the leadership of Tony Blair. Clive Soley, then chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, continued to emphasise the importance of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, claiming that it signalled a change from ‘a policy of crisis management to a policy whereby the British Government … have been prepared to work with the Irish Government in solving what is essentially a joint problem’.61 From his position on the backbenches, McNamara reminded the Commons in the wake of the end of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 with the Canary Wharf bombing that ‘real progress in Northern Ireland has been made only when the two sovereign Governments have been marching forward together, not when there has been divergence between them’.62 His successor as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, agreed:  ‘the most progress is made when the two Governments work closely together, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Downing Street Declaration and the framework documents are proof of that.’63 During the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Mandelson, Mowlam’s successor, suggested that ‘we no longer think in terms of an “Irish dimension” to be tacked on to internal Northern Ireland policies’, such had become the significance of the Republic of Ireland in Northern Ireland affairs.64 Throughout the suspension of devolution after 2002, the British and Irish governments operated a form of joint stewardship over Northern Ireland. In January 2006, amid frustration over the lack of agreement between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin, Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern issued a joint statement: ‘[W]‌e are conscious of the responsibilities that the Governments bear. We are fully prepared to exercise those responsibilities. However we are convinced that those best placed to lay the foundations for a prosperous, peaceful and shared future are the political parties themselves.’65 In an article for the News Letter (and its predominantly unionist readership), the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, claimed that if devolution was not reinstated by November 2006 it would ‘go into deep freeze and, frankly, I cannot see the circumstances in which it will be revived in the foreseeable future.

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There will be no joint authority with the Irish government but north/ south and east/west co-operation will deepen’.66 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the British Labour Party was considerably more enthusiastic about improving Anglo-Irish relations than the Conservative government, particularly demonstrated by its participation in the New Ireland Forum, its response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and its desire to use the institutions established by the Agreement to promote all-Ireland political developments and, ultimately, Irish unification. In opposition, Labour’s Northern Ireland team liaised with Irish politicians to encourage the Conservative government to seek improvements in Anglo-Irish co-operation. With regards to furthering its own policy, Labour envisaged a high degree of Anglo-Irish co-operation to implement its ‘reform and harmonisation’ strategy. Labour’s support for the Irish dimension was partly related to the fact that the majority of the PLP during this period favoured Irish unification. However, the party’s support was also associated with developments within the Republic of Ireland, as successive Irish governments shifted away from traditional aspirations for Irish reunification and towards a more constructive approach to the Northern Ireland conflict. This was reflected in the wider rapprochement in Anglo-Irish relations throughout the 1980s and continued into the 1990s and 2000s as Labour continued to work closely with the Irish government in negotiating and implementing devolution in Northern Ireland. Notes 1 Michael Foot, House of Commons, 10 November 1981, Hansard, vol. 12, col. 422. 2 Labour History Archive and Study Centre (hereafter LHASC), Michael Foot papers, MF/L23/24, Note for the Record, 27 November 1981. However, in a meeting with Don Concannon, Labour’s Northern Ireland spokesman, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Lenihan suggested that ‘any outright statement in favour of the unification of Ireland would be counter-productive’ in terms of alleviating Unionist concerns about Irish unity. MF/L18, Don Concannon, Report on the Visit to the Irish Republic, 31/03/81-02/04/81. 3 Merlyn Rees, Northern Ireland:  a personal perspective (London, Methuen, 1985), p. 73. 4 Rees, Northern Ireland, p. 73. 5 The Times, 11 September 1974. 6 Garret FitzGerald, ‘The 1974–75 threat of a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 17 (2006), p. 144. 7 Christopher Walker, ‘Dublin resentful at British failure to discuss Ulster crisis’, The Times, 20 September 1975.

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 8 Christopher Walker and Diana Geddes, ‘Angry Rees attack as Dublin charge of torture is upheld’, The Times, 3 September 1976.  9 Robert Ramsay, Ringside seats: an insider’s view of the crisis in Northern Ireland (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2009), p. 164. 10 Roy Mason, House of Commons, 6 March 1978, Hansard, vol. 945, cols 1000–1. 11 Garret FitzGerald, All in a life:  an autobiography (London, Macmillan, 1991), p. 333. 12 Northern Ireland:  statement by the National Executive Committee to the 1981 conference (London: Labour Party, 1981). 13 Don Concannon, House of Commons, 10 May 1982, Hansard, vol. 23, col. 485. 14 Clive Soley, House of Commons, 10 December 1982, Hansard, vol. 33, col. 1117. 15 Hull History Centre (hereafter HHC), Kevin McNamara papers, U/ DMC/1549, Letter from Peter Archer to Justin Corfield, London, 20 December 1983. 16 As Clive Soley pointed out in a letter to Tribune, 17 November 1989. 17 ‘MP advocated all-Ireland police force’, The Irish Times, 20 January 1984. 18 HHC, U/DMC/1297, Memo of conversation between Bernard Crick and Garret FitzGerald, Dublin, 23 October 1983. 19 LHASC, Parliamentary Committee minutes, March–October 1983, Shadow cabinet meeting, 9 May 1984. 20 HHC, U/DMC/1300, Letter from Peter Archer to James Prior, 15 May 1984; Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge (hereafter CAC), Neil Kinnock papers, KNNK 12/1/3, Joint Statement by Neil Kinnock and Dick Spring, 19 June 1984. 21 HHC, U/DMC/1300, Letter from Clive Soley to Peter Archer, 12 November 1984. 22 Paul Johnson, ‘Kinnock joins call for Londonderry shooting enquiry’, Guardian, 14 December 1984. 23 Article Two, Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the Republic of Ireland, Hillsborough, 15 November 1985. 24 HHC, Clive Soley papers, U/DCS Box 26, unaddressed anonymous letter, 22 November 1985. 25 LHASC, PLP minutes 1985–86, PLP Meeting, 20 November 1985. 26 LHASC, PLP, minutes, 1985–86, PLP Meeting, 20 November 1985. 27 LHASC, PLP minutes 1985–86, PLP Meeting, 21 November 1985. 28 Martin Flannery, House of Commons, 26 November 1985, Hansard, vol. 87, col. 804. Similar views were expressed by Jeremy Corbyn, Joan Maynard and Dave Nellist. 29 Roy Mason, House of Commons, 26 November 1985, Hansard, vol. 87, cols 788–9. 30 Stuart Bell, House of Commons, 27 November 1985, Hansard, vol. 87, col. 962.

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31 Clive Soley, House of Commons, 26 November 1985, Hansard, vol. 87, col. 822. 32 HHC, U/DMC/1940, Letter from Kevin McNamara to Peter Barry TD, 19 August 1987. 33 HHC, U/DCS Box 25, Kevin McNamara, ‘ “Stream of consciousness” on general aims of Labour NI policy’, May 1988. 34 Kevin McNamara, House of Commons, 12 January 1989, Hansard, vol. 144, col. 981. 35 CAC, KNNK 19/2/88, Kevin McNamara, Speech to Birmingham University Labour Students, 6 December 1989. 36 CAC, KNNK 12/1/1, Kevin McNamara, ‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement and Political Change  – a Labour Party View’, speech at Queen’s University Belfast, 28 June 1988. 37 British Library of Political and Economic Science (hereafter BLPES), Merlyn Rees papers, LSE/MERLYN-REES/14/10, Kevin McNamara, ‘Policy for Labour – No. 2’, Submission to NEC/PLP Study Group on NI, 1985. 38 BLPES, Merlyn Rees papers, LSE/MERLYN-REES/14/10, Kevin McNamara, ‘Policy for Labour  – No. 2’, Submission to NEC/PLP Study Group on NI, 1985. 39 HHC, U/DMC/1592, Kevin McNamara, Jim Marshall and Mo Mowlam, ‘Towards a United Ireland: Reform and Harmonisation: A Dual Strategy for Irish Unification’, September 1988. 40 Kevin McNamara, ‘Letter: Paths to political progress in Northern Ireland’, The Independent, 23 September 1988. 41 McNamara et al., ‘Towards a United Ireland’, p. 22. 42 McNamara et al., ‘Towards a United Ireland’, p. 32. 43 McNamara et al., ‘Towards a United Ireland’, pp. 16–17. 44 McNamara, ‘Letter: Paths to political progress’; McNamara et al., ‘Towards a United Ireland’, p. 17. 45 McNamara et al., ‘Towards a United Ireland’, p. 18. 46 CAC, KNNK 12/1/7, Letter from Kevin McNamara to Neil Kinnock, 28 November 1991. 47 CAC, KNNK 12/1/7, ‘Options for a Labour Government’, undated, attached to McNamara letter of 28 November 1991. 48 CAC, KNNK 12/1/7, ‘Options for a Labour Government’, undated, attached to McNamara letter of 28 November 1991. 49 CAC, KNNK 12/1/7, ‘Options for a Labour Government’, undated, attached to McNamara letter of 28 November 1991. 50 Nikki Knewstub, ‘Ulster joint rule plan a “betrayal” says MP’, Guardian, 2 July 1993. 51 Kevin McNamara, House of Commons, 22 October 1993, Hansard, vol. 230, col. 496. 52 CAC, KNNK 1/2/13, Letter from Clare Short to Neil Kinnock, 20 November 1986. 53 CAC, KNNK 1/2/13, Letter from Dick Clements to Clare Short, 4 December 1986.

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54 HHC, U/DMC/2112, Letter from Stuart Bell to Peter Archer, including a copy of the Workington speech, 31 March 1987. 55 HHC, U/DMC/2131, Proceedings of the Party meeting, 1 April 1987. 56 John Mullin, ‘Unionists deny stymying talks’, Guardian, 3 January 1992. 57 Owen Boycott, ‘Election may delay Ulster peace talks’, Guardian, 10 March 1992. The Labour Party’s election manifesto confirmed this position. 58 Owen Boycott, ‘Ulster plan “recipe for disaster” ’, Guardian, 30 June 1993. 59 John Smith, House of Commons, 15 December 1993, Hansard, vol. 234, col. 1073. 60 Kevin McNamara, House of Commons, 17 February 1994, Hansard, vol. 237, col. 1054. 61 Clive Soley, House of Commons, 23 April 1996, Hansard, vol. 276, col. 314. 62 Kevin McNamara, House of Commons, 19 February 1996, Hansard, vol. 272, col. 106. 63 Mo Mowlam, House of Commons, 9 December 1996, Hansard, vol. 287, col. 31. 64 Peter Mandelson, Speech to Institute of Irish Studies, Liverpool, 4 February 2000, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/pm4200.htm; accessed 31 December 2013. 65 Joint Statement by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, Farmleigh, Dublin, 26 January 2006, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/dott/batb260106. htm; accessed 31 December 2013. 66 Peter Hain, ‘It’s time for reality’, Belfast News Letter, 31 July 2006.

14 Leaving the sound bites at home? Tony Blair, New Labour and Northern Ireland, 1993–2007 Kevin Bean Arriving at Hillsborough Castle on 7 April 1998 to begin the negotiations that would produce the Good Friday Agreement, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the man of the moment, delivered the now-famous sound bite that, for many, seems to encapsulate the remarkable triumph of Northern Ireland’s peace process: ‘A day like today is not a day for sound bites, we can leave those at home, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder with respect to this, I really do.’1 Given New Labour’s reputation for spin, it is easy to dismiss these lines as yet another shrewd exercise in the media-management and manipulation of events that typified Tony Blair’s period as Labour leader and prime minister.2 Many critics found Blair’s reference to ‘the hand of history’ especially grating, in the way it appeared to elevate Blair’s self-image as a statesman guided by destiny, to establish the Good Friday Agreement as ‘a uniquely blessed concord, not a political fix’.3 This sour assessment remained very much a minority view despite the tarnishing of Blair’s reputation following the 2003 Iraq War. Most political commentators and historians continue to emphasise Blair’s indispensable role in the peace process and the successful establishment of devolved government in 2007. In particular, Blair’s personal commitment and talents as a negotiator are frequently highlighted in descriptions of his years in power. These were, according to some, ‘ten years of sustained and intense effort … enthusiasm for face-to-face diplomacy and deal making’, during which Blair’s ‘refusal to abandon the [peace] process in its darker moments, has earned him international respect … and an aura of impartiality’.4 Thus Frank Millar argues that, uniquely amongst British politicians, Blair ‘really did make history in Ireland’, while former Irish taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, believes that his ‘exceptional contribution to the attainment of peace in Northern Ireland’ will prove to be a lasting political achievement.5 In a similar vein, the various accounts and

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memoirs that have regularly appeared since 1998 continue to reinforce these assessments, particularly by emphasising the crucial part played by individuals in shaping history at the expense of other explanations that stress more impersonal forces.6 This chapter, however, will attempt a different type of evaluation by considering two closely related questions:  what was the relationship between New Labour’s policy in Northern Ireland and the wider Blairite project in the United Kingdom as a whole, and how far did the party’s position in this period radically depart from that of previous ‘Old Labour’ leaderships? While there is an extensive literature on British government policy towards Northern Ireland since partition, much of the discussion has focused on policy formation and implementation at state and institutional rather than at party and ideological level.7 Thus, while detailed comparisons have been made between the policies of different British governments, often amidst heated debate about policy learning and the underlying patterns of continuity in state strategy, much less has been written about the analytical structures and policy frameworks that underpin the positions of British political parties.8 This lacuna in the literature might suggest that the ideological assumptions that shape domestic politics in Britain have only a very limited impact on government policy in Northern Ireland.9 While for the most part this may be accurate, in the case of Tony Blair and New Labour, the reverse is true: we cannot fully understand the nature of the new dispensation in Northern Ireland without understanding the ideological assumptions of the political project known as ‘the Third Way’. Where previous governments, left and right, had understood the conflict in Ireland as intractable and alien, sitting apart from mainstream politics, the Blairites saw ‘The Troubles’ in terms of a heightened and more violent form of the widespread crisis of political authority and social stability that faced many Western societies in the 1990s and 2000s. Beyond the rhetoric, New Labour saw the Northern Irish peace process both as a stage upon which to enact a historic resolution of more general conflicts and as a test bed for new political institutions, aimed at uniting communities and managing conflict.10 Far from ‘leaving the sound bites at home’, Northern Ireland actually provides an almost textbook example of ‘Third Way’ theory in practice and, as such, is central to our understanding of the wider historical significance of Tony Blair and his political project. The New Labour project has been variously, and not entirely satisfactorily, defined as a capitulation to Thatcherism, a modernised form of ‘progressive politics’ or a revival of 1950s revisionist social democracy.11 Taking as its starting point the accomplished and implacable facts of a globalised world economy and post-Fordist society, the Third Way aimed

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to make Britain better able to respond to the challenges offered by these ‘new times’. These new politics of pragmatic adaptation self-consciously repudiated the past, whether in the form of Thatcherite free-market individualism or the failed welfarist model of social democracy.12 Above all, Blair rejected backward-looking ‘conservatism’ in the present, whatever form it took. Placing New Labour on the side of the ‘forces of modernity and justice’, and alongside those with ‘the courage to change … and confidence in the future’, he defined ‘the forces of conservatism’ in the broadest terms as: ‘the cynics, the elites, the establishment. Those who will live with decline. Those who yearn for yesteryear. Those who can’t be bothered. Those who prefer to criticise rather than do.’13 Drawing on an eclectic variety of sources ranging from communitarianism and management theory through to the revisionism of Marxism Today, New Labour, under the charismatic leadership of Tony Blair, fused ideas of political reform, social inclusion and economic policy into a strategy to transform Britain.14 While economic imperatives remained a central dynamic, the discourse of Blairismo, expressed through the ‘keywords’ of modernisation and community, focused on the problems of social alienation and political disengagement.15 The style of this politics was often emotional in tone, emphasising ‘values’, ‘fluidity’ and ‘process’ rather than pursuing definite goals laid down by ‘outdated ideology’: ‘our values are our guide’.16 Blair, especially, tried to persuade us he was ‘a pretty straight sort of a guy’, in touch with the therapeutic sensibilities of the zeitgeist, just as Mo Mowlam’s ‘touchy feely’ personality was to become a trademark of her period as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.17 Responding to economic and social change and perceived public disenchantment with political institutions, New Labour spokespeople, rhetorically at least, saw solutions in the strengthening of civil society through the development of common cultural values.18 The therapeutic language of empowerment consequently became the commonplace political cant of conference speeches and policy documents in the New Labour years.19 This communitarian strand reflected concerns about the disintegration of social capital and a declining faith in traditional values that many identified in Western societies in the 1990s.20 It also resonated with fears that a growing alienation from conventional politics and widespread disillusionment with authority presaged a fundamental crisis in both politics and society at large.21 The Blair government’s programme of political and social reform in areas ranging from Scottish devolution through to family policy was, in essence, designed to restore legitimacy for established institutions, and rebuild communities through strengthening social cohesion.

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This process of rebuilding the public realm was frequently framed as a partnership between the state and civil society rather than an authoritarian imposition from above: the state simply provided the resources while newly empowered active citizens repaired the weakened bonds that held society together.22 This suggested that the success of the New Labour project would be judged by how far an energised civil society could act independently of the state.23 However, the scale of this ambition to remodel society was vast, and comparable to Thatcherism at its most utopian: as a form of nation-building within Britain itself, ‘the project’ was much closer to Blair’s peace-building and interventionist foreign policy as practised from Sierra Leone to Iraq than to social democracy as historically understood.24 From the very beginning of his leadership of the Labour Party, Tony Blair was eager to distinguish his approach to Northern Ireland from that of his predecessors. The replacement of Kevin McNamara as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland by Mo Mowlam in October 1994 was highly symbolic. While McNamara was deemed to be ‘too green’ and wedded to the past, Mowlam was ‘iconoclastic’ and without ideological commitment ‘to either side’, more in keeping with the Blairite style.25 In a process similar to other radical policy revisions, in particular the abandonment of Labour’s traditional socialist aims enshrined in Clause 4, Blair’s supporters argued that they were shifting Northern Ireland policy towards the centre, replacing the partisan formula of ‘unity by consent’ with the ostensibly more neutral idea of reconciliation and a new political settlement that can command support of both traditions.26 The basic parameters of the new position were outlined in an interview with The Irish Times in September 1995, in which Blair argued that while ‘easy either way’ about Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom or reuniting with the rest of the island, he believed that: the most sensible role for us is to be facilitators, not persuaders … not trying to pressure or push people towards a particular objective … What I personally want to see is the wishes of the people adhered to … If it is their consent that matters, and their wishes that are uppermost, then that is what I want to see implemented … If I was to sit here and say ‘Well, I want to give effect to the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, but I’m going to be in there trying to tell them they’ve got to unite with the South’, the only result of that would be to incapacitate my government from playing a proper role.27

Characterising Labour’s ‘long standing policy positions’ as wildly unrealistic because of their essential pro-nationalism and fundamental hostility

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to unionism, Blair argued that the party’s new direction represented a ‘mature politics’ and ‘a full blown demonstration not just of a change in Northern Ireland policy, but of a change in approach to being in Opposition’.28 In stating ‘a more balanced view between Unionists and nationalists’ as a strategic priority for the New Labour project, the new leader clearly had wider political aims far beyond Ireland. The new policy of consent, the new shadow spokesperson and the new approach to bi-partisanship were all of a piece, explicitly designed to show that New Labour was both a distinctive and credible political project capable of tackling seemingly intractable issues and governing responsibly.29 While some believed that the party was ‘getting credit for being big and bold and ballsy’ in its new approach, others were less convinced.30 Left-wing critics, for example, argued that this shift in policy reflected the wider ‘Blairite reconfiguration of ideology, priorities and personnel’, meaning that ‘the Labour front bench has endorsed whatever line the Major government opts to lay down’.31 Thus, even before New Labour’s election victory in May 1997 Tony Blair had begun to sketch the outlines of a new transformational narrative for Northern Ireland, explicitly shaped by themes of modernisation and peace-building between divided communities. However, he was not writing upon an empty page. Talks between the British and Irish governments, and Northern Ireland’s ‘constitutional’ parties had been under way since 1991 alongside secret contacts between the two governments and the IRA that had been going on from at least the late 1980s. These distinct strands, public and covert, were increasingly drawn together and merged into the broader framework of ‘the peace process’ after 1993.32 Although disagreements over decommissioning and the breaking of the IRA ceasefire in 1996 seemed to present intractable obstacles, it was clear that most political actors were simply awaiting the election of a new government to end the impasse. Taking advantage of this eager anticipation, New Labour seized the initiative. With his ‘popularity and political momentum high’, Blair summarised the key elements of ‘sorting the Northern Ireland problem’ in the first days of his government thus: ‘principle of consent to satisfy the Unionists, commitment to equality for the nationalists, the rest all negotiation; and with the need for bold steps to get the process moving.’33 Presenting this strategy publicly in Belfast, he reassured unionists that he was on their side, and that the Union was safe in his hands: None of us in the hall today, even the youngest, is likely to see Northern Ireland as anything but a part of the United Kingdom. My agenda is not a united Ireland … I believe in the United Kingdom. I value the Union. Any

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settlement must be negotiated not imposed; it must be endorsed by the people of Northern Ireland … and it must be endorsed by the British Parliament … unionists have nothing to fear from a new Labour government … The government will not be persuaders for unity … The principle of consent is and will be at the heart of my government’s policies on Northern Ireland … there can be absolutely no possibility of a change in the status of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom without the clear and formal consent of a majority of people in Northern Ireland.34

In essentials, this approach followed the framework laid down by the Major government in the 1993 Downing Street Declaration and the 1995 Framework Documents, as many New Labour strategists were to acknowledge.35 Moreover, in their re-statement of the consent principle, their recognition of the Irish dimension and the embedding of power-sharing in their institutional architecture, these documents reflected the settled position of British state strategy since 1972 and were thus in a direct line from Sunningdale to the Good Friday Agreement.36 Thus had the scene been set for the arrival of Blair’s new government with ‘a process, an agenda and a context for moving forward towards the longed for settlement’.37 Tony Blair’s distinctive contribution to the discourse of the peace process was a particular understanding of history expressed in the language of modernisation. Although primarily located within the long-established parameters of British policy, New Labour’s analysis rhetorically gave much greater weight to the potential for conflict transformation in the region.38 In the lexicon of Blairismo, ‘history’ could refer to both a progressive sense of future possibility and to a traditional past holding back the present.39 In Northern Ireland the conservative forces to be confronted were those associated with traditional nationalist and unionist positions, which had caused alienation from public life and fatally undermined the common good. However, the region’s politicians were not simply enslaved by the past: rather they used it to consciously create tribal mythologies that both mobilised their followers and fostered communal division.40 Praising Celtic Tiger Ireland for ‘sprinting down the track towards the future’, while Northern Ireland was ‘hanging around the starting blocks arguing about Protestants and Catholics’, Blair believed that these traditional conflicts were ‘ridiculously old-fashioned and out of touch with the times in which the island of Ireland lived’.41 For Blair, this type of history was a conservative nightmare from which Northern Ireland must be awoken. Fortunately for his project, Blair discerned other, more progressive forces to hand to undertake this historical task. The same powerful economic forces that were shaping British society were also at work in Northern Ireland with potentially positive effects on a divided

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community.42 Mediated through the British state’s predominant role in the region’s economy, the beneficial impact of these globalised economic forces could be magnified and channelled to produce a ‘peace dividend’.43 This would contribute to political stability by consolidating the ‘reinvention of urban Ulster as normal, placeless and able to hold its own in a competitive global economy’.44 These ambitious aims not only reflected the historical importance of the economy as a political instrument in the region, but also drew on New Labour’s contemporary ‘partnership with business’ in Britain that promoted wealth creation as a means of strengthening social cohesion and funding the welfare state.45 While this combination of state intervention and the impersonal forces of the market was clearly an important element in New Labour’s strategy – and indeed was to remain so even after devolved government was finally established in 2007 – the main focus of Blair’s rhetoric was on ‘the people’ and ‘civil society’ as agents of transformation through the peace process.46 This emphasis on the transformative potential of civil society was frequently cited by those who argued that Northern Ireland offered wider lessons about the mechanisms and strategies for peace building, both at home and abroad. This was particularly true for those accounts that believed (or more accurately hoped) that the conflict had not just been managed, but resolved ‘once and for all’.47 This optimism was perhaps best expressed by Tony Blair himself when he argued that the peace process: teaches us the value of a civic society where ancient divisions can be healed. Today, engagement and dialogue have shattered the depressing status quo of the past. ‘Working together’, once dirty words, is now the basis of a new future that offers hope in place of war … The majority rejected the old ways … the fundamental lesson of Northern Ireland for us all … [is that] … [t]‌here is no place in the 21st century for narrow and exclusive traditions. It underlines the supreme importance in the modern world of understanding our dependence on one another, for future progress.48

Although aspects of this argument might appear familiar – the appeal to the ‘moderate majority’ to defeat ‘the men of violence’ had after all been the stock in trade of British Secretaries of State since the 1970s – there were novel variations to both the analysis and the language that reflect wider Third Way theory and practice.49 One distinctive departure was the cultivation of a ‘bottom-up’ language of political change in place of the previous focus on ‘top-down’ elite accommodation, with the clear suggestion that peace processes uniquely transformed rather than simply managed conflict, and that ‘civil society’, as opposed to the state, played the key role in this process. This shift in focus began to be theorised

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in the 1990s as a way of explaining the relatively new phenomenon of international peace processes emerging from the Middle East and South Africa to the Balkans.50 Concomitant with the unfolding of events in these regions, theorists, NGO practitioners and politicians were developing models, toolkits and, above all, a universally applicable discourse to facilitate ‘sustainable reconciliation in divided societies’.51 Although often lacking the precision and clarity of theoretical discourse, the application of this new language of conflict resolution and peace process by New Labour in Northern Ireland served to distinguish ‘the peace process’ from other earlier attempts at political settlement in the region.52 The aim of peace processes was to end protracted conflict through inclusive dialogue, involving previously excluded groups outside the political elites by addressing the fundamental causes of conflict rather than simple institutional tinkering.53 The desired outcome would be significant change, both in public life and across society as a whole. Looked at from this perspective, peace processes in ‘failed states’ on the international stage were confronting the same intractable problems of political legitimacy and popular disengagement that New Labour seemed to be facing in Britain. Whether in Basra, Burnley or Belfast, each crisis required external intervention to rebuild relationships between the state and civil society, or heal divided communities; each promised a radical transformation, almost a peaceful revolution rather than the mere management of conflict; and in each case, given the gap between rhetoric and reality, the long-term success of the project was ultimately to become open to question. The defining characteristic of the Northern Irish peace process and the Agreements that resulted from it was their emphasis on the management of difference, as opposed to the resolution of conflict: ‘if you can’t solve it, manage it until you can solve it.’54 Far from being progressive and transformative, the underlying assumptions of the new dispensation that emerged after 1998 are profoundly conservative and pessimistic. These low expectations reflected a central contradiction of politics in the region, where despite, or perhaps because of, the deeply divided and politically polarised nature of Northern Irish society there was a widespread disengagement from public life and estrangement from authority: behind their imposing facades of electoral dominance, the old traditions of unionism and nationalism were exhausted and hollowed out, although nothing had emerged to take their place. As in Britain, New Labour had attempted to fill the political void by re-engaging and re-mobilising the public around the project of modernisation and ‘rebuilding’ community; but in this respect, at least, they had failed to rouse Northern Ireland from its slumbers. The nightmare of ‘history’ continued, leaving the political class to manage the situation as best they could.

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A key theme in New Labour’s management strategy was to present the Good Friday Agreement not so much as a product of political horse-trading, but as ‘an achievement of the people of Ireland’, given democratic legitimacy and popular endorsement through the referenda on both sides of the border in May 1998.55 The continued assertion and media management of this narrative became particularly important for the New Labour team during the recurrent crises and stalled negotiations in the years preceding the final DUP/Sinn Féin deal in 2007.56 However, the complex round of negotiations, political manoeuvres and false dawns that littered the road from Castle Buildings to St Andrews bore a rather different character from the public pronouncements of the spin-doctors or the prognostications of the theorists of conflict resolution. The picture that emerges from the memoirs and diaries of the main protagonists suggests a much more conventional mixture of old-style power diplomacy and political chicanery combined with contemporary news management.57 Below the surface of ‘inclusive dialogue’, the Good Friday Agreement and its subsequent offspring were effectively products of a series of bilateral negotiations with the various local political parties structured and managed by the British and Irish governments, in association with American and other international facilitators.58 The basic political and institutional politics frameworks had been laid down in advance: it was the detailed implementation that now had to be determined by the governments and the parties. Undoubtedly difficult, complex and protracted, as the prolonged discussions around decommissioning and the devolution of policing and justice were to prove, the Northern Ireland peace process provided the ideal environment in which the freewheeling politics of Blairismo could truly come into their own. This style was uniquely Blair’s own, leading some to argue that ‘the Prime Minister’s heroic role … and extraordinary tenacity and commitment’ were the key factors in the successful outcome of the peace process.59 However, Blair’s style was frequently criticised for its ‘substance’, with suggestions that behind his cultivated informality and language of emotional empathy lay something rather more calculating and rather less demotic.60 When combined with a strong sense of historical mission, it could give his politics a Bonapartist, almost messianic character, which he would increasingly reveal after September 11, 2001, and during the period leading up to the Iraq War.61 This was a new type of political authority, rather presidential in form, dismissive of the formal institutions of democracy, and claiming a special relationship with ‘the people’ through appeals to emotion and values rather than reason and ideology. These tendencies were clearly present, too, during New

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Labour’s choreography and successful management of the peace process. However, for many ‘the creative ambiguity’ of the Good Friday Agreement, ‘the stretching of the truth past breaking point’ during negotiations with David Trimble, and Blair’s rather peculiar sense of destiny can be overlooked and even justified by the positive outcome in Northern Ireland in ways that his foreign wars and interventions cannot.62 If Blair claimed to have a unique understanding of the workings of history in Northern Ireland, he was far less precise when it came to the history of his own party’s policy on the issue. For his own purposes he was willing to ‘stretch the truth’ by distorting Labour’s previous positions and exaggerating their ‘pro-nationalist’ bias. In fact, Labour Party policy on Northern Ireland in the early 1990s was much more moderate, reflecting its origins as a compromise between the left and the right. Despite radical left currents that favoured the immediate withdrawal of British troops and reunification of the island, Labour’s official position since 1981 had been the more gradualist one of unity by consent.63 Always at pains to distinguish its position from that of Irish Republicans, the party leadership stressed the need for a ‘consensual, democratic and constitutional path to Irish unification’, in line with the goals of a majority of nationalists on the island as a whole.64 Labour’s ‘all-Ireland dimension’ reflected the view of Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Kevin McNamara, that partition was the ultimate cause of conflict and that party policy should ‘start with the concept of the island of Ireland and work from that, rather than looking at the six counties as some sort of imperial relic’.65 Recognising the depth of unionist hostility to reunification, Labour policy qualified the ‘all-Ireland dimension’ by stating that: ‘any democratic government should accept that where a change in sovereignty was in prospect which would affect directly the interests and citizenship of a part of its population, those thus affected should have a determining say in the question’.66 This balanced approach continued and was clearly evident in McNamara’s support for the position of Conservative Secretary of State, Peter Brooke, on talks with the constitutional parties, which would eventually form the basis of both Conservative and Labour policy in the 1990s and 2000s.67 Although the confidential paper ‘Northern Ireland: options for government’, drawn up by McNamara before the 1992 general election, which proposed ‘durable shared responsibility between the governments of Britain and Ireland and the peoples of Northern Ireland’, was criticised by Unionists as tantamount to joint authority between London and Dublin, Labour’s ultimate aim nevertheless remained an agreed settlement between the constitutional parties.68 Far from being a

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staging post to Irish unity, ‘shared responsibility’ was designed to bring Unionists to the negotiating table and circumvent their procrastination in future negotiations.69 Blair might interpret this as ‘anti-unionist’, but McNamara argued that such countervailing pressure was simply a logical extension of Hillsborough and the close relationship between London and Dublin that had developed since 1985: indeed, similar oblique threats of ‘joint authority’ would continue to surface during the periodic crises in the peace process in the 2000s.70 McNamara suggested that perhaps the most important continuities between established Labour policies and Blair’s approach can be found in the strands and structures of the Good Friday Agreement itself. The Agreement not only reflected the main elements of bi-partisan policy since the early 1990s, but was also, according to McNamara, in line with Labour policy before 1994:  ‘the policies that emerged in the final Good Friday Agreement were, in structure if not in every detail, what was contained … in our document “Towards a United Ireland”. Certainly, anyone reading that earlier document and then picking up the Agreement would find it hard to find a specific matter which was different between the two.’71 Whatever the broad policy continuities, it is also clear that Tony Blair’s policy had a pronounced pro-unionist emphasis. This might reflect aspects of Blair’s own family background or his lawyer’s pragmatic approach to problem solving.72 Moreover, it is also in line with the record of previous Labour governments that have effectively upheld the Union and the consent principle since partition.73 However, the most likely explanations lay not in personal or party history, but in the contradictions within Blair’s own essentially conservative political project. Despite the language of modernisation and transformation, Blairismo willingly accepted the nature of power in British society and the state. For Tony Blair it was not these structures that had to be transformed; rather it was the public that had to be moulded to these unalterable realities. By embracing this status quo, the New Labour project had, perforce, to rule out ‘unity by consent’ or indeed any other radical change.74 The best that is apparently on offer in Northern Ireland is a passive acceptance of identity politics, ‘an agreement to disagree’, marked by ‘a trade-off for each side’ and secured by ‘constructive ambiguity’.75 As events since 1998 have shown, this new dispensation has not even fulfilled these meagre promises, much less enabled Northern Ireland to fly the nets of history. Far from resolving the conflict, society has been held back by a politics of stasis and institutions that reproduce the very divisions that gave rise to political violence in the first place.

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Notes  1 Jonathan Powell, Great hatred, little room:  making peace in Northern Ireland (London, Bodley Head, 2008), p. 92.  2 In fact, the phrase was a spontaneous response to reporters coined by Blair himself. According to Alastair Campbell, he and Jonathan Powell ‘were close to laughing out loud’ when they heard it; Campbell (edited by Kathy Gilfillan), The Irish diaries 1994–2003 (Dublin, Lilliput, 2013), p. 104.  3 Michael Gove, The price of peace: an analysis of British policy in Northern Ireland (London, Centre for Policy Studies, 2000), p. 1.  4 Owen Bowcott, ‘Blair’s Legacy’, Guardian, 11 May 2007.  5 Frank Millar, ‘Ireland: the peace process’, in Anthony Seldon (ed.), Blair’s Britain 1997–2007 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 528; Bertie Ahern, ‘Foreword’, in Campbell, The Irish diaries, p. x.  6 For good examples of these journalistic accounts and political histories, see Deaglan de Breádún, The far side of revenge:  making peace in Northern Ireland (Cork, Collins Press, 2008); Thomas Hennessey, The Northern Ireland peace process: ending the troubles? (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); Frank Millar, Northern Ireland:  a triumph of politics (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 2008). For memoirs and diaries, see, for example, Tony Blair, A journey (London, Arrow, 2011); Campbell, The Irish diaries; Mo Mowlam, Momentum: the struggle for peace, politics and the people (London, Coronet, 2012); Powell, Great hatred, little room.  7 A good summary of this literature appears in Eamonn O’Kane, Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland since 1980 (Abingdon, Routledge, 2007), pp. 1–11.  8 For some of the main strands in these debates, see Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland:  the politics of war and peace (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, The Northern Ireland conflict: consociational engagements (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004).  9 For some of the limited examples of work that considers how the ideological assumptions of British parties influenced their Northern Irish policies, see Geoffrey Bell, Troublesome business:  the Labour Party and the Irish question (London, Pluto, 1982); Paul Bew and Paul Dixon, ‘Labour party policy and Northern Ireland’, in Brian Barton and Patrick Roche (eds), The Northern Ireland question:  perspectives and policies (Aldershot, Avebury, 1994); and Peter Catterall and Sean McDougall (eds), The Northern Ireland question in British politics (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996). 10 Tony Blair, ‘Tony Blair: Pain, passion and empathy – what I’ve learned about peacemaking’, Guardian, 24 October 2013. 11 The Third Way proved notoriously difficult to define, leading many to argue that it was simply a phrase without any deep ideological meaning. The debate brought forth a large number of books and pamphlets in the 1990s and 2000s. For some of the key themes in the contemporary debate about the meaning of the Third Way and a summary of the main texts, see

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Andrew Chadwick and Richard Heffernan (eds) The New Labour reader (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003). Other useful accounts include Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, Europe: the third way/die neue Mitte (London, The Labour Party, 1999); Olaf Cramme and Patrick Diamond (eds), After the third way: the future of social democracy in Europe (London, I.B. Taurus, 2012); Patrick Diamond (ed.), New Labour’s old roots:  revisionist thinkers in Labour’s history, 1931–1997 (Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2004); Alan Finlayson, Making sense of New Labour (London, Lawrence & Wishart, 2003); Anthony Giddens, The third way: the renewal of social democracy (Cambridge, Polity, 1998); and Roy Hattersley and Kevin Hickson (eds), The socialist way: social democracy in contemporary Britain (London, I.B. Taurus, 2013); Colin Hay, The political economy of New Labour: labouring under false pretences (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999). 12 Tony Blair, The third way (London, Fabian Society, 1998). 13 Tony Blair, Speech to the Labour Party Conference 1999: http://news.rapgenius.com/Tony-blair-the forces-of-conservatism-annotated (accessed 14 April 2014). 14 Finlayson, Making sense of New Labour, pp. 102–40. 15 For the importance of ‘keywords’ in political and cultural discourse, see Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (London, HarperCollins, 2014). 16 Tony Blair, Speech to the Labour Party Conference 1999: http://news.rapgenius.com/Tony-blair-the forces-of-conservatism-annotated (accessed 14 April 2014). 17 F. Abrams, ‘Blair:  “I think I’m a pretty straight sort of a guy” ’, The Independent, 17 November 1997; Mowlam, Momentum, pp. 186–9. 18 Finlayson, Making sense of New Labour, pp. 66–79. 19 See, for example, Patrick Wintour, ‘Blair plans new social contract’, Guardian, 24 November 2006. 20 See, for example, Robert Putnam, Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000), for an influential exposition of this argument. 21 Peter Mair, Ruling the void:  the hollowing-out of western democracy (London, Verso, 2013). 22 For an example of a community cohesion policy in Britain that has an obvious resonance to Northern Ireland, see Elevate East Lancashire, ‘Case Study-Community cohesion work  – promoting good relations’:  www. auditcommission.gov.uk/housing/marketrenewalpathfinders/goodpractice (accessed 15 July 2010). 23 Tony Blair, ‘Full text:  Blair’s Fabian Speech’, Guardian, 17 June 2003: www.theguardian.com/society/2003/jun/17/publicservices.speeches1 (accessed 14 April 2014). 24 David Chandler, Empire in denial:  the politics of state-building (London, Pluto Press, 2006). 25 Powell, Great hatred, little room, p. 9.

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26 Mowlam, Momentum, pp. 31–2. 27 Interview with Tony Blair, Irish Times, 4 September 1995 (emphases added). 28 Blair, A journey, p. 159. 29 Campbell, The Irish diaries, p. 8. 30 Campbell, The Irish diaries, p. 44. 31 Ronan Bennett, ‘New Labour and Northern Ireland’, New Left Review, vol. 1/220, November–December 1996:  http://newleftreview.org/1/220/ ronan-bennett-new-labour-and-northern-Ireland (accessed 10 March 2014). 32 Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, The fight for peace: the story behind the Irish peace process (London, Heinemann, 1996). 33 Campbell, The Irish diaries, pp. 40–1. 34 Powell, Great hatred, little room, pp. 11–13 (emphases added). 35 Campbell, The Irish diaries, p. 46. 36 O’Kane, Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland since 1980, pp. 4–9. 37 Sean Farren, ‘The Blair years: a Northern Irish perspective’, Observatoire de la société britannique, vol. 3, 2007, p. 235. 38 For an assessment of these assumptions, see Peter Neumann, Britain’s long war: British strategy in the Northern Ireland conflict, 1969–98 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 30–5. 39 Williams, Keywords, p. 120. 40 Blair, A journey, pp. 153–7. For New Labour’s understanding of the importance of history in Northern Ireland, see Jonathan Powell, Great hatred, little room, pp. 22–3, 34–58. 41 Blair, A journey, p. 157 (emphasis added). 42 The Portland Trust, Economics in peacemaking:  lessons from Northern Ireland (London, The Portland Trust, 2007). 43 Colin Coulter and Michael Murray (eds), Northern Ireland after the troubles: a society in transition (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2008); see also Kevin Bean, The new politics of Sinn Féin (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2007), pp. 16–50, on the nature of the political economy of Northern Ireland. 44 Brendan Murtagh, ‘The URBAN Community Initiative in Northern Ireland’, Policy and Politics, vol. 29, no. 4, 2001, p. 432. 45 Colin Hay, ‘The political economy of New Labour’, in Chadwick and Heffernan (eds), The New Labour reader, pp.  59–65; Peter Shirlow, ‘The economics of the Peace Process’, in Chris Gilligan and Jonathan Tonge (eds), Peace or war? Understanding the peace process in Northern Ireland (Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997), p. 133. For an overview of the importance of ‘the economic instrument’ in British state strategy in Northern Ireland, see Neumann, Britain’s long war. 46 Sean Byrne, Economic assistance and the Northern Ireland conflict: building the peace dividend (Cranbury, NJ, Associated University Presses, 2009). 47 Powell, Great hatred, little room, p. 1. 48 Tony Blair,‘Values and the power of community’, speech given at the University of Tübingen, 30 June 2000: www.weltethos.org/dat-english/00_1-blair.htm (accessed 30 April 2010).

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49 For an example of this political rhetoric as used by a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, see Merlyn Rees, Northern Ireland: a personal perspective (London, Meuthen, 1985). 50 Hugh Miall, Oliver Ramsbotham and Tom Woodhouse (eds), Contemporary conflict resolution:  the prevention, management and transformation of deadly conflicts (Cambridge, Polity, 2011). 51 See, for example, John Paul Lederach, Building peace: sustainable reconciliation in divided societies (Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997). For the impact of these ideas in Northern Ireland, see Sandra Buchanan, ‘Examining the peacebuilding policy framework of the Irish and British governments’, in Maria Power (ed.), Building peace in Northern Ireland (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2011). 52 Peter Hain, ‘Peacemaking in Northern Ireland:  a model for conflict resolution?’ Blickpunkt Grossbritannien, August 2008. 53 For a discussion on the problems of defining ‘the peace process’ in Northern Ireland, see Eamonn O’Kane, ‘The perpetual peace process? Examining Northern Ireland’s never-ending, but fundamentally altering peace process’, Irish Political Studies, vol. 28, no. 4, 2013, pp. 515–35. 54 Blair, A journey, p. 198. 55 Bill Clinton, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, ‘Joint Statement’, 18 March 1999: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/js18399.htm (accessed 20 April 2014). 56 For an example of this during the referendum campaign, see Campbell, The Irish diaries, pp. 130–46. 57 For memoirs and diaries, see, for example, Powell, Great hatred, little room; Mowlam, Momentum; Blair, A journey; Campbell, The Irish diaries; and Peter Mandelson, The third man (London, HarperCollins, 2011). 58 Powell, Great hatred, little room, pp. 90–107. 59 Millar, ‘Ireland: the peace process’, p. 525. 60 Norman Fairclough, New Labour, new language? (London, Routledge, 2000). 61 Andrew Rawnsley, The end of the party (London, Penguin, 2010), pp. 45–6, and 446–9; and Robert Harris, ‘Tony Blair is a tragic narcissist with a messiah complex, says Robert Harris’, Guardian, 3 June 2014. 62 Paul Dixon, ‘An honourable deception? The Labour government, the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland peace process’, British Politics, vol. 8, 2013, pp.  108–37; Alastair Jamieson, ‘Tony Blair “concealed full truth” to save N.I. peace talks’, The Telegraph 1 September 2010; Powell, Great hatred, little room, pp. 108–17. 63 For examples of left-wing critiques of Labour’s policy and historical position on ‘the Irish Question’, see Geoffrey Bell, David Coen and Liam Mac Uaid, Ireland’s British problem (London, Socialist Outlook, 1989); and Martin Collins (ed.), Ireland after Britain (London, Pluto, 1985); The Irish Freedom Movement, Irish war:  the Irish freedom movement handbook (London, Junius, 1987). For other interpretations of the development of Labour Party policy, see Bew and Dixon, ‘Labour party policy and Northern Ireland’; and Peter Catterall and Sean McDougall (eds), The Northern Ireland question in British politics (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1996).

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64 Kevin McNamara, Jim  Marshall and Mo  Mowlam, Towards a united Ireland:  reform and harmonisation:  a dual strategy for Irish Unification (London, 1988), p. 1; photocopied document (copy in author’s possession). 65 Kevin McNamara quoted in Bell, Troublesome business, p. 143. 66 McNamara et al., Towards a united Ireland, pp. 7–8 (emphasis added). 67 Kevin McNamara, Address to Oxford University Labour Club, 21 May 1991 (copy in author’s possession). 68 Kevin McNamara, interview with author 15 April 2014; M.  Hayes, ‘New Labour and Northern Ireland:  bipartisan consensus and the “Peace Process” ’, in G.  Taylor (ed.), The impact of New Labour (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), p. 211. 69 Kevin McNamara, letter to Neil Kinnock, 28 November 1991 (copy in author’s possession). 70 Kevin McNamara, interview with author, 15 April 2014. 71 Kevin McNamara, interview with author, 15 April 2014. 72 Blair, A journey, pp. 154–6. 73 Bell, Troublesome business; and Collins, Ireland after Britain. 74 Blair, A journey, pp. 181–2. 75 Powell, Great hatred, little room, p. 108.

Index Note: ‘n’ after a page number indicates the number of a note on that page

Adams, Gerry 129–30, 185 Adamson, William 75, 77 Addison, Viscount 94 Ahern, Bertie 12, 228, 233 Allen, Mike 204 Alliance Party 128 Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners 59 American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 93 Andrews, J.M. 8, 91–2 Anglo-Boer war (1899–1902) 161 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) 11, 216, 220–9 passim Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) 71–2, 76–9 Anglo-Irish War (1919–21) 6, 11, 71, 73–6 Anti-Partition League (APL) 89, 97, 104, 106, 108, 116, 139–41, 144 Archer, Peter 219 Asquith, Herbert 5, 46, 65, 73–4 Attlee, Clement 6–7, 9, 89–90, 96–8, 100, 138–9, 142 Bacon, Alice 121 Bagshawe, Edward 39 Barnes, George 1, 45 Barr, Glenn 192, 204 Barry, Peter 219, 222 Beattie, Jack 97, 110 Belfast Co-operative Society 58 Belfast Ethical Society 58 Belfast Protestant Association 59 Belfast Socialist Society 58–9 Bell, Stuart 221, 227

Benn, Tony 152, 186, 193 Out of the wilderness 150 Bennett Report 177 Berry, Sir Anthony 220 Bevan, Aneurin 109, 209 Beveridge Report 7 Bevin, Ernest 9, 91, 138–9 Bing, Geoffrey 89, 100, 141 chapter 6 passim Birrell, Augustine 65 Black, Boyd 193 Blair, Tony 12, 65, 101, 119, 128, 130, 228 chapter 14 passim Bloody Sunday (1972) 122 Body, Brigadier 174 Bonar Law, Andrew 48–9 Boserup, Andres 191 Boundary Commission 7, 77 Bourn, John 171 Brenner, Lenni 182 Brett, Sir Charles 125, 153 Bridgeman, W.C. 83 British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO) 185, 190, 195n.22, 199, 202–3, 208, 213n.35 British–Irish Rights Watch 185 Brockway, Fenner 8, 155, 157 Brook, Norman 90 Brooke, Alan 9 Brooke, Sir Basil 8–9, 90, 92–3, 96–8, 141–2 Brooke, Peter 225, 227, 242 Brown, George 120–1, 150, 153 Brown, Gordon 70, 192 Brown, Oliver 107

250 Browne, Nöel 101n.7, 203, 209 B-Specials 90, 112–14, 160 Buchanan, George 82 Bunyan, John 4 The Pilgrim’s Progress, 4 Byrne, Paddy 149, 157 Callaghan, James 10, 119–20, 128, 135, 143, 151, 218 Campaign for Democracy in Ulster (CDU) 121–2, 127, 149, 152, 157–9, 161, 185 Campaign for Social Justice (CSJ) 150, 155–6 Northern Ireland: the plain truth 156 Campbell, D.R. 62 Campbell, T.J. 112 Fifty years of Ulster 112 Cannon, J.P. 193 Carlyle, Thomas 23 Carson, Edward 183 Castle, Barbara 152 Catholic Educator 36, 41 Catholic Herald chapter 2 passim Catholic News 39 Catholic Times 36 Chamberlain, Joseph 25 Chartism 17, 22–3, 26, 56 Chichester Clark, James 160 Churchill, Randolph 29 Churchill, Winston 6, 9, 45, 91, 93 Chuter Ede, James 92, 139, 142 CIA 93 Clann na Poblachta 94 Clements, Dick 226 Clynes, J.R. 84 Committee for a Workers’ International 206 Commonwealth Labour Party 136, 138 Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) 184, 188 Concannon, Don 218, 229n.2 Connolly Association 10, 154–5 Connolly, James 5, 55–6, 114, 210 Conservative Party 29, 69, 71–2, 76, 165–6, 169, 175, 177, 216 Cooper, Frank 166, 169–70, 172 Cooper, Ivan 128, 144

Index Corbyn, Jeremy 230n.28 Corish, Brendan 88, 202 Cosgrave, Liam 217 Cosgrave, W.T. 82–3 Costello, John A. 92, 94–6, 99 Costello, Séamus 189, 204 Cowen, Joseph 37–8 Craig, Sir James 8–9, 97 Creasey, Timothy 175 Cromwell, Oliver 3–4, 12 Crossman, Richard 152 Cubbon, Brian 172 Curran, Pete 45 Currie, Austin 158 Curzon, Lord George 82 Daily Herald 78, 80, 82–4, 88, 137 Daly, P. T. 61 Davitt, Michael 1–4, 29, 40, 57, 161 Debray, Regis 189 de Courcy Ireland, John 138, 146n.16 Delargy, Hugh 89, 106, 108, 122, 185 Democratic Federation 56 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 128, 228, 241 Derry Labour Party (DLP) 136–9, 144, 199, 204 de Valera, Éamon 7, 9, 30, 85, 92–5, 99, 108, 136 Devlin, Bernadette 124, 201 Devlin, Paddy 122, 126, 128 Diamond, Charles 5 chapter 2 passim Dillon, John 36, 40, 42–7, 49 Doherty, John 26 Dorricott, Jack 138 Downing Street Declaration (1993) 129, 216, 227–8, 238 Engels, Friedrich 25, 204 Evans, Timothy 109 External Relations Act (1936) 95 Fanon, Frantz 193 Fenianism 21, 26 Ferguson, John 44 Fianna Fáil 108, 138 Fine Gael 94–5, 99–100, 203, 221 Finnegan, Thomas 138

251

Index Fisher, Herbert 73 Fitch, Alan 155 Fitt, Gerry 122–3, 128, 157–9, 177 FitzGerald, Garrett 217–20 Flannery, Martin 221 Foot, Isaac 3 Foot, Michael 3–4, 11, 129, 209–10, 216 Forward 45, 73, 85 Fox, Paddy 138–42 Franco, General 88, 115 Freeman’s Journal 49, 67 Friends of Ireland 7, 89, 100, 106, 115–16, 139–42, 144, 185 Gaelic Athletic Association 37 Gaitskell, Hugh 120, 143 Gardiner, Lord 166 Garrett, Brigadier 167 Gaughan, Michael 11 General Municipal and Boilermakers union (GMB) 131 Gibbon, Peter 190 Gilmour, Ian 166, 169 Gladstone, William 1, 18, 24–5, 29, 38, 71 Glasgow Observer 36, 41, 45–6, 48 Good Friday Agreement (1998) 101, 227–8, 233, 238, 241–3 Gordon Walker, Patrick 155 Government of Ireland Act (1920) 71, 154, 156–7 Gray, David 92 Greaves, Desmond 154–5, 192 Greenwood, Arthur 82, 84 Guardian 125 Hain, Peter 192, 228 Haire, John 89, 106 Halliday, Fred 190 Hannigan, James 174, 177 Hardie, J. Keir 1, 3, 13n.2, 29, 56–9, 105 Harkin, Nora 200–1 Hastings, Patrick 84 Haston, Jack 198 Hattersley, Roy 221 Haughey, Charles 219 Hayday, Arthur 138 Hayes, Patrick 188

Healy, Cahir 12–13, 91–2, 107 The mutilation of a nation 112 Healy, Gerry 184, 198–9 Healy, Tim 40 Heath, Edward 169 Henderson, Arthur 59, 62, 74–5, 88 Hermon, Jack 174 Higgins, Joe 206, 209–10 Hitler, Adolf 6, 8, 93, 113 Hogg, Douglas 82 House, David 170, 172, 175–6 Howe, Geoffrey 220 Hume, John 160 Hyndman, Henry 57 Independent Derry Labour Party (IDLP) 136, 138–9 Independent Labour Party (ILP) 8, 36, 48–9, 56–8, 60–2, 69, 71, 73, 78, 82, 107, 115, 188 Independent Orange Order 59 Ireland Act (1949) 98–9, 106–7, 114, 135, 142 Irish Civil War (1922–23) 6, 30, 71, 79–80, 85 Irish in Britain Representation Group 185 Irish National Land League 1, 38, 56–7 Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) 184, 187–9 Irish News 59, 101, 110, 129 Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) 5, 35–6, 41, 44, 46–7, 56, 62, 105 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 8, 71, 73, 78, 91, 93, 99, 121, 125, 151   see also Official IRA;   Provisional IRA Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) 72, 78, 80, 151 Irish Times 91, 203, 236 Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) 58, 60–5 Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) 29, 61 Irish Tribune: An Irish Journal for England and Scotland 36–8 Irwin, William 139

252 Jacobinism 17, 19 Jacobs, Rosamund 3 Jenkins, Roy 11, 152–3 A life at the centre 152 Johnson, Tom 5 Jones, Jack 80–1 Jones, Morgan 83 Jones, Paul 200–1 Justice 57, 136 Kelly, A.J. 90 Kelly, M.J. 40 Kent, Gary 188 Kerr, Russell 160 King, Frank 166 Kinkead, Brian 202 Kinnock, Neil 210, 219, 223, 226 Kirkwood, David 70, 82 Knight, Ted 182 Labour Commission on Ireland (1920) 6, 74, 88 Labour Committee on Ireland 185 Labour Leader 2, 73–5, 78 Labour Party (Irish) 61–3, 65, 75, 82, 88, 125, 136, 139, 199, 202–4, 207–11, 219, 221 Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) 209 Labour Representation Committee (LRC) 56, 58–9 Labour Women for Ireland 185 Lamp 36 Lansbury, George 6, 80 Larkin, James 3, 46–7, 60–1, 110 Lawless, Gery 184, 199 Lee, John 158 Lenin, Vladimir 191, 207 Liberal Party 4–6, 18, 27–9, 35–6, 41–6, 48, 56–7, 60–1, 64, 69, 76, 78–9 Lindley, Keith 144 Livingstone, Ken 129–30, 184–6 Lloyd George, David 6, 11, 71, 73–4, 76, 78–9, 83, 88 Londonderry Labour Party (LLP) 136–7, 144 Longford, Lord (Frank Pakenham) 147n.26, 151, 153

Index Long Kesh 11, 210 Lowry, William 139 MacBride, Sean 94–5, 99–100 MacDonald, Ramsay 5, 58–9, 62, 64–5, 69–71, 73, 79–83, 85, 120, 137 MacGiolla, Tómas 204 MacIntyre, Dr Robert 107 Mackin, Brendan 126 MacManaway, Rev. J.G. 109 MacSwiney, Terence 11, 73, 151, 161n.8 Maguire, Michael 157 Mallon, Seamus 167 Manchester Guardian 96, 137 Mandelson, Peter 101, 228 Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward 39 Mannix, Archbishop Daniel 75 Markievicz, Constance 85 Marshal, Jim 130 Marx, Karl 189 Mason, Roy 11, 172–7, 181n.89, 217, 221 Matgamna, Sean (alias John O’Mahony) 184 Maxton, James 70, 80, 82 Maxwell, General Sir John 5 Mayhew, Patrick 225 Maynard, Joan 10, 185, 230n.28 McAteer, Eddie 136, 142–3 McCartney, Robert 183, 188 McClenaghan, Dermie 144 McGimpsey, Chris 188 McGivern, Andy 131 McCluskey, Patricia 156 McEntee, Valentine 89 McGhee, Henry 89, 106, 139–40 McGonnagle, Stephen 139, 142 McIldoon, Douglas 148n.52 McNamara, Kevin 122, 127–8, 130, 166, 222, 224–6, 228, 236, 242–3 Mellish, Bob 155 Mellows, Liam 192 Merrigan, Matt 209 MI5 127, 151 Midgley, Harry 139 Miliband, Ed 131, 193 Miliband, Ralph 105 Parliamentary socialism 105

253

Index Militant 11, 186–8, 197, 199, 202, 205, 207, 209–10 (Irish section) 11, 188 chapter 12 passim Militant 199, 201, 209 Militant Irish Monthly 197, 202 Mill, J.S. 24 Molyneaux, James 227 Monteith, Ben 131 Morrison, Danny 129–30, 185 Morrison, Herbert 9–10, 91–4, 98–9, 101, 120, 139–40, 142 Movement for Colonial Freedom 155, 185 Mowlam, Mo 128–30, 228, 235–6 Muir, John 82 Mulvey, Anthony 106 Murphy, John 63–4 Mussolini, Benito 8 Nairn, Tom 188 Napier, Sam 153 National Democrat 3 National Liberal Federation 25 Neave, Airey 169, 173–4 Nellist, Dave 230n.28 Newcastle Daily Chronicle 38 New Ireland Forum 11–12, 216, 218–20, 229 New Labour 130–1 chapter 14 passim New Leader 81, 84 New Left Review 188, 191 Newman, Kenneth 171, 176 Nkrumah, Kwame 110 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 108, 142 Northcote Parkinson, Cyril 108 Northern Ireland Act (1982) 218 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA)122, 127, 159, 161 Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) 10, 64–5, 89–90, 96–7, 109–10, 136, 138–9, 141–4, 188, 189, 199–200, 202–3 chapter 7 passim Norton, William 88, 94, 99 Nugent, Kieran 177

O’Brien, Art 80, 83–4 O’Brien, Conor Cruise 108, 202–3 O’Connell, Daniel 19–20, 22 O’Connor, T.P. 42 Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) 169, 183, 187, 189 Official Sinn Féin 165, 187, 189 O’Hanlon, John 45 O’Neill, Redmond 184 O’Neill, Terence 126, 128, 154, 158–9 Orange Order 112, 126, 199 Orme, Stanley 157–8, 160, 165, 170, 192 O’Shannon, Cathal 5 Owen, Robert 115 Paisley, Ian 159, 166, 221, 227 Palmer, Charles 45 Parker, Dame Dehra 5, 142 Parnell, Charles Stewart 107 Ponsonby, Arthur 81 Powell, Enoch 221 Prior, James 218–19 Pritchard, Anthony 173 Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) 188 Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) 12, 127–9, 166–71, 174–8, 184, 187–9, 200 Provisional Sinn Féin 129, 165, 168, 177, 182, 185, 187, 227–8, 241 Punch 26 Purdie, Bob 185 Purvis, Dawn 188 Quelch, Harry 57 Quin, D.J. Mitchel 48–9 Quinn, Ruairi 219 Red Action 188 Redmond, John 42–3, 44, 46–8, 64 Redmond, Sean 155 Rees, Merlyn passim 164–73, 177, 217 Revolutionary Communist Group 187 Reynold’s Newspaper 55 Richardson A.H. 48 Roberts, Ernie 185 Rose, Paul 122, 152, 157–8, 160 Runciman, Walter 46

254 Scargill, Arthur 186 Scottish Labour Party 9, 56, 105 Scottish National Party (SNP) 107 Shackleton, David 60 Shaw, Bernard 105 John Bull’s Other Island 105 Sheehy-Skeffington, Francis 3 Shore, Peter 153 Short, Clare 226 Silverman, Roger 201 Sinn Féin 5, 11, 48, 76, 78, 138 see also Official Sinn Féin; Provisional Sinn Féin Sloan, Thomas H. 58–9 Smith, John 227 Smullen, Eamonn 184 Snowden, Philip 73 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) 12, 123, 128, 166–7, 218–19, 221 Social Democratic Federation (SDF) 56–7, 136 Socialist Appeal 198 Socialist Register 191 Socialist Workers’ Party 188, 199, 201 Soley, Clive 219–22, 228 Soskice, Sir Frank 157 Spanish Civil War (1936–39) 115, 198 Special Powers Act (1922) 92, 110, 112–14, 158 Spring, Dick 210, 219 Stagg, Frank 11 Stallard, Jock 185 Sunningdale Agreement (1973) 127, 216, 238 Taylor, Jan 188 Taylor, John 166 Thatcher, Margaret 11, 169, 192, 210, 216, 220

Index The Times 70, 80–1, 173, 217 Thomas, J.H. 70, 82–3 Thorne, Will 56 Thorpe, Jeremy 155 Tillet, Ben 84 Trade Union Congress (TUC) 56, 58, 61, 78, 153 Trimble, David 183, 242 Troops Out Movement (TOM) 10, 128, 185 UK Unionist Party 188 Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) 171–3 Ulster Unionist Party 121 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 165, 170 Ulster Workers’ Council (UWC) 11, 127, 165 United Irish League 40, 44–5, 48, 53n.73 Walker, William 1–2, 55–6, 58–60, 62, 105 Walpole, Robert 150 Warren, Bill 190 Webb, Beatrice 25, 33n.31, 57 Webb, Sidney 25, 33n.31, 57 Weekly Herald: The Catholic organ for the Metropolis 36, 39 Wheatley, John 28, 45–6, 53n.73 White, Captain Jack 110 Whitley, J.H. 155 Wilson, Harold 10, 122, 127, 130, 135, 144, 149–53, 156–60, 165–6, 192, 201, 217 The Labour government, 1964 to 1970: a personal record 150 Winnick, David 221 Workers’ Party (WP) 188 Workers’ Revolutionary Party 184, 198