Freedom and the ‘Free’ State
by David Convery
David Convery is a historian of Irish and British labour and radical movements. He is the editor of Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life (Irish Academic Press, 2013).
In August 2017, Jeremy Corbyn unveiled a new public square at Archway, north London. As well as being a welcome addition to the public landscape of the area, it is a memorial to a migrant community that was once the beating heart of Archway. Navigator Square was named by popular vote in memory of the Irish navigators, or navvies, that once thronged its streets and built the roads, rails, and buildings of postwar England. Within the square itself is the Archway Tavern, a former hub of the Irish community, and within ten minutes’ walk once lay the Roger Casement Irish Centre, the Green Ink bookshop, the Gresham Ballroom dance hall, and a string of Irish pubs down the Holloway Road. In the other direction up Highgate Hill is the Whittington Hospital, a prominent site for many of the thousands of Irish women who worked as nurses or midwives in the NHS. Such a scene is repeated at various locales across London – down the road at Camden Town, where the London Irish Centre opened in 1955, and over in ‘County’ Kilburn and neighbouring Cricklewood, where ‘the craic was good’.
It is not for nostalgia that I write this but to make a political point. Such a vibrant, thriving community was only possible because of its large numbers. In 1971, London was home to 241,225 people born within the Irish state, larger than the population of Cork and its suburbs. This does not count their children born in London who, of course, formed an integral part of the community. If one includes these, and those from Northern Ireland, it rises to an estimated 700,000.[1] The population of the Irish Republic reached a low of 2,818,341 in 1961, recording a net loss of 142,252 over the previous decade alone.[2] It was a damning indictment of the politics of the state. Entire generations of young people, primarily from rural backgrounds, and more women than men, were lost to Ireland. Why? It was not as if roads and houses did not need building, nor people educated and cared for, nor arts and culture created to enrich people’s lives. The Irish state presided over a socially restrictive and materially impoverished country. It had failed its people and the dreams of the revolution that made it.
The Irish Revolution
This revolution was propelled neither by the force alone of Sinn Féin TDs in Dáil Éireann, nor the guerrilla tactics of the IRA, but by hundreds of thousands of women and men who dreamed of a better world and withdrew their support from the administration of the British state in Ireland. The Proclamation of the Republic at Easter 1916 had positioned men and women as equals and declared ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’. This was revolutionary, but ambiguous enough that it could be read in many ways. What it meant for all was that the British state could no longer drain the country and use it for its own ends. This had a rich historical resonance but was immediately important with the threat of conscription for the First World War then being waged. The Proclamation, and the revolution that followed, was also open-ended enough to mobilise the multifarious dreams of the population for what liberation and an independent state might enable: the return of the land to those dispossessed by colonialism; a revitalisation of an oppressed national culture, including language; sexual liberation; an end to poverty and degradation in the slums; industry run by and for the people; dignity in everyday life. For others, it meant the freedom to conduct business and trade and to profit without recourse to London.
In December 1918, Sinn Féin swept the board in the general election and, on 20 January 1919, declared an independent parliament, Dáil Éireann, while the IRA began its campaign of guerrilla war. This political and military struggle is known as the War of Independence. Labour played an essential role throughout. Membership of unions affiliated to the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) grew from under 100,000 in 1916 to 225,000 in 1920. General strikes were organised against the threat of conscription in April 1918, to celebrate May Day in 1919, and for the release of political prisoners in April 1920. Railway workers boycotted the transport of British military personnel and supplies; local general strikes proliferated (5 in Charleville alone);[3] workplaces were occupied and more than one hundred soviets declared; landed estates were broken up and divided amongst tenant farmers. Combined, these actions crippled the British administration in most of Ireland and brought them to the negotiating table. The result was the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921. It fell far short of what was dreamed of.
““Importantly, the Treaty was the result not of civil negotiation but of force.””
The Treaty created a 26-county Irish Free State within the British Empire, with control over most domestic affairs. It hardened the partition of the country enacted the previous year, maintained British control over several ports in the Free State, resulted in the appointment of a British governor-general in Ireland, and included an oath of allegiance to the crown to be taken by TDs. Importantly, the Treaty was the result not of civil negotiation but of force. British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, threatened ‘immediate and terrible war’ if the terms were rejected.
The Treaty was narrowly accepted in the Dáil but was opposed by a majority in the IRA, Cumann na mBan and na Fianna Éireann. Big business, large landowners, the Catholic Church and the most conservative parts of society rolled in behind the Treaty – the ‘stake in the country’ people, as derided by Liam Mellows and others. The Labour Party, although avoiding a position, implicitly supported it, and called a general strike ‘against militarism’ in April 1922, supported by business. It also took its seats in the Free State’s Dáil, becoming, in effect, a loyal opposition. The social base and politics of the new state was apparent from the get-go.
Tensions between pro- and anti-Treaty supporters exploded into civil war on 28 June 1922, but the Free State army defeated the anti-Treaty IRA in major urban areas by the end of the summer, and ultimately quashed its guerrilla campaign by spring. In May 1923, the IRA gave the order to dump arms, ending the war. Despite defeat, harassment, executions, and the internment of thousands of republicans, abstentionist and anti-Treaty Sinn Féin still had a large and committed support base and managed to obtain 27.4 percent of the vote in the August 1923 general election.
Free State Policies
The Free State was a primarily rural country with its former industrial base cut off across the border. Its governing Cumann na nGaedheal administration was fiscally and socially conservative, concerned above all to ‘balance the books’. The government cut taxes and spending, public sector wages and pensions, and state employment. Unemployment remained high throughout its tenure. Moreover, it was militant, buoyed by its ascendancy in the civil war. One of its first actions was to send in the military to break a postal workers’ strike in autumn 1922, a tactic it repeated on several subsequent occasions. It failed to deliver on reforms in housing, land, education, and social provision. The administration was modelled on the British, right down to the top hats worn by ministers, and many maintained a visceral distaste for the working class and rural poor. The head of government, William Cosgrave, had written in May 1921 that:
people reared in workhouses are no great acquisition to human society. As a rule, their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. As a consequence, it would be a decided gain if they all took it into their heads to emigrate. When abroad, they are thrown onto their own responsibilities and have to work whether they like it or not.[4]
Similarly, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Patrick McGilligan, remarked in a Dáil debate on unemployment in 1924 that ‘There are certain limited funds at our disposal. People may have to die in this country and may have to die through starvation.’[5] The Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins, quipped that they were ‘the most conservative-minded revolutionaries that ever put through a successful revolution’. But O’Higgins and the conservative Catholic middle class he represented were only in power because they rode a wave of mass agitation, which they dashed against the rocks as soon as they were securely on shore. They were helped in this by the blinkered leadership of the labour movement.
Labour and republicanism
Labour won 21.33 per cent of the vote in the June 1922 general election, despite contesting only eighteen seats, seventeen of which it won. It was therefore in a prime position to challenge the nascent Free State regime, yet refused to do so. Its TDs took the ‘responsible’ position, occasionally raising a voice of protest against the state’s actions, but not mobilising its forces against it. Moreover, union leaders baulked at the sort of militant action common during the War of Independence. At the head of powerful and entrenched bureaucracies, they did not want to risk cash or other resources. In the August 1923 election, Labour was reduced to 14 seats and 10.6 per cent of the vote. By 1929, ITUC membership had declined to 92,000.
Jim Larkin, founder of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) and symbol of the 1913 Lockout, returned to Dublin from the United States in April 1923. He had been there since 1914 where he became a founding member of the Communist Labor Party and was jailed for ‘criminal anarchy’ from 1920-23. His return caused trepidation in government, and he soon denounced the ‘God save the King Labour Party’. However, he became wrangled in a dispute over control of the ITGWU with his former comrade, William O’Brien. The fallout resulted in a split, with Larkin leading a new union, the Workers Union of Ireland (WUI), and two-thirds of the Dublin membership of the ITGWU defecting. The WUI was on occasion militant but was crippled with debts, demarcation disputes with the ITGWU, and poor administration. Larkin remained a communist and attended events in Moscow, affiliating the WUI to the communist Red International of Labour Unions, or Profintern. In September 1927 his Comintern-affiliated Irish Worker League secured 12,473 votes for its three candidates in Dublin, outpolling Labour in the capital. Larkin won but was barred from taking his seat due to bankruptcy. The Comintern, however, grew exasperated at his unwillingness to create a disciplined revolutionary party and looked elsewhere.
It is this context of a defeated but still strong base for republicanism, and an ineffective and divided Labour opposition to Cumann na nGaedheal that helps explain the extraordinary rise of Fianna Fáil. Founded as a split from Sinn Féin in 1926, by the second election of 1927 it had gained 57 seats in the Dáil. It tapped into the frustrations, despair, and loyalty to the vision of a Republic that motivated much of the population. Emerging from a militant anti-Treaty side, but one which, unlike Sinn Féin, took its seats in the Dáil, Fianna Fáil combined a vision of a self-sufficient, confident and Gaelic Ireland with moderate social reform and successfully built a significant social base around small farmers and workers.
While Fianna Fáil strode onwards, physical-force republicanism was in serious decline. The IRA’s membership fell from 14,541 in August 1924 to 5,042 in November 1926.[6] Its left-wing, centred on former union organiser Peadar O’Donnell, now gained ground. It argued that the IRA should adopt a social programme and intervene in social struggles, making the goal of a republic relevant to the lived experience of people and not just an abstract vision. In 1931 the IRA founded a political organisation called Saor Éire, which sought ‘the overthrow in Ireland of British Imperialism and its ally, Irish Capitalism’. The Republic was to be built ‘on the basis of the possession and administration by the workers and working farmers, of the land, instruments of production, distribution and exchange.’[7]
Red scares and blueshirts
The rise of Fianna Fáil and the creation of Saor Éire alarmed Free State authorities, particularly Garda commissioner Eoin O’Duffy. A leading IRA figure during the War of Independence and notorious for his persecution of republicans during the Civil War, O’Duffy grew increasingly authoritarian as the 1920s wore on, inspired by Mussolini’s Italy. He saw the hand of the Comintern everywhere and prepared an alarmist dossier on the left and republicans in Ireland. Church and state now combined to initiate the first of many red scares throughout the 1930s and 1940s. A pastoral letter condemning communism was read at masses, and an amendment to the Public Safety Act was passed in October 1931 outlawing 12 republican and socialist organisations, leading to hundreds of arrests.
Cumann na nGaedheal called an election for February 1932, hoping to undermine Fianna Fáil’s credibility by linking it to communist subversion. The IRA backed down, abandoned Saor Éire, and privately campaigned for Fianna Fáil which promised to release the prisoners.[8] Behind the scenes, O’Duffy himself sounded out the possibility of a military dictatorship should Fianna Fáil win at the polls.[9] Cumann na nGaedheal’s strategy failed, as Fianna Fáil were duly elected, and capitalised on their popularity with an increased majority in a snap election the following year. Several subsequent attempts to steer the IRA to the left failed, and in 1934 O’Donnell led a split to form the socialist Republican Congress.[10] Although promising, it suffered from a disastrous split and clerical reaction.
Following victory in 1933, Éamon de Valera felt confident enough to sack several senior civil servants including Eoin O’Duffy as Garda commissioner. Only a decade after the civil war, this gave substance to pro-Treatyite fears of retribution. In July that year, O’Duffy was appointed head of the Army Comrades Association, an anti-communist ex-servicemen’s club. Its members wore a blue-shirted uniform, gave the fascist straight-arm salute, held mass rallies throughout the country, and defended Cumann na nGaedheal events against militant republicans emboldened by Fianna Fáil’s success. O’Duffy renamed it the National Guard, adopted a programme based on a corporate state, and limited membership to ‘citizens of Irish birth or of Irish parentage who profess the Christian faith’.[11] This latter aspect was an allusion to the xenophobic and anti-Semitic sentiment within the organisation. The Blueshirts tapped into resentment felt by pro-Treatyites and big farmers hit by de Valera’s economic policies, and grew to a peak of 47,923 members in August 1934.[12]
O’Duffy planned a ‘March on Dublin’ in August 1933, ostensibly a commemoration of Michael Collins and others, but emulating Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ in 1922. However, unlike Italy, an ascendant Fianna Fáil at the head of the state did not seek conciliation but banned the march and deployed the military on the streets, outlawing the National Guard itself only weeks later. The Blueshirts then merged with the Centre Party and Cumann na nGaedheal to form Fine Gael, with O’Duffy as leader. Fine Gael TDs appeared in the Dáil in the Blueshirt uniform, where prominent TD and future Taoiseach, John A. Costello proclaimed: ‘the Blackshirts were victorious in Italy… the Hitler Shirts were victorious in Germany, as, assuredly . . . the Blueshirts will be victorious in the Irish Free State.’[13] However, Fianna Fáil remained the stronger force. Fine Gael performed poorly in the June 1934 local election and feuds within the Blueshirts impacted its effectiveness as local, rural groups used unsanctioned violence against the Gardaí. The Blueshirts were ultimately a liability to more moderate elements in Fine Gael, who forced O’Duffy to resign in September 1934. Fascism and militant conservatism would remain a threat throughout the decade, however.
Fianna Fáil in power
Throughout the 1930s Fianna Fáil acted on its programme. It emphasised tillage rather than dairy-farming and created up to 7,000 industrial jobs per year, although unemployment remained high. It introduced welfare payments for unemployed men in April 1934, and delivered thousands of houses, although still much less than what was required and failed to adequately address the slums in inner Dublin. It retained land annuities ‘owed’ to the British, who retaliated by imposing a 20 per cent duty on most Irish exports. The Irish government followed suit beginning the ‘economic war’, expressed in the popular nationalist slogan ‘burn everything British except their coal’. Bit by bit they also undermined the Treaty: it removed the oath of allegiance, the position of Governor-General, and mention of the King from the constitution, and regained the Treaty ports. In 1937 it drafted a new constitution broadly asserting Ireland’s sovereignty, staking a claim to the whole island, and positioning Irish as the first language of the state. In effect, it was one, albeit big, step removed from proclaiming a republic.
Fianna Fáil consolidated its base with these measures but a large portion of the population rejected it: the constitution was passed by 685,105 votes to 526,945. De Valera’s vision was of a frugal, pious Ireland with a strong, centralised state; any progressive reforms were a veneer over a deeply conservative social regime. The constitution banned divorce; recognised the ‘special position’ of the Catholic Church; the family as the ‘natural’ unit group of society; and the life of women ‘within the home’. Prominent feminist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington denounced it as a ‘fascist model’ that betrayed the rights guaranteed in the 1916 Proclamation. Rather than a rupture, the constitution was a continuation of a course pursued since the 1920s by Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil alike.[14] In 1927 jury service for women was severely curtailed. Bans were placed on literature advocating the ‘unnatural prevention of conception or the procurement of abortion’ in 1929; on married women in public service in 1932; and on the importation and sale of contraceptives in 1935. The following year, legislation was passed enabling restrictions on the employment of women in the private sector.[15] Hand in glove with the state, the Catholic Church intervened in all aspects of life, public and private, and used its immense power to impose its views and terrorise the population, as with the incarceration of thousands of women and poor children in the sadistic regime of industrial schools, Mother and Baby homes, and Magdalen Laundries.
Left opposition organised by a relatively tiny group of communists and socialist republicans was regularly beaten back. In Leitrim in 1933, the Pearse-Connolly Hall of communist Jim Gralton was burnt down, and he was later deported to the US.[16] In March of that year in Dublin, crowds led by the Catholic Young Men’s Society attacked buildings associated with the Irish National Unemployed Movement, the Workers’ College, and the WUI, and laid a three-day siege to Connolly House, the communist headquarters.[17] In 1935 the state used army trucks as public transport to break a tram strike. The IRA fired at the trucks, while 44 socialists and republicans were arrested and Connolly House raided five times.[18] At Easter week commemorations in 1936, crowds threw potatoes laced with razor blades at Peadar O’Donnell and attacked former Irish Citizen Army instructor Captain Jack White with an iron cross at Glasnevin cemetery.[19] During the Spanish Civil War, the Irish Christian Front organised demonstrations of tens of thousands in cities throughout Ireland in support of Franco’s ‘crusade against communism’, and more than £40,000 was collected in its aid.
The Emergency
The Irish state remained neutral during the Second World War, dubbed The Emergency. Fianna Fáil introduced legislation enabling internment, censorship of the press and post, statutory wage control and widespread control over the economy. There was selective rationing from the beginning, with general rationing from June 1942, and the cost of living rose significantly. The population moved left. Labour became the largest party on Dublin Corporation after the 1942 local elections. In the general election the following year, it increased its seats from 9 to 17. Labour had a significant intake of left activists in the previous years. The Communist Party of Ireland disbanded in the southern state in July 1941 following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and its members were instructed to turn towards Labour.
In Dublin, a left wing also developed around the journal The Torch, centred on Patrick Trench and others influenced by Trotsky. Jim Larkin had also been readmitted in 1941 and was selected as a candidate in the 1943 election. William O’Brien and the ITGWU demanded his expulsion but were defeated, and in January 1944, the ITGWU disaffiliated from Labour. Five of the eight ITGWU TDs resigned and formed the National Labour Party. O’Brien further claimed that there was a communist conspiracy to control the Labour Party in Dublin and instigated a scare campaign. The Dublin executive and the Dublin central branch were considered the heart of this and were dissolved. Labour had once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. In the 1944 general election, it was reduced to 8.8 per cent returning only eight seats. National Labour returned four seats, on a vote of 2.7 per cent. Fianna Fáil once again formed the government.
Catholic ‘moral teaching’
After the 1948 election, Fianna Fáil was still the largest party but several others combined to form the first coalition government. This unlikely coalition was composed of Fine Gael, Labour, National Labour, Clann na Talmhan (an agrarian party with a base in the rural west), and a new republican party, Clann na Poblachta, led by former IRA Chief of Staff Seán MacBride, which benefited from disillusionment with Fianna Fáil after 16 years in power.
“[Fianna Fáil’s] wider agenda and that of [Fine Gael], built a repressive state with the working class, urban and rural, but particularly women, as its victims.”
Although most social issues remained chronic, the government was notable for attempts at amelioration made by its Minister for Health, Dr Noël Browne. A socialist member of Clann na Poblachta, Browne should forever be remembered for tackling head-on a scourge of working-class communities, tuberculosis. His efforts led to its effective eradication, demonstrating the dramatic impact that planned progressive initiatives could have when starting from the low base that existed in Ireland. Fresh from this success, Browne aimed to introduce free medical care for mothers and children up to the age of sixteen in the Mother and Child scheme. Although exceptionally moderate compared to the contemporary establishment of universal public health care in the UK under the NHS, it was still too far for the Church, state, and private medical practitioners. The Irish Medical Association advocated against it, as did the Catholic hierarchy, preaching that it was against Catholic ‘moral teaching’ and that healthcare was the responsibility of the family. The government requested Browne’s resignation in April 1951.
Thirty years after the foundation of the state, it was a clear but bitter illustration of where power lay in Ireland and who it would be used for. De Valera’s ‘Ireland that we dreamed of’, shared in its fundamentals by all those who wielded power, was far removed from the aspirations for a democratic and free society, mustering its resources for the well-being and happiness of its people that drove many in the revolutionary years. All successive governments – both pro- and anti-Treaty – pursued gradual legislative independence from Britain by wearing away the Treaty, combined with a highly conservative social policy. While Fianna Fáil’s goal of self-sufficiency provided a moderate improvement in standards for some people, it was just enough to shore up its base. Its wider agenda and that of Cumann na nGaedheal / Fine Gael, built a repressive state with the working class, urban and rural, but particularly women, as its victims. Those who could, escaped. Clear openings existed for the development of a concerted opposition at various times. For the most part, this lay with Labour, but time and again it was found wanting, unwilling to challenge the state, the Church and to forward meaningful social policies of its own. Instead, it sought the middle ground and conciliation, and attacked attempts to mobilise it to the left. It was its own gravedigger. We still live with the consequences today.
Article originally published in Issue 9 of Rupture Magazine. Subscribe or purchase previous issues here.
Notes
References to specific, less-known sources have been provided. Information on government policy and on the labour movement is taken from several sources, see especially: Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (London: Profile Books, 2004); Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011); and Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party 1922-73 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2007).
1. Seán Sorohan, Irish London During the Troubles (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012).
2. https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/census1991results/volume1/C1991_V1_T1.pdf
3. Emmet O’Connor, Syndicalism in Ireland 1917-1923 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988), p. 31.
4. Cited in Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 (London: Profile Books, 2004), p. 186.
5. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1924-10-30/15/
6. Brian Hanley, The IRA, 1926-1936 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), pp. 11-13.
7. Jonathan Hammill, ‘Saor Éire and the IRA: An Exercise in Deception?’, Saothar 20, 1995, pp. 56-66.
8. Dermot Keogh, ‘De Valera, the Catholic Church and the “Red Scare”, 1931-32’, in John P. O’Carroll and John A. Murphy (eds.), De Valera and his Times (Cork: Cork University Press, 1983), pp. 134-159.
9. Conor Brady, Guardians of the Peace, (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1974), pp. 164-9.
10. See Sami El-Sayed's article in Rupture issue 4 for a brief biography of O'Donnell.
11. John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution 1921-1936 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1999), pp. 332-3.
12. Mike Cronin, ‘The Socio-Economic Background and Membership of the Blueshirt Movement, 1932-5’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 29, No. 114 (Nov. 1994), pp. 234-249.
13. https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1934-02-28/18/
14. Maria Luddy, ‘A “Sinister And Retrogressive” Proposal: Irish Women’s Opposition To The 1937 Draft Constitution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 15 (2005), pp. 175-195.
15. Caitriona Beaumont, ‘Women, Citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922-1948’, Women's History Review, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1997, pp. 563-585.
16. Luke Gibbons, ‘Labour and Local History: the case of Jim Gralton, 1886-1945’, Saothar 14, 1989, pp. 85-94.
17. Eoghan Ó Duinnín, La Niña Bonita agus An Róisín Dubh (Baile Átha Cliath: An Clóchomhar Tta, 1986), pp. 79-82.
18. Brian Hanley, ‘The IRA and Trade Unionism, 1922-72’, in Francis Devine, Fintan Lane and Niamh Puirséil (eds), Essays in Irish Labour History: A Festschrift for Elizabeth and John W. Boyle (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), pp. 157-77; Irish Workers’ Voice, 23 March 1935, p. 1; Republican Congress, 30 March 1935, pp. 1, 4; Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers’ Republic Since 1916 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984), pp. 159-61.
19.Irish Press, 13 April 1936, p. 9; Patrick Byrne, The Irish Republican Congress Revisited (London: Connolly Publication Ltd, 1994), pp. 32-5; Donal Ó Drisceoil, Peadar O’Donnell (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001), p. 93.