The role of the Labour movement has been written out of Irish History

by Dermot Looney - Labour Youth Tue Apr 18, 2006 05:24

I gave the following speech, with a couple of edits, at a superb Labour Youth-organised discussion on the above title in the Teacher's Club last week. It isn't meant to be an exhaustive account of the role of labour being written out of history but was part of a series of four speeches and an excellent open discussion which followed.

I was followed by Rebecca Moynihan (former LY Chair) who spoke of the role of women and feminism in particular being written out of Irish history; Patrick Nulty (Dublin West LY) who spoke on the failures of the Labour Party throughout history in writing itself into the history books; and Senator Joanna Tuffy, who spoke in particular about reclaiming James Connolly as the founder of the Labour Party.

See what you think. Heavy going I know but think it's semi-relevant anyway.

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The role of the Labour Movement has been written out of Irish history

A chomhráidaithe,

Is é an stair an ábhar is mó deacair don ghluaiseacht an Lucht Oibre. I gcomhthéacs polaitiúil, tá an naisiúnachais ceannasach. Féach síos na leabhair stair ar ár ghluaiseacht; na ceardchumainn, an Páirtí an Lucht Oibre, agus na chomhpáirteanna eile ar chlé. Tá gá mór againn na fáthanna a ceistigh agus na réithigh a spreag i gcás seo. Ansin - agus ansin amháin - tá féidir linn an sórt dúshlán atá romhainn a ceistigh freisin. Seo é aidhm an stair féin.

Friends, I believe it is beyond doubt that the labour movement has indeed been written out of Irish history to some extent or another. The other speakers this evening will outline the evidence for this in some detail. I would like to address firstly the definitional issues surrounding this discussion, and move on to discuss briefly the myth of nationalism and the agenda of those who promote a version of history which is received in contemporary society.

There are a number of contentious terms. "The Labour movement" is not a term we can take for granted. Nor is the word "history" itself - and certainly not the phrase "Irish history." I think it is vital that we examine these concepts before moving on.

Even though it is tempting to jump in to a political history of Ireland, realising fully the definitional issues around the terms used in this talk will be of considerable value in determining the extent to which it is true that labour - with a small l - has been written out of Irish history, examining how that has happened, and examining some of the ways to ensure labour is written back into the history of today and tomorrow.

So what is the labour movement? How far back does it extend? Does labour only become relevant in Ireland in 1913? Does it emerge as a political force in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century? Do agitation for land reform and Catholic emancipation amount to the beginnings of a movement of working people? While Parnell and O'Connell were viciously anti-working class, I would contend that those movements were the direct predecessors to the forces of organised labour emerging later on.

Many of us will recognise Michael Davitt as the foremost Irish socialist of the mid-to-late 19th century. But his ties to Fenianism bring about the questions - who comprised the labour movement through history, and who comprises it now?

Surely a labour movement must comprise the entirety of trade unionism too? But this brings awkward questions for those on the left. Does the labour movement comprise both the tramworkers who striked in 1913 and the scab unions who combined with the employers' to defeat the lockout? Does the movement comprise those craft unions whose history is conservative and often in isolation from the rest of the movement?

There are no simple answers to any of these questions. But I feel we can open a broad space for debate here. It is narrow-minded in the extreme to think of the entire movement in the context of the Labour Party. What too of other parties of the left?

At the moment we have the Socialist Party, arguably Sinn Féin, arguably the Green Party, the Communist Party of Ireland. We have the Socialist Workers and the People for Profit Alliance/Davitt League. We have countless others on what is unfairly-called the micro-left and we have the pseudo-socialism of hardline Republicans.

Go back just a few years and we also have Democratic Left, Sinn Féin-the Workers' Party and Official Sinn Féin, Clann na Poblachta, the Democratic Socialist Party, the Independent Socialist Party of Sligo/Leitrim, the National Progressive Democrats, Saor Éire and the Socialist Labour Party. Of course we have National Labour, a split from our party for six years at a crucial time for labour internationally in the 1940's.

And then up North we have the nominally-left SDLP, the Socialist Environmental Alliance, the Green Party in Northern Ireland, and historically the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the Labour Party of Northern Ireland, the Republican Labour Party, the Belfast Labour Party, the Commonwealth Labour Party and the Socialist Republican Party.

The case of the North is one which I wish to return to later. The reason I've gone to the trouble of listing all these parties is to show the width and depth of our movement historically. It is sectarian in the extreme to believe the Labour Party is the sole inheritor of labour history in Ireland. It is even true to say, I believe, that the labour movement has had and perhaps continues to have links to Fianna Fáil. We had, for example, the sight of the ITGWU band marching Charlie Haughey out of a Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis not so long ago.

And how do we define "Irish history?" We are, for all intents and purposes, a 26-county party with a branch in the North. But Irish history can neither ignore partition, nor prioritise it above all else. Furthermore, has there been an ignorance of Irish activism in labour movements outside of Ireland? In particular, the history of British Labour has been dotted with influential Irish activists. Organised labour in the US, too, has also had huge Irish influence.

Defining history itself is, I feel, at the very heart of our discussion this evening. Rather than trot out the usual lines of history being written by the victors - which it inevitably is - I think a more holistic understanding of the concept is required for any meaningful discussion. We all know that history has an over-focus on white, middle and upper-class, powerful men, one which despite recent trends in historiography remains foremost.

Examining the role of the labour movement is hugely difficult for traditional history because labour is based on protracted, lasting action from below. Thus the reliance on leaders, dates and facts is outmoded. Still though, traditional history attempts to focus on leadership and key figures within left-wing movements - from Keir Hardie to Lenin to Dick Spring - rather than on the complex political and social interactions amongst thousands or millions who formulate the ideologies, the tactics and the decisions of the left.

Many of us are attracted to the notion of social history because it stands outside of these narrow frameworks. One of the key questions within social history is whether the people lead the way, or whether leaders show the way for the people. I am also attracted to the notion that there stands a massive population 'outside' of history. This is beautifully drawn out by the poet Eavan Boland, who wrote that...

"These are outsiders, always. These stars --
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened
thousands of years before
our pain did; they are, they have always been
outside history."

While Eavan Boland wrote specifically about women, it is clear that we can apply the concept of being outside history to the women and men who comprise the labour movement. Ordinary workers over decades, hundreds of years even, who have played a part in the societal upheaval and in the many gains of the labour movement.

I would propose that there is a received history and a social history. Received history, taught to us through primary and secondary school and reproduced in the mass media, tells us of a white, Catholic, Gaelic-Ireland. There is an acceptance of the myth of Irish nationalism; the nonsense of opposition to foreign invaders on the basis of a national identity through the ages.

The Celts, the Vikings, the Normans and to a large extent the English and Scottish were welcomed to our island far more than they were opposed. And it is in the myth of nationalism and the acceptance of received history that every single struggle of the labour movement in Irish history has been undermined, subsumed and to a great extent ignored.

1913 is ignored at primary level and appears as an afterthought in the second level history curriculum, mostly in the Leaving Cert cycle. If there is one story that is central to the development of this city, the Lockout is it.

1916 is treated almost solely as a struggle of national liberation within the Gaelic-Irish paradigm. The role of radical socialism is sidelined despite the participation of 250 Citizen Army soldiers and the massive ideological influence of Connolly evident in the proclamation. The subsequent role of the labour movement in the Civil War does not feature in the received history. Nationalism remains the key prism through which the past is seen. The role of labour and the formation of a party best outlined in its Irish translation - Páirtí an Lucht Oibre - is off that narrow spectrum.

The received history tells us almost nothing of trade unionism and the victories of working people. The received history, promulgated by the history textbooks and accepted a prioiri by the corporate media, ignores the role of trade unions between the formation of the State in the South and the advent of social partnership, which is treated as some kind of halcyon revolution.

Were we to believe the received history, we would think that economic decay, social exclusion and mass emigration were the fault of strikes and industrial action. Were we to believe the received history, we would that partnership marks the end of free collective bargaining forever and that industrial relations have now entered into an inevitable postmodernist era of so-called partnership.

Meanwhile, the role of labour in the North is completely subsumed in the sectarian narrative which now is understood as encompassing the entire collective experience in the six counties. There is no role for trade unionism, collective working-class action across the traditions, or for those who fall outside the Nationalist Catholic/Unionist Protestant paradigm.

The received political history tells too of a weak Labour Party which has always been subservient to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. There is a focus up to the 1960's on the aftermath of the Civil War. There is a focus on Taoisigh and other personalities. There is little focus on the successes of Labour, nor is there any focus on the failures of Labour. Rather, we are the afterthought in a political system defined, as Whyte wrote in 1974, as being without social basis. There is singularly nothing in the received history about other parties of the left, bar the derogatory sneers.

The received history is a nonsense. It is driven by an agenda which wishes at all times to downplay the role of labour. Capitalist society, as brilliantly outlined by Chomsky, thrives on the manufacture of consent. The agenda of those who set out the history curriculum for schools, and for those who own and control the corporate media, is of retaining the status quo and dismissing and disintegrating dissent.

For a start, we have a conservative-dominated civil service with its roots in the Gaelic-Ireland identity sought to reproduce that identity through the textbooks. We also suffer the ignominy of so-called political experts, who refer to a 'dark past' of division within the Irish Labour Party. Only when dissent is removed and personalised leadership cemented, they cliam, is Labour 'ready' for power.

Of course, this fits both the political profile of many of these columnists and the corporate interests of those who own and run the media here. But it also fits into the notion of the history of personalities in which the social and political discourse is left outside.

To succeed in telling a true "people's history" we must of course take on the elitist ownership and unfortunate, but distinct, profile of the media professionals. But the interface of history and politics won't merely be solved by criticising the media. To borrow a phrase, we must be the media. Websites such as Indymedia have led the way in documenting those outside the received history. Collective projects such as Wikipedia point the way forward for a public-driven social historiography.

But we must not only be the media. Those on the left must, in a development of the great old model, not only agitate and organise, but educate and communicate aswell

by pat c Mon Apr 03, 2006 14:04

it looks as if rabbitte is trying to write public sector workers out of irish history right now. the answer to the driving test backlogs is not outsourcing. Employ more testers!

i hope LY will dissociate themselves from the cwazy wabbits latest attack on working people.

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by libertarian Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:47

so that they realise, we have already started writing the role of the Labour and Worker and Migrant and all the other movements back into Ireland's history .
do that and you get an invite to rts! 2016 :-)