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Belfast Labour, Nationalism and Sectarianism

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Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39

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Abstract

This chapter combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the Belfast labour movement and national and religious division. It questions previous analysis—which has over-emphasised the ‘failure’ of labour in policy and electoral terms—on the politics of identity, nationality and sectarianism in the city. The first section is concerned with discussion of the politics of identity, nationality and sectarianism. It assesses the inter-war Belfast labour movement and the politics of nationality. The second section examines the relationship between the Belfast labour movement and sectarianism. It examines how national, political and sectarian violence and conflict affected local labour. The third section addresses how Belfast labour addressed sectarian rhetoric and language.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    David Bleakley, Saidie Patterson: Irish Peacemaker (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1980), p. 29.

  2. 2.

    Throughout this chapter, ‘nationality’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘national question’ will be used interchangeably.

  3. 3.

    The Voice of Labour , 6 Feb. 1926; for autobiographical information on McMullen , see Gerry McElroy , ‘William McMullen’ , in Dictionary of Irish Biography ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) <http://dib.cambridge.org> [accessed 1 May 2017].

  4. 4.

    J. R. Campbell to members of the Belfast branch, Communist Party of Ireland, 18 Oct. 1938 (Dublin, Dublin City Archive, Communist Party of Ireland Papers, Box 4/016).

  5. 5.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), p. 15.

  6. 6.

    See footnote 12, Chap. 4.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Andrew Boyd, Have the Trade-Unions Failed the North? (Cork, 1984), p. 61; Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 15.

  8. 8.

    Patrick Buckland, ‘A Protestant State: Unionists in Government, 1921–39’, in Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism since 1801 ed. by D. G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 217; Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn , Nationalism and Socialism in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1977), p. 173.

  9. 9.

    C. G. Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Pearson Longman, 2006), p. 136.

  10. 10.

    Angela Clifford, Poor Law in Ireland: With an Account of the Belfast Outdoor Relief Dispute, 1932 and the Development of the British Welfare State and Social Welfare in the Republic (Belfast: Athol Books, 1983), p. 21.

  11. 11.

    Patrick Buckland , ‘A Protestant State: Unionists in Government, 1921–39’, in Defenders of the Union: A Survey of British and Irish Unionism since 1801 ed. by D. G. Boyce and Alan O’Day (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 211–26 (p. 217).

  12. 12.

    Stefan Berger and Angel Smith, ‘Between Scylla and Charybdis: Nationalism, Labour and Ethnicity across Five Continents’, in Nationalism, Labour and Ethnicity, 1870–1939 ed. by Stefan Berger and Angel Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp. 1–30 (p. 6).

  13. 13.

    Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (second ed., Harlow: Longman, 2002), p. 1.

  14. 14.

    Simon Prince and Geoffrey Warner, Belfast and Derry in Revolt: A New History of the Start of the Troubles (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012), p. 5.

  15. 15.

    See section I of Chap. 1 above.

  16. 16.

    Graham Walker , ‘The Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1924–45’, in Politics and the Irish Working Class, 1830–1945 ed. by Donal Ó Drisceoil and Fintan Lane (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 229–45 (p. 243).

  17. 17.

    G. I. Higgins and J. D. Brewer, ‘The Roots of Sectarianism in Northern Ireland’, in Researching the Troubles: Social Science Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Conflict ed. by David Dickson and Owen Hargie (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003), pp. 107–21 (p. 108).

  18. 18.

    Belfast Newsletter, 10 Jan. 1920.

  19. 19.

    Irish News, 1 Dec. 1933.

  20. 20.

    Timothy Wilson, Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918–22 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 192.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., p. 193.

  22. 22.

    Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast in the Thirties: An Oral History (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1987), p. 153.

  23. 23.

    Timothy Wilson , Frontiers of Violence, p. 201.

  24. 24.

    Anthony Coughlan, ‘Ireland’s Marxist Historians’, in Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism, 1938–1994 ed. by Ciaran Brady (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1994), pp. 288–305 (p. 292).

  25. 25.

    The Second International was an international grouping of left-wing parties whose most significant period politically was 1889 to 1914. See Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), II: The Golden Age.

  26. 26.

    Kieran Allen, The Politics of James Connolly (London: Pluto Press, 1990), pp. 31–2.

  27. 27.

    Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, II: The Golden Age, pp. 90–2.

  28. 28.

    Austen Morgan, Labour and Partition: The Belfast Working Class, 1905–23 (London: Pluto Press, 1991), pp. 147–9.

  29. 29.

    For autobiographical information on William Walker, see L. W. White, ‘William Walker’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) <http://dib.cambridge.org> [accessed 1 May 2017].

  30. 30.

    There are a myriad of publications dealing with Connolly; some of the more important are C. D. Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1961); Austen Morgan, James Connolly: A Political Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988); Donal Nevin, James Connolly: A Full Life (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2005); see also footnote 33 below.

  31. 31.

    See Cork Workers Club, The Connolly-Walker Controversy on Socialist Unity in Ireland (Cork: Cork Workers Club, 1974).

  32. 32.

    Austen Morgan , Labour & Partition, p. 149.

  33. 33.

    The exact balance between socialism and republicanism within James Connolly’s life and thought is a contentious and massive topic. For the definitive introduction to the key literature, see Conor McCabe and Emmet O’Connor, ‘Ireland’, in Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives ed. by Joan Allen, Alan Campbell, and John McIlroy (Pontypool: The Merlin Press, 2010), pp. 137–63; and footnote 30 above.

  34. 34.

    Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000 (second revised ed., Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2011), pp. 108–9.

  35. 35.

    Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast in the Thirties, pp. 131–2; Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn , Nationalism & Socialism, p. 241.

  36. 36.

    See Chap. 3 below.

  37. 37.

    Harry Pollitt to A. Losovosky, 12 Jan. 1925 (Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, Comintern papers, MS57/6/4/534/6/79/20-2) (copies of Comintern files from 495, ECCI, held in the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudartsvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’no-Politischesko Istorii fondi)).

  38. 38.

    The Minority Movement was a communist-inspired attempt to organise a radical, left-wing presence within trade unions in Britain.

  39. 39.

    Harry Pollitt to A. Losovosky, 5 Feb. 1925 (QUB, Comintern papers, MS57/6/5/534/26/39).

  40. 40.

    Harry Pollitt to A. Losovosky, 2 Sept. 1925 (QUB, Comintern papers, MS57/6/5/534/7/26/156).

  41. 41.

    The Irishman, 26 April 1930.

  42. 42.

    Boyd Black, ‘British Trade Unions in Ireland’, Industrial Relations Journal, 20, No. 2 (Summer 1989), 140–9 (141).

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration.

  45. 45.

    Set up on 1 Jan. 1933 as a successor to the Northern Irish Independent Labour Party because of its parent bodies’ disaffiliation from the British Labour Party the previous year.

  46. 46.

    See electoral politics chapter below, p. 133.

  47. 47.

    Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast in the Thirties, p. 149.

  48. 48.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 49.

  49. 49.

    The Voice of Labour , 21 Aug. 1926.

  50. 50.

    Clause IV, the ‘socialist’ clause, was adopted by the British Labour Party in 1918. See The Voice of Labour, 21 Aug. 1926. The founding constitution of the NILP can be examined in C. J. V. Loughlin, ‘The Political Culture of the Belfast Labour Movement, 1924–39’, Queen’s University Belfast PhD thesis, 2013, Appendix A, pp. 367–75.

  51. 51.

    The Labour Opposition of Northern Ireland, Nov. 1925; for consideration of the relationship between labour in Ulster and Scotland, see Graham Walker, Intimate Strangers: Political and Cultural Interaction Between Scotland and Ulster in Modern Times (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1995).

  52. 52.

    The Labour Opposition of Northern Ireland, April 1925.

  53. 53.

    Irish Labour Party and Trades’ Union Congress, 30th Annual Report (Dublin: National Executive ILP & TUC, 1925), p. 164.

  54. 54.

    The Voice of Labour , 17, 24 and 31 July 1926.

  55. 55.

    Aaron Edwards , A History of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: Democratic Socialism and Sectarianism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), p. 16.

  56. 56.

    The Irishman, 26 April 1930.

  57. 57.

    Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration, p. 60.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., pp. 100–1.

  59. 59.

    Irish Democrat, 6 Nov. 1937.

  60. 60.

    Workers’ Republic, June 1938.

  61. 61.

    Ibid.

  62. 62.

    J. F. Gordon, originally from Ireland, was educated in the USA and became a flax manager in Kildare and Meath. He represented the UUP on Belfast Corporation, 1920–23, and was elected a Northern Ireland House of Commons MP in 1921. He was parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour during the inter-war period and served as the Minister of Labour from 1938 to 1943. See J. F. Harbinson, ‘The Ulster Unionist Party, 1882–1970’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1972), p. 295.

  63. 63.

    J. F. Gordon to Viscount Craigavon , 14 April 1928 (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, Northern Ireland (PRONI), Department of Prime Minister files, PM/6/32).

  64. 64.

    Graham Walker , ‘The Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1924–45’, p. 243.

  65. 65.

    Austen Morgan , Labour & Partition, p. 320.

  66. 66.

    J. D. Clarkson, Labour and Nationalism in Ireland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925), p. 374.

  67. 67.

    Ulster Unionist Labour Association Minutes, 6 Aug. 1921 (PRONI, Ulster Unionist Council papers, D/1327/11/4/1).

  68. 68.

    Enda Staunton, The Nationalists of Northern Ireland (Dublin: Columba Press, 2001), pp. 9–10 and p. 113. A more favourable assessment of Devlin’s appeal is contained in A. C. Hepburn , Catholic Belfast and Nationalist Ireland in the Era of Joe Devlin, 1871–1934 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 4–6 (pp. 281–2); and Eamonn Phoenix, Northern Nationalism: Nationalist Politics, Partition and the Catholic Minority in Northern Ireland, 1890–1940 (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1994), pp. 2–6.

  69. 69.

    The first two Irish affiliates to the Comintern from Ireland—the Roddy Connolly–led CPI (founded in 1921, following the renaming of the Socialist Party of Ireland) and the Jim Larkin–led Workers’ Party of Ireland in the mid-1920s—had little to no presence in Northern Ireland. In the mid-1920s in Belfast, individuals such as Murtagh Morgan and Tommie Geehan were involved in a local branch of the communist-affiliated International Class War Prisoners’ Aid. The third Comintern Irish affiliate, the 1933 CPI, did have a significant group based in Belfast. See Emmet O’Connor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004), pp. 51, 121 (pp. 179–94).

  70. 70.

    Richard English, Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State, 1925–37 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 218.

  71. 71.

    William McCullough, quoted in Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland, p. 179.

  72. 72.

    This interpretation is broadly the thesis of Emmet O’Connor, Reds and the Green. See also the recent research on the Comintern and Britain in Alan Campbell and John McIlroy, ‘Britain: The Twentieth-Century’, in Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives ed. by Joan Allen, Alan Campbell, and John McIlroy (Pontypool: The Merlin Press, 2010), p. 113. See also Seán Byers , ‘Seán Murray’s Political Apprenticeship: The Making of an Irish Republican Bolshevik’, Saothar, 37 (2012), pp. 41–55; Seán Byers , Seán Murray: Marxist-Leninist and Irish Socialist Republican (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2015).

  73. 73.

    Ashutosh Varshney, ‘Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict’, in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics ed. by Carles Boix and S. C. Stokes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 279.

  74. 74.

    Quoted in Terry Cradden, ‘The Trade Union Movement in Northern Ireland’, in Trade Union Century ed. by Donal Nevin (Cork: Mercier Press, 1994), p. 69.

  75. 75.

    Quoted in Kieran Allen, Connolly, p. 107.

  76. 76.

    See Catherine Hirst, Religion, Politics and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Belfast: The Pound and Sandy Row (Dublin: Four Courts, 2001); Mark Doyle, Fighting like the Devil for the Sake of God: Protestants, Catholics and the Origins of Violence in Victorian Belfast (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009).

  77. 77.

    Boyd Black, ‘Reassessing Irish Industrial Relations and Labour History: The North-East of Ireland up to 1921’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 14 (Autumn 2002), 45–97 (60); Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn, Nationalism & Socialism, p. 198.

  78. 78.

    Austen Morgan, ‘Politics, the Labour Movement and the Working Class in Belfast, 1905–23’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1978), pp. 124 and 212.

  79. 79.

    Kieran Allen, James Connolly, p. 110.

  80. 80.

    Ibid.

  81. 81.

    Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000, pp. 191–2.

  82. 82.

    Austen Morgan , Labour & Partition, p. 282.

  83. 83.

    Belfast Trades’ and Labour Council, Souvenir of the Trades Union Congress at the Grosvenor Hall Belfast, September 1929 (Belfast: Wm. Strain & Sons, 1929), p. 76.

  84. 84.

    Austen Morgan, Labour & Partition, pp. 265–84; Christopher Norton, ‘Unionist Politics, the Belfast Shipyards and the Labour Movement in the Inter-War Period’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Ulster, 1987); Christopher Norton, ‘Worker Response to the 1920 Belfast Shipyard Expulsions’, Études-Irelandaises, (Spring 1996), 153–63; A. F. Parkinson, Belfast’s Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004).

  85. 85.

    Henry Patterson , ‘Industrial Labour and the Labour Movement, 1820–1914’, in An Economic History of Ulster, 1820–1939 ed. by Liam Kennedy and Philip Ollerenshaw (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 158–83 (p. 178).

  86. 86.

    Geoffrey Bell , The Protestants of Ulster (London, 1976); Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (revised second ed., London, 1980).

  87. 87.

    The Voice of Labour , 8 Dec. 1923.

  88. 88.

    Christopher Norton, ‘The 1920 Belfast Shipyard Expulsions’, p. 158.

  89. 89.

    James Baird was a boilermaker by trade who emigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1924; he died there in 1948. See Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000, p. 191.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., p. 192.

  91. 91.

    Boyd Black , ‘Reassessing Irish Industrial Relations’, p. 60.

  92. 92.

    Austen Morgan, Labour & Partition, p. 271.

  93. 93.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 30 June 1931(PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/546).

  94. 94.

    Captain James Robert ‘Jack’ White was born in County Antrim and was a key figure in the pre-First World War Irish Citizen Army (ICA). See Fearghal McGarry, ‘James Robert ‘ Jack’ White’ Dictionary of Irish Biography ed. by James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) <dib.cambridge.org> [accessed 1 May 2017].

  95. 95.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 17 Sept. 1931(PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/546).

  96. 96.

    Belfast Telegraph, 22 Sept. 1931; Irish News, 18 Sept. 1931.

  97. 97.

    Irish News, 18 Sept. 1931.

  98. 98.

    The figure is typed ‘200’ with a further zero written in ink to give the figure of 2000. It is unclear whether this figure was mistyped or deliberately changed. See Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 17 Sept. 1931(PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/546).

  99. 99.

    Irish News, 18 Sept. 1931.

  100. 100.

    Belfast Telegraph, 22 Sept. 1931.

  101. 101.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 12 Sept., 6 and 10 Oct. 1932 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/8/276).

  102. 102.

    Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), p. xiii.

  103. 103.

    Quoted in Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 90.

  104. 104.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 11 April 1934 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/550).

  105. 105.

    Basil Brooke, quoted in Belfast Newsletter, 20 March 1934; quoted at ‘Discrimination—Quotations’ <cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/quotes.htm> [accessed 1 March 2017]; also, see above, Chap. 1, footnote 56.

  106. 106.

    Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland, p. 91.

  107. 107.

    Hansard N.I. (Commons), xvi, 1095 (24 April 1934).

  108. 108.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 7 April 1934.

  109. 109.

    Ibid., 31 March, 7 and 28 April, 2 June 1934.

  110. 110.

    Graham Walker, ‘“Protestantism before Party!”: The Ulster Protestant League in the 1930s’, The Historical Journal, xxviii, No. 4 (1985), 961–7.

  111. 111.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 31 May 1934 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/550).

  112. 112.

    Ibid., 9 June 1934.

  113. 113.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 28 Sept. 1934 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/550).

  114. 114.

    Ibid.

  115. 115.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 29 Sept. 1934.

  116. 116.

    Inspector General’s Office to Ministry of Home Affairs, 16 Oct. 1934 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/550); Inspector General’s Office to Ministry of Home Affairs, 7 Nov. 1934 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/551).

  117. 117.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 2 May 1935 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/552).

  118. 118.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 7 May 1935 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/553).

  119. 119.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 15 May 1935 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/553).

  120. 120.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 18 May 1935.

  121. 121.

    Ibid., 25 May 1935.

  122. 122.

    Ibid., 15 June 1935.

  123. 123.

    Belfast and district Trades’ Union Council, Belfast and District Trades’ Union Council: 1881–1951: A Short History: 70th Anniversary (Belfast, 1951), p. 18.

  124. 124.

    See the first subsection of Section II, Belfast Labour and the Politics of Sectarianism, above.

  125. 125.

    L. K. Donohue, Counter-Terrorist Law, p. 75.

  126. 126.

    A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, Social History, 15, No. 1 (Jan. 1990), 75–96 (83).

  127. 127.

    Hepburn gives a figure of 2241 Catholic people evicted from their homes and 64 Protestant households evicted. Therefore, a reasonable estimate of the number of Catholic and Protestant people evicted is 2500. A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, p. 84.

  128. 128.

    Andrew Boyd, Fermenting the Elements: The Labour Colleges in Ireland (Belfast: Donaldson Archives, 1999), p. 76.

  129. 129.

    A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, p. 95.

  130. 130.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 13 July 1935.

  131. 131.

    Ibid., 20 July 1935.

  132. 132.

    Ibid.

  133. 133.

    Ibid., 3 Aug. 1935; A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, pp. 86–7.

  134. 134.

    A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, p. 77; Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration, p. 95.

  135. 135.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 10 Aug. 1935.

  136. 136.

    Ibid.

  137. 137.

    Ibid., 24 Aug. 1935.

  138. 138.

    Ibid., 10 Aug. 1935.

  139. 139.

    Ibid., 31 Aug. 1935.

  140. 140.

    Irish News, 23 Sept. 1935; Northern Whig, 23 Sept. 1935.

  141. 141.

    Irish News, 23 Sept. 1935.

  142. 142.

    Ibid.

  143. 143.

    Ibid.

  144. 144.

    NCCL, Report of a Commission of Inquiry.

  145. 145.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 17 and 30 June 1936 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/619).

  146. 146.

    A. C. Hepburn, ‘The Belfast Riots of 1935’, pp. 93–4.

  147. 147.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 3 July 1936 (PRONI, Cabinet files, CAB/9/B/236/2).

  148. 148.

    Ibid.

  149. 149.

    Belfast Newsletter, 3 July 1936.

  150. 150.

    Ibid., 3 July 1936.

  151. 151.

    Irish News, 2 July 1936.

  152. 152.

    Inspector General’s Office to Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 3 July 1936 (PRONI, Cabinet files, CAB/9/B/236/2).

  153. 153.

    Irish News, 31 Aug. 1936.

  154. 154.

    See ‘Meetings 7 Aug. 1936–30 March 1937: Communist U[nemployed] W[orkers’] M[ovement] Friends of Soviet Russia (Part X)’ (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/554).

  155. 155.

    Inspector General’s Office to secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 18 Sept. 1936 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/554).

  156. 156.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 110.

  157. 157.

    Ibid., p. 96.

  158. 158.

    Ibid., p. 98.

  159. 159.

    For the 1937 NILP annual conference and the adoption of a new constitution by the 1938 NILP annual conference, see subsection, Belfast Labour and the Politics of Nationality, 1921–39, above.

  160. 160.

    NILP MP, 1925–29.

  161. 161.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 53.

  162. 162.

    Irish News, 10 Jan. 1930.

  163. 163.

    Belfast Newsletter, 12 Jan. 1933.

  164. 164.

    Patrick Buckland, The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government in Northern Ireland, 1921–39 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1979), p. 18.

  165. 165.

    Belfast Telegraph, 31 March 1925.

  166. 166.

    Northern Whig, 23 March 1925.

  167. 167.

    The Voice of Labour , 28 March 1925.

  168. 168.

    Belfast Telegraph, 24 Nov. 1933.

  169. 169.

    Ibid., 27 Nov. 1933.

  170. 170.

    See A. C. Hepburn , Catholic Belfast and Nationalist Ireland in the Era of Joe Devlin, 1871–1934 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  171. 171.

    Northern Whig, 8 Jan. 1925.

  172. 172.

    See the discussion of Midgley and the Spanish Civil War, above.

  173. 173.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 52.

  174. 174.

    See Chap. 3.

  175. 175.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 7 Jan. 1933.

  176. 176.

    Ibid., 12 Jan. 1925.

  177. 177.

    The Voice of Labour , 23 Jan. 1926.

  178. 178.

    For details of the NILP founding constitution, see footnote 50 above.

  179. 179.

    J. R. Campbell to members of the Belfast branch, Communist Party of Ireland, 18 Oct. 1938 (DCA, Communist Party of Ireland papers, Box 4/016).

  180. 180.

    The Voice of Labour , 7 Aug. 1926.

  181. 181.

    Ibid.

  182. 182.

    Harry Midgley , Important Facts for Old and Young (Belfast: [no publisher details], 1934), p. 14.

  183. 183.

    The Voice of Labour , 31 May 1924.

  184. 184.

    Northern Whig, 1 Sept. 1924.

  185. 185.

    Graham Walker , The Politics of Frustration, p. 69.

  186. 186.

    Erhard Rumpf and A. C. Hepburn, Nationalism & Socialism, p. 200.

  187. 187.

    Irish News, 24 Nov. 1933.

  188. 188.

    Workers’ Voice, 19 July 1930.

  189. 189.

    Workers’ Republic , 18 Jan. 1927.

  190. 190.

    Harry Midgley , Some Important Facts for Old and Young, p. 13.

  191. 191.

    The Voice of Labour , 9 Jan. 1926.

  192. 192.

    Ibid., 23 Jan. 1926.

  193. 193.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 4 Nov. 1933.

  194. 194.

    Ibid., 24 March 1934.

  195. 195.

    The Voice of Labour , 12 June 1926.

  196. 196.

    Austen Morgan , Labour & Partition, p. 10.

  197. 197.

    Liam O’Dowd , ‘Shaping and Reshaping the Orange State: An Introductory Analysis’, in Northern Ireland: Between Civil Rights and Civil War ed. by Liam O’Dowd and Mike Tomlinson (London: CSE Books, 1980), pp. 1–29 (p. 25).

  198. 198.

    Christopher Norton , ‘The Left in Northern Ireland 1921–32’, Labour History Review, 40, No. 1 (1995), 3–20 (4–5).

  199. 199.

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    Christopher J. V. Loughlin

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Loughlin, C.J.V. (2018). Belfast Labour, Nationalism and Sectarianism. In: Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71081-5_2

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