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Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39 pp 95–116Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Labour, Law and the State in Northern Ireland, 1921–39

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Abstract

Utilising a case study approach, this chapter examines how two pieces of legislation impacted on the labour movement in the region in 1921–39. The Special Powers Act (first passed in 1922 and a permanent act from 1933) and the Trade Disputes Act (1927) were both legislated by the inter-war Ulster Unionist Party government of Northern Ireland. Labour activists suffered political discrimination, while they were intimidated through the legislation and their organising was curtailed. Such restrictions effected all those considered ‘disloyal’ in Northern Ireland. The chapter concludes that in 1921–39 the state of Northern Ireland was administered via a politics of ‘disloyalty’; this resulted in a moral economy of loyalty and the peculiar form of the local regime.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Quoted in Marc Mulholland , ‘Why did Unionists Discriminate?’, in From the United Irishmen to Twentieth-Century Unionism: Essays in Honour of A.T.Q. Stewart ed. by Sabine Wichert (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), pp. 187–206 (p. 187).

  2. 2.

    Sir Wilfred Spender as quoted in Patrick Buckland , The Factory of Grievances: Devolved Government in Northern Ireland, 1921–39 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1979), p. 1.

  3. 3.

    See Paul Bew , Peter Gibbon , and Henry Patterson, The State in Northern Ireland, 1921–72: Political Forces and Social Classes (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979); cf. later editions, and, Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon, and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes (revised ed., London: Serif, 2002).

  4. 4.

    Sean Brady , ‘Why Examine Men, Masculinities and Religion in Northern Ireland?’, in Masculinities and Religious Change in Twentieth-Century Britain ed. by Lucy Delap and Sue Morgan (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 218–51 (p. 229).

  5. 5.

    Further research will examine Northern Ireland in 1921–39 anthropologically, culturally, linguistically and historically.

  6. 6.

    Cameron Report, Cmnd 532, Disturbances in Northern Ireland: Report of the Commission appointed by the Governor of Northern Ireland: Presented to Parliament by Command of His Excellency the Governor of Northern Ireland, September 1969 (Belfast: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1969); Patrick Buckland, Factory of Grievances; Patrick Buckland, A History of Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1981); 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; Marc Mulholland , ‘Why did Unionists Discriminate?’; John O’Brien, Discrimination in Northern Ireland, 1920–39: Myth or Reality? (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2010); John Whyte , ‘How Much Discrimination was there under the Unionist Regime, 1921–68?’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983) <cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/whyte.htm> [accessed 1 May 2017].

  7. 7.

    See the discussion amongst sociologists during the 1980s on the extent of discrimination in Northern Ireland. See Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), ‘Discrimination-details of source material’ <http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/discrimination/soc.htm> [accessed 1 May 2017]; for a dated but still indispensable guide to the above material, consult J. H. Whyte , Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

  8. 8.

    Compare the infamous statements deployed publicly by UUP politicians in the 1930s, such as Brooke in 1933 and Sir James Craig in 1934, with the historical research presented by Catholic ecclesiastics in the Down and Connor History Society Journal . See also Chap. 1, footnote 56.

  9. 9.

    Alvin Jackson , Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800–2000 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), p. 260.

  10. 10.

    Single transferable vote proportional representation was introduced for local government elections in Ireland in 1920. In 1922, the Northern Ireland parliament passed a bill to abolish it, the Royal assent was withheld and this precipitated a crisis in Northern Ireland as Craig’s government threatened to resign. The crisis was defused only when Royal assent was granted to the bill in December 1922. For extended discussion of Belfast Labour and electoral politics, see Chap. 3.

  11. 11.

    Steve Bruce , God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Steve Bruce , Paisley: Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Sean Brady, ‘Men, Masculinities and Religion in Northern Ireland’.

  12. 12.

    Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (London: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 5.

  13. 13.

    Lack of co-operation with unions was relatively unimportant in the quiescent inter-war period. It became a significant problem for industrial relations in the region during the Second World War and after; see Boyd Black , ‘A Triumph of Voluntarism? Industrial Relations and Strikes in Northern Ireland in World War Two’, Labour History Review, 70 (2005), 5–25; C. J. V. Loughlin , ‘Pro-Hitler or Anti-Management? War on the Industrial Front, Belfast, October 1942’, in Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life ed. by David Convery (Dublin Academic Press, 2013), pp. 125–39; Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000 (second revised ed., Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2011); Philip Ollerenshaw, ‘War, Industrial Mobilisation and Society in Northern Ireland, 1939–1945’, Contemporary European History, 16 (2007), 169–97.

  14. 14.

    The UUP government was denounced by Alexander Redpath, a Scottish ultra-Protestant ideologue in the 1930s, as ‘a Rome-fearing, priest-puppeting, shilly-shally, namby-pamby pro-Roman Catholic administration, always on the lookout for doing the Pope a good turn’. Quoted in Graham Walker , A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 54.

  15. 15.

    The phrases ‘old tradition’ and ‘new context’ are used by E. P. Thompson , The Making of the English Working Class (re-issued 1980 ed., London: Penguin Classics, 2013), p. 27.

  16. 16.

    E. P. Thompson , ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, in Customs in Common (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 185–258 (p. 188).

  17. 17.

    E. P. Thompson , ‘Moral Economy Reviewed’, in Customs in Common (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 259–351 (pp. 339–40). For a useful introduction to how ‘moral economy’ has been utilised by historians of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland, see K.T. Hoppen , Ireland since 1800: Conflict and Conformity (2nd ed., London: Longman, 1999), pp. 48–56.

  18. 18.

    D. W. Miller , Queen’s Rebels: Ulster Loyalism in Historical Perspective (re-issued 1978 ed., Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2007), p. 119.

  19. 19.

    Hansard Northern Ireland (Commons), xliii, 651 (18 Nov. 1958); [7 & 8 Elizabeth II] Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, (Northern Ireland) 1958; Tom Boyd, of the NILP, was still querying the existence of provisions from the 1927 Act in January 1969, Hansard NI (Commons), lxxi, 199–200 (21 Jan. 1969).

  20. 20.

    For a list of all such acts, see L.K. Donohue , Counter-Terrorist Law and Emergency Powers in the United Kingdom, 1922–2000 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), pp. xx–xxi.

  21. 21.

    [12 &13 George V] Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922.

  22. 22.

    National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL), Report of a Commission of Inquiry appointed to examine the Purpose and Effect of the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Acts of 1922 & 1933 (London, 1936), p. 39.

  23. 23.

    Colm Campbell , Emergency Law in Ireland, 1918–25 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 227; L. K. Donohue, Counter-Terrorist Law, p. 17.

  24. 24.

    L. K. Donohue , Counter-Terrorist Law, p. 34.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 85.

  26. 26.

    Hansard NI (Commons), ix, 15 May 1928, 1694.

  27. 27.

    NCCL, Report of a Commission of Inquiry, p. 39.

  28. 28.

    Hansard NI (Commons), vii, 20 April 1926, 583–4.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 21 Oct. 1926, 1845.

  30. 30.

    Inspector General’s Office to Ministry of Home Affairs, 16 Oct. 1934 (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/550).

  31. 31.

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

  32. 32.

    Belfast Telegraph, 31 Aug. 1936; Irish News, 31 Aug. 1936.

  33. 33.

    Donohue , Counter-Terrorist Law, 113–14.

  34. 34.

    Co-operation, for example, took place through the activities of the ICWPA in Northern Ireland during the mid-1920s. Emmet O’Connor, The Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia, and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43 (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004), p. 110.

  35. 35.

    Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs to the Inspector General, RUC, 5 Aug. 1930 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1301).

  36. 36.

    Meetings of the Workers’ Union, 1923–24 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1307); Meetings of the Workers’ Union, 1925–27 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1422).

  37. 37.

    Londonderry City Strike, Building Trade, Ashpit Cleaners, Bacon Curers, Madden Brothers [no date] (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1352); Strike at Annagher colliery, Coalisland, 1924 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1349); Strike, Bricklayers in Belfast, 1923–28 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1308).

  38. 38.

    Labour Disputes in Belfast Shipyards, general file, 1925–30 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/5/1448).

  39. 39.

    E.W. Shewell to Inspector General, RUC, [no date] (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/490).

  40. 40.

    Report of ICWPA in ILP Hall, York Street, Belfast on 6 February 1926 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/490).

  41. 41.

    Kevin Morgan , ‘Harry Pollitt’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed. Laurence Goldman <www.oxforddnb.com> [accessed 30 March 2017].

  42. 42.

    Chris Wrigley , ‘Thomas (‘Tom’) Mann’ , in Laurence Goldman (online ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online ed. by Laurence Goldman <www.oxforddnb.com> [accessed 30 March 2017].

  43. 43.

    NCCL, Report of a Commission of Inquiry, p. 19; for biographical information on Sean Murray , see Seán Byers , ‘Seán Murray’s Political Apprenticeship: The Making of an Irish Republican Bolshevik’, Saothar, 37 (2012), 41–55; Seán Byers, Seán Murray: Marxist-Leninist and Irish Socialist Republican (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2015).

  44. 44.

    G. A. Harris to W. Sanger , 4 July 1927 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/516).

  45. 45.

    W. Sanger to G. A. Harris , 7 July 1927; [R. D. Bates] to James Craig, 11 July 1927 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/516).

  46. 46.

    R. D. Bates to James Craig, 28 July 1927 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/516).

  47. 47.

    E. W. Shewell , 24 Aug. 1927 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/516).

  48. 48.

    The Gazette: Official Organ of the Northern Ireland Post Office Clerks’ Association, June 1926.

  49. 49.

    Communist meeting, 24 Sept. 1933. Prosecution of Arthur Griffin for Speech Calculated to Lead to a Breach of the Peace (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/598).

  50. 50.

    Inspector General’s Office to Ministry of Home Affairs, 27 Sept. 1933 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/598).

  51. 51.

    Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs to Inspector General’s Office, 30 Sept. 1933 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/598).

  52. 52.

    Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs to Inspector General’s Office, 3 Oct. 1933 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/598).

  53. 53.

    Final Cabinet Conclusions, 2 Oct. 1933 (PRONI, Cabinet conclusions, CAB/4/314, 2–3).

  54. 54.

    Belfast Newsletter, 13 Oct. 1933.

  55. 55.

    Irish Workers’ Voice, 7 July 1934.

  56. 56.

    Donohue, Counter-Terrorist Law, pp. 74–6.

  57. 57.

    A problem also demonstrated in B. M. Walker , A Political History of the Two Irelands: From Partition to Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 97–8.

  58. 58.

    Throughout the period in question, commemorative meetings for James Connolly organised by the left were under surveillance. See, for example, Meetings of North Belfast Socialist Party, 1938 (PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs files, HA/32/1/562).

  59. 59.

    Donohue , Counter-Terrorist Law, p. 75.

  60. 60.

    The most authoritative introduction to this contested historiography is Marie Coleman, The Irish Revolution, 1917–23 (Basingstoke: Routledge, 2013).

  61. 61.

    Mike Milotte , ‘The General Strike and Ireland’, in The Irish Times, 10 May 1976.

  62. 62.

    Belfast Telegraph, 4 May 1926.

  63. 63.

    O’Connor , A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000, p. 196.

  64. 64.

    Further research on the relationship between industrial and political conflict in Northern Ireland in the twentieth century is necessary. For the background in Derry, see Ronan Gallagher , Violence and Nationalist Politics in Derry, 1920–3 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003); Emmet O’Connor, Derry Labour in the Age of Agitation, 1889–1923: 1: New Unionism and Old, 1889–1906 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014).

  65. 65.

    This committee was formed because of fear of a strike on the railways in both northern and southern Ireland. Final Cabinet Conclusions, 10 Aug. 1925 (PRONI, Cabinet conclusions, CAB/4/147, 3).

  66. 66.

    Final cabinet conclusions, 3 May 1926 (PRONI, Cabinet Conclusions, CAB/4/167, 1).

  67. 67.

    [16 & 17 Geo. V] Emergency Powers Act (Northern Ireland), [6 May] 1926; Belfast Telegraph, 6 May 1926; Irish News, 7 May 1926.

  68. 68.

    Hansard NI (Commons), vii, 5 May 1926, 977–82.

  69. 69.

    See footnote 19 above.

  70. 70.

    Final Cabinet Conclusions, 13 July 1927 (PRONI, cabinet conclusions, CAB/4/169, 6).

  71. 71.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 18 Oct. 1927, 2083.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 18 Oct. 1927, 2099–100.

  73. 73.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 19 Oct. 1927, 2180.

  74. 74.

    Ibid., 19 Oct. 1927, 2154. Campbell’s use of the phrase ‘political faith’ seems to be of some significance.

  75. 75.

    For an explanation of industrial relations in Northern Ireland, the reader should begin with 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; and O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, 1824–2000.

  76. 76.

    K. S. Isles and Norman Cuthbert, An Economic Survey of Northern Ireland (Belfast: HMSO, 1957), pp. 232 and 234.

  77. 77.

    For the exact provisions of the legislation, see [17 & 18 George V] Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act (Northern Ireland), 1927.

  78. 78.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 18 Oct. 1927, 2112.

  79. 79.

    Ibid., 2111.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., 8 Nov. 1927, 2674.

  81. 81.

    Many members of the Northern Irish cabinet owned businesses. Kyle’s reference alludes to J. M. Andrews’s interests in linen and flax. Ibid., 18 Oct. 1927, 2086.

  82. 82.

    [17 & 18 George V] Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act (Northern Ireland), 1927.

  83. 83.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 10 Nov. 1927, 2794.

  84. 84.

    Ibid., 10 Nov. 1927, 2800.

  85. 85.

    Belfast Telegraph, 1 Oct. 1927.

  86. 86.

    Northern Whig, 20 Sept. 1927.

  87. 87.

    Irish News, 19 Oct. 1927.

  88. 88.

    Ibid.

  89. 89.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 18 Oct. 1927, 2083.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., 19 Oct. 1927, 2129.

  91. 91.

    Ibid., 2165.

  92. 92.

    Ibid., 18 Oct. 1927, 2099.

  93. 93.

    Labour Party (Northern Ireland) Report of Executive Committee to Fifth Annual Conference, 31 Mar. 1928 (PRONI, Records of Sam Napier, 1923–69, D/3702/B/2).

  94. 94.

    Irish News, 6 Oct. 1932.

  95. 95.

    Mike Milotte , Communism in Modern Ireland: The Pursuit of the Workers’ Republic since 1916 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1984), p. 129.

  96. 96.

    Brian Hanley , ‘The IRA and Trade Unionism, 1922–72’, in Essays in Irish Labour History: A Festschrift for Elizabeth and John W. Boyle ed. by Francis Devine, Fintan Lane , and Niámh Puirséil (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008), pp. 157–77 (p. 163).

  97. 97.

    Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (second ed., London: Pluto Press, 1980), p. 135.

  98. 98.

    Hansard NI (Commons), viii, 2095 (18 Oct. 1927).

  99. 99.

    John Hewitt , first appeared in Tribune, 2 Sept. 1969; re-printed in John Hewitt , An Ulster Reckoning (Coventry: Privately published, 1971); see also W. J. McCormack , Northman: Joh Hewitt, 1907–87: An Irish Writer, His World, and His Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 201–2.

  100. 100.

    The cultural, spatial and temporal connections between Ulster and the early modern British state—through the Covenant in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, for example—make ‘moral economy’ a term worthy of further use while researching the history of the Northern Ireland state.

  101. 101.

    ‘Populist’ is how Bew et al. described the clique of the UUP associated with Craig, J. M. Andrews ; ‘anti-populist’ was used to describe the clique, associated with Spender , who were less inclined to utilise the state for explicit patronage reasons. See Bew, Gibbon, and Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–2001.

  102. 102.

    Cyrill Falls , The Birth of Ulster (London: Methuen, 1936); Cyrill Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars (London: Methuen, 1950); Gillian McIntosh, The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), pp. 25–7.

  103. 103.

    D. W. Miller , Queen’s Rebels, p. 119.

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    Christopher J. V. Loughlin

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Loughlin, C.J.V. (2018). Labour, Law and the State in Northern Ireland, 1921–39. In: Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71081-5_4

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