Hesitant Comrades

Geoffrey Bell

Description

Geoffrey Bell's Hesitant Comrades is the first published history of the policies, actions and attitudes of the British working class towards the Irish national revolution of 1916-21.



Drawing principally on primary sources, Bell brings to light for the first time important incidents in British/Irish history, including how the leaders of British trade unions were complicit in Belfast loyalist sectarianism; the troubled nature of the Labour Party's relations with its Irish community; and how the Bolsheviks criticised British Marxists over their inaction on Ireland. The author also considers socialist debates on the compatibility of Irish nationalism with socialism, as well as the contentious 'Ulster question'. He examines prominent figures of the era, ranging from Ramsay MacDonald to Sylvia Pankhurst. With sources ranging from newly discovered writings to reports of police spies - Hesitant Comrades is a scholarly, provocative and groundbreaking perspective on the fragile relationship between the British left and the Irish revolution.

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Prologue

1. Easter 1916

2. Interesting Times

3. The Labour Party

4. The Trades Union Congress

5. Alternatives

6. Voices from Below

7. Socialism and Nationalism

8. Ulster

9. The Treaty

10. Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Revolutions
• Movimiento sindical
• History of Ireland
• Revolutionary
• Sectarianism
• General officer
• Ireland
• Revolution
• Trade union
• History of Europe
• Espionage
• Economics
• Stephen Ireland
• Great Britain
• Business
• General
• Labor
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783717415
• Langue: English

Extrait

Hesitant Comrades
Hesitant Comrades
The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement
Geoffrey Bell
First published 2016 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Geoffrey Bell 2016
The right of Geoffrey Bell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN   978 0 7453 3665 7   Hardback ISBN   978 0 7453 3660 2   Paperback ISBN   978 1 7837 1740 8   PDF eBook ISBN   978 1 7837 1742 2   Kindle eBook ISBN   978 1 7837 1741 5   EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the European Union and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Prologue
1.
Easter 1916
Guns in Dublin and Beyond
The British Left and Ireland, 1916
Reactions
Explanations
2.
Interesting Times
The Irish Front
The Home Front
The Great and the Good and the Irish
3.
The Labour Party
The Party Conference
The National Executive
The Parliamentary Party
4.
The Trades Union Congress
Conference and Leadership
The Special Congress and its Aftermath
The Belfast Carpenters’ Dispute
5.
Alternatives
The Independent Labour Party
The Communists
Fabians
6.
Voices from Below
Guilty Workers
The ILP Membership
Councils of Action
Climax and Anti-climax
7.
Socialism and Nationalism
Traditions
Ireland Matters
Missionaries
Doubts
The Natives: Sinn Féin
Comprehensions
8.
Ulster
1885–1916
Socialists and Ulster before 1916
Partition
Explanations
9.
The Treaty
Negotiations and Terms
Reactions in Britain
Labour’s Welcome
The Others
10.
Conclusions
Afterwards
Hesitant Comrades
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
This book began life as a PhD thesis. Thanks to my supervisor Kevin Theakston for guiding me through this and to my external examiner David Howell for his comments. Before all of that, at Trinity College Dublin as an undergraduate, I was fortunate to have David Thornley as my tutor on two specialist courses, European Working Class Movements and Ireland 1913–39. As our tutor group sipped sherry, and occasionally something very Irish and much stronger, my interest in these subjects was nurtured and encouraged. My fellow students who were part of that included Brian Walker, Roger Cole, David Haire, John and Shelia Healy, and Shelia Deedy.
This book is also a product of many conversations and discussions over many years, all of which added to my understanding of political ideas and their application. In Belfast, I would thank my parents, Herbert and Mary Bell, James McBeigh and Liam Barbour. In Derry, there was Eamonn McCann, Dermie McClenaghan and Kitty O’Kane. In Dublin there was Bill Moran, Greg Murphy, Mick and Katherine Ford and Breedge Docherty. In London, Mick Sullivan, Nadine Finch, Tariq Ali, Aly Renwick, Davy Jones, Steve Potter, Hilda Kean, Valerie Coultas and Piers Mostyn. Special thanks to the staff and librarians of the British Library, including the Newspaper Library at and after Colindale, the National Archive, the London School of Economics, the Labour Party Archive, the TUC Archive, the Marx Memorial Library and the National Library of Ireland. Thanks as well to all at Pluto Press for their professionalism and support.
This book is for Mary Margaret McHugh, our daughters Lauren and Iona, and our son Sean. It is they who have taught me most.
Abbreviations
ASLEF
Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
BSP
British Socialist Party
CPGB
Communist Party of Great Britain
ILP
Independent Labour Party
ILPTUC
Irish Labour Party and Trades Union Congress [which succeeded the ITUCLP]
IRA
Irish Republican Army
ISDL
Irish Self-determination League
ITGWU
Irish Transport and General Workers Union
ITUCLP
Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party
LRC
Labour Representation Committee
MP
Member of Parliament
NAC
National Administrative Council, ILP
NEC
National Executive Committee, Labour Party
NUR
National Union of Railwaymen
PLP
Parliamentary Labour Party
SLP
Socialist Labour Party
TUC
Trades Union Congress
UVF
Ulster Volunteer Force
WSF
Workers’ Suffrage Federation (from 1918, the Workers’ Socialist Federation)
Prologue
Afterwards, it was called ‘Bloody Sunday’. The blood came from those protesting about British government policy in Ireland. Their march had been declared illegal. Their deaths were at the hands of the police and the British army. It is Sunday, 13 November 1887, Trafalgar Square, London.
The demonstration had been organised by the Metropolitan Radical Federation, a socialist, anarchist and labour movement alliance, and the Irish National League, whose activities in Ireland were being increasingly targeted by the Conservative government’s Crimes Act. A particular focus of the protest was the ‘Mitchelstown Massacre’ of September 1887, when police had fired on a crowd of Irish demonstrators in Mitchelstown, County Cork, demanding land reform and fair rent. The police had killed three and wounded two. The outcome of the London demonstration was similar: two dead, 200 demonstrators hospitalised. Next day the Pall Mall Gazette , not the most subversive newspaper, gave its version of Bloody Sunday.
AT THE POINT OF A BAYONET

It was a strange grim sight that a hundred thousand Londoners witnessed yesterday … The Government in the name of the QUEEN, decided to forbid a real, bona fide political meeting summoned long before to condemn of the incidents of their coercive policy in Ireland. Therefore London was delivered up to the terrorism of the soldiery and police … Ruffians in uniform were despatched to ride down and bludgeon law-abiding citizens who were marching in procession towards the rendezvous. Savage scenes of brutality are reported from Westminster from Shaftsbury-avenue and from the Haymarket. The right to procession … was rudely trampled underfoot … It is a new experience for Englishmen to see peaceful citizens ridden down at the gallop by police cavalry … Our Tory Government prefer to rely on the bludgeon, on the bayonet and on buckshot. As a result, Ireland has been brought to the verge of rebellion, and London, if it is persisted upon, will become ungovernable. 1
It was nearly 30 years later before Ireland passed from the verge to actual rebellion, and London never did become ungovernable. Nevertheless, Trafalgar Square’s Bloody Sunday has an historical relevance beyond the drama of the day itself. Those present were both reflecting and passing on a notable inheritance, the nature of which is suggested in some of those who marched that day. They included John Burns, to become a leader of the 1889 London Dock Strike; Eleanor Marx, a socialist and feminist militant and daughter of Karl; William Morris, artist and writer; (Henry) H. M. Hyndman, a leader of the left wing Social Democratic Federation; George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright who was already a pamphleteer for the influential left wing Fabian Society; and Ramsey MacDonald, to become the first Labour Prime Minister. They represented an impressive range of radical and socialist activism. They were also representing a legacy.
Long before that particular Bloody Sunday, there is a significant history of British radicalism identifying with the cause of Ireland, whether that was self-rule, land reform, Catholic emancipation or opposition to coercion. Only the outlines need be sketched here, but this stretches back at least as far as the Levellers and other radicals of the seventeenth-century English revolution, who made public their objection to Cromwell’s military expeditions against the Irish. 2 This tradition was carried on by some English Jacobins in the late eighteenth century, notably the London Corresponding Society, ‘the first political association in Britain which largely consisted of working class people’. 3 In January 1798 the London Corresponding Society published the Address to the Irish Nation , which protested against British government coercion in Ireland.
During the early nineteenth century radical individuals, organisations and newspapers who expressed sympathy with the Irish national cause included William Sherwin in his weekly Political Register (1817), Richard Carlile in Gauntlet (1833), the Cap of Liberty , (1819) and Henry Hunt in Address from the People of Great Britain to the People of Ireland (1820). There was also the National Union of the Working Class which, in 1832, fused with the London-based Irish Anti-Union Association and added repeal of the union between Britain and Ireland to its aim of radical parliamentary reform. 4 This latter goal was most spectacularly pursued in the first half of the nineteenth century by the Chartists in whose ranks there developed the most sustained attempt to coalesce British radicalism with Irish nationalism. To the fore was Irish Member of Parliament (MP) Fergus O’Connor, one of the leaders of the Chartists, and he and those who thought like him were successful in securing repeal of the union in the second petition of the Chartists in 1842.
There is an alternative tradition. As Irish immigration into Britain grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were frequent physical clashes between the Irish in Britain and the rural and industrial proletariat. The background to these events varied – native xenophobia, religious differences and the use of the Irish as cheap labour or strikebreakers – but they broke out often enough and in enough different areas to suggest that thos