No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
A MAJOR CLAIM OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN THIS DIFFICULT time in Northern Ireland is that they have ‘prevented the spread of riot and disturbance into the workplace’. The claim has been consistently made and with growing emphasis since the troubles began, and Norman Kennedy at last year's annual conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions called it the one beacon of hope, this ‘maintaining unity of the workers, Catholic and Protestant, on the shop floor’ in what he described as largely a conflict of worker against worker, of a working-class community divided along sectarian lines. This is associated with a related claim that trade union recommendations on social and political change have a special legitimacy because the leadership is close to the people who are involved in the conflict. This political role, essentially non-party, is seen to be more significant and extensive than the traditional political activity of the trade union movement.
1 James Morrow in his presidential address to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1970; 12th Annual Report of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, p. 250.
2 Norman Kennedy is Irish Officer of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (this is the British Transport and General Workers Union, the word ‘amalgamated’ being an Irish identifier); Kennedy at the time was also chairman of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions; he is a member of the Whitelaw Commission.
3 14th Annual Report of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, p. 260.
4 Ibid., p. 261.
5 26th Annual meeting of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress 1920 quoted by J. Dusmore Clarkson in Labour and Nationalism in Ireland, New York, 1925, p. 366. (This is probably the best study of Irish trade unions up to 1920; there has been very little work of substance published for the period since 1930.)
6 Ian Budge and Cornelius O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis: A Study of Belfast Politics, 1613–1970, Macmillan, 1973. Budge and O'Leary conclude: ‘There is no reliable estimate of the number of houses burnt or the number of householders forced to flee, but the total number of deaths was 544, of whom nearly 232 occurred in 1922’, p. 143.
7 In a pamphlet published by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, The Northern Ireland Situation 2 (February 1973) it is stated: ‘More than 700 persons in a population of barely 1½ million have now been killed since 1969 – two thirds since the introduction of direct rule – and deaths, numerically speaking, under‐represent the violence occurring’, p. I.
8 S. Higgenbottam, Our Society's History, 1939, p. 227.
9 14th Annual Report of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1972–73, p. 33.
10 CURE (Citizens United for Reconciliation and Equality). A number of the Northern Ireland peace bodies have a patent medicine ring about them: PACE (Protestant and Catholic Encounter) and SODEPAX (Churches' Committee on Society, Redevelopment and Peace).
11 In Trade Union Information (published by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions) No. 168, February 1972, there is an excellent summary chart of Irish trade union membership. Irish trade unionism has the same general appearance as the British; there are a large number of unions, 95 in the Republic and 77 in the North, but a handful of unions represent the vast majority of workers. The percentage of employees in trade unions is 53 per cent, that is in numbers about 650,000. In the north, the total membership is 263,000 of whom 9 per cent (the actual figure is probably less) are in unions with head offices in the Republic and 84 per cent are in unions with head offices in Britain. In the Republic on the other hand 86 per cent of the members are in Irish‐based unions. In the Republic the trade union members are overwhelmingly Catholic. In the north it is difficult to get any reliable figures, but the general understanding is that the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union is approximately half‐and‐half (this union has also a substantial membership in the Republic); in the unions representing engineering workers, perhaps one‐eighth to one‐tenth are Catholic; carpenters and joiners perhaps one‐quarter; but Catholics are strong in number among bricklayers and plasterers.
12 See Cullen, L. M., An Economic History of Ireland since 1660, London, 1972 Google Scholar.
13 See Boyle , J. W. The Rise of the Irish Labour Movement 1887–1907, Dublin, 1961 Google Scholar.
14 The present position is set out in The Northern Ireland Situation 2, op. cit., as follows: ‘The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is the largest Protestant denomination in Northern Ireland, with a community of nearly 400,000 persons. A further 20,000 live in the Irish Republic. There is no connection between this historic Church and the small ‘Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster’, led since its establishment in 1951 by the Rev. Ian Paisley. The (Anglican) Church of Ireland numbers some 340,000 in Northern Ireland and 100,000 in the Republic; the Methodist Church 70,000 and 6,000; and all others apart from Roman Catholics 120,000 and 20,000. The Roman Catholic Church numbers 500,000 in Northern Ireland and 2,700,000 (1961 census).’
15 Budge and O’Leary, op. cit.
16 Brendan Harkin, 14th Annual Report of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1972, p. 267. Harkin incidentally is a Catholic.
17 22nd Annual Report of the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, 1916, p. 16.
18 For example: Report: Commission on Vocational Organization, Dublin, 1943, p. 182.
19 Boyle, op. cit., p. 302.
20 The various names of the Irish congress since then reflect its history. In 1912 under the influence of Connolly’s syndicalism it was called the Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, and in 1918, in order to express emphatically the political purpose of the working class movement’ this became the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress. In 1930, when Labour Party and trade union movement divided, it became the Irish Trade Union Congress. William O’Brien’s rival nationalist congress, established in 1945, was called the Congress of Irish Unions, and when the two congresses united in 1959, the body then established was named the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
21 On more than one occasion, Belfast sectarianism was submerged in an industrial dispute, as with the linenlappers in 1892, which brought orange and green rosettes together in a great demonstration, however shortlived this brotherhood might be.
22 Boyle, op. cit.
23 For an authoritative account of his career see Emmet Larkin, James Larkin Irish Labour Leader 1876–1947, London, 1965.
24 Clarkson, op. cit., p. 217.
25 Clarkson, op. cit., p. 323.
26 This is best seen in a rather remarkable speech of his in Sligo in 1916 when as President of Congress he honoured James Connolly, ‘we mourn his death, we honour his work, we revere his memory’; and went on: ‘And while laying these wreaths on the graves of our comrades who gave their lives for what they believed to be the Cause of Ireland's Freedom – let us also remember those many others (some of whom had been chosen in years past to attend our Congress) who have laid down their lives in another field for what they believed to be the Cause of Liberty and Democracy, and the Love of their Country.’ Of course many thousands of men from Dublin, Cork and the south generally had also fallen in the war.
27 It took place on 24 April 1922. ‘The call for a general strike was received joyously and responded to universally.’ See: Annual Report of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress, 1922, p. 28. Militarism however continued unabated.
28 Annual Report of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress, 1924.
29 A special and final conference of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress was held in Dublin on 28 February 1930 for the purpose.
30 For an analysis of trade union membership in the 1920s, see Mortished, R. J. P., Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 10 1927, Part CI, Vol. XV, pp. 213 Google Scholar ff.
31 Annual Report of the Irish Trade Union Congress, 1939, pp. 87 ff.
32 National Union of Railwaymen v. Sullivan and Ors, 1947, I R 77.
33 For a contemporary account see Roberts, R., Trade Union Organization in Ireland, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, 1958–59, p. 94 Google Scholar.
34 Annual Report of the Irish Trade Union Congress, 1959, p. 63.
35 Ibid., 1958, p. 59.
36 Ibid., 1958, p. 251.
37 Annual Report of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1963, pp. 191, 192.
38 11th Annual Report of Northern Ireland Committee, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1969–70, p. 27.
39 3rd Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1961, p. 213.
40 14th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1972, p. 248, where the President Stephen McGonagle said: ‘In Northern Ireland unemployment stood at nearly forty thousand in June of this year, representing a rate of 7½%. In the case of men, however, the rate was 9%. But in some parts of Northern Ireland pockets of very high chronic unemployment persist. Newry has 18.3% out of work and Derry has 14.2%.’
41 7th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1965, p. 314.
42 8th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1966, p. 196.
43 10th Annual Report of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1968–69, p. 24.
44 4th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1962, p. 364 reports a resolution adopted on this topic which reads: ‘Congress considers that the Electoral Law in Northern Ireland is in need of drastic overhaul, as evidenced by the plural voting in the Parliamentary Elections, the retention of university seats and the fact that only householders can vote in Municipal Elections. It is imperative that Congress initiates a campaign for the purpose of bringing the Electoral Laws into keeping with present‐day needs of society.’ During the debate, J. H. Binks, a prominent trade unionist whose background is Protestant said: ‘I have not yet had the opportunity during my lifetime of voting in a Local Government election although I was a candidate in 1946 for the election of the Belfast City Council.’
45 8th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1966, p. 200.
46 The Cameron Report: Disturbances in Northern Ireland, 1969, Cmd. 532, p. 11. It is as well to give the quotation in full: ‘It is plain from what we have heard, read and observed that the train of events and incidents which began in Londonderry on 5th October 1968 has had as its background, on the one hand a wide‐spread sense of political and social grievance for long unadmitted and therefore unredressed by successive Governments of Northern Ireland, and on the other sentiments of fear and apprehension sincerely and tenaciously felt and believed, of risks to the integrity and indeed continued existence of the state.’
47 McGonagle is a Catholic, but in this he was reported explicity as speaking on behalf of the Northern Ireland Committee. See 10th Annual Report of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1968–69, p. 25.
48 10th Annual Report of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1968–69, p. 25.
49 Ibid., p. 25.
50 Ibid., p. 26.
51 Ibid., p. 25.
52 There is a contemporaneous account in a pamphlet by Michael McInerney reprinted from the Irish Times: Trade Unions Bid for Peace in Northern Ireland, pp. 8 ff.
53 11th Annual Report Nortbern Ireland Committee Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1969–70, p. 10.
54 Ibid., p. 10.
55 Ibid., p. 10.
56 Northern Ireland: Text of a Communique and Declaration issued after a meeting held at 10 Downing Street on 19 August 1969: HMSO Cmnd 4154. See also the communique of the government of Northern Ireland of 29 August 1969 (after Mr Callaghan's visit) on pp. 13 ff. of A Commentary by the Government of Northern Ireland to accompany the Cameron Report, September 1969, HMSO Cmd. 534.
57 Published by Northern Ireland Committee, Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
58 i.e. The Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922.
59 Inset in the pamphlet Programme for Peace and Progress in Northern Ireland.
60 12th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1970, p. 250.
61 11th Annual Report Northern Ireland Committee, p. 28.
62 Michael McInerney, op. cit., p. 16.
63 On Sunday 17 August 1969 over thirty prominent and very representative people met and adopted a resolution which they conveyed to Mr Harold Wilson and Mr James Callaghan as follows: This meeting welcomes the dramatic improvement in Belfast and Derry created by the introduction of British Troops. The meeting is convinced that if peace is to be restored it is urgently necessary to increase their numbers and that the duties, at present carried out by auxiliary forces, should be taken over as soon as possible by the Regular force and that for the time being law and order should be the direct responsibility of the British Government.’
64 12th Annual Report Northern Ireland Committee, 1971, p. 30.
65 Ibid., p. 30. See also the quite remarkable report of May 1973 on discrimination in the private sector of employment prepared by a working party on which the trade unions were prominently represented and which met under the chairmanship of the Minister of State, William van Straubenzee (Belfast HMSO, 1973).
66 14th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1972, p. 54.
67 Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act 1972.
68 Political Policy in Northern Irealnd 1973, Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
69 15th Annual Report Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1973, p. 15.
70 A prominent trade union official remarked to me recently: ‘It was difficult to get a quorum in Stormont on the Budget, but the house was filled on a housing problem.’
71 D. Wylie reported in Annual Report of Irish Congress of Trade Unions, 1972, pp. 262, 263.