CHAPTER SIX: THE RUPTURED REVOLT 1943-1957

CHAPTER SIX

THE RUPTURED REVOLT

1943-1957 .. Upon the stage of universal history all great events and personalities reappear... On the first occasion they appear as tragedy; on the second as farce, K. Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte I Respublica ex machina In the general election of June 1943 the Irish political spectrum underwent a change, such as appeared to anticipate its complete revision. In the new Dail, Fianna Fail held sixty-seven seats out of one hundred and thirty-eight. It was now clearly holding the constitutional centre against the right-wing Fine Gael, with thirty-two seats and thirty-two Deputies who were pledged to achieve an official Irish Republic. Independents held the balance.

The government depended on the differences between opponents. It was confident both that the Republicans would never put it out to put Cosgrave in, and that Fine Gael was equally against the Republicans. Fianna Fail itself was now a party that could claim justly to represent ‘all the nation’. It was now fully conservative. However, if need be, it could refurbish the forms of its old Jacobinism, Of Fine Gael at this time, it might be said that, whereas Fianna Fail trimmed to suit the electoral wind, it trimmed despite it. Its front bench losses had been proportionate to its overall weakening. What was more, in January 1944, Cosgrave would resign the party’s presidency in favour of General Richard Mulcahy. This represented a new error; Cosgrave had had sufficient personal popularity to compensate for his conservatism: Mulcahy represented 138

for too many the full crudity of the Irish reaction and had detractors within his party. What was more he had lost his seat in 1943 and would regain it only in May 1944.

In these circumstances, the parties of the future seemed to be on the left. Such a trend was in keeping with the contemporary radicalism in world politics. In Northern Ireland a new Cabinet included an apparent Socialist, Harry Midgely. In Britain, the Coalition was preparing mildly progressive peace-time policies. Russia was a heroic liberator even, to some extent, in ‘Eire’.

But the Republican opposition was divided. Seventeen of its seats were held by the Labour Party, fourteen by Clann na Talmhan and the remaining one by the young Monetary Reformer, Oliver Flanagan. Admittedly, Clann na Talmhan talked vaguely of ‘National Government’ and Labour proclaimed its readiness to ally with it (though not with Fianna Fail or Fine Gael). The clear demands of each party were also similar. But Labour’s state capitalism and Clann na Talmhan’s Vocationalism were different developments of Republican Populism and provided an immediate insuperable obstacle to a Republican Front.

The situation was complicated further by the divisions existing within both parties. Within Labour, the Larkin-O’Brien feud encouraged O’Brien’s backing a breakaway National Labour Party under the I.T.G.W.U.’s T.D., James Everett. Within Clann na Talmhan the difference, revealing itself less promptly, but going more deeply, was between the small farmers and the larger ones.

What was more Fianna Fail was not prepared to succeed only by its opponents’ errors. The price freeze was strengthened. Sean MacEntee continued his welfare reforms, amongst which the introduction of Children’s Allowances removed a major point of agreement between the Labour Party and Clann na Talmhan.

And two pieces of luck befell the government.

The rate of inflation for 1942-1943 was reduced for 1943- 1944. In February 1944 the U.S.A., supported by the U.K., sent an ultimatum. It denounced Irish neutrality as a pro-Axis front and demanded the expulsion from ‘Eire’ of the German and Japanese Ambassadors thereunto. De Valera refused to accept this and was supported by all opposition parties. The Irish Army was mobilized and bridges to Northern Ireland were mined against invasion thence. The Anglo-American bluff was called. Neither U.K. nor U.S.A. were prepared really to divert forces from Europe; they were content to break every severable link between the U.K. and ‘Eire’, But de Valera was now able to appear as the recognized 139

leader of a united people.

And in May he was defeated on a Bill to co-ordinate transport.

He appealed to the country once again. Now Fianna Fail was the only possible single party government. Many former opposition supporters abstained from voting. De Valera won an over-all majority on the lowest vote since his abstentionist days.

In May 1945 came the end of the war in Europe. Accordingly the government ended most of the Emergency Powers, though not the Offences Against the State Act nor, indeed, the Emergency that justified them. But in 1947 the Oireachtas did extend a measure of senatorial control over delegated legislation.

In June 1945 O’Ceallaigh was elected to succeed Dr Douglas Hyde as President. His successor at the Department of Finance, Frank Aiken, carried out a strongly deflationary policy as advised by the civil servants. But he could not prevent the initiation of many long overdue schemes.

Aer Lingus expanded its services; in 1947 its airport at Rineanna Co. Clare, became the custom-free port of Shannon. The Irish harbour system was reorganized and Irish shipping was encouraged to modernize itself, with especial attention to the Atlantic carried trade. The third great hydro-electric power scheme, that of Lough Erne, was carried out, with the help of Northern Ireland, between 1946 and 1952. A plan to expand turf production was put into operation. Another scheme was initiated to supply cheap electricity to the rural areas. Other Acts were passed to stimulate land drainages and egg production. Tourism was encouraged. MacEntee continued his health schemes and crowned them with a Health Act in 1947. And between 1945 and 1948, ‘Eire’ voted £ 7,500,000 as aid to war-stricken Europe.

Such measures were either for the long term or for pure expenditure. They were financed partly by an immediate post-war boom: partly out of the assets created by favourable war-time trade balances. Despite its efforts, the government could not increase exports even to the post-war level. From 1947, the volume of imports grew steadily. Inflation continued. The dreadful winter of 1946-1947 involved a reduction of British fuel supplies to Ireland. A large number of strikes followed over the year. Finally in October an emergency budget imposed price control.

Government popularity was hurt also by the after-effects of its firm policy against the I.R.A. In December 1944 Charles Kerins, one of its prominent young men, had been executed for murder on what many felt was doubtful evidence. In May 1946 the I.R.A.

ex Chief of Staff, Sean McCaughey, died on hunger strike.

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At the same time a series of scandals shook Fianna Fail. As early as September 1942 Sean O’Faolain could write in his magazine The Bell: “The word is — Racket. It is flying from lip to lip.’

Now good reasons for the word appeared. A court case involving corrupt practices in the 1944 Seanad election led to the reform of the electoral system used therein. In March 1945 a government Deputy was found guilty of breaking the Emergency Powers Acts.

A leading supporter was found to be involved innocently with smugglers. In July 1946 Dr Francis Ward (now Minister-designate for the proposed Department of Health) was discovered to have connections with a firm of bacon-curers who seemed unduly evasive about their books. In October 1947 the climax came. Lemass and Boland were accused of conniving at a breach of the Control of Manufactures Acts in regard to Locke’s whiskey distillery, Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath. Although they were cleared of the charge the case reflected a general dissatisfaction with the post-war appearance in ‘Eire’ of alien buyers of native industries.

And there were no countervailing developments in constitutional or foreign affairs. In the first, de Valera’s explanations of the position of ‘Eire’ as an informal republic within the British Commonwealth merely encouraged dissatisfaction with his ‘dictionary Republic’, Northern Ireland (now a truly ‘uneconomic farm’) was encouraged to remain loyal to Britain by application thither of the new ‘Welfare State’ that ‘Eire’ could not match.

In international affairs ‘Eire’s’ continuing refusal to give the U.S.S.R. diplomatic recognition was countered by the latter maintaining a veto against admission to U.N.O.

But was there any alternative to Fianna Fail?

Fine Gael was in a pathetic state. Between 1944 and 1948 it did not win a single bye-election and in several it did not enter a candidate, It still urged a National government, denounced bureaucracy and havered on the government’s anti-I.R.A. policy. Its one original proposal was Mulcahy’s suggestion in November 1944 of an Anglo-Irish alliance; that had to be abandoned swiftly. It gained little new support though in 1947 a prolonged strike of teachers some of them to move to back its support.

The Republican opposition was a little better. The parties therein did win occasional bye-elections. And Labour and Clann na Talmhan (now led by Joseph Blowick) carried on desultory negotiations for an agreement on social welfare reforms. But these came to nothing. What was more Cogan and his associates left Clann na Talmhan, and the split within the Labour Party was duplicated in the trade union movement in 1945.

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oo Then in May 1946.the number of Republican Parties was augmented. A group of I.R.A. ex-internees and members of dead Republican parties joined with disillusioned Fianna Fail and Labour Party supporters to make up a new ‘Clann na Poblachta’ (Republican Brotherhood). This was led by Sean MacBride and organized by the former Fianna Fail supporter, Noel Hartnett. Its programme was one of Republican Jacobinism pushed as far as possible without becoming Socialist. It appealed to many who despaired of the existing Republican left.

In October 1947 the new party won seats in two bye-elections.

De Valera went to the country in February 1948. Fianna Fail lost its overall majority but remained the largest single group in the Oireachtas. It prepared to continue in office. At this point stepped in the Providence that waits on fools, drunkards and Fine Gael.

A number of Mulcahy’s opponents within that party had seen the idea of coalition as a way to keep him from the Taoiseach’s office. Amongst these was a certain Sir John Esmonde, once noted as the youngest M.P. in the Irish Parliamentary Party. He had suggested to MacBride that only a National government could overcome British opposition to an open Irish Republic. When after the 1948 general election, Clann na Poblachta held only ten seats, it was eager to accept the proposal. The other Republican parties had never had much understanding of class, and were now desperate for power enough to ally even with Fine Gael. Thus de Valera was ousted in favour of a new ‘Inter-Party’ government.

The new Taoiseach was neither Mulcahy nor Esmonde but John A. Costello, a distinguished constitutional lawyer. He had served as Cosgrave’s Attorney-General, and would have probably returned to that post under any purely Fine Gael government. His forensic skill is undoubted and, as Taoiseach, he left his mark in the sphere of the Department of Justice, itself placed carefully under non-lawyers. But his political qualities were less certain and he held his new position as the honest broker between the claim of stronger men. Such a system worked well under normal circumstances; crises caused its collapse.

The party leaders divided the posts as follows; Norton, as leader of the second largest group, was Tanaiste (Deputy Taoiseach) and Minister for the new (1947) Department of Social Welfare; Mulcahy was Minister for Education; MacBride, Minister for External Affairs; Joseph Blowick (of Clann na Talmhan), Minister for Lands; Everett, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs; the Independent, Dillon, represented the government’s non-party support as Minister for Agriculture. Esmonde received the reversion of the 142

Attorney-Generalship; he was never to get the actual office and would retire from politics in 1951.

An immediate ten-point programme was announced. It appeared a Republicanism differing in ‘detail only from that of Fianna Fail. It included vague promises of increased production, taxes on ‘unreasonable’ profits, reduced living costs, a cheap housing drive, a Council of Education, a national drainage plan, a social security scheme, an emasculated means test, an anti-tuberculosis drive and the removal of certain Fianna Fail indirect taxes. For the rest, it was agreed tacitly that government policy would be worked out by each supporting party maintaining its separate programme and pressing it through its Ministerial representatives.

Such a compromise could not satisfy the militant elements among the supporters of the Republican left. The I.R.A. began to be reorganized in 1948. From 1949 a revitalized Sinn Fein was working more closely with it than ever before. In 1948 the C.P.I.

was revived for ‘Eire’ as the Irish Workers’ League.

Yet Inter-Partyism seemed to work at first. Norton streamlined welfare benefits. Labour’s successive Ministers for Local Government, Murphy and Keyes, revived and continued pre-war housing policies. Dr Noel Browne, Clann na Poblachta Minister for Health, organized the eradication of tuberculosis. MacBride augmented Irish diplomatic representation abroad. To help pay for all this Patrick MacGilligan, now Minister for Finance, initiated an economy drive. Dillon expanded the original drainage proposal into a land reclamation scheme, abolished compulsory tillage and prepared a plan for parish co-operation. Blowick revived and expanded forestry. Daniel Morrissey, Fine Gael’s ex-Labour Minister for Industry and Commerce, struggled to expand sales of Irish produced goods at home and abroad and in 1950 set up an Industrial Development Authority.

In external affairs, the greatest achievement of the first Inter- Party government was MacBride’s insistence on Ireland’s military non-commitment, even (and in June 1949) as against the anti- Communism of N.A.T.O. MacBride’s reasons for this were not ideological. However, they had greater practical political influence than ideological arguments would have done. He was not prepared to accept the territorial status quo involved in acceptance of the N.A.T.O. Charter, while Britain ruled Northern Ireland.

To regain the latter, all Irish parties combined in a propaganda campaign against partition. In 1949, a special Irish News Agency was established for this purpose. Ireland’s delegates to the new 143

Council of Europe took every opportunity to raise the issue.

Browne appointed a Northern Ireland woman M.P., Mrs Eileen Hickie, to the new National Health Council. Partition remained.

There were reasons for this apart -from Northern Irish Protestant fears of Catholicism and low pensions. One was the essentially governmental and political nature of the Anti-Partition Campaign. No appeal was made directly to the Protestants of the north-east that they oppose their colonial status. And the ruling elites of both areas could act together for practical purposes. In 1950 they reached agreement over the latter part of the Erne scheme, The next year they shared in the division of the crossborder Great Northern Railway. MacBride offered an all-Ireland free trade area. Few Irish bourgeois interests wanted such a thing.

It remained uncreated. And the Ulster Unionists were able to bolster themselves politically. In February 1949 they regained a number of lost seats in a general election after a campaign of Carsonite proportions. Later that year the U.K.’s Ireland Act formulated Northern Ireland’s status quo as alterable only with its parliament’s assent.

The excuse for these measures was Costello’s attack on the External Relations Act, that kept ‘Eire’ in the British Commonwealth in August and September 1948. This was followed up by MacBride’s formal repeal of the Act and the resultant inauguration of a Republic of Ireland outside the Commonwealth on April 18th 1949, This had not been promised in the government programme. However, it occurred as a logical result of the Government’s political composition. Not only were nearly half the Ministers avowed Republicans, but many Fine Gael leaders (notably the Minister for Justice, General Sean MacEoin and though less outspokenly, the Taoiseach) had concluded that the ‘Dictionary Republic’ had to be formalized. The only possible way to do this was the one which was followed.

The inauguration of the Republic has been claimed to have ‘taken the gun out of Irish politics’. More truly it sent that weapon northwards. Neither Sinn Fein nor the I.R.A. were appeased. And in 1950 a former Clann na Poblachta T.D., Peadar Cowan, announced his intention of leading a private army over the border.

Another economic flaw was now appearing in Inter-Partyism.

The government had carried out the more definite parts of its policy. It had been encouraged by the Marshal Plan loan to Ireland that began in June 1948. Most of this money was placed in a special fund. But much of it financed Dillon’s agricultural schemes.

And Norton was encouraged by it to be preparing a major social Lad

welfare reform when the government fell in 1951.

But without a major change in the form of society, such policies had to be paid for in trade terms. Morrissey could not increase exports or production at the same rate as imports. His biggest achievement was a trade agreement with the U.K., which failed to overcome the latter’s price guarantees to its own farmers and which Britain could not itself honour anyway.

Furthermore, the U.K. devalued the pound on September 18th 1949, Ireland followed suit rather than break the financial link.

As a result Ireland had either to be supplied from the U.K. or pay increased prices. By 1951 it was spending three times the dollars it earned, as against its spending twice the number it earned in 1938.

As a result of all this the government had to recall some £30,000,000 of external holdings. For the first time, in 1951, most Irish public assets were held in Ireland.

In August 1950 there was a bad harvest. In November bread rationing had to be revived. A fuel shortage followed.

To allay unrest new price controls were imposed.

Two political crises occurred also. The first (the so-called ‘Battle of Baltinglass’) was relatively minor, concerning the traditional spoils system in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. However, it lost the Government the support of the Independent Farmer, Cogan. The second crisis arose in February 1951 when the Minister for Health attempted to operate Part III of the 1947 Health Act (which dealt with free health schemes for mothers and children).

The Catholic Bishops opposed this and all the other Ministers accepted their judgment. Browne resigned from government and party. He was supported definitely only by two other T.D.s and Clann na Poblachta’s Chairman, Noel Hartnett.

Finally there came the breakaway of two of Clann na Talmhan’s Munster Deputies. None of these had been given a Ministerial post. Moreover their dairy-farming constituents wanted aid to solve the economic problems caused by the previous year’s bad harvest. The dissidents threatened to ally with Fianna Fail to defeat the agricultural estimates. Costello forestalled this by having the Dail dissolved. A general election was fought in May.

Fianna Fail campaigned against Inter-Party economics. It did not convince. Prices had not risen sufficiently quickly to cause major privations; in fact, between 1947 and 1950 they had risen less than they had in the U.K. Between 1946 and 1951 the population had increased for the first time in a century. Unemploy- 145

ment was at its lowest since the revision of the register in 1934.

The party’s one definite point was the increasing trade imbalance (it was to reach £123,000,000 for the current year). Not only was this an indefinite evil for most people, but Fianna Fail’s ' promises did not seem different enough from those of the Coalition to be able to solve it.

Thus the party only gained one seat. However it was returned to power backed by Browne, two of his allies and Cogan.

But this overall result concealed more important changes. The only losers in the election were Clann na Poblachta and the reunited Labour Party, This was especially notable in Dublin City where opinion backed Browne and Fianna Fail as a reaction against the Coalition’s surrender to clerical prejudice. Fine Gael’s support held in and around Dublin (after all, it tended naturally rather to approve Browne’s fall). In addition, Inter-Party agricultural policy and Republicanism gave both Fine Gael and the Clann na Talmhan’s Connacht rump increased rural support.

This Fine Gael revival was further emphasized the next year when it was joined by Flanagan at the same time as Dillon, and his supporter, Charles Fagan, re-entered.

The new government was the last to be guided within the general petty bourgeois Republicanism that Griffith had initicated. From it, enough had already been extracted to make such remaining ideals as currency reforms by themselves as inadequate for a political programme as they were obnoxious to the bourgeoisie. Many were trying to develop from them. Of the previous attempts, ‘Workers’ Republicanism’ had been shelved as its advocates heard the call of office and conscious Vocationalism had been for most too compromised with Fascism. Now Noel Browne was trying to re-work out the left-ward development of Republicanism. However it was the bourgeois need to revise Republicanism in a rightist form that was justified by events.

These appeared as a series of economic crises. Early in the life of the new government the U.S.A. announced the ending of its Marshall Aid-subsidized European Co-operative Administration.

At the same time, it called in its loans to Cold War neutrals. De Valera and Aiken, now Minister for External Affairs, restated Irish neutrality. In January 1952 Ireland was left owing the U.S.A. £3,200,000 on top of its usual dollar deficit, eighteen months before it expected that that amount would fall due.

This was a justification for an austerity budget the following April. In it, MacEntee, again Minister for Finance, increased taxes and removed or reduced food subsidies. The Act was carried 146

oe ee with aid of the government’s independent supporters. As a result the cost of living rose more steeply than for any year since 1943.

Unemployment also rose. But it reduced imports and helped stabilize the trade balance. Accordingly it encouraged greater domestic capital formation, slightly increased production and thus a new decline in unemployment figures by 1954.

The last development was not very much. Between 1950 and 1957 the average rate of economic growth was 1% per annum: less than half the contemporary average for other states in the O.E.E.C. The proportion of the Irish G.N.P. devoted to fixed capital formation remained less than it was in similar states.

What was more, the common currency with the U.K. encouraged the maintenance of the primacy of the essentially one-sided Anglo-Irish trade. In 1953 a new agreement was made therein improving the terms on which Irish livestock was imported, but leaving the situation doubtful on other matters.

There was one bright spot. In 1951 the Inter-Party government had initiated and Fianna Fail had carried through legislation setting up a special body to encourage the American trade: Coras Trachtala Teoranta. Aided by post-devaluation circumstances and new American investment expansion in Europe this achieved an increase in trade with the U.S.A. This helped both to pay off the debt and to establish a favourable overall trade balance by 1956.

In various spheres of internal affairs, the 1951 Fianna Fail government carried out important reforms. Reorganization was begun in the Irish fisheries. A move was made to expand industry in the under-developed areas through a body, An Foras Tionnscail. Another flash of Republicanism was Lemass’ Restrictive Practices Act. Dr Ryan’s Social Welfare Act was a watered-down version of Norton’s project. Adoption was legalized. Above all, Ryan passed his Health Act after the Catholic bishops had been outmanoeuvered. Government firmness against the Church contributed to a decline in cross-border hostility. In fact, however, this took place on Ulster Unionist terms. This was the more objectionable in that the British welfare benefits had not changed the nature of Unionism. In 1946, the Northern Irish Franchise Act further limited its local government franchise at a time when Britain was democratizing its own. In 1954, the Unionists passed a Flags and Emblems (Display) Act, banning the appearance of the Irish Tricolour.

The Republican movement (including both Sinn Fein and the I.R.A.) was stimulated by such activities. In March 1952, Sinn 147

a ) a —— a Fein announced a new political plan of campaign. The leadership was now in the hands of a triumvirate: Anthony Magan, the Chief of Staff of the I.R.A., Patrick MacLogan, President of Sinn Fein and Thomas MacCurtain. The ‘three Macs’, as they were called, though more active than their predecessors, led the movement too cautiously for many. As a result they were overtaken by a more radical movement. In November 1953 a Co. Tyrone I.R.A. leader, Liam Kelly, broke with the official movement and formed a group ‘Saor Uladh’ (Free Ulster). He was elected to the Northern Ireland Parliament (albeit as an Abstentionist) and proclaimed his recognition of the Oireachtas, both against Sinn Fein principles. In December he established ‘Fianna Uladh’ (Warriors of Ulster) but was subsequently imprisoned for ‘seditious statements’ made in his election campaign. Sinn Fein was stimulated into acting. In March 1954 it ran a candidate in a bye-election in Aiken’s constituency of Co. Louth.

This bye-election was one of a group decisive for the de Valera government. After the results, it found that it had won only a third of all fought since 1951. A general election was fought in May. This contest was fought as before between Fianna Fail and the Coalition parties. Among them, Fine Gael was now paramount. It had had the sense to elect Costello as its parliamentary leader whilst keeping the less flexible Mulcahy to inspire the faithful as Party President, This dual leadership enabled Fine Gael to give an effective impression (without any definite schemes) of a move to the left. In turn, this inspired the reinvigoration of constituency organization. The other parties seemed content to follow. Much of Clann na Poblachta’s support was now backing Sinn Fein and Saor Uladh, or, if more respectable, such right-wing fringe parties as the Young Ireland Party (1953) or the National Action of Joseph Hanley Clann na Talmhan had been completely overshadowed by Dillon. Labour was more fortunate in possessing a more politically critical rank and file than the other parties; to appease it Norton had to insist that the Coalition add economic planning to its programme.

The election result was decisive. Fianna Fail held only sixtyfive seats: less than at any time since 1932. Fine Gael’s seats rose to fifty and, for the first time since 1933, it had as many seats in Dublin City as Fianna Fail. The Labour Party was restored to its 1951 position. Clann na Talmhan lost seats to Fine Gael. Clann na Poblachta gained one seat (and hence a 50% increase in its 148

Ee e.,Cmc re Dail numbers). The second Inter-Party government had the same programme (or lack thereof) as the first, plus the demand for a plan. To secure this, Norton was placed in charge of the Department of Industry and Commerce. But, to ally backwoods fears in Fine Gael, the new Minister for Finance was Gerard Sweetman. He was not only without ministerial experience but has been described as being so conservative that, if present at the creation of the world, he would have voted against it. Planning remained a paper ideal.

In these circumstances, government policies continued much as before. Norton carried out Fianna Fail’s projected reform of the tourist trade. Dillon (again Minister for Agriculture) put into effect his predecessor’s drainage scheme for the Midland areas and the long-standing proposals for an Agricultural Institute and the eradication of bovine T.B. Norton also expanded the powers of Coras Trachtala Teo. to enable it to deal with trade spheres outside the dollar area. The Labour Minister for Social Welfare, Brendan Corish, increased welfare benefits and reformed the law on workmen’s compensation. More distinct from Fianna Fail policies was Thomas O’Higgins junior’s (son of Dr O’Higgins) co-operation with the Irish Medical Association in creating a Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme.

Also different from the practice of the party that had been so long in government was Patrick O’Donnell’s County and City Management Act which gave the local councils some say in the control of their managers.

In December 1955 Ireland was able at last to enter U.N.O.

But these policies were accompanied by the steady growth of the I.R.A.’s activities. Within a month of the general election an officer of this body, Joseph MacCriostal, made a successful raid on a British Army arms depot in Armagh. In July, Liam Kelly was elected to the Irish Seanad with Clann na Poblachta backing.

I.R.A. and Fianna Uladh carried out rival activities along the border for two years. In August 1956, MacCriostal and his followers were expelled from the I.R.A. They allied with Fianna Uladh in opening a formal war on Northern Ireland on the 11th of November. The official I.R.A. attack began on the 12th December. The only real difference between the two groups was in the Fianna Uladh-MacCriostal readiness to use force and their unreadiness to accept the traditional taboos of Republicanism militancy. The differences of both with government and Fianna Fail were little more than the respectable bodies’ betrayal of Republicanism. However, these were attractive to many and not without reason.

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The government initiated its activity against the I.R.A. in October 1954 with a denunciation of that body by Liam Cosgrave, the Minister for External Affairs, and son of.William. Then, for a year it did nothing until the Northern Ireland government began to blockade the border. In December 1955 it brought into force a number of sections of the Offences Against the State Act. Mention of Republican organizations was censored and the Irish Army combed for malcontents. This policy was backed by Fianna Fail and the Churches, But the government’s need for Clann na Poblachta support made it hesitate to impose military law.

By August 1955 it was clear that government ‘economic policy’ had further reduced unemployment. But it had involved, also reducing foreign money reserves and increasing imports. Economic planning remained in the future.

Norton was unable to carry out his promise, unwilling to resign. His opportunism was tested accordingly. It responded magnificiently. He began to encourage more than ever before Irish association with foreign capitalism. Individuals from the latter were urged to invest in Ireland. Plans were made to use foreign capital to carry out untaxed schemes: mines in Avoca, Co. Wicklow, and, more successfully, an oil refinery at Whitegate, Co. Cork. American investors were assured that their Irish holdings would be safe.

In 1956 Norton ended the policy of giving special grants to factories in undeveloped areas: factories anywhere could receive the same. He hinted at repealing the Control of Manufactures legislation ‘if necessary’. But already a new crisis had hit Ireland. It had been protected against the general agricultural slump at the end of the Korean war by the British trade agreement of which the benefits had been augmented by the latter’s ending of meat rationing. From November 1955, the market contracted rapidly.

Sweetman reacted promptly. He urged a national savings drive, restricted credit (for other than housing schemes) and imposed import. levies and export rebates. The balance of payments deficit and the run on external reserves both declined. So did production.

Unemployment and consumer prices showed a rise.

_Planning was now clearly necessary. In October 1956 Costello announced a Plan for Production. It was based on six principles; increased agricultural investment, private investment in home products, high saving, high exports and co-operation. In its proposals it was more of a summary of the policies and promises of the previous thirty years of Republicanism than a plan for the future or indeed one that had much relevance to the present. How- 150

ever, its detailed proposals included schemes that would be carried out under a different scheme.

Within a month British troops landed at Suez. The resultant crisis hurt British and Irish oil imports. Irish production was cramped further. Unemployment swelled while relief was cut. Several firms went bankrupt.

In December two bye-elections showed increased support for Fianna Fail, In January MacBride and Clann na Poblachta, worried at the growing possibility of government coercion of the I.R.A., moved a censure motion. In February Costello obtained the dissolution of the fifteenth Dail.

In the general election campaign the only difference between government and Fianna Fail was that the latter was more openly ready to continue the policies that the former had initiated. The result reflected popular recognition of this. Fianna Fail was returned to power with a record number of seats, but on the lowest poll since 1944. I.R.A. and Fianna Uladh remained active. Four Sinn Fein candidates had been elected to Dail Eireann on an Abstentionist ticket. Unemployment topped 70,000. Emigration figures were higher than at any time since the period of the Union, Abroad a European Free Trade Area was being developed among states of which the average G.N.P. was increasing at a rate five times that of Ireland.

What would happen next would rather emphasize the irrelevancy of the latest general election.

II The farm-owning classes In 1943, all other things being equal, the small-holders tended to vote for either Clann na Talmhan or Fianna Fail. The medium farmers were split three ways between the above choice and Fine Gael. The ranchers were mainly Fine Gael.

Of these parties, Clann na Talmhan possessed the promise of youth. However, it also possessed the weaknesses thereof.

It was a ramshackle party. Its strength varied between constituencies according to organization and personalities. In addition, there was within it a basic difference on the subject of land division. This split its medium farmer representatives, headed by its deputy lead- 151

wa) ae eRe Pe er, Patrick Cogan, and the small farmers, led by its Mayo representation headed by Joseph Blowick. The former took its stand on the principle of ‘Fixity of Tenure’: the latter on rural Distributism.

The party’s leader, Michael Donnellan, an amiable man, better at Gaelic Athletics than at politics, was unfitted to unite the two. In November 1943 the party suffered its first loss; its Protestant T.D., William Sheldon, broke with it on its neutralist policy.

While Clann na Talmhan suffered from internal dissension, it could not participate as yet in building a larger Radical Republican entity. Its basic Vocationalism directly opposed the Labour Party’s state capitalism. And Donnellan feared his right-wing too much to negotiate with the other Republican group on such matters of common agreement as credit control and family allowances. In any case, the 1944 Children’s Allowances’ Act weakened the radical significance of the latter.

In the general election of May 1944, the Clann lost seats. Then, in July, Donnellan resigned in favour of Blowick.

The new leader played down Vocationalism and opened negotiations with the Labour Party on welfare policy. The two parties co-operated in sponsoring the presidential candidature of Dr Patrick McCartan against Fianna Fail’s Sean T. O’Ceallaigh and Fine Gael’s Sean MacEoin. Clann na Talmhan gained a seat in bye-election. But its wings became increasingly restive. In December 1946 two of its T.D.s. took prominent parts in a land division agitation in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo. Cogan and his allies left the Clann and revived the National Agricultural Party the next April.

Blowick changed his tactics. In June the Clann was allied with Fine Gael against the new Health Bill (itself backed by Labour).

As a result, in July, the Agricultural Party re-merged with Clann na Talmhan on its own terms, including a definite support for ‘Fixity of Tenure’. But in January 1948 Cogan left the Clann again and fought the subsequent general election as an Independent. Meanwhile and ignored by the Clann a number of new ideas appeared on Irish agriculture. In 1943 a prominent farmer of Co.

Wexford, Captain E, Richards-Orpen, proposed that the problem of land-holding be transcended by the organization of rural areas as ‘Economic Farm Units’. These would be made up of a number of small farms gathered round a processing and wholesaling centre. This idea generated considerable and influential support but it could never be put into general action. The larger farmers were strong enough, in general, to ignore the necessity for 152

local unity. On the other hand, the Emergency Parish Councils that might just have been developed as such a unit collapsed in 1945.

More effective was the Majority Report of the War-time Committee of Agriculture. This appeared in November 1945. It urged for ‘Eire’ a dairy economy economy backed by home production of grasses and cereals and resigned to its dependence on the British market. The government accepted these proposals. It initiated schemes to supply electricity to rural areas, and to give the farmer state loans for arterial drainage (1945) and reconstruction of farm buildings (1948). A National Stud was set up (1945). Eggs were given a state-guaranteed price and national system of A.I.D. centres were established. Successive trade agreements with Britain encouraged the growth of agricultural produce exports thither in return for supplies of tractors and fertilizers. The war-time boom was maintained. But there was cause for farmer discontent. Compulsory tillage was retained to produce the necessary cereals. The I.A.O.S. was annoyed increasingly by the government’s continued sponsoring of its rival, the Dairy Disposal Company. The small farmer learnt about the discrepancy in the rural and urban shares of the national income: he himself enjoyed few of such urban benefits as subsidized housing or. general insurance cover; in 1954 he would be earning £165-320 p.a. less than the industrial worker.

Rapport between the farm-owners was encouraged institutionally in two years. In 1946, the Federation of Rural Workers was founded. This formalized the apparent difference between organized rural workers and the unorganized employers. At the same time as it stimulated the raising of agricultural wages, it encouraged the reduction in numbers of farm employees and their replacement by machinery. From 1946, it was the agricultural labourer who left the land. Between 1939 and 1953, farm machinery costs rose by £35,000,000 while labour costs fell £ 28,000,000. Between 1926 and 1951, successive departures from the rural areas reduced agricultural employment from 53% to 40.8% of total Irish jobs.

On the other hand, there grew the Young Farmers Clubs, limited to sons and daughters of farm-owners (not labourers).

From 1944 they made up a national organization, Macra na Feirme. They were inspired by the motives that had stimulated the rise of Clann na Talmhan, But the new movement included a greater complement of large farm people (its first component group was founded at Athy in Co. Kildare). And it avoided 153

positive political analysis, concentrating instead (and very successfully) upon technical education and cultural and ‘social’ matters.

Its influence was reinforced in 1950 when a brother organization, Macra na Tuaithe, was formed for young farmers under the age of eighteen. Economies also helped the unity of the rural propertied. The decline in small farm pig production and the lack of subsidies for eggs (until 1945) and potatoes forced the smallholder to concentrate upon the supply of calves for the larger farmers to raise. In October 1956 a National Farm Survey remarked that cattle-raising was the poorer farmers greatest worry. Large-small farm trade copied the Anglo-Irish one.

But in 1948 the crises that would cement the farmers’ alliance had yet to appear. The position of the average farm owner continued to improve. In the February general election, Clann na Poblachta’s rural victories depended on local circumstances. Though it won a large share of the small farm votes, its real breakthrough came in Dublin. The Inter-Party governments assured James Dillon the Department of Agriculture. He initiated a regime that was intended to work with the co-operation of the farmer and not (as he claimed, like Fianna Fail) with his subjection. First, he ended compulsory tillage; as he maintained the guaranteed wheat price, production remained fairly high. In October 1948 he initiated a Parish Plan, that would use the parish as a centre of agricultural educational organization. The next year he also made the parish unit the basis for a Marshall Aid-financed expansion of Fianna Fail’s drainage scheme into a national land reclamation plan. In 1950 he began to supply piped water to farms.

But his policies had a major weakness. The bulk of the production stimulated by them was for the British market. But, at this time, the British price guarantees to their own farmers were being expanded and rationalized by the post-war Labour Government.

To obviate this Ireland signed successive agreements with the U.K. But these were signed on terms that emphasized British predominance. Ireland promised to limit its trade with Europe, but Britain gave no pledge to limit its own deficiency payments. An obvious example of a result of this imbalance was shown in the result of the Dillon-inspired drive to ‘drown Britain in eggs’. This encouraged the appearance of a glut in both British and Irish markets, The Irish egg producer was left especially vulnerable to the Korean War slump. By 1955 egg exports to Britain were at less than one-tenth their 1949 figure. And the small farmer was 154

left still more dependent on his calves. Between 1948 and 1963, the Achonry Diocese (which straddles the small farm counties of Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon) saw baptisms decline by 41%; marriages by 50%. Dillon in office overshadowed completely the Leader of Clann na Talmhan. As Minister for Lands, Blowick’s major achievement was to launch a policy of increasing forestry. By 1950-1951, 9,400 trees were being planted per annum and the numbers were increasing steadily. Apart from that Blowick’s only achievement was a Land Act that extended still further the Land Commission’s powers of division. By 1951, a number of farmer T.D.s were becoming disgruntled with the government. In November 1950 Cogan withdrew his support over the ‘Battle of Baltinglass’. In this, the inhabitants of a village in his constituency went into active unrest against the appointment by Everett, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, of a political client to the postmastership.

In April 1951 after Browne and his supporters had broken with the régime, two of Clann na Talmhan’s three Munster T.D.s did the same. The bad harvest of 1950 had caused suffering to their dairy farming constituents. An Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association demanded an increase in the guaranteed price of milk.

The subsequent general election showed that the dissentients were in a minority among the farmers. Their material position had continued to improve under the Coalition. For them, Dillon’s One major error of the egg glut had not outweighed his many positive services. Thus the rump of Clann na Talmhan (now limited to Connacht) slightly increased its representation. Fine Gael, the party most’ associated with Dillon, gained a net eight seats, all rural.

With its admission of Dillon and Flanagan in May, 1952, and its position as senior partner in the government that had proclaimed the Republic, Fine Gael was the leading force of the Republican right. Dillon’s Fianna Fail successor, Thomas Walsh, did not change agricultural policy radically. Compulsory tillage was not restored and the land reclamation scheme remained in existence.

But the latter was changed in its operation. In October, 1951, Dillon’s Parish Plan was suspended (in fact, stopped altogether) for the lack of the necessary parish advisers to work it. Farm aid was henceforward given to the individual farmers, directly. Thus the potential for area planning was weakened though Muintir na Tire was later (1956) to attempt a similar scheme among their |

guilds. A similarly atomistic approach was shown in a scheme to supplement the A.C.C. by direct state loans to farmers for agricultural machinery, cattle and sheep. But Walsh’s main concern was the reorganization of Irish fisheries. For the sea ones, he established a Bord Iascaigh Mhara to co-ordinate and direct expansion. But he was unfortunate in that his career as Minister clashed with MacEntee’s austerity budgets. In 1952, consumer prices rose more than agricultural ones for the first time since the War. The Munster dairy farmers renewed their demand for higher prices. In January and February 1953, the I.C.M.S.A. conducted an inconclusive commodity strike. Fianna Fail lost a number of bye-elections in the area. What was more, in the same year, a similar affair to that of Baltinglass occurred in Ballinalee, Co. Longford, the home of the Fine Gael leader, General Sean MacEoin.

Yet, in the general election of May, 1954, Fine Gael’s rural gains were mainly at the expense of Clann na Talmhan and various Independent Farmer Deputies (including Cogan, now a member of Fianna Fail). Even in agricultural constituencies where it had won bye-elections, it could not maintain its advantage. This was due, in part, to Fianna Fail’s superior organization; in part to the fact that it had most expectation of success in the bigger livestock producing areas, where wholesale prices had risen faster than feed prices. Blowick, now accepted completely his position as leader of Fine Gael’s second fiddle. He returned to the Department of Lands, Dillon to the Department of Agriculture.

Dillon’s second period was less successful than his first. This was due to its initial euphoria. In April 1954 the U.K. had ended its meat rationing policy and had agreed to increase its imports of Irish cattle to that end. A cattle boom began.

Dillon carried out policies within this context and without making a major attempt to rectify the balance. He carried out Fianna Fail plans to drain the cattle areas of the Midlands and to begin the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. More generally beneficial to farmers were his preparation for an Agricultural Institute (‘An Foras Taluntais’) and, less directly and more weakly, Patrick O’Donnell’s County and City Managements Act.

But, politically, the most significant achievement in Irish agriculture at this time was the founding of the National Farmers’ Association on January 6th 1955. This body appeared as the result of the amalgamation of various County Farmers’ Associations 156

dominated by energetic young men who had matured in Macra na Feirme. It absorbed the Irish Farmers’ Federation. It was regarded favourably by Dillon. It has come to represent some 122,000 farms. However, such associations of (mainly small farm) commodity producers as the Irish Beet Growers Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association have remained aloof.

What is more, although it claims to speak for all farm-owners and seems to be composed at a ratio of four small farmers to one large one, it has organized a larger proportion of the farmers in Leinster and Munster than in Connacht and Republican Ulster. And it is led by the big landowners.

Its organization is reflected in its ideological weakness. It claims to speak for the Irish farmers (of all farm sizes) united against the other Irish. It accepts the imbalance of Irish agriculture both in land and in trade. Its concept of co-operation is in the purely economist form of the I.A.O.S.; in fact it worked early to bring that body into the small farm areas by helping it set up co-operative cattle marts to facilitate the calf trade. All in all, it is an organization to serve and encourage the kind of rural capitalists that have maintained for so long Irish subordination to external interests. It soon had an opportunity to show its mettle. In November 1955, the British meat boom collapsed. Prices fell swiftly. For the next year, the agricultural price index was thirty-five points lower.

The N.F.A.’s main aid in the crisis was the setting up of the cattle marts and the support for An Foras Taluntais. But it survived.

Its survival was more significant than what now seems to be the last blow of smallholder leftism. In the general election of February 1957, four Sinn Fein T.D.s were elected, all from small farm areas. They did not take their seats.

In practice, the small farmer had to look for redress to an organization in which he was represented less effectively vis-a-vis his larger neighbours. But his need was to be justified by new social developments. 157

Ill Labour in confusion In June 1943, the Labour Party had reason to hope for a swift expansion in its strength. It had won 208,000 first preference votes (its largest number ever) in the election and now held its largest complement of Dail seats since 1927. It was the biggest party on the Dublin Corporation, with its leader there, Alderman Martin O’Sullivan, being Lord Mayor. It seemed that it had only to make an agreement with Clann na Talmhan to bring it to annie within a decade as a partner in a Republican front.

But there were barriers to this prospect. The party’s essential opportunism was relieved only by dogmatic, rather than rational adherence to the idea of nationalization especially of credit. This was not an adequate weapon with which to oppose Fianna Fail.

With a hostile government, dominance on the Corporation could be, and was, an embarrassment. These circumstances provided the background and the justification for the personal split that was now to divide both the party and the I.T.U.C.

This was the Larkin-O’Brien feud, exacerbated by the I.T.G.W.

U.’s development within the Labour Movement. That trade union’s leadership had opposed the Trade Union Act but now saw in it possibilities to benefit it. It was also prepared to co-operate with the government over the Central Bank (to which O’Brien was appointed a Director). And it was mildly sympathetic to the new Transport Bill which aimed to extend State control over the railways in an authoritarian manner, albeit one strengthening the L.T.G.W.U.’s powers. As a whole, the Labour Party disagreed with it. O’Brien discovered that not only were the Larkins in the party, but that his trade union’s influence on it was no longer decisive. To him, the only possible explanation was a Communist plot.

In January, 1944, James Hickey, the I.T.G.W.U. party Labour Chairman and five of that trade union’s eight T.D.s formed a separate National Labour Party, led by James Everett. In July, the 1.T.G.W.U. transferred its affiliation thither. The new party had little prestige, only rudimentary organization, and no power in Dublin. It tended to act mainly as a Fianna Fail subsidiary. Its appearance nipped effectively in the bud any belief in the credibility of a Labour Government. And, at this time, MacEntee and Ward were extending welfare 158

benefits, introducing small-scale Children’s Allowances (a year before the U.K., but considerably less generous in scale). These weakened further the hopes for a Republican Front and the incentive to vote Labour. . By May, 1944, the Labour Party had failed either to reunite or to ally with Clann na Talmhan. In the general election, it failed to bring its erstwhile supporters to vote and lost four seats, one of which was the elder Larkin’s.

In July, the I.T.G.W.U. was defeated in the 1.T.U.C. on its motion against entering the World Federation of Trade Unions. It carried out the same tactics that it had used in the party struggle.

It left the I.T.U.C. and elevating its Council of Irish Unions into a Congress of Irish Unions (Comhar Ceard Eireann) composed of thirteen trade unions based in Dublin and, thus free of alleged Communist influences from London and Belfast. Despite this split, figures of trade union membership nearly doubled between 1946 and 1961. The C.I.U. threatened to try to use the Trade Union Act to supplant the English trade unions, and, perhaps, the Irish, albeit Larkinite, W.U.I., which had now joined the I.T.U.C., at last.

Such intentions were soon thwarted. In July, 1946, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Part III of the Trade Union Act, with its provision for possible restriction of a firm’s workers to the union of their majority. On this, the C.I.U.’s hopes had been based. The dual split in the Labour Movement encouraged a rightwing move in both sections. This was most especially notable in National Labour and C.I.U. The Secretary to the former body, Frank Purcell, demanded an episcopal investigation into the Labour Party’s ‘Communism’. In January, 1948, one of its T.D.s, John O’Leary, was to declare that ‘only Communists would denounce Franco’s Spain or ask for diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R.’. Similarly the C.I.U. tended to give special weight to ‘Christian principle’ in its deliberations. In February, 1951, the I.T.G.W.U helped sponsor a clerically-inspired Catholic Workers’ College. For a time, the C.I.U. considered joining the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions.

But the Labour Party showed a similar, if less extreme, tendency. Many of the more outspoken ex-members of the C.P.I. were expelled, as was Captain Peadar Cowan, who had started the Vanguard movement of Republicans to end partition on international Socialist principles. Despite these measures in April, 1945, the Labour Party lost the affiliation of I.N.T.O.

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Weakness was shown too in the conduct of Labour’s Councillors on the Dublin Corporation. In June 1944, Martin O’Sullivan won the Mayoralty the second time running, after having denounced this practice in candidates of other parties. This was allied to Labour’s natural futility in this sphere, and to Fianna Fail’s redrawing of Dublin’s electoral areas. Naturally, after the Corporation election of June 1945, Labour had, again, fewer seats than either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

In 1946, both sectors of the debilitated Labour Movement accepted Lemass’ replacement of the Emergency Wages Standstill Order with a measure to regulate the wage disputes that had become common with the peace. The Industrial Relations Act set up a Labour Court to advise on the settlement of industrial disputes.

This body did aid various groups of unorganized workers. But its main significance was to encourage active collaboration between state, employers and trade unions, moves towards which were especially notable in the I.T.G.W.U. It had no powers to forcibly prevent strikes and, indeed did little to do so. Though between 1949 and 1959, 81% of its recommendations, involving 85% of workers involved, were accepted, most of these acceptances came only as second thoughts after rejection.

The most positive development in the Labour Movement at this time occurred in the countryside. A number of strikes of agricultural workers, directed by the W.U.I. resulted in the formation of a Federation of Rural Workers. This body had strengthened the hand of the agricultural labourers and turf-workers, especially in Leinster. More immediately it strengthened the Labour Party’s rural strength against a threat from a new quarter.

On May 10th 1946, the ex-Chief of Staff of the I.R.A. Sean MacCaughey, died from his hunger-strike in Port Laoighis Prison.

A campaign to free him had brought together many prominent Republicans, Socialists and other figures and had gained considerable popular support. The campaign’s leaders recognized this as symptomatic of general dissatisfaction with existing parties and decided to prepare an alternative. On July 6th, 1946, they announced Clann na Poblachta (‘The Republican Party’).

The new grouping appealed to a wide cross-section of Republicanism. Its leaders included recalcitrant Republicans, like its leader, Sean MacBride, and left-wing Fianna Fail members, like its organizer, Noel Hartnett. Amongst its supporters were former Labour Party members, like Peadar Cowan, and ex-Christian Frontists, like Dr J. P. Brennan, the Dun Laoghaire Coroner, and Fine Gael members, like John Timoney of South Tipperary. But it ap- 160

pealed, especially to a large amorphous body of potential and actual left-wingers, prominent among which was a young doctor, Noel Browne, who had gained celebrity in a campaign to end tuberculosis. The new party appeared more radical (and more possible) than demoralized Labour. Its detailed policy proposals included, constitutionally, the proclamation of the Republic for all Ireland, the admission of Northern M.P.s to Dail Eireann and the ending of the Emergency laws. Educationally, it demanded education for all, the revival of the Irish language and a Council of Education, In other social matters, it urged a ‘socially-just’ regime based on Christian principles, which included a Housing Plan, a National Health Service and Dr Dignan’s social welfare scheme.

Economically, it proposed a National Economic Council, a minimum family wage, and repatriation of external assets to invest in development schemes for forestry, fisheries, land reclamation and the electrification of the railways. It also demanded parish councils. This was not Socialism, it was Vocationalism, albeit Vocationalism of the left, leaning towards Social Democracy. No attack. was offered property rights nor was there any analysis given of the pitfalls that such a policy would face.

One such pitfall was dug in 1947, when MacEntee’s Health Act was passed. Dr Ward had increased benefits, albeit meagrely, and put shoes on the poor of Dublin, while MacEntee had denounced more ambitious schemes: that of Dignan as ‘slipshod’ and that of Beveridge as ‘totalitarian’. However, on his Secretary’s fall from office, he took over his Bill and forced it through the Oireachtas. The Act streamlined and rationalized the country’s health organization; in Part III, it prepared the way for a free Maternity and Children’s Health Service. In October, Dr James Ryan, ‘Eire’s’ first Minister for Health, produced a White Paper hinting at a British-style N.H.S. James Dillon initiated a law suit to test the constitutionality of Part III. The Catholic hierarchy attacked it as ‘unchristian’, declaring that a Means’ Test would somehow protect the parent from bureaucracy. Neither of these disputes were solved when Fianna Fail left office. Furthermore, the party avoided mentioning the clerical one to its successors.

The Health Act could not save Fianna Fail’s popularity.

Though, since 1946, money wages had risen faster than the cost of living, they had failed to overtake the decline in real wages that had occurred between 1939 and 1945. And their rises had been achieved by strenuous efforts. Despite the Labour Court, strikes spread across the country. The most notable was the strike of the Dublin National Teachers from March to October, 1946.

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The government was hurt further by scandal and gave the general impression of staleness. In three by-elections, in November 1947, Clann na Poblachta won two seats. In the resultant general election it put up ninetytwo candidates. It won seats in five of the six Dublin City constituencies, and in Dun Laoghaire. However, in the countryside, its success was dependent in its candidates, and it held only four seats. Even in Dublin, it came third to Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

In the new Dail, it had fewer T.D.s than the country-based Labour Party, which had fourteen, excluding the National Labour ones. MacBride was already negotiating an alliance with Fine Gael.

The position of the Labour Parties was more doubtful. However, in the main party’s case, its plank of separation from the Bank of England had been weakened by the return of New Zealand to sterling. It wanted power more than anything; before the election, R. S. Anthony, whom it had expelled sixteen years previously, was allowed to re-enter. while in November, 1947, Roderick Connolly, an influential member, had urged an immediate alliance with the Clanns. National Labour was more doubtful. Its L.T.G.W.U. sponsors were opposed to any break with Fianna Fail. However, its deputies asserted their independent Labour identity. The I.T.G.W.U.

began to grow cold towards its creation.

But the initial entry of the Republican left to coalition with Fine Gael caused considerable consternation amongst its followers. The I.R.A. revived. So, too, from 1948 did the Communist Party (now styled the Irish Workers’ League), stimulated, also, by the Cold War. The Inter-Party government are recognizably a stage in the degeneracy of class collaboration from the Popular Fronts to the Apertura a Sinistra. Whereas the former represents, at least, the fight against Fascism, they represent merely the fight against Fianna Fail. Accordingly, as far as their left wing goes, they are products of a diminished class understanding even if not one greater than the 1960s experiments.

On the other hand, alliance with Fine Gael and Clann na Talmhan was not entirely fruitless. MacBride established the formal Republic. Dr Browne, Clann na Poblachta’s other Minister, operated his plan to eradicate T.B., and set up a National Blood Bank.

Norton, as Minister for Social Welfare, reorganized the National Health Insurance Scheme to benefit the employee class, expanded insurance benefits to an amount nearer to Britain’s and projected a reformed scheme of social welfare. Above all, Labour’s Minis- 162

ters for Local Government, Tadhg Murphy, and, on his death, Michael Keyes, revived and expanded Fianna Fail’s housing and slum crearance schemes. Between 1949 and 1958, Ireland was estimated as spending with Sweden the largest proportion of public aid to housing in Europe. Everett was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Sean Dunne, Secretary to the F.R.W. gained a weekly half-holiday for agricultural labourers. Of Fine Gael’s Ministers, Mulcahy, as Minister for Education, improved the position of the teacher. Morrissey, Minister for Industry and Commerce, struggled to reduce prices and the Minister for Finance, Patrick MacGilligan accepted readily the reduction of Irish external assets to finance the spending. Co-operation between Labour and National Labour on the government benches was expedited by O’Brien’s retirement from the Secretaryship of the I1.T.G.W.U. in 1946 and Larkin’s death, the next year. The surviving 1.T.G.W.U. leaders turned incresingly towards active support of Fianna Fail. Since the National Labour Party had not much organization, or faith in itself, it moved back towards Labour politics. In Janary, 1950, Norton and Hickie united in a demand for greater worker participation in management through increased nationalization. In June, the Labour Party was reunited, agreeing, on principle, to the desirability of all unions being Irish-based. No such compromise was yet possible in the Trade Union Movement. At the same time, the Irish Labour Party was expanding into the north-east. In 1949, all the Northern Ireland Labour Party’s candidates were defeated in a general election again overshadowed by the Republic issue. This caused that party to declare its acceptance of union with Britain and to break its links with the Anti- Partition Irish Labour Party. The latter absorbed the Republican elements in the N.I.L.P. and various other Labour-Republicans, and announced its intention of fighting Northern Irish elections.

Unfortunately, its new members were soon quarrelling amongst themselves. As in the Republic, the Party was never to put up sufficient candidates to make a credible fight. From 1958, the N.LL.P. would revive. The Northern Irish branches of the Irish Labour Party are now limited to Newry and Warrenpoint in County Down. However, the augmentation seemed, originally, to be, if nothing else, good propaganda.

From the end of 1950, the expanded Labour Party was tested by the economic crisis. This was held at bay by a new measure of price control. More worrying were two more personal difficulties.

From November to December of 1950, the village of Balting- 163

lass revolted on behalf of a popular claimant to the post of Postmaster as against Everett’s nominee. The government backed him strongly, but he had to surrender his position in January, when he was faced by a growing opposition amongst government supporters, including Cogan, the Independent Farmer. It was the second .

crisis that provoked a general election.

Noel Browne had been appointed Minister for Health as the only possible Clann na Poblachta Minister that Fine Gael could accept readily. In office he had inaugurated a successful campaign to eradicate T.B. Then he turned to the maternity services where there was great need of improvement. He determined to implement Part III of MacEntee’s Health Act.

The Irish Medical Association denounced his proposed Regulations, but the government was ready to ignore it. Then the Hierarchy announced that it agreed with the I.M.A. It attacked the Regulations under seven headings, composing three main points; the right of parents to provide for their children was threatened under a free scheme: there was a remote possibility that the gynaecological care might include birth control: the doctor’s private relationships with patients might be tampered with by the State.

Certain of its apologists, notably Fr Coyne of the Workers’ College, were later to make alternative (and unimplemented) proposals for co-operative arrangements. However, as yet, in April, 1951, the Church was attacking negatively the only scheme proposed to reduce Irish mortality in child birth.

The government surrendered. Labour supported this action.

Norton feared a new split in his party; several of his loyal supporters of 1944 (notably Keyes and O’Sullivan) were opposed to any disagreement with the Bishops. So successful was Labour at avoiding such a thing that Dr Brennan, who spoke for the I.M.A.

interest in Clann na Poblachta, transferred his allegiance to Norton in the subsequent general election. However the I.T.U.C. announced its full support for the Minister for Health. MacBride’s initial reaction was much like Norton’s; he had already expelled Peadar Cowan for opposing Marshall Aid in 1948; he didn’t want more trouble. Then he found that Browne was trying to obtain the Hierarchy’s assent to a modified version of his Regulations. Mac- Bride lost his nerve completely and ordered his follower to resign his office. Being inexperienced in politics and despairing of political support, Browne did resign, but he left Clann na Poblachta also, and with him went Hartnett, and the party’s T.D. for County Roscommon, John MacQuillan, to make up, with Peadar Cowan, a dis- 164

tinct group. These ‘Brownites’ joined with Cogan and the Munster Farmer rebels to precipitate the dissolution of the Dail.

In the subsequent general election, the Brownites gained a seat, the Labour Party lost four (mainly in urban areas) and Clann na Poblachta was reduced to MacBride’s South-West Dublin seat and its T.D. for County Cavan. Now the Brownites held more seats in Dublin City than Labour and the Clann combined.

But they did not try to organize more thoroughly. On Hartnett’s advice, the Dubliners supported Fianna Fail. That party made Hartnett a Senator. However, MacQuillan was alienated and Browne’s erstwhile lukewarm supporter, Oliver Flanagan, retreated to Fine Gael. Support for Fianna Fail meant support for its austerity policies.

In September, 1951, most price controls were ended. Repeal of the others followed swiftly. The following April, MacEntee’s budget attacked the pockets of all classes. Income tax was increased; rationing was ended; the subsidies on tea, sugar and butter were removed: those on bread and flour, reduced; taxes on beer, spirits and petrol were raised. This made financial sense; it made less definite economic sense. In 1952 the consumer price index rose by 9%, its largest jump since 1943. Unemployment figures rose from | 51,639, to 60,797. The next year the government cut a pay rise granted the civil servants by their salary tribunal.

The Dublin Brownites continued to support the government. It was backed also by the C.I.U., which, in May, 1952, signed a wage limitation agreement with the Federated Union of Employers. A leading figure in the 1.T.G.W.U., William McMullan, was elected to the Seanad for Fianna Fail.

The government’s left-wing support was rewarded by a number of small but important rationalizing reforms. In 1952, Ryan, as Minister for Health and Social Welfare passed his Social Welfare Act which organized the national welfare services in their present form. It was no more than Norton’s original, abortive plan, limited in coverage because of the economic crisis. It did provide, however, a single national insurance organization, except for Workmen’s Compensation and Children’s Allowances. His Health Act (1953) included a more conservative form of ‘Mother and Child’ scheme with the principles extended to cover the embryo of his 1947 White Paper, in providing a limited form of National Health Service. This scheme met opposition from the Catholic hierarchy and the I.M.A., backed by Fine Gael. However, the Act became law and has become the centre for future developments in the health services. 165

On the strength of the Health Act, Browne and his supporters, Hartnett and Dr Michael ffrench O’Carroll entered Fianna Fail in October, 1953. However, the electorate at large was unconvinced by this legislation. In the general election of May, 1954, the Dublin Brownites (almost as much an embarrassment to Fianna Fail as it was to them) were defeated. Many urban workers turned from Fianna Fail to the Labour Party. Even more definite was the switch to Fine Gael, which had gained kudos as the leading party in the first coalition, whose Parliamentary leader had been Taoiseach in that government, and which was, apart from Fianna Fail, the only party to put up enough candidates to maintain itself in. Clann na Poblachta and the Parliamentary Labour Party (not its rank and file) both lacked the nerve to attempt to fight for office power without Fine Gael. However, the latter had to insist on an economic plan being placed in the Inter-party programme as the formal price of its adherance to it. Just how formal the price was, was soon made clear. Mac- Gilligan, who tended to be fairly favourable, refused the Department of Finance, preferring the Attorney-Generalship. The ex- Civil Servant, John O‘Donovan, preferred the less exciting office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach. A Fine Gael Minister for Finance was demanded by that party to counter-balance Norton’s position at the Department of Industry and Commerce. So, in the end, Gerard Sweetman, with his cynicism about the whole principle of planning, took the post. Labour Ministers, besides Norton, included Brendan Corish as Minister for Social Welfare, Everett as Minister for Justice and Keyes, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. MacBride and his two followers supported the government from without, feeling too weak to participate in the Executive. From the second Inter-party government, the workers gained certain increases in welfare benefits, a commission, whose report has since prepared the way for radical changes in Workmen’s Compensation Law (1956) and O’Donnell’s County and City Managements Act (1956). Also the younger O’Higgins’ Voluntary Health Insurance Scheme (1956) though designed to sabotage Ryan’s plan, served, in practice, to supplement it. It is also true that Sweetman’s credit squeeze did bear less harshly on expenditure on housing than on other matters.

But the failure of the plan to materialize until the last minute and the developing economic crisis of resale price rises and (from 1956) increased unemployment stimulated unrest amongst the La- 166

bour Party’s rank and file. They had been doubtful about coalitions since 1951, when the Party Conference had forbidden participation therein without a-special assembly. Now, headed by the Dublin Regional Council, they pressed for more radical policies.

Norton reacted by stepping up his international capitalist methods in the hopes that their success would weaken their critics. It didn’t work. On the other hand, the successive crises had strengthened pressures for the re-union of the I.T.U.C. and the C.I.U. Already much of the distrust of the British-based trade unions had been weakened by the increased autonomy given by such of their Irish branches, On January 8th, 1956, the two Congresses formed a Provisional United Trade Union Organization to prepare for a permanent body. The second Inter-Party government was failing apart.

O’Donovan prepared a vague plan, which was published in October, 1956. In January, 1957, the Dublin Regional Council of the Labour Party was attacking the whole principle of the Coalition.

At the end of that month, Clann na Poblachta followed suit.

Within the Dail, Larkin was increasingly restive and, preferred, in fact, to withdraw his candidacy in the ensuing General Election.

The result of this was decisively anti-coalition. The Labour Party (whose Manifesto had avoided any mention of coalition politics) was reduced to twelve seats; the fewest for it, as a single whole, since 1943, MacBride lost his seat and his party only held one. In the Dublin constituencies, it was notable that a number of left-wing (or pseudo left-wing) Independent Deputies were returned to replace left-wing coalitionists. Among the more sincere of such was an unemployed man, Jack Murphy (who lost his nerve and resigned his seat after one year), Noel Browne (who had left Fianna Fail in a disagreement with MacEntee over their common Constituency), and, in Co. Roscommon, McQuillan. On May 16th, 1956, the last two were to form a new party, ‘The National Progressive Democrats’, It was aimed most definitely against the waste of national resources in prestige products, but it became swiftly a refuge for Independent Socialists, such as Browne, himself, had become.

But most significant about the general election of March, 1957 was the widespread abstentions: people just did not know what to expect of anything. 167

IV The predicament of the petty bourgeois The development of post-war economic crises stimulated divisions within the Irish establishment that might have been used by the manipulated to strengthen themselves against it. However, all that happened was that certain elements from among the ruling groups found themselves reduced to a position of subjection.

This was especially true of the petty bourgeoisie, the class of the self-employed and of employers of 15 people or less. This group has been the most fluid in Irish society. It includes many who use it as a starting-point to something better, whether in business, bureaucracy, professions or Church. At the same time, there are many within it who do not have such ambitions.

Both petty bourgeois elements had been doubtful about Fianna Fail coming to power. But they had been the principal beneficiaries of its protective legislation. The former had grown under it: the latter had maintained itself thereby.

But these conditions proved to be decreasingly sufficient for overall economic growth. In 1954, Christus Rex, in a survey on the growing footwear industry, decided that, although it had begun an export trade both with the U.K. and the U.S.A., it depended on protection for survival. Yet the American IBEC survey of the Irish economy had found in 1952 that such protection weakened enterprise, and in 1953 the survey Dollar Exports remarked that the family nature of most Irish businesses created negative attitudes in the businessmen concerned.

And the smaller businesses, although growing in number, were not, from 1946, growing as quickly as the larger, more vigorous firms, Although, in 1958, some 56,35% of manufacturing employment was given by firms employing less than 200, this represented a reduction in the numbers of such small firms of a decade before. Then (in 1946), 58.45% manufacturing employment had been given by firms employing less than 100. Between 1938 and 1963 the number of industrial firms employing less than 10 fell from half of the total constant — roughly at 3,000 — to one third thereof. By 1958, in fact, the average size of the Irish manufacturing unit was comparable to that of its Swedish equivalent and rather larger than the average units in Norway and Belgium. This consolidation was matched in the Irish retail trade.

The consolidated firms and the bureaucracy pressed for more 168

efficiency. At first the government endeavoured to achieve this in ways that did not weaken small business. In 1948, before losing office, Lemass introduced an Industrial Efficiency and Prices Bill to organize efficiency by a combination of trust-busting and development councils. The Inter-party Government’s Industrial Development Act was another attempt to expand efficiency, but it was attacked bitterly by the (petty bourgeois) Federation of Irish Manufacturers, In 1952 the crisis necessitated more dramatic measures. Lemass supported the creation of a Management Institute. In the same year he passed a Restrictive Practices Act which created a Fair Trade Commission to examine restrictive trade practices (including resale price maintenance) and to report to the Minister for Industry and Commerce for him to act against them as he saw fit. But, especially in 1952, the small traders were pressed by high taxation. And they were hurt, too, by non-governmental activity. The ending of resale price maintenance initiated a period of price-cutting against the small retailer. He was also a victim of the slump of the mid-1950s. But, at the same time, a threat was developing for the small manufacturer. His large rivals were beginning to press for freer trade. Vv Big Business The Irish bourgeoisie did well out of the Second World War. Between 1938 and 1946, the money value of bank deposits rose by 103%. By 1949, the total value of external assets had risen to £.400,000,000. It has been estimated by Profesor E. T. Nevin, that, in 1953, 10% of Ireland’s population owned 66.7% of Ireland’s land and capital. The same man has declared since that there was little change in the distribution of Ireland’s personal wealth between 1931 and 1961; in both years half of it was concentrated in estates valued at £10,000 or more. But, in the latter year, one third of it was concentrated in estates of £20,000 or more. However, the full significance of these latter facts is lessened by inflation. 169

By 1958, textiles, metals, engineering and (mainly since 1952) paper and printing works were all bigger employers than in 1938, and the average textile plant was the largest single employer of manufacturing labour. But business knew how fragile was this prosperity. In September, 1945, a Federated Union of Employers was formed to protect the interests of its members against the dangers from below at a national level. It was successful because of the divisions and inadequacy of its opponents.

More formidable were the economic threats of Irish business arising out of its country’s position in the world trade cycle. With the end of the Emergency, ‘Eire’ resumed its customary trade deficit on a greater scale than before 1939. In 1947, the excess of imports over exports was at £91,823,000: more than four times the largest inter-war deficit. Taxation was also a problem. In 1954, the F.U.E. was to produce a pamphlet by the economic historian, F.G. Hall, ‘proving’ that forty-nine Irish manufacturing and distributive companies had been made un-competitive by excessive direct taxation since 1938.

Thus, many of the early measures of the Inter-party government were welcomed by Irish business. MacGilligan’s economy drive ended such schemes as Aer Lingus’ transatlantic service, Radio Eireann’s short-wave station, the building of new Government offices and aid for mineral prospecting and athletics. His Budgets of 1949 and 1950 reduced income tax. Unfortunately much of the benefit to business was lost by devaluation, though, as most external assets were held in Britain, the immediate blow did not harm the bourgeoisie as much as might have been expected. What did worry them was the return to a steady rise in the trade deficit af-.

ter 1949. But the crisis came with MacEntee’s 1952 Budget. In the first place, it increased income tax. In the second place, it initiated an Irish slump at a time when Britain was entering into its period of ‘Tory Affluence’. The contrast brought home to the manipulated Irishman the fact that something was wrong with the economy.

The big bourgeois was even better fitted to see this. His reaction was two-fold. First of all direct taxes had to be cut. But this had to be done with care. Ireland was a democracy. To reduce the social welfare services (already comparing unfavourably to those of the U.K.) could not be achieved without political counter-revolution. Direct taxation might be reduced in two other ways: — by transferring the emphasis of revenue collection to indirect taxes and by a new economy drive in the civil service.

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a ee The latter policy was especially attractive to Irish business. The take-over of the Dublin United Tramways Company in 1944 and of the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) between 1951 and 1958 had left considerable grievances amongst the shareholders in these units. When, in May, 1954, Gerard Sweetman had been appointed Minister for Finance, it appeared that the alliance between bourgeois and bureaucrat was likely to collapse.

But opposition to direct taxation was not the only nostrum of Irish big business. Despite protests from the petty-bourgeois Federation of Irish Manufacturers, the newer element among the larger companies came into full agreement with the government’s international outlook. This manifested itself in two ways. By 1957, the major development was the steady encouragement of foreign capital investment, such as Norton encouraged as Minister for Industry and Commerce. This suited the larger (and the more efficient) business better than the smaller. The former was in a better position to bargain with the foreign interests. In any case, it was better than Norton’s threatened ‘Economic Plan’ with its bureaucratic implications. Every pressure was used within the government (from Sweetman) as well as from without, to carry out the freer competition policy. As a result, it was not until October, 1956, with the reinforced economic crisis, that the government allowed the pleas of the ex-Civil Servant John O’Donovan and produced its Plan.

The other aspect of the freer competition policy developed more slowly. It became clear that, if foreign investments were to be encouraged, the prospective investor would want rather more than the Irish market to supply. However, this discovery was made by the bureaucratic element in the State, and becomes more important after 1957. Before that, government policy had been the orthodox one of protection against imports subject to the needs of the British market. The obvious example of this was Sweetman’s import levy of March, 1956, which imposed a reduced charge on imports from Britain.

Similarly, the opening of the Irish market to foreign investments had its emphasis mainly on British firms. However, aided by the flow of American dollars to Europe, Coras Trachtala Teo was successful in establishing a trade (1955) and currency (1956) relationship with the U.S.A. This led, in turn, to further encouragement of investment from that quarter.

With bourgeois internationalism went national quietism. This was especially notable on the outstanding issue of political Na- 171

tionalism, partition. Whereas in the first half of the twentieth century, Irish Nationalist opinion had unthinkingly alienated the north-eastern Protestants, it began, in the second half, to try equally unthinkingly, to conciliate them. Ernest Blythe made utopian appeals to the Northern Nationalists to dissolve politically and form branches of the Gaelic League instead. The aged John J. Horgan went one better; he appealed to his fellow countrymen to win the friendship of the Ulster Unionists by joining in their glorious crusade against Russia. Their bourgeois readers smiled admiringly and forgot about them, but they themselves were no better. Northern Irish trade was treated, as always, merely as a part of British trade, no attempt being made to encourage it per se. The Irish bourgeoisie as leaders of the Republic accepted complacently such cross-border agreements as the Erne Agreement and (except insofar as it hurt dividends) the G.N.R. takeover. As far as they were concerned, Partition was there to stay. As far as they were concerned, why shouldn’t it? Irish unity would be a new problem to a class overburdened with difficulties.

VI The Survival of the Civil Service With the end of the Emergency, many of the immediate executive controls thereof (but not the legal situation justifying them) were scrapped. But the state bureaucracy still possessed its considerable prewar power and maintained the potentialities thereof created under the Offences Against the State Acts.

This authority was threatened after 1945. The various opposition parties distrusted enhanced executive power, especially when associated with a government that had held office for over a decade. They agitated for the dilution of bureaucratic discretion.

Fianna Fail bowed to this. In 1947, it provided for the publication of all statutory instruments.

The first Inter-Party government had less reason to feel inhibited about limiting the powers of Fianna Fail’s legacy. In 1948, a Labour Party motion set up in the Seanad a Select Committee on Statutory Instruments to scrutinize them and to report for inquiries on seemingly objectionable ones. Murphy prepared a County 172

and City Managements Bill to reduce direct central government control over the local managers: it became law in the second Coalition. But all this was animated by a mainly political opposition to a Fianna Fail-orientated body. This was shown clearly by Norton, at the Department of Social Welfare, who paralleled the action of Sean T. O’Ceallaigh in the 1930s and, in 1951 achieved the removal of his Permanent Secretary, D.J. O’Donovan.

From 1952, the economic crisis added a new dimension to the coalition parties’ struggle against bureaucracy. The bourgeoisie demanded more action in the name of retrenchment. This justified, in 1955, the final granting to the lower-grade civil servants of their own arbitration and conciliation machinery. This had been urged for years; in 1938, a motion to achieve it had forced the dissolution of the ninth Dail. However, the need of Irish business was for a compact number of wellpaid employees, rather than a steadily swelling number of under-paid clerks. The latter enhanced the authority of the senior civil servants while increasing the drain of money into the bureaucracy. In May, 1956, Sweet- - man declared the reduction of civil service numbers to be government policy. The earlier attacks on bureaucratic powers was not accompa- > nied immediately by any campaign against the proliferation of state-sponsored bodies. New additions to the numbers of such included Coras Iompair Eireann (the Transport Company, 1944), the National Stud (1945), Irish Steel Holdings Ltd (1947), Aramhara Teo (the seaweed processing company, 1949), Coras Trachtala Teo and the Voluntary Health Insurance Board. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1951 to 1954, Erskine H.

Childers, prepared to transform Radio Eireann into such an organization. In August, 1950, James Dillon, an agrarian reformer, with leanings towards Fine Gael’s bourgeois wing, demanded the nationalization of Ireland’s milling and fertiliser production. By 1951 state-sponsored bodies were more powerful than in 1963, when they controlled about 25% of Irish investment and employed 5% of all employed workers at a rate of 40% more than the average. Yet when, in February, 1950, Morrissey, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, was pressed for greater Dail control of these bodies, he took refuge in vague promises, never implemented. The general bourgeois approval for these bodies arose because, although statist, they were, at least run internally on capitalist lines. However, external control of them is a different matter. Their 173

directors were (and are) not embarrassed by the restraints of capitalist external control; they had no shareholders to pacify. And, while controlled by the Oireactas as to general policy, their day to day working (which includes, unlike ‘in Britain, their annual report and accounts) could not be questioned. Nor, apart from in their higher appointments, was there any clear relationship between them and the responsible Minister.

Besides this, it tended to be government policy to reserve the patronage of state-sponsored bodies to the more enterprising bureaucrats. And, in any case, state capitalism, in an imperialist economy, will always be a less satisfying property form than private capitalism, to those who know the latter.

The Irish bourgeoisie became less eager to expand the numbers of state-sponsored industries. As economic crises developed, policy became geared to foreign capitalism rather than to internal state capitalism. Yet the directors of the state-sponsored bodies have initiated techniques through which, since 1956, the civil servants have adapted their position the better to maintain it. State capitalist dynamism is based upon consciously prepared action to economic ends in the manner to which post-war Europe has accustomed itself. Such examples were used by many of the younger generation of state bureaucrats to revise their position the better to defend their prerogatives against the bourgeois attack.

Prominent among these new men is one Thomas Kenneth Whitaker, a Northern Irishman. In 1956, he was leapfrogged by Sweetman, over the heads of a number of senior men, into the Principal Secretaryship to the Department of Finance. Sweetman knew Whitaker to be financially a man after his own heart. Both agreed that, in the circumstances, government spending must be reduced to make way for productive (equated by both with ‘private’) investment. Both were satisfied with the social structure as it stood. However, Whitaker was a Civil Servant. If he did not encourage a revived increase in bureaucratic numbers, nor did he participate in any startling reductions.

On two other matters, his disagreement with Sweetman became clear. He favoured a form of state planning vaguely derived from French ‘programming’. And whereas the bourgeoisie tended to believe (in so far as they considered the matter) in Ireland’s private capitalist development as a small part of an Anglo-American free enterprise economy, Whitaker and his associates look to Europe.

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Here in 1956 capitalism was preparing to develop within lines as directed by an international bureaucratic elite. Such a scheme could ensure its participating civil servants a continuingly distinctive, dominant role in the capitalist-class structure.

VII

The expansion and contraction of Irish Catholic power With the Russian advance into eastern Europe and O’Brien’s denunciation of Larkin’s ‘Communism’ Catholic social theory was able to maintain its pre-eminence in Irish political controversy.

It had to change to a certain extent. From 1941, the Christus Rex society aided, later, by Hibernia helped to turn Vocationalism from the organization of the state to schemes of co-partnership at the factory floor. Abroad, the south European dictators were considered more critically than before 1943. Mussolini was, of course, completely discredited. Salazar was regarded less favourably than before. But Franco had been too much of a protegé of the Irish Catholic hierarchy for it to consider criticizing him.

The Church’s political authority was emphasized by various post-war organizations. Clann na Poblachta, with all its a-clerical background, leant to Vocalionalism rather than to Socialism: its comparative success in 1948 may be regarded as much a triumph for clerical views as for the Republic. More strident were the National Labour Party and the Congress of Irish Unions whose Secretary, Leo Crawford, wrote in Christus Rex in January 1951, that his organization had ‘led the way in its profession of allegiance to true (i.e. Christian) principles’. It was also a great backer of the Catholic Workers’ College. Such politicians as Lemass and Dillon took care to intersperse their speeches with abuse for Communism. There were more sinister tendencies developing in ‘Eire’. In March, 1944, the Jesuit magazine Studies could demand by implication a stronger film censorship against ‘subversion’. In a similar vein, in 1945, Fr Denis Fahey, founded Maria Duce to revive the old Vocationalist policies, though, in practice, it restricted itself to attacking the constitutional rights of Ireland’s minority religions.

In February, 1950, it won a brief victory by gaining support for its principles from Westmeath County Council, which re- 175

pudiated them at its next meeting, however. Dr MacQuaid maintained a ban on it in his archdiocese... Another example of Catholic chauvinism was the campaign mounted from February 1950, by both Hibernia and Sinn Fein, to ban the sale of British newspapers in Ireland. Such bigotry was encouraged further by actions and trends associated with the Protestants. The British Labour government caused a wave of welathy British emigres to take out Irish citizenship; ‘the retreat from Moscow’ as it was known by the old Establishment, part in sympathy, part contempt. Some of the stragglers bought land in their new country, an activity that caused some immediate resentment among local peasants. More publicized, but also more fleeting was the action in May, 1945, of a small group of students, of Trinity College, Dublin who angered the townsmen by burning the Irish flag.

Some Clerical influence can be seen in government activity at this time, despite that body’s rejection of the proposals of Dignan and the Vocational Commission. The Industrial Relations Act was a less formidable execution of demands raised by certain clerical and capitalist interests for compulsory arbitration. The Censorship of Publications Act of 1946, while setting up an Appeals Board, insisted that censorship might be imposed on a reading of marked passages, rather than of the entire book concerned.

O’Deirg ignored I.N.T.O.’s 1947 Plan for Education with its demands for the raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen, for a Council of Education and for an increase in the state’s payment to managerial schools, to which the latter was opposed by the clerical managers. By 1947, the Bishops were feeling strong enough to mount a formal attack on the Mother and Child legislation. Nothing basic was changed by the Inter-Party government.

Mulcahy, as Minister for Education, did carry out a number of alleviations of the teachers’ lot. The retiring age of women teachers was raised back to parity with that for men. The rate of pay ‘by attendance’ for teachers was replaced by a flat rate (1948). Teacher’s pensions were increased (1949). Secondary Teachers were given an Arbitration Board (1950). But the essentials of the education system remained, Mulcahy’s one enactment of I.N.T.O.’s education policy, was that of the Council of Education (1950) which did not include parents (as had been intended as its raison d’étre) and which became notorious for the obscurantism of its actual educational proposals.

Upon the less conservative Ministers, clerical pressure was more 176

open. Dr Dignan himself led the opposition to Norton’s social welfare scheme. But the climax of the clerical advance came over the Mother and Child scheme, This was a test case, and its significance lay less in the scheme’s rejection than in the electorate’s belief in it as against the Hierarchy. It was felt that the latter had exceeded its authority by enough people (if not politicians) to enable Browne to remain in politics, to give the Brownites a plurality of the leftwing seats in Dublin City and, more significantly to smash Browne’s original party even in the (more clerical-minded) rural areas. In 1953, the clergy tried to force Fianna Fail to withdraw its Health Bill, but de Valera was able to allow purely nominal concessions, in return for its quiescence.

The Fianna Fail government of 1951 carried out similar reforms. In 1952, its Adoption Act legalized adoption despite some clerical and right-wing protest.

Another significant portent was the career of Sean Moylan at the Department of Education. An ex-Republican General, and a building contractor, Moylan was, at once, the least-qualified Minister for Education since the founding of the state and the best since John Marcus O’Sullivan. He fought successfully to maintain the teachers’ pensions’ scale. He also initiated a school-building scheme in 1951. Finally, in March, 1954, he increased the grants to secondary schools for the first time for thirty years.

That this policy was still inadequate was due, partly, to Moylan’s limitations, partly to the limitations of his leader, partly to the continuing dominance of the Catholic Church. Especially, it was due to the refusal of all political parties to consider education beyond the Council thereof, and according to the needs of Irish society. Public apathy backed this, Ireland was still a rural country: apart from the Church itself and the bureaucracy, there were few opportunities, or, as yet, needs, for the home-employment of intellectuals. Thus, between 1947 and 1962 the percentage of Ireland’s Gross National Product spent in State Aid to Education remained less than before 1939. But, in other spheres, clerical authority was being tested. The Courts of Justice continued throughout the 1940’s and 1950’s to interpret the law with absolute impartiality. Most prominent were Tilson’s (1951) and May’s (1954) Cases in which the British Common Law principle that denied the validity of pre-marital agreements on children’s education were set aside to benefit Catholic mothers. Coming in addition to the Mother and Child affair, 177

these decisions caused some Protestant worry. Nonetheless, in Begley’s Case (1948), the paternal right of sole educator had been set aside already without benefiting the Catholic party. Frost’s Case (1945) denied the Catholic widow of a broken mixed marriage any right to break the contract of separation to educate her child as a Catholic. Burke’s Case (1951) restated the right of Protestant parents to use a legacy to educate their children as Protestants, though the codicil stipulated a Catholic education for them.

But, in the sphere of faith and morals, clerical authority was under attack from private sources. Though the offerings of the cinema were often cut by the censor, they showed the Irish people non-Catholic ways of life. In 1952, extreme Catholicism suffered a set-back when. an attempt to ban the film Death of a Salesman proved abortive. In the same year Dr Ernest Alton, the Protestant Unionist Provost of Dublin University died. His successor was Dr McConnell, a friend of de Valera. The end of the University’s political isolation became reflected slowly at local levels. A growing number of County Councils began to vote scholarships thither. But the Archbishop’s ban remained. In 1954, Fr Fahey died. Maria Duce was soon replaced by An Fhirinne, an organization which never gained equivalent influence. In Christus Rex for October, 1956 another priest, Fr Thomas Fitzgerald showed a new tendency in clerical outlook, when he urged that Priests ‘lead’ rather than ‘rule’ their flocks.

Yet there were still unpleasant incidents. In October, 1952, the Papal Nuncio regarded himself as having been insulted at a public meeting. In the repercussions, his putative insulters were subjected to a storm of abuse. More incidents showed that the struggle against religiosity still had to be fierce. It took a year (1954-1955) to obtain the showing in Dublin of Henry Moore’s ‘Reclining Figure’. In October of the latter year, a football match between Ireland and Yugoslavia nearly had to be cancelled by clerical pressure not to kick off, which was, however, defied successfully by Oscar Traynor.

This ambiguity in the situation was encouraged by the fact that the lay establishment felt in continuing need of clerical authority.

It was grateful for clerical denunciation of the I.R.A. in 1955.

Also, it had no wish to shake the social order by mounting an attack on Catholic power. All it really wanted was a slight relaxation and a reduction of the crudities of the status quo, including clerical control of education, some censorship and illegal divorce.

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a It had little real quarrel with the principles of Vocationalism, divorced of such incendiary principles as credit reform.

But the continuing economic crisis was forcing the lay establishment to try to reconsider society the better to maintain their position therein. A major contributory weakness of the economy was clearly education. This fact made for the contradictions within the social position of the Irish Catholic Church after 1957.

INTERMISSION

The frustration of the literati With Dominion status achieved, the contradictory nature of the Literary-National aliance was emphasized. Each movement had used the other. Now the latter was established in power and allied to such groups as the Catholic Church whose interests were not those of its former associates. In these circumstances the English-writing literati found its inspiration under fire. In 1929, it received the major blow of the Censorship Act. This was itself just an obvious set-back among a number of small negative actions that forced the writers to recognize that they were not to have the influence that Nationalism had seemed to promise them.

Against this, the older generation of Irish writers were unequipped to fight. Firstly, none of them had any real wish to change the status quo in matters other than censorship reform. Their sheer social negativism was shown in many ways. 42, the co-operatives’ organizer, became an ardent supporter of Cumann na nGaedhael.

Yeats, an opponent of Catholic censorship, was eager to support the Catholic Fascism of O’Duffy. Gogarty, an ex-Senator of the United Ireland Party wrote in praise of the partition of Ireland out of spite against de Valera. In their actions in their speeches, in their political writings, one can find nothing apart from personal prejudice and interested pleas. Only two things can be said for Anglo-Irish writing at this period. The period of Yeats’s public cretinism was the period of Yeats’s greatest poetry. The Irish people showed their good sense in laughing off the former and accepting the latter. : And it was not as though the writers were themselves as ready to practice what they preached, James Joyce had found it necessary to leave Ireland in the good days of the literary movement.

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Now it began to close in upon itself, the process was repeated.

Sean O’Casey was forced into exile in 1928. Seven years later, Brinsley MacNamara (who had gained the reputation of a liberal when a book of his was burnt by a township that it had libelled) tried to bowdlerize the former’s Silver Tassie before its presentation at the Abbey Theatre. Later still, Samuel Beckett has had to retire to France. With a harsh censorship of books and no censorship of plays, much artistic creativity was diverted towards the theatre. From 1927 throughout the 1930s the Earl and Countess of Longford allied with the young actors, Michael MacLiammor and Hilton Edwards, in productions that made famous the Gate Theatre. At the Abbey Theatre, Yeats twice refused to ban plays ‘derogatory to Ireland’. And, for a brief period, from 1935, the Theatre entered on a period of Indian summer. In the former year, Yeats was joined by the writers, Frank O’Connor and F. R. Higgins and the young producer, Hugh Hunt. For three years, the Theatre seemed to relive its better period. Then came disruptions. Hugh Hunt was refused permission to put on a somewhat a-clerical play, The White Steed, and resigned. In 1939, Yeats died and O’Connor resigned, In 1941, Higgins died, and was succeeded as Managing Director, by Ernest Blythe, one-time Minister for Finance under Cosgrave. It had been Yeats’s hope that the new generation of Anglo-Irish writers should revive the literary movement to active life. Certainly, such men as Frank O’Connor, Sean O’Faolain, Liam O’Flaherty and, of course, Peadar O’Donnell could be said to be closer than their predecessors to popular feeling in the 1930s. All had had experience of the Republican movement. And their efforts did achieve the admission of an appeal board into the censorship machine in 1946. But the actual revitalization of Anglo-Irish culture never occurred. Some isolated works of art were produced, A magazine The Bell provided, in the 1940s and early 1950s, a centre for literary achievement. Yet, though the fire was kept up it never rose high. The writers remained tolerated on the terms imposed by the Establishment. The censorship still takes toll of literature. Its discipline has been known (as in the case of the Connacht writer John MacGahern) to be reinforced by exterior powers to a point where its victim has his means of living taken from him.

Part of the reason for this is the continuing stagnation of Irish education. However, there are reasons less flattering to the writers. Their second generation were, in their way as insensitive to 180

a xed a a the causes of Ireland’s problems as their predecessors. This fact can be seen when they enter into biography, history or politics.

Frank O’Connor wrote a somewhat schizophrenic life of Michael Collins. Sean O’Faolain’s The Irish concentrates on the Celtic period. The younger generation are at once more developed and less conscously so; Brendan Behan was an implicit Socialist; John B.

Keane is a confused Agrarian. All deal with the symptoms rather than the causes of the Irish Question. | This was seen best in the literary monthly magazine, The Bell which appeared first in October, 1940, continued to April, 1948, and then had a brief revival from November 1950 to December, 1954, This was perhaps the most sustained attempt ever made by the literati to create a weltanschauung that would provide the justification for social reform. It was a failure, The Editor (to 1946), Sean O’Faolain made quite good criticisms on certain aspects of the cultural scene, such as the Gaelic Revival and Censorship and he published a number of muck-raking articles. But he had no basis in which to build a critique beyond one ‘Nationalist, Democratic and Catholic’. In an early issue, he stated that ‘the first thing we must do in Ireland is to have the facts and understand the picture’. Unfortunately, The Bell never developed any adequate criteria for finding or seeking facts. When O’Faolain resigned ‘the picture’ (of Irish society) still included large blank spaces in some parts, while others were cluttered up with unnecessary detail. O’Faolain’s successor, the Republican Socialist, Peadar O’Donnell, was, surprisingly enough, less formally socially conscious than his predecessor. Under him The Bell became completely a literary magazine.

Cultural isolation encouraged the Anglo-Irish literati to look somewhat enviously upon the apparent satisfaction of the linguistic revivalists. Naturally, the latter benefited more from National independence. The linguistic revival had been a part of the National movement, not merely its ally. What was more, Irish writing was less subversive than English writing in a mainly Englishspeaking state and, accordingly, it was less to be censored than the latter. Yet the official encouragement of the Irish language has proved to be as debilitating for it as the attacks on English writing were to that. The linguistic revival has been tamed to suit the establishment. The liberalizing influences of the pre-1914 Gaelic League were not expanded. The example of the Folk High Schools of Denmark with their national cultural enlightenment for adult pupils were not copied in Ireland until 1957, and, then, only in a 181

small way. What is left is the formal Irish education of juvenile and adolescent pupils, the use of Irish as a qualification for entry to official positions, help for the Gaeltacht and, far less justifiable but more apparent, a small group of people who seem to be making a good thing out of the language movement.

It is, then, scarcely surprising that a small group of people, most of whom have been prominent in maintaining the social background for conservative linguistic policy, should choose, in September, 1965, to organize a campaign against the actual policy of revival. It may be doubted whether there will be much enthusiasm for this, especially as this ‘Language Freedom Movement’ tends to talk with two voices: one declaring that it hopes to make the language loved by ending the compulsion in its teaching: the other regretting its existence in the name of the new cosmopolitanism. However, it may have some success for two reasons: the possible Irish entry to the E.E.C. and the reaction caused by attacks on its right to hold meetings in the name of ‘Nationalism’.

In the last resort, neither the Irish nor the Anglo-Irish microcultural movements can survive in a healthy condition if they struggle for their aims in isolation from the totality of Irish social issues. How far they can do this depends on how far their ideals can be accepted by the Irish worker.

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