CHAPTER SEVEN: THE NEW DEAL OF SEAN LEMASS, 1957-1967

NNR de mmm dems i a ea am aa” meinen ia aie aaa i aaa ee

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE NEW DEAL OF.SEAN LEMASS

1937-1967 ‘...That one man (T.K. Whitaker) could exert such an influence all in the name of practicality and realism — it is a terrible warning!’ — Extract from a Letter to the Author — April 7th 1967 I Bourgeois and Bureaucrat It is, as yet, difficult to distinguish accurately the significant developments in Irish society since 1957. Certain dates at the beginning of the period do seem to be more important than others, but that is all. What one can say is that the history of the Republic of Ireland has developed according to policies that contrast directly with those executed over the previous thirty-five years but which correspond to the present real needs of the Irish Establishment.

For seven years, from Eamon de Valera’s retirement to the Presidency in June 1959, the choosen exemplar of this elite was Sean Lemass. Since November, 1966, it has been Sean Lynch. But it is Lemass who represents it more adequately. He entered active politics just after the consummation of the bourgeois revolution; he instituted the policies that protected that revolution’s status quo; finally, he turned the clock back again for the same cause. This is a record of dedication that Lynch cannot yet match. It would be wrong, however, to assume that he will have any inhibitions about trying to do so. How will he try? How has it been attempted since 1957? The subjective duty of de Valera, of Lemass, and, now, of Lynch, has been, is now, and will be in the future to maintain the Irish Establishment in the twenty-six counties, This is a task both economic and political, because Ireland’s rulers have their powers 183

_t—- = i =< - = = |” eo =< s.Oo , justified by their economic benefits and because such powers have to be maintained against the rest of the population.

The task has been accomplished successfully. The political achievement is clear. Fianna Fail has remained in power in two successive elections; although, in 1961, its vote fell below 500,000 for the first time since 1932, it was able to make up the loss in 1965. What is more, the second party in the country, Fine Gael, presents a mirror-image to the government, and Labour is, politically, very much a bad third to its rivals.

Some of the reasons for this lie in the political development of the state since 1957; in the sophistication of Fianna Fail as opposed to the haverings of its opponents. Others must be admitted to be symptomatic of other aspects of the contemporary period.

Unemployment, though now rising, has not yet reached the 1957 level. The population has risen from 2,818,000 in 1961, to 2,894,002 in 1966. The fact (not surprising in a still rural country) that the Republic’s intake of calories is amongst the highest in Europe has been pressed into government propaganda. Finally, the continuing improvement in North South relations has culminated in meetings between the Ministers of the two areas since January 1965 and in October, 1967 a technical agreement to cooperate in the distribution of electricity. These have given the Irish of the Republic an impression that re-union on their own terms is a probability. But the most certain advantage possessed by the establishment in the Republic of Ireland is the division of its enemies.

The composition of the said establishment is much as ten years previously. At its head is the old alliance of Top bureaucrat and big bourgeois. With this Axis are associated on a satellite basis, the large farmer, the petty bourgeois, and, albeit in a special position, the Catholic Bishop.

Both the dominant groups act as willing agents for foreign imperialisms. But disagreement exists as to the nature of the imperialism that should control the agency and as to the form that the agency should take. The big bourgeois looks to the direct capitalist control of Anglo-American trading interests. The bureaucrat prefers it in its formalized and regulated form of the European Economic Community. As yet, big business has had the advantage. The British trade’s pre-eminence in Ireland’s capitalist economy has been too great to dislodge without dislocation of the latter. However, the growth of the American business interest in Britain has encouraged the development of an equivalent Irish-American trade. This was reflected 184

in 1956, when the government based the Irish part in. American, as well as British, reserves. Nonetheless, the British market has remained the chief focus for Irish exporters. Indeed it has been strengthened since 1957, and, especially, since the British (and Irish) failure to enter the E.E.C. in January, 1963. Between 1963 and 1964 the proportion of Irish exports taken by the U.K. grew in direct proportion to their total growth. In October of the latter year, Britain imposed a unilateral 15% import duty which operated against Irish goods as well as those from elsewhere. The Republic’s immediate reaction was to initiate (among more reasonable measures) subsidies aimed specifically to help its traders in the English market. Finally, in December 1965, there was negotiated an Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area. The form of this area appears to benefit most definitely the textile firms and slaughterers (though the livestock trade was given guarantees that encouraged it to overload the British market in 1966). At the same time, the only mention of markets outside the British Isles is in a clause limiting exports of materials made in low cost countries. The White Paper accompanying the Agreement ‘assumed’ that Ireland would be by 1970, within a greater European free trade area including both E.E.C. and E.F.T.A.: big business was safeguarding itself accordingly. During the past year (1967-1968) two of the traditional Irish protected industries, motor car assembling and shoemaking, have had their protection attacked. In September 1968, plans are announced to try to hasten to weaken dependence on the English market by allowing exporting firms to postpone demanding tax rebates until they needed to pay for machinery depreciation. But now Ireland is dependent on foreign investment. Freedom of the (British) trade is merely one aspect of Ireland’s bourgeois economic policy. In 1958 the coverage of the Control of Manufactures law was removed for firms established in Ireland producing for export and offering 50% of their bona fide total to Irish investors. This mild change does not seem to have satisfied the makers of economic policy. The second Economic Programme envisages the complete scrapping of the law.

From 1959, a special trading estate has been developed around the customs-free Shannon Airport; it is aimed to attract foreign firms encouraged by a twenty-five years tax moratorium. Under the law as rationalized in 1959 foreign manufacturers are offered cash grants of up to two thirds the total cost of setting up industries in Ireland. By March 31st 1965, some 234 new foreign projects had been set up in Ireland; 40% of them were British; 15% 185

American. The right to exploit Ireland’s mineral resources has been surrendered to Canadian and American firms, subject only to Irish possession of the mining royalties. The centre of Dublin has been bought up by British property speculators. These are just the respectable stories. It is not surprising that the government is carrying out this policy, when one realizes that private Irish firms are entering increasingly into association with foreign opposite numbers. As early as June 1962, Hibernia remarked on this. It pointed out that the process was generally most notable among the biggest and most likely firms, and that it occurred chiefly in co-operation with British firms and (more occasionally) with American ones. It declared that ‘the pattern is one of external participation in the ownership of a subsidiary or of the parent firm, coupled with an exchange of technical information mainly one way, and a degree of access to the Irish market together with help for exports’. Such practices created the atmosphere in which in April 1967 the State-sponsored subsidiary, Erin Foods could form with H. J. Heinz Co. a company to sell its products on the British market.

The Heinz-Erin Agreement is the revelation of the secondary role of the bureaucracy in its partnership with Irish business.

Nonetheless, the authority of the former has grown during the past decade. From 1957 to 1967 the number of top bureaucrats is thought to have risen from 433 to 640. Between 1962 and 1966 the percentage of Ireland’s G.N.P. made up of the public sector’s spending rose from 32.5% to 37.5%, the highest in Western Europe.

At the same time, the percentage taken up by social welfare spending has remained Europe’s lowest, outside Portugal.

Expansion in spending has accompanied a change in bureaucratic techniques. Whitaker, backed by Lemass and by Dr Ryan, as Minister for Finance until 1965, has asserted the civil service as a positive economic directive force.

One means to this amounted to a departmental revolution: in November 1959 the Department of Finance was augmented by a Development Section. But this was itself the instrument by which to guide the economy under State direction.

The technique of doing this is the Economic Programme, a much weaker version of the French Plan. Specimens of this have appeared twice. The first was introduced in November 1958, to chart Ireland’s economic progress for five years. the second was introduced to take over the duty of prophecy from the first. It was intended to programme for a period ending in 1970, but, in October 1966 it was announced that it would have to be amended 186

drastically. It is fair to say that there were a number of people (including Lemass himself) who warned against placing too much trust in programming, The programme was a guide rather than a directive. It was essentially an economic placebo, and as such a very useful one. This scepticism was justified when the first Programme was found to have anticipated half the rate of economic growth that had occurred in fact over its period.

The programmers determined not to make the same mistake again. They were now, they felt, in a better position to know Ireland’s economic future. They possessed the Development Section. Between 1961 and 1965 a Committee on Industrial Organization (C.I.0.), including representatives of both capital and. labour, had issued reports on the prospects of Irish industrial development. From October 1963 a similarly-manned National Industrial Economic Council has existed to advise on the principles of economic growth. Backed by increased knowledge, the second Programme was published as a fully-detailed prophecy.

Unfortunately Ireland’s actual rate of growth in its programme’s first two years came to one quarter of its. anticipation.

Unemployment is increasing. This is not really surprising. In the Republic of Ireland today effective programming (and therefore, of course, ‘planning’) is a doubtful possibility. This is because of Ireland’s dependence not only on international trade, but on the foreign entrepreneurs called in by its capitalists to help them in their dependence. The policies of such entrepreneurs in regard to Ireland tend to be governed more by their home offices than by the programmers. This was accepted by Whitaker’s original panphlet Economic Development which anticipated the first Programme. However, the problem was passed over therein as a necessary price to pay for benefits in managerial experience that such firms could supply. The programmers’ answer to this weakness is to try to transcend it. The E.E.C. is, for them, the ideal, possessing, as it does, a large market directed by a supernational group of bureaucrats. Thus entry to the E.E.C, is government policy. In 1957, Lemass was anticipating it by 1959. In 1962, Lynch prophesied entry in 1963.

The entire second Economic Programme was based on the assumption that Ireland would have entered the Community by 1970. Now 1975 is the deadline.

But here, again, appears the weakness of the bureaucracy. The Anglo-Irish trade continues to dominate the economy, partly due to the wishes of the large firms, partly to the inertia of the small- 187

er ones. Britain has yet to enter the E.E.C. Ireland cannot enter until it does. Thus, the latter’s second application for admission was presented within a week of Britain’s, and rejected at the same time. : The bureaucracy cannot provide anything to break Irish capitalism. The general policy of the original Economic Programme did no more than reflect the view of the contemporary establishment economists that Ireland could escape from its existing economic crisis only by increased investment in production. Such investment did not include the means of full scale state capitalism.

The methods employed to raise the money, however, included reduction in social investment, the end of the external reserve backing for currency, foreign investment and reduced direct taxation.

The bureaucracy cannot divorce itself from capitalist methods.

The second Programme gave an inkling of why this should be so. The E.E.C., to which Ireland’s entry was so readily anticipated, is a capitalist institution; even the pseudo-Socialism of state capitalism would be considered inimically by its members. However, there were significant details within the Programme’s limits; notably its readiness to anticipate the greatest measure of rural depopulation since the famine. On the other hand, the second Programme demanded more expenditure on education, social welfare and aid to the underveloped states, but this was subject to the proposed increase in economic growth.

The motive for this conservatism is one of caution. The expansion of bureaucratic power takes place in circumstances that necessitate the maintenance of capitalism both at home and abroad. Since the bureaucracy wants to enter the E.E.C. it cannot attack the countries with which it hopes to ally, all of which maintain capitalist economics. Since it is itself an elite body, it cannot attack Irish capitalism too determinedly for fear of shaking its own power. Above all, international capitalism offers enough incentives to leading bureaucrats not to encourage them to fight against it. At the same time, it is these people and their associates who display most offensively the ubiquitous high-mindedness associated with the statements of the system’s theorists. The Irish people are urged to work (if they can find work); to save (if they can find money) and not to expect too much from their country (they can scarcely have many such illusions). They are asked to do this without question by men unlike many of them in only one thing: these people know whence their next meal will come. This applies now to the minor bureaucrats, as was shown by the govern- 188

ment decisions to ‘save the west’ by arbitrarily moving two departments thither. Such a high-minded action would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.

If the programmes have failed to: dislodge bourgeois hegemony in Irish society, they are succeeding in weakening the constitutional institutions associated with the hegemony. There has been no discussion of the Programmes in Dail Eireann. In fact it appears that the C.I.0. had, and the N.I.E.C. has, more influence on the economy of the country than its elected representatives. At the local level, the authorities have less real power than the Chambers of Commerce. The formers’ new development powers are less limited than before by the national bureaucracy at a time when they have been long deprived of the means to use them. Even the times of local elections are dictated by the Minister for Local Government. Swiftly and silently Ireland has realized, in practice, the dream of the Vocationalists. None of them seems really happy about it. Part of the reason for this is the fact that, since 1957, Ireland has been ruled by the same party. But there is no real reason to suppose that the immediate alternative will be any better.

In another sphere, the fact of class has forced bourgeois and bureaucrat into an unsatisfactory compromise. The bourgeois ethos tends to identify with the farmers among the manipulated.

The bureaucrats endeavour to win the amity of the workers. Economic and political fact makes it impossible to satisfy either.

In foreign policy, the establishment is similarly hobbled. The bourgeois is not enamoured with neutrality and the bureaucrat is against it as it threatens to handicap entry to the E.E.C. In February 1962, the Minister for Lands, Michael O’Morain, hinted as much. More significantly in March 1967 his suggestions were taken up by the prominent Eurocrat, M. Albert Coppé. But events have necessitated the avoidance of clearer action or statement on this matter. While Ireland’s rulers have become increasingly inimical to non-alignment, its ordinary citizens are more favourable to it than before. From 1956, its position in world affairs appeared to be stimulated by its delegation in U.N.O. In July 1960, its soldiers took part in that body’s peace-enforcement in the Congo, despite the protests of such ‘insular leftists’ as Noel Browne. In August, Lemass was careful to emphasize Irish sympathy to N.A.T.O. Then two things happened. In November 1960, the ‘peace-making’ resulted in the death of a force of Irish soldiers. A year later, Conor Cruise O’Brien endeavoured to implement his mandate in Katanga, only to find it sabotaged by N.A.T.O. powers. Admittedly, his resignation enabled the Department of Exter- 189

nal Affairs to tone down practical neutrality. Its circumstances did increase popular support for its forms. This support was encouraged further by the words of John F. Kennedy, on his visit in June 1963, and by their allowing through his murder in November. He praised Irish neutrality; he did not mention what was, by this time, the essential negativity that made it please him. Since then, the War in Vietnam has not encouraged Irish support for the Atlantic Alliance. (The Czech crisis may, partly, encourage it, yet). The situation remains static; the government can twist neutrality as in its refusal to let R.T.E. news team visit Vietnam; it has feared to dispense with it. But, when Ireland applied again for entry to the E.E.C. in 1967 Lynch revived the hints of entry into

N.A.T.O.

The Irish establishment’s only clear victory has been in the sphere of culture. Here, clerical dominance and intellectual elitism have created a climate of opinion unable to withstand the new gutless cosmopolitanism justified by the needs of bureaucratic capitalism. The open property market involves (and, therefore, must justify) the destruction of the Georgian areas of Dublin, and the evacuation of the population of the city centre to the suburbs.

The linguistic needs of international trade create an atmosphere favourable to the weakening of the Irish linguistic revival. Such acts have been achieved entirely on the manipulator’s own level.

These facts (and other aspects of the needs of Irish capitalism that will be considered) have encouraged considerable (as yet, disorganized) agitation to prevent new coercive measures. Police brutality is being alleged with increasing frequency. The government is reacting to criticism by bureaucratic suppression in all spheres that it can influence. A referendum (the second in ten years) has been called to try to end proportional representation and, this time, to weight the vote of the western areas against Dublin. This is being done in the name of ‘strong government’, such as could (though this is not said) attack the trade (and farmers’) unions and, if necessary, the Church; and pass a proposed criminal justice bill that would make it an offence to agitate without police permission — all with immediate impunity. Whether this explains all Fianna Fail’s blatancies is another matter.

The bourgeois-bureaucrat dialogue is continuing in the political sphere. It continues across the division between the two main parties. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who control together 119 of the 144 seats in Dail Eireann.

In Fianna Fail the division is somewhat blurred by two things.

Being the government, all its leading figures tend to be influenced 190

by the state bureaucracy, anyway. Also there is a declining, but still influential, old guard in the party. Its leader is Frank Aiken, Minister for External Affairs and, since, 1965, Tanaiste. It tends to dislike the fact of class and to fry to avoid it intellectually as well as officially. These old Populists still hanker towards Vocationalism. Accordingly, they provide a rather embarrassing backing for the party’s business wing.

In these circumstances the latest struggle for the party leadership was worked out in November 1966. The most prominent candidate was Charles Haughey, Minister for Agriculture, son-in-law of Sean Lemass, of a Fine Gael family. His political strength lies in the fact that he has never allied openly with either section of the Irish Establishment. Unfortunately, he was at this time fighting an open, and embarrassing, struggle with the National Farmers’ Association, This reinforced the cause for opposition to him from the bourgeoisie and the old guard. They backed the candidacy of George Colley, Minister for Industry and Commerce, with an impeccable party background, but who had only entered the government only in April 1965. Rather than succeed to the leadership of a broken party, Haughey retreated to back the candidacy of an older man. This was Sean Lynch, Minister for Finance, prominent less politically than for his prowess as a hurling player, but more deeply associated with Whitaker and the state bureaucracy, than the other candidates. He defeated Colley. As a quid pro quo, Haughey succeeded him at the Department of Finance, in effect becoming heir apparent. There were signs that this did not satisfy his Permanent Secretary. The reason for this appeared in his budget of April 1967.

Apart from certain small increase in welfare benefits, it was a budget essentially bourgeois in tone. Surtax allowances were given to the young executives (though this benefits also the officers of the development bureaux). Increased allowances were offered foreign entrepreneurs. They, and their home opposite numbers, were encouraged to invest in the west of Ireland and thus to raise living standards therein. The actual small farmers were given, at last, freedom of rates from land of under £20 valuation, had their rights to unemployment assistance reinforced, and were given subsidies for farmhouse tourism. (These are, in effect, a dole). There can be little doubt that this budget, and Haughey’s delivery of it, reinforced his position in the Party.

Opposing Lynch is a man even less inspiring, Liam Cosgrave, son of W.T. and Leader of Fine Gael. Unlike Lynch, however, he is not the spokesman of the state bureaucracy, mainly because he 19]

has not been directly associated with that group since 1957. He is essentially an honest broker, presiding over a party wherein the difference between bourgeois and bureaucrat are clearly delineated.

Until April 1965, the Presidency and Parliamentary Leadership of the party were in the hands of the most articulate of agrarian capitalists, James Dillon, who had held the first office from February 1960 and the second from October 1959. He put forward a party policy appealing to the interests of capitalists and farmers, not excluding denunciation of compulsory Irish, but with certain old-style populist attacks on such gaps in the second programme as that of housing. Under Dillon’s leadership, the Party opposed the bureaucratic tendency of the 1965 Land Act and the attack on primogeniture in the 1964 Succession Act. This policy had some success in the West and enabled the party to absorb the remants of Clann na Talmhan. However, it had little success in the urban areas, as was shown in the general election of April 1965, when it actually lost seats there. Accordingly, the party took advantage of Dillon’s ill-health to replace him with Cosgrave who had once remarked that Fine Gael should be ‘left of centre’.

As a result of the change the most hopeful element in the party was its left-wing led by Declan Costello, son of John, an able lawyer but politically a pure idealist. His leftism is that of the American Democratic Party, and he has never gone beyond that party’s position on external affairs; it was his initiative that gave the government the excuse to haver on neutrality. Nonetheless, after bye-election defeats, in May 1964, he produced for his party eight points on which to base a Social Democratic policy. These urged an economic ‘Plan’ (instead of a ‘Programme’), under a Minister for Economic Affairs, that would involve direction of private as well as public concerns, control of banking, state involvement in industry, price control and welfare schemes, financed by direct, rather than indirect, taxation. This crypto-policy was essentially one of economic reform rather than the plan for social transformation that would be needed to put such a scheme into operation. It was little more than the ideas of a liberally-minded bureaucrat. It ignored rural problems. (Costello added one point on this matter to appease Dillon.) It avoided the issues of international trade and finance (although Costello’s ally, Garrett Fitzgerald, is an ardent Common Marketeer). It ignored the reality of capitalist property relations. All these weaknesses were merely magnified in Fine Gael’s programme, Towards a Just Society, as produced for the General Election Campaign of March-April 1965. Although the ‘plan’ remains, such effectiveness as it 192

ae anneal had is to be reduced. ‘Control of banking’ is interpreted as meaning greater control of currency reserves through the Central Bank.

‘State Investment’ is dropped quietly. To top its political effectiveness, most of the more possible of its welfare proposals — most lately the de-rating of small farms — are being adopted by the government. With Dillon’s retirement in favour of Liam Cosgrave as party leader, the reformers hoped for better days. They have been disappointed. Cosgrave has followed a policy of ‘responsible opposition’ which means, in practice, alternating silence and demagogy.

Gerard Sweetman (no friend to Costello) is in charge of organization. On specific issues, the party has failed similarly to protect itself. It sat on the fence over the issue of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area. Its detailed policy on the Irish language is an uneasy comprise between Dillon’s orginal proposals and the language vote. Its most ambitious policy yet, on education, urges merely the revival of the Council of Education, albeit in triplicate, subsidies for free secondary education (which was in its essentials, promptly adopted by the government), and mild encouragement for parent-teacher associations. Such of its proposals on agriculture that have appeared (other than entry to E.E.C.) bear the traces of the thought of the bourgeois wing. The party’s Local Government policy is clearly a weaker form of that of Labour and Sinn Fein. In these circumstances it is not surprising that Declan Costello should allow himself to be guided by his health into preparing to leave politics. He leaves the leadership of the Fine Gael left to three men. Most notable is Thomas O’Higgins, the younger, an amiable man, and almost a successful Presidential candidate in 1966, who learned something about Health during his eleven years as party spokesman on it, but who now speaks on finance. The other Dail leader is Richie Ryan, an amiable lightweight noted mainly for his campaign against fluoridation on ‘medical’ grounds; he is spokesman on Health and Social Welfare.

And in the Seanad sits Garrett Fitzgerald, son of Desmond Fitzgerald, a statistician of considerable ability, who has dedicated his talents to serve the ruling elite. All three are faced by a seemingly insoluble problem: what is possible in their proposals can be used by Fianna Fail; what is impossible can be exposed; they cannot advocate the possibilities inherent in Labour.

The same difficulty faces the smaller conservative groups. None of these has yet won a seat. On the one hand are the Christian parties, Problachta Christoiuil and (the second) Cumann na Poblachta, whose policies are the latest developments of the teachings 193

of Fahey and Hanley. On the other hand is the newly-formed Irish Liberal Party, which is interesting mainly because it brings to public notice fissile tendencies that have been developing for some time within the lay establishment.

However, it now seems that Fine Gael will be in a position after the next general election, where no single party can command a majority in Dail Eireann, in which it can offer coalition terms to the Labour Party. In fact, Fianna Fail may be trying to lose the next general election and to leave a possible inter-party (which will be, of course, capitalist) Government to carry out the unpopular tasks necessary to maintain Irish capitalism, or, at least to ruin things, so that the electorate will turn back with relief to the ‘army of destiny’.

II The Catholic Church The lay establishment’s gradual recognition of the need for economic growth is a factor stimulating re-assessment of Church- State relations, Under present conditions of technology, economic expansion depends on educational efficiency. In turn, this necessitates a careful consideration of the Irish education system.

In the past decade, (and especially since de Valera’s retirement to the Presidency), there have been many such surveys. Most notable is the officially sponsored, comprehensive Jnvestment in Education which appeared in December 1965. These reports give the facts that show that Irish education must be reformed. In 1962-1963, out of 17,459 National school leavers, 28% had passed the Primary school certificate examination, 8% had failed it, 10% were absent from it and 54% were unaccounted for. The causes for this have been made apparent. Two-thirds of Irish National schools (mainly rural ones) involve the employment of not more than two teachers. Thus, there is a discrepancy between the low pupil-teacher ratio of many rural schools and the overcrowding in schools in urban areas. Some 76% of national schools have 38% of the pupils and employ 50% of the teachers. What is more, such onetwo teacher schools are generally ill-equipped: 39% of one-teacher and 34% of two-teacher schools have drinking water. The proportion of schools with flush toilets is still smaller.

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C- 4 y e According to Senator Sean Brosnahan of the I.N.T.O., 700 Irish schools are sub-standard, The curriculum is also a handicap.

Whereas Ireland has the shortest school week in Europe, it gives the largest time (50% more than in Spain) to religious instruction. It is scarcely surprising that the teachers are getting increasingly frustrated and that their frustrations are leading more frequently to open opposition to clerical, as well as to lay, authority.

At the apprenticeship level, a new industrial training authority has proclamed the insufficient training of the bulk of Ireland’s 12,349 apprentices. In these circumstances, the Department of Education has not restricted itself to investigations. In 1958, female National Teachers were again allowed to be married. In 1963, it imposed a reform of the mathematics course and attempted to bridge the gap between vocational and secondary education by joint exam papers and a new system of comprehensive schools to serve isolated areas. Helped by the introduction of Telefis Eireann in 1962, it has encouraged the increased use of audio and visual aids in teaching. In 1964, it initiated grants for school libraries. In 1967, reforms in English text books have been announced. A Language Institute has been set up to improve teaching in this sphere. The Primary Certificate has been replaced by a system of record cards. A system of pilot schools for educational aids has been announced. Under the Second Programme, it is policy to raise the school-leaving age to 15 by 1970. The first decisive step towards this was the introduction of a subsidy towards free places at secondary schools. This has been extended to grants to university students. Yet education policy remains vague on too many points. There is much unofficial scepticism, shared by many teachers, as to the possibility of expanding staff to meet the needs of the new year of compulsory pupils by 1970.

And the claims of education are being advanced hesitantly. The essential irrelevance of the Manager system remains unassailed by public policy. The replacement of lay teachers by clerics in the secondary schools run by the orders increased in rate (in January 1968 46.2% of male teachers in these schools were lay, 38.2% of female teachers were). Furthermore a powerful rearguard action mounted by sections of the clergy against even such necessary reforms as were being introduced was met, at first, by fabian tactics. In 1965-1966, the Bishop of Galway Dr Michael Browne, denounced the policy of fusing the smaller schools as being detrimental to the authority of parish school managers. The then Minister 195

for Education, George Colley, answered defensively and moved to the Department of Industry and Commerce. His successor, Donach O’Malley, was bolder, however. A reluctance amongst clerical teaching orders about entering his subsidized free education scheme was denounced by him openly in the Seanad. Now 93% of such schools have entered the plan. However, it is not yet clear on what terms they have done so; except that there is a proviso for the parents of the pupils concerned to make ‘voluntary’ grants to eke out the subsidies. It seems likely, also, that the numbers of such entrants do not include the most celebrated schools of all. Also, the Protestant secondary schools, with their higher costs from the payment of their teachers, appear discontented. O’Malley’s last move to amalgamate T.C.D. and U.C.D.

(inherited by his successor, Brian Lenihan) has caused most concern amongst the dons involved. However, it looks, in practice, like a somewhat shady compromise by which the archiepiscopal ban on Trinity will be removed, whilst the Church gains a control over it through a governing body weighted with Catholics.

The comparative timorousness (as over the dismissal of John McGahern for writing a banned book) of the teaching organizations is for clear reasons. Their subordinate position in Irish education is allied to their long tradition of conservatism. The latter has been reinforced, if anything, since T. J. O’Connell’s retirement as Secretary of I.N.T.O. in 1948. Governmental timorousness is motivated less obviously. It seems fairly reasonable, however, that the Irish establishment is torn two ways on education: it needs educational reform; it fears to shake the position of the most effective conservative force in the Republic.

Thus, one finds great agitation on the part of members of the establishment on what are essentially fringe changes in Irish education, most notably the teaching of the Irish language. Since those who capitalize on Irish culture are operating within the lay establishment, an attack on their interests would be less catastrophic to it than an attack on those of organized religion.

But educational necessity is only one force working against Catholic power in Ireland. In 1957, an attempt to use the courts to censor the stage came to nothing, and the successful use of archiepiscopal power to prevent theatrical performances in 1958 and 1959 has proved to be an isolated example, at least in Dublin. In January 1962 Telefis Eireann began operations. It was an encouragement for ownership of many television sets. These can be adjusted (if in the north or east) to take British programmes. And even T.E. programmes offer some, though at times crude, alterna- 196

a OL a a ee Se ee a ae a tive to Catholic culture. The film censorship has also been relaxed as regards adult showings. The book censorship is to be amended to limit bans to twenty year periods and to extend the right of appeal. A Constitutional Commission has advised for the legalization of divorce. A new group centred on the magazine Grille, is trying to establish a genuine Christian Socialism.

There are signs that elements in the Catholic Church are trying to adapt it to the new atmosphere, Since 1958, the reign of John XXIII and the conciliar movement have provided new excuses for such activities. Hibernia has been given a more liberal format. Fr Peter Connolly of Maynooth has criticized the censorship objectively. Bigotry (clerical and lay) has to operate in public. In 1965, the Archbishop of Dublin found it necessary to set up a Public Relations Office. In April, 1967, an ecclesiastical Communications Centre was set up in his Archdiocese. In 1966, the Bishop of Clogher tried unsuccessfully to ban post midnight dances in his diocese. In 1968 an advisory council of the laity was set up in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Yet these facts cannot conceal the determination of the Catholic hierarchy to exert its power whenever possible as arbitrarily as before. For an Irish Catholic, attendance at Dublin University is still a mortal sin unless the Archbishop of Dublin has given it his permission (though this may change if O’Malley’s plan materializes). In 1958, Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy was banned (though it has since been adapted to the stage and was shown at the Abbey Theatre), John McGahern has lost his basic means of livelihood for extra-curricula reasons. The Archbishop of Dublin has shown greater readiness to innovate in the spheres of public relations and mass media than in matters that encouraged greater lay participation. As late as May, 1967, a three month prison sentence was imposed on a contraceptives vendor. The plight of Biafra (where Irish Catholic missionaries have a traditional stake) gave the Church an opportunity to regain popularity, aided by independent newspapers. However, this was, in effect, countered by the papal encyclical on contraception.

It is not, therefore, surprising that sectors of the lay establishment should press more actively for a further reduction in clerical power. In December, 1966, a Censorship Reform Society was initiated. In July, 1967, a new body ‘reform’ was founded to end corporal punishment in schools; in June, 1968, it got a Christian Brother sued for cruelty and got a shilling damages for its plaintiffs. In the following October a Dublin Humanist Association was begun. What may be most significent is the founding, the pre- 197

vious March, of an Irish Liberal Party, whose most distinctive aims seem to be a mixture of anticlericalism and L.F.M. such bodies have already given the government the excuse to reform the book censorship; they may encourage it to further harden its secularization policies. In the circumstances, it is just conceivable that the Catholic Church might turn to advocacy of the Encyclicals of the 1960’s on behalf of a new Christian Socialist movement. However, this would be more likely than it is but for two things. Firstly, reforms have to be made in Irish education and such reforms must weaken clerical managerial authority. Secondly, it is difficult to see such a movement being radical enough to overwhelm the protest of the establishment parties. However Irish Catholic power remains strong, although threatened. Accordingly, it can still be counted as a manipulating force in Irish society, and, thus, not yet disruptive. These statements cannot be made so definitely of the next class to be considered.

Ill The small capitalists Dealing with this class currently, as before, one is handicapped by its essential fluidity. Under present conditions it can be said that its more efficient members will tend to merge with larger (foreign or home) firms, while the less efficient ones are forced out of business. This will apply to both small manufacturers and to small shopkeepers. The first have to meet steadily increasing competition from abroad. Since 1963, the second have had their profit margins — already lower than those of their British equivalents — hurt by a turnover tax, while the new trade produced in areas of economic growth has declined in the conditions of the Second Programme. In October 1966 the Irish Management Institute published a survey that discovered that firms employing less than 500 showed little interest in marketing or in work study, and tended to promote by age. Part of the reason for this is that there is less incentive than previously for the enterprising worker to set himself up in business. To counteract this tendency, Colley has given grants specifically to small industries, and the I.D.A. set up, in December 198

ee eee 1967, a special small industries division to encourage industries employing thirty people or less, but this latter service was reserved for rural areas. However, the lack of petty bourgeois enterprise allied to the small capitalist class’s traditional politics and individualism has left it incompetent to organize against the major parties. As a result it declines steadily, in its interests, amorphously and anonymously. IV The farmers Between 1953 and 1961 Exchequer aid for farmers almost trebled.

Between 1958 and 1966 it more than doubled. Despite this, Ireland’s rural population declined from 46% of the total in 1946 to 38% in 1956 and 34% ten years later. The percentage of the national income absorbed by the agricultural sector fell to 21% in the latter year. The percentage of national output supplied by it fell to 22%. Yet agricultural products still made up 56% of all Irish exports. Under capitalist programming it is as clear as ever before that the blame lies with the Irish lay establishment and the imperialism to which it is harnessed. Of course, it can be argued that the actual small farmers are doomed anyway by the unpleasant conditions of their existence. It remains true that policy of the government has continued the errors that marked the agricultural schemes of most of its predecessors.

In so far as the programmes favour agricultural interests, they favour those of the ranchers and (albeit less) of the medium farmers. In Economic Development, Whitaker dismissed the production of agricultural goods other than cattle. The second Programme provided for a 43% increase in the number of cows coupled with a 17% reduction in human farm population: a transformation unseen in scale since the Hungry Forties. In 1964, a subsidy scheme for heifers (since withdrawn) encouraged excessive ranch breeding of calves (at a time of glut to boot) and struck thereby at the small farmers’ major trading support. As yet the outstanding financial aid to the actual smallholders has been Haughey’s gesture in his first Budget of placing them on the dole and 199

the similar grant the next year to small farmers (albeit on a viability basis). Professor Joseph Johnston has remarked on the care given to the tourist roads in Co. Mayo as compared with the neglect of the ways leading to the fishing villages where people live and work.

The relief of the west is expected similarly to be effected by the Government’s uprooting of two Departments (Education and Lands) and sending them thither, and by the movement of the State-sponsored Gaeltacht company, Gaeltarra Eireann, to Co.

Donegal (where it should have been, anyway).

The small farmers are hurt by other results of policy. Continuing dependence on the British market places Ireland as a whole in the position of the smallholders vis-a-vis the buyers of their calves, and thus further weakens the position of the former. Inflation (aided by the turnover tax) has meant that between 1955 and 1967 the prices paid by the farmer for his commodities have risen by between 50% and 110%.

But it is government land policy that exposes its agriculture failings. The basic problem of Irish agriculture has been remarked on by Economic Development as ‘generally speaking the larger the farm size, the smaller output and income per acre, the smaller the income per £100 total output, but the larger the income per unit of labour’. The large farmer has a greater ability to command capital and machinery and to plan the working of a greater area of land than the small man can control. But he need not use these advantages as effectively as the latter must use his. His market is, with all its faults, larger and more certain than the latter’s for reasons of transport and history. Thus Irish agriculture has to grapple with problems of markets and the productivity needed to develop them, the latter including not only mechanisation but the inefficiency and conservatism bred by a system of farm-ownership under primogeniture. The Land Act of 1965 deals with these problems in a conservative fashion. One of its aims is to provide for farm units that can support their owners and his family. The government made it clear then that the one definite qualification of viability was a minimum size of 45 acres. No attempt has made to suggest a maximum size. Nor for years, was there any suggestion of a connection between farm size and farm fertility, possibly because a national soil survey has only recently been begun. Yet when An Foras Taluntais operated such a survey in west County Cork, it reported in 1963 that at least one seventeenth of the farms under 30 acres were viable holdings as were half the farms of 30-100 200

sis af wie a acres. This was in a notably infertile area and one where farmers are excluded, often by sheer ignorance, from claiming subsidies to which they are entitled. In the better land of counties Meath and Kildare the proportions of viable small farms could be much higher. One achievement of the much denounced national agricultural council was to establish viability as the yardstick for farm efficiency. Admittedly, the 45 acre farmer will find it easier than will the smaller man to make savings by large-scale planning and to buy machinery (though inflation makes even this doubtful). Even so, dependence on the principle of the minimum farm size involves the reduction of the numbers of farmers. Thus, the Second Programme may exceed its norm at least in agricultural depopulation.

The needs of productivity are not entirely against depopulation.

Under conditions of absolute ownership, primogeniture has left too large a proportion of Irish soil in unenterprising hands, often of single elderly women. It may be partly for this reason that, although between 1950 and 1960 agricultural productivity rose by 50% as against industry’s rise of 28.5%, the former increase was less than the average rise for all O.E.C.D. countries.

The Land Act endeavoured to deal with this problem in a characteristically bureaucratic spirit. The elderly farmer is offered an annuity to enable him to retire. Efficient landholders are offered loans to buy land to expand their farms. Later, in 1964 in a Succession Bill, an attempt was made to attack the principle of primogeniture. The lawyers; Fine Gael; the N.F.A. and sections of Fianna Fail itself united to denounce this betrayal of the freedom of testation. The Act passed with primogeniture unchanged.

Under such a government it is scarcely surprising that agrarian economists like Joseph Johnston and Raymond Crotty are advocating that real land values be related to ownership by maintaining and expanding the conacre (eleven-month rent) system. This policy is perfectly feasible. However, it has qualities of atomism and social divisiveness that prevent it from being the best possible.

For that one must look elsewhere.

In the Parish of Glencolumbkille, County Donegal, the priest, Fr James McDyer, set himself to combat the emigration of his congregation. He organized the expansion of the area’s facilities and encouraged production of vegetables on his parishioners’ 12acre smallholdings. This was not enough; by 1961 his parish saw the departure of the last of its unmarried girls between the ages of 16 to 36. More ambitious schemes were needed. Already a proposal for a parish marketing co-operative had failed because of 201

government opposition. Now McDyer made a new attempt. He offered to sell a greater supply of vegetables to a private canning company. The offer was rejected. However, aided by his Bishop and by the veteran Socialist Republican, Peadar O’Donnell, he signed a contract to sell vegetables on a large-scale with the then Chairman of the Irish Sugar Company, Major-General Michael Costello. Helped by money supplied by emigrants from Donegal, he supervised the co-operative working of a few plots of land to grow the vegetables on an economic basis. The scheme has been a success, The collective has been expanded throughout the parish.

It has made economics of production such as no 45-acre farm could. The Charlestown Conference has developed to expand the Glencolumbkille ideal throughout the small farm areas. In May 1965, Fr McDyer was elected to the Committee of the I.A.O.S. In September, 1966 he was released from parish work to act full time in the cause of co-operation.

Governmental reaction has been less than enthusiastic. The Small Farms Committee that is to decide the fate of the western regions insists in giving grants to individual farms rather than to communities. Its sub-committee set up to look into the formation of similar ‘pilot area’ schemes elsewhere in the west turned down Fr McDyer’s proposals as ‘involving too much regimentation’. It also advised to continue the individualist nature of the grants even within the pilot areas. A grant for a food processing factory for Glencolumbkille was allowed only on condition that 50% of the products were exported and was then held up for two years. The Sugar Company’s subsidiary, Erin Foods Ltd., that markets Glencolumbkille’s vegetables was losing money so that it found it necessary to associate with Britain’s H. J. Heinz Co. to expand the export market. Lemass’ stated policy for the west (which his successors are continuing) does not go beyond the pilot areas as far as co-operation is concerned. And in September-October 1966, Costello was forced to resign as Chairman of the Sugar Company. But co-operation has to be extended. It is the best way for the farmers to obtain markets for their produce and offers them some security in them. Thus in 1961, the Report of a Commission Concerning Small Western Farms urged the encouragement of the cooperative spirit in its area of reference. In 1964, another report, of the American expert, Dr Joseph Knapp, urged the greater encouragement of the co-operative spirit in the 1.A.O.S. The government itself is prepared to encourage co-operation as long as it does not Override property ‘rights’. Thus the Knapp report is accepted en- 202

thusiastically. In the west, however, the state’s attitude towards the small farms remains that of pilot areas and the I.A.O.S. and Muintir na Tire outside them, while encouraging individual accumulation of land and paying dole to the smallest farmers.

Similar lack of enthusiasm is shown by the administration as regards the valuable work done by a Muintir na Tire survey group in Co. Limerick. Begun in 1958, it gained an immediate and valuable stimulus from a paper read by Dr Jeremiah Newman of Maynooth seminary. He pointed out that similar investigations in Britain and in the Netherlands showed that urban growth was encouraged by lack of rural amenities. He deduced that it would appear that a balanced population can only be maintained by the creation of (‘rurban areas’) of large village units on a six mile radius of towns of 1,000 population. The survey’s annual reports have vindicated this view and thus provided both a valuable complement to the Glencolumbkille ideal and an important argument for the expansion of light industry.

Economics seem to have limited the project to its single county.

Although the government has at last set on foot Soil and Ordinance Surveys, it has done nothing to establish a National Social Survey to do for the whole national area what the Limerick Survey has done for its County. Otherwise its policy is somewhat schizophrenic. Until December 1966, it appeared to have replaced the old politics of general distribution of industry by ones of concentration on large industrial estates in a very limited number of areas, starting with Shannon Airport and, now, with the cities of Galway and Waterford. However, Colley has initiated his small industries branch of the I.D.A. to attempt to reverse this policy slightly. Whether industries employing less than thirty people can be supplied in sufficient numbers to adequately employ the populace of ‘rurban’ area centres is another matter. Also, without a National Survey, there can be no criteria for industrial distribution.

Yet, earlier in December 1966, Nathaniel Lichfield, governmentappointed planner for the Limerick area produced his own plan; it ignored the work of the Survey.

The smali farmers’ reaction to their predicament has changed over the past decade. In 1957, they were still ready to ally with the Populism of Sinn Fein. In the same year, Father John Fahey, a veteran of the anti-annuity agitation, participated in the founding of Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny), a movement directed against land purchases by foreigners. These moves were doomed to frustration. The failure of the Sinn Fein T.D.’s to take their seats or, indeed, to do anything constructive for their constituents resulted 203

in their defeat in the general election of October, 1961. Similarly, Lia Fail has been isolated and unable to combat the tendencies that move the small farmer to ally with the forces of the right.

One of these was the continunace of the N.F.A. However, this was encouraged by the increasing distress of the larger farmers. In 1958, the U.K. reduced its quota of Irish butter. In 1959, its entry to E.F.T.A. involved its reduction of tariffs on Danish dairy and pig produce. The ensuing agricultural depression was partially eneded by a new Anglo-Irish trade agreement the following year.

However, in 1964, the new British Labour government imposed unilaterally a 10% import levy that covered Irish products. The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area agreement benefited mainly the abattoirs and the textile factories. At the same time many large farmers suffered from inflation and the fall of real agricultural prices. They became increasingly concerned to help the small farmer as their most possible and numerous ally. The N.F.A.

pushed ahead with co-operative cattle marts despite the protests of the livestock exporters. In 1958, it initiated a supplementary farm credit scheme in co-operation with the banks. In February, 1964, it published its Green Book which included a special section devoted to reform to aid the small farmer. Its leaders denounced the foreign purchase of lands until such purchases were more rigorously controlled in October, 1964.

At the same time, a number of business interests have moved to help the farmers, such a step being better business. It was natural, in 1958, for Gouldings, the fertilizer firm, to offer farmers special credit terms. The next year, the banks co-operated with the A.C.C. and the N.F.A. to carry out the latter’s comprehensive credit plan. These factors, allied to the natural mistrust felt by rural property-owners for organized labour, encouraged the rightward political move of the small farmers. In October, 1959, it was justified by Fine Gael’s choice of James Dillon as Parliamentary Leader and, later as Party President. Under his leadership Fine Gael augmented its strength in the small farm areas. It swallowed Clann na Talmhan. In the General election of April 1965, its gains in the west almost offset its urban losses. But Dillon’s prompt retirement and the succession to him of Liam Cosgrave’s more urban figure seems to have weakened the trend. In June 1966, the majorities gained for T. F. O’Higgins’s Presidential candidacy were predominently urban. In the following December Fine Gael did no more than hold its vote in bye-elections in Co. Waterford and South Co. Kerry. But in 1967 the party did make major gains in the lo- 204

cal elections outside Dublin City, though these appear to be the focal rationalizing of Dillonite popularity at the expense of minor groups. But the true expressor of farmer-conservatism is the National Farmers’ Association. Its basic weaknesses remain unchanged. Led by the larger farmers, it tries to help the small holder on their terms. It accepted the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area, and its line on the E.E.C, is the same as Fine Gael. It needs must support Glencolumbkille, but it certainly does not consider its example worthy of emulation. Indeed, its concept of co-operation is guided by the vertical commodity marketing principle of the I.A.O.S.

It is not anti-rancher, only anti-foreign rancher. It backs the exporter of cattle against the exporter of meat. It accepts the minimum farm size, and one, at least, of its more prominent figures looks forward openly to the 100-acre average farm unit. Towards urban labour its leaders and supporters have appeared generally antipathetic and they have openly supported governmentimposed wage freezes, without mentioning profits. All this amounts to mere aspects of the N.F.A.’s essential respectability.

Its ‘Small Farms Development Plan’ is an attempt to help the small farmer without hurting the larger one: in fact by keeping | the former in a subordinate position. Its other demands express its desire to restore and to formalize (by rancher-dominated marketing boards, most notably in meat) the big farmers’ old alliance within the establishment. But that now includes the new business groups (notably the slaughterers) whose interests lie in exploiting even the large farmers and who are nearer the government than they. But there are smaller bodies whose demands and tactics push the N.F.A. further than it would like. They are the commodity organizations, the Irish Beet-Growers’ Association and, most importantly, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association. The latter body clashes most often with the N.F.A. By it, it is denounced as sectional and as ‘catering for a minority’ although, on both Associations’ estimated membership figures, it seems only to have 22,000 members less than its rival. It had, also, the prestige of employing as its adviser Raymond Crotty, perhaps Ireland’s greatest agrarian economist. This is not to say that its demands are exceptionally progressive. In fact they do not go beyond the essentially Distributist development of Clann na Talmhan theory, in a demand for graduated government subsidies to benefit the small dairy farmer. But the Association has been naturally ready to embarrass the government. 205

In May 1966, the I.C.M.S.A.’s action in picketing Dail Eireann won its members an increase in the price of milk. This success helped galvanize the N.F.A. into activity. In October it organized a number of protest marches from all agricultural regions to converge on Dublin, where it staged a sit-down outside the Department of Agriculture. The following January N.F.A. members blocked roads with their agricultural machinery. They were ordered to pay fines for obstruction and imprisoned when they refused. Against this counter-attack the Association organized a rates strike and a strike in supplies of agricultural commodities.

Now they are boycotting a newly-established National Agricultural Council because it does not recognize their claims for dominant representation thereon. However, the I.C.M.S.A.,_ the I1.B.A.A. and General Costello (a vigorous critic of economic _ policy since October 1966) have taken seats. Meanwhile the Government impounded the goods of N.F.A. members in lieu of fines and backpayment of rates, thus forcing the N.F.A. to end its ‘norates’ campaign. As a final move, the N.F.A. claims to be turning its attention to a full scale National Co-operative Agricultural Marketing Organization, through an Agricultural Development Trust. Yet the government seems determined to maintain the fight. It has passed an Act giving the Minister for Agriculture powers over the livestock marts. And this was supported by the N.A.C. Since then it has removed N.F.A. nominees from Agricultural boards. In return, the N.F.A. (backed by Fine Gael-dominated rural councils) has taken over the Beet Growers’ Association and removed its representative from the N.A.C. This success has led to a new front with the I.C.M.S.A. against the government. The organizations are in a strong position. Though the N.F.A.’s aim (to keep the small farmer from coveting its leaders’ lands) is the same as the government’s, it can offer the farmers more. The government had to balance the claims of an urban labour too. The farmers are thus divided, and not according to interest.

This is by their own errors as much as anything. The fact should not be welcomed. Wrong-headed though their attitudes (and those of such supporters as General Costello) may be, their struggle has shaken the Irish Establishment. It should be supported, critically, by all with an interest in that group’s defeat. However, complete support (through such bodies as the workers-farmers credit movement, Dochas) should be given the collectives. They attack the property nexus; they are thus a force for rural liberation.

As regards Irish fisheries, the outlook is slightly less grim. Dur- 206

ing Erskine Childers’s period (1957-1959) at the Department of Lands and, later, (1961-1964) when Brian Lenihan was Under- Secretary there, the administration of the Department of Fisheries was rationalized and grants to fishermen increased. Also, it is one sphere where co-operation in production has been able to develop swiftly. Unfortunately, these changes remain inadequate for Irish seafishing. It is still under-capitalized, and has far to expand before it can compete adequately with foreign trawling interests.

(France’s Credit Naval Loan of £5,000,000 and Norway’s £3,000,000 Loan to B.I.M. may help repair this). Yet, between 1963 and 1967 fish sales rose 35%.

Vv Labour It is fair to say that the N.F.A.’s denunciations of the workingclass have some economic basis. The latter was hurt by inflation absolutely less than the farmers. Between 1960 and 1966, while the latter had the real value of their prices steadily eroded, industrial wages per hour rose by 43.6% as against a rise in consumer prices of 16.9%. Even so, the urban wage-earner remains a member of a manipulated class. Its share of the national income is declining; between 1958 and 1961 profits rose by 46% as against the wages rise of 24%: between 1960 and 1966 they rose by 54%. In October, 1967, Ireland’s total manufacturing wage level was revealed as Europe’s lowest. After a sudden drastic rise between 1958 and 1960, the Republic’s total H.P. debt has fallen steadily.

Between 1958 and 1965, the government experimented with uncontrolled prices only to be forced to restore controls in July 1965, as a reaction against a developing price spiral. The latter was itself encouraged, in part, by government policy with its tendency towards reducing direct in favour of indirect taxation. The most obvious move in this direction is the inclusive 2.5% turnover tax, introduced in 1963. In addition, a selective 5% wholesale tax has been imposed in June 1966 and taxes on spending have risen in successive budgets since 1957. Thus, although wages in Ireland are (understandably) lower than wages in Britain, the cost of living is somewhat higher. 207

The discrepancy between the general level of public spending and its level on specific social welfare schemes has been mentioned already. Furthermore, whereas Italy has a per capita income equal to that of Ireland, its spending’on social welfare is nearly 50% higher. The Second Programme promised large scale increases in social welfare such as would further extend civil service powers. But these increases have had to have their scope reduced because of the unprogrammed recession.

That the recession had this result is more significant in that, though unemployment decreased during the first six years of programming; it has risen steadily since then and stands now at its 1958 figure. But the regime’s most important social failure has been in housing. Under Neil Blaney, Minister for Local Government from 1958 to 1966, bureaucratic capitalism is revealed in all its illogicality. In 1958, ground rent was restricted to one sixth of the gross.

Then, in 1960, rent restriction was ended for many dwellings. The former distorted the free enterprise price system: the latter pandered to it, With the restriction of ground rent allied to the continuing rural exodus to Dublin, demand for houses esceeded the supply and ground landlords had no incentive to let land for building. Two other factors complicated matters. Government policy involved the freedom of companies to build offices. They offered a better rent than housing did. At the same time, productive investment did not include investment in housing. Although, under the second Programme, the numbers of houses built doubled, Ireland has remained less productive in this sphere than most other countries, who have similarly increased their house building from a greater starting-figure. In 1964, fewer houses were built in the Republic of Ireland than in the north-east. In 1965, the increase in building was the lowest in Europe. In 1966-1967, the numbers fell slightly.

(Since then they have risen slightly.) The situation provided a new excuse for bureaucratic expansion. Already, a Planning Act had effectively weakened local control over environment by ordering the ill-equipped local authorities to plan swiftly or surrender power.

Now, in 1965, though a Housing Act provided £20,000,000 to raise the house-building average, it used the same techniques to centralize the direction of daily policy. Few who have considered the local problem are in any doubt that this means, in practice, bureaucratic imposition of out-dated zoning techniques (themselves invoked to try to regulate the price of land) and the resultant moving of population to suburbs and increased commuting. It may build houses, but since ground rents are still pegged and no sub- 208

stitute is offered save a doubtful plan to expand their purchase by the ground tenants, this will be handicapped. And whatever may be said against Sean T, O’Ceallaigh and Tadgh Murphy, their plans of urban renewal resulted in house-building where the need was greatest: not on virgin ground.

Finally, there is a point not necessary to the Programmes but significant about their anti-worker bias. Unlike in Britain, workers’ co-operatives do not receive tax concessions.

In these circumstances, the fact (mentioned in the English journal Psychiatry recently) that Ireland has the highest rate of hospitallized mental illness in the world does not amaze one.

More rational is the fact that there has developed in Ireland since 1963 a considerable rise in the volume of labour unrest. In 1965, more man hours were lost than in any one year since 1945. In 1964 and 1965, Ireland had the highest rate of strikes in the (tabulated) world: in 1966, it had the third highest.

The government reacted. In July, 1966, a Department of Labour was founded. Its first Minister, Dr Patrick Hillery, had already’ spread word of proposals for closer state control of worker-management relations. These included the up-grading of the Labour Court to be a Court of final appeal, with all officials appointed by the Department of Labour and its verdicts to be related mainly to the ‘National Interest’. Other proposals would limit the legality of the strike to occasions where it had been passed by secret ballot, treble the cost of the negotiating licence and prevent trade union expelees from entering a new union for six months. Official trade union reaction was cautious at first. Talks proceeded with Hillery. They were said to have managed to dispense with the Labour Court proposals. However, the most significant idea that has appeared from the talks was a revival of the unconstitutional proposals of the 1941 Trade Union Act. This would limit negotiating and striking powers in any industry to unions representing 60% of the workers therein. On this being publicized, the rank and file reacted so that the trade union leadership had to withdraw from the discussions.

The initial cause for this was the fact that, on February 10th, 1959, the Provisional United Trade Union Organization gave place to an Irish Congress of Trade Unions. This unites fully both C.1I.U. and LT.U.C.; British-based trade unions are represented only according to the numbers of their Irish members. To preserve this unity has tended to be the chief aim of the left wing of the I.C.T.U. As a result, member unions whose official policy 209

might alienate militants can count on a wide latitude. Another event strengthened this tendency. In 1961, the Supreme Court decided (Educational Company of Ireland v Fitzpatrick) that picketing to maintain a closed shop might be unconstitutional. Accordingly, the I.C.T.U. strengthened its authority to protect those of its affiliated unions that were, for any reason, threatened by rivals ‘poaching’ of their members. Similarly, in 1963 it declared itself hostile to breakaway union bodies. However, in an attempt to protect union membership as well as unions, it established, also, a body to hear appeals from disaffected trade unionists.

And the establishment itself offers inducements to trade union leaders to act ‘responsibly’ (towards it). The creation first of the C.1.O., then of the N.IE.C. gave them permanent officialdom within. During his two years (1962-1964) in Ireland, Dr Edward Nevin never heard a trade union official use the term ‘just strike’, however good the cause. Increased conservatism under present conditions has encouraged what the I.C.T.U. leaders are trying to avoid. Poaching and breakaway trade unions appear with maximum publicity. In 1962, the E.T.U.(1) was expelled for poaching though it has amalgamated since then with an affiliated union, and has gained re-admission thereby. In 1963, a National Busmen’s Union was formed from busmen disaffected with the I.T.G.W.U. In 1965, an Irish Telephonists’ Association was formed of telephonists similarly disgruntled with the Post Office Workers’ Union. In 1966, an Irish Post Office Officials’ Association appeared, composed of other breakaways, and with, as its Secretary, the redoubtable Jack Mac- Quillan. The influence of these unions (despite the ‘one big union’ ideal) has encouraged militancy among the members of the older bodies and has forced the bureaucrats thereof into reluctant activity.

Another factor in trade union militancy has been the open hostility of certain companies brought in under the Programmes — most notably the American E.I.C.O., at the Shannon Estate.

The workers’ importance would be stronger had they any clear political alternative to the lay establishment. As it is, the majority of them vote Fianna Fail, and even Fine Gael’s working class vote seems comparable to that of the Labour Party.

This is the more regrettable in that it is the workers as a class who have the fewest vested interests in preserving the present system. Farmers and petty bourgeoisie are propertied classes that possess definite stakes in it. Thus, although they may be hurt by its working out, they will not try to alter the social structure. The small farmer fears for his one remaining probable market, and, as 210

yet, dislikes the idea of co-operative working of his land. That it is his land, and not a landlord’s diminishes his radicalism further.

The small businessman is inhibited by the fact that, as the most obvious product of the present order he would be doomed by its disappearance. Both the last named are the last atomized individuals in contemporary society. The Church may trim to the wind: it cannot change it. Only the worker is subjectively, as well as objectively, opposed to the manipulators. Although sections of the other classes may ally with him, the struggle for social change is primarily his. In his task he faces major obstacles. Two of these have been mentioned already. Education is controlled by the Church, The trade union leaders’ integrity is threatened by circumstance.

And there are the media of mass communication. There are three daily newspapers in Dublin, one in Cork. Of these, the Irish Press is the de Valera fief, the Irish Independent and the Cork Examiner tend toward clerical Fine Gaelism and the Jrish Times represents well enough the liquid liberalism of a sector of the Protestant bourgeoisie. Of them all, the last-named has the most progressive record in recent years: it has to expand its circulation and looks to the workers to do so. But its radicalism is confused, atomistic and unduly respectable: it fears any extra-parliamentary means of change. The Radio-Television system, Radio-Telefis Eireann, a public corporation since 1960, tends to lean over backwards not to embarrass the government.

When the worker has surmounted these barriers he is faced with the choice of political method. On the one hand, there are the parties that advocate a transformation into Socialism. On the other hand there is Sinn Fein — Clann na Poblachta died in September 1965. Sinn Fein is not a Socialist body, but it includes So- Cialists who work within it to change society to provide foundations on which Socialism can be built.

By the end of 1961, it was clear that the Republican Campaign of the 1950s had failed. In the general election of October Sinn Fein had lost its four seats in Dail Eireann. Saor Uladh and its associated bodies had disappeared; many of their members joining the Labour Party or the Brownite N.P.D. Finally, on February 26th 1962, the I.R.A. ended its campaign. The movement entered into a period of reappraisal. In 1961 MacLogan was succeeded as President of Sinn Fein by Tomas MacGiolla (Thomas Gill), grandson of an Irish Parliamentary Party M.P. who became secretary to the D.A.T.I. MacGiolla encouraged new men with social ideas to enter the party. This trend was expressed 211

through the United Irishman after January 1965, when Cathal Goulding became editor. All this attracted a number of Socialist intellectuals who had been repelled by the I.W.P. Headed by Dr Roy Johnston they had founded the Wolfe Tone Society in 1963, following the bicentenary of Tone’s birth. This society sought to work out a synthesis of Republican Populism and Socialism, and included members of both Sinn Fein and of the working-class parties. But its main appeal has been in fact Republican rather than Socialist: of its founders, Johnston was elected to the Ard-Chomarle of Sinn Fein in November 1966. He has taken a major part in encouraging the party’s setting-up of committees to work out new policies and in the deliberations of those committees. The first of these announced a policy for the local elections: a competent piece of rightist Social Democracy. Sinn Fein made no breakthrough in the elections. But perhaps the most important pending policy change is in the moves afoot to end its principle of abstention from Dail Eireann. But Sinn Fein’s essential nature is unchanged. It possesses still a powerful right wing with few social ideas and xenophobic aspirations. And, indeed, the policy of its left is essentially as Populist as that of Fianna Fail in 1931 and Clann na Poblachta in 1947.

Johnston and his support base their tactics on the necessity for a national revolution against imperialist control of Ireland. such as will create the circumstances for a Socialist takeover thereof. It is not clear whether they consider such circumstances to be general confusion or a new order that would involve a decisively weakened Irish capitalism. This failing has not prevented the Wolfe Tone Society from working out valuable descriptive analyses of the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area and of the E.E.C. However, it does inhibit its proposals for avoiding these from exceeding the limits of the traditional Irish capitalist Republicanism that has made such diminishing returns from Irish public opinion.

The Wolfe Tone Society’s ten points for a Republican alternative to entry to the E.E.C. make up a rather Jess radical programme, for its time, than that of the young Fianna Fail. Credit is to be controlled; (The question of ‘how’ is unanswered); home capital will be repatriated and foreign investment limited; taxation and social security will be reformed equitably; tariffs are promised where necessary; the language restoration will be encouraged to strengthen the Republic culturally. Two new points arise out of growing Republican association with the Charlestown Conference and the farmers’ and fishermen’s co-operatives; such are to be encouraged and social life must be democratized. How 212

—— ee ee a ee eee ee eee — this will be done after an elitist putsch — such as a purely nationalist revolt must be today — is not stated.

Thus, in practice, the new Leadership is becoming increasingly constitutional, trying to vary its urban appeal between labour and bourgeois. Its concentration is on isolated social problems, such as housing and the nationalization of inland fisheries — an odd contrast to Saor Eire’s emphasis on unemployment and annuities.

Its motivation is still chauvinist as far as the rank and file are concerned, as is shown by the fact that the greatest mass arrests of members are still made over ‘pure’ national issues. All this means is that the new Republicans may have a part to play in softening up Irish capitalism in the rural areas and give valuable service in denouncing imperialism. It cannot provide a viable Irish alternative. However, Sinn Fein’s importance does not lie so much in its possible radicalism as in its association with the one remaining unauthorized military organization — the I.R.A. This body’s existence ensures that a recognizable Republican Movement is unlikely to be suppressed without civil war. Unfortunately, the ideological confusion of Orthodox Republicans means that the Army Council could direct its forces to remain neutral in a struggle between the Irish State and Irish Socialism, This situation may be met in one of two ways: a Socialist Citizen Army may be revived and/or a Socialist-Republican rapprochement may yet be achieved.

Of the working class bodies in the Republic of Ireland, four are avowedly Communist. Strangely enough, they tend to agree with Johnston in awaiting Republicanism before Socialism, partly because their numbers are certainly too small to achieve Socialism under present circumstances. The Irish Workers’ Party (until 1962, the Irish Workers’ League) can justify this stand by its officially Utopian concept of Socialism. The other organizations are less logical, as they regard Stalin’s Russia, and now Mao’s China, as examples of Socialism in the making. The former group is the older of the two and takes an orthodox ‘Russian’ communist line.

Its perennial candidate for Dail Eireann, Michael O’Riordan, loses his deposit each time he contests his chosen constituency. However, it provided a valuable role when, in 1966, it acted as godfather to a new Socialist youth body. This has acted as a stimulus to youth action by itself and similar youth bodies. The other groups are Maoist in theory — the more effective in practice, the less Maoist.

In these circumstances the Labour Party appears to be the probably political instrument for Irish radical change. It represents more real support than any other left-wing body. It has the affilia- 213

j tion of many trade unions for all their leaders’ faults, the truest economic expressions of working-class ideals. These affiliations include that of the W.U.I. and, now, of the I.T.G.W.U., the second largest and the largest Irish trade unions. These facts make it impossible to ignore Labour; it is the largest political body orientated to the working-class, such as can, alone, take power for radical objectives. But will it? Will it not betray the workers, as in 1942, 1948 and 1954? Certainly this is possible, but it is less probable than in the years before 1957. In March of that year, the catastrophic election result placed Norton in difficulties. He could maintain himself in power only by recourse to his constituency’s dominating votes at the annual Party Conference. In March, 1960, he gave up the struggle in favour of Brendan Corish, Minister for Social Welfare in the second Inter-Party Government and possessor of a right-of-centre record. Corish has proved to be better than expected. His amiable manner conceals an intelligent political mind, vitiated only by lethargy. Not only did he declare in an interview with Hibernia in December, 1960, that he would not oppose the Party Conference’s decisions, he has acted according to this principle. He has also encouraged the entrance into the party of new men and has encouraged them to take a major part in its working. In October, 1961, the Labour Party gained four seats in Dail Eireann.

But the most decisive step in its advance was its fusion with the National Progressive Democrats in November, 1963. This event was greater than the admission of two deputies; in fact, both lost their seats in the general election of April, 1965. What was important was that Browne’s entrance to the party has encouraged the entry of many determined people who are, at once, ready to work for it, opposed to conditions, and sufficiently patient to wait for long enough to ensure a government with a social revolutionary programme. To this was added the affiliation of the W.U.I. in 1964. The two facts combined to give the party twenty-two seats in the general election of April, 1965. This number is more than at any time since 1927. And it includes five seats in Dublin City, won, mainly, from the Independents elected after the debacle of the second coalition. This is more than it held ever before. The recent affiliation of the I1.T.G.W.U. will help it more, as the pin-pricks of the Government against the latter show it recognizes.

The growing strength of the left-wing of the Labour Party has 214

not been opposed adequately by any sort of organized right. William Norton died in December, 1963,; without him the right has lacked his intelligence, character and prestige. The most sustained claim to lead it was made by Proinsias Mac Aonghusa (Francis MacGuinness) originally a protegé of Corish and, from 1964 to 1966, Vice-Chairman of the Party. His basic philosophy is Social Democratic: the bureaucratic idealism of the left wings of Fianna Fail and of Fine Gael. But he was handicapped from developing it by a vague recognition that the main parties could always out-do the credible aspects of such policies. He pleased no one, found himself too isolated to continue as Vice-Chairman and ended by being expelled from the party in January, 1967. Today, some fear lest Labour’s Political Director (a post that itself represents progress), and, since December, 1967, Secretary, Brendan Halligan, might become the new leader of its right-wing. In certain matters, there is evidence for this: Mr Halligan has cosmopolitan tendencies as was shown by his welcome for the Heinz Erin Agreement and his membership of the Irish Council of the European Movement, both expressions of international capitalism. In the Labour Party, the right must be less intellectual than emotional; merely Social Democratic policies will place Labour in relation to Fine Gael, as Fine Gael is to Fianna Fail.

Yet the party appears, still, to be a negative body. Many were alienated from it by its failure not simply to contest the Presidential election of June 1966 but to put across their definite point of view on the matter to any adequate length.

The disappointment was expressed in the bye-elections, in the following December, in County Waterford and south County Kerry where, despite good candidates, Labour finished an ignominious third. Other elements of this negative image included the failure to produce worthwhile and co-ordinated policies. A local government manifesto rather more moderate than Sinn Fein’s contributed to a loss of labour seats in the local election, outside Dublin city where it could only increase its vote. Its present draft pol- | icies are somewhat to the left of this, but are still unduly limited: notably on credit and agriculture. Mac Aonghusa’s expulsion had unpleasant overtones of Skeffington’s, which were emphasized duly by the newspapers. And McQuillan’s expulsion from the parliamentary Labour Party, and his subsequent resignation from the national body, was still more obvious, since it hit at hopes of growth west of the Shannon.

These apparent faults are merely symptoms of the party’s traditional weaknesses. These are being gradually rectified but much 215

remains to do. A monthly newspaper, Labour News, was begun in October, 1965, it was then published as Labour, but still no more than a monthly and it has since died. Until the appointment of a Political Director in March 1967, the Party Central Office was staffed by a full-time Party Secretary and typist and various part-time officials. And, although Labour’s universities branches are the best of their kind, and there is less hostility to intellectuals than Brian Inglis found in the 1940s, the party has yet to learn how to use in a Socialist fashion the talent that it has.

This is seen in the Oireachtas party. Although its T.D.s do not include relatively as large numbers of inheritors as the bourgeois parties, those it has, notably until December, 1967, Patrick Norton, son of William, tend to provide a jarring contrast to the party as a whole. The parochial attitudes, of T.D.’s, and the unduly easygoing strategy that this encourages has been criticized also, And too many T.D.s are too selfish. When Norton died, his son failed to hold his seat in the subsequent bye-election; fearing potential rivals, his father had failed to put up the ‘second string’ candidate from a doubtful part of the constituency, such as P.R. necessitates. Yet Patrick Norton refused similarly to take a ‘second string’ in 1965. Party leaders are aware of this weakness and are combating it. In several speeches, Corish has promised that at least two candidates will fight all constituencies in the next general election. However, Corish himself showed an eagerness shocking to his followers in accepting a rise in Dail salaries in June 1968 and in July 1968 Frank Cluskey T.D. relied on Fine Gael support to be elected Lord Mayor of Dublin.

But, even if the party does grow (alone or in alliance with Sinn Fein) it is faced with many exterior problems. There is education — there is the mass media, More immediately, there are the questions of appeal. The small farmers’ continuing hostility to Labour lost MacQuillan his seat in 1965, Fianne Fail has a continuing strong traditional claim on working-class loyalty. Above all there are the superior advantages held by demagogic T.D.s of all or no parties, in promising their constituents anything they want. However, the last general election results seem to show that the partiers can outspend independents. There are further dangers. In 1959, Fianna Fail tried to carry the abolition of P.R. under cover of the Presidential election. De Valera’s popularity failed to prevail in this matter against the combined opposition of all other parties and the trade unions.

Now the Government is trying not only to abolish P.R. again but to strengthen the representation in its traditional strongpoint, the 216