CHAPTER FOUR: 'COME IN A GALE; GO IN A STORM' 1923-1932

CHAPTER FOUR

COMEINAGALE: GOINASTORM

1923*+1932 We cry because We hate you so You know! You very wicked peers! Don't go!

WS. Gilbert: Jolanthe, Act I I Politics — home and abroad Sinn Fein’s Treatyite wing did not organize itself as a political party until the Civil War was in its last months, by when hope of reuniting had been long abandoned. The new body took the name of Griffith’s original foundation: ‘Cumann na nGaedhael’. ‘Sinn Fein’ was adopted by Cumann na Poblachta which still pledged its loyalty to de Valera. He was styled ‘President’ of the ‘Irish Republic’ of which the ‘Second Dail’ was held by them still to be the de jure legislature. In the general election of August 1923 Cumann na nGaedhael won 63 seats out of 153. Sinn Fein’s 44 T.D.s revived the Hungarian policy on behalf of the ‘Second Dail’. Thus, in practice, the former party had an overall majority.

It backed an Executive Council pledged to organize Irish society from above as it had restored the Irish central political authority. The struggle for the latter had magnified the difficulties of the former. The Civil War had squandered a vast, albeit uncertain, sum of money. It had added a bitterness to the Saorstat’s constitutional disagreements so that they could never be made up by Cumann na nGaedhael. Above all, it had postponed, and had thus made less tractable, the serious consideration of problems that 72

would have existed anyway.

First amongst these was the existence of Northern Ireland. This included what had been (in the 1911 census) nearly one-third of Ireland’s population, one fifth of its area, 40% of its taxable capacity and the bulk of its industry.

This loss aggravated existing deficiencies in the Saorstat’s economy. It lacked natural reserves of minerals and nonagricultural raw materials, Technical education was negligible outside the cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. There was a similar dearth of efficient managers and effective merchants. The consumer price index was higher than in 1914 by more than twice as much as the agricultural price index. On top of all, many chose to act as if the Civil War was still being waged. In these circumstances, both capital and labour had strong incentives to quit the country.

And, for several winters more, starvation would recur in areas of the west. How such problems would have solutions attempted might be foreseen. The Treatyite party backed solidly by the elitist triple alliance of Church, Business and Bureaucracy: Altar, Till and Filing Cabinet. Admittedly, tensions existed between the three. The Catholic Church’s influence was limited, at first, by the position of the Unionist firms that maintained the Anglo-Irish market. The expansion of the bureaucracy was countered by the spheres of Church and business. The latter was the least demanding of the groups, yet events would prove it had to maintain a certain, low, standard of efficiency, or be supplanted by the bureaucracy. But clashes were exceptional; unity was the rule, especially when faced with the demands of the democracy, as already in the soviets and trade unions, and now in local government.

Cumann na nGaedhael accepted this. Most of its Deputies were, in background and weltanschauungen, like their predecessors of the Republican Dails (if indeed, they were not themselves of those assemblies). But Dail Eireann procedure ensured considerable powers to its Executive Council vis-a-vis the ordinary T.D. This strength was increased gradually. The one major power possessed by the Dail as a whole was its duty to refuse its dissolution at the request of a defeated Executive Council. And this was to be used in 1930 to restore to power such a government.

This body had as its. President, one William Thomas Cosgrave, a little man, notable mainly for his Civil Service appointments.

Before 1916 he had been, as a councillor on the Dublin Corporation, associated with the activities of his Labour colleagues. In the 73

Republican Dails he had been able to make a mark as Minister for Local Government. But neither he, nor his Minister for Defence, General Richard Mulcahy, had much clear idea of the sort of country they wished to establish beyond the Sinn Fein national bourgeois demands, at which they were to stop with dedicated obstinacy. The Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe, could offer to transcend them only by a rather woolly Gaelic Co-operatism.

And, though the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Joseph McGrath, had once been Larkin’s private secretary, he had learnt little from the Socialists.

Opposed to the old Sinn Fein policy was Kevin Higgins (now O’Higgins), Vice-President of the Executive Council and Minister for Home Affairs from 1922. His background was orthodox national bourgeois. He was accordingly cynical about the overall efficacy of tariffs and fearful for their effects upon the existing Anglo-Irish trade. His prejudices were reinforced by the arguments of his friend, the Minister for Agriculture, Patrick Hogan. With Eoin MacNeill, Desmond Fitzgerald, the London Irishman, and, later, Patrick MacGilligan, they formed a group speaking for the policy to which the bourgeois alliance was bound to divert Cumann na nGaedhael. As yet this division was less definite than a division running across it. This was between the civilians (including both Cosgrave and O’Higgins) and the soldiers (a term covering several groups whose leading figures were Mulcahy and McGrath).

The forces of the right were given even greater weight than they possessed already by the Saorstat Constitution. It established in the legislature (an t’Oireachtas) a second house (an Seanad) that included members of the old Unionist and United Ireland groups out of all proportion to their numbers in the community.

In addition, the Dail restored to itself University representation, only with the University of Ireland being given equal representation to the University of Dublin.

But the crowning glory of the new order was His Majesty’s Governor-General. And this post was given to T.M. Healy, perhaps the least progressive of all Parliamentary Nationalists, and the employers’ advocate in the 1913 Lock-Out.

And yet Cumann na nGaedhael won an overall majority in the Dail without the Republicans. Indeed, even with the Republicans sitting, it could have held a majority of seats, as it did later, by reliance on such minor groupings as the old Unionists, the old Redmondites, the Businessmen and the Farmers’ Party.

That this was so was due to various facts. New Cumann na 74

nGaedhael was considered to be as much the heir to Sinn Fein as that body was the heir to old Cumann na nGaedhael. The limited Sinn Fein economic policy possessed still its basic attraction as the elixer of economic freedom, to which was now added the prestige of the three years War of Independence. Socialism as a conscious policy had gone by default. For the moment Cumann na Gaedhael benefited. More important was the fact that the side of the Treaty was the side of peace: that of the Republic, the side of war. The details of the Sinn Fein split did not influence many; they did see that the Republicans were rocking the boat. The failure of the new Sinn Fein to go beyond the constitutional issues encouraged this view.

The opponents of Cumann na nGaedhael suffered not only from its divisions but from these facts.

The Republicans did win forty-four seats in August 1923. But they would have won more but for their confusion on social issues, their militarist background and the threat to peace implicit in their maintenance of the Second Dail.

Until 1927 the only consistent and constitutional left-wing opposition to Cumann na nGaedhael was the Labour Party. It was led in the Dail by its Secretary, Thomas Johnson. In August 1923 it won only fourteen seats. It was handicapped by its quiescent background in the post-1916 national struggle, by the strength of Larkinism in Dublin City, by the existence of the Republican left and by its own refusal to contest more than fortyfour seats. In these circumstances Irish policy under Cosgrave was conservative at home as abroad. In the latter sphere it was circumscribed by the Treaty; in the former by the social framework accepted by bureaucrats, ranchers and businessman. Irish credit economy remained dependent upon that of Britain. Irish credit had to be backed by British credit. Irish currency remained a prettier form of British currency. Irish exporters supplied the British market. To these aims the Irish power elite was encouraged by various types of incentive given at the workers’ expense, by the encouragement of foreign capitalists as examples and competitors, by agricultural aids benefiting, in the main, the ranchers, and, only when all else had failed, by a few faltering steps towards state-sponsored enterprise.

Against this, the opposition was naturally ineffective. Between 1922 and 1927 Labour’s importance remained founded in its existence as a parliamentary opposition to an administration tempted, at times sorely, by the examples of foreign dictators. Its one finite 75

achievement was to force the Executive Council to promise never again to conclude important foreign agreements without the Dail’s consent. Motions on social welfare, against the further weakening of Irish local government, and on other measures to defend the workers were voted down by the Oireachtas’ conservative majority.

Yet between 1923 and 1927 the administration found much to achieve within its chosen limits. This was quite apart from such post-war reconstruction as the rebuilding of roads and railways.

Dominion status enabled the rationalization of the civil service, police and judiciary, and the improvement of selection methods for the personnel of central and local Compulsory primary education was at last enforced and the Irish language became compulsory in schools. A small tariff system was developed. Post Office costs were reduced, inland fisheries improved and reafforestation timidly begun. Hogan went beyond the Republican Dails by ending the individual landlord and regulating the quality of agricultural produce. Above all, by 1928 there had been initiated three major public works schemes: the Carlow beet sugar factory (originated as a plan of the Republican Dails), the drainage of the River Barrow, and above all the Shannon electricity scheme that has enabled a cheap native supply of power to be transmitted throughout the sparse Irish population. The same progress appeared in the formalities of foreign policy.

Fulfilment of the Treaty was interpreted in a manner that strengthened Ireland’s diplomatic position. O’Higgins and the Minister for External Affairs, Desmond Fitzgerald, took the lead in broadening the concept of dominion status. Ireland was the first Dominion to have its own foreign legation. Its representatives won kudos both at the League of Nations and at the Naval Armament Conference. It headed the struggle against the British Privy Council’s authority over imperial law suits. Above all, O’Higgins led the Dominions in the attack that achieved the Balfour Declaration, later embodied in the Statute of Westminster. This was to clarify the Dominions’ complete legislative independence of the U.K. Even in their own limited sphere, such developments could not heal the Treaty settlement’s sorest wound; the excision of the north-east. This gave the fulfilment policy its worst set-back.

Hopes that Northern Ireland might prove uneconomic were dashed by Britain’s readiness to make allowances for it. The policy of reducing its area below the economic minimum was similarly unsuccessful. Britain appointed to the Boundary Commission, as its representative, the South African Imperialistic judge, Ri- 76

chard Feetham, and as Northern Ireland’s, the Orangeman, J.R.

Fisher. The Saorstat appointed to it the scholarly Eoin MacNeill, who had few hopes of its success. Having declared against any Minority Report, MacNeill seems to have found himself presented by his fellow-Commissioners with a fait accompli. The proposed Majority Report recommended but minor frontier changes, of which some were transfers of territory to Northern Ireland.

MacNeill resigned immediately from the Commission and shortly after from the Executive Council. The latter achieved a new compromise, The border remained as before (which gave the Unionists further documentary backing for their intransigence) and all debts between Britain and Ireland were cancelled, with three exceptions that would later prove important. Northern Ireland remained within the U.K, Its return seemed possible only by even more assiduous fulfilment of the Treaty. In fact, O’Higgins and his associates began seriously to consider sacrificing some independence in order to be reunited with Northern Ireland in a formal Anglo-Irish dual monarchy.

Despite the partition set-back, it can be said truly that, under Cosgrave, Saorstat Eireann initiated a period of nearly two decades in which it was arguably the best-governed state in Europe.

But this appears less glorious when one considers the rivalry.

Cumann na nGaedhael’s increasing loyalty to the Saorstat as an end in itself caused friction amongst supporters of a party of which many had accepted the Treaty only as a step to a Republic.

As early as March 1924 a mutiny had occurred in the Army.

Backed by Mulcahy, members of the Treatyite rump of the I.R.B.

had occupied a number of commands. They had clashed with more Republican-inclined officers, centred on Collins’ old Intelligence Service. These latter threatened to rebel if state policy did not satisfy them more, The Commisioner of Police (‘Garda Siochana’ or Guardians of the Peace), General Eoin O’Duffy was appointed to deal with the situation. However, Mulcahy acted against the mutineers without consultation, and, though successful, had to resign with his protégés. An Army Oaths Act was passed in the same year to crush all cliques including what little remained of the I.R.B. é From sympathy with the mutineers, MacGrath resigned at the same time as Mulcahy. He formed a ‘National Group’ with like minded Cumann na nGaedhael T.D.s mainly from Dublin city and small farm constituencies, In October 1924 most of them resigned their seats. In the subsequent bye-elections only one was a candidate and he was soundly defeated. Some of the Group drift- 77

ed back to Cumann na nGaedhael. Others moved further the other way. The disappointing boundary agreement encouraged further disaffection. In January 1926 Professor William Magennis announced the founding of ‘Clann Eireann’ (The ‘Irish People’ — or ‘People’s Party’) which included a Senator, Maurice Moore, and two other T.D.s sympathetic to the former National Group. This gained next year the adherence of the Republican T.D., Dan Breen, who took the oath to the King that he might introduce an abortive Bill to abolish it. Although Senator Moore’s pamphlet against the British holding of land annuities encouraged a campaign based on economic fact, the new party’s policy was purely constitutional. Thus all its candidates were defeated in the general election of June 1927. A party with a programme both more comprehensive and more Republican seemed to be more of a possible alternative government. On November 14th 1925 the I.R.A. withdrew its allegiance from Sinn Fein and became a free agent to pursue its specific ideals. De Valera could no longer speak for all Republicans. Furthermore, without armed backing, Sinn Fein was left an ordinary political party self-willed to frustration. In two years its strength had declined from 1,500 branches to 303. In the local government elections of 1925 it had been defeated crushingly. The Local Appointments Act forced local employees to swear loyalty to the Saorstat. Such employers as John Good, T.D., discriminated similarly. Yet the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis of November 1925 reaffirmed abstentionism, and the party ignored appeals from Magennis and the Labour Party to enter the Saorstat Dail to vote against the Boundary Agreement. But the passing of this stimulated a special Ard Fheis of Sinn Fein on March 11th 1926. Here de Valera proposed that the party enter the Dail if the oath were removed. A contradictory amendment was passed and he resigned from the party with his followers. Two months later, on May 16th, in the La Scala (now the Capitol) Theatre, Dublin, he founded a new party: ‘Fianna Fail’ (Soldiers of ‘Fal’ or ‘Destiny’: poetic for Ireland).

Between Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail the difference was purely constitutional. For Sinn Fein even an oathless Saorstat Dail usurped the authority of the ‘True’ Second Dail for all Ireland.

The I.R.A, was, as yet, less dogmatic; its aim was to make the 32 County Republic a reality as soon as possible. As before, it represented the Republic of the poor, as against the middle class party politicians. However, its point of reference was still the Republic 78

of 1919 that it confused with that of 1916. Under these circumstances, it provided a broad front on the one hand for such Socialists as Michael Price, Peadar O’Donnell and the youngsters George Gilmore and Frank Ryan, and, on the other hand, Maurice Twomey, Sean Russell and young Sean MacBride. Similar, albeit less clearcut, divisions existed in the parties. Fianna Fail opposed the dying Countess, Constance Markievicz, and Sean MacEntee to de Valera, Sean T. O’Ceallaigh and Frank Aiken.

Sinn Fein had on the left Fr Michael O’Flanagan and, on certain specifics, Mary MacSwiney (Terence’s sister) and J. J. O’Keliy (‘Sceilg’): on the right Art O’Connor (de Valera’s ‘Presidential’ successor), Austin Stack and the propagandist, Brian O’Higgins.

But the common denominator of Republican policy remained the spirit and economics of Griffith.

A small majority of abstentionist T.D.s supported Sinn Fein rather than Fianna Fail. The general election of June 1927 more than reversed this position. The results also left Cumann na nGaedhael without an overall majority even among sitting Deputies; it had to rule with support from the Independents and the Farmers’ Party. Outside the Dail, Fianna Fail held only three seats less than the government. The Labour Party, sitting in Dail Eireann, had half as many as Fianna Fail. Between Labour and Cumann na nGaedheal was Captain William Redmond’s small National League: an attempt to revive his father’s party in a hostile world. Cosgrave had worries within his party. Since 1923 Kevin O’Higgins’ star had risen. A fine intellect, an incisive orator and a courageous politician, O’Higgins represented the beau ideal of Irish bourgeois politics. He was undoubtedly the most respected of all the Ministers; to many he was the personification of law and order; it had been he, not Cosgrave, that had prevented the Army feuds from getting out of hand in 1924. On the other hand, Republicans hated the defender of their sufferings; debtors, the supporter of the bailiffs; publicans, the man who had reduced drinking time.

He and his allies formed a powerful group and one which believed sincerely that he was better suited than Cosgrave to hold the Presidency. After the June election, he obtained the portfolio of External Affairs in addition to that of Justice. Cosgrave countervailed desperately by bringing Mulcahy, his old opponent, back on to the Council as Minister for Local Government.

Then, on July 10th 1927, O’Higgins was murdered by what seems to have been a freelance group of Republicans. A new and draconian Public Safety Act was passed. In addition, Cosgrave 79

took the opportunity to strengthen his hold over his followers and against the growing Labour Party. Claiming that the crime had been encouraged by the political atmosphere created by abstention, he introduced a Bill by which no one could stand as a legal candidate to the Dail without promising to take the oath. Accordingly, de Valera and his party swore ‘as an empty formula’ and took their seats in the manner followed by Labour for the past five years. Johnson prepared now to form a coalition with Redmond, backed by Fianna Fail. The policy of such a front would include the negotiated removal of the oath. The plan failed; Major Bryan Cooper, a government supporter caused the doubtful Redmondite, John Jinks, to be drunk and incapable of going to the Dail. The resultant tie was solved in favour of Cumann na nGaedhael, by the casting vote of the Ceann Comhairle (Chairman of the Dail), Michael Hayes. But Cosgrave’s position remained insecure. Then two bye-elections returned his supporters. In September, he had the Dail dissolved for a second time that year and went to the country. In this election Sinn Fein did not participate; most of its last remaining seats went to Fianna Fail. This party won other seats from Labour. Cumann na nGaedhael continued its existing practice of winning seats from the Farmers’ Party. It gained also from the National League (although a sizeable minority of League votes went to Fianna Fail) and admitted several Independents to its ranks. In the gross result, it was still the government. But it retained dependence on the Farmers (of whom the leader, M.R.

Heffernan, was placed in charge of the Post Office) and Independents. Fianna Fail was the only viable alternative.

To February 1932, party support continued to polarize. Against this tendency Labour tried in vain to establish itself as a possible administration. Outside the Oireachtas, from 1929, the ‘anti-party’, ‘Comhairle na Poblachta’, co-ordinated the Republicans. But their strategy, being military rather than political, mobilized more followers to Fianna Fail.

But the most important reason for the growth of such support was the overall change accomplished by the two main parties from their position of 1923.

On the: Treaty settlement, the possibilities of fulfilment were being exhausted. Entry to the Council of the League of Nations (1930) and the Statute of Westminster (1931) represented two of the strongest possibilities of the status quo. On a third aim, that of the abolition of the British Privy Conciliar jurisdiction, there was 80

compromise. Yet Ministers defended the Treaty as an end in itself. Hogan waxed enthusiastic about the oath. Blythe stated that the Saorstat had ‘more freedom’ than a Republic. The Constitutional provisions for Initiative and Referendum were expunged when de Valera sought to use them to remove the oath. For all this there were two reasons. The first was the north-east, The second was the continuing dependence of Ireland’s economy upon the British market. The first reason was vitiated by Craig (now Craigavon)’s continuing refusal to have anything to do with the Saorstat: the second, by the diminishing economic returns of imperial membership under the world slump.

Yet the administration’s economic policy could be little changed, even as the slump deteriorated. Blythe’s emergency budget of November 1931 left income tax lower than in Britain.

Maintenance of the British market remained the overriding economic goal, even at the expense of possible new Irish enterprises.

If anything, this tendency was increased in the last years of the Cosgrave government, after the high tariff Minister, J. J. Walsh, had been replaced by the I.F.U. leader, Heffernan. Hogan continued his policy’s emphasis on livestock. The hungry unemployed man watched live beef leave the country, shod his feet (if at all) with boots made in Nottingham, and probably ate bread baked in a less agricultural state. The small farmer paid land annuities as insurance for a market in which he could not participate. Ministers argued that the Irish were better off than people elsewhere.

Fianna Fail pointed out that much of this argument was based on incomplete statistics (notably in unemployment).

The complete subservience of Cumann na nGaedhael to the ethos of the Irish establishment was revealed in April 1930. The Executive Council showed itself ready to resign rather than accept a Fianna Fail-sponsored bill to extend old age pensions. And it did not offer any alternative other than vague hopes for the future. Nor was the regime producing schemes like those with which it had been associated. The Shannon and Barrow enterprises were completed in 1929. Little was introduced to continue to inspire the people. The Vocational Education, Forestry and Tourist Acts were all important and beneficial, but not awe-inspiring. The Irish Sweepstake was a private member’s scheme. And Dr Drumm’s celebrated electrical battery came too late and was too complicated to be a help to Cumann na nGaedhael. In addition, Mulcahy’s ‘reforms’ of the administrations of the cities of Dublin and Cork soon proved to be notable neither for democracy nor for efficiency.

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In one sphere, ministerial activity was obvious. There was still constant and active opposition to the ‘gun bullies’ of extreme Republicanism, But here doubt was developing. The 1927 Public Safety Act was repealed partly because it was too extreme for operation. It was replaced by an act to protect juries against intimidation. Discontent swelled the ranks of the I.R.A., of Comhairle na Poblachta, and of the Combhairle’s successor, Saor Eire. The first-named committed several murders and the Executive Council forced through the Oireachtas a constitutional amendment far in excess of the obvious need. A clerically-supported red scare stampeded two prominent Labour T.D.s into backing this act. Despite it, many felt sceptical about the move. Many who were charged and arrested during the scare were neither murderous thugs nor Russian agents but normal Irishmen; indeed one of them was the Editor of the new Fianna Fail newspaper.

Nor was there, as originally, the unquestioning respect for the Gardai. O’Higgins had been able to control the Commissioner, O’Duffy. The new Minister for Justice, James Fitzgerald-Kenny (‘Cowboy Kenny’ to Republicans) was less capable. Accounts appeared of police brutalities. On occasions, O’Duffy was found to have drawn up a warrant illegally and to have detained prisoners without charge. Cumann na nGaedhael’s admired toughness seemed to be developing into thuggishness. It gloried in such brutal necessities as the Public Safety Act of 1923, described approvingly as ‘the Floggers’ Act by the party’s periodical The Star. This hinted, also, at an Army mutiny against a possible Republican administration. Dr Thomas O’Higgins (Kevin’s elder brother) proclaimed pride in Cumann na nGaedhael’s ‘hanging, jailing or flogging’. In the general election campaign of February 1932 the party’s orators seemed to regard peace in the manner attributed to the Romans by Tacitus’ Caledonians. And yet, while the country had its hair raised by the red terror, the Garda Siochana had its morale reduced by a pay cut.

None of this could maintain the government as the protector of the peace. Many began to feel that either it was dishonest in its protests, or that it had been inefficient in keeping order in the past, or that, possibly, Fianna Fail’s way of ending agitation might be better. Other minor details jarred on the Irish. Why couldn’t Ministers and higher civil servants have pay cuts? Had the Treaty to be interpreted to pay the Governor-General such a large sum (including such allowances as a grand piano)? Was it really necessary 82

—_ Nee for Ministers to dress, like Unionists, in top-hats and morning coats? In its general election campaign in February 1932 Fianna Fail offered proposals to the future such as seemed to answer the feelings of many Irishmen. Cumann na nGaedhael’s addresses interspersed praise for its record with abuse of its opponents. For a slight but definite majority of the Irish, the latter was just not good enough. Il The Divisions of the Peasantry Between 1910 and 1923 the clearest change on the Irish agricultural scene occurred amongst the co-operatives. In 1910, their mentors had given the impression that they were potential forces for revolutionary change. By 1923, they could be seen to be mere agents of one sector of the farming community. This was of course no more than the logic of their position. Being limited mainly to dairy farmers, they could not excede the ideals dictated by this class’s economic base. 42 was thus a voice crying in the wilderness though not so far therein that his co-operation could deal logically with the property question.

The Irish Farmers Union instituted an alliance between large and medium farmers against the landless. Farmers’ boycotts weakened the dairy soviets. And they did so with the blessing of the ideologists of the I.A.O:S.

After 1920 ideological retreat was parallelled by physical decline. In the War of Independence, British forces burnt many co- Operative creameries. Partition necessitated the separate development of an ‘Ulster’ A.O.S. By 1922 Plunkett described his movement as being ‘financially embarrassed to a degree threatening its very existence’. So the government stepped in. By their actions as strike and soviet-breakers their leaders had killed Catholic bourgeois mistrust of them. The Saorstat Minister for Agriculture, Patrick Hogan, rewarded them by increasing the I.A.O.S. grant. From 1923 it has existed as a purely economic body accepting with equanimity a capitalist economy that stultifies its existence.

Agricultural capitalism was also furthered by Hogan’s first 83

Land Act in 1923. This was an advance on the timid schemes of the Republican Dails (albeit not on those of contemporary Republicans). It transferred finally (subject to compensation) all remaining tenanted agricultural land from landlords to Land Commission, through which the tenants would buy it on easy terms land annuities. By the Land Commission Act of the same year, the Department of Agriculture took over the powers of the Congested Districts Board. Further Land Acts extended the Commission’s authority to cover sub-tenants on purchased lands until which the 1931 Act all tenants and sub-tenants held their lands from it directly.

The legislation fostered the separateness of the farmer, however small, from the landless agricultural labourer, whose only legal hope for independent land-holding was in the conacre or elevenmonth lease system. Neither labourers nor smallest farmers felt this separateness as yet. In the small farm areas there was lack of conspicuous difference between farmer and labourer. Many small farmers had to eke out their livings by road work or remittances from emigrant relatives. Eight out of ten labourers were themselves close relatives of small farmers. And, in any case, farm labourers in the west were fewer than farmers and declined further relatively after 1930. : And the small farmer tended to distrust his larger equivalent far more than he did the landless man. Despite its efforts, the 1.F.U. gained little support west of the Shannon. In part, this was due to the countrymen’s general mistrust of men who lived by money: gombeen men, professional men or ranchers.

Maintaining this alienation was the policy of Hogan, Minister for Agriculture from 1922 to 1932 and for the new Department of Lands from 1924 to 1928. He understood that exports were important to Ireland and that, by the Saorstat’s nature, its exports must be mainly agricultural. So his aim was simple. It was to reduce the farmers’ production costs.

This was helped by such achievements as the Shannon power station, the drainage of the River Barrow, and the beet sugar factories. More direct aid was the control and subsidization (to a sum doubled between 1922 and 1928) of many agricultural products. They included eggs, dairy products, livestock, meat and potatoes. The inadequacy of orthodox banking and the failure of co-operative credit societies led to the establishment in 1927 of an Agricultural Credit Corporation. University Schools were established in Agriculture and Dairy Sciences.

All this was no more than a holding operation. After a brief 84

rally in 1924, agricultural prices declined steadily and more swiftly than corresponding consumer prices throughout this period.

And the schemes had less success for the smaller farmers than for the large and medium ones. The smallholders produced mainly milk, poultry, pigs and cereals. Only the first two were subsidized significantly. Pigs were the chief small farm export. They were ignored until, after 1931, the Northern Ireland farmers were able to produce them more than competitively.

Yet this was not all. Even where small farmers were ready to participate in improvement schemes, they had not the capital resources so to do. The security of co-operation existed rarely. The A.C.C. was too centralized and its loans too dependent on land security. But most important was the situation in the actual market sphere. Among home distributors there was general prejudice against Irish goods. The story is told of a merchant who for apples described as ‘Canadian’ offered four times the price he had offered for the same apples admitted to be Irish. Thus the export market’s significance was enhanced. But the only European state that still carried out a free trade policy was Britain and, despite efforts in Europe and in the Empire Marketing Board, exports increased far more quickly across the Irish Sea than elsewhere. This tendency was emphasized by the excessive charges demanded by both rail and marine carriers. Thus Irish external trade became increasingly dependent upon Britain in a manner that favoured the larger farmers. In 1928 Finian Lynch, Minister for Fisheries from 1922, took over the Department of Lands and a newly-established Department of the Gaeltacht. The re-organization was aimed specially to help the small farmer. The new body did in fact subsidize housebuilding and school meals in Gaeltacht areas and initiated some tweed spinning schemes. These merely scratched the surface of the problems, Similarly though inland fishery development was reorganized, nothing effective was done to improve Ireland’s deteriorated sea fishing. Hogan’s forestry policy was the defensive one of preventing uneconomic tree-cutting. Starvation haunted the west.

Meanwhile, the small farmer’s powers were weakened by the abolition of the Rural District Councils and by the increased powers of such administrative officials as Land Commissioners and quality inspectors. The farm labourer was even worse off. His organizations were crushed by 1924. By 1934 his weekly wage had fallen from 26/3d to 21/-. He received no unemployment benefit, He could not 85

vote in local elections. So his numbers declined steadily but gradually. On the other hand, the medium farmer could oppose the governmental powers through the I.A.O.S.-and the I.F.U.

The large farmer also had the I.F.U. and the county agricultural bodies, Even without them, he was powerful enough to force the bureaucracy to compromise.

What activated the small farmer opposition to the administration was the discovery that his land annuity and most of its arrears had still to be paid into the British Exchequer. This was for no apparent reason other than the Land Act of 1923 ratified by a non-statutory agreement in 1926. (In fact there was a similar earlier and secret agreement in this subject.)

This was publicized by Senator Moore, of Clann Eireann. It was taken up by Peadar O’Donnell, the Socialist I.R.A. leader. At first his campaign was limited to the north-west of Co. Donegal. It nearly collapsed, then revived under pressure from similar conditions. O’Donnell tried to interest the Labour Party in ending the annuities. The party’s leader, Johnson, was cynical. His successor, O’Connell, feared a red scare. But individual Party members did support such a scheme. But the movement was organized by O’Donnell’s Comhairle na Poblachta and backed by Fianna Fail (officially) on the single issue of whither the annuities would be paid. Cumann na nGaedhael could show, to oppose retention, only six lawyers: Fianna Fail produced seven. It varied its programme with vague promises to use the annuities to lower rural rates and subsidize the small farmers’ cereals. In April 1930 a Working Farmers’ Conference met in Galway.

It was composed of delegates from Cos. Clare, Galway, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Roscommon and Donegal. It passed motions denouncing annuities and associating with the contemporary European movements of their kind and with what was to become Saor Eire. This developed without central organization. It was encouraged by the World Depression. In 1931, the administration banned it as Communist; its contributory conditions could not be so easily swept away. These now became important justifications for the return to power of Fianna Fail.

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III

The workers and their movements The years of warfare, abroad and home, did represent material progress for the Irish worker. Between 1914 and 1918 he gained parity of wages with his British counterpart. By the Acts of 1911 and 1920 unemployment, though considerable, was covered at the British rate of benefit, for all but agricultural labourers. Irish trade unions enrolled many new working-class interests.

At the same time growth of trade union membership went with growth of trade union organization. The leadership was isolated increasingly from the rank and file. This was most notable in the I.T.G.W.U.’s whose constitution was redrawn to that effect.

Organization reinforced ideology. The rigour of the Labour leaders’ Syndicalism was justified by the existence of trade union bureaucracy and its need for secure conditions. Elaborate organization wanted to believe that the situation was unripe for Irish Socialism, or even Labour government, for fear of the unrest that would be caused by attempts to achieve such. Accordingly Larkin’s struggle against William O’Brien received little support from other union leaders. They tended naturally to prefer piecemeal action against capitalism to all-out attack on it.

The instincts of union members were wiser. They would be the immediate victims of the mounting capitalist offensive. Most of the I.T.G.W.U.’s non-Dublin membership had been organized by O’Brien and, of it, builders and road-menders depended by the nature of their work upon the existence of an established union. In Dublin, however, the unskilled workers were more concentrated and could afford to opt for their original leader. Two-thirds of the I.T.G.W.U.’s membership formed the core of the W.U.I. Such dissentient Labour candidates as P. T. Daly used Larkin’s name to split the Labour vote in the 1923 general election. The Party’s Dublin organization went into suspended animation for most of the next twenty years. O’Brien himself fought future Dail elections in Co. Tipperary and failed to retain his seat on the Dublin Corporation. Despite these setbacks, the movement’s leaders continued in their chosen syndicalism. Though in 1918 their organization’s title was changed from ‘Congress and Party’ to ‘Party and Congress’ the practical emphasis remained as before. When it started to fight general elections, the Party never put up sufficient candi- 87

dates to form an alternative administration. Such political casualness, added to trade union division and bureaucracy, could not provide a focal point for resistance to reaction.

Such resistance was needed. The civil war saw new attacks on the workers. These were continued after 1923 in the name of increased employment. That the Irish labourers on the Shannon scheme were not paid starvation wages (32/- per week at time of high inflation) was ensured only by general strike and boycott of the area. The policy of the Executive Council itself was little better. The social welfare services (most notably the old age pen- .

sions) were cut down and an attempt was made to end rent control entirely. In the name of economy, a number of local councils (admittedly, after four troubled years of sitting, not in the best of shape) were swept away and replaced by appointed Commissioners. These sacrificed everything to reduce the rates (and left the City of Dublin with an almost doubled public debt). Later the restored Dublin City Corporation was given a franchise loaded to favour business. Johnson’s Allotment and Common Pasture Bill was sabotaged. On the other hand, the administration gave the workers cheap electricity from the Shannon scheme, certain inadequate (albeit, at the time, impressive) housing schemes, and some minor measures of price and food quality control. Most important was the fact that it did reduce unemployment until 1930, though how far this was due to its necessary public works and reconstruction schemes, and how far to emigration wage reduction and the European boom is another matter. Also, from 1925, retail prices declined slightly on the whole. Government schemes for total rent control were eventually shelved. Finally, its attempts to solve the worsening economic situation after 1930 were more than its rightwing followers could approve.

Against aggressive capitalism, the official Labour image was one of futility. The Trade Union Congress appeared most interested in isolating Larkin. Between 1923 and 1929, the numbers of Irish trade unionists declined from 130.000 to 85,000, most of the decline being felt by the I.T.G.W.U. This union showed signs of arrogance. In 1929 it tried to sabotage the reconstituted Dublin Trade Union Council because P. T. Daly was its secretary. The same year its President, Thomas Foran, left the Seanad Labour Party because his union’s Seanad candidate had been defeated.

In the Oireachtas until 1927, the Labour Party prevailed everywhere but in the division lobbies. Thomas Johnson showed outstanding intellectual qualities, backed by the industrious research 88

of the Assistant Secretary, R. J. P. Mortished. But Cumann.na nGaedhael with other anti-Labour forces possessed an overall majority. The Labour Party had to seek alliances on specific issues.

Such Independent T.D.’s as Darrel Figgis, Myles Keogh and Alfred Byrne did support aspects of Labour’s welfare policy. Captain Redmond spoke for town tenants. The Farmers’ Party opposed the whittling away of local government. The businessman, John Good, advocated better education. None of this was effective. Self-condemned to being a minority party, Labour became ready to compromise on all other principles. Revolutionary. Socialism was silently dropped and Johnson began to consider the coalition with Redmond. As a final example of weakness, Labour was fissile. Of its seventeen T.D.s elected in 1922, three were independent by August 1923. Of the fourteen elected then, one was independent by June 1927. Of the thirteen elected in September 1927, four fought the election of 1932 as Independents.

The weakness of orthodox Labour was marked by both Larkinites and Republicans, Of these, Larkin was too bound to Dublin; his politics too radical for most, even, of his industrial followers.

His ally, Daly, returned to the Labour Party. The ‘Irish Worker’ League not only included the Communists but Larkin himself was, at this time, a leader of the Comintern. In the general election of September 1927 the I.W.L. contested the three Dublin seats. Larkin, its only victor, was promptly disqualified as being a bankrupt. The one permanent achievement of that campaign was that of his son, and namesake, who split Johnson’s vote and caused his defeat. Most Larkinite second preferences went to Fianna Fail. This appealed to disgruntled workers as representing the vague Republican-social ethos as against Labour’s over-extreme appearance.

Also it put up enough candidates to make it a credible opposition.

It gained thirteen seats in the general election of September 1927.

Eight of these came from Labour.

Between 1927 and 1932, this situation was accentuated. Johnson’s successor was Thomas J. O’Connell, Secretary to the Irish National Teachers’ Organization. He had achieved a supreme feat in affiliating this body to Party and Congress. What was more, at the beginning of his parliamentary career, he had advocated lay control of education. Five years of accepted minority status, had acted to soften this radicalism. He refused to support the anti-Annuity Campaign. Until then, Labour had enjoyed among the small farmers at least as much (and usually more) support as in Dublin City. Now all this disappeared. Meanwhile Fianna Fail gained 89

votes from town workers and unemployed by promises of increased social benefits and employment. It also gained the national teacher vote whose holders were disgruntled by Labour’s apparent failure to defend their benefits. When Fianna Fail won in 1932, the Labour Party was reduced to seven seats, which did not include its leaders. On the other hand, as the slump in Ireland worsened, and, from 1931, as it was magnified by the closing of American emigration opportunities, trade union membership rose. This dichotomy was formalized in 1930 when Congress and Party were separated. This was partly to enable the latter to seek support from among the intelligentsia: partly to admit, reluctantly, that trade unionists need not vote Labour. Above all, it was the funeral of Irish Syndicalism.

But Fianna Fail would not have expanded without the extraparliamentary agitation of the group centred on the newspaper, An Phoblacht. This started in June 1925 as the organ of all abstentionist Republicans; it preached, then, the confused populist social programme common to all the movement. This changed in April 1926 when Peadar O’Donnell became editor; he began campaigns against land annuities and against Capitalism in its various forms. An Phoblacht angered both Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail and became a purely I.R.A. periodical. In December 1929 it set up a new body, Comhairle na Poblachta (‘the Republican Council’), to express it as a political force. This was broadened in October 1931 to include Fianna Fail and Labour supporters in Saor Eire (‘Free Ireland’) soon banned under constitutional amendment.

The Phoblacht movement was not Communist: its ideals had more in common with those of its contemporary central European peasant-worker movements to whose conferences it sent delegates.

But it was on moderately friendly terms with the I.W.L. and encouraged its transformation into more aggressive and less centralized Workers’ Revolutionary Groups. It was, in fact, an anti-parliamentary precursor of Popular Front (or Republican Congress)-ism. Its support for Fianna Fail in 1932 added to the fears entertained for that body by the respectable.

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IV Bourgeoisie and Gentry Cosgrave’s successive Ministers for Industry and Commerce, Joseph McGrath (1922-1924) and Patrick MacGilligan (1924- 1932), and his Minister for Finance (1923-32), Ernest Blythe, were agreed in their social conservatism. All based their policies on a readiness to work the existing social mechanism and to use its motivations. By encouraging the prosperity of capitalists (and by Hogan’s encouraging the prosperity of ranchers) it was hoped that any of the wealth left over would trickle down to benefit the poor. Such an attitude was natural for a party that had inherited the principles of Griffith, the policies of the Republican Dails, and the backing of Church, bourgeoisie (both Unionist and National) and bureaucracy. Different (and usually cruder) variants of this viewpoint appeared as the policies of certain groups allied usually to the Executive Council against the Labour Party and associated increasingly with Cumann na nGaedhael against the Republicans. Such included the old Unionists, the Business Group, the National League (from 1926) and the Farmers’ Party. The first faction was not homogeneous. Members representing the Protestant small farmers of the border counties and West Cork voted occasionally for increased welfare benefits. The Trinity Deputies (and the ex-Unionist Senators) tended to vote against open breach of the Rule of Law. Major Bryan Cooper, representative of the Co. Dublin bourgeois Protestants, expressed unashamedly the reactionary desires of the bourgeoisie. In this he concurred with the Business Group.

It was composed of varying numbers of large Businessmen Independents and preached a naked laisser-faire and purely economic doctrine leavened, only, in John Good’s case, by a readiness to invest more money in education. The National League was founded in September 1926 by Captain William Archer Redmond (son of John) who became its leader. It tried to revive the Hibernian ideal for the changed circumstances of bourgeois independence, but in practice made direct appeals to such varied interests as town tenants and publicans. After a small success in the general election of June 1927, it broke up so as to benefit mainly Cumann na nGaedhael. In February 1932 Redmond himself joined that Party. 91

Most significant of all right wing groups then in Dail Eireann was the Farmers’ Party. From 1923 to 1926, it held one more seat than Labour, yet it could not establish itself as the main opposition. This was due to its complete subordination to the LF.U.

which was reflected in lack of interest in any viewpoint other than that of the large farmers and in schizophrenia over tariffs. Most representative of its defects was its somewhat oafish leader, Denis Gorey, who rarely attempted to offer leadership on non-farming issues and who was, in any case, convinced from 1925 that his party would have to enter Cumann na nGaedhael. In April 1927 an I.F.U. conference rejected his proposals to that effect and he left the party for the government benches. His two successors, Michael Doyle and Patrick Baxter, failed to reinvigorate the party.

In September 1927 its fourth leader, M. R. Heffernan, accepted undersecretaryship to the Department of Finance, with control of Posts and Telegraphs. The Farmers’ Party declined apace with its parent body, the Irish Farmers’ Union. In 1932, Heffernan and two others of the six sitting Farmer T.D.s fought as Cumann na nGaedhael candidates; the other three fought, practically, as Independents, Collapse was emphasized when the three Farmer T.D.s elected in 1932 were unable to unite for or against de Valera.

Outside Dail Eireann the administration was supported by the Seanad majority, by the I.F.U. (albeit this declined after it had crushed the labourers’ organizations) and the I.A.O.S. and by all daily newspapers until September 1931. It was backed similarly by 4, whose political nerve had been shattered by the spectacle of co-operation soviet-style: his Irish Statesmen represented to its death in April 1930 the liberal, cultured element amongst the propertied. Until 1927 Moran’s Leader also supported the Executive Council, but it cooled due to the latter’s reluctant tariff policy.

All such applauded most of Cumann na nGaedhael’s economic policy. After 1927, income tax was extracted at less than the British rate; a proposal by Thomas Johnson to impose a double rate on foreign investment was rejected. Also rejected were Labour proposals to implement the 1910 Committee’s advice to nationalize railways and National League proposals to buy out town landlords (a last flicker of the original, radical, U.I.L.). Local government ‘reforms’ were in favour of economy at the expense of democracy. In 1931 a subsidy was given to tide big farmers over the slump. 3 | There were more positive aids to the capitalist economy. The Trade Loans (Guarantee) Acts were renewed annually after 1924 and overruled the banks to enable the Department of Industry 92

and Commerce to make loans to guarantee employment or to reduce prices. There was also the Shannon scheme and the shrewd bargaining of John Dulanty, the Saorstat’s Trade Commissioner (High Commissioner from 1930) in. London. To 1929 this policy succeeded, It could not defeat world depression however. Nor could it cause any immediate beneficial change in the Irish social order. This was due to the nature of the Irish bourgeoisie and gentry in its respective parts. The large Anglo-Irish trading firms and the ranchers had succeeded when the economy was geared completely to the British market. They were not disposed to alter existing trade patterns by state action or by their own efforts. They were supported by the big Dublin Catholic businessmen, headed by Murphy’s son at the Irish Independent. Since the rancher-bourgeois complex continued to dominate the Irish export trade, the Executive Council avoided offending it. Even after the murder of O’Higgins, the economics of his allies, Hogan and MacGilligan, were predominant.

But Anglo-Irish interests would have been less important had any great enterprise been shown among the small businessmen. A typical example of the type was exposed by a Fiscal Commission in 1924. A prominent witness there was a clay-pipe manufacturer who not only imported his clay, when aware of an adequate Irish supply thereof, but who imported it in a roundabout way. In the first three years of the industrial loans scheme, only a third of the money earmarked for it was spent. The Executive Council’s encouragement of foreign entrepreneurs in such schemes as the Carlow sugar beet factory and Ford’s motor assembly plant in Cork was justified by the absence of Irish entrepreneurs. No attempt was made to reverse the sales of Irish ships to British firms. Marketing techniques remained undeveloped. No large slaughtering trade grew up. By 1932 the bulk of leather goods bought in Ireland were still imported.

Exceptions to the general conservatism appeared amongst the manufacturers (mainly of textiles) and certain of provincial businessmen (especially in Cork). They wanted a more active tariff policy from the government. In this, they were at one with the small farmers. In 1926 the leaders of these groups in Cumann na nGaedhael, J. J. Walsh, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and William Sears, the party Chairman, forced the establishment of a Tariff Commission to examine claims for tariffs and to recommend where such tariffs be raised. The results were not significant. Whereas between 1922 and 1926 ten. duties had been im- 93

—— CO posed, between 1926 and 1932 only fifteen trades applied to the Commission for tariffs and twelve applications (mainly as regards textiles) were accepted. Of the rejected demands, the most notable was that for protection of wheat, opposed by the millers. It seems true that the most definite demands for protection after 1926 came from the urban workers (fearing unemployment) and the tillage (mainly small) farmers.

Irish capitalism’s weakness was exacerbated by Irish banking.

Much of Ireland’s money was held by commercial banks, of which all but one were cross-border institutions, one a London clearing bank. Profits had been declining from 1910 and, with profits, initiative. Both commercial and P.O. savings banks held most of their assets (56% in 1927) in the United Kingdom, losing them from the Saorstat. But less money was lost than might have been because most Irish deposits bore interest, though this was rarely invested in Ireland. The depositor classes included large and medium farmers and all bourgeoisie. If small, they kept their money accumulating in their deposits, especially if they had been wounded in the immediate post-war land boom. The large depositors, and the banks themselves, tended to keep money invested abroad to the amount of some £150 — £200,000,000, representing estimated fractions of the national capital resources varying from 1/5 to 5/7ths. Such action was reasonable; the big investors had traded abroad, they got a better return for their money there than at home and they had the monetary links there for years. The stock exchange looked to the British share market instead of starting an Irish one. Such links were jealously guarded. The banks refused to help the administration’s trade loans scheme. Cosgrave’s head of the Department of Works, Seamus Bourke, could only get 5% of his proposed drainage schemes backed by the banks, although 50% thereof would be met by the local councils involved.

Yet even the 1927 Currency Act allowed Irish currency to remain a prettier form of the British reality. Defenders of the system pointed out that Irish banking was the most solvent in the world.

Many, including most Republicans, were doubtful whether such classic capitalist criteria were valid for a country such as Ireland.

Their doubts still have relevance.

Another handicap to orthodox capitalist expansion was the civil service. This was the most obvious point of dissension between big and small business. The former objected to its powers. The latter relied upon it both as a shield against the demands of big business and labour and as a possible employer of its children. The latter was enabled to have its way in this for two reasons. The big bour- 94

_— Sa Rll SS ey geoisie could not replace state bureaucracy in any way generally acceptable to labour or farmers. And, in the last resort, such reforms as the imposition of local commissioners at once strengthened the bureaucracy and reduced the property-owners’ rates.

The national necessity for a large civil service within Irish capitalism was shown in 1927. MacGilligan despaired of the inadequate private distribution of the hydro-electricity produced by the Shannon scheme. He organized a state-sponsored monopoly company, the Electricity Supply Board, despite protests from Deputy Good and the Irish Independent. Similarly, in the same year, Hogan set up the Agricultural Credit Corporation to by-pass the banking system. However, neither was prepared to consider analytically the Irish economy outside the special spheres in which they were immediately interested.

By now Fianna Fail was a possible alternative to Cumann na nGaedhael. Many small manufacturers preferred the former’s promises of ’as much protection as possible’ to the comparative moderation of the Tariff Commission. So did many large provincial capitalists. In 1930 the World depression made its impact in Ireland. The next year, the Executive Council gained powers to impose tariffs (not import quotas) for limited periods. But Walsh had retired from politics in September 1927; Sears had died in 1929; Cumann na nGaedhael was clearly a low tariff party.

It must be emphasized that it seems to have retained the loyalty of most capitalists, great and small, at this time. Its appeal was most reduced for the workers and especially the small farmers.

But there was also some unrest amongst the bigger farmers. As early as December 1923, the Jrish Statesman prophesied that the I.F.U. would crumple for lack of policy. In practice, under the Saorstat, it followed Hogan. Other bodies appeared to promise more. Fianna Fail offered a subsidy to grow wheat and tariffs on imported cereals (such as the Tariff Commission had rejected).

From 1931 its ally, the Farmers’ Protection Association, denounced annuities, free trade and high rural rates. Most important was the fact that the Country Agricultural Leagues composing the I.F.U.

remained. They were reorganized in 1930 to agitate for rural derating backed by mild banking control by Patrick Belton, a maverick Republican, once in Fianna Fail but since a bitter enemy thereof. His Leagues did not welcome Fianna Fail’s victory in 1932. But, by their existence, and their division of the big farmers’ movement they prepared for its working of a policy that would not benefit their members.

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Vv The bureaucracy The formation of the state bureaucracy is accounted generally as being W. T. Cosgrave’s finest achievement. As Minister for Finance in his first year of power, he prepared the plans for fusing the embryo Republican administration and the established Union civil service. The result lasted until 1959 and still provides the base from which the modern economic development bureaucracy is expanding. Cosgrave’s creation was much as the Parliamentary Nationalists had envisaged for a Home Rule Parliament. It was a departmentalized civil service of the British design, with control of appointments in the Department of Finance.

This (and the adoption of the Irish language as a means of entry) was merely the formality of the final triumph of the Irish nationalist bourgeoisie. Most of the new top Secretaryships were given to men whose civil service experience had not obscured their Nationalist loyalties, whilst most of the old Unionists sought jobs in the British bureaucracy. The civil service became completely open to the talents. There was enough of it to cater for the talents of most. Irish education, traditionally geared to stimulate literary intellect, found an alternative outlet to the Church, and to its pupils one more pleasant and promising than business. Accordingly, the bourgeois hegemony now dominated the state bureaucracy.

The weight of the Irish establishment became urban, Catholic and bureaucratic. It is significant that, in certain respects, the policy of the Cosgrave administration was to the right of that which might have been followed by a liberal Unionist or Liberal regime.

But the ending of hegemonic conflict between capitalist and bureaucrat did not mean the end of the bureaucratic class or the end of conflict. If the state bureaucracy had taken over the national bourgeois mores, it could not take over its caste interests. The state bureaucracy was closer to the bourgeoisie than to the worker or to the small farmer but was itself an interest distinguished from others by its methods of organization and by such forms thereof as the means of mobility within it. It was able to preserve most of its pre-war powers untouched. The Nationalists had hoped for a local system of police forces. The civil disturbances surrounding independence were agreed generally to have made this impossible: Control by the Dail was less than in Britain. No Committee of 96

Estimates existed in the Saorstat. The Committee of Public Accounts had eventually to renounce detailed control of virements.

More worrying to business was the further extension of bureaucratic powers in its own sphere. In 1927 the new Radio Eireann was placed under direct civil service control. The same year found three major bodies of a new kind: the Electricity Supply Board, the Agricultural Credit Corporation and the Dairy Disposal Company, set up to take over and run private creameries. These were associated with, staffed by, and yet not within the civil service.

The bourgeoisie protested yet could offer nothing in their place.

And business supported the tightening of bureaucratic control around local authorities. Bourgeois Nationalism, having taken all it could from them, was terrified of Labour councillors following its example to benefit their class. In 1921, George Lansbury went to prison for paying the unemployed out of the rates. To prevent this in Ireland, certain councils were replaced by commissioners and the rural districts were abolished. From 1926, local appointments were made by centrally-appointed commissioners, Thus an already centralized organization was centralized still more. From this resulted a development of the T.D.s essentially supplicatory duties. Above all, the conservative pressures were reinforced at local level. VI The Catholic Church In the first instance, dominion status clarified the respective positions of altar and filing cabinet so as to benefit the latter. As dynamic forces within such bureaux as the Congested Districts Board and the Department of National Education, the priests were ended. The civil service became secular again.

But bourgeois and bureaucrat concurred, in part positively, in part negatively, in confirming and indeed strengthening the Church’s authority in certain special areas. For Ireland’s lay rulers, the priesthood has always been a necessary, if uncertain, agent in weakening antipathetic reaction to their policies. Without it, they might have to rethink their attitude to democracy.

Thus it was not suggested that denominational education be abandoned. Impulse for maintenance was stimulated by the fact 97

J | | that in 1923 the Northern Ireland Government endeavoured to enforce the original national system of non-denominationalism.

What was more, it amended this later to allow for Protestant bible instruction, Once again secularism was equatable with Protestantism and such newspapers as the Irish Independent took care that the equation was made. In primary education, the great achievement was the School Attendance Act (1926) which was aimed to enforce compulsory primary schooling. It was drawn up under Eoin MacNeill, the Minister for Education (1922-1925). He was a reluctant convert to the compulsion principle, whose act provided as little as was consistent with its permanence. It left the statutory school-leaving age at fourteen (though the Minister might raise it to sixteen) and avoided dealing with the existing denominational framework. The system was praised by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Rappresentanti in Terra (1929), but, of its weaknesses, only the voluntarism was ended. In addition, of all Pearse’s principles, the organizers of the system preferred to concentrate on a narrow variant of his Nationalism, rather than his organizational theories.

MacNeill did good work in a number of other fields. He subsidized private secondary schools on a capitation, rather than an examination, basis. In the advice of a committee of the first (Republican) Dail he reformed the teaching methods for the intermediate examinations, ending nationally set text books for language instructions. This was the one wholly beneficial genuflexion to Pearse’s shade. But MacNeill’s most determined policy was in the teaching of the language. Schools were graded according to their ability in this. Irish was used as a medium of teaching the younger children.

The curriculum time for other subjects was reduced in its interest.

Unfortunately this attack on the children was not accompanied by anything remotely comparable for their parents.

MacNeill’s policy in post-primary education did not include drastic steps to extend every child’s chances of it. To do so was the achievement of his successor, Professor John Marcus O’Sullivan, Minister for Education, 1926-1932. In 1930 his Vocational Education Act expanded the system of the old D.A.T.I. into a national system of vocational schools to be set up and administered under the direction of lay committees of the County Councils. O’Sullivan may have intended something more radical; certainly he provided for these schools’ curricula to be extended to cover all academic (as well as technical) subjects. As it was, however, the Vocational Education Committees had to concern them- 98

selves with enough clerical mistrust of their immediate aims, to be wary of expanding them. The Priest’s role as guide to the children was equalled in his unofficial local lay authority. This was augmented by the government’s abolition of the R.D.C.s.

But MacNeill’s most determined policy was in the teaching of the Church’s moral power. This was done despite some protest from the old Protestant Unionists. Divorce was made impossible in 1925. In 1923 was set up a Film Censorship Board that reflected in its actions the Catholic view. O’Higgins opposed the ultimate conclusion of all this. It was only in 1929, after a considerable alarm about imported pornography, that State Censorship of Publications was set up; it went rather farther than its original proposers had advocated. All these innovations were soon accepted by the upper classes as necessary for keeping their material benefits. After all, they could obtain banned books under plain cover from Britain; few of them went to the cinema; since the British Lord Chamberlain, there has been no theatre censorship; the obvious example of rural censorship, the clerical smashing of the popular country dances, did not affect bourgeoisie or gentry.

As clerical authority expanded over morality and culture, so did episcopal authority over the priesthood. In 1925, the case of O’Callaghan v O’Sullivan (the ‘Kerry Case’) recognized the right of a Bishop to deprive a priest of his parish subject to canon law.

Two years later, the system by which Bishops were elected by all the diocesan clergy (‘Recommendation’) was replaced by that of the compilation of secret lists of the choices of all the other provincial Bishops. Yet increase in episcopal power was not apparent in politics.

The Catholic Church had to share class power with business and bureaucracy; none of them were yet ready to try for sole position.

In any case, Irish clerical political strength had depended on three things: a divided opposition, a lack of secular ideology and, above all, an absence of direct clerical opposition to any well-defined popular material cause (such as, at this time, the payment of land annuities to the U.K.). In 1923 all these factors existed; in 1932, there was only the second. In the latter year, the general election results differ from those of the earliest contest.

But lack of any strong non-denominational Irish political tradition has given the Church an immense power in political matters not immediately relevant to living standards. Cumann na nGaedhael could not escape its influence. The Republicans were less affected only in degree. Fr Michael O’Flanagan was a promi- 99

nent leader of the left-wing both of Sinn Fein and of the I.R.A.; but his representative position as a churchman cannot be sustained. As to Fianna Fail, it had been Eamon de Valera who had rejected, when the First Dail needed allies, an offer of friendship from the new Russian Soviet regime, preferring instead to concentrate on futile overtures to the U.S.A. In 1927, when his new party entered Dail Eireann, it gained much support from many (such as Colonel Moore and Professor William Magennis) whose previous opposition to him had been based mainly on their Catholicism. De Valera is, himself, not a bigot, yet he could use religion to get cheap votes. In 1931, he denounced the enforced appointment of a Protestant as Mayo County Librarian, although the original objection had been to that candidate’s lack of the Irish language. Nor did Fianna Fail object, in principle, to the establishment of a State Censor of Publications.

Increased clericalism in the Saorstat encouraged increased Orange-ism in the north-east. In turn, this weakened the best pragmatic argument for having a Dominion rather than a Republic.

More sinister was the appearance, at the end of the nineteentwenties, of positive clerical theories concerning the overall form of Irish society. These were especially menacing in that the clergy had no serious competition. After 1927, outside the 1.W.L. and An Phoblacht, Socialism was as dead as Connolly. Thus, stimulated in 1931 by Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, a form of intellectual Corporatism began to develop steadily even within the apparently left-wing party that came to power in 1932.

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