The Protestant working class — still ‘no surrender’

~The Protestant

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working class — still ‘no surrender’ If, ten years ago someone had predicted that by 1980 the Unionist Party would be split into half ¢ dozen pieces; that the Orange Order would be in decline; that Ian Paisley would be posing as a respectable moderate — such a prophet would have been burnt at some polemical stake as a heretic.

And yet here we are, in 1980 and such developments have indeed occurred. Paisley, by agreeing to participate in the Tory Government’s constitutional conference on the North of ireland, in contrast to the Official Unionists’ boycott has been described as conciliatory and reasonable. The once all-mighty ; Unionist Party has divided into half-a-dozen parts. The Orange ‘ Order, membership of which was once obligatory for any aspiring Unionists politician, is no longer guaranteed a seat at ‘ the tables of power. It is important to emphasise the extent of these changes.

For 50 years the Unionist Party oversaw the governance of the North of Ireland to the extent that the Six Counties took on the appearance of a one-party state. Despite that rule being accompanied by disastrous economic and social effects, the Unionist all class alliance which had been first established in the preceeding century remained solid. There had been the Contents Editorial The Protestant working class — still ‘no surrender’ | 3 by Geoff Bell Belfast Labourism, 1905-1925 8 by Bob Purdie Marxism, the state and Northern Ireland 16 by Richard Chessum The SDLP'’s ‘New Ireland’ 20 by Keith Savage Reports Provisional Sinn Fein Ard Fheis 1980 23 PTA Arrests 24 London Labour supports withdrawal 25 Reviews Sean O'Casey; Politics and Art 26 Poverty in the U.K. Geotf Bell odd challenge here, the odd desertion there, but the hegemony that the Unionist Party enjoyed over the Protestant population of the North of Ireland continued.

Just listing the various contemporary Unionist parties shows _ how all that has:changed. There is the Democratic Unionist ‘ Party, the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, the United de nec tee neem Ulster Unionist Party, the Alliance Party, the Ulster Progressive Unionist Party. If other pro-partitionist parties which do not have their roots in the former Unionist Party are included there is the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the United Labour Party, Still more — the Dominion Party and Vanguard have come and gone in the last decade.

As well as this proliferation the most dramatic change in Protestant politics has been the decline of the Unionist Party, now named the Official Unionist Party. The decline was graphically illustrated in last year’s European election when the single DUP candidate (Paisley) received 170,688 first preference votes and the two OUP candidates received a total of 127,169. Totally up the percentage of votes cast for the various pro-partition parties the official Unionists managed only 22.8 per cent of all votes cast compared with 44.4 per cent for *' the rest. The most popular British media explanation for the decline of the Official Unionists is the charisma of its leading challenger — Jan Paisley of the Demoeratic Unionist Party.

Undoubtedly this is a factor, but it is somewhat disparaging to the population of the North of Ireland to suggest that it decides its political allegiance on the basis of a candidate’s personality. It is all the more foolish a suggestion considering the politicisation that Northern Irish society has gone through in the last ten years, But if politics rather than such nebulous concepts as ‘personality’ determines voters’ allegiances, what than explains the shift in these allegiances, on the Protestant side in the last ten years? Before discussing that question it is important to establish just who has shifted and who has not. Evidence concerning this was provided in last years general election results in the North of Ireland. The most striking advance was achieved by the DUP who captured the North Belfast and East Belfast seats from the j Official Unionists. Similarly in the North Down constituency i H Jim Kilfedder retained his seat despite changing his party label from OUP to independent. It was of more than passing significance that Kilfedder was supported by the DUP.

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ag we é j e i Ripa nae oe: eR etn RTE Al I 1 Renmei The Belfast results were important because it was the first concrete evidence that Paisley had established a real base upon among the Protestant working class. Previously the DUP had been seenas the voice of the Protestant petty-bourgeoisie. The ¢ election in May 1979 implied that this had now been extended to the industrial working class. In this sense the DUP may be seen as beginning to resemble the all-class alliance nature of the old Unionist Party. What the DUP doesn’t have — or at least there is no evidence to suggest as such — is the support of the Protestant upper or middle class. But that provides little comfort for the party managers of the OUP because in that area too this party found its base eroding; this time in the direction of:Alliance who in the general election increased their total vote in the more prosperous constituencies of South Antrim and South Belfast.

What this implies is that the divisions which have emerged within Unionism in the last teneyears correspond, at least in part to social divisions.

It is also worth noting that these divisions are likely to persist. Esmond Thomson, a leading Official Unionist recently remarked that he saw ‘little hope of restoring Unionist unity this side of a Northern armageddon’ Urish Times 9/7/79).

The depth of the divisions and the fact that they appear to approximate to — even if in the most general or partial sense — to class divisions may seem azcause for celebration for socialists on both sides of the Irish Sea. Since the foundation of the Northern state the (Official) Unionist Party, controlled and so nakedly run in the interests of the Protestant bourgeoisie had, despite the social and economic deprivations of all sections of the working class, enjoyed the consistant backing of the major, that is the Protestant section of that working class. That this no longer prevails may suggest hope for the future, among those who look for independent class consciousness among Protestant workers.

But before the celebrations begin it has to be answered as to why this break-up in the all-class alliance has developed in the past ten years when it didn’t, for instance in the 1930’s when the social and economic conditions in the Protestant working class were worse than today. Of course in the 1930’s there was the occasional split from the Official Unionists in which social and economic questions were raised, but there was nothing remotely comparable to the splits of the last decade.

An explanation that could be offered as to what has changed is that the consciousness of a significant section of the Protestant working class has changed. Possible support for such a hypothesis could be found in the fact that Ian Paisley has, in the past taken up social and economic issues. He is known to be a good constituency MP, in the past he made great play of the lack of toilet facilities in his constituency; he has even advocated the nationalisation of Lough Neagh and its fishing grounds. Similarly another founder of the DUP, Desmond Boal, who broke away from the officail Unionists also criticised his former party’s social policies and he was the first Unionist MP in the history of the Northern state to set up a surgery in his constituency. Apart from the DUP it is also worth noting that many of the leaders of the various loyalist, extra-parliamentary organisations which have sprang up since 1968 have impecable working class and trade union credentials. Billy Hull, who led a strike at Harland and Wolfe shipyards in 1972 in demand of internment was a leading AUEW shop steward at the yards, The present leader of the Ulster Defence Association, Andy Tyrie is himself a former shop steward. Indeed the growth of organisations such as the UDA, composed of and led by members of the Protestant working class and petty-bourgeoisie is further evidence of the failure of the Protestant bourgeoisie to retain control of all political activity in the Protestant Community. But before such developments can be heralded as representing a growth of class consciousness among Protestant workers it remains imperative to analyse why the break up of the allclass alliance has occured and on what basis the Protestant workers have distanced themselves from their former leaders.

Do the sociological divisions within Unionism reflect class divisions in the political sense? The importance of answering such a question is obvious: if there has been a significant growth of working class consciousness in the Protestant compapas I Be one ~ munity, then clearly the opportunity for winning Protestant workers to the cause of socialism has significantly increased during the last ten years.

‘Socialism’ That reises the question of what is defined as ‘socialism’ For the moment let us use that word in its most ‘moderate’ sense as it is understood in the context of British social democracy. Such a definition is relevant because the possiblity of winning Protestant workers to the British Labour Party has attracted some controversy of late. Involved here is an advocacy to extend Labour Party organisation td the North of Ireland. This campaign has been conducted under the auspices of an organisation calling itself the Campaign for Labour Representation, (CLR) a body mainly constituted by one time members or supporters of the Workers’ Association, which in turn had its roots in the British and Irish Communist Organisation, which attracted attention in Ireland in the early 1970s because of its thesis that Ireland was ‘two nations’. This theory bestowed a legitimacy on the partition of Ireland.

Another generation waves the flag (From Camerawork) Homer Sykes

TIT TT LL LL I A I OCA CCE EA CP a ae ar oe The arguments of the CLR have at times been couched in attractively progressive terms. For example there is the following letter which appeared in Tribune.

‘As a socialist 1 am not only concerned with ending the war in Northern Ireland but also with the development of working class politics and the eradication of the traditional political divisions. The basis will be laid for this if the (British) Labour Party faces up to its responsibilities to the working class and extends its organisation to the province’ (Tribune 14/9/79).

The emphasis on ‘working class politics’ as a solution to the North of Ireland is also reflected in the position of the Militant grouping in the Labour Party. Militant, while support- . Ing— on paper — the withdrawal of British troops argue that the means to such withdrawal lies in cementing working class unity, via the trade unions, and a concentration on what it terms as ‘class issues’, that is wages, jobs, houses. The first difficulty with such a view is that when it has been tested in practice it Wfeve has come unstuck.

In the 1979 general election Jeff Dudgeon, a CLR advocate stood as a candidate of ‘Labour Integration’ in South Belfast.

He received 1.47 per cent of the total vote. In the same election Bill Webster of the Irish Militant stood in Derry under the banner of Labour Trade Unionist. He polled one per cent, and his vote actually fell from when he stood in the previous election. The point about the rather unhappy electoral fate of Dudgeon and Webster is that their poor results argue against the very analysis of CLR and Militant which suggest that as long as ‘class issues’ are stressed with enough force they will attract significant support from a working class straining at the leash for its chance to put its ‘x’ against the cause of working class unity. But if that did not happen in the general election what did determine how Protestants, and particularly Protestant workers voted? An indication can be found in the manner in which the general and European elections were waged in the North of Ireland, and the issues on which various Unionist parties chose to concentrate in an attempt to win votes; also the issues they have since chosen to highlight in their battle for the Protestant majority. In the general election the DUP’s manifesto spelt out that as far as that party was concerned the ‘security’ situation overshadowed everything else. The manifesto demanded that, ‘Ulster be put on a war footing’. This involved ‘full-time border security’ and capital punishment for those guilty of the ‘heinous murders’ commited by the IRA.

The DUP also called for an end to ‘colonial type of direct rule’ and argued, ‘only a strong devolved Parliament and Government based firmly on the tried and trusted principles of British democracy, with no room for power sharing can meet the needs of Northern Ireland’. The other main points in this manifesto were the withdrawal of the UK from the EEC and opposition to the liberalisation of legislation on gay rights and protitution.

And it was this manifesto which won for Paisley his increased support among the Protestant working class.

The dominance of the issues raised in the general election continued afterwards. There developed a mad scramble between the DUP and OUP for who could appear most ‘security’ minded; who best represented the traditional loyalist values. Thus during the 1979 12 July celebrations James Molyneaux, now leader of the OUP challenged Paisley on security. The DUP leader had argued that in order for the RUC and British Army to gain acceptance, any member of the security forces who broke the rules under which they were meant to operate should be liable for prosecution. Molyneaux attacked such notions with gusto: ‘Of course there will be mistakes and in a war there will always be casualities. But those who face the full threat of IRA aggression are not likely to have their resolve strengthened by the sound of Loyalist voices clamouring for their prosecution before the courts.’ Urish Times 13/7/79) The same day Paisley, preferred to stake his claim to traditional loyalist values by saying that Catholic priests were ‘deep in active service’ with the IRA (U/rish Times 13/7/79) Not to be outdone Enoch Powell of the OUP reacted to the

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Mountbatton assassination by saying that Catholic cardinals — as well as the Protestant Archbishop of Canturbury ‘aided and encouraged’ the IRA (/rish Times 27/9/79).

The OUP further sought to outdo Paisley on the security issue when in October 1979 local councils which they controlled passed a resolution calling for ‘hot pursuit’ over the North/South border and the imposition of curfews in Catholic areas of the North. The whole contest reached its height with the initiation of the government’s constitutional conference at the end of 1979. In the manoeuvring which went on before and after that conference the DUP and OUP entered into a fierce polemic as to who was best serving Loyalists’ interests — the OUP by boycotting or the DUP by attending. Molyneux gave as his reason for staying away the refusal of the British Government to launch a new security initiative, and by saying that the ‘whole object’ of the talks was to ‘devise a mechanism to shift Northern Ireland just one step out of the UK and turn it into an all-Ireland Republic’ (quoted in Socialist Challenge, issue 129). Paisley maintained that he had only agreed to attend the talks because of an assurance he had \ received from Margaret Thatcher on security after a private meeting with her. Said Paisley, ‘Mrs Thatcher is the only i j Prime Minister who has said to me that the way to defeat the ¢ | IRA is through military defeat’(Socialist Challenge 124).

Terrain The point about this ‘debate’ is the terrain on which it was waged. Not jobs, not wages, not any economic or social issues but on defence of the union, security, and occasionally anti- Catholic bigotry. Of course it could be said that all this was an organised conspiracy to hide from the Protestant working class the ‘real issues’; that it was an attempt to blindfold them from what really concerned them. The truth is that politicians in the North of Ireland, like bourgeois politicans everywhere, seek to emphasise what they think will win them votes as long as those issues do not threaten the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The stress on security and allied matters reflected not so much on the obsessions of Paisley or Molyneaux but those of the audience to which they were appealing.

That applied not just to the most recent periods. The rise of Paisley and the fall of the OUP over the last ten years were not because of bad toilet facilities. It was because of the concessions the Official Unionist were perceived to have made towards the Catholic minority in the North and because of the inability of the Official Unionists, when they were in government, to put down the ‘rebellion’. The emergence of the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Volunteer Force and similar organisations was not because the Protestant working class realised the necessity to organise themselves independently of the bourgeoisie, it was because those organisations by their assassination campaigns and similar activities offered to ‘deal with’ the rebels in a way in which the government appeared incapable of doing.

Such attitudes were most obviously present in the Ulster Workers Council Strike of 1974. A general strike initiated in the main by Protestant industrial trade unionists, but a strike not over wages or jobs but against the idea of Catholics having any share in power, or the North of Ireland being in any way linked — even in the most symbolic ~ sense to the rest of Ireland: a strike for the traditional loyalist ideology.

All of which is hardly new in the history of the Northern state; the primacy of the issue of defence of the union has always been there. One historical example, that of the 1938 Northern Irish parliamentary election can ilustrate the general point being made about Protestant working class consciousness. In that election the (Official) Unionist Party faced their most widespread challenge to date from within the loyalist camp. The main opponent was the Progressive Unionist Party who contested ten seats on what today some would describe as ‘class issues’. When the Unionist Party accused the PUP leades, W J Stewart of splitting the Protestant vote and of possibly letting in anti-partition candidates Stewart replied: are ene

ROE

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‘Partition as an election cry has no value because all ' Unionists are firmly opposed to any attempt to interfere , With the province as an integral part of the United Kingdom i ... We will fight the election on the question of unemploy- + ment.’ (Bell, 1976, pages 69-70).

i Unfortunately for Stewart partition proved a very loud election cry indeed. In all ten constituencies in which PUP i stood they were defeated. And this is worth remembering at a time when the economic and social conditions were so bad that unemployment would indeed have seemed to be a good issue to go in on. The failure of the PUP and the contemporary success of the DUP may, at first glance appear contradictory. In fact the same explanation can be applied to both one’s failure and the other’s success. Stewart failed because he did not make partition the main issue, Paisley has succeeded because he ; has been seen to be the most uncompromising on the issue.

In both cases Stewart’s emphasis on unemployment, Paisley s occasional flirtations with populism were marginal to their success or failure. The union was, and is the issue.

Or at least it is the issue for the Protestant working class.

The trend which that class has detected in establishment Unionism — that of not being totally uncompromising in the traditional values — is not something that has been only imagined. Right from Terence O’Neill’s talks with Sean Lemass in the mid 1960’s through the Unionist Party’s support for power-sharing and a Council of Ireland in 1975 the party has hinted that its stress on ‘a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people’ (in the words of a former Unionist PM) is not what it once was.

Even today with all the electioneering talk and postelection talk about ‘security’ the Official Unionists continue to tamper with the old articles of loyalist faith.

For instance there is the OUP’s main resolution adopted at the 1979 conference. There was no demand for a return to the old Northern Ireland parliament, or indeed fora devolved parliament of any description. Instead: ‘Believing as Unionists that Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom, we would urge conference to adopt the policy that would result in Northern Ireland | receiving the same rights and conditions that prevail else- | where in the Kingdom’ (/rish Times 22/8/79).

This meant a call for the complete integration of the Six “f> Counties into the UK. As a policy this is again at variance with that of the DUP. While its submission to thé consti- “fatidiial conference regretfully admitted that a return to the { exact state structure that prevailed during the old Stormont + parliament was ‘unattainable’, it did demand a devolved i parliament of some kind. Of some power too, for, ‘any new { administration should be seen as having some sway and role | in security matters’(/rish Times 9/1/80).

It is worth recording that once again there is no breaking of fresh ground in the Protestant bourgeoisie’s ambivalence over the permanence of a separate parliament for the Six 1 Counties, or the issue of relations with the South of Ireland.

The upper class leadership of the loyalist resistance to Irish home rule from 191.2-21 was never particularly favourable to the idea of a separate Northern Irish parliament. It was accepted in the end as the best it could get. And, once partition had been won as the historian George Dangerfield records, ‘Early in.1922, the Belfast business leaders were all in favour of coming to terms with the South’ .(Dangerfield, 1979, p.348). When the Northern parliament was established the vast i majority of Northern Protestants grew not only to accept it | but to defend it. But this was because, de facto, it had in itself become the guarantee of the union with Britain, and the .; guarantee against Irish self-determination. It became useful i too for the Unionist bourgeoisie because it assured them }} complete control through the state institutions it threw up st — the police, the civil service and so on — from which the i Unionists could exclude any representative of the cai (y minority who might challenge their ascendency.

But while the North of Ireland parliament proved useful for the bourgeoisie it never has been regarded as a timeless principle to defend. Today, with the instability that the consequences of the old arrangements have so patently produced it is hardly surprising that the Unionist bourgeoisie ae ee i ., 18 looking for other solutions. And integration may. be seen ': to offer a permanence which the previous constitutional Al arrangements did not. But for the Protestant working class it is not that simple.

For them the precise structures established in 1921 serve a real and material purpose. They have guaranteed a system of preferential treatment over Catholic workers in terms of employment, houses and better paid jobs. Certainly, integration with Britain and the abandonment of the state structures established in 1921 would not change that overnight; indeed it would not change it for rather a long time.

: But the point remains that unlike the bourgeoisie the ‘} Protestant working class have a real material interest in ; ensuring the ‘Protestant Parliament for the Protestant ; People’. Just how much so was illustrated in a report from the Government sponsored Fair Employment Agency issued in 1978 which concluded that there was two and a half times ag many Catholics who were unemployed as there were Protestants and that as far a$ the working class were concerned, ‘the model Protestant male is a skilled worker, whereas themodel Roman Catholic is unskilled’ Urish Times 12/1/78).

A later report, issued by the same body in early 1980 concluded. that in the last generation ‘Catholics have tended , to move down the social scale more commonly than Protestants’ and that ‘the proportion of Catholics in lower status jobs could increase in the next decade’ U/rish Times 17/1/80). This latter observation is particularly relevant in regards to an expectation commonly voiced that the present economic crisis, and the expected deepening of in the next few years will open to eyes of Protestant workers to the splendours of a socialist solution and class unity. On the contrary the historical evidence — notably the 1930’s suggest the reverse — the economic depression increases sectarianism, and that in any depression Catholics invariably suffer worse.

The contemporary example of the Belfast shipbuilding industry can be cited. Catholics have always found employ- } ment in the yards difficult to obtain but in the early 1960’s + there was, it has been estimated 2,000 employed at Harland ae, and Wolff; today it is reckoned there are 400, a decline way } out of proportion to the total job loss Urish Times 10/1/80).

* There is the additional factor that because Protestant workers tend to be skilled in comparison-to unskilled Catholics, Protestants have a better chance of finding reemployment than Catholics. To emphasise, what evidence there is suggests that in an economic recession the proportionte differences between Catholic and Protestant workers f/ increase; the notion of a ‘common suffering’ is a myth.

el Common identity Which is one, although not the only reason why the sense of a common identity has always been lacking among the working class of the North of Ireland. It is all very well to preach the virtues of a shared class interest between Protestant and Catholic workers: the difficulty is that two ‘class interests’ have operated — the interests of the Protestant working cla$s and the interests of the Catholic working class.

Thus on a simple issue like housing or on unemployment the talk of workers’ unity is by and large a mirage. The example of the early civil rights movement illustrated this graphically.

This movement, supported by the overwhelming sections of the Catholic working class was in many ways a social movement in that it concentrated on social reforms — fair shares ’ in housing allocation, voting, employment.

; That movement was opposed most fervently by the Protestant working class and petty bourgeoisie because the demands the civil rights movement was making cut against .; their material interests. An end to discrimination meant an i end to Protestant (including Protestant working class) ty privileges. , Which is not to say that the consciousness cf the Protestant working class is solely determined by the marginal material privileges they enjoy. There are a whole series of ideological and cultural factors at work. The point is that to separate, in the traditional good old British democratic manner, the ‘trade 4

union’ or ‘economic’ questions from the ‘political’ questions is even more impractical in the North of Ireland than it is elsewhere, Because the ‘economic’ questions — jobs, houses, pa lwage rates are intimately bound up, and inseparable from the big ‘political’ question — the existence of partition and the Northern state, For, it is that state and the structures which it has thrown up that are the most obvious determinates of how houses are allocated, who gets the jobs that are going and who gets the higher wages.

At the start of the civil rights movement the extreme loyalists alleged that the civil rights movement was a republican plot. Which was not exactly the case, but certainly the demands of that movement threatened the state because that state and the sectarianism it has produced are so related that it is impossible to imagine one without the other. Perhaps the loyalist opponents of the early civil rights movement realised that before anyone else. But, could it not be argued that if the British Labour Party organised in the North of Ireland, then, sectarianism could be challenged by that party? Considering the history of the last Labour Government and its North of Ireland policy such an expectation is rather a small pie in a large sky, but even if the Labour Party desired to make such a challenge — how ¥ would it do so? How would it both win Protestant and «Catholic workers to its cause? The question is rhetorical: | '. despite all the searching, no cause in the last ten years and in the last sixty years has proved capable of even hinting at the forging of a sustainable common political identity.

The position of the CLR and of those in the Militant and Communist Party who share similar economistic errors is, in its most profound sense nothing to do with trade union unity or the electoral possibilities of the British Labour Party. It is to do with different concepts of democracy implicit in the following question asked by the chairman Harland & Wolff, Belfast: Protestant jobs on the line

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of the CLR in his letter to Tribune: ‘Why should we in Northern Ireland not be allowed to vote a Labour Government?’

/ To support the British Labour Party standing in Northern _fisland is to accept the legitimacy of the Northern Ireland state. In that sense the Labour Party has nothing to offer the people of Northern Ireland except blood, sweat, tears and Unionism. Perhaps it would, if nothing else, heighten the comedy if we were faced with yet another Unionist Party standing in the North of Ireland this time under the banner of British social democracy. In no way however would this be bringing ‘class issues’ to Northern Irish politics. The first class issue in the North of Ireland is the right of Irish self-determination.

All other questions are peripheral and any who get that first question wrong, whatever their attitude to the others crosses class line. Which is what the Protestant working class has done.

Today those workers are as sectarian and as bigoted as they have ever been in their history. Paisley’s 170,000 votes showed that. They are so because they know the threat to the North of Ireland state they have relied on for so long is greater than it has ever been. That state has chained the Protestant working class to one of the most reactionary ideologies in Western Europe. The last ten years has done no .; more than underline the message of the last sixty — there is ": no way the chains will be broken, until the state itself is _. broken. Geoff Bell References Bell, G (1976), Protestants of Ulster, Pluto.

Dangerfield, G (1979), The Damnable Question, Quartet. oa ~ . he : Bp Oy : i . Py

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