The Irish Labour Party 1922-73

(UCD Press, 2007) 408 pp.

The Irish Labour Party 1922-73

(UCD Press, 2007) 408 pp.

During the 1950s, Jack White, the deputy editor of the Irish Times was asked by a foreign colleague to explain the irrelevance of the left-right cleavage in Irish politics. ‘Draw a line, and put all the parties well to the right,’ he explained. ‘But what about the Labour Party?’ his companion inquired, to which White replied, ‘Put that furthest of all’. White was joking but only just and if Labour was regarded as conservative at home it was it was even more so when compared with her sister parties. One historian described it ‘as the most opportunistically conservative party in the known world.’ It was not until the late 1960s that the party professed an adherence to socialism, a word which had been completely taboo until that point. But why had Labour developed such a reputation for conservatism and, indeed, how accurate was this belief?

The Irish Labour Party 1922-73, the first comprehensive history of the party, examines its fortunes during the first five decades of the new state. Using a wealth of new material and building on existing scholarship in history and political science, it traces how Labour endeavoured to establish a place for itself in the context of a conservative society dominated by civil war politics and in which the profoundly anti-socialist Catholic Church exerted very significant influence.

The Irish Labour Party was established after delegates at the 1912 Irish Trade Union Congress approved James Connolly’s proposal that the ITUC should establish a political wing. Though Labour was active local politics, it was not until 1922 that the party contested its first national election. On that occasion, Labour took twenty two percent of the vote, a figure it has never equalled. Arguably the least successful social democratic or Labour Party in western Europe, the Irish Labour Party has never held office alone and has only been the minority party in coalition. Labour faced significant obstacles to success. Partition meant the new state had a relatively small industrial base which made Labour’s natural constituency but even then, while Labour began as a trade union party, it failed to win the majority of votes of trade unionists, many of whom preferred the republican politics of Fianna Fáil. Labour was seen as the ‘labourers’ party’ and early efforts to expand its appeal were unsuccessful. Subsequent attempts in the mid-1930s to make the party appear more radical resulted in accusations that Labour had begun to slide down the slippery slope of communism. This was not true but rather than risk the condemnation of the church and reactionary sections of the press, such as the Irish Independent, Labour abandoned its leftwing rhetoric as quickly as it had taken it up. Labour displayed a propensity to be opportunistically radical as well as being opportunistically conservative. This political opportunism was pursued in an effort to survive – at its lowest point, Labour had only seven seats in the Dáil and once fell below six percent of the vote – but it did nothing to advance the party’s reputation or popularity. Its policies were too radical for conservatives but far too conservative for radicals so that Labour found itself in the unhappy position of pleasing none of the people all of the time.

Labour was frequently its own worst enemy – never more so then when a personality based row involving Big Jim Larkin prompted a seven-year split in which the two Labour Parties devoted most of their energies into fighting each other – but there were many others who were strong contenders for the position among them Fianna Fáil which labelled Labour ‘respectable’ in a (successful) effort to win over the working class vote; republicans who branded it Imperialist lackies and broke up Labour meetings and the Catholic Church which argued that state provision of health care or education was the thin end of ‘atheistic communism.’ Nevertheless, as reactionary as the party may have appeared at times, there was a lively leftwing subculture within the membership which is brought out in this book which includes chapters based on an IRCHSS-funded doctoral dissertation entitled ‘”If it’s socialism you want, join some other party”: the Left in the Irish Labour Party, 1948-69’.

The book, which examines Labour in opposition and during two periods of coalition government, is more than a history of a political party and its relationship with voters, other parties (within and outside of the state) and interest groups but also shines a light on attitudes and values in Irish society, and marks a major contribution to our understanding, not simply of the Labour Party, but of twentieth-century Ireland itself.