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Workers Solidarity Movement
Talk given by Andrew Blackmore in Dublin,
February 5th, 1992
SECTARIANISM
This talk is about sectarianism in the North.
Sectarianism is something that has existed to a
greater or lesser extent in Ireland since the
plantations and must be overcome if socialism can
be introduced in the North.
Like racism in South Africa, sectarianism is not
just something that came out of thin air. As
racist laws are enshrined in the South African
constitution, denying blacks equal rights to
whites, so is sectarianism an integral part of
the northern statelet.
When the state was formed it was designed
deliberately so that Protestants would have a
permanent majority, six counties was the perfect
size. 3 counties would have been too small and 9
counties was rejected because it would have meant
a majority of Catholics.
By 1923, the Stormont government had set about
gerrymandering the electoral boundaries to secure
Protestant controlled councils and MPs were
elected. This was so effective that the
nationalists went from controlling 25 local
councils out of 80 in 1920 to only controlling 2
at the next election in 1924.
The most famous example of Gerrymandering was in
Derry, with a 66% Catholic majority was fiddled
to return a Protestant controlled city council.
The Catholic population in that city increased so
fast that Stormont had to gerrymander again in
1936 to keep the unionists in control!
Not only did the state twist and turn the
electoral boundaries whichever way it suited them
to get unionists elected but they also abolished
PR and only allowed people paying rates to vote.
Both had the effect of decreasing the
Catholic/nationalist representation.
Others devices were used to favour Protestants,
the allocation of houses by councils was purely
arbitrary and since letting a house to someone
meant one new ratepayer, and so one new voter,
Unionist controlled councils were strongly
against giving houses to Catholics. And from the
start of partition Protestant employers were
urged to employ Protestants only.
Northern Ireland was truly a Protestant State for
a Protestant people. This was not because there
was something inherently superior about
Protestants in Northern Ireland, nor was it
because Protestants were naturally in favour of
retaining the union with the British empire and
Catholics were naturally in favour of becoming
independent.
The reality was that there was a clear economic
reason for dividing the working class on
religious grounds. If Ireland had achieved
complete independence from the British Empire it
would have resulted in huge losses for the
textiles and shipbuilding Industry concentrated
in the North of the country.
They relied on selling their goods to the rest of
the Empire - the Belfast shipbuilders were part
of the triangle of Glasgow, Liverpool and Belfast
which supplied Britain with the bulk of its navy
and commercial ships. In 1907 95% of goods
manufactured in Belfast was exported to the
British Empire. In was cheaper to ship goods to
Glasgow than to send them by rail to Dublin.
If Ireland was to become independent, the raising
of tariffs, economic wars etc would have
seriously damaged the profits of the
industrialised North. The rest of the country was
much less industrialised and still largely based
on farming which is why the Southern bosses
wanted independence with the protectionist
policies that could go with it.
So there was a clear difference of interests
between the bosses up in the North and the bosses
in the rest of the Country. Likewise it was
more vital for Britain to hold onto the
industrialised regions of the north than any
other part.
In order to keep the North British, the bosses of
the North and the British ruling class exploited
the difference in religion between the majority
Protestants in the North East of the Country and
the majority Catholics everywhere else. They
used the old imperialist ploy of divide and rule
to split the working class. Divide and rule
meant working on the working class so that one
section allies itself with the bosses and sees
its interests as being the same as the bosses.
The enemy is made out to be the other section of
the working class which is made out to be the
main threat to standard of living, jobs etc.
Thus by dividing the working class, the ruling
class get to rule.
In the early 1900's, sectarianism was encouraged
to grow politically and militarily. The ' Solemn
League and Covenant' which was against Home Rule
was signed by 400,000 people in 1912. Unionism
began increasing its military presence as well.
The UVF, a private unionist army was recruited
from the orange order. The Orange order was and
is a Protestant only club and has been a strong
breeding ground for the Protestant supremacy
politics of sectarianism. The UVF was taken over
by a retired British General and in April 1914
they landed 25,000 rifles and 2.5 millions rounds
at Larne. The arm were for the express use of
fighting against a united Ireland.
They were backed in their organisation against
Irish Independence by the Tories and the British
military establishment. In July 1912, Bonar Law
the Tory leader said " I can imagine no length of
resistance to which Ulster will go in which I
shall not be ready to support them." As we know,
the Unionists managed to create partition and the
Orange state was created with sectarian divisions
and has been that way ever since.
But of more interest to us as socialists than why
were anti Catholic laws made, is why did the
Protestant working class believe the crap that
they were better than Catholics and should unite
with their bosses to keep Catholics down.
The working class in Northern Ireland has always
been poor and the Protestants have always been
told that there are only a few jobs going around.
Catholics are made out by Unionist leaders to be
a threat to their jobs unless they are kept down.
This is what is called playing the orange card.
Any show of strength by the Catholics is
portrayed by Unionist leaders as a direct threat
to the livelihood of the Protestants. The orange
card is also used against the left wing
Protestants who go on strike.
This has been why Catholics have been attacked
murdered kicked out of their homes and pogromed
with the full support of the British government
and the Northern Irish ruling class throughout
the history of this state.
Two weeks ago over 15 ,000 people commemorated
the twentieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday where
14 people were murdered by British paratroopers.
For those people their only crime had been to go
on a civil rights march.
The first Bloody Sunday is now hardly ever
mentioned. It took place in 1920 in Derry. That
time it was after the Catholics had done
something completely inexcusable - they had
elected Sinn Fein to the city council. This
incensed the Unionists and gave confidence to the
Nationalists. After the local head of the RIC
was shot by the IRA, the UVF started firing
indiscriminately from the walled city into the
Catholic Bogside, the RIC did nothing to stop
them.
Fighting broke out for a week, Catholic families
were driven out of the Protestant Waterside and
Prehen areas. Several Catholics were stopped by
the UVF, asked their religion and shot dead. The
Catholics sealed off the Bogside and shot the son
of the Governor of the Apprentice Boys and
another Protestant.
Like in 1972 the British troops moved in in
force. They fired on the Catholics, using
machine guns and occupied the city with 15,000
soldiers. The UVF were left unmolested. The
final death toll was 18, 14 Catholics and 4
Protestants.
In order to create a socialist Ireland,
sectarianism which can lead to what happened
above needs to be confronted and defeated. This
is not going to be easy. Protestant workers are
told that it is good to keep down Catholics
because it means that Protestants will get the
jobs, and houses. They are not told that because
they fight Catholics instead of uniting with them
that the working class of Northern Ireland has
higher unemployment, and lower wages than
anywhere else in Britain.
In order for us as anarchists to work out how we
will convince the majority of the Unionist
working class to our views we should look at some
examples of how sectarianism was beaten, albeit
temporarily, in the past, analyse it and find out
what went wrong so that we will not make the same
mistakes.
the 1919 Dockers and Engineers strike in
Belfast.
For a time the 1919 strike looked like it had won
Protestant workers away from their bosses, but
these hopes were pinned on shaky ground and the
increased support for class politics was only
temporary.
During the First World War the shipyard and
Engineering workers had been working 54 hour
weeks and once peace came they wanted to get back
to the old conditions. The bosses were having
none of it. In fact this action was part of a UK
wide movement as there were strikes in Britain as
well at the time, especially in Glasgow.
The strike was voted for by 20,225 to 558 at a
public meeting, after they had marched to the
city hall.
On the 25 January the strike started and from the
beginning it had a big impact on the city. Gas
was cut off, electricity limited to hospitals and
essential services, trains stopped and any shop
turning on lights was stoned. By the end of the
first week there were 40,000 out and 20,000
others laid off by the businesses closed due to
having no power.
The strike was solid for the first 3 weeks
despite the orange card being played. The
Belfast Newsletter of 8 February called the
strikers "Bolsheviks, anarchists and the
hirelings of Germany" The Belfast Grand Orange
Lodge condemned the strike. The state then got
more involved. The Defences of the Realm Act was
invoked to make it illegal not to supply
electricity. 3 magistrates were moved into the
city to deal with the increased number of
arrests. The army was moved into the power
stations.
After four weeks the strike ended with a 47 hour
week won and what seemed to be 10's of thousands
of Protestant workers won away from unionist
politics to class politics.
A few months later 100,000 took part in a May Day
march to Ormeau Park in a Protestant area of
Belfast and listened to speeches demanding more
labour representation. And next January Labour
candidates won 12 seats out of 60 on the local
council elections where they had previously held
none. This included one Labour councillor who
topped the poll in the Protestant stronghold of
Shankill.
And at the next May Day march there was another
massive demonstration with a resolution passed
supporting the Bolshevik Government in Russia.
However this shift to the left was short lived.
By the end of July there started a massive pogrom
against Catholics, and left wing Protestants.
According to the Catholic Protection Committee,
10,000 Catholic men and 1,000 Catholic women were
expelled by Protestant workers from the
shipyards, engineering works, and linen mills.
The Labour vote at the 1921 general election was
minimal.
To see why this happened, we must look at the
political composition of the strikers and how the
Unionist bosses reacted to the growing "socialist
threat".
In order to coordinate the strike, a strike
committee had formed composed on one side of
trade unionists (like the mildly anti-partition
members of the Independent Labour Party such as
Charles McKay, James Baird and Sam Kyle) and on
the other side members of the Unionist Labour
Association such as Robert Weir and William Grant
who was later to be a Unionist MP and Cabinet
Minister.
The Unionist Labour Association was obviously pro
unionist and allied to the bosses politically.
There was only a slight disagreement on the hours
of labour that workers should have to work.
William Grant said afterwards that he had voted
against the strike and had only joined the strike
committee to oppose the socialists that were on
it.
The two sides of the committee had opposing views
on partition and so "to preserve unity" as they
said the ILP said that "politics have nothing to
do with the hours of labour". The Independent
Labour Party made no effort to win the majority
of Protestant workers over to the anti-partition
side in case they caused a split in the
committee.
So while Labour was popular when it came to
fighting on purely economic issues like a
reduction in hours worked, it had won very few
anti-partition Protestant recruits.
While the anti-partition side avoided politics
the unionist side did not. Edward Carson along
with other Unionist leaders was deeply concerned
that the workers would break with Orangism and
develop their class consciousness. At the same
time the IRA was waging a highly successful
guerrilla war in the South and Unionists were
worried that the Protestants would link with
this. The Orange card was laid out.
Carson made a violently inflammatory speech at a
Orange rally at Finaghy outside Belfast calling
on the government to get rid of Sinn Fein and all
it stood for. He then called on the UVF to do
the job for the government making it clear what
sort of violent methods they should use. He then
went on to say about the Independent Labour
Party:
"those who come forward posing as friends
of Labour care no more about labour than does the
man on the moon. The real object and the real
insidious nature of their propaganda, is that
they mislead and bring about disunity amongst our
own people and in the end, before we know where
we are, we may find ourselves in the same bondage
and slavery as is the rest of Ireland.
On 17 July Colonel Smyth, head of RIC Munster was
shot dead by the IRA. He was a well known Orange
man and had told the RIC a month before "The
more you shoot the better I will like you, and I
assure you no policeman will get into trouble for
shooting any man.
Carson's speech, the murder of Smyth, the IRA
actions, combined with the fact that all jobs
were under threat in the post war depression,
brought sectarian tensions in Belfast to breaking
point.
On the day of Smyth's funeral a meeting was held
at the gates of Workman Clark and Co shipyard.
It was decided to kick the Sinn Feiners out of
the shipyard and the pogrom started. Armed with
sledgehammers and other weapons the Catholics
were attacked, beaten and driven out.
It quickly spread and as I mentioned before left
wing Protestants were also removed, including
James Baird a labour councillor, and Charles
McKay ILP and chairman of the old strike
committee.
The Protestants by carrying out their purge of
11,000 of their "disloyal" workmates had made
their jobs safer and stopped what was called the
"socialist threat".
The anti partitionists of the strike had not been
prepared for the backlash against them and they
suffered for it. Loyalty to the Unionist bosses
had been reaffirmed with a vengeance.
The Outdoor Relief Strike 1932
It is worth looking at the Outdoor Relief Strike
of 1932 to see if any lessons had been learnt
from the 1919 strike.
As before capitalism was having a depression.
Wall Street had crashed and the industrial
countries were feeling the pinch. In Northern
Ireland the two biggest industries, textiles and
shipbuilding were taking a hammering.
The famous Poor laws which had been scrapped in
the South and Britain were still in use by
Stormont in the North. There were also many
restrictions concerning who got unemployment
benefit and who didn't. Those who failed had to
apply for what was called Outdoor Relief.
For a married man to qualify for Outdoor Relief
he had to do two and a half days 'task work' per
week on what were called Outdoor Relief schemes,
which was work such as mending roads and laying
pavements.
There was no Outdoor Relief for women, and single
men only got anything if they were lucky enough
to get task work.
Because there were so many unemployed there was
not enough task work for everyone for every week
so the men had to take turns. In the weeks that
you didn't get task work you were paid in kind,
which meant being given a donation of food. So
on many weeks there was no money to pay bills,
buy cloths or to spend on entertainment.
At the time of the strike there was crippling
poverty in Belfast. A survey showed that 37% of
working class families were living in absolute
poverty. This meant such a lack of food,
clothing or fuel as to endanger health.
Tuberculosis killed off 45% of people between the
ages of 15 and 25 and a quarter of all children
dying under the age of one, died in the
workhouse.
Despite the unemployment crises the government
didn't give a damn. The last time the government
had met had been to extend its summer holiday by
a month until November.
However the unemployed were organising to fight
back. Here in the south the Irish unemployed
workers movement was holding large
demonstrations, one as large as 1,000 in Longford
and in Britain there were Hunger marches taking
place alongside disruptions of political banquets
and invasions of factories to appeal for an end
to overtime and speed ups.
The Revolutionary Workers Group had formed in
Ireland. This crowd later went on to form the
communist party of Ireland but at that time, the
early thirties, Stalin's crimes were not widely
known and it was the only socialist organisation
of note that was active.
The RWG argued for a fighting response to the
dole queue and managed to win around a large
amount of unemployed. An Outdoor Relief Workers
Committee was set up and Tommy Geehan of the RWG
who was also a delegate to the Belfast Trades
Council called for a strike by the ODR workers.
They held a mass meeting on September 30th and
voted to strike in four days time if their
demands were not met which were abolition of task
work, and an increase in payments, no payment in
kind, all street work to be paid at trade union
rates, adequate outdoor allowances for all single
unemployed men and women who are not in receipt
of unemployment benefit.
Since their demands were not conceeded they were
out on strike the following Monday. It was 100%
solid, there was no task work being done. That
evening a crowd of 30,000 marched from Frederick
St to the Custom House steps where a mass meeting
was held. This was the first time since 1919
that workers had ignored the bigots and united on
class lines to fight for their own interests.
Catholic and Protestant made common cause against
the ruling class.
The strike went on and by the end of the week
rioting and looting had taken place in the main
Catholic and Protestant areas. Despite baton
charges by the RUC, the army being put on stand
by, and partial offers of improvements from the
Lord Mayor, the strike continued. When a
demonstration was banned on Tuesday 11th, the
fighting got serious. Hand to hand battles took
place on the Falls and Shankill against the RUC,
with the RUC starting to use their guns.
However the government came up with a strategy to
beat the strikers. Instead of firing
indiscriminately at both Catholics and
Protestants, the RUC were told to only shoot at
Catholic areas. The Orange card was being
played. The strikers were told that the IRA were
using the ODR strike as a cover to overthrow
'protestant rights'.
The newly formed sectarian Ulster Protestant
League said that they "deplored that these
unfortunate conditions were used as a cloak by
the communist Sinn Fein element to attempt to
start a revolution in our province. We also
greatly deplore that some few of our loyal
Protestant unemployed were misled to such an
extent that they associated themselves with the
enemies of their faith and principles. We
congratulate the government of Northern Ireland
on the firm steps they have taken to preserve law
and order in our city.
In fact the IRA who had many members on Outdoor
Relief at the time had given local support to the
strike but had no real influence in the
organisation or course of the strike.
There was little success in rekindling sectarian
hatreds during the strike and they won big cash
increases in their relief pay. But relief to
single persons was not won and there was heavy
criticism of the strike committee for ending the
strike before winning this. Two were shot dead,
one Catholic and one Protestant and 15 were
injured from gunshot wounds - all in Catholic
areas.
There is an article on the ODR strike in our
pamphlet NI and BI from which I got part of this
account. I did not read it word for word in case
some of you have read it already.
I will go on the look at some of the problems of
the strike, and they again come partly from the
politics of the leaders of the strike in this
case the RWG. Firstly it was Stalinist policy at
the time to refuse to work with any other groups
on the grounds that they were what they called
"social fascists". So the RWG were not heavily
involved in Trade Unions and so it was very hard
to implement their plan for a general strike. If
that had happened the potential for winning an
outstanding victory would have been much
increased.
Also, being a communist party they confined
themselves to being the leadership of the strike
and made no effort to give people the confidence
to fight for themselves. The unemployed were
encouraged to listen to speeches and then fall in
behind as they went on a march, shouting the
correct slogans.
But most importantly, for this talk, they did
little to promote anti imperialist and anti
capitalist ideas within the Protestant working
class. At the barricades when they were all
fighting together was the ideal opportunity to
win Protestants away from support for their
bosses and over to class based anti imperialist
and anti partitionist politics. As it was the
unity was based more on common suffering than
common beliefs and so it was easily broken.
After the strike Unionist politicians started
having success in stirring up sectarian hatred
again. On 27 August Senator Sir Joseph Davison,
Grand Master of the Orange Order made a speech
saying " When will the Protestant employers of
Northern Ireland recognise their duty to their
Protestant brothers and sisters and employ them
to the exclusion of Roman Catholics? It is time
Protestant employers realised that whenever a
Roman Catholic is brought into their employment
it means one Protestant vote less. It is our
duty to pass the word along from this great
demonstration and I suggest the slogan should be
"Protestants employ Protestants"
Without the unifying pressure of the strike,
these words had an effect and sectarianism
increased. At a Unionist rally called to protest
against the Catholic Church being allowed to use
the Belfast Corporation owned Ulster Hall,
Protestants were told by Dorothy Harnett to "get
training in firing", a mob coming home from this
meeting attacked Catholic homes in the York St
area of Belfast.
Violence increased until the 23 June 1935 when
the aftermath of an Orange parade resulted in
three weeks of sporadic riots. 56 Catholic homes
were burnt out in the docks area. Mobs attacked
the Catholic ghettos of Short Strand, Sandy Row
and Peters Hill. Many people were killed and
when the shipyard reopened after the July 12
holiday, the Catholic workers were expelled
again. This time there were only 200 out of
4,000 workers to expel.
the last example
Anti sectarianism, is not just a thing of the
past. Now in the past two decades there have
been lots of examples of Protestants and
Catholics being anti sectarian.
One short and successful example was the DHSS
strike of August 1986, only six years ago. After
the Anglo Irish Agreement there had been a big
rise in the number of sectarian attacks against
Catholics by the UDA and the UVF.
In Lisburn Catholics and Protestants are not
divided into separate ghettos, most streets are
mixed. This is why they were picked by loyalist
terrorists who wanted to separate the Catholics
from the Protestants. The UDA had made threats
to the DHSS, health board and housing offices of
Lisburn that Catholic workers in them were going
to be killed. The object of the threat was to
terrorise the Catholics and force them out of
their jobs.
In response all 124 DHSS workers walked out in
solidarity with their threatened workmates.
Catholics, Protestants and those of no religion
stood together as workers. The next day 2,000
workers in another 12 offices joined in and the
following morning 14 offices were shut. Without
any lead from their national officials, local
activists of the union (NIPSA) had organised the
strikes and had found that nearly all staff were
eager to stand up to the hate-mongers. Action
also took place in the Eastern Health and Social
Services Board. Since then workers in the DHSS
have had the confidence to fight back together
each time the bigots try to split them. Their
example has led to a similar stance recently
being agreed by workers in Northern Telecom.
Conclusion
The great thing about these examples is that it
shows that sectarianism can be beaten. If it
happened before it can happen again. But we must
learn from the historical examples.
Catholic and Protestant workers in extremely
divided areas like Belfast or Derry have only got
together under specific circumstances. That is
when they have been thrown together to fight for
a common objective. They will not get unite just
by us arguing that you have to be nice to each
other.
Nor will the Catholics and Protestants get
together after British initiatives like the Anglo
Irish Agreement or the Brooke talks, no matter
how well he can sing. Since it is in the
interests of the ruling class to keep the working
class divided they are hardly likely to arrange
talks which could possibly link them together.
On the contrary such talks have always led to a
big increase in sectarian violence as Protestants
see their interests threatened. 36 Catholics
were killed in a spate of murders after the
Brooke talks last Summer.
Unity has the best chance of occurring when it is
clear that both Protestants and Catholics will be
materially better off by getting together. That
is why they united in the 1919 strike and the
Outdoor Relief strike and that is why they united
in the Jim Larkin led strike in 1907, which I
hadn't got time to go into.
But in order to keep them united it is crucial to
win the anti imperialist pro socialist battle of
ideas with the Protestant and Catholic workers
while you have the chance.
Obviously it is in everyones' interests to have
an anarchist society, where bosses and
exploitation have been removed and there will be
a rise in living standards for the whole working
class. The problem is convincing Protestant and
Catholic workers of this, and in the heat of the
struggle is the best time. People are in those
times confident enough to realise that they can
overthrow the State and run society for
themselves.
Not only is it probably the most profitable time
to argue anarchist politics, but if they are not
argued for and won, there will certainly be a
Unionist backlash as Protestants realign
themselves with their bosses and see the main
threat to their livelihood yet again as the
Catholics instead of British Imperialism and the
Capitalist system.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Workers Solidarity Movement can be contacted at
PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland
Some of our material is available via the Spunk press electronic archive
by FTP to etext.archive.umich.edu or 141.211.164.18
or by gopher ("gopher etext.archive.umich.edu")
in the directory /pub/Politics/Spunk/texts/groups/WSM