The Loyalist working class

THE LOYALIST WORKING CLASS

1. Introduction There are around one million Protestants in Ireland: the vast majority are working class people in the north east who are committed to the Six Counties remaining within the United Kingdom. Of Ireland's nearly three million Catholics, the large majority too are workers. But their aspiration is for a united Ireland, independent of Britain.

The division of the Irish working class along religious lines has been a key factor in stabilising British rule in Ireland.

The Partition of the country in 1920 gave particular force and permanence to the division between Protestant and Catholic workers. The Loyalist workers of the Six Counties are wagelabourers exploited by capital. But their defining political allegiance is to the British state, the guarantor of capitalist social relations in Ireland. This is the paradox at the root of the enigma of the Protestant workers of Ulster. To understand the role of the trade union and political institutions of Loyalism it is necessary to penetrate the relationship between the Loyalist working class and the force that created it, sustains it still - the British oppressors of Ireland.

The Plantation contract In essence the relationship between the Protestants of Ireland and the government in London has changed little in 300 years. English and Scottish Protestants were planted in Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ever since they have acted as custodians of English rule. From the earliest days of the Plantation Protestants joined with the forces of the Crown to put down rebellious natives. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Orange Order brought together Protestant tenants and their landlords to fight the United Irishmen, Wolfe Tone's movement for Irish indepen- Loyalist workers joined with their employers to oppose the Home Rule movement, a battle that culminated in Partition in 1920. Today the Protestants of the Six Counties - in the official paramilitary Royal Ulster Constabulary and Ulster Defence Regiment and in their own sectarian militias play an active part in Britain's attempts to crush the national liberation movement. In return for their services the Irish Protestants have enjoyed the benefits of British patronage. In the Plantation they received land concessions, favourable tenancies and protection against the natives.

In time the nature of the benefits changed. In the nineteenth century Protestant industrialists enjoyed preferential access to the markets of the British Empire. Their Protestant workers enjoyed preferential access to jobs in the thriving textiles, engineering and shipbuilding industries are in terminal decline. But Protestants still have a better chance of having a job (and a better job) than Catholics. They are still favoured in housing, higher education and political representation. These privileges may be marginal but they are crucial in a crisis-ridden and impoverished society. Conflicts in the Loyalist camp We are British to the core, but we won't hesitate to take on even the British if they sell our country down the river. Billy Hull, founder member of the Loyalist Association of Workers.

Although the Protestants boast their loyalty to Britain their relations with the British ruling class have often been tense; occasionally they have been openly hostile. This is why the British bourgeoisie has an ambivalent attitude to the Loyalists. To the extent that they swear allegiance to the Crown and act as a local bulwark of British rule against nationalist subversion, the government has good reason to send the Queen or Margaret Thatcher on periodic good-will trips to 'the province'. When, however, the Loyalists declare opposition to British strategy, denouncing perceive as any threat to their special position, the British bourgeoisie reacts with exasperation and ill-concealed contempt for the bizarre rituals and strange modes of expression And the alliance of Loyalist workers with their Loyalist employers has periodically come under strain when Protestant trade unionists have backed demands for better pay and conditions with militant action. But the fundamental allegiance of Ulster Protestants - capitalists and workers - has always remained with Britain. Any challenge to British rule in Ireland has soon submerged the conflicts within the Loyalist camp to ensure a united bloc in defence of Protestant privileges against the national population.

Thus Unionist discontent with Britain has always stopped short of threatening Union itself on which the status of the northern Protestants depends.? Protestant workers have gone on strike - and even rioted - with their Catholic fellow workers against the Orange establishment But any nationalist upsurge (or even just the hint of it) has always been sufficient to forestall Protestant working class militancy and destroy incipient class unity. Through the 'seventies the Six Counties has drifted further and further into slump. But the ever present need to suppress the republican threat to the integrity of the United King dom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has ensured that no corresponding drift towards anti-Unionist politics has occured among Loyalist workers. On the contrary the dynamic of Loyalist politics is towards the Rev. Ian Paisley, the staunchest defender of the British link.?

1 Quoted in D Boulton, The UVF: 1966-73, Torc Books, 1973, p146. 2 Any Loyalist politician who ever moved so far as to stand openly for ending the Union - and thus into alignment with Catholic nationalists - has soon lost support. Sloan and Crawford's Independent Orange Order at the turn of the century and Craig's Vanguard movement in the 'seventies, overstepped these limits and fell rapidly into obscurity as a result.

3 The success of Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party in the local government elections in May 1981 follows his personal triumph in the 1979 European elections when he won 30 per cent more first preference votes than the Official Unionist candidate.

Although the DUP still holds slightly fewer council seats than the OUP, Paisley's advance is dramatic, especially in working class areas in and around Belfast where his support had previously been weak. 27

Labour market, trade unions and politics Here we examine the Loyalist working class, in its dominant Loyalist and in its underdeveloped aspects, relating both to British imperialism. We begin by looking at the formation of the modern working class with the development of capitalist industry in Ireland.

For Marx two factors defined the wage-labourer under capitalism - the freedom to sell his own labourpower and the freedom from ownership of the means with which to produce the essentials for life.

4 The formation of a free labour market by the dissolution of workers' traditional dependencies and their expulsion from the land played a vital part in the emergence of the modern proletariat. In Ireland, however, one issue has distorted the labour market from the industrial revolution up to today religion. A worker's Catholicism has always been a major constraint on his freedom to sell his own labour-power.

The Protestants' key privilege under the British Union is their hard-won success in frustrating the development of a free labour market. Trade unions are the means whereby workers combine to achieve the best possible price for the sale of their labour-power. They have also been used by sections of the working class to try to achieve some control over the competition of the labour market and sustain a sectional advantage. In Britain skilled workers have always tried to use unions to preserve their privileged position, but since the middle years of the nineteenth century they have had limited success; trade unions have generally been used to fight for higher wages. In the north of Ireland the trade unions were formed in a distorted labour market; Loyalist workers have used unions to sustain their privileged access to particular jobs and even entire industries. This function of trade unions in organising the Protestant section of the working class against the Catholics has always superceded their wage-bargaining role against the employers.

Finally, we look more closely at the tensions within Loyalism. Protestant workers have in the past temporarily supported organisations that advocated socialism they have never failed to respond to the beat of the Orange drum when the choice was between supporting Irish liberation or the British oppressor. The failure of social democracy and Stalinism to find a middle road between these poles of Irish politics has condemned such political organisations to a marginal role. When it comes to the crunch in Ireland the only alternatives are - for British imperialism or against it. And the Loyalist working class has always preferred full-blooded Orange to the pink patriotism of One thing that has changed over the past 50 years is the relative weight of workers alliance. Before the industrial revolution Protestant landlords were the central figures of Loyalism; in the period up to Partition this position was taken over by the Unionist industrialists. Now they preside over derelict mills, closeddown factories and stagnant shipyards; most viable industry in the Six Counties is controlled directly by British and foreign capitalists. The main representatives of the Protestant community in recent years have been workers - shop stewards and trade union officials like Billy Hull, Andy Tyrie, Glen Barr and Harry Murray. The petit-bourgeois Orange Order is now less important than the solidly proletarian Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Workers Council and Loyalist Association of Workers It was Protestant workers who demanded internment in 1971; who brought 28 down the power-sharing executive in 1974; who demanded more repression of the national population throughout the present war. British labour and Loyalist labour The British labour movement has never understood the Loyalist working class. It has always been bemused by the failure of Irish workers to develop a reformist tradition parallel to its own. Unable to relate to any significant Labour Party, the British labour movement - from right to left - has seized on the trade unions as the legitimate representatives of the Irish working class. British socialists have simply assumed that trade unions in the Six Counties are the same as trade unions in Britain. But they are not: they have fundamentally different functions. The British left has however identified the Loyalist trade unions as a progressive force. It uses the institutions of the Loyalist working class to justify its own opportunist approach to the Irish national question. British labour bureaucrats have taken advantage of the convergence of the Loyalism of Protestant trade unionists with their own loyalty to the British state. They invoke the statements and positions of Orange trade union leaders to back up their own hostility to the Irish liberation struggle and their support for the forces of repression.

More radical trends seize on (at present virtually nonexistent) rank and file militancy among Protestant workers in response to the cuts, closures and mass unemployment in the Six Counties as the spark of political progress. They recall exceptional moments when Protestants combined with Catholics to fight the employers - such as the 1932 outdoor relief strike. In a polemic ostensibly against this viewpoint (most strongly favoured by the Stalinists and the Militant tendency) Socialist Workers Party leader Chris Harman comes around to advocating the same basic position.

Harman begins with a disclaimer: Protestant workers will not respond to the crisis by automatically looking to forms of united class struggle. 'But, he continues, contradicting his opening with a typical statement of the reformist view: It would be a foolhardy prophet who denied any possibility of a class response: there have been militant strikes involving Loyalist workers (the lorry drivers, the firemen); there have been contingents of Protestant workers on unemployment demonstrations in Britain. Out of such responses new elements of class consciousness can emerge, however feeble, to compete in the ideologica battle with the various fragments of Loyalism.

This perspective ignores the norm of Ulster politics - the loyalty of Protestant workers to Britain and their active commitment to the suppression of the Catholics. It forgets that the short-lived unity of 1932 ended in sectarian pogroms. Harman, as we shall show in detail, is quite wrong to suggest that 'new elements of class consciousness' can emerge out of Loyalists' trade union struggles.

As long as the British connection exists Loyalism will always triumph over working class consciousness.

Although individual Protestants have contributed, often heroically, to the struggle for Irish freedom, the Loyalist working class maintains its privileged position through the denial of national liberation. That is why every major mobilisation of the Loyalist workers has been in defence of the British connection. No amount of trade union militancy can alter that relationship.

The Loyalist working class is not the main barrier to the national struggle in Ireland - British imperialism is the central enemy of the Irish people. Neither is the Loyal-

ist working class the main obstacle to British strategy - it is the nationalist working class that Britain has to beat to stabilise capitalism in Ireland. But Loyalist workers play an important part in the evolving war of national liberation.

For Britain they are a vital, if somewhat troublesome, ally.

For the national population in the Six Counties they are enemy agents insofar as they ally themselves with the British state. The future for Protestant workers lies in a united Ireland free from British domination. British imperialism exploits Protestants while it oppresses Catholics: the future for the working class in Ireland, and its only hope of unity, lies in the war for national liberation.

4 *The owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labourpower.' K Marx, Capital, Vol 1, Lawrence & Wishart, 1974, One thing that hasn't changed much is the prominent place 5 of clergymen as the spokesmen of the Protestant people.

Paisley follows a long line of demagogues stretching back to Cooke, Drew, Hanna and Kane in the nineteenth century.

The UDA is a Protestant paramilitary organisation formed in September 1971. The UWC organised the 1974 Loyalist general strike. It was composed of members of the LAW, UDA and other paramilitary groups, and Protestant politicians. It has recently been revived. The LAW is a grouping of Protestant trade unionists formed in the Belfast shipyards in 1969.

This hasn't stopped some of them from trying to create a reformist tradition in the Six Counties. Different methods are favoured by different groups. The Stalinist British and Irish Communist Organisation wants the British Labour Party to set up shop in the Six Counties; Militant thinks the Loyalistdominated unions should do the job.

8 The TUC has endorsed a series of policy initiatives that have emerged from the Loyalist Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The central theme of the Bill of Rights and the Better Life For All Campaign, which have become official TUC policy, is denunciation of the republican movement combined with pleas for British rule to be exercised less brutally. C Harman, Ireland after the hunger strike, Socialist Review, 9 January 1981. 10 Harman is also mistaken in his implication that the battle against Loyalism is ideological. What is at stake is a political struggle against the material ties that bind Loyalist workers to British imperialism. 2. Protestant workers and the Protestant community Protestant workers' profound attachment to the Union of the Six Counties with Britain has its origins in the particular conditions in which this section of Irish society came into existence. The early development of capitalist industry and the parallel emergence of the working class in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries took place in the North East of Ireland, where the Protestant ascendancy had been established a century previously.

Thus the working class acquired its Orange stamp from the moment of its birth.

From linen spinning to shipbuilding A number of factors favoured capital accumulation and industrial innovation in the north east. The English government encouraged linen manufacture in the area after an Act of Parliament in 1699 put an end to the Irish woollen trade (by prohibiting exports). The settlement of Huguenots in Ulster brought the necessary technical skills and a flourishing cottage industry soon emerged. It was however cotton that played the decisive role in the development of Irish industry and the Loyalist working class.

The cotton trade was encouraged by the 1801 Act of Union which brought nascent Irish industry into closer contact with the technological revolution then in progress in the workshop of the world - England. The British government tolerated Protestants trading in the British Empire in return for their allegiance to the Crown.

Cotton differed from linen in that it had already passed beyond the handicraft to the machine stage; it was therefore manufactured in factories in towns rather than in rural cottages. And the town in Ireland where cotton production became concentrated was Belfast, at the turn of the century already an important port with foundries, rope-making and sugar refineries. The cotton industry in Ireland collapsed after the depression caused by the American Civil War in the 1860s.

But the technology it had introduced to Ulster transformed linen manufacture. The establishment of joint-stock banks in Belfast in the late 'twenties and early 'thirties assisted in the formation of a modern industry. Workers flocked to Belfast textile factories: its population rose five-fold between 1800 and 1850. From the early 'fifties the number of power-looms rose dramatically. By the 1920s one third of all the linen spindles in the world were in Ulster.

Engineering emerged alongside textiles. Machines had to be serviced and maintained - and manufactured. Engineering in turn stimulated shipbuilding which began in Belfast's Queen's Island in 1853. British engineer Edward Harland bought the site in 1859; by 1884 his firm Harland and Wolff had built 168 ships with a total tonnage of 253 000 tons? The firm employed nearly 4000 workers.

By the end of the nineteenth century Belfast was a teeming city of textile mills, engineering workshops and shipyards; its population of 350 000 made it the eighth largest city in the United Kingdom. The source of the funds for capital accumulation in Ireland has been a controversial issue among historians.

Some have tried to explain the emergence of industry in the North East by the 'Ulster custom' - the favourable In fact the ready availability of cheap labour retarded the introduction of machinery in the linen industry. The decline of the population in the famine years of the 'forties, however, stimulated the introduction of power looms. One manufacturer wrote in 1862: 'So long as a man's labour could be had at the handloom in Ireland for a shilling a day, it was felt no power loom could be worth much, if at all cheaper; but when wages, some few years back, began to advance, and the population to decrease, instead of increase, it was admitted that the power loom was at length required'. C Gill, The rise of the Irish linen industry, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1964, p328.

Harland knew the secret of his success: It had been accomplished simply by energy and hard work. We have been wellsupported by the skilled labour of our artisans; we have been backed up by the capital and enterprise of England'. Samuel Smiles, Men of invention and industry, John Murray, 1884, 29

tenancies conferred on the Protestant settlers. Protestant tenant farmers enjoyed greater security of tenure and were compensated for any improvements they effected on their smallholdings. However a recent study has convincingly disposed of this hypothesis: 'The picture of a thriving Ulster agriculture, accumulating capital under the beneficient Ulster Custom and investing it in improved techniques, does not belong to the eighteenth century, when Ulster was covered with tiny holdings of weavers so impoverished that they needed the yields of primitive agriculture to bring their pitifully small earnings from weaving up to subsistence level.

That these weavers should have accumulated enough capital in their condition to finance the growth of the linen industry and eventually the Industrial Revolution in Ulster is not credible.'

The capital invested in industries came not from tenant farmers but from merchants trading in the products of cottage textile manufacture. However, insignificant though have been in capital accumulation, the custom' had an important influence on the formation of the Loyalist working class.

A special working class The 'Ulster custom' made Protestant tenants beholden to their landlords: it welded the Protestant community together against the impoverished and disgruntled Catholic The Orange Order promoted this unity in defence of the English connection against the United Irishmen in the 1790s. The identification of their interests with those of their Protestant rulers - in antagonism to the threat of the Catholics to their meagre advantages - was deeply ingrained in Loyalist workers as they moved off the land to seek work in the new industries of Belfast.

Thus although Belfast industrialised along the English pattern, the labour movement developed along different lines. The Protestant working class never became an integral part of the British labour movement. It had little in common - "no bread riots, no chartists, no threat to the middle classes like Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square'.4 workers devoted most of their energies, not to fighting their employers, but to defending their special status against Catholic workers. Conditions were grim in nineteenth century Belfast worse even than in industrial cities in England. Unemployment was higher, wages lower and living and working conditions more appalling. In 1900 Belfast had the highest typhoid rate of 82 of Europe's largest cities; its poor citizens got the lowest rate for out-relief in the United Kingdom. In the early days of industrial Belfast the vast majority of the workers exploited in its satanic mills were Protestants. But by the middle of the nineteenth century there was an influx of Catholics driven by famine and destitution from the country in search of jobs. The hostile response of Loyalist workers to Catholic competition for jobs in the latter part of the century ensured that the proportion of Catholics in Belfast in 1900 was lower than that in the 1830s 5 The Protestant working class fought to dominate the labour market. They succeeded in holding on to their privileged position at the expense of the Catholics. Catholic workers were confined to low paid or unskilled work or chronic unemployment. The establishment of a Protestant-dominated labour market was the outcome of a protracted series of struggles.

The mass influx of Catholics led to the growth of the Orange Order in the working class. The rioting organised through Orange Lodges in 1864 against Catholic workers 30 similar action in 1872, 1880 and 1884. In 1864 Catholic workers were attacked and forced out of work in the linen mills and factories. In the shipyards similar attacks took place.

The recurrent riots led to the demarcation of the sectarian ghettos that persist to this day in Belfast: 'Since the commencement of the late riots [1857]...the districts have become exclusive, and by regular systematised movement on both sides, the few Catholic inhabitants of the Sandy Row district have been obliged inhabitants of the Pound district have also been obliged to leave that Initially the Protestant employers opposed the distortion of the labour market effected by Loyalist workers. The bourgeoisie was eager to obtain cheap Catholic labour for its mills and factories. Employers giving evidence to the Commission of Inquiry into the 1864 riots complained ment.> the forceful expulsion of Catholics from employ- However by the 1880s the Protestant bosses had changed their mind. Indeed, they had not only become reconciled to the distorted labour market but also begun to encourage sectarianism at work.

The shift in the employers' attitude was due to the revival of the nationalist movement in the 1880s. The Protestant bourgeoisie saw Home Rule agitation as a direct threat to its links with Britain. In response to the Home Rule movement they moved to strengthen their ties to the Protestant workers. In 1864 Edward Harland had resisted his workers' sectarianism; by 1886 he gave it full rein.

*In 1864, when attempts had been made to drive out every Catholic worker, Harland had posted up a notice threatening to close the yard until the Catholics were permitted to return. In 1886, when 190 Catholics fled from their employment in the yard, Harland virtually took no steps to prevent such discrimination.

In spite of urgings from a deputation of Catholic workers, he did not threaten the 1864 sanctions.

By the turn of the century Catholics were well under the Loyalist heel. They made up 7 percent of the shipwrights, but 41 per cent of the dockers; 13 per cent of the commercial clerks, but 32 per cent of the general labourers.

Only 15 per cent of tramway workers and 8 per cent of municipal clerks were Catholics. On the other hand Catholics represented half of the workhouse inmates although only a quarter of the total population.

The sectarian state The employment patterns created through Loyalist control of the labour market have persisted up to today. Partition institutionalised and perpetuated Protestants' preferential access to jobs in traditional industries and in the state apparatus; it ratified Catholics' inferior status on the jobs market. Because capital always tends towards the creation of a free labour market, the Protestants have had to fight to safeguard their particular advantages. Since 1920 the state, itself a bigger and bigger employer, has actively sustained Loyalist control of the labour market. The unions have continued to operate sectarian discrimination - and the traditional methods of job demarcation by rioting and intimidation have been regularly deployed. A few contemporary examples illustrate the persistence of the distorted labour market in the Six Counties.

overall discrimination against Catholics in industry. The main source of employment for Catholics is in unskilled jobs. Catholic employment in the Harland and Wolff shipyard has never exceeded 10 per cent and on many occasions

since 1921 the Catholic workforce has been cleared out completely. 10 In their analysis of the economy in 1957 Isles and Cuthbert remarked on the lack of workers in moving into semi-skilled or skilled jobs. Their analysis of wage rates also showed that rates were lower than in Britain, the rates for skilled workers were higher and the rates for un- Britain 11 orkers lower than corresponding workers in Not only have Catholics not been able to secure skilled work but they are paid low wages for the unskilled Catholics also bear the brunt of unemployment. The 1971 census figures revealed that, while unemployment overall at 10 per cent was higher than in Britain, it was most heavily concentrated in Catholic areas: Derry 19 per cent, Strabane 15 per cent, Newry 15 per cent. The same is true at much higher levels today. The government-sponsored Fair Employment Agency reported in 1978 that there were two and a half times more Catholics unemployed than Belfast Corporation Electricity Department Employees, 197112 Protestant Catholic Motor inspectors 91 4 Installation department 995 24 Street lighting 20 Garage 64 Mains 148 27 Cooker service 28 4 Total 1346 61 Per cent 96 4 Note: Catholics make up 26 per cent of the population of Belfast.

Local government, one of the biggest employers in the Six Counties, perpetuates sectarian discrimination.

The Northern Ireland Development Agency has advertised 'a loyal workforce' in its appeals to foreign investors. But foreign capital has not altered the distorted labour market of the Six Counties: 'It is a fact of life in Northern Ireland that its skilled industrial workers tend to be Protestant. The big firms on which Northern Ireland's reputation grew - Short Aircraft and the shipbuilders Harland and Wolff among them - had a largely Protestant workforce. The high technology capital-intensive industries that NIDA is angling for find themselves, almost willy-nilly, taking on Protestant After Direct Rule was introduced in 1972 the Westminster government stated its intention to end discrimination in employment. In practice, however, the British government has maintained the unequal job market, confirming its continuing importance for British imperialism.

In 1976 the Fair Employment Agency was set up with the acclaimed aim to promote equality of opportunity in employment...and to work for the elimination of religious and political discrimination in employment'.

words to destroy the Loyalist-controlled labour market in the Six Counties. In 1979 the Belfast Workers' Research Unit reported on the FEA's 'investigations of sectarian bias in industries and firms': "The FEA has twice bowed to governmental pressure on this count. In 1978 Don Concannon dissuaded it from investigating Ford Autolite in Finaghy, and in June 1978 the FEA wilted under pressure from Hugh Rossi to stop an investigation into the civil service. The FEA has also dropped an investigation into the engin eering industry and one into the employment structure of Derry.

31 The FEA has never secured a single conviction of discriminestablishment. Its reports have merely revealed the intensification of sectarianism as unemployment rises. The FEA report of early 1980 concluded that 'Catholics have tended to move down the social scale more commonly than Protestants' and that 'the proportion of in lower status jobs could increase in the next A still-born class The privileged position of Loyalist workers is above all based on the abolition of a free market for labour. In return for their loyalty, Protestant workers have been accorded a degree of control over the hiring of labourpower. It is this privilege that has defined the attitude of Protestant workers both towards their employers and towards Catholic workers.

Loyalist workers have never differentiated themselves as a class from the wider Protestant community. Their primary identification of themselves is as Protestants, not as workers. Their social and political institutions reflect their Loyalism rather than their class consciousness. Protestant workers cannot act as a class because their control over the labour market shelters them from Catholic competition. That's why the dominant form of action taken by Protestant workers is not against employers but against Catholic workers. Loyalist sectarianism is not a result of misguided ideology, but of real material relations. As long as the distorted labour market continues in the Six Counties with other types of privileges, Protestant workers will derive limited but definite advantages from the Union with Britain.

B L Solow, The land question and the Irish economy, 1870 1903. Harvard University Press, Massachussets.

4 S Baker, 'Orange and Green Belfast, 1832-1912', in H J Dyos and M Wolff, eds, The Victorian City, Vol 2, RKP, London 1973, p801. 5 Catholics as a proportion of Belfast population (per cent): 1750: 6.5; 1834: 31; 1848: 43; 1900: 25. Senior, Orangeism in Ireland and Britain, 1795-1836, London, 1966.

E Jones, 'The distribution and segregation of Roman Catholics in Belfast', in The Sociological Review, Vol 4 (new series), 7 Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry, 1864.

P Buckland, Irish Unionism Vol 2: Ulster Unionism and the origins of Northern Ireland, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1972, S Baker, op cit, pp789-814.

10 KS Isles and N Cuthbert, An economic survey of Northern Ireland, HMSO, Belfast, 1957, p237.

11 Ibid, pp217-219. 12 J Darby, Conflict in Northern Ireland: the development of a polarised community, Gill & MacMillan, Dublin, 1976.

13 The Economist, 28 June 1980.

14 Trade unions in Northern Ireland', Belfast Bulletin, No 7, Summer 1979, p28. 15 Irish Times, 17 January 1980.

3. Orange unions Trade unionism in the Six Counties is the product of the Loyalist-dominated labour market. Far from uniting the working class against capital, the unions themselves have played a key role in fostering sectarian divisions.

Divided they stand The guilds and early craft unions in Belfast were Protestant organisations. When Catholic peasants came in search of unions closed ranks to protect their jobs and positions. The sectarian character of the trade unions was reinforced by the growth of skilled manufacturing workers' unions linked with their British counterparts in the midnineteenth century. By regulating apprenticeships and the closed shop these unions kept the shipbuilding and engineering trades exclusively Protestant. One historian summed up the situation: 'Protestant dominance in the skilled trades was strengthened undoubtedly.

barriers against Catholic labor; s by the Trade Unionists' Even the organisation of unskilled workers towards the end of the nineteenth century did little to alter the domination of the trade unions by Loyalism. Catholic workers were ultimately obliged to form separate, unions to defend their interests The Loyalist workers were well organised. But because their main enemy was not the employers but Catholic workers they were susceptible to collaboration with the Protestant bourgeoisie. The Loyalist unions' long tradition of 'good industrial relations' dates from the period of their formation. A recent bourgeois history of the engineering the class harmony that prevailed in Belfast compared with Manchester and Sheffield: There was less antipathy between unions and employers than in many other industrial cities; the Belfast employers appear to have made no attempt to destroy the trade unions in the 1860s and 1870s when this was being attempted in Britain."

The Belfast employers were shrewd: the Loyalism of their workers was a precious asset, not only in the expropriation of profit in the factories, but also in rallying popular Protestant opposition to any change in the political status quo in Ireland. 'Home Rule is Rome Rule' The trade unions played a full part in mobilising Protestant working class opposition to the nationalist movement for Home Rule. In the decisive battle against the Third Home Rule Bill Loyalist workers followed the leadership of bourgeois Unionists Carson and Craig.

Early in 1911 the Ulster Unionist Council began to organise Unionist Clubs in the shipyards: within 12 months men were drilling in arms.

Labour Association was created specifically to rally working class opposition to Home Rule. Mobilised for action, the Protestant workers turned on Rulers - Catholic labourers in the shipyards. As a result 2000 men were forced out of their jobs. As the Home Rule Bill went through Parliament in 1912 Carson convened mass meetings of Loyalists, culminating in a vast Belfast rally which pledged violent resistance to Irish independence. The Home Rule controversy simmered until the outbreak of the First World War. In April 1914 2000 Protest- 32 ant trade unionists met in Belfast to protest at the collusion between the British Labour Party and Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party over Home Rule. Boilermakers' leader J Hanna declared that 'as freemen and as members of the greatest democracy in Great Britain and Ireland, the organised trade unions of the country, they would not have Home Rule'. The trade unionists were urged to support a manifesto which acclaimed Carson as their leader.

Edward Carson leads us because we, the workers, the people, the democracy of Ulster, have chosen him 15 Two months later, Protestant trade unionists and Belfast Trades Council protested at the Irish Trades Union Congress against Redmond's compromise plan for the Partition of Ireland. They wanted Ireland as a whole to remain British A Belfast printer spoke for the Loyalist Ireland was theirs and Ireland they were going By 1920, however, the Unionists had become convinced was inevitable. The war of independence from 1918 to 1920 was largely conducted in the south and west of Ireland; the northern Protestants were not required to assist the British forces. Partition, however, transformed Britain's drive to suppress the republican movement into civil war (conducted by the pro-Treaty government with British backing) in the south and sectarian pogroms (conducted by Loyalist workers) in the north.

Counties, two years of rioting, burning and intimidation left more than ded thousands of Catholics were driven from their jobs and homes.

Recriminations were not, however, directed exclusively at Catholics. Because full Loyalist backing was essential for the new Stormont regime no dissent could be tolerated in the Protestant camp. The Labour Party - which won 20 percent of the seats on Belfast Corporation, its best result ever, in 1920 - also became a target of Loyalist attack. At the July 1920 Orange parade Carson condemned Labour as being the same as Sinn Fein, as a sinister force to be given no quarter: We have been handed down great traditions and great privileges, and in our Orange Order we have undertaken to preserve those and to hand them on to our children, and we must proclaim today clearly that, come what will, and be the consequences what they may, we in Ulster will not tolerate no Sinn Fein - (cheers) - no Sinn Fein organisation, no Sinn Fein methods.,8 Protestant Labour supporters soon followed Catholics out the gates of the factories and shipyards. If you ask me my opinion of your action', Craig later told shipyard workers, 'I say "well done" ,9 In the aftermath of the 1920 expulsions, Vigilance Committees were established at workplaces to consolidate Loyalist control.10 In the shipyards, special vetting committees were formed to prevent the infiltration of Sinn Feiners'. All the unions except none were complicit in these attacks on Catholic workers.

Sectarianism and 'non-sectarianism' There was little place for Loyalist trade unionism in the 'twenties and 'thirties. The government built sectarian discrimination into every aspect of the new state apparatus.

The national population had been beaten into temporary submission. And conditions of slump and mass unemployment were not conducive to trade union organisation. By 1937 trade unionists made up only 20 per cent of the Six Counties workforce. The temporary revival of Ulster's traditional industries during the Second World War led to renewed growth of the

unions. It was at this time that the Loyalist trade unionists, organised in the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Trades Union Congress, formally adopted the approach to politics that it has pursued ever since: "The activities of the Committee should be confined to industrial and economic operations and matters which affect trade unions and workers, as such, leaving aside political issues in so far as they are bound up with Trade Union interest.

The function of this 'convention' was to exclude from discussion any consideration of sectarian discrimination in employment whilst the NIC fully accepted the Stormont regime that enforced sectarian divisions. Once the NIC had reassured the Belfast government of its autonomy from the Dublin-based ICTU it was granted official recognition in 1964. The government was so pleased with the moderate and loyal behaviour of the NIC that by 1972 it was subsidising the committee to the tune of £10 000 per year.

During the past decade of war the 'non-sectarian' vention of the NIC has paid dividends for British imperialism.

While the more militant Loyalist workers have joined the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force in carrying out traditional-style intimidation and assassinations, the trade union leaders have played a more discreet role in backing up British rule. Firstly, they have worked overtime to prevent strikes that might damage the economy. Up to 90 per cent of the disputes that occurred despite their efforts were British in origin - 'national' strikes such as the lorrydrivers' strike of 1978 or the engineers' strikes in 1980.

Secondly, trade union bureaucrats have constantly urged workers not to let sectarian politics disrupt collaboration with the employers in the production of profits.

On the day the troops went in to Derry and Belfast in 1969, Harland and Wolff shop steward Sandy Scott pleaded with workers not to bring sectarian strife into the shipyards and to recognise that the continuation of the present civi order can only end in economic disaster'. 14 later awarded the MBE for his services.

In 1974, The Times paid tribute to the role of the unions in keeping politics out of the factories, for keeping the wheels of capital turning while the national struggle raged on the streets of Belfast: *Last year [1973] a long and tough battle was fought between shopfloor management in the Belfast shipyard. But the issues were confined to those involved in the straight-forward industrial dispute.

All attempts to introduce sectarian arguments - and several were made - were quickly stopped by unions and management alike....

Throughout the troubles the unions have successfully negotiated a tricky tightrope. Their position was exposed and vulnerable. There have been all sorts of elements and pressure groups seeking to involve them. Wisely the unions have decided to pursue their traditional role of shopfloor representation, maintaining worker solidarity and using its strength to contest industrial issues.

When, however, the trade union bureaucrats went so far as to oppose industrial action called by militant Loyalist shop stewards in defence of the Union with Britain they were spurned by Protestant workers.

In May 1974 the Ulster Workers Council general strike in protest against the British government's scheme for a 'power-sharing' executive. British TUC leader Len Murray joined with NIC leaders to oppose this attempt to disrupt the industrial life of the Six Counties and frustrate a legitimate government policy. Their "back to work' march was a fiasco: it was attended by only a couple of hundred people who were jeered and spat upon by Belfast The trade unions were irrelevant to Loyalist workers when the defence of their historic privileges was at stake. But once 'power-sharing' was defeated, the unions resumed their position as the 'non-sectarian representatives of Protestant workers. Trade unions in the Six Counties are an instrument of Loyalist privilege. Their central function is to maintain the status quo of the labour market. However, because Protestant workers fear Catholics more than they hate their bosses, trade unions are of limited use. Thus whenever the republican movement puts British rule in jeopardy or when British policy seems to put the Union in question, Loyalist trade unionists ignore the NIC and the TUC and turn to the Loyalist paramilitaries. The Loyalist trade unions are the creations of British imperialism: the struggle against it will require the establishment of different organisations to defend workers' interests.

The local unions had to take strong action from time to time to keep workers from other areas out of Belfast, in order to prevent them flooding the labour market and depressing the level of wages...the trade unions' main interest was in restricting the number of apprenticeships, in order to maintain the wage level of existing journeymen.' WE Coe, The engineering industry in the North of Ireland, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1969, pp173,175. S Baker, op cit, p802. WE Coe, op cit, p181. H Patterson, Class conflict and sectarianism, Blackstaff, 1980, 4 p88. J Biggs-Davison, The hand is red, London, 1973, p74.

5 J D Clarkson, Labour and nationalism in Ireland, p299.

6 After expelling Catholic workers on the Great Northern Rail- 7 way, Loyalist workers explained that we would have no hesitation in resolving to work with any of our fellow workmen who sign a declaration of loyalty to their King and Constitution'. Ibid, p370. Ibid, p365. Ibid, p371-2. H Patterson, op cit, p135.

10 11 Society of Carpenters and Joiners Only the Amalgamated opposed the expulsion of Catholics. The British TUC, however, pressed the ASCJ not to take disciplinary action against its members in Belfast who participated in the pogroms. A Boyd, The rise of the Irish trade unions, 1729-1970, Anvil, Dublin, C McCarthy, Trade unions in Ireland, 1884-1960, Institute of 12 Public Administration, Dublin, 1977, p322. The Irish TUC was formed as an offshoot of the British TUC in 1894. The North ern Ireland Committee of the ITUC was set up in 1944. In 1959 the ITUC fused with the Dublin-based Congress of Irish Trade Unions (originally formed when the Irish Transport and General Workers Union split from the ITUC in 1945) to form the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The NIC became the virtually autonomous Six Counties section of the ICTU. The British TUC has no regional organisation in Northern Ireland although it has close contacts with the NIC. Approximately 50 per cent of workers in the Six Counties are trade union members: 78 per cent belong to British unions, 14 per cent to unions based in Northern Ireland and 8 percent to unions with their headquarters in Dublin.

13 The UVF is a paramilitary rival of the UDA, formed in 1966 in emulation of Carson's militia.

14 Quoted in Belfast Bulletin, op cit, p13. In June 1970 500 Catholics were thrown out of Harland and Wolff when the IRA began to fight back against the British troops.

15 The Times, 29 March 1974.

R Fisk, The point of no return, Andre Deutsch, London, 1975, 16 pp109-119. 33

4. Tensions within Loyalism Protestant workers have never been simply lackeys of the several Unionist bourgeoisie. On occasions substantial sections have moved towards working class politics, embracing socialism and joining in militant collective action with Catholic fellow workers.

Such movements have generally taken place in times of economic recession when the national struggle was at a low ebb; they have ended abruptly upon the emergence of any threat to the British It is also noteworthy that the tendency of connection. Loyalist workers to move in a left-wing direction has become progressively weaker during the present century.

Labour's high tide Around the turn of the century Belfast had a high reputfor socialist politics and militant trade unionism.

Between the end of the Second Home Rule Bill in 1893 and the beginning of the Third Home Rule Bill controversy in 1911, Loyalist working class politics flourished. Trade unions adopted a militant syndicalist outlook and socialist groups such as William Walker's branch of the Independent Labour Party were established.

Labour's first electoral breakthrough came in 1897 when six candidates were elected to Belfast Corporation.

But this was no triumph for socialism - the Loyalist establishment welcomed the new members as representatives of Loyalist workers. In Shankill the Conservative Association left a seat open for one of the Labour candidates.

One of the most significant developments of the period was the split in the Orange Order as a result of working class pressure. In 1903 shipyard worker Tom Sloan and journalist Lindsay Crawford denounced the unholy alliance between the Order and the Tories and founded the Independent Orange Order. Sloan advocated Protestantism, Orangeism, total abstinence, trade unionism, in a word Protestant Belfast' 3 But Crawford was more radical, producing in the Magheramore manifesto of 1905 a call for religious toleration and a measure of devolved government for Ireland.* The 100 backed a working alliance of Labour, Nationalist and Independent Unionist candidates in the 1906 general election. Sloan captured South Belfast in an unprecedented challenge to the Unionist establishment.

The 100 also joined with Labour in support of the 1907 dock strike. Catholic and Protestant workers came out against the employers' attempt to break the unions.

authorities found it The police force mutinied and the necessary to transfer the entire force to outlying districts, and pour thousands of troops into the city. The military were mainly concentrated in the Falls Road district in an attempt to provoke Catholic antagonism and break the unity of the strike. another Home Rule Bill on the The appearance horizon led to the rapid demise of the IOO. Crawford came out in support of Home Rule and was sacked from his job on the Ulster Guardian and was expelled from the IO0 for going one step too far. Sloan tried to backtrack and began making virulent sectarian speeches. But it was too late. He was outflanked by the official Unionists and lost his Westminster seat in 1910. The collapse of Labour support among the Loyalist workers confirmed the strength of their allegiance to Britain in comparison with the weakness of their identification with Catholic fellow workers. The Labour Party retreated to the Catholic ghettos: The Home Rule crisis of 1912-14 so polarised Belfast along traditional sectarian lines that the local Labour Party, which in Walker's day had been a unionist body, could tind refuge only among the Catholic nationalists of the Falls district. '6 From class unity to pogroms The pattern of a period of support for Labour politics and class unity, followed by a wave of renewed sectarianism arising out of a threat to Ireland's constitutional relationship with Britain, was repeated in the early 'twenties and In 1919 and 1920 there were significant instances of Loyalist radicalisation. The strike committee that led the February 1919 shipyard strike included Catholic and Protestant trade unionists. Labour Party leader Sam Kyle cooperated on the committee with Ulster Unionist Labour Association leader shipwright William Grant. But when the national struggle came to the fore later in 1920 the ULA encouraged the same shipyard workers to go on the rampage against the Catholics. Grant tried to justify the pogroms: The happenings in the shipyard were bound to occur. For the safety of their Unionist Party Association and organisation it was necessary that steps should be taken to put down the Sinn Fein movement when the government had practically acknowledged that they were unable to do so."

While Labour supporters were driven from the shipyards with Sinn Feiners, Labour candidates were trounced at the polls. In the first election to the Northern Ireland Parliament in 1921 the Belfast ILP candidates denounced the division of Ireland: together they received less than 2000 votes. When the Northern Ireland Labour Party was formed in 1923 it decided to avoid taking a position on Partition. Again, in the early 'thirties Protestants united with Catholics to oppose a cut in the levels of benefits to the unemployed. Two factors were important in creating the conditions for the outdoor relief strike. Firstly, unemployment had risen rapidly amongst Protestant workers. Between January 1930 and October 1932 when the strike broke out employment had fallen by 87 per cent in the shipyards. Secondly, the republican movement had been further and weakened by the election to disorientated government in the Twenty-six Counties of the Fianna Fail (anti-Treaty) party in 1932. As a consequence there was no apparent threat to Partition in the minds of Protestant workers. This combination of poverty and the security of Partition facilitated the united action.

However, the more traditional response to rising unemployment amongst Protestant workers was never far from the surface. In 1931 the Ulster Protestant League was set up 'to safeguard the employment of Protestants'. Unionist made inflammatory speeches encouraging politicians Protestant employers not to employ any Catholics. The shortlived unity was decisively terminated with the outbreak of sectarian riots in 1935. Loyalists killed five Catholics, pushed hundreds more out of work and drove more than 500 from their homes.

34

Labourism in the Irish War In the post-war period Loyalist workers have shown little inclination for Labour politics. Although reformist political organisations have endorsed Partition and embraced the sectarian state, Protestant workers have for the most part remained solidly loyal to Unionism. The slow decline of the Northern Ireland Labour Party reveals the lack of appeal of social democratic politics for Loyalist workers.

In 1949 the NILP gave up its equivocation over Partition and recognised the Stormont state: *The Northern Ireland Labour Party, being a democratic party, accepts the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and the close association with Britain and the Commonwealth. Furthermore we are not seeking any mandate to change it.

The Protestant workers were not impressed: the NILP lost its three remaining seats in the 1949 elections.

In the late 'fifties and early sixties, however, the NILP began to make some headway. The decline of traditional industries created rising unemployment; Protestant workers fought a number of redundancy disputes. The IRA's border campaign was no threat to the Union: it fizzled out early in 1962. The NILP won four seats in Stormont in 1958, vehemently denouncing the IRA in the election campaign.

In 1962 the Party won 76 000 votes - its highest score ever - and retained all four seats.

In 1963 the new leader of the Unionist Party Terence O'Neill moved to curb Labour's incursions into the Loyalist ranks. He encouraged new investment in the Six Counties and he made sure that Protestant workers got the benefits.

New towns were sited in Orange country - at Craigavon and Ballymena - and Ulster's new university went, not to Catholic Derry, but to Protestant Coleraine. And, despite his highly publicised meeting with Irish Taoiseach Sean Lemass and visits to Catholic convents, O'Neill's appeal to Loyalist workers succeeded. The NILP was routed in the 1965 election. However, O'Neill's concessions to the Catholics soon became his undoing. The Rev. Ian Paisley began his protests against O'Neill's conciliatory approach towards the Irish Republic, the Catholic Church and its northern congregation in the early 'sixties. By 1969 and the rise of the civil rights movement he was attracting a growing body of support from Loyalist workers. O'Neill was the first victim of the movement of the Loyalist community towards more and more extreme exponents of traditional Ulster Unionism.

Ten years after O'Neill's resignation Paisley won 300 000 votes in the European election and proclaimed himself In the years of war since 1969 reformist parties have fared badly. The NILP scarcely exists today. There are, however, new contenders for its place as the reformist party of the Loyalist workers - the Workers Party-Republican Clubs (the remnants of the Stalinist Official IRA) and the Labour and Trade Union Group (the Militant Tendency in Orange). All these fragments have been humiliated in recent national and local government elections."!

Loyal workers and Orange ideas Relations between Loyalist workers and Unionist capitalists have never broken down so far as to allow the emergence of a genuine workers' party. Conflicts have always been limited by the common concern of the Protestant community to defend its distinctive way of life. And since the guarantor of this way of life is the British state, Loyalist politics have always prevailed over the particular concerns of any section of the Protestant community.

Social democratic politics have played a marginal role because Loyalist workers need to line up with their employers against the national population. Reformist groupings from the NILP to the WP-RC have adopted a pro-imperialist stance in an attempt to win Protestant working class support. But to no avail: Protestant workers do not want reforms - the maintenance of the status quo is their overriding objective. British socialists have failed to appreciate that it is the social position of Protestant workers that has led them to line up with the Loyalist ruling class. They have not understood that the condition for uniting Protestant and Catholic workers is the destruction of the force that prevents them coming together by promoting the all-class sectarian unity of the Loyalist alliance - British imperialism.

A group of radical academics, in an influential recent book, recycle the traditional reformist appeal for an alliance between Protestants and Catholics to fight for reforms.

They call for 'the construction of a progressive alliance to reform the state and create the best possible conditions for the development of the class struggle'. 12 But it is the state - the British state - that has contained the class struggle, by using its powerful influence on Protestants (and most importantly on Protestant workers) to prevent any such alliance with Catholics from taking place. The struggle 'to reform the state' in the Six Counties simply accepts the existing divisions in the working class. It is only the national struggle against the British state that can create the conditions for the development of the class struggle in Ireland.

E Larkin, James Larkin, RKP, London, 1977, p316.

J Boyle, The Belfast Protestant Association and the Independent Orange Order, 1901-1910, in Irish Historical Studies, Crawford appealed to Catholics: We stand once more on the banks of the Boyne...to hold out the right hand of fellowship to those who, while worshipping at other shrines, are yet our fellow countrymen'. E Larkin, op cit, p313.

The strike was eventually sold out by British trade union leaders.

E Rumph and A C Hepburn, Nationalism and socialism in twentieth century Ireland, Liverpool University Press, 1977, 7 N Campbell, The Unionist Party and the Protestant working class, unpublished thesis, New University of Ulster, Coleraine, 1978. 8 KS Isles and N Cuthbert, op cit, p594.

9 M Farrell, Northern Ireland: the Orange State, Pluto, 1980, pp136-140. 10 Ibid, p194. 11 The Stalinist Stickies were dumbfounded by their disastrous What performance in the May local government elections: polarisation? the assessment? A then is overall Absolute straight return to the Roman Catholic versus Protestant politics of the pre-civil rights days? Extreme communal violence generated by the H-Block issue? The questions are easier than the answers. D O'Hagan, Worker's Life, June 1981. For the 'the North is out of gear with Militant the answer is easy: Britain and Southern Ireland. Bill political developments in Webster, Militant, 29 May 1981. In the Six Counties workers, Protestant and Catholic, obviously thought it was Militant that was 'out of gear' with the reality of a war of national liberation.

12 P Bew, P Gibbon, H Patterson, *Some aspects of nationalism and socialism in Ireland: 1968-78, Ireland: divided nation, divided class, Morgan and Purdie, eds, Irish Links, 1980, p170.

35

above all to endorse the national struggle against British imperialism, British radicals submerge themselves in the quest for 'contradictions' within the Loyalist camp. One of the leading left-wing analysts of the Protestant working class, Henry Patterson, argues in his recent that the complicated study of the pre-Partition period nature' of 'intra-Protestant conflicts' has to be closely examined. For it can be shown that in these contests involving Protestant "democrats" a significant amount of 13 Having identified progresclass feeling was articulated'.

sive trends within Loyalism, Patterson goes on to discover a positive side to Orange ideology. He dismisses those who treat the main ideological currents among Protestant workers simply as obstacles to be overcome 14 Because 'Orangeism as an ideology if not an institution could develop into a militant populism' 15 Patterson never explains the basis for Protestant workers' class collaboration. As a result he ends up portraying Orangeism as having autonomous laws.

it will be argued, derived its significance Orangeism, simply as a pliant instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie, but as a relatively autonomous institution with practices and demands that could and did bring it, or sections of its conflict with the leaders of Belfast Conservatism 1 embership, into The actions of the Protestant working class cannot be reduced to the flights of fancy of relatively autonomous questions institutions. Patterson is asking altogether. Protestant workers were neither 'dupes' of the Loyalist bosses nor a threat to the Protestant ascendancy.

Their opposition to the Unionist establishment was motivated by the same force which led them to expel Catholics from the shipyards. In both cases they were defending their positions in the labour market. Protestant workers are not haunted by 'semi-autonomous' ideology - their actions are determined by the real material relations of the Six Counties.

The weakness of the social democratic tradition and the limited role of trade unions reflect the special character of Protestant workers. Like all wage labourers under capitalism, they work and they are exploited. But their special position in the labour market means that they cannot act as a working class as long as their privileges survive. The modification of the labour/capital relationship produced by the constraints on the free sale of labourpower mean that Protestant workers have no interest in common with the nationalist working class. The call for Protestant-Catholic unity is a chimera which masks the real issue - the political oppression of Ireland by British imperialism. Andrew Clarkson Phil Murphy H Patterson, op cit, pxii.

13 14 Ibid, pxi. 15 Ibid, p144. 16 Ibid, pxi.

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