Irish Labour History, Lecture 7 : The Middleman State

1. HHIS403 - Political & Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Ireland
The Irish Labour Movement, 1889 – 1924
Friday @ 10am
Introduction: Irish Labour movement, 1889-1924
The Rise of New Unionism, 1889-1906
James Connolly and the Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896-1904
Jim Larkin and ‘Larkinism’, 1907-1914
The 1913 Lockout and the Irish Citizen Army
Syndicalism, 1917-1921
Civil War and Retreat, 1921-1924
Conclusion
Required Reading:
Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824-2000 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2011): 51-127.
Supplementary Reading:
Conor McCabe, ‘Your only God is profit’: Irish class relations and the 1913 Lockout ’ in David Convery (ed)
Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 2013)
Lorcan Collins, James Connolly: 16 Lives (Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2012)
Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, 1881-1896 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997)
David Lynch, Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: The Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896-1904
(Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005)
Emmet O’Connor, Syndicalism in Ireland, 1917-1923 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1988)
Emmet O’Connor, James Larkin (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002)

2. 4. Larkin and the Labour movement

10. The Government of Ireland Act
(1920)
Offered two Home Rule parliaments: one
parliament for the 6 counties and another for
the 26 counties
It made provision for ultimate Irish unity
Only local powers were granted
Ultimate power remained in London

11. Local Government (Emergency
Powers) Act
• Introduced to the Northern
parliament on 2 December 1921
• Enabled the government to dissolve
any local council which withheld
recognition and co-operation and to
replace it with a government
appointed commissioner

12. Electoral Arrangements
• Proportional Representation was abolished
by legislation on 11 Sept 1922
• It imposed a declaration of allegiance upon
members and officials of local authorities
• Enabled the reversion to old electoral areas
and in some cases the redrawing of new,
local electoral areas
• Meant that unionists would be able to
dominate local government
• The number of nationalist controlled
councils achieved in 1920 were reduced by
half

13. The Civil Authorities (Special
Powers) Act 1922
• Introduced on 15 March 1922
• Introduced draconian emergency powers to
search, arrest and detain without warrant,
impose stiff penalties and indeed to
suspend civil liberties when deemed
necessary.
• Initially passed for one year only, it was
renewed annually until 1928, was renewed
in that year for five years and in 1933
became permanent, until its abolition in
1972.

40. 1966 Housing Act
- allowed local authority tenants in urban
areas to purchase their homes
- by the early 1990s, 220,000 of the
330,000 public housing units in the state had
been sold to tenants

50. … Matheson attorney Dualta Counihan has served as a director of at least 274 entities,
based on Irish records, while attorney George Brady has served as a director of at least 232
entities.