The north of Ireland was hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Belfast the biggest industry, the shipyards, built and sold almost no ships as global trade collapsed. Poverty was enormous. Tens of thousands relied on megre rations and payment from work in kind to survive. Relief for the poor was overseen by the reactionary, sectarian and deeply conservative Board of Guardians who managed the workhouses. Their bigoted politics and their belief that the poor were only poor because they were lazy added insult to injury.
In this climate few were prepared to resist. But a small group of Communists organised in Revolutionary Workers' Groups (RWGs) decided to get organised and through the summer of 1932 they led a mass, militant protest movement that spilled out into the wider working class. What made the movement particularly dangerous to the authorities and the Board of Guardians was that it drew Protestant and Catholic workers into united action. There are some remarkable accounts. Workers from different sides of the supposedly sectarian divide stood side by side, marching together through each others communities and celebrating what united them. They took militant action together - fighting the police, breaking into meetings of the Guardians and organising a strike of workers of relief projects.
The RWGs conscious efforts to build unity did not necessarily meet with approval at the top, as the following quote shows, but it did lead to unity from below:
There was a strong turnout from Protestant areas on the march. This was not however, reflected in the music played on the day. Catholic bands, including St John's Accordion Band, St. Kelvin's Accordion Band and St Malachy's Pipe Band, accompanied the march. Orange bands were invited too, including the Prince of Wales Band, the Northern Belfast Pipe Band, the North Pipes and Brass Band, the Willowfield Brass and Reed Band and the Ballymacarrett Flute band, though it was announced from the platform that they had failed to turn up. Women too joined the march in large numbers... Over a thousand strong they marched behind one of the textile banners, singing and cheering.
As the protest movement's repression saw it explode into rioting, unity developed further. Mitchell quotes one eyewitness:
On the Shankill Road crowds of growling men lounged around waiting. Suddenly a big red-faced woman with a black shawl thrown over her shoulders, wisps of hair hanging from her eyes appeared from nowhere. She shouted, "They are kicking the shite out of the peelers up the Falls. Are you going to let them down?" That seemed to be a flashpoint for the riot. Thee people started to burn a watchman's hut that had been used in an ODR [Out Door Relief] scheme.
The repression was enormous, but the police lost control of Belfast's working class areas - both Catholic and Protestant. The Guardians had to back down and massive, though not complete, concessions were made. The 1932 ODR riots showed the potential for working class unity, as did a subsequent rail strike which took place across Ireland and saw participation of both Catholic and Protestant strikers in the north.
While the struggle inspiringly demonstrates the potential for unity of workers in struggle, it did not lead to any lasting unity. Sectarianism was consciously reintroduced to break down the unity. The protestant leadership, closely working with the British authorities, introduced all sorts of methods - including protestant only trade unionism, to undermine unity. Mitchell explores why this was able to happen.
This emphasis on the remarkable achievements of the ODR agitation does not mean that the trajectory of events in the aftermath of the ODR riots is unimportant, however. Any serious analysis of the period will have to acknowledge that while the ODR campaign displayed the potential for working-class unity, it also revealed the power and persistence of communal division. Why was this the case?
Part of the problem, as Mitchell explores was that sections of the Nationalist movement bought into the idea that Protestant workers were bought off by the system and their interests lay with the Protestant ruling class. Mitchell shows that this was not true - after all both Catholic and Protestant workers starved in the Depression. He goes on:
The Communist agitation of 1932 was successful because it built a movement capable of convincing large numbers of working-class people that heir lot was better served struggling together across the traditional divide. But this agitation was never combined with a political challenge to sectarian notions - including the vicious anti-Catholicism common within Orangeism... loyalist forces were able to re-articulate class concerns and direct the frustrations of Protestant workers in a sectarian direction.
The left had caught the moment in 1932. But it was too small to seriously develop the struggles after the ODR victory. The RWGs were isolated from the rail strike without roots in those workplaces. But they also had a political flaw. The Communists assumed that a single period was "enough to wipe out sectarianism" they did nothing to "steel the unemployment movement, or even their own cadre, for a political fight with sectarianism".
Mitchell points out that while struggle does undermine division, but "the process of becoming that [struggle] creates will not progress uninterrupted". Sectarianism retreated, but did not disappear. That would require both further struggle and a conscious attempt by the left to challenge it. As Mitchell says, "For anti-sectarian socialist ideas to grow they must become organised, to become a 'material force,' as Marx argued." The RWGs failure to do this, and to try and build its networks to fight on economic and political fronts left it vulnerable. But the RWG was also being shaped by other forces - including the Third Period Stalinism coming out of Moscow. The RWGs eventually played a role in the formation of the Irish Communist Party. Its leading figures playing central roles in ongoing struggles. But the Irish Communist Party itself capitulated to Nationalism, by eventually breaking with the revolutionary demand for a Workers' Republic.
These conclusions are important today. Firstly, and most immediately at the time of writing, there is a need to remind ourselves of the potential for Unity between Catholic and Protestant in the north of Ireland. That may seem distant today, but Mitchell points out that just a couple of months before they built barricades together in August 1932, Catholic and Protestant workers were rioting against each other. Longer term though we must remember that it is not enough to have economic struggle to overcome division, racism and oppression. This is perhaps the most pertinent of lessons. Too many on the left in Britain today, when faced by the rise of the right, argue that what we need is struggle over housing, wages, education and health. That struggle is enough. But we also need to wage a political struggle against racism, oppression and division. The two cannot be separated.
Struggle or Starve is a brilliant and inspiring book. It reminds us of our power and the possibilities opened up by that power. I highly recommend reading it.
Related Reviews
Mitchell - A Rebel's Guide to James Connolly
Kee - The Bold Fenian Men
Kee - The Most Distressful Country
