Our guest blogger, Joe Duffy, is researching for a PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin on the internationalism of the Irish labour movement during the revolutionary period, 1900-1923. In this post he describes his project and how the TUC Library has helped in his research.
The objective of this PhD project is to explore the intersection of nationalism, internationalism, and anti-imperialism within the Irish labour movement during the island’s revolutionary period. The archival materials held at the Trade Union Congress Library Collections will be of great benefit to this project, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have visited this excellent archive.
The Irish revolution has, rightfully, begun to be considered as a global event. The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed radical transformation in Ireland. In two decades, the nationalist movement shifted from demanding self-governance within the British Empire through ‘Home Rule’, to a militant push for full independence. This culminated in the Irish War for Independence (1919-1921), which led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the island’s partition and the creation of Northern Ireland. The Irish revolutionary period was part of an intense era of global political upheaval that included WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution, an increase in anti-imperial nationalism and insurgency and a wave of labour militancy. In recent years, historians have begun to situate aspects of Ireland’s revolutionary period within this tumultuous global context and identify the interconnections between Britain’s closest colony and the rest of the world.
From general strikes against British rule to James Connolly’s execution following the 1916 Easter Rising, the labour movement played a significant role during Ireland’s revolutionary period. Yet organised labour and the working class have been largely excluded from the increase in transnational and global histories of Ireland’s revolutionary period. This project seeks to fill this historiographical gap by exploring how members of the Irish trade union movement were considerably more enmeshed in global debates of working-class organisation, socialist internationalism, and anti-imperialism than has previously been acknowledged.
In the few instances that historians have explored the internationalism of the Irish labour movement, the focus has predominantly been on its most famous leader, James Connolly. This recognition of Connolly’s internationalism has not extended to other members of Irish labour. This project will examine in greater detail the global engagement of other labour leaders and will also include a consideration of whether union members shared their worldview. Building on this, this PhD intends to address the underexamined importance of women trade unionists during Ireland’s revolutionary period.
A final focus of this PhD is to examine how members of Ireland’s labour movement looked beyond Europe’s borders to draw connections between Ireland’s history of imperialism and that of other colonised nations. Historians have increasingly recognised that the Irish revolution was part of a global tumult alongside the Bolshevik uprising, Egyptian and Iraqi revolutions and growing anti-colonial consciousness across the globe. This project will explore how nationalist trade unionists were active participants in these global debates. A broader intention of this PhD is therefore to consider whether trade unions, in Ireland and around the world, should be included within accounts of burgeoning independence movements in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The vast array of illuminating documents at the Trade Union Congress Library are of great relevance for these research aims. Some selected highlights include a reprint of a lecture delivered in Belfast by prominent trade unionist William Walker, whose dispute with Dublin based James Connolly exposed fissures within the Irish labour movement along Catholic and Protestant lines. Reports of government commissions into labour disputes, notably the Dublin Lock Out of 1913-14, provide granular accounts of strikes from those who took part. Reports from the British Labour Party into ‘The Present Conditions in Ireland’ offer a window into understanding why the Irish labour movement splintered from their UK-based counterparts during the revolutionary period. British government reports into the conditions of working classes in Dublin demonstrate the widespread poverty that fuelled more militant labour organising during this period. Minutes from Irish trade union annual conferences are of great benefit to this project, as is the report of the Irish delegation to the International Labour and Socialist Conference in Switzerland in 1919. A 1922 pamphlet on ‘The Influence of Women in Catholic Ireland’ issued by the Reverend J.S Sheeny provides an interesting example of the conventions and expectations that women trade unionists were breaking with during this period. The range of press clippings during this period, from the Daily News to labour papers such as The Irish Worker, will also be of great help to this project.
In summary, this PhD project intends to demonstrate that, during the febrile global context of Ireland’s revolutionary period, members of the Irish labour movement engaged with the world in a more extensive manner than has thus far been acknowledged. The excellent archives of the Trade Union Congress Library Collections will be crucial in telling this story.