A hundred years ago today, on April 23rd, 1922, Ireland experienced a general strike arising from the burgeoning tensions between working people on the respective pro- and anti-Treaty factions.
The strike was called by our party, the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress, as a protest against the growing militarisation of both sides of the Treaty divide and the threats their military activities posed to everyday working men and women.
We have been well conditioned in this nationalist-dominated state to believe that the broader labour movement played no role in the events before, during and after the foundation of the southern state, but this is untrue. “Labour must wait” has been accepted too often at face value.
While Labour may not have been the only party in the State organised on a national basis, we were certainly the only movement that drew support from both nationalist and unionist communities.
Indeed, in a harbinger of difficulties to come, the party’s effective foundation had been delayed by internal disputes about whether an Irish party should be established – the wish of nationalist-minded trade unionists – or whether we should affiliate to the already existent British Labour Party – the wish of unionist-minded trade unionists. (Indeed, at one congress following the Easter Rising, the movement honoured both the dead of Easter Week and the Somme – it would be some time before we reached that moment again.)
It was the Labour movement that organised the anti-conscription campaign of 1918, the first deployment of the general strike as a statement of national values.
During the War of Independence itself, in April 1920 a two-day strike in support of hunger-striking prisoners of the war succeeded in forcing the British authorities to release the prisoners. Similarly, the strike was used as a tactical tool to disrupt the capacity of the British authorities to move military equipment around the country.
Slide to war
The 1922 strike was successful but was not heeded by the armed camps. It was successful in the sense that it was adhered to across the country, with Dublin in particular shut down and a mass rally held on O’Connell Street. However, it could not prevent the slide to war, which crystallised around the occupation of the Four Courts by anti-Treaty volunteers and the subsequent response by the provisional government.
The general strike was not Labour’s only attempt to prevent the outbreak of that bitter conflict, with representatives acting as honest brokers between both sides.
In particular, Labour put forward a concrete proposal for a referendum on the Treaty, a proposal which, if taken up, would have had the potential to clearly determine the views of the people.
We must learn from the mistakes of Brexit in the UK in order to avoid confusion or dangerous division
Tom Johnson, Labour’s English-born leader, called on both sides not to turn their weapons upon each other, just as subsequently as leader of the opposition in the Dáil he opposed the tactics of the State in its treatment of anti-Treaty irregulars.
The significance of Johnson’s role in the first decade of the new State is greatly underappreciated. He contributed significantly to the democratisation of the new State, just as Labour was instrumental in the facilitation of both the entry of Fianna Fáil into the Dáil and its ultimate achievement of power in 1932.
Labour has always been criticised for being either insufficiently nationalist or radical. Yet the events of 100 years ago illustrate a movement prepared to exercise its influence in the pursuit of the safety of its working members but also with one eye on the national tragedy that the Civil War represented.
Labour is the only national movement whose primary focus is on the basis of social and economic, not nationalist goals, and I believe that has afforded us a different perspective on some of these questions, a focus that is markedly different from the Civil War parties of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin.
United Ireland
Labour believes in an agreed, united island, founded on fairness and equality for all people on the island. We believe that a huge amount of genuine and sincere preparatory work must be done in both jurisdictions in advance of any Border poll, in order to ensure that people on both sides of the Border are clear on what it is they are voting on, and that a new, agreed and united island would be a state accepted by all communities on the island.
We must learn from the mistakes of Brexit in the UK in order to avoid confusion or dangerous division.
This process will require generosity on the part of everyone on the island.
As we move towards the possibility of new political arrangements on this island, I believe Labour has a crucial role to play.
Unification means a unity of people before any unity of territory. The spirit of the Belfast Agreement remains the yardstick we should both adhere with and be inspired by. But ultimately a generosity of spirit on both sides will be needed to make a success of whatever emerges over the next decade or so.
Labour wants a united Ireland, a shared island and it believes in our potential to build a true republic. To get there, an all-island citizens’ assembly, approved by the Stormont Assembly as well as the Oireachtas, must be constituted.
Our collective task is a serious one. It requires patience and consideration. It will involve generosity and to give people hope of a better future and we don’t for a second underestimate the issues involved. It will involve profound change across an island. It will involve finding a mechanism to accommodate difference.
And it will involve, if we are to be successful, considerable introspection on our part, for it must demand fairness and equality for us all on the island of Ireland. Nothing less will do.
Ivana Bacik TD is leader of the Labour Party