Abstract
All of the chapters to this volume are valuable contributions to our knowledge of the Labour Party and Ireland. From Bob Purdie’s discussion of Geoffrey Bing and partition to Aaron Edwards on the Northern Ireland Labour Party, from Stephen Howe’s discussion of the intellectual origins of the Left’s thinking about Ireland to Emmet O’Connor on British Labour, Belfast and Home Rule, every chapter was worthy of inclusion. For the purposes of this review, however, attention will be focussed on only a handful of the contributions.
First, Ivan Gibbons’ excellent ‘Labour and the Irish Revolution’, provides an account of the Labour Commission on Ireland that visited the country in December 1920 to report on conditions. They visited Cork in the days after the military had burned down the city centre. Their report was rushed out, informing the wider labour movement that things are being done in the name of Britain which must make her name stink in the nostrils of the whole world. The honour of our people has been gravely compromised. Not only is there a reign of terror in Ireland which should bring a blush of shame to the cheek of every British citizen, but a nation is being held in subjection by an empire which has proudly boasted that it is a friend of small nations.
Leaving aside the credence this gives to the idea that the British Empire was ever a ‘friend of small nations’, this is powerful stuff, especially when the government of the day could play the ‘support our boys’ card. The first edition of the report (10,000 copies) immediately sold out. And this was followed up with the Campaign for Peace in Ireland that held some 500 public meetings across the country in January and February 1921, culminating in a great rally at the Albert Hall on 15 February. On 21 February, the Labour Chief Whip, Arthur Henderson, speaking in the Commons, demanded an official investigation into British reprisals, the opening up of negotiations with Sinn Fein and a settlement ‘consistent with the aspirations of the Irish people’. This is all in very stark contrast with the Labour Party’s subsequent record on Ireland and one has to ask why this was so. In 1920–1921 Labour was still being carried along by the great wave of militancy that followed the first world war and that saw even Labour moderates threaten a general strike in opposition to British intervention in Soviet Russia. The Labour Party’s support for the Treaty really marks the end of this ‘radical’ phase, although there was still one noteworthy episode.
Gibbons provides a very useful account of the assistance the Conservative government gave to the Free State during the civil war, deporting over a hundred Republicans, including nineteen women, living in Britain to Ireland where they were thrown into prison. As George Lansbury pointed out, these were British citizens being deported without any due process. The architect of Labour’s assault on this practice was the Shadow Attorney General, Patrick Hastings and in May 1923, the Court of Appeal ruled that the deportations were illegal. As Gibbons points out, the government had to rush through an embarrassing Indemnity Bill to give the Home Secretary and Attorney General ‘retrospective legal protection for exceeding their authority’.
By the time we get to the period covered by Peter Collins in his chapter on the 1945–1951 Labour government and Ireland, Unionist fears that the government might take action against the apparatus of discrimination, repression and gerrymandering they had established in the North were completely unfounded. Indeed, there was what he describes as ‘a growing symbiotic relationship between Stormont and Westminster’. He sees this as exemplified by the Treasury allocation of £137,500 per annum for the maintenance of the ‘B’ Specials. Herbert Morrison, in particular, was a strong supporter of the Unionists. An opportunity to impose reform on the ‘Orange State’ was missed; indeed, there is no evidence that such an idea ever occurred to the government.
Not only was there no effort to reform Northern Ireland under the 1945–1951 Labour government, but when Labour once again came to power in 1964, nothing was done. The former Labour MP, Kevin McNamara, provides a personal testimony to this, finding the Wilson government ‘culpable for failing to prevent what was to be a running sore in the politics of these islands for three decades’. The consequences were, as he points out, disastrous.
Which brings us to Stuart Aveyard’s discussion of security policy under the 1974–1979 Labour government. As he points out, the introduction of ‘police primacy’ was a key feature of Labour policy together with the phasing out of internment. While Roy Mason, the Secretary of State, talked very tough, in fact he resisted pressure for ‘more aggressive measures’. This is an important point, but the fact remains that under this Labour government confessions were routinely beaten out of Republican prisoners by the RUC and then used to jail them. The government did its best to cover up this use of torture, which shows how far Labour had come from the days of the 1920 Labour Commission. And this condoning and covering up of torture was to bring them down in 1979, something that histories of the Labour Party never really acknowledge. It was over this issue that Gerry Fitt refused to vote for the Labour government in a vote of confidence, forcing a general election. The enormity of this seems to completely escape historians: a British government brought down over allegations of torture. This is surely an event of some moment. One cannot help thinking that if it had been a Conservative government brought down over such an issue then it would be seen as a terrible indictment, but because Labour was in power the scandal is passed over, forgotten, ignored.