An Irishman’s Diary: Labour history from the archives

‘The Irishman likes to get nine pence for four pence, just as anybody else would”, David Lloyd George told a delegation of Irish trade unionists on June 17th, 1911 at his rooms in the House of Commons during the constitutional crisis over the “People’s Budget”. The embattled Liberal chancellor of the exchequer was explaining that the reason why the new-fangled health insurance scheme was not being extended to Ireland was that the Irish could not agree on funding it among themselves. One long-term consequence of this particular debacle was that the British ultimately ended up with the NHS and we ended up with the Health Service Executive, supplemented by a plethora of private health insurance schemes

This is one of the many fascinating insights into our history contained in the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party reports from 1901-1925, which have just been put on the National Archives of Ireland website in partnership with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

As ICTU general treasurer Joe O’Flynn said at the launch of the project, “Generally speaking, the ITUC & LP could be found on the progressive side of most debates, which did not of course always mean the winning side”.

National health insurance was the first attempt by a British government to lay the foundations of a welfare state in the United Kingdom, but John Redmond and the Irish Party didn’t want their long-awaited Home Rule parliament saddled with such an extravagant social experiment. Nor did Irish employers.

The president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, William Martin Murphy, told the parliamentary committee examining the feasibility of an Irish version of the scheme that he could well afford the extra halfpenny a week per employee needed to match the worker’s contribution but it was unnecessary. “In Ireland, and especially in a city like Dublin, with its hospital and dispensary system, there was no person wanting medical relief and medicine, and unable to pay for them, who could not obtain them without any payment whatsoever,” he said.

Workhouse

Dublin’s GPs disagreed. They demanded an annual capitation fee of 21 shillings per patient to participate, when their London counterparts were willing to accept seven shillings. The city’s voluntary hospitals, which depended on private patients, wondered why anybody would bother paying if national health insurance was introduced. There were already workhouse hospitals to look after the indigent poor.

The year 1918 was a better one for the ITUC & LP, arguably its best of the revolutionary decade when it organised a general strike against conscription on April 23rd. As its then president, William O’Brien said, “Through the exercise of the people’s will Ireland is the only country in Europe still free from the crushing burden of conscription, the only country that has kept its freedom of soul and carries its opposition to conscription into resistance, in action”.

It was nationalist Ireland’s most complete victory against British rule, and not a drop of blood was spilt.

There were more strikes during the War of Independence. Some were in support of political prisoners, some in opposition to the British military occupation and eventually the biggest mobilisation of all, was against home- grown militarism on April 24th, 1922, in an attempt to avert civil war. It was also the least effective. The second ITUC & LP congress of 1922 was held a month after the war’s outbreak when Louie Bennett, the general secretary of the Irish Women Workers Union, told delegates, “Personally I would prefer to see no army in Ireland. The very existence of an army means fighting, as if it is not fighting for some aggressive purpose, it will be drawn into some European war, or will be turned on the workers”.

Vote

The first congress, on February 21st, was to decide if Labour should contest the Treaty election. Walter Carpenter of the Irish Garment Makers said workers “should seize the mills, the creameries, and the railways. Russia did not bring the workers’ republic into operation by going into parliament. No, but through the direct actions of Lenin and Trotsky”.

Delegates voted by 104 votes to 49 to contest the election.

These are just snippets from a mass of documents that cover everything from child labour to old age pensions, housing to the cost of school books. They can all be accessed at the new National Archives portal. centenaries-ituc.nationalarchives.ie/galleries/