FROM THE ARCHIVES:The Irish Trade Union Congress split in 1945, effectively over Partition, with the formation of the Congress of Irish Unions which represented Irish-based unions only. This report by a special correspondent showed there were few signs of healing the split four years later: it took another decade to do so with the creation of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
THE FORMAL efforts to secure the unity of Ireland’s 350,000 trade unionists in the Trades Union Congress and the Congress of Irish Unions have failed, but the problem remains and may cause an intensification in trade union rivalry.
The annual conferences of the T.U.C. and the C.I.U. did little to solve the problem, and the many speeches on the question tended to aggravate rather than to ease the bitterness between the two camps.
Neither Congress attempted to initiate a discussion on the fundamental causes of the split, or to put forward any serious proposal for its solution. The most intelligent discussions which I heard took place far from the conference rooms – in the train, restaurant, bar and hotel, where the delegates felt more at home to air their views for a solution, and the fears which they felt for the future of trade unionism in Ireland.
The most serious obstacle to the establishment of Irish-controlled unions and a re-constituted trade union congress, comes, naturally enough, from the North, where 140,000 workers are organised in unions with their headquarters in Britain. The leaders of these workers will not agree to establish Irish unions or to join existing organisations.
They say that in many cases . . . agreements on wages and conditions in Britain automatically apply to them.
In addition, several industries in the North come under the control of the British Government, and negotiations on many questions have to be carried on with British Ministers of State. The intrusion of Irish national politics into their trade unions, they say, would have the effect of creating bitter religious animosities among their members and would cause a split on religious grounds . . .
In addition, they have to face the fact that Ireland is divided into two legislative areas . . . and that problems can be dealt with more effectively by organisations with headquarters in Northern Ireland or in Britain – in fact they prefer organisations with headquarters in Britain, with direct access to the British Government.
When faced with the argument that there are trade unions in Belfast with headquarters in Dublin already, they say that these bodies are concerned with local employers or with the Northern Government alone, and encountered no difficulties.
Another factor . . . is the possible reaction by the British and Northern Ireland Governments, if suddenly control of the entire trade union movement was transferred from Belfast or British centres, to Dublin . . .
If control of the entire economic life of the North was transferred to Dublin, it would have political repercussions much wider than envisaged at present by the trade union movement.