Vibrant narrative of the labour movement from an insider devoted to the cause

BOOK OF THE DAY: No Workers' Republic! Reflections on Labour and Ireland, 1913 – 1967By Barry Desmond Watchword, 352pp, €20

BARRY DESMOND is one of a relatively small number of Irish politicians to have written an account of their time in office. In his memoir Finally and in Conclusion, he gave a typically forthright account of his political career, particularly his tenure as minister for health in the 1980s.

He has now gone one step further and written this fascinating and insightful exploration of the history of the labour movement between 1913 and 1967. The book combines research, anecdote and personal reminiscence into a vibrant narrative of events covering half a century. The key to the book is the commitment of Barry Desmond and his wife Stella. This is no dry academic approach to labour history but is written from the point of view of a passionate activist who spent his life working for the cause.

Desmond’s involvement does not blind him to the faults and failings of his comrades in the movement or of his predecessors for that matter. He writes about all of them with a clear eye and does not shy away from telling the whole story, as he knows it, warts and all.

While a lot has been written about labour history much of it has come from an ideological academic perspective that has little sympathy or understanding of the people who built the movement or, for that matter, of the ordinary working people they sought to represent to the best of their ability.

As the son of a trade union official from Cork, Desmond began his working life as a trade union official before becoming a Labour TD in 1969. He knows his territory intimately. He has an instinctive sympathy with the unglamorous men and women of the labour movement, who toiled in the interest of working people, rather than the exciting mavericks who were more anxious to be on the side of the angels rather than compromise principles to achieve real gains.

He begins his exploration of labour history with Larkin and Connolly and reveals a little-known side to James Connolly’s involvement in the 1916 Rising. It seems that not all the members of the Dublin 1 branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union were happy about Connolly’s decision to hoist the green flag over Liberty Hall and plunge the union into the tumult of the Rising.

“They were undoubtedly shocked at the unilateral involvement in the Rising of their acting general secretary who had been appointed some 19 months before by James Larkin. They had lost their jobs, their records and their place of employment. They must have been very angry towards Connolly in the immediate aftermath,” he writes.

Desmond goes on to advance the theory that Connolly was actually expelled by the union for his involvement in the Rising although the minutes of the meeting at which that decision was made went missing in mysterious circumstances.

Desmond gives prominence to the two men who built the labour movement, Tom Johnson, on the political side and William O’Brien, on the trade union side. Desmond recalls the passionate support O’Brien generated among labour activists in Cork.

Before he came to Dublin Desmond was a committed O’Brienite ITGWU man and an opponent of James Larkin snr and jnr. However, he quickly warmed to Larkin jnr and felt the internal feud had to be ended.

The book explores the internecine warfare at both trade union and political level in the 1940s and 1950s and if anything the author is too hard on the more conservative O’Brien side of the argument, given the struggles that the movement faced to retain its independence without falling into the grip of communist “entryists.”

The author, an inveterate collector of documents and memorabilia is planning a second volume from 1967 to the present day. That should make some of his former colleagues in the party a little nervous.

Stephen Collins is Political Editor of The Irish Times