The smile on Ivana Bacik’s face at the count centre last June said it all about Labour’s latest comeback bid – she was thrilled. Her party had recovered in Dublin in the European elections. Later in the year Labour had a relatively good general election. The party’s political siblings, the Social Democrats, also had a good outing in November. If the founders of that party can be forgiven for harbouring personal grievances with their former colleagues in Labour, Bacik and Holly Cairns have no excuse not to pool the resources of their near-identical parties. Petty differences should be resolved quickly, as Labour discovered just one year after its first breakthrough in a general election.
As the cost of living soared under the Fianna Fáil government during the second World War, Labour became the biggest group on Dublin Corporation following the 1942 local elections. One of its candidates, Jim Larkin snr – the legendary trade unionist of the 1913 Lockout – won the biggest vote. Both Larkin snr and his son, Jim Larkin jnr, were elected to the Dáil in the June 1943 general election when the party almost doubled its seats to 17.
Trade union militants, energised by austerity measures such as the Wages Standstill Order, had joined Labour. So had Dublin’s communists – all 20 of them – when their party branch dissolved itself, on Moscow’s orders, following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The communists then established a dynamic Central Branch, whose members included both Larkins, who ran the Workers’ Union of Ireland. However, Larkin snr, who had not received a hero’s welcome when he returned from America 20 years earlier, had a powerful enemy in William O’Brien, who had taken over from him as the boss of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union.
Fianna Fáil’s most colourful minister, Seán MacEntee, featured in a ditty about the daily hardships endured by most in Éamon de Valera’s Ireland – butter and sugar were rationed, as was tea, the most sought-after commodity.
“Bless de Valera and Seán MacEntee,
They gave us the brown bread,
And the half-ounce of tea.”
During these years Kathleen Behan’s home in Kimmage hosted meetings attended by idealists of various left-wing hues, day and night. She saw no contradiction in being an ardent Catholic and an admirer of Stalin. The locals called the Behans’ house “the Kremlin” but her husband, Stephen, called it a “mad house” and wished they would “save the world” somewhere else.
MacEntee believed he could counter Labour’s threat to Fianna Fáil in 1943 by highlighting the dangerous potential of the “Muscovites” – Moscow’s agents – who had “infiltrated” Labour in Dublin. He tried to exploit the personality clash between Larkin and O’Brien and the resulting divisions in the trade union movement. MacEntee asserted that “honest men” had tried to keep the unions “Irish and Christian. As God-fearing, honest workers they had no use for those pagan totalitarian systems being imported from abroad.” Not a believer in “cooing” to election opponents, as he told one of his colleagues, MacEntee suggested here that O’Brien’s union, the biggest in Ireland, could do something about troublesome “Reds”. MacEntee’s abrasive tactics backfired, however, and, accepting the blame for Fianna Fáil’s losses in the election, he offered his resignation.
O’Brien, who had refused to accept Larkin snr’s nomination in the first place, stepped up his vendetta against him in January 1944 by splitting the Labour Party. Five TDs resigned and established National Labour. De Valera, who did not have a Dáil majority, then repeated what he had done before when faced with the same uncomfortable situation and called a snap election. He secured his majority. Labour returned with eight TDs, and National Labour came back with half that. And Larkin snr lost his seat, although Larkin jnr succeeded in being re-elected. Labour’s gains of 1942 and 1943 had been thrown away.
O’Brien excused his vengeful behaviour by alleging a “communist conspiracy” existed to take over the party. Arguably a more damaging development, the trade union congress split in 1945 when O’Brien’s union and some smaller ones left to create a (Fianna Fáil-friendly) Congress of Irish Unions.
Harassed by the Standard, a popular Catholic weekly, Labour expelled six members for previously attending a communist party conference in Belfast, where the political atmosphere was quite different. North of the border communists benefited from their association with Stalin’s Russia – the ally of Britain and the US in the war against Nazi Germany. Pamphlets on the Red Army were distributed to thousands of homes, and a Soviet Friendship Society, chaired by a Presbyterian minister, found well-known public figures to speak at its meetings.
After the fiasco of 1944, it took the two feuding Labour parties six years to get back together, thanks to the death of Larkin and the retirement of O’Brien. Unity eluded the two trade union bodies until 1959. The Labour Party did not bounce back until the mid-1960s, but its willingness to be the minor partner in Fine Gael-led governments proved costly. Labour and the Social Democrats might study their – joint – history and be more clear-sighted. What are the odds on a merger?