Ireland Since 1939

by Henry Patterson

  16. Dominions Office comment on Home Office views, 18 November 1938, PRO, DO 35/893/XII/251.

  17. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 49.

  18. ibid., 57.

  19. Quoted in Patrick Buckland, ‘The Unity of Ulster Unionism’, History, 60 (1975).

  20. W. A. Maguire, Belfast (Keele, 1993), 136.

  21. Henry Patterson, Class Conflict and Sectarianism: The Protestant Working Class and the Belfast Labour Movement 1868–1920 (Belfast, 1980), 20–23.

  22. D. S. Johnson, ‘The Northern Ireland Economy 1914–1939’, in Liam Kennedy and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), An Economic and Social History of Ulster 1820–1939 (Manchester, 1985), 192.

  23. ibid., 199.

  24. David Fitzpatrick, The Two Irelands 1912–1939 (Oxford, 1998), 208, and Johnson, 190–91.

  25. Fitzpatrick, 178.

  26. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 69.

  27. Christopher Norton, ‘Creating Jobs, Manufacturing Unity: Ulster Unionism and Mass Unemployment 1922–1934’, Contemporary British History, 15, Summer 2001, 9–10.

  28. Graham Walker, ‘Protestantism before Party: The Ulster Protestant League in the 1930s’, Historical Journal, 28, 1985, 961.

  29. Brian Barton, Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast, 1988), 84.

  30. ibid., 85–7.

  31. Thomas Hennessey, A History of Northern Ireland 1920–1996 (Dublin, 1997), 63.

  32. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 58.

  33. Dennis Kennedy, The Widening Gulf: Northern Attitudes to the Independent Irish State 1919–1949 (Belfast, 1988), 143.

  34. Oliver P. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983 (Dublin, 1994), 230.

  35. Sean T. O'Kelly, Vice-President of the government, declared in March 1932: ‘We will make every effort to establish a republic of 32 counties. This is our aim and if the gun is necessary, the people have the government to direct the army and they have the volunteer force behind them.’ Kennedy, 199.

  36. Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, 70.

  37. ‘The Impact of Ethnic Violence: The Belfast Riots of 1935', in A. C. Hepburn, A Past Apart: Studies in the History of Catholic Belfast 1850–1950 (Belfast, 1996), 183.

  38. John M. Regan, The Irish Counter-Revolution 1921–1936 (Dublin, 1999), 378.

  39. ibid., 377.

  40. ibid., 374.

  41. Paul Bew, Ellen Hazelkorn and Henry Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics (London, 1989), 26.

  42. Dermot Keogh, ‘The Role of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland’, in Building Trust in Ireland: Studies Commissioned by the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation (Belfast, 1996), 103.

  43. Peter Hart, The IRA and Its Enemies (Oxford, 1998), 286.

  44. Regan, 254.

  45. ibid., 137.

  46. Nicholas Mansergh, The Unresolved Question: The Anglo-Irish Settlement and Its Undoing 1912–1972 (New Haven and London, 1991), 136.

  47. ibid., 237.

  48. Peter Mair, The Changing Irish Party System (London, 1987), 20.

  49. Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland 1923–1948 (Oxford, 1995), 83.

  50. Bew, Hazelkorn and Patterson, 33.

  51. Mair, 17.

  52. Dunphy, 82.

  53. ibid., 79.

  54. A. Kennedy, T. Giblin and D. McHugh, The Economic Development of Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London, 1988), 45.

  55. Enda Delaney, ‘State, Politics and Demography: The Case of Irish Emigration 1921–1971’, Irish Political Studies, 13, 1998, 30.

  56. Bew, Hazelkorn and Patterson, 75.

  57. Dunphy, 178–9, and Lee, 193. James Craig was created Viscount Craigavon of Stormont in 1927.

  58. Lee, 193.

  59. Between 1933 and 1939 the number of Irish industrial concerns quoted on the Dublin stock exchange trebled and their aggregate capital doubled: Cormac Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s (Manchester, 1997), 109.

  60. Emmet O'Connor, A Labour History of Ireland (Dublin, 1992), 130.

  61. ibid., 130.

  62. Delaney, 30.

  63. In 1935–7, some 75,150 emigrated to the UK: Dunphy, 163.

  64. James Meenan, The Irish Economy since 1922 (Liverpool, 1970), 41.

  65. Arthur Mitchell, Labour in Irish Politics 1890–1930 (Dublin, 1974), 246.

  66. ibid., 258.

  67. Mair, 20.

  68. Enda McKay, ‘Changing the Tide: The Irish Labour Party 1927–1933’, Saothar Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, 11, 1986.

  69. Mansergh, 304, and Paul Canning, British Policy towards Ireland 1921–1941 (Oxford, 1985).

  70. Canning, 201–2.

  71. ibid., 233–5.

  72. Dermot Keogh, Twentieth-century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994), 104.

  73. Lee, 215–16.

  74. Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–2001: Political Forces and Social Classes (London, 2002), 66.

  2 War and the Welfare State

  1. Brendan Lynn, Holding the Ground: The Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland 1945–72 (Aldershot, 1997), 4.

  2. Oliver P. Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983: An Interpretative History (Dublin, 1994), 223.

  3. Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: The Orange State (London, 1976), 143.

  4. The Prime Minister departed for a family holiday in Scotland in the month of the riots and did not return until September: A. C. Hepburn, A Past Apart: Studies in the History of Catholic Belfast 1850–1950 (Belfast, 1996), 196.

  5. Letter from Cahir Healy to the Secretary of the County Cavan Executive of Fianna Fáil, 28 October 1938, ‘An Taoiseach wants the pressure to be from within the Six Counties rather than from without at the moment’, PRONI, Cahir Healy Papers, D2991/B/98/1–2.

  6. Brian Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War (Belfast, 1995), 123.

  7. Round Table, 32, 125, December 1951.

  8. Chris Norton, ‘The Politics of Exclusion: Nationalism in Northern Ireland’ (unpublished paper).

  9. Hepburn, 193.

  10. An Phoblacht, 20 August 1932, and Ronaldo Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast in the Thirties: An Oral History (Belfast, 1987), 184.

  11. Neil Jarman and Dominic Bryan, From Riots to Rights (Coleraine, 1998), 28.

  12. Laura K. Donohue, ‘Regulating Northern Ireland: The Special Powers Acts 1922–1972’, Historical Journal, 41, 4, 1998, 1,094.

  13. Jarman and Bryan, 46.

  14. Sir Charles Wickham to the Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, 3 December 1938, PRONI, Ministry of Home Affairs, HA/32/1/1649.

  15. Brian Barton, Brookeborough: The Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast, 1988), 129.

  16. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 124.

  17. Irish News, 5 September 1939.

  18. Irish News, 17 September 1940.

  19. J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), 267.

  20. Irish News, 24 June 1940.

  21. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 120.

  22. Rafferty, 242.

  23. Belfast Newsletter, 20 June 1940.

  24. One journalist claimed that in parts of Northern Ireland ‘Catholics have joined the army at the rate of anything from eight to fourteen Catholics to one Protestant’; see Gertrude Gaffney's comments in Orange Terror by ‘Ultach’, a reprint from the Capuchin Annual, 1943 (Dublin, 1998), 39.

  25. Irish News, 21 September 1940.

  26. J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: A History of the IRA 1916–1970 (London, 1972), 239.

  27. Denis Sampson, Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist (Dublin, 1998), 47.

  28. T. D. Williams, ‘A Study in Neutrality’ (V), Leader, 28 March 1953.

  29. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 200.

  30. Graham Walker, The Politics of Frustration: Harry Midgley and the Failure of Labour in Northern Ireland (Manchester, 1985), 132.

  31. Brian Lacy, Siege City: The Story of Derry
and Londonderry (Belfast, 1990), 238–43.

  32. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 123.

  33. Lacy, 243.

  34. Enda Staunton, The Nationalists of Northern Ireland 1918–1972 (Dublin, 2001), 54.

  35. MacEntee's criticisms were in a speech on 15 April 1944 that provoked protests from leading northern nationalists: see correspondence in PRONI, Cahir Healy Papers, D2991/B/2¾6.

  36. Spender was to end his days as an integrationist: a supporter of Northern Ireland's total political and administrative assimilation into the rest of the UK; see Paul Bew, Kenneth Darwin and Gordon Gillespie, Passion and Prejudice: Nationalist–Unionist Conflict in Ulster in the 1930s and the Founding of the Irish Association (Belfast, 1993), x.

  37. Bew, Darwin and Gillespie, 50.

  38. Farrell, 147.

  39. Barton, Brookeborough, 269.

  40. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 17.

  41. ibid., 18–19.

  42. Barton, Brookeborough, 159.

  43. Belfast Newsletter, 19 June 1940.

  44. Quoted in Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 116.

  45. Belfast Newsletter, 29 May 1940.

  46. See letter from Dr James Little, MP, Belfast Newsletter, 23 June 1940.

  47. Barton, Brookeborough, 159–62.

  48. Thus in his resignation speech Warnock denounced the government as ‘pathetic, with the exception of the Minister of Agriculture they had done nothing’, Belfast Newsletter, 19 June 1940.

  49. Bew, Darwin and Gillespie, 40.

  50. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 44.

  51. Robert Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality (London, 1983), 51.

  52. Ian Budge and Cornelius O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis (London, 1973), 194.

  53. W. A. Maguire, Belfast (Keele, 1993), 147.

  54. Walker, 127, and Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London, 1975).

  55. Letter from Maynard Sinclair, Brian Maginess and Wilson Hungerford, quoted in John Ditch, Social Policy in Northern Ireland 1939–1950 (Aldershot, 1988), 68.

  56. ‘Northern Ireland's Manpower Resources’, a report by Harold Wilson, 17 December 1940, PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 6¼40.

  57. ibid.

  58. D. S. Johnson, ‘The Northern Ireland Economy 1914–1939’, in Liam Kennedy and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), An Economic and Social History of Ulster 1820–1939 (Manchester, 1985), 194.

  59. ‘The Manpower Position in Northern Ireland’, 24 March 1941, PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 6¼40.

  60. M. Moss and J. R. Hume, Shipbuilders to the World: 125 Years of Harland and Wolff, Belfast, 1861–1986 (Belfast, 1986), 347.

  61. Johnson, 201, and Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 81.

  62. Barton, Northern Ireland in the Second World War, 189.

  63. ‘When Peace Breaks Out in Ulster’, Bell, 5, February 1943.

  64. For intellectual life in the North in the period, see Robert Greacen, The Sash My Father Wore: An Autobiography (Edinburgh, 1997); John Boyd, The Middle of My Journey (Belfast, 1990); and ‘Regionalism: The Last Chance’, in Tom Clyde (ed.), Ancestral Voices: The Selected Prose of John Hewitt (Belfast, 1987).

  65. Johnson, 208.

  66. Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, Northern Ireland 1921–1996 Political Forces and Social Classes (London, 1996), 82.

  67. Ditch, 80.

  68. Barton, Brookeborough, 213.

  69. R. R. Bowman to Cabinet Secretary, 6 April 1945, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/2.

  70. See Malachy Gray, ‘A Shop Steward Remembers’, Saothar Journal of the Irish Labour History Society, 11, 1986.

  71. Barton, Brookeborough, 186–7.

  72. E. H. Cooper, Ministry of Commerce, to H. R. Chapman, Ministry of Aircraft Production, 14 October 1942, in file on ‘Labour Disputes’, PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 61/655.

  73. Mike Milotte, Communism in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 1984), 201.

  74. Belfast Newsletter, 15 October 1942.

  75. During a dispute at Short and Harland, Tommie Watters, a Communist Party militant, deplored the strike ‘during this critical period for freedom loving people of the world’, Belfast Newsletter, 19 October 1942.

  76. Minutes of Cabinet Committee on Manpower, 6 August 1942, PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 61/66.

  77. Minister of Labour to Prime Minister, 5 November 1942, ‘Arbitration in Strikes and Industrial Disputes’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/1.

  78. Emmet O'Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824–1960 (Dublin, 1992), 187.

  79. Andrews and the Minister of Labour supported the reduction of fines on strikers at Short and Harland and Harland and Wolff against the advice of Brooke and the Inspector-General of the RUC. See letter from Gransden, Cabinet Secretary, to Montgomery of Home Affairs, 3 April 1942, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/1.

  80. See file on Labour Disputes in PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 61/655.

  81. Barton, Brookeborough, 203.

  82. Letter from Hugh Douglas to Prime Minister, 27 March 1943: ‘the current of abuse against the government from the business and middle class people of the Province’. ‘Arbitration in Strikes and Industrial Disputes’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/2.

  83. W. D. Scott, Regional Controller of Ministry of Supply, Belfast, to E. M. Bowen, Ministry of Supply, London, 31 March 1944, ‘Labour Disputes’, PRONI, Ministry of Commerce, COM 61/655, and Belfast Newsletter, 4 April 1944.

  84. Telegram from Brooke to Churchill, 9 March 1944, and Churchill's response, 15 March, on this ‘most serious and lamentable strike’. ‘Arbitration in Strikes and Industrial Disputes’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/2.

  85. Northern Whig, 7 April 1944.

  86. See Lowry's report of a meeting with a deputation from Belfast Trades Council on 24 May 1944, ‘Arbitration in Strikes and Industrial Disputes’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/22/2.

  87. Letter from J. F. Gordon, Minister of Labour, to Andrews, 15 January 1942, ‘Infiltration of Workers from Eire’, PRONI, Ministry of Finance, FIN 18/22/37.

  88. Conclusions of Cabinet Subcommittee on Infiltration, 5 February 1942. PRONI, Ministry of Finance, FIN 18/22/37.

  89. Letter from Dawson Bates to Herbert Morrison, 26 March 1942, PRONI, Ministry of Finance, FIN 18/22/37.

  90. ‘Infiltration of Eire Workers’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/47/2.

  91. Memorandum from Minister of Labour on labour for stone quarries, 18 April 1942, PRONI, Ministry of Finance, FIN 18/22/37.

  92. Letter from F.A. Clarke, Ballinamallard, to Sir Basil Brooke, 11 March 1944, and Cabinet Conclusions, 6 April 1944, ‘Infiltration of Eire Workers’, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/47/2 (3).

  93. Figures from memorandum on the Residence in Northern Ireland (Restriction) Order, October 1946, PRONI, Cabinet Secretariat, Cab 9C/47/3.

  94. Terry Cradden, Trade Unionism, Socialism and Partition (Belfast, 1993), 46. In the 52-seat parliament, the Unionist Party had thirty-three seats and the Nationalists had ten. Sydney Elliott, Northern Ireland Parliamentary Election Results 1921–1972 (Chichester, 1973), 92.

  3 ‘Minding Our Own Business’: Éire during the Emergency

  1. Speech to the Dáil, 18 June 1936, ‘Notes on the Work of the Irish Section of the Security Services 1939–1945’, PRO, KV 4/9 59761.

  2. Cornelius O'Leary, Irish Elections 1918–1977 (Dublin, 1979), 102.

  3. T. Ryle Dwyer, De Valera: The Man and the Myths (Dublin, 1992), 219.

  4. T.D. Williams, ‘A Study in Neutrality’, Leader, 31 January 1953.

  5. Speaking on supplementary army estimate in the Dáil, Irish Times, 17 February 1939.

  6. G. R. Sloan, The Geopolitics of Anglo-Irish Relations in the Twentieth Century (Leicester, 1998), 184.

  7. Eunan O'Halpin, ‘The Army in Independent Ireland’, in Tom Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (eds.), A Military Histor
y of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), 419.

  8. Tony Gray, The Lost Years: The Emergency in Ireland 1939–1945 (London, 1998), 49.

  9. Dermot Keogh, Twentieth-century Ireland: Nation and State (Dublin, 1994), 109.

  10. Maurice Moynihan (ed.), Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera (Dublin and New York, 1980), 418, and Gray, 2.

  11. O'Halpin, ‘The Army in Independent Ireland’, 418.

  12. Garret FitzGerald, ‘Myth of Irish Neutrality Not Borne out by Historical Fact’, Irish Times, 24 April 1999.

  13. O'Halpin, ‘The Army in Independent Ireland’, 420.

  14. ‘Notes on the Work of the Irish Section of the Security Services 1939–1945’.

  15. J.J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), 234.

  16. Sloan, 201.

  17. David O'Donoghue, Hitler's Irish Voices: The Story of German Radio's Wartime Irish Service (Belfast, 1998), 19.

  18. C. S. Andrews, Man of No Property (Dublin, 1982), 162.

  19. O'Donoghue, 19.

  20. Lee, 247.

  21. Brendan Barrington (ed.), The Wartime Broadcasts of Francis Stuart 1942–1944 (Dublin, 2000), 32.

  22. Eunan O'Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and Its Enemies since 1922 (Oxford, 1999), 239–45.

  23. Conor Foley, Legion of the Rearguard: The IRA and the Modern Irish State (London, 1992), 191.

  24. Lee, 223.

  25. ibid.

  26. Round Table, 119, June 1940.

  27. Account of Plant's trial by Military Court, NAD, Department of the Taoiseach, S12682.

  28. John Horgan, Seán Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot (Dublin, 1997), 108.

  29. ‘Notes on the Work of the Irish Section of the Security Services 1939–1945’.

  30. Round Table, 119, June 1940.

  31. Letter from Maurice Moynihan to Patrick Kennedy in the Department of the Taoiseach with enclosures detailing the extent of wartime cooperation with the British government, included as an Appendix in Tim Pat Coogan, De Valera: Long Fellow, Long Shadow (London, 1995), 748–9.

  32. Coogan, 549.

  33. ‘Notes on the Work of the Irish Section of the Security Services 1939–1945’.

  34. ibid.

  35. Sloan, 210.

  36. ibid., 227.

  37. Geoffrey Roberts, ‘Three Narratives of Neutrality: Historians and Ireland's War’, in Brian Girvin and Geoffrey Roberts (eds.), Ireland and the Second World War: Politics, Society and Remembrance (Dublin, 2000), 167.