Between God and Mammon : politics, class conflict, and the southern Irish state, 1922-45
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Although it is well understood that working-class politics and the political Left have been marginal forces in Irish political life, the question "Why?" has been underexamined, often attributed to the Labour Party's refusal to contest the 1918 parliamentary elections. This dissertation analyses the political landscape that shaped the development of Irish working-class politics, the way the organized working class played a role in the development of the emergent southern Irish state between 1922 and 1945, and the fault lines and pressures that led to splits in working class organization in the early to mid-1940s. It concludes that external pressure--such as Catholic Action and political anticommunism--and internal divisions, principally between British-based and Irish-based unions, led to the split in the Irish Labour Party and the Irish Trades Union Congress. The unique scope of archival research utilized in the dissertation, as well as the focus on the role of the Catholic Church and political anticommunism on both the elite and popular level, helps illuminate and add new perspective on the broader political and social milieu in which the organized working class operated. Consequently, the dissertation suggests more compelling reasons than the 1918 elections for the marginality of working-class politics.
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Ph. D.