As Ireland heads to a general election, here are reflections on the September 1927 election, the second that year, from Jack Carney. Carney spent formative years in the U.S. where he helped to found the Communist movement here, editing some of its earliest papers before returning to Ireland. In the election Carney’s comrade, another leading Irish revolutionary with deep roots in the U.S. movement, Jim Larkin, won a seat–which he was later denied for being an ‘undisclosed bankrupt–for the Irish Workers League.

‘The Irish Free State Elections’ by Jack Carney from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 7 No. 56. October 26, 1927.

With the hope that a general election would find all other political parties unprepared, William Cosgrave, president of the Irish Free State, suddenly decided to call a general election. The election was fought with much bitterness and the result is just the same; the Free State Government holds office by a bare majority of six votes out of 152. The parties, with their strength, before and after the general election are:

What do these parties represent? Behind the Government Party are the interests of the ruling class, rich farmers, etc. Behind the De Valera Party are the small business men, the poor farmers, etc. The Independents represent varied interests, but can be depended upon to vote with the government on all fundamental questions. The Irish Labour Party was for the Government. It tried to make a coalition with the Government, having failed, it tried to win out on a coalition with the De Valera Party. A deputy failed to vote and the coalition went smash. The National League represent the old Nationalist Party. It lives on the traditions of the past. It has neither funds nor following. Its leader, Captain Redmond, is elected because of his father, the late John Redmond, former leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the British House of Commons. His father was immensely popular. The Irish people love their leaders after they are dead. They show their gratitude to John Redmond by giving his son a job.

The election was fought out in the newspapers, with the exception of those parties who had not the funds to spend. Advertising in the newspapers cost £ 100 per page. “New Era”, a paper privately circulated among bankers, financiers, etc. declared that the election was mainly centering around the issue of American finance versus British finance. American finance seeks to penetrate Ireland, to cultivate the friendship of the Irish as a diplomatic preparatory measure for the future. British finance threw its weight behind the Government Party. Behind the De Valera party was American finance.

Immediately following the election, the Cork Chamber of Commerce, an important body of Irish employers, called a unity conference with a view to securing unity between the Government and the Valera Parties. The movement failed to reach an agreement, due to the attitude of the Government Party in refusing to attend the conference and a declaration by leaders of the De Valera party that they would not unite with any pro-British elements.

The employing elements behind the Government Party are imperialist in outlook. They are for the British Empire. The employing elements behind the De Valera Party want high tariffs because they suffer from the competition of British combines. The Government is against tariffs; the De Valera party is for tariffs. The farmers supporting the Government make their profits out of cattle-raising, which are sold in foreign markets. They are against tariffs. The farmers who support De Valera are for tariffs because they depend upon the sale of agricultural products, wheat, butter, etc. They want tariffs. Unity within the immediate future is impossible.

The Irish Labour Party suffered heavy reverses. Its leader, Thomas Johnson, and the leader of the industrial movement, William O’Brien, went down to bitter defeat. The Labour Party lost ten seats out of 22 and gained one seat in the North. The Irish Labour Party has based its policies upon class collaboration. On the industrial field it has carried them out to the extent of scabbing on other unions. It has supported the Government. When M. Kevin O’Higgins, Minister of Justice, was killed, its leaders rushed to the Government and offered to go into a coalition. In other words they were prepared to enter into an anti-Republican bloc. The Government refused to accept their offer. The Labour Party then offered to join with the Republicans and fight the Government. A deputy got lost and his vote killed all hope of a coalition to beat the Government. The Irish Labour Party is not a party in the true sense of the word. It is a clique of officials. It candidates are selected by officials. It dare not advertise its meetings; it holds them in unexpected places, always sure of receiving ample publicity in the columns of the capitalist press. Through the political and industrial policies of the Irish Labour Party the labour movement of Ireland, has lost thousands of members. The writer talked with Cabinet ministers, employers and British army officers on the day of the counting of votes. They were all gravely concerned with the condition of the leader of the Irish Labour Party. They were more sorry at his defeat than that of any other candidate. Johnson had served them well.

For the first time in Irish politics Communist candidates stood for election. If the candidates had endeavoured to conceal the fact that they were Communists the capitalist press made sure that the electors knew they were voting for candidates who were Communists out and out. Robert Stewart, William Gallacher and S. Saklatvala, members of the British Communist Party, came across and assisted the Irish Worker League, section of the Comintern. The Communist candidates polled 13,000 votes. Jim Larkin, founder of the Irish Worker League, ran third out of sixteen candidates, beating strong candidates like the deputy leader of the De Valera Party. The Irish Worker League was handicapped through lack of finance. It was unable to send one written appeal to the electors. The capitalist press completely ignored the work and meetings of the I.W.L. Yet its meetings were the largest ever held in Dublin. There was one meeting held in the slums that shook the feelings of enemies and friends alike. Picture two high tenements, with nearly two thousands families living in them. Add to this an immense throng that followed to the meeting. There were ten thousand workers, and there they stood. Like a mighty roar, symbolical of the awakening of Irish labour, rose the cheers of the crowd. This meeting was typical of many more meetings. The Government party rushed around with motor cars, free beer, free tea and sugar, in an attempt to stem the tide of feeling that was rising in support of the Communist candidates. But the Dublin working class knew Larkin. They had grown tired and were despairing of anything being done to alleviate their condition, then came the Irish Worker League. In the country the Irish Worker League had to face the leader of the Irish Labour Party, in addition the two major parties Government Party and De Valera Party. The League was on virgin soil. It had to cover over 100 square miles of country where there were no real means of transport. Its speakers were addressing three and four meetings per night, and six on Sunday. It polled over two thousand votes. Furthermore, it defeated the leader of the Irish Labour Party a victory in itself. One could go on describing the elections. The Irish Worker League elected one candidate , James Larkin. That was what it did during the elections.

The elections were used in the main to rally the forces of Irish labour. Without a unified labour movement there can be no hope of any real success. The victory of Jim Larkin has been the means of arousing the workers and peasants throughout Ireland. An appeal is being sent out to all trade unions, trades and workers’ councils for a unity conference. A strong, virile, militant labour movement in Ireland will follow the work of the League. On the political field a strong political organisation is being organised. It is expected within the next few weeks that there will be active groups throughout the whole of Ireland. A united labour movement, industrially and politically, of the workers and peasants of Ireland is the work of the Irish Worker League. The elections laid the groundwork of the success of that movement.

Born in Dublin, and orphaned young, he was raised by relatives in Liverpool. There he heard Jim Larkin as a teenager in 1906 and began his life as a socialist. After odd jobs and ‘tramping,’ Carney returned to Ireland and became a founder of Larkin’s Irish General Transport Workers Union in 1909. He soon moved to Belfast where he worked on the shipyards and edited the ITGWU’s paper, ‘The Irish Worker.’ While in Belfast he worked closely with James Connolly. Emigrating to the U.S. shortly after 1916’s Easter Rising, which he did not participate in, he met his old comrade Jim Larkin in Chicago, and together they produced a short-lived U.S. version of ‘The Irish Worker.’ In Chicago Carney married socialist activist Mina Schoeneman, who would remain his life-long comrade, and joined the I.W.W. and the Socialist Party, becoming one of its paid lecturers. As staff for the Party he moved to Indiana in the late summer of 1916 where he was a lead organizer for Eugene V. Debs’ Senate campaign. After that, comrade Carney moved to Duluth and there became editor of the insurgent Left Wing paper ‘The Truth.’ Carney was an early supporter of the tendency around John Reed that would become the Communist Labor Party, of which Carney was a founder in 1919. After leaving under repression in 1920, Carney moved to Butte, Montana to work with William F. Dunne on that city’s ‘Daily Bulletin; which had similar politics and attitude to ‘Truth.’ From there he went to Chicago, where he worked for the new United Communist Party’s ‘Voice of Labor’ in 1921. Arrested for ‘criminal syndicalism’ in late 1922, he was pardoned and later followed Larkin back to Ireland on his release from Sing Sing. There he worked for the Workers’ Union of Ireland and edited ‘Irish Worker,’ then the paper of Comintern affiliate the Irish Worker League. He was a delegate to the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International in 1928 where he presented on Ireland. Carney broke with Larkin and the W.U.I. over the Spanish Civil War and moved to London, where he continue to write and be active in politics. Comrade Jack Carney died in London in 1956 at 69 years old. His wife Mina Schoeneman, an accomplished sculptor well-known for her bust of Debs, passed away in 1974.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1927/v07n56-oct-06-1927-inprecor-op.pdf