Newly ‘independent’ Ireland was a country that had also seen a counter-revolution politically, while its economy was especially hard hit by the island’s division and the beginnings of Great Depression in the early 1930s. Sean Murray looks at the situation that would see former Anti-Treaty forces of Fianna Fail under De Valera come to power after their loss to the Pro-Treaty reaction in the Civil War and the reemergence of an Irish Communist movement.

‘The Economic Situation in Ireland’ by Séan Murray from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 11 No. 40. July 30, 1931.

All classes in Ireland are deeply affected by the economic crisis. The Trade Returns, wages, unemployment figures, Government finances, the plight of agriculture, and the stoppage of emigration all tell the same tale: Irish capitalism is up to the neck in the crisis now engulfing every capitalist country.

The Trade Returns of the Free State area for the first quarter of this year give the answer to the bourgeois propagandists that the country was escaping the crisis. Imports for this quarter were, £12,534,000, as compared with £14,853,000 for the same period of 1930. These figures are significant in view of the fact that imports for this quarter since 1928 had been practically stationary between the £14-15 million mark. For the same quarter of this year exports dropped from £11 millions to £9 millions. Of the £2,300,000 drop in imports £800,000, or over one third, is accounted for by food, drink and tobacco. Commenting on this situation, “Irish Trade”, a bourgeois economic journal, openly accounts for it by the fall in the standard of living of the labouring population. In up-to-date capitalist logic it shows “the way out” by calling for a ruthless drive for further economy.

The agricultural crisis is being rapidly accentuated by the drop in live stock prices. The Government had staked everything on the continuance of the relatively stable prices of live stock. Hogan, Minister for Agriculture, told the grain-growing farmers to drop this form of farming and take up cattle-raising. But the returns of live stock exports for the first four months of 1931 contain poor encouragement for the farmers. These returns show a fall of over half a million pounds on the same period of 1930, or almost 10 per cent. The advance of the crisis is smashing to pieces the basis of the Free State’s Government agricultural policy. The prices of fat and store cattle are down by 10 per cent, compared with 1930, lambs by 18 per cent., store sheep from 12 per cent. to 24 per cent., store pigs 35 per cent. For a country in which this form of agriculture plays such an important part in the national economy, these figures are of great significance. All the more so, in view of the fact that this is the first time such a drop has been recorded.

The principal manufacturing industries are suffering all the ravages of the industrial crisis. The Belfast shipbuilding industry is almost at a standstill. Towards the end of last year one of the yards of Harland and Wolff was permanently closed, throwing 3,000 workers on to the Labour Exchange. Workman and Clark’s yard took a two months holiday at the new year. Since then the major part of the orders have been completed and no new ones have been procured. The Linen industry presents a similar picture, less than 50% being at present employed. The recent wage cut of 10% for all operatives not earning less than 21/- per week, has increased the competitive capacity of the industry, but only a slight increase in trade is recorded. The economic position in these industries of the North is best revealed by the registered unemployment figures for the area, which reach almost 100,000 out of a population of 1 1⁄4 million.

The crisis in the United States of America deeply affects the position of the Irish toilers, particularly the poorer section of the rural population. Many families in partial or total dependence on assistance from relatives in the U.S.A. are now deprived of this source of income in consequence of the impoverishment of large masses of the working class in the States. The figures for emigration tell the tale. For the six months ending June 30th of this year, 476 persons left the Free State for America, compared with 8,468 for the corresponding six months of last year. During the same period 1,080 returned to Ireland from the United States. Well may the capitalist press comment: “not since the Norman invasion has such a situation been witnessed immigration exceeding emigration”. The crisis has destroyed the principal industry bequeathed to Ireland by British Imperialism–the export of labour power to the United States.

The bourgeoisie are reacting to the crisis by a general offensive against wages and social services. Practically every section of the working class has been in turn attacked during the past six months. The building workers wages were reduced in Dublin but only after a three months strike struggle. The unorganised linen workers in Dublin resisted a wage reduction of 10 per cent. for thirteen weeks in the teeth of the sabotage and strike-breaking of the whole reformist trade union leadership. In the Belfast area, despite the strength of the trade union bureaucracy and the old-standing divisions in the workers’ ranks, one of the largest mills resisted the cut. The new terms in the engineering industry affect the remnant of the workers now in employment in the shipbuilding industry. The railway men have lost 43/s per cent on earnings over £2 per week. Cramp and his colleagues were successful in piloting through the cut, despite the clamour of the men, particularly in Dublin, for a strike. The railway rank and file are drawing important conclusions from these experiences they have organised in Dublin a rank and file movement under Communist leadership, and fixed August 15th for a wide rank and file conference.

The bourgeoisie has had considerable success in passing a heavy share of the burden of the crisis on to the shoulders of the toiling masses. The Free State Government has made heavy raids on the social services. The Unemployment Insurance Fund yields a surplus of a quarter of a million pounds annually and less than £200,000 is spent annually on unemployment insurance in the Free State. The unemployment figures are scarcely ever published, and the Fianna Fail (De Valera) and Labour Parties in the Dail (parliament) obligingly fight shy of raising the question of unemployment in their parliamentary bouts with the Government. The extent of unemployment in the Free State is better reflected in the Outdoor Relief returns. These show that in Dublin city 7,000 are in receipt of this form of assistance. The last official unemployment figures are given at 26,000, but the conditions concerning the granting of benefit are such and so bureaucratically administered, that thousands of workers are outside the ranks of those registered at the Labour Exchanges.

The class character of the Free State Government’s legislation is shown by its imposition of tariffs on essential articles of mass consumption (boots, clothes, tobacco, etc.), the recent imposition of an additional 1d. in the 1b. on sugar, while at the same time maintaining income tax at 1/6d. in the £ below Great Britain. The index cost of living remains at from 12 to 15 points above that of Great Britain. This hits particularly the poorer peasantry, who are obliged to buy tariffed goods, while selling their own produce at lowest competitive prices. The Government has rejected the farmers demands for de-rating, but instead advanced £ 750,000 to be distributed according to rateable valuation, over the rural areas.

According to De Valera’s figures a peasant with a farm of less than £10 valuation will receive 3/6d. relief from rates and with an average family of five will pay 15/- extra per annum for his sugar. The defeat of the Government candidates in two bye-elections in the rural constituencies is the answer of the peasantry to the Government’s policy.

The objective situation in the country offers favourable ground for the rise of a revolutionary working class movement. Hitherto three important factors hindering the rise of a united revolutionary movement of the Irish working class were: (a) The strength of British Imperialist influence in the North. The main base of this influence, within the working class, was the Belfast aristocracy of labour in the two imperialist industries–linen and shipbuilding. (b) American Imperialism, which, in its upward course, absorbed the “surplus” population of the country, who in turn were able to assist their families at home. (c) Bourgeois nationalism, to whom large masses looked for a solution of the economic and political ills of the country.

The mass unemployment in the shipbuilding and linen industries and the drive against the workers, employed and unemployed by the British Labour. and Northern Irish Governments, is putting the imperialist loyalty of the Northern masses to the severest test. The economic basis of British Imperialist influence in its Irish Vendee is being rapidly undermined by the capitalist economic crisis.

The crisis is dealing equally heavy blows at American Imperialist illusions among the Irish masses. Dollar imperialism, with its 10 million unemployed, offers no way out to the Irish toilers. And the Free State Government has given the workers a fair inkling of the meaning of bourgeois national freedom by its drive against the former standards of living of the workers and peasants, Thus are the variegated capitalist remedies for the solution of the Irish toilers grievances standing their trial before the masses in the present crisis.

The Free State Government is confronted by a rapidly developing mass discontent. This is revealing itself in the loss of bye-elections to its national reformist parliamentary opponents, the Fianna Fail Party, in the rise of the Labour Party vote, the growth of the military Republican organisation and the increasing sharpness of its conflict with the Free State Police forces. The rising discontent, especially in the rural areas, is calling forth a renewed regime of oppression by the Government, which is being more and more compelled to rely on naked force to preserve its rule.

The terrorist movement against the Government’s agents (policemen and informers) has re-appeared and is rapidly increasing. The jury system is again showing signs of cracking up (refusals to convict republicans, refusals to bring in “murder verdicts” in the case of policemen and informers found shot). The Government sabotages a republican demonstration by prohibiting the running of trains. The republicans sabotage a Government Sports gathering by pulling up the railway lines. The revolutionary upsurge is taking a variety of forms from support of the nationalist reformist De Valera opposition and the social reformist Labour Party, to the extra-parliamentary Republican radicals and in several areas the Communists.

The bourgeoisie has still, however, a trump card to play against the revolutionary forces in the shape of the Fianna Fail republican opposition. The likelihood is that the present Cosgrave Government will, at the next General Election, give place to a Fianna Fail-Labour bloc, whose task will be to behead the revolutionary upsurge. Outside the Communists, there has been no consistent struggle against national and social reformism. The physical force republicans drag politically in the wake of Fianna Fail, while organisationally distinct from the De Valeraites.

The chief task confronting the Irish working class is the building of a Communist Party. This work has made big headway, especially in Dublin, where, despite many bad mistakes by the communists, a good basis has now been laid among the industrial workers. The Party groups have secured a strong footing in all sections of the building industry, on the railways and in a number of factories. In the North, the beginning of organised contact with the workers, hitherto following the Unionist and reformist cliques, has been made. In the West, a start has been made among the rural proletariat by the organisation of the County Council workers. A new Union, under Communist leadership, has been started for miners, quarrymen and roadworkers. Good connections have been made with the Irish workers in the United States.

The situation demands ruthless struggle against national and social reformist illusions and the substitution of revolutionary Marxist-Leninist strategy and tactics for that of petty bourgeois adventureism. The organisation of the class conscious workers in a Communist Party is now an urgent necessity, if the present revolutionary upsurge is to find the channels through which it can be successful in the struggle against Irish Capitalism and British Imperialism.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” 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. Inprecor’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/1931/v11n40-jul-30-1931-inprecor.pdf