and also in virtue of the scanty staff of inspectors assigned to Ireland, the employers of Belfast have been consistently guilty of gross abuse of their economic power over their workers. It remains to analyse the methods by which these masters have staved off that combination of Protestant and Catholic workers which, if effected, must have forced them to concede, in fact as in name, whatever workers elsewhere have wrung from their employers.

It has been notoriously difficult to weld Catholic and Protestant workers into the same trade union. Only the presence of the British Trades Union Congress in 1893 made it possible to hold a joint demonstration, in which both Catholic and Protestant bands participated—a demonstration whose beauty was somewhat marred by attacks by Orangemen on John Burns and other open-air speakers. The year 1886 was still too fresh in men's minds to absolve Englishmen from suspicion as papists. The temporary union of hearts in 1893 was all but duplicated in 1907, under circumstances already detailed. These two instances of the momentary ascendency of labour philosophy were due to the enthusiasm aroused, in 1893 by the sessions of the British Congress, in 1907 by the leadership of Jim Larkin. Against them must be set the long series of riotous years stretching from the refulgent outburst of 1886 to the "Castledawson pogrom" of 1912. In this last year the attempt of the Irish Parliamentary Party to collect blood-money for its share in the virtual murder of the House of Lords provoked exceedingly virulent manifestations of sectarian political economy.

The violent passions attendant on the reverberations of “loyalty" among the workers of Ulster must be passed over here. The war not alone lulled into quiescence the efforts of Socialists to make headway among the workers of the North, but equally hushed the fiery patriotism of

Orange workers. Employment was good and wages mounted steadily. So great was the demand for labour that no exception was taken to the indiscriminate employment by shipbuilders and linen merchants of Catholics and Protestants alike. As usual, good times quieted politico-sectarian discord. Curiously enough, the war, which was ultimately to prove the rock on which the nascent labour movement was to split, effected a temporary unification of the hostile factions. To be sure, the North did not participate in those striking manifestations of energy displayed by the Irish labour movement in the war years. On the other hand, the most vigorous post-armistice demands of labour were preferred and pushed in Belfast. While the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress had under consideration proposals for a national wages and hours movement, a rank and file strike for a 44-hour working week broke out in the Belfast shipyards, spreading rapidly among other sections of labour in the city. This strike of February, 1919, far from provoking clashes between Protestants and Catholics, went far to cement them in the bonds of common interest. Though the majority of the workers were Protestants, the chairman of the Strike Committee was a Roman Catholic. After several weeks, however, the strike broke down, the shipbuilders accepting a "national" (i. e., a Kingdom-wide) settlement.

The seeming solidarity of the working class was not long to survive the disappearance of the conditions that had made its development possible. "In the War, 75,000 Ulstermen voluntarily enlisted. In addition many thousands were prevented from enlisting owing to urgent War work".? Peace conditions deprived all these thousands of their em

1

1 Cf. Report of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress (Drogheda, 1919), p. 44.

2 Ulster's Claim on Britain, "Ulster's Proud Record".

ployment, a loss not to be made good elsewhere. "Since the war the linen trade of Ulster has had to bear its share of the depression which has weighed upon the trade and commerce all over the world." 1 Shipbuilding was equally hard hit. The falling-off of the demand for labour permitted the employers to become again interested in the political and religious opinions of their employees. Normally, "workers and employers in Ulster understand each other, and each other's difficulties". In 1920 the employers felt very sorry for their cherished employees, working side by side with Catholics and Sinn Feiners-not only working side by side with them, but standing shoulder to shoulder with them in pressing for betterment of their economic condition, forgetting that Ulster has "to struggle for her existence not only materially but socially and spiritually ". "To the old faith the Puritan faith-that has made England and Scotland what they are, Ulster has clung like the ivy to the vine, and to-day no community in Christendom is more devoted, or a more consistent exponent of the principles and the philosophy of those Empire builders of centuries now past whose ideas prevail to-day in the greatest and most vigorous populations in both hemispheres." " Whether or no the "Empire builders" of Ulster intend to hold themselves up to a gaping world as the most consistent living exponents of the practices of Hawkins and Drake, of the renowned slavetraders and freebooters of centuries now past, it is certain that their interest in the workers' struggle for existence "materially was confined to contesting wage increases. In this effort they met with but scant success. Thus, in November, 1919, the Interim Court of Arbitration awarded an advance of 5s. a week to the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades and the Workers' 1 Ibid., "Our Linen Industry ".

2 Ulster's Claim on Britain, "Ulster and the Empire".

2

Union against Harland and Wolff, Ltd., Workman, Clark and Co., Ltd., and others and a similar increase to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers against these two great shipbuilding firms.1 Corresponding awards were being made by single arbitrators. By December, 1920, wages of shipbuilders in Belfast ranged from 83s. 3d. to 87s. 10d. for a 47-hour working week. Such wages were out of all proportion to the "state of the labour market "— in other words, the solidarity of the men's organisations was enabling them to hold their own. Only the revival of sectarian discord could hold out any hope of a return to normalcy.

2

“Guided by this faith, her glorious heritage in the past, Ulster has pursued a path of progress and development unexcelled by any community of the same size."3 On July 12, 1920, Sir Edward Carson spoke at the usual Orange celebration. His speech was delivered in the midst of the Terror. In Derry, a Conciliation Committee had been

1

1 Report on Conciliation and Arbitration (1919), pp. 107-108. Parliamentary Papers, 1920, XIX, pp. 1-462.

2 Standard Time Rates of Wages and Hours of Labour, p. 55. Parliamentary Papers, 1921, XL [Cd. 1253]. On the West Coast of Scotland and in Dublin the rates were at that time Is. 6d. lower than the corresponding rates in Belfast.

3 Ulster and the Empire. This is excessive modesty; "unexcelled " might be replaced by "unapproached ".

In the House of Commons the Member for Duncairn called attention to what he seems to have regarded as a remarkable occurrence, viz., that 120,000 Orangemen should meet together, with "not one" policeman in attendance, and yet "there was not a single untoward incident that day". Parl. Debates, 5th Series, vol. 132, pp. 711 sq.

" According to a statement made in the House of Commons there had been, in the period between January, 1919, and March, 1920, 426 raids undertaken by Sinn Fein, as against 22,279 raids undertaken by the British authorities. Ibid., p. 763. Cf. Sir Hamar Greenwood: "There is no coercion in Ireland. There is not a soldier in Ireland to-day except for the purpose of protecting life." Ibid., p. 729.

1

formed, consisting of both Protestants and Catholics, to prevent an outbreak of rioting; through their intervention the usual demonstrations were not held in Derry on the Twelfth. But in Belfast he who in the House of Commons persistently and savagely attacked the Government for its failure to preserve the peace, used language most peculiar for one who professed to desire the restoration of order. Speaking of the Sinn Feiners, he said:

They have all kinds of insidious methods and organisations at work. Sometimes it is the Church. That does not make much way in Ulster. The more insidious method is tacking on the Sinn Fein question and the Irish Republican question to the Labour question. (A voice-"Ireland is the most Labour centre in the United Kingdom.") I know that. What I say is this these men who come forward posing as the friends of Labour care no more about Labour than does the man in the moon. Their real object, and the real insidious nature of their propaganda, is that they may mislead and bring about disunity amongst our own people; and in the end, before we know where we are, we may find ourselves in the same bondage and slavery as is the rest of Ireland in the South and West.

Beware of these insidious methods. Our duty is an absolutely clear one, and we must state it clearly on a day like this. We have been handed down, from the time of the battle of the Boyne and the siege of Derry-and they may have another siege before long-we have been handed down great traditions and great privileges, and in our Orange Order we have undertaken to preserve those and to hand them on to our children, and we must proclaim to-day clearly that, come what will, and be the consequences what they may, we in Ulster will tolerate no Sinn Fein-(cheers)—no Sinn Fein organisation, no Sinn Fein methods . . . 2

1 Joseph Devlin, ibid., p. 729.

2 Northern Whig, July 13, 1920.