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Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942-7 Author(s): G. S. Walker Source: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 93 (May 1984), pp. 69-91 Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30008027 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 15:07 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Historical Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 91.229.248.139 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 15:07:55 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942-7

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942-7Author(s): G. S. WalkerSource: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 93 (May 1984), pp. 69-91Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30008027 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 15:07

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toIrish Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

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Page 2: The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942-7

Iri.sh Historical Studies, xxiv. no. 93 (May 1984)

The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942-7

I

T he Commonwealth Labour Party (Northern Ireland), hereafter referred to as the C.L.P., came into existence on 19 December 1942. Its birth was

the result of a split in the ranks of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (N.I.L.P.). This split centred on the personality and the political outlook of the man who had led the N.I.L.P. since 1932, and who was to be leader of the C.L.P. during its five-year lifespan: Harry Midgley.'

Midgley (1892-1957) was, by the time of the formation of the C.L.P., one of the best-known and most controversial politicians in Northern Ireland. Born into a working-class protestant home in north Belfast, he acquired an early political education as a youth through the medium of the Independent Labour Party organisation in the city. He was close, at least initially, to William Walker, the most outstanding labour leader produced by the north of Ireland during the early troubled years of the labour movement. In addition, he met and listened to some of the most eminent spokesmen of British labour, most notably Keir Hardie. Midgley served his time as a joiner in the Workman Clark shipyard (where his father was a labourer) before spending a brief period in America in 1913 and 1914. After serving in the Ulster division in the First World War, he returned to Belfast in 1919 and quickly got himself a job as a trade-union organiser with the Linenlappers' Union.

From then on Midgley's political career never looked back. He was a leading figure in the Belfast labour movement of the 1920s and perhaps personified the prevailing ethos in the movement at that time: that of a desire to become the main parliamentary opposition to the unionist government, and of non-commitment on the question of partition. Midgley, like most of Belfast's other labour activists, had been much influenced ideologically by James Connolly's concept of an Irish workers' republic. Indeed he had stood for election to the new Northern Ireland parliament in 1921 on an anti- partitionist platform.2 As the twenties wore on, however, Midgley and many other prominent labour personalities such as Sam Kyle and Hugh Gemmell began to display less fidelity to Connollyite principles in favour of a more

1For Midgley's background and early career, see G. S. Walker, 'Harry Midgley (1892-1957): an Ulster political biography' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1983).

2Irish News, 18 May 1921.

69

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concentrated approach to the practicalities of the political situation which lay before them. By the early 1930s Midgley at least had come to the conclusion that labour could not hope to succeed in Ulster politics as long as the party was tainted with Irish nationalism. From 1932 to 1942, when he was leader of the N.I.L.P.,3 Midgley moved the party gradually towards an acceptance of the border with Eire and to a closer relationship with the labour movement in Britain.

He did not do so without opposition. This came, predictably, from those in the party with a republican socialist, or plainly nationalist, outlook, who saw the logic of Midgley's policy as leading to the point where the N.I.L.P. would compete with the unionists in declarations of loyalty to the union.

By the outbreak of the Second World War Midgley's supporters and critics were firmly at loggerheads. His critics argued that he had needlessly antagonised the catholic electorate during his campaign on behalf of republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War; those sympathetic to Midgley accused his critics of 'funking' this critically-important issue and soft-pedalling their support for the Spanish republic lest they should arouse catholic resentment. In the 1938 Northern Ireland general election, the catholic voters of the Dock division of Belfast, who had formed the backbone of Midgley's support when he was returned for the constituency in 1933, turned against him because of his stance on Spain. A nationalist candidate, James Collins, entered the contest and won the majority of the catholic votes. This had the effect of pushing Midgley into third place and 'letting in' the unionist candidate.4 Midgley was never to forgive or forget this pointed gesture.

The outbreak of war in 1939 only served to widen the gap between him and his opponents. Midgley immediately called for a no-holds-barred effort to defeat Nazism but the republican/nationalist wing of the party saw the war as a conflagration between rival imperialisms in which Ireland - both north and south - should play no part. This was a minority view within the N.I.L.P., but even those in the moderate centre of the party, who were more or less enthusiastically behind the Allies and the war effort, winced at Midgley's willingness to wave the union jack and to consort with unionist politicians.

This trend of explicit pro-Britishness on Midgley's part was accentuated in his campaign for the seat of Willowfield in Belfast at a by-election late in 1941. Midgley made a full-blooded labour-unionist appeal to the overwhelmingly protestant working-class electorate and was rewarded with the seat in what was indisputably the biggest electoral upset to that date in Northern Ireland's history.5 While delighted at the result, a large body of opinion in the N.I.L.P.,

3The labour party in Northern Ireland formally came into existence in 1924 when it was decided to expand the organisation of the Belfast Labour party as far as possible throughout the six counties. The party remained separate from the I.L.P., which was organised only in Belfast. The I.L.P. dissolved in Belfast in 1932 and was reconstituted as the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland which operated as a left-wing (and generally republican-socialist) pressure group on the N.I.L.P.

4The result was G. A. Clark (unionist) 3,578; J. C. Collins (nationalist) 2,891; H. C. Midgley (labour) 1,923.

5The result was Midgley 7,209; Lavery 2,435. This seat had never been contested by labour before and the constituency had always been regarded as a unionist stronghold.

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including many who were generally in favour of Midgley's approach, feared that the party was becoming too obviously anti-nationalist to the extent that it would cease to be viewed as a non-sectarian political force making an equal appeal to both communities, protestant and catholic.

Moves were thus made to redress the balance. In January 1942 two nationalist members of Belfast city council resigned to join the N.I.L.P. They were Frank Hanna, a solicitor, and James Collins, the very man held responsible for Midgley's defeat in 1938. The N.I.L.P. gave them both a cordial welcome. Presently there occurred, in the summer of 1942, the readmission into the party of Jack Beattie who had been expelled back in 1934. Beattie was strongly anti-partitionist in his outlook and had been more concerned to oppose conscription being extended to Northern Ireland than to support the war. There was also a history stretching back over a decade of personal rivalry between Beattie and Midgley. Midgley seems not to have voiced any opposition to the decisions to admit these men, but the implications of this new injection of anti-partitionist blood into the party were plain for him to see. After Beattie had been readmitted, there were three M.P.s at Stormont under the N.I.L.P. banner: Midgley, Beattie and Patrick Agnew, the member for South Armagh who might best be described as a nationalist on the right wing of the party. Midgley was thus in the embarrassing position of attempting to identify the party he led with loyalty to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and unequivocal support for the war, while his colleagues in parliament made no secret of their nationalist views and did nothing to encourage the war effort.

By 1942 the Northern Ireland government under the premiership of John Andrews looked decidedly insecure. The public seemed to lack confidence in a cabinet composed mainly of ministers who had been in office for over twenty years. There were suggestions of complacency and of Northern Ireland not pulling its weight in the British war effort. Even some influential unionist party members felt that Andrews's government could not supply the necessary drive and vigour to mobilise the province's resources to their fullest capacity. Two by-elections had been lost: Willowfield to Midgley, and North Down to an independent unionist. Talk of a coalition government was in the air: the partnership between labour and conservatives in Britain gave rise to demands that the Northern Ireland government should broaden its base beyond the unionist party.

At the N.I.L.P. annual conference on 31 October 1942, Midgley used his address as chairman to identify the party with his own world view: 'the Northern Ireland Labour Party ... is proud to associate itself with the labour movements of the British Commonwealth and, indeed, the United Nations, in their resolve to free the world from the barbarities, fears, bestialities, and injustices of Nazi-Fascist totalitarianiam'. He went on to excoriate those who subscribed to 'outworn nationalism', and those who were 'quislings, if not actual agents of Nazism' in their midst. The British Commonwealth, he added, had built up 'the finest system of social services in the world'.6 Midgley had

6Chairman's address reproduced as a pamphlet entitled Pilgrimage of hope (Belfast, 1942).

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had enough of internal party bickering. He was speaking out plainly and forcefully and throwing down the gauntlet to those who disagreed with him.

Midgley had decided to confront his critics and to settle the party's policy leaving no room for doubt. On 20 November, at a meeting of the Willowfield labour group, he issued a 'Declaration of policy' which committed the N.I.L.P. to support for the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, and affirmed the party's belief in a socially progressive British Commonwealth of Nations.7 On 25 November, in the Northern Ireland house of commons at Stormont, Beattie took the opportunity of dissociating himself from Midgley's views while attacking the government over the issue of the prolongation of the Northern Ireland parliament.7 Matters seemed to be rolling towards a showdown.

A meeting of the parliamentary party of the N.I.L.P. was held on 4 December at which Beattie was elected leader and Midgley his deputy. Midgley was unable to be present at this meeting, which was attended by Beattie and Agnew, and by Robert Thompson and William Leeburn of the party's executive committee.8 Neither Thompson nor Leeburn held anti- partitionist views and both were probably closer to Midgley in terms of their general political outlook. However, they represented the moderate centre of the party which had resented Midgley's precipitous manoeuvring in order to get his policy for the party officially adopted. Leeburn was later to accuse Midgley of refusing to 'work in harness',9 and there seems little doubt that a strong conviction existed throughout the party that Midgley was attempting to run a one-man show. The elevation of Beattie to parliamentary party leader seems to have been an attempt to stall Midgley's progress in this respect. While those who shared Beattie's nationalist views looked forward to a new era in the party's history, moderates like Leeburn and Thompson still remained in control. There was to be no swing to the anti-partitionists, and the party continued to hedge on the 'national question'.'0

Midgley, however, interpreted the gesture as clear evidence of a rejection of his personal political outlook. He could rightly point out that Beattie's views were well known and that the party was associating itself with a basically- nationalist political creed. Midgley thus issued the party an ultimatum: either he be elected party leader in the house of commons or he would resign. On 15 December the parliamentary party reaffirmed its decision and, without waiting for the matter to be referred to the executive for a final decision, Midgley issued a statement to the press to the effect that he was resigning. 'For some time past', he said, 'I have been deeply perturbed by the trend of events within the N.I.L.P. This has taken the form of pandering to elements more in sympathy with nationalism and republicanism than with the fundamental objectives of the labour party, which are the social ownership of the means of life.'"

7Hansard N.L (commons), xxv, 3055-68 (25 Nov. 1942). 8Minutes of meeting of Northern Ireland Parliamentary Labour Party, 4 Dec. 1942

(papers of Mr Sam Napier of Bangor, Co. Down). 9Belfast News-Letter, 17 Dec. 1942. 10Beattie was expelled again in 1944. Not until 1949 did the N.I.L.P. finally decide its

position - affirmatively - with regard to the constitution. 11Belfast News-Letter, 17 Dec. 1942.

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Midgley's departure led to the disaffiliation of two party branches: Londonderry (led by Milton Gordon) and North Belfast.12 The Willowfield divisional party expressed full confidence in Midgley though declined to follow him. The other branches either voted to support the executive or indicated that support by carrying on as usual." Most of the people who left the party with Midgley were friends, relations or admirers of long standing, who had constituted something of a personal following throughout his ten years at the helm of the labour movement in Belfast. The N.I.L.P. had by no means resolved its internal rifts and tensions, but it could at least give the appearance of having survived Midgley's departure without its organisational strength being seriously impaired.

On 19 December 1942 Midgley announced the formation of the Common- wealth Labour Party.14 Some in the N.I.L.P. had hinted, more out of hope than conviction, that he would throw in his lot with the unionist party. For this they would have to wait. The Northern Ireland political scene was to undergo the experiment of a new party.

II

At the first meeting of the executive committee in January 1943, the 'Declaration of policy' which Midgley had two months before sought to have the N.I.L.P. adopt, was approved as the initial pledge to be accepted by all C.L.P. members. It came to form the basis of the C.L.P.'s programme. The text is given below as an appendix (p. 91).

In this policy statement the C.L.P. outlined its two objectives: the consolidation of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, and the attainment of a system of social security and social justice in harmony with the British labour party's programme for England, Scotland and Wales. This latter objective was given a distinctly socialist character by the second section of the fourth clause in the C.L.P.'s constitution. This duplicated word for word the British labour party's commitment to socialism in its constitution of 1918: 'to secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration of each industry or service'.15

12Gordon was an independently-minded individual who had been an active member of the labour party in England before returning to Northern Ireland at the end of the 1930s. He was elected vice-chairman of the C.L.P. in January 1942, but severed his connexion with the party in July 1943, taking the Londonderry party out with him. Gordon became convinced that the C.L.P. was 'inimical to the interests of Ulster's workers, in the widest sense' (New Statesman and Nation, 11 Dec. 1943).

13John Harbinson, 'A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party' (unpublished M.Sc. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast, 1966), pp 129-32.

14Belfast Telegraph, 21 Dec. 1942. 15Constitution and standing orders of the Commonwealth Labour Party,

(P.R.O.N.I. D1195/5, Box 1). The constitution took effect on 1 January 1944.

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Midgley was anxious to establish close ties with the British labour party. However, any efforts he may have made to obtain speakers and to have prominent labour personalities give his new venture their backing came to nothing. Midgley counted such as Herbert Morrison, Ellen Wilkinson and Tom Johnston'6 among his personal friends but the British party - traditionally reluctant to get involved in Northern Ireland affairs - gave the new party a wide berth. If anything, it backed the N.I.L.P. in the dispute."

The C.L.P. was on its own. It was, initially at least, a 'Midgley party'. Midgley himself assumed the chairmanship. His daughter Marie became the party's literature secretary; his son, Harry Junior, was the first editor of the party newspaper, Justice, before leaving to serve in the armed forces; his wife was elected to the committee of the party's branch in North Belfast; and his son-in-law William Kennedy was the party's first secretary and, between periods of service in the Royal Air Force, prominent as a speaker and organiser. The old friends and admirers making up, at first, a large part of the party membership included Bob McLung, a veteran campaigner from the early days of the Belfast I.L.P., who became an agent of the party's welfare bureau; Alex Adams, an N.I.L.P. parliamentary candidate in the 1920s, who was one of the party's leading figures in Newtownards; and Hugh Gemmell, another activist from the earliest days of the N.I.L.P., who taught a weekly course to party members on the art of public speaking.

In the first year of its existence, the C.L.P. gradually built up its organisational strength. In November 1943, Justice carried a report on the activities of its branches, which were then nine in number: North, South and East Belfast, Bangor, Coleraine, Lisburn, Lurgan, Newtownards and White- house. The North Belfast branch contained most of Midgley's friends and supporters from his N.I.L.P. days and was probably the strongest, both numerically and in terms of its level of activity. South Belfast was also healthy, including as it did, the Willowfield parliamentary constituency represented by Midgley at Stormont. The Newtownards branch hosted several of the party's biggest public meetings and was probably numerically strong. Its role in the party was to be given greater impetus after 1945 in the energetic person of Albert Horatio McElroy, whose service in the British army during the war kept him away from home and so from active C.L.P. politics for long periods. Bangor seems to have been fairly active too, but elsewhere the party may only have had a paper existence. It is difficult to estimate its overall strength but, given that 300 members attended a social gathering in Belfast in October 1943,18 800-1000 may be a fair guess. Midgley knew that the C.L.P. would have to receive the active backing of rank and file Ulster workers in order not

16Johnston was the former editor of the I.L.P. newspaper, Forward, to which Midgley had contributed in the 1920s and 1930s.

17Correspondence between the N.I.L.P. secretary, Joseph Corrigan, and the British labour party's national agent, G. R. Shepherd, is contained in the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (U.S.D.A.W.) archives in Manchester (union file A22). Corrigan wrote to Shepherd, 24 Dec. 1942, requesting the British party not to back Midgley by sending speakers to C.L.P. meetings. In reply (30 Dec. 1942) Shepherd acceded to the request.

18Justice, Nov. 1943.

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to join the N.I.L.P. on the margins of the province's politics. He made strenuous appeals to trade unionists,"9 but he faced two formidable obstacles in most workers' traditional support for the unionist party, and the nominal organic connexion existing between some trade unions and the N.I.L.P., a connexion which survived the split between the N.I.L.P. and Midgley's followers at the end of 1942.

On 28 April 1943, after it had become clear that he had lost the confidence of the unionist parliamentary party, John Andrews resigned. He was replaced as prime minister by Sir Basil Brooke, who announced his new cabinet on 6 May. Brooke cleared out the 'old guard' unionists and introduced younger blood in an effort to provide more dynamic government. In addition he responded to pressure from across the water to give his administration at least the appearance of a coalition: he appointed Midgley as minister of public security.20

The appointment came as a shock to many in the unionist party who resented the presence of a non-unionist, and professed socialist, in the government. However, Brooke was satisfied that on the two issues he considered to be the cardinal ones of the day - loyalty to Northern Ireland's constitutional position and support for the war effort - Midgley was sound. The N.I.L.P. and the nationalists scoffed at the suggestion of the government being a genuine coalition and held that Midgley could not be viewed as representative of labour. It was indeed a cosmetic exercise on the part of Brooke, but in the context of Northern Ireland politics at this time, it was the only plausible way he could find of broadening his government beyond the ranks of the unionist party.2'

Midgley had no qualms about accepting. He was at this time still distant from the vast majority of unionists in his general political outlook. The entrenched conservatism of the unionist party in relation to social and economic issues was being slightly eroded by some maverick figures such as Edmund Warnock, but the overriding ethos in the party was still hostile to anything that smacked of socialism. To Midgley, however, such questions were of secondary importance while the war remained to be won. It was a chance to establish his credentials as a man of cabinet timber; it was also a chance to project himself and his party more positively into the public limelight. After over twenty years of unionist monopoly of government office in Northern Ireland, Midgley saw this development as a possible turning point, a breaking down of traditional political conceptions and a possible opening up of a new, wider, more radically orientated and socially progressive context in which a new order would be constructed after the war.

The C.L.P. agreed with him and the executive committee duly endorsed his entry into the government. In so doing the C.L.P. committed itself to collaboration with the new government for the duration of the war. This had

19See his 'Open letter to trade unionists in Northern Ireland' in Justice, Dec. 1943. 20See the Brookeborough memoirs in the Sunday News (Belfast), 4 Feb. 1968.

Midgley was the first non-unionist to become a Northern Ireland cabinet minister. 21The independent unionist M.P.s at Stormont were, like the labour and nationalist

representatives but for their own reasons, unwilling to join the government.

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important implications for party policy and the image presented to the public. The party, to a large extent, found that its hands were tied and that its freedom to develop a radical critique of the conservative nature of unionism and Ulster society was somewhat circumscribed. As will be made clear, while the C.L.P. did attack what it perceived to be reactionary aspects of unionism, it was more concerned with stressing its support for the war and its loyalty to all things British. 'Outworn nationalism', as Midgley frequently disparaged the move- ment for Irish unity, was the butt of the party's critical polemics to a far greater degree than 'reactionary conservatism', which was confidently believed to be in decline and about to be overwhelmed in a politically radical post-war era. Until then, however, the C.L.P. accepted that it could not truly come into its own.

III

The C.L.P. based its political ideology on a belief in the British Commonwealth of Nations as a potential instrument of international co- operation and social progress. This concept was not a substitute nationalism. The Commonwealth was not an end in itself; it was the means to the end of achieving peace and bettering man's economic circumstances. The party looked forward to the establishment of a Commonwealth parliament for such a purpose.22

The C.L.P. saw itself as a party in tune with a rapidly changing world in which traditional political concepts were being rendered redundant. Harry Midgley junior wrote in Justice:'the Commonwealth Labour Party can be the saviour of Northern Ireland's future. It is the only political party in Ulster with a policy to fit the times. It recognises that both imperialism and nationalism are philosophies of the past.'23 The C.L.P. characterised Irish nationalism as an attempt to impose a Gaelic cultural republic on all Ulster. It sought to contrast British 'progressiveness' with southern Irish 'backwardness', and made much of the disparity in social welfare benefits between Northern Ireland and Eire. The Beveridge report (1942), promising as it did an even more comprehensive system of social security, was enthusiastically endorsed by the party. Justice published several articles on the report, including a r6sum6 of the scheme as a whole by Midgley who was anxious to scotch suggestions that it would prove too costly.24 In relation to the war, the C.L.P. completed its deprecatory picture of neutral Eire by accusing it of opting out of the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. To the C.L.P. this was the clearest evidence of the insular and retrograde nature of southern Irish society and of the ideology of Irish nationalism.

The C.L.P. held up the achievements of the New Zealand labour government as its model. It viewed New Zealand's social security system as second to none and as a standard to which all the Commonwealth nations should aspire. Midgley had expressed his appreciation of New Zealand's

22See Midgley's speech in Hansard N.I. (commons), xxviii, 535-6, (20 Mar. 1945); Ulster for the Commonwealth (Belfast, 1943), p. 15.

23Justice, Feb. 1944. 24Ibid., Apr. 1944.

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achievements when leader of the N.I.L.P. and was well versed in the details of all its welfare schemes and benefits.25 He drew attention to its size as a country and to the fact that its population was only slightly larger than that of Northern Ireland. To Midgley and the C.L.P., New Zealand was the exemplar of the British Commonwealth path to progress through peaceful radical change. Ulster for the Commonwealth spelled it out:

The New Zealand social security act proves beyond doubt what can be done by a government pledged to the principle of placing human worth and consideration above that of private profit or gain. As an integral part of the United Kingdom we shall feel privileged to share the benefits of expanding social services, but we shall also accept it as a responsibility to join with those - in the sister isles - who desire to raise our standards to the highest level possible within the ambit of the British Common- wealth. . . . We stand for internationalism through the strengthening and enlarging of the British Commonwealth and continued association with the International Labour office, so that the social standards we set for ourselves may ultimately become applicable to all peoples throughout the world, regardless of race or colour.26

A logical corollary to an endorsement of a wide-ranging system of social security was an acceptance of the principle of social and economic planning. This indeed was the policy of the C.L.P. and the party was explicit in its conception of such planning as socialist in character. Its constitution, as has been noted, committed the party to communal ownership and control of industry. Articles in Justice bolstered this commitment and laid claims to the C.L.P. as the only worthy custodians of the socialist cause in Northern Ireland.27 Justice also carried frequent quotations from Sir Richard Acland's books, and endorsed his message that common ownership was 'the only way'.28 The C.L.P.'s position was trenchantly, if somewhat rhetorically, stated in Ulster for the Commonwealth:

The Commonwealth Labour Party is bound to emphasise that the power of democracy in the future to maintain international peace is, in the long run, inseparable from the growth, in each country, of the common ownership of the main instruments of production and their co-ordinated planning for common ends. ... The private empires of privilege, whether in oil, munitions, or minerals, whether in power or the basic means of transport, are bound to frustrate the fulfilment of democracy at home and the maintenance of peace abroad. ... Only the rapid socialisation of these instruments of production will enable us to move to that plane of common action where co-operation for abundance instead of division through scarcity is the chief motive in international effort.29

At the first annual conference of the party, in June 1944, resolutions were passed calling for the implementation of the recommendations contained in the Beveridge report, the establishment of a central economic planning bureau in Northern Ireland, a 'comprehensive housing programme', and 'equality of opportunity from the primary school to the university by the provision of

25See Ulster for the Commonwealth, pp 9-14, for a breakdown of the New Zealand social security system as a whole.

26Ibid., p. 15. 27See, e.g., the article by 'Fusilier' in Justice, June 1944. 28See, e.g., Justice, June 1944. See below with regard to Sir Richard Acland. 29Ulster for the Commonwealth, p. 16.

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publicly-controlled schools which all children may attend'. The latter resolution also called for the raising of the school leaving age to sixteen.,3 The C.L.P. gave particular attention to education: it was an issue on which Midgley had long waged a campaign for reform in the Belfast city council, and it distanced the C.L.P., with the party's call for a comprehensive system, from the unionists. It was also an issue which was to be the subject of much controversy after the war."

The C.L.P., while careful to stress its co-operation with Brooke's govern- ment, sought to depict the unionist party as hidebound by a retrogressive social outlook and desirous of a return to pre-war conditions of privilege for the wealthy few and hardship for the masses. The C.L.P. thus attempted to convince the public that the unionist party, firstly, had no monopoly of loyalty to Britain, and, secondly, was ill-equipped to lead Ulster into a socially transformed post-war world.

Midgley, as a cabinet minister, was in a delicate position with regard to a sizeable section of unionist opinion which resented his status. A good illustration of how he handled this situation was his response to a London journalist in February 1944: Brooke and himself, he said, were 'poles apart' on social and economic questions, but he was 'a great admirer and devoted colleague' of his nevertheless.32 Thus Midgley reaffirmed his loyalty as a government minister while keeping his philosophical distance from unionism. In this way he sought to maintain the momentum of the C.L.P. and to prevent its distinct identity from being eroded, as was threatened by the war-time political circumstances. If doubts can be expressed as to the success of this latter venture, there was no question of Midgley's own career suffering. When it became clear, early in 1944, that the ministry of public security was to be wound up, many unionists looked forward to Midgley returning to the political wilderness. However, Brooke, intent on maintaining the appearance of a coalition government, shuffled his cabinet and gave Midgley the ministry of labour. This appointment dated from I June 1944.

IV

As has been noted, the C.L.P. derived some inspiration from the political outlook of Sir Richard Acland. Acland led a contemporaneous movement in British politics: CommonWealth (C.W.). C.W. was founded in July 1942 and won three wartime by-elections in England. It attempted to fill the vacuum created by labour's absorption into the coalition government. For a time C.W. reflected the leftward shift in British public opinion during the war, a shift which Paul Addison suggests as having peaked by the end of 1942."

C.W. supported the war but opposed the government.34 Thus its role in British politics was rather different from that of the C.L.P. in Ulster.

30Justice, July 1944. 31See below, pp 86-7. 32London Evening Standard, 25 Feb. 1944. 33Paul Addison, The road to 1945 (London, 1977), p. 15. 34Angus Calder, 'The CommonWealth Party' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University

of Sussex, 1968), p. 12.

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Moreover, C. W. was not content merely to hope for a military victory over the Germans; it functioned as a vehicle for ideas on how Britain could - unilaterally - end the war quickly. Such ideas included Britain sacrificing her own sovereignty and empire and offering a share in the control of her colonies to other nations. Acland's belief was that only by such gestures and by adopting a new way of life and providing moral leadership, would Britain lead the way out of war and destruction into peace and renewal.35 Acland and C.W. stood for ethical socialism; a 'new Jerusalem' based on a new political morality which replaced careerism, corruption and deceit with selflessness, sincerity and honesty. Acland took this millenarian message to the country and found that his evangelical rhetoric struck a chord.

To some extent the C.L.P. made a similar kind of appeal in Northern Ireland. Like Acland, Midgley was fond of couching his message in terms of a spiritual revival,"36 while his son, Harry Junior, wrote floridly of the C.L.P.'s 'charter of upliftment', and the party's view of socialism as 'a burning faith, a moral conviction'." In his address to the C.L.P. party conference in 1945 Midgley claimed that, in submitting candidates for local elections, the party was 'actuated by the supreme ideal of substituting social service and social consciousness for the sordid struggles of commercial rivalry and selfish individual gain'.38

Midgley, however, had been over twenty years in Ulster politics and could not hope to convince people that what he was offering was genuinely new. He had been using evangelical rhetoric for the duration of his political career but had always shown himself ready to 'dirty his hands' in taking a pragmatic course when the situation seemed to dictate it. Acland and C. W. luxuriated in the freedom afforded to them by their position as outsiders decrying what they perceived to be rotten within. In the person of Midgley the C.L.P. were 'insiders' in Northern Ireland, and their scope to make a case for new political ethics was therefore limited.

In addition the C.L.P. did not deviate from the firm belief that the war would only be won by the military defeat of Nazism. It expressed no hope in gestures such as those favoured by C.W., and while it might thus have shown more realism, it arguably needed to play host to such a ferment of ideas to make its position on the political landscape more notable and less typical of the traditional form of politics which it claimed was in decline.

While C.W. in Britain might have shown no little political naivety, the movement at least defined its policies and ideals in some depth. The key concepts of C. W. - 'commonownership', 'vital democracy' and 'morality in politics'39 - were the subject of much verbal debate and written discussion within the movement. In contrast, the C.L.P. tended to substitute rhetoric for analysis and slogans for detailed argument. Midgley's dilations on Beveridge and New Zealand can be exonerated from this indictment, but Justice (the only

35See ibid., p. 24. 36See, e.g., his New Year message in Justice, Jan. 1944. 37Justice, Oct. 1943. 38Belfast Telegraph, 24 Nov. 1945. 39See Calder, 'The CommonWealth Party', pp 30-76, for a discussion of these

concepts.

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C.L.P. publication apart from the occasional pamphlet) seldom initiated discussion of political ideas. Typical of the paper's approach was an article by H. F. Lyttle on the party's position. After stressing that the C.L.P. was socialist, Lyttle went on to state:

Where they [conservatives] believe in private enterprise, which brings about such evils as monopolies which are in a position to dictate prices, we believe in common ownership of industry of all kinds. Where they believe in privately-owned finance controlling the banks, we believe in a state bank under national control. Where they believe in production for profit, we believe in production for use.40

This was the extent of the discussion to be found in Justice on the central question of common ownership. Later issues of the paper simplified the issue further: 'competition is the law of death: co-operation is the law of life'.4'

The C.L.P.'s anxiety to emphasise its pro-British character led it to eulogise the British Commonwealth in a way in which its views on the independence struggles of British colonial territories were at best obscure. The question of India, for example, does not seem to have exercised the minds of C.L.P. members, whereas C.W. was always explicit in its support for Indian independence. C.W., moreover, derived little evident inspiration from the concept of a united British commonwealth of nations. The C.L.P. primarily used Beveridge to support its case with regard to the superior social services enjoyed by Northern Ireland in relation to Eire. The party thus lauded the scheme unreservedly. C.W., on the other hand, endorsed Beveridge with several qualifications: it believed there had to be full employment for it to work properly, and it desired the scheme to be part of a framework of thorough economic planning. It also insisted that it be allied with the moral and spiritual regeneration of society.42

Both C.W. and the C.L.P. shared a belief in a comprehensive state- controlled education system, and they both advanced a similar internationalist message. Although C.W. did not view the British Commonwealth in the same light as the C.L.P., both movements were inspired by what seemed to be an important tendency in American politics towards an endorsement of the principle of international economic planning and co-operation. This was given best expression in the writings of Wendell Wilkie, the American statesman who in 1942 wrote One world, and in Vice-president Henry A. Wallace's calls for a new world democracy and peaceful co-operation with Russia. Midgley quoted both men copiously in his writings and public addresses and cited their stress on the interdependence of nations. Inter- national planning, Midgley argued, would eliminate the economic incentives which made for war. 'But if the nations.went back to the mad competitive scramble for markets, and if, within each nation, individuals went back to the sordid struggle for profits regardless of the national well-being, then within another generation we would once again be faced with war.'43

The respective social profiles of C.W. and the C.L.P. differed significantly.

40Justice, May 1944. 41Ibid., June and July 1944. 42Calder, 'The CommonWealth Party', p. 121. 43Newtownards Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1944.

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Acland appealed to the middle class and believed that the new managerial class would aid the revolution he sought. Angus Calder has described the typical C.W. member as 'a comfortably off schoolteacher living in one of the pleasanter suburbs of Liverpool, who had never been active in politics before, and quite likely would never be active in them again'.44 The middle-class professional and semi-professional groups were, in Calder's view, 'curiously vulnerable' to Acland's millenarian appeals.45

In comparison, Midgley largely made his appeal to the skilled protestant workers of the sort who had returned him at Willowfield in 1941. The skilled worker, dissatisfied with the toryism of the unionist party but fiercely loyal to the British connexion, was the typical C.L.P. member. The occupations of some prominent party members tend to bear this out: Thomas Martin (engineer); Norman Black (train driver); James McKittrick (electrician); J. N. Adgey (radio engineer). However, the C.L.P. did recruit quite widely from the lower middle class - people such as clerks, secretaries, local government officials and small businessmen.46 There were also a few professional people who were probably more liberal than socialist in their outlook. Perhaps typical of these were Alex Mylchreest, a masseur, and Billy Lyttle, a dentist, both from Belfast.47 Midgley and the C.L.P., however, were to find to their cost that the protestant middle class would not lightly break with the unionist party.48

The C.L.P. was also far more reliant on Midgley than C.W. was on Acland. At least in the initial stage of C. W., Acland was the moving spirit of a movement in which much was happening around him. Regional branches took it upon themselves to work for the movement in a more autonomous way than was the case with the C.L.P. where everything seemed to pass through Belfast and, invariably, Midgley. Given the smallness of the Northern Ireland political scene, however, this was probably inevitable. C.W. produced other leading figures who were able speakers and skilful organisers: men like Tom Wintringham and R. W. G. Mackay. Only by the end of the war, when Albert McElroy could devote himself to political activity, was there anyone who seemed prepared to shoulder the burden of leadership in the C.L.P..49 As noted earlier, Midgley's government position did not make it possible for him to give full commitment to the party in the vital early period of its existence.

Unlike C.W., which began to splinter in 1944, the C.L.P. seems to have been untroubled by serious internal rows or tensions. Midgley's leadership was never the target of public criticism, and his performance as a government minister was never questioned. In September 1944 he was one of the most outspoken cabinet ministers on the subject of Eire nationals who had served in the British forces obtaining residence permits in Northern Ireland. Midgley

44Angus Calder, The people's war (London, 1971), p. 634. 45Calder, 'The CommonWealth Party', p. 219. 46Interview with Mr William Kennedy of Lisburn, 2 May 1983. The second editor of

Justice, James Kennedy, was a draper; a prominent member of the North Belfast branch, Dan McVey, was a tailor.

47See Justice, June 1946. 48See below, pp 85-6. 49McElroy, an ex school-teacher, served in the army until 1945; he became a

non-subscribing presbyterian minister.

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shared the extreme unionist view that the province would be 'deluged' by tire workers after the war and that they would 'gravitate to the disloyal element in our population and increase our political difficulties'.50 Midgley's stance, while defensible from the point of view of seeking to avert sectarian friction from developing after the war, was unbecomingly belligerent for the leader of a party which voiced its concern for civil liberties. It was also the kind of traditional 'not-an-inch' unionist response which the C.L.P. took up at the risk of obscuring its distinctiveness from the unionist party. However, if such questions caused concern to C.L.P. members the expression of it was well concealed."' The party rank and file seemed always to fall in obediently behind their chief.

V

The C.L.P.'s first electoral test came in the Northern Ireland general election of June 1945. The party announced on 22 April 1945, when Midgley was still in government, that it would contest the election. There was some suggestion that Midgley would stay in the government after the election if the C.L.P. agreed not to oppose the unionist party in any constituency but Midgley's own.52 This could have been little more than a rumour, for it would have meant the C.L.P. virtually admitting electoral defeat before it started. The party's main political objective was to win the support of the protestant working class from the clutches of the unionist party, and it would have made little sense to contest seats only in nationalist areas where they could not have made such an appeal. Moreover, there were few unionists who wanted to see the continuation of the 'coalition' chiefly for Midgley's personal benefit. Therefore on 29 May 1945 Midgley resigned from the government and threw his weight behind the C.L.P. campaign."

The C.L.P. fielded six candidates: Midgley in Belfast, Willowfield; William Kennedy in Belfast, Ballynafeigh; Norman Black in Belfast, Victoria; James Kennedy in Belfast, Windsor; Thomas Martin in Armagh Central; and Albert McElroy in Newtownards.

With Midgley out of the government, the C.L.P. was at last free to turn up the volume of its appeal to the unionist-minded electorate. By so doing it was immediately attacked by the unionist party as attempting to split that electorate and thus create an appearance of disunity in the ranks of those who valued the British link. It was a predictable charge and reflected the arrogance of the unionist party, which believed it had an exclusive right to the pro-British vote. Yet it was a charge not easily shrugged off by a small party which could not, at this stage, be viewed as a serious force in Ulster politics. The unionists depicted the C.L.P. as an unwitting but potentially dangerous nuisance on the

50P.R.O.N.I., Cab. 4/597/7. The quotation is taken from a memorandum prepared for the cabinet by Midgley.

51Indeed an article appeared in Justice, Nov. 1944, saying that the measures taken to tighten up control of residence permits were justified.

52See Irish News, 24 Apr. 1945. 53He paid tribute to Brooke in his letter of resignation and stressed the C.L.P.'s

loyalty to the constitution. See Northern Whig, 29 May 1945.

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question of he border, and as a group not well enough aware of the need to preserve unity on the issue at all costs.

The C.L.P. hit back pugnaciously. Thomas Martin said in Armagh: 'several unionist speakers have referred to my audacity in coming into their constituency to split the unionist vote. I like the word audacity, because it implies courage, guts and all the things that are typical of Ulster people. . ... I accept the word, and I go forward to the fight, believing that the people are with me.'54 Midgley, at a meeting in his Willowfield constituency, referred to the unionists uttering 'wails and sobs' because their 'immortal privileges were being curtailed in the interests of the nation'.55

The latter thrust was the most typical kind of campaign tactic adopted by the C.L.P. It painted the unionists as standing for the perpetuation of privilege and the ascendancy of vested interests and an unplanned way of life based on personal greed. The C.L.P., on the other hand, looked forward to a new egalitarian age. Midgley outlined an eight point programme: (1) Ulster always to remain part of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth; (2) a strengthened and enlarged British Commonwealth; (3) wages and conditions equal to the best in Britain; (4) a national housing policy based on need and not in the interests of speculators, investors or exploiters; (5) full education with equality of opportunity for all from the primary school to the university; (6) full British standards for Ulster teachers with full civil rights; (7) implementation of the highest Beveridge proposals; (8) the utilisation of the resources and capital of Ulster to a national investment board and a planned economy for Ulster to prevent poverty and destitution.56

The unionist reponse to the C.L.P. charge that it was the party of privilege was to taint the C.L.P. with communism. In Brooke's view, his admiration for Midgley notwithstanding, the C.L.P. was the thin end of the wedge leading to the 'broad edge of communism'." In Newtownards the local unionists attempted to have voters believe it was C.L.P. policy to confiscate the private property of individual citizens."

The C.L.P., however, by equivocating on questions of nationalisation and commonownership, did not help its own cause. A McElroy advertisement carried the message: 'we shall encourage and stimulate genuine private enterprise. We shall break the power of the privately owned trusts, cartels and monopolies by a policy of rigid public control and/or ownership.'59 No other C.L.P. candidate really specified what 'genuine private enterprise' was, although James Kennedy, a draper, gave his approval to the 'small trader', which presumably meant people like himself. Kennedy went on to call for government control of 'basic industries', on which he did not elaborate.60 However, McElroy identified 'essential industries and services' as transport,

54Northern Whig, 7 June 1945. 55Belfast Telegraph, 8 June 1945. 56Ibid., 7 June 1945. 57Ibid., 6 June 1945. Brooke's campaign echoed that of Churchill against labour in

the British general election of 1945. 58Newtownards Chronicle, 9 June 1945. 59Ibid. 60Northern Whig, 13 June 1945.

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coal-mining and iron- and steel-making.61 There may have been a consensus among party candidates on these details, but their respective campaigns tended to suggest that the C.L.P. policy was confused and uncertain.

The C.L.P. also gave its campaign a Christian socialist flavour. Norman Black challenged anyone (including clergymen) to a public debate on 'Christianity's support of the capitalistic system or of any party who upholds this system'. He then listed several biblical references on the subject of Christianity and wealth, and trumpeted the slogan: 'Ulster for the Common- wealth and Christian principles in politics'.62 Midgley was at pains to commend the report of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It was, he said, in line with C.L.P. policy on the necessity of a measure of central planning and a new housing programme.63

When the results of the poll were eventually declared on 10 July (polling day was 15 June), the C.L.P. strength at Stormont was as before. Midgley held Willowfield with a clear majority over his unionist opponent G. I. Finlay, with the N.I.L.P. candidate coming a poor third.64 The other C.L.P. candidates were not so fortunate: William Kennedy finished second to the unionist candidate but ahead of the N.I.L.P.; Black finished bottom of the poll behind the unionist and N.I.L.P. candidates; James Kennedy lost honourably to a unionist; Martin was also defeated by a unionist; and McElroy, despite a strong showing, similarly lost to a unionist.65 The C.L.P. aggregate total for its six candidates was 28,079, a creditable figure but well short of what it needed to change the complexion of the Northern Ireland parliament.

That complexion stayed much as it had been before. The unionists won 33 seats, the nationalists 10, independent unionists 2, independents 2, N.I.L.P. 2, C.L.P. 1, socialist republican 1, and independent labour 1. The allocation of seats however, belied the fact that parties of the left had won an unpre- cedentedly-large number of votes. The N.I.L.P. fielded 15 candidates and amassed 66,053 votes, while the communist party, with 3 candidates, polled an impressive 12,456. The combined vote of the various explicitly left-wing parties came to 125,869 and compared with the unionists' total of 178,662. This was at the very least an indication that Northern Ireland had shared, to some extent, in the leftward shift drift during wartime. The unionists, significantly, had not disowned the Beveridge proposals and their campaign, while anti-socialist, had promised that British social welfare reforms would be extended to Ulster. Arguably this, coupled with the usual emotional pulls exerted by the border question, forestalled the potential defection of a great

61Newtownards Chronicle, 9 June 1945. 62Belfast Telegraph, 6 June 1945. 63Ibid., 9 June 1945. 64The result was Midgley 7,072; Finlay 4,488; McBrinn (N.I.L.P.) 1,082. All election

data are taken from Sydney Elliott, Northern Ireland parliamentary election results, 1921-1972 (Chichester, 1973).

65The results were: Ballynafeigh F. Thompson (unionist) 5,775; W. Kennedy (C.L.P.) 3,715; J. R. Baine (N.I.L.P.) 2,424; Victoria R. B. Alexander (unionist) 7,618; G. Matthews (N.I.L.P.) 4,342; N. Black (C.L.P.) 2,133; Windsor A. F. Wilson (unionist) 8,737; J. Kennedy (C.L.P.) 4,985; Armagh Central Dr G. Dougan (unionist) 9,508; T. Martin (C.L.P.) 4,559; Down, Ards J. R. Perceval-Maxwell (unionist) 7,976; A. H. McElroy (C.L.P.) 5,615.

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many more voters. With the left in fragments, the unionists were able to ride out what might have been for them a dangerous storm.

The election brought home to the C.L.P. the enormity of its task in mounting a serious challenge to unionism. The unionist party machine was a remarkable political phenomenon. With the Orange order in train, it possessed a breadth and depth of organisation and resources which matched the electoral expertise of its party administrators. To redress this imbalance the C.L.P. had to recruit widely and have skilful organisers spread out throughout Northern Ireland to cultivate support. Throughout its existence, however, the C.L.P. was a 'Belfast and district' party. With the defection of Milton Gordon and the Londonderry branch in July 1943, the furthest flung areas of significant party activity were Newtownards and Bangor. The fact that the party could afford only to put up six candidates - as against the N.I.L.P.'s fifteen - in the 1945 general election, tends to suggest that party membership could not have increased very markedly since the party's earliest days. It shows also that trade-union financial support such as it was was still going to the N.I.L.P. There was no mention in Justice of any trade-union branch affiliating to the C.L.P.

Shortly after the poll in the elections to the Northern Ireland parliament, attention turned to the United Kingdom general election called for 5 July 1945. On 18 June Midgley announced that he was standing in the constituency of South Belfast. No other seat was contested by the C.L.P. and all efforts were directed to the end of returning Midgley to Westminister.

It was a three-cornered contest, Midgley's opponents being Lt-Col. Connolly H. Gage (unionist) and James Morrow (N.I.L.P.). The constituency, a unionist stronghold, was the most redoubtable bastion of the protestant middle class in Belfast. It comprised the largest concentration of professional and business people in the city, with a liberal sprinkling of skilled workers -mostly from Midgley's Willowfield ward - and a small catholic population around the Markets area close to the city centre. The odds against Midgley seemed daunting, but he had a strong base of support in Willowfield and he had reason to hope that many voters would change their allegiance in accordance with the promise of a new post-war era.

He was to be disappointed. The middle class clung to unionism more tenaciously than did the middle class in Britain to the conservative party.66 Gage won comfortably, with 24,282 votes to Midgley's 14,096 and Morrow's 8,166. Even with Morrow's votes Midgley would still not have won.

The only other electoral foray undertaken by the C.L.P. occurred in the local elections of September 1946. The party succeeded in winning seats on the Belfast, Bangor, Newtownards, Richhill and Ballymena councils. Indeed it won two in Bangor, which was perhaps indicative of a healthy party branch there at the time.67 The year 1946 seems to have been the C.L.P.'s best in terms of numerical strength. In June Justice announced the establishment of three new party branches, in Portadown, Ballymena and Richhill. Towards the end

66Addison (The road to 1945, p. 268) says that a 'substantial section of the urban middle classes' helped labour to its landslide victory.

67Sydney Elliott, 'The electoral system in Northern Ireland since 1920' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University, Belfast, 1971), p. 570.

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of that year the party was claiming a 50 per cent increase in membership over the previous twelve months.68

As in the two parliamentary elections of 1945, in the municipal elections of 1946 the party concentrated its efforts in Belfast. It put up eight candidates. Midgley was again its sole success, winning the aldermanship of the Ormeau ward against a unionist, H. R. Walsh, by 5,710 votes to 3,987. William Kennedy, Dan McVey and William McIntosh all failed to win council seats in Ormeau; Alex Mylchreest and T. J. Spence lost in Woodvale; William Brisbane was defeated in Victoria; and Billy Lyttle failed in Duncairn.69 None polled badly but, given that the N.I.L.P. increased its representation on the city council from four seats to eight and outpolled the C.L.P. in most of their Belfast contests, there was reason to think that the party was not making sufficient electoral progress. If traditional unionist voters were not prepared, in large enough numbers, to transfer their support to the C.L.P. at local level, then there was little chance of them doing so at parliamentary level where the constitutional stakes were much higher. Those who were disillusioned with the unionist party, moreover, seemed as likely to give their backing to the N.I.L.P. as to the C.L.P. - if not likelier. The N.I.L.P., of course, was just as committed to social welfare schemes and, from 1945, was increasingly becoming identified with a pro-British position. The C.L.P. was still a young party and did appear to be growing. However, its electoral performances were disappointing, and, more ominously, electoral trends seemed unfavourable.

VI

The C. L.P.'s stance on the constitution effectively limited the party to seeking support only from the protestant majority. Attempting to win catholic votes was all but written off as a pointless exercise. The C.L.P. could not afford to try to be flexible in its appeal lest it resemble the N.I.L.P. All efforts were directed at undermining the unionists' grip on the protestant community. Early in 1947, the C.L.P. even appealed to the Orange order to break its traditional link with the unionist party.70

From its inception the C.L.P. had been implicitly a protestant labour party, a characteristic which became manifest from the end of 1946 as a result of the debate on the government's education bill. One of several radical proposals in the bill was to increase capital grants to voluntary schools from 50 to 65 per cent. Most voluntary schools were catholic controlled and the catholic church refused to have any official representation on their management committees. The bill did not attempt to impose on the schools the principle of the 'four-and-two' committees whereby the public authorities would have two representatives on school management committees.

Midgley was probably the fiercest critic of the bill inside Stormont and he threw the C.L.P. behind a campaign against it. In November 1946 at the C.L.P. conference he predicted that most protestant voluntary schools would

68Belfast Telegraph, 2 Dec. 1946. 69Ibid., 20 Sept. 1946. 70Commonwealth, Feb. 1947. This newspaper was the C.L.P.'s successor to Justice,

which ceased publication at the end of 1946.

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pass away leaving the catholic schools as the sole recipients of the increased grants. He averred that those who refused to use the state system of schooling should be told to provide their own schools. He went on: 'there cannot be the slightest doubt the perpetuation of the old voluntary school system leads to children being kept apart in their most impressionable years, and thus reach the adult stage estranged and embittered'.7'

It was an argument eminently in accord with socialist thinking, but Midgley knew that in Northern Ireland such a stance would be interpreted in sectarian terms. As with the Spanish Civil War, catholic opinion denounced his stand as the product of bigotry. For his part, Midgley did not conceal his view that by virtue of its entrenched Irish nationalism, and the high profile of its church, the catholic community was a reactionary obstacle to progress.72 The education issue merely highlighted the mutual antagonism which had existed between Midgley and the catholic community since his defeat in Dock in 1938. It also had the effect of dressing up the C.L.P. in more of the unionist party's traditional clothes.

The more the C.L.P. thus competed for protestant support, the more it exposed itself to the unionists' charge of causing division in the ranks of the protestant community. By 1947 Midgley was particularly sensitive to this charge, since, at this time, there was in full swing a concerted nationalist propaganda campaign spearheaded by the Anti-Partition League in Ireland, and backed by the 'Friends of Ireland' group in the labour party at Westminster. Midgley had attacked the latter in an article in Justice in February 1946. He was deeply worried about their influence on British public opinion and was frequently disposed in this period to voice his dissatisfaction at the way Ulster's case was presented both to the British people and to America. He wrote in Justice: 'the people of England are notoriously easy- going in domestic politics and for this reason are often tempted (and sometimes succumb to the temptation) to placate their enemies by sacrificing their friends'." Midgley, as much as any unionist, desired that the loyalty of Northern Ireland's majority be properly appreciated in Britain and America in order to combat nationalist propaganda.

The C.L.P., of course, also claimed to be a socialist as well as pro-British party, and that its political ideology was far removed from the 'toryism' of the unionist party. By 1946 or 1947, however, Midgley was beginning to sound decidedly less dogmatic on this point. In March 1946 at Stormont he spoke out against 'state control for the sake of state control' and advocated 'proper co-ordination between the state and properly developed private enterprise'.74 In May 1947, also at Stormont, Midgley made a speech calling for all sections of the community to work for the common good and to create 'a better spirit in industry'. The speech contained critical references to strikes called for 'frivolous reasons', and to people who were apparently disinclined to use the machinery of conciliation in industrial disputes.7" The speech indicated that

71Chairman's address to the C.L.P. third annual conference on 30 Nov. 1946, reproduced as a pamphlet, Ulster education and democracy (Belfast, 1946).

72See his speech in Hansard N.I. (commons), xxix, 369 (2 Aug. 1945). 73Justice, June 1946. 74Hansard N.I. (commons), xxx, 295-6 (20 Mar. 1946). 75Ibid., xxxi, 212-13 (7 May 1947).

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Midgley no longer viewed the world from a class perspective. He seemed to believe that such concepts were losing their relevance in a new egalitarian age. Even more significantly, in July 1947, he wrote an article for the Belfast Telegraph in which he lashed out at Ulster's critics in Britain who, he said, were not prepared to consider the Ulster unionist case because the Ulster people had, in the main, been conservative. In Midgley's view these critics had fundamentally mistaken the nature of modern conservatism. 'They assume', he said, 'that conservatism is an unchanging philosophy, whereas there is nothing truer than George Bernard Shaw's dictum that "nothing stays put", and so it comes about that conservatives of today often sponsor legislation that would have been considered revolutionary a few years ago. This is essentially true of legislation in Ulster.'76

This was all a long way from Midgley's jibes about the unionists being the party of privilege and reaction. It seems, however, that once the unionist government in Northern Ireland began bringing in welfare-state legislation after the Second World War, Midgley's outlook rapidly changed. His earlier fears of an 'old style' unionism reasserting itself against the new measures proved to be unfounded. During the years 1946-7 he found himself voting with the government for the introduction of such social measures as the family allowances bill, the housing bill, and the national insurance bill. Before his eyes many of the reforms he had preached for over twenty-five years were materialising. Despite their fears of extreme socialism, the unionists' approach to post-war social reconstruction echoed the consensus which had developed in this context in Britain." In Midgley's view the unionists had decided to move with the times. And Midgley was no doctrinal socialist: he did not believe in nationalisation for its own sake or in too much centralised government. His post-war outlook was sympathetic to the concept of a mixed economy: a measure of central planning combined with a vigorous private enterprise sector. That such a wave of social reforms was being implemented also reinforced his faith in the virtues of parliamentary democracy as the best means of effecting change and social progress. His outlook can perhaps simply be summed up as social democratic.

It is not clear how far Midgley's drift towards the political centre was reflected among the C.L.P. membership. No C.L.P. newspaper or pamphlet published after February 1947 survives as evidence. Midgley does seem to have lost touch with the party to some degree during 1947. It was a year in which his health troubled him continuously, especially during the summer when he took a long rest from politics in order to convalesce. He also used this period to reflect on the direction in which his career was headed. He could only recognise that the C.L.P. had not significantly eroded the unionist party supremacy and that it seemed fated to be dragged at the tail end of protestant politics in Northern Ireland.

On 6 September 1947, at an executive committee meeting, Midgley resigned as chairman of the C.L.P. The other committee members voiced their surprise and regret but agreed that the party should carry on without him.78 Three

76Belfast Telegraph, 1 July 1947. 77See Addison, The road to 1945, passim. 78Belfast Telegraph, 8 Sept. 1947.

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weeks later Midgley applied for, and received, the unionist party whip in the Northern Ireland house of commons. In his letter of application, Midgley made it clear that attacks on Ulster's constitutional position had led him to believe in the need for unionist unity: 'I have now reached the conclusion that there is no room for division among those in our community who are anxious to preserve the constitutional life and spiritual heritage of our people'. He also stated that the unionists' policy of maintaining the highest standards of social security and working conditions was 'in harmony with my social objective'.79 Two years later Midgley was back in the cabinet, first as minister of labour, then as minister of education, a post he held till his death in 1957.

The C.L.P. went ahead with its annual conference on 27 September 1947. The new chairman, William Brisbane, denied that the party was simply 'a Harry Midgley supporters' club', and expressed his regret that Midgley had laid down the fight he had waged for almost thirty years in the interests of socialism.80 Brisbane's view seems to have reflected the will of the party to remain in existence as a clearly socialist alternative to the unionist party for protestant voters. However, if the spirit was willing, finances were weak.81 Mounting debts and the loss of the man in whom it had virtually sunk its identity proved too much for the C.L.P. It had faded out of existefice by the end of 1947. Some members followed Midgley into the unionist party, and there were a few notable ones, including Albert McElroy, who joined - or rejoined - the N.I.L.P. Most, however, dropped out of politics.82 McElroy, a charismatic figure, later, in 1957, founded the Ulster Liberal Party, of which he was president until his death in 1975.83

VII

The demise of the C.L.P. only served to underline the main peculiarity of Northern Ireland's politics: the 'national question' was the central issue compared with which all others were at best of secondary importance and at worst irrelevant.

The Second World War years provide an example of a time when the conditions seemed to be ripe for a serious challenge to be made to the unionist party hegemony and for the possible development of class politics. Had the unionist government in Northern Ireland refused to duplicate the British labour government's welfare legislation after the war, it might have lost much support to the C.L.P., the N.I.L.P., or even the communists. But whatever the disagreements within the unionist party on the matter,84 it wisely chose to remain 'step by step' with Britain. In so doing it ensured a post-war political

79Northern Whig, 27 Sept. 1947. 80Ibid., 29 Sept. 1947. 81Interview with Mr Sam Napier, Jan. 1980. 82Interview with Mr William Kennedy, 2 May 1983. 83Information from Miss Sheelagh Murnaghan, 9 Jan. 1984. 84Some unionists favoured greater independence for Northern Ireland on the

grounds that the Northern Ireland people had not voted for a socialist government. See David Harkness, 'Difficulties of devolution: the post-war debate at Stormont' in Irish Jurist. xii (1977). Do 176-86.

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consensus in Northern Ireland with regard to social welfare reform, and it strengthened its position further by building up new industries in the immediate post-war period."85

In these circumstances the C.L.P. found that there was no room for two parties proclaiming their loyalty to Britain and standing for the same policy of keeping Northern Ireland in line with British social reforms.86 The C.L.P. could only succeed by destroying and replacing the unionist party as the standard-bearer of the majority's desire to retain the British link. It neither had the resources nor, in the case at least of Harry Midgley and those who followed him, the inclination for such a fight.

G. S. WALKER

Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University, Belfast

85See Denis Norman, 'No tories here' in Moirae, iv (1979), pp 74-85. 86It may be held that the N.I.L.P. also found this out to its cost after its declaration in

favour of the constitution in 1949; but the N.I.L.P. successes in the 1958 and 1962 elections to the Northern Ireland parliament are grounds for a contrary view.

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APPENDIX

Declaration of policy adopted in January 1943

[Ulster for the Commonwealth (Belfast, 1943)]

We accept the present political position in Northern Ireland and are prepared to work for a government in this area which will co-operate with Great Britain and the British Commonwealth of Nations.

This means that we reject the claims of those who stand for separation from Great Britain and the Commonwealth.

This does not mean that we accept the doctrines or policy of the conservative party; but it does mean that the Commonwealth Labour Party will work for the establishment of a government which will seek to establish social justice and social security for all in Northern Ireland.

Those who believe that the mere removal of partition would solve any social or economic issue are living in a fool's paradise. Those who profess to believe that it is wise, expedient or possible to build up a Northern Ireland divorced from political and economic association with the people of England, Scotland and Wales are living in the ideological realms of the past. The lesson to be learned from the new trend in world events and affairs is that no nation can live unto itself, and if there is to be any form of survival for the rule of law and observance ofjustice amonst the nations, it must be on the basis of international co-operation, rather than on the basis of political or economic isolation.

Those who claim that Ireland has nothing in common with the other democracies of the world and who refuse to take their place in the fight against Nazi-Fascist totalitarianism, can have no claim to support in the Commonwealth Labour Party.

The real politics of our people are their economics, and our economic life and future salvation are bound up with the welfare and salvation of the people in the British Isles, the British Commonwealth and the Federation of the World.

Despite the wildly exaggerated assertions of abstentionists and isolationists there is much worth fighting for and retaining in our social life. Those who concentrate only on the inquities of such acts as the special powers act (glossing over the fact that all countries have special powers acts), conveniently ignore the rights and liberties we enjoy. All citizens enjoy the right to vote and to select candidates, on equal terms. We enjoy the right of a free press, subject only to the limitations imposed by considerations of national security. We enjoy (all of us in Northern Ireland) equality of social services with the people of England, Scotland and Wales. These are, in the main, much superior to the social services prevailing in Eire, and they are destined to improve still more if the recommendations of the 'Beveridge report' are accepted.

Our duty, therefore, is clear. We must use and improve our Northern Ireland constitution so that within our area we can build up a fine free social order in which social security and equality of opportunity shall prevail.

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