History of The Irish Labour Party - Early History

Early History

In Larkin's absence and Connolly's demise, William X. O'Brien became the dominant figure in the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union joining it in January, 1917, and quickly becoming the leader of that union and wielding considerable influence in the Labour Party. O'Brien, along with Johnson, also dominated the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party. O'Brien took a leading role in the growing separatist movement that would become the revitalised Sinn Féin. The Labour party, now led by Thomas Johnson, as successor to such organisations as D.D. Sheehan's, (independent labour MP.'s) Irish Land and Labour Association (ILLA), found itself marginalised by the preeminence that Sinn Féin gave to the national question. De Valera and others expressed sympathy for the labour movement's objectives but made clear that Labour must wait. The congress-party strongly opposed the moves to introduce conscription into Ireland in 1918 and a twenty four hour strike was successfully called on April 23, 1918. Only the Belfast area ignored the strike call. That spring, Labour announced that it would take part in the General Election to be held immediately after the war ended. De Valera and other Sinn Féin leaders were highly critical of what they saw as a divisive step by the ITUCLP. At the congress held in August, 1918, the executive reported that Labour's hour of destiny had struck and it found the movement ready. O'Brien urged the development of electoral machinery. At this moment, the first signs of the split between O'Brien and the Larkinites became evident. PT Daly, the protégé of Larkin, was locked in a struggle with O'Brien and was beaten by 114 votes to 109 for the post of secretary of the Congress. Daly was later to be purged by O'Brien from the leadership of the ITGWU setting the scene for a longlasting split in Irish trade unionism. Following the congress, Labour was finally forced to deal with the issues of national self-determination and abstention from parliament.

Sinn Féin entered into discussions with Labour to secure its abstention from the forthcoming election. Labour was again faced with the dilemma that it might win some seats by entering into a pact with Sinn Féin at the price of alienation of northern unionist workers. Labour offered a radical election programme. Among other objectives, it declared that it would win for the workers the collective ownership and control of the whole produce of their work; adopt the principles of the Russian Revolution; secure the democratic management of all industries in the interest of the nation; and abolish all privileges which were based on property or ancestry.

In the end, a special party conference voted by 96 votes to 23 that the ITUCLP would not contest the 1918 general election, in order to allow the election to take the form of a plebiscite on Ireland's constitutional status. Sinn Féin went on to gain 73 of the 105 seats in the General Election and convened the First Dáil in January, 1919. The Democratic Programme of the First Dáil was jointly drafted by Sean T O'Kelly of Sinn Féin and Thomas Johnson of Labour. Despite being eventually pruned of much of its socialist content, some of the original radical elements survived. Sinn Féin paid its debt of honour to the Labour Party for its abstention by including in the Programme that every citizen was to be entitled to an adequate share of the produce of the nation's labour; the government would concern itself with the welfare of children, and would care for the aged and infirm; and it would seek "a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour".

Labour took part in the 1920 local elections and won a significant role in local government for the first time. It gained 394 seats compared to 550 for Sinn Féin, 355 for the unionists, 238 for the old nationalists, and 161 independents.

In 1921, the ITUCLP again agreed with Sinn Féin that it would not take part in the election for the new Southern Ireland parliament envisaged by the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. This left the field clear for Sinn Féin to treat these elections as the election to the Second Dáil. As a result of these decisions, the party was left out of the Dáil during the vital years of the independence struggle. Following the Truce of July, 1921, Labour was not involved in any way in the subsequent negotiations leading to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December, 1921, by which a new Irish Free State would be established as a Dominion of the British Empire equivalent in status to Canada.