The Ulster Unionist Labour Association (UULA) was an association of trade unionists founded by
Edward Carson
Edward Henry Carson, 1st Baron Carson, PC, PC (Ire) (9 February 1854 – 22 October 1935), from 1900 to 1921 known as Sir Edward Carson, was an Irish unionist politician, barrister and judge, who served as the Attorney General and Solicito ...
in June 1918, aligned with the
Ulster Unionists
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...
in Ireland. Members were known as Labour Unionists. In
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
, 1918 and 1919 were marked by intense
class conflict
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor.
The forms ...
. This phenomenon spread to
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, the whole of which was under British rule at the time. This period also saw a large increase in trade union membership and a series of strikes. These union activities raised fears in a section of the
Ulster Unionist
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...
leadership, principally Edward Carson and
R. Dawson Bates. Carson at this time was president of the
British Empire Union, and had been predisposed to amplify the danger of a
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
outbreak in Britain.
[Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, ''Northern Ireland: 1921 / 2001 Political Forces and Social Classes'', Serif (London 2002), , pp. 16–17.]
Founding
The Ulster Unionist Labour Association was made up of trade unionists and
Ulster Unionists
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule movem ...
and was founded by Carson along with
J. M. Andrews as a means of instigating a purge from the local trade union movement of 'Bolsheviks' and
republicans. Both Carson and
Bates
Bates may refer to:
Places
* Bates, Arkansas, an unincorporated community
* Bates, Illinois. an unincorporated community in Sangamon County
* Bates, Michigan, a community in Grand Traverse County
* Bates, New York, a hamlet in the town of Ellingt ...
feared this class conflict and the development of a militant
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur G ...
would threaten the class alliance with dissolution which had been embodied in the old
Ulster Volunteers
The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government ("Home Rule") for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the ...
. By sounding the counter-revolutionary alarm, it would be a call to "loyal workers" against the twin threats of
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
and
republicanism
Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasises the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It ...
.
The grouping adopted as formal policy an opposition to socialism, but was seen by many as an attempt to show that the Unionist Party had the interests of the
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colo ...
at heart. Members included
Tommy Henderson
Thomas Gibson Henderson (13 October 1887 – 14 August 1970) was an Independent unionist politician. He served in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland from 1925 to 1953 in vigorous opposition to the Unionist governments on all issues oth ...
, later an independent Unionist member of parliament.
1918 General Election
During the
1918 general election the aims of the UULA were set out by Bates. In a letter to Carson he stated that they would be used as a means of distracting younger members of the working class from the
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party (UK), Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse worki ...
, who held views which were very different from their own organisation, i.e. socialism.
[Jurgen Elvert, ''Northern Ireland, past and present'', Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1994. , p. 93.]
The
Belfast Labour Party put four candidates forward, but they lost out to two UULA and two Unionist candidates.
The UULA had three members returned, all of them in
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingd ...
.
Workers' strike
Predominantly
Protestant
Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
, Belfast engineering and shipyard workers, traditionally well organised, staged a three-week
strike demanding a 10-hour reduction in the working week. This was done in defiance of the national leadership of the
Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions
The Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), often known as the Confed is a trade union confederation in the United Kingdom.
History
The confederation was founded in December 1890 as the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuil ...
. The strike was extended to include electricity and municipal gas workers, causing large sections of industry and commerce to close down. They began to publish a daily newspaper and a General Strike Committee was formed and began to issue permits allowing only "necessary" production.
Sectarianism
By 1920 growing
unemployment
Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refer ...
in the linen industries and engineering sector were creating tension within the "Protestant bloc". Large numbers of well organised ex-servicemen were still out of work and a cause of concern to the local
middle class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Co ...
. It was the local middle class who alleged that "peaceful penetration" of Belfast industry during the war by thousands of Catholics created the unemployment problem, especially that of the ex-servicemen. It would be the local middle class who succeeded in giving the conflict its
sectarian
Sectarianism is a political or cultural conflict between two groups which are often related to the form of government which they live under. Prejudice, discrimination, or hatred can arise in these conflicts, depending on the political status quo ...
twist.
In the spring and summer of 1920 "indignation" meetings were held in Belfast by working-class members of Carson’s “
Old Town Hall circle” to attack the British unions for their "
Bolshevism
Bolshevism (from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, ...
" and "pro-republicanism". Leading Unionists and employers went along in these events and even justified them, as they were perceiving themselves to be vulnerable. After one meeting held in the shipyards in July, attacks began on workers identified as Belfast Labour members, socialists and Catholics. This then spread to some sections of the linen industry and the engineering industry, resulting in over "8,000 expulsions within a week."
[Bew, Gibbon and Patterson, ''Northern Ireland'' (2002), pp. 18–19.]
Paul Collins suggests that the expulsions were partly the result of a speech made by Carson on 12 July,
Orange Order
The Loyal Orange Institution, commonly known as the Orange Order, is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland and primarily associated with Ulster Protestants, particularly those of Ulster Scots people, Ulster Sco ...
celebrations linking Labour with Sinn Féin: "…These men who come forward 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 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."
[Elvert, ''Northern Ireland, past and present'' (1994), p. 94.]
Collins however suggests that the direct cause of the expulsions was the killing of
Banbridge
Banbridge ( , ) is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies on the River Bann and the A1 road and is named after a bridge built over the River Bann in 1712. It is situated in the civil parish of Seapatrick and the historic barony of ...
RIC man Colonel Smyth on 7 July in
Cork
Cork or CORK may refer to:
Materials
* Cork (material), an impermeable buoyant plant product
** Cork (plug), a cylindrical or conical object used to seal a container
***Wine cork
Places Ireland
* Cork (city)
** Metropolitan Cork, also known as G ...
. Rail Union members in the south of Ireland refused to allow his body to travel home by train, leading many Loyalists to then identify the Labour movement with his assassins. It was on the day of his funeral, Collins says, that the expulsions began, resulting in ten thousand Catholics and so-called "Rotten Prods" with connections to Labour.
Most Protestant employers looked on with tacit approval as "Vigilance Committees" were established to prevent "disloyalist" workers from being re-employed. Protestant domination of the Belfast industries was celebrated with Union Jack unfurlings and addressed by members of the UULA.
B Specials established
Catholic retaliation and reprisals were inevitable, with gun and bomb attacks on trains carrying shipyard workers. This resulted in yet more reprisals, with widespread looting and burning of Catholic owned businesses. The British army while guarding Catholic properties clashed with Protestant crowds with fatal consequences. This resulted in UULA creating an "unofficial special constabulary", with members drawn chiefly from the shipyards, tasked with "policing" Protestant areas. Carson and Craig need to establish a militant basis for resistance to republicanism, wished to reconstitute the UVF which could operate independently of the British. They then set about securing British government approval and funds for the UULA constabularies in Belfast, along with the UVF.
While
Neville Macready
General Sir Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, 1st Baronet, (7 May 1862 – 9 January 1946), known affectionately as Make-Ready (close to the correct pronunciation of his name), was a British Army officer. He served in senior staff appointments in ...
commander-in-chief of the British army in Ireland withheld his approval, he and his supporters in the Irish administration were over-ridden;
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was a Liberal Party politician from Wales, known for leading the United Kingdom during ...
's government approved from the beginning and granted official status in the form of the
B Specials in November 1920. This official endorsement would shape both the formation of the state of Northern Ireland and Catholic feelings to it.
Other activities
Besides its opposition to a united Ireland and to socialism, the association did not make serious attempts to speak on behalf of loyalist workers. However, it did organise some limited
adult education
Adult education, distinct from child education, is a practice in which adults engage in systematic and sustained self-educating activities in order to gain new forms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values.Merriam, Sharan B. & Brockett, Ralp ...
in its early days, and opened two
working men's club
Working men's clubs are British private social clubs first created in the 19th century in industrial areas, particularly the North of England, Midlands, Scotland and South Wales Valleys, to provide recreation and education for working class m ...
s in East and North Belfast. The association was also able to appoint twenty delegates to the
Ulster Unionist Council
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is a unionist political party in Northern Ireland. The party was founded in 1905, emerging from the Irish Unionist Alliance in Ulster. Under Edward Carson, it led unionist opposition to the Irish Home Rule mov ...
as late as the early 1970s.
Decline
The organisation was never able to attract leading trade unionists, and soon declined in importance. While Andrews and
William Grant William Grant may refer to:
Politicians
*Sir William Grant (Master of the Rolls) (1752–1832), Member of the Parliament, 1790–1812; Master of the Rolls, 1801–1817
*William Grant (Northern Ireland politician) (1883–1949), Unionist M.P. for ...
were initially able to speak on its behalf in the
Parliament of Northern Ireland
The Parliament of Northern Ireland was the home rule legislature of Northern Ireland, created under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which sat from 7 June 1921 to 30 March 1972, when it was suspended because of its inability to restore o ...
, in later years only the less prominent
John William Kennedy
John William Kennedy (born 1910, date of death unknown) was a Northern Irish Ulster Unionist politician who was a member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He represented Belfast Cromac from 1962 to 1973.
Kennedy was an area supervisor for a ...
and occasional senators sat in the Stormont Parliament.
[Harbinson, ''The Ulster Unionist Party, 1882–1973'', p. 68.]
The
Great Depression saw many workers look instead to the official trade union movement and the
Northern Ireland Labour Party
The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) was a political party in Northern Ireland which operated from 1924 until 1987.
Origins
The roots of the NILP can be traced back to the formation of the Belfast Labour Party in 1892. William Walker stoo ...
, and many branches of the UULA became moribund. A drive to reinvigorate the UULA was launched in the 1950s, although only one new branch was formed, in
Derry
Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. Th ...
.
In the 1970s, its role as a movement for the mobilisation of the
loyalist
Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Cro ...
working classes was taken over by more militant groups such as the
Loyalist Association of Workers
The Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW) was a militant unionist organisation in Northern Ireland that sought to mobilise trade union members in support of the loyalist cause. It became notorious for a one-day strike in 1973 that ended in wide ...
and the
Ulster Workers' Council
The Ulster Workers' Council was a loyalist workers' organisation set up in Northern Ireland in 1974 as a more formalised successor to the Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW). It was formed by shipyard union leader Harry Murray and initially fa ...
.
Already by the early 1970s, the association's primary role was organising the wreath-laying at the annual memorial service for Carson, and today it exists solely to perform this ceremonial role.
[Peter Barberis et al., ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations'', p. 255.]
References
Bibliography
*Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley, ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations''
* Paul Bew, Peter Gibbon and Henry Patterson, ''Northern Ireland: 1921 / 2001 Political Forces and Social Classes'',
Serif (London 2002),
* Jurgen Elvert
''Northern Ireland, past and present''(''Nordirland in Geschichte und Gegenwart''), Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1994. .
*Graham S. Walker, ''A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, pragmatism and pessimism'', Manchester University Press (2004),
*Brian Lalor, ''The Encyclopaedia of Ireland'', Gill & Macmillan (Ireland 2003),
Further reading
Sean Hutton and Paul Stewart, ''Ireland’s Histories: Aspects of State, Society and Ideology'', Routledge (London 1991).
{{Ulster Unionist Party
Defunct political parties in Northern Ireland
Labour parties in Northern Ireland
Ulster Unionist Party
Ulster unionist organisations
1918 establishments in Ireland