This overview of Irish labour history serves both as an introduction for the general reader and as a synopsis for the specialist. Its basic concern is to outline the course of labour history, to illustrate the different phases of its chronology and to determine the forces behind its development. It also investigates some of the most persistent questions surrounding the history of labour in Ireland including why labour marginalized in disaffected 19th-century Ireland and why nationalism presented such a problem in the 20th century?
This is a new edition of Emmet O'Connor's classic and pioneering work on Irish labour history, providing an introduction for the general reader and a synopsis for the specialist. The first edition, which covered 1824 to 1960, has been updated to 2000 with the inclusion of three new chapters on developments in the Republic and Northern Ireland. In addition to providing a challenging overview of labour's past, O'Connor addresses industrial relations and political issues of contemporary relevance. He has taken full account of new research on Labour and argued that events in Ireland can only be understood in an international context. The text also features pen portraits of over fifty leading personalities of the left and the trade union movement. This book will be indispensable to undergraduates, labour activists, and those interested in labour's place in modern Ireland.
This overview of Irish labour history serves both as an introduction for the general reader and as a synopsis for the specialist. Its basic concern is to outline the course of labour history, to illustrate the different phases of its chronology and to determine the forces behind its development. It also investigates some of the most persistent questions surrounding the history of labour in Ireland including why labour marginalized in disaffected 19th-century Ireland and why nationalism presented such a problem in the 20th century?
Fully revised and updated with over 100 beautiful maps, charts and graphs, and a narrative packed with facts this outstanding book examines the main changes that have occurred in Ireland and among the Irish abroad over the past two millennia.
This book is the first definitive history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP), a unique political force which drew its support from Protestants and Catholics and became electorally viable despite deep-seated ethnic, religious and national divisions. Formed in 1924 and disbanded in 1987, the NILP succeeded in returning several of its members to the locally-based Northern Ireland parliament in 1925–29 and 1958–72 and polled some 100,000 votes in both the 1964 and the 1970 British general elections. As British Labour’s ‘sister’ party in the province from the late 1920s until the late 1970s, the NILP could rely on substantive fraternal and organisational support at critical junctures in its history. Despite its political successes the NILP’s significance has been downplayed by historians, partly because of the lack of empirical evidence and partly to reinforce the simplistic view of Northern Ireland as the site of the most protracted sectarian conflict in modern Europe. For the first time this book brings together important archival sources and the oral testimonies of former NILP members to explain the enigma of an extraordinary political party operating in extraordinary circumstances. The book situates the NILP’s successes and failures in a broad historical framework, providing the reader with a balanced account of twentieth-century Northern Irish political history. This book will appeal to students and scholars of labour movements, as well as non-specialists who wish to learn more about the NILP’s brand of democratic socialism, its ideological and logistical ties to British Labour and the character of its cross-sectarian membership.
First published over forty years ago and now updated to cover the “Celtic Tiger” economic boom of the 2000s and subsequent worldwide recession, this new edition of a perennial bestseller interprets Irish history as a whole. Designed and written to be popular and authoritative, critical and balanced, it has been a core text in both Irish and American universities for decades. It has also proven to be an extremely popular book for casual readers with an interest in history and Irish affairs. Considered the definitive history among the Irish themselves, it is an essential text for anyone interested in the history of Ireland.
Based on original sources, this study charts the development of modern Irish socialism from the influence of William Thompson, Marx and the First International, challenging the myth that socialism emerged with James Connolly and the struggle for independence. The author explores the land war, the challenging position of Irish socialists in relation to Irish independence and the impact of British socialism on Ireland.
A forgotten historical figure and his influence on the writing of James Joyce In this book, Neil Davison argues that Albert Altman (1853‒1903), a Dublin-based businessman and Irish nationalist, influenced James Joyce’s creation of the character of Leopold Bloom, as well as Ulysses’s broader themes surrounding race, nationalism, and empire. Using extensive archival research, Davison reveals parallels between the lives of Altman and Bloom, including how the experience of double marginalization—which Altman felt as both a Jew in Ireland and an Irishman in the British Empire—is a major idea explored in Joyce’s work. Altman, a successful salt and coal merchant, was involved in municipal politics over issues of Home Rule and labor, and frequently appeared in the press over the two decades of Joyce’s youth. His prominence, Davison shows, made him a familiar name in the Home Rule circles with which Joyce and his father most identified. The book concludes by tracing the influence of Altman’s career on the Dubliners story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” as well as throughout the whole of Ulysses. Through Altman’s biography, Davison recovers a forgotten life story that illuminates Irish and Jewish identity and culture in Joyce’s Dublin. A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles
