Partition – Follow The Money!

There is a driving force behind all of history. Wealth.

As far back in recorded history, to Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, wealth has been the core engine that drives us forward. The tombs of the Pharaohs are adorned with wealth that they did think they could take with them. Democracy in Greece was accessible if you were of the wealthy elite. In Rome there were those that qualified to rule, by dint of their wealth, and there was the rest. The British history of Kings and Queens is underpinned by the accrual and division of wealth. The English Civil War was a fight for control over the economy and the state purse. You may think that it is power, but wealth facilitates power, you can buy power. You will have learned in history that other forces were at work, but that is a process of differentiation and detail. If all history was taught as: “This was a fight over money!” it would not garner a lot of interest.

There is a smokescreen that surrounds the Partition of Ireland. History tells us that it was principle, that Carson was leading the fight against Home Rule for some emotional or religious reasons. Nationalists to this day call out colonialism as the force for retaining Northern Ireland/the six counties.

But here is the reality. It was wealth.

Ireland was divided before Partition. The North was an industrial powerhouse, not just in the UK, but around the world. Belfast was the location for the largest shipyard in the world, the largest ropeworks, the highest levels of linen production, the biggest whiskey distillery. It was eighth in the league of industrial cities, in the world. These were locally owned businesses, and the local owners were wealthy.

Look around the next time you drive around the city. Cruise up the Malone Road, still referred to as the leafy suburbs. Who lived in those houses? Street after street of comfortable residences that had space for servants to live at the top. (Belfast houses don’t have ‘downstairs’ the land is too wet to facilitate cellars.)

The house I grew up in had buttons beside the mantlepiece for summoning a cup of tea. Ours was a large semi. Further down Adelaide Park were detached houses with gardens and summer houses, two gates, in and out. As it was in Derryvolgie, Windsor Park, the Deramores, Eglinton and Malone Avenue and many more. Further up was Malone Park, the best address in Belfast. (I will at this stage declare that my late mother grew up there initially, as did her cousins. They were in linen). A road of mansions, huge houses with large gardens, a gate on the entrance to the Park as well as the houses.

Then drive over to the upper Antrim Road, or to the Old Holywood Road, perhaps Cultra. The wealth to build those houses is evident. Multiple large rooms, gardens, driveways and space. Think for a moment about living there, in 1910. Fires lit by the servants, food and drink in abundance, a life often dramatised in London and Manchester, but if anything more prevalent proportionally in Belfast. Middle class. Not titled. Wealthy.

Abutting this luxury are the terraces. The workforce accommodation, where the inhabitants worked twelve to fifteen hour days, six days a week long. Mackies’ workers in Protestant and to a much lesser degree Catholic West Belfast. The Lower Newtownards Road was the home for the Yard skilled and unskilled men, always men. Row after row of small terraces, kept proudly pristine, where sons worked in factories and daughters in service.

The industrialists of Belfast were not just factory owners, they had raised this small city to such prominence through creativity and innovation. It was the Silicon Valley of its day, inventing new techniques in manufacturing, shipbuilding, linen, printing and more. Innovation for profit. They were middle class capitalists through and through.

Their biggest fear was not partition, or Home Rule.

It was socialism.

Across Europe the improvements in education had led to the working class being more open to ideas. Intellectuals were translating Marx into understandable chunks that opened eyes to the dreadful lives people were leading to fund those that lived just up the road. Marxism begat socialism and political parties were being formed, welcoming the working class into the political system with opportunities to vote in their own interests not those of the bosses.

The class system itself was threatened. A system that protected the middle class through access to education, jobs and money. A network that supported itself through business and social engagement. Families intertwined through marriage of the well to do sons and daughters, all Protestant and all wealthy.

The Labour Party was founded in England in 1900. In Dublin the Republican movement was led by men with socialist credentials. James Connolly was a Scot, determined to break the system, not just to get Irish Independence. The Independence that the 1916 Uprising men wanted was for a new modern socialist state. It was not the Independence that arrived following the Irish Civil War, led by the arch conservative De Valera, in hock to Catholicism.

But in Ulster the wealthy, Protestant factory owners had a secret weapon. They had the Orange Card.

First played by Randolph Churchill on 22nd February 1886, the Orange Card would be dealt over and over by the leaders of Unionism. It is still being used today. It is the sectarian card.

The majority in work in the industry of Ulster were Protestant. Sectarian strife was common and had been for as long as there had been two distinct churches in Ulster, following the Plantation. Originally created by theological differences, when people were educated/indoctrinated every Sunday by a priest or minister, it became the branding of differences. It developed a life of its own. Learned in the home, it had evolved into hatred that had no logic, only that ‘they’ were different. So different that hatred was the norm, and those to hate were easily identified by name or church, or language, or accent, or whatever was needed.

Faced with the rising threat of socialism, trade unions, strikes, shorter more costly working hours, age limits on workers, payment levels, the industrial North had no hesitation in playing the Orange Card. Civilised men met in high ceilinged rooms, to plan and scheme. Ideas were discussed. Emotions would be stirred, arms would be bought, lines would be drawn.

Home Rule would be Rome Rule. You, the workers, will have your jobs taken away by the government in Dublin. Taxation will fund the Catholic South, not the Protestant North, taxation of your work! If you form Trade Unions are you going to welcome James Connolly and his republican cohorts? Are you going to strike for more money when we need it to protect you from Home Rule? Who is paying for the weapons being brought in on the Clyde Valley, we are, so be grateful. And the King. Don’t forget the King.

The Orange Card is itself propelled by fear. Fear of lost wealth.

The Northern industrialists wanted access to the Empire for trade, to sell the machines made in Mackies, the ships made in Harland and Wolff, the linen woven in multiple factories, the aircraft made by Shorts. They wanted to look outwards to the Empire, they did not see London looking inwards.

The workforce were compliant. The fear of Home Rule and subsequently a Free State were strong enough to supersede any industrial politics. While in Great Britain by 1926 the General Strike had arrived, in Northern Ireland all was quiet. The politicians in a gerrymandered Stormont were part time, drawn from the very same class and pool of people that had successfully played the Orange Card. The Ulster Unionist Party was a patrician party, made up of the great and the good of Protestant Northern Ireland. Men offered a seat when they reached the right age and status would be dutifully elected by the very electorate that they had frightened into compliance. The future of hte country would be discussed by gentlemen, over port and cigars, and rubber stamped in Stormont.

For 50 years the industrial environment in Northern Ireland payed lip service to left wing labour politics. Yes there was an occasional strike, a protest about working conditions, but the threat was still there, still only needing hinted at to pull people back into line.

That is what Partition was and is about. It is not British Imperialism, it is inside imperialism.

The economy of Northern Ireland no longer warrants the use of the Orange Card, but like sectarianism it has become infused in the DNA of Unionist politics. We see it played to create imaginary fear of the European Court of Justice. We hear that sovereignty is at risk, when all that is is an idea carried around in the heads of those that are made fearful.

It is still the patricians that play it. It is still the working class that act against their own interests in response.

It is 2021, time for a fresh look?