Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Some Bleedin’ Skanger Nicked My Class Consciousness
Read more about: Irish Election, Irish Politics
There are so many holes in our knowledge of Irish labour history as to warrant its own brand of cheese. The most glaring omission, and the one that leads to the most problems regarding labour’s identity, is that we do not have a history of the working class in Ireland. Not enough research has been done in order for us to arrive at a synoptic view of the cultural, economic, social, and intellectual history of those within Irish society who did all the work – and not just those who gave the orders.
This leads to problems within the Irish labour movement, as already discussed in a previous article. Without a proper historical study, it is difficult to talk with authority about the Irish working class. What we have is a history of Irish trade unions, and trade unions are by no means the summation of the working classes.
Briefly, the study of Irish labour history as a distinct discipline began in the 1970s, which saw the formation of the Irish Labour History society (ILHS), and the publication of its journal, Saothar. The 1970s also ’saw the publication of two studies that did much to redefine the subject’ (see Emmet O’Connor, ‘Ireland’) : these were Arthur Mitchell’s Labour & Irish Politics, 1890-1930 (1974), and Charles McCarthy’s Trade Unions in Ireland, 1894-1960 (1977). Before then, studies of Irish labour tended to be radical interpretations of Irish history – with the emphasis firmly on the revolutionary power of the Irish working class - rather than studies of, say, trade union organisation or working class culture.
The best known of these studies is James Connolly’s Labour in Irish History, which was first published in 1910. Connolly saw in Irish history evidence to support the view that ‘only the Irish working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.’ In Connolly’s eyes, ‘the Irish question is a social question, the whole age-long fight of the Irish people against their oppressors resolves itself, in the last analysis, into a fight for the mastery of the means of life, the sources of production, in Ireland.’ The book is structured around the timeline of the independence struggle, not the labour movement, in Ireland.
Labour in Irish History served to inform a number of studies. Connolly’s argument can be heard in W.P. Ryan’s The Irish Labour Movement from the Twenties to Our Own Day (1920), and O’Donnell’s The Story of Irish Labour (1921), although both works contain more on the labour movement than Connolly’s Labour. Other works which owe a debt to Connolly include Elinor Burns, British Imperialism in Ireland (1931), Brian O’Neill, The War for the Land in Ireland (1933), T.A. Jackson, Ireland Her Own (1947), D.R. O’Connor Lysaght, The Irish Republic (1970), and Peter Beresford Ellis’, A History of the Irish Working Class (1972). A more detailed examination of Unionism is included by Eric Strauss in Irish Nationalism and British Democracy (1951).
Works which lay outside of the ‘Connolly School’ include J. Dunsmore Clarkson, Labour and Nationalism in Ireland (1925), and Jermone J. Judge’s PhD dissertation, ‘The Labour Movement in Ireland’ (UCD, 1955). Before the 1970s, detailed Irish labour studies remained sparse, although trade union studies included works such as John Swift, A History of the Dublin Bakers and Others (1948), and T.J. O’Connell, 100 Years of Progress: The Story of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (1968), as well as significant articles by Rachel O’Higgins, Fergus D’Arcy, and D.W. Bleakley.
The establishment of the ILHS in 1973 saw the start of a concerted move to establish Irish labour studies as a distinct discipline within Irish historiography. The society’s constitution called for the promotion of ‘Irish labour history and of Irish people in labour history abroad and labour history in general; the appreciation of the importance of labour history in the educational curriculum; and the preservation of all records and reminiscences, oral and written, relating to the current and past experiences of the Irish working class and its organisations’. It was followed two years later by the first issue of Saothar (1975), which has recently (2006) reached its 30th edition.
Until recently, Saothar’s focus tended to be on the trade union movement. Research continues to develop and expand the subject of Irish labour history.
The journal defines working class studies as follows:
“By the history of the Irish working class, we mean waged and unwaged workers, their lives, work, economic conditions, social and cultural relationships, leaders, organisations, movements, values and ideas. Studies of anti-labour organisations or anti-socialist groups are also of relevance [as are] studies that focus on the everyday life of workers and their families.”
However, a general history of Irish labour, as defined above, has yet to be written.
Because of this, the story of Irish labour rarely includes topics such as the history of Fianna Fáil’s working class base. (A notable exception is Henry Patterson’s 1988 Saothar article ‘The enigmatic relationship: Fianna Fáil and the working classes’.) The same can be said for the strict social stratification within the Irish working class itself. Why, for example, is ‘working class’ in Ireland now a euphemism for ‘skanger’ or ‘scumbag’ or ‘doley’? Unless one has a knowledge of the strict stratification within Irish working class culture, and the historical precedent these divisions carry, then it is hard to equate the hatred of ‘working class’ with the pride ‘working people’ have about themselves.
To those on the outside, the SWP for example, the Irish working class is a homogenous, romantic group of begorrah cockneys. To the PDs and Fine Gael, the divisions are seen as evidence that there is no Irish working class. The absence of awareness of the historical social stratification within the Irish working class leads Fine Gael and the PDs to make those judgments, while allowing the SWP to keep its head up its student arse by blaming the political right for creating a chimera.
It also leads to problems when trying to build a left-wing political base in Ireland. Sinn Féin are not targeting Labour voters, although they’ll take them. Sinn Féin are targeting Fianna Fáil’s quite significant working class base. That’s why Bertie announced the decision to celebrate the glorious 90th anniversary of the rising AFTER Sinn Féin had announced their intention to run Mary Lou McDonald in Bertie’s constituency.
When a Dublin worker hears working class, he or she thinks ‘Dublin Knackers.’ That way of thinking, that conception, goes back generations. But has never been explored. Until it is challenged with, among other things, robust historical evidence and analysis, Fine Gael and the PDs can continue to promote their view of Ireland as one big happy middle class (by exploiting social stratification within the working class for their own ends), while the left struggles to sell a class analysis with the skanger as their ‘working class’ demographic.
Why don’t we just call them the proletariat? ‘that class of society which does not have ownership’ Far easier.
Not a Marx supporter but his mentor Mr. Engels had some pretty good ideas.
The petty bourgeoisie, rely primarily but not exclusively on self-employment at an income no different from an ordinary wage or below it, and the lumpenproletariat, who are not in legal employment. Intermediate positions are possible, where some wage-labour for an employer combines with self-employment. Socialist political parties have often struggled over the question of whether they should seek to organize and represent the entire proletariat, or just the wage-earning working class.
I find the economic phrase the ‘black economy’ rather fitting. The reason the skanger might have decided to ‘nick your class consciousness’ is because with the amount of money in untaxed circulation the reality is that the skanger may have more undeclared disposable cash then you, I or the other guy. We live in a peculiar environment. My comment on colour is not in reference to race or creed.
Hi Tom, thanks for the comment. The point I’m trying to make is that we talk about the Irish working class as if we know just who that is. I would argue that we don’t, and because of that we get into political strategies and analyses that end up eating themselves. It’s like, when people talk about the working class vote in Ireland, the assumption is that we’re talking about Labour, Sinn Féin, Socialist party, sometimes the Greens, and a handful of independents, whereas the party with the largest working class vote in Ireland is Fianna Fáil.
Secondly, there is a strict social stratification in the Irish working class,and has been for generations. The Skanger is a newish term, but they are by no means a new member of my class - and I would most certainly see myself as working class, having been brought up in the corpo houses of Coolock. One of the main reasons why we have a strong trade union movement in Ireland, but not a strong left-wing political opposition, is because the Irish labour party was content to focus on its clientele - trade union members - rather than the working class community as a whole. Fianna Fail marched in, and took the rest.
Also, I wouldn’t say that a skanger is someone who works in the Black economy - almost everyone done some work in the black economy - but is someone who doesn’t hold the values and codes of the ‘working community’. Basically, get a job, work hard, keep your head down,look after your kids. Skangers, or ‘Rajas’ as we called them in Edenmore, are just wastes of space. By the way, we called them ‘rajas’ in the eighties because they listened to Bob Marley all the f**king time.
The problem is that we now have a situation in Ireland where the ‘ordinary working people’ as Joe Higgins calls them would be horrified to be called ‘working class’ because culturally that phrase is now associated with, well, skangers.
I’m saying that that division is nothing new, but because there is not an awareness of its historical predigree, parties like fine Gael, PDs, and indeed Fianna Fáil, have been able to talk about the new middle class that have emerged under the celtic tiger. There is no new middle class,just ‘working people’ with more money.
It’s like, you may be a plumber whose wife drives the kids to school in an SUV, but walk into the Shelbourne bar on a rugby day and you’re still a fucking plumber.
Oh. one other point. If a skanger has more money than me it’s because the cunt’s dealing drugs, or else he’s nicked it. It aint from working, undeclared or otherwise.
Yeah, your right, nothing worse than a left-wing, right-winger!
If that makes sense.
Oh it does! and I think it’s something that really needs to be fleshed out more here in Ireland. I mean, the working class tory is such a part of the British cultural mainstream. In Ireland, because the analysis seems to be that we’re all middle class except the skangers/lumpen proles, then we do not have class issues in any real sense, which of course is bull.
It’s like the idea that Fianna Fáil is has no ideology, but is instead a populist party. Thing is, Fianna Fáil is a party whose policies are dictated by big business and the construction industry, and it is the function of Bertie Ahern to keep a lid on the masses by handing out sweets every so often. After ten years, our economy has been run to suit the enormous profits being made by a handful of companies/indviduals. They back Bertie to be the front man to stammer along and show up at Croke Park and drink his fucking beer in Fagans.
The ideology there is that it is the role of government to serve business. That is the fundamental principle underlying ten years of Fianna Fáil government.
Government is not there to serve society. If it were then we wouldn’t have had that disgraceful climbdown on social housing, whereby the construction industry can pay off local authorities in lieu of social housing. The obsession with roads,instead of …. listen I’m going off the point here,but yeah, left-wing right-winger makes sense to me!
The greatest feat the establishment, going back decades, has achieved is making it appear that Ireland is not a classist society, and thereby hampering the creation of class consciousness.
Ireland’s middle class is for the most part one or two generations from working class, so its a case of hold what you have - they don’t have any sympathy for those that haven’t managed to climb up from the bottom rung of the ladder as they so recently have.
This is what has informed the political culture of the State more than anything else - the huge progression from working class to modest middle class that so many Irish people went through over the course of the last century.
In Ireland to be poor is truly seen as shameful, as many older Irish people remember what it is like first-hand. This attitude has been passed on to their children.
To be working class is synonymous with underclass, so decent working class people don’t even accept the label for themselves. In today’s society they feel it is even less relevant to have a working class consciousness as upward mobility to the middle class is tangibly close to those willing to give it a shot, or so the story goes.
It’s the republican ideal that people create their own fortune regardless of where they come from, even if this is just a myth. The creation of the Republic was primary the work of middle class minds, upwardly mobile in every sense of the word, and this is what has fed the ethos of the State.
Working class consciousness ironically exists purely for its own destruction. If it should be stirred up at all requires much analysis into what ultimately it hopes to achieve, and how.
Hi Niall, I agree. what I’m arguing here is that in working class communities across Ireland there are people who would consider themselves ‘doing well for themselves’ as well as those who they’d call, pejoratively, ‘working class’ living in the same area. You’d have people, often on the same street, who would see themselves as apart from their neighbours who are ‘feckless’ or ‘a bunch of wasters’.
But I would question the “huge progression of working class to lower middle class over the last century.” That is a very recent phenonomen, only the last fifteen years or so. The defining characteristic of working class life in Ireland over the past hundred years has not been the move to the middle classes, but has been, in fact, emigration, an altogether more brutal affair. There was no ‘con-job’ as such. The Irish middle class never held out affiliation to its club as the carrot to the more ambitious Irish working class - rather it was emigration that was the stick to beat up anyone who refused to toe the line and accept their status in Ireland.
up until very recently, the working class left the country, they were not assimiliated into the middle classes. and they left in their millions.
My point in raising all of this on an election website is to draw attention to some of the conclusions Irish political parties hold about themselves, and each other, and to go “well the historical facts state otherwise”.
OOps! I didn’t say what I agree with! I agree completely that working class consciousness exists purely for its own destruction, and that Ireland was eventually carved into an effigy for, and by, the Irish conservative, catholic, middle class who made up most of the politicians, judges, senior civil servants, and bishops, while the rest of us, including my grandfather and my father, had to leave for England - although in my father’s case it was not a permanent move.
I think a problem is the definition of class in Ireland.
Over the last century many people who would be considered middle class in Ireland would by the standards of more affluent societies be considered working class. The middle classes of the last 15 years have a lot more money than previously but I think most would still not have considered themselves working class before the onset of the Celtic Tiger.
Traditionally status was not defined purely by wealth, but also by less quantifiable factors such as ‘being from a good family’, religious devotion, civic duty and sociability etc. The depressed nature of the economy for so long meant that the pursuit of anything other than modest wealth was not really a viable goal for many, so other differentiating factors when it came to social stratification came into play. By the standards of other Western countries we had a massive rural population as well, where people were regularly in contact with each other irrespective of their wealth. Consequently other differentiating factors were essential, and are often harder to quantify in an economic analysis.
Emigration was not something that affected only the working classes either. Many who would have thought of themselves as from middle class backgrounds got the boat. The term ‘brain drain’ was often applied, as many educated people uninterested in competing for a career in the civil service left the country. Many of these were dismissive of people who chose to stay behind and get the dole, as some, whether from middle or working class backgrounds, did.
The judges, senior civil servants, bishops, politicians etc to which you refer would definitely be upper middle class, if not upper class, in many older people’s minds.
again I agree. There hasn’t been the type of research into the Irish working class that is needed to flesh out what ‘Irish working class’ actually is. That needs to be done before we can talk with any authority about the working class in the past. The work, quite simply, has not been done.
It is true that emigration affected most families, but I’m not talking about most families, I’m talking about the Irish working class, and in terms of analysis the millions who left over the past 150 years has to be factored in to any analysis. In 1956 Ireland had the highest birth rate in europe, and as a country was actually growing old. The average age, I mean, was increasing, such was the effect ofemigration.
There’s another thing I was thinking about today,and it’s the effect that inter-generational emigration and unemployment has had on the Irish psyche. That sense of failure and loss, of defeat and resignation - emotions so alien now to ‘modern’ Ireland, but really they’re only a bubble burst away.
I read some good material on the effect of emigration on the Irish psyche back in college - can’t remember who wrote it, maybe Tom Inglis, but there was some good stuff on how parents had to prepare their children for emigration - suppressing natural parental emotion in order to instill toughness and adaptability, things their kids would need when abroad.
The generation that emigrated were faced with conflicting feelings of sadness and anger about having to leave the country and their parents, and guilt for embracing foreign lifestyles and becoming successful. Real emotion for the homeland was transformed into a kind of self-loathing sentimental schtick, which could be relied upon to differentiate the emigrant from the host community when needed but could be discarded just as quick. Well worth reading some of this stuff: Inglis might be a good starting point, or Luke Gibbons.
‘Thousands are sailing’ by The Pogues sums up the schizophrenic aspects of the Irish character quite well I think:
“Where eer we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies”
Well that’s the crux of the problem for me. Tom Inglis is a sociologist, and Luke Gibbons is a cultural studies. academic. Irish historians have not tackled this issue, and Irish labour historians have yet to really delve into a comprehensive study of Irish working class identity and culture. It’s been left to other disciplines like sociology and cultural studies to take on this topic. and yet, we’ll have people talking about the historical failure of the left in Ireland and mentioning the most bizzare mystical reasons for its failure, despite the lack of any real heavy-duty academic historical scholarship on the subject (a notable exception is the excellent work of Emmet O’Connor). I’ve started to mess around with a new article for dublin opinion on how the parties of the left define working class in their present literature, I’m hoping to have something by next week, but already it’s throwing up some interesting finds. sure we see how it goes but yeah, an interesting topic alright.