Iris an Chumainn le Stair Lucht Saothair na hEireann Journal of the ...

Document Study
Labour and the 1922 General Election
Charles McCarthy
On January 7,1922 the Dail, by a slender majority, ratified the Treaty. De Valera, resigning
his presidency of the Republic in the circumstances, offered himself immediately for reelection
and was defeated by an even more slender majority. The Southern Ireland
Parliament, elected under the Government of Ireland Act, 1 met on January 14 in accordance
with Articles 17 and 18 of the Treaty to approve the Treaty and accept the surrender.
Ominously Mr. de Valera did not attend this parliament. The army was deeply divided and
there were insistent calls for an Army Convention. This fragile political situation with a
provisional government on the one hand and a very limited Southern Ireland Parliament on
the other was to be resolved by a general election which was expected to take place within
four or five weeks. 2
But what was to be the position of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress? They
had abstained in the 1918 general election. Were they to abstain now? If they were not to
abstain, and if, on election, their representatives were to hold the ha lance of power, how
should they conduct themselves? Were they to support Mr. Griffith and the Treaty or Mr. de
Valera and the anti-Treaty forces? How much division was there among them on this very
crucial issue and how did they deal with it?
The document we examine here, it is suggested, might shed some light on these questions.
I t is a pull or a proof of a memorandum from the National Executive to the Special Congress
of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress which was held on February 21, 1922 to
consider election policy. Mr. Barry Desmond deposited the document recently in the
archives of the Irish Labour History Society. It consists of two long galleys. There were
originally three, but the second galley is missing, so that we have now merely the first and the
third. The galleys have a number of blue pencil marks, but since no handwriting appears we
cannot identify their author.
This document becomes interesting when it is compared with the recommendations which
were circulated in printed form to the delegates at the Special Congress. 3 At least one copy of
this document is extant in the WiIliam O'Brien papers in the National Libmry. There are a
number of differences between the galleys and the final text as circulated to the delegates and
these form the area of our inquiry.
Largely they are omissions which were heralded by blue pencil in the proof and which were
effected in the final text. Three are of importance. 4
The first omission from the finill text was blue pencilled in the first galley. In a reference to
.the Treaty, the sentence read:
'We may regret that a better issue was not forthcoming, but we are'reminded of the peace signed by the
Russians at Brest-Litovsk,- a peace which, though humiliating to the pride of an unvanquished people, was
accepted by those who knew the true position in regard to the country's powers of resistance, in order to
give them a chance to recuperate their' economic and military strength' and to spread the virus of
revolutionary propaganda in the ranks of the enemy,'
In the third galley a paragraph readsasfollows:
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