JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

REVIEWSnolly-Column Song','Proudly we're marching, proudly we're singingThe song of our country we all hold so dearFar from our native land, proudly we take our standWe're members of the International Brigades.Think of the guns we bear, think of the clothes wewearThink of the insults endured in thy nameTempered by the sun of Spain, hardened by thewind and rainWe're members of the International Brigades.'3NotesManus O'Riordan1. Michael O'Riordan, The Con.n.olly Column, (NewBooks, Dublin, 1979). .2. UinseannMacEoin (ed), Survivors, (Dublin, 1980),p 13. .3. I am grateful toMary Parker, widow of Ma x Parker,for permission to quote the Connolly Column song.(Mary Parker's parents hailed from Oughterard,Co. Galway.) No Connolly Column veteran I'vespoken to could remember the song any more!Ronnie Munck and Bill Rolston, Belfast In the ThIrties:An Oral History, (BlackstaffPress, Belfast, 1987),pp. 209,£9.95The 1798 Rebellion and the 1932 Outdoor ReliefStrike have a special symbolic significance for manyIrish radicals. Both have been used as evidence thatProtestants and Catholics can transcend sectarian divisions,and unite against injustice. In recent years,however, some historians - mostly Unionist - haveargued that the unity of the 1790s was spurious, onlybriefly and partially masking ongoing sectarian conflict.One of the aims of the book reviewed here is tosimilarly deromanticise the 1932 strike, but this timefrom a leftist point of view. .The authors state their po si tion clearly. They arguethat in recent history there have been two major forcesoperating in working class life in Belfast; sectarianismand socialism. These do not necessarily cancel oneanother out. The apparent paradox, that the unity of the1932 strike was followed in 1935 by some of the worstsectarian violence seen in Belfast, is overcome whenwe realise that neither was an isolated occurrence.Socialism and sectarianism operated in Belfast beforeand after the 1930s. The upsurge of popular protest in1932 meant that for a time sectarianism was 'quiescent',but there is no need to postulate a sudden break-through in Belfast working-class consciousness. Forthe authors, the events of the 1930s are directly relevantto a central question for the Irish left. Can socialism beachieved and sectarianism obliterated before the nationalquestion it settled? Rolston and Munck, whodescribe their book in the concluding chapter as a'study of republicanism', make their own position veryclear. This will rouse strong passions in many readers,but whatever one feels about the position, their at timesalmost polemical statemeiIt of it makes a refreshingchange from historical works which pretend at empiricalobjectivity.AlI'of this would be sufficient to make the bOok asubject of debate. However, the bulk of the text dealswith working class life in the 1930s. Chapters dealingwith unemployment, poverty, and working'conditionsprecede a discussion of organised labour and republicanmovements in the city. Outlining the data presentedcould completely fill this review and createalmost as many arguments as the central theme. (Werethere 1,000 communists in Belfast during the 1930s asBetty Sinclair claimed, or fifty, a more accurate figureaccording to the authors?). Discussing the historicalcontent, however, would preclude consideration ofanother of the book's most important aspects - the oralhistory method used.. Labour historians have been attracted to oral historybecause of its potential to provide access to theexperience of the mass of working class people, whopreviously were anonymous. Many conventional historians,however, dismiss the method as, in A.I.P.Taylor's words, 'old men drooling about their youth'.Munck and Rolston strongly defend oral history, whiletaking major criticisms of the method into' account.They carefully describe how the fifty people interviewedwere chosen, and how interviews were conducted.They also describe how they cross-checkeddata with contemporary writings, and other oral sources.A frequent charge made against oral history is thatit is bound to be simply anecdotal. This is not how it isused in this book. Some sections, such as the generalsurvey of unemployment, or the description of sectarianattacks in 1935, are based largely on documentarysources, and oral tes timony is used to enrich the data, orto provide examples. Buteven in these sections the oralevidence is vital. Accounts such as the one describinga young Catholic couple's desperate and futile attemptto escape from a sectarian mob drive home the obscenityof this kind of atrocity more forcefully than statisticsof burnings or killings ever could.The method really comes into its own, however, inareas where it is the only possible historical source.Some of the most impressive sections of the book dealwith the variety of ways in which families tried to makeends meet, the position of women in working classfamilies, and the ways in which people heard aboutwork, or used patronage to get it. The detailed descrip-59