JOURNAL OF THE IRISH LABOUR HISTORY SOCIETY

ESSAYS 85recognition of the impracticality of a revolutionary strategy based on the working class in thecircumstances of inter-war Ireland. The notion that the annuities campaign was the way out of theconservative impasse, the detonator for a revolutionary alliance between town and countryside waswholly chimerical. But strategies that are illusory do not, for all that, necessarily have no effect. Anunintended effect of social republicanism was the creation of a formidable ideological obstruction tothe development of a more realistic socialist strategy which at the same time contributed to theideological resources of FF. For the annuities campaign did, when FF decided to colonise it, make amajor contribution to its radical image in the 1932 election. 0 'Donnell himself has recently mentionedPaddy Hogan, then Minister for Agriculture, claiming that 'de Valera rowed in on the crest of a waveof agitation promoted by the communist Peadar O'Donnell' .19 This was an image based on the pettybourgeois radicalism of rural Ireland, where the large grazier had displaced the landlord as the enemyof the proprietorial ambitions of small farmers and landless men. Such an ideology did not have aninevitable import for the urbanworking class. 0 'Donnell had already noted amongst the working class'a distrust, acynicism' towards the annuities campaign which reflected a feeling that the peasantry were'a hard, mean, clutching, self-centred, self-seeking lot who really want to payout nothing'.20This recognition of a potential rift between rural and urban wings of his revolutionary alliancedemonstrated O'Donnell's capacity for sharp insights within a fundamentally fuzzy and ambiguousconceptualisation of the Irish social order. More importantly, it demonstrates the basis for Fianna Failhegemony in this period. This hegemony had nothing to do with any reputation as a 'left wing' party.The most disturbing elements ofFF policy were those which threatened a degree ofland redistribution,something which alarmed the rural bourgeoisie but represented no threat to the fundamental pattern ofland ownership. Ironically, it was people like de Valera who had least illusions about the fundamentalpassions of the countryside. He had at various times made clear that he was well aware of its capacityfor sectional selfishness. Seeing the essence of the annuities campaign as a demand for petty bourgeoiscomfort, he would have been well aware of its fundamental variance with the objectives of socialrepublicans like O'Donnell.Understanding the hegemony of FF in this period needs no resort to notions of ideologicalmystification. The label 'party of the Irish middle class' hung around its neck by Saor Eire was onlyvery partially true. Of course its ultimate philosophical position was the famous middle way betweenthe extremes of capitalism and communism, a rather threadbare suit of populism and Catholic socialteaching. However its actual operative set of medium term policies for industrial development, housingand welfare could obviously have an appeal to the working class. As significant ideologically was thefact thatFF' s middle class, was still more a potentiality than an oppressi ve presence: as part of a nationalproject of industrialisation it could still be defined as part of the 'people' as opposed for example to thefinancial and mercantile fractions of the bourgeoisie. Therefore a simple class denunciation of FF wasunlikely to have much popular resonance. This was, of course, in part the product of the influence ofCatholicism and the recent clerical denunciations of Saor Eire and other organisations committed to aclass based view of the world. There was also a specifically political factor. Possession of state powerwould allow FF to define itself concretely to the working class as a party that was truly 'national', onethat used power to benefit all the main 'legitimate' interests in the state. Thus although the annuitieswould not be paid to Britain any more, they had, at a reduced level, to be paid to the state, as the farmersheld their land in trust for the nation as a whole. O'DonnelI had favoured the scrapping of annuitypayments altogether as part of his attack on the 'conquest', but this would have appeared to urbanworkers as an unrealistic wager on the radical impulses and wider vision of the peasantry.In the early 1930s the working class was offered three variations, with different inflections ofpopulism and class, on one 'national strategy' by FF, the Labour Party and left republicans. There wasnever any doubt which would be chosen. The Labour Party complained that FF had stolen its policies.This was to miss the point. FF's appeal lay not in this or that piece of social or economic policy, butin identifying itself as the only realistically 'national' party. By attempting to compete with FF a LabourParty which could never hope to appeal to the large constituency of petty bourgeois radicalism that