Материал: Rethinking ethnicity, 2nd Edition by Richard Jenkins
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them from the possibility of entrepreneurial economic activity. Thus the foundations of Protestant capital accumulation were laid during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, built on the effective exclusion of Catholics from professional life, commerce and agricultural prosperity.
The consolidation of ethnic domination: the industrial revolution
The Protestant colonists came from areas of England and Scotland that had existing traditions of capitalist commodity farming and domestic textile industry. The potential for industrial development which this implied was given a further boost in 1698 by the arrival at Lisburn, Co. Antrim, of Louis Crommelin and his fellow Huguenots, refugees from religious persecution in Catholic France. Their sudden appearance is at least partly explained by the fact that Huguenots had been among William’s best troops in the campaigns of ten years earlier. The significance of their immigration rests mainly in the fact that they brought to Ulster the craft of weaving damask, a very fine, patterned linen fabric; plain linen cloth was already a well established manufacture in the province by the time of their arrival. Following the abolition by the British government, in 1696, of the tax on plain linens from Ireland,
many English dealers began to buy Ulster cloth because it was cheaper than the Dutch and German linens. Since it continued to sell very well more weavers throughout Ulster began to weave for the London market and the industry spread to places as far apart as Strabane, Antrim and Monaghan before 1710. (Crawford 1972: 1)
Thus there were several reasons for the success of the textile industry in Ulster. First, there was the knowledge and skill of the settlers, both the original planters and the later Huguenot refugees. The importance of their craftsmanship, combined with some experience of small-scale capitalist production cannot be overestimated.
Second, the economically privileged position of the Protestant settlers, particularly their secure land tenure system, mentioned earlier, encouraged the harnessing of this entrepreneurial potential. It supported modest capital accumulation, encouraging farmer-manufacturers to expand by either employing weavers or ‘putting out’ extra work (Gill 1925). Finally, and perhaps of determinate importance, because – for political reasons which are obvious – their case had the ear of the London government, Ulster Protestants were in a position to petition for, and achieve, important economic concessions such as the withdrawal of the tax on plain linens in 1696:
The prosperity of the linen industry in Ulster was due to English demand for Irish linens … and to its duty-free entry into the English market. (Crawford and Trainor 1973: 33)
On these foundations, the technical know-how of the settlers, their secure relationship with the land and their links with the mainland – based on what was, in the
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local context, a bond of shared politicized ethnicity – the Ulster textile industry was developed.
It was this industry, originally domestic in its nature, that provided the necessary base from which industrial development gradually took off in north-east Ireland. The trend in the rest of the country, with some important exceptions in urban centres such as Dublin and Cork, was increasingly towards large-scale agriculture, with the emphasis being on cattle. Until the famine years of the 1840s the western margins and the less fertile upland areas continued to be characterized by the smallholdings of the native Irish peasantry.
Once linen manufacture had been firmly established it became less reliant on the land tenure customs of Ulster and evolved into an independent industry in its own right. This had important consequences for the industrial and social future of the province:
the linen industry affected the character of Ulster society … It not only gave employment to manual workers; it produced a substantial middle class of bleachers and drapers, many of whom acquired considerable wealth … It also promoted urban development, for the towns were the natural centres for marketing the cloth woven by rural weavers; and at least in some areas, there was a tendency for weavers to concentrate in the vicinity of these market towns. (Beckett 1973: xii–xiii)
Thus in the wake of capitalist industrialization – albeit on a modest scale at this time – we have the concomitant development and elaboration of class stratification within the Protestant ethnic community. Manufacturing, far from being a reflection of prosperity rooted in the land, was rapidly becoming a source of capital accumulation in itself.
Further economic stimulation came as a result of the agitation by the Volunteers for free trade and other reforms. In 1779 many of the remaining restrictions on the Irish export trade were lifted and in 1782, following a political meeting in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, the Dublin parliament was largely emancipated from control by Westminster. In the years immediately following, the Dublin government of Grattan’s parliament did much to stimulate grain production, brewing, woollen manufacture and the cotton industry. The north-east counties had a head start on the rest of Ireland and benefited disproportionately from these reforms.
The new parliament failed, however, to grasp the nettle of Catholic emancipation, a cause that attracted some sympathy at this time from Nonconformists. The organizational expression of this sympathy was Wolfe Tone’s Society of United Irishmen, founded in Belfast in 1791. Once again, however, as so many times before and since, self-interest and ethnicity successfully undermined the movement’s radical ideals. In County Armagh, an area dominated by the textile industry and distinguished by an approximate demographic balance between Catholics and Protestants, a violent encounter occurred in 1795 which led to the formation of an Orange Society, which spread quickly in the countryside. With it came an increase in violent attacks on Catholic weavers, many of whom fled. There is considerable evidence of sympathy and support for the society among landlords and the magistracy; when a yeomanry was established to counter the United Irishmen’s 1798 rebellion, the Orange Society provided many of its members. The Protestants may
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have been increasingly stratified along class lines; nonetheless, ethnicity remained the major axis of political mobilization (Haddick-Flynn 1999; Kelly 2000; Senior 1966).
By the beginning of the nineteenth century Belfast had come to rival Dublin in importance as a mercantile and financial centre. In terms of manufacturing the north-east had established a predominance that was to last a long time. The expansion of the textile industry, new technological developments and the boom in cotton production stimulated by the Napoleonic Wars all combined to encourage systematic mechanization, both in yarn spinning and weaving. By the 1830s factory production was rapidly becoming commonplace, with linen manufacturing eventually reasserting itself as the market for cotton became increasingly competitive again in the conditions of peacetime.
The mechanization of the labour process in textiles led to the development of a local engineering industry, based in the first instance on the market for machinery and repair services among the local mill owners. This development was heavily dependent on the mainland, particularly for specialist expertise. However, despite the influx of entrepreneurs possessing such expertise, the enterprises set up during this period were local companies that were not accountable to external sources of control:
Few of the early engineering works in the north of Ireland were established by local men; Joe Rider, John Hind, Stephen Cotton, George Horner and E.J. Harland came from England, James Combe and James Mackie from Scotland. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, local men trained in the original works began to set up business for themselves or to take over the management of existing firms when founders retired or got into financial difficulties … It seems clear that the early entrepreneurs were attracted to the north of Ireland, not by the local market for small metal goods, but by the opportunity to exploit new techniques, such as iron founding, the making of steam engines and textile machinery, and the provision of a machinery repair service … the region was kept in touch with progress in industrial organisation in Britain not only by the political union of the two countries but also by periodic infusions of new blood from the British engineering industry. (Coe 1969: 193, 194, 196)
Business or other economic links with the mainland were not all one way, however. In addition to the inward flow of technology and entrepreneurial personnel, there was also a flow of investment capital, in particular – though not exclusively – a flow of local capital out, for investment in England and Scotland. Due to the restricted scale and scope of the local economy, the local economic élite’s links with their fellow businessmen ‘across the water’ – sometimes the close links of family or marriage – provided a useful avenue for diversification and investment (ibid.: 190–2). From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, Ulster rapidly became incorporated into the burgeoning industrial economy of the rest of the kingdom.
The increasing importance of large-scale manufacture, which required easy access to the sea for the import of the necessary raw materials and the export of its finished products, resulted in Belfast becoming the centre of industrial and commercial activity. The situation developed for three reasons. First, there was the city’s centrality within the predominantly Protestant area east of the River Bann;
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second, its ease of communication, via the natural corridor of the valley of the River Lagan, with the smaller textile towns of the rest of the province; and third, its position as the major deep-water port on the north-eastern seaboard, providing ready access to the markets of the Empire and the rest of the world. The establishment of steamship services to Glasgow and Liverpool in the 1820s further strengthened Belfast’s position. In 1800 the city had been smaller than either Limerick or Waterford; by 1891 Belfast had overtaken Dublin in both size and commercial importance.
Naturally enough, the industrial development of the Belfast area drew in many immigrants from the rest of the province. Although it was already happening before the Famine, rural distress in the 1840s and the subsequent flight from the land accelerated this population movement. Many of the new city-dwellers were Catholics from the southern and western districts of Ulster, attracted to Belfast by the availability of employment. They tended to take unskilled jobs in textile production or as navvies, building the new town. Skilled work, particularly in engineering, remained the preserve of the Protestant working man; industry and commerce were controlled by the local Protestant bourgeoisie – either local or newly arrived – and hiring practices reflected the traditionally sanctioned hierarchy of Catholic and Protestant (cf. Reid 1980). Relations between an employer and his workforce were often paternalistic and a firm recognition of the relationship between employment and ethnicity structured the emergent labour market in the city, although this did not prevent the emergence, from the 1870s, of labourism and trade union organization (Patterson 1980). Historians of this period leave us in little doubt as to the systematic manipulation of ethnicity by the local élite, both in furtherance of their political ends – the maintenance of Protestant supremacy and the link with Britain – and, more indirectly perhaps, but no less definitely, their economic goals. The link between the political and the economic was clearly recognized by both workers and employers and formed the basis of the Unionist class alliance.
With the increasing importance of shipbuilding and marine engineering from mid-century onwards, the industrial structure that was to characterize the local economy until the 1970s began to emerge. The development of the shipyards reflected the presence of a deep-water harbour, the large numbers of skilled men, such as boilermakers, in the local engineering industry (although many more were brought in from Clydeside), and the enthusiasm of the Harbour Commissioners in developing the Queen’s Island site. As the nineteenth century drew to its close, the Belfast region became incorporated more and more into the wider United Kingdom economy, particularly that region of it which includes the other major Irish Sea ports, Glasgow and Liverpool. Employers and men participated in national and regional industrial negotiations and disputes, and the commercial life of the city drew ever closer to Britain, much local capital continuing to be invested on the mainland (Coe 1969: 191; Lyons 1973: 270–86). By 1900 the economy was provincial no longer.
This account of the industrialization of Northern Ireland allows us to examine some of the links between ethnicity and economic activity. During this period the linked processes of urbanization, industrialization and mechanization served to reinforce the economic and political dominance of the local Protestant bourgeoisie.
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Their economic position was made more secure, and their sphere of activities expanded, through the importation of technological resources from the mainland. Access to external investment markets when the local opportunities for capital accumulation became too limited further consolidated their economic base. These strategies were facilitated by their links of shared ethnicity – religious, political, and in terms of origins – with the English and Scottish bourgeoisie, who were a source of technologically innovative entrepreneurs and provided opportunities for Ulster Protestant businessmen to invest money in their enterprises. The economic and political interests of the local businessman – and the two are inextricably linked – were also well served by the stratification of the working class along ethnic lines. Class issues were never forgotten in local politics – the distinction between skilled and unskilled Protestant workers, although much undermined by restructuring, remains important today – but the increasing orchestration of ethnic solidarity by the Orange Order as the nineteenth century wore on ensured that, particularly following the Home Rule crisis of 1886, sectarian issues dominated the political arena. The important connection between ethnicity and access to work would probably have seen to that if nothing else did, and this tendency was reinforced by the pre-eminence of élitist craft unions among organized labour.
Sectarian ethnicity was not the only factor, of course. It must not be forgotten that, from the point of view of Northern Protestants, the underdevelopment of the rest of Ireland was a powerful (if with hindsight somewhat self-fulfilling) argument against Home Rule. A genuine and understandable fear of losing a relatively prosperous lifestyle informed politics and industrial relations. The outcome of these fears for the Ulster employer, occasional disputes notwithstanding, was the continuing control of his workforce and a high degree of industrial harmony. This was a subtle and ongoing process of negotiation and accommodation:
Ulster Unionism emerged as the product neither of a conspiracy of landed notables and industrialists to ‘dupe the people’ nor from the spontaneous convergence of a set of forces without prior political relations. (Gibbon 1975: 145)
Systematic connections between ethnicity, economic activity and politics in Ulster were established during the two centuries following the Plantation. These connections were, and are, neither accidental nor determined by socio-economic structure. They can only really be understood as the consequences of the pursuit – not always consistent – of rational political and economic goals by the government in London and the Ulster Protestant establishment. They became, finally, systematically organized with the rise to importance of the Protestant industrial and commercial élite of Belfast in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their roots, however, lay much earlier.
Organized labour and the manipulation of ethnicity
So the foundations of a hierarchical ethnic division of labour were laid in the military subjugation of the Ulster Irish and the subsequent Plantation. This division of labour was further consolidated as the industrial revolution progressed