Social Democracy and Partition: The British Labour Party and Northern Ireland, 1951—64

Abstract

Within the academic literature there appear to be conflicting interpretations about the nature of British Labour policy towards Northern Ireland. Bob Purdie, in his analysis of the small 'Friends of Ireland' pressure grouping in the 1940s, has shown how Irish interests failed to inflame Irish nationalist sympathy among Labour backbenchers,' a view recently challenged by Peter Rose.2 Perhaps most damning of all, Rumpf and Hepburn have concluded negatively, but not without some justification, that 'even British socialism has been unable to intervene in Northern Ireland affairs outside the sectarian framework'.3 A more accurate view would show that in fact Labour's policy has been more complex and contradictory than this. On the basis of evidence recently excavated from the Labour Party Archives one could argue that not only did Labour see the pro-partitionist NILP as a viable non-sectarian alternative to unionism; it also endorsed the party's policies and financed it by way of an annual maintenance grant until as late as 1975.4 One of the most illuminating interpretations of British Labour involvement in Northern Ireland is that provided by the scholar Paul Dixon.5 Dixon's premise, briefly stated, is that the party's attitude to Northern Ireland in the 1960s was conditioned by its attitude to decolonization more generally. He argues that we must view Labour's Irish policy through the prism of a 'classnation' paradigm and not by emphasizing a trans-historical line of enquiry which overestimates the strength of anti-partitionism within its ranks. According to Dixon, it is British Labour's ambiguity over precisely what con-