Contents

The first half of the twentieth century was a period dominated by world wars and internal conflict. The constitutional division of Ireland reinforced the gap between the economy of the north-east and that of the rest of Ireland, and further complicated relationships with Britain. The new constitutional boundaries within which men and women worked inevitably impacted upon the opportunities open to them, and the degree of personal or professional independence that they could aim to achieve. Unionist dominance over a substantial Catholic minority in Northern Ireland and continuing Republican demands in the twenty-six counties seriously hampered the efforts of the governments of both states to introduce stability, while international events impacted strongly on the economy.

Though feminists and suffragists, nationalists and unionists held different views on the morality of war, the voices of those urging pacifism, on both national and international platforms, were drowned by the wave of patriotic fervour which greeted the declaration from 10 Downing Street. This was to be a war fought in a manner that would have been unimaginable even in the days of Napoleon. The battle of the Somme lasted for 138 days and cost 420,000 British, 195,000 French and 650,000 German casualties, about a third of whom were killed. The demand for manpower on the battlefields was insatiable, and Ireland was seen as a recruiting ground. By January 1916 Lord Wimborne was able to report that 75,293 volunteers had joined the 51,046 regulars and reservists serving at the outbreak of the war. There was a definite urban/rural split in terms of recruiting, with the cities supplying a disproportionate amount of manpower, Belfast District (city + Antrim and Down) had supplied 31% of the recruits, Dublin District (city + county) 19.4%, Cork District (city + part of county) 7.5%, although naval recruiting traditional in the city was not included in this figure. In comparison, the average of the eight other rural districts, each of which covered 3-5 counties, was only just over 4500 men or 5% of the total.

It is now clear that initial support for the war was a shared experience in Ireland, with only a ‘tiny, eccentric collection of irreconcilables dissenting from the majority’. Catholic religious periodicals of the period were full of obituaries and requests for prayers for front-line soldiers, calling attention to the sacrifice made by ‘Irish Tommies’, so long ignored in consequent nationalist and unionist histories. This would of course change as a result of the events in Dublin in 1916, and indeed, attempts to introduce conscription two years later demonstrated the extent to which collective hostility to Britain had developed.

Opportunities also existed for women to engage directly in the war effort, both at home and overseas. For many, the most obvious way to help was in the traditional role of nursing, and there were plenty in need of their care. Both old and new organisations recruited new staff to meet the growing demand, with nurses from the various units entering the war at different stages. As the war progressed, women were increasingly organised into auxiliary uniformed services. One of the earliest was the Women’s Legion, formed by Lady Londonderry in 1915 as a pioneer corps to enrol and train women for army work. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps [WAAC] was formed in December 1916, and despite the intentions of the authorities, remained a mostly lower class organisation. The Women’s Royal Naval Service [WRNS], one of the most popular of the female uniformed services, was formed in November 1917. WRNS ratings served in various roles, including signalling, driving, cooking and general administration. It provided opportunities for both overseas and local work. The Women’s Royal Air Force [WRAF] was founded alongside the Royal Air Force [RAF] on 1 April 1918. Although the absence of conscription in Ireland meant less pressure for women to take over men’s jobs, the war did provide new working opportunities for civilian women, particularly in the linen industry and in the production of munitions.

Daily life was, however, regularly marked by tragedy, with telegrams bringing news of the deaths of husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers on the battlefields of France. The towns and villages of Ulster were particularly hard hit by the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, while the Dublin Fusiliers and the Muster Fusiliers were decimated at Verdun and Gallipoli. A Lurgan Orangeman claimed that there was ‘hardly a house in Hill Street in which at least one member of the family has not been killed or wounded’, while a Dublin woman noted that, ‘there was scarcely a family around us who had not lost someone’.

The war had initially impacted negatively on the Irish economy as normal markets for linen were closed, shipbuilding found supplies of steel and other materials being diverted to military projects and agriculture was disrupted and prices fluctuated. However, this slump was to prove short-lived. As the Factory inspector in Belfast reported at the end of 1914, the demand for fine linen was soon replaced by orders for bandages, army bedding, shirts and tents. Belfast had never been a major centre for naval construction and according to the records comparatively few vessels were built in the city in the war years. How ever, this hides a major shift in activity and the city became a major repair centre. Workman Clark proudly boasted that they had carried out repair, overhaul or conversion work on almost one ship for every day of the war—and Harland and Wolff were busier. Agriculture boomed, as it had during the great wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and for the same reasons, as other supplies were cut off Ireland became Britain’s larder. The importance of Irish agricultural exports increased significantly as the war progressed, notably after the adoption of unrestricted U-boat warfare by the Germans in February 1917. In general, as with the rest of Britain this was a period of high demand and higher profits for Irish Farmers and industrialists.

Economically, the post-war period saw unprecedented levels of demands for Ireland’s agricultural and industrial produce, as continuing shortages of foodstuffs and demand for consumer goods stimulated the market. However, the volatile and violent political context of the period caused economic hardship in many rural areas, with restrictions on travel and markets imposed by the security forces. More seriously there was a particularly vicious and costly policy adopted by the security forces of burning down co-operative creameries in retaliation for attacks on police or troops in nationalist strongholds. While it was recognised that such actions would harm the whole community rather than the guilty, it was hoped that such indiscriminate economic attacks would undermine support for the nationalists.

In Belfast such restrictions were not really a problem although violence in the city was to result in over 450 deaths in these years. After a brief post-war boom the world economy slumped badly after 1921, there were soon 1,052 individuals claiming relief from the Belfast Guardians, the highest figure since the great slump in shipyard demand in 1904-5. The number of unemployed in Belfast stood at 6,447 in 1927. The demand for ship construction fell after the war due to the freeing up of wartime merchant ships. These modern vessels which might be expected to serve for another 20 years. Moreover, during the war many of Belfast's overseas customers had during the war years developed their own shipbuilding industries and could pose serious competition. In the linen trade a range of social and technical changes were to seriously affect demand, women's dresses became shorter and the petticoat went out of fashion, the habit of eating out became more common reducing the need for table linen and when the family ate at home the tablecloth was often now replaced by placemats. At the end of the First World War the first metal aircraft appeared and from that point the demand for linen to cover wings and fuselages, which had been a significant element in war-time production steadily declined.

The political events of the immediate post-war years had two major consequences in social and economic terms, firstly the partition of Ireland separated the most industrial region of the country from the more agricultural-based areas of the south and west, and secondly both the segments were granted Home Rule. By 1925 Ireland was partitioned between two antagonistic if not hostile governments and the dream of a free united Ireland seemed lost. In the south, the War of Independence had been followed by a bitter civil war, which had caused immense damage to the economy and transport infrastructure. The first priority of the new government was to create stability and rebuild; they had little time or interest for the lost counties. In Belfast the new parliament faced serious economic problems as the world trade slump hit the industries of Belfast particularly hard, despite the prosperity of the region before the war the Belfast government was soon dependent on subsidies from London.

Northern Ireland’s constitutional position within the UK did have economic consequences, with Westminster retaining control over much of the province’s revenue. The fact that Northern Ireland’s economy was effectively integrated with that of Great Britain, further reduced the ability of the government to formulate an independent economic policy. Moreover, Northern Ireland’s specific needs were in the main ignored by Westminster, with one historian claiming that in 1934-5 only 110 minutes were devoted to matters connected with the Province. On the other hand, decisions made at Westminster could affect Northern Ireland, for example the return to the Gold Standard in 1925, an issue on which the Northern Ireland government were not consulted; damaged Belfast’s export industries and increased unemployment. Despite these problems, even when it did have the freedom to go its own way, the Stormont government felt it had to follow British legislation to demonstrate the unity of the two constitutions.

The problem was that income was falling and expenditure rising in the inter-war depression years, and the policy of matching British developments became increasingly dependent on subventions from Westminster. This, argued the Northern Ireland Government, was only fair for the province was part of the United Kingdom, and as such had a right to expect central funds if needed. The British Treasury, not surprisingly, did not share this view and were antagonised by Prime Minister Craig’s rather cavalier attitude towards expenditure. This could have been ignored if Belfast was paying the bill, but as Westminster was paying an ever-increasing proportion, criticism mounted. Craig kept the increasing dependence of Northern Ireland’ Government on Westminster grants a secret from the rank and file of his followers, who felt resentment at what was seen as unjustified interference in domestic issues. Relations were not good and were deteriorating as the inter-war period progressed, but neither side seriously suggested that the relationship should be ended.

In the first decade after independence the government of the new Irish Free State was to prove as conservative as the British in terms of economic policy and perhaps even more so in terms of social policy. Although successful in creating a stable state, Cumann na nGaedheal was unable to create prosperity and improve the living standards for the Irish people after the struggles for independence. There was no real opposition to the governing party’s conservative policies until Eamon de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party entered the Dáil in 1927. From this point on, the opposition grew in power and viability until in 1932 Fianna Fáil, with their Labour and independent allies, finally formed a government. They were to win because they offered the Irish people change, Cumann na nGaedheal lost because they could only offer more of the same. What de Valera offered was certainly different and was in many ways radical. He was in part able to do this because the previous government had been so successful in guiding the country through the worst of the Depression and conditions were actually improving. Fianna Fáil’s election manifesto promised to abolish the oath of allegiance, withhold payments of land annuities (the mortgage payments due to the British Government for money advanced under the pre-independence Land Acts) and review payments such as police pensions agreed following the Anglo-Irish Treaty. In addition, they offered protectionism for industry and agriculture, reductions in the wages of higher-ranking civil servants and a policy to preserve and expand the use of the Irish language, policies that enjoyed a broad appeal.

The economic aspects of the election manifesto were quickly acted upon as the new government sought to distance the Irish from the British economy. In March 1932 payment of the Land Annuities to Britain were withheld. At the same time Seán T. O’Kelly attended the Imperial Trade Conference in Ottawa and negotiated a series of trade agreements with various Dominion governments, but notably not with Britain. With attempts to resolve the situation described as ‘unproductive’, Westminster imposed a 20% duty on two-thirds of Irish exports to the U.K. in order to recoup the lost annuity payments. In response, on the 23 July, the Emergency Imposition of Duties Act empowered the Free State government to retaliate. The so-called ‘Economic War’, which in reality was more about politics than economics, had begun. De Valera imposed tariffs on British goods entering the Free State, notably 5 shillings a ton on coal and coke and 20% on cement, machinery, electrical goods, iron and steel. However, as Britain was the market for 96% of Irish exports and Ireland was the market for less than 10% of Britain’s such a contest was decidedly one sided.

Despite a definite improvement in world trade conditions, the value of Irish Agricultural Exports dropped from £35.8 million in 1929 to £13.5 in 1935, because of the ‘war’. The total value of exports to Britain fell from £43.5 million to £18 between 1929 and 1935. The cattle trade was particularly badly hit, with exports of live cattle falling from 775,000 to 500,000 between 1929 and 1933. In 1934, a quota of 50% of 1933 imports was fixed and the import of Irish beef or veal was restricted. The position began to improve after 1935 when the so-called Coal-Cattle Pact was agreed, under which Britain agreed to increase the quota for Irish cattle by 50% in return for Irish agreement to import coal only from British sources. Further concessions followed and by 1938, both parties felt able to enter into discussions aimed at ending the crisis. The resulting Anglo-Irish Agreements produced a final settlement of the Land Annuity question and reopened unrestricted trade between Britain and Ireland

Within the Northern Ireland Economy, the industrial boom that had marked the founding of the state soon ended and was replaced by serious long-term recession. The manufacturing economy was based on three industries, agriculture, linen, and shipbuilding/engineering all of which were dependent on export markets, which declined considerably during the inter-war years. The agricultural sector also faced serious difficulties; average farm size being smaller than in the Free State, methods of production were often outmoded and quality control was poor. The government took positive action to address these deficiencies and a succession of Acts established effective quality inspection and attempted to improve livestock quality by regulating breeding; subsidies were introduced on a range of products and consequently agricultural production improved in terms of both quality and quantity.

The ambitions of the Northern Ireland government to improve social conditions in their area to match those in the rest of Britain were creditable but impractical in the inter-war era. The Londonderry education scheme was a liberal and well thought-out programme seeking to improve the appalling standards within the Northern Ireland education system, particularly at secondary level. However, the fact that the scheme was rejected by both Catholic and Protestant communities and replaced by a rigidly denominational education system, says much about the political realities of this era. There was a genuine effort to improve the physical environment in which education took place, by the end of the 1930s, 138 new schools had been built and 428 enlarged or improved. But the inadequacy of the programme, particularly in rural areas, can be gauged by the fact that as late as 1963 50% of schools in Northern Ireland were built prior to 1900, over 300 had no piped water supply, 450 had not lighting and 850 had no central heating.

The issue of health care provision was another serious problem for the new government and again their efforts proved insufficient to deal with the growing problems in these years. A major difficulty was that health fell within the remit of the Department of Home Affairs who were also responsible for security/law & order, which tended to account for an excessive share of the budget. As a consequence, standards of health care actually fell. The contributory factors to this sorry situation were many-they included a serious scarcity of hospitals; grossly inadequate pay for dispensary doctors, nurses and midwifes; poor sanitary conditions, inadequate checks on the purity of food or milk and above all perhaps, no serious effort to deal with the ravages of TB which in 1938 accounted for 46% of deaths amongst 15-25 year olds and 38% of those between 25-35.

A major obstacle to improving social conditions was the poor quality and ineffectiveness of local government, an over-complex structure containing 6 County Councils, 10 Borough Councils, 24 Urban Districts and 31 Rural Districts made improvement difficult. In any case, these bodies had limited powers and a tradition of keeping spending to a bare minimum to keep rates low. Their weakness is apparent in housing. In Britain local authority house building was an important factor in the recovery of the construction sector. Between 1919 and 1939 the Rural District's built 3,669 labourers' cottages and the Urban District's 3,839 while private builders produced about 43,000 (70% of them with state aid). These unimpressive figures and the dependence upon private developers compares poorly with England and Wales, where although the population was thirty times greater, house building was eighty times greater than NI. Largely as a result of this abysmal local authority record, the actual standard of housing declined for the poorer elements of the community and the unemployed in these years.

The local authorities were again less than impressive in their response to the other great social issue facing Northern Ireland in these years, un-employment. Northern Ireland's unemployment rate was far higher than the average of Britain as a whole,

Despite the Unemployment provisions introduced by the government in imitation of GB, many remained dependent on the old Poor Law system of relief. The unsympathetic manner in which this was administered lead to serious riots in 1932, which forced concessions from the authorities, although it left the unemployed in a desperate plight. At this time unemployment payments were absorbing over a third of all rate income in Belfast, yet the payments made were so low that the physical health of the jobless and their families was suffering. While these factors affected workers in many countries during this period, the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland carried the additional burden of religious discrimination. The determination of the government to appoint ‘as far as we can manage it … loyal men and women’, for example, ensured that jobs in the public sector were almost entirely the reserve of Protestants. The prolonged economic slump of 1920-1939 represented a time of hardship and misery in many parts of the United Kingdom, and the slump in South Wales or the North of England went deeper and lasted longer than it did in Northern Ireland. However, this was poor comfort for those on the dole.

Although the dominant issue of the early 1930s in the 26 counties was the economic war, the Irish government did seek to address social and economic problems. During these years the first systematic efforts were made to eradicate the Dublin slums, although the sheer scale of the problem and the limited resources available resulted in slow progress. There was a determined effort to promote industrial and agricultural self-sufficiency. The government, for example, appealed for an increase in wheat production, which they argued would reduce reliance on imports and boost employment, and between 1931 and 1936 acreage increased from 21,000 to 255,000. Seán Lemass endeavoured to develop an industrialisation programme and sought new export markets such as the US, Germany and France to reduce the overwhelming dependence on the UK. An ambitious £1million road-building programme was introduced to counter the rising levels of unemployment. The sugar-beet industry was extended to reduce imports and hopefully gain export earnings; two cement factories were opened in Limerick and Drogheda, again with the aim of replacing imports, and tentative efforts were made to develop the mining and metal extraction industries. Between 1931 and 1938 there was a 44% increase in industrial output but given the low starting point this was only a limited success and the numbers employed in industry only increased from 110,000 to 166,000.

A marked feature of the Irish economy was the relatively low number of married women in paid employment—only 5.6% in 1926, and remaining at around this level until the 1960s. This compared with around 14.5% in Northern Ireland and 21% in industrial Belfast. The persistence of this trend can largely be explained by the introduction of legislative measures targeting working wives; in 1933 it became law for national schoolteachers to resign on marriage, and the 1935 Employment Act extended the marriage bar to all civil service posts. Whether under Cumann na nGaedheal or Fianna Fáil, women’s role in the new Free State was characterised as domestic and familial, with legislative measures progressively eroding their position in public life. For example, although under the 1922 Irish Free State Constitution, women were accorded total and complete right as citizens, a Bill of 1927 proposed that, in the interests of administrative efficiency and financial savings, they should be excluded from Jury service. Protests from a range of women’s organisations succeeded only in securing an amendment, which enabled them to ‘opt in’ if they wished. Citizenship, it seemed, could be as gendered as any other category. Clauses referring to women’s position in de Valera’s 1937 Constitution also reflected a narrow and specific view of womanhood, assuming that ‘woman’ and ‘mother’ were interchangeable, and that both were directly and inevitably associated with domesticity. However, the 1937 constitution and the debate surrounding it need to be considered in the light of both the national and international idealisation of family, marriage and motherhood, and the fear that women’s political and economic progress would undermine these so-called traditional values.

Both northern and southern governments also attempted to control sexual and moral behaviour through Criminal Law legislation which, particularly in the south, were subject to much debate, enquiry and lobbying, and which reflected the conservative nature of church, state and mainstream society. For example, both the decline in marriage overall, and the late age at which couples married, made the issue of contraception a particularly relevant issue for both young people and society as a whole. The 1926 census showed that 80% of men and 62% of women in the 25-30 age group were unmarried, and that the illegitimacy rate stood at 3.7 per 1,000 births. This compared to 53% single females in the same age group in Northern Ireland, and an illegitimacy rate of 4.7%, though there were many local and regional variations. The Carrigan Committee, called to enquire into such matters, declared that both its members and the witnesses they had called were unanimous in their view that ‘the moral condition of the country has become gravely menaced by modern abuses’. This type of alarmist comment was very typical of the period, and should be seen as a reflection of religious and conservative anxieties rather than an indication of the moral laxity of the population at large.

Those holding such views were, however, powerful enough to influence the public debate. Sections 16 and 17 of the 1929 Censorship of Publications Act had already banned the printing, publishing, distribution or sale of publications advocating contraception or abortion as a means of birth control. The argument was that the sexually explicit nature of such information made it unacceptable. As with the banning in 1941 of a book about the infertile period, because of a fear that spreading such knowledge could lead to indecent conduct and public immorality, this says a great deal about public assumptions around female sexual behaviour. Section 17 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1935 prohibited the importation and sale of contraceptives, and it is important to note that prominent women’s organisations raised no objection to this. In a predominantly Catholic state, the subject of contraception was, publicly at least, a taboo subject.

As a neutral nation during the Second World War, which was officially designated as ‘the emergency’, the Irish Free State found itself a low priority for deliveries of goods and raw materials. By 1944-5 import levels of coal were only one-third of those of 1938-9 and supplies of oil had almost ceased. The number of new cars licensed for use dropped from 7,480 in 1939 to 240 in 1941, town gas production was so adversely affected that regulations were brought in prohibiting it use at certain times and for certain purposes.

The economic situation during the Second World War, as during the ‘Economic’ one, was made worse by the dependence of the Irish Free State on imported fuel, raw materials and foodstuffs. In 1939 Irish-registered merchant marine had a gross tonnage of only 41,105 (rather less than the Titanic) and the country was therefore very dependent on foreign shipping for deliveries of critical supplies. To try to overcome this, the Irish government established a state-operated shipping line, which bought eight vessels and leased five more. Sadly, however, German submarines and aircraft tended to regard any vessel in British waters as a target and consequently Irish losses in ships and men were high. Inevitably living standards began to fall, and although supplies of basic foodstuffs (potatoes, eggs, sugar and meat) were adequate, butter was scarce due to reduced production and imported foods like tea, coffee, and tinned or dried fruit were almost unobtainable. Things would have been far worse without large-scale emigration to join the British forces or work in war industries, which reduced unemployment and created an inflow of remittances.

The outbreak of the Second World War was to change the lives of the whole community in Northern Ireland, and give the government the political security they had craved. The first benefit to the province was the movement of aircraft and munitions works to the region, which defence planners believed was safe from attack. By the autumn of 1939 shipbuilding, engineering and textile industries were all benefiting from defence related orders; unemployment fell during the year from almost 95,000 in January to 63,000 in September. Output was impressive, although the Ministry of Supply always felt it could have been better, including 170 warships and 1,500 Sterling heavy bombers and large numbers of flying boats from the Harland and Wolff and Shorts in Belfast. Factories manufactured parachutes at Carrickfergus, torpedoes at Antrim, ball bearings at Portadown, landing craft at Warrenpoint and clothing, tents and military equipment of all kinds throughout the province.
However, more important than the industrial contribution was perhaps the agricultural, where the whole structure was changed to meet war needs and conditions. The number of pigs fell from 627,000 to 247,000 as no suitable alternative to imported feedstuff could be found, but cattle numbers increased by 22% and poultry by 71%. The number of horses fell by over 12% as the number of tractors increased from 550 in 1939 to 7,000 in December 1944, allowing almost a doubling of acreage under tillage. Production of oats increased 42%, potatoes 26%, flax increased from 4,500 tons to 14,200 tons, Wheat from 3,000 to a peak of 12,000 before being allowed to decline to 2,000.

War again brought changes to working life, with women in Northern Ireland once more the beneficiaries. The total number of female insured workers in the six counties rose from 111,900 in 1939 to a wartime peak of 118,600 in 1943, with increased opportunities in the aircraft industry, and in rope and twine-making. While engineering firms before the war were almost exclusively male, with only 250 women to 21,500 men, by 1943 numbers had risen to 12,300 women and 44,000 men. Young women from all parts of Ireland also sought work in England during this period, receiving permits to take up employment as teachers, nurses, midwives, domestics in hospitals and hotels, or in munitions factories, cotton mills, transportation, or bus conducting

Life in the domestic arena was also affected by war. In Northern Ireland, the immediate rationing of petrol was soon followed by that of food, then clothes and shoes, and families in the neutral Free State did not escape. With any kind of shipping vulnerable to bombs, and isolated from any arrangements made by the Allies, Eire suffered from shortages of motor parts, machinery and, in particular, coal, with households limited by March 1941 to a quarter of a ton per month. The smell of damp turf revealed the alternative, and several schemes for turf production were implemented. Gas usage was limited to three one-hour sessions a day. Shortages of petrol meant a sharp reduction in train and bus services, and horses, carts and bicycles became more common modes of transport. Clothes and shoes were rationed from the summer of 1942, and many young women became accomplished in the skill of ‘painting stockings’ on their legs. A degree of cross-border enterprise was inevitable in this situation, with tea and sugar regularly smuggled down from the north in return for butter, eggs and bacon.

It seems that for the first eighteen months of the war, the more practical dangers to civilians were not taken seriously, with a good deal of laxity around blackouts and air raid shelters. Historians have confirmed that Belfast was completely unprepared for the German air raids, which eventually began in April 1941. The first raid, on the night of 7-8 April, which killed thirteen and injured eighty-one, to some extent shattered that air of complacency, with ‘everyone anxious to recount their reactions and experiences’. The night of 15-16 April, however, which saw many overcrowded residential areas receiving direct hits, was much more serious, with at least 900 deaths. Belfast was not the only northern area to suffer; Derry, Newtownards and Bangor also experienced devastating attacks. Nor did the Free State escape the indiscriminate devastation of bomb raids. On 26 August 1940, bombs killed three women working in a creamery in Campile, Co. Wexford, and another three died in the German bombing of Carlow in January 1941. Four months later thirty-four people lost their lives when parts of Amiens Street and North Strand in Dublin were flattened during air raids.
It does seem, however, that social life on the island carried on, particularly in the south, and in June 1942 the situation for young women in Northern Ireland livened up considerably with the arrival of some 3,900 American troops. Peaking at 37,000, this new transient population would inevitably have a major impact on local social and economic life. Dancehalls, cinemas and hotels competed for the custom of these relatively well off, dancing, smoking, poker-playing young men, while for many local women the war was transformed by the appearance of the ‘Yanks’. One commentator noted an influx of women from the south anxious to secure new nylon stockings, and romance—with passions intensified by war-time tensions—blossomed. When the war ended the American government initially stated they would not finance the journey to the U.S. of the new brides of servicemen. However, they relented in 1946 and sent a converted troop ship to bring 445 brides to a new life in the U.S., to be shortly followed by a further 219— another strand in the long history of Irish-American relationships.

In the Irish Free State in the immediate post-war era there was a modest improvement in the economy and personal expenditure rose by approximately 25%. The number of new cars registered increased from 2,848 in 1946 to 17,524 in 1950. At the other extreme, nylon stockings rocketed from a few thousands pairs imported during the war to an average of 230,000 pairs a year between 1946 and 1951. By 1948, although Fianna Fáil were now out of power, the public housing policy in Dublin was finally having an effect and inner-city slum dwellers were moved to new estates such as Kimmage, Ballyfermot and Finglas. This building boom did much to create employment in the construction industry. However, this turned out to be a false dawn and the buoyancy of the late 1940s only served to conceal the futility of the protectionist strategy adopted in 1932. The Irish balance of trade went into deficit in 1950 due to adverse terms for sterling, which devalued in 1948, and the effects of the Korean War. The Irish government, however, saw the deficit as a structural rather than a fundamental policy problem and adopted a series of ill-thought-out fiscal measures to restore balance.

While the gap between Northern Ireland and the Free State was growing in these post-war years, a widening gulf between urban and rural life was also clearly emerging in the Republic. In domestic terms this was most significantly reflected in the processes of electrification and of bringing supplies of running water to individual homes. Electrification had made steady progress in the early twentieth century, reaching most towns by 1931, with the vast majority of urban homes enjoying the benefits of instant light and heat by 1946. From the 1950s the electrification of rural areas became a major government concern, and as a result, over half of all rural households had electricity within ten years. The situation with water was very different. By 1946, almost 92% of urban homes had access to piped water and 35% had a fixed bath. In sharp contrast, over 90% of rural homes were still reliant on pumps or wells for running water, while less than 4% had a fixed bath. De Valera’s famous 1943 St Patrick’s day broadcast spoke of his ‘ideal Ireland’: full of sturdy children, athletic youths, and happy maidens, where even the firesides would be ‘forums for the wisdom of serene old age’. Evidence suggests, however, that this ‘dream’ was far from the reality of the experiences of many Irish men and women, who would continue to leave the country in droves.

In Northern Ireland the social problems of the inter-war years remained unresolved, but the climate in Britain was changing. The workers and soldiers had been kept in the war by promises of reform and improvement, and the Beveridge Report offered a vision of a new Welfare State caring for all ‘from the cradle to the grave’. The Northern Ireland Ministry of Home Affairs conducted a survey to assess housing needs and reported that 100,000 new homes were needed to meet the shortfall and that if a programme of slum clearance was intended then that number could be doubled. In 1944 a Ministry of Health and Local Government was established, and in 1945 the Housing Act (NI) made funds available to local authorities for new housing projects. It says much of the conservatism or realism of the Northern Ireland authorities that their target for the first ten years was not the minimum of 100,000 houses but 25,000. In July 1945 the British General Election produced a Labour Landslide and the government began to implement the Beveridge Report in a more comprehensive manner than perhaps its author had ever foreseen. Although now so much part of our lives we tend to take it for granted, at the time of its introduction such change was radical to the point of being revolutionary. This immense programme of social and economic reform was to have a huge impact in Northern Ireland. Although the conservative Unionists retained power in Belfast they could not afford a split with the new socialist government. In any case, more radical elements within in Unionists party argued their working-class supporters would accept nothing less than the British System. Between 1946 and 1949, under a complex series of agreements, the provisions of the Welfare State were extended to the Northern Irish people, with London agreeing to absorb a considerable proportion of the extra expenditure.

By the end of the Second World War the social, economic and cultural gaps between Northern Ireland and the Republic were firmly established. But at least some of the patterns which had been established, particularly in matters of housing, education and employment in the north, would have serious ramifications as the twentieth century progressed. Similarly, while the experiment in economic self-sufficiency had undoubtedly failed in the Republic, it would be some time before Irish Catholic nationalism shed its inward-looking and conservative mantle.

Dr Myrtle Hill & Dr John Lynch