Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921–39: The Moral Economy of Loyalty by Christopher J. V. Loughlin (review)

The North of Ireland was historically the most heavily industrialized part of the island. The shipbuilding and linen factories that were critical to that industrialization were centered around Belfast, which emerged in the nineteenth century as an important city of the British Empire. However, the development of working-class politics was troubled by the national question of independence. Marx and Engels, for instance, supported selfdetermination for Ireland. In addition, religion also intersected with the emergence of class politics: the industrialized northeast corner of the island had been "planted" and settled by Protestants from the seventeenth century, and its overall ethno-religious political culture, outlook, and aspirations became distinct from (most of) the rest of Ireland.

The partition of Ireland in 1921 consolidated these differences. In this important new work, Christopher Loughlin takes that critical juncture as his starting point for considering the development and constraints facing leftist politics in Belfast up to the beginning of the Second World War. Although working-class politics have begun to receive renewed attention among historians and cultural studies scholars in recent years, Loughlin's monograph responds to a gap in research in terms of local history, periodization, and theoretical insight. Drawing on an impressive array of archival sources, he revisits the secondary literature and marshals his arguments and material in a compelling and lucid style.

The book might be characterized as a work in a minor key. As he explains in his conclusion, the work substantially revises his PhD research that was conducted at Queen's University, Belfast. He points out that whereas the latter suggested that "labour failed in Belfast but did also register some success," the present monograph explores the spectrum of ethno-political forces that tilted the playing field from the start and ensured that "labour and class politics could not have won" (141). "Decisions made in London," he argues, "resulted in a regionalised state and a peculiar political culture. In this regionalised culture, the power holders become self-perpetuating, utilising an essentially plebiscitary democracy" (142). He explains that the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) outbid the Left ideologically as well as outflanked it electorally through the move from proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PRSTV) to first-past-the-post. Thereby, the UUP won "dominance without hegemony" by the end of the 1930s (140).

Loughlin's book is based on a number of case studies that illustrate the constraints and problems labor in Belfast faced from the time of the founding of the northern state. Chapter 1 represents an overview of the secondary literature and, in and of itself, ought to be required reading for any postgraduate research on the region. Loughlin warns against the ambiguous use of the term "hegemony" to apply to the northern state: "The UUP administration of Northern Ireland created a dominance in the region, but it lacked democratic legitimacy and hegemony" (20). His subtitle references the concept of "moral economy" developed by E. P. Thompson, suggestive as it is of deeply held convictions about the legitimacy of beliefs and customs drawn from their alleged prevalence within a community. The dis/loyalty aspect of his thesis comes in particular from the work of D. W. Miller, who first unpacked the seemingly paradoxical ideological basis of Ulster Unionism, which professed loyalty to the Crown but remained intensely suspicious of Westminster. As Loughlin, interestingly, points out, part of the moral economy of this paradox is the articulation of a politics of difference—a distinction from Catholic nationalists and an assertion of lawfulness even in the context of rebelling against the government (29).

The issue for labor was how to negotiate this tricky ideological territory. Drawing on a range of primary and newspaper sources, Loughlin demonstrates that the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) struggled to traverse that terrain, sometimes quite literally. On one occasion, a Sunday rally...