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of Dublin form two-and-a-half days "task work' a week- mainly mending roads etc.

Even then there was never enough work to go round and men had to take turns on the schemes. Whoever didn't get the task work was paid in kind that week-in which case, the rent or gas bills couldn't be paid. Single men got nothing unless they secured some task work. Then they got three shillings and sixpence a week.

Women had even rights.

Employed

In 1932, unemployment in Northern Ireland stood at 28% of the population, 45,000 (17%) of whom were in Belfast.

Harland and Wolff shipbuilders failed to launch a single vessel during 1932 or 1933 and employed only 4,000 workers (compared to 20,000 in 1924).

The other major shipyard, Workman Clark's closed down in 1934. The crisis hit the skilled Protestant workers as hard as it did the Catholics.

Agitation began in late 1930 by the Revolutionary Workers' Group, (who later formed the Irish CP) began to have some effect. During the summer of 1932, the Belfast R.W.G.-led by Tommy Geehan-organised an Outdoor Relief Workers' Committee, and held a series of mass rallies during August and September.

Strike vote

On September 24. the ODR Workers' Committee voted to strike on October 4. Flying pickets stopped men taking up the task work, and that evening some 60,000 workers marched through The following day 7,000 unemployed workers marched to the workhouse where the Poor Law Guardians were meeting, and outlined their demands: a minimum of 15/3d for a single man: 13/6d for a single woman-all payment to be made in cash: the abolition of the means test and an end to all task work.

On Wednesday there were clashes with the police in both Protestant and Catholic parts of the city.

On Friday the Guardians promised a 50% increase in the rates-with al payments in cash. But this compromise was rejected by the strikers who called for a series of demonstrations on October 12.

Again clashes with the police occurred. One man was shot dead and fourteen Ppened fire on a crowd in the wounded when the Falls Road. As this news The Man in Ja Election poster for Griffiths Spread barricades were erected in the staunchly Protestant Shankhill Road-an indication of the class unity existing at the time.

On October 14, the Guardians offered to double the rates and to modify the means test.

Although these concessions did not meet the strikers'demands, they represented important gains, and on Monday October 19 the strikers returned to work.

As in 1919, this class unity was to prove extremely fragile. Sectarian riots in 1935 reversed the modest but significant steps in the direction of such unity in 1932.

But both 1919 and 1939 prove that working class unity can be forged in and that it is not a utopian dream as the I-CL, RCG, or IMG would believe.

Striven

That unity is not spontaneously given to the working class of Ireland-it must be striven for consciously. The battles over Outdoor Relief are of significance precisely in that respect, for that unity did not emerge overnight but was prepared for by the activities of the Revolutionary Group in the years preceding.

Although their programme was severely limited, (and was ultimately-via the formation of the CPI-to prove treacherous) their achievements of that period remain today an important example of what could be achieved by a communist organisation Ireland. Although the polorisation of the Catholic and Protestant working class has undoubtedly intensified as a result of the events since 1968, we in the WL still see a possibility of the revolutionary reunification of the working class throughout all Ireland.

Extends Such unity can only be forged on the basis of a revolutionary program me which extends beyond economic issues alone. The RWG were unable in 1932 to point out the real political lessons of the 1932 strike, caught up as they were in the single issues of the ODR. Nor were the left Republicans-who tried to form an anti-imperialist 'United Front' lin 1934 (the Irish Republican Congress)-capable of such a development.

As a result both organisations were unable to intervene decisively in political events in the North or South.

When the Spanish Civil War erupted many of the best militants from each group went off to fight with the

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Belfast demanding 'work and wages, not charity'

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