DAVE MANSBLL issue has been as much of a weapon at elections in the South as in the North-East so that the Irish Labour Party has always been a poor third to the two rival nationalist parties which emerged as the contenders far power out of the civil war in the South in 1922/3. In the military struggle which followed the Dail Eireann's secession from the British regirne in Ireland, the I.R.A. was used as much to prevent takeovers by the landless of the property of the landed bourgeoisie in the South, as to hold the South against the British troops and auxiliaries. The dominant figure in the I.R.A. power structure was Michael Collins, who along with Arthur Griffith, as the representative of the large land-owners and finance capital in the South. Although the Dail was, from the separatist base was among the small farmers and manufacturers and the defeated working class, was at best in a position of dual power with Collins and Griffith. The incursion of the I.R.A. into the North in the spring and sumrner of 1920 carne after a period of strong class struggle in Belfast. There had been a massive engineering strike in January/February 1919 which had brought industry in the city to a standstill far four weeks. The leader of the predorninantly Protestant strikers had been a Catholic, and this resurgence of non-sectarian working-class unity seerned to last until the local government elections in January 1920 when twelve non-Unionist Labour councillors were elected. The local Ulster Unionist leaders had already tried to preempt labour dissidence in Belfast by the foundation of an Ulster Unionist Labour Association affiliated to the Ulster Unionist Council, which was theoretically the mediurn of expression of the views of Labour Unionists within the U.U.e., and whose duty it was " ... to expose the real aims and objects of Socialism and other anti-British movernents", but it never achieved any penetration arnong the Ulster Protestant working class, so the spectre of socialism regaining strength amongst the Belfast workers truly appalled the Unionist leaders. The I.R.A., however, carne to their rescue by their intervention allowing them to incite sectarianism. The progrorns of "republicans" and "Sinn Feiners" (i.e. all Catholics) started in the shipyards, the base of the most militant sector of the Ulster workers. These "unofficial" measures were strengthened by the setting up of an armed special constabulary, the "A", "B" and "C" specials, of whom only the second survived, until their disbandment by the British government during the most recent phase of "troubles". 52
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