This is a vital, short book on an overlooked Irish radical socialist, James ‘Dongaree’ Baird. Emmet O’Connor describes him as ‘one of that extraordinary cohort of agitators’ created in Ireland by the syndicalist, revolutionary trade unionism and unrest in the period 1917–23 (xi). Baird was a boilermaker in the Belfast shipyards, took part in ‘the 44’ engineering strike in 1919 and was elected to Belfast Corporation in January 1920. In early 1920, Baird gained his epithet when he wore his workplace dongarees to Belfast Corporation Council Chambers, but he went on to have a labour agitator career in southern Ireland. Yet, this explosive career ended just as quickly: Baird and his family left Ireland in 1927. In this monograph-length case study, O’Connor presents an in-depth discussion of Baird’s political career in the Irish labour movement.
O’Connor’s synoptic and case study analyses have influenced the shape of the field on the island. This book is an interesting contribution. It is especially strong when discussing the Irish labour movement, its complex interaction with British trade unionism and the ebbs and flows of politics within trade unionism. The detail O’Connor offers here is superb. The re-construction of Baird’s career alone justifies the publication of this work. O’Connor’s discussion of the Expelled Workers’ Relief Committee and Baird’s lobbying of trade unions on behalf of the victims of expulsion in 1920–21, is particularly important. It has added detail to the labour and trade union response to the expulsions and political violence of the north between 1920 and 1922. O’Connor also presents fascinating detail about Baird’s biography such as the fact that he was a member of the Rechabite Friendly Society and, hence, a teetotaller.
Overall, the book offers an excellent contextualisation of Baird’s life. It begins with a description of Baird’s early life, his education and family. But throughout, O’Connor accompanies narrative presentation with analytical and thematic analysis. For example, having charted some of Baird’s biography, O’Connor describes where Baird worked — the Belfast shipyards. This workplace was ‘caste-conscious and [an] aggressively Protestant environment’ (14). There is a nuanced description of how conservative politics and religion were combined with the ‘bedrock forces’ of trade unionism and loyalism in the shipyards of Belfast (xii). Furthermore, Baird in the early 1920s moved from a more traditional craft trade union, the Boilermakers, to the syndicalist, new trade unionism of the Irish Transport & General Workers’ Union (ITGWU). Baird’s union, the Boilermakers, commonly created radicals in Britain: Harry Pollitt, the Communist Party of Great Britain’s secretary for many years, was a member of the union. However, in the north, this was far less common. Baird also travelled across Britain and Ireland between 1920 and 1922 lobbying trade unions to support the expellees caused by political violence in the north and was a roving agricultural official for the ITGWU between 1923 and 1924. The structure of O’Connor’s study reflects Baird’s varied career in the 1920s and is an excellent example of a transnational, cross-border political biography. The study also makes use of an excellent range of sources from archives across Britain and Ireland. Newspapers, official reports, private papers and contemporary publications are all used in a comprehensive fashion. O’Connor, as would be expected of a long-standing expert, is especially strong on the trade union and labour history, but the social and political analysis demonstrated is well written.
O’Connor also makes a significant contribution to historiographical debate. First, the title of this book, Rotten Prod, alludes to the historiographical debate about northern workers, Protestantism and radical politics. According to O’Connor, some historians, such as Conor Morrissey, have argued for a ‘dissident, democratic, and republican tradition among non-conformists’, while Aaron Edwards and Connal Parr provide a list of radical or socialist Protestants significant to the history of the northern labour movement, and James Greer and Graham Walker present evidence for ‘awkward Prods’: moderate dissident Protestants whose radicalism was influenced by their religious and ethnic identity (xiv). O’Connor further develops his exploration of the historiography by citing Walker as the exemplar of the ‘Rotten Prod’ tradition. For O’Connor, this amounted to little more than an Irish reflection of conventional Labourism. Secondly, O’Connor’s discussion of the Expelled Workers’ Relief Committee is, again, excellent. The detailed discussion he presents of those events is an important contribution to our knowledge of the period. Thirdly, the book’s discussion of loyalism and reactionary working-class politics is also important. O’Connor relates the development of the Ulster Unionist Labour Association with the development of right-wing, sympathetic movements across Britain.
However, there are two areas in the book that could have been further developed. First, how do we define sectarianism? Is it an ethnic conflict, a religious dispute and/or a political conflict? Without a clear definition, it is not possible to conclude that O’Connor’s analysis is persuasive. For example, O’Connor claims that catholics were excluded from the shipyards in the 1920 expulsions on account of their religion and Protestants for their politics (xv). Therefore, the question of whether politics accounts for these expulsions is asserted rather than demonstrated. Similarly, a definition of loyalism would have further enhanced the study. Is loyalism a working-class expression of unionism or something different? Despite O’Connor highlighting that the twin bedrock forces of Belfast’s shipyards were trade unionism and loyalism (xii), we are left feeling further discussion of loyalism was necessary. For example, one of Baird’s contemporaries — William McMullen, elected Northern Irish Labour Party MP for Belfast West in 1925 — stated in Northern Ireland’s House of Commons on 9 December 1925 that Ulster Unionists were ‘conditional loyalists’.
Overall, this book is an important contribution to Irish industrial, labour and political history. It develops an overlooked twentieth-century Irish biography and highlights the political sophistication of the actors of the period. It is exceptionally strong at combining narrative and analysis, and provides important detail on the social history of the period. The structure is clear and coherent, and the writing style complements the topic superbly. However, some opportunities have been missed. For example, gender, masculinity and loyalty could all have been employed further as modes of analysis, along with ethnicity, race, and Britishness. This does not undermine the significant contribution to historical knowledge this short work delivers.
