And now, instead of engaging with where I was being ‘dishonest’ in your view, you’re throwing in strawmen about Noonan and Hepatitis C.

Fuck me CDG. Here. Let me do you a favour.

Have a read of Mary E. Daly’s ‘Industrial Development and Irish National Identity, 1922-1939′. It’s not on the web so you can’t google it, so you’re going to have to go off and find it in a library and read it.

In it, Daly makes the argument - and quite a strong one it is too - that despite all of Cumann Na nGaedheal’s faults, they were pragmatists - and for her that’s the bottom line.

Joe Lee, in his book, Ireland 1912-1985, is a lot more critical of Cumann Na nGaedheal, yet he also falls on the side of ‘well they were pragmatists’.

Now, maybe you’ll find it easier to engage with scholarly work which already reflects your world-view, I don’t know, but at least if you’ve read them, you’ll have an actual analysis based on a reading of the facts, instead of this dribble about Noonan and hepatitis, and how Marino was “hardly an examploe of subsidised middle-class housing”, and what you think I may or may not think. Oh, and soyabeans for some reason. (flats and soyabeans? WTF?)

“maybe you think it was subsidised middle-class housing, though McManus obviously doesn’t since she refers to it as “working-class”.”

Ugh! you haven’t even read McManus’ article. I dunno.

Yeah, listen, there’s some really good ammo in Daly AND Lee. Their summation of Cumann Na nGaedheal’s tenure in office is a lot closer to where you are coming from, and, unlike you, they’ve done the work to argue the case they are making.

forget about McManus. The fact that she uses the phrase “working-class” is obviously causing your brain to short-circuit. Go with Lee and Daly instead. you’ll like them because you already agree with them.

Any chance you can do that, CDG? Any chance you can raise your game and actually engage with the reality of Ireland in the 1920s based on a critical analysis of the facts?

I am not saying Cumann na nGaedhael were perfect and cutting the pension was perhaps excessive (I am sure you have done your research on the effects of the cut) and no doubt you can link Ernest Blythe’s cut to Michael Noonan’s attempt to limit the costs to the state of the Hepatitis C debacle. But, how much better would we be if the country had been run by people like Blythe and Noonan for the last 15 years?

Because, if you think Ruth McManus believes that ‘Marino may only have been affordable by the most well paid of the working-class but that is not the issue here’ when the issue we are talking about is Cumann Na nGaedheal and how it approached the working class in the 1920s, then you’re able to read your view-point into anything.

“Marino may only have been affordable by the most well paid of the working-class but that is not the issue here.”

Yeah. That’s what Red Forts says alright. That’s the kernel there. A clear and concise reading of that article.

Fuck me. “Marino may only have been affordable by the most well paid of the working-class but that is not the issue here.”

I dunno. I despair for our youth. I ask for an alternative analysis - one that counters mine - and I get a weblink and a cut and paste from a PDF I put up on the web in the first place. The motorskills of undergrads these days. At least you haven’t given us wikipedia. yet.

The above was from ‘Blue Collars, “Red Forts” and Green Fields: Working Class Housing in Ireland in the Twentieth Century’.

Marino may only have been affordable by the most well paid of the working-class but that is not the issue here.

I await your book with interest.

CDG, I don’t need to find them, I already know them, and I know how they fit in with the wage rates in Dublin at the time.

what I find funny is the idea that you have that Marino “was hardly an example of the Free State subsidising middle class housing” - which contradicts the work of people like Dr. Ruth McManus of DCU and Professor Murray Fraser of the University of Westminster, who have written extensively on the issue of Irish working class and middle class housing.

Seems that you’re good at googling, why don’t you google their names and see what you’re up against when you claim that Marino “was hardly an example of the Free State subsidising middle class housing”?

you could try reading their books as well. Just a thought.

Really? Are you sure about that? Tell me what you know about the Marino scheme. what was the criteria for selection?

how much did one have to have saved to qualify? and where did this income criteria fall within the working class wage scale of 1924?

how much did the houses cost, and where did this cost fall in relation to the working class wage scale of 1924?

you tell me about the Marino scheme and where it fell in relation to the wage levels of the Dublin working classes.

go for it. Show me how much you know about the Marino scheme.

The Marino scheme is mentioned in passing above - hardly an example of the Free State subsidisng middle-class housing. Nor should the Shannon Scheme be forgotten, the most successful development project in the history of the state.

One of the things about the history of the Irish working class in the 26 counties is the very real split in the Labour movement between Labour and Fianna Fail. It’s hard to say whether a formal merger would have created a social democratic political system, but it certainly would have given it a fighting chance.

It’s for another day and another post but the ideological heartbeat of the southern working class was (and probably still is) Republicanism. Fianna Fáil, and James Connolly, understood this, and Fianna Fail gain power in 1932 with the type of combination which historians like Richard English claim is impossible - that is, labour/left-republicanism. One could argue that the history of the Irish Labour Party is an example of what happens to a trade union party in Ireland which rejects republicanism - it ends up sucking blueshirt c**k.

mind you, the Irish Labour Party is on the verge of rejecting trade unionism so maybe it should just merge with FG and be done with it.

Quick question: did the housing subsidy scheme referred to above have the goal of creating a class of people ‘with a stake in the country’ who could provide a new social base for the new Free State regime?

Speaking of which, it’s a commonplace to speak of ‘the Stormont regime’ when referring to the North, yet we never speak of ‘the Leinster House regime’ in relation to down here. Maybe we should.