This chapter, central in ail senses, traces the way in which the pre-war stalemate between Ireland and Westminster over urban housing policy was transformed during the course of the First World War. At the outbreak of hostilities with Germany in August 1914, the prime concerns of the British Government and the Castle Administration became the repression of anti-war propaganda and the promotion of the recruitment campaign. The Home Rule Act was passed but put on ice for the duration of the war, and the Irish Party showed its loyalty by recommending enlistment and support for the war effort. A policy of state retrenchment was introduced that severely restricted Irish rural and municipal house building, and was to make new measures like the 1914 Housing (No.2) Act irrelevant. However, the 1916 Easter Rising was to prove a decisive turning point. From this moment on, first the Castle Administration and then Westminster took control of Irish state housing, and began to use the issue as a political tool in initiatives such as the 1917-18 Irish
Convention. Ireland was thus the crucible where Lloyd George's post-war policy of using housing for political ends was first expounded. Whilst few dwellings were actually built in war-time Ireland, the involvement of British officials reinforced a move towards garden suburb design in schemes by Dublin Corporation. By the end of the First World War, the British Government regarded housing as a key strategy in its search for a solution to the thorny question of Irish Home Rule.
5 .1 War-time retrenchment in Irish urban housing policy
The prospects for Irish urban housing at the start of the First World War were not
promising. Two new initiatives emanating from Britain, the 1914 Housing (No.2) Act and then the housing programme of the Ministry of Munitions, made no impact on Ireland. The Housing (No.2) Act was introduced in late-1914 by the British Government to meet
Parliamentary demands for a safeguard against potential unemployment in the building industry. ^ A sum of £4,000,000 was allocated to the English Local Government Board and the Board of Agriculture, to lend to local authorities or public utility societies for housing purposes up till 31 August 1915. The Chancellor of Exchequer, Lloyd George, pledged that loans would receive a grant-in-aid from the Exchequer but only to meet war time inflation in the cost of building materials; duly he announced a 10% free grant plus 90% loan at 4.25% interest over 60 years to local authorities, and a 10% free grant plus 80% loan at 5% interest over 60 years to other agencies. The Treasury, however, strongly
opposed the Housing (No.2) Act, and in particular the prospect of subsidy. Hence it issued a minute in December 1914 stating that grants would be for exceptional cases only, and were intended to relieve chronic unemployment rather than housing need. This was simply a Treasury pretext to use the strict terms of eligibility, in having to prove
"exceptional and insistent distress" in an area due to lack of building employment, as the means to refuse all loan applications.^ Since the anticipated war-time unemployment did not arise, the 1914 Housing (No.2) Act remained a dead letter.
A potential threat to the Treasury's intentions came from the determination of the Irish Party, backed by Dublin Corporation and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities of Ireland, to exploit the Housing (No.2) Act as the long-desired augmentation in urban subsidy under the Irish Housing Fund. The IPP's spokesman, J.J. Clancy, told Parliament that in Ireland "the problem of increased unemployment is greater and the housing conditions worse than in Great Britain."^ Chief Secretary Birrell was pressured to secure an extending Act, known as the 1914 Housing No.2 (Amendment) Act, to cover Ireland. There followed a dramatic rush in loan applications from Irish municipalities.'^ But when the Castle Administration applied in September 1914 for Ireland's share of the allocated loan fund (estimated at around £350,000), the Treasury sharply reminded them that the measure "is not intended as the foundation of a general housing scheme for which the present time is obviously most inopportune."^ Dismayed, Clancy wrote bluntly to the Treasury on 7 October 1914:
"I am writing now, at the instance and with the sanction of Mr John Redmond, and I say that there really ought to be no higgling and haggling in this matter. The state of things here is too serious to be considered from the mere usual point of view, and the reasons for giving the grant to Ireland which is asked for are so plain that I need not refer to them. I believe that my views on that subject will be fully confirmed by the Local Government Board for Ireland the seriousness of this matter from every point is so great that I hope that, in the public interest, no delay will be made in announcing a satisfactory answer from the Treasury."^
The Treasury reiterated that the Housing (No.2) Act was purely a temporary relief measure, and that "Ireland will be treated in no way differently from England, Scotland, or Wales."^ Several Irish municipalities then drew up detailed applications; the most authoritative coming from Dublin Corporation in March 1915 with testimonies from the Building Trades Employers' Association and the RIAI as to the likely unemployment in the local building trades during the forthcoming year.^ Not surprisingly, the Treasury refused the claim, causing the Sinn Fein Chairman of Dublin Corporation's Housing Committee, Alderman Thomas Kelly, to declare in exasperation "that the Housing (No.2) Act, 1914, about which there was such a great flourish of trumpets, was merely a make-believe and a sham.
Much of the acrimony was directed at the ILGB, but the real source of intransigence lay in the Treasury and therefore the British Government.
Ireland fared little better out of the major programme of state housing by the Ministry of Munitions after its inception in June 1915. It was the cottages built by this department that received the first state subsidy in Britain, and which consolidated garden suburb design as the new orthodoxy. In Ireland there was a shortage of facilities and resources suitable for munitions production, and political opposition to the war made it risky to produce armaments there. At the height of the war there were only around 14,500 munitions workers in Ireland (although many went to work in British factories), and thus the Irish sub-department of the Ministry of Munitions had little to do.^ ^ The two large centres of production were in Belfast shipyards and the Kynochs Cordite Works at Arklow, Co. Wexford. The former was renowned as a well-housed city, and so the only actual
munitions scheme in Ireland appears to have been 112 cottages for explosives' workers in Arklow. These dwellings pre-dated the programme of the Ministry of Munitions, and were built by Arklow UDC using a £13,500 public in November 1914 once the Treasury had abandoned its insistence on temporary dwellings. New municipal cottages were permitted "on the understanding that the buildings to be erected will not be in excess of the normal requirements of the D i s t r i c t . " Subsequently, however, the Treasury fought off an
attempt to revive a scheme for a 'garden village' at nearby Gorey for workers commuting to Arklow. And when further local housing need was identified in October 1915, the Castle Administration recommended to the Irish branch of the Ministry of Munitions that they simply lend £ 3,000 to the factory owners for a 300-bed temporary hostel. It is not clear whether this hostel was ever built, but certainly nothing came of a later application by Arklow UDC to the Ministry of Munitions in February 1917, asking for a £20,000 grant for up to 200 permanent c o t t a g e s . B y this point, the building of munitions housing through the agency of local authorities had anyway been abandoned in Britain.
In lieu of positive housing initiatives from Westminster, state housing in Ireland dwindled with the onset of war. Despite a further grant of £1,000,000 under the 1914 Labourers Act, the rural programme was greatly reduced. Only around 1,100 rural cottages were built each year from 1914-18, compared to an annual average of 3,500 in the four preceding years [Diagram A; Table U].^^ Chief Secretary Birrell and the Castle Administration went along with a Treasury stipulation that only those rural schemes that had already been sanctioned should now be completed. The Treasury also announced in October 1914 that the limit for Irish public loans in the next financial year was to be cut to only £600,000, rather than the £700,000 previously envisaged. The President of the Irish Board of Works warned that "it would be extremely awkward if the smaller sum proved insufficient, and
particularly if loans for Housing of the Working Classes (a burning question here) had to be refused or delayed." The Treasury thus reluctantly permitted loans for urban housing to receive favoured status. Dublin Corporation were granted a sum of £43,500 in
December 1914 to commence its three most developed schemes, and the Irish Party leader, John Redmond, also secured a loan of £23,000 for Waterford Corporation to proceed with an estate of 38 single-storey cottages in Trinity Square, Ballybricken (1915-17). The latter loan, however, was only agreed by the Treasury on condition that Redmond used his influence over Nationalist municipalities to curb future urban housing applications.^^ Such voluntary restraint was not forthcoming: so when Dublin Corporation asked in April 1915 for a further £31,980 to build the scheme in Beresford Street/Church Street, the Treasury finally decided to extend to Ireland the moratorium on local authority expenditure already in operation in Britain. They called for Cabinet support on the matter
"Our position in regard to Irish finance is stronger in so far as practically all the Irish authorities have recourse to the Local Loans Fund and do not (or cannot) borrow in the open market; it is weaker in so far as the Departments there are in alliance with the borrowers and hostile to economy. Our appeal to them to suspend current works (which cover a large proportion of the expenditure) would therefore be ineffective unless the decision was put to them as the decision of His Majesty's Government."!^
The Treasury were duly empowered to send a directive to the Castle Administration on 21 April 1915 imposing a moratorium on all public loans, and this decision was notified to Irish local authorities through an ILGB Circular in early May.20 Contrary to Treasury suspicions about the loyalty of Irish Departments, the latter fully supported retrenchment now that it was official Government policy. The ILGB assiduously turned down all new applications for rural cottages under the Labourers Acts, and even sought to cancel existing contracts wherever possible. The Under Secretary for Ireland, Sir Matthew Nathan, pointed out the political sensitivity of pursuing a hard-line policy at a time of widespread anti-British feeling, but on balance the Treasury doubted "that a temporary suspension of new schemes would provoke a revolution."21 In terms of urban housing, the Vice- President of the ILGB, Sir Henry Robinson, observed that:
"As regards Public Health and Town Housing loans we have, to all intents and purposes, shut down inexorably on them, and are very glad to do so, as Ireland hardly realizes the seriousness of the situation and the only way to put a stop to their anti-recruiting
blackguardism is to make the people over here feel the inconvenience and trial of the war. "22
The ILGB's housing expert thus reminded Dublin Corporation at an inquiry in July 1915 that, because of the war, "the claims on public resources for even so urgent a matter as the housing of the working classes in Dublin should be subordinated to other claims of an unprecedented and dominating character on the energies and financial abilities of every
part of the Em pire."^ The net outcome was a further decline in Labourers Acts schemes, and a dramatic fall in Irish municipal house-building from mid-1915 [Diagram D; Table Y].24 The complacency of the Castle Administration on the urban housing issue was shown by their lack of interest in the 1915 Rent Act (which prohibited war-time rent increases on dwellings with rateable values of up to £26, or £35 in London). The Under Secretary merely observed that rent control was not a burning issue in Ireland, because the departure of soldiers to the front and munitions workers to Britain meant that housing demand and thus pressure on rents was, if anything, on the wane.^5 And when an unnamed wealthy citizen offered to lend money to Dublin Corporation for housing purposes. Sir Matthew Nathan argued that such funds would be better diverted to the war effort. 26
Yet the desire of the Castle Administration to impose thrift in Irish housing was threatened by British Government's need to retain the support of the Irish Party in the recruitment drive. This conflict came to a head when the ILGB, after carefully preparing the ground, informed John Redmond in August 1915 that the payment of the remaining £17,000 loan to Waterford Corporation was now to be postponed until after the war. The ILGB requested the Treasury "that if John Redmond tackles your parliamentary chiefs you won't give way again", and the Treasury Remembrancer in Ireland declared that if the ILGB were over ruled then "we shall be unable, 1 am afraid, to put the almost complete stopper on local loans which 1 had hoped for: because all the arguments in favour of Waterford apply - and in some cases with much greater force - to other places."27 However, John Redmond privately threatened the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, E.S. Montagu, that if "the promise publicly given is broken, there will be very serious trouble in the City of
Waterford, and 1, personally, will be put into a position of extreme embarrassment. "28 Montagu therefore agreed a special loan of £5,000 for Waterford Corporation to continue its housing work, and Redmond tactfully asked local Nationalist councillors "that no public splash be made about this at all. "29 [t was a political concession that greatly angered the Castle Administration, for it meant that the strategy of imposing a moratorium on urban housing loans had been effectively sunk. Faced by a renewed wave of applications, the ILGB introduced another tactic in late-1915. It now told Dublin Corporation to borrow on the open market to carry out schemes at Spitalfields and the McCaffrey Estate, hoping that high war-time interest rates would deter municipal building. The new policy was justified by the ILGB's Vice-President, Sir Henry Robinson, on the grounds that:
"many of these Boroughs are packed with Sinn Feiners who are openly anti-British and who declare that the war is no concern of theirs and that no Irishman has any interest or reason in fighting England's battles and should not be asked to enlist It is a very good object lesson to these people to let them see how they are affected by the war."^^
The attempt by the Castle Administration to turn off the tap of public funds provoked a swift response. An Irish Party deputation led by Redmond and Clancy met the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reginald McKenna, on 16 November 1915 to demand an urgent housing loan of £35,500 for Dublin Corporation. A plethora of documents were submitted in support of the application, including a pamphlet written by the Corporation that declared: "Countless millions are being spent on the prosecution of a war to which Dublin alone has sent some 14,000 men to fight the Empire's battle Are they to find the Empire’s gratitude on their return represented in the refusal of the Government to allow the
Corporation to lift their wives and children from the horrors of life in dilapidated tenement houses or cellar dwellings into the atmosphere of light and life in a sanitary, self-contained comfortable home ?"^1
Unaware of the ILGB's ruling that housing loans had to be raised on the open market, the Chancellor of the Exchequer approved a loan of £25,000 to buy sites at Ormond Market, Spitalfields and the McCaffrey Estate. The ILGB again complained bitterly that "it is very hard for us to force the Treasury policy of retrenchment upon the local authorities when ministers make promises in individual cases without first hearing what we have to say in the matter. "^2 The Treasury, realizing that the IPP deputation had been a 'try-on' that successfully exploited the lack of communication between Dublin Castle and Westminster, resolved in future to back the ILGB. They were compelled to grant one further loan of £15,750 to Dublin Corporation to buy a site at Fairbrothers Fields, since the expenditure had already been sanctioned. But the Treasury made it clear that this was intended as the last housing loan that would be made to Irish municipalities during the war. Thus by March
1916, despite dire warnings of social unrest from the Irish Party, Dublin Trades Council, and journals such as the Irish Builder, the Castle Administration and the British
Government had imposed strict retrenchment on urban housing.^^ It took the dramatic events of Easter 1916 to alter the course of British housing policy in Ireland.
5 .2 The aftermath o f the 1916 Easter Rising
The outbreak of rebellion in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 came as a surprise to the Castle Administration, and highlighted their ineffectiveness in either controlling the supply of arms or in foreseeing the extent of anti-British opposition in Ireland.^^ The abortive uprising was led by a conjunction of hard-line nationalists from the Irish Volunteers and the outlawed Irish Republican Brotherhood, along with socialists from James Connolly's Citizens Army. Although the insurgents made swift gains, the rebellion was firmly crushed by the British Army within a week. The bombardment of the GPO building in
Lower Sackville Street led to the surrender of the rebels' headquarters, and Ireland was immediately subjected to martial law under the firm hand of General Maxwell. The Easter Rising was in effect a futile 'blood sacrifice' with little support at the time. Yet it proved significant for two reasons: firstly, because outrage against the Government's swift execution of the rebel leaders appears to have driven many towards sympathy with Sinn Fein; and secondly, because the Rising foreshadowed the coalition of extreme nationalists and labour elements in the post-war nationalist movement. The participation of radical socialists was precipitated by a revulsion against imperial militarism, lucidly shown in their