An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950. .

An Irish Working Class: Explorations in Political Economy and Hegemony, 1800-1950. By Marilyn Silverman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. xiii plus 566 pp. $85.00).

Since the pioneering work of historians like Keith Thomas and Natalie Davis, social historians have generally accepted that we can learn much from anthropologists. Based on this work however, the cross- fertilization has been one-way. In this very detailed historical ethnography of the working classes in Thomastown, County Kilkenny from 1800 to 1950, Marilyn Silverman frequently suggests that she is improving on the work of historians who have ignored complexity and metissage. But instead of actually engaging with recent work in Irish history, Silverman simply uses these unnamed historians as strawmen. The relative scarcity of secondary works in her bibliography reinforces the suspicion that unread historians make easier targets.

Not only does Silverman's failure to consider recent work in Irish social history weaken her argument, it also greatly weakens her text. Careful consideration of the work of scholars such as David Fitzpatrick, Samuel Clark and James Donnelly would have provided a much needed context for her very detailed research in local archives. Using newspapers, oral interviews, and local records Silverman examines the lives of workers in Thomastown in a quest for an explanation of how political and economic hegemony is formed and maintained. In the nineteenth century chapters she focuses on the petty sessions and disputes over fishing rights. The twentieth century material expands to include national political issues and the efforts of the Irish Labour Party. Silverman did an enormous amount of primary research. However her efforts are seriously hampered by the lack of a larger context. Her focus remains strictly local and for national context she relies heavily on one book dating from 1973.

In addition to ignoring recent work in Irish social history, Silverman also overlooks much of the recent research which has helped simultaneously to clarify and complicate the history of class. Silverman uses the "labouring class," "labour" and "Labour" as if the terms were synonymous which they most clearly are not, as much of her evidence demonstrates, Silverman assumes that the working class exists as a distinct entity and that its true interests lie in a radical restructuring of society. It is strange in 2002 to read a book detailing the false consciousness of the Irish working class. The scholarship of the past few decades has demonstrated that the aspirations, ambitions and experiences of workers were considerably more diverse than the designation "working class" can encompass. The most valuable sections of her book come towards the end when she discusses the local politics of the Irish Labour party between 1922 and 1950 using oral history to complement documentary evidence. But even here the work lacks context and Silverman conflates Labour as a political party with laborers as a group. In Ireland, as in England and elsewhere the ideology of the Labour Party was far more reflective of the ideas of journalists and intellectuals than the beliefs of actual workers. Assuming the ideological differences represent a "failure" on the part of the workers is presumptuous.

The book is also hampered by the frequent substitution of jargon for analysis. After nearly 500 pages of extremely detailed information Silverman's conclusion deals more with theory in its most abstract form than with her own research and is more a defense of her methods than an interpretation. Her methods do need explanation. One particularly confusing technique is the presentation of "cases." The cases are set off from the main text, but rather than individual incidents or primary documents, they are summaries of events and statements. Quoted (but uncited) primary material is intermingled with her own words in ways not readily distinguishable from the use of primary material in the text itself. However, an explanation of the book's structure and intent would be far more useful in an introduction. In her final paragraph Silverman suggests that the "so-called collective is complex and the so-called movement is heterogeneous." A statement which is certainly true, but will offer nothing new to anyone familiar w ith the work of social historians over the past thirty years.