Women and Irish Politics || The Politics of Everyday Living in Belfast

Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesCanadian Association of Irish Studies

The Politics of Everyday Living in BelfastAuthor(s): Madeleine LeonardSource: The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, Women and Irish Politics (Jul.,1992), pp. 83-94Published by: Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25512898 .

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The Politics of Everyday Living in Belfast

MADELEINE LEONARD

According to the Collins English Dictionary, politics is defined as the art and

science of directing and administrating states and other political units. The

Dictionary further describes politics as the complex or aggregate of relationships of men in society. This narrow definition exemplifies the often utilised dichotomy between the public world of men and the private world of women. Garmarnikow

and Purvis (1983: 1-6) have argued that the domination of men in the development of sociology and politics has resulted in a concentration upon the public sphere of

male concerns associated with the realm of work, economy and politics. By and

large, women have been excluded from these social and institutional activities and

"consigned and confined to the private realm of the family" (1983:1). Thisdivision

of social life into a private domestic female domain considered to be outside of

politics, properly understood and a public/political domain, occupied by men and considered as the appropriate focus of political analysis has been widely criticised. As Ackelsberg and Diamond (1987: 507) point out, the public and private domains are integrally related and the distinction between the two is in itself political. In this

paper, I intend to expand upon these criticisms by looking at the politics of everyday living in a marginalised community in Belfast Following Garrett (1987: 120) I

want to suggest that the personal is political and people's private lives and

experiences, particularly if they are oppressed, are more significant and important to study than questions of voting patterns or styles of government. The paper will focus on two interrelated issues: women and informal political and economic

activity. A focus on the informal aspects of these two primary features of public life will illustrate the shifting boundaries between the public and private sphere and the

eroding distinction between the two.

Background to the Data

The data used in this paper comes from a survey of one hundred and fifty households in a working class Catholic estate in West Belfast, referred to through out the paper by the pseudonym Newbury. The estate was deliberately chosen as it represents one of the most economically disadvantaged areas within Northern Ireland. In 1974, it was cited by Boal et at. as being the most deprived of the "97

Areas of Special Need" which he identified. While Doherty's (1977:259) study of

unemployment in the Belfast urban area concluded that Newbury had "the unfor tunate distinction ofbeing the peak unemployment area in both 1966 and 1971." My own survey of one in four households in the area carried out in 1989 revealed that

only 24% of the male head of households were in formal employment (Leonard 1991).



84 Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

Because of British welfare benefits regulations, women's employment opportu nities are adversely affected by their husbands' employment status. Different rules

apply to the short-term as opposed to the long-term unemployed. Provided he has

made sufficient social security contributions when in employment, an unemployed man can claim Unemployment Benefit for twelve months. The amount of benefit

he receives will vary, depending on, among other things, whether his wife is

employed. However, in calculating the amount of benefit due, a substantial part of

the wife's income is disregarded. Once a worker has exhausted his Unemployment Benefit, he transfers to a means tested Income Support benefit and the regulations

concerning his wife's income become much less generous. This means that men

unemployed for under one year and therefore qualifying for Unemployment Benefit are more likely to have a wife in formal employment. As length of employment increases, and the family transfers to means tested benefit, the woman is less likely to remain in, or continue to seek formal employment (Morris 1990). These

regulations adversely affect those least able to bear the brunt of unemployment Women married to males, out of work for over one year, with little possibility of

obtaining future employment, may themselves be deterred from entering the formal

labour market Instead, such women may have little option but to seek work "off

the record" (Leonard 1992: 149). In the latter part of this paper, I intend to focus on female economic adaptations to male long-term unemployment. Unemployment in the estate is considered here as an overt political issue stemming from the failure

of previous Unionist governments to create adequate job opportunities for working class Catholics and from the deliberate creation of the Newbury estate as a dumping

ground for perceived problem families.

Formal and Informal Political Activity in Newbury

Because conventional politics largely reflects male concerns and has effectively excluded women, women have been stereotyped in conventional accounts of

political behaviour as being uninterested in politics, politically conservative, and influenced by their husbands (Evans 1980:210). Randall (1982) argues that when the definition and arena of politics is broadened to include the private and informal

aspects of social life, women's political participation is greater and more visible than the traditional paradigm allows for. Even if we remain with the established

definition, the notion that women are less politically knowledgeable, interested, and active than men has been widely challenged. Siltanen and Stanworth (1984: 188) argue that political characteristics are attributed to women and men as if they were

homogeneous social groups, thus playing down the variations within each sex in order to highlight sex differences. Goot and Reid (1975) challenge the view that women's political participation demonstrates that women are less politically aware than men, or less interested. They argue that the familiar adage that "politics is a

man' s world" is reflected in the issues dealt with by political parties and trade unions which often marginalise the concerns, needs, and opportunities of many women.

Moreover, the timing of trade unions and political party meetings often makes it difficult for women with domestic commitments to attend.



Politics ofEverday Living in Belfast 85

Research has suggested that gender differences are not a major factor in voting behaviour. Hills (1984), for example, argues that during the last two decades women have voted in British elections at the same rate as men and that women's

alleged greater support for the Conservatives is really an age, rather than a sex, difference. Furthermore, feminist writers argue that it is the state that plays the most

important role in maintaining the public/private distinctions. In particular, ideolo

gies about motherhood and the appropriate role of women, reinforced by state

policies, confine women to the domestic sphere and make it extremely difficult for

women, especially married women, to compete with men in the labour market on

equal terms. This is clearly illustrated in Newbury estate where welfare benefits

legislation discourages women with long-term unemployed husbands from seeking formal employment. Thus the ideas of the public and private and the exclusion of

women from the public sphere have been created by political processes ?

Government legislation and state policies (Abbott & Wallace 1990: 201). The conventional image of voting, elections, and party politics has little rel

evance for both males and females in the Newbury estate. Newbury illustrates the

need to focus on the communal context of people's everyday lives. It is within

deprived communities that relationships of domination and subordination are

experienced first-hand. Gallagher (1977:127) argues that women are more likely to be in the forefront of community activity in deprived areas which are, in general, less socially respectable than the neighbouring locality. In these settings, women

come together, engage in effective community action, and act in ways which are not

consistent with stereotypes of women. I would like to illustrate this by focusing on women and collective action in Newbury.

Newbury was the first estate to be built in Belfast after the second world war. It

was built in response to a number of critical inquiries into housing in Northern Ireland which were made more urgent by the effects of the second world war

bombings which destroyed 3,200 dwellings and damaged 50,000 more. A 1943

survey (Birrell 1971:82) found that throughout Northern Ireland, 71% of dwellings required repairs, while in Belfast itself, one fifth of all existing dwellings were unfit

for human habitation.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the Ministry ordered the closure of a number of

war-time hutments just at the time the Newbury estate was being completed. Forced

to find accommodation for them quickly, the Estates Committee rehoused a number

of the occupants in Newbury. Many of these people had originally squatted in the

hutments and were widely believed to be dirty and unable to manage their children, their money, or their homes (Spencer 1973). Hence Newbury began its existence

with a number of "problem families." By 1958, the estate was recommended to

Dorita Field, a Belfast city councillor, for her study of unsatisfactory tenants. It soon

became a liability to have a Newbury address. This is reflected in the various

surveys referred to earlier, which illustrate a consistent high level of unemployment for the area. The estate began to get a bad name with employers, traders, rent

collectors, and the police. A local survey (Doolan 1982: 21) revealed that




approximately 12,000 people went through the 600 houses in the area in the first

fourteen years of its existence. This did little to enhance community development. Those who could have contributed positively to the estate's development left at the

earliest opportunity, reinforcing the inadequacy of those who remained. It is against this background that the "troubles" which erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969 and

their impact on Newbury, needs to be assessed. The conflict is usually referred to

in terms of political and economic disaster leading to tremendous social and moral

erosion, thus providing overwhelming evidence of its dysfunctionality. However, the "troubles" also led to the stresses and strains of everyday living in deprived communities becoming politicised and was to have a significant impact on women in the estate and their attempts to cope with poverty and unemployment

The conflict resulted in the community map in many areas of Belfast having to be re-drawn. Attacked, intimidated, or simply frightened, many families who once

lived in areas predominately inhabited by people of the opposite sectarian identifi cation fled for security to live amongst "their own kind." According to Darby (1986: 58) in the month of August and September 1969, a total of 3,570 families were

displaced in Belfast. An analysis of 1,820 cases of families which appeared on

official lists revealed that 83% of those who moved were Catholic. Another period of population movement occurred following the introduction of internment (impris onment without trial) on 9th August 1971. A Community Relations Commission Research Unit (Darby & Morris 1974) recorded that 2,069 families had been forced to abandon their homes during the rest of the month of August. Most were Catholic and crowded into the already over-populated areas of West Belfast.

The mass population movement was to have important consequences for the

Newbury area of Belfast Many of the people who fled their homes during this

period surged into the Newbury estate. To facilitate this movement, local commu

nity organisations, mainly comprised of women, usurped the functions of formal

organisations who were unable to cope with this mass onslaught by finding emergency accommodation for these evacuees and providing them with food and other immediate basic needs. This community response demanded considerable

organisational skills and instilled in a number of women the realisation that they had the ability to mobilise, co-ordinate, and successfully carry through a plan of action.

This was to have considerable positive effects on the women's self esteem as they stepped into the vacuum created by the inabilities of formal organisations to respond to the emergency created by the mass evacuations from 1969-1971.

The organisational capabilities that came to the fore during this period awakened in many women a new faith in their own abilities to overcome the disadvantages the area faced. This lead to the development of a female co-operative, founded in 1970. One of the instigators behind the setting up of the co-operative stated that its aim was "to convince the people that they have it in their own hands the ability to create work and manage their own affairs." The project was funded by local people with some

help from outside well-wishers in the belief that industry could be founded on

already existing local skills. The initial most obvious domestic skill was that of




hand-knitting. This knitting had taken place on a loosely commercial basis in

approximately twenty women's homes over the previous year. The women decided

to co-ordinate and develop this hand-knitting home industry in order to make it a

more viable and profitable commercial concern. Second-hand knitting machines

were purchased and placed in a house rented from the Belfast City Council.

However, the aging machines and their need to be constandy overhauled were a

great liability in such a competitive industry. In other parts of Ireland, knitted goods industries which were organised along more efficient lines were working with a

profit margin of as little as 3%. To enter this kind of world required extremely efficient production, little or no wastage, keen marketing, and effective manage

ment For a young emerging co-operative this was a very difficult programme.

Shortage of money, leading to shortage of staff meant that the manager had to go out selling as well as taking charge of the factory. This way of working simply could

not produce the marketing efficiency and economy required in an industry of this

kind. Yet, remarkably, the co-operative survived for nearly ten years. By that time,

however, enthusiasm alone could no longer prolong the co-operative's existence, and the inefficient production methods and marketing inexperience of the workers led to the co-operative's terminal decline. Nonetheless, the establishment of the co

operative was an important milestone in the history of the estate. It set in motion a range of economic strategies instigated by women in their attempts to cope with

male unemployment 1 will return to this issue later in the paper. Of course I do not want to paint too rosy an image of the impact of the "troubles"

on the estate and the residents' response to the conflict The eruption of the sectarian violence in 1969 has inflicted lasting damage on the estate. The drabness of the estate is now mitigated somewhat by the colourful wall murals which adorn almost

every end gable wall and which starkly proclaim the inhabitants' political persua sions. One such mural depicting three IRA men with rifles raised, defiandy declares "Our Day Will Come." The lack of amenities for young people, combined with

general dilapidation, absence of "normal" policing, and the attraction of paramili tary involvement has led to an increase of vandalism and anarchy in the estate. Many of the estate's inhabitants were interned in 1971, and many more have been

imprisoned since. Locals estimate that every one of the 660 houses in the estate have been searched by the British Army

? some of them several times. Both men and women participate in a wide range of unorthodox political

activities. In the last two national elections, the inhabitants ofthe estate voted for

Gerry Adams, leader of S inn Fein, a Catholic Republican party committed to an end to British rule in Northern Ireland. Adams refuses to take his parliamentary seat or

accept his parliamentary salary. Hence a vote for Adams is a rejection rather then a show of support for British democracy in Northern Ireland. Political activity takes

place at a grass-roots level on the estate, often involving a heated debate between those who advocate the use of the gun rather then the ballot box.

While paramilitary involvement is more commonly a male response to the

political situation in Northern Ireland, women have also played their part in this




overtly political struggle. Women and their children were at the forefront of

campaign supporting the hunger strikers in 1981 or calling for the release of the

"Birmingham Six" or the "Guildford Four." Women in Newbury were among the

first to establish the so-called "hen patrols." These were a response to surprise raids

by the British Army. Soldiers with blackened faces would silently move through the estate at night, hoping to uncover paramilitary activity. The soldiers were

referred to as "duck patrols." The women would counteract this surprise element

with their own "hen patrols." Armed with whistles, football crackers, bells, and

rattling bin lids, and calling "quack, quack," the "hen patrol" would follow the

invading troops from street to street depriving them of the element of surprise. Women married to internees and prisoners have also had to learn how to deal with

officialdom in their day-to-day lives and to become spokespersons and activists at a broader level (Evason 1991:48). All these responses emerge from the peculiari ties of the political situation in Northern Ireland and indeed an analysis of women

and political activity in Newbury could focus on these unusual practices. But the

politics of everyday living in Newbury go beyond these unorthodox political practices and involve issues of poverty and deprivation affecting women living in

marginalised communities generally. The ways in which women in Newbury cope with poverty and unemployment links them to women in deprived areas elsewhere. In deprived neighbourhoods, faced with poverty and unemployment, the women come together and engage in collective action. Ackelsberg and Diamond (1987: 509) suggest that in deprived communities, women are often leaders and their

ability to work effectively depends on their rootedness as women in networks based on kinship and friendship. I want to illustrate this aspect of women's political lives

by looking at women and participation in informal work. As Coote and Campbell (1982:242) put it, "as women, we assert a different approach to politics, which has a double axis: reproduction and production. This embraces domestic work, as well as paid work, relations within the family and community as well as relations between capital and labour."

Formal and Informal Work

Most social scientists recognise a connection between work and politics. How

ever, work is regarded differently depending upon whether it takes place in the

public domain of the economy or the private domain of home and family. Work which takes place within the public domain is formally recognised as economic

activity by being paid. Paid work receives social and public recognition. It gives the individual a status and identity. It enables the individual to achieve economic

independence and gain access to scarce goods and services. However, women who do not work within the public domain of the formal economy are not so rewarded. Even though the work women do within the family may be necessary and important, it does not attract the same social and public recognition because it does not produce

products which can be sold in the public arena. As such women's work tends to remain invisible even to women themselves as is reflected in the oft-quoted




exchange: "Do you work?" "No, I'm only a housewife." Moreover, ideas about the

type of contribution made by women in the private sphere are carried over into the

public sphere of paid work so that when women do take on paid work, they are

regarded as more short-sighted than men in their aims and objectives. Women's

closer relation to caring and nurturing, it is suggested (Siltanen & Stanworth 1984:

12) encourages them to be motivated by "extra-political" factors. In other words,

they are more concerned with attempting to improve the lives of their children and

fulfil other domestic obligations, rather than displaying a broader commitment to

the betterment of workers as a whole.

Marx was one of the first social theorists to argue that the experience of waged employment provides the necessary spark for class consciousness and political awareness. This is because under a capitalist system, workers become alienated

from their labour and from their fellow workers. Hence individuals work to

maintain the existence of themselves and their families and not for the benefit of the

community. Self-interest becomes more important than concern for the social

group. This tendency was outlined by Marx and Engels in The Communist

Manifesto (1969:11), "(The bourgeois social order) has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment_It has resolved

personal worth into exchange value . . . (and) has converted the physician, the

lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage labourers." This

emphasis on self-interest is reflected in Goldthorpe et al.' s (1968) study of affluent workers in Luton. In general, the affluent workers formed few close ties with then workmates either on the shop floor or beyond the factory gates. This general lack of close attachments results from the workers' instrumental orientation. They define work simply as a means for making money, not as a place for making friends. This definition, in turn, shapes their attitude to trade unions. Four-fifths of all the workers interviewed believed that unions should limit their concerns to obtaining higher wages. Goldthorpe et al. refer to the affluent workers' relationship to their unions as "instrumental collectivism." The affluent worker joins a union with fellow workers for instrumental reasons, the union being regarded merely as a

means to personal ends. Most workers did not see solidarity as a worthwhile end in itself nor did they think unions should promote radical change in society as a

whole. Yet, in work-based politics, as in electoral politics, men are characterised as hard-headed bargainers who understand the central issues and the strategies for

pursuing them (Siltanen & Stanworth 1984: 13). This disguises the extent to which men are pursuing their self-interests. Collective action may only be collective because it represents the most effective mechanism for achieving personal ends.

By contrast, women are regarded as less prepared than men to engage forcefully over wages, security and prospects, but more responsive to what Siltanen & Stanworth (1984: 13) term humanistic issues. These issues concern working conditions rather than wages, sociable work companions rather than career ad vancement, and flexible hours that accommodate domestic commitments as op posed to security of employment These concerns lead to the notion of women




workers as passive workers. Not only are women regarded as acquiescent

employees, but they are also accused of defusing the pressures built up by social

inequalities by exerting pressure on husbands to avoid any kind of militant action

which might threaten family income (Purcell 1984:57). This image of the inherent

passivity of women is contested by Hunt (1984). She argues that women are less

socialised into the ethos of capitalist industry. Hunt suggests that women's isolation as housewives and their relative lack of trade union experience is potentially

advantageous. As she says, "as productive workers in the home women have been

less subjected to the full force of the calculative relations characteristic of capitalism ... when women work in industry they put up a struggle to stay human" (Hunt 1984:

50). This results in women being less likely to see themselves as wage earners above

all else, which in turn affects their personal relationships at work. I would like to

illustrate this point by looking at women from the Newbury estate who work

informally as contract cleaners in Belfast

Sixteen women from Newbury worked informally as contract cleaners. All the women were married and their husbands were unemployed and qualified for

welfare benefits. The declaration of the women's extra income would have affected

benefit entitlements and hence went unreported. Thus, technically speaking, the women were breaking the law. Like most other claimants, the unemployed are able to earn a small amount without loss of benefit Earnings above this "disregarded" amount are deducted from benefits and therefore leave the claimants no better off. In some cases it may leave them worse off as extra declared income may affect

entitlement to other benefits. The women worked in some of the best known shops and business concerns

operating in Belfast None of the women were directly employed by the owners of the premises in which they worked. Rather, they were all employed informally by large-scale subcontractors who specialise in cleaning retail and business premises.

The subcontractor is employed directly by the owners and/or managers of indi vidual office blocks and retail units. Since cleaning contractors rarely make

stipulations regarding the volume, deployment, organisation or conditions of contract labour, then the contractor has total freedom in these matters (Daly 1986:

23).

Cleaning requires few inputs apart from labour. Wage costs remain the major costs and according to Coyle (1985: 12), contractors' strategies for reducing their

wage bill have developed into an art form. Coyle states the secret is to employ a lot of people for a short time, rather than to employ a few for longer. Short hours remove the necessity either to pay employers' National Insurance contributions or to

provide tea or coffee breaks. Moreover, the employers are aware that because the women's husbands are unemployed, they prefer to be employed "off the books" as their extra income would affect their benefit entidements. Hence, the women

receive very low hourly wage rates, averaging between $2 - $3 per hour.

Working conditions were also far from ideal. The women worked unsociable hours usually at night time when the main workforce had gone home. The work was




labour intensive and standards were continually scrutinised. The scarcity of

cleaning materials proved a constant source of friction between the cleaners and

supervisors. No bags to put rubbish in, insufficient cloths and cleaning agents, and no hot water were the most frequent complaints. This meant that some ofthe women

could not do their job properly and often had to bear the brunt of office employees'

complaints if they happened to be working overtime. Most women received a quota of cleaning materials to last a specific time, and if they ran out before the time limit,

they had to resort to cleaning with ordinary water. Most women felt that these quotas were inadequate to meet the workloads allocated to them.

While, on the one hand, the women could be seen as being exploited by their

employers, on the other hand, they were adopting their own labour market solutions to meeting their family's needs. Moreover, a focus on the workplace strategies utilised by the contract cleaners may encourage us to transform the ways we think

about workplace militancy. Ackelsberg& Diamond (1987:518) argue that women

develop a specifically female consciousness, which emerges out of their roles as

caretakers of communities and households. As a result, women develop a special

sensitivity to quality of life issues, which shape their engagement in collective action. In relation to this study, women's orientations to wage labour were

embedded in personal relationships. This was partly due to the ways women were

recruited into the contract cleaning industry. All the contract cleaners were

recruited through a network of friends, neighbours and relatives. This had the affect of making this form of exploitative work less alienating. While all of the sample stated that they were working above all else for instrumental purposes (i.e. they needed the money); nonetheless, all stressed the close companionship of then workmates as an added incentive. Since their workmates were also their friends,

neighbours, and relatives, and since family commitments prevented the women from meeting as often as they would have liked, work provided a venue for catching up on gossip and keeping up to date with news regarding the welfare of a wider range of friends and relations than they could otherwise have managed.

These networks could also be utilised to cope with the harsh demands made by the women's employers. Subcontracting firms are involved in a constant effort to fulfil contracts and make profits. This results in a continuous intensification of the labour process. Thus if employees take time off work, this can put the implemen tation of the contract into jeopardy. Moreover, since the women were employed "off the books" they were not entitled to any form of employment protection or benefits.

Thus, if one of the women was off sick or had to deal with some family crisis, then she did not receive payments for any time she took off, regardless of her length of service to the organisation. These problems were averted by the women in this

study, through the development of social relationships within the workplace. All the women interviewed stated that when a close colleague had to take time off work, then her chain of social contacts within the organisation joined together and distributed her workload between them. This typically happened among friends, neighbours and relatives but often extended over a team of cleaners working in the




same building. The women usually co-operated knowing that they may need the

favour returned at some future date. In the process, the women taking time off work were guaranteed their weekly wage, their employment was not placed in jeopardy

(unless this was a frequent occurrence), and the smooth running of the contract was

ensured. Hence, the research demonstrated the ways in which women's work, even

in this highly disadvantaged sector of the labour market, provides strong supportive networks between female friends, neighbours and relatives.

The fact that informal work is often concerned with evading regulation by the

State, in itself, makes informal work as much a political as an economic phenom enon. Redclift and Mingione (1985: 4) argue that it is important to see informal economic activities as political options and as co-opted by political discourse, not

simply as solutions to individual subsistence problems or household survival.

Weiss (1987), from an analysis of informal economies in Italy, argues that informal

economies are political creations rooted in features of social structure which have

been shaped and sustained by the State. She concludes (1987: 231) that it is

frequently the need to circumvent the inadequacies of the State that throws citizens back on informal support systems. Hence, rather than displacing the need for

informal networks, the very organisation of the State has sustained and enlarged the

space for their operation.

Conclusion

This paper set out to demonstrate that the public/private dichotomy is a particu larly clumsy division for exploring political and economic life. Such a distinction

gives rise to a misconception of women's political capacities and interests. In

particular, it encourages forms of analysis which ignore the political context of women' s waged work and tri vialises the impact of women' s private activity on their

public working lives. Women's domestic relations, and their insulation from the

chilling effects of the cash nexus, enables them to develop personal relationships in the workplace which can in turn reduce the potentially alienating aspects of their

working lives. Following Hunt (1984) I suggested that the humanistic concerns of women may have a radical edge equal to that of the economistic concerns of men,

by which industrial militancy has been traditionally judged. Bourque and Grossholtz

(1984:193) suggest that a focus on the social orientations of women may promote more promising political styles than those traditionally based on expedience and

pragmatism.

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Women and Irish Politics || The Politics of Everyday Living in Belfast