It is not often a man shakes up society so much that the powerful of the day combine to destroy him, his ideas and his followers. That happened with Nixie Boran. Born in 1904, he lived through intense turmoil in Irish history and labour relations. His actions sent a tremor through the political, religious and industrial powers of the day because he dared to set up a communist trade union in Catholic rural Ireland.
Each era presents its own challenges; Nixie’s was about the reality and nature of freedom; today this is being questioned anew as the failures of the main political custodians to deliver equality are exposed.
Nixie was born into a farming family on the Castlecomer estate of the Wandesfordes in north Co Kilkenny on the Leinster coalfield. Like other small farmers, the Borans depended on supplementary earnings from the coal mines, also owned by the Wandesfordes, but conditions and pay for the miners were bad.
By Nixie’s youth there were four pits with 500 miners and 300 carters, but they were all replaced by Deerpark pit, opened in 1928, which would continue until its closure in the late 1960s. The miners’ wages sustained the economy of the area, but they struggled to improve their pay and conditions despite some efforts by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1918.
Nixie lost of his mother at the age of four. Aged 12, he joined the Brotherhood, which offered future prospects and a good education but he left after two years and went into the mines. By 1922, he had already experienced the dangers of mining, its mean wages and its legacy of early deaths due to poor safety conditions and lung disease. He had witnessed the failure of strike action to pressurise the mine owner. At the same time, he was a youth during the upheaval of the War of Independence. In June 1922, Nixie was forced by the turmoil and unemployment in the mines to join the new Provisional State army. It was just six days before the outbreak of the Civil War and he was posted to Tipperary.
In November 1922, he was with Free State forces in Clonmel fighting against men such as Dan Breen and Dinny Lacey. But the introduction of the Public Safety Act on September 17th, and the executions of Republicans that followed, were too much for Nixie. He deserted to the Republican side and spent the rest of the war fighting with Breen’s men. He was shot in an ambush and hospitalised in Limerick alongside three Free State soldiers. His cover was blown and he had to be rescued before going back to fight. Nixie was finally captured in the Glen of Aherlow on May 8th, 1923. He was condemned to death but made a daring escape on August 2nd from Emmet Barracks, Clonmel.
His time on the run exposed Nixie to ideological influences about the nature of freedom and control of state resources. He had already imbibed Connolly’s thinking and subsequent contacts with the left wing of the IRA inspired him towards a Workers’ Republic combining small farmers and labourers. The Russian Revolution provided an example of how a different, fairer system was attainable.
Nixie brought these ideas with him when he returned to Castlecomer. Nothing there had changed since independence, and he began mobilising. The miners collected money to send him to the Red International of Labour Unions conference in Moscow in August 1930. Refused a passport, he stowed away on a ship and made his own way across Russia to the event. There he met activists from around the world and also James Larkin Jr and Sean Murray from Ireland. They returned to organise revolutionary workers groups and run the Worker’s Voice newspaper to support workers in their struggles.
The authorities arrested Nixie on his return home but protesting miners forced his release from Garda custody. A period of activism followed with the foundation of the Mine and Quarry Workers Union in January 1931 and also a local revolutionary workers group.
Opposition came in torrents. The local parish priest canvassed against the dangers of communism in schools, from the pulpit and in visits to miners’ families, accusing them of receiving Russian funding and being misled by Nixie. The State harassed them and their families and the mine management refused to consider their claims. They went on strike in 1932. Although a small concession ended the strike, further organisation generated intense controversy. Eventually, the Bishop, Dr Collier, made it clear that union members could not be Catholics and communists at the same time and indicated they were excommunicated. The local community was encouraged to reject everything they stood for and to squash the union.
So, Nixie Boran had defied newly-independent Ireland over its failure to deal fairly with workers. Faced with collapse, they changed tactics and formed a separate branch of the IT&GWU. Three strikes followed. In 1940 a strike of 11 weeks got payments for formerly unpaid coal products, there was later a successful seven-day staydown against the Government wartime wage freeze, and in 1949 an 11-month strike finally forced the company to substantially improve wages and conditions for all mine workers.
Nixie was elected to the executive of the IT&GWU in 1952. This gave him membership of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and he used those positions to fight for legislation on the miners’ disease, pneumoconiosis, and on safety in the mines. He represented Ireland as a delegate to the International Labour Conference in Geneva in 1956. His feet, however, remained firmly planted in his local community.
The ultimate challenge Nixie faced was the end of mining in Castlecomer. He put all his efforts into preventing closure then, when it looked inevitable, helped to delay the process through surveys and pressure on the union and politicians. He even joined the board of Castlecomer Collieries and helped keep Deerpark mine operating for three extra years until final closure in 1969. By that time some alternative employment opportunities had been created in the area.
"He stood strong" was a term used to describe Nixie by a woman from Castlecomer whose father had been killed in the mines. He had the qualities of conviction, ability to inspire and doggedness when up against intransigence. He was also able to compromise. His value system was based on equality, fairness and intolerance of oppression. The challenges of today demand leaders with similar qualities.
Anne Boran is the author of Challenge to Power: Nixie Boran (1904-1971): Freedom and the Castlecomer coal miners (Geography Publications, Dublin)
