Home : Britain and Ireland : Historical Analysis
By Ted Grant
April, 1966
On 17th April 1916 the Irish Citizen Army, together with the Irish Volunteers, rose upin arms against the might of the British Empire to strike a blow for Irish freedom and forthe setting up of an Irish Republic. Their blow for freedom was to reverberate round theworld, and preceded the first Russian Revolution by almost a year.
The background to the rebellion was the centuries of national oppression suffered bythe Irish people in the interests of British landlordism and capitalism. In this they hadthe support of the Irish landlords and capitalists, of the Catholic hierarchy, who werelinked by ties of interest to the Imperialists, and joined with them in fear of the Irishworkers and peasants.
It is impossible to understand the Easter Rising without understanding the ideas of itsleader, James Connolly, who considered himself a Marxist and based himself on the ideas ofInternationalism and the class struggle. Like MacLean in Britain, Lenin and Trotsky,Liebknecht and Luxemburg and other Internationalists, Connolly regarded with horror thebetrayal by the leaders of the Labour movement in all countries in supporting theImperialist War. Dealing with the betrayal of the Second International, Connolly declaredin his paper The Workers Republic: "If these men must die, would it not be better todie in their own country fighting for freedom for their class, and for the abolition ofwar, than to go forth to strange countries and die slaughtering and slaughtered by theirbrothers that tyrants and profiteers might live?" Protesting against the support bythe British TUC of the war, Connolly wrote: "Time was when the unanimous voice ofthat Congress declared that the working class had no enemy except the capitalist class -that of its own country at the head of the list!"
Connolly stood for national freedom as a step towards the Irish Socialist Republic. Butwhile the Stalinists and reformists today - 50 years after 1916 still mumble inpolitically incoherent terms about the need for the "national revolution againstimperialism", Connolly was particularly clear about the class question that was atthe basis of the Irish question. Without being in direct contact with Lenin and Trotsky hehad a similar position. "The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland, and the causeof Ireland is the cause of Labour", he wrote. "They cannot be dissevered.Ireland seeks freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress ofher own destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil".
Connolly had no illusions in the capitalists of any country, least of all Ireland. OnInternational capitalism he wrote: "If, then, we see a small section of thepossessing class prepared to launch into war, to shed oceans of blood and spend millionsof treasure, in order to maintain intact a small portion of their privileges, how can weexpect the entire propertied class to abstain from using the same weapons, and to submitpeacefully when called upon to yield up forever all their privileges?"
And on the Irish capitalists, "Therefore the stronger I am in my affection fornational tradition, literature, language, and sympathies, the more firmly rooted I am inmy opposition to that capitalist class which in its soulless lust for power and gold wouldbray the nations as in a mortar". And again, "We are out for Ireland for theIrish. But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not thesweating, profit grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitutepressmen - the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the futuredepends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which afree nation can be reared."
Writing on the need for an Irish insurrection to expel British imperialism he wrote inrelation to the World War: "Starting thus, Ireland may yet set the torch to aEuropean conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the lastcapitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last Warlord."
As an answer to the demand for conscription which had been imposed in Britain and whichwas supported by the Irish capitalists for Ireland too, where the employers were exertingpressure to force Irish workers to volunteer, Connolly wrote: "We want and must haveeconomic conscription in Ireland for Ireland. Not the conscription of men by hunger tocompel them to fight for the power that denies them the right to govern their own country,but the conscription by an Irish nation of all the resources of the nation - its land, itsrailways, its canals, its workshops, its docks, its mines, its mountains, its rivers andstreams, its factories and machinery, its horses, its cattle, and its men and women, allco-operating together under one common direction that gather under one common directionthat Ireland may live and bear upon her fruitful bosom the greatest number of the freestpeople she has ever known."
He looked at the employers who were opposing conscription too from a critical classpoint of view: "if here and there we find an occasional employer who fought us in1913 (the Great Dublin lock-out in which the employers tried to break union organisation,but were defeated in this object by the solidarity of the Irish workers and their Britishcomrades too) agreeing with our national policy in 1915 it is not because he has becomeconverted, or is ashamed of the unjust use of his powers, but simply that he does not seein economic conscription the profit he fancied he saw in denying to his followers theright to organise in their own way in 1913."
Answering objections to the firm working class point of view which he expounded hedeclared: "Do we find fault with the employer for following his own interests? We donot. But neither are we under any illusion as to his motives. In the same manner we takeour stand with our own class, nakedly upon our class interests, but believing that theseinterests are the highest interests of the race."
It is in this light that the uprising of 1916 must be viewed. As a consequence of thestruggles of the past Connolly who was the General Secretary of the Irish Transport andGeneral Workers Union had organised the Citizens Army for the purpose of defence againstcapitalist and police attack and for preparing for struggle against British imperialism.The Citizens Army was almost purely working class in composition: dockers, transportworkers, building workers, printers and other sections of the Dublin workers being itsrank and file.
It was with this force and in alliance with the more middle class Irish volunteers thatConnolly prepared for the uprising. He had no illusions about its immediate success.According to William O'Brien, on the day of the insurrection Connolly said to him:"We are going out to be slaughtered." He said "Is there no chance ofsuccess?" and Connolly replied "None whatsoever."
Connolly understood that the tradition and the example created would be immortal andwould lay the basis for future freedom and a future Irish Socialist Republic. In that layhis greatness. What a difference from the craven traitors of the German Socialist andCommunist and Trade Union leaders who despite having three million armed workerssupporting them, and with the sympathy and support of the overwhelming majority of theGerman working class (ready to fight and die, capitulated to Hitler without firing a shot.
Having said this, it is necessary to see not only the greatness of Connolly, sprungfrom the Irish workers, one of the greatest sons of the English speaking working class,and the effect of the uprising in preparing for the expulsion, at least in the Southernpart of Ireland of the direct domination of British imperialism, but also the faults ofboth.
There was no attempt to call a general strike and thus paralyse the British Army. Therewas no real organisation or preparation of the armed struggle. No propaganda was conductedamong the British troops to gain their sympathy and support. The leaders of the middleclass Irish Volunteers were split. One of the leaders Eoin MacNeill countermanding ordersfor "mobilisation" and for "manoeuvres" and in the confusion only partof the Volunteers, joined with the Irish Citizens Army in the insurrection. Thus at thelast minute the insurrection was betrayed by the vacillation of the middle class leaders,as they have betrayed many times in Irish history and in the history of other countries.
The British occupying troops suppressed the insurrection and then savagely executed itsleaders, including the leader of the insurrection James Connolly, who was already badlywounded.
Connolly was murdered, but in the last analysis, British imperialism really suffereddefeat.
Nowadays all sections of Irish society in the 26 counties hypocritically give supportto the "brave and undying heroism of Connolly." The Irish capitalists pretend tohonour him. Connolly would have split contemptuously in their faces. He fought them, eversince he attained manhood, in the interests of the Irish workers and of InternationalSocialism. But his most withered contempt would have been reserved for those in the Labourmovement, including the leaders of the Labour Party and of the so-called CommunistParties, and of the various sects claiming to speak in the name of Irish Labour, who fiftyyears after Easter 1916, have not understood that unity of the Irish workers North andSouth can only be obtained by conducting the struggle on a class basis for an IrishSocialist Republic, in indissoluble unity with the British workers in their struggle for aBritish democratic Socialist Republic.
April, 1966