As we approach the 95th
anniversary of the Easter Rising many Irish socialists and republicans
will go out as they do every year to marches to celebrate the
anniversary of the episode which asserted Ireland’s right to national
self-determination. It was, however, also a revolution which saw the
working class prove itself in the words of Connolly as “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
As we approach the 95th
anniversary of the Easter Rising many Irish socialists and republicans
will go out as they do every year to marches to celebrate the
anniversary of the episode which asserted Ireland’s right to national
self-determination. It was, however, also a revolution which saw the
working class prove itself in the words of Connolly as “the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland.”
"We serve neither King nor Kaiser", the ICA outside Liberty Hall.The
rising was led by James Connolly’s Irish Citizens’ Army, the armed wing
of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union established to
protect workers during the 1913 Dublin lockout from scabs and the
police.
Today workers in Ireland yet again find themselves confronted by
capitalism in crisis. Yet today our class is far stronger than it was in
1916. The experience of international economic expansion and
particularly the “Celtic Tiger” years which saw the economy more than
double in size between 1995 and 2007 saw a massive growth in the size of
the Irish working class. The period since the onset of the economic
crisis has given the Labour Party an unprecedented opportunity that even
saw it leading in the opinion polls. In the 2011 General Election
Labour emerged as the biggest party in Dublin, winning 18 seats. If the 4
United Left Alliance seats and 4 Sinn Fein seats are also counted this
marks an overall majority for the left in Ireland’s biggest city.
Unfortunately the response of the Labour leadership to this situation
has been to go down the road of the failed policies of “social
partnership” and they failed to learn the lessons of history or heed the
advice of Connolly.
In 1916, shortly before the rising was due to begin, he warned the
volunteers that even in the remote possibility of success they should
“hold onto your rifles because the Volunteers may have a different
goal.” This was in the context of the Citizens’ Army playing the leading
role in the rising, with a vacillating layer of the middle class Irish
Volunteers led by Padraig Pearse eventually also joining them. Even
under these circumstances, when the rising was based around support for
the Proclamation of the Irish Republic – which pledged the
“right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the
unfettered control of Irish destinies” – Connolly understood the
fundamental differences in class interest and outlook.
Just as he recognised that “the cause of Ireland is the cause of
labour and the cause of labour is the cause of Ireland” he also
recognised the role of the Irish bourgeois as a class inherently linked
by a thousand threads to international capitalism and reconciliation
with British imperialism. Connolly commented that even as early as the
late eighteenth century, “the Irish capitalist class was not able to
combat the influence of the corruption fund of the English Government,
or to create and lead a party strong enough to arrest the demoralisation
of Irish public life.”
period since Connolly’s murder in 1916, when he was shot tied to a
chair despite being mortally wounded, has only confirmed his analysis.
Labour’s failure to provide an alternative to Sinn Fein in the 1918
General Election saw it willingly subordinate itself to Sinn Fein. The
War of Independence was marked by the lack of a coherent leadership and
independent role of the working class. This directly resulted in
partition and the onset of the “carnival of reaction” Connolly warned
would arise from it.
In more recent years this has been repeatedly confirmed. In the 1980s
Labour joined Fine Gael in coalition only to see it forced to implement
a raft of cuts. Once again we are entering a situation where Irish and
international capitalism is in crisis and attempting to force the
working class to pay for it. The policies of “social partnership” will
only lead to exponential failure. Once again the Irish bourgeois will
not hesitate to use Labour to implement a series of cuts which will only
see a squandering of the gains that have been made.
We can’t afford to simply commemorate the Easter Rising and James
Connolly, we have to learn the lessons from the historical experience of
our class in struggle and the ideas advanced by Ireland’s most eminent
Marxist. Only a policy of class independence and a refusal to implement
cuts and to challenge a system which sees the sick, the poor, the
unemployed and the young pay for its crisis can provide the answer we
need.
The recent election results and the demonstrations and public sector
strikes of 2010 showed the willingness to struggle, only a leadership
dedicated to taking over the major parts of industry and the banks under
workers’ control can truly make the causes of Ireland and labour one.
The events of 1916 marked a major development in the struggle for a
socialist, united Ireland. We must finish what Connolly and the working
people of Dublin began!
