Post by RedFlag32 on Mar 11, 2006 20:43:57 GMT
Socialism and the long struggle for Irish freedom
Socialism and the long struggle for Irish freedom
By Phil Mitchinson
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
We are publishing here a speech given by Phil Mitchinson at the recent international Marxist school in Barcelona. Dealing with the history of the centuries old struggle for freedom in Ireland, and the part played in that history by republicanism and socialism, as well as the political developments that have led to the current impasse, this should serve as an introduction to a major article analysing the recent declaration of the end of the armed struggle by the Provisional IRA which we will be publishing later this week.
“An Irish Republic, the only purely political change in Ireland worth crossing the street for will never be realised except by a revolutionary party that proceeds upon the premise that the capitalist and the landlord classes in town and country in Ireland are criminal accomplices with the British government, in the enslavement and subjection of the nation. Such a revolutionary party must be socialist, and from socialism alone can the salvation of Ireland come.”
These words written by James Connolly almost one hundred years ago contain the basis of the perspectives and tasks of the struggle in Ireland. The idea that the national liberation of Ireland, its freedom from British imperialism - and consequently today Ireland’s reunification, can only be achieved by the revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism - is repeated a thousand times in the writings of James Connolly – the greatest Marxist born in the islands of Ireland and Britain – who, just seven years after these lines were written gave his life in the cause of that struggle. Wounded in the Easter rising of 1916 and so unable to stand he was strapped to a chair by the army of British imperialism and shot dead.
I could easily fill the next hour or more reading extracts from Connolly’s writings –
“only the working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the struggle for freedom in Ireland”, “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, and the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour, the two cannot be dissevered” – and it would be worthwhile. All comrades should read Connolly. Here we find the most modern ideas, ideas that are more relevant today than ever. It is our duty to rescue those ideas from the clutches of the nationalists who have twisted and distorted the memory of Connolly and buried him beneath Dublin statues and street names.
In the same way in his own day Connolly struggled to rescue the ideas of that great revolutionary democrat Wolfe Tone, leader of the United Irishmen, who, one hundred years before Connolly, drew the following conclusion:
“Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – the men of no property.”
Writing about Wolfe Tone, and unwittingly about himself, Connolly said “apostles of freedom are ever idolised when dead yet crucified when living.”
Four years ago I had the privilege of speaking at an international school on the life and ideas of James Connolly. At that meeting there was no-one present from Ireland. Today we are delighted to welcome two comrades here as visitors from the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Johnny from Strabane and Neil from Cork.
Of course our International does not yet have a section in Ireland. For my part, I am with Connolly when he wrote,
“a real socialist movement can only be born of struggle, of uncompromising affirmation of the faith that is in us. Such a movement infallibly gathers to it every element of rebellion and progress, and in the midst of the storm and stress of struggle solidifies into a real revolutionary force.”
I believe that there is now an historic opportunity to construct out of the crisis of Irish republicanism, out of the impasse of Irish capitalism and out of the Irish workers’movement just such a revolutionary party as Connolly demanded.
That is a struggle “worth crossing the street for.”
There is no alternative. Just read what passes for analysis in the bourgeois press – the Manchester Guardian or the Belfast Telegraph attempt to explain the latest failed attempt at devolution (The Good Friday Agreement and Strormont) in terms of psychology and personality, of Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. Or worse they blame the ‘stubbornness’ and ‘moodiness’ of the Irish as a national characteristic!
The inability of capitalism – of the Irish and British ruling classes – to solve the problems of Ireland cannot be explained away by national insults, nor the whims of sectarian politicians.
In these terms either the problems of Ireland can never be solved – ‘it’s in their nature’, the self-justification of those with no answer. Or, all that is needed is to change the leaders of the sectarian parties – the fantasy and illusion of those utopians who believe the GFA and Stormont can be revived once the ageing Ian Paisley dies.
It is not Paisley, nor Adams, nor any individual sectarian politician, but sectarianism, that poison which British imperialism injected into the veins of Ireland; that Frankenstein’s monster to which they gave life, and are now powerless to stop, which prevents capitalism from solving the Irish question. The inability of that system to provide jobs, houses, healthcare and education for all, continues to spread that poison – which in turn is the lifeblood of the sectarian politicians – even into the ranks of the one class in Irish society able to solve both the national and social questions – the working class.
Now, it is impossible to understand the situation in Ireland outside of the context of its whole historical development, and the entire world situation.
Fifteen years ago amidst imperialism’s euphoria at the fall of Stalinism, they deluded themselves into believing they could solve the national question in Palestine, for example, and in Ireland. Instead, the changing balance of forces internationally served to violently shake up international relations and world politics. Rather than being solved the national question reasserted itself – their efforts in Palestine and Ireland ending in tragedy and farce.
In the case of the former Yugoslavia imperialism reopened wounds and caused wars on the continent of Europe for the first time in half a century.
It is against this new international background of war and profound instability that we must see the so-called peace process in Ireland and the perspectives for the Irish working class.
Above all when dealing with the national question we have to be concrete – which working class, with what history and tradition, in what concrete circumstances? As Connolly explained in his pamphlet Erin’s Hope, “The interests of labour all over the world are identical, it is true, but it is also true that each country had better work out its own salvation on the lines most congenial to its own people.”
In other words it is not enough simply to call for workers’ unity – of course, Protestant and Catholic workers have more in common with each other than with Irish bankers, or British industrialists, or with Adams and Paisley. As true as this is on its own it is no more use than standing on a street corner in Barcelona or London or Paris and declaring the need for the working class to overthrow capitalism. If this was all that was required to make a revolution it would have succeeded long ago.
As Marxists we have to get to grips with the outlook of the Irish working class as it is and not as we might like it to be, in the real, concrete situation. To grasp the direction in which events are moving, in order to intervene and build our movement.
The 31st August 1994 marked a turning point in Irish politics with the declaration of an unconditional ceasefire by the Provisional IRA. For 25 years the Provisional IRA fought an armed struggle with the declared aim of driving out British imperialism and reuniting the island of Ireland. With more than 3000 dead on all sides not one single step has been taken in that direction – on the contrary quite a few strides have been taken further away.
This represents a crushing defeat for the policy that Marxism has always called individual terrorism, a campaign of bombings and assassinations, which could not defeat British imperialism in centuries.
The Provisional IRA have been forced to follow up their cease-fire with a statement confirming “the complete cessation of violence” and that their arms are “beyond use” and they will go still further in the coming months, desperate to rescue the Good Friday Agreement.
But it will never be enough for Paisley. Paisley and co. have one policy – fear. ‘You see’ they say ‘If the Provisional IRA are willing to do this the British government must have promised them something.’
Two thirds of Unionists in a Belfast Telegraph poll now oppose the Good Friday Agreement. In the annual violence around Orange Order marches, or in the results of the recent elections, we see a clear indication of the opposition of a Protestant majority even to the shadow of concessions. They would not accept one step in the direction of becoming an oppressed minority in a united capitalist Ireland, which could not provide them with jobs, decent houses, hospitals and schools.
Of course, British imperialism has no such plan – much though they might like to disentangle themselves from the whole costly, destabilising mess that they have created. They have given a few concessions, released a few prisoners; changed the name of the RUC to the PSNI. In turn Sinn Fein sell these meagre concessions and the hysterical reaction of Paisley and co. to gain support. But in reality Adams and McGuiness have swapped their lofty ideals for ministerial portfolios in a parliament that never meets.
It is ironic that for decades before the Good Friday Agreement the so-called centre ground of Unionism and Nationalism, the UUP and the SDLP, held a majority. The degree to which Stormont has entrenched sectarianism is in part demonstrated by the fact that the DUP and Sinn Fein now have the majority ensuring that Stormont cannot meet and the Good Friday Agreement cannot work.
After nearly 30 years of armed struggle the Provisional IRA and their strategy has been defeated and the goal of a united Ireland is further away than ever.
Instead of peace there are peace walls; segregation in housing and jobs has increased; and Stormont has constitutionalised Partition and the leaders of Sinn Fein have accepted it. The Nationalist bourgeoisie in the south long ago abandoned any claim on the north.
The Loyalist paramilitaries bear a heavy responsibility for widening the sectarian divide, the tactics of the Provisional IRA also mean they share a heavy burden of responsibility. But in the first place it is necessary to place the ultimate responsibility where it rightfully belongs – at the feet of British imperialism.
Ireland was England’s first colony and experienced the vicious cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class long before the peoples of Africa and Asia. From the twelfth century onwards the Irish nation was devastated by a series of wars of conquest – the economy was wrecked, the people reduced to starvation, and their language and culture destroyed.
Centuries of brutal oppression under English rule bred a fierce spirit of revolt and repeated uprisings. The whole history of these struggles is dominated by the courage of the people’s struggles on the one hand, and by the betrayal of those struggles at every turn by the bourgeois nationalist leaders on the other.
It is no accident, therefore, that without ever referring to Trotsky’s phrase the Permanent Revolution, nevertheless, we find exactly the same conclusion running through all the writings of James Connolly. Namely, that the bourgeoisie in the modern epoch is incapable of solving the tasks of the national democratic revolution. That the leadership of that revolution has passed to “the men (and women) of no property”, to the “incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom”, the working class, who will not stop at its boundaries but must carry on to the tasks of the socialist revolution.
In 1899, for example, Connolly wrote:
“ The nationalism of men who desire to retain the present social system is not the fruit of a natural growth but is an ugly abortion, the abortive product of an attempt to create a rebellious movement in favour of political freedom among men contented to remain industrial slaves. It is an attempt to create a revolutionary movement towards freedom and to entrust the conduct of the movement to a class desirous of enforcing the social subjection of the men they are professing to lead… It professes to believe that the class grinding us down to industrial slavery can at the same moment be leading us forward to national liberty”
(Apologies to the translators)
When Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government was forced to accept the idea of Home Rule for Ireland, on the eve of the First World War, Lord Carson mobilised a mass Protestant force to oppose it. British army officers refused to carry out the Liberal government’s orders, and the Tories and Unionists joined together to force the government to abandon the plan. They feared that Home Rule would mean the end of their power and privileges.
During the First World War the Irish bourgeois Nationalist leaders supported their British masters and sent their Irish Volunteers to die at the front on behalf of British imperialism. As an aside, Connolly wrote a scathing piece of propaganda attacking Nationalist leader John Redmond:
“Full stem ahead,
John Redmond said
That everything was well chum
Home Rule will come
When you are dead, and buried out in Belgium!”
The abandonment of Home Rule and then the First World War prepared the way for the Easter Rising of 1916. Now that would require an entire discussion in itself. In brief Connolly joined forces with nationalist elements to stage an uprising against British imperialism – that rising was betrayed by the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalists and then put down with great savagery by the British army. They tied the wounded Connolly to a chair and shot him.
The mass revulsion that followed led inexorably to the war of independence from 1919-21.
At every stage of the Irish liberation struggle, the national question has been inextricably linked to social problems. The Irish bourgeois nationalists have consistently betrayed the movement to further their narrow, class interests.
At bottom the national question is a class question. The emancipation of the Irish people can only be won through the emancipation of the working class, which has no class interest in national or religious oppression. As Connolly insisted, the national and social liberation of Ireland are bound together – only the working class can achieve both, the capitalist class are capable of neither.
In 1921, threatened by social revolution the British ruling class cynically carved up the living body of Ireland, proposing a treaty – accepted by the majority of the Irish Nationalist leaders – to separate the north, and a bloody civil war followed in the south.
Connolly had warned before his death that any attempt at such a Partition would lead to “a carnival of reaction” undermining the growing unity of the working class.
Four northern counties with Protestant majorities (Armagh, Down, Derry and Antrim) were lumped together with two with Catholic majorities (Fermanagh and Tyrone) to create an unstable, artificial statelet.
The south of Ireland at this time was predominantly agricultural – the bulk of industry was in the north where the Protestant working class had shown its revolutionary colours in the period following the First World War. In truth the southern bourgeoisie was just as terrified of the northern working class as the Protestant bourgeoisie was. They saw the creation of this northern statelet as an opportunity to rid themselves of the ‘godless Protestants and communists.’
The southern bourgeoisie has consistently demonstrated its lack of interest in reuniting Ireland – they supported its division in the first place.
British imperialism feared social revolution in Ireland. They had economic interests in the north; the Protestant landlords were linked to the British Tories; and imperialism had strategic naval and military interests there.
Partition led to the creation of a reactionary state based on Protestant superiority. For more than 50 years Catholics were systematically discriminated against in housing and employment. There was formal democracy, but the autonomous parliament – Stormont – with its guaranteed, in-built Protestant majority was effectively ‘a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.’
The so-called police, the RUC and the hated ‘B’ Specials were Protestant forces. This fostered bitterness and anger in the Catholic population – it was meant to. The deliberate sowing of national and religious hatred between Catholic and Protestant in Ireland is yet another crime of British imperialism.
In order to defeat revolutionary struggle in Ireland the British ruling class perfected the tactic of divide and rule they would later use in India and Palestine.
Yet there is nothing natural or insurmountable in this. The unity of workers in struggle runs like a red thread through all of Irish history. The first great movement for Irish independence, the revolutionary movement of the United Irishmen was led by Wolfe Tone, who came from a Protestant background.
Socialism and the long struggle for Irish freedom
By Phil Mitchinson
Tuesday, 30 August 2005
We are publishing here a speech given by Phil Mitchinson at the recent international Marxist school in Barcelona. Dealing with the history of the centuries old struggle for freedom in Ireland, and the part played in that history by republicanism and socialism, as well as the political developments that have led to the current impasse, this should serve as an introduction to a major article analysing the recent declaration of the end of the armed struggle by the Provisional IRA which we will be publishing later this week.
“An Irish Republic, the only purely political change in Ireland worth crossing the street for will never be realised except by a revolutionary party that proceeds upon the premise that the capitalist and the landlord classes in town and country in Ireland are criminal accomplices with the British government, in the enslavement and subjection of the nation. Such a revolutionary party must be socialist, and from socialism alone can the salvation of Ireland come.”
These words written by James Connolly almost one hundred years ago contain the basis of the perspectives and tasks of the struggle in Ireland. The idea that the national liberation of Ireland, its freedom from British imperialism - and consequently today Ireland’s reunification, can only be achieved by the revolutionary struggle of the working class for socialism - is repeated a thousand times in the writings of James Connolly – the greatest Marxist born in the islands of Ireland and Britain – who, just seven years after these lines were written gave his life in the cause of that struggle. Wounded in the Easter rising of 1916 and so unable to stand he was strapped to a chair by the army of British imperialism and shot dead.
I could easily fill the next hour or more reading extracts from Connolly’s writings –
“only the working class remain as the incorruptible inheritors of the struggle for freedom in Ireland”, “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, and the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour, the two cannot be dissevered” – and it would be worthwhile. All comrades should read Connolly. Here we find the most modern ideas, ideas that are more relevant today than ever. It is our duty to rescue those ideas from the clutches of the nationalists who have twisted and distorted the memory of Connolly and buried him beneath Dublin statues and street names.
In the same way in his own day Connolly struggled to rescue the ideas of that great revolutionary democrat Wolfe Tone, leader of the United Irishmen, who, one hundred years before Connolly, drew the following conclusion:
“Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – the men of no property.”
Writing about Wolfe Tone, and unwittingly about himself, Connolly said “apostles of freedom are ever idolised when dead yet crucified when living.”
Four years ago I had the privilege of speaking at an international school on the life and ideas of James Connolly. At that meeting there was no-one present from Ireland. Today we are delighted to welcome two comrades here as visitors from the Irish Republican Socialist Party, Johnny from Strabane and Neil from Cork.
Of course our International does not yet have a section in Ireland. For my part, I am with Connolly when he wrote,
“a real socialist movement can only be born of struggle, of uncompromising affirmation of the faith that is in us. Such a movement infallibly gathers to it every element of rebellion and progress, and in the midst of the storm and stress of struggle solidifies into a real revolutionary force.”
I believe that there is now an historic opportunity to construct out of the crisis of Irish republicanism, out of the impasse of Irish capitalism and out of the Irish workers’movement just such a revolutionary party as Connolly demanded.
That is a struggle “worth crossing the street for.”
There is no alternative. Just read what passes for analysis in the bourgeois press – the Manchester Guardian or the Belfast Telegraph attempt to explain the latest failed attempt at devolution (The Good Friday Agreement and Strormont) in terms of psychology and personality, of Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. Or worse they blame the ‘stubbornness’ and ‘moodiness’ of the Irish as a national characteristic!
The inability of capitalism – of the Irish and British ruling classes – to solve the problems of Ireland cannot be explained away by national insults, nor the whims of sectarian politicians.
In these terms either the problems of Ireland can never be solved – ‘it’s in their nature’, the self-justification of those with no answer. Or, all that is needed is to change the leaders of the sectarian parties – the fantasy and illusion of those utopians who believe the GFA and Stormont can be revived once the ageing Ian Paisley dies.
It is not Paisley, nor Adams, nor any individual sectarian politician, but sectarianism, that poison which British imperialism injected into the veins of Ireland; that Frankenstein’s monster to which they gave life, and are now powerless to stop, which prevents capitalism from solving the Irish question. The inability of that system to provide jobs, houses, healthcare and education for all, continues to spread that poison – which in turn is the lifeblood of the sectarian politicians – even into the ranks of the one class in Irish society able to solve both the national and social questions – the working class.
Now, it is impossible to understand the situation in Ireland outside of the context of its whole historical development, and the entire world situation.
Fifteen years ago amidst imperialism’s euphoria at the fall of Stalinism, they deluded themselves into believing they could solve the national question in Palestine, for example, and in Ireland. Instead, the changing balance of forces internationally served to violently shake up international relations and world politics. Rather than being solved the national question reasserted itself – their efforts in Palestine and Ireland ending in tragedy and farce.
In the case of the former Yugoslavia imperialism reopened wounds and caused wars on the continent of Europe for the first time in half a century.
It is against this new international background of war and profound instability that we must see the so-called peace process in Ireland and the perspectives for the Irish working class.
Above all when dealing with the national question we have to be concrete – which working class, with what history and tradition, in what concrete circumstances? As Connolly explained in his pamphlet Erin’s Hope, “The interests of labour all over the world are identical, it is true, but it is also true that each country had better work out its own salvation on the lines most congenial to its own people.”
In other words it is not enough simply to call for workers’ unity – of course, Protestant and Catholic workers have more in common with each other than with Irish bankers, or British industrialists, or with Adams and Paisley. As true as this is on its own it is no more use than standing on a street corner in Barcelona or London or Paris and declaring the need for the working class to overthrow capitalism. If this was all that was required to make a revolution it would have succeeded long ago.
As Marxists we have to get to grips with the outlook of the Irish working class as it is and not as we might like it to be, in the real, concrete situation. To grasp the direction in which events are moving, in order to intervene and build our movement.
The 31st August 1994 marked a turning point in Irish politics with the declaration of an unconditional ceasefire by the Provisional IRA. For 25 years the Provisional IRA fought an armed struggle with the declared aim of driving out British imperialism and reuniting the island of Ireland. With more than 3000 dead on all sides not one single step has been taken in that direction – on the contrary quite a few strides have been taken further away.
This represents a crushing defeat for the policy that Marxism has always called individual terrorism, a campaign of bombings and assassinations, which could not defeat British imperialism in centuries.
The Provisional IRA have been forced to follow up their cease-fire with a statement confirming “the complete cessation of violence” and that their arms are “beyond use” and they will go still further in the coming months, desperate to rescue the Good Friday Agreement.
But it will never be enough for Paisley. Paisley and co. have one policy – fear. ‘You see’ they say ‘If the Provisional IRA are willing to do this the British government must have promised them something.’
Two thirds of Unionists in a Belfast Telegraph poll now oppose the Good Friday Agreement. In the annual violence around Orange Order marches, or in the results of the recent elections, we see a clear indication of the opposition of a Protestant majority even to the shadow of concessions. They would not accept one step in the direction of becoming an oppressed minority in a united capitalist Ireland, which could not provide them with jobs, decent houses, hospitals and schools.
Of course, British imperialism has no such plan – much though they might like to disentangle themselves from the whole costly, destabilising mess that they have created. They have given a few concessions, released a few prisoners; changed the name of the RUC to the PSNI. In turn Sinn Fein sell these meagre concessions and the hysterical reaction of Paisley and co. to gain support. But in reality Adams and McGuiness have swapped their lofty ideals for ministerial portfolios in a parliament that never meets.
It is ironic that for decades before the Good Friday Agreement the so-called centre ground of Unionism and Nationalism, the UUP and the SDLP, held a majority. The degree to which Stormont has entrenched sectarianism is in part demonstrated by the fact that the DUP and Sinn Fein now have the majority ensuring that Stormont cannot meet and the Good Friday Agreement cannot work.
After nearly 30 years of armed struggle the Provisional IRA and their strategy has been defeated and the goal of a united Ireland is further away than ever.
Instead of peace there are peace walls; segregation in housing and jobs has increased; and Stormont has constitutionalised Partition and the leaders of Sinn Fein have accepted it. The Nationalist bourgeoisie in the south long ago abandoned any claim on the north.
The Loyalist paramilitaries bear a heavy responsibility for widening the sectarian divide, the tactics of the Provisional IRA also mean they share a heavy burden of responsibility. But in the first place it is necessary to place the ultimate responsibility where it rightfully belongs – at the feet of British imperialism.
Ireland was England’s first colony and experienced the vicious cruelty of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class long before the peoples of Africa and Asia. From the twelfth century onwards the Irish nation was devastated by a series of wars of conquest – the economy was wrecked, the people reduced to starvation, and their language and culture destroyed.
Centuries of brutal oppression under English rule bred a fierce spirit of revolt and repeated uprisings. The whole history of these struggles is dominated by the courage of the people’s struggles on the one hand, and by the betrayal of those struggles at every turn by the bourgeois nationalist leaders on the other.
It is no accident, therefore, that without ever referring to Trotsky’s phrase the Permanent Revolution, nevertheless, we find exactly the same conclusion running through all the writings of James Connolly. Namely, that the bourgeoisie in the modern epoch is incapable of solving the tasks of the national democratic revolution. That the leadership of that revolution has passed to “the men (and women) of no property”, to the “incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom”, the working class, who will not stop at its boundaries but must carry on to the tasks of the socialist revolution.
In 1899, for example, Connolly wrote:
“ The nationalism of men who desire to retain the present social system is not the fruit of a natural growth but is an ugly abortion, the abortive product of an attempt to create a rebellious movement in favour of political freedom among men contented to remain industrial slaves. It is an attempt to create a revolutionary movement towards freedom and to entrust the conduct of the movement to a class desirous of enforcing the social subjection of the men they are professing to lead… It professes to believe that the class grinding us down to industrial slavery can at the same moment be leading us forward to national liberty”
(Apologies to the translators)
When Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government was forced to accept the idea of Home Rule for Ireland, on the eve of the First World War, Lord Carson mobilised a mass Protestant force to oppose it. British army officers refused to carry out the Liberal government’s orders, and the Tories and Unionists joined together to force the government to abandon the plan. They feared that Home Rule would mean the end of their power and privileges.
During the First World War the Irish bourgeois Nationalist leaders supported their British masters and sent their Irish Volunteers to die at the front on behalf of British imperialism. As an aside, Connolly wrote a scathing piece of propaganda attacking Nationalist leader John Redmond:
“Full stem ahead,
John Redmond said
That everything was well chum
Home Rule will come
When you are dead, and buried out in Belgium!”
The abandonment of Home Rule and then the First World War prepared the way for the Easter Rising of 1916. Now that would require an entire discussion in itself. In brief Connolly joined forces with nationalist elements to stage an uprising against British imperialism – that rising was betrayed by the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois nationalists and then put down with great savagery by the British army. They tied the wounded Connolly to a chair and shot him.
The mass revulsion that followed led inexorably to the war of independence from 1919-21.
At every stage of the Irish liberation struggle, the national question has been inextricably linked to social problems. The Irish bourgeois nationalists have consistently betrayed the movement to further their narrow, class interests.
At bottom the national question is a class question. The emancipation of the Irish people can only be won through the emancipation of the working class, which has no class interest in national or religious oppression. As Connolly insisted, the national and social liberation of Ireland are bound together – only the working class can achieve both, the capitalist class are capable of neither.
In 1921, threatened by social revolution the British ruling class cynically carved up the living body of Ireland, proposing a treaty – accepted by the majority of the Irish Nationalist leaders – to separate the north, and a bloody civil war followed in the south.
Connolly had warned before his death that any attempt at such a Partition would lead to “a carnival of reaction” undermining the growing unity of the working class.
Four northern counties with Protestant majorities (Armagh, Down, Derry and Antrim) were lumped together with two with Catholic majorities (Fermanagh and Tyrone) to create an unstable, artificial statelet.
The south of Ireland at this time was predominantly agricultural – the bulk of industry was in the north where the Protestant working class had shown its revolutionary colours in the period following the First World War. In truth the southern bourgeoisie was just as terrified of the northern working class as the Protestant bourgeoisie was. They saw the creation of this northern statelet as an opportunity to rid themselves of the ‘godless Protestants and communists.’
The southern bourgeoisie has consistently demonstrated its lack of interest in reuniting Ireland – they supported its division in the first place.
British imperialism feared social revolution in Ireland. They had economic interests in the north; the Protestant landlords were linked to the British Tories; and imperialism had strategic naval and military interests there.
Partition led to the creation of a reactionary state based on Protestant superiority. For more than 50 years Catholics were systematically discriminated against in housing and employment. There was formal democracy, but the autonomous parliament – Stormont – with its guaranteed, in-built Protestant majority was effectively ‘a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant People.’
The so-called police, the RUC and the hated ‘B’ Specials were Protestant forces. This fostered bitterness and anger in the Catholic population – it was meant to. The deliberate sowing of national and religious hatred between Catholic and Protestant in Ireland is yet another crime of British imperialism.
In order to defeat revolutionary struggle in Ireland the British ruling class perfected the tactic of divide and rule they would later use in India and Palestine.
Yet there is nothing natural or insurmountable in this. The unity of workers in struggle runs like a red thread through all of Irish history. The first great movement for Irish independence, the revolutionary movement of the United Irishmen was led by Wolfe Tone, who came from a Protestant background.