Post by Stallit 2 de Halfo on Feb 6, 2008 19:08:25 GMT
"Against the Red Flag"
Socialism and Irish Nationalism
1830 - 1913
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Mags Glennon (Red Action)
The 1913 Lockout was the culmination of several years of political organisation and agitation among the unskilled working class, carried out primarily through the Irish Transport Workers Union. The ITGWU had been founded by Larkin in 1909 specifically as a union of the unskilled, long deemed 'unorganisable' by the official trade union movement. The open militancy of the ITGWU was a new departure in the history of the Irish trade union movement and the organisation grew rapidly, from 4,000 members in 1911 to 10,000 by 1913. The ITGWU quickly came up against determined resistance from employers, the police and the British state.
However some of the most vitriolic abuse and opposition to this manifestation of the independent organisation of the working class was expressed by Irish nationalist organisations, not only the official Irish Parliamentary (Home Rule) Party but also by the more 'radical' Sinn Fein movement led by Arthur Griffith. While James Connolly declared the indivisibility of the of the struggle for Irish independence from the fight for socialism he was essentially a lone voice whose ideology, based on the application of Marxist principles to the Irish situation, was a radical break from the previous two centuries of Irish nationalism which had laid the foundations for the collection of political beliefs that still dominate the discussion on the 'National Question'.
Irish nationalism, as it developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries was an eclectic mixture of aspects of various political doctrines, not necessarily of Irish origin, which were gradually amalgamated in different forms by the groups who adopted a policy of Irish independence. In the 1890-1910 period at least four main nationalist organisations existed, these being the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Around these a series organisations, some officially 'non political' had emerged such as the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and a number of bodies promoting cultural expression and the Gaelic revival.
The genesis of what can be broadly termed as Irish Nationalism emerged from the ideals of the United Irishmen and the failed rebellion of 1798. All of the above organisations active in the early 20th Century claimed a heritage that stemmed from the radical ideas propounded by Wolfe Tone and his supporters in the 1790's, Sinn Fein and the IRB more so than the Irish Parliamentary Party or the Ancient Order of Hibernians. However the ideals put forward by the United Irishmen in the 1790's were profoundly different the strain of Irish nationalism that emerged in the 19th Century. The Republican tradition founded on the ideas of Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson and others within the United Irishmen owed a large measure of inspiration to the political beliefs which led to the French revolution of 1789. There was, for example, a strong vein of secularism and anti clericalism running through the United Irish movement that found no expression in the later nationalist tradition of Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party.
The constitutional nationalist tradition drew its inspiration from the long political career of Daniel O'Connell and the later Home Rule campaign directed by Charles Stuart Parnell. O'Connell, Parnell and John Redmond dominate the stage of Irish history and are portrayed as the champions of nationalist Ireland. Nationalists they undoubtedly were but their political motivation, supporters and ideology do not make them champions of the cause of the working class.
The first opportunity for organised political action by the Irish working class on the issue of national independence and the development of internationalist links with the English working class emerged in the 1830's but were effectively blocked by Daniel O 'Connell.
O 'Connell, long revered in Irish history as 'The Liberator' was a consistent enemy of the working class and laid the foundations for the anti English and anti socialist premises at the root of much of Irish nationalism. O Connell's family background is of interest as are some of his less publicised political activities. O Connell was born into a family of the minor landowning catholic gentry. He received his education in France during the period of the French Revolution, which swept away the reactionary catholic ancient regime forever. These experiences are held as the formative influences on a political career in which he famously declared the Irish freedom was not worth the shedding of a drop of blood. It is a less well known fact that O Connell was a volunteer with the Lawyers Yeomanry Corps which rounded up supporters of Robert Emmet's failed rebellion in 1803, was the suppression of Irish freedom worth paying such a price?
It is interesting also to note that Emmet's rebellion, long derided as a revolt of the 'rabble', was in fact one of the most proletarian of Irish risings. Berresford Ellis' 'A History of the Irish Working Class' provides details of tentative links between Emmet and a group known as the United Englishmen who represented labourers in London and textile workers in the North of England. Emmet's proclamation, drawn up at the start of the Rising, provides for the nationalisation of all church and landed property and declares itself for universal suffrage.
Robert Emmet's rebellion was to be the last armed uprising in Ireland for 45 years, a period of history dominated politically by Daniel O Connell. O Connell's first political success was the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 which removed the last vestiges of the Penal Laws. The benefits of the measure were of great advantage to the rising catholic middle class which had long circumvented the restrictions on Catholic landholding by engaging in trade and commercial activities. The political ambitions of the Catholic middle class, the economic backers of O Connell, found their expression in the rise of Catholic nationalism throughout the remaining years of the 19th Century and were the dominant economic forces opposing the trade unions in 1913.
O Connell's position as the founder of modern Irish nationalism centres not only on the ideology he espoused but also on the methods of political organisation he adopted. The organisations he founded were based on the mass mobilisation of the poorest sections of Irish society in support of the objectives being promoted, catholic emancipation and repeal, the achievement of which would do most to further the political ambitions and advance the social and financial position of the middle class. A second element of O Connell's leadership style was the promotion of the populist model of political leadership, the placing of all faith in one messianic figure, 'the liberator', the uncrowned king', 'the chief ' or even 'the boss'. Thus the confidence of a class, in this case the working class, to act autonomously in its own interest, was dependant on the approval and sanction of a popular hero. This trend is found most prominently in the nationalist criticism of the 1913 Strike which speaks of 'Larkinism' and 'Larkin's Union', of a working class being led like sheep by a popular political figure rather than of the working class reacting against their intolerable conditions and fighting collectively for their rights.
The third aspect of O Connell's style of leadership that endured into later years was the tactic of threatening the English government with the power of the masses. Once the people had been mobilised in support of a nationalist objective the fear of revolution in Ireland was often a sufficient inducement to the English ruling class to grant some concessions. Such compromises were a feature of the nationalist political process. The small gains made were to the advantage of the directors of such campaigns but rarely did any political or material gain accrue to the stage army wheeled out to win them. O Connell turned back from the brink of illegality in the Repeal campaign and Parnell made the Kilmainham deal to quell rising revolutionary feeling during the Land War. The Fenians were roundly condemned for their 'terrorist' actions and the workers in 1913 for promoting 'anarchy'', neither of which could be controlled and channelled by middle class nationalists.
In the 1830's O Connell turned his attention to the question of the Repeal of the Act of Union with the vision of a semi autonomous Irish legislature in Dublin, modelled on Grattan's parliament of 1782. The 1830's also saw the establishment of the Dublin Trades Political Union, an umbrella group of artisans (skilled workers) and tradesmens organisations which supported the Repeal campaign. O Connell entered into negotiations with the DTPU with the aim of bringing it under the direct control of the Repeal movement and diluting it's working class orientation, a course of action which led to a great deal of friction on questions of class and strategy. In the late 1830's two aspects of O Connell's anti working class beliefs came to the fore, one being the question of trade union organisation in Dublin, the other his attitude to the Chartists.
The Trade Union controversy arose as a result of increased industrial agitation in Dublin and a violent spinners strike in Glasgow in 1837. The Dublin disputes were centred around the enforcement of a minimum wage, the limitation of apprentices in trade and the compulsory membership of trade unions. O Connell, supported by the Archbishop of Dublin, attacked Trade Union leaders and was challenged to openly debate the issues involved. At this meeting O Connell complained that Irish Trade Unions were more militant than their English counterparts and that their activities had led to a decline in trade in Dublin. He also claimed that the tactics and philosophy of the trade unions had been 'imported from Manchester'. The workers argued that the restrictive practises within their trades were necessary to maintain jobs and conditions. The trade union leaders also recognised the openly class nature of O Connell's position.
"What advantage is it to the tradesmen of Ireland that 1,300 situations have been thrown open by (Catholic) Emancipation ?... Has it given a loaf of bread to the thousand starving families of the poor operatives of this city ?"
(Freemans Journal Jan. 18th 1838;Quoted in:P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class)
The President of the Carpenters Union said that Trade Unionists had
''Followed and aided Mr O Connell as long as he did not seek to oppress us, but when he seeks to take the bread out of our mouths it is time for us to defend the moral combination by which we support our children''
(Freemans Journal, Jan 9th 1838)
O Connell was also opposed to the demand for a minimum wage and believed that if employers made no profits then their employees wages must decrease. He persuaded the Whig government to set up a committee of enquiry into the trade unions but very little came of this.
During the Commons debate O Connell said
"There was no tyranny equal to that which was exercised by the trade unionists in Dublin over their fellow labourers"
(P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class, p.106)
In 1838 O Connell voted against Lord Ashley's bill to limit the hours children under the age of 9 could be employed in factories and limiting those under the age of 13 to a 48 hour week. He stated that it infringed the rights of industry and condemned the
"...ridiculous humanity, which would end by converting their manufacturers into beggars"
(History of the Irish working class; P.B.Ellis; p. 107)
The second incident that highlights the anti revolutionary nature of O Connell's politics was his attitude to the Chartist movement. The Chartists enjoyed widespread working class support in Britain and campaigned for a peoples charter guaranteeing universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. A number of the Chartist leaders were trade unionists who had emigrated from Ireland. Fergus O Connor, a prominent Chartist leader, sought an alliance between English workers and Irish peasants to pressurise the English parliament. The Chartists also supported repeal of the Act of Union. O Connell was firmly wedded to the promise of repeal from the Whig party and was consistently hostile to any unity between the English and Irish working class.
However, despite his best efforts, Chartist ideas made some progress in Ireland in the later 1830's. Chartist groups were set up not only in the main towns and cities but also in smaller, mainly rural, centres such as Cashel and Loughrea. Although Chartist demands appear moderate in historical retrospect they were strongly condemned by O Connell, the clergy and employers. At his trial for conspiracy in 1844 O Connell proudly boasted, as part of his defence, that he had always supported the rights of property, opposed trade unions and prevented the spread of Chartism in Ireland.
"I shall ever rejoice that I kept Ireland free from this pollution"
(London Times, Feb 7th 1844: Quoted in J.D.Clarkson: Labour and Nationalism in Ireland)
The Chartists had realised that the defeat of capitalism in England, and the rights of landed property in Ireland involved an identity of class interests between English workers and Irish peasants. O Connell also realised this but the class interests of the 'Liberator' were firmly with his political backers, the capitalists and the catholic clergy and gentry. O Connell's class interests were best served by the suppression of any class conscious unity between the oppressed sections of English and Irish society as this would expose the collaboration of the upper classes of both countries to keep them in poverty and servitude in the interests of greater profits. O Connell's 'betrayal' of the cause of the working class was not irrational or treacherous but was merely the obvious protection of his class interests and political powerbase should the Repeal campaign succeed.
O Connell revived the Repeal campaign in the 1840's and again the majority of workers organisations supported it's demands. He was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841 and became even more reactionary, increasingly equating Catholicism with nationalism, a position which alienated radical Presbyterians from the national movement. O Connell always made clear that he was loyal to the English crown and did not wish to sever all Irish links with the monarchy but merely to establish an Irish House of Commons and Lords. In 1840 he set up the Loyal National Repeal Association.
Marx's friend and collaborator Frederich Engels had a strong interest in the Irish question and made some interesting observations. He recognised the revolutionary potential of the mobilisation of the workers and the peasantry through the Repeal campaign.
" What people! They haven't a penny to lose, more than half of them have not a shirt to their back, they are real proletarians and sans culottes, and Irish besides - wild ungovernable fanatical Gaels... If I had two hundred thousand Irish I could overturn the whole British monarchy"
(Fredrich Engels; G, Meyer, 1936)
However optimism and activity declined after O Connell's failure to confront the British ban on the Clontarf monster meeting. The climax of the campaign had been reached but O Connell's politics would not allow him to stray beyond the bounds of legitimate constitutional activity. Engels had predicted three months earlier that O Connell did not have the political capability to bring the movement to a revolutionary conclusion.
"If O Connell was really a popular leader, if he had sufficient courage and he was himself not afraid of the people, i.e. if he were not a double faced Whig, but a straight consistent democrat, then long ago there would not have been an English soldier in Ireland... Give the people freedom for one second and they will do with O Connell and his financial aristocracy what the latter want to do with the Tories"
(Elinor Burns: British Imperialism in Ireland; p 1
The disillusionment this defeat engendered cast a shadow over political activity throughout the 1840's. O Connell fought to prevent control of the Repeal movement falling into the hands of the more radical nationalists of Young Ireland. One of the most radical of this group was John Mitchell who described O Connell in the following terms-
"Next to the British government he was the greatest enemy Ireland ever had"
(Paul Dubois: Contemporary Ireland; p63)
The Young Ireland group began to gain increasing working class support despite it's middle class leadership. 15,000 Dublin artisans signed a petition of protest against the expulsion of Young Ireland from the Repeal Association. Young Ireland, while being more radical than O Connell on national issues, equated the oppression of labour and the peasantry as being due solely to the oppression of Ireland by Britain. Thus capitalism and its evils were the 'English system' and would disappear with the creation of an independent Ireland, a belief also held by some Fenian writers and revived by Sinn Fein in the early 20th Century. The logical conclusion of this argument was that, since capitalism was an English import, it was intrinsically evil for this reason, not for its impact on the poor as an exploitative ideology. However it was necessary to subsume the struggle for improved workers conditions to the general fight, of all classes in Ireland, for independence.
The oppressive features of capitalism would disappear with the ending of the English occupation. Consequently, such nationalists believed, there was no need to introduce another 'English' ideology, socialism, to combat capitalism. This belief failed to take account of the international nature of capitalism and thus the consequent need for workers to organise to defeat it in a similar manner. Irish nationalist leaders were terrified that workers would become aware of this fact and thus the true nature of their oppression had to be clouded in myths which attempted to explain the foreignness of capitalism and to promote the belief that Irish leaders and employers would not exploit their fellow Irish workers.
In fact, as the 19th century progressed increasing numbers of the Catholic middle class became prosperous enough both to employ labour and become landlords. It was not English, but Irish, capitalism that presided over the poverty of Ireland, but these capitalists were the financial backers of nationalist politicians who were highly unlikely to criticise those who would ensure the stability of an independent or semi autonomous Ireland.
While the Young Ireland movement did recognise the fact that capitalism was a component part of the English occupation of Ireland its programme and ideology rejected socialism as a solution. John Mitchell, seen as one of the most radical in the leadership, referred to socialists as 'something worse than wild beasts' in his autobiography Jail Journal.
The situation grew increasingly farcical as the Famine approached. Young Ireland quite reasonably demanded an end to food exports to alleviate worsening shortages, however at the same time O Connell tried to force the Young Irelanders to denounce violence as a political weapon. After O Connell's death some elements of Young Ireland developed links with the Chartists in Britain but such political activity had little relevance to a population more concerned with staying alive than engaging in politics. During the Famine huge amounts of grain and other agricultural produce was being exported from Ireland, more than enough to feed the country. This was the profit of mainly absentee landlords and the peasantry were left to die rather than interfere with the laissez faire economic policy of the British government. John O Connell M.P., a son of 'The Liberator', commended the people for their willingness to starve to death-
"I thank God I live among a people who would die of hunger rather than defraud their landlords of rent"
( quoted in P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class; p112)
The massive support for Chartism in England and the plans for a Young Ireland rebellion were both buoyed up by the tide of European revolutions in 1848. However both organisations were crushed almost simultaneously by British coercion acts. 1848 was one particular instance whereby there was a confluence of workers demands and nationalist aims. However, despite their strong support among the working class in Dublin, the Young Ireland leaders made a seriously damaging tactical error in planning to centre the rebellion in rural areas of Munster. The failure of the Rising and the arrest or death of the most radical leaders, including James Fintan Lalor, contributed to the depressed state of radical nationalist activity in the following decades and may also have been a contributory factor in the decline of militancy among urban workers. Trade Unions increasingly turned towards more restrained methods of organisation and in the main shunned political activity.
The Fenian movement is interesting because it provides an Republican alternative to the bourgeois nationalism of constitutional parliamentarians in the later half of the 19th Century. The Fenian movement reverted to the old physical force tradition of Republicanism stemming from the United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders. However unlike them the Fenian tradition paid little attention to political organisation. It was almost exclusively a physical force grouping adopting the clandestine organisational methods that had previously been used by agrarian organisations. Many in the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (as the Fenians were also known) had contacts with the socialist movement both in Ireland and internationally. James Stephens, leader of the Fenians, had fled Ireland after the 1848 rebellion and was a member of socialistic societies in France in the 1850's, as were Michael Doheny and John O Mahoney. Karl Marx had a strong interest in Irish affairs and supported the Fenians. He wrote -
"Fenianism is characterised by socialistic tendency (in the negative sense directed against the appropriation of the soil) and by being a lower orders movement."
(Quoted in A Boyd: The Rise of the Irish Trade Unions; p56)
The leadership of the IRB was confined to a group of middle class intellectuals but the rank and file of the organisation was composed of urban workers, small farmers and rural labourers. There was also a strong degree of Fenian influence in the development of the land agitation campaign as evidenced by the involvement of Michael Davitt in particular. Davitt had suffered a long term of imprisonment for his Fenian activities and later returned to Ireland to found the Land League. The IRB would not officially support the Land campaign as it was seen as a deviation from the overall importance of the Republican struggle but many individual members of the movement participated in the Land League.
A similar situation also arose within the Trade Union movement. Jim Connell, the author of the Socialist anthem The Red Flag, was a Fenian who became prominent in the Labour movement abroad. Frank Roney from Belfast was a Fenian who was described before a Parliamentary Commission as an 'advocate of violence, assassination and terror', he later emigrated to the United States and was an important figure in the growth of Trade Unionism in that country.
The Fenian movement was important too in that by its secret organisational structure and the level of infiltration it managed to effect, particularly within the British Army, it had the potential to be serious revolutionary force. Joseph Biggar, an MP in Parnell's Home Rule Party, was a senior member of the IRB.
As previously mentioned Marx was a strong supporter of the Fenians and influenced the International Working Mens Association in support of Irish independence. He also worked on a campaign demanding the release of Fenian prisoners after a bombing campaign in England. J.P. Mc Donnell, a Fenian, became correspondence secretary in Ireland for the International Working Mens Association and was on its Central Council. A branch of the International was established in Cork, then seen as the Irish city most likely to sustain a socialist movement. The International in Cork organised around the nine hours day campaign and large numbers were recruited. Rumours of increasing support led to the promotion of a Red Scare by the church. Branches of the International in Dublin, Belfast and Cavan also declined due to clerical interference.
Socialism and Irish Nationalism
1830 - 1913
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Mags Glennon (Red Action)
The 1913 Lockout was the culmination of several years of political organisation and agitation among the unskilled working class, carried out primarily through the Irish Transport Workers Union. The ITGWU had been founded by Larkin in 1909 specifically as a union of the unskilled, long deemed 'unorganisable' by the official trade union movement. The open militancy of the ITGWU was a new departure in the history of the Irish trade union movement and the organisation grew rapidly, from 4,000 members in 1911 to 10,000 by 1913. The ITGWU quickly came up against determined resistance from employers, the police and the British state.
However some of the most vitriolic abuse and opposition to this manifestation of the independent organisation of the working class was expressed by Irish nationalist organisations, not only the official Irish Parliamentary (Home Rule) Party but also by the more 'radical' Sinn Fein movement led by Arthur Griffith. While James Connolly declared the indivisibility of the of the struggle for Irish independence from the fight for socialism he was essentially a lone voice whose ideology, based on the application of Marxist principles to the Irish situation, was a radical break from the previous two centuries of Irish nationalism which had laid the foundations for the collection of political beliefs that still dominate the discussion on the 'National Question'.
Irish nationalism, as it developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries was an eclectic mixture of aspects of various political doctrines, not necessarily of Irish origin, which were gradually amalgamated in different forms by the groups who adopted a policy of Irish independence. In the 1890-1910 period at least four main nationalist organisations existed, these being the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Around these a series organisations, some officially 'non political' had emerged such as the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and a number of bodies promoting cultural expression and the Gaelic revival.
The genesis of what can be broadly termed as Irish Nationalism emerged from the ideals of the United Irishmen and the failed rebellion of 1798. All of the above organisations active in the early 20th Century claimed a heritage that stemmed from the radical ideas propounded by Wolfe Tone and his supporters in the 1790's, Sinn Fein and the IRB more so than the Irish Parliamentary Party or the Ancient Order of Hibernians. However the ideals put forward by the United Irishmen in the 1790's were profoundly different the strain of Irish nationalism that emerged in the 19th Century. The Republican tradition founded on the ideas of Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson and others within the United Irishmen owed a large measure of inspiration to the political beliefs which led to the French revolution of 1789. There was, for example, a strong vein of secularism and anti clericalism running through the United Irish movement that found no expression in the later nationalist tradition of Sinn Fein and the Irish Parliamentary Party.
The constitutional nationalist tradition drew its inspiration from the long political career of Daniel O'Connell and the later Home Rule campaign directed by Charles Stuart Parnell. O'Connell, Parnell and John Redmond dominate the stage of Irish history and are portrayed as the champions of nationalist Ireland. Nationalists they undoubtedly were but their political motivation, supporters and ideology do not make them champions of the cause of the working class.
The first opportunity for organised political action by the Irish working class on the issue of national independence and the development of internationalist links with the English working class emerged in the 1830's but were effectively blocked by Daniel O 'Connell.
O 'Connell, long revered in Irish history as 'The Liberator' was a consistent enemy of the working class and laid the foundations for the anti English and anti socialist premises at the root of much of Irish nationalism. O Connell's family background is of interest as are some of his less publicised political activities. O Connell was born into a family of the minor landowning catholic gentry. He received his education in France during the period of the French Revolution, which swept away the reactionary catholic ancient regime forever. These experiences are held as the formative influences on a political career in which he famously declared the Irish freedom was not worth the shedding of a drop of blood. It is a less well known fact that O Connell was a volunteer with the Lawyers Yeomanry Corps which rounded up supporters of Robert Emmet's failed rebellion in 1803, was the suppression of Irish freedom worth paying such a price?
It is interesting also to note that Emmet's rebellion, long derided as a revolt of the 'rabble', was in fact one of the most proletarian of Irish risings. Berresford Ellis' 'A History of the Irish Working Class' provides details of tentative links between Emmet and a group known as the United Englishmen who represented labourers in London and textile workers in the North of England. Emmet's proclamation, drawn up at the start of the Rising, provides for the nationalisation of all church and landed property and declares itself for universal suffrage.
Robert Emmet's rebellion was to be the last armed uprising in Ireland for 45 years, a period of history dominated politically by Daniel O Connell. O Connell's first political success was the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 which removed the last vestiges of the Penal Laws. The benefits of the measure were of great advantage to the rising catholic middle class which had long circumvented the restrictions on Catholic landholding by engaging in trade and commercial activities. The political ambitions of the Catholic middle class, the economic backers of O Connell, found their expression in the rise of Catholic nationalism throughout the remaining years of the 19th Century and were the dominant economic forces opposing the trade unions in 1913.
O Connell's position as the founder of modern Irish nationalism centres not only on the ideology he espoused but also on the methods of political organisation he adopted. The organisations he founded were based on the mass mobilisation of the poorest sections of Irish society in support of the objectives being promoted, catholic emancipation and repeal, the achievement of which would do most to further the political ambitions and advance the social and financial position of the middle class. A second element of O Connell's leadership style was the promotion of the populist model of political leadership, the placing of all faith in one messianic figure, 'the liberator', the uncrowned king', 'the chief ' or even 'the boss'. Thus the confidence of a class, in this case the working class, to act autonomously in its own interest, was dependant on the approval and sanction of a popular hero. This trend is found most prominently in the nationalist criticism of the 1913 Strike which speaks of 'Larkinism' and 'Larkin's Union', of a working class being led like sheep by a popular political figure rather than of the working class reacting against their intolerable conditions and fighting collectively for their rights.
The third aspect of O Connell's style of leadership that endured into later years was the tactic of threatening the English government with the power of the masses. Once the people had been mobilised in support of a nationalist objective the fear of revolution in Ireland was often a sufficient inducement to the English ruling class to grant some concessions. Such compromises were a feature of the nationalist political process. The small gains made were to the advantage of the directors of such campaigns but rarely did any political or material gain accrue to the stage army wheeled out to win them. O Connell turned back from the brink of illegality in the Repeal campaign and Parnell made the Kilmainham deal to quell rising revolutionary feeling during the Land War. The Fenians were roundly condemned for their 'terrorist' actions and the workers in 1913 for promoting 'anarchy'', neither of which could be controlled and channelled by middle class nationalists.
In the 1830's O Connell turned his attention to the question of the Repeal of the Act of Union with the vision of a semi autonomous Irish legislature in Dublin, modelled on Grattan's parliament of 1782. The 1830's also saw the establishment of the Dublin Trades Political Union, an umbrella group of artisans (skilled workers) and tradesmens organisations which supported the Repeal campaign. O Connell entered into negotiations with the DTPU with the aim of bringing it under the direct control of the Repeal movement and diluting it's working class orientation, a course of action which led to a great deal of friction on questions of class and strategy. In the late 1830's two aspects of O Connell's anti working class beliefs came to the fore, one being the question of trade union organisation in Dublin, the other his attitude to the Chartists.
The Trade Union controversy arose as a result of increased industrial agitation in Dublin and a violent spinners strike in Glasgow in 1837. The Dublin disputes were centred around the enforcement of a minimum wage, the limitation of apprentices in trade and the compulsory membership of trade unions. O Connell, supported by the Archbishop of Dublin, attacked Trade Union leaders and was challenged to openly debate the issues involved. At this meeting O Connell complained that Irish Trade Unions were more militant than their English counterparts and that their activities had led to a decline in trade in Dublin. He also claimed that the tactics and philosophy of the trade unions had been 'imported from Manchester'. The workers argued that the restrictive practises within their trades were necessary to maintain jobs and conditions. The trade union leaders also recognised the openly class nature of O Connell's position.
"What advantage is it to the tradesmen of Ireland that 1,300 situations have been thrown open by (Catholic) Emancipation ?... Has it given a loaf of bread to the thousand starving families of the poor operatives of this city ?"
(Freemans Journal Jan. 18th 1838;Quoted in:P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class)
The President of the Carpenters Union said that Trade Unionists had
''Followed and aided Mr O Connell as long as he did not seek to oppress us, but when he seeks to take the bread out of our mouths it is time for us to defend the moral combination by which we support our children''
(Freemans Journal, Jan 9th 1838)
O Connell was also opposed to the demand for a minimum wage and believed that if employers made no profits then their employees wages must decrease. He persuaded the Whig government to set up a committee of enquiry into the trade unions but very little came of this.
During the Commons debate O Connell said
"There was no tyranny equal to that which was exercised by the trade unionists in Dublin over their fellow labourers"
(P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class, p.106)
In 1838 O Connell voted against Lord Ashley's bill to limit the hours children under the age of 9 could be employed in factories and limiting those under the age of 13 to a 48 hour week. He stated that it infringed the rights of industry and condemned the
"...ridiculous humanity, which would end by converting their manufacturers into beggars"
(History of the Irish working class; P.B.Ellis; p. 107)
The second incident that highlights the anti revolutionary nature of O Connell's politics was his attitude to the Chartist movement. The Chartists enjoyed widespread working class support in Britain and campaigned for a peoples charter guaranteeing universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. A number of the Chartist leaders were trade unionists who had emigrated from Ireland. Fergus O Connor, a prominent Chartist leader, sought an alliance between English workers and Irish peasants to pressurise the English parliament. The Chartists also supported repeal of the Act of Union. O Connell was firmly wedded to the promise of repeal from the Whig party and was consistently hostile to any unity between the English and Irish working class.
However, despite his best efforts, Chartist ideas made some progress in Ireland in the later 1830's. Chartist groups were set up not only in the main towns and cities but also in smaller, mainly rural, centres such as Cashel and Loughrea. Although Chartist demands appear moderate in historical retrospect they were strongly condemned by O Connell, the clergy and employers. At his trial for conspiracy in 1844 O Connell proudly boasted, as part of his defence, that he had always supported the rights of property, opposed trade unions and prevented the spread of Chartism in Ireland.
"I shall ever rejoice that I kept Ireland free from this pollution"
(London Times, Feb 7th 1844: Quoted in J.D.Clarkson: Labour and Nationalism in Ireland)
The Chartists had realised that the defeat of capitalism in England, and the rights of landed property in Ireland involved an identity of class interests between English workers and Irish peasants. O Connell also realised this but the class interests of the 'Liberator' were firmly with his political backers, the capitalists and the catholic clergy and gentry. O Connell's class interests were best served by the suppression of any class conscious unity between the oppressed sections of English and Irish society as this would expose the collaboration of the upper classes of both countries to keep them in poverty and servitude in the interests of greater profits. O Connell's 'betrayal' of the cause of the working class was not irrational or treacherous but was merely the obvious protection of his class interests and political powerbase should the Repeal campaign succeed.
O Connell revived the Repeal campaign in the 1840's and again the majority of workers organisations supported it's demands. He was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1841 and became even more reactionary, increasingly equating Catholicism with nationalism, a position which alienated radical Presbyterians from the national movement. O Connell always made clear that he was loyal to the English crown and did not wish to sever all Irish links with the monarchy but merely to establish an Irish House of Commons and Lords. In 1840 he set up the Loyal National Repeal Association.
Marx's friend and collaborator Frederich Engels had a strong interest in the Irish question and made some interesting observations. He recognised the revolutionary potential of the mobilisation of the workers and the peasantry through the Repeal campaign.
" What people! They haven't a penny to lose, more than half of them have not a shirt to their back, they are real proletarians and sans culottes, and Irish besides - wild ungovernable fanatical Gaels... If I had two hundred thousand Irish I could overturn the whole British monarchy"
(Fredrich Engels; G, Meyer, 1936)
However optimism and activity declined after O Connell's failure to confront the British ban on the Clontarf monster meeting. The climax of the campaign had been reached but O Connell's politics would not allow him to stray beyond the bounds of legitimate constitutional activity. Engels had predicted three months earlier that O Connell did not have the political capability to bring the movement to a revolutionary conclusion.
"If O Connell was really a popular leader, if he had sufficient courage and he was himself not afraid of the people, i.e. if he were not a double faced Whig, but a straight consistent democrat, then long ago there would not have been an English soldier in Ireland... Give the people freedom for one second and they will do with O Connell and his financial aristocracy what the latter want to do with the Tories"
(Elinor Burns: British Imperialism in Ireland; p 1
The disillusionment this defeat engendered cast a shadow over political activity throughout the 1840's. O Connell fought to prevent control of the Repeal movement falling into the hands of the more radical nationalists of Young Ireland. One of the most radical of this group was John Mitchell who described O Connell in the following terms-
"Next to the British government he was the greatest enemy Ireland ever had"
(Paul Dubois: Contemporary Ireland; p63)
The Young Ireland group began to gain increasing working class support despite it's middle class leadership. 15,000 Dublin artisans signed a petition of protest against the expulsion of Young Ireland from the Repeal Association. Young Ireland, while being more radical than O Connell on national issues, equated the oppression of labour and the peasantry as being due solely to the oppression of Ireland by Britain. Thus capitalism and its evils were the 'English system' and would disappear with the creation of an independent Ireland, a belief also held by some Fenian writers and revived by Sinn Fein in the early 20th Century. The logical conclusion of this argument was that, since capitalism was an English import, it was intrinsically evil for this reason, not for its impact on the poor as an exploitative ideology. However it was necessary to subsume the struggle for improved workers conditions to the general fight, of all classes in Ireland, for independence.
The oppressive features of capitalism would disappear with the ending of the English occupation. Consequently, such nationalists believed, there was no need to introduce another 'English' ideology, socialism, to combat capitalism. This belief failed to take account of the international nature of capitalism and thus the consequent need for workers to organise to defeat it in a similar manner. Irish nationalist leaders were terrified that workers would become aware of this fact and thus the true nature of their oppression had to be clouded in myths which attempted to explain the foreignness of capitalism and to promote the belief that Irish leaders and employers would not exploit their fellow Irish workers.
In fact, as the 19th century progressed increasing numbers of the Catholic middle class became prosperous enough both to employ labour and become landlords. It was not English, but Irish, capitalism that presided over the poverty of Ireland, but these capitalists were the financial backers of nationalist politicians who were highly unlikely to criticise those who would ensure the stability of an independent or semi autonomous Ireland.
While the Young Ireland movement did recognise the fact that capitalism was a component part of the English occupation of Ireland its programme and ideology rejected socialism as a solution. John Mitchell, seen as one of the most radical in the leadership, referred to socialists as 'something worse than wild beasts' in his autobiography Jail Journal.
The situation grew increasingly farcical as the Famine approached. Young Ireland quite reasonably demanded an end to food exports to alleviate worsening shortages, however at the same time O Connell tried to force the Young Irelanders to denounce violence as a political weapon. After O Connell's death some elements of Young Ireland developed links with the Chartists in Britain but such political activity had little relevance to a population more concerned with staying alive than engaging in politics. During the Famine huge amounts of grain and other agricultural produce was being exported from Ireland, more than enough to feed the country. This was the profit of mainly absentee landlords and the peasantry were left to die rather than interfere with the laissez faire economic policy of the British government. John O Connell M.P., a son of 'The Liberator', commended the people for their willingness to starve to death-
"I thank God I live among a people who would die of hunger rather than defraud their landlords of rent"
( quoted in P.B. Ellis: A History of the Irish Working Class; p112)
The massive support for Chartism in England and the plans for a Young Ireland rebellion were both buoyed up by the tide of European revolutions in 1848. However both organisations were crushed almost simultaneously by British coercion acts. 1848 was one particular instance whereby there was a confluence of workers demands and nationalist aims. However, despite their strong support among the working class in Dublin, the Young Ireland leaders made a seriously damaging tactical error in planning to centre the rebellion in rural areas of Munster. The failure of the Rising and the arrest or death of the most radical leaders, including James Fintan Lalor, contributed to the depressed state of radical nationalist activity in the following decades and may also have been a contributory factor in the decline of militancy among urban workers. Trade Unions increasingly turned towards more restrained methods of organisation and in the main shunned political activity.
The Fenian movement is interesting because it provides an Republican alternative to the bourgeois nationalism of constitutional parliamentarians in the later half of the 19th Century. The Fenian movement reverted to the old physical force tradition of Republicanism stemming from the United Irishmen and the Young Irelanders. However unlike them the Fenian tradition paid little attention to political organisation. It was almost exclusively a physical force grouping adopting the clandestine organisational methods that had previously been used by agrarian organisations. Many in the leadership of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (as the Fenians were also known) had contacts with the socialist movement both in Ireland and internationally. James Stephens, leader of the Fenians, had fled Ireland after the 1848 rebellion and was a member of socialistic societies in France in the 1850's, as were Michael Doheny and John O Mahoney. Karl Marx had a strong interest in Irish affairs and supported the Fenians. He wrote -
"Fenianism is characterised by socialistic tendency (in the negative sense directed against the appropriation of the soil) and by being a lower orders movement."
(Quoted in A Boyd: The Rise of the Irish Trade Unions; p56)
The leadership of the IRB was confined to a group of middle class intellectuals but the rank and file of the organisation was composed of urban workers, small farmers and rural labourers. There was also a strong degree of Fenian influence in the development of the land agitation campaign as evidenced by the involvement of Michael Davitt in particular. Davitt had suffered a long term of imprisonment for his Fenian activities and later returned to Ireland to found the Land League. The IRB would not officially support the Land campaign as it was seen as a deviation from the overall importance of the Republican struggle but many individual members of the movement participated in the Land League.
A similar situation also arose within the Trade Union movement. Jim Connell, the author of the Socialist anthem The Red Flag, was a Fenian who became prominent in the Labour movement abroad. Frank Roney from Belfast was a Fenian who was described before a Parliamentary Commission as an 'advocate of violence, assassination and terror', he later emigrated to the United States and was an important figure in the growth of Trade Unionism in that country.
The Fenian movement was important too in that by its secret organisational structure and the level of infiltration it managed to effect, particularly within the British Army, it had the potential to be serious revolutionary force. Joseph Biggar, an MP in Parnell's Home Rule Party, was a senior member of the IRB.
As previously mentioned Marx was a strong supporter of the Fenians and influenced the International Working Mens Association in support of Irish independence. He also worked on a campaign demanding the release of Fenian prisoners after a bombing campaign in England. J.P. Mc Donnell, a Fenian, became correspondence secretary in Ireland for the International Working Mens Association and was on its Central Council. A branch of the International was established in Cork, then seen as the Irish city most likely to sustain a socialist movement. The International in Cork organised around the nine hours day campaign and large numbers were recruited. Rumours of increasing support led to the promotion of a Red Scare by the church. Branches of the International in Dublin, Belfast and Cavan also declined due to clerical interference.