A series of articles by the Irish Republican Socialist POW's, H3-Long Kesh. Additional material by Paul Little.

POLICY STATEMENT

This project is the first in a series of articles commissioned by the Starry Plough to investigate the roots of modern Irish republican socialism and to put the current peace process that has culminated in the Good Friday Agreement and the restoration of the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, in its political and historical context.

We have reprinted the article by James Connolly on Page 13 from an issue of "The Harp" first printed in 1908.

We do so not only to illustrate the very obvious comparisons with what is happening politically in Ireland today but also to reissue the clarion call of Connolly, the founder of twentieth century Irish Republican Socialism, for unity among the Irish working class Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, as the only certain method of confronting British occupation and international capitalist exploitation.

Preface

For many without an intricate knowledge of Irish Republicanism or those who have learned their politics from the pages of the revisionist historians either Irish or British, this series of articles is a must for those who wish to understand the differences between mainstream republicanism and republican socialism.

From the motivations, aims and objectives of 19th century republican socialists to its modern expression, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, this series of articles will show that the two republican traditions are both distinct and very different

This series will allow readers to understand the IRSP's opposition to the Good Friday Agreement. That opposition is based not only on sound modern political analysis but also learned from the historical experience of the British refusal to disengage militarily and economically from Ireland.

The republican socialist movement of today can trace its origins and ethos back over a hundred years to James Connolly's forming of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). As can be seen even at that time, before the British partition of Ireland, James Connolly recognised the need for the marriage between the class struggle and the struggle for national liberation.

Connolly said, "The struggle for Irish freedom is national and social. Its national ideal can never be realised until Ireland stands forth before the world a nation free and independent. It is social and economic because no matter what form of government may be, as long as one class owns as private property the land and instruments of labour from which all mankind derive their substance, that class will always have power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow creatures....

The Party which would lead the Irish people from bondage to freedom must then recognise both aspects of the long continued struggle of the Irish nation."

In 1896 Connolly formed the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP), with the view of uniting the class and national struggle under one banner.

In 1974 like-minded Irish republicans, having failed to influence Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army away from reformism, left to found the Irish Republican Socialist Party with veteran republican Seamus Costello as its first chairperson. At the same time republican socialists set up an armed revolutionary organisation - the Irish National Liberation Army, or INLA. The INLA maintained armed struggle until declaring a ceasefire in 1998.

In 1969 the republican movement had divided along traditional left/right lines and in reaction to loyalist/unionist pogroms in the six-counties. Both the Official IRA and the newly-formed Provisional IRA maintained an armed resistance campaign until 1972, when the officials declared an open-ended ceasefire and fully embraced the politics of reforming the British-occupied six-county statelet. The Provisional movement continued armed struggle until 1994, when it embarked on its present policy of short-term reformism married with long-term British disengagement. This reformist policy is better known in 1999 as the "Equality Agenda" - that agenda has been sidelined by both the British and Unionists within the Good Friday Agreement.

The Irish National Liberation Army declared its ceasefire in 1998 on the basis of the political analysis of the IRSP. That analysis stated that the referenda result in June 1998 was a clear expression by the Irish people that they wished to see peace and that political organisations should pursue their aims in a peaceful manner. In recognising the wish of the people the IRSP and INLA quite clearly stated our political opposition to the Good Friday Agreement as a vehicle for either Irish freedom, socialism, British disengagement or long term peace.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party holds the same aims and objectives as the Party formed by James Connolly - to end British misrule in Ireland and establish a workers republic.

The ISRP was to stand in elections with little success and was to remain a small party. It was squeezed between the two evils - British imperialism (international capitalism) and ultra-nationalism.

This in many respects has also proved the fate of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, who today rests on the edge of mainstream republicanism, a tradition which has never fully embraced true revolutionary politics.

This difference between revolutionary politics and reformist politics is best illustrated in history by the dialogue by Sinn Fein president Arthur Griffith attacking James Connolly's and Jim Larkin's encouragement of symapthetic strike action by Irish workers.

Griffith had embarked on an all-out attack on industrial action by Irish workers in the weekly newspaper "Sinn Fein". In one article during the railwaymen's strike in 1911 Griffith and Sinn Fein encouraged the British armed forces to break the striking Irish workers thusly: "We are forced to pay for a very large police force, and Dublin overflows with English soldiers. Yet, when a real emergency arises, the police and military together are not able to cope with so small a matter as ensuring the delivery of foodstuffs to their consignees in a great city threatened with starvation by irresponsible fomentors of sympathetic strikes."

When criticised for his position by leading republican Eamonn Ceannt, later to be executed by the British in 1916, Griffith replied, "Some of the strike orators have tried to draw a parallel between the fight of the farmers for security of tenure and fair rents and the strike of industrial workers for higher wages. The fight of the Irish people for land was the fight of a nation for the reconquest of a soil that had been theirs and had been confiscated. The landlord did not make the soil - but the industrialists made the industry."

And further, Griffith commented, "Mr. Larkin's career of destruction is coming to a close but when it has closed it will have established his name in the memory of Dublin as the man who did the maximum of injury to trade unionism and the industrial revival."

Jim Larkin in reply to Griffith and Sinn Fein in the workers' paper "The Irish Worker" described Sinn Fein thus: "A party, or rump, which, while pretending to be the Irish of the Irish, insults the nation by trying to foist on it not only imported economics based on false principles, but which had the temerity to advocate foreign capitalists into this sorely exploited country. Their chief appeal to the foreign capitalists was that they would have the freedom to employ cheap Irish labour!

No, friend Arthur, the Irish capitalist has too much freedom to exploit the worker."

In the decades following, Sinn Fein has learned little about the true nature of freedom. This is best illustrated by present-day Sinn Fein economic policy which in the 1990's actively encourages foreign capitalists to come to Ireland (often described as inward investment). Nothing is further from the truth - these companies set up in Ireland on the basis of huge grants, cheap labour and non-unionised factories.

In recent years multi-national companies such as "Fruit of the Loom" cut and run to some other country, paying poorer wages, with worse worker conditions. These multi-national companies' exploitation of the worker continues elsewhere, leaving behind a community of workers in Ireland exploited, devastated and of no further use to the capitalist.

Why the politics of republican socialism has been marginalised and sidelined is a question that the Irish Republican Socialist Party is addressing today.

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that revolutionary republican socialist politics enjoyed its heyday in the early part of this century it is also a fact that revolutionary politics has never found a significant audience among the Irish working class. Indeed why is revolutionary politics so marginalised and practiced by so few? Is it the case that the ideology is seen as the domain of the educated few and as a result the Irish working class are overawed by the jargon and terminology so often used by exponents of revolutionary politics?

It is the view of the IRSP that republican socialist politics need to be articulated in user-friendly language. It is our objective to do so, couched in such terms that will be understood by the very people who undertake to struggle for true freedom.

As James Connolly said, "The working class have nothing to lose but their chains. The working class is the only class who will not compromise the revolution, they are the only incorruptible class."

Jim Larkin came to Dublin from Liverpool in 1908 with plans for the formation of an Irish-based union which would make full use of the new revolutionary techniques under his control and leadership.

The plight of the working class in Dublin at this time was disturbing. These conditions encouraged Jim Larkin to set about forming the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU). Doing so began one of the most militant periods in the history of the Irish Labour movement.

Jim Larkin had been so successful in organising the unskilled workers in Dublin that employers, led by William Martin Murphy, owner of the Irish Independent newspaper, formed the Dublin Employers Federation to combat the fledgling I.T.G.W.U.

By 1913, the employers under Murphy felt that Larkinism and trade unionism must be smashed. Workers in the dispatch department of the Irish Independent were given an ultimatum - they had to choose between their union membership or their jobs. Forty workers were laid off. In response the I.T.G.W.U. blacklisted the Irish Independent. However, the ultimatums were not to stop. Other companies followed the lead of the Irish Independent, issuing similar threats to workers to resign the union or face the sack. Matters came to a head with a series of strikes which led to the Dublin Lockout of workers in 1913.

The idea of a "strikers defence" organisation to protect the Irish workers from employers, police and military attack had been floated prior to the formation of the Irish Citizens Army (ICA). Jim Larkin himself had said he would form a "workers army" to defend the workers if the employers sent in the British Army as they had done in Belfast in 1907.

After 1907 the idea of a workers army surfaced many times. However it was not until an offer from a military man, Jack White, to James Connolly to organise and discipline a workers defence force.

With the sheer brutality of the police and British military during the first weekend of strike action in August 1913, which culminated in what became known as Bloody Sunday, with the need for workers defence so clearly demonstrated James Connolly, Jack White and other republican socialists set about the formation of the Irish Citizens Army.

With the gradual collapse of the strike and the workers forced away from the Irish Transport and General workers union as a consequence of the employers' starvation tactics and the failure of the authorities to protect workers' rights, the ICA set about building a revolutionary workers army that would eventually take on the might of the British empire in conjunction with the Irish volunteers in the Easter rising 1916.

This recognition by Connolly and others of the need to force the British out of Ireland before real freedom for the Irish working class could be achieved led the ICA into direct confrontation with Britain - the seeds of revolution had been sewn.

Meanwhile with the outbreak of the first world war what was to become known as mainstream republicanism was in a dilemma - it had even at one time considered a merger with the "home rule" organisation "All for Ireland League" headed up by William O'Brien. The Irish Volunteers were divided, some opting for the leadership of constitutional nationalist John Redmond and enlisted in the British Army to fight Germany.

The Irish Citizens Army however faced no such contradictions and continued on its revolutionary path. When the British Prime Minister Asquith visited Dublin to address a recruiting rally for the British Army the ICA organised a huge counter demonstration in the centre of Dublin. This was in open defiance of the state police and British military - armed members of the ICA openly paraded through the capital's streets, occasionally firing vollies of shots in the air. At the meeting which was addressed by Connolly, Larkin and Constance Markiewicz, Sinn Fein chose not to attend!

However a group of republicans who were organised around the newspaper "Irish Freedom" applauded the ICA's initiative and the following month joined forces with them to form the Irish Neutrality League. James Connolly was appointed president of the INL. Though Sinn Fein founder Griffith was also involved he continued his verbal attacks on the workers.

ICA reconstituted

On the 22nd of March 1914 a general meeting was held at Liberty Hall to reconstitute the Irish Citizens Army. A constitution was proposed and unanimously accepted at the AGM.

The new constitution stipulated:

1. The first and last principle of the ICA is the avowal that the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland.

2. That the ICA shall stand for absolute unity of Irish nationhood and shall support the rights and liberties of the democracies of all nations.

3. That one of its objectives shall be to sink all difference of birth, property and creed under the name of the common Irish people.

4. That the Irish Citizens Army shall be open to all who accept the principle of equal rights and opportunities for the Irish people.

5. Before being enrolled, every applicant must, if eligible, be a member of his/her trade union, such a trade union to be recognised by the Irish Trades Union Congress.

By late October 1914 Jim Larkin had left on a speaking tour of America. His plans though were hazy and he was unable to give a date for his return. Though he was to remain general secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, he did not return to Ireland for a period of seven years.

In his absence James Connolly became acting general secretary of the union, and by then was influential within the Irish Citizens Army, rising to the rank of commandant. The ICA from then onwards became more militant and this was reflected in James Connolly's restating that a revolt against British rule was inevitable.