CRISIS Part TwO

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The destruction of • industry through erior English competi• after the passing of : Act of Union was sive in the form that lical struggles took pughout the 19th tur!. the consequent economic kies of the Irish middle• =ade it one of the most lically craven in British erzi history.

Thes liberal-national it= to be 'masters in i San house' always Bi = arrangements with Emism against their own movement Connell, a who led a 1820's for pation-the Catholics in1 upper level:

In order O'Connell mobilise the 21 -it leader oi this was Daniel O' Dublin barrister, campaign in the Catholic emanciadmission of o Parliament and 3 of the armed to pressurise the for this demand was forced to peasantry:, e....

Alter a campaign or mass meetings O'Connell was elected against the government candidate in County Clare.

The government subsequently passed three Acts in 1829:

1. One admitting Catholics to Parliament, to commission in services and to the Inner Bar.

2. One disfranchising 40 shilling freeholder.

3. One banning 0' Connell's Catholic Association.

The Catholic 'Emancipation' had thus been rendered completely toothless by the Second Act.

The increase of the electoral qualification to £10 meant that the very people responsible for the passing of the bill were prevented from enjoying any fruits from it.

The 'Liberator' had freed the Catholic middle class only.

The aspirations of the Catholic peasants had been leaders in Northern Ireland, O'Connell used the mass movement purely as a counter in Parliamentary manoeuvring.

Only the object of the manoevres has changed.

For O'Connell it was reforms, today it is power sharing.

O'Connell's willingness to compromise was shown most graphically in conclusions to the Repeal campaign.

In 1843, monster meetings -750,000 strong-were held all over the country.

In his speeches O'Connell threatened the government with outright rebellion. However the government called his bluff by banning the final national meeting scheduled for October 5 1843 at Clentarf.

O'Connell then had to declare where he stood. His fear of rebellion outweighed his 'opposition' to the government. He called the meeting off.

Violent Campaign What was surprising about O'Connell's handling of the Repeal Campaign was not Daniel O'Connell

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s youth around the globe.

Thẹ *clearing' of Ireland vas by no means an historiial accident.

It was the result of a hange in the class relations n Britain, which dictated for conomic and political easons, the reorganisation of griculture in Ireland.

The existence of an almost eudal land system in Ireland vas an obstacle to the ascenlancy of liberal capitalist nterests in Britain.

As Marx later asserted "Ireand is the bulwark of English andlordism'. The interests of he growing capitalist class lemanded the weakening of he Anglo-Irish landed iristocracy.

The first step in this process was the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. The stablishment of Free Trade in the import of grain ended reland's "monopoly' of the English grain market.

Competition with American and European uppliers of grain for the English market made Irish :illage-based agriculture iconomically untenable. However, the proximity of Ireland still gave it an advanage in the supply of livesstock.

The radical reformers in England could thus combine their undermining of the andlord class with a restructuring of Irish agriculture on i free-trade basis through a shift to pasture farming.

Bourgeois interest required both the liquidation of the andlords as a class, and the ›hysical removal of the enant-farmers to free the and for more docile beasts.

As Marx points out in Capital:

"Therefore her depopouation must go yet further, hat thus she may fulfill her rue destiny that of an Engish sheep-walk and cattlepasture'.

This process began with evictions following the passage of the irish Poor Law (1838).

This poor relief applied only to those with less than % acre of land, thus forcing the tenant to choose between starvation or holding on to and.

The Encumbered Estates Act (1849) making the sale bf a bankrupt's land much asier, facilitated the transfer ›f the land from the landords to financial speculators.

This heralded a period of iven greater callousness owards the plight of the enant farmers.

Capitalist land-owners leared their properties of the itting tenant with less imotion than they showed vhen balancing their books.

This revolution in Irish griculture fundamentally iltered the nature of Irish villuge life.

As well as the replacement of village squires by ruthless businessmen, the small holdng almost completely disIppeared to be replaced by medium and larger holdings.

Small farmers who had not migrated or died, were either pushed into the squalor of he town unemployed or else recame agricultural labourers with no claim of their own to the land.

These conditions revived the agrarian secret societies, under the name of Ribbonism' and agrarian "crime again became widespread.

Capitalist exploitation also gave rise to the Tenants Right movement.

Before then payment of rent was an expression of the tenant's right to farm whereas the new ownership was a purely legal contract between owner and lessee with all the rights on the farmer's side.

Despite initial successgetting 50 MP's elected in 1853-the Tenants Right Movement crumbled after the betrayal by a section of its leadership, Sadleir and Keogh-known as the 'Pope's Brass Band' because of their rabid clericalism.

The balance of power at Westminster, which was held by the Tenants Right Movement was sold by these two for posts • the Whig Tenant right continued to be a demand of the peasantry throughout the fifties and sixties.

However, the disappearance of the small farms in favour of medium sized ones considerably narrowed its social base.

The agricultural labourers had no interest in this demand, retaining instead a deep hostility to the whole land-system.

From those other casualties of the Famine and British government policy, the Irish in America, emerged a new movement, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Ine 'Fenians', founded in 1858 by James Stephens.

Despite the limited Nationalist programme of this movement, the social background of its membership determined its general character as a revolutionary movement.

Proletarian

In America and England its membership was almost totally proletarian in origin, in Ireland support came mainly from the agricultural labourers or the skilled working class in the cities.

These elements regarded their situations as arising out of the occupation of Ireland by an enemy army and pledged themselves to the eradication of every aspect of British rule in Ireland.

This standpoint was obviously anathema to the Church and to the Catholic middle class who had mostly become small landlords during the fifties.

Their interest in maintaining the status quo effectively prevented them from influencing the Fenian movement and thus Tone's 'men of no property' took the centre of the stage once more.

The Fenian conception of Britain and Ireland as nations at war with one another lent their activity an excessively military character.

Military tactics

This preoccupation meant that the major disputes in the movement centred on mílitary tactics, rather than political clarification which was vital if the war against Britain was to become a reality instead of an assumption.

In April 1865 at the end of the American Civil War, thousands of Fenian soldiers were released, leaving them free for action in Ireland.

The return of many of these to Ireland so alarmed the British government that it provoked a general clampdown on the Fenians in Raided The paper The Irish People was raided and its leaders arrested. With the daring escape of Stephens from Richmond Jail, it was generally expected that insurrection would immediately follow.

When nothing happened the delay caused dissension and splits in America.

O'Mahoney, one of the founders of the movement was isolated and the majority organised a futile invasion of Fenians in the 'smashing of the I Fr British-ruled Canada.

This split and others caused by the apparent lack of strategy by the leadership forced Stephens to organise for a rising in March 1867.

Confusion over the date however, led to a premature attempt on Cresten Castle in February. Foiled by an informer in their ranks, this attempt put the authorities on full alert for the main insurrection.

Aided by a blizzard on the appointed night, the authorities quickly put the rising down.

In September the same year, when one of the main leaders, Colonel Kelley was captured in Manchester, an attempt was made to rescue him.

During the attempt, one of the police guards was inadvertently killed. Five men were subsequently charged with the 'murder' of the police sergeant.

One was discovered to have nothing to do with it while another was released because of his American citizenship.

The other three, Allen, O'Brien and Larkins, despite their defence by Ernest Jones, a leading Chartist, and and an international campaign against their sentence, were hanged, and as the 'Manchester Martyrs' bedilen, Larkin and O'Brien, the 'an'-a bid to rescue frish rebels on came another landmark in Anglo-Irish politics.

However, although it failed as a military conspiracy the Fenians maintained constant the demand for National independence for Ireland.

The election of a leading Fenian prisoner, Jeremiah O' Donovan Rossa to Parliament in 1869, heralded a new turn by the Fenians, one which in Engels' words led them:

'from their tedious conspiracies and small outrages on to a road of action which, although legal in appearance, was nevertheless much more revolutionary than anything they had undertaken since the failure ' of their insurrection.' The attempt to find legal roads for their activities led them in 1870 to co-operate with Isaac Butt's Home Rule League.

Despite the conservatism of Butt, the Fenians saw advantages in using the League for their propaganda.

The land question still mained the dominant one Irish politics.

Gladstone's Land Act of 1870 did little to ease the conditions of the peasantry, merely allowing for compensation on eviction for any improvements made during tenancy.

The main demand of the peasantry were for the "three their way to trial.

1. Fixity of 2. Free sale 3. Fair rents.

The poor potato crops in 1875, 1876, 1877 and 1878 evoked the spectre of the Famine. The economic depression of the period also increased evictions.

As a result Michael Davitt, a leading Fenian founded the Land League in 1879 on the demand for the nationalisation of the land.

The importance of this movement was that it constituted a mass movement, unlike all those previous and not dependent on the urban middle class for leadership.

Rent strikes

Such a movement however could not be ignored by the middle class... Consequently, Charles Stuart Parnell, a Home Rule MP, who had in the mid-seventies gained fame through his practice (borrowed from a Fenian) of obstructing bills in the House of Commons by long-drawnout speeches, made overtures to the Land League and subsequently became its nominal President.

campaign of 'rent strikes' was agitated for by the Land League. The severity of the crop failure of 1879 and the increase in evictions left the country on the brink of rebellion.

It was only the attempted Land Bill of 1880 and the Act of 1881 which prevented this from occurring.

This latter Act actualiy conceded the "three 'F's" in the hope that the threatened alliance between the Catholic tenantry of the South and West and the Protestant tenantry of North East Ulster would be undermined.

The left wing of the Land League argued for a complete boycott of the law, while Parnell, although simulating hostility to it, actually favoured acceptance of the Bill.

When the conflict between the two tendencies in the League became too hot, Parnell evaded taking a clear position by provoking , the into arresting him.

From prison he could watch the repression of his extremist opponents while, at the same time, opening negotiations with Gladstone.

Concessions

The outcome of these was the notorious 'Kilmainham Compact' whereby Pamell agreed to 'slow down' agitation and co-operate in the suppression of agranan 'crime' in return for concessions which would strengthen his moderate position against his left-wing.

In 1882 the National League was set up with the support of the Catholic Clergy and Parnell turned completely to farhamentary manoeuvring.

In 1885 he switched support from the Liberals to the Tories in exchange for a promise of Home Rule.

In the election of 1886 the Home Rule party had 86 MPs -exactly difference between the Whig and Tory numbers. Neither party could rule without the support of the Home Rule Party.

Gladstone subsequently introduced a Home Rule Bill but was defeated by the defection of 78 Liberal Imperialists, under the leadership of Joseph Chamberlain.

Land Purchase Gladstone resigned and the Tories were returned in the general election.

Accompanying their policy of coercion and sup pression of any agrarian movements, the Tories instigated a programme of facilitating land purchase.

This policy, followed through for the next 25 by making them "propertyowners' and, more importantly, to remove the Tories" landlord supporters from as enterprise which was DO longer profitable. This policy was designed also to isolate the Home-Rulers.

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Pag* To mark the 60th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution we have given over our Reviews page to three extracts from Lenin and Trotsky in which they

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SOCIALISI PRESS A DE he Irish nation, particularly

years, was designed to both undermine peasant discontent