CRISIS PART THREE The Easter Rising

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*The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living," wrote Marx in 1852.

His statement could have been written with Irish Republicanism in mind.

And of all the events in the Republican calendar, it is the 1916 Easter uprising which is commemorated with the greatest fervour.

Easter Sunday of each year brings thousands of Catholic workers on to the streets in commemoration of Ireland's "Fenian dead" , and above all the 16 leaders executed by the British in 1916.

Disaster

And yet the actual rebellion itself was nothing short of a disaster.

It began on Easter S unday a mail 1016 whet UUS men from the Irish Volunteers and almost 200 men of the Irish Citizen Army (virtually its entire strength) seized key buildings throughout Dublin.

The tactical plan was to hold a roughly circular area enclosing Dublin Castle-British HQ in Ireland-using the General Post Office in the City Centre as headquarters.

Boland's Bakery, Jacob's Factory and the South Dublin Union were taken in the South of the city; the Four Courts on the River Liffey was seized and volunteers were positioned near the railway stations and on the North Wall.

Surprisingly, there was little or no resistance to these first moves-the government forces never in their wildest dreams expected the Irish 'to rise again" , so when open rebellion did come along they were quite unprepared for it.

Inc have itself Bleed the rebels seized Dublin if they had tried.

Tricolour

Thus on the first day of the rising the leaders could have been quite contented: the tricolour of green, white and orange (symbolising peace between Catholic and Protestant) flew over the FPO; the proclamation decaring "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible" had been read by Padraig Pearse on behalf of the 7-man Provisional Government of Ireland, and posted throughout the city.

The Republic, for which there had been 4 uprisings in the preceding 120 years, had, it seemed, finally come into off the South of Ireland.

Before it reached Cobb harbour, it was scuttled by its commander, Karl Spindler. On hearing this news the Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Eoin MacNeill, actually countermanded plans for the rising and, through the pages of the viciously anti-working-class, anti-republican Irish Independent, called off the Easter Sunday manoeuvres which were to prepare for generalised national rebellion.

No putsch Despite this, the leaders in Dublin decided to go ahead and carry out their planknowing that it would fail, and knowing that they would die as a result.

Yet for all that the Easter rising cannot be strictly characterised as a putsch. In a polemic directed at Karl Radek amongst others, written in July 1916, Lenin denied that the Irish rebellion was a putsch.

"The term putsch," he wrote, " ...may be employed only when the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses.

"The centuries-old Irish national movement, having passed through various stages and combinations of class interest, manifested itself, in particular, in a mass Irish National Congress in America... which called for Irish independence; it also manifeswhose object was to resist attempts by the British Liberal government to proclaim Home Rule in Ireland.

By the summer of 1914 this force numbered 180,000, and although most followed John Redmond into support for the 1914-18 war, some 12,000 stayed, ready for The Volunteers were augmented by the forces of the Irish Citizen Army, working-class militia based on the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and formed after the Dublin lock-out of 1913 under the leadership of James. Larkin and James Connolly.

revolt were small, they were all tied to organisations which did have roots in the working-class petty bourgeoisie and peasantry.

Moreover, the leaders were far from being 'stupid maniacs' • They had decided to rebel on the basis that 'England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity' Torch Connolly himself saw the uprising as being the torch which could cause a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord.?

The rebellion for Connolly was to be a blow against the imperialist war which he had De Valera in 191: country.

The absence of such party and a programme f working-class independen and leadership of the nation struggle meant that throug out these years the workin class were subordinated 1 the national bourgeoisie.

James Connolly's specif failures in this respect w be dealt with in a later artic in the series, but the graph demonstration of this subc dination can be seen in tl relations which existi between the bourgeois al petit-bourgeois Irish Volu teers, and the working-cli Irish Citizen's Army.

The Citizen Army tail behind the Volunteers, ev allowing them to be membe of the Citizens Army a unblinkingly accepted t Volunteers' programme codified in the 1916 Proc mation.

This document which signed by Connolly as member of the 1916 P visional Governmer certainly possesses a radi tinge. but is nonethel

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Liberty Hall after bombardment during the rising IRISH-WOMEN, it is you who will suffer most by this foreign war. It is the sons you reared at your bosom that will be sent to be mangled by shot and torn by shell; it is your fathers, husbands and brothers whose corpses will pave the way to glory for an Empire that despises you; it is you and your children who will starve at home if the produce of irish soil is sent out of this country. TO YOU WE APPEAL TO AID US IN THIS STRUGGLE TO SAVE IRELAND FROM THE HORRORS FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN, if we allow the farmer to sell his crops for export our people will starve; if we allow the profit-monger to sell the products of our land to be exported to foreign countries our people will die of hunger. Already we are threatened with famine prices: already the gaunt frame of hunger looms large in the outlook because the people think that you will do in 1914 as your fathers did in 1846-7-8. Is it not better to take the risk and responsibility of preventing a repetition of this than to die as our fathers died of hunger and of fever begotten of famine? And you can prevent it. To the men of our class who are armed we say, Keep your arms and use them if necessary. If God created the fruits of the earth He created them for you and yours. Do not allow our crops to be gleaned for any other country. They are yours. KEEP THEM AT HOME! KEEP THEM AT HOME, WB SAY! KEEP THEM AT HOME BY THE STRENGTH OF YOUR RIGHT ARM!

bourgeois nationalist The leadership of the post 1916 National Movement was thereby handed over to the bourgeoisie which, weak and divided, were unable to rid Ireland of imperialist oppression. This was the birth of the Irish Republican Army.

There can be no doubt that the struggle for independence was carried out with daring, tenacity and courage.

But there can also be no doubt that the leadership were determined at all stages to confine it to the limits of a bourgeois revolution.

No attempt was made to integrate national demands with working class demands, despite the fact that the years from 1917 onwards saw considerable working class agitation.

December 1917 saw a successful strike by Belfast shipyard workers for higher wages; druggists and municipal workers struck in Portadown in 1918, and by the end of that year the issue of the 44 hour week began to loom large.

action In January 1919 the Belfast District Committee of the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades (F.E.S.T.) ballotted for a strike for the 44 hour week.

The result was 20,225 to 558 for strike action although denounced by F.E.S.I. leaders in London, the Belfast solidarity-although the mass of workers were Protestant, the strike committee chairman, Charles Mckay was a Catholic-Belfast slowly ground to a halt.

Shortly after this troops were sent in to re-open public services, and shortly after that again the strike ended, having settled for a 47 hour week.

Nor was this agitation confined to the north. In the south the membership of the ITGWU rose from 5,000 in 1916 to 100,000 in 1920.

In September 1918, Dublin papers were comparing the situation to the events of 1913. And even at the start of 1919, industrial struggles were more noticeable in southern cities than the guerrilla campaign which was getting underway in the countryside of the south west.

Indeed, the refusal of Irish transport workers to handle munitions or troops during these years was probably a greater blow to the British war-machine than the undoubtedly effective IRA guerrilla tactics.

For the party of the Nationalists-Sinn Fein-all this class agitation was a woefull distraction from the main tasks at hand.

"Labour must wait', said Sinn Fein leader Eamon De Valera before the 1918 General Election, "in the interests of national unity'.

And official labour did wait-sanctioning only token ship of the national struggle to Sinn Fein.

This failure-in a period when the working class clearly wanted to fight imperialism, and when the sectarian divisions in the north could have been overcome (as exemplified in the 1919 strike)-was nothing short of criminal, and is an important factor in explaining the continued imperialist oppression of Ireland, the deep divisions between Catholics and Protestants in the north, as well as labour's inability to decisively influence current southern Irish OF FAMINE. Royal Irish Constabulary at Soloheadbeg in Co. Tipperary. These deaths, the first British fatalities since 1916, mark the beginning of the War of Independence.

For the rest of 1919 the guerrilla campaign was directed largely at the RIC, with some spectacular results.

IRA units led by Michael Collins ás Director of Intelligence, systematically infiltrated and destroyed the British espionage service, effectively paralysing the entire imperialist intelligence service in Ireland.

With military deaths But their very indiscipline prevented them from effectively carrying out their task, which was in any case made more difficult by the fact that the ostensible enemy based itself in the country and adopted the 'hit and run' tactics of all guerrilla groups.

And though the Tans retaliated-burning Cork City in December 1920-they proved incapable of suppres sing the nationalist led movement.

Instead Sinn Fein and its armed wing, the RA, increased in confidence, and in the general election of May Street fiehting in the Laster Rising the Mansion House with peace proposals; and at noon July 11 1921 the truce came into effect.

One other factor had been operative in bringing about the ceasefire. The May elections-held under the Government of Ireland Act-had been designed to form the basis of two home-Tute governments in the country.

The six north eastern counties were to have their own, limited, parliament as were the remaining 26.

Not feasible The IRA had opposed this scheme and it was clear that in the south it was totally unfeasible.

But in the north the Unionists ruled the roost, and devolver they didn't want government, they opted for •it as a way of strengthening their positions.

Having won comfortably in the north in the May elections the Unionists, led by Sir James Craig, formed a government and on June 22, 1921 King George V came to Belfast and opened the six-county Parliament.

Having secured the foundations of the Northern Ireland state, Lloyd George's strategy was to negotiate with

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So, although the numbers physically taking part in the