Why Commemorate

It’s a tribute to the latent anti-imperialist spirit of the majority of Irish people that the committee “Reclaim the spirit of 1916”, arising from an initiative by Sinn Fein, was able to bring together a wide range of talent and build a whole series of commemorative events around the 75th anniversary of the rising.

More’s the pity that the political aim of the committee, to force the Dublin government to commemorate the rising, led militants bound up in the movement down a cul-de-sac. The truth is that the Dublin government should not be asked to celebrate 1916. They are not the inheritors of the rising but its gravediggers. The failure to make this reality the centrepiece of the commemoration activities has demobilised many of the victims of the gombeen collaborators- the young, the working class, the feminist movement. It has also stifled a central debate. Why commemorate 1916? What relevance does it have today?

### PROCLAMATION

The problem with the proclamation is that it was just that - a proclamation. It wasn’t a program that spelt out for the Irish people in 1916 the nature of the new Ireland or the steps necessary to win it and it certainly doesn’t offer such a program today.

Implicit in the proclamation was a new balance being struck and a new promise for the future. In the 19th century the national question had expressed itself through the peasant struggle for land. In the 20th century the major opposition to imperialism was to come from the working class. In it’s promise to cherish all children of the nation equally the proclamation expressed the new alliance between worker and peasant and also an attempt to smooth over the class contradictions expressed in Connolly’s famous quotation;

“In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles. Those with whom we are fighting may cease before our goal is reached. We are for economic and social as well as political liberty.”

The death of Connolly and the disbanding of the Irish Citizen Army removed from the scene a revolutionary leadership for the working class. Republicanism became subordinated to the national bourgeoisie. It was able to offer a program of physical force in the North but its own social base made it impossible for it to offer an alternative to capitalist oppression and collaboration in the South.

### PROGRAM

It was only after a long period of attrition that the republicans made some hesitant steps towards the working class, The result was the Civil rights explosion in the North and 20 years of mass struggle which has presented the greatest challenge yet to British rule. In the process a Republican leadership has developed committed to political action and intent on breaking out of a growing political isolation.

Yet still the program of republicanism is unable to break with the national bourgeoisie. The present tactic for breaking out of isolation is a “unity offensive” aimed at Fianna Fail and AN REABHLOID Page 2

the SDLP. Unfortunately what is being offered is a unity that either suggests that there is no programmatic difference between republicanism and bourgeois nationalism or that these differences don’t matter - for example proposals for a “unity” candidate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone. The result of this policy is 3 years of politically empty commemorations that leave anti-imperialist and working-class militants confused and demoralised. “Reclaim the Spirit of Easter 1916” is the latest such initiative.

Again Connolly stated the issue clearly;

“Having learnt from history that all bourgeois movements end in compromise, that the bourgeois revolutionaries of today become the conservatives of tomorrow, the Irish socialists refuse to deny or lose their identity with those who only half understand the problem of liberty. They seek only the alliance and friendship of those hearts who, loving liberty for its own sake, are not afraid to follow its banner when it is uplifted by the hands of the working class who have most need of it.”

### CLASS STRUGGLE

Ireland does not have a party of the working class, but it most certainly has a class struggle and class issues; youth, emigration, women’s rights, the separation of church and state, trade union democracy, government collaboration with British and US militarism, are thrown up every day. These questions Gemand answers. Political abstention or an empty waving of the proclamation won’t do. Eventually silence becomes an answer and people turn away, even if the alternative is the mirage of Labour and Workers party “radicalisation”

It was the working class intervention in the Rising that gave it a truly international dimension. Connolly and his followers fought not just for Irish freedom, but also to realise the ideal of the emancipation of the working class from the betrayal of Social Democracy. Today the results of the betrayal of Stalinism are leading to a new balance of power in the world. The existing political structure and the political parties in Ireland today will all be changed in this convulsion. Our response should be to make the promise of the rising a reality today by supporting the concrete demands and struggles of working people against the imperialist domination of our country and by raising the banner of the Workers Republic unfurled by Connolly over the GPO in 1916.

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