REASONS The Irish Git

betrayal but a cynical effort to contioue sabotaging the national liberation struggle ina slightly less bypecritical mancer.

BLOOD OF THE HOME RULERS HARES In the years before the Rising the South— ern Catholic middle-class { as it then was} mode few apologies for its pro-fritish stance. It is trae they used their Hote Rule party to eogineer an alliance the English Liberal Party to gain « meas— ure Of devolved governtent, However, in the face of a reactionary onglaught by (ater Unionists,they backtracked so rap—idly that they ended sending ever 30,000 people to fight and die in the service of an empire with one of the bloodiest records of all che ioperialist powers. [hia iamedlately tears to shreds the ‘arguient® that the constitutdonal wing of Irish nationag=faq ds peaceful, Metther ig ¢f desocntic ferite partie wee BF oat of the f04 Tried seate in the 1900 election based on « prom policies, with this problem: “At on tine .ia logked dawn with contempt on the unskilled and bitterly resented his attempt to get bis children tTaucht anv at the skilled tradog: the feeliog af the Grangemen of leedand towards..the Catholics Ls hut a glarified representatiaa an ao blg atage of the sam) passions iswired ty the same unworthy fotives.! (Selected Warks [. 266].

Latertumately the rest of Irelanits labour leadera deferrad ta thesac backward elements by simply centeotrating oo “eread and butter issucs', thus ubandoning the adyaboed workers ta tha bourgeois acles among the unskilled workers, that mass of the British proletariat which in England is so often cut off from the advanced workers by that cursed petty= boy a, -t-beral, aristocratic spirit of British skilled worker”

("British Labour And Britieh Imperial -ism p 3. The fight of the wiakilled Irish workers waa not just abstractly linked to the struggle agaipat British Imperialism, In 1909 Larkin breke from the English Deckers’ Union te form the Irish Trangpert ‘ind Geoeral Workers!

inion (ITOW) because the English union weuld nat suppert his militant The other Irish unions wore originalyy based on a stall Layer of skilled yorkers, largely organized in English-tesed uuione, A labour aristocracy existed do the North dne ta Belfast's Limited jatar trigiisatios ad, fe dadte tion or its English counterpart, placed its interests Before those of the entLlre proletariat. Connolly has been one ef the few Marxists to com to tere the industrial world ef Great Britain add Ireland the -akilled:dabourer BECAUSE Ti pledges iu 3 erganige for, dill ior and fi Ereland.

BECAUSE Jt places ite ralian that never betrayed Iralan (hua.

BECAUSE Mavine » detirie Via oe Loar-ol st} boong paraly and that thet ff) eq Ge ought io be, oko oe Grd hath pot witli th ee BECALISE Ir Wythe i} god true Notional Me all that. makes -[igri LZ Dal

ef the brutal imperialist ageressian conducted by Briteada against Ireland became clear in the crisig wiich preceded the Tf1h Kheing, CAUSES OF THE RISD General enthusiasm for the world war had waned by early T9I5, Although Britain wanted ta introduce for fear of wiping out the Home | Huilere! credibility, They hoped that the Limited prosperity gained by the Irish middle-clasa due to | Britain's isolation from its major truding partners would counterbalance The wir's unpopularity. Thilg was naive Girstly because tho som dol crisis hed been mode more acute by the war ana secondly due te the growing pressure for extra victins in the European carnage. The Republican dominated Volunt= cers were increasing their mn wanted an insurrection. The that nothing was wrong - yen Link between litenal fied antiWar propaganda ond the drap in the futiber of arm recrulta.

bership and along with Connolly British tried te delud= thesselves the police agenta didn't. sae any For these and other reasons, we can only gay that the theory that Lt was ooly the Post-Hising executions and the attempt to dntreduce conscription vblch allenated the masses trom the governmtent and the Home Rulers is hopelessly wrong, We esdorse Lenin's criticism of the veteran Mamcist Karl Radek who supported this type of explanation and referred te the Higing az 4 trade unice politics sa the workers turned te Sinn Fein, got trapped in its insoluble contradictions, and were denied freadom. Until the revolutionary left graspa the full implications sf thia fact it will remain incapoble of giving real leadership te the workers. The most inpertant lessons of the Aising for ua today are that the unfinished national reyalution remaing at the cantre of the class atruggle and that the bourgeoisie sabotages it not because it ig morally corrupt {although it certainly da} bur becauge it is fatally compromised by its links with Imperialism. This of courde ds an application of Trotsakyrts ‘original gin” of Permanent Revolution which cate ta infect Lenin: “backward suotrites can go over to the soviet system ani, through certain stages af

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acted Jy aereyone ae die Kipp BECAUSE Jt temchen dhe an cl Ireland) =e

| oinscription and crush the anti=war. | agitation. it was unable to da sa