Socialism and Nationalism the Legacy of Connolly

British rule.

“The Irish working class, as a class, can only hope to rise with Ireland. Equally true is it that Ireland cannot rise to freedom except upon the shoulders of a working class knowing its rights and daring to take them.” James Connolly, October 1914 THE IRISH WORKER Pearse described Connolly as ‘the guiding brain’ of the 1916 rebellion and it is as a leader of the Easter Rising that Connolly is most widely remembered. However, to think of Connolly simply as a military exvert is to forget the richness of the legacy which Connolly bequeathed to the working people of Ireland.

As the few lines quoted above eloquently show, it was the struggle for survival waged by the toilers of Ireland that led to Connolly being present in Dublin’s G.P.O., for Connolly was first and foremost a socialist internationalist.

Of course, the identification of revolutionary socialism with the struggle for Irish self-determination goes back a very long time. The founders of the international communist movement, Kari Marx and Frederich Engels were not only active fighters in the defense campaigns for fhe Fenian prisoners. in the latter half of the 19th century put also canvassed support for Irish freedom within the socialist and democratic movements of that time. Both Marx and Engels believed that it was in the interests of British workers to support Irish freedom In this issue of SOCIALIST REPUBLIC we have given special attention to the battles of August ’69 and the lessons for the H-Block campaign. It is also important however, to look at some of the more general lessons of the anti-imperialist struggle. The article below starting with an appreciation of the role of James Connolly explains why socialists support national independence and why working class leadership is necessary in the struggle against struggle for socialism. What a contrast between this clear thinking and the confused twaddle of the fake socialists who slammed Connolly as a “convert to the madness of nationalism”. The British Independent labour Party pontificated its disapproval “of armed rebellion or any other form of militarism and war”. These side-line commentators on the class struggle tut-tutted the same whether addressing the genocide of world imperialism or the struggle of a small oppressed nation against one of the major imperialist powers.

LABOUR BETRAYAL This sort of moralising is of course as familiar to Irish socialist republicans today as-it would have been to Connolly and his comrades. The present leaders of the British Labour Party are just as keen to earn the laurels of the Empire, as Foot and Concannon have shown in relation to the hunger strikers.

This shameless collaboration with imperialism by those masquerading as socialists is not simply a foreign disease. Although Connally prabahly did more to strengthen Irish trade unionism than any other individual, the Irish Trade Union Congress meeting shortly after his death refused to condemn his execution. Michael O'Leary, today’s leader of the Irish Labour Party and the leaders of the ICTU, with their cowardly silence on Sands and his comrades, stand in the same tradition of compromise with imperialism and contempt for the genuine interests of Irish workers SOCIALIST PROGRAMME ‘The socialist programme of Peoples revolutionary struggles of Lenin, Trotsky and Connolly and stands in total opposition to the treach>-; of Michael Foot and Michael O’Leary. Peoples Democracy fights to build a revolutionary workers’ party which can lead the struggle for a 32 county socialist republic to victory. Alongently, can secure national liberation through socialist revolution. The struggle for Irish freedom is centuries old and has failed to achieve success not just because the British have superior military might but also because the national movement has repeatedly been strangled by its leadership. In general the leadership the hands of the men of property — to the propertyless, the industrial and tion of the 1916 leaders, as nationalist agitation swamped the country, the native capitalists in the South joined the independence movement. Their contribution to the movement soon became clear as the JRA began to be used to repress land agitation in the War of Independence. The Partition Treaty of 1921 saw the native capitalists installed as junior partners of British imperialism in the exploitataion of Ireland’s economy and natural resources. The Free Staters tore up the 1916 Proclamation and the deaths of ATGWU member Bobby shooting of hostages.

Democracy has been developed on the side Connolly we understand that only the working class, organised independof the national movement remained in while the actual fighting was deputised water cannon.

agricultural labourers. After the executhis wel]: developed a regime distinguished by its repressive character: former comrades-in-arms executed, republican and workers’ organisations outlawed internment without trial, FIANNA FAIL REPRESSION The arrival in government of the allegedly republican Fianna Fail did not signal any shift from this reliance on repression; De Valera proved as eager to repress the IRA as the Blueshirts, republicans continued to be imprisoned without trial and were forced to embark on fatal hunger strikes. The rising of the nationalist workers of the Northern ghettoes in 1969 following the loyalist pogroms saw Fianna Fail declare it “would not stand idly by”. When internment was introduced in the North, the Free Staters set up the Special Criminal Court where republicans were convicted and jailed on unsupported allegations by the gardai. Today, as Britain murders republican hunger strikers in the H-Blocks the Coalition arms the gardai with CS gas and CLASS POSITION The whole history of capitalist involvement in the national struggle is no more than a testament to their betrayal of Ireland and their loyalty to the capitalist class. Connolly understood “No revolutionist can safely invite the cooperation of men or classes whose ideals are not theirs and who therefore, they may be compelled to fight at some future critical stage on the journey to freedom. To this category belong every section of the propertied class and every individual The people of no property, the workers and small farmers who depend on their labour for existence have nothing in common with the capitalist class in Ireland, Britain or anywhere else. Their interest lies in the ending of exploitation and oppression and the building of a society in which the yast majority who create the wealth through their labour receive {ts fruits rather than the parasites of the capitalist class. It is precisely because the task of the working class is socialist revolution that it is capable of carrying through to the end the fight for national liberation.

OWN DEMANDS The best and most consistent republicans are socialists. The Irish working class will never give its wholehearted support to a movement that satisfies itself with the mere extension of a 26-counties type regime throughout the country, or asks workers to forget their own demands until ‘national freedom’ has been achieved. Such movements have never achieved political independence from imperialism and always result in the continued exploitation and oppression of Irish workers.

In building a revolutionary workers’ party in Ireland Peoples Democracy forges links with socialists throughout the world, explaining the importance of the Irish struggle and gaining valuable lessons from struggles against imperialist rule elsewhere. Such links have immediate relevance in promoting international solidarity but they also have a deeper relevance. A socialist revolution in Ireland isolated from revolutionary socialism internationally would, assuming it was not defeated militarily, be economically suffocated by imperialism: cooperation within a world socialist economy is the only guarantee that imperialist domination in Ireland once defeated, remains er Due to other assignments, Gerry Foley was unable to write the article on the Irish anti-imperialist struggle. We hope to have the article in the next issue. Instead this article by JOHN MAGEE deals with the connection between the fight for socialism and the fight for national libzration.