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75 years since the Easter Rising
By Ann Talbot
30 March 1991
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the 1916 Irish rebellion
against British imperialism which took place in the midst of the
First World War. The anniversary holds a special significance
this year as the imperialist countries threaten to plunge the
world into another world war which will entail even greater slaughter
than that of 1914-18 and instigates a new era of colonial wars
of conquest.
The sacrifices and heroism of the young working class revolutionaries
who took part in the 1916 rising and the outstanding contribution
of its leader, James Connolly, should be a constant source of
inspiration to the Irish and international working class. It is
a vital task for Trotskyists to defend the significance of that
event and to reclaim this heritage from those who have hijacked
it for their own purposes.
On the outbreak of the First World War James Connolly stated,
'a great continental uprising of the working class would stop
the war; a universal protest at public meetings would not save
a single life from being wantonly destroyed.'
The Irish rebellion of 1916 was the beginning of a revolutionary
upheaval in Europe that was to culminate in the 1917 revolution
in Russia which succeeded in creating the first workers' state.
It was this movement and the victory of the working class in the
Soviet Union that ultimately stopped the war. For the working
class, not only in Ireland, but internationally, this is a vital
historical lesson which must be affirmed against all those who
say that the working class are impotent in the face of imperialist
war.
Attacks on the heritage of 1916
No sooner was Connolly cold in his grave, executed by the British
imperialists, than the propagandists of Irish nationalism sought
to claim him as a true nationalist. The Stalinists of the Connolly
Association have perpetuated this lie, turning Connolly into the
patron saint of Irish nationalism. Currently the Morning Star
and Sinn Fein have reached a new political nadir -- competing
with one another to sell Connolly memorabilia, converting the
anniversary of the rising into a money making venture.
Today the most serious attacks on Connolly and the 1916 rising
come from the petty bourgeois radical groups who claim to be Marxist
or even Trotskyist. From their armchairs, these middle class moralists
see fit to lecture the shade of Connolly on revolutionary strategy
and tactics. Their message to the working class is that all revolutionary
struggle is futile and will inevitably end in disaster and defeat.
The legacy of the 1916 rising is so potent that it has always
been essential for the bourgeoisie to distort the historical record
-- by converting Connolly into a harmless icon or by undermining
and devaluing the role of Connolly himself and the workers who
fought under his leadership. In restoring the proletarian tradition
of 1916, we are doing more than simply setting the historical
record straight. We are countering an attack on the contemporary
consciousness of the working class.
Connolly and Nationalism
Connolly was no nationalist. He had spent his entire life fighting
for internationalism and socialism. As a leader of the Irish Transport
and General Workers Union (ITGWU), he had fought pitched battles
in the streets of Dublin with Irish nationalist employers.
Lenin explained the way in which the Irish employers had declared
'a war to the death against the Irish labour movement' as the
bourgeoisie grew confident that they would gain 'home rule' from
the British state.
For Lenin the Dublin lockout in 1913, in which Connolly played
a key role as a leader of the ITGWU, in collaboration with Jim
Larkin, was of decisive significance in the development of class
relations in Ireland. He wrote:
"The Dublin events mark a turning point in the history
of the labour movement and of socialism in Ireland. Murphy (the
leader of the employers) threatened to destroy the Irish trade
unions. He only succeeded in destroying the last remnants of the
influence of the nationalist bourgeoisie over the proletariat
in Ireland. He has helped to steel the working class movement
in Ireland, to make it independent, free of nationalist prejudices,
and revolutionary."
The uprising of 1916 cannot be understood apart from the emergence
of the Irish working class as an independent political force taking
a revolutionary road. Although the Irish working class suffered
set backs in the wake of the defeat of the struggles of 1913,
this did not diminish the importance and validity of the political
lesson drawn by Lenin from this experience.
Nor can the 1916 rising be understood in a purely Irish context.
Connolly was one of the few European socialists who opposed the
opportunism and nationalism of the Second International on the
outbreak of the First World War. Although he lacked the theoretical
clarity of Lenin, this does not detract from his principled proletarian
internationalist stand. His support for the right of the Irish
nation to self determination was that of a socialist engaged in
a fight against British imperialism.
The uprising
Without the decisive leadership of James Connoly the rising
would never have taken place. He it was who forced the vacillating
leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood -- the radical wing
of petty bourgeois nationalism -- to take part in the rebellion.
When the leaders of the largest organisation in the nationalist
movement withdrew from the planned uprising, Connolly threatened
that he would lead the Irish Citizens Army, the militia created
by the ITGWU, in an insurrection without the aid of the nationalists.
Already it was clear that the petty bourgeoisie did not themselves
have the capacity to carry out their own revolution, but that
this task fell to the working class, as part of the socialist
revolution.
The insurgents, who numbered no more than 900 and were armed
only with light weapons held out for six days agaisnt the full
might of the British military machine. Acts of destruction took
place that were unparalleled in any Euroean capital up to that
time. Heavy artillery was used to sweep barricades from the streets.
The British gunboat Helga sailed up the Liffey into the heart
of Dublin to bombard Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the ITGWU.
Incendiary shells were used which caused extensive destruction
in the tightly packed working class tenements. Some idea of the
extent of the devastation can be gained from the figure of almost
£2m that was paid in compensation to property owners in
Dublin.
At least 450 civilians were killed and 2,614 wounded in the
fighting. Almost 4,000 people were rounded up under martial law
and almost 2,000 of these deported to prisons in England. After
a secret trial, 90 people were sentenced to death by court martial.
Although 75 of these sentences were later commuted this was, as
Trotsky remarked, only a display of humanity within the limits
of what was politically expedient.
Fifteen death sentences were carried out, all with the utmost
brutality. James Connolly, whose wounds prevented him from standing,
was carried to the firing squad on a stretcher and shot while
tied upright in a chair. When his execution was announced in the
House of Commons, MPs rose and cheered. Among them were the Labour
MPs, led by Arthur Henderson, who was a member of the coalition
war cabinet which had ordered the executions and the violent repression
of the rising.
Lenin and Trotsky on the Rising
The rebellion was universally condemned by European socialists,
except Lenin and Trotsky, who both defended it on the basis of
Marxist theory. They recognised that the revolt of the colonies
and the oppressed nations in Europe against imperialism was the
inevitable outcome of the war. As the crisis of imperialism deepened
and the working class gained in strength so, Lenin predicted,
the national revolts would be followed by proletarian uprisings
in the imperialist countries.
Karl Radek, who later became a leader of the Bolshevik party,
criticised the rebellion as a 'putsch', an attempt by a small
armed minority to bring about a general uprising when the conditions
did not exist for it. Lenin launched a broadside against this
position. Describing the mass agitation, demonstrations and suppression
of the press which had preceded the rising, he thundered:
"Whoever calls SUCH a rebellion a 'putsch' is either a
hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire, hopelessly incapable of
envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon."
Trotsky took fundamentally the same position on the Irish rebellion.
He unequivocally praised "the heroic defenders of the Dublin
barricades". He accused Plekhanov, one of the leaders of
the Second International who had criticised the rebellion, of
suffering from "a complete patriotic softening of all the
joints".
Both Lenin and Trotsky emphasised the role that workers had
played in the rising and payed tribute to it. Both stressed that
the rising was a harbinger of greater struggles to come in which
the working class would assert their leadership more decisively.
Lenin and Trotsky's analysis of the class struggle and national
struggle in Ireland was entirely borne out by subsequent developments.
Their analysis was founded in both cases on the understanding
that the events in Ireland could not be estimated outside of the
development of the European and world socialist revolution and
that the national question was bound up with this. It is the theory
of the Permanent Revolution which is the essential basis for any
contemporary assessment and evaluation of the class struggle and
the national question in Ireland.
The Permanent Revolution vindicated
Only by developing the insights
of Lenin and Trotsky can a Marxist assessment of Easter 1916 and
the work of Connolly be made. Only by starting as they did from
the world economy and its impact on both the class struggle and
the conflict between nations, can the significance of the revolutionary
events within Ireland and Connolly's contribution be understood.
Many criticisms might be made of Connolly's understanding of Marxism
and the tactics he employed in the 1916 rising. Indeed revolutionaries
struggling in Ireland can learn many valuable lessons from a critical
analysis of this strategic experience of the working class.
But what cannot be doubted
are Connolly's credentials as a genuine workers' leader. Nor can
it be doubted that the working class was right to take the initiative
and force the hand of the nationalists in launching the insurrection.
But this is precisely what is attacked by the petty bourgeois
radical groups, whose aim is to convince the working class of
the absolute impossibility of any independent action.
To this end they are hard
at work trying to resurrect the criticisms made by Radek, Plekhanov
and others of the Easter rising. They go far beyond a criticism
of Connolly -- merely using his weaknesses as their stalking horse
in pursuit of bigger prey. It is the whole heritage of Marxism,
embodied in the works of Lenin and Trotsky which they attack.
Above all their target is the theory of the permanent revolution.
Two recent biographies of
Connolly both seek to deny the revolutionary significance of the
rising and its class character. Connolly, a Marxist analysis
is written by Andy Johnston, James Larragy and Edward McWilliams
of the Irish Workers Group -- associated with Workers Power in
Britain. The second is The Politics of James Connolly --
published by the Socialist Workers Party and written by Kieran
Allen, a former editor of the Irish edition of the state capitalist
paper Socialist Worker.
These are the first full
scale biographies of Connolly to be produced since that of Stalinist
Desmond Greaves, which sought to present him as a martyr of the
nationalist cause. Both seek to distort and diminish the significance
of Connolly's life. At a time when the working class have a very
real need to draw the lessons of the struggle against the First
World War, this reflects the need of imperialism to disarm the
workers' movement.
Blanquism
Neither the SWP nor the IWG can openly repudiate Lenin and
Trotsky's support for the 1916 rebellion, but both attempt to
do so by the back door. Since the term 'putsch' is off limits
as it was denounced by Lenin, the IWG declare instead that 1916
was a 'blanquist insurrection'. In an attempt to make a distinction
between the terms, they point out that Blanqui did coin the phrase
'dictatorship of the proletariat' and was an important figure
in the 1848 revolution. But -- they tell us sanctimoniously --
Marx rejected his conspiratorial methods.
It is certainly true than Marxists have always rejected the
methods of Blanqui, who had argued that an active minority of
the proletariat could seize power regardless of the general conditions
of the country. But if the Easter rising was such a prime example
of a Blanquist coup, why did Lenin -- who we may assume was at
least as familiar with the writings of Marx as Messrs. Johnston,
Larragy and McWilliams -- not see fit to devote a line of his
article to warning the workers of Europe against engaging in such
dangerous and futile exercises. But Johnston, Larragy and McWilliams
are determined to remedy this oversight!
Nationalism
Lenin and Trotsky defended the 1916 rebellion as internationalists.
They saw this failed uprising of a small oppressed nation as a
harbinger of a European wide revolutionary movement. Indeed this
was precisely the conception which animated the internationalist
Connolly, who wrote:
"Ireland may yet set a torch to a European conflagration
that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist
bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the pyre of the last
warlord."
The IWG and SWP are completely opposed to this. They reject
any internationalist appraisal of 1916 and view it solely within
an Irish context. Both dismiss Lenin and Trotsky's support for
the rising in favour of a 'more realistic' attitude to it from
a national standpoint.
Kieran Allen comments sagely on Lenin's article on the rising:
"The article was not meant as an assessment of the tactics
of socialists in Ireland. The focus of the article was primarily
on how the Easter rebellion would affect the coming European-wide
revolution." (p 155)
Allen does not inform us how else, other than in relation to
'the coming European wide revolution', an Irish socialist was
to assess the Easter rising. The IWG warn the reader that Lenin
'was by no means uncritical' of the rising (p 160). This turns
out to be Lenin's comment that: "It was the misfortune of
the Irish that they rose prematurely, before the revolt of the
European proletariat had time to mature."
But this is not a criticism. It was precisely such considerations
which concerned the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of
1917. This event, which occurred just one year later, could have
led to a different outcome to the events in Ireland. The IWG are
dishonestly turning a statement in which Lenin encapsulates the
international context of the rising into a condemnation of the
working class for risking such an adventure. Could these armchair
strategists of the IWG and SWP be transported back to St. Petersburg
in October 1917, they would surely have lectured Lenin against
staging such a Blanquist insurrection alongside the revolution's
Menshevik opponents!
The distinction which these middle class radicals make is between
an internationalism which is confined to broad rhetorical statements
and the practical business of political possibilities on the national
scale. The IWG baldly comment that Trotsky's prognosis: "...was valid for Ireland in the
general sense... It would have been of little use, however, as
an immediate political perspective to guide Irish workers immediately
after 1916. But then he could only observe the situation from
a distance"(!) (p162)
And later, "Lenin and Trotsky, from an internationalist
standpoint, and from outside Ireland, were powerless to intervene
as a political factor in the Dublin of 1916." (p 166)
Lenin and Trotsky spent the greater part of their adult lives
outside Russia as political exiles and "powerless to intervene"
in the vast majority of countries where revolutionary movements
were developing. The statement that only those who are present
on the soil of a given bourgeois nation state can legitimately
direct the course of a revolutionary struggle is in direct opposition
to all the principles of international socialism.
Lenin and Trotsky's assessment of the Irish rebellion cannot
be correct on the international plane and at the same time wrong
on the national level. Moreover, they never subsequently revised
this estimation. The Soviet government was the first to give international
recognition to the provisional Dail -- the first independent Irish
government -- at the same time that the Third International began
to build the Communist Party of Ireland.
Petty bourgeoisie
The IWG and the SWP argue that Trotsky's analysis of the class
struggle in Ireland is wrong because it underestimates the capacity
of the urban petty bourgeoisie to conduct the national struggle.
Trotsky's analysis of the Irish rebellion was truly prophetic.
It was based on his theory of permanent revolution.
Trotsky showed that, with the development of imperialism and
the domination of the world's markets by the major imperialist
powers, the bourgeoisie in the oppressed countries was unable
to carry out their own national revolution. Only the working class
was capable of achieving national independence from British imperialism,
as a by-product of the socialist revolution. He wrote:
'The urban workers fought and died, together with the revolutionary
enthusiasts from the petty bourgeois intelligentsia. The histoncal
basis for the national revolution had disappeared even in backward
Ireland. Inasmuch as the Irish movements in the last century had
assumed a popular character, they had invariably fed on the social
hostility -- of the deprived and exhausted pauper-farmer -- toward
the omnipotent English landlord." (Trotsky's Writings
on Britain Vol 3, New Park, p 168)
Trotsky explained the disintegration of the bourgeoisie as
a revolutionary force capable of leading the entire nation in
the manner of the bourgeoisie in the French revolution. The Irish
industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, who had long been the social
basis of parliamentary agitation for home rule had, "adopted
an antagonistic position towards the young Irish proletariat,
giving up the national revolutionary struggle and entering the
camp of imperialism." (ibid p168)
Nor could the peasantry or urban petty bourgeoisie carry out
this task. Trotsky explained the social and political impact of
the land reforms carried out by the British ruling class in the
interests of maintaining their control of Ireland and the subsequent
demise of Fenianism. The agrarian reforms of the period 1881-1903
had turned the peasants into, "conservative small property
owners, whose gaze the green banner of national independence is
no longer able to tear away from their plots of land." (ibid
p168)
At the same time the urban petty bourgeoisie had been swallowed
up in emigration and had largely lost sight of the national question.
Trotsky's analysis agrees exactly with that of Lenin on the
implications of the Dublin lock-out of 1913, when he said that
the epic battles of this strike had served to break the Irish
working class from the domination of nationalism.
If the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie were incapable of
carrying out the national revolution and liberating Ireland from
British imperialism, this left only the working class. Trotsky
showed great sensitivity in his characterisation of the Irish
working class. Summing up the pressures upon them in words that
still ring true today, he wrote, "The young Irish working
class, taking shape in an atmosphere saturated with the heroic
recollections of national rebellions, and clashing with the egoistic,
narrow-minded imperial arrogance of British trade unionism, naturally
swing between nationalism and syndicalism, ever ready to unite
these two concepts in their revolutionary consciousness."
(ibid p168)
But Trotsky did not for one moment doubt that the leading historical
role had fallen to the working class:
"But the historical role of the Irish proletariat is only
just beginning. Already into this uprising -- under an archaic
banner -- it has injected its class resentment against militarism
and imperialism. That resentment from now on will not subside.
On the contrary, it will find an echo throughout Great Britain."
(ibid p169)
Neither the SWP nor the IWG can accept this estimation of the
role of the working class. Both come forward to champion the progressive
role of the petty bourgeoisie. Keiran Allen and the SWP dishonestly
link Trotsky with Radek, as though he too had criticised the rising:
"Both Radek and Trotsky reduced the national movement
to a particular class -- the peasantry -- who had deserted it.
Both limited the role that their late substitute -- the urban
petty bourgeoisie -- could play." (p 154)
The SWP are playing the old Stalinist trick of trying to draw
a line between Lenin's attitude to the national liberation movements
and Trotsky's. This accusation that Trotsky "underestimated"
the petty bourgeoisie is a variation on the Stalinist slander
that he "underestimated the peasantry" and has the same
validity. It was used by the Stalinists to subordinate the working
class to the national bourgeoisie as they did in China in 1927.
It is used by the SWP to subordinate the working class of Ireland
to petty bourgeois nationalist forces such as the IRA.
The IWG concur in this denigration of the theory of the permanent
revolution: "Clearly he (Trotsky) was wrong inasmuch as the
subsequent years saw a renewed national struggle in the form of
guerrilla warfare." (p161)
This is the authentic voice of every petty bourgeois radical
who has ever decried Trotsky for underestimating the ability of
the petty bourgeoisie to overthrow imperialism in a guerrilla
war, whether in Cuba, Palestine or elsewhere. Subsequent developments
in these countries and in Ireland itself however, have not invalidated
Trotsky's prognosis but bloodily confirmed the inability of bourgeois
and petty bourgeois forces to defeat imperialism and act as a
substitute for the working class and the socialist revolution.
The resurgence of the national movement in the war of independence
which led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922-3 does
not invalidate Trotsky's analysis of the permanent revolution.
If Trotsky could say of the 1916 rising that 'The national revolution...
in practice has become an uprising of workers", this was
doubly true of 1918.
There was no reawakening of the peasantry as a revolutionary
force. Nor was it the numerically and politically weak urban petty
bourgeoisie who made up the backbone of the Irish struggle for
independence. The urban petty bourgeoisie were swept along in
a movement whose social base was in the working class. Not only
did workers fight and die in the ranks of the Irish Republican
Army, but the strikes and occupations between 1918-23 played a
significant role in the war.
But the working class had been deprived of its revolutionary
leadership in 1916 and were forced to follow a bourgeois nationalist
leadership, rather than assert their own independent role. It
was this bourgeois leadership under Michael Collins and Arthur
Griffiths, who made the compromise with imperialism which established
the partition of Ireland in 1921 and aborted the national revolution.
This was later accepted by de Valera and the rest of the nationalist
bourgeoisie.
It was the leadership of the Second International which was
primarily responsible for the defeat of the 1916 rising. While
detailing at length the alleged shortcomings of Connolly's programme,
the IWG and SWP say virtually nothing about the social chauvinism
which had developed within the International that led to the betrayal
of 1914 -- when Europe's social democratic parties supported their
own bourgeoisie on the outbreak of World War One. Any analysis
of Connolly's shortcomings which fails to place the responsibility
for the defeats of that period on the shoulders of the foremost
Marxists of the day -- such as Kautsky and Plekhanov -- is to
perpetuate this betrayal.
Syndicalism
Both the IWG and the SWP accuse Connolly of making unpardonable
concessions to nationalism and trace this crime back to his inherent
syndicalism. Kieran Allen condemns Connolly as a syndicalist whose,
"... reluctance to build a separate organisation led to confusion
and vacillation... The absence of a political organisation meant
that Connolly was forced to call on others to act... Pressuring
other forces to act entailed for Connolly an adaptation to their
politics." (p158-9)
These accusations, it should be noted, come from organisations
which constantly participate in popular front protest movements
with Sinn Fein. As for syndicalism, they are its most diseased
advocates. To prove their charges they juxtapose, in a completely
formal and unhistorical manner, passages from Lenin with quotes
from Connolly which they have torn out of context. But all they
succeed in showing is that this self educated dustbin man from
Glasgow, trained in isolation from the main currents of European
Marxism, was not as great a theoretician as Lenin.
While it is undoubtedly true that Connolly made mistakes in
his alliance with the nationalists, the real purpose of the IWG
and the SWP is to prove that the working class is incapable of
taking the lead in a national uprising.
Revolutionary syndicalism was in fact the response of the proletarian
elements in the Second International to the betrayals of their
leaders. It was the means by which they sought to preserve the
independence of the working class against all nationalist parties.
Lenin and Trotsky did not condemn the syndicalists for failing
to understand the necessity of building a Bolshevik type party
in 1914. Indeed Trotsky himself rejected the need for such a party
until 1917. The recognition that this was the only way in which
the working class could achieve power was the unique contribution
of Lenin.
Trotsky in fact described the pre-war syndicalist unions as
being in their practice, "a remarkable draft outline of revolutionary
communism". The Irish Transport and General Workers Union
(ITGWU) -- with its constitution which called for a workers republic
and its militia the Irish Citizens Army -- embodied this.
The real historical significance of Connolly is that of the
other revolutionary syndicalists of the period before 1917 --
men like De Leon, Maclean; Tillet and Larkin. Once the Third International
was founded, Lenin and Trotsky spared no effort in order to win
leaders of this calibre to its banner, by breaking them from their
syndicalist illusions and prejudices.
The majority of working class leaders who survived 1916 went
over to the camp of the nationalists and opportunists of the Second
International. The Irish TUC and the right wing of the Socialist
Party of Ireland founded the Irish Labour Party when they were
driven out of the Socialist Party by the nucleus that later became
the Communist Party of Ireland.
It was the young revolutionary forces within the Socialist
Party under the leadership of James Connolly's son Roddy, who
fought for the affiliation of the Socialist Party of Ireland and
the Dublin Trades Council to the Third International. In founding
the Communist Party of Ireland in 1920, they were standing in
the proud tradition of revolutionary internationalism which is
the real legacy of James Connolly and Easter 1916, which the middle
class radicals now seek to bury.
The Permanent Revolution
Today only one party upholds Trotsky's perspective of permanent
revolution and defends the best traditions represented by Connolly.
That party is the International Committee of the Fourth International
and its British section the International Communist Party. Only
the working class can liberate Ireland from British imperialism,
through the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a
united socialist Ireland. Nor can that revolution be confined
within the national borders of Ireland but it must be part of
a European and world wide movement which has as its aim the creation
of the United Socialist States of Europe and the world.
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