Over in England, there is talk of political changes – changes we are told that could restore our native Parliament. As a cold matter of fact all such talk is misreading history. Ireland never had an Irish Parliament - a Parliament representative of the Irish people. The assembly called by the name of an Irish Parliament was in reality as alien to the Irish people as the Council of the Governor-General of India is alien to the Indian people. And some of the laws passed by our so-called native Parliament against the poor Irish peasantry were absolutely revolting in their ferocity and class vindictiveness.
The fight which ended with the Act of Union in 1800 was not a fight for freedom, it was a fight to decide whether the English governing classes or the Irish governing classes should have the biggest share of the plunder of the Irish worker. Whichever side won made no difference to the worker; he was skinned, anyway.
For over a hundred years Ireland has looked outside her own shores for the means of her redemption. For over a hundred years Ireland through her "constitutional agitators" has centred her hopes upon the possibility of melting the heart or appealing to the sense of justice of her oppressors. In vain! England - the British Empire, was and is the bourgeoisie personified, the incarnate beast of capitalist property, and her heart was as tender as that of the tiger when he feels his victim helpless in his claws; her sense of justice was as acute as that of the same beast of prey when his jaws are wet with the warm blood of the feast.
For over a hundred years the majority of the Irish people begged for justice, and when ever and anon the hot blood of the best of her children would rise in rebellion at this mendicant posture Ireland turned her face from them and asked the enemy to forgive them.
When her rebel sons and daughters were dead, hunted, imprisoned, hanged or exiled she would weep for them, pray for them, sigh for them, cry for them, and when they were long enough out of the way, erect monuments to them.
But as long as they were virile, active and aggressive, Ireland regarded them only as disturbers who gave the country a bad name.
This attitude, whether it is exhibited by an oppressed nation or by an oppressed class, is the direct outcome of that frame of mind in either which teaches them to look outside their own ranks for the impulse towards emancipation. To believe that someone else than the slave is going to free the slave makes the slave impatient and intolerant of every effort at self-liberation on the part of his fellow bondsmen.
Now the course of action implied in the name Sinn Féin, in English Ourselves, is the reverse of all that. It teaches the Irish people to rely upon themselves, and upon themselves alone, and teaches them also that dependence upon forces outside themselves is emasculating in its tendency, and has been, and will ever be disastrous in its results. So far, so good. That is a part of Sinn Féinism I am most heartily in agreement with, and indeed with the spirit of Sinn Féin every thinking Irishman who knows anything about the history of his country must concur.
I have though heard some doctrinaire Socialists arguing that Socialists should not sympathize with oppressed nationalities, or with nationalities resisting conquest. They argue that the sooner these nationalities are suppressed the better, as it will be easier to conquer political power in a few big empires than in a number of small states. This is fallacious. It fallacious because the emancipation of the Working Class will function more through the economic power than through the political state. The first act of the workers will be through their economic organizations seizing the organized industries; the last act the conquest of political power.
The Working Class must perfect their economic organizations, and when such organizations are in a position to control, seize and operate the industries they will find their political power equal to the task. But the preparatory work of the revolutionary campaign must lie in the daily and hourly struggles in the workshop, the daily and hourly perfectioning of the industrial organization. Let the great truth be firmly fixed in your mind that the struggle for the conquest of the political state of the capitalist is not the battle, it is only the echo of the battle. The real battle is being fought out, and will be fought out, on the industrial field.
Sinn Féin. Ourselves. I wonder how long it will be until the Working Class realize the full significance of that principle! How long it will be until the Workers realize that the Socialist movement is a movement of the Working Class, and how long until the Socialists realize that the place of every other class in the movement is and must be a subordinate one.
We will get the Workers to have trust in their own power to achieve their own emancipation when we demonstrate our belief that there is no task incidental to that end that a worker can not accomplish; when we train the workers to look inward upon their own class for everything required, to have confidence in the ability of their own class to fill every position in the revolutionary army; when, in short, we of the Socialist Working Class take to heart the full meaning of the term Sinn Féin, Ourselves, and apply it to the work of Industrial Reconstruction, when we realize at last what was meant by Marx when he spoke of the revolt of those who
Have Nothing to Lose but their Chains.
Now the problem is to find a basis of union on which all these sections who owe allegiance to one or other conception of Socialism may unite. My position is that this union, or rapprochement, cannot be arrived at by discussing our differences. Let us rather find out and unite upon the things upon which we agree. Once we get together, we will find that our differences are not so insuperable as they appear whilst we are separated. What is necessary first is a simple platform around which to gather, with the understanding that as much as possible shall be left to future conditions to dictate and as little as possible settled now by rules or theories. As each section has complete confidence in their own doctrines, let them show their confidence by entering an organisation with those who differ from them in methods, and depend upon the development of events to prove the correctness of their position. Each person to have complete freedom of speech in conformity with the common object; the lecture platform to be common to all, and every lecture to be followed by questions and discussion. With mutual toleration on both sides, the Protestant worker may learn that the cooperation of the Catholic who works, suffers, votes and fights alongside him is more immediately vital to his cause and victory day by day than the co-operation of workers on the other side of the Channel; and that Socialists outside of Ireland are all in favour of that national independence which he rejects for the sake of a few worthless votes.
And the Catholic Sinn Feiners may learn that love of freedom beats strongly in the breasts of Protestant peasants and workmen who, because they have approached it from a different historical standpoint, regard the Nationalist conception with suspicion or even hostility.
We find that amongst a large section of the Irish in this country, and Irish Socialists here are included, it is tacitly assumed that Socialism cannot take root in Ireland, that the Home Rule press, the supposed conservative habits of thought of the people and, above all, the hostility of the clergy, make it impossible for Socialist thought to make headway amongst the Irish working class. This assumption is, of course, not to be reasoned with – you cannot reason with a thing that ignores facts – but is only to be combatted with a quiet presentation of facts to prove that which is assumed as impossible of existence, is already existent, and not only existent, but lusty, aggressive and powerful. The influence of the Home Rule Press is in reality nil amongst the intelligent working-class of Ireland: the conservative habits of thought supposed to be characteristically Irish are in reality the reflex of agricultural conditions in Ireland, as elsewhere, and do not prevail where the Irish worker lives and suffers in the industrial environment of a city and the hostility of the clergy has worn off its own edge by too frequent and indiscriminate use.
Let those who tell us that the Irish will never respond to the call of Socialism remember that five years ago the candidate of the Irish Socialist Republican Party, in contests against the nominees of the Home Rule and Unionist Parties, polled a vote which represented a third of the total electorate; let them remember this, and then, thinking of the frantic joy of the Socialist Parties of America when they succeed in polling the necessary three or five per cent to get on the official ballot let them stop trying to discourage the Irish in America by their foolish declarations that Socialism will never take root amongst the Irish.
Socialism in Ireland is now a force, influencing alike the political, economic and literary thought of the island. In other words, the Socialists of Ireland recognise that the world for the workers can only be realised by the people of each country seizing upon their own country and wresting it by one means or another from the hands of the present rulers or proprietors and restoring it with all its powers and potentialities to the people who inhabit it and labour upon it.
With the advent of self-government in any shape in Ireland, the question of the ownership and administration of the soil can, and will, be approached in a new spirit.
The genius of peasant proprietorship is essentially individualistic, and therefore exercises a disintegrating influence upon the political strength and influence of the peasant proprietor. The Land Acts, therefore, have, despite their faults, destroyed the slavery of the Irish tenantry, taken from agricultural questions their exclusive power over Irish affairs, and opened a way for the fundamental reorganisation of the social life of the community.
Then, two years ago, another Royal Commission investigating the question of Irish railways, reported in favour of Nationalisation. With the coming of self-government the almost unanimous expression of approval with which this was received in Ireland is likely to take concrete form in an legislative enactment.
And now another Commission reports, likewise, in favour of a State Medical Service. And this, also, is received with a chorus of approval.
Said I not that although the Irish have little regard for Socialist theories they have a strong bias in favour of action on lines that are in essence lines of Socialist activity?
Side by side with all this development of mere Government Socialism, those who know Ireland best know that there is also developing that strong and active spirit of industrial rebellion, that aggressive challenging of the rights and powers of the master class that is absolutely necessary to prevent such governmentalism degenerating into despotic paternalism.
I do not believe it to be possible to prevent a continual extension of the powers of government, even if it were desirable, but I look to the cultivation of the rebel spirit to secure that that extension of the functions of government shall connote a conquest of powers by the working-class instead of an invasion of our rights by the master class.
It is because of that defiant, rebel spirit in Ireland today, ever keeping step with, indeed outmarching, the trend of legislative experimenting with social problems that we Irish Socialists feel at last that we are leaving the stage of theorising and are seeing our principles becoming the faith that moves our class to action.
So let them create this Irish Parliament, let them create ten such. The Socialists of Ireland are ready.
NOTE: Based on various articles by James Connolly archived here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/index.htm