Connolly’s view on the defeat of the clans

These are my notes on Connolly’s Labour in Irish History, chapt 8.

The defeat of 1641, according to Connolly, ended the old clan system. The involvement if old Anglo-Irish noblemen, he says, weakened the Irish side as they mainly wanted to maintain their own class position, in turn based on earlier confiscations. These contradictions meant they were riddled with equivocation and treachery. This movement of clans was huge and powerful, but had this fatal weakness: its own class divisions (like the Republican Movement in the Tan War period, I might add.)

With the destruction of clan society came a mixture of feudalism and capitalism, says Connolly.

He is very insightful about how the Protestant landed gentry and capitalists used more fanatically Protestant types to drive down the Catholic masses while, at the same time, exploiting the Protestant lower orders. (This is what later came to be in a really concentrated form, of course, in the six counties statelet.)

Incipient Irish capitalism was stymied by British rule, as the British capitalists did not want competition. But it reproduced opposition in Ireland over and over.

Once the economic reason ceased to drive Irish landlords and capitalists into opposition the upper elements ceased championing independence. Meanwhile, common suffering opened the way to the unity of Protestant and Catholic masses, argues Connolly.

The United Irish movement, he notes, represented the coming together of a series of developments in Irish society, an exceptional person (Tone) – or generation! – and a galvanising event (the French revolution).

Connolly notes how the French revolution changed the consciousness of both Catholics and Protestants, helping bring them together. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants gave way to conflict between the ruling class and a new force, which Connolly class “the democracy”. He reflects that Tone was waging a class war. It is very important to grasp that class war was key.

Moreover, United Irish and the English could only unite when Ireland was independent (a point very reminiscent of what Engels said.)

Connolly recorded that the aristocracy was “anti-freedom”, the Irish fight was part of a global struggle and that Irish fighters were allied with British revolutionaries. (Of course, today it is quite hard to find these today!) The Irish struggle represented what in those days were called “the rights of man” in Ireland.

Tone had asserted that when the aristocracy go forward, the people fall backward, and we might say that when the Irish capitalist class today run things, the masses (in particular, the working class, goes backwards).

Connolly records the celebrations in Belfast over the fall of the Bastille.

Lastly, in this chapter, he records that Tone was combining the national and the socio-economic. He was for making a revolution.

On-line talk on Constance Markievicz, Wednesday, March 31, 8.30pm (Irish time)

The next in a series of on-line talks organised by Eirigi is a re-running of the talk on Constance Markievicz.

It’s being given again by myself, Philip Ferguson, a member of Eirigi and the person behind this blog.

I’ll be looking at Markievicz’s life, activities and her ideas, as she was a major socialist-republican figure during the revolutionary era.

There will be an Q & A afterwards.

The meeting will take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday the 31st of March (Irish time; check for time differences if are in the USA, Australia, NZ, continental Europe etc)

Contact eirigigeneralsecretary@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email from Rúnaí Ginearálta Éirígí, Mickey Moran, containing information about joining the meeting.

 

100 years of partition – on-line talk/discussion

Online discussion hosted by Socialist Democracy

Garda and RUC officers at the Irish border 1920s
Ireland:
100 Years of Partition
Counter-revolution and reaction

Speaker: Philip Ferguson (Irish Revolution blog)

23 March 2021
19.00 London/Dublin
Zoom platform

Register
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkfu2rrDotE9b_EnzBHm4JSaET69Kf_sPn

Speaker
Philip Ferguson is a socialist activist based in New Zealand.  He runs the Irish Revolution blog.  A member of Sinn Fein in the 1980s and early 1990s; he is now a supporter of the socialist republican group Eirigi.

Summary
This year marks the 100 years since partition.  Over that period, it has had a profound influence on Irish politics and society.   It has been the foundation of imperialist rule in the north and of reaction across the whole of Ireland and has proved to be a severe impediment to the advance of the labour movement and to the development of socialist politics. The prediction of James Connolly that partition would usher in a “carnival of reaction” proved to be correct.

This discussion will examine the continuing legacy of partition and how it can be overcome.  It will also consider whether there is any validity to recent claims that the decline of unionism and the dynamics of Brexit are advancing the cause of a united Ireland.

Veteran activist Diarmuid Breatnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign

Interview by Mick Healy with Diarmuid Breathnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign.

 

Mick also did an earlier interview with Diarmuid on his decades of political activism:

 

 

Liam Mellows’ Dail speech against the Treaty, January 4, 1922

Liam Mellows, 1895-1922, Fianna leader, IRA leader, TD of First Dail,  executed by Free State

Below is Liam Mellows’ speech against the Treaty, delivered in Dail Eireann, January 4, 1922.  It was delivered in the early afternoon, before the Dail broke for a recess of several hours (1.30pm-3.45pm).  To make it easier for 21st century readers, I have broken the huge blocks of text into paragraphs.  I have also added subtitles to identify the main themes of Mellows’ speech.

I have very little to say on this subject that is before us, because I stand definitely against this so-called Treaty and the arguments in favour of acceptance— of compromise, of departing from the straight road, of going off the path, and the only path that I believe this country can travel to its freedom. These arguments are always so many, at all times and with all causes, while the arguments in favour of doing the right and straight thing are so few, because they are so plain. That is why I say I have very little to say.

Negotiating did not connote compromise

An effort has been made here from time to time by speakers who are in favour of this Treaty, to show that everybody here in this Dáil was prepared mentally or otherwise to compromise on this point, during the last few months. I wish, anyway, as one person, to state that is not so. I am speaking for myself now on this, and I state certainly that consciously or unconsciously, I did not agree to any form of compromise. We were told that when the negotiations took place we were compromised. We have been told that since this Dáil meeting. This is not so, because negotiations do not connote compromise.

Entering into negotiations with the British Government did not in the least presuppose that you were going to give away your case for independence. When the British Government, following upon the Truce, offered, as it did, to discuss this whole case of Ireland, Ireland had no option but to enter into such a discussion. To refuse to have done so would have been the worse thing for the Irish case, and would have put Ireland very wrong in the eyes of the world. There was no surrender involved in entering into such a discussion; and when the plenipotentiaries went on their journey to England they went, not as the plenipotentiaries of a Republican Party in Ireland, not as the envoys of any political creed in this country, but they went as the Envoys Plenipotentiary of the Irish Republican Government, and, as such, they had no power to do anything that would surrender the Irish Republic of which they were plenipotentiaries.

No mandate

They were sent there to make, if they could, a treaty of settlement—personally I doubt if it could be done—but they were not sent to bring about what I can only call a surrender. I am not placing the plenipotentiaries in the dock by stating this, but I am stating what are plain facts. It is no reflection on them to state these things. In item 3 of the instructions given to the plenipotentiaries it is stated: “It is also understood that the complete text of the draft Treaty about to be signed will be similarly submitted to Dublin and a reply awaited.” The Dáil had no chance of discussing this Treaty as it should be discussed because the ground was cut from under the feet of the Dáil with the publication of this Treaty to the world before the Dáil had a chance of discussing it. The delegates, I repeat, had no power to sign away the rights of Ireland and the Irish Republic.

They had no mandate to sign away the independence of this country as this Treaty does.

They had no power to agree to anything inconsistent with the existence of the Republic.

Now either the Republic exists or

Ireland’s Marxist guerrillas: the story of the Saor Éire Action Group, 1967-73

by Mick Healy, in collaboration with several former Saor Eire members

(Mick wrote an article about Saor Eire which appeared on this site in 2011;  this is an updated and expanded version of that article, including new material added by former Saor Eire members; the article has been proofed and edited by me – PF)

The 1960s was a time of upheaval and change in conservative Irish society; social attitudes, fashion and music, for instance, all changed dramatically. New social movements reflected the thinking of a new generation that, in particular, wanted more freedom. The huge student-worker protests of May-June 1968 in France, the Vietnamese struggle to remove the US, its allies and their Vietnamese toadies, the US civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and the national liberation struggles in Latin America and Africa galvanised opposition to the existing order. In Ireland, these events inspired people, especially the new generation, into action. This was especially the case around the civil rights movement in the north of Ireland. Among the new organisations which emerged here as a result of this new ferment and revolutionary idealism was the Dublin-based Saor Éire (SE) or, to give it its full name, the Saor Eire Action Group.

Saor Éire Action Group was established in the late 1960s by former members of the Republican Movement and newer young Irish political left activists coming together. As an organisation they claimed to have their roots in the

Interview with veteran Irish working class and Marxist activist Kevin Keating

This is an interview that Mick did recently with Kevin Keating, a veteran activist in Dublin.  Kevin’s many years of activism go from the IRA to the fused People’s Democracy (merger of the original northern-based PD and the southern-based Movement for a Socialist Republic), which became Socialist Democracy in the later 1990s.

Kevin has very serious health problems these days.  Happily, this was one of his better days.

 

See also the interview with John McAnulty of SD.  John was a leading figure in People’s Democracy in Belfast over decades.  Mick spoke to him last October about the experience of 50 years of struggle.  See here.

“Our choice lay in submitting to foreign lawlessness or resisting it, and we did not hesitate to choose” – Roger Casement on trial for his life

In his 1914 book The Crime Against Ireland and How the War May Right it, Sir Roger Casement wrote, “Sedition (is) the natural garment for an Irishman to wear”.  Casement wore it well. 

A participant in the preparations for the 1916 Easter Rising, Casement landed at Banna Strand (northwest of Tralee) in Co. Kerry on board a ship from Germany with a large consignment of weaponry for the rebels.  However the rendezvous did not take place and Casement was captured on April 21, 1916.  He was subsequently held in Pentonville Prison in London, tried in London over four days in May, and hung for treason on August 3.  At his trial, he made a speech from the dock; he had written the body of it while in prison.  Below is the text.  I have broken up some paragraphs which were huge in the original.

This text is longer than that often found on the internet.  I had to type up additional chunks of text from where I found this – I have it taken it from The Great Prisoners: the first anthology of literature written in prison, selected and edited by Isidore Abramavotich, New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1946.  Abramovitch lists the range of his Casement sources on p869.

I have added subheads to break up the text.

Roger Casement:

My Lord Chief Justice, as I wish to reach a much wider audience than I see before me here, I intend to read all that I propose to say. What I shall read now is something I wrote more than twenty days ago. I may say, my lord, at once, that I protest against the jurisdiction of this Court in my case on this charge, and the argument that I am now going to read is addressed not to this Court, but to my own countrymen.

There is an objection, possibly not good in law, but surely good on moral grounds, against the application to me here of this old English statute, 565 years old, that seeks to deprive an Irishman to-day of life and honour, not for “adhering to the King’s enemies”, but for adhering to his own people.

When this statute was passed, in 1351, what was the state of men’s minds on the question of a far higher allegiance – that of a man to God and His kingdom?  The law of that day did not permit a man to forsake his church or deny his God save with his life.  The ‘heretic’ then had the same doom as the ‘traitor’.

Today a man may forswear God had His heavenly kingdom without fear of penalty, all earlier statutes having gone the way of Nero’s edicts against the Christians, but that Constitutional phantom, ‘The King’, can still dig up from the dungeons and torture chambers of the Dark Ages a law that takes a life and limb for an exercise of conscience.

If true religion rests on love, it is equally true that loyalty rests on love.  The law I am charged under has no parentage in love and claims the allegiance of to-day on the ignorance and blindness of the past.

I am being tried, in truth, not by my peers of the live present, but by the peers of the dead past; not by the civilisation of the twentieth century, but by the brutality of the fourteenth; not even by a statute framed in the language of an enemy land – so antiquated is the law that must be sought to-day to slay an Irishman, whose offence is that he puts Ireland first.

The Government of Ireland by England. . . can evoke no loyalty

Loyalty is a sentiment, not a law.  It rests on love, not on restraint.  The Government of Ireland by England rests on restraint and not on law; and since it demands no love it can evoke no loyalty.

But this statute is more absurd even than it is antiquated; and if it is potent to hang one Irishman, it is still more potent to gibbet all Englishmen.

Edward III was King not only of the realm of England, but also of the realm of France, and he was not King of Ireland.  Yet his dead hand to-day may pull the noose around the Irishman’s neck whose Sovereign he was not, but it can strain no strand around the Frenchman’s throat whose Sovereign he was.

For centuries the successors of Edward III claimed to be Kings of France, and quartered the arms of France on their royal shield down to the Union with Ireland on 1st January, 1801.  Throughout these hundreds of years these “Kings of France” were constantly at war with their realm of France and their French subjects, who should have gone from birth to death with an obvious fear of treason before their eyes.  But did they?  Did the “Kings of France” resident here at Windsor or in the Tower of London, hang, draw and quarter as a traitor every Frenchman for 400 years who fell into their hands with arms in his hand?  On the contrary, they received embassies of these traitors, presents from these traitors, even knighthood itself at the hands of these traitors, feasted with them, tilted with them, fought with them – but did not assassinate them by law.  Judicial assassination today is reserved  only for one race of the King’s subjects, for Irishmen; for those who cannot forget their allegiance to the realm of Ireland.

Slide by Robert Ehrlich

The Kings of England as such had no rights in Ireland up to the time of Henry VIII, save such as reasted on compact and mutual obligation entered between them and certain princes, chiefs and lords of Ireland.  This form of legal right, such as it was, gave no King of England lawful power to impeach an Irishman for high treason under this statute of King Edward III of England until an Irish Act, known as Poyning’s Law, the 10th of Henry VII, was passed in 1494 at Drogheda, by the Parliament of the Pale in Ireland, and enacted as law in that part of Ireland.  But if by Poyning’s Law an Irishman of the Pale could be indicted for high treason under this Act, he could be indicted only in one way and before one tribunal – by the laws of the realm in Ireland and in Ireland.

The very law of Poyning’s, which, I believe, applies this statute of Edward III to Ireland, enacted also for the Irishman’s defence, “All those laws by which England claims her liberty”.  And what is the fundamental charter of an Englishman’s liberty?  That he shall be tried by his peers.

“Not a jury of my peers”

With all respect I assert this Court is to me, an Irishman, not a jury of my peers to try me in this

Frank Keane, veteran socialist-republican and former national organiser of Saor Eire, interview

Frank Keane is one of the living people I most admire and respect.  The questions for this interview were written by myself and Mick Healy, and Mick conducted the actual interview.  Mick has done more than anyone to retrieve the story of Saor Eire, which disbanded in 1973, and its significance and relevance.

 

Máirín Keegan commemoration, 1997

Commemoration in 1997, marking the 25th anniversary of the death of Irish revolutionary fighter Máirín Keegan.  Frank Keane is the main speaker.