Whilst having been a strong supporter of Irish Republicanism
for most of my life, when comrades from Eirigi,
a Dublin based Republican Organization asked
me to write a short piece on what the Proclamation
of the Irish Republic means to me, I was somewhat
taken aback. Not being Irish and having spent the
greater part of my life living in the heart of Perfidious
Albion, I wondered if I was up to this task and
if by attempting it, would I not be in some way
usurping something that is precious to millions
of Irish people and their descendants around the
world. But I quickly placed such thoughts to one
side, for this short document is not just the property
of the Irish people. For since it was first proclaimed
by Padraig Pearse, from the steps of Dublin's main
Post Office on Monday 24th of April 1916, to mark
the beginning of the Easter Rising, it has had an
enormous influence upon freedom loving and oppressed
people in almost every corner of the world.
Coming
as it did at approx the half way stage at what was
to become known as World War One, only added to
the Proclamation's significance. For that bloody
conflagration which engulfed the whole of Europe
and beyond was being waged over the future spoils
of Imperialism; and would leave its filthy skid
marks across the whole of the 20th century. It was
a time when the fault lines of the British Empire
were becoming increasingly obvious to all who toiled
under it's yoke. Thus the Proclamation became a
spur for National Liberation Movements the world
over, many of whom were then experiencing the throes
of their birth pangs. Few of the founders and foremost
leaders of these Liberation Movements, who were
in time to rock both the French and British Empires
to there core and eventually bring about their downfall,
would not have read the Irish Proclamation of Independence.
It
was Vladamir Illich Lenin from his Swiss exile who
was amongst the first to articulate the importance
of the Easter Rising, when he observed the events
of 1916 and wrote: "The misfortune of the Irish
is that they rose prematurely when the European
revolt of the proletariat had not yet matured. Easter
week was not a proletarian revolution. It was a
national rising in which a new factor appeared -
the working class was no longer content merely to
provide man-power, but participated as a separate
force with its own organization, leaders and outlook".
(Lenin's Collected Works, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, Volume 22, 1964, pp. 320-360)
What
Lenin means here is the very presence of James Connolly
as one of the Proclamations Signatories; and the
amalgamation just prior to the Easter Rising of
the ITWU's Citizens Army with the Irish Volunteers,
which resulted in the establishment of Óglaigh
na hÉireann, was a clear signal that the
Irish working classes were staking their claim to
not only Nationhood, but a major say as to what
type of Nation an independent and free Ireland would
become. The fact that the Rising was accompanied
by such an eloquent call to arms which demanded
a better life for all, only added to the Proclamations
international impact amongst those Frantz Fanon
sympathetically called the wretched of the earth.
Beyond
Ireland's shores, it was amongst the dispossessed
of the British Empire, the men and women of no property,
where the Easter Rising and the Proclamation which
heralded it was to have the most dramatic impact.
The news of it the events of Easter 1916 spread
throughout these distant lands like red hot volcanic
lava. The Proclamation's message was also not lost
on the millions of Empire troops then fighting on
behalf of the 'mother country' in the trenches of
northern France, the desert's of the middle east,
or along the shore of the Dardanelles. [Galllipoli]
For they had been recruited on the pretense of fighting
to defend small nations from the Hun. But if those
who lived as the Irish did in the heart of the Empire,
regarded it as less than a privilege and were prepared
to risk all by Rising against the English Crown,
then why should they, who came from the four corners
of the Empire continue to shed their blood, only
to return home to live in poverty and as second
class subjects of a far away Monarch.
It
is impossible to read the Proclamation without seeing
James Connolly's finger prints all over the document.
Connolly understood clearly that the removal of
the British State and its military enforcers from
Ireland would only be the half way stage of the
freedom struggle. For an Irish Socialist Democratic
Republic was the end game for the working classes
if it was to achieve freedom with equality. As Connolly
new full well from his work as a Trade Union activist,
there would be Irish men and women from the bourgeois
classes who would be only to willing to step up
to take the place of the English satraps, who had
oppressed and exploited the toiling masses of Ireland
for centuries. Connolly understood that if this
were not to happen, the working classes must be
independently represented at the Nations top table;
and if necessary in the field, by their own organizations
and leaders. By placing himself and the men and
women of the Citizens Army who he led at the fore
of the Rebellion, he was laying down a marker in
blood as to the role of the working classes within
any future Irish Republic.
James
Connolly on the Irish capitalists: "Therefore
the stronger I am in my affection for national tradition,
literature, language, and sympathies, the more firmly
rooted I am in my opposition to that capitalist
class which in its soulless lust for power and gold
would bray the nations as in a mortar". And
again, "We are out for Ireland for the Irish.
But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning
landlord; not the sweating, profit grinding capitalist;
not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute
pressmen - the hired liars of the enemy. Not these
are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not
these, but the Irish working class, the only secure
foundation upon which a free nation can be reared."
Labour in Irish History, 1910.
Like
millions of others, when I went to school the history
I was taught revolved around the reigns of English
Kings and Queens and the rule of great men, according
to this infantile version of history all historical
acts came about via the Great and Good; and the
Irish Proclamation of Independence, written by a
school teacher at a minor Irish school and proof
read and bettered by a working class man, born of
Irish blood in an Edinburgh slum was not something
to be taught to working class boys who were destined
to be the pack animals of Capital, it might give
them ideas above their station in life.
But
read it I did and to understand the words were written
by men who lived much as I did, in humble circumstances
and among their number was a man like James Connolly,
who like millions of working men and women, then
and now had little formal education. (See also the
James Connolly internet archive) Was an inspiration
and a spur to educate myself and understand the
iniquity of those who felt that they, due to their
economic might, have an absolute right to manipulate
and chart the course of billions of peoples lives;
and for no better reason than to enrich and empower
themselves. The Irish Proclamation of Independence
also taught me, along with countless others that
once you understand the inequalities of the world,
the point is to change it.
