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From Socialist Worker, No. 119, 26 April 1969, pp. 2–3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
JUST TWO of the many points that should be made on the article on the 1916 Irish rising (April 12):
Trotsky is – falsely – lumped with those who saw 1916 as a putsch, and dismissed ‘Trotsky, while defending the Rising, thought that the basis for a national revolution in Ireland had disappeared.’
Trotsky in fact, having analysed the erosion of the agrarian basis of the traditional Irish nationalist movement, and noted the abstention of the peasants in 1916, wrote: ‘The historical ’ (my emphasis) ‘basis for the national revolution, even in Ireland, had been swept away.’
He explained the growth of a conservative peasantry (1881–1903 land reforms) and how the ‘independent Irish bourgeoisie, insofar as it had formed in the last decade, immediately adopted an antagonistic position towards the young Irish proletariat. Because of this the independent bourgeoisie gave up the national revolutionary struggle and went into the camp of the imperialists.’
He goes on: ‘The young Irish working class, taking shape in an atmosphere saturated with the heroic recollections of national rebellion, clashed with the egoistic, narrow-minded, imperial arrogance of English trade unionism, and naturally swung between nationalism and syndicalism, uniting both tendencies in their revolutionary consciousness. This synthesis captivated the intellectual youth and individual national enthusiasts who, in their turn, supplied the movement with a preponderance of the Green over the Red. ‘In this way the “national revolution”, even in Ireland, in practice, became an uprising of the workers ...’ (my emphasis).
Trotsky concluded:
‘The experiment of the Irish national uprising in which Casement, with undoubted personal courage, represented the hopes and myths of the past is over. But the historic role of the Irish proletariat is only just beginning. Already into this uprising – under an archaic banner – it carried its class indignation against militarism and imperialism.
‘That indignation from now on will not subside. On the contrary, it will find an echo throughout Great Britain. The Scottish soldiers smashed the Dublin barricades, but in Scotland itself coalminers are rallying around the red banner raised by John MacLean and his comrades.
‘Those very workers, who at the moment Henderson is trying to chain to the bloody chariot of imperialism, will revenge themselves against hangman Lloyd George.’(Nashe Slovo, 4.6.1916. Translated by Sandra Milligan.)
Trotsky’s brief comment didn’t foresee the re-emergence of a limited agrarian struggle after 1916. He did see and indicate the fundamental class forces and relationships which were to unfold between 1916 and 1922 and result in the present set-up. That is, the relationship between the working class and the southern bourgeoisie.
After Easter, a mass upsurge. The urban movement grew. The drying up, in the feverish financial heat of the war, of government-financed land for division, added solid fuel to the sparks of traditional nationalism struck among the peasants by the Rising.
In response, the bourgeoisie markedly absent at the start, adapted their line so as to control the rising mass movement. When Lawless and Gray counterpose the 1918 election successes of ‘Sinn Fein, the Republican Party’ to the rout of the ‘Green Tories who had opposed 1916’, they obscure the process which produced the bosses’ domination they mention.
Already in 1918 SF was ruled by bandwagon-jumping, anti-Rising bourgeois – typified by Griffiths, absent in 1916, who was the practical leader of Sinn Fein (before and after 1917).
Their domination of the mass movement behind Sinn Fein had one precondition. The peasants, even when roused, could only play an auxiliary role, following either workers or bourgeois. But the workers’ organisations, industrial and political (the SP abstained from independent political activity and gave the leadership of the workers to the bourgeoisie – thus automatically also giving them the leadership of the peasants.
Finally, in 1921–22, the majority of the bourgeoisie, through fear of the growing and deepening mass movement under them, helped imperialism to enthrone neo-colonialism.
Trotsky’s analysis grasped the essence here. Because the working class proved unable to take the lead and put its stamp on it, the national revolution was aborted. No traditional national revolution was in fact possible. Trotsky’s conclusions, emphasis and perspectives for Ireland were more right 50 years ago than are those of the authors today.
For example, in 1916 he linked the workers of Dublin with the British class struggle, counterposing MacLean to Henderson. Lawless and Gray emphasise only the criminal complicity of official British labour. But there was another British labour movement – the anti-Hyndman majority of the BSP, the SLP, the MacLean ILP element, the great shop stewards movement – which had no sympathy with the work of the Empire in Ireland, nor with chauvinism, nor pacifism.
The emotional one-sidedness of this section expresses the feelings of some of the best emigré Irish workers who see only the official movement. But in a paper like Socialist Worker it’s a senseless incitement to history-conscious Irish workers to remain aloof from the British struggle. What could be worse!
While we teach British workers to despise chauvinism and Imperialism, SW must also build on the real and substantial record of support for Ireland of the revolutionary British workers, to forge class unity in struggle. Publishing extravagant denigration which ignores both history and current needs, won’t help here at all.
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Sean Matgamna, |
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