Labor agrees with Sinn Fein not only that Irish industry must be developed
but also that Ireland must have independence. After the national war, the
class war must come. First freedom from exploitation by capitalistic
nations, and then freedom from capitalistic individuals. Many socialists,
it is said, do not understand why Ireland should not plunge at once into
the class war. It was a matter of regret to James Connolly that many of his
fellow socialists the world over would never understand his participation
in the rebellion of 1916. Nora Connolly, the smiling boy-like girl who
smokes and works by a grate in Liberty Hall, says that on the eve of his
execution, when he lay in bed with his leg shattered by a gun wound, her
father said to her: "The socialists will never understand why I am here.
They all forget I am an Irishman."
But James Connolly's fellow socialists in Ireland understand "why he was
there," They back his participation in the national war. And they know
every Irishman will. So they go to the workers and say: "Jim Connolly died
to make Ireland free." Then while the workers cheer, they swiftly show why
Connolly advocated the class war, too: "Jim Connolly lived to make Ireland
free. He believed that the world is for the man who works in it, but in
Ireland he saw seven-eighths of the people in the working class, and he
knew that to these people life means crowded one-room homes, endless
Fridays, no schools or virtually none, and churches where resignation is
preached to them. So his life was a dangerous fight to organize workers
that they might become strong enough to take what is theirs." At Liberty
Hall, one is told that the martyr's name is magnetizing the masses into the
Irish Labor party. And, in order to propagate his ideas, the people are
contributing their coppers towards a fund for the permanent establishment
of the James Connolly Labor College.
So labor fights for a republic first. At the last general elections it
withdrew all its labor party candidates that the Sinn Fein candidates might
have a clear field to demonstrate to the world how unified is Irish
sentiment in favor of a republic. And at the International Labor and
Socialist conference held in Berne in 1919, Cathal O'Shannon, the bright
young labor leader who goes about with his small frame swallowed up in an
overcoat too big for him, made this declaration:
"Irish labor reaffirms its declaration in favor of free and absolute
self-determination of each and every people, the Irish included, in
choosing the sovereignty and form of government under which it shall live.
It rejoices that this self-determination has now been assured to the
Jugo-Slavs, Czecho-Slovaks, Alsatians and Lorrainers, as well as to the
Finns, Poles, Ukrainians, and now to the Arabs. This is not enough and it
is not impartial. To be one and the other, this principle must also be
applied in the same sense and under the same conditions to the peoples of
Ireland, India, Egypt, and to such other people as have not yet secured the
exercise of the inherent right.... Irish labor claims no more and no less
for Ireland than for the others."
After the republic, a workers' republic? After Sinn Fein, the Labor party?
Madame Markewicz is high in the councils of both Sinn Fein and Labor. One
day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her
intuitions with absolute disregard of expediency, she said to me:
"Labor will swamp Sinn Fein."
[Footnote 1. Figures supplied by William O'Brien, secretary Irish Labor
party and Trade Union congress, 1919.]
[Footnote 2. Census of 1911.]
[Footnote 3. Figures supplied by Department of Agriculture of Ireland,
1919.]
[Footnote 4. Figures read by Thomas Lough, M.P., in House of Commons, May
14, 1918.]
[Footnote 5. "Reconquest of Ireland," By James Connolly. Maunsel and
Company. 1917. P. 328.]