LABOUR AND THE INSURRECTION.
No person in Ireland seems to have exact information about the
Volunteers, their aims, or their numbers. We know the names of the
leaders now. They were recited to us with the tale of their execution;
and with the declaration of a Republic we learned something of their
aim, but the estimate of their number runs through the figures ten,
thirty, and fifty thousand. The first figure is undoubtedly too slender,
the last excessive, and something between fifteen and twenty thousand
for all Ireland would be a reasonable guess.
Of these, the Citizen Army or Labour side of the Volunteers, would not
number more than one thousand men, and it is with difficulty such a
figure could be arrived at. Yet it is freely argued, and the theory will
grow, that the causes of this latest insurrection should be sought among
the labour problems of Dublin rather than in any national or patriotic
sentiment, and this theory is buttressed by all the agile facts which
such a theory would be furnished with.
It is an interesting view, but in my opinion it is an erroneous one.
That Dublin labour was in the Volunteer movement to the strength of,
perhaps, two hundred men, may be true--it is possible there were more,
but it is unlikely that a greater number, or, as many, of the Citizen
Army marched when the order came. The overwhelming bulk of Volunteers
were actuated by the patriotic ideal which is the heritage and the
burden of almost every Irishman born out of the Unionist circle, and
their connection with labour was much more manual than mental.
This view of the importance of labour to the Volunteers is held by two
distinct and opposed classes.
Just as there are some who find the explanation of life in a sexual
formula, so there is a class to whom the economic idea is very dear, and
beneath every human activity they will discover the shock of wages and
profit. It is truly there, but it pulls no more than its weight, and in
Irish life the part played by labour has not yet been a weighty one;
although on every view it is an important one. The labour idea in
Ireland has not arrived. It is in process of "becoming," and when labour
problems are mentioned in this country a party does not come to the
mind, but two men only--they are Mr. Larkin and James Connolly, and they
are each in their way exceptional and curious men.
There is another class who implicate labour, and they do so because it
enables them to urge that as well as being grasping and nihilistic,
Irish labour is disloyal and treacherous.
The truth is that labour in Ireland has not yet succeeded in organising
anything--not even discontent. It is not self-conscious to any extent,
and, outside of Dublin, it scarcely appears to exist. The national
imagination is not free to deal with any other subject than that of
freedom, and part of the policy of our "masters" is to see that we be
kept busy with politics instead of social ideas. From their standpoint
the policy is admirable, and up to the present it has thoroughly
succeeded.
One does not hear from the lips of the Irish workingman, even in
Dublin, any of the affirmations and rejections which have long since
become the commonplaces of his comrades in other lands. But on the
subject of Irish freedom his views are instantly forthcoming, and his
desires are explicit, and, to a degree, informed. This latter subject
they understand and have fabricated an entire language to express it,
but the other they do not understand nor cherish, and they are not
prepared to die for it.
It is possibly true that before any movement can attain to really
national proportions there must be, as well as the intellectual ideal
which gives it utterance and a frame, a sense of economic misfortune to
give it weight, and when these fuse the combination may well be
irresistible. The organised labour discontent in Ireland, in Dublin, was
not considerable enough to impose its aims or its colours on the
Volunteers, and it is the labour ideal which merges and disappears in
the national one. The reputation of all the leaders of the insurrection,
not excepting Connolly, is that they were intensely patriotic Irishmen,
and also, but this time with the exception of Connolly, that they were
not particularly interested in the problems of labour.
The great strike of two years ago remained undoubtedly as a bitter and
lasting memory with Dublin labour--perhaps, even, it was not so much a
memory as a hatred. Still, it was not hatred of England which was evoked
at that time, nor can the stress of their conflict be traced to an
English source. It was hatred of local traders, and, particularly,
hatred of the local police, and the local powers and tribunals, which
were arrayed against them.
One can without trouble discover reasons why they should go on strike
again, but by no reasoning can I understand why they should go into
rebellion against England, unless it was that they were patriots first
and trade unionists a very long way afterwards.
I do not believe that this combination of the ideal and the practical
was consummated in the Dublin insurrection, but I do believe that the
first step towards the formation of such a party has now been taken,
and that if, years hence, there should be further trouble in Ireland
such trouble will not be so easily dealt with as this one has been.
It may be that further trouble will not arise, for the co-operative
movement, which is growing slowly but steadily in Ireland, may arrange
our economic question, and, incidentally, our national question
also--that is if the English people do not decide that the latter ought
to be settled at once.
James Connolly had his heart in both the national and the economic camp,
but he was a great-hearted man, and could afford to extend his
affections where others could only dissipate them.
There can be no doubt that his powers of orderly thinking were of great
service to the Volunteers, for while Mr. Larkin was the magnetic centre
of the Irish labour movement, Connolly was its brains. He has been
sentenced to death for his part in the insurrection, and for two days
now he has been dead.
He had been severely wounded in the fighting, and was tended, one does
not doubt with great care, until he regained enough strength to stand
up and be shot down again.
Others are dead also. I was not acquainted with them, and with Connolly
I was not more than acquainted. I had met him twice many months ago, but
other people were present each time, and he scarcely uttered a word on
either of these occasions. I was told that he was by nature silent. He
was a man who can be ill-spared in Ireland, but labour, throughout the
world, may mourn for him also.
A doctor who attended on him during his last hours says that Connolly
received the sentence of his death quietly. He was to be shot on the
morning following the sentence. This gentleman said to him:
"Connolly, when you stand up to be shot, will you say a prayer for me?"
Connolly replied:
"I will."
His visitor continued:
"Will you say a prayer for the men who are shooting you?"
"I will," said Connolly, "and I will say a prayer for every good man in
the world who is doing his duty."
He was a steadfast man in all that he undertook. We may be sure he
steadfastly kept that promise. He would pray for others, who had not
time to pray for himself, as he had worked for others during the years
when he might have worked for himself.