the A.O.H., sapped the foundations of belief, and it became known that
'a high official achieved his ambitions on the judicial bench only by
becoming a professing Catholic and accepting initiation under the rites
of Mr. Devlin's brotherhood. The staff of the _Freeman's Journal_, the
official patriot organ, got endless jobs. At the same time Mr. Redmond
excluded from his party, without trial or grounds, a dozen leading
members opposed to this policy.'
"All that was sober, unselfish, self-respecting, and self-reliant
quitted his ranks and joined the Sinn Fein movement without thought of
rebellion or pro-Germanism.
"The courage of the Sinn Feiners atoned for much of their folly in the
mind of those who realized that their spirit was not pro-German, but, in
the main, a revolt against the conversion of Dublin Castle into a
Redmondite Tammany Hall. Their uprising was the answer to the
corruption, jobbery, and judge-mongering of the Molly Maguires
masquerading in the vestments of religion. Hence the wholesale arrests
of men not in rebellion have evoked no protest from Mr. Redmond, 'who
watches calmly the dispersal of his critics,' hoping to find a new lease
of life under a new jobbing nominee."
The Larkinists were, if anything, still more out of sympathy with the
official party because, in the words of Connolly, they looked upon them
as no better than the English conqueror, since they took the side of
the social conqueror in the economic struggles of life in the city.
This seems certainly to have a touch of truth, for if ever any body of
men resembled the unfortunate victims of rural landlords it was these
wretched victims of the tenement slums, the denunciation of which seemed
to have no part in the official Parliamentary programme, so much so as
to compel Labour to create its own party and evolve its own leader,
which it had accordingly done in the person of Jim Larkin.
Now, if anyone wishes to judge James Connolly they should not look at
the soldier for a week; they must examine the life-long student of
economics and read his "History of Labour in Irish History" and his
"Reconquest of Ireland," for it is here we have the revolution in its
cause, which was just as much economic as political.
It is the custom to speak of the Larkinites with scant respect, as if
they were the mad, blind multitude of the "have nots" in perpetual prey
upon the "haves"; but it is quite a false idea, for they have in their
movement some of those who count socially and intellectually.
Thus, for example, the training of the Citizens' Army was almost
entirely carried out by Captain J. R. White, D.S.O., son of the late
Field-Marshal Sir George White, whose "Labour" ideas got him three
months' imprisonment only a few weeks ago.
As to the attitude of the average Dublin merchant towards the new labour
party that is arising, I know of no finer apology for Larkin than the
brilliant letter of "Æ." to the _Irish Times_ in the days of the great
strike, when he addressed the "masters of the city."
In it he warned them--the aristocracy of industry--because like all
aristocracies they tended to grow blind in long authority, and to be
unaware that they and their class and their every action were being
considered and judged day by day by those who had the power to shake or
overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty was
making our industrial civilization stir like a quaking bog. He reminded
them that their assumption that they were answerable to themselves alone
for their actions in the industries they controlled was becoming less
and less tolerable, in a world so crowded with necessitous life; but
what he chiefly held them responsible for was their incompetence as
commercial men, because, with the cheapest market in the world at their
command, they could never invite the confidence of investors.
What was even worse than their business incompetence, however, was,
according to "Æ.," their bad citizenship, for had they not allowed the
poor to be herded together so that one could only think of certain
places in Dublin as of a pestilence?
"There are twenty thousand rooms in Dublin," continued the terrible
indictment, "in each of which live entire families and sometimes more,
where no functions of the body can be concealed, and delicacy and
modesty are creatures that are stifled ere they are born." In fact,
"nothing that had ever been done against them cried so much to heaven
for vengeance as their own actions, such as the terrible lock-out, which
threw nearly a third of the whole city on to the verge of starvation";
and he concluded:--
"You are sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry. There was
autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So
surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The
fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the
aristocracy of land, if you do not show that you have some humanity
still among you."
It was from such roots that the spirit of the Citizens' Army drew its
inspiration (and possibly not a few of the looters as well), and it is
impossible to understand the rage of these men without fully
comprehending the condition in which they were compelled to live and
move.
True, the revolt was not with any concrete economic end in view; but,
none the less, it was coloured throughout with economic grievances.
It was the very torture of the ordinary conditions of peace that made
them resent the fear of any additional burdens and sacrifices such as
were demanded of their patriotism.
Yet what did patriotism and Empire mean to them, save only the doubling
of their burdens and their masters' profits?
If the Scotch workman in London and the Scotch worker on the Clyde and
the Welsh miner in the coalfields round Cardiff felt it, much more must
the Irish docker; and it must never be forgotten that there is a triple
link of blood, interest, and common sympathy between the workers of the
two islands; and one has only to glance at the way the respective labour
Presses of the two countries kept in touch with each other for the past
year to realize how much an English labour problem the Irish political
problem really was.
This brings me to some further factors which can be discerned in the
rising--firstly, the fear of conscription; secondly, the hatred of
militarism; and, thirdly, the chronic loathing of Castle government.
With regard to conscription, there has always been a dread of it. They
had seen it come in England, and had watched anxiously the way it had
been introduced and applied, and the farce of the Tribunals, whose
action, in the words of the _Freeman's Journal_, would have been
sufficient to cause a revolution had they behaved in Ireland as they
behaved in England.
All during the summer months they had seen the cloud gathering, and
Irishmen caught by a legal technicality and forced into the system; but
all this came to a climax when the cry of cowardice was raised at
Liverpool, as five hundred young emigrants, who would never have been
helped to live for Ireland in their own country, were suddenly held up
by order of the Cunard Company--which, as a matter of fact, owed nearly
its whole prosperity to its coffin boats of the Famine days, and whose
glaringly seductive posters had emptied Ireland, neither for America nor
Ireland's sake, but purely to get the passage-money of the emigrants who
were now asked to go instead and "help England to give Constantinople to
Russia, even if it cost them their lives."
For they had a way of blunt speaking, these men whose everyday life was
an heroic fight for the home against "Hun" poverty.
When the cry of "cowardice" was raised, however, it was high time to
protest, and none voiced that protest so well as Dr. O'Dwyer, the Bishop
of Limerick, who wrote the following letter to the _Munster News_:--
"SIR,--The treatment which the poor Irish emigrant lads have received at
Liverpool is enough to make any Irishman's blood boil with anger and
indignation. What wrong have they done to deserve insults and outrage at
the hands of a brutal English mob? They do not want to be forced into
the English Army, and sent to fight English battles in some part of the
world. Is not that within their right? They are supposed to be free men,
but they are made to feel that they are prisoners, who may be compelled
to lay down their lives for a cause that is not worth 'three rows of
pins' to them.
"It is very probable that these poor Connaught peasants know little or
nothing of the meaning of the war. Their blood is not stirred by the
memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Serbia.
They would much prefer to be allowed to till their own potato gardens in
peace in Connemara. Small nationalities, and the wrongs of Belgium and
Rheims Cathedral, and all the other cosmopolitan considerations that
rouse the enthusiasm of the Irish Party, but do not get enough of
recruits in England, are far too high-flying for uneducated peasants,
and it seems a cruel wrong to attack them because they cannot rise to
the level of the disinterested Imperialism of Mr. T. P. O'Connor and the
rest of the New Brigade.
"But in all the shame and humiliation of this disgraceful episode, what
angers one most is that there is no one, not even one of their own
countrymen, to stand up and defend them. Their crime is that they are
not ready to die for England. Why should they? What have they or their
forbears ever got from England that they should die for her? Mr. Redmond
will say a Home Rule Act on the Statute Book. But any intelligent
Irishman will say a simulacrum of Home Rule, with an express notice that
it is never to come into operation.
"This war may be just or unjust, but any fair-minded man will admit
that it is England's war, not Ireland's. When it is over, if England
wins, she will hold a dominant power in this world, and her manufactures
and her commerce will increase by leaps and bounds. Win or lose, Ireland
will go on, in our old round of misgovernment, intensified by a grinding
poverty which will make life intolerable. Yet the poor fellows who do
not see the advantage of dying for such a Cause are to be insulted as
'shirkers' and 'cowards,' and the men whom they have raised to power and
influence have not one word to say on their behalf.
"If there is to be conscription, let it be enforced all round, but it
seems to be the very intensity of injustice to leave English shirkers by
the million to go free, and coerce the small remnant of the Irish race
into a war which they do not understand, and which, whether it is right
or wrong, has but a secondary and indirect interest for them.
"I am, dear sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"-|- EDWARD THOMAS,
"Bishop of Limerick.
"_November 10, 1915._"
The seditious Press took up the cry: "Conscription had not even been
applied to her own sons, yet England was applying it to Irishmen," said
Gilbert Galbraith in _Honesty_; adding: "for all she wants of Irishmen
is their lives that she might live," and he warned Irishmen that "she
(England) who took everything they had and stripped them naked and left
them like Christ to the ribald jest and sneer of the rabble in the
world's back-streets, would, like every bully, try to have revenge when
she got them by themselves."
Had this been mere verbal sword-play, however, I should not quote it; it
was more: it was the taking up of the challenge of cowardice.
"Will you in God's name get ready to answer her?" concluded the famous
article in which he appealed to these would-be exiles repatriated by
force; "because, if you want to, all you have to do is to get into touch
with the nearest corps of Irish Volunteers." They would give them
instructions, he added pointedly, how to act, and what they did they had
better do quickly, for it might be too late on the morrow.
Could one be surprised, I ask, if some of these would-be emigrants
answered the taunt gun in hand?--especially when men like Captain White,
who was afterwards to try to rouse the South Wales miners to endeavour
to save Connolly, was telling them plainly:--
"You are fast being led into industrial slavery. You know it, and I am
apprehensive and angry, but too bewildered to move. To rob you of your
right over your own poor bodies is the workers' tyrant. To rob you of
your sovereign power over your own will is the workers' devil.
"Awake, brothers, before your liberty is dead. Arm yourselves against
your real enemies. Say to the tyrants and their agents, 'The first man
who lays hands on me against my will dies.'"
All this, I say, jumps to the eyes of anyone perusing the literature
that produced the rising.
It is beside the point whether such argumentation be true or false,
patriotic or seditious. The only point, as far as we are concerned in
this quasi-medical diagnosis of diseased mentality, is whether or not
these thoughts were present in the psychology of the combatants, and I
maintain that the evidence is undeniable.
The attitude of "conscientious objectors" to militarism in England is
England's own affair. Yet I cannot, in my own mind, separate the
personality of Sir John Simon from that of John Hampden. No doubt
ship-money was necessary, and it was the patriotic thing to give it up,
and no doubt the same applies to men for the Army: but when it came to
the principle of the King taking money without the consent of
Parliament, John Hampden thought it his duty to the traditions of his
country to resist, just as Sir John Simon thought it his duty to the
traditions of the British conscience to passively protest--but that
again, I say, is a matter for Englishmen.
The attitude of the Irish conscientious objector, however, has always
been of a more militant form, and this began to assert itself among the
labour leaders in Ireland through the medium of the more outspoken of
the English labour leaders. Whereas in England the masses of workers are
naturally loyal, in Ireland loyalty is a sustained effort against the
grain of tradition. Hence, while in England the right to rebel fell on
unsympathetic soil, in Ireland it merely relit the smouldering embers of
past grievances into flame.
For there had been a growing epidemic of the phrase "Shoot them,"
applied almost indiscriminately, like a quack panacea, by political
orators to every opponent on every conceivable subject since the war,
and this was producing the most evil results.
Two quotations may suffice from the work by J. Bruce Glasier on
"Militarism," which was freely circulated in Dublin by means of Liberty
Hall, to illustrate the strength of the feeling on this subject:--
"Although Great Britain is suffering neither from invasion from without
nor insurrection from within, the military authorities are not only in
command of the defences of our shores but of the civil authorities, and
the whole population of the realm. The birthrights of British
citizenship embodied in the Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and Bill of
Rights are no longer inviolable. Martial Law--that is to say, military
despotism--may be put in operation at will by the military commanders.
Civilians may be seized and tried by Army officers, and even sentenced
to any penalty short of death without appeal to trial by jury. Our War
Lord is made virtual dictator. A military censorship has been
established over the Press and public meetings. Military officers may
enter our houses, quarter troops upon us, take possession of our horses,
motor-cars, cows, pigs, and pigeons. They may commandeer schools,
factories, warehouses, farms, or any other kinds of public or private
property. Strikes may be declared acts of treason, Trade Union officials
arrested and tried by courts martial, and soldiers used as
blacklegs--and no knowledge whatever of these happenings, not even of
the existence of strikes or trade disputes, may reach the general public
at all if the authorities so determine...."
A phrase that seems to have done great harm, and was specially singled
out by the men of Liberty Hall, was "Shoot him!"--as a form of argument
employed by every Tom, Dick, and Harry orator, on every conceivable
subject without the slightest constitutional authority; but it must be
said it was one used by all parties.
During the Home Rule controversy, for example, the Nationalists were
just as fond of employing the phrase towards Carson as during the Welsh
coal strikes Conservatives were of using it towards the miners.
The danger of such doctrines in Ireland is this, that whereas in England
it is the upper class principally that is militarist, in Ireland it is
principally the lower class, and whereas it is the Castle authorities
who are always preaching the iniquity of physical force, it is the lower
classes who mainly admire it.
Realizing this, as any student of Irish history would, there should not
have been the slightest doubt about the danger of employing force to men
who not only had the principle of active resistance but the arms
necessary to make it effective, and it has always appeared to me as the
most marvellous thing the Liberals ever did that they were able to allow
Ulster the full possession of arms without once provoking an occasion on
which to actually put them to use.
The result of this fatal misuse of the words "Shoot him!" as a form of
argument--which unauthoritative should be made a penal offence--was that
the workers really feared that such irresponsible individuals if given
the power would really carry out the threat, and determined to
anticipate the danger by a protest in arms.
Another contributory cause was undoubtedly Castle rule, and the fear
that with the holding up of Home Rule it might continue for ever, unless
some effective protest were made.
The Chief Secretary was himself the foremost in admitting this to be one
of the contributory causes of the rebellion.
"There are a number of contributory causes, which lately have created
antipathy to constitutional methods and tended to increase in numbers.
First--growing doubts about the actual advent of Home Rule. If the Home
Rule Bill had not been placed on the Statute Book there must have been
in Ireland and the United States a great and dangerous explosion of
rage and disappointment, which when the war broke out would have assumed
the most alarming proportions in Ireland. All (outside parts of Ulster)
would have joined hands, whilst our reports from Washington tell us what
the effect in America would have been. Still, even with Home Rule on the
Statute Book, the chance of its ever becoming a fact was so uncertain,
the outstanding difficulty about Ulster was so obvious, and the details
of the measure itself were so unattractive and difficult to transmute
into telling platform phrases, that Home Rule as an emotional flag fell
out of daily use in current Irish life. People left off talking about it
or waving it in the air.
"Second, in Ireland, whenever Constitutional and Parliamentary procedure
cease to be of absorbing influence, other men, other methods, other
thoughts, before somewhat harshly snubbed, come rapidly to the surface,
and secure attention, sympathy, and support. The sneers of the
O'Brienites, the daily naggings in the Dublin _Irish Independent_, also
contributed to the partial eclipse of Home Rule, and this eclipse
foretold danger."
Another point is worth noting in this connection, and that was the
growing power, first of the Coalition and then of the Unionist clique
who were capturing it. Thus says Mr. Birrell:--
"The Coalition Government, with Sir Edward Carson in it--it is
impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland.
The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the
same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr.
Redmond had consented, he would, on the instant, have ceased to be an
Irish leader. This step seemed to make an end of Home Rule, and
strengthened the Sinn Feiners enormously all over the country."
A general desire for peace and a sort of Socialistic feeling of
brotherhood, I should say, were two further contributory causes.
"The prolongation of the war and its dubious end," as Mr. Birrell
observed, "turned many heads. Criticism was not of the optimistic type
prevalent in Britain, and consequently, when every event had been
thoroughly weighed, there was always a chance of Germany lending a
hand."
As to the general attitude of Sinn Fein and Larkinite Ireland, it might
be described as one of benevolent neutrality where, as in many cases, it
was not one of actual hostility.
True, recruiting figures had reached a total quite unprecedented in
Irish history (150,000), and loyalty had received an official stimulus
when the Irish leader and the Lord-Lieutenant toured the provinces
together; but this was discounted in the country districts by the
deliberate plans of the Sinn Feiners, and in the towns, or rather in
Dublin, by a sense of the futility of all war, and in particular this
war, whose aims were vague enough to the statesmen, and appeared almost
illusory to the worker. Hence anyone reading the _Workers Republic_
could have noticed whole passages that might have been taken direct from
the German Socialist Liebknecht.
One very significant leader (Saturday, February 5, 1916) on "The Ties
that Bind" is well worth quoting in parts as an example of this
feeling:--
"Recently we have been pondering deeply over the ties that bind this
country to England. It is not a new theme for our thoughts; for long
years we have carried on propaganda in Ireland, pointing out how the
strings of self-interest bound the capitalist and landlord classes to
the Empire, and how it thus became a waste of time to appeal to those
classes in the name of Irish patriotism.
"We have said that the working class was the only class to whom the word
'Empire,' and the things of which it was the symbol, did not appeal;
that to the propertied classes 'Empire' meant high dividends and
financial security, whereas to the working class that meant only the
things it was in rebellion against.
"Therefore from the intelligent working class could alone come the
revolutionary impulse.
"Recently we have seen the spread of those ties of self-interest binding
certain classes and individuals to the Empire--we have seen it spread to
a most astonishing degree until its ramifications cover the island,
like the spread of a foul disease.
"It would be almost impossible to name a single class or section of the
population not evilly affected by this social, political, and moral
leprosy....
"For the sake of £400 a year our parliamentary representatives become
Imperialists; for the sake of large travelling expenses and luxurious
living they become lying recruiters....
"There is nobody in a representative position so mean that the British
Government will not pay some price for his Irish soul. Newspaper men
sell their Irish souls for Government advertisements paid for at a
lavish rate. Professors sell their souls for salaries and expenses,
clergymen sell theirs for jobs for their relatives, business men sell
their souls and become recruiters lest they lose the custom of
Government officials. In all the grades of Irish society the only
section that has not furnished even one apostate to the cause it had
worked for in times of peace is that of the much hated and traduced
militant labour leaders.
"But if the militant labour leaders of Ireland have not apostatized, the
same cannot be said of the working class as a whole....
"Perhaps some day the same evil passions the enemy has stirred up in so
many of our Irish people will play havoc with his own hopes, and make
more bitter and deadly the cup of his degradation and defeat.
"But deep in the heart of Ireland has sunk the sense of the degradation
wrought upon its people--our lost brothers and sisters--so deep and
humiliating that no agency less potent than the red tide of war on Irish
soil will ever be able to enable the Irish race to recover its
self-respect, or establish its national dignity in the face of a world
horrified and scandalized by what must seem to them our national
apostasy."
Now the strange thing about Ireland is her definition of "loyalty." It
is not with her a species of sentimental altruism but a plain,
business-like, common-sense view of her own interests, and nothing can
make her change that view, for she has through centuries of
disillusionment become chronically suspicious.