"I have always endeavoured to teach my countrymen, whether at home or
abroad, the lesson of =self-reliance=.... Do not rely upon any English
Party; do not rely even upon the great English democracy, however
well-disposed they may be to your claims. But rely upon yourselves."
Sinn Fein means self-reliance.
According to Parnell, then, the Irish people secured nothing through Irish
talk at Westminster. Whatever they got, they got by direct action. It is
easy to convince ourselves that Parnell is right. We got Free Trade and
legislative independence in 1782, without any Irish Party at Westminster,
with the help of 60,000 Volunteers. In 1829 Catholic Emancipation was won
by O'Connell in Clare, before he ever set foot in Westminster, because he
had the Irish people and the Catholic Association behind him. Yet a few
months before the English Government had rejected a Catholic Relief Bill
with scorn. Here are Peel's words:--
"In the course of the last six months, England, being at peace with
the whole world, has had five-sixths of the infantry force of the
United Kingdom occupied in maintaining the peace and in police duties
in Ireland. I consider the state of things which requires such an
application of military force much worse than open rebellion. If this
be the state of things at present, let me implore of you to consider
what would be the condition of England in the event of war. Can we
forget in reviewing the state of Ireland what happened in 1782?"
The Prime Minister was evidently unmoved by all the eloquent appeals for
justice to Irish Catholics; he moved very rapidly when Irishmen showed
signs of =doing= something. The Duke of Wellington, in May, 1829, made a
similar confession:--
"If you glance at the history of Ireland during the last ten years,
you will find that agitation really means something short of
rebellion; that and no other is the exact meaning of the word. It is
to place the country in that state in which its government is utterly
impracticable except by means of an overawing military force."
Not such a far cry after all from the Iron Duke to the Tin Viscount!
Tithes were abolished in 1838, again not by a Parliamentary Party, but by
the people themselves after a bloody seven years' war.
Then came Disestablishment in 1869. How did that come? When in 1868
Gladstone proposed his Church resolution, a hundred Irish members
voted--fifty-five for and forty-five against! Obviously Disestablishment
was not carried by Irish representation at Westminster. Let Gladstone
himself tell us what carried it:--
"Down to the year 1865 and the dissolution of that year, the whole
question of the Irish Church was dead. Nobody cared about it, nobody
paid attention to it in England. Circumstances occurred which drew
attention of the people to the Irish Church. I said myself in 1865,
and I believed, that it was out of the range of practical politics."
In other words, Fenianism secured Irish Church Disestablishment. Lord
Derby, writing from the opposite camp, agreed with Gladstone:--
"A few desperate men, applauded by the whole body of the Irish people
for their daring, showed England what Irish feeling really was, made
plain to us the depth of a discontent whose existence we had scarcely
suspected, and =the rest followed, of course=."
Let us hear the same two unimpeachable witnesses concealing the Land
Question. "I must make one admission," said Gladstone, "and that is that
without the Land League the Act of 1881 would not at this moment be on the
Statute Book." "Fixity of tenure," said Lord Derby, "has been the direct
result of two causes: Irish outrage and parliamentary obstruction. The
Irish know it as well as we. Not all the influence and eloquence of Mr.
Gladstone would have prevailed on the English House of Commons to do what
has been done in the matter of Irish tenant right, if the answer to all
objections had not been ready: How else are we to govern Ireland?" In
plain English, every concession wrung from England has been secured simply
by making the English Government otherwise impossible in Ireland.
=THE FAILURE OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM.=
If this be so, what is the use of sending Irishmen over to talk at
Westminster? That is the question which we have to face squarely. In the
hand of a genius like Parnell, the parliamentary policy secured a
temporary success, because, with the help of Joe Biggar, the Fenian, he
played the game in his own way--by parliamentary obstruction--and because
he secured the co-operation of the anti-parliamentary Nationalists. But
even he only looked upon the experiment as a temporary expedient. "Have
patience with me," he said to a Fenian in 1877; "give me a trial for three
or four years; then if I cannot do anything, I will step aside." He made a
very striking declaration in November, 1880, when the freedom of Limerick
was conferred on him:--
"I am not one of those who believe in the permanence of an Irish Party
in the English Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the
influence which every English Government has at its command--the
powerful and demoralising influence--sooner or later--will sap the
best Party you can return to the House of Commons. I don't think we
ought to rely too much on the permanent independence of an Irish Party
sitting at a distance from their constituencies and legislating, or
attempting to legislate, for Ireland at Westminster. But I think it
possible to maintain the independence of our Party by great exertions
and by great sacrifices on the part of the constituencies of
Ireland--while we are making a short, sharp, and I trust decisive,
struggle for the restoration of our legislative independence."
There could not be a more striking condemnation of Westminsterism from the
lips of Ireland's greatest parliamentary leader. What would he not have
said could he have foreseen the Liberal alliance, the pledge-breaking, the
jobbing, the L400 a year! "If the young men of Ireland have trusted me,"
said Parnell at Kilkenny, December, 1890, "it is because they know that I
am not a mere Parliamentarian." Ireland, young and old, has since then had
good cause to distrust mere Parliamentarianism.
The test of any policy is its practical result. What has Westminsterism
got for us? For 47 years we have had an Irish Party, for 118 years Ireland
has been represented in the English Parliament. We have given the
experiment a fair trial; it is high time to take stock. When the Party
started in 1871 our population was 5-1/2 millions; since then over 2-1/4
millions have emigrated; there are now only 4-1/3 millions in the country.
In 1871 there were 5,620,000 acres in tillage; now there are less than
4,900,000. In 1871 the poor rate was 2s. 6d. per head, now it is over 5s.
In 1871 the taxation of Ireland was L1 5s. 7d. per head; to-day it is
about L7. Apply any rational test you like, and find if you can any single
good we have got by sending Irish talkers to Westminster. The Irish Party,
of course, attribute everything to themselves. But this electioneering
dodge--never used by Parnell--is getting a trifle thin. Even Mr. Redmond
wrote in 1902: "Despite the efforts made by Isaac Butt and other Irish
members between 1871 and 1876, nothing was done in the direction of land
reform until the Land League came." The Local Government Act of 1898 was
drafted secretly by the Government and came as a surprise to the Party; it
was even opposed by John Redmond. The Party never asked for Old Age
Pensions, and when these were proposed they confined themselves to the
remark that if extended to Ireland half-a-crown a week would be enough.
Parliament has spent thirty-three years drafting Home Rule Bills; they
have all come to nothing. In three weeks Irish Conscription was passed in
spite of the Party. Where was Conscription defeated--in Ireland or in
Westminster? And if the organised opposition and resistance of the Nation,
especially of Labour, made Conscription impossible, does it not teach us
that our real power is here at home in Ireland? The Party made vain
efforts to secure justice for the Irish teachers. The teachers took the
matter into their own hands and won at once; had they been more
determined, they would have done better still. In 1847-'48, while Irishmen
talked in Parliament, Mitchel proposed to =do= something here in Ireland,
to keep our own food here for our own people. Ireland did not realise her
true salvation then, and the consequences were terrible. Seventy years
later the same gospel is being preached under a new name. Are we going to
listen to-day?
Why, indeed, argue against Parliamentarianism at all? Its very adherents
have abandoned all defence of it. On 3rd December, 1917, Mr. Dillon said
in the English House of Commons: "Our position in this House is made
futile, we are never listened to." Next day Mr. Devlin declared: "I do not
often come to this House, because I do not believe it is worth coming to."
These men are merely re-echoing from their own experience the parting
words of Michael Davitt as he left the English Parliament (Oct., 1899):--
"I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of justice in this
House of Commons on behalf of Ireland. I leave, convinced that no just
cause, no cause of right, will ever find support from this House of
Commons unless it is backed up by force."
=THE FUTILITY OF TALK.=
Let us consider the whole policy in a sane, business-like way. John Bull
runs his Other Island purely as a lucrative investment; he makes a good
profit by the concern. Ireland is simply an Area for supplying beef and
mutton, oats and butter, timber and men. We, Irish men and women, exist
merely to be exploited. Well, we know it; what have we done? How have we
striven to oust this big profiteer who sweats and coerces us? We were once
an independent concern, we managed our own affairs. Then John Bull annexed
us; by means of bribes and promises and threats he turned out the Irish
directors. Arrangements were made by which 100 Irishmen were admitted to
the English Employers' Federation 600 strong. And for 118 years these
Irishmen have been talking there, making speeches and petitions and
harangues. And we? What have we been doing? Oh, yes, now and then the
Irish--that is, John Bull's workingmen--got restive and made things
unpleasant. So they got some concessions: Emancipation, Land Acts, etc.
But still they always turned again to talk; with 80 Irishmen talking to
600 Englishmen they were told that they would be quite safe. Weren't we
"represented" at Westminster? Whenever these, our representatives,
definitely proposed anything, they were, of course, beaten; but if the
majority against them was less than 200, they always raised a deafening
cheer. It is so nice to be beaten by only 150, whereas if we were not
"represented" we should be beaten by 230--which would be dreadful. Then we
were told that what was said in Parliament reached the world--as if Mr.
King had not told more truth about us in Parliament than the whole Irish
Party, as if Hansard is not censored, as if Dr. McCartan, Mrs.
Sheehy-Skeffington and others have not said more in America than twenty
Westminsters could convey--not to mention T. P. O'Connor's performances!
To what depths are we reduced, when Westminsterism is excused only as a
means of getting into Hansard!
Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can
persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off
this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? Is it
not, to say the least, more likely that the English majority, far cleverer
and more powerful, will succeed in cajoling, bribing and fooling the few
Irish flies who walk into the spiders' parlour? =In fact, was not the Act
of Union specially designed for this very purpose?= To swallow a powerless
Irish minority in an English Parliament, to give them facilities for
talking and letting off steam that thereby the Irish people might be
beguiled into doing nothing else. By providing a sham outlet for our
energies, by diverting our attention into wordy warfare, the English
Parliament has succeeded for 118 years in preventing us from seeing the
obvious truth that the English Government can only be made unworkable =in
Ireland=.
The very genius of Parnell has done us harm by intensifying the illusion.
He succeeded for a while, where Butt failed, because he adopted
unparliamentary methods in Parliament. For a time, by persistent
obstruction, Parnell made Government unworkable, even in England. He was
beaten in the end; obstruction is no longer possible; we have reverted to
the mock debates of Isaac Butt. Things are even much worse; for the whole
Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons
has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the
party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and
Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further
presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism.
The English Coalition would, however, still like the eighty Irishmen to
come and hobnob with them. England is far keener on their attendance than
Ireland ever was. Those who oppose the Westminster policy are mostly in
English prisons; absenteeism is treason felony. English aeroplanes drop
leaflets printed (at our expense) by the English Government to denounce
the policy of abstention, to show that it is folly. The English foreign
propaganda tirelessly advertises the presence of Mr. Dillon and Co. in
Westminster as the surest proof of England's kindness to us, and of Irish
loyalty to the Empire. The Irish Party think that their attendance is good
for Ireland, the English Government is quite certain that it is good for
England, everyone agrees that it cannot be good for both. Which, do you
think, knows the situation best: the English Government, whose policy of
exploiting us has been hitherto so eminently successful, or the Irish
Party which has been so often taken in, outwitted, bribed and duped? It is
worth pondering over.
=THE ALTERNATIVE.=
Undoubtedly in most minds the great objection to the Abstention Policy is
that it seems a mere negation; it seems to leave a horrible blank. What!
No Irish Representatives at Westminster? Are we to allow Carson to
represent us? And so on. Let us look at the thing calmly. Why do we want
to be "represented" at all? We must first answer that question. For
instance, we have no desire to be "represented" in Timbuctoo or in the
Moon; but some Irish people find it consoling to feel that they are
represented in England. If not, they feel something dreadful will happen:
the income-tax will be trebled, we shall all be coerced and conscripted.
Well, as things have hitherto been, the Irish Party have never succeeded
in staving off a penny of our taxation. Twenty-four years ago an
Anglo-Irish Commission found that England was plundering Ireland of two
and three-quarter millions a year in excess of the amount of plunder
sanctioned by the Union. From that day to this we have never secured the
remission of one penny of this plunder; on the contrary, it has been
increased tenfold. And all this time we have been strongly "represented"
at Westminster. We have been paying heavily for the privilege! As for
coercion--did the Party ever prevent it? For years past they might have
got the Crimes Act abolished, they didn't or couldn't. Conscription was
passed swiftly in spite of our "representatives"--but somehow it did not
come off. Now, that is worth thinking on. Conscription, like Coercion Acts
and Budgets, danced through our representatives, yet we ourselves beat it.
How? By electing our own little parliament in Dublin (we called it the
Mansion House Conference, of course, for decency's sake), by voting taxes
to it (we called them the Defence Fund), by organising the country so
effectively that the English-made law was seen to be impossible and
unworkable. What an object-lesson if only we will learn from it. The
anti-conscription campaign is Sinn Fein in a nutshell. Even the Party
developed a momentary backbone; the members came back to Erin and actually
left us "unrepresented" in London--and we hardly noticed the dreadful
fact!
The Abstention Policy means, therefore, that we give up the sham battle
and take up the real struggle in grim earnest. We cease to rely on talk as
an effective economic or political defence, we begin to DO something, to
rely on ourselves. There is only one way of putting an end to English
tyranny in Ireland, and that is, not by scolding at it from the other side
of the Irish Sea, but by making it unworkable over here.
Do we mean the use of physical force? This is a difficulty which at once
arises in discussing the abstention policy. This is chiefly due to the
hysterical asseveration of Mr. John Dillon, whose chief electioneering
argument--apart from abuse--is that the only alternative to Westminster is
Rebellion. It seems rather curious, doesn't it, that we cannot sit tight
here in our own country and win independence as Hungary did under Deak.
But perhaps Mr. Dillon means that if we were not distracted and bamboozled
by the fighting on the floor of the House, we would not so tamely
acquiesce in our oppression; and probably Mr. Dillon is right. But, after
all, conscription was beaten without rebellion, and Mr. Dillon's adherence
(however lukewarm) to the Mansion House Committee showed that he believed
it could be beaten without physical force. And when Mr. Dillon signed the
No-Rent Manifesto he was, though he knew it not, a staunch upholder of
Sinn Fein:--
"Against the passive resistance of an entire population, military
power has no weapons.... No power on earth except faint-heartedness on
your own part, can defeat you.... The world is watching to see whether
all your splendid hopes and noble courage will crumble away at the
first threat of a cowardly tyranny.... Stand together in the face of
the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race.... Stand passively,
firmly, fearlessly by, while the armies of England may be engaged in
their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot
touch.... The Government will learn in a single winter how powerless
is armed force against the will of a united, determined and
self-reliant nation."
Would to God that this was the message which Mr. Dillon had for Ireland
to-day! Michael Davitt's comment on the No-Rent Manifesto is
interesting:--
"While I admit its great success as far as results were concerned, I
think that it dulled a weapon which could have been used to give the
final blow to landlordism in Ireland. Had the League waited until two
or three hundred thousand tenant-farmers were ready to obey it, it
would have involved the eviction of a million of people. That would
have been a measure which the Government could not have faced, and the
result would have been the downfall of the system of landlordism.
Still, the results were immediate. The landlords offered the largest
possible reduction of rents, and Mr. Gladstone offered to release the
suspects and bring forward the Arrears Bill."
There, in Davitt's words, you have the central belief of Sinn Fein:
reliance on the moral solidarity and economic power of a Nation. Even a
small determined minority, if prepared to suffer, can effect enormous
reforms. The English Suffragettes have won the franchise for women. It was
certainly not by physical force--even the militant suffragettes did not
rebel, though they burnt houses, broke statues, and harried politicians. A
handful of determined women made government extremely difficult and thus
they won the vote =in spite of Parliament=. If such is the power of a
minority, how irresistible would be an entire nation. Secure even only one
million determined adherents of Sinn Fein, and in six months English
government will be at an end. That is our belief, and it is based on solid
facts of history--Hungarian Independence, English suffrage struggle, Irish
victory over conscription. There are limits to the possibilities of brute
force. At this stage of the world it is impossible to slaughter a nation,
it is impossible to cope with a nation of passive resisters. What is to be
done with a million or so of people who refuse to pay taxes, who combine
to secure the products of their own country, who repudiate the authority
of the intruders? That is the problem which England does not want to face
in this country. The only way for Irishmen to secure a government based
on the consent of the governed is to withdraw all practical consent and
concurrence from the present usurpation. There is no other way. To go on
accepting the English government, co-operating with it as farmers,
workers, tax-payers, policemen, etc., and at the same time to keep whining
and petitioning--this is despicable folly.
John Bull is our boss, Ireland is his food-producing factory. The old idea
of the workers was to do nothing, to form no combination, but merely to
cringe for charity from their employers. That is the stage in which the
Irish Party want to keep us; they are a century behind-hand. The workers
now rely on themselves, on trade union organisation, on direct action;
they have even lost faith in parliamentary tactics. At any rate, they
never complain that they are not "represented" (by a small minority) on
the Employers' Federation! The modern Labour movement is based on
self-reliance, on the power and cohesion of large numbers, on the slowly
built-up economic strength of great unions. Sinn Fein is merely the
transfer of this faith from Labour to Nationality. That is what we are
aiming at in Ireland: the formation of One Big Union, which will ask
nothing from England =until it is ready to strike=. That is the task which
lies before us: the organisation of the Irish People into a National
Union. We must put ourselves into the position of taking over the whole
national business of Ireland. The first step is the capture of the
existing organisations--the parliamentary constituencies, the county and
district and municipal councils, the boards of guardians, every single
body which has a share in directing the national life.
=THE MORAL PRINCIPLE.=
Even from the purely practical standpoint, the case for abstention from
the Westminster talking shop would be irresistible. But there is more than
that at stake. We maintain that attendance at Westminster is immoral and
dishonest, it would be a national lie and apostacy. The members of the
Irish Party, when seeking re-election, have always indulged in an orgy of
sedition and disloyalty. They talk of Emmet and Tone, they celebrate the
Manchester Martyrs, they are not afraid to speak of Ninety-Eight, they are
proud of the felons of our land, they sap every moral claim of the English
Government in Ireland. (Had they not done so, they would never have been
elected in the past.) And then they are carried off by mail-boat and
express-train, and within a few hours they swear allegiance to the English
King and draw their first instalment of L400 a year. What a bastard
nationalism, what a monstrous Anglo-Irish mongrel mentality! English
loyalty veneered with Irish martyrs' blood, damnable casuistry juggling
with oaths and playing with rebellion, blood and thunder paid by a cheque.