James Connolly and the Easter Rising

As we mark the 95th anniversary of the easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland, we republish an article written 10 years ago by Alan Woods and Ted Grant.

 

This Easter marks the 85th
anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin (Ireland) against
British imperialist rule. The outstanding leader of that movement
was James Connolly. There have been many attempts to portray
him simply as an Irish nationalist. But Connolly was, first and
foremost, a militant workers’ leader and a Marxist. He alone in the
annals of the British and Irish Labour Movement succeeded in
developing the ideas of Marxism.

Born in 1868 into a poor family in Edinburgh, James Connolly was a
genuine proletarian. His working life commenced at the age of ten.
All his life he lived and breathed the world of the working class,
shared in its trials and tribulations, suffered from its defeats and
exulted in its victories. Connolly was a self-educated man who became
a brilliant speaker and writer. He alone in the annals of the British
and Irish Labour Movement succeeded in developing the ideas of
Marxism.

On the basis of a careful study of the writings of Marx and
Engels, he developed an independent standpoint and made an original
contribution. Even more remarkably, he did this without the benefit
of direct contact with the other outstanding Marxist thinkers of the
time: Lenin, Trotsky or Luxemburg.

From the first, Connolly had to contend with the same problems
that blighted the existence of the rest of his class: dire and
unrelieved poverty, which at times made it all but impossible for him
to feed his family. But nothing could deter him from his chosen path.
With unceasing vigour and absolute single-mindedness, Connolly fought
for socialism. The programme of the Irish Socialist Republican Party,
written by Connolly, was not a nationalist but a socialist programme
based upon:

"Establishment of AN IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC based on the public
ownership by the Irish people of the land, and instruments of
production, distribution and exchange. Agriculture to be administered
as a public function, under boards of management elected by the
agricultural population and responsible to them and to the nation at
large. All other forms of labour necessary to the well-being of the
community to be conducted on the same principles."

Connolly was, first and foremost, a militant workers’ leader. The
Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), under the
leadership of Larkin and Connolly, led the stormy wave of class
struggle that shook Ireland to its foundations in the years before
1914. Rarely have these Islands seen such a level of bitter class
conflict. This affected not only Dublin but also Belfast, where
Connolly succeeded in uniting Catholic and Protestant workers in
struggle against the employers. In October 1911 he led the famous
Belfast Textile workers strike and organised the workers of that
sector – predominately low-paid and very exploited women.

The wave of strikes was countered by the employers in the
notorious Dublin lockout of 1913. Here we saw the real face of the
Irish bourgeoisie: grasping, repressive, reactionary. The Dublin
bosses, organised by William Martin Murphy, the chairman of the
Employers’ Federation and owner of the Irish Independent newspaper,
set out to crush the workers and their organisations. The ITGWU
replied by blacking Murphy’s newspapers, and he retaliated by locking
out all ITGWU members.

The issue of class unity runs like a red thread through all the
writings and speeches of Connolly: "Perhaps they will see that the
landlord who grinds his peasants on a Connemara estate, and the
landlord who rack-rents them in a Cowgate slum, are brethren in fact
and deed. Perhaps they will realise that the Irish worker who starves
in an Irish cabin and the Scots worker who is poisoned in an
Edinburgh garret are brothers with one hope and destiny." (C.D.
Greaves, James Connolly, p. 61.)

Throughout the lockout, Larkin and Connolly repeatedly appealed to
the class solidarity of the British workers. They addressed mass
rallies in England, Scotland and Wales, which were also the scene of
big class battles in the years before the war. The appeal of the
Irish workers did not fall on deaf ears. Their cause was
enthusiastically supported by the rank and file of the British
movement, although the right wing Labour leaders were preparing to
ditch the Irish workers as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Despite the solidarity and sympathy of the workers of Britain, the
trade union leaders refused to organise solidarity strikes, the only
way that victory could have been achieved. In the end, the workers
were starved back to work. Bitterly, Connolly noted:

"And so we Irish workers must again go down to Hell, bow our backs
to the last of the slave drivers, let our hearts be seared by the
iron of his hatred and instead of the sacramental wafer of
brotherhood and common sacrifice, eat the dust of defeat and
betrayal. Dublin is isolated." (p. 23)

The Citizen’s Army

In the years preceding World War One, the British ruling class was
facing revolutionary developments in Ireland and in Britain. In order
to head off the danger of revolution, they resorted to the "Orange
card". Lord Carson organised and armed the hooligans of the Belfast
slums in the Ulster Volunteers, pledged to resist Irish Home Rule by
force. When the Liberal government in London contemplated using the
British army in Ireland, they were met with the "mutiny at the
Curragh". Connolly remained firm in the face of the sectarian
madness. He organised a Labour demonstration under the auspices of
the ITGWU, "the only union that allows no bigotry in its ranks." In
answer to the sectarians and religious bigots, he declared class war,
issuing his famous manifesto: "To the Linen Slaves of Belfast".

In order to protect themselves against the brutal attacks of
police and hired thugs of the employers, the workers set up their own
defence force: the Irish Citizens’ Army (ICA). This was the first
time in these Islands that workers had organised themselves on an
armed basis to defend themselves against the common enemy: the bosses
and the scabs. The latter, it should be remembered, were much more
numerous than at the present time, as a result of the widespread
conditions of poverty and despair. The two main leaders were Connolly
(himself an ex-soldier) and Captain Jack J. White DSO – a Protestant
Ulsterman. But Connolly saw the ICA not only as a defence force, but
as a revolutionary army, dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism and
imperialism. He wrote:

"An armed organisation of the Irish working class is a phenomenon
in Ireland. Hitherto, the workers of Ireland have fought as parts of
the armies led by their masters, never as a member of any army
officered, trained, and inspired by men of their own class. Now, with
arms in their hands, they propose to steer their own course, to carve
their own future." (Workers Republic, 30 October 1915)

As we see from these lines, Connolly envisaged the ICA in class
terms, as an organisation organically linked to the mass
organisations of the proletariat. It was funded out of the
subscriptions of the members of the union, and its activities were
organised from Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the ITGWU in Dublin.
The Citizens Army drilled and paraded openly on the streets of Dublin
for several years before 1916. Here was no secret organisation
engaged in the methods of individual terrorism, but a genuine
workers’ militia: the first workers’ Red Army in Europe.

Unfortunately, the movement in the direction of revolution in
Ireland was rudely cut across by the outbreak of the First World War.
In August 1914, despite all the resolutions passed by the congresses
of the Socialist International, every one of the leaderships of the
Social Democratic Parties betrayed the cause of socialist
internationalism and voted for the War. The only honourable
exceptions were the Russians, the Serbs – and the Irish. Right from
the start, Connolly adopted an unswerving internationalist stance,
which was, in all fundamentals, identical with the position adopted
by Lenin.

Commenting on the betrayal of the leaders of the Socialist
International, he wrote in Forward (15 August, 1914):

"What then becomes of all our resolutions; all our protests of
fraternisation; all our threats of general strikes; all our carefully
built machinery of internationalism; all our hopes for the future?"

And he reached the same conclusion as Lenin. In answer to the kind
of pacifism that was the hallmark of Labour Lefts such as Ramsay
MacDonald (at that time) and the leaders of the ILP, he wrote:

"A great continental uprising of the working class would stop the
war; a universal protest at public meetings would not save a single
life from being wantonly slaughtered."

Connolly was not just a socialist, not just a revolutionary: he
was an internationalist to the marrow of his bones.

The Easter Rising

From the start of the War, Connolly was virtually isolated.
Internationally, he had no contact. Outside of Ireland, the Labour
Movement seemed to be as silent as the grave. True, there were
symptoms of a revival in Britain, with the Glasgow rent strike of
1915. But Connolly feared that the workers of Britain would move too
late. The idea of an uprising had clearly been taking shape in
Connolly’s mind. The threat that Britain would introduce conscription
into Ireland was the main issue that concentrated the mind, not only
of Connolly, but also of the petit bourgeois nationalists of the
Irish Volunteers. Connolly therefore pressed them to enter a militant
alliance with Labour for an armed uprising against British
imperialism. In the event, the leaders of the Volunteers withdrew at
the last movement, leaving the Rising in the lurch.

Was Connolly right to move when he did? The question is a
difficult one. The conditions were frankly unfavourable. Although
there were strikes in Ireland right up to the outbreak of the Rising,
the Irish working class had been exhausted and weakened by the
exertions of the lockout. There were rumours that the British
authorities were planning to arrest the leading Irish
revolutionaries. Connolly finally decided to throw everything into
the balance. He drew the conclusion that it was better to strike
first. He aimed to strike a blow that would break the ice and show
the way, even at the cost of his own life. To fight and lose was
preferable than to accept and capitulate. When Connolly marched out
of Liberty Hall for the last time that fateful morning, he whispered
to a comrade: "We are going out to be slaughtered." When the latter
asked him: "Is there no chance of success?" he replied: "None
whatever."

Connolly was undoubtedly a giant. His actions were those of a
genuine revolutionary, unlike the craven conduct of the Labour
leaders who backed the imperialist slaughter – with the enthusiastic
support of the Irish bourgeois nationalists. Yet he also made some
mistakes. There is no point in denying it, although some people wish
to make Connolly into a saint – while simultaneously ditching or
distorting his ideas. There were serious weaknesses in the Rising
itself. No attempt was made to call a general strike. On Monday 24,
1916, the Dublin trams were still running, and most people went about
their business. No appeal was made to the British soldiers.

Only 1,500 members of the Dublin Volunteers and ICA answered the
call to rise. The nationalists had already split between the
Redmondites – the Parliamentary Irish Group – who backed the War, and
the left wing. However, on the eve of the Rising, the leader of the
Volunteers, Eoin MacNeil publicly instructed all members to refuse to
come out. As so many times before and since, the nationalist
bourgeoisie betrayed the cause of Ireland.

The behaviour of the nationalist leaders came as no surprise to
Connolly, who always approached the national liberation struggle from
a class point of view. He never had any trust in the bourgeois and
petit bourgeois Republicans, and tirelessly worked to build an
independent movement of the working class as the only guarantee for
the re conquest of Ireland. Since his death there have been many
attempts to erase his real identity as a revolutionary socialist and
present him as just one more nationalist. This is utterly false. One
week before the Rising he warned the Citizens Army: "The odds against
us are a thousand to one. But if we should win, hold onto your rifles
because the Volunteers may have a different goal. Remember, we are
not only for political liberty, but for economic liberty as well."

From a military point of view the Rising was doomed in advance –
although if the Volunteers had not stabbed it in the back, the
Uprising could have had far greater success. As it was, the British
used artillery to batter the GPO (the rebel centre) into submission.
By Thursday night, after four days of heroic resistance against the
most frightful odds, the rebels were compelled to sign an
unconditional surrender.

Although the Rising itself ended in failure, it left behind a
tradition of struggle that had far-reaching consequences. It was this
that probably Connolly had in mind. In particular the savagery of the
British army, which shot all the leaders of the Rising in cold blood
after a farcical drumhead trial, caused a wave of revulsion
throughout all Ireland. James Connolly, who was badly wounded and
unable to stand, was shot strapped to a chair. But the British had
miscalculated. The gunshots that ended the life of this great martyr
of the working class aroused a new generation of fighters eager to
revenge Ireland’s wrongs.

The Easter Rising was like a tocsin bell, the echoes of which rang
throughout Europe. After two years of imperialist slaughter, at last
the ice was broken! A courageous word had been spoken, and could be
heard above the din of the bombs and cannon-fire. Lenin received the
news of the uprising enthusiastically. This was understandable, given
his position. The War posed tremendous difficulties for the Marxist
internationalists. Lenin was isolated with a small group of
supporters. On all sides there was capitulation and betrayal. The
class struggle was temporarily in abeyance. The Labour leaders were
participating in coalition governments with the social-patriots. The
events in Dublin completely cut across this. That is why Lenin was so
enthusiastic about the uprising. But he also pointed out:

"The misfortune of the Irish is that they have risen prematurely
when the European revolt of the proletariat has not yet matured.
Capitalism is not so harmoniously built that the various springs of
rebellion can of themselves merge at one effort without reverses and
defeats."

Had the Rising occurred a couple of years later, it would not have
been isolated. It would have had powerful reserves in the shape of
the mass revolutionary movement that swept through Europe after the
October Revolution in 1917. But Connolly was not to know this.

Importance of leadership

Some sorry ex-Marxists criticised the Easter Rising from a right
wing standpoint, such as Plekhanov. In an article in Nashe Slovo
dated 4 July 1916, Trotsky denounced Plekhanov’s remarks about the
Rising as "wretched and shameful" and added: "the experience of the
Irish national uprising is over….the historical role of the Irish
proletariat is just beginning."

Unfortunately, this prediction was falsified by history. The
tragedy of the Irish working class was that, unlike Lenin, Connolly
did not create a revolutionary Marxist party, armed with theory, that
would have carried on his work after his death. This was his biggest
mistake, and one which had the most tragic consequences. In the same
way that the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht later
beheaded the German revolution, so the killing of Connolly removed
any chance of the Irish working class leading the revolutionary
movement against British imperialism. This was a heavy price to pay!

Connolly had created the Irish Labour Party, with a solid base in
the trade unions and the working class. In effect, it was the workers
of the Irish Citizens Army who had led the Easter Rising, not the
petit bourgeois Volunteers. In fact, Sinn Fein played NO role in the
uprising, while the Irish bourgeois nationalists openly betrayed it.

Yet, when Connolly was removed from the picture, it was the
bourgeois and petit bourgeois nationalists who took advantage of the
situation to seize control of the movement. Tragically, the leaders
of the Irish Labour Party, lacking Connolly’s grounding in Marxism,
proved to be hopelessly inadequate to the tasks posed by history.
Instead of maintaining Connolly’s fight for an independent class
policy, they tail ended the nationalists, standing down in their
favour in the general election after the War.

Under the leadership of the bourgeois and petit bourgeois
nationalists, the movement was side-tracked into a guerrilla
struggle, and then betrayed. Fearful of the prospect of revolution,
the rotten Irish bourgeoisie reached an agreement with London to
divide the living body of Ireland. All Connolly’s warnings about the
treacherous role of the bourgeoisie were confirmed by the terrible
events surrounding partition. The legacy of this betrayal is still
with us today.

For the last 85 years, the Irish bourgeois and petit bourgeois
nationalists have demonstrated their complete incapacity for solving
the tasks of the Irish national liberation struggle. In 1922, the
bourgeois leaders signed the partition of Ireland. This problem
cannot be solved on a capitalist basis. For the last 30 years the
Provisional IRA have been trying to solve the problem by a senseless
campaign of bombing and shooting. These tactics of individual
terrorism have absolutely nothing in common with the methods of
Connolly and the Citizens Army, which were always based on class
politics and organically linked to the proletariat and the mass
workers organisations.

What have these methods achieved after 30 years? Over three
thousand deaths; the destruction of a whole generation of Irish
youth; the splitting of the population of the North into two hostile
camps; a terrible legacy of sectarian bitterness. And with what
result? Has the border question been solved? Let us speak clearly:
After three decades of so-called armed struggle, the cause of Irish
reunification is further away today than at any other time.
Ignominiously, the leaders of the Provisionals have capitulated for
the sake of a few paltry ministerial portfolios. Nothing has been
solved for either Catholics or Protestants.

This is the terrible legacy of decades of individual terrorism and
the total lack of any class or socialist perspective. True, there was
a serious division in the past between Catholics and Protestants in
Northern Ireland. But now in place of division we have a yawning
abyss. Yet none of this would have been necessary if Connolly’s ideas
and methods had prevailed.

In his lifetime, Connolly always fought for the unity of the
working class above all national and religious lines. By
concentrating on class issues, he succeeded in uniting the Catholic
and Protestant workers in the struggle against their common enemy –
the employing class. That is the only way to get out of the present
mess. The only way to solve what remains of Ireland’s national
problem is as a by-product of the revolutionary struggle for
socialism. That was true in Connolly’s day. And it remains true
today. There can be no reunification of Ireland while the working
class remains divided along sectarian lines.

The socialist revolution in the North is inextricably linked to
the perspective of socialist revolution in the South – and in
Britain. In other words, it can only be solved with a proletarian and
internationalist policy. There is still a ray of hope in the North of
Ireland. Despite everything, the fundamental organisations of the
working class – the trade unions – remain united. They are probably
the only real non-sectarian mass organisations that still exist. This
is the base upon which we can build! That would undoubtedly be the
message of James Connolly, were he alive at this time.

Eighty five years later, it is necessary to cut through all the
fog of historical fantasy and nationalist mystification that
surrounds the events of Easter Week, and see the key role of the
proletariat. What a great opportunity was missed with the death of
James Connolly! But the new generation must take the lesson to heart.
Connolly failed because he did not create – as Lenin created – the
necessary instrument with which to change society: a revolutionary
party and a revolutionary leadership!

Today we pledge ourselves to defend the heritage of this great
Marxist, fighter, and martyr of the working class. We must rescue the
ideas of Connolly which have been stolen and distorted beyond
recognition by people who have nothing to do with Connolly, socialism
or the working class. We must continue the fight for Connolly’s ideas
– the only ideas that can guarantee the ultimate victory. We must
create the necessary revolutionary organisation, soundly based on the
programme, policy and methods of Marxism. And we must understand that
such an organisation must be firmly based in the only soil in which
it can grow and flourish: the trade unions and the mass organisations
of Labour in Ireland, North and South, as well as on the other side
of the Irish Sea.

The Easter Rising was a glorious harbinger of what is still to
come. The job was left unfinished in 1916. The task now falls upon
our shoulders. Armed with the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky –
and Connolly – we shall not fail!