[This is the third in a 3-part series. Also see part 1 and part 2]
To whom do we owe our allegiance today?
To those brave men who fought and died that Róisín live again with pride?
Her sons at home to work and sing
Her youth to dance and make her valleys ring
Or the faceless men who for Mark and Dollar
Betray her to the highest bidder
This struggle for an Ireland free in the national and class senses ultimately led to Connolly’s martyrdom as we have examined in part 1, but the question remains: what is the relevance of this 110th anniversary to the workers of both Ireland and Britain?
At home in Ireland the revolution remains unfinished. As foretold by Connolly we have raised the green flag, but having failed to dispel the foreign capitalists we remain ruled by them. This was cemented by the victory of the reactionary ‘Pro-Treaty’ forces in the Irish Civil War, the very people Connolly warned that with ‘whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached’. In the intervening years many have suffered seeking to enact the lofty goals of the proclamation, many more worked as navvies still across Britain’s building sites under McAlpine and expressed the hardship through song and story as is our proud culture – this includes Ireland’s greatest musician of the 20th Century and one time CPGB member Luke Kelly. From the homeland to the diaspora the struggle never ceased and deserves a series of it’s own. 31 10
Today however, Ireland now finds itself in a triple lock of Imperialism; The occupied 6 counties of the North have gone from the richest to the poorest area of the island (the industrialised areas east of the river Bann considered too large a bounty to be relinquished by Westminster in 1921) and acts as Britain’s Call Centre – cheap English-speaking labour. Jobs are fewer, wages are lower and most disturbingly these counties are in the midst of an epidemic of femicide – over 30 women have lost their lives to sex-based violence since 2020.The EU and America use Ireland simultaneously as a tax haven to benefit multinational corporations particularly in the Tech sector and the bountiful seas as ripe pickings for Dutch and German trawlers. America has it’s part to play in this also, and more recently exacerbating the housing crisis viewing Irish property as safe investments with large returns on ever rising rents. This is most acute in Dublin where echoes of the conditions described by Connolly in 1905 ring true again, but also in touristic areas such as Dingle where locals cannot find a place to live or raise a family but each summer play host to hordes of American’s seeking to retrace some distant, if even real, connection and play out their fantasy’s from watching ‘The Quiet Man’. The housing crisis has reached such a state that 7/10 Irish people aged between 18 and 24 are considering emigration. 28 22 1 19 39
More sinister, however, is the three powers combined push for Ireland to abandon its neutrality and align totally with the NATO/EU war machine, and all its associated crimes and monies directed away from the people and into the pockets of death dealers. The Irish bourgeoisie is fully onboard with this: attempting to remove the triple lock on military deployments, welcoming British warships into Ireland’s harbours and their press organs engaging in a campaign of agitation around supposed dangers from Russia while ignoring the only country that has ever occupied our island. This neutrality is daily mocked however by the American military’s use of Shannon Airport as a crucial way station to West Asia. Horrifically, weapons used to supply the genocidal Zionist state have been passed through here, and paid for by the Irish taxpayer as the government refuses to charge the even nominal landing fees. The human cost of this has rendered my generation one who is ‘leaving on planes or jumping in rivers’ – I’m lucky enough to count myself among the former. 37 34 20
That these calls for military integration often emanate from the British bourgeois press is no surprise, given the refusal of the ruling class to part with any colony, let alone the first and closest. Not only do they harbour the same ambitions but they reuse the same tools. The cries of ‘across the great plain of Scotland from Glasgow […] to Edinburgh will soon be dominated by the [foreign] race’, a foreign race who ‘never hesitates to seek relief from charity organisations’ and the unprecedented nature that ‘one race should gradually by peaceful penetration supplant another in their native land’ are not from GB News, Farage or Tommy Ten-Names. These are the words of the Church of Scotland’s official position on the ‘Irish problem’ from 1923. It was only in 2002 that this was officially apologised for. The same charges of inferior racial make-up, barbarous religion and simply not belonging are now recycled as attack lines against our Muslim fellow workers and seek to divide the working class along the same faults as outlined before. Many of whom occupy the same positions in society as the Irish immigrants before them – in the most unstable, lowest paid and most looked down upon professions. The rise of anti-Muslim parties is no aberration either, with anti-Catholic parties holding seats in Edinburgh’s local council until 1962. Bar entrances and job adverts stating ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ are not just legend but a vivid memory for many still alive today. The focus of those who wish to divide us has undoubtedly shifted, but instances of anti-Irish racism remain on this island at all levels. Councils refusing Irish language headstones in case they carry terrorist messages, the continued attempts by the sectarian and bourgeois Orange Order to entrench existing hate marches and expand to new grounds, and the continued hostility of the British state to those from my island who dare seek justice – either historically as seen in the recent acquittance of the so-called Soldier F or like the continued lawfare against working-class music group Kneecap.11 23 6 27 38 9
The fight goes on however. On the occasion of 1916 Lenin remarked that ‘A blow delivered against the power of the English imperialist bourgeoisie by a rebellion in Ireland is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in Asia or in Africa.’ This is not to downplay the importance of the struggles in various corners of the globe, but a recognition that given the material and technological limitations of the time, a rebellion by a colony so close to the metropole, with a large diaspora inside that metropole who spoke the same language, was capable of a sizeable blow. Indeed, this was recognised by the British state at the time given the ferocity and viscousness employed in attempts to put down the Irish rebels in the aftermath of WW1. 16
Today this limit has been transcended, the revolutionary struggle of imperialised and subjugated masses is available at the touch of a button, so is in equal parts the brutality unleashed by imperial forces. We have spent 30 months with our phones live streaming a genocide, alongside the resistant masses in all aspects of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples.
In Ireland this has reignited a mass movement of those who’s nation knows the pangs of hunger, the terror of militias and the heartbreak of displacement – tempered by the pride in resistance and the heroes that emerge in the darkest of moments. The songs and stories of our people’s struggle have gained another layer of meaning as we again twin our struggle with those abroad with the same demands. However deeply we know the feeling though, we remind ourselves that ‘we were never bombed from the f*cking skies with nowhere to go’. 36
In Britain, a generation of youth has gained an anti-imperialist consciousness and mobilised against this and poses a real threat to British imperialism, more and more ask the question why is there always money for weapons of war but never for nurses or starving children at home. A large contingent of this is undoubtedly members of the Irish diaspora, most visibly in the working-class men and women of Glasgow Celtic’s Green Brigade, who have led a worldwide campaign to show Israel the red card and have faced state repression for it. This is the blow Lenin meant. The forces of reaction and ruling classes again unleash the same bigotry and division in their hour of weakness – how foolish would we be to fall for this again.
This Easter as a proud Republican, I wear my Easter Lily in remembrance of Connolly, those brave few at Easter, and the dead generations before and since who fell for Irish Freedom. I wear my Easter lily as a solemn vow to continue the struggle until the Irish people own everything from the plough to the stars.
To my comrades in the Communist and progressive movement, those lovers of freedom and fighters for their cause in the united front; I ask you to remember the still true words of Marx in its broadest and most anti-imperial sense:
‘It is in the direct and absolute interests of the English working class to get rid of their present connexion with Ireland. I am fully convinced of this, for reasons that, in part, I cannot tell the English workers themselves. For a long time I believed it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. […] Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland. This is why the Irish question is so important for the social movement in general. ‘ 17
Cathal Ó Gaillín, is a member of the YCL’s Lanarkshire Branch and International Department
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