Pd SuPPORT THE PoW( from Britain.
the present, tions of the speaking Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Labour the border. demonstrated that the SDLP is incapable of waging a struggle for even made for the most elementary human rights in But the most important impact of the H-blocks campaign was within the itself. The servile worsnip lessons of the campaign were applied to the entire activity of Sinn Fein with the goal of transforming it into a mass campaigning socialist party. The leadership of Sinn Fein passed to the current led Sinn. Fein was able to show that the votes it received North of the border savours temporary emotional response to the plight of the hunger classes, strikes, by going on to stand candidates and win 59 seats in the local governUnlike all of the constitutional naparties Sinn Fein now stands for the liberation of women from the restrictions imposed on them by both the catholic church and orange bigotry.
Il is for a women's right to choose and contraception theological divorce North and South of the border Il is developing a programme which really can unite the majority of the Irish nation, men and women against British in the main, And it is becoming stronger in the South. At this year's annual conference the proposal from the leadership that Sinn Fein should end its policy of abstention from the Southern parlia ment was only very narrowly defeated It is this whole development of Sinn the threat that has brought the Dublin government and Margaret Thatcher together - and not some belated conversion of Thatcher to testant.
The accord therefore faces the British labour movement with a basic realises at Notwithstanding fine phrases about Irish unity, support for the accord is support for Thatcher's efforts 10 destroy the one mass political party in Ireland that has fought relentlessly for British withdrawal, Irish unity and social progress for the last sixteen - at present supported by just 13 Labour MPs - is to gain a powerful ally in its own struggle against British capital by uniting with the Irish people 1o fight for Irish unity That requires rejecting the accord and opening up a dialogue with British labour's natural allies in Ireland WE REPRODUCE here an article written in 1913 by the great irish marxist James Connolly. In it he explain: that the divisions in the Irish working class originate not in religion but in British domination of Ireland.
He shows that the key to uniting the Irish labour movement is to free Ireland FROM TIME to time I propose to give some attention to the elucidation of the problems peculiar to Ireland and particularly to this part of it. For phasise the fact that religious affiliapopulation of Ulster determine their political leanings to greater extent than is the case in any part of Europe outside the Balkans.
But the manner in which this has I believe developed is also alique. that it is true to say that, politically the Protestantism of the North of Ireland has no parallel out. side this country, and the Catholicism of the Irish Catholics is, likewise peculiar in its political trend To explain I mean that, whereas, Protestantism has in general freedom and political radicalism, it has been opposed to slavish worship of kings and aristocrats. Here, in Ireland, the word convertible term with Toryism, lickspittle loyalty, hatred of all that savours of genuine political independence on the part of the 'lower classes.' in the same manner, Catholicism which in most parts of Europe is synonymous with Toryism. lickspittle loyalty, servile worship of has and hatred of all that of genuine independence on the part of the lower almost synonymous with rebellious tenden- most cies, zeal for democracy, and intense feelings of solidarity with all strivings upward of those who toil.
Such a curious phenomenon is easily understood by those who know the history of Ireland. Unfortunately for their spiritual welfare and I am using the word spiritual, not in its but in its better significance as controlling mental and moral development upward Protestant elements of Ireland were, plantation of strangers upon the soil from which the owners old had been dispossessed by force.
The economic dispossession was, perforce, accompanied by a political and social outlawry. Hence every attempt of the dispossessed to attain citizenship, to emerge from their state of outlawry, was easily represented as a tentative step towards reversing the plantation and towards replanting the Catholic and dispossessing the ProImagine this state of matter per sisting for over 200 years and one once that the planted populaton — me r rotestants — wert bound to acquire insensibly a hatred of political reform and to look upon every effort of the Catholic to achieve political recognition as a insidious move towards the expulsion of Protestants. Then the Protesant always saw that the kings and aristocrats of England and Ireland were opposed by the people whom he most feared and from recognising that it was but an easy step to regard his cause as identical with theirs. They had a common enemy, and he began to teach his children that they had a common cause, and common ideals.
This is the reason - their unfortunate isolation as strangers holding a conquered country in fee for rulers alien to its people - that the so-called Scotch of Ulster have fallen away from and developed antagonism to political reform and mental freedom as rapidly as the Scots of Scotland have advanced in adhesion to these ideals.
The Catholics, for their part, and be it understood I am talking only of the Catholic workers, have been as fortunately placed for their political education as they were unfortunately placed for their political and social condition. Just as the socialist knows being the lowest in the social system, emand oate use wour as a resul emancipating all other classes, so the ly that he, being the most oppressed and disfranchised, could not win any modicum of political freedom social recognition for himself without winning it for all others in Ireland.
Every upward step of the Catholic emancipated some one of the smaller Protestant sects; every suc cessful revolt of the Catholic peasant has given some added security even to those Protestant farmers who were defending landlord. And out of this struggle the Catholic has, perforce toleration. He has learned that his struggle is, and has been, the struggle of all the lowly and dispossessed, and he has grown broadminded with the of the slave revolt against slavery.
But with the advent of Home Rule, nay even with the promise of Home Rule and the entrance of upon the normal level of civilised self-governing nations, the relation of Protestant Catholic begins to melt and dissolve, and with their dissolution will come a new change in the relation of either faith to politics. The loss of its privileged position will mean for Protestantism the possibilities of an immense spiritual uplifting; emergence into a knowledge of its kinship with its brothers and sisters of different creeds.
Whether the entrance of Catholicity into a position of mere numerical voting power will lead, in its turn, to a withering up of those kindly feelings born of its past sufferings is another matter. I do not believe inal ll will, al least amongst toilers.
Our apprenticeship to misery has been too long, our journeyings in the desert of slavery have surely implanted in our breasts a sense of the criminality of any attempt to impose fetters upon omen such ourselves have worn. And out of that belief the writer looks forward with confidence to the future believing that the tale these Notes from Ireland will have to tell will be a hopeful one, even if the hope is nurtured amid storm and stress.
James Connolly Forward, 3 May, 1913.