British working class consciousness and ideological independence from its ruling class has always been and remains its attitude to Ireland.
Those workers who clearly identified their own exploiter did not slander or assault the Irish immigrant. Those who understood the nature of their own political and overlords did not condemn the Irish rebel.
08188) Ireland: Part I THROUGHOUT history the most England's difficulty was not people against enemy. Conversely. Ireland then strengthened at home. the case today. England's Bourgeois Revolution and Ireland. military the 17th Century. of
BANCKET only Ireland's opportunity - it was also the chance for the British working class to seek ponents liberty in alliance with the Irish •common previous if the British state tightened its grip in would This historical survey hopes to be a reminder that this is still the Rebellion in Ireland acted as one of the catalysts of the English Revolution Initially, and Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1995. Page 37
While Matt HATS By DAVID MOSS however, it was not sympathy with the insurgents but popular fear that the King intended unleashing a Catholic "Papist army" to massacre his op-
- as the Protestant colonists had been massacred in Ireland the
year which compelled many of parliament's supporters to take up arms in 1642
Then, with the final defeat of the royalist armies in Britain, the triumphant bourgeoisie, led by Cromwell and his generals, were free to root out
remaining nests of royalists in Ireland and at the same time to complete the subjugation of the province.
The perversion of the revolution to this end became the immediate cause of the rilt between the army Grandees and the tank and file soldiery drawn from the small traders, artisans
farmers. Their economic
grievances over conditions of service only aggravated deep dissatisfaction with the increasing authoritarianism of the generals and the failure to attain many of the democratic objectives of the Revolution. Preparations for the Irish expedition in 1649 provided the spark for mutiny and the first declaration of support for Ireland by English radicals, under the leadership of the Levellers, the most committed republicans in the Parliamentarian forces.
A Leveller pamphlet, The English Soliders Standard... produced for circulation in the army, related the conquest of Ireland to the suppression of democratic liberties at home. "For consider, as things now stand," it asked the soldiers:
*to what end you should hazard your lives against the Irish. Will you go on still to kill, slay and murder in order to make (your of. ficers] as absolute lords and masters over Ireland as you have made them over England? Or is it your ambition to reduce the Irish to the happiness of tithes... excise. customs and monopolies in trades? Or to fill their prisons with poor disabled persons. to fill their land with swarms of beggars... to take down monarchical tyranny and set up aristocratic tyranny... before you go... see those evils reformed here, that when occasion shall justly invite you thither. you may carry a good platform in your hands. such a one as possibly they will never fight against."
Another pamphlet justified the Irish rebellion of 1641, posing the question:
*Whether the English would not do as the Irish have if the Irish should dispossess and tyrannise over them? Whether it be not England's duty to repent of the oppressions and usurptions over the rish nation by their Kings and forefathers?"
Condeming all imperialism, it advocated that Ireland be a "free state"
After the execution of a soldier for his part in the mutiny over arrears of "Agitators to present their demands, troops elected a council and one regiment refused to march to the port of embarkation for Ireland. A pamphlet stating their grievances also expressed concern that they were degenerating into a professional and mercenary army.
"What have we to do in Ireland. to fight and murder a people and a nation, (for indeed [the Grandees] are set upon cruelty and murdering poor people which is all they glory in) which have done uS no harm...?*
The defeat of the hard-core Leveller troops at Burford in May 1649 decided the fate of English Radicalism and Irish Nationalism for almost one and a half centuries. Not only was the mutiny ended, but also all Radical opposition to Cromwell's regime was eradicated with it, clearing the field for the rule of the
Generals, the ruthless reconquest of Ireland and the ultimate restoration of the monarchy. Political crises continued, culminating in the "Revolution" of 1688 which established a new King counterbalanced by landowner-merchant oligarchy in terested in developing capitalism at home and consolidating the Protestant supremacy in Ireland
In order to survive, British mercantile and industrial capital had to prolect its markets against the growth of foreign capitalism. Backed by armed might. it had a host of Navigation Laws and Tariff barriers to give the English bourgeoisie the advantage over foreign rivals, including the trade and manufacturers of the colonies.
Resentful of these restrictions and of the raising of taxes for an administration over which they had no control, the manulacturing bougeoisie, planters, farmers and artisans of the American colonies rose against the British government in 1775. Their rebellion and its philosophy as embodied in the Declaration of Independence were to have important repercussions on the political systems of both Britain and Ireland
According to Walpole in 1776, "All Ireland was America mad". Led by the protestant bourgeoisie the bulk of the Irish people involved in trade and manufacture identified their cause with that of the American Sociahat: Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985, Pager 32
Cromwell: his bourgeote republic reconquered Ireland. revolutionaries. Invasion fears caused by the entry of the French into the war led in 1778 to the formation of a guard, bourgeois. predominantly whelmingly Protestant and increas-
nationalistic. While Britain's hands were still tied by the American revolt this armed force was organised behind demands for free trade and an independent Irish parliament, gaining by 1782 major concessions on both these points.
rapid development of the capitalist mode of production had
Othe constitutional settlement of 1688 and the majority of the bourgeoisie of both Britain and Ireland were excluded from govern-
galvanised by the parliamentary reformers further encouragement from the suc-. cesses of the Irish Volunteers, whom some of them wished to emulate:
"Was it love of Ireland that made Lord North anxious to hurry the Irish bills through Parliament?" need the speaker at one kabire bayonets planted at his breast."
But as the Gordon riots of 1780 and
widespread unrest and bread riots of 1783 showed, reform agitation if taken too far would unleash forces bourgeoisie. It was for this reason
also that the French Revolution, greeted with enthusiasm by many Whig reformers in 1789, increasingly terrified them as it became apparant that its main driving force came from the plebeian radicals republicans — the "Sans-culottes" British Republicans and Ireland. The ideale of the Patch editiond especially articulated elaborated by Tom "Rights of Man" published in 1791, gained thousands of followers in both Britain and Ireland. To the horror of the ruling class, common labourers and artisans were politically under an internationalist banner of Liberty, Equality Fraternity which elevated Reason and the People above Church and King. Sedition in all its guises was summed up in one word - Jacobinism.
"Rights of Man" was banned in 1792 and Paine escaped to France from the threat of a capital conviction. A number of his disciples in England, Scotland and Ireland were arrested, some imprisoned and others transported, especially as the outbreak of war with France in 1793 had added suspicion that they were planning to assist an invasion.
Groups like the United Irishmen and the Corresponding Societies in Britain, who had sought reform of parliament and an extension of the ranchise, were thus prevented tron legal agitation and propaganda. The Right to resist Tyranny was one of the central themes of Jacobinism and the more determined elements began to reorganise secretly.
Republicans, protestant chants, professional men, tradesmen, farmers, artisans and labourers and their Catholic counterparts, tegrated with the secret Catholic peasant societies, The Defenders, build the United Irishmen into a military orgnaisation by 1796. By the following year United Irishmen were also active in Britain.
After meetings with Father Quigley (later hung for treasonable negotiations with the French) members of the London Corresponding founded the United Englishmen (or Britons) on the model of the United Irishmen. Under the influence of immigrants wagrantseman from Monaghan and Robert James Dixon, a Belfast weaver, United Englishmen's organisation developed in Manchester and the adjacent manufacturing
Quigley talked about the intention to "revolutionise" England
Scotland.
But it was in the fleet that the
Republicans had their most spectacular successes. In the
Nore and Spithead in 1791 testering
grievances about conditions erupted into mutiny. On board some ships the
leadership ws assumed by members
or sympathisers of the Corresponding
Societies and the United Irishmen.
Paine in his organising and Republican mer- in- to hung for forming a conspiracy Plymouth of soldiers and Society sworn to make England, Gray, the government were terrified by districts. and committee them and to direct the mutiny. ships at ecuted,
(top) Cartoon depicts destruction of feudalism in French Revolution: (above) A hostile view of the 1798 rebellion. There were about 15,000 Irishmen in the navy out of a total of 120,000 history sailors and marines and there is evidence that United Irishmen had enlisted specifically to spread disaf. fection. Robert Lee from Dublin was at among marines "like France republican: and Ameria, a free country". Some of the mutineers referred to the fleet as "The Floating Republic" and discuss- obliged ed sailing to either France or Ireland. However the Admiralty and the the mere fact that Republican literature was ciculating in the fleet and that sailors and marines were aware that He they had "Rights" and were practis- ing democracy by the election of a of delegates to represent After two months of negotiations An and mounting tension, with even the Britons Thames being blockaded for a while, the mutiny collapsed in mid June. Twenty nine of the leaders were ex- as many imprisoned and a number brutally flogged. Although a sister Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985. Page 33
defeat, it marked the first time in
when British and Irish Republicans acted together.
Not only were United Irishmen agitating in the British fleet but also United Englishmen were agitating
Othe Irish soldiers. Henry Fellows, executed for his activities at Maidstone, wrote to a fellow
"Citizen, I received your parcel with the regulations, etc.. and am
Wto you for sending the Ulster address. as I think it will be productive to our cause, for they seem to meet the approbation of the citizens here, particularly the Irish soldiers...
also requested 50 copies of Paine's "Agrarian Justice" which advocated land reform. The seeds of social, not only political, revolution were being sown.
"Address from the United to United Irishmen" in January 1798 expressed the common interests of the two peoples:
"Though labouring under the yoke of the same oppression, the
countries have been dif-
ferently treated. Ireland always been the object of direct and open violence. England fraud... however resulted from the mutual effect sufferings and mutual commiseration: the prejudice of nations done away and the English burn with the desire to hail the Irish as freemen and bretheren.
Another address to the "Brave and Suffering Nation from the London Corresponding Society, condemned the harsh repression which begun particularly against the Irish peasantry there are few in Britain who do not suffer with horror at a recital of the sufferings of the Irish people...
It included an echoed the Leveller pamphlets of the English civil war:
"Soldiers, we have with the deepest concern learned. that you have, on some occasions, been induced to violate that humanity which has heretofore characterised British soldiers... If you massacre the Irish, will not the Irish in some measure be justified in retaliating upon the British... behave with the manly firmness of British soliders. not the desperate fury freebooters and assassins: conduct will endear you to your relatives and friends by convincing them that their happiness is dear to you: it will restore peace and liberly to Ireland, and consequently to Great Britain.
Faced with arms searches, the torturing of suspects, threats massacre from the Orange Lodges and treachery in high places United Irishmen broke out into a premature and ill co-ordinated insur-
GIELLERS CIEFFET has rection. The uprising of inspired organisation banner of a deistical republic! is terrified many draper Henry Munroe. rest of Ireland, and inadequately rebels Ulster in defeated appeal which the United Englishmen were arrested English republicans materialise. these serious defeats and growing French Buonaparte, the Republic spirit lived оп. Englishmen and of began to reorganise and delegates such continued to pass between the two countries and France. The thought in terms of a common strug gle stating their objectives as "The in- dependence of Great Britain and Ireland political and of manifesto called on Englishmen to be united and reminded them of the ex- the ample of Ireland: her Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7. September 1985. Pope 34
encapsulated all the contradictory elements of Irish society. An urban-based, Protestant- prepared struggle which resulted in a devout Catholic peasantry rising under the Liberty." The social nature of the rebellion of the bourgeois republicans but Antrim rose under released the United Irish leader Henry Mc- Cracken, a wealthy Presbyterian cot- ton manufacturer, followed by Down, in under another Protestant, the Lisburn But as in the evidence partially mobilised equipped, the were bloodily invasion. Before the rising several leaders of was and the expected support from the did not A French force did ar- rive in Ireland, but too late. Despite disillusionment with the course of the rebellion Revolution under Surviving cells of both the United United Irishmen were United Englishmen clearly under equalisation of civil teligious rights." Its •.see her fertile plains ravaged hospitable villages
The execution of Robert Emmet. Blundered and barder
Tand Generous Sons chered and exiled for no other crime than the inflexible Love of
One of the leaders of the United Englishmen, arrested in 1798 but
Aby 1800, was Marcus Despard, a former army Colonel and the son of an Irish landowner. He was
contact with United Irish emissaries in London and there is
that via them coordinated uprising was planned possibly to coincide with a French
In 1801 he visited Ireland and in November of the following year he
arrested at a meeting in a Lambeth pub along with soldiers and labourers, some of them Irish, who were accused of plotting a coup to seize the Tower of London and other strategic points. As in the 1278
Othe signal for the United Englishmen to rise throughout the country was to have been the stopp ing of the mail coaches.
Despard and six comrade soldiers
executed and the United organisation collapsed. Undeterred, preparations continued for another insurrection by the United Irishmen
Robert Emmett, but this dissolved in a premature attempt which only attracted the support of a few Dublin workers. Emmett followed Despard to the gallows. Thus ended the first round of Ireland's struggle for an independent Republic and the beginning of a common cause between the Irish and English people through a decade of rapid and profound social and political change.
Republicanism, working
class radicalism, and the
Act of Union.
Riots and disturbances were com-
monplace in eighteenth century Bri-
cats, conscription address wage
cuts, conscription unpopular
laws and governments. In Ireland
agrarian warfare and secret peasant
paramilitary societies were endemic.
But with the French Revolution the
threat to the ruling class from such
violence became potentially lethal.
For the first time since the Revolution
of the 1640s, there was a coherent
ideology and set of objectives to weld
all the diverse forms of discontent together and target them against the
state and ruling class.
There was also a new factor - the
emergent working class concentrated in the industrial towns of Britain and the small master craftsmen in the manufacturing already feeling the impact of industrial capitalism.
These classes also existed in Ireland where they provided the backbone of a republican movement of which the bourgeoisie formed much of the initial brains and the
peasantry the muscie. Thus from its
beginning the overriding character of Irish and English republicanism was plebian - a fact which must not be obscured by the origins of some of its leaders like Tone or Despard.
Faced with the fourfold spectre of Jacobinism, social war, French invasion and the loss of their prime colony, it is not surprising that the reaction of the British ruling class was merciless. Apart from the ruthless repression of the '98 rebellion, Parliament enacted a whole battery of laws which served it, or set a precedent for future action, against the popular movements in Britain and Ireland for the next century.
There other consequences of the reaction to the Republican movement which were to affect the whole course of the future struggle: the rise of the Orange Order, and the passing of the Act of Union.
The Orange Order originated in 1795 among Protestant linen weavers in North Armagh who sought forcibly to expel Catholics from the trade. Powerful patronage was soon fortheoming irom gentry in the com. munity who saw the Orangemen as a potential military auxillary against the United Irishmen and Defenders and as an ideological counterweight to republican ideas amongst the Protestants.
Orange lodges were formed and incorporated into the local militias which played a part in the suppression of the rising. But it was not only in Ireland that the Orange Lodges combated sedition. In 1812 Lancashire magistrates recruited their agents and special constables from fellow members in their campaign against the Luddites. Henceforth
Orangeism was to spearhead loyalist reaction amongst the working class in both countries. There was little support for the Act of Union of 1801. Orange Lodges either abstained or objected to it because of the strong opposition to Union from some powerful Protestant interests. It was only conceded by the Irish parliament after the majority of MPs were covinced that participation in the British parliament would be The attitude of the majority of peo- le in Dublin was described by the British minister Castlereagh: "The lower orders are naturally indifferent to the question but will easily be set in motion should their co-operation become necessary to leading opposers of Once passed, the Union was bound to become the pivot of all political SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT No. 3. Apell 1985. Who will be the next? ASIDE INSIDE: • Alter • SOUTH AFRICA the miners - a • LPYS • Black: deluge of sell-outs • NHS under the axe • USFITTE • GWU ballots Our monthly magazine carries analysis and background coverage coupled with reviews, historical articles and comment. Make sure of your copy each month - take out a subscription at the bargain rate of 12 issues for £10 including postage (or £12 overseas. Or take several copies to sell: contact us for bulk rates. Please send me I enclose £ Name Address. Socialist: Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985, Page 35
agitation in Ireland, whilst for Britain it ensured that Ireland was no longer merely a colonial and military pro- blem like any other province in the empire, but a factor central to the inter-party parliamentary For British working class radicals, it meant that the people of both coun- tries had a common interest in refor- ming the same parliment. by the same corrupt landed oligar- "boroughmongers", were responsible misery and social repression in Bri- NEXT MONTH: Between Napoleon and the First International SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT No. 4. June/Taly 1345. 70p WELFARE & STATE • Health werkers strice back C MARXISM and ECOLOG Keep up with events - from a Socialist Viewpoint! issues of Socialist Viewpoint. plus a donation of €
THE historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership. Without being solved, threatens our whole culture. stated the Transitional Programme in 1938. How much more so does that catastrophe face us nearly 50 years later with the invention of the Atom Bomb and the insanity of the nuclear arms race, which in itself feeds on the continuous oppression of the workers and peasants of the world.
Those who argue for nuciear disarmament can see this month in Geneva the Non-Prolileration Treaty signed by 126 countries in 1970 now in fatters at its review, with the USA, USSR and others just ignoring the agreements. The run-up to the 19-20 November powers" summit meeting sees both nides flexing their muscies and consolidating their positions rather than showing signs of any peace agreement
In this context, the END Annual Convention has become very important as the International Peace