In 2013 in Dublin the centenary celebrations of the famous Lock-out took place. To mark the occasion there were plays, historical re-enactments, issues of commemorative postage stamps, art exhibitions, lectures, and a mass of publications. And many of the celebrations would receive the hesitant endorsement of official and government bodies, because the 1913-14 Lock-out, much to the chagrin of the Irish bourgeoisie, cannot be ignored: it has become inextricably bound up with the ‘national mythos’ of Ireland.

But the aim of those socialists who adopted the counsels of Marxism, even during the independence struggle, was not just an independent Ireland, but an Ireland run by the working class in the interests of the working class. Thus there was a wide gulf between their aims and those of the bourgeois nationalists who would eventually triumph. For the bourgeois nationalists, labour needed to repudiate socialism and resume its rightful place as the humble servant of the nation. This was the programme of Sinn Fein, such that its leader and future Irish president, Arthur Griffiths, revealingly stated during the Lock Out that he wanted to see every last one of the workers bayoneted.

However the continued and unavoidable presence of socialist leaders such as Connolly and Larkin in the pantheon of Irish nationalism means that today the bourgeoisie still has to try and conceal the goals that the proletarian party was pursuing during the independence struggle: that of a communist Ireland.

In Marx’s time, Ireland was to England what Poland was to Russia, and we could add what Algeria was to France. Ireland and Poland had this in common: that their enslavement was the basis of the two great pillars of European reaction: landlordism in England and the Holy Alliance on the continent.

The story of British rule is one of pillage and infamy. In Ireland British imperialism was only ever maintained as a state of permanent siege, to prevent the social revolution and the expropriation of the landlord. For the overwhelming majority of the Irish people the independence of Ireland was a matter of life or death. But more than that, the immense wealth that the English bourgeoisie extracted from Ireland allowed it to corrupt a section of the English proletariat, resulting in the latter supporting the imperialism and chauvinism of its own bourgeoisie. Thus the English proletariat propped up the English bourgeoisie, just as the latter supported the English aristocracy. In this situation there was no possibility of unity between the English workers and Irish workers, who meanwhile made up a large part of the industrial proletariat in England. Thus for Marx the independence of Ireland, or at least its exit from the Union and a greater autonomy within a federal State, would constitute the sine qua non of any social revolution in England.

The settlement of the Irish national question in 1921, after the War of Independence, with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, was far from conclusive and the differences between the Pro and Anti-Treaty factions would lead to a two year Civil War. Indeed some might say the national question was only resolved in 1937, when De Valera’s party, representing the old Anti-Treaty faction, constituted a Republic in all but name; or in 1938, when the ’economic war’ caused by Ireland’s non-payment of the £3,000,000 annual debt due to the English Government under the terms of the pre-treaty agrarian reforms, came to an end, and England abandoned certain naval and military rights it had obtained under the Treaty in specified Irish ports.

But the six counties in the North remained under the control of a Protestant elite, whose interests were best served by remaining a part of the United Kingdom. The continued oppression by this elite of the Catholic population, treated like an underclass, which was severely disadvantaged in regards to access to land, jobs and housing, continued to fuel an ongoing Irish irredentism up to the present day. To Catholics in the North, unity with their co-religionists in the South continued to present itself as a tempting solution to their predicament.

And thus the embers of nationalism continued to smoulder, finally bursting into flame during the years of the ‘Troubles’, at their most intense between 1970 and the late 1990s.

After countless deaths in what would become a long and brutal sectarian war, the Catholic population of the North would eventually win a number of concessions. Bourgeois Catholics and nationalists would finally be admitted as full partners in government and as participants its democratic rituals, with the aim, of course, of protecting its economic interests. But this would necessarily entail them having to perpetuate and reinforce their stranglehold over the working class; the source of the bourgeoisie’s profits, of whatever religious persuasion. Catholic proletarians would find that the conditions of equality obtained by their Catholic bosses would give them, their employees, few advantages and that they still had a world to win.

As Protestant triumphalism and overt Irish Catholic nationalism slowly reduced over the years, so the ancient sources of bad will between the two historic communities of the coloniser and the colonised receded further into the background, and what there was would come to be expressed more and more by means of chummy banter in debates in the Stormont Parliament. What sectarian ‘militancy’ now remains, regarding the routes of parades and how and when the Union Jack may be displayed and so on, are coming to appear increasingly anachronistic; although we can be pretty certain that the bourgeoisie will continue to stoke the fires of sectarianism in order to “divide and rule” the working class.

In Ulster, whether it eventually becomes united with the South, remains part of the United Kingdom, or establishes itself as a separate political entity, the task of communists is the same as elsewhere: to build an international party, the conscious expression of the global working class. Between the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, as the national movement moved into its culminating phase, the early Marxists in Ireland could already see this, and were making every effort to bridge the sectarian divide and unify the strategy of the workers’ parties in Ireland and on the British mainland.

In recommencing our study of the Irish Question, our point of departure, and sound basis, will be a number of quotations from the extensive writings of Marx and Engel, as mentioned in previous Party studies.

In the chapters that follow we will go on to document in more detail the bitter clashes which took place between the different parties and classes in Ireland and English imperialism, ranging from the final decades of the 19^th century to the First World War and on to the achievement of an independent State by the Irish bourgeoisie. In particular we will describe the rising wave of workers’ struggle in Ireland which culminated in the Dublin Lockout of 1913, the greatest and most radical strike that had ever taken place on the island, and a key episode in the unfolding international battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

1. Marxism and the Irish Question

Report presented at the party general meeting in Genoa, May 2014

1) Natural conditions and ancient history of Ireland

The first writing we examined was the draft History of Ireland ⁽¹⁾ which Engels worked on from the end of 1869 to the middle of 1870, but of which he only completed the first chapter on “Natural Conditions”, which discussed the island’s physical characteristics, and part of the second, on “Old Ireland”, which covered the early history up to the defeat of Viking invaders at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. A few significant extracts from that work appear below.

Natural Conditions

“Between Ireland and the rest of Europe another island lies transversally, three times the size, which we for brevity’s sake usually refer to as England; it completely encloses Ireland from the north, east and south-east, only leaving it a clear view in the direction of Spain, Western France and America.

“The channel between the two islands, 50-70 English miles wide at the narrowest points in the south, 13 miles wide at one place in the north and 22 miles at another, enabled the Irish Scots in the north to emigrate to the neighbouring island and found the Kingdom of Scotland even before the 5th century. In the south it was too wide for the boats of the Irish and the Britons and even posed a serious obstacle to the Romans’ flat-bottomed coasting vessels. But when the Frisians, Angles and Saxons, and after them the Scandinavians, ventured out on to the high sea, out of sight of land, in their keeled vessels, this channel was no longer an obstacle. Ireland became the object of raids by the Scandinavians and easy prey for the English. As soon as the Normans had formed a strong, uniform government in England, the influence of the larger neighbouring Island made itself felt – in those days this meant a war of conquest (…)

“Once the whole of the larger island was finally united in a single State, it was then bound to attempt the complete assimilation of Ireland, too.

“If this assimilation had been successful, its whole course would have become a matter of history. It would be subject to its judgement but could never be reversed. But if after seven hundred years of fighting this assimilation has not succeeded; if instead each new wave of invaders flooding Ireland is assimilated by the Irish; if, even today, the Irish are as far from being English, or West Britons, as they say, as the Poles are from being West Russians after only 100 years of oppression; if the fighting is not yet over and there is no prospect that it can be ended in any other way than by the extermination of the oppressed race – then, all the geographical pretexts in the world are not enough to prove that it is England’s mission to conquer Ireland”.

The Island’s geology

“In order to understand the soil conditions of present-day Ireland, we must go back a long way, right back to the age when the so-called carboniferous system was formed (…)

The entire central plain of Ireland is a result of denudation, so that, the coal-measures and the upper limestone deposits have been washed way (…)”

So it turns out Ireland found itself with little coal, and of an inferior quality. Engels concludes that:

“Ireland’s misfortune is ancient indeed: it commences immediately after the coal-measures were deposited. A country whose coal deposits have been washed away, situated right next to a larger country with plenty of coal, was condemned by nature, as it were, to play the part of a farming land vis-à-vis the future industrial country. This sentence, pronounced millions of years ago, was not carried out until this century. What is more, we shall see later how the English gave nature a helping hand by immediately and violently trampling underfoot almost any sign of burgeoning industry in Ireland”.

Soil and crops

Engels goes on to disprove the myth propagated by the English landowners and bourgeoisie that Ireland was not suited to tillage but only to pasturage, and therefore only to providing England with meat and dairy products while the Irish themselves, without bread, would have to emigrate to make way for the sheep and cattle.

“It is evident that all the authorities are agreed that the soil of Ireland contains all the elements of fertility to an unusual degree, with regard to both its chemical constituents and its physical composition. The extremes – sticky, impenetrable clay, which allows no water through, and loose sand, which does not retain it for an hour – are nowhere to be found. Yet Ireland has another disadvantage. While the mountains are mainly along the coast, the watersheds between the different river basins in the interior of the country are mostly very low-lying. The rivers are not able to drain off all the rainwater into the sea, and this gives rise to extensive peat bogs (…) But each one of these peat bogs contains within itself the material for its own reclamation and cultivation” (…)

“The oldest report on the Irish climate is provided by the Roman Pomponius Mela (De situ orbis) in the first century A. D. It says: “Beyond Britain lies Hibernia ⁽²⁾, almost equal to it in extent but otherwise similar; of a rather long shape, with skies adverse to the ripening seed; but abounding in grass not only luxuriant but also sweet, so that a small part of the day suffices for the cattle to eat their fill, and if they are not removed from the pasture they will go on grazing until they burst”.

“If one looks at the matter impartially and without being misled by the cries of the interested parties, the Irish landowners and the English bourgeoisie, one finds that Ireland, like all other places, has some parts which because of soil and climate are more suited to cattle-rearing, and others to tillage, and still others – the vast majority – which are suited to both. Compared with England, Ireland is more suited to cattle-rearing on the whole; but if England is compared with France, she too is more suited to cattle-rearing. Are we to conclude that the whole of England should be transformed into cattle pastures, and the whole agricultural population be sent into the factory towns or to America – except for a few herdsmen – to make room for cattle, which are to be exported to France in exchange for silk and wine? But that is exactly what the Irish landowners who want to put up their rents and the English bourgeoisie who want to decrease wages demand for Ireland (…)

“And yet the social revolution inherent in this transformation from tillage to cattle-rearing would be far greater in Ireland that in England. In England, where large-scale agriculture prevails and where agricultural labourers have already been replaced by machinery to a large extent, it would mean the transplantation of at most one million; in Ireland, where small and even cottage-farming prevails, it would mean the transplantation of four million: the extermination of the Irish people.

“It can be seen that even the facts of nature become points of national controversy between England and Ireland. It can also be seen, however, how the public opinion of the ruling class in England – and it is only this that is generally known on the Continent – changes with fashion and in its own interests. Today England needs grain quickly and dependably – Ireland is just perfect for wheat-growing. Tomorrow England needs meat – Ireland is only fit for cattle pastures. The existence of five million Irish is in itself a smack in the eye to all the laws of political economy, they have to get out but where to is their worry!”

The Irish peasant class was essentially composed of small farmers who paid a rent, in money or in kind, to the proprietor, who was almost always English. The transformation of a part of the cultivated land into pasture, imposed by the English landed proprietors, led to famines and the death of a large part of the population.

Old Ireland

Recent archaeological discoveries have established that there was no single continuous ethnic population in Ireland during prehistoric times. The thick layers of ash deposited in northern England and northern Ireland resulting from the three catastrophic eruptions of the Hekla volcano in Iceland had a significant effect in terms of severely restricting the growth of vegetation and necessarily prompted migration from these areas. The eruption in 2354BC lasted nine years and more or less coincides with current estimates of the ending of the Neolithic Age and the beginning of the copper/bronze age. The eruption in 1154BC lasted for a decade and roughly coincides with the middle Bronze Age. The movements of people in the region at this time, along with others in northern Europe may have been connected with the invasion of the Sea Peoples in the Mediterranean. The eruption in 950BC coincides with the ending of the Bronze Age. The Celtic conquest in the subsequent Iron Age, linked to new forms of agriculture and animal husbandry, was facilitated by the destruction and disruption wrought by this most recent eruption.

After the Celtic conquest of Gaul, southern Britain and Ireland, there still remained important features inherited from the previous society: women’s rights, an artisan class and the priestly cast of Druids, which did not exist in other Celtic areas. Over the millennia there were several further waves of immigration by various peoples, but when the Irish make their first appearance in history they constitute a homogeneous people with a Celtic culture.

In the course of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the 5^th to 7^th Century, the Celtic speaking Britons were pushed towards the western and northern regions of the larger island, into Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, and across to Brittany. These areas, facing on to the smaller island, would maintain a certain shared Celtic identity with Ireland, reinforced by trade, tribal wars, invasions and migrations.

Ireland possesses a rich literature, despite the destruction of a large part of it during the devastating wars conducted by England in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. And under British domination only a small part of these works could be published, and not necessarily the most interesting.

Resuming our quotation from Engels’ History:

“Christianity must have penetrated Ireland quite early, at least the east coast of it. Otherwise the fact that so many Irishmen played an important part in Church-history even long before Patrick cannot be explained” (…)

“The Irish people are called Scots and the land Scotia in all the writings of the early Middle Ages (…) The present Scotland was called Caledonia by foreigners and Alba, Albania by the inhabitants; the transfer of the name Scotia, Scotland, to the northern area of the eastern isle did not occur until the 11th century. The first substantial emigration of Irish Scots to Alba is taken to have been in the middle of the third century; Ammianus Marcellinus already knows them there in the year 360. The emigrants used the shortest sea-route, from Antrim to the peninsula of Kintyre (…) Large numbers of Scots came over again at about the year 500, and they gradually formed a kingdom, independent of both Ireland and the Picts. They finally subdued the Picts in the ninth century under Kenneth MacAlpin and created the State to which the name Scotland, Scotia was transferred, probably first by the Norsemen about 150 years later”.

“Ireland was known throughout Europe as a nursery of learning, so much so that Charlemagne summoned an Irish monk, Albinus, to teach at Pavia, where another Irishman, Dungal, followed him later. The most important of the many Irish scholars, who were famous at that time but are now mostly forgotten, was the ‘Father,’ or as Erdmann calls him, the ‘Carolus Magnus’ [Charles the Great] of philosophy in the Middle Ages – Johannes Scotus Erigena. Hegel says of him, ‘Real philosophy began first with him’ (…) by his translation of the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, he restored the link with the last branch of the old philosophy, the Alexandrian Neoplatonic school. His teaching was very bold for the time. He denied the ‘eternity of damnation’, even for the devil, and brushed close to Pantheism. Contemporary orthodoxy, therefore, did not fail to slander him.

“Ireland was far from being inhabited by a single nation at the end of the eighth century. Supreme royal power over the whole island existed only in appearance, and by no means always at that. The provincial kings, whose number and territories were continually changing, fought amongst themselves, and the smaller territorial princes likewise carried on their private feuds. On the whole, however, these internal wars seem to have been governed by certain customs which held the ravages within certain limits, so that the country did not suffer too much.

“But this was not to last. In 795, a few years after the English had been first raided by the same plundering nation, Norsemen landed on the isle of Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim, and burnt everything down; in 798, they landed near Dublin, and after this they are mentioned nearly every year in the annals as heathens, foreigners, pirates, and never without additional reports of the losccadh (burning down) of one or more places. Their colonies on the Orkneys, Shetlands and Hebrides (Southern Isles, Sudhreyjar in the old Norse sagas) served them as operational bases against Ireland, and against what was later known as Scotland, and against England”.

These invasions continued, with varying degrees of success, until the famous Battle of Clontarf, not far from Dublin, April 23, 1014, where the Vikings suffered a painful defeat by the Irish troops led by Brian Boru. This decisive battle definitively ended the Viking raids.

2) The English Conquest of Ireland

Here, unfortunately, Engel’s History breaks off, but we do have an outline of a speech on the Irish question, referring to the subsequent period, delivered by Marx on December 16, 1867 to the German Workers’ Educational Association in London ⁽³⁾. The question would have been of especial interest to the Germans, the “migrants” of that period.

Before the Protestant Reformation

The English invasion got underway in 1169.

In 1172 Henry II had conquered than a third of the country. A nominal conquest. A gift from Pope Adrian IV, an Englishman. Some 400 years later another Pope (in 1576, in Elizabethan times) Gregory XIII, took back the present from the English (Elizabeth). The capital of the “English Pale” was Dublin. Mixing of English common colonists with Irish, and of Anglo-Norman nobles with Irish chiefs. Otherwise, the war of conquest was conducted (originally) as against Red Indians. No English reinforcements sent to Ireland until 1565 (Elizabeth)”.

The 14^th to 15^th centuries witnessed a renewal of Irish society: the economy developed, Celtic culture flourished and the old English conquerors ended up intermarrying with the native population and adopting the Celtic language.

The Elizabethan Reconquest

The English monarchy realised that it was losing control of the situation. In the 15^th century the Tudors – Henry VIII and Elizabeth – took up the reconquest of Ireland, which concluded with the Flight of the Earls in 1609. The reconquest led to the massive expulsion of peasants in Ulster and Munster and their replacement by British colonists. The situation was therefore especially terrible for the native population, which could no longer own or rent plots of land, or even work on the land held by the colonists. Two passages from Marx:

“Elizabeth. The plan was to exterminate the Irish at least up to the River Shannon, to take their land and settle English colonists in their place, etc. In battles against Elizabeth the still Catholic Anglo-Irish fought the English alongside the natives. The avowed plan of the English: Clearing the island of the natives, and stocking it with loyal Englishmen. They succeeded only to plant a landowning aristocracy. English Protestant ‘adventurers’ (merchants, usurers), who obtained from the English crown the confiscated lands, and ‘gentlemen undertakers’, who were to plant the ceded estates with native English families”.

“In Ireland apart from ‘conversion’, the openly acknowledged objective of the government was to find a pretext for pillage. ‘Reform’, from its inception, had ‘pillage’ engraved on its forehead, but in Ireland it was nothing but pillage from head to toe. In Ireland, Bess ⁽⁴⁾ allowed massacres to be perpetrated on a grand scale, brigandage and butchery without end. She sent to Ireland the same clergymen whose successors still live there today. The incessantly bloodied sword guaranteed their tithes and the land. In England, she was forced to enact the poor law (in the 43^rd year of her reign) but for the looters whose regime she sanctioned ‘England was a place where they could raise armies to send them to fight in Ireland for their interests.’ And it was the permission to loot that attracted these armies” (Marx, The Ethnological Notebooks, 1883).

The First National Insurrection

In 1641 an agrarian crisis led to a famine. In this context a group from the petty nobility tried to take possession of strategic points with a view to liberating Ireland, which led to a general insurrection. With the aim of regaining their land, the Irish peasants attacked the colonists, who were murdered or expelled. The Irish nobility then took control of the movement for national liberation and transformed the peasant uprising into a classic war. It stopped the attacks against the colonists and formed a national government: the “Irish Confederation”. Marx, in a plan for a report on the Irish question, spoke of the “First national revolt of Ireland” and of the “Irish revolution of 1641”.

The civil war brought a favourable situation for the Irish population. To begin with the Confederation tried to obtain the King of England’s recognition of Irish autonomy, then in 1646 it declared its independence and tried to liberate the whole territory. During this time the peasants took back half of the colonised lands. At the same time the constitution of the Confederation declared liberty of conscience and religion across the entire country, which at the time, made it the most advanced constitution in the world.

Cromwell’s Campaign in Ireland

In this second reconquest of Ireland the ignominy and cruelty of Cromwell’s troops knew no bounds. The English ruling class – essentially the big landowners but also the financiers and industrialists – would reveal the extent of its bestiality and ferocity. In 1649 Cromwell disembarked at the head of his troops and organised a massacre. In contrast to Napoleon who, though also an imperialist, exported the French Revolution on the European continent by abolishing feudal privileges and introducing bourgeois legislation, while at the same time developing the nucleus of large-scale industry, Cromwell behaved like a pure imperialist, uniquely defending the interests of the English landowning bourgeoisie, and secondarily those of the industrial bourgeoisie, by ruining all industry in Ireland.

It was true genocide: between a third and a half of the population was massacred. William Petty, the first demographer and statistician, wrote that at least 400,000 people were massacred, but that it could have been more than 600,000, two-thirds of whom were civilians. Before this genocide, the Irish population was estimated to be around 1,500,000 inhabitants.

In a letter to Jenny Longuet of February 24, 1881, Engels describes the reconquest of Ireland and says that it brings to mind an English chauvinist who compares Ireland at the time of Cromwell to the Vendée:

Ireland was Catholic, Protestant England Republican, therefore Ireland-English Vendée. There is however this little difference that the French Revolution intended to give the land to the people, the English Commonwealth intended, in Ireland, to take the land from the people. The whole Protestant reformation, as is well known to most students of history (…) was a vast plan for a confiscation of land. First the land was taken from the Church. Then the Catholics, in countries where Protestantism was in power, were declared rebels and their land confiscated”.

But the tragedy and the agony of the Catholics, that’s to say of the Irish people, did not stop there. Under Cromwell 100,000 women and children between 10 and 14 years old were sold as slaves in the English colonies of America. (See White Cargo by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh).

The subjugation of Ireland reinforced the most reactionary and infamous layer within the English bourgeoisie: the landowners. And Cromwell, far from serving the revolution, on the contrary reinforced reaction in England itself. The English Republic paid the price for this bloody and pitiless subjugation of Ireland. By reinforcing the economic power of English landowners, it provided the basis for the restoration: at its death the House of Lords was re-established, together with the monarchy. In a letter to Ludwig Kugelmann dated 29 August 1869, Marx would write, “As a matter of fact, the English Republic under Cromwell met shipwreck in – Ireland”.

In 1688, the new King of England James II was overthrown. He tried to win back the throne by disembarking in Ireland and seeking the support of the Anglo-Irish nobility. After his defeat by Prince William of Orange – his nephew, who had married his daughter Mary – the English ruling class completed the pauperisation and subjugation of the population and gained total control of the Irish economy.

Further discriminatory measures were applied against the Catholics and all of the land, along with the little industry that remained, was handed over to various English land magnates and adventurers – traders, industrialists and businessmen etc. Moreover, direct commerce between Ireland and foreign countries was completely forbidden, England being the only outlet and the arbiter of prices. The weaving of wool was also forbidden. In a word, Ireland became a full colony, like America, Australia and South Africa but under much worse conditions. This situation of economic submission explains why later on certain bourgeois Protestants in Ulster, although of English origin, would join the fight for Ireland’s independence.

In 1640 the natives and the old English held 60% of the land; in 1660 it was no more than 8-9%.

Ireland During the American and French Revolutions

On the eve of the American Revolution the Catholics, that is the three-quarters of the population who were Irish, were deprived of all rights. The “Irish” parliament, like that of England, consisted of two chambers: the House of Lords, whose members were drawn from the landed aristocracy, all of English origin, and the House of Commons, elected by the Protestants, who were English in origin by the overwhelming majority.

In Eccarius’s record of Karl Marx’s speech to the German Workers’ Educational Society in London on December 16, 1867, referred to above, we read a striking description of the Irish situation at this time:

“Under William III, a class came to power which only wanted to make money, and Irish industry was suppressed in order to force the Irish to sell their raw materials to England at any price. With the help of the Protestant Penal Laws, the new aristocrats received freedom of action under Queen Anne. The Irish Parliament was a means of oppression. Those who were Catholic were not allowed to hold an official post, could not be landowners, were not allowed to make wills, could not claim an inheritance; to be a Catholic bishop was high treason. All these were means for robbing the Irish of their land; yet over 50 per cent of the English descendants in Ulster have remained Catholic. The people were driven into the arms of the Catholic clergy, who thus became powerful. All that the English government succeeded in doing was to plant an aristocracy in Ireland. The towns built by the English have become Irish. That is why there are so many English names among the Fenians”.

The breath of revolution from America, then France, spread to the island. The Catholics, who up to now had been pleading for an attenuation of the Protestant law, again raised their heads and made their voices heard. The Protestants themselves, hitherto considered by the British government to be their gaolers and their bailiffs, demanded more autonomy and above all freedom of trade: the island’s colonial status restricted their trade and above all stifled all industrial development. And this last question was, by its very nature, one of national interest.

The Irish resolved to adopt an agreement forbidding the import and consumption of British manufactured goods. As soon as this measure was publicly put forward, it was universally accepted throughout the country.

Moreover the international situation was favourable to a national emancipation movement: England found itself at war first with America and then with France, and was even threatened by a French military invasion. This situation weakened England and forced it to withdraw its garrisons from Ireland.

The revolutionary movement in Ireland deepened and clarified the class relations at the heart of the communities, pushing out the most conservative and reactionary elements, and leading in 1791 to the creation of the United Irishmen, which brought together both Catholics and Protestants.

“From this moment, the Volunteers movement fused with that of the United Irishmen. The Catholic question transformed into that of the people of Ireland. The question was no longer about giving rights back to the Catholic upper and middle class, but about emancipating Irish peasants, the large majority of whom were Catholics” (Marx, Ireland from the American Revolution to the Union of 1801).

Under these conditions England loosened its grip on Ireland and was forced to make concessions. Here is what Engels had to say about it in a letter to Jenny Longuet (February 24, 1881):

The Abolition of the Penal Laws! Why the greater part of them were repealed, not in 1793 but in 1778, when England was threatened by the rise of the American Republic, and the second repeal, 1793, was when the French Republic arose threatening and England required all the soldiers she could get to fight it!

During this period Irish industry experienced a new growth and the material situation of the population improved. The law regarding Catholics became milder. Once again the renting of land to Catholics was authorised.

The revolutionaries organised in their Convention and in the Party of United Irishmen contemplated dissolving the parliament by force, declaring independence and proclaiming the Republic.

With the aim of supporting the Irish revolutionaries, on December 15, 1796 a French fleet of 45 ships transporting 13,400 men left Brest. However a terrible storm prevented them from landing, causing the failure of the operation. On June 21, 1798 the United Irishmen, without French help, set the insurrection in motion with Dublin as its epicentre. Thousands of men rose up in arms. However, the authorities, alerted by their informers, and who had imposed martial law, decapitated a large part of the organisation shortly afterwards, arresting the main leaders. Lacking coordination and centralisation, the insurrection failed and was soon violently crushed.

With order re-established, the British government took back everything it had been forced to concede and English law, that is to say the law of retaliation, was applied again in full force with the imposition of a state of siege. The parliament was dissolved and union with Great Britain imposed.

In conclusion, we refer to a passage in a letter from Marx to Engels (December 10, 1869):

This period [1779-1800] is of the highest interest, scientifically and dramatically. Firstly, the foul doings of the English in 1588-89 repeated (and perhaps even intensified) in 1788-89. Secondly, it can easily be proved there was a class movement in the Irish movement itself. Thirdly, the infamous policy of Pitt. Fourthly, which will annoy the English gentlemen very much, the proof that Ireland came to grief because, in fact, from a revolutionary standpoint, the Irish were too far advanced for the English Church and King mob, while on the other hand English reaction in England had its roots (as in Cromwell’s time) in the subjugation of Ireland. This period must be described in at least one chapter: a pillory for John Bull!

1801-1846: The age of the small peasant

With the Union imposed, freedom of commerce suppressed, and the eradication of the industry that had developed between 1778 to 1801, Ireland was once again transformed into a purely agrarian nation, consisting mainly of small peasants who had to lease their land from a handful of English landlords, the 8,000 to 9,000 big landowners who possessed all of the farmland.

Marx stated in his speech to the German immigrants:

“During the American War of Independence the reins were loosened a little. Further concessions had to be granted during the French Revolution. Ireland rose so quickly that her people threatened to outstrip the English. The English government drove them to rebellion and achieved the Union by bribery. The Union delivered the death blow to reviving Irish industry. On one occasion Meagher said: all Irish branches of industry have been destroyed, all we have been left is the making of coffins. It became a vital necessity to have land; the big landowners leased their lands to speculators; land passed through four or five lease stages before it reached the peasant, and this made prices disproportionately high. The agrarian population lived on potatoes and water; wheat and meat were sent to England; the rent was eaten up in London, Paris and Florence. In 1836, £7,000,000 was sent abroad to absent landowners. Fertilisers were exported with the produce and rent, and the soil was exhausted. Famine often set in here and there, and owing to the potato blight there was a general famine in 1846. A million people starved to death. The potato blight resulted from the exhaustion of the soil, it was a product of English rule”.

Ireland had been subjugated and transformed into a purely agricultural country for the benefit of both British industry and the landlords, who could exploit the tenants without mercy. In an article entitled England in 1845 and 1885, published in The Commonweal (no.2, March 1^st,1885), Engel’s wrote:

“The Reform Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the whole capitalist class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn Laws was the victory of the manufacturing capitalists not only over the landed aristocracy, but over those sections of capitalists too whose interests were more or less bound up with the landed interest; bankers, stock-jobbers, fundholders, etc. Free Trade meant the re-adjustment of the whole home and foreign commercial and financial policy of England in accordance with the interests of the manufacturing capitalists – the class which now represented the nation. And they set about this task with a will. Every obstacle to industrial production was mercilessly removed. The tariff and the whole system of taxation were revolutionised, Everything was made subordinate to one end, but that end of the utmost importance to the manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce, and especially of the means of living of the working class, reduction of the cost of raw material, and the keeping down – if not as yet the bringing down – of wages. England was to become the ‘workshop of the world’; all other countries were to become for England what Ireland already was – markets for her manufactured goods, supplying her in return with raw materials and food. England is the great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world, with an ever increasing number of corn and cotton-growing Irelands, revolving around her, the industrial sun. What a glorious prospect!”

Such is the unvarnished beauty of capitalist development!

Despite everything, the Irish peasants did not allow themselves to be fleeced without putting up resistance,the peasant associations that had been set up organised, when possible, expeditions to kill the landlords and their accomplices. The Irish peasantry, although the most miserable and exploited in Europe, clubbed together to pay teachers to give their children an education.

“These truly national schools did not suit English purposes. To suppress them, the sham national schools [introduced in 1831] were established” (Engels to Jenny Longuet, 24 February 1881).

1846-1870: Extermination by Mass Starvation

The intense exploitation of Ireland by the landlords led to the exhaustion of the soil and favoured the spread of a potato disease, potato blight (Phytophthora infestans). This killer fungus, then still undiagnosed, almost entirely wiped out the local potato crop, then the staple food of the Irish peasantry. It resulted in a terrible famine between 1845 and 1852, the most acute phase of which lasted four years: in 1841 Ireland had 8,175,124 inhabitants; in 1851 a million had emigrated and a million and a half starved to death.

But food there was. In the House of Commons it was reported that during the first three months of the famine, up to February 1846, 3,280 tons of wheat, 35,600 tons of barley and 12,700 tons of oats and oat flour were exported to England. And exports continued at the same pace, enriching the landlords, after this date.

Added to which in 1846 there was the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had assured Ireland her monopoly position on the English market. Once this monopoly was abolished, America could export its grain to England, but the Irish small peasant could not compete with mechanised large-scale American agriculture. The landlords, who saw their rents tumble with the abolition of the Corn Laws, set about expelling the peasants with armed force in order to replace them with sheep, cattle and pigs, for the production of meat. The peasants had the choice of dying of starvation or emigrating to America, if they had the means, or rising up against the British oppressor and exterminating the landlords.

We’ll hand over to Marx who in Capital describes the agricultural transformation that followed ⁽⁵⁾.

“Ireland, in less than twenty years, lost more than 5/16^ths of its people. Its total emigration from May, 1851, to July, 1865, numbered 1,591,487: the emigration during the years 1861‑1865 was more than half-a-million. The number of inhabited houses fell, from 1851‑1861, by 52,990. From 1851‑1861, the number of holdings of 15 to 30 acres increased 61,000, that of holdings over 30 acres, 109,000, whilst the total number of all farms fell 120,000, a fall, therefore, solely due to the suppression of farms under 15 acres – i.e., to their centralisation.

“The decrease of the population was naturally accompanied by a decrease in the mass of products. For our purpose, it suffices to consider the 5 years from 1861-1865 during which over half-a-million emigrated, and the absolute number of people sank by more than a third of a million (…)

“England, a country with fully developed capitalist production, and pre-eminently industrial, would have bled to death with such a drain of population as Ireland has suffered. But Ireland is at present only an agricultural district of England, marked off by a wide channel from the country to which it yields corn, wool, cattle, industrial and military recruits.

“The depopulation of Ireland has thrown much of the land out of cultivation, has greatly diminished the produce of the soil (if the product also diminishes relatively per acre, it must not be forgotten that for a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without as much as allowing its cultivators the means for making up the constituents of the soil that had been exhausted) and, in spite of the greater area devoted to cattle breeding, has brought about, in some of its branches, an absolute diminution, in others, an advance scarcely worthy of mention, and constantly interrupted by retrogressions. Nevertheless, with the fall in numbers of the population, rents and farmers’ profits rose (…)

“The total capital of Ireland outside agriculture, employed in industry and trade, accumulated during the last two decades slowly, and with great and constantly recurring fluctuations; so much the more rapidly did the concentration of its individual constituents develop. And, however small its absolute increase, in proportion to the dwindling population it had increased largely.

“Here, then, under our own eyes and on a large scale, a process is revealed, than which nothing more excellent could be wished for by orthodox economy for the support of its dogma: that misery springs from absolute surplus population (…)

“The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage. The exodus of the next 20 years, an exodus still constantly increasing, did not, as, e.g., the Thirty Years’ War, decimate, along with the human beings, their means of production. Irish genius discovered an altogether new way of spiriting a poor people thousands of miles away from the scene of its misery. The exiles transplanted to the United States, send home sums of money every year as travelling expenses for those left behind. Every troop that emigrates one year, draws another after it the next. Thus, instead of costing Ireland anything, emigration forms one of the most lucrative branches of its export trade. Finally, it is a systematic process, which does not simply make a passing gap in the population, but sucks out of it every year more people than are replaced by the births, so that the absolute level of the population falls year by year.

“What were the consequences for the Irish labourers left behind and freed from the surplus population? That the relative surplus population is today as great as before 1846; that wages are just as low, that the oppression of the labourers has increased, that misery is forcing the country towards a new crisis. The facts are simple. The revolution in agriculture has kept pace with emigration. The production of relative surplus population has more than kept pace with the absolute depopulation (…)

“The change of arable to pasture land must work yet more acutely in Ireland than in England. In England the cultivation of green crops increases with the breeding of cattle; in Ireland, it decreases. Whilst a large number of acres, that were formerly tilled, lie idle or are turned permanently into grass-land, a great part of the waste land and peat bogs that were unused formerly, become of service for the extension of cattle-breeding. The smaller and medium farmers – I reckon among these all who do not cultivate more than 100 acres – still make up about 8/10^ths of the whole number. They are one after the other, and with a degree of force unknown before, crushed by the competition of an agriculture managed by capital, and therefore they continually furnish new recruits to the class of wage labourers. The one great industry of Ireland, linen-manufacture, requires relatively few adult men and only employs altogether, in spite of its expansion since the price of cotton rose in 1861-1866, a comparatively insignificant part of the population. Like all other great modern with an absolute increase in the mass of human beings absorbed by it. The misery of the agricultural population forms the pedestal for gigantic shirt-factories, whose armies of labourers are, for the most part, scattered over the country. Here, we encounter again the system described above of domestic industry, which in underpayment and overwork, possesses its own systematic means for creating supernumerary labourers. Finally, although the depopulation has not such destructive consequences as would result in a country with fully developed capitalistic production, it does not go on without constant reaction upon the home-market. The gap which emigration causes here, limits not only the local demand for labour, but also the incomes of small shopkeepers, artisans, tradespeople generally (…)

“Formerly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium and large farms on which they found employment. Only since the catastrophe of 1846 have they begun to form a fraction of the class of purely wage labourers, a special class, connected with its wage-masters only by monetary relations (…)

“Lord Dufferin ⁽⁶⁾ (…) declares (…) that Ireland is still over-populated, and the stream of emigration still flows too lazily. To be perfectly happy, Ireland must get rid of at least one-third of a million of labouring men (…) The proof is easily given. Centralisation has from 1851 to 1861 destroyed principally farms [that are] (…) under 1 and not over 15 acres. These above all must disappear. This gives 307,058 “supernumerary” farmers, and reckoning the families the low average of 4 persons, 1,228,232 persons. On the extravagant supposition that, after the agricultural revolution is complete one-fourth of these are again absorbable, there remain for emigration 921,174 persons. [Farms] (…) of over 15 and not over 100 acres, are, as was known long since in England, too small for capitalistic cultivation of corn, and for sheep-breeding are almost vanishing quantities. On the same supposition as before, therefore, there are further 788,761 persons to emigrate; total, 1,709,532. And as l’appétit vient en mangeant, Rentroll’s eyes will soon discover that Ireland, with 3½ millions, is still always miserable, and miserable because she is overpopulated. Therefore her depopulation must go yet further, that thus she may fulfil her true destiny, that of an English sheep-walk and cattle-pasture.

“Like all good things in this bad world, this profitable method has its drawbacks. With the accumulation of rents in Ireland, the accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace. The Irishman, banished by sheep and ox, re-appears on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian.”

We add here an excerpt from a letter from Marx to Engels (8 November1867):

“How the English carry on is evidenced by the Agricultural Statistics for the current year, which appeared a few days ago. Furthermore, the form of the eviction. The Irish Viceroy, Lord Abercorn, “cleared” his estate in the last few weeks by forcibly evicting thousands of people. Among them were prosperous tenants, whose improvements and investments were thus confiscated! In no other European country did foreign rule adopt this form of direct expropriation of the stock population. The Russians confiscate solely on political grounds; the Prussians in Western Prussia buy out.”

The agrarian revolution entailed a diminution in the number of small peasants, although the latter remained the majority, and an increase in the number of the largest farms, in particular those over 30 acres and hence the rise of a rural bourgeoisie capable of employing one or two agricultural labourers, as occurred later in Russia with the Kulaks, and at the same time the appearance of an agricultural proletariat.

This terrible situation did not arise without creating a revolutionary ferment within the peasantry, above all those farming small and medium-sized holding, and among the agricultural proletariat. The Fenian movement, which led the struggle against the English coloniser, originated among the Irish emigres to the United States but was profoundly rooted in the great mass of the Irish population, i.e. the peasantry. This movement had to be atheist as the church originally wanted to ban it, although it revised its opinion once it realised it risked losing its influence over the great mass of peasants. In contrast to earlier peasant movements, which took the Irish aristocracy to be its natural guide, Fenianism ignored the authority of the church and the Irish ruling class; it was above all a popular movement.

We reproduce below a lengthy text by Engels which gives a historical summary of the struggles led by the peasantry against its oppressor ⁽⁷⁾.

“In Ireland there are two trends in the movement. The first, the earlier, is the agrarian trend, which stems from the organised brigandage practised with support of the peasants by the clan chiefs, dispossessed by the English, and also by the big Catholic landowners (in the 17^th century these brigands were called Tories, and the Tories of today have inherited their name directly from them). This trend gradually developed into natural resistance of the peasants to the intruding English landlords, organised according to localities and provinces. The names Ribbonmen, Whiteboys, Captain Rock, Captain Moonlight, etc., have changed, but the form of resistance – the shooting not only of hated landlords and agents (rent collectors of the landlords) but also of peasants who take over a farm from which another has been forcibly evicted, boycotting, threatening letters, night raids and intimidation, etc. – all this is as old as the present English landownership in Ireland, that is, dates back to the end of the 17^th century at the latest. This form of resistance cannot be suppressed, force is useless against it, and it will disappear only with the causes responsible for it. But, as regards its nature, it is local, isolated, and can never become a general form of political struggle.

“Soon after the establishment of the Union (1800), began the liberal-national opposition of the urban bourgeoisie which, as in every peasant country with dwindling townlets (for example, Denmark), finds its natural leaders in lawyers. These also need the peasants; they therefore had to find a slogan to attract the peasants. Thus O’Connell discovered such a slogan first in the Catholic emancipation, and then in the Repeal of the Union. Because of the infamy of the landowners, this trend has recently had to adopt a new course. While in the social field the Land League pursues more revolutionary aims (which are achievable in Ireland) – the total removal of the intruder landlords – it acts rather tamely in political respects and demands only Home Rule, that is, an Irish local Parliament side by side with the British Parliament and subordinated to it. This too can be achieved by constitutional means. The frightened landlords are already clamouring for the quickest possible redemption of the peasant land (suggested by the Tories themselves) in order to save what can still be saved. On the other hand, Gladstone declares that greater self-government for Ireland is quite admissible.

“After the American Civil War, Fenianism took its place beside these two trends. The hundreds of thousands of Irish soldiers and officers, who fought in the war, did so with the ulterior motive of building up an army for the liberation of Ireland. The controversies between America and England after the war became the main lever of the Fenians. Had it come to a war, Ireland would in a few months have been part of the United States or at least a republic under its protection. The sum which England so willingly undertook to pay, and did indeed pay in accordance with Geneva arbitrators’ decision on the Alabama ⁽⁸⁾ affair, was the price she paid to buy off American intervention in Ireland” ⁽⁹⁾.

3) The Irish Question in the First International

Up to 1867 Marx and Engels thought the socialist revolution in England would resolve the Irish question, putting an end to its enslavement by England. Then Marx would recognize that the immense riches that England extracted from Ireland, and from its colonies in general, allowed it to corrupt a part of the English proletariat, the famous aristocracy of labour. The latter, of a chauvinist mentality, espoused the imperialist positions of its own bourgeoisie and spread a petty bourgeois ideology among the ranks of the proletariat. Moreover, the immense rent that the English landed aristocracy – the landlords – extracted from England lent a considerable material, political and moral force to English society. In England they had this hierarchy: a few working class members of parliament acted as servants to the liberals, who represented the interests of industrialists, and the latter acted as servants to the landlords. A large part of the proletariat in England was Irish, and the bourgeoisie fanned the flames of hatred between its British and Irish sections in order to prevent them from unifying.

Thus for Marx and Engels it also became evident that the independence of Ireland, or at least a large measure of autonomy, and therefore exit from the Union, was a precondition for social revolution in England. In an independent Ireland, or at least an Ireland that had acquired a large measure of independence by leaving the Union, a social revolution to expropriate the landlords would immediately follow, this being a matter of life or death for the great majority of Irish peasants. An expropriation of the landlords in Ireland would have delivered a fatal blow to landordism and would have considerably weakened the political and moral influence of this pillar of counter-revolution in England. This would have likewise delivered a revolutionary blast across the whole of England and galvanised the class struggle. Irish independence would, at the same time, have liberated the English proletariat from its subjection to the English bourgeoisie.

This is why within the International Marx and Engels would support every movement for Ireland’s exit from the Union and would call upon the English proletariat to support this. Indeed even after the dissolution of the International they would continue to reiterate the necessity of Ireland’s independence.

On this subject we are spoilt for texts to choose from, but we will cite a letter from Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt in New York, dated April 9, 1870, which sets things out very well:

“After studying the Irish question for many years I have come to the conclusion that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes (and it will be decisive for the workers’ movement all over the world) cannot be delivered in England but only in Ireland.

“On January 1, 1870, the General Council issued a confidential circular drawn up by me in French (for only the French journals, not the German ones produce important repercussions in England) on the relation of the Irish national struggle to the emancipation of the working class, and therefore on the attitude which the International Association should take towards the Irish question.

“I shall give you here only quite briefly the salient points.

“Ireland is the bulwark of the English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of that country is not only one of the main sources of their material wealth; it is their greatest moral strength. They, in fact, represent the domination over Ireland. Ireland is therefore the cardinal means by which the English aristocracy maintain their domination in England itself.

“If, on the other hand, the English army and police were to be withdrawn from Ireland tomorrow, you would at once have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. But the downfall of the English aristocracy in Ireland implies and has as a necessary consequence its downfall in England. And this would provide the preliminary condition for the proletarian revolution in England. The destruction of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland is an infinitely easier operation than in England herself, because in Ireland the land question has been up to now the exclusive form of the social question because it is a question of existence, of life and death, for the immense majority of the Irish people, and because it is at the same time inseparable from the national question. Quite apart from the fact that the Irish character is more passionate and revolutionary than that of the English.

“As for the English bourgeoisie, it has in the first place a common interest with the English aristocracy in turning Ireland into mere pasture land which provides the English market with meat and wool at the cheapest possible prices. It is likewise interested in reducing the Irish population by eviction and forcible emigration, to such a small number that English capital (capital invested in land leased for farming) can function there with “security”. It has the same interest in clearing the estates of Ireland as it had in the clearing of the agricultural districts of England and Scotland. The £6,000-10,000 absentee-landlord and other Irish revenues which at present flow annually to London have also to be taken into account.

“But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class.

“And most important of all! Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the “poor whites” to the “niggers” in the former slave States of the U.S.A. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker both the accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rulers in Ireland.

“This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organisation. It is the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. And the latter is quite aware of this.

“But the evil does not stop here. It continues across the ocean. The antagonism between Englishmen and Irishmen is the hidden basis of the conflict between the United States and England. It makes any honest and serious co-operation between the working classes of the two countries impossible. It enables the governments of both countries, whenever they think fit, to break the edge off the social conflict by their mutual bullying, and, in case of need, by war between the two countries.

“England, the metropolis of capital, the power which has up to now ruled the world market, is at present the most important country for the workers’ revolution, and moreover the only country in which the material conditions for this revolution have reached a certain degree of maturity. It is consequently the most important object of the International Working Men’s Association to hasten the social revolution in England. The sole means of hastening it is to make Ireland independent. Hence it is the task of the International everywhere to put the conflict between England and Ireland in the foreground, and everywhere to side openly with Ireland. It is the special task of the Central Council in London to make the English workers realise that for them the national emancipation of Ireland is not a question of abstract justice or humanitarian sentiment but the first condition of their own social emancipation.

“These are roughly the main points of the circular letter, which thus at the same time give the raisons d’étre of the resolutions passed by the Central Council on the Irish amnesty. A little later I sent a strongly-worded anonymous article on the treatment of the Fenians by the English, etc., attacking Gladstone, etc., to the Internationale (organ of our Belgian Central Committee in Brussels). In this article I have also denounced the French Republicans (the Marseillaise had printed some nonsense on Ireland written here by the wretched Talandier) because in their national egoism they are saving all their wrath for the Empire.

“That worked. My daughter Jenny wrote a series of articles to the Marseillaise, signing them J. Williams (she had called herself Jenny Williams in her private letter to the editorial board) and published, among other things, O’Donovan Rossa’s letter. Hence immense noise. After many years of cynical refusal Gladstone was thus finally compelled to agree to a parliamentary enquiry into the treatment of the Fenian prisoners. Jenny is now the regular correspondent on Irish affairs for the Marseillaise. (This is naturally to be a secret between us.) The British Government and press are fiercely annoyed by the fact that the Irish question has thus now come to the forefront in France and that these rogues are now being watched and exposed via Paris on the whole Continent.

“We hit another bird with the same stone, we have forced the Irish leaders, journalists, etc., in Dublin to get into contact with us, which the General Council had been unable to achieve previously!

“You have wide field in America for work along the same lines. A coalition of the German workers with the Irish workers (and of course also with the English and American workers who are prepared to accede to it) is the greatest achievement you could bring about now. This must be done in the name of the International. The social significance of the Irish question must be made clear.

“Next time a few remarks dealing particularly with the position of the English workers.

“Greetings and fraternity!”.

The letter could not be clearer: it is the first requirement of the International to support Irish independence by all means available. An independent Ireland would translate into a considerable weakening of the English aristocracy: Marx spoke of “a decisive blow”. The agrarian revolution in Ireland would force the English proletariat to confront its own bourgeoisie to obtain wage increases. Due to the revolutionary wave that would hit the larger island, the independence of Ireland would radicalise the class struggle and increase the influence of socialism.

Marx also anticipated the programme that an independent Ireland would be compelled to apply. In a letter to Engels dated 30 November 1867, he wrote:

“The question now is, what shall we advise the English workers? In my opinion they must make the Repeal of the Union (in short, the affair of 1783, only democratised and adapted to the conditions of the time) an article of their pronunziamento. This is the only legal and therefore only possible form of Irish emancipation which can be admitted in the programme of an English party. Experience must show later whether a mere personal union can continue to subsist exist between the two countries. I half believe it can if it takes place in time.

“What the Irish need is: 1) Self-government and independence from England. 2) An Agrarian revolution. With the best intentions in the world the English cannot accomplish this for them, but they can give them the legal means of accomplishing it for themselves. 3) Protective tariffs against England. Between 1783 and 1801 every branch of Irish industry in Ireland flourished. The Union, which overthrew the protective tariffs established by the Irish parliament, destroyed all industrial life in Ireland. The bit of linen industry is no compensation whatsoever. The Union of 1801 had just the same effect on Irish industry as the measures for the suppression of the Irish wool industry, etc., taken by the English parliament under Anne, George II, and others. Once the Irish are independent, necessity will turn them into protectionists, like Canada, Australia, etc.

Before I put forward my views at the Central Council (next Tuesday, this time fortunately without reporters), I would like you to give me your opinion in a few lines”.

At the General Council Meeting of May 14, 1872 an important discussion on the Irish question was held. From the detailed minutes we can see that this commenced with a report by McDonnell, who spoke about the progress the movement was making in Ireland and read a letter from a correspondent in Dublin. Later in the discussion:

“Citizen Hales proposed “That the formation of Irish nationalist branches in England is opposed to the General Rules and principles of the Association (…) The fundamental principle of the Association was to destroy all semblance of the nationalist doctrine, and remove all barriers that separated man from man”. [further on adding that] “The International had nothing to do with liberating Ireland, nor with the setting up of any particular form of government, either in England or Ireland” (…)

“Citizen Mottershead could not escape the logic of the motion, but he deprecated the spirit in which it was made. The speech of Citizen Hales showed the animus with which it was actuated, and, seeing that, he could not vote for the motion. He would rather vote for a motion recommending our English members to cultivate a spirit of fraternity with the Irish members. He unfortunately knew too well the domineering spirit with which Englishmen of the ignorant class treated their Irish brethren. They had been treated as aliens in a foreign land and were looked down upon by the English workers (…)

“Citizen Engels said the real purpose of the motion, stripped of al hypocrisy, was to bring the Irish sections into subjection to the British Federal Council, a thing to which the Irish sections would never consent, and which the [General] Council had neither the right nor the power to impose upon them (…) The Irish sections in England were no more under the jurisdiction of the British Federal Council than the French, German or Italian and Polish sections in this country. The Irish formed a distinct nationality of their own, and the fact that [they] used the English language could not deprive them of their rights.

“Citizen Hales had spoken of the relations of England and Ireland being of the most idyllic nature – breathing nothing but harmony.

“But the case was quite different. There was the fact of seven centuries of English Conquest and oppression of Ireland, and so long as that oppression existed, it would be an insult to Irish working men to ask them to submit to a British Federal Council. The position of Ireland with regard to England was not that of an equal, it was that of Poland with regard to Russia. What would be said if the Council called upon Polish sections to acknowledge the supremacy of a Council sitting in Petersburg, or the North Schleswig and Alsatian sections to submit to a Federal Council in Berlin? Yet that was asked by the motion. It was asking the conquered people to forget their nationality and submit to their conquerors. It was not Internationalism,but simply prating submission. If the promoters of the motion were so brimful of the truly international spirit, let them prove it by removing the seat of the British Federal Council to Dublin and submit to a Council of Irishmen. In a case like that of the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinct national organisation, and they were under the necessity to state in the preamble to their rules that their first and most pressing duty as Irishmen was to establish their own national independence”.

In order to overcome nationalism there are times and places when it is not enough, indeed it is actually counter-productive and counter-revolutionary, to simply negate it.

As regards the internal organisation of the International we have to bear in mind that we then in an “Association”, which for historical reasons was formed and functioned, as we know, on a federal basis, and as such was a necessarily immature expression of the class party. The question of the national sections was no longer raised – or should no longer have been raised – in the Third International, and nor will it be, with all the more reason, in the world communist party of the future, whose members will not be German, Irish or English, but indifferentiated communists, who have repudiated their own particular upbringing within the nodes of this society.

The party constantly bears in mind the complexity and weight of bourgeois and pre-bourgeois historical survivals; their succession and necessity and the dynamic of the social clashes they inevitably provoke, but it isn’t directly involved in them, or directly part of them, and, as regards its own programme and internal organization, it keeps itself entirely separate from them at all times, even when it considers them historically progressive and has a duty to support them through its propaganda and actions. And such were clearly the deeply held convictions of Marx and Engels which shaped their position on the Irish question.