Leon Trotsky’s Writings on Britain
Volume III

National Liberation Struggles


Ireland, 1916



Results of the Dublin Events

The former prominent colonial bureaucrat of Great Britain, Sir Roger Casement [1], by conviction a revolutionary Irish nationalist, the go-between for Germany and the Irish uprising, on being sentenced to death declared, “I prefer to sit on the bench of the accused than in the seat of the accuser,” before the reading of the sentence, which ran according to the old formula that Casement should be “hung by the neck until dead”, at which God was invited to have mercy on his soul.

Should the sentence be carried out? This question must have given Asquith and Lloyd George many troubled hours. To execute Casement would make it even more difficult for the opportunist, nationalist and purely parliamentary Irish party, led by Redmond [2], to ratify a new compromise with the government of the UK on the blood of the insurrectionaries. To pardon Casement, after having carried out so many executions, would mean an open “display of indulgence to a high-ranking traitor”. This is the demagogic tune of the British social-imperialists of the Hyndman [3] type – downright blood-thirsty hooligans. But however the personal fate of Casement is resolved the sentence on him will bring to a conclusion the dramatic episode of the Irish uprising. [4]

In so far as the affair concerned the purely military operations of the insurrectionaries, the government, as we know, turned out comparatively easily to be master of the situation. The general national movement, however it was expressed in the heads of the nationalist dreamers, did not materialize at all. The Irish countryside did not rise up. The Irish bourgeoisie, as also the upper, more influential layer of the Irish intelligentsia, remained on the sidelines. The urban workers fought and died, together with revolutionary enthusiasts from the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. The historical basis for the national revolution had disappeared even in backward Ireland. Inasmuch as the Irish movements in the last century had assumed a popular character, they had invariably fed on the social hostility of the deprived and exhausted pauper-farmer towards the omnipotent English landlord.

But if for the latter Ireland was only an object of agrarian plunder and exploitation, for British imperialism it was a necessary guarantee of their dominion over the seas. In a pamphlet written on the eve of the war [5], Casement, speculating about Germany, proves that the independence of Ireland means the “freedom of the seas” and the death blow to the naval domination of Britain. This is true in so far as an “independent” Ireland could exist only as an outpost of an imperialist state hostile to Britain and as its military naval base against British supremacy over the sea routes. It was Gladstone [6] who first expounded with full clarity the military imperialist consideration of Great Britain over the interests of the Anglo-Irish landlords and laid the basis for the wide agrarian legislation by which the state transferred to the Irish farmers the landlords’ land, very generously compensating the latter, of course. Anyway, after the agrarian reforms of 1881-1903, the farmers turned into conservative small property owners, whose gaze the green banner of national independence is no longer able to tear away from their plots of land.

The redundant Irish intelligentsia flowed in their thousands into the towns of Great Britain as lawyers, journalists, commercial employees, etc. In this way, for the majority of them, the “national question” got lost. On the other hand, the independent Irish commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, in so far as it has formed over the past decades, immediately adopted an antagonistic position towards the young Irish proletariat, giving up the national revolutionary struggle and entering the camp of imperialism. The young Irish working class, taking shape in an atmosphere saturated with the heroic recollections of national rebellions, and clashing with the egoistic, narrow-minded, imperial arrogance of British trade unionism, naturally swing between nationalism and syndicalism, ever ready to unite these two concepts in their revolutionary consciousness. It attracts the young intelligentsia and individual nationalist enthusiasts, who, in their turn, supply the movement with a preponderance of the green flag over the red. In this way, the “national revolution”, even in Ireland, in practice has become an uprising of workers, and the obviously isolated position of Casement in the movement only serves to emphasize this fact still deeper.

In a pathetic and shameful article, Plekhanov [7] recently pointed to the “harmful” character of the Irish uprising for the cause of freedom, rejoicing that the Irish nation “to their credit” had realized this and not supported the revolutionary madmen. Only complete patriotic softening of all the joints could lead anyone to interpret the situation as if the Irish peasants had declined to participate in the revolution from the standpoint of the international situation, thus saving the “honour” of Ireland. In actual fact they were led only by the obtuse egoism of the farmer and complete indifference to everything beyond the bounds of their plots of land. It was precisely because of this and only this that they supplied the London government with such a quick victory over the heroic defenders of the Dublin barricades. The undoubted personal courage, representing the hopes and methods of the past, is over. But the historical role of the Irish proletariat is only beginning. Already into this uprising – under an archaic banner – it has injected its class resentment against militarism and imperialism. That resentment from now on will not subside. On the contrary, it will find an echo throughout Great Britain. Scottish soldiers smashed the Dublin barricades. But in Scotland itself coal-miners are rallying round the red flag, raised by Maclean [8] and his friends. Those very workers, who at the moment the Hendersons [9] are trying to chain to the bloody chariot of imperialism, will revenge themselves against the hangman Lloyd George. [10]

[On the Events in Dublin,] Nashe Slovo, 4th July 1916

* * *

Clemency!

The Irish rising has been crushed. Those whom it was thought necessary to shoot first have been shot. The rest wait for their personal fate to be decided after that of the rising itself. The triumph of British rule is so complete that Prime Minister Asquith [11] considered it possible to declare from his parliamentary platform the government’s intention to show “reasonable clemency” towards the imprisoned Irish revolutionaries. In so doing Asquith referred to the good fruits of the clemency shown by General Botha to those who took part in the South African rising. Asquith refrained from mentioning General Botha himself. Twelve years before the present war he stood at the head of the Boers who shed their blood in a struggle against British imperialism; but at the beginning of the war he successfully put down a rising of his own fellow-countrymen. Thus Asquith remains wholly within the traditions of British imperialism when he crowns the work of the “law and order” specialists in Dublin and other places with a proclamation of the principles of “expedient” humanity – humanity, that is, within the limits of what is ... expedient. So far, then, everything is clear, and there can be no doubt in the minds of our readers about Asquith’s statement, which goes beyond what it is permissible to express in the French Republic in 1916.

But the matter does not end there. We have an uprising crushed, buildings razed, human corpses, men and women in chains. We have triumphant authority making a gesture of “philanthropy”. But in this picture which history has set in the frame of the world war, on this “stage within a stage”, one other figure is missing: the French social-patriot, the standard bearer of “liberating” war and the principles of national “freedom”, commenting on the official “humanity” of the Dublin government.

To fill in this gap, and add the finishing touch to our picture of the official governmental, patriotic aspect of our epoch, M. Renaudel [12] published an article on Clemency in the pages of his paper Humanité, which until now has not carried a single word about the Irish rising. [13]

Now of course he, Renaudel, knows that there were facts in the past which clouded relations between Ireland and Britain. He allows that these facts could not but leave bitterness to this day in the most irreconcilable Irish hearts. But the Irish chose the most fatal hour for their action. He, Renaudel, had not doubted for a moment that the British government would do everything necessary to remain master of the situation, and he was not mistaken. But, therefore, “Britain who is fighting with her allies for the rights of nations, can and must show magnanimity.” And that is why being simultaneously a friend of Britain and of Ireland, of Britain which crushed down and of Ireland which was crushed, he, Renaudel, could only welcome Asquith’s magnanimous gesture.

One might think that this was quite enough. One might think it physically impossible for social-patriotic cynicism to go any further than masquerading like this as the advocate of clemency to a set of frenzied butchers. But no, Renaudel has also to introduce a national French factor in order to explain and rationalize his sage statesmanlike pleading on behalf of the vanquished and justify it to official France. “Of course,” he writes, “in a land which weeps over Corneille’s verses and the noble farewell to Cinna by Auguste [14] – in such a land it causes no surprise if we counsel that clemency be shown.”

Thus the spiritual heirs and political descendants of Thiers and General Gallifet [15] are reassured. For didn’t they, who wept on reading Racine [16] show clemency to the fighters of the Paris Commune? Here is the real crowning of the spiritual reconciliation between Gallifet’s descendants and the offspring of the movement in whose history the Commune is indelibly inscribed.

[Clemency!,] Nashe Slovo, 11th May 1916


Volume 3, Chapter 2 Index


Notes

1. Roger Casement (1864-1916), Irish patriot and British diplomat; as British consul in the Belgian Congo Casement compiled a report of human rights abuses committed, which led to the Congo, which had been run as a private estate by the belgian king, being taken over by the Belgian government; resigned from the British consular service in 1913 and joined the Irish Volunteers, a paramilitary revolutionary nationalist organisation, in 1914; after the outbreak of World war I he went to Germany to organise military support for a nationalist uprising; tried unsuccessfully to organise an irish brigade recruited from Irish prisoners of war; landed from a submarine on the Irish coast just before the Easter Rising in 1916 he was arrested, tried for treason and hanged in August 1916.

2. John Redmond (1856-1918), Irish nationalist politician and lawyer; leader of the moderate Irish Parliamentary Party 1900-18.

3. H.M. Hyndman (1842-1921), British socialist and journalist; founded the Democratic Federation, the first socialist organisation in Britain, in 1881. Early members included belfort bax, Edward Aveling, Eleanor marx and William Morris. The organisation became the Social Democratic Federation in 1884. In late 1884 the organisation split and Bax, Aveling, Morris and Eleanor marx left to form the Socialist League. Hyndman’s approach to politics was essentially propagandistic and he rejected work in the trade unions. Although hyndman was involved in the discussions that led to the setting up of the Labour Representation Committee, the forerunner of the Labour Party, the SDF had little incfluence and eventuially left in 1906. Hyndman continued to dominate the SDF, called the Social Democratic Party from 1908 and the British Socialist Party from 1911, right down to the start of World War I. Along with Belfort Bax he supported the war, aposition that was not shared by the majority of party members. Eventually he was forced out in 1916 and set up the National Socialist Party.

4. On Easter weekend, April 1916, the joint forces of the Irish Volunteers, mainly bourgeois nationalists under the leadership of Patrick Pearce, and James Connolly’s Citizen Army of workers, declared a Provisional Government and seized a number of the main buildings in Dublin “ including the Post Office which dominates O’Connell Street then called Sackville Street. After resisting four days bombardment there, the rebels were forced to surrender and fifteen of their leaders were shot. Despite its defeat the Rising was a major step in the war for independence which raged in the subsequent years.

5. Ireland, Germany and the Freedom of the Seas, written 1911 but published 1914 in New York. Republished as Crime Against Europe – Causes of War and Foundation of Peace, Berlin 1915

6. William Gladstone (1809-1898), originally a Conservative, he later became became leader of the Liberal Party and served as prime minister four times (1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886 and 1892-1894); unsuccessfully attempted to grant Home Rule to Ireland.

7. Georgii Plekhanov (1856-1918) founder of Russian Marxism but opponent of the October Revolution. He started political activity as a Narodnik terrorist, and later the educated the generation of Lenin and Trotsky in the fight for Marxism against Narodnism and Populism. In 1883 he organized the “Emancipation of Labour” group as first cell of Russian Marxism. In Our Differences (1885) he opened the struggle against Narodnism, and in The Development of the Monist View of History (1895) set out the basic principles of Marxist philosophy in Russian for the first time. He worked with Lenin on Iskra for a period; they were in agreement on programmatic questions at the Second Congress of Russian Social Democracy (1903), but not on the principled organizational steps necessary for the development of the Bolshevik Party. Plekhanov degenerated into social patriotism on the outbreak of war, and was bitterly hostile to the Bolshevik revolution. After his death he was nonetheless honoured as a pioneer of Marxism (see Trotsky’s Political Profiles).

8. John Maclean (1879-1923), Scottish socialist and school teacher; member of the SDF and then of the BSP; a militant opponent of World War I, his opposition to the war led to him losing his job as a teacher, so he became a full-time Marxist lecturer, providing educational classes in Marxist theory for the developing Glasgow labour movement. In 1916 he was jailed for his anti-war activities, but was released again in 1917; after the October Revolution Lenin named him Soviet consul in Scotland; although he was a supporter of the Comintern and the BSP, opf which he was a member, was the #major conbstituent of the Communist party of Great britain, formed in 1920, Maclean remained outside the CPGB and eventuially set up the Scottish Workers Republican Party, which combined communism with a belief in Scottish independence. His health broken by his years of imprisonment Maclean died in 1923 at the early age of 44.

9. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931).

10. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Welsh Liberal politician, responsible as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) for the introduction of old age pensions, unemployment benefit and sickness benefits; prime minister from 1916 to 1922.

11. Herbert Asquith (1852-1927), British Liberal politician and lawyer; Home Secretary 1892-95, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1905-08 and prime minister 1908-1916.

12. Pierre Renaudel (1871-1935), French socialist leader, collaborator of Jean Jaurès before World war I and editor of l’Humanité, right-wing social patriot during War.

13. See note 8.

14. In Corneille’s play Cinna (1641), the character in the title is a reluctant party to a conspiracy led by his uncle against the emperor, Augustus. He receives a political pardon.

15. Louis Adolph Thiers (1797-1877) and Gaston Gallifet (1830-1909) were respectively leaders of the political and military forces that suppressed the Paris Commune of 1871. Thiers led the bourgeois government of the day and was the first President of the Third Republic. Gallifet became a general in 1870, and distinguished himself by ordering summary executions of the Communards. He thus became a symbol of counter-revolutionary repression. [In The Civil War in France Marx quotes the English Daily News to describe the shooting of the communards. This passage was written by George M. Crawford, the brother of the great-grandfather of the transcriber, Ted Crawford. – ERC]

16. Jean Racine (1639-99), French dramatist; mostly he wrote tragedies, but he wrote one comedy.


Volume 3 Index

Trotsky’s Writings on Britain


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Last updated on: 2.7.2007