“What The Proclamation
Means To Me”
By Mick Hall
(Writer and Political Activist)
Whilst having been a strong supporter of Irish
Republicanism for most of my life, when comrades from éirígí, a
Dublin based Republican Organization asked me to write a short piece on what
the Proclamation of the Irish Republic means to me, I was somewhat taken
aback.* Not being Irish and having spent a greater part of my life living in
the heart of Perfidious Albion, I wondered if I was up to this task and if
by attempting it, would I not be in some way usurping something that is
precious to millions of Irish people and their descendants around the world.
But I quickly placed such thoughts to one side, for this short document is
not just the property of the Irish people. For since it was first proclaimed
by Padraig Pearse, from the steps of Dublin's main Post Office on Monday
24th of April 1916, to mark the beginning of the Easter Rising, it has had
an enormous influence upon freedom loving and oppressed people in almost
every corner of the world.
Coming as it did at approx the half way stage at what was to become known as
World War One, only added to the Proclamation's significance. For that
bloody conflagration which engulfed the whole of Europe and beyond was being
waged over the future spoils of Imperialism; and would leave its filthy skid
marks across the whole of the 20th century. It was a time when the fault
lines of the British Empire were becoming increasingly obvious to all who
toiled under it's yoke. Thus the Proclamation became a spur for National
Liberation Movements the world over, many of whom were then experiencing the
throes of their birth pangs. Few of the founders and foremost leaders of
these Liberation Movements, who were in time to rock both the French and
British Empires to there core and eventually bring about their downfall,
would not have read the Irish Proclamation of Independence.
It was Vladamir Illich Lenin from his Swiss exile who was amongst the first
to articulate the importance of the Easter Rising, when he observed the
events of 1916 and wrote: "The misfortune of the Irish is that they rose
prematurely when the European revolt of the proletariat had not yet matured.
Easter week was not a proletarian revolution. It was a national rising in
which a new factor appeared - the working class was no longer content merely
to provide man-power, but participated as a separate force with its own
organization, leaders and outlook". **
What Lenin means here is the very presence of James Connolly as one of the
Proclamations Signatories; and the amalgamation just prior to the Easter
Rising of the ITGWU's Citizens Army with the Irish Volunteers, which
resulted in the establishment of Óglaigh na hÉireann, was a clear signal
that the Irish working classes were staking their claim to not only
Nationhood, but a major say as to what type of Nation an independent and
free Ireland would become. The fact that the Rising was accompanied by such
an eloquent call to arms which demanded a better life for all, only added to
the Proclamations international impact amongst those Frantz Fanon
sympathetically called the wretched of the earth.
Beyond Irelands shores, it was amongst the dispossessed of the British
Empire, the men and women of no property, where the Easter Rising and the
Proclamation which heralded it was to have the most dramatic impact. The
news of it the events of Easter 1916 spread throughout these distant lands
like red hot volcanic lava. The Proclamations message was also not lost on
the millions of Empire troops then fighting on behalf of the 'mother
country' in the trenches of northern France, the desert's of the middle
east, or along the shore of the Dardanelles. [Galllipoli] For they had been
recruited on the pretence of fighting to defend small nations from the Hun.
But if those who lived as the Irish did in the heart of the Empire, regarded
it as less than a privilege and were prepared to risk all by Rising against
the English Crown, then why should they, who came from the four corners of
the Empire continue to shed their blood, only to return home to live in
poverty and as second class subjects of a far away Monarch.
It is impossible to read the Proclamation without seeing James Connolly's
finger prints all over the document. Connolly understood clearly that the
removal of the British State and its military enforcers from Ireland would
only be the half way stage of the freedom struggle. For an Irish Socialist
Democratic Republic was the end game for the working classes if it was to
achieve freedom with equality. As Connolly knew full well from his work as a
Trade Union activist, there would be Irish men and women from the bourgeois
classes who would be only to willing to step up to take the place of the
English satraps, who had oppressed and exploited the toiling masses of
Ireland for centuries. Connolly understood that if this were not to happen,
the working classes must be independently represented at the Nations top
table; and if necessary in the field, by their own organizations and
leaders. By placing himself and the men and women of the Citizens Army who
he led at the fore of the Rebellion, he was laying down a marker in blood as
to the role of the working classes within any future Irish Republic.***
Like millions of others, when I went to school the history I was taught
revolved around the reigns of English Kings and Queens and the rule of great
men, according to this infantile version of history all historical acts came
about via the Great and Good; and the Irish Proclamation of Independence,
written by a school teacher at a minor Irish school and proof read and
bettered by a working class man, born of Irish blood in an Edinburgh slum
was not something to be taught to working class boys who were destined to be
the pack animals of Capital, it might give them ideas above their station in
life.
But read it I did and to understand the words were written by men who lived
much as I did, in humble circumstances and among their number was a man like
James Connolly, who like millions of working men and women, then and now had
little formal education.**** Was an inspiration and a spur to educate myself
and understand the iniquity of those who felt that they, due to their
economic might, have an absolute right to manipulate and chart the course of
billions of peoples lives; and for no better reason than to enrich and
empower themselves. The Irish Proclamation of Independence also taught me,
along with countless others that once you understand the inequalities of the
world, the point is to change it.
*http://www.eirigi.org/latest/index.htm
**Lenin's Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 22,
1964, pp. 320-360
*** James Connolly on the Irish capitalists, "Therefore the stronger I am in
my affection for national tradition, literature, language, and sympathies,
the more firmly rooted I am in my opposition to that capitalist class which
in its soulless lust for power and gold would bray the nations as in a
mortar". And again, "We are out for Ireland for the Irish. But who are the
Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit
grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute
pressmen - the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom
the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure
foundation upon which a free nation can be reared." Labour in Irish History,
1910.
**** See also, http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/index.htm
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