cause of labor is the cause of Ireland.
Over the years, the seperation of these two historic struggles has led to our inability to win our freedom.
Although the 1916 uprising failed and was brutally suppressed, its suppression had a completely different effect that the British government expected. In this regard it was similar to the results of the brutal manner in the allowed Sands and his comrades to starve to death in prison.
The deaths of the few of 1916 inspired the many. And by 1918 the movement for home rule and independence became a mass national movement in Ireland. was a general election throughout all 32 counties of Ireland.
In the 1918 elections Sinn Fein gọt 85.13 per cent of all the votes cast in Ireland. More than 85 percent of the population peacefully, ly, and by the ballot box, Ireland's independence. portant to keep in mind when we hear of the violence that came later.
How did the British government respond to Sinn Fein's victory? Britain declared immediated war on the rebel parliament and the Irish people. Gunboats sailed up the River Liffey to the capital city of Dublin and blew up the building in which the parliament was meeting.
Every member of that parliament that Britain could get her hands on was arrested and sent to jail England.
A war of independence began in 1918. On December 6, 1921, a treaty to end hostilities was signed in London by the prime minister of England and Michael Collins on behalf of the Irish Republican Army.
Under its provisions a 'Free State' within the was to be established in Ireland's counties. And although the loyalist population wanted to remain under British rule - was less than per percent of the total and was concentrated in only Ireland, six counties in the north would remain an integral part of Britain's empire.
The treaty's concessions to the British caused a civil war in Ireland which lasted until 1923.
I live in that part of Ireland that Socialist Challenge 10 December 1982 democratica -voted for This is imsent the Catholic population population.
the overwhelming Irish people ABse since then, grandparents down parents to myself and my in to live under threats of greater violence.
you don't like it. become homeless.
Commonwealth of those who the aw equality equality in housing.
northeastern introduced socialised housing, education improving their situation. Britain retained. The people I repre- and although this is not a religious struggle, historically we are - make up nearly 40 per cent of the northern Our forefathers - together with majority - voted themselves out of the British empire in 1918. At no my greatmy grand children have we ever conceded the legality of the existence of the state we are forced through violence and We were given exactly the same choice as the people of Palestine: if move out and But our people stayed where they were and became violent. the second-class citizens of Northern We were denied equality before the system, equality in employment, and It was not until 1947 - when a Labour Party government in Britain socialised medicine, and that the Catholics of Northern Ireland had any choice of In 1968 I was 19 years old. I was not a revolutionary or a socialist then. I was not even a militant. I was a young Catholic student who simply wanted equality before the law and equality within the system What made me a revolutionary and an international socialist practical experience. I saw what happens to people who ask for little. They get less! I saw that when people refuse to lie down and be walked over, they get kicked down. And when they have been kicked down but get up again, they are put in prison. When they find a way under the law to organise legally, the authorities change the law.
When people claim they support our struggle in Northern Ireland because it is violent, they must remember that it is that way because of those who own and control society, not because we have chosen to make it Thirteen years ago, in 1968, took to the streets peacefully to demand that every person over the age of 18 have the right to vote in every election in the country.
demanded an end discrimination in employment on the basis of politics, race and religion.
These were hardly revolutionary demands to raise in Western Europe in 1968!
In response to these democratic demands, the British jailed thousands of our people without trial. At 4 am on 9 August 1971, the British army swept through Northern and taking away the male members of our families to be interned in British concentration camps, was were held for years without trial.
In 1969, march from Belfast to Derry, a city that was Northern Ireland's prize exhibit of discrimination Catholics. We modeled that march on the civil rights from Selma to Montgomery.
Along the way we were attacked by loyalist thugs cannot uniformed and paid law-enforcement officers of the state. 85 marchers required hospitalisation. kids, including me, got up, gathered our injured, and marched on.
But that was the last time we turned the other cheek. We reckoned that we only had two cheeks, and we had turned them both. Never again would our people walk and be beaten to the ground and simply say 'that's OK, I'I keep on walking to In August 1969 in the Bogside area of Derry we fought back against the police attacks for three days and three most nights.
petrol bombs, which we had also seen on television, against police guns and simple LCarLOs.
In that same month, a loyalist mob systematically burned down the Bombay Street area of Belfast in a breaking down our doors SUIC Calle we staged a peaceful Alabama who were the And those IRA As people We fought with stones and the many. pogrom against the Catholic people There too the forces of law and order' led the attack. In that situation a very few people with a very few guns defend the neighbourhood and opened fire on the advancing loyalist force.
That was where the present phase of armed struggle began. It was not organised by diehard terrorists. general you find the diehard terrorists positions government America of Western Europe These were young people acting to protect their community. The present IRA was born out of fear of pogroms. And out of fear it could happen again the people continue to support the La socialist, I recognise that even fighting another 800 years the IRA will never be able to militarily defeat the might of the British army, no matter how many guns trickle in from here and there. They cannot militarily win freedom for the Irish I believe that because of the history of my own and every other country proves that freedom cannot be won by the few and handed over to If you look at your own tradeunion experiences, you see that the might, strength, and solidarity of the trade unions has won through the blood, sweat and tears of the masses
of working people. That is the only way anything is won.
People are only free when take freedom for themselves. must be armed with the ability to educate, to agitate, and to organise themselves to understand that their oppression is not something that just hits them understand that what oppresses me is also what oppresses him and what opPresses you.
Oppression, discrimination, and occur ultimately to fight them we must fight them on a worldwide basis.
That is also why many of us come to look to you in America. We don't look to Ronald Reagan. We try to take our case to those who form the backbone of American society people who make America work, its working people.
the people with the most strength are those American workers who are organised through trade unions. There is no power on this earth greater than the democratic majority of the people organised through their own organisations.
We are fighting to change an irrational system that has barbaric priorities. Margaret Thatcher's COVCHICH which allowed hunger strikers to die, is now locked in a battle against people very much like you the health service and public employee unions in Britain.
For a year these workers have been fighting for a 12 per cent wage increase, wate government refuses to give them more than 4 per cent. Virtually everyone in the contry supports 12 per cent for the healthcare workers. They are supported by une ranway workers, te miners, patients who have come out hospitals to march with the healthcare workers.
But the British government said: You're not getting the money. We don't have any money!' And in the middle of that dispute, somebody placed a wee tiny Argentine flag on wee tiny somewhere in the South Atlantic. All of a sudden money was no object! Every bathtub that could float was being refitted for war. Bands set to relearn to play "Rule Brittania'.
And in defence of this kind of these barbaric priorities, the SYSLCHE British have filled their prisons with our young men and women. Ten of the finest young men that our or any they country ever produced died slowly in They defence of human dignity in last year's hunger strike.
Can you imagine 74 days hunger strike? Can you imagine how many seconds there are in 74 days, and how many times you make the ing to give up?
And authorities have taken away the right to trial by jury in Northern Ireland. They have shifted the onus of proof from the prosecution to the defence. They have taken away the defendant's right to know the identity of cross-examine the Only last week they took away the - Ei right of defendants to be presented with the evidence against them!
Britain has a problem. Britain's problem is that we will not meekly submit to continued British rule over our country.
We do not accept the argument that you should forget past injustices and start afresh trom where We maintain that where we are now is the direct historical consequence of the injustices of yesterday. If there is to be peace in the world, those historical injustices must be redressed.
We too have a problem - how to end British rule in our country and how to start building in Ireland a society fit for human beings to live in.
the island flag and a new anthem.
did, nothing would change for the oron dinary man and woman in the street.
has an equal chance to be all that he or she can or may want to be.
people do not go hungry because it is more profitable to close down fac tories than to produce what people need.
heads. Ridiculous as it may seem, while we have the worst housing conCOUSCE also have the highest percentage of unemployed construction workers.
society, change system.
Ireland they tell us that the building workers cannot build the houses we need because it is not profitable for the contractors, the big construction We are companies, to build housing.
tors don't want to build the houses people need fitable enough, we can get them jobs as construcuon workers. tionalise the build the houses ourselves. Isn't that reasonable?
education and for hospitals, but the We don't just want to stick one land mass onto another and get a new James connolly taught us that if that's all we We want to build a different kind way to of society, one in which every child socially dangerous.
your money, We want to build a society where We want to build a society where people have a decent roof over their ditions in all of Western Europe, we least Africa want to build a reasonable but to do that we have to Northern Western I say, fair enough! If the contracbecause it's not proWe'll nabuilding industry and When we say we need money for bankers won't give it to us because they make more money financing the war in the Falklands or investing in South Africa, or building nuclear weapons to blow everyone to blazes, we say that's a totally irresponsible Fact. It's irresponsible and I happen to think that if you use made off my work, to build nuclear weapons, that is socially irresponsible and your money should be taken away from you.
The kind of society I want to build is eminently reasonable and sensible. That's precisely why the British and American governments are terrified of our struggle. They fear our example It's bad enough when people in Black Africa begin to talk like that. But a aWay America. And in the Third World, America can still wield power because it has more money than anyone else and can, in Henry Kissinger's words, use hunger as a political commodity But we are right in the middle of Europe and our example could spread into areas where the people are strong and unionised.
Moreover, when I speak or someone else comes to this country to speak to you, and you begin to examine what's happening in Ireland and are moved to do something about it, then you also start seeing your own society slightly differently.
When you see injustice in Ireland and try to redress it, you begin to look want just a bit differently on Nicaragua and Cuba and all the places in Latin America that you are told are trying to sneak up on here and paint you al red in the middle of the night while you're not looking.
You begin to wonder if that's no all nonsense. You begin to question all the rubbish that is spewed out or television, in the press, and in election literature. You begin to see that it has no validity.
And •VOL might actually begin changing the policies of America.
Someday in this country a broad American movement will come that is just IrishAmericans for freedom in Ireland, o Americans for freedom Africa, or Chicanos or Puerto Ricans in defence of their homelands.
There's going to be an Americar movement for peace, freedom and justice at home and throughout the world. And do you know what wil happen then? There'll be no Ronal Reagans winning elections.
We in Ireland will fight on with or without international support. will fight on with whatever means are at our disposal to empty our jails, to save our children from their bullets.
We will fight on until we win. It may not be in my personal lifetime because I don't know how long I will be permitted to live, but in the lifetime of my generation there will be a unite But that alone is not enough. I united socialist workers republic of Ireland because no one will look to the interests of the working people of Ireland but the workers themselves. Unless working people run society themselves, we will all have fought and died for little more than change of flag and a change of anthem.
There is a better day coming in and America well. Whether we move together as a common movement, or whether we move first and you move later, a new movement will arise in the United States too. This country is a melting pot of ethnic groups that arrived here fleeing poverty and oppression. Many have links to their struggling people a The complete speech is available in the US socialist weekly The Militant, 3 Dec 1982, available from 14 Charles Lane, New York, NY 10014, USA.
Socialist Challenge 10 December 1982