Six days of the Irish Republic: A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish PoliticsRedmond-Howard, L. G., (Louis George)
History
Six days of the Irish Republic: A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics
Redmond-Howard, L. G., (Louis George)
Ireland -- History -- Easter Rising, 1916
This seems certainly to have a touch of truth, for if ever any body of
men resembled the unfortunate victims of rural landlords it was these
wretched victims of the tenement slums, the denunciation of which seemed
to have no part in the official Parliamentary programme, so much so as
to compel Labour to create its own party and evolve its own leader,
which it had accordingly done in the person of Jim Larkin.
Now, if anyone wishes to judge James Connolly they should not look at
the soldier for a week; they must examine the life-long student of
economics and read his "History of Labour in Irish History" and his
"Reconquest of Ireland," for it is here we have the revolution in its
cause, which was just as much economic as political.
It is the custom to speak of the Larkinites with scant respect, as if
they were the mad, blind multitude of the "have nots" in perpetual prey
upon the "haves"; but it is quite a false idea, for they have in their
movement some of those who count socially and intellectually.
Thus, for example, the training of the Citizens' Army was almost
entirely carried out by Captain J. R. White, D.S.O., son of the late
Field-Marshal Sir George White, whose "Labour" ideas got him three
months' imprisonment only a few weeks ago.
As to the attitude of the average Dublin merchant towards the new labour
party that is arising, I know of no finer apology for Larkin than the
brilliant letter of "AE." to the _Irish Times_ in the days of the great
strike, when he addressed the "masters of the city."
In it he warned them--the aristocracy of industry--because like all
aristocracies they tended to grow blind in long authority, and to be
unaware that they and their class and their every action were being
considered and judged day by day by those who had the power to shake or
overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty was
making our industrial civilization stir like a quaking bog. He reminded
them that their assumption that they were answerable to themselves alone
for their actions in the industries they controlled was becoming less
and less tolerable, in a world so crowded with necessitous life; but
what he chiefly held them responsible for was their incompetence as
commercial men, because, with the cheapest market in the world at their
command, they could never invite the confidence of investors.
What was even worse than their business incompetence, however, was,
according to "AE.," their bad citizenship, for had they not allowed the
poor to be herded together so that one could only think of certain
places in Dublin as of a pestilence?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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