What price reform (1958)

From the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a social reform since embodied in legislation became law not because the ruling class or its political representatives were moved by the plight of certain sections of the population, but primarily because advantages accrued to capitalism. Not benevolence but the profit consideration was the motive.

A great deal of evidence is available to substantiate this view, and that it actually accumulates almost daily is evident from what follows. In two days’ issues of the Manchester Guardian were found the following three examples.

One: Speaking of the position of young widows with children and the inadequacy of their Widows' Allowances so that “ they simply had not enough money to live on ” and were being forced to put their children in nurseries and go out to work, Dr. J. C. Heenan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, commented: “It need hardly be said that it costs the country more to maintain nurseries than it would do to give widows adequate allowances.” (March 27th, 1958.)

Two: On the 25th of March the Maintenance Orders Bill was before the House of Commons. Now, this Bill is ostensibly designed to ensure that any man who deserts his wife and has had a Court Order for maintenance made out against him will not be able to bilk payment by simply moving about from place to place. The method by which it is hoped to ensure this is by an attachment of the man’s earnings, a form of P.A.Y.E. The essential point here is not the advantage that there may be for the women, but again the L.S.D. motive. Mr. Renton, Joint Under-Secretary to the Home Office, moving the third reading of the Bill, stated that the Bill dealt with the problem of a woman who could not get maintenance and a man who drifted into prison because he had failed to keep up regular payments more by incompetence than by malice. Continuing, he said: “More than 3,000 prisoners were now sleeping three in a cell. Prisoners are costing us (sic) nearly £6 per week per head and we ought to try and avoid sending thousands of men a year to prison for defaulting payment.” (March 26th, 1958.)

And, three: In 1955 a Committee was appointed by the Minister of Labour to investigate “industrial health.” The Report of this Committee’s first survey was published on the 26th of March, and it was given some prominence by the Manchester Guardian devoting an editorial to it, headed, “ Keeping Well at Work.” Among other things, the editorial informed us that in over one in four of nearly 800 workplaces visited in Halifax (employing some 7,700 people) washing facilities and general cleanliness were considered unsatisfactory. And Halifax was chosen not because its regarded as particularly unhealthy in any way but because it is “a concise industrial town with a fair diversity of industries.” The editorial’s summing-up paragraph is a little masterpiece of simple, lucid Guardian language. “ It is both more profitable and more sensible to spend money on keeping people well than to grant sick leave; and the best work is usually done in the best-kept places.” (March 26th, 1958.)

And there you have the Holiest of all Holy Trinitys— Church, State, and Press—lamenting the plight of young widows, deserted wives, and the working-class in general; yet withal their reforming zeal and burning fervour against injustices never leaving out monetary calculations, but all the time carefully weighing the price of one reform against another.

Chris Walsh

A Letter To An Irish Worker (1947)

From the October 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not far away lies the country where you were born, Ireland—Ireland, geographically, but not politically. Politically, there are two lands—as you know—Eire and Northern Ireland. Ireland as a geographical unit does exist—Ireland as a nation, no.

Unpalatable as this fact may appear to you and the majority of Irishmen and women in this country it remains none the less a fact and to ignore it in any review of the situation in Ireland would be sheer folly, if not deceit. More important still: since it is the position of the working class with which I am concerned it is from that class point of view that I examine Ireland. To express any other point of view but the working class one would not only be detrimental to the real interests of Irish workers both here and in Ireland, but would also be tantamount to a surrendering of my Socialist principles.

At present you are being asked to give your support to a campaign to ”end partition in Ireland.” You are asked, as an Irishman, to "help end the unnatural division of Ireland, to make Ireland, once more, as she was in the past, a free and united nation.” Those organisations that are very much interested in getting your support for their nationalist policies are constantly reminding you of “your glorious heritage,” of ”your proud past, your great Irish nation and your nationality.” However, I would urge you to stop and think, and ask yourself what it’s all about—remember, the hand that heartily slaps you on the back may yet conceal a knife.

Ireland, today, represents a glaring example of the utter futility of supporting nationalist parties, from the workers’ view point. From long before the French Revolution to the Civil War of 1920 Irish men, women and children, have died a hundred-and-one deaths through war, famine and pestilence caused either directly or indirectly by the pursuing of this "pure ideal” of national independence. Of course, one can look back upon it all as ‘‘just history” and murmur about the "inevitability of social development.” However, such an attitude is not enough—to stop there is to close your eyes to what is happening now and what may happen in the future. History follows no preordained, inexorable path—it is men who make history, and men who change the world. And because Irish working men and women still give their allegiance and support to this nationalist ideal of a “free and united Ireland” so are they also prepared to follow in the footsteps of those who went before them and lay down their very lives, in one way or another, for something they believe to be in their interests.

And what has been the result of it all in Ireland? What has been achieved through the misery and the suffering and the death of the countless thousands of unnamed Irish peasants and workers? What concrete and tangible gains have been made by those who always bear the brunt of wars, whether national or international? Shall we assess our gains? Surely it is high time we did.

Now, then, note these data: Eire (26 of the 32 Irish counties) is a Republic, an independent state. It has a population of about 3,000,000, of which number 66 persons are considered wealthy to the extent that they receive an average £27 10s. each per day; the great remainder of the population—the working class—being so poor that their income is below the 1939 cost-of-living figure by over 30 per cent. in the cities and 15 per cent. in the country areas; of the 70-odd-thousand registered unemployed members of this population the unmarried man “exists” on the munificent sum of 22s. 6d. per week. Emigrant ships (you’ve experienced the luxurious comfort of these sea-greyhounds!) have carried on an average a daily cargo of 78 Irish men and women to this and other countries since 1922. Slums, hovels and dilapidated houses that constitute “habitable accommodation” for a great many; all the poverty-diseases, of which tuberculosis causes one-half of all the deaths between the ages of 15 and 25 each year. One hundred and forty politicians who prate about "equality of sacrifice” and, at the same time, increase their salaries from £40 to £52 per month while 140,000 old-age pensioners “exist” on £2 10s. per month. Charitable organisations are as much a part of the Irish scene as are the Mountains of Mourne or the Blarney Stone. (One of these organisations issued its 157th annual report in June. That report stated that in Dublin City—capital of this proud “Irish nation,” Eire—about 8.500 families are trying to live on incomes of between five shillings and £1 per week. It continued, in like vein, to enumerate the many afflictions from which the working people of city, town and village suffer; and for the hundredth-and-fifty-seventh time this unctuous, back-slapping Christian organisation, shedding crocodile-tears, bemoaned the fact that to find large families accommodated in one ramshackle room, damp and miserable, without anything like sufficient food, clothing and bedding is a common experience.)

Well, that’s Eire today after a quarter of a century’s self-government. I think you’ll agree that all the “heroic” national struggles that have been waged in Ireland have—so far as the Irish worker and his family is concerned—achieved absolutely nothing. Today, behind the brave talk of the politicians, behind the backs of the cultured gentlemen of the Gaelic League and the language revivalists, beneath the cloak of nationality and religion, lies the stark reality of the slum, of rampant disease, of poor wages, of high prices, of dole and emigration queues—poverty is the daily companion and bed-fellow of the majority of men and women in Ireland.

Yes—of course—there have been changes, the strategically-important seaports are no longer the legal property of the British Government, the British Governor-General is gone, the tricolour now flutters triumphantly in the breeze over Government House in Merrion Square . . . Changes? Well, of a sort; changes which certainly haven’t changed your wage-slave position in the least—and, surely, that’s the one thing worth changing?

No, nationalism has nothing to offer you—except a change of masters. Whether the Eire Government of De Valera or the Northern Ireland Government of Basil Brooke rules the whole, or only part, of Ireland, whether the flag be the tricolour or the Union Jack, whether partition ends or continues, you, as a worker, will in no wise be any better off. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave yon, be you in Ireland, Britain, America or any other part of the world—you’ll most certainly have to struggle.

But let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth being Ireland, Britain, America or anywhere else, to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave ; struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure.

Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories . . . That will be Socialism—so, speed the day!

Comradely Yours,

Chris Walsh.

Dublin Letter (1949)

From the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is some weeks now since the world heard the result of the General Election in Northern Ireland—though how much the world really cared about that election result, we, of course, can’t say. The election issue, however, was said to be a clear one. "King or Republic?”—that is, maintenance of the constitutional status quo or incorporation in an all-Ireland Republic. For the King and continued union with Gt. Britain, were the ”Ulster Unionists” (Tories); for the Republic, the Nationalists. Uncomfortably straddling the constitutional fence, swaying, now this side, now that, were the Northern Ireland Labour party, and a few “Independents.” Though the result was never in any doubt—the return to power of the Tories—the utter debacle of the Labour party came about as a complete surprise to most people. Not one of their nine candidates were elected, including three fighting to retain their seats in Belfast; all told, the Labour party lost about 35,000 votes. And McCullough, the one Communist party candidate, only got 688 votes as compared with his 5,802 in 1945—in the same constituency, and against the same opponent. Lord Glentoran, one of the foremost Tory leaders.

To Socialists, the ups and downs of the Tory and Nationalist votes are unimpressive by comparison with the disintegration of the “Leftist and Progressive” ones; for these went, overwhelmingly, to the Tory party. Apologists have said that the supporters of the Labour party and the "Leftist” groups were stampeded. into voting Tory because of the jingoism and sabre-rattling of the Orange (Freemason) Lodges and the alleged threat to their Protestantism, etc., of absorption in a Papist-dominated all-Ireland Republic. Be that as it may, what volumes does it not speak for the Socialist attitude on reformism in general and, to Socialists in Ireland, on the "Partition question” in particular? That one-time adherents of the Labour party can be persuaded that a new national flag is a greater threat to their interests than the continuation of the capitalist economic system constitutes, indeed, a pitiful and sad commentary on the efficacy and worthwhileness of that tragically mis-named party, the Labour Party. But then, what are we to say of the lamentable decline of the alleged "revolutionary” vote, the Communist Party one ? Of McCullough’s [3.9] per cent. depleted vote, can we justifiably attribute it to the same cause? We think so, for no other fits the facts.

So, in this respect, the Northern Ireland elections have afforded one more demonstration of the uselessness of reformist votes as a means of effecting any real change in the worker’s position vis-a-vis the capitalist. Such votes are as easily lost in the next election as they are won in this. Though Hitler won quite a proportion of the Communist and Social Democrat parties’ votes, to a large extent by outdoing their promises of "social betterment,” any analogy between that phase of German history and the recent Tory victory in Northern Ireland would be not only misleading but involve the paying of false compliments to the Labour and "Leftist” parties. For the truth is that Sir Basil Brooke (Tory leader) and his party were under no great pressure to defend existing social and economic conditions in Northern Ireland. When, now and then, they did do so, it was only by way of superficial comparison with Eire, saying: "Look how worse off you’d be in an Irish Republic!” But that all they had to do, for the most part, was to wave the Orange flag and beat the Orange drum, is due to the pusillanimity of the Labour party and others, and their inability, because of their capitalist-reformist base, to point the way out to the Northern Ireland workers.

That the workers there, no less than their fellows down here in Eire, and elsewhere under capitalism, are “getting it in the neck ” all of the time, is ably borne out by an examination of the available social and economic statistics. With a population of 1,330,000, Northern Ireland has, at present, 37,000 men and women on the Unemployment Register. And this unemployment figure is not only proportionately higher than Britain’s—it was two-and-a-half times the British rate in 1947—but higher even than Eire’s, with 83,766 unemployed. This very large and ugly social blot on Northern Ireland is not of recent occurrence either. Except for the war periods, unemployment has always hovered round the 20,000 mark, and in more recent years, between 25,000 and 35,000. As a matter of fact, in March, 1947, it actually reached the 45,000 figure.

Working class housing and health conditions are, in general, no better than they are here in Eire—and that comparison is, indeed, an odious one. The number of houses officially estimated as unfit for habitation in Northern Ireland is 27,000. In Belfast itself (the Northern Ireland capital), where there were over 17,000 applications for houses by January, 1948, the Corporation and Housing Trust had between them built only 322! A survey recently undertaken by the Northern Ireland Council of Social Service (a semi-official body) revealed appalling conditions existing in this area of the "King’s Dominions.” Those conditions are all too graphically detailed in the work embodying the Council’s findings, "Rural Life in Northern Ireland ” (Oxford University Press, 1947).

For instance, taking the Beveridge Report subsistence benefit (and that low enough by any standards) as “ the poverty line,” the Council found that in County Fermanagh, twelve labourers’ households out of twenty-nine fell below this line, as well as nineteen pensioners’ households out of twenty-nine. And in Co. Down, likewise; while in Nth. Antrim, fifty per cent. of the farm labourers exist below this "minimum required to maintain health.” As to housing; not a single labourer’s cottage has been built by any Rural Council in Co. Fermanagh since Northern Ireland became a separate State (1921)! Much the same story is told of the other five counties. Even in Nth. Down, which is claimed to be the "most advanced” area because of its proximity to Belfast, only six per cent. of the houses have a W.C.! Also—and not far from Stormont either, where the "King’s men” legislate in the interests of the linen, brewing and shipbuilding industrialists and big farmers, and rave about the ‘‘prosperity of Ulster and the poverty of Eire”—in Belfast, according to the Council, the main causes of distress in that city were tuberculosis and the housing shortage.

But enough has been said already to show that there are working-class problems in Northern Ireland apart from the capitalist constitutional ones. The solution of these problems, because they are specifically working-class ones, is not to be found in formulae concerned with national boundaries. Neither Statute of Westminster nor Republican Declaration can offer a solution of them. The division which gave birth to these problems—the division of the wealth of the few and the poverty of the many—is, needless to say, conveniently ignored by all of the current publicity devoted to that sorrowing tale, "Divided Ireland.” Even a King and a Republic (and that’s not a piece of Irishry, for through the External Relations Act that was the situation in Eire from 1937 to 1949) holds no hope of the ending of that division. And that Partition is one which will remain until a majority of the workers decide to end the capitalist system—complete with all its Republican and Monarchical paraphernalia—and establish Socialism.

Chris Walsh

(Dublin Socialist Group).

50 Years Ago: A Letter To An Irish Worker (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

I think you’ll agree that all the “heroic” national struggles that have been waged in Ireland have—so far as the Irish worker and his family is concerned—achieved absolutely nothing. Today, behind the brave talk of the politicians, behind the backs of the cultured gentlemen of the Gaelic League and the language revivalists, beneath the cloak of nationality and religion, lies the stark reality of the slum, of rampant disease, of poor wages, of high prices, of dole and emigration queues— poverty is the daily companion and bed-fellow of the majority of men and women in Ireland.

Yes—of course—there have been changes, that strategically-important seaports are no longer the legal property of the British Government, the British Governor-General is gone, the tricolour now flutters triumphantly in the breeze over Government House in Merrion Square . . . Changes? Well, of a sort; changes which certainly haven’t changed your wage-slave position in the least—and, surely, that’s the one thing worth changing?

No, nationalism has nothing to off you—except a change of masters. Whether the Eire Government of De Valera or the Northern Ireland Government of Basil Brooke rules the whole, or only part, of Ireland, whether the flag be the tricolour or the Union Jack, whether partition ends or continues, you, as a worker, will in no wise be any better off.

(From an article by Chris Walsh, Socialist Standard, October 1947)

Trip to Ireland April 4-11th (1959)

Party News from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is a short report of the activities in Ireland and matters which arose during my visit.

We travelled from Belfast to Dublin on the Saturday evening after I arrived, and a get-together had been arranged at the home of Comrade Chris Walsh, who had travelled to Dublin for the occasion.

On Sunday the Conference was held in the Boilermakers’ Hall. This was the first Conference to take place in the Socialist Party of Ireland, and its chief aim was to set the Party on its feet as a national organisation. Until now there has been little contact between the Dublin and Belfast Branches, and they have been virtually two separate organisations.

The Conference appointed an Executive Committee, which will meet alternatively in Dublin and Belfast on the first Sunday of each Quarter. Its members are Comrades Montague and Devine, of Belfast, Comrades McBrain and Adams, Dublin, and Comrade Hackett of Armagh, where there is a sturdy group which probably will soon become a Branch. Montague was appointed General Secretary and Adams, Party Treasurer; one of the E.C.s first tasks will be to go into the question of dues, Central Funds, and Party Finances generally.

The Conference also adopted The Socialist, which hitherto has been produced entirely on the initiative (and at the expense) of two Belfast Members, as the official organ of the S.P. of I. It will still be produced in Belfast, but will now be under the control of the Executive Committee. A Central Branch Secretary was appointed (Comrade Tennyson) who will keep contact with outlying members. The other proposal before the Conference, that the name “World Socialist Party” should be adopted, was turned down.

Five members from Dublin, five from Belfast, Comrade Walsh and myself from England, Comrade Earp from Canada and a sympathiser were present at the Conference. There was some disappointment that the tape recordings of greetings could not, be available for the Conference, and also that I had not been appointed officially as a fraternal delegate by the E.C.

In the evening a propaganda meeting was held in the same hall, and there was a “full house” for this. Collections at the Conference and the meeting totalled nearly £8 and wipe out the deficit in Dublin's funds.

We returned to Belfast on Monday morning, and public meetings were held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The Tuesday one was on Socialism and Religion, a rather daring subject in Ireland, but the audience was appreciative throughout. At the Wednesday meeting a group of Communists made weak attempts at opposition but did accept a challenge to debate, and if this materialises it should be an excellent thing for the Belfast Branch. On Thursday we travelled to Armagh and held another successful indoor meeting; I was told before I left that on the following day the Armagh members had many callers asking for Party literature.

There was no meeting on the last night. Friday, but on this night and all the others, members gathered together to discuss and ask question after question. I left with the impression that the Socialist Party of Ireland is really on its feet for the first time, and the prospects are good. At the same time they need help in various directions.

Robert Barltrop

A Letter From Ireland (1949)

From the January 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our "Friend from Across the Water” (as the Otoe, Indian tribe of "native Americans" rechristened Eamon De Valera, during his recent tour of the U.S.) has indeed been at all times only too anxious to prove himself a “friend in need, a friend indeed” for the industrial-capitalist class of Eire. And now he’s off again, campaigning against the Partition of Ireland, but still in the service of his same old masters. This man who, as you well know, is boosted as the indefatigable opponent of everything anti-Republican in Ireland; this man who resolutely stood out against the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty in 1921 and, when all else failed, took “arms against a sea of troubles” ; this man who tenaciously stuck to his guns and his Republican principles—this man is actually non-existent, he’s a figment of the imagination.

Wasn’t it “Dev." who declared fearlessly at Newry, "north of the border,’’ in 1918, that he was “ready to blast the North out of his path”? And, again, in 1919, to an American newspaper correspondent:

“If the Paris Conference fails to take steps to extend self-determination to Ireland, violence will he the only alternative left to Irish patriots. This will mean something like continued revolution until Ireland’s rights are recognised.” (Times, London, March 13th, 1919.)

"Fighting words," you say? Perhaps. Though let me remind you that those were “fighting days.” However, let’s skip, for the moment, all that happened afterwards and come to the year 1946. In that year, in our parliament, “An Dail,” a certain man made a speech. Among other things, he said:

“The Border can only be done away with when the majority in the North decide of their own free will to come in and join us, without any coercion or compulsion whatever, and if any coercion or compulsion was used to bring them in I would he the first to oppose it.”

Yes, it was—" Dev.” When you’re in, you’re in; when you’re out, it’s another story. See? And now that “Dev’s.” out he’s been telling another story—the Newry story. To an audience in Chicago during his recent American tour, he said:

“If we get assistance the day will not be far off when we will have not twenty-six counties (Eire) but thirty-two.” (Press, March 21st, 1948.)

Now I ask you—can you beat it?

For sixteen years, remember, he wielded the power of a continental political dictator—he commanded the whole forces of the Irish State—and for sixteen years this great man, who was destined (“they’’ said) to fulfill the "1916 dream" of Irish Republicans, sat on his backside and lifted not a finger to bring any nearer that “glorious day.” What a man ! And what a game !

And now, in Britain, no less than the U.S. and Ireland, he’s once more donned the cloak of the Irish Republican Moses, and is rearing to storm the Stormont citadel in the North and lead his people to the wonderful Promised Land, “the Republic.” However, the above statements surely show, if nothing else, the utter disregard of principles which characterises this much-inflated personality, Eamon De Valera.

“For the Irish Republic! For national independence!”—remember the inspiring phrases which so intoxicated the Irish working man and woman? In the meantime, though, De Valera and his crowd were getting on with the real, down-to-earth job of attempting to establish the supremacy of the Irish manufacturers and industrialists. That was their goal.

Yes, history does record that De Valera was indeed the leader of the anti-Treatyites when the so-called split took place in the Irish Republican movement (Sinn Fein) over the signing of the Treaty in ’21. But did this division arise over some fundamental difference between those for and against that Treaty? Did it divide those involved into “for the Republic” and “against it”? And was there, from now on, an impassable gulf between these two sections? To all three questions the answer is a very simple “no”! The split over the Treaty was, in fact, no more than a fake split It didn't occur because the terms of that Treaty were such as to make manifest two irreconcilable principles within Sinn Fein. All that took place then was merely a disagreement between two sections of one negotiating side over the terms of the bargain struck, but, as a matter of fact, neither of these two sections were opposed to the conclusion of such a Treaty. Both accepted the basic conditions laid down by Lloyd George for the British Government.

From the official correspondence between the British Government, and Sinn Fein which preceded the actual Treaty conference of 1921 (published by the British Government, Command Paper 1470, 1921), I quote the following:

September 12, 1921. De Valera to Lloyd George: declaring Sinn Fein’s willingness “to enter a conference to ascertain how the association of Ireland with the community of nations known as the British Empire can best be reconciled with Irish national aspirations.”

(“Reconciled,” mark you! The Republican virgin was going to lie down with the Imperialist profligate . . Kathleen ni Houlihan!)

September, 29,1921. Lloyd George to De Valera: ‘‘There is no purpose to be served by any further interchange of explanatory and argumentative communications upon the subject. The position taken up by H.M. Government is fundamental to the existence of the British Empire, and they cannot alter it.”
September 30, 1921. De Valera accepts : "Our respective positions have been stated and are understood. . .”

So much for the alleged Republicanism of De Valera. But the whole tragedy was that this fiction was a not unimportant contributory cause of the Civil War which followed the signing of the Treaty. For the best part of that following two years, brother slayed brother. You well know all that. And what did these men and women—the men and women who did the fighting—get out of it? But need I ask you that? You know they got nothing. Why, even the victors got little more than the vanquished: a pittance and some medals. They weren’t invited to the “Irish Free State banquet” which followed, although it was they who provided all the good things that were spread on the table. That historic banquet is now celebrated annually by a few, at functions known as “annual company meetings.” But those who were once the soldiers at the front are now no more than the wage slaves in the rear. Some of these soldiers, as you may be aware, are lying in the re-named Dublin Workhouse, St. Kevins, as I write, and—perhaps—are fondling their medals and certificates of ‘‘I was there.”

After the Civil War, Fianna Fail was formed, in 1926, with “Dev.” at its head. Yes, he forgave and forgot, accepted and recognised the Government that derived its legitimate authority from the 1921 Treaty, and prepared to battle for political power. During the years that preceded his 1932 victory he and his party were always ready and willing to barter, to sell their support and the votes they commanded for a share in the governing and administering of the new, up-and-coming Irish capitalist exploitation of the Irish people. And they were not loath to offer their allegiance to their “bitterest enemies” either, the so-called pro-Treatyites. Shortly before the 1927 elections, when the leader of the “pro-Treaty Government” in power then; Cosgrave, declared: “I am prepared to forgive and forget,” Sean Lemass, for “Dev’s ” party, replied:

“We are prepared to forgive . . .  If he wants a political truce with Fianna Fail he can have it tomorrow.” (The Republic, September 17th, 1927.) 

See how they trick you!

The wide gulf that separated the “friends of the Republic” from the “enemies of the Republic” wasn’t so very wide after all. In point of fact, it just didn’t exist. It was as imaginary .as “Dev’s” compact morroco-bound, Oxford dictionary, Republic or his own “100 per cent. Republicanism.” One side was as wide awake as the other on the desirability, and resulting advantages, of building-up a native capitalism. That is the plain fact. They merely differed as to the means to employ to achieve that end. In such conflicts the workers have nothing at stake. The interest of the worker is to dispense with his chains, not fight over who shall rivet them.

Today, Irish working men and women are in the same old boat. Yes, the old tramp, the coffin-ship of millions, capitalism; the only difference being that now, in Ireland, there’s a Republican master at the helm. But wage-slavery for the majority continues—now, in the Republic, as much as before it. De Valera or Costello—either name spells capitalism and exploitation of the mass of the Irish people!

Let me quote once more. From an old article on the Sinn Fein movement in the Socialist Standard:

“What part can the Irish workers, devoid of capital, take in the Industrial Revival except the toiling part? All those revivals are useless to the worker until he owns the product of his toil, then he will be able to enjoy to the full all the advantages to be obtained. So long as private property is the order of the day it matters little to the property less Irish worker (the vast mass of the Irish population) who rules Ireland.” (June, 1917.) 

It’s a far cry from 1948 to 1917 but the foregoing is every bit as applicable now as it was then.

And now “Dev.” and Costello, and the other “great Irish leaders,” are hitting the headlines with speeches railing against Partition in Ireland. Well, in conclusion, let me say that we Socialists in Ireland equally desire, and ceaselessly work for, the ending of Partition, also—but we never get any headlines in the Press. Oh, no; for the Partition we speak against is not a geographical one but an economic one. The Partition we oppose is that between the rich and poor, between the capitalist class and the working class. That is the Partition, a universal one, which Socialists everywhere seek to abolish, and that I suggest, is the only Partition which you, and all other workers, ought to concentrate on and bend all your efforts towards removing.

National boundaries may be altered—may even disappear—but such re-arrangements of things geographical can in no way abolish, or even lessen, the poverty of the many. The solution to that problem will not be found by struggling for Empires or Republics (whether of the 26- or 32-County variety), but by striving for the World Socialist Commonwealth.

So—Yours for Socialism,

CHRIS. WALSH.

(Dublin Socialist Group.)