Jocember 14, 1918 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Ireland and the Peace Conference REAT hopes that Ireland case will be saBy Eadmonn MacAlpine the Irish working class, and even this change will tisfactorily settled at the Peace Conference, ches of such men as William Brien, chairman only result from the action of the Irish people though the actions of President Wilson, are of the Irish Trade Union Congress for 1918, it is themselves. The British Trade Union Congress teing manifested just now by that section of the Irish race in America who were ever loud in their not unreasonable to suppose that the right of at its last session showed a deplorable lack of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland understanding of the Irish question, when it went advocacy of Ireland rights when those rights were in fashion, and when the way to political bourgeois proclamations using somewhat similar means something more then is usually meant by on record as favoring Home Rule for Ireland, clearly proving that it lies with the Irish work preferment lay through love for the Emerald terms.
ers to effect their own salvation, and thui little Isle. Prominent Irish Americans are now bu The Irish Trade Union Congress at its last hope can be entertained from the present irader sily engaged in bringing influence to bear on Washington to the end that America shall chamsession declared for the establishment of a Work ship of the British working class, either by the ers Republic, and it was by means of a general Irish or the British worker.
pion Ireland at the Peace table.
The more prominent these men, the less destrike, demonstrating their economic power, that Irish freedom has long been a burning question, the Irish people resisted the imposition of confinite they are in stating just what would be con scription. The Irish working class twice in the past of the ablest and best of her sons have freely a question towards the settlement of which, some sidered a settlement by the Irish people. The two years has demonstrated its power and in spent their energies and when necessary their vague term self determination is being bandied dications, such as the reception accorded to Maxim lives. Long periods of sullen dispair have result back and forth, as if it were in itself some abra Litvinoff, the ambassador to England of the Rus ed in glorious moments of action and hope, only cadabra that would in some inexplicable manner open the way to Irish freedom. short time ago sian Soviet Republic, during his visit to Dublin, to be again followed by the soul sickening fruits these very men, who are now the adherents of the one that uthe generales weep of revolutionary of failure, but always the light of freedom flick ered and always the call to the struggle was ang.
self determination, were in complete accord with There is no doubt that Ireland has progressed be wered. Every flame of freedom, that from time the late John Redmond when he announced that yond the stage where she is willing to shed the to time has swept the world, lighted the fire in Asquith Home Rale Bill, or as was technically blood of her sons merely to exchange one form. Ireland and the new ideal of freedom the free called the Better Government of Ireland Bill, of tyranny for another, where she will send her dom of the proletariat, the rise of the world would be accepted by the Irish people as a full sons to languish in English jails in order to disinherited, is today spreading throughout the and complete settlement of the Irish question.
Since that time things have changed in Ireland. ernment to the domination of the Martin Murers of the North with their brethern change from the domination of the English gov length and breadth of Ireland, uniting the workthe South.
In Easter Week 1916, the little group of men, phys, the Guinesses, the Barbours, the Harland who for seven days raised the standará of revolt And it is freedom in the new sense that it is in the Irish capital, completely erased Home Rule and Wolfs, and the Burnses of Irish Capitalism. now the goal of the Irish working class; Ireland from the Irish mind and in its place firmly estab bourgeois politics, hopeful that she might relieve demand is not Irish freedom, but freedom, and no her misery by ousting the foreign domination of one can be a genuine friend of the Irish cause It must therefore be taken for granted that England, but within recent years the conviction Even in the days gone by, when the struggle for who is not the friend of freedom everywhere.
a settlement of the Irish question means the est has slowly but surely taken root in the minds of liberty meant liberty in the bourgeois sense, the ablishment of a Republic accepta to the Irish people and that this, and nothing less, is what the Irish people that their miseries were not so these people expect to materialize for Ireland as much the result of domination by England as of liberty were the advocates of freedom wherever a result of the Peace Conference, and is the end to which President Wilson would strive. But Eng: Dublin strike of 1912 13, and the subsequent in Ireland; when most of the world was still England is such an able exponent. The great dom for the workers is no recent innovation in land insists that the question is purely one of dustrial unrest that grew out of that economic thinking of the propertied classes, when it spoke omy to an acknowledged portion of her empire. this conviction, and today the workers of Ireland beneath the surface, saw that Ireland meant the ment, has explicitly stated, within the past few days, that neither the Independence of Ireland the cause of their miseries.
Ireland entrance into the industrial struggle hood knew what they were striving for, and exclass of the Irish people. The Fenian Brothernor the coercion of the north east portion of Ulster into a Home Rule government would be for a facts in the case. She found that the evils that pressed themselves in the following. definite moment considered by England. Nearly every weighed heaviest upon her were not peculiar to minister of the British government has publicly her alone, but were equally shared by the workers To permit a small class, whether alien or nastated that the question of Ireland is one affecting the purely internal affairs of the British Em. land, living under what is presumably their own of the world. She found that the workers of Eng. tive, to obtain a monopoly of the land is an intol erable injustice; its continued enforcement is pire and can in no sense be considered as one of of the hard the problems arising out of the war.
she found that when she took the field against and laborious earnings of the large section of the American press also embraces this view. The Christian Science Moniher economic masters her friends and enemies While John Mitchell showed that he was not tor on December 12, in a news article under the were not determined by territorial or racial lines apart from the ideas that were then pointing the caption Efforts Seen to Confuse Issues at Peace but by the lines of economic interest.
world towards the true path to liberty when he Table, states that friends of the President are Any settlement that might come from the Peace said: Dynasties and thrones are not half so imConference as at present constituted must merely portant as workshops, farms and factories.
somewhat disturbed by certain events, one of which is the effort to enmesh the President in mean an outward change in the form of govern Rather, we may say, that dynasties and thrones, the tangle of the Irish question. Their posiment and not in the system at present oppressing and even provisional governments, are good for tion is that the justice of the Irish cause.
anything exactly in proportion as they secure fair has nothing at all to do with the situation preplay, justice and freedom to those who labor.
sented Whatever be the result of the Peace Conference. The President has, on more than one occasion, whether, as it appears at the moment, Ireland will refused to interfere in the Irish question. He is be ericirely ignored or whether she is given a sop perfectly well aware that any effort on his part in the form of Home Rule, the real settlement of to interfere in matter that is purely internal IN THE the question can only rest with the people therand the business alone of the United Kingdom, selves. Ireland will never have freedom until the would a British effort here to secure better prices be in English people are themselves emancipated, but it is not improbable that the movement for such for wheat for Swedish farmers in Minnesota.
Cor. Dover and Washington Streets, Boston freedom may emanate from Ireland.
This is very plain speaking, and anyone who has taken the pains to study the present situaThe British Labor party is slowly awakening tion can readily see that it is fairly near the realSunday, December 15 to the realities of its position, it is already a probability that the next parliament in England will be ity of the situation. The best that may be exat P.
controlled by the workers and then the futility pected for Ireland as a result of resolutions is of such control will lead to an actual taking over the setting up of some form of Home Rule Govunder the auspices of the of the country by the workers and the establishernment that will give the Irish people the fiction ment of an industrial democracy; and with the of freedom and deny them the reality.
James Connolly Literary Society coming of industrial democracy in England the It is very much open to question whether those now advocating Ireland rights from this side Irish question will be settled.
of the water would find themselves in agreement SPEAKERS: In view of the part the Irish working class has with what the Irish people have in mind when already played in the few years it has been actuthey speak of an Irish Republic. The proclamaally active on the industrial field, it is not extration of the Provisional Government of the Irish vagant to suggest the probability that the move Republic states: We declare the right of the ment to secure economic freedom for the peoples people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and General Secretary of the Irish Transport of the British Empire will start in Ireland.
to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be Workers Union and Labor Candidate Reports reaching here indicate that the Irish sovereign and indefeasible. Taking into consi for Dublin, in the Coming General workers are in no mood to be trifled with, and it deration the writings of James Connolly, one of Election is certain that any concerted movement for ecothe signatories to the proclamation; the fact that nomic and political independence arising in Ire it was signed at Liberty Hall, the Headquarters land will not meet with the fate of Easter Week of the Irish Transport and General Workers 1916, but will have the hearty cooperation of a Union; the fact that the majority of the forces large, and an ever growing, section of the British whose arms supported the proclamation were the working class, with the result that the Irish and men of the Citizen Army, the first class consciADMISSION FREE British workers will walk side by side down freeous army in the world, and the subsequent speedom path.
Mass Meeting Grand Opera House Jim Larkin Eadmonn MacAlpine