As a dedicated socialist and labor leader as well as a republican, Connolly differed considerably from many nationalists on an ideological level, but at the same time he inspired some of the more progressive elements within the republican movement to consider social issues alongside national ones, and with his overt political agitation, provoked the nationalists beyond theory and towards concrete action. Although Connolly was not in charge of the rebellion against England, he shared in its ideological and military leadership, and his contribution prompted Patrick Pearse to write that Connolly was "the guiding brain of our resistance."1 Due to Connolly's role, both republicans and the labor movement (including the Irish Labour Party, the Irish Trade Unions Congress and the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union) had equally compelling claims to Connolly's political legacy, and therefore were equally poised to take political advantage of an increasingly radical working class.

The Rising offered political success to any party that was able to rally the workers behind its ideals. Sinn Féin was the one to seize the initiative, and shifted the focus of the working class towards national issues and away from a class analysis. As a result, socialist rhetoric was purged from post-Rising discourse and the labor movement became marginalized in Irish politics. Ultimately, Sinn Féin claimed Connolly's ideological inheritance without challenge, and immediately and intentionally worked to defuse the more dangerous aspects of his life's work.

CONNOLLY AND GRIFFITH

In order to understand how the focus of the working class shifted from social issues to national ones, it is important first to define James Connolly's politics in relation to those of Sinn Féin and its founder, Arthur Griffith.

Throughout his political career Connolly strove to harness the energy of Irish nationalism and channel it into a larger class struggle that would simultaneously challenge British imperialism and create a Workers' Republic. Following a Marxist analysis, Connolly believed that Ireland would never achieve true freedom until there was a complete social revolution by and for the working class, and political separation from Britain therefore was only one of his ultimate goals. He understood that a united Irish working class would find the strength to fight both political and economic oppression, and that true freedom for the Irish people could only come after an end to British imperialism and capitalist domination. Without a socialist analysis, Connolly accepted that the national struggle would be unable to create a substantially different nation for the Irish people or address issues of inequality and sectarianism. Under capitalism, an Irish oppressor was no different from a British one.

Connolly's Marxist vision for Ireland's freedom brought him into direct conflict with Irish nationalists with more conservative and bourgeois intentions. Many nationalists saw Irish freedom as a stepping stone to native Irish capitalist development and expansion - in other words, precisely what Connolly opposed. Specifically, the republican party known as Sinn Féin was unquestionably bourgeois in nature. One of its primary founders, Arthur Griffith, was a staunch capitalist, and upon its founding in 1905 Sinn Féin immediately courted Irish businessmen and encouraged capitalist development and the assistance of American millionaires to invest in the country. An early pamphlet, The Sinn Féin Policy, called for industrial development and for County Councils to invite Irish-American millionaires to invest in Irish industry. Perhaps the party was radical compared to Home Rulers, but its social program as well as its underlying constitutionalism was conservative to the bone, and in fact historian Pat Walsh claims that "Sinn Féin's radicalism lay entirely in its abstentionist policy."2

Not surprisingly, Griffith saw socialists as a menace to his goals, believing that "the red flag of English socialism" needed to be overcome through the use of nationalism. As Griffith explained in 1911, "Imperialism and socialism - forms of the cosmopolitan heresy and in essence one - have offered man the material world. Nationalism has offered him a free soul."3 Ultimately Griffith could not accept that socialism could have a role in the struggle, and promoted a nationalist campaign that disregarded class interests. In September 1899 Griffith attacked socialists in the pages of the United Irishman, in 1908 the journal Sinn Féin openly denounced an Irish carters' strike, and in 1913 he was against the workers in the Dublin Lockout, making the comment that he would like to see them all bayoneted. As he said in 1913, "The man who declared he wanted National freedom in order to promote social reform did not understand the meaning of the nation."4 Although these words were not directed at Connolly, the meaning was obvious. Griffith wanted Irish freedom as a means to improve economic conditions in Ireland - to make Ireland self-sufficient (hence the English translation of the name of the party: "Ourselves Alone"), not as a way to improve the lives of ordinary Irish people.

Although Connolly saw wisdom in the idea of socialists working side by side with nationalists, he did not see an advantage to an all-class struggle against England that Griffith promoted. Connolly knew that each class had distinct and competing interests, and in an all-class alliance the bourgeoisie would require constant reassurance. As Connolly illustrated in 1897,

...You can only disarm [bourgeois] hostility by assuring them that in a free Ireland their 'privileges' will not be interfered with....You must guarantee that when Ireland is free of foreign domination, the green-coated Irish soldiers will guard the fraudulent gains of capitalist and landlord from 'the thin hands of the poor' just as remorselessly and just as effectually as the scarlet-coated emissaries of England do today.

On no other basis will the classes unite with you. Do you expect the masses to fight for this ideal? 5

In his early contact with Sinn Féin, Connolly thought there was hope for Griffith and his supporters. Since Connolly believed that nationalist aspirations could not co-exist with capitalist objectives for any length of time, he expected that Sinn Féin's nationalism would cause the party to ultimately embrace socialism. By the end of 1909, when reactionary forces at work within the party caused Sinn Féin to slip into political decline against increasing working-class militancy, Connolly revised his opinion of Sinn Féin and denounced their bourgeois intentions in the Irish Nation:

...when the Sinn Feiner speaks to men who are fighting against low wages and tells them that the Sinn Fein body has promised lots of Irish labour at low wages to any foreign capitalist who wishes to establish in Ireland, what wonder if they come to believe that a change from Toryism to Sinn Feinism would simply be a change from the devil they do know to the devil they do not know! 6

CONNOLLY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO EASTER WEEK

Despite his frustrations with Sinn Féin, Connolly would soon join forces with more progressive elements within Irish nationalism. He had learned with dismay in 1914 that many socialists supported the British war effort against Germany, and indeed very few socialists in any country spoke out against the war, or would consider exploiting England's subsequent weakness to the benefit of the working class. As Connolly explained, "With the honorable exceptions of the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Labour Party, the organised and unorganised Labour advocates of Peace in Great Britain swallowed the bait and are now beating the war drums and hounding their brothers on to the butchery of their German comrades - and hounding them on with the cant of fraternity on their lips." 8 Nationalists also tended to be conservative when it came to the war, and Home Ruler John Redmond was able to rally thousands of the Volunteers to join the war effort. By 1916 there were 265,600 Irish serving British military interests at home and abroad.

Soon after the outbreak of war, in the face of British repression and nationalist rhetoric, Connolly openly preached insurrection in meetings and in the pages of his various publications. He hoped to turn the Irish people against England; but such a strategy was as much to bring about Irish freedom as to serve as inspiration to other socialists in Europe. During times of peace and war alike, Connolly believed that "... it is the duty of the working class in self-protection to organize its own force to resist the force of the master class," and with Ireland as an example, other countries might follow suit. 9 Connolly continued to recruit for and train the Irish Citizen Army, the militia that initially had served as an armed force to protect the workers in Dublin during the Lockout, and he tried to push the Irish Volunteers, who had been openly drilling throughout Ireland, into taking action. At a Dublin meeting held on 30 August 1914 to commemorate workers who had been killed in the Dublin Lockout, Connolly said: "Revolutions do not start with rifles; start first and get your rifles after. Our curse is our belief in our weakness. We are not weak, we are strong. Make up your mind to strike before your opportunity goes." 10

The Irish Volunteers, led by Eoin MacNeill and Bulmer Hobson and numbering about 16,000, were the smaller faction of the Volunteers that, like Connolly, had opposed Irish participation in the war with Germany. These Volunteers had considered a rising in September 1915, but when the time came, they could not commit. In the Workers' Republic Connolly chided the Volunteers, remarking that 1915 was not all that different from 1848, when "there were men who talked much of revolution, but when the spirit of the times called upon them to strike they all began to make excuses, to murmur about the danger of premature insurrection, of incomplete preparations, of the awful responsibility of giving the word for insurrection, etc., etc." 11 Unknown to Connolly at the time, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a clandestine group of republicans that had successfully infiltrated the Volunteers' leadership, were concerned with his agitation. Patrick Pearse, speaking in December 1915, said that Connolly "will never be satisfied until he goads us into action, and then he will think most of us too moderate, and want to guillotine the half of us. I can see him setting up a guillotine... For Hobson and MacNeill in particular. They are poles apart."12

Republicans would not ignore Connolly much longer. As Hobson described, "Connolly's weekly paper was full of abuse of leading members of the Irish Volunteers, who were supposed to be 'bourgeois' or anti-labour, or generally not revolutionary enough." 13 As a result, the IRB Supreme Council, unwilling to have Connolly act independently of them, and accepting his ability to further mobilize the working class behind the republican struggle, brought him into their confidence. Between 19-22 January 1916 Connolly had intense meetings in secret with the IRB leadership, which convinced Connolly to link the Irish Citizen Army forces with the Irish Volunteers. When Connolly resurfaced, he had formed an alliance with the IRB and had been inducted onto the IRB Supreme Council. Furthermore, the IRB agreed with Connolly's analysis of the situation and during this meeting they made concrete plans to stage a rising, initially to be held on Easter Sunday 1916 (though ultimately postponed to the Monday following). 14

Connolly's alliance with the nationalists was tactical more than philosophical, and from that point on he "operated as an adviser to the republicans rather than challenging their tradition in its entirety."15 He did his best to bring them around to his way of thinking, to infuse their already radical ideology with elements of socialism. Desmond Ryan, Patrick Pearse's pupil and later his first biographer, indicated that Pearse initially wrote warnings against the dangers of socialism, but by 1916 had softened to the issues of social reform through Connolly's influence. In Pearse's final pamphlet, "The Sovereign People" he discussed his feelings about the role the "sovereign people" play in determining matters involving private property. At one point he plainly said, "I do not disallow the right to private property; but I insist that all property is held subject to the national sanction."16 Other members of the IRB, including Hobson, who was always hostile to socialism, found such comments threatening; he commented about Pearse that "once he had started moving to the left in Irish politics, moved so rapidly that six months later he was writing to people to whom I had introduced him in America casting doubts about my reliability as an Irish revolutionary."17 Despite such descriptions, it would be an oversimplification to claim Pearse actually was a socialist, when he himself never considered himself as one. More accurately, Ryan explained that Pearse "saw through the canting hypocrisy which relies for its criticism of Socialism entirely upon the exploitation of religious and moral prejudices. In private conversation he would pronounce his passionate and considered convictions on the struggles of the women and the workers for freedom."18

For all Connolly tried, he was unable to alter the mainstream ideological position within Irish republican politics, and neither he nor Pearse reflected the position of most of their republican colleagues. More representative was someone like Tom Clarke, whose politics were solidly republican without socialist underpinnings. Clarke believed that "national ideals had to be clear and unaffected by alien doctrines," such as socialism, which despite Connolly's influence remained a 'foreign' and undesired element within Irish republicanism. Clarke shared the goal of a revolution with Connolly but had a different vision for its outcome. 19

SINN FÉIN AND THE WORKING CLASS

The political landscape began to shift with the end of the Rising, a week after Pearse had declared the Irish Republic and his vastly outnumbered rebel army had finally surrendered to the British. All of Ireland had initially recoiled in shock at the destruction and death, but as public sentiment turned slowly to favor those who had participated in the Easter Rising, and both Sinn Féin and the Irish Labour Party had a chance to overcome previous political misfortunes and enjoy mass support. From the beginning, however, it was apparent that to topple the Parliamentary Party at the polls, the successful opposition party would need a united working class behind it, and this would not be possible if several radical organizations simultaneously fielded candidates in upcoming elections.

Compared with both Labour and Redmond's Parliamentary Party, Sinn Féin up until 1916 had been a tiny political organization. In 1909 Sinn Féin had only 581 paid members, and by 1911, the weekly journal Sinn Féin had a circulation of only 2,000, compared with 94,994 copies of Larkin's Irish Worker that were sold in September of the same year. At the time of the Rising, Sinn Féin was still largely confined to Dublin where it could count on perhaps a hundred active members, and in Redmond's words the party was "small enough to be crushed in the hollow of my hand." Furthermore, in 1907 Sinn Féin had challenged the Parliamentary Party's hegemony by standing Charles Dolan in a by-election in north Leitrim. Dolan had previously stood as an Irish Parliamentary Party MP in the same constituency, yet as a Sinn Féin candidate he received only 1,157 votes against the Redmondite candidate who received 3,103 votes. Simply put, prior to 1916 Ireland was not ready for Sinn Féin. 20

Sinn Féin's fortune was soon to change. In May 1916, fifteen men, including the seven who signed the Proclamation and eight others who were considered "ring-leaders" were shot inside Kilmainham Gaol over the course of many days. Throughout Ireland, ordinary working people who had opposed the actions of the Volunteers and the ICA were now appalled by the executions, and in particular by the story of Connolly's execution, occurring after he had been strapped to a chair due to a gangrenous leg injury. Truly, "a wave of revulsion... swept Ireland." 21

To complicate matters, even as the forces of Easter Week engaged the British, Redmond and the British Army had both taken to calling the Rising the "Sinn Féin Rebellion" despite the fact that Griffith and the party itself had played no role in the Rising and had supported Eoin MacNeill's attempts to call it off. 22 On May 11th, the day before Connolly and MacDermott were executed, John Dillon of the Irish Parliamentary Party explained in the House of Commons, "What is happening is that thousands of people in Dublin, who ten days ago were bitterly opposed to the whole of the Sinn Fein movement and to the rebellion, are now becoming infuriated against the Government on account of these executions, and, as I am informed ...that feeling is spreading throughout the country in a most dangerous degree." Sinn Féin had not taken part in the rising, but it was that organization more than any other than became associated with the events. As its leaders were released from internment brought about by their supposed involvement, Sinn Féin jumped at the opportunity to capitalize on the error. 23

As a result, support for Sinn Féin came rapidly. From a marginalized movement a year before, by early 1917 Sinn Féin suddenly had 11,000 members and by October 1917 there were approximately 250,000. 24 In its first foray into electoral politics after the Rising, in February 1917 Sinn Féin successfully stood Count Plunkett, the father of Joseph Plunkett (one of the men executed for his role in the Rising) for the Parliamentary seat of North Roscommon. Another success story was that of Eamon De Valera. Although he was the most senior member of the Easter leadership to survive, he was also a political unknown. P. S. O'Hegarty, an IRB man who, according to Desmond Ryan, was one of Griffith's "intimates and colleagues," explained that De Valera "had no political history, had never been a member of Sinn Fein or of any political organization, and had in 1915 declined to allow himself to be nominated for the Executive of the Irish Volunteers because he did not want any executive position or responsibility." 25 In June 1917, while still in prison, De Valera was nominated for the Parliamentary seat in East Clare, and with his connection to the Rising he easily won the by-election. At the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis the following October, De Valera admitted the debt he owed Easter Week when he said, "I regard my election here as a monument to the brave dead, and I believe that this is proof that they were right, that what they fought for - the complete and absolute freedom and separation from England - was the pious wish of every Irish heart." 26

As its political success increased, Sinn Féin did not hide its desire to move the struggle forward on a solely nationalist basis rather than also concerning itself with working class issues. Despite the ideals of equality, and the declaration of "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland" expressed by Pearse and Connolly in the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, socialism held little appeal for the men who commanded the radical forces after the rising. 27 In December 1916 Griffith was released from prison, and "with Griffith dominating the national movement... opposition to England and national solidarity became the only issue." 28 De Valera also side-stepped social issues: in October 1917 he said that "the only banner under which our freedom can be won at the present time is the republican banner," and in March 1918 he reminded the Irish that Sinn Féin was not a class movement but a national movement that fought on behalf of all classes. 29 Although Connolly had provided a handy synthesis of socialism and republicanism that could have been adopted by Sinn Féin as it built a mass movement largely from the working class, the reconstituted party was not interested in radical social change, or in retaining his agenda within its struggle.

The one serious competitor to Sinn Féin, and the only other group that had a claim to the Easter Rising, was labor, manifested in the ITUC, ITGWU, and a handful of parties such as the Irish Labour Party. Like Sinn Féin, some of the Labour leaders, including Connolly's colleague William O'Brien, also had been interned for their connections with the Rising. When they were released, they faced a ITGWU membership of only about 5,000 - but quickly the numbers grew, and in 1920 they had 130,000 members, including the majority of agricultural workers. Connolly had left a legacy that an astute trade union organizer or Labour party leader could have parlayed into a partnership with the nationalists or even into electoral success beyond what the nationalists could command. Connolly wrote:

The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be dissevered. Ireland seeks freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress of her own destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil. Labour seeks to make the free Irish nation the guardian of the interests of the people of Ireland, and to secure that end would vest in that free Irish nation all property rights as against the claims of the individual, with the end in view that the individual may be enriched by the nation, and not by the spoiling of his fellows. 30

There was one problem. In the election the vote might be split between Sinn Féin and Labour, which had pledged a platform of "self-determination and socialism," and such a split vote would give the election to the Parliamentary Party. O'Hegarty urged Sinn Féin to resolve the quandary "amicably," and as a result the republicans made Labour an offer: Labour candidates would be given free reign to stand candidates in some areas if they would stand down in the rest. 33 This offer was contingent on Labour pledging to abstain from Parliament if elected, as well as committing the party and its supporters to an independent Irish Republic. In the end, this proposal was rejected, but another motion, offered by Tom Johnson, passed the ITUC by a vote of 96 to 23:

A call comes from all parts of Ireland for a demonstration of unity on this question (of self-determination) such as was witnessed on the conscription issue. Your Executive believes that the workers of Ireland join earnestly in that desire, that they would willingly sacrifice for a brief period their aspirations towards political power if thereby the fortunes of the nation can be enhanced. 34

Sinn Féin was able to successfully push Labour to the background for several reasons. First of all, leadership of the ITUC and ITGWU erred by not following the Rising with strikes or other industrial action, which "might have pointed a way forward to the mass of the workers who were politicised rapidly after the rising." 35 Second, although Connolly had arguably done everything right to give the working class both theory and opportunity to dismantle British imperialism and Irish capitalism, few of his closest associates were available to carry on his work, many either having died in the Rising or shortly afterwards, or else isolated in prison, like Constance Markievicz. Third, no literary executor or political heir existed who could appropriately carry on Connolly's work and promote his ideology and principles posthumously. Connolly had chosen Francis Sheehy-Skeffington for this role, a man who "could ensure that the Socialist message would not be condemned to trivialisation or distortion." 36 Tragically, unknown to Connolly, the British had already shot Sheehy-Skeffington during the Rising. The inheritance of Connolly's political legacy fell to William O'Brien, a leading figure in the labor movement, including the ITUC and the ITGWU. Unfortunately, O'Brien was negligent both in promoting the work of his mentor and friend as well as taking up where Connolly had left off in his work building bridges between socialism and nationalism. 37 As Aindreas O Cathasaigh, a recent editor of Connolly's writings, remarked, "While far from alone, O'Brien was the leading embodiment of the labour lieutenant - ready to talk left as the occasion demanded and nod in the direction of the martyred Connolly, but happiest sitting round a table in the corridors of power negotiating 'on behalf of his members' with the great and the good."38

O'Brien, like his colleague Johnson, willingly conceded the fight to Sinn Féin, stating in September 1918 that "it is to the Sinn Féin party that Ireland must now look to mould the future of her people." 39 In retrospect it appears that many socialists of the time misunderstood Connolly's alliance with the IRB. Sean O'Casey, a former ICA member, believed Connolly had sold out to the nationalists; on the other hand, O'Brien seemed content to let nationalists take the reins - Connolly's alliance with the IRB perhaps giving O'Brien a false sense of hope concerning republican intentions. Whatever the cause, Peadar O'Donnell, both a socialist and a future IRA Army Council member, bemoaned,

"Nobody noticed that Connolly's chair was left vacant; that the place Connolly purchased for the organised Labour movement in the leadership of the independence struggle was being denied or reneged. It was made easy for De Valera to call Griffith in and shut Labour out, for the Irish Labour Party did not want a share in the leadership. James Connolly's work, teaching, martyrdom, left no imprint on the policy of Irish working class movements. Dublin workers uncovered at every mention of his name at a meeting but nobody preached Connolly to them." 40

With Labour out of the way, the 1918 election was Sinn Féin's opportunity to reshape people's memories of the Rising as a strictly nationalist, not socialist, rebellion. In the "1918 Sinn Féin Election Manifesto," issued by the Standing Committee of Sinn Féin, the last sentence reads as follows: "Sinn Féin... goes to the polls confident that the people of this ancient nation will be true to the old cause and will vote for the men who stand by the principles of Tone, Emmet, Mitchel, Pearse and Connolly...." 42 Of course, such a statement was completely contradictory, as Sinn Féin had no intentions of promoting Connolly's socialist principles. A representative of Sinn Féin said in 1918 that "The struggle in which Ireland was now engaged was the question of national liberty, and should not be confused with any question of socialism, red ruin and revolution." 43

At the polls, it was Easter 1916 that won votes, not any specific set of principles or social program. O'Hegarty described Sinn Féin's success in December 1918 as follows:

"...what was sold to the electorate, what they voted on, was not Sinn Fein, not the Republic, but Easter Week. The swing-over to Sinn Fein, after Easter Week, was only to a limited extent due to conviction about the policy or about the Republic.... the executions roused Ireland out of apathy and patience and hope long deferred into grief and wrath and determination, grief for the men who had died, wrath at the way they had died, and determination that the people for whom they had died would not let them down. So, the election was fought and won on Easter Week." 44

With a manufactured electoral mandate, and with Labour out of the way, Sinn Féin had a clear road ahead to create their ideal national struggle that could safely discard the socialist character of one of its heroes. The bourgeois intentions of the movement were no longer in question, and social conservatism became paired with political radicalism.

On 21 January 1919, Dáil Éireann, the parliament of the provisional Irish Republic, met for the first time and agreed upon three declarations put before them. The first was a declaration of independence, and the second, a request to the nations of the world to recognize the Irish Republic and allow it to be represented at the Peace Conference. The third declaration was a bit different. Written by Johnson and O'Brien as a reward for Labour candidates standing down in the election, the declaration created the "Democratic Programme of Dáil Éireann." O'Hegarty said that it initially "had more than a suspicion of socialist theoretical high-sounding jargon," and given its authors, this was not surprising. Johnson had attempted to weave socialist principles into the programme, using not only Connolly but Pearse as inspiration. He even lifted lines directly from Pearse's pamphlet "The Sovereign People." The original draft contained sentences such as "The Republic will aim at the elimination of the class in society which lives upon the wealth produced by the workers of the nation but gives no useful service in return," 46 and as O'Hegarty explained,

It went on to say that every citizen was entitled to 'an adequate share of the produce of the Nation's labours,' and numerous other highly debatable things, all tending to a common principle, the principle that responsibility for the well-being of a citizen no longer rested on himself but on the State. It was a principle which, stated nakedly, the Dáil would not have accepted, but it was not stated plainly, it was wrapped up in jargon and presented as the legacy of Padraic Pearse. 47

Although Sinn Féin had won the election based on the memory of Easter, the ideas of even those leaders who were not openly socialist were still considered dangerous - even Pearse's work made the document too radical, and leaders within the IRB opposed the original draft. According to O'Hegarty, "[Michael] Collins... said that he would suppress the 'democratic programme,' and he did so...." 48 In other words, the memory of the Rising was appropriate to use to get votes, but the ideological position of its leaders was not appropriate for use in post-Rising republican discourse. However, despite Collins' objections, the document could not be completely discarded as the members of the Dáil "refused to go on without a democratic programme." Without a doubt, a written social agenda within the Dáil had popular support, particularly among the working class supporters of Sinn Féin who hoped to bring about a radically new government that would be responsive to their needs. As a result the draft was handed over to O'Kelly, who expurgated much of the socialist rhetoric and produced what was finally put before the Dáil. His draft removed a line from Pearse that read: "no private right to property is good against the public right of the nation" as well as Johnson's sentence "It shall be the purpose of the Government to encourage the organization of the people into Trade Unions and co-operative societies, with a view to the control and administration of the industries by the workers engaged in the industries." 49

Even with revision, due to popular demand the "Democratic Programme" still retained some of its social elements. A portion of the "Democratic Programme" reads as follows, in almost exactly the same words as Pearse had used in his pamphlet:

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first president, Pádraig MacPhiarais, we declare that the Nation's sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation's soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare. 50

By 1919 the revisionism of the Rising was almost complete. De Valera gave a speech on 1 April 1919 entitled "The Irish Patriot James Connolly" during which which he asserted:

"In the Labour world the Irish patriot James Connolly, whom many of you knew personally, was known as a Socialist. There is nothing inconsistent with his economic idea in his life and fight and death as an Irish Republican - an Irish Nationalist. His position is very much our position. Connolly's story is broadly the story of Irish Labour throughout history... the Irish worker, ever true to Irish National ideals, has declared himself unmistakably, and finds no clash between his interests as an Irishman and his class interests as a worker." [italics mine] 52

Certainly De Valera did not mean to imply that Connolly's position - advocating a Workers' Republic - was held by Sinn Féin. For De Valera, labor issues and socialism were more appropriately subsumed under the republican agenda, to be implemented later, if the people chose to do so. Class interests, if considered at all, would be secondary to a free Irish nation. With this position, Sinn Féin participated in a usurpation of the romantic notion of the Rising while discarding the ideological background and repudiating the position of its leaders in order to create a mass-based nationalist party.

CONCLUSIONS

Before the Rising Sinn Féin was a small party of socially-conservative nationalists. Although it preached Irish self-sufficiency, none of its leaders had demonstrated personal charisma or vision sufficient to bring about Irish independence. Instead, that role fell to a radical element within nationalist and Labor circles, people whose vision called for the empowerment of the Irish working class and who recognized that there was more to Irish freedom than just the end of British imperialism. Those possessing the farthest-reaching vision and the courage to stand up against their enemies, united together to lead the Easter Rising. Although not all men fought strictly on behalf of the Irish working class, it was the working class that had demonstrated its courage in the Dublin Lockout of 1913 and had formed the bulk of the Volunteers and ICA. And it was the champion of the working class, James Connolly, who lent the inspiration, motivation and tactical skill to make the Rising a reality. Unfortunately, these leaders paid the ultimate price for their ideals when they were executed for their roles. Their sudden absence altered the course of Irish politics and opened a door for other nationalists to redefine the concept of "freedom."

Sinn Féin repaid the debt owed to Connolly by promoting him as one of their republican heroes, and in fact upon his death, Connolly "...was accorded instant entry to the Nationalist pantheon of martyrs." 53 But it was also more than a simple debt of gratitude. The leaders of Sinn Féin were astute political opportunists who recognized the power of the Easter legacy, and they used the Rising and its heroes as its primary recruiting tool. Connolly's republicanism was impeccable, and his tireless work to achieve an Irish republic made him an easy role model - even as Connolly's socialist ideology was 'dangerous,' his image was empowering. But the party that claimed him needed the support of those within the labor movement; they needed to reconcile the socialism inherent in the leadership of the Rising with its own ideological position. The leaders of Sinn Féin did not wish to relinquish Connolly to other claimants; however, they had to side-step his politics in order to merge the ideals of Easter with the party's political program. Connolly scholar Owen Dudley Edwards made the observation that "...men who quite genuinely wish to see themselves and have others see them, as heirs to the Connolly tradition, and who yet wish to fulfil programmes of its own, are obliged to convey new impressions of Connolly." 54

The revisionism of Easter Week would have repercussions throughout Ireland. In particular, turning a blind eye to Connolly's analysis left the nationalists without a substantial understanding of the problems in Ulster. From the moment it had been proposed, Connolly had predicted the destructive nature of partition, fearing it would divide the Irish into sectarian camps formed around the national issue. Through his influence labor organizations were the ones which took the firmest stand against partition before the Rising, but because of the position they chose to take on the eve of elections in 1918, partition became simply a nationalist issue. Without unity between the labor movement and nationalists, it also became a permanent fact of Irish life.

In the 1930s, some who had held on to Connolly's vision attempted to publicly resurrect the goals of republican socialism. Peadar O'Donnell and others, including Connolly's daughter Nora, George Gilmore, Michael Price and Frank Ryan, tried to remind republicans about Connolly's synthesis of working class issues and national ones. At the General Army convention in 1934 Price proposed to the IRA that it "affirm its allegiance to a Workers' Republic" but such a resolution was strongly opposed by the non-socialist element within the organization. Within the IRA leadership most were sensitive to such "communist-sounding" rhetoric, and ultimately the IRA forced out Price, O'Donnell, Gilmore and others. The ousted republicans along with labor activists met on 7-8 April 1934 and suggested that Connolly's efforts to destroy capitalism were still needed, that his teaching still "represents the deepest instinct of the oppressed Irish nation." To that end they formed the short-lived Republican Congress, an organization that was formed to "confront the forces of capitalism and imperialism" that fostered such reactionary movements as the Blueshirts and even contributed to the constant shift to the right of De Valera's party Fianna Fáil. 55

The Congress was opposed by Fianna Fáil, Cosgrave's Blueshirts, and even the IRA. In light of such opposition, it represented the only viable voice of republican socialism as well as the only revolutionary activism in Ireland of the time. Despite a good showing for a while, this effort met much the same fate as Labour had in 1918. Fianna Fáil, a bourgeois nationalist party much like Sinn Féin of 1918, was able to present itself as the inheritor of 1916, the true republican party. O'Donnell said, "My quarrel is that [De Valera] pretends to be a Republican while actually the interests for which his Party acts - Irish capitalism - are across the road to the Republic." 56

George Gilmore wrote that De Valera "had urged upon Sinn Fein the necessity to play to the working-class more wholeheatedly that it had been doing." The leadership of Sinn Féin, and then De Valera's new party Fianna Fáil, was astute enough to know that political power could not come without the working class, and such support was impossible unless there was at least a token of support for labor issues. 57

By encouraging a policy of "Labour must wait", Sinn Féin was able to effectively remove working-class issues from center-stage in Irish politics. Even today, the main political forces in Ireland are nationalist, not socialist, in nature, and socialist and workers' parties are routinely marginalized despite overwhelming unemployment and other substantial working-class issues that face Irish politicians regularly.

1 P. H. Pearse, "Manifesto," 28 April 1916, in Séamas O Buachalla, ed., The Letters of P. H. Pearse (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1980), 372.

2 Pat Walsh, Irish Republicanism and Socialism: The Politics of the Republican Movement 1905 to 1994 (Belfast: Athol Books, 1994), 11.

3 Sinn Féin, 30 August 1911 and 11 November 1911; quoted in Walsh, 12.

4 Arthur Griffith, "Response to Sheehy-Skeffington," in Sinn Féin, 1913, quoted in Seamus Deane, ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. II (Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991), 1003-1004.

5 Connolly, "Socialism and Nationalism," Shan Van Vocht, January 1897.

6 Connolly, "Sinn Féin, Socialism and the Nation," Irish Nation, 23 January 1909.

7 Letter from Connolly to O'Brien quoted in Kieran Allen, The Politics of James Connolly (London: Pluto Press, 1990), 98-99.

8 Connolly, "Some Perverted Battle Lines," Irish Worker, 26 September 1914.

9 Connolly, "Can Warfare Be Civilized?", The Worker, 30 January 1915; also "The Friends of Small Nationalities," Irish Worker, 12 September 1914; etc.

10 Connolly's speech printed in Irish Worker, 5 September 1914.

11 Connolly, "Ireland - Disaffected or Revolutionary," Workers Republic, 13 November 1915.

12 S. Levenson, James Connolly, Socialist, Patriot and Martyr (London: Quartet, 1977), 282.

13 Bulmer Hobson, Ireland Yesterday and Tomorrow (Tralee: Anvil Books, 1968), in Seamus Deane, ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. III, (Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991), 505-506.

14 C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 392.

15 Allen, 158.

16 Patrick Pearse, "The Sovereign People," in Proinsias MacAonghusa and Liam O Réagáin, eds., The Best of Pearse (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1967), 171.

17 Hobson, in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. III, 507.

18 Desmond Ryan, The Man Called Pearse (Dublin: Maunsel and Roberts, Ltd., 1923), 114-115.

19 Owen Dudley Edwards, The Mind of an Activist - James Connolly (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd, 1971), 73-75.

20 Allen, 96; Peter Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class (London: Pluto Press, 1996), 187; Rev. F. X. Martin, "The Origins of the Irish Rising of 1916," in Desmond Williams, ed., The Irish Struggle 1916-1926 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 3.

21 Ellis, 231-32.

22 Desmond Ryan, "Sinn Féin Policy and Practice," in The Irish Struggle 1916-1926, 33.

23 John Dillon's speech in the House of Commons, 11 May 1916, quoted in O. Dudley Edwards and Fergus Pyle, eds., 1916: The Easter Rising (London: Macgibbon & Kee, 1968), 75.

24 P. S. O'Hegarty, A History of Ireland Under the Union 1801-1922 (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1952), 712; Milotte, 26-27.

25 Ryan, "Sinn Féin Policy and Practice," 33; O'Hegarty, 714.

26 De Valera's address at the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis, Dublin, 26 October 1917, quoted in Maurice Moynihan, ed., Speeches and Statements by Eamon De Valera 1917-1973 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1980), 7-8.

27 The Proclamation of Poblacht na hEireann: The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland, Dublin, 1916.

28 Patrick Lynch, "The Social Revolution that Never Was," in The Irish Struggle 1916-1926, 36.

29 De Valera's address at the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis, Dublin, 26 October 1917; in Speeches and Statements by Eamon De Valera, 7-8; Waterford News, 22 March 1918, quoted in D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 317.

30 Connolly, "The Irish Flag", Workers' Republic, 8 April 1916.

31 Peter Collins, "Irish Labour and Politics in The Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," in Peter Collins, ed., Nationalism and Unionism Conflict in Ireland, 1885-1921 (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast, 1994), 143.

32 J. M. MacDonnell, The Story of Irish Labour (Cork: The Cork Workers' Club, 1921, reprint n.d.), 30.

33 Saoghal Gaedhealach (Irish Life) 7 September 1918, quoted in C. Desmond Greaves, Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 146.

34 A. Mitchell, Labour in Irish Politics 1890-1930; The Irish Labour Movement in an Age of Revolution (Dublin, 1974), 33.

35 Milotte, 20.

36 David Howell, A Lost Left: Three Studies in Socialism and Nationalism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 145.

37 Milotte, 26.

38 Andreas O Cathasaigh, Introduction, in James Connolly, The Lost Writings, Andreas O Cathasaigh, ed. (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 6.

39 J. V. O'Brien, William O'Brien and the Course of Irish Politics, 1881-1918 (California: 1976), 223; quoted in Boyce, 314.

40 Peadar O'Donnell, There Will be another day (Dublin: Dolmen, 1963), 1-5.

41 George Gilmore, The Irish Republican Congress (Cork: Cork Workers' Club, 1978), 42.

42 "1918 Sinn Féin Election Manifesto," reprinted in Michael Hughes, Ireland Divided: The Roots of the Modern Irish Problem (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), 101.

43 The Nationalist (Clonmel), 30 November 1918; quoted in Boyce, 317.

44 O'Hegarty, 725.

45 Official Report of the Dail Debates on the Treaty of 6 December, 1921, 135; in Ruth Dudley Edwards, Patrick Pearse, the Triumph of Failure (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), 326.

46 Original draft quoted in Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland Since the Rising (New York: Praegmar, 1966), 25.

47 O'Hegarty, 726.

48 O'Hegarty, 727.

49 O'Hegarty, 727; Patrick Lynch, "The Social Revolution that Never Was," in The Irish Struggle 1916-1926, 46-47.

50 "The Democratic Programme of the First Dáil" (1919), from "Dáil Éireann proceedings, 1919-21," in The Field Day Anthology, vol. III, 734-735.

51 Ryan, "Sinn Féin Policy and Practice 1916-1926," 36.

52 Watchword of Labour, vol. 1 no. 2, 4 October 1919; quoted in W. K. Anderson, James Connolly and the Irish Left (Dublin, Irish Academic Press, 1994), 116-17.

53 Collins, 141.

54 Edwards, The Mind of an Activist, 4.

55 Gilmore, 28-31.

56 Peadar O'Donnell, Republican Congress 6 October 1934, quoted in Gilmore, 52.

57 Gilmore, 6-7.