'Believing that the British Government has no right in Ireland, never had any right in Ireland, and never can have any right in Ireland, the presence in any one generation of Irishmen of even a respectable minority ready to die to affirm that truth makes that Government for ever an usurpation and a crime against human progress.'
These lines represent the last testament of the Irish revolutionary socialist James Connolly, and were spoken at the secret trial held before his execution by a firing squad of British soldiers on 12 May 1916 for his involvement in the Easter Rising a few weeks earlier.
Connolly was a workers' leader, committed to the international struggle for socialism, but his socialist comrades deplored his involvement in this rebellion. Connolly himself understood that the socialists of the world would not appreciate his motives.
Only Lenin and the Bolsheviks took up the defence of Connolly and the Irish rebels. Lenin recognised the international significance of the Easter Rising, explaining that its effect would be to 'sharpen the revolutionary crisis in Europe'.
He declared that a blow struck against British imperialism in Ireland was 'of a hundred times greater political significance than a blow of equal weight in Asia or Africa'. And in reply to the Polish revolutionary Karl Radek, who had described the Easter Rising as a putsch, Lenin argued: 'Whoever calls such an uprising a putsch is either a hardened reactionary or a doctrinaire hopelessly
incapable of picturing a social revolution as a living thing.'
Lenin continued: 'The misfortune of the Irish lies in their having revolted prematurely when the European revolt of the proletariat has not yet ripened.'
Sixty years on, Ireland is still under the heel of British imperialism. In the North, the British Army carries on a campaign of repression against the nationalist working class. In the 26 Counties, the servile Coalition Government enthusiastically throws Republicans into prison and makes every effort to block solidarity with the struggle in the Northern ghettoes.
Just as Connolly in his time was branded as a criminal by British imperialism and the Irish capitalists, so today these same people attempt to brand the resistance fighters and isolate them from the mass of the population. But the thousands of workers who are taking to the streets this week in marches commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Easter Rising are a clear expression of the will of the Irish working class to expel British imperialism once and for all.
As in 1916, the resistance is characterised by numerous weaknesses and errors. But after seven years of struggle and questioning, there are signs that new layers of militants are emerging who recognise the importance of providing a clear socialist perspective for the national revolution in Ireland.
For the first time in Dublin and Belfast this Easter, there have been united commemorations organised by the revolutionary left along the theme of '1916 – what lessons for the working class?' The Movement for a Socialist Republic (formerly RMG), Irish section of the Fourth International, is fully involved in these activities and is committed to developing the broadest unity of the revolutionary left and the anti-imperialist movement as a whole.
The challenge that faces Irish socialists today faces not them alone but internationalists everywhere. In the stance adopted by Lenin to the 1916 Rising is a clear example of genuine proletarian solidarity that must be developed and followed by class conscious workers everywhere to strengthen the struggle in Ireland today.
JOHN MAGEE