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The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 11

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The Starry Plough flag of the Irish Citizen Army (from  History Ireland ). CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST .  Conclusion From the evidence of the above accounts, it seems likely that, in an Ireland where the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and clergy was profound, there was – at the very least – a wariness or suspicion of socialist ideology. The Church’s warnings against the evils of socialism were certainly more serious than any similar misgivings it may have had in regard to nationalism.  Furthermore, if Kevin O’Shiel’s account is to be believed, nationalism was the one creed capable of exerting a stronger pull on the Irish people than that of the Catholic Church. To this extent, it would seem that the first interpretation of the failure of the socialist republican movement is the correct one – the people of Ireland were simply not ready to embrace any movement that espoused radical socialist ideas. The other aspect of that interpretation is the notion that radical nationalism
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The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 10

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Frank Robbins in Irish Citizen Army uniform (from  1913committee.ie  website). CONTINUED FROM  PREVIOUS POST .   Disunity   In his testimony to the Bureau of Military History, given in 1951, Frank Robbins, a former sergeant in the Irish Citizen Army, describes a meeting he had with Larkin in New York in 1917. Robbins had conveyed a message to Larkin from Thomas  Foran , a leading figure in the ITGWU. According to Robbins, "Larkin seemed less interested in hearing the message I had to give than in making wild charges against John  Devoy , Judge Daniel F.  Cohalan  [both senior members of the Irish nationalist community in America] and other Irish People in America". He then, according to Robbins, went on to declaim against James Connolly,  Pádraig  Pearse and Thomas McDonagh, all signatories of the 1916 'Proclamation of the Irish Republic', who had been executed by the British for their role in the Easter Rising, stating that "Connolly had no right whatever to bri
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The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 9

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A pro-Treaty poster from the 1922 Free State general election (from History Ireland on  Pinterest ). CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST . Nationalism and socialism As well as warning against the dangers of socialism from a purely Christian perspective, Reverend Michael Phelan, in his article for the Southern Star newspaper, associates socialism strongly with England. At one point, he laments that "The full sewerage from the maxims of Anglicisation is now discharged upon us. The black devil of Socialism, hoof and horns, is amongst us". The Gaelic revival is seen as a way to shore up "the strong hold Christianity has on our people". The writer points to strike-bound Dublin as "the very antithesis of the dream of Gaeldom" and "the living spectacle of the cesspool into which Anglicisation has at last dragged us". He claims that "Gaelicism and Socialism, mutually repel and antagonise each other at every point", and invites the
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The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 8

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A Sinn Féin poster from the 1918 general election. Picture from www.dail100.ie .   CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST. The 1918 general election It is argued by some historians that the Irish Labour Party’s decision not to stand in the general election of 1918 was triggered by the fact that what would have been a ‘war election’, involving issues such as opposition to conscription – to which Labour was already deeply committed – became, after 11 November, with the signing of the Armistice between the allies and Germany, a ‘peace election’, in which national independence now appeared to be the main issue before the country. However, according to newspaper reports of the manifesto which was published by the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party in September 1918, prior to the decision to withdraw from the electoral race, even at this time, with the war still ongoing, Labour had considered the issue of national independence to be the primary question over which the elec
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The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 7

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William O'Brien (left) with Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. From  'Stories from 1916' . Continued from  previous post . Unionism and the Labour movement At the Irish Trade Unions’ annual congress in Derry in 1917, the President of the ITUC, Thomas McPartlin, in his opening day speech, said that since all parties now engaged in the world war claimed to be doing so “on behalf of the freedom of small nations”, it was clear that Ireland’s claim to independence would be honoured as part of the post-war settlement. This, he said, would “remove every obstacle to the onward march of the workers to their rightful place in the counsels of the country”. McPartlin apparently saw Irish self-government as a necessary step on the road to securing the rights of Irish workers. He also acknowledged that, while the national question remained unresolved, “it was almost impossible to organise on a class conscious basis” and that the question had split the workers “into different politic
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