A Nation Once Again: How the idea of the Nation State became the primary focus of popular struggle in early twentieth century Ireland - Part 3


The first Dáil, January 1919. The Irish Times, 10 December 2018.

(Continued from previous post)

Many women were involved in both feminist and nationalist activities. There was, however, an ongoing debate within these movements as to which commitment should take precedence over the other. Many suffrage campaigners saw the extension of the vote to women as a pre-requisite for genuine national self-determination. The Historian Rosemary Cullen Owens quotes Margaret Cousins, a founder member of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, who was twice imprisoned for her suffragist activities and took part in a six day hunger strike for political prisoner status, as follows: “We were as keen as men on the freedom of Ireland, but we…were convinced that anything which improved the status of women would improve, not hinder, the coming of real national self-government.”[1] The Irish Citizen, newspaper of the Irish Women’s Franchise League, took the line that “Home Rule without the enfranchisement of women meant Male Rule”,[2] and referred to the members of Cumann na mBann as “slave women”.[3] On the other hand, Agnes O’Farrelly, who chaired the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBann, “believed that the enfranchisement of women would more effectively follow an appeal to a body of Irishmen sitting in an Irish parliament than to a body of men sitting in Westminster”[4] and labour activist Helena Molony, responding to the criticisms from the Irish Citizen, wrote: “You say, truly, ‘there can be no free nation without free women’, but neither can there be free women in an enslaved nation, and it seems to me sound citizenship to put the welfare of the whole nation before any section of it."[5] In the end, the fact that the 1916 ‘proclamation’ had included a guarantee of equal rights and opportunities for women, coupled with Sinn Féin’s comparatively accommodating attitude to women members and its pro-women’s suffrage stance, meant that, in the years following the rising, large numbers of women who had been involved in campaigning for women’s rights chose to throw their energies behind the struggle for an independent nation-state as a way to obtain not only national self-determination but equal civil and political rights for their sex, too. 

____________________

The concept of an Irish nation-state is not identical to the idea of an Irish republic, and in the early part of the twentieth century there were those who supported the former notion but not the latter. Arthur Griffith, the founder and president of Sinn Féin until October 1917, was one of these, as were many of those who had joined Sinn Féin in the early years of its existence. After Easter 1916 the name of Sinn Féin had become inextricably associated with the rising and it became an “umbrella” organisation for advanced nationalists.[6] Many of these had connections with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and few had any truck with the idea of retaining a monarchy. In order to reconcile the republicans with the older, Griffithite element, the constitution adopted by Sinn Féin in October 1917 included the clause, “Sinn Féin aims at securing the International recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic. Having achieved that status the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of Government.”[7] Effectively, the effort to achieve nation-statehood had been prioritised over the specific requirement that the final form of a self-governing Ireland should be a republican one.

Over four years later, the question as to which mattered most, political independence or a republican constitution for Ireland, was to resurface in the debates which took place over the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty. Of the various issues contested in these debates, including the question of partition, the most pressing - at least in terms of the time spent discussing it - was the question of whether or not members of the Irish parliament (Dáil Éireann) should be required to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown.[8] It was the pro-treaty faction - those who supported the establishment of the Irish Free State - who prevailed, both in the Dáil vote and in the 1922 Irish general election, over those who wanted to continue fighting the British in the hope of achieving an Irish Republic. The pro-treaty side went on to win a bitter civil war against the ‘Republican IRA’. As in October 1917, it was the desire for an independent Irish nation-state, regardless of the form of constitution it might adopt, which furnished what proved to be the decisive goal in the struggle for popular liberation in Ireland.
There was also a sense in which the idea of the nation-state as a political form played a decisive role during this period. After the 1918 general election, Sinn Féin began to build the apparatus of a nation-state even while Ireland was still officially part of the United Kingdom. Its MPs constituted themselves as the first Dáil in January 1919 and in July 1920 the Irish Volunteers (increasingly, by now, becoming known as the Irish Republican Army)[9] became formally subordinated to the Dáil, by means of all members being required to swear an oath pledging their exclusive support.[10] In 1920, the Dáil began to set up ‘republican courts’,[11] with civil policing activities being carried out by members of Volunteer units.[12] This counter state became, in itself, an extremely effective weapon by giving Irish nationalists their own, unofficial national institutions and helping to make Ireland ungovernable by the British administration.

____________________


In the first half of the twentieth century, various groups across the globe sought ways to liberate themselves from real or perceived oppression. For peoples seeking to free themselves from control by imperial powers, it was the nation-state that turned out to be the decisive political form that shaped their struggles, and this was certainly the case in regard to Ireland. Attempts to achieve a level of self-governance through constitutional means proved, for many, unsatisfactory, dependendent as they were, for their extent and their timescale, on the permission of the British authorities. Michael Collins, who became the chairman of the provisional government of the newly founded Irish Free State in 1922, wrote that what the Anglo-Irish treaty provided for Ireland was “not the ultimate freedom which all nations hope for and struggle for, but freedom to achieve that end”.[13] In a similar way, many of those Irish men and women who hoped and worked for liberation in the workplace or in the domestic sphere, in the field of labour relations or gender relations, found it expedient to fight first of all for an independent Irish nation-state as their best hope for gaining influence over the social and economic power structures which directly affected them.

Andrew Suzmeyan (January 2017)

[1] James H. Cousins and Margaret E. Cousins, We Two Together (Madras, 1950), p. 185 quoted in Rosemary Cullen, from ‘Votes for Women’, Labour History News, 9 (1993), pp. 15-19 in Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart (eds.), The Irish Women’s History Reader (London, 2001), pp. 37-43, p. 40.
[2] Ryan, “Irish Citizen”, Saothar, p. 107.
[3] Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, p. 143.
[4] Freeman’s Journal, 3 April 1914 quoted in Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, p. 141.
[5] Helena Molony, Irish Citizen, 9 May 1914 quoted in Pašeta, Irish Nationalist Women, p. 143.
[6] Richard English, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London, 2007), p. 280.
[7] Sinn Féin party members, The Constitution of Sinn Féin in McCardle, Irish Republic, pp. 915–916 [electronic edn.], p. 915, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900007.html (Accessed: 5 January 1917).
[8] Elizabeth Keane, Seán MacBride, A Life (Dublin, 2007), p. 40.
[9] Townshend, Republic, p. 89.
[10] Coleman, Irish Revolution, p. 85; Cathal Brugha, Dáil Debates F13, col. 151, 20 August 1919, http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail1919082000013?opendocument (Accessed 5 January 2017).
[11] Townshend, Republic, pp. 128-130.
[12] Ibid., pp. 132-133.
[13] Michael Collins, The Path to Freedom [electronic edn.] (Cork, 2010), p. 29, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900001-001.html (Accessed: 5 January 2017).
Bibliography

Primary Sources


Clarke, Thomas J. et al., The Proclamation of the Irish Republic (Dublin 1916) http://the1916proclamation.ie/ (Accessed: 3 January 2017).


Collins, Michael, The Path to Freedom [electronic edition] (Cork, 2010), http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900001-001.html (Accessed: 5 January 2017).


Connolly, James, ‘The Irish Flag’, The Workers’ Republic (8 April 1916), https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1916/04/irshflag.htm (Accessed 29 December 2016).




Hansard, HC Deb 09 April 1918 vol. 104, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1918/apr/09/conscription-in-ireland (Accessed: 28 December 2016).

Irish Times, The Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook, Easter, 1916 (Dublin, 1917), https://ia802607.us.archive.org/5/items/sinnfeinrebellio00dubl/sinnfeinrebellio00dubl.pdf (Accessed: 26 December 2016).

Sinn Féin party members, The Constitution of Sinn Féin in Dorothy McCardle, The Irish Republic: a documented chronicle of the Anglo-Irish conflict and the partitioning of Ireland, with a detailed account of the period 1916-1923 (London, 1937) pp. 915–916 [electronic edn.] (Cork, 2010), http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E900007.html (Accessed: 5 January 1917).


Secondary Sources

Coleman, Marie, The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 2014).

Connell, Joseph E., ‘Irish Women’s Franchise League and Irish Women’s Workers’ Union’, History Ireland, 21, 1 (2013), p. 66.

Cullen, Rosemary, from ‘Votes for Women’, Labour History News, 9 (1993), pp. 15-19 in Alan Hayes and Diane Urquhart (eds.), The Irish Women’s History Reader (London, 2001), pp. 37-43.

English, Richard, Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland (London, 2007).

Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1992)

Hroch, Miroslav, Social Conditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985).

Grant, Adrian, Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909-36 (Dublin, 2012).

Jackson, Alvin, Home Rule: An Irish History, 1800-2000 (New York, 2003).

Keane, Elizabeth, Seán MacBride, A Life (Dublin, 2007).

Laffan, Michael, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (Cambridge, 1999).

McCarthy, Cal, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution, Kindle edition (Downloaded: 1 January 2017).

McConnel, James, ‘The Franchise Factor in the Defeat of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 1885-1918’, The Historical Journal, 47, 2 (2004), pp. 355–377.

Pašeta, Senia, Irish Nationalist Women, 1900-1918 (Cambridge, 2013).

Ryan, Louise, ‘The “Irish Citizen”, 1912-1920’, Saothar, 17 (1992), pp. 105-111.

Townshend, Charles, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (London, 2006).

Townshend, Charles, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923 (London, 2014).

Ward, Margaret, In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism (Cork, 1995).

Wheatley, Michael, Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland 1910-1916 (Oxford, 2005).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 6

Image
Bruree Workers Soviet Mills, 1921 by  Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin . Continued from  previous post . In April 1919, the British Army declared the city of Limerick a Special Military Area under the Defence of the Realm Act, imposing a requirement for civilians to carry permits issued by the Royal Irish Constabulary in order to enter or leave the city. This action triggered a defiant response from the people of that city involving a twelve-day long strike, with the city effectively being run by a strike committee calling itself the Limerick Soviet. The strike was eventually called off on Sunday 27 April, with most workers agreeing to the use of the permits and to a return to work. On the day that the strike ended, Reverend W. Dwane, in an address to the congregation of St Michael's Church in Limerick, used language indicating that the clerical attitude to socialism and to militant industrial action in general had remained remarkably consistent since the Dublin Lockout and
Read more

The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 5

Image
Scab labour being escorted to work by RIC officers during the 1911 Wexford lockout. Picture from  Independent.ie . Continued from previous post . The Evidence The Church and socialism The Dublin Lockout of 1913 is rightly remembered as a crucial struggle between various Dublin employers and their workers, essentially over the question of whether or not workers had the right to join the trade union of their choice (it was the unionisation of unskilled workers - alongside the skilled and semi-skilled - by the ITGWU to which employers like William Martin Murphy of the Dublin United Tram Company objected). But lockouts in general had become a not infrequent occurrence during the second decade of the twentieth century. One important example was a lockout which took place in Wexford in 1911 when various foundry and engineering companies decided to lock out all employees who had become members of the ITGWU. The union had only recently begun to recruit in the area, and its su
Read more

The failure of socialist republicanism in the Irish revolution and its aftermath - Part 7

Image
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
Read more