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