Peoples’ Defence: ‘all we have are the monuments to our dead.’

Wicklow Independent Workers Union activist, Sean Doyle with his words from an Easter Commemoration event in Dublin on the 30th March this year.

Sean Doyle delivering his oration in Dublin

Ireland throughout its history has produced many that came to the fore and inspired thousands in their time to courageously challenge foreign occupation holding our nation in bondage. They gallantly laid down their lives against the military might of England to weaken the grip that one day we might break free. Lalor, Tone, Connolly and most recently Costello to name but a few in this chain of command to break the shackles of foreign and native servitude of the Irish people.

Connolly said Ireland without her people is ‘nothing to me.’ And many other examples are to be found in his writings. But crucially more important he Larkin, O'Carroll and others were not armchair generals. They were to be found amongst the workers and most notably in the 1913 Lockout.

A time of chilling clarity and awareness that freedom from foreign domination would still leave us in servitude to native capitalism. An example of international solidarity came from the Liverpool Dockers when the DMP, RIC and the Home Rule Irish nationalist William Martin Murphy and Co who owned the Dublin tram company, numerous businesses and a large amount of the slum tenements that the workers had to live in organised brutal attacks by his lackeys on the unionised workers to break their will and starve their families in to submission.

The Liverpool Dockers offered to take their children over and care for them during the Lockout but the Bishop of Dublin objected citing a risk to the Catholic ethos. Connolly, Larkin and O'Carroll's response was to gather the children and march with them to the Bishop's big house and demand if he was concerned about the Catholic ethos would he feed them? Which of course he refrained.

As the attacks continued from the establishment forces and the Captains of Industry it became apparent to Connolly and comrades they needed to organise a defence force to protect the unionised workers on the streets. They formed the Irish Citizens Army after all that had been unleashed by the ruling class. A new consciousness and a sense of identity had emerged. The need inevitably to distinguish themselves and their struggle from others emerged.

The nationalists like Murphy used and abused as a flag of personal greed the tricolour. The unionist flag the red hand of Ulster and so on the 5th April 1914 at an Irish Citizens Army meeting a flag bearer carrying for the first time in public a beautiful new flag The Starry Plough was displayed with great pride and sense of identity and we carry it to this day in their honour.

In the 1916 Rising they raised it over the Imperial hotel in Dublin which was owned by the infamous William Martin Murphy which was burned to the ground during the fighting. In the subsequent civil war which followed - that we prefer to call the counter revolution due to the fact that the British armed the Free State to crush the likelihood of socialist republicans gaining a foothold - executions of men like Mellows were prioritised. British and native capitalism interests were secured at a high human cost.

When we speak of high human cost we must commend the people of the occupied Six Counties whose sacrifice seems to be endless. As we mark the signing of The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 some things have changed, relative peace, has not been matched with justice neither socially nor politically.

As the norm in these agreements there emerged a new middle class rich but as a comrade sadly remarked to me ‘all we have are the monuments to our dead.’