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The
question of organisational strategy is of decisive
importance. Connolly understood that the working class
had to be organised industrially, politically and
militarily, that is through a trade union, a political
party and an army. But he weighted the respective
importance of each of those areas differently.
In
1896, James Connolly formed the Irish Socialist Republican
Party. Connolly was trying to create an Irish version
of the German social democratic party. The ISRP was
conceived as a typical Second International political
organisation: a propagandist group seeking to achieve
a workers’ republic by electoral means. It should
be noted that for many years, Connolly was an evolutionary
as opposed to a revolutionary socialist. In 1897,
he specifically dissociated himself from insurrectionary
socialism and called for the use of the “slower,
but surer method of the ballot box” to achieve
“the peaceful conquest of the forces of Government
in the interests of the revolutionary ideal”
(CW1, 315-316). For its time, the programme of the
party was the most advanced of all socialist organisations
in the British Isles. One of the problems was perhaps
that it was too advanced for its times. This is one
of the reasons why the party never took off. The party
remained weak and politically insignificant, as well
as divided by internal disputes. When Connolly emigrated
to the USA in 1903, his experience had shown that
a political party had little value as an organisational
mode of mass mobilisation. Being on the left of the
Second International, he also understood that trying
to create socialism gradually through parliamentary
measures led to an impasse. In the USA, Connolly was
very impressed by syndicalism through the theory and
practice of the American socialist Daniel De Leon.
Syndicalism
is a socialist current that seeks to overthrow capitalism
and the state by primarily if not purely industrial
organisation and struggle. If political parties and
action lead to reformism, to destroy capitalism the
working class must concentrate on the industrial battlefield.
Syndicalism seeks to mobilise all grades of workers
in a single revolutionary trade union organisation,
the “One Big Union”. This “One Big
Union” was conceived by Connolly as the prime
vehicle for the national and economic struggle of
the Irish working class. The Union was conceived as
the means through which the workers would exercise
their rule under socialism in the same way the capitalists
exercise their rule through parliament. Through his
experience of the Industrial Workers of the World
in the USA, syndicalism impressed Connolly as the
organisational scheme which best concentrated the
offensive power of the class struggle. For Connolly,
syndicalism seemed the answer to the failure of the
ISRP.
“The
fight for the conquest of the political state is not
the battle, it is only the echo of the battle. The
real battle is the battle being fought out every day
for the power to control industry” (SW, 159)
The practical conclusion from this idea is that Connolly’s
priority was to build the One Big Union and no longer
the party, because “the conquest of political
power by the working class waits upon the conquest
of economic power, and must function through the economic
organisation.” (SW, 163) Although heavily influenced
by syndicalism, Connolly was not anti-political or
hostile to the idea of a political party, but they
were assigned only a complementary role. In 1914,
he wrote: “The only force available to the worker
is economic force, the capture of political power
when it does come will come as a result of the previous
conquest of economic power, although that conquest
can be and should be assisted by the continual exercise
of political action.” (CW1, 339). All this rests
upon the assumption of the relative self-sufficiency
of workers organised in the trade union movement and
that political class consciousness could spontaneously
rise from trade union consciousness.
But
political class consciousness does not spontaneously
grow from trade union consciousness, and industrially
organised workers will not spontaneously also mean
politically organised workers. History proved that
the mass strike would not spontaneously transform
itself into a political insurrection. The mass strike
happened in 1913 (Dublin 1913), but did not lead to
a mass political insurrection. The insurrection happened
in Easter 1916, but without broad mass involvement.
The merging of the two could only be organically mediated
by a party. 1913 showed the irruption of the Irish
working class on the Irish scene, but simultaneously
showed the weakness of the political organisation
of that class. Ireland at that time possessed the
objective conditions for revolution, but the subjective
conditions lagged far behind. Unfortunately, Connolly
never placed the party (be it the ISRP or its successor,
the Socialist Party of Ireland founded in 1909) at
the centre of his attention. His main energies went
into the trade union (the Irish Transport and General
Workers Union, founded 1908), not the party. Connolly
formed political parties, but failed to attach central
importance to them. His failure to establish a vanguard
party resulted in a situation where there were no
trained and experienced revolutionary leaders to take
his place.
Connolly
was the most far-sighted socialist in the British
isles in regards to the military organisation of the
working class. The Irish Citizen Army was founded
in 1913 to give protection to the workers during the
Dublin lock-out. Hailed as the first Red Army in Europe,
it was a very significant phenomenon.
An
armed organisation of the Irish working class is
a phenomenon in Ireland. Hitherto the workers of
Ireland have fought as part of their armies led
by their masters, never as members of an army officered,
trained and inspired by men of their own class.
Now with arms in their hands, their propose to steer
their own course, to carve their own future. (CW2,
92-93)
Connolly
understood the importance of arming the masses and
creating a workers’ militia. The Citizen Army
was always a stalwart of the ITGWU and was able to
use its Liberty Hall as a base. Connolly conceived
it as the armed wing of the trade union, in the same
way the Socialist Party was its political wing. That
limited its political potential.
The
point is that the organisational theories of Connolly
meant that once he was killed, the full revolutionary
potential of the labour movement began to degenerate
without anything to prevent doing so. The working
class in Ireland, famed for its militancy became prey
to the leadership of opportunists. The fact that the
Socialist Party of Ireland was a loose centrist organisation
and the very all-embracing nature of the ITGWU meant
that the workers’movement had no ideologically
trained vanguard to resist the replacement of Connolly
and Larkin by opportunists like William O Brien. The
Citizen Army, under the new leadership of James O
Neill, became an uninfluential group which eventually
ceased to exist for all practical purposes. All this
was not unconnected to the influence syndicalism exerted
on Connolly, indeed syndicalism provided fertile ground
for opportunism to flourish. Connolly had the right
political analysis, but was unable to draw the correct
organisational conclusions from it.
It
is interesting to compare the organisational strategy
of the Republican Socialist movement to that of Connolly.
Traditionally, because of the war situation in the
Six Counties and the weight of the physical force
tradition, the Army played the central role, the party
was often nothing but a “political wing”
of that Army, and the trade unions played little or
no role. This is the exact opposite of Connolly. The
IRSP is not the political wing of the trade union
movement, or the INLA its military wing! But as objective
conditions changed, and through experience and analysis
like that of Ta Power, our movement modified its approach
in regards to organisational strategy. The Army is
on ceasefire and adopted a defensive role, so that
leaves much more room to build the party and our influence
in the trade union movement. It is time our movement
assesses what should be our priority in the industrial,
political and military organisation of the Irish working
class.
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