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Saturday, April 11, 1925
THE IRISH WORKER
3
IN MEMORIAM!
PEADAR MACKEN
Irish National Painters' Society
I. R. B.
Killed in Action, Boland's Mill
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
SEAN CONNOLLY
CAPT. IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Died in Action
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
JIM CONNOLLY
Acting General Secretary, I.T. & G.W.U.
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Commandant Irish Republican Army.
EXECUTED MAY 12th, 1916.
WILLIAM PATRICK PATRIDGE
Amelignated Union of Engineers,
Organiser I.T. & G.W.U.
COMMANDANT IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Died from wounds received during
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
JAMES McCORMACK
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
RICHARD CARROLL
Secretary, Brick and Bonelayers' Army
I. R. B.
Died from wounds received in Action
MAY, 1916.
JOHN O'BEILLY
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
MICHAEL MALLIN
Silk Weavers' Mallion
Organiser I.T. & G.W.U.
CHIEF OF STAFF
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
EXECUTED MAY, 1916.
CHARLES D'ARCY
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
J. F. ADAMS
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
GEORGE GEOGHEGAN
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
JAMES CORCORAN
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Died 1920 from wounds received
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
PHILIP CLARKE
IRISH CITIZEN ARMY
Killed in Action.
EASTER WEEK, 1916.
Unionmen who gave their Lives Fighting for Liberty and a Workers' Republic
Easter Week, 1916!
Like the flesh of a meteor causing consternation to British Imperialism and carrying exhilaration to every man and organisation that had ever mouthed or meant the slogan "Ireland a Nation," came the slogan to the power and might of the suppressors of our ancient nation in that now historic Easter Week of 1916.
What could it mean? How dare the British Imperialism while embarrass in a death struggle to consolidate its power throughout the world. Even the stolid British worker felt that it was not playing the game when he was at war for the defence of small nations according to the teaching of his mesters. He knows a little better now and is still learning what were and are the lessons of the Rising to the insurgent working class.
Was it a mass rising? No. Unfortunately there had been no serious
attempt to mobilise the great mass of the working class and these masses remained spectators instead of participants in the struggle. Was it a National insurrection? It was and yet it was not. The national forces and the subsequent history of Ireland in these last nine years is showing clearly the reason for the division. Nine years after the events of Easter Week we see former rebels now acting as his Britannic Majesty's Ministers of State.
We see Treason Acts being passed by men who claimed to fight for Ireland, to prevent their former conrades from carrying on the fight to its successful conclusion against British Imperialism.
"At was a glorious fight against unlimited odds, but it was not a fight directed by a clearly revolutionary party pledged not only to free Ireland in the abstract but to free the workers
of Ireland in reality from slavery and slumdom. Every man who went out in that fight was not imbued with working class consciousness, yet there was a sufficient number of that valiant body who ventured of all for the attainment of some small measure of economic freedom for the working class of this land.
But though that small army was not consciously fighting for working class emancipation, yet by their very act they struck a blow at British Imperialism, the main capitalism of the structure of world capitalism, which shook that hellish system to its foundations.
The men who ventured out in Easter Week of 1916 were setting out to destroy a system of world-wide exploitation and robbery, and if their effort had met with some measure of success, we, who in later years are striving to follow their lead, would
find our task far nearer accomplishment. But those men failed through force of circumstance, and though the fight has been continued through the years yet we find that after nine years have passed we are no further along the road to class emancipation than those men of 1916 were. The next fight must be better prepared; the masses must be mobilised to fight for their own needs. For that purpose we must have a Workers' Party of Ireland. The greatest tribute we can pay to the men of Easter Week, particularly to those who, like Connolly and the fighters of the Citizen Army, were actuated by working class instinct and training, by carrying their work to a victorious end through a Workers' Party pledged to a Workers' Republic based upon and upheld by the organised might of the working class.