By TOM FOLEY reland has not been in the headlines for a long time. Now. with the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland, the arrival of British troops, and the fall of Premier Terence O’Neill, people have come across the fact that Ireland is parti- tioned and wonder why. The easiest answer, that the partition came about on a religious basis, is the most misleading. It is true that a major- ity of Protestants live in Northern Ire- land, sometimes called Ulster, which is still part of the United Kingdom ‘‘of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.’’ It is also true that Roman Catholics are a majority in the independent Irish Republic, or Eire, in the south. But the partition of the Emerald Isle came about on political grounds and not on the basis of Protest- ant-Catholic hatred. The long struggle for Irish ‘‘Home ule.” autonomy within the British Em- * eginning to win more and more the early years of the 20th cen- and would have been governed aS va... i Wa for so long—as a Dominion with its own parliament and with special .provisions for the minority to guarantee its rights. Over the years, many English liberals in the British Parliament had come to re- alize that Irish home rule was a necessi- ty. Added to their strength now was a par- liamentary delegation representing Brit- ish labor. Both Marx and Engels had said that the English working class would nev- er get anywhere until Ireland got its free- dom, and many of those who were no-. where near Marxism nonetheless saw the practical force of Marx’s argument in their everyday lives. The brutal English conquest of Ire- land had created a military-feudal oli- garchy of English landlords whose wealth and power rested on the continued sup- pression of the Irish people. Together with the British industrial capitalists, the oligarchy formed a powerful reactionary bloc in Parliament opposed to all pro- gress anywhere in the British Empire. The names of the oligarchs — George Curzon, Alfred Milner, Austen Chamber- lain, and others — immediately call forth images of the savage armed repression of Boers, Egyptians, Sudanese, Indians, West Indians, and most of all the Irish. It was the hapless Irish peasant who provided the rent, the taxes, and the la- bor-power to keep the oligarchy in power, and the oligarchy in turn required an army four times as large as the British army in India to keep the rebellious Irish in line. With this wealth and power they could thiéatéi’ English workers with the same fate: But their weakness was ‘‘one man, oneVote.” If the Irish peasants ~ they flogged and drove off the land would have an equal vote to theirs, they were lost. And if the oligarchy lost its power in Ireland, it would cease to hold up the progress of the working man in England. Oligarchy-capitalist power was .con- centrated in the British House of Lords, which then had the power to block legisla- tion. But by the. Parliament Act of 1911,, any bill passed in three annual sessions of PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 25, 1969—PAGE 4 the House of Commons would become law whether the Lords liked it or not. This meant that Irish Home Rule, in- troduced as a bill into Commons in 1912, 1913, and 1914, would become a reality, and the oligarchy’s power would be smashed. At this point, the oligarchy raised the flag of revolt against the Brit- ish government in no uncertain terms. The oligarchy’s leader, Sir Edward MAP OF IRELAND Carson, went to Germany before World War I, where he got the promised sup- port of the Kaiser and bought 35,000 Mau- ser rifles and three million rounds of am- munition. Under the slogan, ‘‘Home Rule Means Rome Rule,’”’ he panicked and paid the Protestants of the northern province of Ulster into joining his Ulster Volunteers. These people, mainly Presbyterians and dissenters from the established Church of England to which all the oligarchs belonged, were convinced that they were about to be tossed alive to the Vatican by the Home Rule provision of equal voting rights. They provided the mass base for the oligarchs’ revolt. Carson tried to land his German arms in the spring of 1914, shortly before the German invasion of Belgium, and was quoted as saying: ‘‘I do not care twopence whether it is treason or not.”’ When the British government ordered the army to stop Carson, General Hubert de la Poer Gough and 57 of his under-of- ficers in the Ulster garrison resigned their commissions, receiving wide back- ing from the professional officer corps. The Gough Mutiny, as it is called, is an indication that civil war and an army - revolt was brewing in Britain in 1914. The arms were landed, the resigna- SIR EDWARD CARSON REVIEWING 1HE ULSTER REBELS. AT HIS SIDE STANDS GEN- ERAL RICHARDSON AND COL. HACKETT PAIN, HIS ENGLISH DRILLMASTERS. tions were not accepted, and when war with Germany broke out, Carson, Bonar Law, Curzon, Arthur Balfour, and the rest of the Ulster rebels were taken into the British government en masse. Carson first became Attorney-General and then First. Admiralty Lord, while his loyal follower, Sir James Campbell was made — Lord High Justice for Ireland. As this glorious reconciliation was ‘going on, with the oligarchs taking over the British government with wartime powers, Home Rule for Ireland was sus- pended for the duration of the war. This was the final straw that forced the Jrish Nationalists led by the Marxist James Connolly to plan the revolt against Britain that culminated in the Irish East- er Rebellion of 1916. There was an evil mockery in the British charge that the men led by Connolly were ‘“‘traitors’’ be- cause they sought German help, and it has rarely been commented on that in effect, by sending the 1916 Dublin rebels before firing squads, the oligarchy was legally eliminating its home-based Irish political opponents. This fact was not lost on the Irish masses, however, who responded to the slain martyrs after 1916 as they had never responded to them in life. By the time of the famous ‘Khaki Election’ of December, 1918, so-named because so many servicemen voted in it, the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein had _ won the allegiance of the vast majority of Irishmen, north and south. Sinn Fein means ‘‘We Ourselves,’’ and had begun as nothing more than a Gaelic language re- vival movement. But the revolutionary - currents sweeping Ireland propelled it on to the political stage. It won 73 percent of the seats for Irish members of parliament. In 22 of the total 32 Irish counties, Sinn Fein was the only party on the ticket. It carried five Ulster counties — Donegal, Monaghan, Cavan, Fermanagh, and Tyrone — including the Protestant stronghold city of Derry (re- _ ee cently the scene of civil rights marches": Only four Ulster counties — Down. Der! Newspaper WMoustrations, Ard. Armagh, and Antrim — went to the Pig testant Unionist party. It is quite clea! from this vote and the narrow Unionls majorities that in fact Protestants 4" Catholics alike voted for Irish nationa®™ ism. Sinn Fein candidates were pledged not to take their seats in the British Hous® of Commons. Instead, they assembled! January, 1919, in Dublin, where they PF claimed themselves a Dail Eireann (1 Assembly). The Dail Eireann proclaimed an Irish Republic and named Eamon De Valet: Je by. then in prison, as its president. Litt theil little, the Irish began to take over own country, and where they met resis tance from the British, waged guerrilla war against them led by the Irish Repub: lican Army (IRA). The British hastilY amended the Government of Ireland of 1920 to deal with this situation: 19 partitioned Ulster of six instead of Mit" counties there was to be no self-govel™ ment, no ‘‘one man, one vote.” no matlé what happened in the rest of Ireland. In this rump-Ulster, the oligat could still maintain itself in power eV® when in July, 1921, an Irish-British tru rish | i chy came into effect and in December. ! a 7 when an “Irish Free State’? was PIT claimed in the other 26 counties of ‘ land. Some of the IRA refused to acceP anything less than a united Ireland a” carried»on 40 years of guerrilla warfa against the north. ed Ulster, now more commonly call Northern Ireland, is still today more e curately characterized by the rig” voting in favor of landlords, who may oa anything from six to 20 votes, than by !” Protestantism. Within this backwater &” clave, given a kind of autonomy. wit i the'United Kingdom, the remnants of oligarchy maintained their power ¥",, challenged by a new ‘‘one man, one V9 movement. —