© Recalling the 1916 Easter Week uprising

1 ee SS
TVMVIM RI mmm ign yvm tim emt ttm t m mL t i

Ireland shall

et be free

EVEN men sat around a table
in Liberty Hall in Dublin at
9 am. Easter Monday morning,
1916. (in that year it fell on
April 24.) Padraic Pearse, the
Poet, was elected president of
the provisional government and
commander-in-chief of the army
of the Republic of Ireland to be;
James Connolly, the Marxist, the
revolutionary working class hero
of the struggle for Irish indepen-.
dence, was made vice-president
and commander of his Citizen
- Army, the Irish Volunters—and
that brave band of Irish women
who fought in the Easter Rebel-
lion. : :
_ The Easter Rebellion that Len-
In said marked a turning point
in the history of the Irish labor
Movement, was launched.
Beforé noon the march’ to
Seize the Post Office began. Brian
O'Neill in his Story of Easter
Week, describes the scene:
“The flower women around
the Nelson Pillar saw the charge
and heard the shots fired over
the\ heads of the retreating of-
ficials. The flower women grasp-
€d their baskets and ran.
“Glory be to God, it’s the
Citizen Army, and they’re after
taking the Post Office!’
“Sentries coolly moved back
the curious, the rifle butts crash-
ed through Post Office windows. .
“Some of the spectators knew

James Connolly -

By MARY
FLANAGAN

“And | say to my people’s mast-

ers: Beware,

Beware of the thing that is com-
ing. Beware of the risen
people

Who shall take what ye would

: not give. Did ye think to
i conquer the people; - ~
Or that Law is stronger than

Life and men’s desire to be
free?

We will try it out with ye, ye

that have harried and held,

Ye that have bullied and bribed,

yrants, hypocrites, liars.”

—From The Rebel,

x by Padraic Pearse.
ET Erin remember Easter
week of 1916, when her faith-
ful sons struck a blow for her
Tight to exist as a free nation.

In the struggle to achieve this,
James Connolly was executed by.
a@ British firing squad in a most
brutal manner. Already wound-
ed in the fight (he was not one
-to tell others what to do, he
showed them how it should be
done), he was lifted from his
bed, propped up and held there
by two British soldiers, while
another soldier of the same
Stripe “took aim” and laid low a
man whose shoes they were not
fit to lick. But Connolly is not
dead. He lives to stir the hearts
of liberty-loving peoples’ the
World over. ‘

‘Poetry was written at that
time by all whose hearts were
Moved to = anger. Describing
Connolly’s execution, Liam Mac-
Gowan wrote:

_ frish-Americans
picketing British Pr
the U.S.

ohe or all of the three men
standing together:

“Padriac Pearse, his face pale
under the Volunteer hat, a paper
in his hand; James Connolly’s

burly body filling out his Citi--

greatest of Ireland’s leaders

“Ready present, And he just
smiling — God!
I felt my rifle shake.

His wounds were opened and

round that chair was one:

red lake;
| swear his lips said *Fire!’ when
all was still |
Before my rifle spat.
That cured lead — And I was
picked to kill
A man like that.” i
es Connolly alone aino
at ae labor leaders could be
called a Marxist. In his books,
Labor in Irish History and Labor,
Nationality and Religion, and in
his pamphlets, he had applied
his Marxist knowledge with

“phoreeting the partitioning of Ireland
ime Minister Churchill on his last visit to

zen Army uniform; and beside
them, Tom Clarke in civilian
dress, eyes shining in the thin,
lined face.
“Pearse read aloud... .
“‘Phoblact Na h-Eireann. The

greater ability than any other
writer of the English-speaking
world. ‘

He was a revolutionary and
gave hours to study of military
questions at a time when many
labor leaders in most countries
regarded the imbibing of “Blue
Books” .and the drafting of am-

~ endments to capitalist law as the

sum of socialist activity.

He had grasped the “National
Question” as had no one apart
from the Russian Bolshevik lead-
ers. His last years of life re-
vealed him as a political tacti-
cian of outstanding calibre.

)
In. remember James Connolly

Underground railway

tHE new underground now be-

ing constructed in Budapest
will make travel for city office
and factory workers far more
rapid and comfortable. As a i
sult of a bigger population an

the greater number of employed .

people, the passenger transport
ers: in the Hungarian capital
is strained to its capacity, peer e
the fact that new bus and tro.
bus lines have been inaugurate

since the Liberation. -
- Budapest already has one un-
secon railway, the nok
and smallest in Europe. on-
structed in 1896, it runs for ey
miles under the mals boulevar :
but is inadequate for presen

itions.

a eon to passenger needs,
the Budapest town-planning ae
ject and the plan for industria

line is being built first.

development were also taken in-
to account. Three lines were
planned—an east-west line con-
necting Pest with the old city of
Buda, a north-south line, and a
link line joining all four termini.

The five-mile long east-west
This
line starts at the People’s Stad-
ium in Pest, and then joins main-
line railways stations on both
sides of the Danube, passing
through the centre of the city.
There will be eight stations on
the line, and part of it will be
in operation by the end of 1954.
When completed it will carry
300,000 passengers a day.

“The underground is of the
deep-level type, and five hund-
red yards of the east-west line
will pass under the Danube, pre-
senting special construction prob-

Provisional Government of the
Irish Republic to the people of
Treland, ~: 237)”

. The great poet then read the
proclamation:

“Trishmen and Irishwomen:—
In the name of God and of the
dead generations through whom
she receives her old tradition,
of nationhood, Ireland, ‘through
us, summons her children to her
flag, and strikes-for her free-
dom. ... We declare the right
of the people of Ireland to’ the
ownership of Ireland, and to the
unfettered control of Irish des-
tinies, to be sovereign and in-
defeasible. . . .”

T. A. Jackson’ in his Ireland,
Her Own, describes the scene: ‘

“As the reading concluded,
with a general cry of ‘God Save
Treland,’ a crackle of musketry
from across the river told that.
the Irish Republic had been pro-
claimed in arms as well as in
words.

“Looking up at the : flags
gleaming in the sunshine, James
Connolly, with tears of joy in
his. eyes, clasped the hand of
the no less delighted veteran
Tom Clarke; saying: ‘Thanks be
to God, Tom, that we have lived
to see this day’.” .

_ But, as in Upper Canada and
Lower Canada in 1837 when the
Reformers and Patriots under
Mackenzie and Papineau pitted
their ill-equipped citizens’ armies
against the artillery of the Brit-
ish, the Easter rebellion was
defeated. On April 29, with
Connolly seriously wounded,
Pearse slightly wounded, hund-
reds dead and dying, Pearse
yielded in an unconditional sur-
render, to spare further slaught-
Ors <-4

Then followed the revenge,
the reign of terror. More than
2,000 were deported to England
as prisoners. Scores were shot
by trigger-happy Imperial Army
soldiers.

Fourteen were executed,. in-
cluding Padraic Pearse, James
Connolly and Tom Clarke.

we do not forget all the thous-
ands of brave Irishmen and wo-
men who took their stand with
him.

Others executed by British fir-
ing squads were Padraic Pearse,
Tom Clarke, Sheehay Sceffing-
ton. Enraged reaction showed
these patriots and scholars no
quarter. In fact, to be “hanged,
drawn and quartered” was up to
then the usual sentence meted
out to those who dared strike a
blow for the freedom of Ireland.

The years 1916 to 1921, which
ended in proclamation of the

- Trish Republic, in an Ireland rent

eby partition, saw the Irish Re-
publican Army defying 100,000

lems. The line will run at an
average depth of 210 feet below
ground level.

Budapest citizens will have no

_ drab and crowded stations on

their underground. Constructed-
in the style of the Moscow Un-
derground, the stations will be
large, brightly lit, and decorated
with marble and works of art.

Ticket halls will be at ground
level, and escalators will carry
passengers to a large hall situat-
ed between the two plaforms.
The terminal station at the Peo-
ple’s Stadium is already nearing
completion, and murals, —sculp-
‘tures and mosiacs will be install-
ed.

Trains will consist of two, four
or six coaches, according to traf-
fie needs, and will take 54 seat-
ed and 186 standing passengers.

So.

ie |

fearful were the British that
they defied doctors’ orders, car-
ried the gravely wounded leader
to the courtyard and placed him
in a chair before the firing squad.
As it was reported then:

“He gripped the sides of the
chair to steady himself and held
his head high, waiting for the
volley.” :

Lenin, writing of the ill-fated,
but heroic uprising against the
English colonizers, wrote: “The
‘misfortune of the Irish is that
they rose prematurely, when the
European revolt of the prole-
tariat had not yet matured. Cap-
italism is not so harmoniously
built that the various springs of
rebellion can immediately merge
into one, of their own accord,
without reverses and defeats.”

As O’Neill explains, Easter
Week was a national uprising,
not a_ proletarian revolution.
“But it was a national uprising
in which a new factor. appeared

- participated as a separate
force, with its own organization,
leaders and outlook.” :

The struggle was not in vain.
O’Neill writes (in 1939): “The
struggle reshaped itself and took
new forms after Easter Week.
It reshaped itself again in the
Civil War of 1922-24. It takes
new forms again today.

“Treland has been mutilated;
six of her counties are still held
down by the imperial bayonets
and by fomented religious dis-
cord and pogroms. .. . The new
forces pressing forward from the
ranks of the working class and
farmers see more clearly today
than at any time since Connolly’s
death. The struggle ... will
have learned much from the sac-
rifices, the heroism and the
treacheries of the past... .

“tt will prove that the new
generation—facing, like Connol-

‘ly and Pearse, internal misery

and a crisis on the stage of
world politics—not only aecept
their heritage but are determin-
ed to win final victory in their
time.

“We shall rise again’.”

imperialist troops encamped in
Treland to deny the Irish people
the right of self-determination.
' That was when the British
hanged 18-year-old Kevin Barry
in Mount Joy Jail. He was cap-
tured during an attack on an
armored car, then tortured in an
effort to make him betray his
people. As the great Irish bal-
lad that immortalizes his patriot-
ism and courage relates, Kevin
‘Barry preferred death to dis-
honor.

Lenin was right a thousand
times as against the pedants,
who _ proclaimed the uprising
“abortive.” Easter week presag-
ed not the death of the Irish
nation, but its rebirth.

for Budapest by 1954

At rush-hours there will be a
train every one and a half min-
utes, and the total journey will
take sixteen minutes, against
three-quarters of an hour by
street transport. Maximum
speed will be 43 miles an hour.
When the work on the east-
west line is finished, 85,000 tons
of cast-iron, 30,000 tons of rein-
forced concrete, 150,000 tons of
cement and 600,000 tons of
gravel will have been used.
Budapest citizens are proud of.
this considerable engineering
feat — no -other country in the
world of a comparable size is at
work on a project of this nature.
When it is completed it will save
9 million hours of travelling
time a year — meaning more
leisure and greater comfort fo
“the working people. .

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 10, 1953 — PAGE 9