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The Irish Rebellion began back in 1916. This print shows British troops marching Fenians to Mountjoy prison in Dublin.
April 10 is the 50th anniversary of the Easter uprising.

‘We'll never forget

PRIL 10 of this year will
mark the 50th anniversary
of the Dublin Easter Rebel-

lion of 1916.

In the centuries-old struggle
for Ireland’s freedom from the
galling yoke of British imperial-
ism. millions of Irish men and
women, in their own land and
abroad, will observe this historic
anniversary: with a sense of deep
reverence and an indestructible
pride in the memory of their im-
mortal patriot martyrs.

James (Jim) Connolly, com-
mandant-general of that ill-fated
rebellion; Sean MacDermott,
Michael Mullins, executed by
British imperialism for their role
in that historic uprising; the
names of others, “shot out of
hand” by British troops, all will
be remembered. And that too of
a heroic woman, Lieutenant Con-
stance (Countess) Markievicz,
also sentenced to death, but later
commuted to 15 years of penal
servitude.

This great Easter Sunday.

drama in Ireland’s struggle for
freedom and independence, to-
day being played out in a differ-
ent age and under different con-
ditions in Vietnam, Asia, Africa,
Latin America and the Near
East (Aden), has often been
referred to in ignorance as “a
wild adventure”, “Irish mad-
ness” and so forth.

In her book, I Speak My
Piece, the late Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, an Irish-American Com-
munist who dedicated her whole
life to the cause of progress
and socialism in America with
matchiess devotion, wrote:

“Strange-~as it may seem now,
in 1954, there was a strong
Natural affinity between. the
Irish Republic, which had been

By TOM McEWEN

Editor, Pacific Tribune

proclaimed first in the Easter
week uprising in 1916, and the
Soviet Republic of workers,
soldiers and sailors, which came
into power in 1917. James Con-
nolly’s last words to his daugh-
ter before he was executed in
1916 (May 12—Ed.) were: ‘The
Socialists will never understand
why I am here. They will all
forget that I am an Irishman’.

. This was true of some So-

cialists, who called the uprising
a folly.- But before two years
had passed a mighty revolution
overthrew Russian imperialism,
an ally of British imperialism,
which had executed Connolly
and his comrades.

“The Socialist leader of that
revolution, V. I. Lenin, under-
stood Connolly. In the autumn
of 1916 he wrote a sharp rebuke
to Karl Radek, who had char-
acterized the the Irish rebellion
as a ‘putch’, a term which Lenin
said could not be applied to
the centuries-old Irish national
movement.

“Lenin said further: ‘The mis-
fortune of the Irish is that they
arose prematurely, when the
European revolt of the prole-
tariat had not yet matured.’ He
recalled how Karl Marx, back
in 1867, had called upon the
British ‘to demonstrate in favor
of Fenianism’ — the Irish free-
dom movement of that day.”

Inseparably interwoven with
this 50th anniversary of Easter
week are events and places sym-
bolic of struggle and progress:
the old Liberty Hall in Dublin,

where Jim Connolly, Jim Larkin
and many other courageous Irish
men and women “conspired and
were inspired” within its stout
walls; where they “dreamed
their dreams and prepared their
plans to rend the chains of slave-
ry, humiliation and suffering
that oppressed and depressed
the working class of Dublin and
Ireland.”

This year Ireland will remem-

-ber James Connolly, comman-

dant-general of the Irish Citizen
Army, founder of the Socialist
Party of Ireland, founder and
builder of the great Irish Trans-
port and General Workers
Union, :

“Tt found the workers of Ire-
land on their knees, and has
striven to raise them to the
erect position of manhood; it
found them with all the vices
of slavery in their souls, and
it strove to eradicate these vices
and replace them with some of
the virtues of free men; it found

them with no other weapons of.

defense than the arts of the
liar, the lick-spittle and the
toady, and it combined them
and taught them to abhor these
arts and rely proudly on the de-
fensive power of combination.”

A special, Golden Jubilee edi-
tion of the ITGWU (1909-1959),
published recently under the
title Fifty Years of Liberty Hall,
brilliantly illustrates how well
Connolly’s dedication has been
honored: by those who hold his

martyrdom and that of his com-:

rades of 1916—-a memory sacred
and immortal in the cause of a

x

free and united Ireland

On May Day, 1965, a new
16-storey Liberty Han was
opened in Dublin. This greaz
edifice was erected on ground
sacred to all Irish patriots, not
only as a headquarters to ser-
vice the needs of its 150,000
ITGWU members, but as a
“memorial to our fallen com-
rades” in the long struggle for
Irish freedom and progress. The
steel and-concrete of this edifice
ere bound together with the
blood, sweat, sacrifice and
struggle of many generations of
Irish martyrs and rebels. All
the deathless traditions of the
old Liberty Hai], which stoutly
stood its ground against British
artillery, give life and purpose
to the new. :

A May, 1965 souvenir edition
of the Irish Liberty Magazine
editorially declared: “It is our
duty, as we now pay tribute to
their memory, to rededicate our-
selves to the causes they in-
spired and the principles they
ennobled with their sacrifice
and death. We must pledge our-
selves to carry on the great
work they commenced until vic-
tory is won and every working
man and woman in Ireland is

”

assured of social justice...

We salute the 50th anniver-
sary of the 1916 Easter rebel-
lion, and the memory of its
martyrs who fell in the sacred
cause of freedom, a cause now
sweeping three continents, ex-
acting blood and sacrifice as
the price of final victory.

Long ago Thomas Jefferson
said: ‘The Tree of Liberty must

be watered with the blood of.

patriots and tyrants.” The sons
and daughters of Ireland have
watered it well!

April 7, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5 -

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