MIA > Archive > Markievicz
Originally published in An Phoblacht, 26 June 1925.
Copied
with thanks from Phil Ferguson’s blog, The
Irish Revolution.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The military side of Tone’s career was so splendid, and the
political work he did so great, that the economic and social ideals
that inspired him as well as the revolutionary tactics that he
adopted have been very much obscured and are known to few.
He began, as so many revolutionaries do, as a reformer and pamphleteer, desiring to better the conditions of the people of Ireland. To do this he sought to unite the various warring religious factions on a common ground, the reform of the colonial Parliament of his time, by extending the franchise to all sections of the community, Catholic as well as Protestant, poor as well as rich.
This, at that time, was as revolutionary a change as “Bolshevism” would be today. He put great faith in a Parliament so composed. One of the addresses circulated by Wolfe Tone and his comrades declares that the forces that enslave, degrade and impoverish the Irish people,
“Can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity,
decision and spirit in the people, qualities which may be exerted
most legally, constitutionally and effica-ciously by that great
measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of Ireland – an
equal representation of all the people in Parliament ... We have gone
to what we conceive the root of the evil; we have stated what we
conceive to be the remedy – with a Parliament thus reformed
everything is easy; without it nothing can be done.”
A few more quotations from the various manifestos issued will prove that there was something greater and deeper in the alliance with France than the mere linking up with a nation at war with England. In July, 1791 the fall of the Bastille was celebrated in Belfast and a manifesto issued which contained the following words:
“Here then we take our stand, and if we be asked
what the French Revolution is to us, we answer, much. Much as men. It
is good for human nature that the grass grows where the Bastille
stood ... Go on then – great and gallant people; to practise
the sublime philosophy of your legislation, to force applause from
nations least disposed to do you justice ... you are in very truth
the hope of the world, of all except a few men in a few Cabinets who
thought the human race belonged to them, not them to the human race;
but now are taught by awful example and tremble.”
Another manifesto supposed to have been written by Tone himself in collaboration with Samuel Neilson and others applies to one of the slogans of the French Revolution, adopting it as one of the battle cries of the United Irishmen:
“This Society is likely to be a means the most
powerful for the promotion of a great end. What end? The Rights of
Man in Ireland. The greatest happiness of the greatest number in this
island, the inherent and indefeasible claims of every free nation to
rest in this nation ... The greatest happiness of the greatest number
– on the rock of this principle let this Society rest; by this
let it judge and determine every political question, and whatever is
necessary for this end let it not be accounted hazardous, but rather
our interest, our duty, our glory and our common religion. The Rights
of Man are the Rights of God, and to vindicate the one is to maintain
the other. We must be free in order to serve Him whose service is
perfect freedom.”
In this manifesto the linking up internationally of all revolutionary societies was advocated – as far as I know for the first time in the world’s history, for the three planks in their platform are – propaganda by publication; the accomplishment of “a National Convention of the People of Ireland” and “communication with similar societies abroad – as the Jacobin Club of Paris, the Revolutionary Society of England, the Committee of Reform in Scotland. Let the nations go abreast. Let the interchange of sentiments among mankind concerning the Rights of Man be as immediate as possible.”
And further,
“When the people come forward, the aristocracy,
fearful of being left behind, insinuate themselves into our ranks and
rise into timid leaders or treacherous auxiliaries. They mean to make
us their instruments; let us rather make them our instruments. One of
the two must happen. The people must serve the party, or the party
must emerge in the mightiness of the people, and Hercules will then
lean on his club ... ‘Dieu et mon Droit’ (God and
my Right) is the motto of kings. ‘Dieu et la liberté,’
exclaimed Voltaire when he beheld Franklin, his fellow citizen of the
world. ‘Dieu et notre Droits’ (God and our Rights)
let every Irishman cry aloud to each other the cry of mercy, of
justice, and of victory.”
No-one can fail to see that Wolfe Tone gave his life for the
freedom of Ireland from not only foreign political and military
control, but from the more subtle and cruel oppression and
enslavement that resulted from the establishment of the English
social system and the English economic system.
Link up the oppressed peoples and classes of the world was his cry, and it is well if those who gather to honour him, his life and his death should understand this and ponder well on the policy of Ireland’s greatest thinker, fighter and martyr.
Last updated on 25.8.2011