Some Reflections on the 1916 Rising
21 Apr 2006
This article was written by David Begg for the annual conference publication of the Teachers' Union of Ireland
The phrase 'cherishing all the children of this national equally' comes from the proclamation of the Irish Republic in Easter 1916. We should I suggest analyse this quotation in its broader context.
"The Republic guarantees civil and religious liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and addresses its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally..."
The phrase 'children of the nation' was not intended by the authors of the proclamation to refer exclusively to children, but the citizens and the role of the State in asserting and maintaining their social and economic rights.
Diarmaid Ferriter in his book 'The Transformation of Ireland' says that "This passage became one of the most quoted of twentieth century Irish history largely because of the failure of the promises to materialise." It was also a useful passage to quote when contrasting the often grim reality of the State's education system with the ideals espoused by Pearse, the educationalist.
It is more useful to analyse the broader passage and to examine what kind of State the authors of the proclamation envisaged. Significantly, the proclamation addressed women in an era when European women did not have the vote. It is, therefore a surprisingly modern and forward looking document. Declan Kiberd suggests that 'by promising to cherish all the children of the nation equally the rebels prefigured a welfare state decades before post-war Britain." In this vision we can, I think detect the mind and the pen of James Connolly- who was a fundamentally practical person.
The proclamation was written during a wartime boom. Army supply contracts and separation allowances brought wealth to Ireland. The proclamation makes the point that this wealth was not spread evenly - a point that will be familiar to observers of contemporary Ireland. As a trade union official Connolly would have known the key role that unions have to play in ensuring a fair and even division of wealth in society.
The role of unions then and now, was to ensure that the children of the nation were cherished equally either by acting on their behalf in collective bargaining or by pressing government to legislate and to implement existing laws. In the years 1906-1913 the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster opposed many of the socially innovative legislation of the Lloyd George Liberal Government such as old age pensions and unemployment insurance on the grounds that they would have made Irish industry 'uncompetitive'. This refrain is also familiar to modern ears.
The events that led to the Civil War of June 1922 to March 1923 made the emergence of labour as a political force very difficult. There was only one issue, and most people divided on that issue. The task, therefore of 'cherishing all of the children of the nation equally' fell to the trade unions by collective bargaining and by strike action. Unions were weakened in this role by divisions along a number of fault lines which arose in their ranks. The first division was between Larkinites and anti-Larkinites. Jim Larkin was a larger than life figure who was loved and hated in equal measures. Following his return from America in 1923, Larkin got into increasingly bitter disputes with the leadership of the ITGWU culminating in the establishment of the Workers' Union of Ireland in 1924. As if one split was not enough, the thirties and forties saw increasing tensions emerging between Irish and British based unions, leading to a split in congress in 1945. Defending the role of labour in an infant State debilitated by civil war was not an easy task. It was not any easier by the succession of splits and divisions which should be an object lesson in the need to maintain unity in the trade union movement.
The immediate post-war era saw the foundation of the Labour Court and the Conciliation & Arbitration Scheme for public servants. The Labour Court was specifically Irish, and grew into an authoritative institution, facilitating the negotiation of the post-war wage 'rounds' (of which Sustaining Progress is the thirty third).
The fifties saw a divided Congress trying to cope with an economic crisis of truly horrific proportions. The re-unification talks took some years but eventually came to fruition in 1959. One of the first acts of the new Congress was to organise a vigorous campaign on the Constitutional Amendment to abolish proportional representation. The rejection of the proposed amendment was by a very narrow margin and the plurality of vote for the 'no' side is attributed to the strong union campaign. This is illustrative of the role that unions have of promoting democracy. Unions were and remain the largest civil society organisation in Ireland.
The fundamental goal of the 1916 Rising was to establish a separate Irish State. In the trade union world the separatist goal was not achieved for very good reasons dealing with what today is known as North-South and East-West reasons. The majority of trade unions in Northern Ireland have their union headquarters in London. Failure to acknowledge this would have partitioned Congress in 1923. Secondly, traditionally many Irishmen worked in Britain for either short of long spells, and preferred membership of a British based union. A prominent labour historian has called this a 'colonised mind'. I think this approach is a-historical, and patronising to the aspirations of many Irish workers and to the influential role played by men such as Matt Merrigan in the affairs of the Irish trade union movement.
If we look for signs of decolonisation it is surely in the divergence of our system for setting wages from the British model. Central to this process was the establishment of the Labour Court in 1946 but more important was the evolution of National Wage Agreements from 1970 onwards. These lasted until 1982.
Eric Hobsbawm the eminent historian talks of 'the short twentieth century' in Europe which ran from Sarajevo in 1914 to Berlin in 1989. We have indeed a short twentieth century in Ireland, but defining the boundary dates is problematic. From a political point of view we can take it from Easter 1916 to Easter 1998, with the signing of the Belfast Agreement. From an industrial point of view, I would suggest 1913 to 1987. The first date is self-evident. The 1913 established a notion of an Irish labour movement dominated by Irish-based unions. Although the dispute itself was a stalemate it established unions as being there to stay at least in urban Ireland. Proof of this can be seen in 1923. In that year, the farmers of Waterford comprehensively defeated a labourer's strike, and eliminated union organisation in that county for two decades. At the same time, during a Dublin Dock Strike, the leader of the employers, in a confidential memo lamented that due to the division between Larkin and the ITGWU, there was nobody to negotiate with. Unions were here to stay in urban Ireland.
Establishing an end date to our short twentieth century is more problematic. I would argue that it is 1987, with the signing of the programme for National Recovery. This was the action of the players in the small nation reaching agreement to try and work towards a solution of all problems. Blaming past British misrule was simply not an option. As we took our gaze off the former imperial power we matured as a nation and Europeanised our system of collective bargaining.
The phrases from the proclamation of 1916 have therefore a contemporary ring. When this document is read as a political document and not a historical fetish object it has surprising contemporary political and economic relevance.
The core social values of this republic can be encapsulated in the notions of guaranteeing civil and religious liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens resolving to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, and cherishing all the children of the nation equally. These actions will not take place of their own accord. They are conditioned by the operation of economic forces within our society. Economic forces if left to their own accord will not result in equal or inclusive results. Unions are the only actors in economic life who strive as their core mission to achieve these outcomes. To this extent the economic sentiments of the proclamation of 1916 remain as relevant today as they were when it was written.
