Page:Claude McKay (1920) Under the Iron Heel.pdf/1

 UNDER THE IRON HEEL.

British Labour, says the Daily Herald, will stop the Allies from making war against Soviet Russia. Let us hope so. Perhaps the Allies will hold back at the last moment, coming to the conclusion that a Russian campaign might prove to be a very dangerous experiment, or the unscrupulous Polish leaders might be brought to their senses. In either case, we shall be prepared to see huge Herald posters, John Bull-like, shouting at us from the city walls: "We stopped the Russian War."

Meanwhile the Irish war goes merrily on, and British labour and the Daily Herald look on. The Executive of the Labour Party does not send out ponderous notes demanding the stopping of the Irish war.

Although funds are being solicited for the victimised workers of Belfast, we can learn nothing of the real conditions obtaining in that city from the Capitalist Press. Carsonism, using the loyalist thugs, has driven hundreds of working men from their jobs and homes because they dared to resent English oppression, and their wives and children are literally starving. The big, expensive advertisements in the press appeal for clothing and money for the children of Vienna, but we hear nothing of the children of Belfast. Of course, we have no objection to the Allies rationing the Viennese after depriving them of the means of making a living.

To divert attention from the dastardly crime that is going on in Ireland, the English Junkers and their Press raise the cry of Mannixism. The religious bug-bear is invoked to justify junkerism in Belfast. It has been used to aid the Poles, but it has become a boomerang. It is natural that the Church, especially the Catholic, should take part in economic struggles. In the end it will try to snatch the victory from the workers and give it to the favoured class. Irishmen, like other people, are rather concerned about the way in which the established religion affects their economic welfare. And persons who are interested in, and conversant with, the industrial life of the North and the South will easily understand why the wily politicians can play off one religious section against the other. Capitalism will use the foulest methods to set the workers at each others throats.

In his recent pamphlet (Daily News reprint), exposing the barbarities practised upon the Irish people and advocating a free republic for Ireland, Mr. Childers remarks that such a system is the only one by which a white people can be governed, thus subtly endorsing the vulgar and pernicious view of the Western people that coloured humanity may be ruled by any system. A rather silly sentiment to be voiced by a so-called rebel. British Imperialism has not been able to pit Mohammedan against Christian Egypt, although it has tried. Both groups have buried their religious differences and united in a nobler and higher cause–to rid Egypt of foreign Imperialism. Even in India the different sects are coming together. What British Imperialism could not achieve in the coloured East, it has accomplished in white Ireland.

In Central Europe, before the great war, nationality was set off against nationality. The intrigue was centred in Vienna, the result of which is that that city is now ruthlessly boycotted by the border states, and even the farmers of Austria are refusing to send it food. To-day, Allied machinations are centred in London and soaked in blood and oil. The City of London will eventually pay the price.

Across the Atlantic the capitalist weapon is race and colour, but the recent dockers' strike in Philadelphia shocked even the blunted feelings of the American Plutocracy, for it was an unique demonstration of working-class solidarity, regardless of race or colour.

It should not surprise us greatly, then, that Downing Street, Dublin Castle and Carsonism should invoke religious hatred, as a last resort, to maintain Imperial Capitalism in Ireland. But Sinn Fein diplomacy, we are pleased to chronicle, is more than a match for English chicanery, and the Junkers will be out-witted again.

Sinn Fein has been learning much from the tactics of the Bolsheviki. It has recently issued a manifesto to the Irish people, enjoining them to give a whole-hearted welcome to all members of the Royal Irish Constabulary who have resigned from the service. And the resignations are becoming more numerous every day! The policemen are only regarded as enemies while they wear the uniform of English Imperialism. We are on the eve of a dramatic change in the Irish situation.C. E. E.