Page:The issue; the case for Sinn Fein.djvu/14

12 the consent of the governed is to withdraw all practical consent and concurrence from the present usurpation. There is no other way. To go on accepting the English government, co-operating with it as farmers, workers, tax-payers, policemen, etc., and at the same time to keep whining and petitioning—this is despicable folly.

John Bull is our boss, Ireland is his food-producing factory. The old idea of the workers was to do nothing, to form no combination, but merely to cringe for charity from their employers. That is the stage in which the Irish Party want to keep us; they are a century behindhand. The workers now rely on themselves, on trade union organisation, on direct action; they have even lost faith in parliamentary tactics. At any rate, they never complain that they are not "represented" (by a small minority) on the Employers' Federation! The modern Labour movement is based on self-reliance, on the power and cohesion of large numbers, on the slowly built-up economic strength of great unions. Sinn Fein is merely the transfer of this faith from Labour to Nationality. That is what we are aiming at in Ireland: the formation of One Big Union, which will ask nothing from England until it is ready to strike. That is the task which lies before us: the organisation of the Irish People into a National Union.- We must put ourselves into the position of taking over the whole national business of Ireland. The first step is the capture of the existing organisations—the parliamentary constituencies, the county and district and municipal councils, the boards of guardians, every single body which has a share in directing the national life.

THE MORAL PRINCIPLE.

Even from the purely practical standpoint, the case for abstention from the Westminster talking shop would be irresistible. But there is more than that at stake. We maintain that attendance at Westminster is immoral and dishonest, it would be a national lie and apostacy. The members of the Irish Party, when seeking re-election, have always indulged in an orgy of sedition^ and disloyalty. They talk of Emmet and Tone, they celebrate the Manchester Martyrs, they are not afraid to speak of Ninety-Eight, they are proud of the felons of our land, they sap every moral claim of the English Government in Ireland. (Had they not done so, they would never have been elected in the past.) And then they are carried off by mail-boat and express-train, and within a few hours they swear allegiance to the English King and draw their first instalment of £400 a year. What a bastard nationalism, what a monstrous Anglo-Irish mongrel mentality! English loyalty veneered with Irish martyrs' blood, damnable casuistry juggling with oaths and playing with rebellion, blood and thunder paid by a cheque. Listen to what John Redmond said on 9th August, 1902: —

"'Never for one single hour since the Union was passed has Ireland been a constitutionally governed country &hellip; Never for one hour has the English Government of Ireland obtained. the assent or approval or confidence of the people of Ireland &hellip; Never for one hour since then has the English Government of Ireland rested upon anything but naked force. No single reform, large or small, has ever been obtained by purely constitutional means &hellip; We submit to the English usurpation of the government of Ireland, but we do so only because we have no adequate means of successful resistance.'"

On 4th September, 1907, John Redmond described the Act of Union, which gave him his seat in the English Parliament, as "a great criminal act of usurpation carried by violence and fraud," which "no lapse of time and no mitigation of its details can ever make binding upon our honour or our conscience." Resistance to this Union, he continued, i?