26.10.1995

Ireland: the object lesson

From ‘The Communist’, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, October 28 1920

WHILE TRAVELLING round the south and west of Ireland during the last few days as part of a mission of investigation, I came to the conclusion that any revolutionists who may be considering the possibility of an armed revolution in this country should take a turn round Ireland just to realise what they will be up against.

To hold down about four million souls ... the Imperial Government considers the following forces necessary. As a basis there is the Royal Ireland Constabulary, an armed disciplined force who act as the local spies ... In close conjunction with them are the Black and Tans, a terrorist force recruited to some extent from the English criminal classes ... consisting of flying squadrons of men in huge motor lorries, carrying large stores of petrol and ammunition to raid the scattered villages and farmhouses within a wide radius of where any ambush has taken place. It is during these lorry raids that most of the deaths of the crown forces occur, for they offer the readiest means to the Sinn Feiners of securing arms and ammunition ...

Apart from the police forces and the guerrillas, there are the military ...

Of the Sinn Feiners’ counter-organisation I do not propose to speak, beyond saying that ... they are able to maintain a complete system of government, and only their writs run in the south and west.

It seems a pity, when our government has gone to such expense and trouble to stage for us so near home a rehearsal of what we may expect, that our eyes should be fixed only on the military methods of Russia. A few discreet and suitably accredited British communists might learn much from Irish organisation, for Sinn Fein is facing the problems we shall have to meet, not on a Russian steppe, but in the conditions of a western parliamentary democracy.

Ellen Wilkinson