Ireland and the Russian Revolution
Ireland and the Russian Revolution Colm Bryce22 In February 1918, an estimated 10,000 ‘workers’ parliament’. That is people packed into the Mansion House in the language of the Bolshevists Dublin to ‘hail with delight the advent of and Sinn Féiners and it should the Russian Bolshevik revolution’.1 The open the eyes of the authorities, speakers included some of the most promi- and also of the vast majority of nent figures in the Irish revolutionary move- the men, who are loyal and law ment such as Maud Gonne and Constance abiding, to the real objectives of Markievicz, Tom Johnston of the Labour the strike committee. These ob- Party, a representative of the Soviet gov- jectives are not industrial, but ernment and the meeting was chaired by revolutionary, and if they were William O’Brien, one of the leaders of the attained they would bring disas- 1913 Dublin Lockout. The Red Flag was ter to the city.2 sung and thousands marched through the streets of Dublin afterwards. On May Day 1920, a few months after A few weeks later The Irish Times the general strike, 100,000 workers marched warned against the danger of Bolshevism: in Belfast, under red flags. On the same day, tens of thousands marched in towns and vil- They have invaded Ireland, and lages across the whole of Ireland. The Irish if the democracies do not keep Transport and General Workers Union (IT- their heads, they may extend to GWU) which had called for the marches, de- other countries in Europe. The clared itself in favour of the ‘soviet system’.3 infection of Ireland by the an- In 1918, the British Prime Minister archy of Bolshevism is one of Lloyd George wrote to his counterpart those phenomena which, though Clemenceau in France: almost incredible to reason and experience, are made intelligible The whole of Europe is filled by the accidents of fortune or hu- with the spirit of revolution.
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