Undoubtedly in most minds the great objection to the Abstention Policy is that it seems a mere negation; it seems to leave a horrible blank. What! No Irish Representatives at Westminster? Are we to allow Carson to represent us? And so on. Let us look at the thing calmly. Why do we want to be “represented” at all? We must first answer that question. For instance, we have no desire to be “represented” in Timbuctoo or in the Moon; but some Irish people find it consoling to feel that they are represented in England. If not, they feel something dreadful will happen: the income-tax will be trebled, we shall all be coerced and conscripted. Well, as things have hitherto been, the Irish Party have never succeeded in staving off a penny of our taxation. Twenty-four years ago an Anglo-Irish Commission found that England was plundering Ireland of two and three-quarter millions a year in excess of the amount of plunder sanctioned by the Union. From that day to this we have never secured the remission of one penny of this plunder; on the contrary, it has been increased tenfold. And all this time we have been strongly “represented” at Westminster. We have been paying heavily for the privilege! As for coercion—did the Party ever prevent it? For years past they might have got the Crimes Act abolished, they didn’t or couldn’t. Conscription was passed swiftly in spite of our “representatives”—but somehow it did not come off. Now, that is worth thinking on. Conscription, like Coercion Acts and Budgets, danced through our representatives, yet we ourselves beat it. How? By electing our own little parliament in Dublin (we called it the Mansion House Conference, of course, for decency’s sake), by voting taxes to it (we called them the Defence Fund), by organising the country so effectively that the English-made law was seen to be impossible and unworkable. What an object-lesson if only we will learn from it. The anti-conscription campaign is Sinn Fein in a nutshell. Even the Party developed a momentary backbone; the members came back to Erin and actually left us “unrepresented” in London—and we hardly noticed the dreadful fact!
The Abstention Policy means, therefore, that we give up the sham battle and take up the real struggle in grim earnest. We cease to rely on talk as an effective economic or political defence, we begin to DO something, to rely on ourselves. There is only one way of putting an end to English tyranny in Ireland, and that is, not by scolding at it from the other side of the Irish Sea, but by making it unworkable over here.
Do we mean the use of physical force? This is a difficulty which at once arises in discussing the abstention policy. This is chiefly due to the hysterical asseveration of Mr. John Dillon, whose chief electioneering argument—apart from abuse—is that the only alternative to Westminster is Rebellion. It seems rather curious, doesn’t it, that we cannot sit tight here in our own country and win independence as Hungary did under Deak. But perhaps Mr. Dillon means that if we were not distracted and bamboozled by the fighting on the floor of the House, we would not so tamely acquiesce in our oppression; and probably Mr. Dillon is right. But, after all, conscription was beaten without rebellion, and Mr. Dillon’s adherence (however lukewarm) to the Mansion House Committee showed that he believed it could be beaten without physical force. And when Mr. Dillon signed the No-Rent Manifesto he was, though he knew it not, a staunch upholder of Sinn Fein:—
“Against the passive resistance of an entire population, military power has no weapons.... No power on earth except faint-heartedness on your own part, can defeat you.... The world is watching to see whether all your splendid hopes and noble courage will crumble away at the first threat of a cowardly tyranny.... Stand together in the face of the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race.... Stand passively, firmly, fearlessly by, while the armies of England may be engaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot touch.... The Government will learn in a single winter how powerless is armed force against the will of a united, determined and self-reliant nation.”
Would to God that this was the message which Mr. Dillon had for Ireland to-day! Michael Davitt’s comment on the No-Rent Manifesto is interesting:—
“While I admit its great success as far as results were concerned, I think that it dulled a weapon which could have been used to give the final blow to landlordism in Ireland. Had the League waited until two or three hundred thousand tenant-farmers were ready to obey it, it would have involved the eviction of a million of people. That would have been a measure which the Government could not have faced, and the result would have been the downfall of the system of landlordism. Still, the results were immediate. The landlords offered the largest possible reduction of rents, and Mr. Gladstone offered to release the suspects and bring forward the Arrears Bill.”
There, in Davitt’s words, you have the central belief of Sinn Fein: reliance on the moral solidarity and economic power of a Nation. Even a small determined minority, if prepared to suffer, can effect enormous reforms. The English Suffragettes have won the franchise for women. It was certainly not by physical force—even the militant suffragettes did not rebel, though they burnt houses, broke statues, and harried politicians. A handful of determined women made government extremely difficult and thus they won the vote in spite of Parliament. If such is the power of a minority, how irresistible would be an entire nation. Secure even only one million determined adherents of Sinn Fein, and in six months English government will be at an end. That is our belief, and it is based on solid facts of history—Hungarian Independence, English suffrage struggle, Irish victory over conscription. There are limits to the possibilities of brute force. At this stage of the world it is impossible to slaughter a nation, it is impossible to cope with a nation of passive resisters. What is to be done with a million or so of people who refuse to pay taxes, who combine to secure the products of their own country, who repudiate the authority of the intruders? That is the problem which England does not want to face in this country. The only way for Irishmen to secure a government based on 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 behind-hand. 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.