Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  The suppression of this corrupt Irish Parliament was probably no great loss, except in so far as it might have developed later into something better. But this Act of Union did one real harm, and perhaps it was intended to do this. It succeeded in putting an end to the movement for unity between the North and the South, Protestant and Catholic. Protestant Ulster looked away again from the rest of Ireland, and the two parts grew estranged from each other. Another difference had crept in between the two. Ulster, like England, took to modern industry; the rest of Ireland remained agricultural, and even agriculture did not flourish because of the land system and the continuous emigration. Thus while the north became industrialized, the south and east, and especially the west, remained industrially backward and medieval.

  The Act of Union did not pass off without a rising in protest against it. The leader of this abortive rising was Robert Emmett, a brilliant young man, who, as so many of his countrymen before him, ended his days on the scaffold.

  Irish members went to the British House of Commons. But not Catholics. Catholics were not permitted to do so either in England or Ireland. In 1829 these disabilities were removed and Catholics could sit in the British Parliament. The Irish leader, Daniel O’Connell, was successful in getting these disabilities removed, and was therefore called the “Liberator”. Another change that took place gradually was the widening of the franchise, which gave the vote to more and more persons. Ireland now being joined on to Britain, the same laws applied to both. Thus the great Reform Bill of 1832 applied to Ireland as well as to Britain. So also the later Franchise Bill, and in this way the type of Irish member in the British House of Commons began to change. From being a representative of the landlords, he became a spokesman of the Catholic peasantry and of Irish nationalism.

  In their poverty the landlord-ridden and rack-rented Irish tenantry had made the potato their chief article of diet. They practically lived on potatoes and, like the Indian peasantry today, they had no reserves; there was nothing to fall back upon. They lived on the verge of existence, and had no powers of resistance left. In 1846 the potato crop failed, and this resulted in a great famine. But despite the famine the landlords turned out their tenantry for non-payment of rent. Large numbers of Irishmen left their homes for America and other countries, and Ireland became almost a depopulated land. Many of her fields were tilled no longer and became pasture-lands.

  This process of conversion of agricultural land that was ploughed into pasture-land for sheep was continuous in Ireland for over 100 years and right up to our times. The principal reason for this was the growth of factories in England for the manufacture of woollen textiles. The more machinery was used the greater the production and the more wool was required. It was more profitable for the landlords in Ireland to have pasture-lands for sheep rather than tilled fields with men working in them. Pasture-lands require very few workers, just a handful to look after the sheep. The agricultural workers thus became superfluous and were turned out by the landlords. Thus Ireland, which was in reality thinly populated, always had “superfluous” workers, and the process of depopulation went on. Ireland became just an area to supply raw material to “industrial” England. This old process of converting tilled land into pastures has now been reversed, and again the plough is getting back to its own. Curiously enough, this has resulted from a trade war between Ireland and England, which began in 1932.

  The land question, the troubles of the unhappy tenants under absentee landlordism, was the chief question in Ireland for a great part of the nineteenth century. Ultimately the British Government decided to remove these landlords completely by buying up their land compulsorily and then giving it to their tenants. The landlords, of course, did not suffer at all. They got their full price from the government. The tenants got the land, but with the burden of the price attached to it. They were made to pay this price not in a lump sum, but by small annual payments.

  After the national rising of 1798 there was no big rebellion in Ireland for over 100 years. The nineteenth century, unlike previous centuries, was free from this periodical occurrence in Ireland. But this was not due to a feeling of contentment. There was the exhaustion of the last rising and of the great famine, and the depopulation. To some extent, in the latter half of the century, people’s minds were also turned to the British Parliament in the hope that the Irish members there might be able to do something. But still some Irishmen wanted to keep alive the tradition of a periodical rising. Only so, they thought, could the spirit and soul of Ireland remain fresh and unsullied. The Irish immigrants in America started a society there for Irish independence. These people, “Fenians” they were called, organized petty risings in Ireland. But the masses were not touched and the Fenians were soon crushed.

  I must end this letter now because it is long enough. But Ireland’s story is not yet over.

  140

  Home Rule and Sinn Fein in Ireland

  March 9, 1933

  After so many armed insurrections, and because of famine and other calamities, Ireland was a little weary of this method of trying to gain freedom. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as the franchise for the British Parliament widened, many nationalist Irish members were returned to the House of Commons. People began to hope that perhaps these people might be able to do something for Irish freedom; they began to look to parliamentary action instead of the old-time method of armed rebellion.

  The rift between Ulster in the north and the rest of Ireland had widened again. The racial and religious differences continued and, in addition to these, economic differences became more marked. Ulster, like England and Scotland, was industrialized, and big factory production was taking place. The rest of the country was agricultural and medieval and depopulated and poor. England’s old policy of dividing Ireland into two parts had succeeded only too well; so well, indeed, that England herself could not get over the difficulty when she tried to in later years. Ulster became the greatest obstacle to Irish freedom. In a free Ireland rich Protestant Ulster was afraid of being submerged in a poor Catholic Ireland.

  In the British Parliament and in Ireland two new words came to be used, the words “Home Rule”. Ireland’s demand was now called Home Rule. This was much less than, and very different from, the 700-year-old demand for independence. It meant a subordinate Irish Parliament dealing with local affairs, the British Parliament continuing to control certain important matters. Many Irishmen did not agree with this watering down of the old demand for independence. But the country was weary of rebellion and strife and refused to take part in several abortive attempts at insurrection.

  One of the Irish members in the British House of Commons was Charles Stewart Parnell. Realizing that neither of the British parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, paid the slightest attention to Ireland, he decided to make it difficult for them to carry on with their polite parliamentary game. Together with some other Irish members he started obstructing parliamentary business by long speeches and other tactics merely meant to cause delay. English people were very annoyed with these tactics; they said that they were not parliamentary, not gentlemanly. But Parnell was not affected by these criticisms. He had not come to Parliament to play the polite English parliamentary game in accordance with rules of the Englishman’s making. He had come to serve Ireland, and if he could not do so in the normal way, he considered himself fully justified in adopting abnormal methods. In any event, he succeeded in drawing attention to Ireland.

  Parnell became the leader of the Irish Home Rule Party in the British House of Commons, and this party became a nuisance to the two old British parties. When these two parties were more or less evenly matched, the Irish Home Rulers could make a difference either way. In this way the Irish question was always kept in the forefront. Gladstone at last agreed to Home Rule for Ireland, and he brought forward a Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons in 1886. This was a very mild measure of self-government, but even so it created a storm. The Conservatives were, of course, wholly op
posed to it. Even Gladstone’s party, the Liberals, did not like it and the party split into two, one part actually joining the Conservatives, who came to be called “Unionists” because they stood for union with Ireland. The Home Rule Bill fell, and with it fell Gladstone.

  Seven years later, in 1893, Gladstone, then eighty-four years of age, again became Prime Minister. He brought forward his second Home Rule Bill, and this was just passed by a narrow majority in the House of Commons. But all Bills have also to pass the House of Lords before they can become law, and the House of Lords was full of Conservatives and reactionaries. It was not elected. It was a hereditary assembly of big landowners with some bishops added. This House of Lords rejected the Home Rule Bill which the Commons had passed.

  So parliamentary efforts also had failed to bring what Ireland wanted. Still the Irish Nationalist Party (or the Home Rule Party) continued to work in Parliament in the hope that they might succeed and, on the whole, they had the confidence of the people of Ireland. But there were also many who lost faith in these methods and in the British Parliament. Many Irishmen became somewhat disgusted with politics, in the narrow sense of the word, and devoted themselves to cultural and economic activities. In the early years of the twentieth century there was a cultural renaissance in Ireland and, in particular, an effort to revive Gaelic, the old language of the country, which still flourished in the western country districts. This Celtic language had a rich literature, but centuries of English domination had driven it away from the towns, and it was gradually disappearing. Irish nationalists felt that Ireland could only retain her soul and her old culture through the medium of their own language, and so they worked hard to dig it out of the western villages and make it a living language. A Gaelic League was founded for the purpose. Everywhere, and especially in all subject countries, a national movement bases itself on the language of the country. No movement based on a foreign language can reach the masses or take root. In Ireland English was hardly a foreign language. It was almost universally known and spoken; certainly it was better known than Gaelic. And yet Irish nationalists considered it essential to revive Gaelic so that they might not lose touch with their old culture.

  There was a feeling in Ireland then that strength came from within, and not from outside. There was disillusion at purely political activities in Parliament, and attempts were therefore made to build up the nation on a firmer basis. The new Ireland of the early years of the twentieth century was different from the old, and the renaissance made itself felt in many directions—in the literary and the cultural, as I have mentioned above, as also in the economic, where efforts were made, with success, to organize the farmers on a co-operative basis.

  But behind all this was the craving for freedom, and although the Irish Nationalist Party in the British Parliament seemed to hold the confidence of the Irish people, faith in them was shaking. They began to be looked upon as just politicians fond of making speeches and powerless to do anything. The old Fenians and other believers in independence had, of course, never believed in these parliamentarians and their Home Rule. But now the new and young Ireland also began to look away from Parliament. Ideas of self-help were in the air; why not apply them to politics? Again ideas of armed rebellion began to play about in people’s minds. But a new turn was given to this desire for action. A young Irishman, Arthur Griffith, began to preach a new policy, which came to be known as Sinn Fein, meaning “we ourselves”.

  These words give an idea of the policy behind them. The Sinn Feiners wanted Ireland to rely on itself and not look for succour or charity from England; they wanted to build up the nation’s strength from inside. They supported the Gaelic movement and the cultural revival. In politics they disapproved of the futile parliamentary action that was going on, and expected nothing from it. On the other hand, they did not consider armed rebellion feasible. They preached “direct action”, as opposed to parliamentary action, by means of a kind of non-co-operation with the British Government. Arthur Griffith gave the instance of Hungary, where a policy of passive resistance had succeeded a generation earlier, and pleaded for the adoption of a similar policy to force England’s hands.

  During the last thirteen years we have had a great deal to do with various forms of non-co-operation in India, and it is interesting to compare this Irish precedent with ours. As all the world knows, the basis of our movement has been non-violence. In Ireland there was no such foundation or background; and yet the strength of the proposed nonco-operation lay in a peaceful passive resistance. The struggle was to be essentially a peaceful one.

  Sinn Fein ideas spread slowly among the youth of Ireland. Ireland did not suddenly catch fire because of them. There were many people still who hoped from Parliament, especially as the Liberal Party had come back again in 1906 with a huge majority. In spite of this majority in the House of Commons, the Liberals had to face a permanent Conservative and Unionist majority in the House of Lords, and soon there was conflict between the two. The result of this conflict was to curb the power of the Lords. In money matters their interference could be got over by the Commons by passing the Bill objected to by the Lords in three successive sessions. In this way, by the Parliament Act of 1911, the Liberals took out the teeth of the House of Lords. But still the Lords remained with a great deal of power to hold up and interfere.

  Having provided for the inevitable resistance of the Lords, the Liberals brought forward the third Home Rule Bill, and this was passed by the Commons in 1913. As expected, the Lords threw it out, and then the Commons went through the laborious process of passing it in three sessions. It became law in 1914, and it applied to the whole of Ireland, including Ulster.

  Ireland seemed to have got Home Rule at last, but—there were many buts! While Parliament had debated Home Rule in 1912 and 1913 strange things were happening in the north of Ireland. The leaders of Ulster had proclaimed that they would not accept it and would resist it even if it became law. They talked of rebellion, and prepared for it. It was even stated that they would not hesitate to ask the help of a foreign Power, meaning Germany, to fight Home Rule! This was open and unabated treason. More interesting still, the leaders of the Conservative Party in England blessed this rebellious movement, and many helped it. Money from the rich Conservative classes poured into Ulster. It was obvious that the so-called “upper classes” or governing class were generally with Ulster, and so were many of the army officers who came from these classes. Arms were smuggled in and volunteers were openly drilled. A provisional government was even formed in Ulster to take charge when the time came. It is interesting to note that one of the leading “rebels” in Ulster was a prominent Conservative member of Parliament, F. E. Smith who later, as Lord Birkenhead, was Secretary of State for India and held other high offices.

  Rebellions are common enough occurrences in history, and Ireland especially has had her full share of them. Still, these preparations for an Ulster rebellion have a special interest for us, as the party at the back of it was the very party which prided itself on its constitutional and conservative character. It was the party which always talked of “law and order” and was in favour of heavy punishment for those who offended against this law and order. Yet prominent members of this party talked open treason and prepared for armed rebellion, and the rank and file helped with money! It is also interesting to note that this projected rebellion was against the authority of Parliament, which was considering, and which later passed the Home Rule Bill. Thus the very foundations of democracy were attacked by it, and the old boast of the English people that they believed in the reign of law and in constitutional activity was set at nought.

  The Ulster “rebellion” of 1912-14 tore the veil from these pretensions and high-sounding phrases and disclosed the real nature of government and modern democracy. So long as “law and order” meant that the privileges and interests of the governing class were preserved, law and order were desirable; so long as democracy did not encroach on these privileges and interests, it could be tolerat
ed. But if there were any attack on these privileges, then this class would fight. Thus “law and order” was just a fine phrase meaning to them their own interests. This made it clear that the British Government was in effect a class government, and not even a majority in Parliament against it would dislodge it easily. If such a majority tried to pass a socialistic law which lessened their privileges, they would rebel against it in spite of democratic principles. It is well to keep this in mind, as it applies to all countries, and we are apt to forget this reality in a fog of pious phrases and resounding words. There is no essential difference in this respect between a South American republic, where revolutions occur frequently, and England, where there is a stable government. The stability consists in the governing classes having dug themselves in and no other class being strong enough so far to remove them. In 1911 one of their defences, the House of Lords, was weakened, and they took fright and Ulster became the pretext for rebellion.

  In India the charmed words “law and order” are, of course, with us every day and many times a day. It is well, therefore, to remember exactly what they mean. We might also remember that one of our mentors, a Secretary of State for India, was a leader of the Ulster rebellion.

  So Ulster prepared for rebellion with arms and volunteers, and the government calmly looked on. There were no ordinances promulgated against these preparations! After a while the rest of Ireland started copying Ulster and organizing “National Volunteers”, but in order to fight for Home Rule and, if necessary, against Ulster. So rival armies grew up in Ireland. It is curious to find that the British authorities, who had winked at the arming of the volunteers for the Ulster rebellion, were much more wide awake in suppressing the “National Volunteers”, although these were not against the Home Rule Bill.