6. Guerrilla War¶
Core Argument¶
Following Sinn Féin’s landslide victory in the 1918 general election, Ireland was plunged into a three-and-a-half-year guerrilla war for an independent republic. The struggle was ultimately betrayed by the Irish bourgeois nationalists, who accepted the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. This settlement renounced the Republic, partitioned the North, and established a semi-colonial Free State, confirming James Connolly’s prescient warnings about the treacherous role of the bourgeoisie in national liberation struggles. The Irish working class, decapitated by Connolly’s execution and lacking a revolutionary Marxist party, failed to assert an independent leadership. The Labour Party subordinated itself entirely to the nationalist cause, adopting the fatal slogan “Labour must wait” and standing down from the 1918 election entirely.
This political paralysis was a profound strategic failure, for the potential for working-class power was immense. The period witnessed explosive growth in trade union membership, waves of strikes, land seizures, and the establishment of workers’ soviets, most notably in Limerick in 1919. Yet this revolutionary energy was squandered. After the Treaty, the Irish bourgeoisie launched a vicious wage-cutting offensive, deploying police and troops to break strikes. The Labour Party’s vote stagnated at around 9.7 per cent between 1923 and 1938, its reformist leadership steadfastly refusing to adopt Connolly’s radical programme.
Partition was no accident of history but a deliberate strategy of British imperialism, driven by economic and strategic interests—particularly control of Ireland’s ports—and by the ruling class’s fear of proletarian revolution. The Orange Order was the key instrument for splitting the working class along religious lines, a tactic perfected during the defeat of the 1919 Belfast general strike. In Belfast, 2,000 trade unionists mobilised to counter sectarian violence, but after the strike’s defeat, reaction seized the initiative. Police attacked pickets; the Orange Order deployed the lumpen-proletariat to incite riots and pogroms. Catholic workers were assaulted, shops destroyed, and murder became commonplace. From June 1920 to June 1922, 428 people were killed and 1,766 injured. Of 9,000 sacked workers, a quarter were Protestant.
The Protestant ascendancy was a device to divide the working class. Systematic discrimination against Catholics in jobs and housing was built into the six-county statelet, backed by gerrymandering. Prime Minister Sir James Craig declared in 1932: “Ours is a Protestant government and I am an Orangeman.” The Ulster Volunteers became a special constabulary; the B-Specials brutally suppressed the Civil Rights movement. The 1922 Special Powers Act gave the authorities a free hand. Yet the fragility of this sectarian edifice was exposed in 1932, when Falls and Shankill workers rioted together against unemployment, prompting frantic Orange Order warnings against communism. Sectarianism was never an end in itself for the ruling class, but merely a means to maintain its power. The division of Ireland was founded on the division of the working class.