aut ee a bar ache a (Gi) ae. 6 Raftery THE PROVISIONAL ey !Published by New Books, 16a Pearse Street, Dublin 2. Ireland, and printed by Ripley Printers Ltd., Ripley, Deroy xy March 1966. No. 1 in Golden Jubilee Year Series. atTHE TEACHINGS OF PADRAIG PEARSE by A. Raftery PADRaIG PEARSE anti ipated the wrong light in which his own Personality and teachings are Tn his pamphlet, “The Separat- ist Idea,” speaking of two of the great Irish revolutionaries whom he most closely resembled, he wrote :— “When we speak of men like Tone and Emmet as “vision- aries” and “idealists,” we re- gard only one side of their minds. Both were extraordin- arily able men of affairs, masters of all the details of the national, social and econo- mic positions of their day.” This perfectly sums up Pearse himself. The Picture of him as a mystic, devoted to a cult of blood sacrifice has been widely propagated. Pearse, the clear Political thinker, the organiser, has been largely lost sight of. This is particularly unfortunate because, with the Single excep- tion of James Connolly, he was the most profound political thinker in the Ireland of his time. Pearse was not a great poet. Some of his poems are effective, but as thetoric, not as poetry. Unfortunately, it is on the basis of his imaginative writings and poetry—in other words on his secondary activities, that he is judged. now presented, —=——_—__—_—____ no wonder that the real nationalists of tre- | land, the Separatists, have always been men of broad human sympathies and in- tense democracy, for it has ever been in the heart of the | Working class at home they | found their most loyal sup- port, and in the working | class abroad their most resolute defenders,”—Jamos Connolly, Clarity political writings there is no sentimen- tality but a clear, concise analy- sis of the lessons of Irish history. In his and social Padraig Pearse was not de- voted to the idea that Treland could only be freed by blood let- ting. Like all great revolution- aries he suited his tactics to the circumstances of the time in which he worked. Neither was he a narrow fanatic who wanted to exclude all but those who agreed with him from the desig- nation of “patriot,”To take first of all his attitude to others in the Nationalist movement. Far from being nar- row in outlook he in fact at- tacked the sectarian attitudes which were prevalent in sections of the national movement. Touch-stone He wrote:— “Our love of disputation sometimes makes us indecent, as when we argue over a dead man’s coffin as to whether he was a Nationalist or not, and sometimes makes us ridiculous, as when we prove by 4 mathe- matical formula that the poet who has most firmly voiced Trish nationalism in our time is no Nationalist. As if a man’s opinions were more important than his work! “J propose that we take ser- vice as our touch-stone and re- ject all other touch-stones; and that, without pothering our heads about sorting out, segre- gating and labelling Irishmen and Irishwomen according to their opinions we agree to ac- cept as fellow-Nationalists all who specifically or virtually recognise this Irish nation as an entity and, being part of it, owe it and give it their ser- vice.” (“From a Hermitage” “Jrish Freedom,” June, 1913). He was later to show in action his willingness to co-operate with all those who genuinely desired Irish freedom. He summed up his attitude to the means to be used to secure Trish freedom in his pamphlet, “The Spiritual Nation,” which he wrote shortly before the 1916 Rising. in ‘ He wrote:— “That Davis would have achieved Irish nationhood by peaceful means if he could is undoubted. Let it not be a re- proach against Davis. Ob- viously if a nation can obtain its freedom without bloodshed, it is its duty so to obtain it. Those of us who believe that, in the circumstances of Ire- land, it is not possible to ob- tain our freedom without ploodshed will admit this much, If England, after due pressure, were to say to us, ‘Here, take Ireland, no-one would be so foolish as to answer ‘No, we'd rather fight you for it.’ But things like that do not happen. One must fight, or at least be ready to fight.” Incapable The last sentence contains the essence of all political strategy and tactics. The failure of the Irish constitutionalist movement was not that it was constitution- alist, but that it was incapable of being anything else. When the time for constitutional action had passed the constitutional movement was incapable of going over to revolutionary methods. Basically this was be- cause the constitutional move- ment, including Daniel o’Connell, did not want @ revolution. It represented classes, in Irish society, who wanted more free- dom of manceuvre but who did not want to break with Britain. Padraig Pearse was a revolu- tionary but if it Jooked as if con- stitutional means could achieve Trish freedom he was prepared to use them.Before the outbreak of the First World War it appeared that Britain was to grant Home Rule to Ireland. Home rule In his column in “trish Free- dom,” in July 1913, Padraig Pearse wrote of this prospect: “I said last month that this generation of Irishmen will be called upon in the near future to make a very passionate as- sertion of nationality and that the form which that assertion shall take must depend largely upon the passage or non-pas- sage of the present Home Rule Bill. If the Home Rule Bill passes I imagine that the as- sertion I speak of will be made by the creation of what we may call a Gaelic party within the Home Rule Parliament, with a strong following behind it in the country. If the Home Rule Bill does not pass .. . the as- sertion must be made in other ways.” Pearse actually spoke on the same platform (in fact there were a number of platforms) as John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, at a mass meeting in O’Connell Street in support of the Home Rule Bill. Arthur Griffith, who was later to be one of the main architects of the compromise Treaty of 1922, was to the Left of Pearse on that occasion. Home Rule was too wishy-washy for Griffith. But it was Pearse, who accepted Home Rule at that time, who was the real revolu- tionary. Arthur Griffith, in spite of the great services which he per- formed at the beginning of the century in re-awakening Trish nationality, was in fact in the O'Connell tradition which he proclaimed that he despised. When 1916 came Arthur Griffith joined MeNeill and the others who tried to frustrate the Rising. 1913 PADRAIG PEARSE did not see the winning of Irish freedom as just a question of getting ri of the Br ish. He recognised that British domination was not simply a question of occupation by British forces. In 1913, at the time when the great battle was being waged in Dublin to force the employers to recognise the right of the workers to organise, Padraig Pearse was writing the column which he called “From a Hermi- tage” in “Irish Freedom.” The tone of this column was ironic. with Pearse posing as a hermit who commented on current events without being in any way involved in them, When it came to the Labour War, as it was called, Pearse, in commenting, began ironically but ended with a classic definition of his own attitude. In October 1913 he wrote in his columns;—“There are only two ways of righting wrongs, reform and revolution.” He pointed out Marie Antonette had not grasped the situation in France and ended on the guillotine. Drawing the parallel with the Irish employers he wrote: “TI would like to put some of our well-fed citizens in the shoes of our hungry citizens, just for an experiment. 1 would try the hunger cure upon them. “It is known that a pound a week is sufficient to sustain a Dublin family in honest hun- ger—at least very rich men tell us so and very rich men know all about everything.” The rich He suggested that the rich should try keeping their families on a pound a week. He calculated that.— “One-third of the people of Dublin are underfed, that half the children attending Irish primary schools are ill- nourished. Twenty thousand Dublin families live in one- room tenements. It is com- mon to find two or three fami- lies occupying the same room, and sometimes one of the fami- lies will have a lodger!” The comments above show that Padraig Pearse was no ivory tower mystic, living in a dream world. But he went on to ex- press his own profound convic- tions. His view was not some- thing just called forth by sym- pathy with the poor but a politi- cal attitude which was to deepen and develop as he came to work more closely with the wing of the Labour movement represented by Connolly. He wrote:— “God knows that we, poor remnant of a gallant nation, endure enough shame in com- mon to make us brothers. And yet here is a matter in which I cannot rest neutral. My in- stinct is with the landless man against the lord of lands, and with the breadless man against the master of millions, I do hold it a most terrible sin that there should be landless men in this island of waste yet fer- tile valleys and that there should be breadless men in the city where great fortunes are made and enjoyed. James Larkin “I do not know whether the methods of Mr. James Larkin are wise methods or unwise methods (unwise, I think, in some respects) but this I know that here is a most hideous wrong to be righted and that the man _ who attempts honestly to right it is a good man and a brave man.” It should be noted that here again Arthur Griffith took the wrong side. He denounced Lar- kin. There is nothing accidental about people’s political actions. Griffith's antipathy to Larkin was due to a political attitude of which he himself was probably not fully aware. Pearse’s sup- port for Larkin sprang also from his political approach. The most complete working . out of Padraig Pearse’s political ideas is to be found in the four great pamphlets which were written in 1915 and 1916. The