Excerpt from Irish Nationalism and Labour Internationalism

The Author of this Report has not attempted to deal with the Irish question in the terms of a Statute, but the weight of common-sense to be found in these pages reflects the position which the Labour Party has tried to main tain with regard to Ireland since first the Party had to deal with the question. By instinct and principle the Party has ever been on the side of Self Govern ment, and the organized resistance to that demand has at length presented all the guilty parties with an Irish problem infinitely more difficult to settle than was the problem prior to the great war..

The present situation in Ireland is not the product of Labour policy, but no solution is likely to be found unless it travels upon the lines of that policy. The parts of the question which are rooted in history and in the spirit of Irish patriotism are not subordinated by the Labour Party when it emphasizes the labour and industrial aspects which are now a dominating part of the Irish trouble. The Party movement in Ireland travelled for a long time upon the lines of religious division and inherited political opinion. These movements are enormously modified by the social and economic factors which have entered into the problem. To the other Parties in Ireland, the Labour Party has now been added, and whatever form Irish Government may eventually assume, Labour aspirations and doctrines are sure to find defence by a strong Irish Labour Party.

Irishmen, either in Ireland or elsewhere, can turn with the greatest profit to that part of the Report which deals with the military question.

Unionists who have feared the separation of Ireland from the British Empire are driven now to understand how intense is the hostility of Irishmen to the separation of any one part of Ireland from the other parts, and those who wish to maintain Empire unity cannot now set aside the unquenchable desire for both the unity of Ireland and the government of its affairs by the Irish people.

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