Citizen Engels said the real purport of this motion was to bring 
the Irish sections under the jurisdiction of the British Federal 
Council, a thing to which the Irish sections would never consent, 
and which the Council had neither the right nor the power to 
impose upon them. According to the Rules and Regulations, this 
Council had no power to compel any section or branch to 
acknowledge the supremacy of any Federal Council whatsoever. It 
was certainly bound, before admitting or rejecting any new 
branch, within the jurisdiction of any Federal Council, to consult 
that Council. But he maintained that the Irish sections in England 
were no more under the jurisdiction of the British Federal 
Council than the French, German or Italian sections* in this 
country. The Irish formed, to all intents and purposes, a distinct 
nationality of their own, and the fact that they used the English 
language could not deprive them of the right, common to all, to 
have an independent national organisation within the Interna- 
tional. 

Citizen Hales had spoken of the relations between England and 
Ireland as if they were of the most idyllic nature, something like 
those between England and France at the time of the Crimean 
war, when the ruling classes of the two countries never tired of 
praising each other, and everything breathed the most complete 
harmony. But the case was quite different. There was the fact of 
seven centuries of English conquest and oppression of Ireland, 
and so long as that oppression existed, it was an insult to Irish 
working men to ask them to submit to a British Federal Council. 

a The Minute Book of the General Council has: “French, German, Italian or 
Polish sections” .— Ed. 

Relations Between the Irish Sections and the British Federal Council 155 

The position of Ireland with regard to England was not that of an 
equal, it was that of Poland with regard to Russia. What would be 
said if this Council called upon Polish sections to acknowledge the 
supremacy of a Russian Federal Council in Petersburg, or upon 
Prussian Polish, North Schleswig, and Alsatian sections to submit 
to a Federal Council in Berlin? Yet what it was asked to do with 
regard to Irish sections was substantially the same thing. If 
members of a conquering nation called upon the nation they had 
conquered and continued to hold down to forget their specific 
nationality and position, to “sink national differences” and so 
forth, that was not Internationalism, it was nothing else but 
preaching to them submission to the yoke, and attempting to 
justify and to perpetuate the dominion of the conqueror under 
the cloak of Internationalism. It was sanctioning the belief, only 
too common among the English working men, that they were 
superior beings compared to the Irish, and as much an aristocracy 
as the mean Whites of the Slave States considered themselves to be 
with regard to the Negroes. 

In a case like that of the Irish, true Internationalism must 
necessarily be based upon a distinctly national organisation; the 
Irish, as well as other oppressed nationalities, could enter the 
Association only as equals with the members of the conquering 
nation, and under protest against the conquest. The Irish sections, 
therefore, not only were justified, but even under the necessity to 
state in the preamble to their rules that their first and most 
pressing duty, as Irishmen, was to establish their own national 
independence. The antagonism between Irish and English work- 
ing men in England had always been one of the most powerful 
means by which class rule was upheld in England. He recollected 
the time when he saw Feargus O’Connor and the English Chartists 
turned out of the Hall of Science in Manchester by the Irish.’” 
Now, for the first time, there was a chance of making English and 
Irish working men act together in harmony for their common 
emancipation, a result attained by no previous movement in their 
country. And no sooner had this been effected, than they were 
called upon to dictate to the Irish, and to tell them they must not 
carry on the movement in their own way, but submit to be ruled 
by an English Council! Why, that was introducing into the 
International the subjugation of the Irish by the English. 

If the promoters of this motion were so brimful of the truly 
International spirits, let them prove it by removing the seat of the 
British Federal Council to Dublin, and submit to a Council of 
Irishmen. 

As to the pretended collisions between Irish and English 
branches, they had been provoked by attempts of members of the 
British Federal Council to meddle with the Irish sections, to get 
them to give up their specific national character and to come 
under the rule of the British Councll. 

Then the Irish sections in England could not be separated from 
the Irish sections in Ireland; it would not do to have some 
Irishmen dependent upon a London Federal Council and others 
upon a Dublin Federal Council. The Irish sections in England 
were our base of operations with regard to the Irish working men 
in Ireland; they were more advanced, being placed in more 
favourable circumstances, and the movement in Ireland could be 
propagated and organised only through their instrumentality. And 
were they to wilfully destroy their own base of operations and cut 
off the only means of which Ireland could be effectually won for 
the International? For it must not be forgotten that the Irish 
sections, and rightly so, would never consent to give up their 
distinct national organisation and submit to the British Council. 
The question, then, amounted to this: were they to leave the Irish 
alone, or were they to turn them out of the Association? If the 
motion was adopted by the Council, the Council would inform the 
Irish working men, in so many words, that, after the dominion of 
the English aristocracy over Ireland, after the dominion of the 
English middle class over Ireland, they must now look forth to the 
advent of the dominion of the English working class over Ireland.