FEARGUS O’CONNOR AND THE IRISH PEOPLE”! 


The first issue of The Northern Star for 1848 contains an address to 
the Irish people by Feargus O’Connor, the well-known leader of the 
English Chartists and their representative in Parliament. This address 
deserves to be read from beginning to end and carefully considered by 
every democrat, but our restricted space prevents us from repro- 
ducing it in full. 

We would, however, be remiss in our duty if we were to pass it over 
in silence. The consequences of this forceful appeal to the Irish 
people will very soon be strongly felt and seen. Feargus O’Connor, 
himself of Irish descent, a Protestant and for over ten years a leader 
and main pillar of the great labour movement in England, must 
henceforth be regarded as the virtual chief of the Irish Repealers?” 
and advocates of reform. His speeches in the House of Commons 
against the recently published disgraceful Irish Coercion Bill*** have 
given him the first claim to this status, and the subsequently con- 
tinued agitation for the Irish cause shows that Feargus O’Connor is 
just the man Ireland needs. 

O’Connor is indeed seriously concerned about the well-being of the 
millions in Ireland. Repeal*—the abolition of the Union, that is, the 
achievement of an independent Irish Parliament—is not an empty 
word, not a pretext for obtaining posts for himself and his friends 
and for making profitable private business transactions. 

In his address he shows the Irish people that Daniel O’Connell, 
that political juggler, led them by the nose and deceived them for 
thirteen years by means of the word “Repeal”. 

He shows in its true light the conduct of John O’Connell, who has 
taken up his father’s political heritage and who like his father is 
prepared to sacrifice millions of credulous Irishmen for the sake of 


* Here and below Engels uses the English term.—Ed. 


Feargus O’Connor and the Irish People 449 


his personal ventures and interests. All O’Connell’s speeches at the 
Dublin Conciliation Hall?** and all his hypocritical protestations and 
beautiful phrases will not obliterate the disrepute he has brought 
upon himself earlier and in particular now in the House of 
Commons during the debates on the Irish Coercion Bill. 

The Irish people must and will see how things stand, and then it 
will kick out the entire gang of so-called Repealers, who under cover 
of this cloak laugh up their sleeves and in their purses and John 
O’Connell, the fanatical papist and political rogue, will be kicked out 
first of all. 

If this were all the address contained, we should not have especially 
mentioned it. 

But it is of much wider importance. For Feargus O’Connor speaks 
in it not oniv as an Irishman but also, and primarily, as an English 
democrat, as a Chartist. 

With a lucidity which cannot escape even the most obtuse mind, 
O'Connor shows that the Irish people must fight with all their might 
anc in ciose association with the English working classes and the 
Chartists in order to win the six points of the People’s Charter— 
annual parliaments, universal suffrage, vote by ballot, abolition of the 
t operty qualification for members of Parliament, payment of M.P.s 
and the establishment of equal electoral districts. Only after these six 
points are won will the achievement of the Repeal have any 
advantages for lreland. 

Furthermore O’Connor points out that justice for Ireland has 
already been demanded earlier by the English workers in a petition 
which received 31/, million signatures,245 and that now the English 
Chartists have again protested against the Irish Coercion Bill in 
numerous petitions and that the oppressed classes in England and 
Ireland must at last fight together and conquer together or continue 
to languish under the same oppression and live in the same misery 
and dependence on the privileged and ruling capitalist class. 

There can be no doubt that henceforth the mass of the Irish people 
will unite ever more closely with the English Chartists and will act 
with them according to a common plan. As a result the victory of the 
Fnglish democrats, and hence the liberation of Ireland, will be 
hastened by many years. That is the significance of O’Connor’s 
«ddress to the Irish people.