Communist Party editorial on the December, 1921 Treaty that partitioned Ireland, created the ‘Free State,’ and started a Civil War. For reference, ‘The American Labor Alliance’ was the legal front of the C.P. before the Workers Party was formed just as this was published.

‘Sinn Fein Barters Irish Republic for Mess of Pottage’ from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 4 No. 51. December 23, 1921.

The hopes of the Irish people for complete liberation from foreign rule have again been dashed by the complete surrender of the bourgeois Sinn Fein party dominated by Arthur Griffith. The republic that was proclaimed by the social revolutionist James Connolly and his comrades in 1916 has been betrayed. Under the terms of the settlement Ireland is labeled “The Irish Free State.” The agreement is simply a commercial arrangement which satisfies the greed for profits of the Ireland capitalists of Northern as well as Southern Ireland. The Irish Free State is neither Irish nor free. It is not Irish because it is based on the capitalism which, as James Connolly so well put it, is the most foreign thing in Ireland. It is not free because with Irish ports under the control of the British navy and Ulster as a friendly base for British troops Ireland is in the vise-like of the military and naval forces of the British government.

The Sinn Fein agrees that Ireland should pay its proportionate share of the Imperial debt which was incurred in carrying on its campaign of international robbery and the suppression of insurrections against the Empire, including the revolution of 1916, in which James Connolly, Pearse and others were executed by order of the British government. The Sinn Fein delegates have agreed to compensate the British government for the expense of crushing the Irish revolt and maintaining the Royal Irish Constabulary who were actively engaged in fighting the young republic.

The Workers’ Republic that Connolly and the workers who comprised his Citizen Army died for is now scrapped for ‘a fake Irish Free State. The Irish middle-class politicians like their prototypes in all countries have proved that they are not interested in freedom. While they get the workers to fight for them by talking about “national honor” and “self-determination,” when the opportune moment arrives they have no hesitation in throwing their fine phrases to the winds and surrendering their alleged principals for a mess of pottage.

The Irish Workers have a real fight before them, a fight to establish the Workers’ Republic. That is the only fight worth the shedding of one drop of workers’ blood. In common with their brothers in England they can by the use of their power overthrow the British government and upon the ruins of Imperialism establish the free Republic of Labor. The American Labor Alliance extends the hand of fellowship to the Irish workers, pledging them its support in the inevitable struggle for the conquest of power. It also calls on the workers of Irish birth and descent in the United States no longer to be the followers of capitalist politicians who have used them and Ireland as pawns in the game of politics, but to rally to the standard of the American Labor Alliance, the only political organization in America with a militant policy for the capture of power by the workers of the United States.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the I.W.W. leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-I.W.W. raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor J.O. Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the C.P.

PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1921-12-23/ed-1/seq-1