1- 's xt sed s ze Europe-wide conflagration" and bring an end to the misery of the war through proletarian revolution. The period following Connolly's death was one in which, to quote the words of Comrade Kim Jong Il, "a new development was taking place in the struggle of the working class and the popular masses against exploitation and oppression. On the world arena, the influence of socialism, which had won its first victory, grew strong, and the revolutionary struggle of the working class and the liberation struggle of the peoples in colonies and semi-colonies were intensified sharply... A new age was approaching, in which the revolutionary movement made progress in a broad and diversified way on a worldwide scale." Today it is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which, having stood, through unbelievable hardship and sacrifice, face-to-face with US and all imperialism for thirty-five years, focusses the hopes of the people in the East Asian region and inter- nationally for worldwide anti-imperialist advance to make the whole world independent and finally usher in the victory of the age of Chajusong. United as one under the unconquerable unifying force of the half-century leadership of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, the Korean people have indeed, to paraphrase Lalor's words of 1848, placed Korea foremost, in the van of the world, at the head of the nation, in the blaze of the sun and for ages the lodestar of history. Thus does the Juche torch beam out across the world, focussing the hopes of peoples from the Indian Ocean to the Irish Sea, from Africa to Japan, and from the Middle East to the Americas, for a free world -- in Connolly's words a "free federation of free peoples" -- where no nation or national group, no matter how oppressed, divided or downtrodden by 3
In the stormy struggles of Irish Republicanism, as in other national liberation movements, the question of consolidating a leadership structure and of success- ion has normally had to be faced in the context of crisis and martyrdom. Tone's martyrdom was followed by the despair of the succeeding years of British colonialism's counter-revolutionary terror, and the movement at home was unable to regroup itself after the killing of Tone and the other Republican leaders of '98. It was only in Republican France that condi- tions existed for reconstituting the organised republican leadership. The resultant leadership structure centred on Robert Emmet and led the uprising of 1803. This was the legendary final blow in the struggle of the United Irish national movement before British colonialism's long success in dividing the two communities in Ireland -- a success which has held back Irish victory till today. The Emmet uprising was a magnificent victory of independent and creative anti-colonialist leadership method, and brilliantly achieved succession to the leadership of Tone. It thus proved that the United Irish Republican movement had not died with Tone but was immortal. Throughout the following century Emmet's portrait was respectfully displayed in every patriotic household, songs of Emmet were passed from parent to child, and the heroic personality of Emmet was upheld triumph- antly as the historic proof of that united Irish identity which British colonialism had tried and was trying unsuccessfully to obliterate. Emmet societies and Emmet monument associations spread like a flame among the Irish communities forced to emigrate to the United States and elsewhere. Truly the Irish Republican tradition founded by Tone and immort- alised by Emmet was a worthy precursor of the Juche Idea, and achieved historic advances in the 6
n 8 an S S e Irish and international anti-colonialist tradition, through its profound respect for the leading ideas of its great leaders and their achievements in inspiring unity of their people. The European democratic revolutions of 1848 once again saw Ireland deeply affected by the advance of the most progressive forces, and the whole country seethed with expectation of rebellion under the banner of Tone and Emmet. Once again crisis, martyrdom, imprisonment and deportation were the context in which Irish Republicanism sought to consolidate a revolutionary leadership. The insurrectionary preparations and drilling of 1847-8 found the focus of their cohesion in the leadership of John Mitchel. His deportation was followed by the regrouping of the movement around the great revolutionary patr- iot James Fintan Lalor, but the leadership crisis was not solved in time for Ireland to ride the revolutionary high tide sweeping Europe that year. Nevertheless it was Lalor who faced and solved the major problems of the Irish national revolution. Above all he solved the question of successors to the revolution in the difficult circumstances of illegal- ity, and the majority of the leaders of the Fenian movement of the later nineteenth century traced their origins back to the brief but brilliantly constructive period of Lalor's revolutionary activities. Lalor bequeathed to the world the priceless revolutionary legacy of his thought on peasant movements and revo- lutionary patriotism and is to be numbered, like Connolly later, among the most strikingly and prophetically modern of the early scientific socialist and progressive thinkers. His vision of an interna- tionalist mission for a free Ireland, its independence shining out like a beacon, has been implemented by the Juche Idea which has made of the heroic struggles 7
of the Korean people not just a gain for Korea but a beacon of hope for all the world's oppressed people. Such was some of the fine legacy in theory and practice which James Connolly inherited and developed, above all in the four glorious years of his revolut- ionary activity to lead Ireland to national revolu- tion with the working class, the most independent class, at the head. It was in this period of world war and imperialist crisis that James Connolly came forward as a great internationalist leader who pro- foundly grasped the principle later formulated by Comrade Kim Jong Il in these words: "The best way to preserve national independence and peace and win the revolutionary cause is to counter the imperialist war of aggression with the war of liberation, answer the counter-revolutionary violence of reaction with revolutionary violence, and always meet the imperial- ist moves of aggression and war in full preparedness." James Connolly called on the working class, the most independent class, to "erect barricades all over Europe, to break up bridges and destroy the transport service that war might be abolished," and called for "armed battling in the streets". In the course of this magnificent period of revolutionary propaganda and organisation, James Connolly developed a legendary style of leadership that met the masses' desire for Chajusong/independence and enlisted their strength. He profoundly grasped the truth that the masses must be led to take up the revolution as their own affair, and called for a movement that would "inspire its followers with a belief in their own ability to conquer and master the future". He was the scourge of factionalism and flunkeyism, and tirelessly worked to repudiate the degrading legacy of the "flunkeys, toadies, lick- 8
Connolly fully respected the independence of all patriotic organisations and built relations with them on the basis of independence and equality, providing a unique and shining example for independent anti-imperialists of respect for the leadership and organisational structures built by the oppressed. In the field of military affairs, James Connolly sought to build a guerilla army, based on "a complete overhauling and remodelling of all the training and instruction" hitherto applied, under "conditions for which text books made no provision," and he studied the experience of urban and rural guerilla and revolutionary warfare, including the experience of the Moscow Insurrection of 1905, the Insurrection in the Tyrol in 1809, the 1830 Revolu- tion in Belgium, the 1836 Defence of the Alamo, the Paris Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and the 1775 American Revolutionary battle at Lexington. From these studies he crystallised a theory of insurrection that culminated in his week-long successful defence of much of the centre of Dublin against the colonial army of occupation at Easter 1916. Thus was born today's Irish Republican Army, which is indeed an army which lives up to the demanding standards put forward for a genuine people's army by Comrade Kim Jong Il in these words: "Such armed forces must embrace the sons and daughters of the working people... A noble revolutionary spirit to fight for the freedom and liberation of the people, boundless loyalty to the party and the leader, a peerless self-sacrificing spirit and mass heroism which are expressed in willingly giving up one's youth and life for the sake of the country and revolution, revolutionary comradeship between men and officers, their inseparable links with the people, and vol- untary military discipline -- these are politico- 10
