VI + 

During the previous autumn a terrific sensation had been caused all over Ireland by the farm-labourers’ strike in the M⁠⸺ district. The sensation was brought to a crisis by the murder of the Farmers’ Union Secretary. For the first time it was discovered that the Revolutionary Organization had spread its influence among the farm-labourers and over the whole country. Something had been discovered. A Government secret organization had overlapped the Communist organization and there was a little effervescence, which was immediately suppressed by the Government. Very little leaked out publicly. The newspapers were forbidden to talk about it. The Conservative organs in Dublin had timid editorials demanding that the Government should take the people into its confidence. What really was the extent of this “conspiracy against the national safety”? + 

Then immediately Commandant Dan Gallagher became a public figure and a general topic of conversation. He came out of obscurity in a night as it were. People suddenly discovered that he was a power in the country. He was photographed and interviewed and his photographs appeared in all the newspapers both in this country and in England and in America. He promptly denounced the murder as a “foul crime against the honour of the working class and the whole revolutionary movement.” He began to be feared intensely in official quarters as a “slippery customer.” This phrase was used at a Government Cabinet meeting. + 

Just about that time, the leading organ of the English aristocracy had a two-column leading article on the subject of Commandant Dan Gallagher. In the course of the article a short survey of Gallagher’s life was given sarcastically. The following is an extract from the article: + 

“… This flower of Irish manhood grew on an obscure dunghill, in the daily practice of all these virtues, which are indigenous to the Irish soil, if one is to believe the flowery utterances of the politicians on St. Patrick’s Day. His father was a small peasant farmer in Kilkenny. Having assisted very probably in the gentle assassination of a few of his landlord’s agents in the past, reverently decided to devote the activities of his promising son to the service of his God. But Daniel would have none of it. He was meant for other fields of conquest. He succeeded in making himself famous in the ecclesiastical seminary in which he was being prepared for the priesthood, by smashing the skull of one of the Roman priests during a dispute on the playground. The instrument used in this display of boyish gaiety was the favourite Irish weapon, a hurling stick. + 

“The young Fionn McCumhaill was expelled and fled the country. He drifted around for eight years without a trace of his whereabouts. Very possibly he spent the time in the United States. We can well imagine that he was favourably received among those organizations in the United States which are governed by Irishmen intent on the destruction of the British Empire by conspiracy, murder, slander, and all the other delectable schemes that come to life so readily in the Gaelic brain. We can imagine him perfecting himself in the arts of gunmanship, deceit and those obscure forms of libidinous vice which are said to be practiced by this morose type of revolutionary in order to dull his sensibilities into an apathy which the consciousness of even the most horrible enormities cannot penetrate.⁠ ⁠… + 

“At any rate he has returned to his beloved motherland endowed liberally with those qualities which make him dear to the hearts of all Irishmen of murderous inclinations. These latter unfortunately form as yet a considerable portion of the population of Ireland. Mr. Gallagher has a powerful and enthusiastic following. + 

“His brand of Communism is of the type that appeals most to the Irish nature. It is a mixture of Roman Catholicism, Nationalist Republicanism and Bolshevism. Its chief rallying cries are: ‘Loot and Murder.’ ”⁠ ⁠… + 

The following is an extract from an article which appeared a little while later in the columns of the official organ of the American Revolutionary Organization: + 

“When the glorious history of the struggle for proletarian liberation in Ireland comes to be written, the name of Comrade Dan Gallagher will stampede from cover to cover in one uninterrupted blaze of glory.⁠ ⁠… No other living man has given nobler service to the world revolution than this sturdy fighter, who rules the workers of Dublin with greater power than is wielded by the Irish bourgeoisie, who are still nominally in the saddle. The collapse of the farm-workers’ strike need not dishearten those comrades who expected great things from the hoisting of the red flag at M⁠⸺ last October. Comrade Gallagher has not seen fit as yet to call the Irish bourgeois bluff. When the time arrives.⁠ ⁠…” + 

In November a representative of the International Executive of the Revolutionary Organization was sent over from the Continent to make a special report on the situation in Ireland. The following is an extract from a secret report drawn up by him, after spending three months in Ireland secretly touring the country: + 

“… For the moment it would be a tactical blunder to expel Comrade Gallagher from the International. At the same time there can be no doubt that the Irish Section has deviated entirely from the principles of revolutionary Communism as laid down in the laws of the International. Comrade Gallagher rules the national Organization purely and simply as a dictator. There is a semblance of an Executive Committee but only in name. The tactics are guided by whatever whim is uppermost in Comrade Gallagher’s mind at the moment. Contrary to the orders issued from Headquarters, the Organization is still purely military and has made hardly any attempt to come into the open as a legal political party. This is perhaps not entirely due to Comrade Gallagher’s fault. There are local causes, arising out of the recent struggle for national independence, which has left the working class in the grip of a romantic love of conspiracy, a strong religious and bourgeois-nationalist outlook on life and a hatred of constitutional methods. This makes it difficult for the moment to check Comrade Gallagher’s hold⁠ ⁠…” + 