Palestinians, Boers, and Irish: What Would the Irish Founding Fathers Think of Palestinian Solidarity?

Word Count: 2,690 words

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Summary: Peter Ryan argues that Irish nationalism’s roots include global solidarity; supporting Palestine continues that legacy.

Source: Le Petit Journal, 31 December 1899, Irish Transvaal Committee protest in support of Boers during Anglo-Boer War.

Ireland is a land of contradictions. A land known for the most freedom loving people, but long oppressed under despotism. Today, it is a land where the national Irish flag is overshadowed by the Palestinian flag. What are we to make of this?

It serves little use to retell the obvious parallels between the Irish and the Palestinians. The vast majority of Irish people are sympathetic to the Palestinians because of those parallels. Even more so, being a deeply moral people, the Irish feel compelled to support the Palestinians because of the sheer barbarity perpetrated against them.

This stimulated some Irish people to take to the streets to support Palestine. Others argue that enthusiastic solidarity of Palestine risks distracting from Irish issues. One of those critics might say: “Ireland has enough problems at home. We shouldn’t be overly active in a conflict so far away and outside of our control. We shouldn’t fly any foreign flags.”

This discourse creates a dichotomy between right-coded nationalists and left-coded internationalists. The implication of such a dichotomy is that the internationalists lose sight of a specific nationalist way of looking at the world. The nationalist perspective is also implied to be the more patriotic i.e. consistent with the history of Irish nationalism. The nationalist critic raises the Irish tricolour over the Palestinian flag to show his adherence to ideas of the men who raised that flag in Dublin in 1916.

But what if they were wrong? What if they were discordant with those men? Such men were part of a national movement that saw their own struggle as no different than other struggles. They didn’t consider acknowledging universal injustice as a distraction from their just cause; in fact, international solidarity and moral certitude bolstered it.

Boers and Wars

No example is as clear cut as the Irish support for the Boer cause in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902. The Boers settled South Africa in the 17th century with a society focused on family-based farming. “Boer” literally means farmer in Dutch and Afrikaans. At the turn of the 19th century, the English took over what was a Dutch South African colony. Many of these original settlers migrated further inland to be outside the control of the English. This migration was called the Great Trek.

The English then became aware that those new Boer lands were rich in gold and diamonds. Consistent with English character, greed motivated them to perpetually harass the Boers in attempts to seize more and more of their lands. These conflicts culminated in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902. The guerrilla tactics of the Boers proved too great for the English, leading to the latter resorting to increased ruthlessness.

Tens of thousands of Boer women and children were forcibly moved into concentration camps where they experienced starvation and disease due to extreme neglect and/or sadism by the English. While able to resist the hardships of war, the Boer men eventually succumbed to the grief to save their women and children. In May of 1902 they officially surrendered and were absorbed into the British Empire.

A small, underdog people versus the tyrannical British Empire. Sound familiar yet? Now that we are caught up to speed on the conflict, we can examine how the Irish fit into this story. Let’s start with Arthur Griffith.

Arthur Griffith was the founder of Sinn Féin and leading intellectual of the Irish nationalist movement. During the Irish Revolution, he and Michael Collins co-ran the revolutionary government. After the revolution, he became the President of Dáil Éireann. But before all that, he was a young man in South Africa.

In 1898, Griffith traveled to South Africa to find work. He worked for a small newspaper and in mining administration. Griffith noted that the English treated the native Africans “like a dog [and that] they were slaughtered and their country taken from them” by the English. He called the English “white barbarians.” Griffith juxtaposed this evil English tyranny to the more peaceful Boers who just wanted to farm and be free. Griffith’s time in South Africa drew him to the plight of the Boers and connected that English oppression in South Africa was no different than it was in Ireland.

After returning to Ireland in the autumn of 1898 and the start of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899, Griffith didn’t shy away from demonstrating this connection. On 14 October 1899 in The United Irishman newspaper, Griffith penned an untitled essay.; one may find this essay via An Chartlann under the unofficial title Solidarity with the Boers. He began it with this passage:

“Thirty thousand farmers are standing out to-day on the uplands of South Africa against the might of the British Empire. There is no craven amongst them to tell them with shaking voice of the invincibility and all-conquering power of the modern Carthage—to bid them lay down their arms and sue for mercy. The Boer has not yet learned that when England desires to smite him it is his moral duty to surrender his gun and use his tongue as his weapon of defence. The doctrine of Irish Constitutionalism—the doctrine that it is wicked and criminal to resist oppression by force unless success is certain—has not yet spread amongst the republicans of Africa. Thirty thousand fighting men against the power of England, strong in the righteousness of their cause they have sent her the haughtiest message in answer to her menaces”

The Boer is framed as an underdog; his cause is a just one, per Griffith, colouring the legitimacy to his resistance of oppression by force. He framed the Boer cause as akin to Fenian militant nationalism - the aforesaid are positively juxtaposed to what Griffith labels “Irish Constitutionalism”. The Boer and the Fenian were connected in their shared struggle against an British Empire.

He heralded “that the flag of the fearless and freedom-loving farmers may wave in triumph from the Zambesi to Cape Algulhas before many weeks—is the prayer of Ireland.” The Boer traits of freedom and farming were recalled again by Griffith. He also had no trouble in his use of flag imagery to champion one side. It wasn’t something to keep out of, but something all of Ireland should consider in their prayers according to Griffith.

Griffith advocated clear calls to actions. The most important was to hinder the English recruitment of Irishmen to fight against the Boers. He wrote:

“we can render assistance…by making recruiting for the British army impossible in this country. We call on Irish Nationalists everywhere to engage in this work. The climate of Ireland must be made unhealthy for the recruiting-sergeant, the victim whom he has inveigled must be rescued, the simpleton whom he is entrapping must be saved. The kidnapping of Irish youths to fight the battles of their tyrant must cease. From the moment the British crimp enters an Irish town the Nationalists must not lose sight of him until he is compelled to retire baffled from the place.”

Griffith was not shying away or callously ignoring this conflict. In the concluding paragraph, he wrote, “[w]e are loud in our expressions of sympathy with the Boers, and our sympathy is undoubtedly sincere.” He was fervently engaged in incorporating the conflict into an expression of what it meant to be Irish. He called on Irish people to participate in this struggle of nationalist solidarity. Another call to action was to communicate with the “Irish Transvaal Committee” where Griffith was its honorary secretary.

Griffith biographer Colum Kenny wrote:

“At the turn of the century Griffith was ‘the driving force behind the Irish pro-Boer movement’, most notably through the Irish Transvaal Committee that embraced ‘all that is dangerous in Dublin’, according to a police report…to stir up opposition to Britain’s presence in southern Africa. It was a heady campaign that drew large crowds.”

On 17 December 1899, the Irish Transvaal Committee organized a public protest against the British Empire’s colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain MP; a recipient of an honorary degree from Trinity College. Chamberlain blocked Home Rule in Ireland and was managing operations against the Boers in South Africa. Thousands of protesters joined them. The police aggressed upon the protest which led to arrests.

In an act that must stir us to believe in the rhythm of history, Kenny noted that protesters unfurled “the flag of the South African Republic [of the Boers]. The Irish Times reported that a body of mounted constables was sent after it, and ‘A brisk struggle for the Transvaal flag took place.’” It was reported that “Griffith that day ‘engaged in hand to hand struggle’ with a police officer.” Foreign press picked up the event like Paris’ Le Petit Journal; James Joyce even referenced it in Ulysses years later.

Could there ever be a clearer answer to our original questions? Griffith and thousands of Irish nationalists centered a street demonstration around a foreign nation and waved their flag. The similarity, in form and substance, to the present-day Irish demonstrations in support of Palestine is striking. There is no ambiguity.

Griffith was not alone. John O’Leary, Maud Gonne, and WB Yeats were on the Irish Transvaal Committee together with him. James Connolly protested Chamberlain alongside Griffith and got arrested for it. Earlier that year, Connolly drafted a Resolution of Sympathy with the Boer Republics. The Boer struggle moved the emotions of thousands of Irish nationalists.

Some Irish took a more direct approach. “Irish and Irish-Americans formed the 500-strong Irish Transvaal Brigade, led by John Blake, with John MacBride as his second in command” according to Lar Joye published in History Ireland. John MacBride was given Transvaal citizenship for his service and would go onto to use his combat experience from South Africa in the Easter Rising of 1916. He was one of such Irish leaders executed for the Rising later that May. The English also captured a German Mauser carbine originally sourced from the Anglo-Boer War during the Rising.

The Boer struggle was so connected to the Irish one that, at the first annual convention of Sinn Féin in 1905, Griffith cited the Boers four times in his speech outlining the policy of the party. The Boers inspired and shaped many facets of Irish nationalism of that era. However, the international solidarity was not limited to the Boers.

More than just the Boers

As noted before, Griffith extended sympathies to the native Africans who were mistreated by the English. Griffith also wrote in 1899 that “Ireland and the Empire are incompatible. One cannot be an African ‘civilizer’ and an Irish nationalist; one cannot trample on the rights of other people and consistently demand his own.”

This universal solidarity of the oppressed extended to not only other nationalities but other religions. Islamic Sudanese forces fought against the English in 1884. In the second issue of his United Irishman newspaper in 1899, Griffith composed a ballad called the Song of the Khalifa written in the voice of one of the Islamic Sudanese leaders. The first line is: “Vengeance, O Children of Allah! Veng’ance on England’s base horde.” Griffith also noted the imperialist injustice in India and China.

Beyond Griffith, Eamon de Valera corroborated this sentiment. Acting as President of the revolutionary Irish Republic, he gave an address delivered at the India Freedom Dinner of the Friends of Freedom for India on 28 February 1920 in New York City. He said:

“we of Ireland and you of India must each of us endeavor, both as separate peoples and in combination, to rid ourselves of the vampire that is fattening on our blood, and we must never allow ourselves to forget what weapon it was by which Washington rid his country of this same vampire. Our cause is a common cause. We swear friendship tonight; and we send our common greetings and our pledges to our brothers in Egypt and in Persia, and tell them also that their cause is our cause.”

De Valera highlighted foreign nations like India, Egypt, and Persia all had common cause with the Irish. He didn’t feel squeamish about vocalizing this nor apathetic to plight of suffering around the world. In that same tour across America to raise support for the Irish cause, he met with the Ojibwe (Chippewa) nation of native Americans. He expressed that:

“[w]e, like you, are a people who have suffered, and I feel for you with a sympathy that comes only from one who can understand as we Irishmen can.”

That American tour also allowed other Irish revolutionaries to learn and express support for other struggles. Joseph Connolly, the Irish revolutionary Consul General to the U.S., highlighted the struggles of Cuba and Poland. Harry Boland, Irish revolutionary Special Envoy to the United States, noted the plights of San Domingo (Dominican Republic) and Haiti.

Do Unto Others

In conclusion, the Boers make the answer clear. The additional examples of solidarity with other nations makes it abundantly clear. The Irish founding fathers of the 1916 rebellion and revolutionary war would find today’s solidarity with Palestine not just legitimate, but compelled by the tenets of their own Irish nationalist beliefs. These men are the reason Irish people today can hoist a Irish tricolour. The fetishization of such a flag robs it of its true spirit.

If a present-day Irish nationalist seeks to remove or cover up a Palestinian flag, they are no better than the British police who tried to rip the Boer flag away from Irish protestors, fist fought Arthur Griffith, and threw James Connolly in jail in 1899.

The Irish nationalists of that earlier era knew that if you reject or neglect the nationalist principle for any other nation, you destroy your own justification for nationhood. Support for the Palestinian people doesn’t distract from Irish nationalism at home, but only makes it stronger. The solidarity with the Boers didn’t dissipate nationalist fervor, it clearly only made it stronger. So it is today with the Palestinians.

Perhaps a more subtle quality is its power to unite Irish people together. Griffith and Connolly represented different wings of the political spectrum, but united under the flag of the Boer. Today, the Irish right and the Irish left could similarly unite to support justice for Palestine. Wouldn’t resolving conflicts and resentments under this shared cause do more to bring about a united Irish nation than the alternative?

The Irish nation is best when it has solidarity among all its people no matter right or left. The Irish nation is also best when it has solidarity with other nations experiencing suffering Ireland has known in its past or even today. To be like Griffith and Connolly, one has to act in their spirit. They supported the Boer. They would have supported Palestine. If you don’t, then at least be honest that you don’t support the Irish founding fathers too.