A Week that Shook the British Empire

 The 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising

Leave a Commenton A Week that Shook the British Empire

“Never had man or woman a grander cause, never was a cause more grandly served.”

James Connolly

LONG READ

This feature first appeared in An Phoblacht/Republican News on March 28th 1991 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising.

It is no exaggeration to say that the events of Easter Week in 1916 radically altered the course of Irish history. This is the story of the Rising in Dublin during that week, an event that reawakened the national demand for Irish freedom, the struggle for which continues to this day.

Thursday, April 20th

Plans for a nationwide Rising received a cruel blow on Thursday, April 20th, 1916, when the German arms ship, the Aud, arrived in Tralee Bay at 4.15pm with arms and ammunition for the insurgents. It failed to make contact with Irish Volunteers ashore, however, because it wasn’t expected until Sunday.

Friday, April 21st

On Good Friday, the next day, at 2.15 in the morning, Roger Casement landed from a German submarine on Banna Strand in Kerry. At 1.30pm he was arrested at McKenna’s Fort by armed members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. At half-past six that evening, the Aud was surrounded by British naval vessels and was ordered to Cobh (then known as Queenstown). Three Volunteers who had been sent to dismantle the wireless station at Cahirciveen and to set up a transmitter in Tralee to help Casement were tragically drowned when their car plunged into the River Laune at Ballykissane Pier in a freak accident.

Saturday, April 22nd

On the orders of its commander, Captain Karl Spindler, the Aud was scuttled off the Cork coast in the early hours of the morning. The captain and crew abandoned ship and were all captured.

Towards midnight that night, Eoin MacNeill, the Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers, issued the now infamous countermanding order cancelling the Rising, which had been arranged for Sunday. He had only found out on the Thursday about the Rising, which had been planned by the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood since January. He confronted Pádraig Pearse and Seán Mac Diarmada, who had both then managed to persuade him that the Rising would be a success because of the imminent arrival of the German arms shipment.

The news of Casement’s capture and the scuttling of the Aud led to his countermanding of Pearse’s orders for a full mobilisation on the Sunday morning.

Easter Sunday, April 23rd

On Easter Sunday, the IRB’s Military Council, (which had been formed in February 1915 and consisted first of Pádraig Pearse, Eamonn Ceannt and Joseph Plunkett but was later expanded to include Thomas Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, James Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh) met at 9am in Liberty Hall. It confirmed the cancellation of the Rising for Sunday but decided to go ahead the following day. From noon onwards, printing of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, signed by the seven members of the Military Council, now the Provisional Government, commenced.

New mobilisation orders were issued but, as a result of the confusion caused by MacNeill’s countermanding order, the Rising was mostly confined to Dublin City.

Easter Monday, April 24th

Even in Dublin, mobilisation was far from complete. The details of how many Volunteers, Irish Citizen Army, Cumann na mBan, Fianna Éireann and Hibernian Rifles members turned out are sketchy but it appears that at the start of the week the total number was less than a thousand but this was augmented during the week. At its peak the republican side consisted of around 1,800, of which over 200 were Citizen Army.

At 12 noon, having marched from Liberty Hall, the main body of insurgents – headed by Pearse and Connolly, and including Clarke, Mac Diarmada and Plunkett – occupied the General Post Office in Sackville (now O’Connell) Street as headquarters.

Connolly sent small detachments to occupy Hopkins the Jewellers and Kelly’s Gun Store, the corner shops commanding Bachelor’s Walk, Eden Quay and Carlisle (now O’Connell) Bridge.

Prince’s Street from the GPO after Rising

Later, other small parties would be sent to take over such prominent buildings as the Metropole Hotel, just across Prince’s Street from the GPO, the Manfield boot factory and Easons bookshop on the corner of Abbey Street. On the other side of Sackville Street, the Imperial Hotel, Marconi House and the tall Dublin Bread Company building were occupied. Connolly had the Starry Plough run up on the roof of the Imperial Hotel, a capitalist stronghold during the 1913 Lockout. A barricade was constructed at the junction of Abbey Street and Sackville Street to hold off the expected British reinforcements’ line of march from Amiens Street railway station.

Pearse stepped outside the front of the GPO into Sackville Street and read the Proclamation of the Republic. Two hundred copies of the Proclamation were pasted around the city centre.

The 1st Battalion of the Irish Volunteers (under Commandant Edward Daly) occupied the Four Courts and established posts at Jameson’s Distillery and buildings in the Church Street/North King Street area. The Mendicity Institute was occupied by ‘D’ Company under the command of Captain Seán Heuston.

Four Courts

The 2nd Battalion (under Commandant Thomas MacDonagh) occupied Jacob’s Factory. Some units occupied positions in the Fairview/Ballybough area.

A contingent of the Citizen Army (under Commandant Michael Mallin, with Constance Markievicz as second-in-command) occupied the St Stephen’s Green area and the Royal College of Surgeons.

The 3rd Battalion (under Commandant Eamon de Valera) occupied Boland’s Bakery and flourmill and the railway from Landsdowne Road to Westland Row station, with outposts at Mount Street Bridge and Northumberland Road.

The 4th Battalion (under Commandant Eamonn Ceannt and Vice-Commandant Cathal Brugha) occupied the South Dublin Union, James’s Street Hospital, with outposts at Marrowbone Lane, Roe’s Distillery, Ardee Street brewery and Cork Street.

A company of Citizen Army men and women (under Captain Seán Connolly) occupied the City Hall and houses facing Dublin Castle, the seat of British government in Ireland. The Castle was almost undefended and probably could have been taken had the republicans known it. The first casualties of Easter Week occurred here: a police officer at the Castle gate and then Seán Connolly himself on the roof of the City Hall as he was attempting to raise the Tricolour.

The insurgents also attacked Haddington Road and Beggar’s Bush Barracks but 2,500 British troops from the Curragh arrived and engaged them in the Dublin Castle, area and recovered City Hall.

The Mendicity Institute, held by Volunteers and Fianna members under Seán Heuston, came under attack, as did the South Dublin Union. The British gained entry to the grounds of the Union. During the day, a cavalry detachment of lancers charged down Sackville Street but were repulsed without firing a shot. Six cavalrymen were killed with the accidental shooting dead of one Volunteer in this first encounter in Sackville Street In the Ballybough/North Strand area, a party of Volunteers bringing supplies from Fairview to the GPO came under machine-gun attack but the crown forces, who were advancing towards Annesley Bridge, were successfully repulsed by snipers in the North Strand and the main contingent of Volunteers continued on their way to the GPO.

1916 aftermath from the Pillar

A small party, consisting mainly of Fianna with a few Volunteers, raided the Magazine Fort in the Phoenix Park, the main munitions store for crown forces in Dublin, and blew up the explosives store.

The British had so far been taken completely by surprise although the republicans had made a basic error in overlooking the importance of seizing the Crown Alley telephone exchange.

Tuesday, April 25th

The Lord Lieutenant, Viscount Wimborne, declared martial law. The British attack on the Mendicity Institute continued and they took Citizen Army posts at the Dublin Daily Express and Evening Mail building and the Henry and James shop nearby.

Artillery pounded barricades at Phibsboro and the British secured the North Circular Road. The British occupied the Shelbourne Hotel and from it and the United Services Club kept up fire on the Volunteers in St Stephen’s Green, forcing a withdrawal into the College of Surgeons.

General W.H.M. Lowe took command of the crown forces in Dublin and established a cordon from Kingsbridge to College Green via Dame Street. British reinforcements arrived from Belfast and Templemore with artillery support from Athlone.

The South Dublin Union was attacked and the British cordoned off the route from the North Wall to Kingsbridge (now Heuston) Station. Irish positions throughout the city came under attack. Despite inflicting many casualties on British forces repairing the damaged Great Northern Railway line at the Sloblands, British strength forced a withdrawal of republican outposts from the outlying Fairview and Annesley Bridge posts late in the day. At noon that day, the insurgents had produced their own newspaper, Irish War News, priced one penny, giving details of all that had taken place so far.

Control of Trinity College and Dublin Castle enabled the British to attack the GPO with artillery from the southside of the river, this wedge in the ring of rebel defensive positions also making it unnecessary to do more than contain the insurgents at Boland’s, Jacob’s and the South Dublin Union. It wasn’t until Friday that the gunners got the range of the GPO accurately. Two British infantry brigades were landed at Dún Laoghaire late on Tuesday evening.

Wednesday, April 26th

These reinforcements marched towards the city centre.

The 5th and 6th Battalions, Sherwood Foresters, came in on the Blackrock/Stillorgan/Donnybrook road in time to take part in heavy fighting at the South Dublin Union.

The 7th and 8th Battalions, marching in via Ballsbridge, were halted by three Volunteer outposts covering Mount Street Bridge. For nine hours, 12 men held down the two battalions, inflicting appalling casualties on them. The British admitted losses of 234 officers and men killed or wounded –– in fact, more than half their total casualties in the Rising, an unnecessarily stubborn waste of lives as there were other undefended routes into the city. Four Volunteers survived the epic battle, retiring from Clanwilliam House only when it was in flames from incendiary artillery fire.

British Sherwood Foresters on Northumberland Road

That day the rebels burnt the Linenhall Barracks and took the surrender of the garrison. The unoccupied Liberty Hall was shelled by the gunboat Helga. The Helga had sailed up the Liffey to Butt Bridge but the Loop Line bridge prevented direct firing. British forces took up positions in Sackville Street while rifle and machine-gun fire on the GPO and other IRA outposts in Sackville Street and on the quays became heavy and ceaseless. This was mainly coming from Trinity College and the tower of Tara Street Fire Station across the river. Artillery at Tara Street also shelled Liberty Hall. In the afternoon, a heavy gun at the corner of D’Olier Street and College Street demolished the upper part of the post at Kelly’s Corner and its little garrison was forced to withdraw to the Metropole. The Mendicity Institute was bombed and its rebel garrison was forced to surrender despite causing heavy British losses.

College of Surgeons

Crown forces advancing on Sackville Street from Parkgate met stiff resistance from Daly’s posts in the Four Courts and North King Street area. By the end of the day, a cordon had been thrown around the city centre north of the Liffey. Two more battalions were also on their way from England.

The pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (who had been arrested the previous day while trying to prevent looting in the city centre) was killed, along with two journalists, on Wednesday by British troops in Portobello Barracks, Rathmines.

Thursday, April 27th

Communications between the republican outposts had been cut and it became clear that the principal British objective was the GPO and its outposts.

Heavy fighting in the North King Street and Four Courts area was an unsuccessful effort on the crown forces’ part to eliminate these obstacles to the principal objective. The Four Courts were shelled and an armoured car was used by the British in North King Street. Artillery attacks and incendiary bombs aimed at the GPO continued. Fires raging throughout Sackville Street spread rapidly.

Flag on GPO

James Connolly was severely wounded twice but continued to direct the defence from a stretcher. In the South Dublin Union, Cathal Brugha was also very seriously wounded in heavy fighting but continued firing. The British were forced to temporarily retreat. There was no very determined assault on the main republican positions in Jacob’s and Boland’s.

John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, condemned the Rising in the House of Commons.

Jacob’s Factory

Friday, April 28th

Major General Sir John Maxwell arrived from England as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces.

At 9.30am, Pearse, President of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of the Irish Republic, issued his last manifesto paying tribute to his troops and singling out James Connolly for special mention:

“If I were to mention names of individuals my list would be a long one. I will name only that of Commandant General James Connolly, commanding the Dublin Division. He lies wounded, but is still the guiding brain of our resistance . . . If we accomplish no more than we have accomplished, I am satisfied. I am satisfied that we have saved Ireland’s honour. For my part, as to anything I have done in this, I am not afraid to face either the judgement of God or the judgement of posterity.”

Connolly himself ended an order with the words:

“Courage, boys, we are winning, and in the hour of our victory let us not forget the women who have everywhere stood by us and cheered us on. Never had man or woman a grander cause, never was a cause more grandly served.”

The Fingal Volunteers, then the 5th Battalion of the Dublin Brigade, under the command of Thomas Ashe and numbering 48, out-fought and completely defeated a superior force of about 70 RIC officers at Rath Cross, Ashbourne, the Volunteers having taken four RIC barracks. They captured arms and ammunition but failed to take Ashbourne Barracks.

Clanwilliam House

However, in the city, the beginning of the end of the Rising was marked when the British artillery finally got the range of the GPO. The building was set on fire and the prisoners who had been taken and the wounded were withdrawn by Volunteers and Cumann na mBan members to Jervis Street Hospital. The GPO could no longer be defended and the decision was taken to evacuate it. Connolly remained in command but as the garrison unsuccessfully attempted to break through a British barricade in Moore Street, hoping to fight their way through to a soap factory on Great Britain (now Parnell Street) The O’Rahilly was killed.

At 8.40pm the new headquarters were set up in a house at the Moore Street end of Henry Place.

British soldiers of the South Staffordshire Regiment shot dead 15 civilians in the North King Street area.

The ruins of the GPO

Saturday, April 29th

From first light on, the battle raged with mounting intensity. British forces closed in on other posts where fighting continued. By morning, headquarters in Moore Street were isolated.

Around Connolly’s bedside, Pearse and members of the Provisional Government (except MacDonagh and Ceannt, whose commands were in Jacob’s and the South Dublin Union) decided to negotiate terms of surrender. Preliminary arrangements were made by Cumann na mBan member Elizabeth O’Farrell, who took the dangerous job of delivering the message to the British in Moore Street. General Lowe would accept only unconditional surrender.

At 3.30pm, Pearse agreed to this and handed his sword to Lowe. Fifteen minutes later, he signed orders to the other outposts:

“In order to prevent the further slaughter of Dublin citizens and in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the members of the Provisional Government present at Headquarters have agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the commandants in the various districts of the city and county will order their commands to lay down arms.”

The Tricolour was hauled down from the roof of the GPO by British soldiers and the headquarters garrison marched out to surrender late in the afternoon. Daly’s garrison in the Four Courts also surrendered. The 400 republicans taken prisoner spent the night in the open in the grounds of the Rotunda Hospital.

Sunday, April 30th

All the other strongpoints (the South Dublin Union, Jacob’s, the College of Surgeons, and Boland’s Mill) were still in action but, after assurances of the genuineness of Pearse’s order, all the other commandants, with their officers and men and women, surrendered.

The republicans who had been held prisoner at the Rotunda were taken to Richmond Barracks at Inchicore. Hundreds were taken from here to the North Wall to be interned in Wales and England.

On Wednesday, May 3rd, the executions began.

Sixty-four republicans had been killed in action during the Rising.

Of the 20,000 British troops involved, 516 officers and men were officially listed as killed, wounded or missing.

Somewhere between 160 and 216 civilians had been killed.

British shelling had reduced much of the city centre to charred rubble.

---

• This article was originally published by An Phoblacht on March 28th 1991, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising, and was reproduced on 18th April 2025.
• You can follow An Phoblacht on Facebook and Twitter/X.

 

Lakenheath Blockade Breaks the Silence on US Nukes Returning to Britain

Leave a Commenton Lakenheath Blockade Breaks the Silence on US Nukes Returning to Britain

“Lakenheath, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, has the biggest presence of US military forces in Britain – exposing its less than honest claim to be an RAF base.”

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) Vice Chair Carol Turner reports on a successful blockade of Lakenheath last Saturday.

Despite government silence, news that US nuclear weapons are returning to Britain is at last beginning to get through. CND members from across the country gathered at the main gate of Lakenheath airbase to join a blockade which marked the end of a successful two-week peace camp, organised by the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace (LAP) coalition.

Lakenheath, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, has the biggest presence of US military forces in Britain – exposing its less than honest claim to be an RAF base. Lakenheath hosts the US Airforce 48th Fighter Wing, tasked with providing ‘worldwide responsive combat airpower and support’ which is ‘capable of dominating any adversary’.

Palestinians are among the so-called adversaries the US forces based there are currently helping to ‘dominate’. F35 bombers fly from Lakenheath, in support of Israel’s attacks on the Occupied territories.

LAP activities during the April peace camp included a War Crimes and Genocide Day highlighting the complicity of the US, UK, and NATO in Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza. Past attacks from Lakenheath include Libya in 1986 and combat missions against Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq in 2023. Other peace camp activity days included an international conference attended by guests from across Europe and beyond, and a Greenham Women day.

Around 250 people took part in the blockade on Saturday 26 April, including two CND coaches from London. An impressive list of banners. I recall seeing them from Wales, York, Plymouth, Quakers, London Peace Pagoda – including nearby Norwich and Cambridge.

Fine weather and a carnival atmosphere notwithstanding, there were seven arrests from among those who chose not to heed the police call to disperse at the end of the afternoon.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said nuclear weapons don’t make us safer, they make us a target. She expressed solidarity with those arrested after the successful three-hour shut down of the main entrance to the base. “Rather than arresting people for peacefully protesting the return of US nuclear weapons to Britain,” Sophie said, “the clear violations of international law facilitated by the British government should be investigated.“

Visit CND for more information on US nuclear weapons coming to Britain and what you can do.

Lakenheath Alliance for Peace is a coalition of local, national, and international groups dedicated to preventing the return of US nuclear weapons to Lakenheath. LAP holds monthly vigils at the base.

---

• Carol Turner is Vice Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). You can follow her on Twitter/X, and CND on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X and TikTok.
• You can follow the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace on Facebook, Twitter/X, Bluesky and YouTube.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon: “So What Now?”

Leave a Commenton Jean-Luc Mélenchon: “So What Now?”

“One development stands out as the most crucial advance of our era: the rise of a single human people, united by its shared fate and its common dependence on the ecosystem.”

The following is an extract from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s new book Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century (Verso).

In the last century, the story of history’s progress was built on the idea that it would pass through a series of stages of material development. These stages were fixed, predetermined, and similar regardless of place, culture, or past history. This story indicated a path from underdevelopment to the happiness of an efficient, democratic market economy.

Various benchmarks were proposed along the way: the supposed results of material production. But the real criteria of success were not the spread of education, the status of women, literacy, human life expectancy, the fate of animals, or even the quality or life span of the products that we use. For most branches of political thought, all these were just automatic by-products of growth and the flow of goods and money.

Until the beginning of the new millennium, almost no political camp had taken stock of the inherent contradiction in this way of seeing things: its quest for infinite demand in a world of finite resources. This objection surely did gain traction in the human and physical sciences, but both right-wing politics and the traditional left shrugged their shoulders.

But now the reality has become undeniable. The narrative of triumphant productivist modernity is dead. It has been replaced by nothing more than empty propaganda.

The Poverty of Productivism

Later in the century, another vision of the world was — at last — officially expressed. This came only after a long period of social struggle and reflection that began with the Club of Rome in the early 1970s. In 1987, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published Our Common Future, the report by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Five years later, in 1992, the first Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Brundtland’s report replaced quantitative assessments with a qualitative vision. It proposed new criteria of success: “human development criteria,” to be achieved within the framework of “sustainable development.” Here the benchmarks for evaluating government action changed. They still produced a ranking of the different nations’ performance, but these were no longer based on growth and GDP.

The quantitative dimension had to take a step back, in favor of an assessment of the qualitative progress in the human condition. Of course, it is now well understood that this discourse has limits of its own. But it did mark a step forward in the mental universe of politics. In my own case, it prompted a break with a whole way of thinking — and offered an alternative to the traditional, entirely quantitative focus of the wing of the Left to which I had belonged.

I adopted this new approach in my first book, À la conquête du chaos. Twenty years later, I called the program on which I was running in the French presidential election “L’avenir en commun” (Our Common Future), echoing the title of the UNDP report. It was from there that I had deduced the idea of a general human interest. And no longer did I confuse this idea with the interests of the working class alone or just with the development of the productive forces.

Today I see the expression “in common” as extending the scope of this general interest to embrace all living things. After all, is not all life indivisibly linked by the need to halt the destruction driven by finance and productivism?

Another Narrative is Possible

Sometimes a narrative of history on which we long relied becomes exhausted. Even if this is unbeknownst to us, this also changes our relationship with the world. It forces us to reposition ourselves. We can find many past instances of this.

The humanist thinkers of the Renaissance felt like they had been pitched into terra incognita when they learned of the existence of a continent unmentioned in the Bible. Worse still, on that continent there were people with no knowledge of Noah or the prophets. And yet, up to that point, everything from Adam and Eve to the final apocalypse had seemed set out in writing — a narrative that also justified the political order of the time.

We face a similar challenge today. Those humanist thinkers had two centuries to work up the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, before the French Revolution of 1789 ushered in what the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called “the modern era.” But today we are hemmed in by much shorter deadlines.

The younger generation will show its own ability to mount the necessary uprisings and pave the way for a different history. It will leave those who build their haughty power on the market ridiculous and archaic, just like those who once ruled the feudal ancien régime. A new narrative will take shape together with the new reality to which their actions give rise.

Of course, history will never come to an end, as long as there are at least a couple of human beings left. But the present moment is indeed the end of a world. It is the end of that world in which we were forced to live with suicidal ecological and social irresponsibility.

But what real reason is there to nurture such optimism? And is it enough to stir up our will to act? Looking at how things are right now, should we not instead conclude that all indicators point to collapse? Where can we find the energy to oppose this happening with all our might?

It is true that the limits of the ecosystem’s resistance are being crossed, one after another. Climate change has begun — and it is irreversible. Yet nothing seems to be able to stop the blindest form of capitalist productivism. Social and political violence against the many is spreading ever further. Similarly nothing seems to be able to interrupt the calculations of the warmongers and génocidaires.

So what now? The truth is that reality never follows inevitable paths. The real world is a world of probabilities. However small the possibility of a positive outcome, what else can we do but act to help make it happen? Why should we do less for the human community than we would do for ourselves?

We all know that we are doomed to die eventually. And yet everyone strives every day to keep going, to improve their living conditions and those of the people around them, and sometimes even those of society as a whole. So life poses only one question: Who can we help to build a different future?

Making a Commitment

In all this, we do have a guiding principle: personal commitment. That means not relying on others to achieve the outcome you want. All you have to do is act according to this principle, without worrying about getting any reward. The self-centered liberal thinks that he is doing what is best for everyone by doing what is best for himself — and calls on everyone else to do the same.

Such a perspective makes little practical sense. We cannot ignore the rest of the human community and its ways of organizing itself. For me, this liberal-egoist mindset is itself extra cause for concern. It adds to the other harmful elements of the market society that we are forced to live in.

Given the pressing — indeed, quite foreseeable — hardships ahead of us, this social egoism will hinder the solidarity and collectivism that we need to tackle the present situation. A mass culture based on “every man for himself” will weaken the overall resilience of the human community.

More broadly, social inequalities, the various kinds of discrimination and divisions driven by religious or racist hatred all undermine humans’ ability to build solidarity. So these are all additional dangers. The new collectivism of our time requires, more than anything else, that we cultivate our collective reflection, deliberation, and action.

But have you noticed? The high and mighty are no longer offering us any narrative on the bright future ahead of us. Gone are the steps toward happiness through growth, and a world in which we are guaranteed ever more freedoms! There are no grand declarations about a future of equality or of a happy society. Nor anything else.

In France, Emmanuel Macron is simply offering young people an immoral dream: to become a billionaire by taking part in the plunder. We are told that there is no future beyond an individual career plan. But from our perspective, our political commitment is about the appetite and the need — to live together.

This is neither self-sacrifice nor a career path, but real action to develop ourselves and build our future. It is a process in which personal ethics, a political program, and activism all come together. The program and the action are currently decided within the frame of our public political intervention, as part of La France Insoumise. But what about ethics and morality themselves?

There is no poetry without poets, no rebellion without the rebellious, no goodness without the generous of spirit. In general, nothing happens — however improbable it may seem at first — without someone being there to make it happen. The first source of a moral code of responsibility is personal commitment.

And to act, you need a reason to act. Where does that come from? Obviously it comes from nowhere other than oneself, from one’s own determination to act. But why? You have to breathe in order to be. This desire to be ends only with the end of life itself.

Yet there is a certain demand for coherence that stands above each of us individually. It demands that we make what we do consistent with who we are. When we cannot do this, we are sure to feel remorse and regret. But when we can pass this test, we feel satisfied and fulfilled.

We would call this hoped-for coherence “harmony,” if we saw it in a bird soaring through the sky, in a river meandering across a plain, in a flower releasing its fragrance, in a note in a piece of music, or in a smile on the lips of a loved one. This inner harmony is unachievable if the context makes it impossible. We instinctively know that. Other people are our peers, our fellow human beings. If their needs can be met, then ours can too.

The human community is our inorganic being, our body outside our body, our imagination outside our will. It does not just contain us as individual members: we ourselves express this community. This community is just as concrete as the city that binds us together as we use its many networks and connections.

Political Good and Evil

When we learn to read and write, and connect with large numbers of other people, each human being acquires a taste for individual freedom. By now, the humanist idea that everyone is their own creator has made considerable headway. The rights that are today being demanded are good proof of this.

Even when we do not want them for ourselves, we are now more accepting of the freedom of each individual to make use of them. Indicative in this regard are three fundamental rights of self-determination that are increasingly gaining recognition, at least in some societies. These are the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, the freedom to identify as the gender of your own choosing, and the right to die when you wish.

Even insofar as these issues produce bitter debates, these shifts are testament to movements in the history of ideas and behavior. What is good for each person endowed with equal rights is good for everyone — even if you do not use that right yourself. No one is forced to have an abortion, or commit suicide, or choose a different gender, just because the law allows for it.

Other moral or religious norms that someone has taken up may dissuade them from exercising some freedom that they have gained. But in each case, an equality of rights is the basis of the desirable order of things. Here freedom of choice turns out to be the surest path toward equality. This connection between freedom and equality gives moral and ethical force to our political efforts.

When we want what is best for everyone, we want what is surely also best for ourselves. The concern to serve the general interest thus provides the basis for the quest for harmony: both the guarantee of its good intentions and the cornerstone of effective political action.

We call this quest virtue. This has nothing to do with the morality police; rather it is a political choice. Virtue is a moral code for the decision that is good both for oneself and for everyone else. But can a political program also have a moral meaning? Should we want it to?

Undoubtedly yes. Every form of social organization names some things good and others evil. It does this with its laws, but also with the projects that it sets out for the future. To plan something is to want something. And what should we want, if not good itself?

Our program calls for a break with the existing world order. It then names what is good by outlining the ecological and social transition that we need. It does this in a specific enough way to be realistic.

But it also makes clear that its intention to bring about a new direction in human history does not lock the future into any preconceived model. Still, this program does more than simply boast of its own good intentions. It also points to a political evil. It should not avoid doing so.

The world is not careening toward ecological disaster because of some sort of misunderstanding. Finance has no extenuating circumstances when it fails to do its duty in relation to society’s needs. Finance cannot be excused when it merely serves its own particular interest, in the absurd, infinite accumulation of capital.

Production really is to blame, when it works not to satisfy human needs but to speed up the circulation of money in the cycle of commodities. It is evil when it criminally passes on its social and environmental costs to other people and places. When its greed leads it to deny the fundamental biological needs of our species and of nonhumans in the biosphere, that is something evil.

Virtue as Civic Morality

If virtue is the basis of a civic morality, then we must not shy away from the questions posed by its material practice. Virtue is not a state of being that we could hope to reach, as if it were like climbing a mountain and then staying up there like hermits. Rather virtue is a path that must continually be built anew.

It is the path that we take when we question the consequences of our actions: Are they really good for everyone? Virtue cannot stop at the level of good intentions. If it did, it would turn into something of a totally different nature. It would become hypocrisy, something in which we wrap our mere inability to act. To be something real, it must necessarily be an action, in the here and now.

There can be no virtue without the virtuous. Virtue cannot be merely decreed but must be observed in reality. Virtue finds its concrete application in the way in which we live together with others.

Virtue is its own reward and is itself fulfilling. To expect something else in return would hardly be virtuous. It would turn the focus of our actions away from doing what is good and just for everyone. But virtue is not self-denial or a negation of the self. In its most fundamental principle, it is a quest for reciprocity.

The motto of the virtuous would be: “What is good for everyone is necessarily good for me.” I know that my freedom ends where others’ freedom begins, once I can see that others’ freedom ends where my freedom begins. Virtue is a deliberately chosen and actively practiced relation of reciprocity.

For this reason, it has to be based on equality. Virtue is impossible wherever one person dominates another. It does not matter whether that domination is based on prejudice or on custom and practice, as patriarchy does through the creed of social one-upmanship — or worse still, by making people act out of fear of punishment. Equality is the very oxygen of solidarity.

Reciprocity means recognizing that we each have similar needs to be met. Virtue is the ability to reconcile the principles that we apply in our own lives with the ones that we would like to see applied to other people, for our common benefit. At a time when our societies are brimming with hatred, virtue is the glue that sticks us together.

Creolization

One development stands out as the most crucial advance of our era: the rise of a single human people, united by its shared fate and its common dependence on the ecosystem. This itself provides the starting point for writing a new narrative about human history.

We need to make this the oxygen of our aspiration for a different world order. Humanity is indeed bound together, at the very least by its equal dependence on its ecosystem. This provides the objective basis for the universality of rights: we all have the same inescapable needs and must have the same right to satisfy them.

If this understanding is correct, then we will also find spontaneous material evidence of it in practice. We could do this simply by noting that there is just one human species and, indeed, one in which any person can reproduce with any other, whoever they may be. And they do so.

We could also make the simple observation that all cultures and languages make demands for freedom and universal equality. Humanity, in the form of large numbers united by their dependence on collective urban networks, is today spreading these realities far and wide.

But a new argument has been raised against this self-evident truth. The “clash of civilizations,” based on religious differences, is cited as proof that there are insurmountable divisions cutting through the human species. Humanity is said to be inherently divided, because communities assert their existence by developing different cultures.

This is surely a clever way of turning the argument around. Even if nature does not create any insurmountable boundary between the various expressions of humanity, perhaps culture does create one? We should respond as follows: even looking at this aspect of human life, our species has demonstrated its material unity, indeed in the most concrete terms.

We see this in the human tendency to create a common culture out of distinct elements; that is, to practice cultural mixing. This process has been called “creolization.” The word stems from the creation of a new language in the West Indies and South America: Creole.

There the slaves who had been kidnapped from all over Africa did not speak the same language, either among themselves or with the slaveowners. But communication is fundamental for all social animals. It is a means, but also an end: to produce the social bond without which no human can survive.

So these slaves developed a new, common language so that they could communicate. This new connection enabled them to reenter the realm of human relations. In the exact moment when their enslavement — their treatment as an object to be owned — denied their humanity, this was how they reasserted it. This is the fundamental significance of creolization.

Humanity of the Many

Creolization differs from the idea of a “mestizo” society in that it does not necessarily have any biological aspect. It is a purely cultural phenomenon. The concept was coined and given formal definition in the writings of the poet-philosopher Édouard Glissant. But even beyond the particular context that he was writing about, in the West Indies, we can find many other proofs and traces of this process at work.

We find it in all languages, which integrate loanwords from some other language, but we can likewise find it in music and rhythms. The same can be said of more private tastes. Whether it is cooking or clothing, creolization is proof of human universality, because it makes it a reality.

From a political point of view, it is the missing link between the desire for universalism and the assertion of the right to be different. It is not a half-and-half but the passage toward something new. Most creolization today takes place through music, television series, and our know-how in using various objects. These things all allow for a fusion of behaviors and norms.

Creolization makes a mockery of racism. There will never be enough difference between human beings to stop them from combining to produce all manner of new things that they have in common. Creolization goes beyond the narrow demand for “integration” into some preconceived mold. Rather, it concretely produces the human community in each country.

Creolization is inclusive. No doubt, in each instance, it draws on the dominant culture of a particular time and place. But that doesn’t mean reducing everything to a single norm. Rather, it brings out the unexpected and the original. It welcomes in and remolds everything that it comes into contact with.

This tendency is all the more powerful when the pressure of numbers multiplies connections and increases the interactions between people. In such a context, creolization can be seen as the preparation of a common matrix to build from, or as the foundation of a future cumulative culture.

Politically creolization offers a perspective for an era of mass population movements in the age of large numbers. Creolization does this at a time when climate change is massively increasing the number of human beings on the move. It does this at a time when the intensification of connections in the online noosphere has an unparalleled capacity to produce a common culture of reference.

It does this a time when an AI system like Bloom has proven its ability to “think” in forty-six different languages and come up with “intelligent” suggestions. And finally, it does this at a time when humanity’s expansion into outer space is underlining the existence of a single human community — and beginning to transport it into a boundless universe. Creolization is the future of a humanity that is soaring to new heights.

---

• Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the founder of La France Insoumise: you can follow him on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.
• This extract was originally published in Jacobin on 21/4/2025.
• Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century is available in English for purchase from Verso Books here.

 

Trump’s Tariffs and the End of Free Trade Orthodoxy

Leave a Commenton Trump’s Tariffs and the End of Free Trade Orthodoxy

“The World Trade Organization’s model, based on global supply chains, high capital mobility, and wage repression, was unsustainable. We do not lament its passing. What we oppose is the reactionary vision rising in its place.”

The European Left’s Economic Advisory Board have published the following article on Trump’s tariff announcements, how progressive forces in Europe should respond, and the policies needed as an alternative.

On 2nd April 2025, US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on all EU imports in the largest set of trade penalties since the 1930s. Although broader in scope, this new protectionism is in line with his 2018 and 2019 policies and reflects a pattern of authoritarian economic nationalism that the Left has warned against for over a decade.  

Trump’s rationale—to regain industrial capacity lost due to globalisation—reveals the disintegration of the neoliberal consensus. He aims to weaken the dollar while at the same time trying to maintain the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, reduce capital flows to the Global South, and reconstruct a nationalist supply chain rooted in the fossil economy. This model will deepen inequality and accelerate climate breakdown.  

But the European Left has never supported the so-called “free trade” regime now being dismantled by Trump. The World Trade Organization’s model—based on global supply chains, high capital mobility, and wage repression—was unsustainable. We do not lament its passing. What we oppose is the reactionary vision rising in its place.

In response, we reject the idea that the EU should enter an industrial trade deal with Trump in exchange for tariff exemptions. His record shows that even when deals are made, they are later discarded. Appeasement will not work. We also reject the call for retaliatory tariffs without a social strategy. Such measures may harm working people without changing the structural logic of trade.  

Finally, we reject the assumption that the EU can become “competitive” in the new order by prioritising trade over transformation. “Competitiveness” itself is a concept rooted in the logic of export-led growth and wage discipline. The alternative is to restructure the economy around people and the planet. 

What should the EU do?

• Shift away from an export-led growth model.
  The EU should focus on stable domestic demand and good jobs instead of endless export competition. The Green Deal and digitalisation must be aligned with this strategy.    
• Reject financialisation and inequality-promoting reforms.
  Proposals from the Draghi report—including capital markets union, pension privatisation, and labour law deregulation—must be set aside.  
• Guarantee jobs and protect workers.
  A European job guarantee, extension of the SURE programme, and strict social conditionality for corporate support must be prioritised. 
• Make NGEU permanent and break with austerity.
  The NextGenerationEU programme must become a permanent fixture of EU economic governance, not a temporary exception. 
• Fund transformative investment. 
  European public investment must focus on public services, climate resilience, reindustrialisation, and social infrastructure. 

On the Digital Front

Trump’s allies in Silicon Valley represent a serious threat to democracy and economic sovereignty. Their role in his re-election campaign and their domination of digital infrastructure highlights the need for an EU-wide public alternative.  

The EL EAB supports:  

• Public ownership of digital infrastructure.  
• A European sovereign technology fund .
• Publicly owned chip manufacturing using open-source designs.
• A public and ethical AI system governed democratically .
• Digital sovereignty must become a core right for European citizens.  

A New Economic Framework 

This crisis should lead to a new economic paradigm:

• Increase the wage share in GNP.  
  Today, it is 50.5%. We aim for 70%. This will reduce dependence on exports.  
• Ensure the ECJ upholds minimum wage directives.  
  Wage repression must no longer be the path to growth. 
• Suspend the Stability and Growth Pact.  
  In particular, the 3% rule should not allow military spending while limiting public services.  
• Enforce price controls and use ECB powers.  
  If Trump’s tariffs cause inflation, the ECB must act to contain prices rather than suppress wages.  

Global Solidarity 

The Global South must not be forced to bear the cost of Western trade wars. The EL EAB supports: 

• An alternative reserve currency to the US dollar.  
• Expansion of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and fair distribution .
• International trade focused on human development, not capital accumulation.

Conclusion

The European Left does not mourn the end of the free trade consensus—but it refuses to let authoritarianism shape the next global order. This is the time to push for democratic, just, and ecologically sound alternatives. A different Europe is possible—one that builds solidarity across borders and defends the needs of people and the planet.  

---

• President of the European Left Walter Baier will be speaking along with guests from labour movement and progressive organisations around the world at International Rally for Peace & Socialism: No to Trump’s New World Disorder, an online eve-of-May Day rally hosted by Arise: A Festival of Left Ideas. You can find out more and register here.
• You can follow the Party of the European Left on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.
• This article was originally published by the European Left on 9/4/2025.
• The Labour Outlook Editorial Team may not always agree with all of the content we reproduce, but are committed to giving left voices a platform to develop, debate, discuss and occasionally disagree.