totally misunderstand them. Besides, they are absolutely contrary to the actual facts.
The events proved the correctness of Connolly's Leninist analysis. The war brought economic want to the country. It increased to an extreme degree oppression and deprivation of political rights. Arrests, confiscation, suppression of papers, were the order of the day. Slowly there ripened amongst the masses a condition of revolutionary discontent. The growing strength of the revolutionaries compelled the British government to prepare, nervously and anxiously, a large-scale destructive offensive and a regime of general reaction.
These conditions brought about a rapprochement between the revolutionary groups. These were: the Irish Transport Workers' Union and the Irish Socialists, who rallied to Connolly's newspaper, the "Workers' Republic," the Irish Citizen Army, which represented the military organization of both these workers' organizations and was founded during the general strike in 1913, the Sinn Feiners and the Irish Republican Volunteers. Both the latter groups represented the radical lead of the petty bourgeois nationalists, but at the same time had a strong following amongst the workers and peasants.
Connolly understood that in the coming revolutionary struggle joint work was necessary between these groups. How he interpreted this is shown in the characteristic manner in one of his declarations:
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