Marx-Engels Correspondence 1888

Engels To Wilhelm Liebknecht

Abstract

Source: Marx & Engels on the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, p. 350-51;
Transcribed: by Einde O'Callaghan.

February 29, 1888

Have heard nothing of the Irish tricolour to which you refer. Irish flags in Ireland and here are simply green with a golden harp, but without a crown (in the British coat-of-arms the harp wears a crown). In the Fenian days, 1865-67, many were green and orange to show the Orangemen of the North ^[356] that they would not be destroyed, but accepted as brothers. However, no question of that any more.

Notes

<"n356">356. Orange Lodges or Orangemen (the Orangeist Order), named after William III, Prince of Orange — a terrorist organisation, set up by the landlords and Protestant clergy in Ireland in 1795 to fight against the national liberation movement of the Irish people. The Order united ultra-reactionary English and Irish elements from all layers of society and systematically incited Protestants against the Irish Catholics. The Orangemen had a particularly great influence in Northern Ireland, where the majority of the population were Protestants.