James Connolly: Class Government and Class War

Socialists are always accused of trying to create ill feeling, to bring about a class struggle, to “set class against class”. Of course, the real fact is, we only point out what already exists, analysing the political and industrial institutions under which we live and critically noting the forces which produce them in any given phase. The necessary result of our analysis is to discover that the very basis of Society today is a struggle between two classes, the Landlord and Capitalist who own all the means of production, and the propertyless class who are only allowed to use and operate these means of life when it suits the convenience or interest of members of the other class to allow them.

The average worker has no clear, reasoned out knowledge of this, but he has a more or less dim perception of the fact borne in upon his slow intellect through the channel of his daily experience of the struggle for life. His masters who are interested in keeping him in that plentiful lack of knowledge are always careful to raise the cry “Capital and labour are brothers” and don’t “set class against class”. Armed thus, mentally, with the illogical rot preached to him by his fleecers the “man in the street” regards the Socialist as, well – perhaps right enough, but rather “extreme”. We Socialist workers who know the tricks by which our fellows are deceived and kept in subjection are filled with disgust, mingled with pity.

We have always proclaimed that, while the worker is not class-conscious – that is, knowing and understanding his class subjection and its cause, and therefore knowing and understanding his class interest in overthrowing the institutions which keep him so – it is not so with the landlord and capitalist. They, as a rule, are thoroughly class-conscious and in all their measures never lose sight of the cardinal principle of the class struggle. While the average worker makes a great show of having nothing much to do with politics, the other class have calculated to a nicety its exact value not merely to their whole class, but even to each of their sections. All government is therefore class government; and that the middle-class and aristocratic swindlers who hold the reins of political power know it is amply proved by the following extracts from speeches. Thus Lord Rosebery, addressing the Wolverhampton Chamber of Commerce:–

“He was one of those who held chambers of commerce in the highest respect. In the first place they focussed the opinion of a great and governing class – a class which had governed Great Britain in the past, and which he was not prepared to say did not govern it in the present.”

But the Socialist is so extreme. He sets class against class.

Mr McNeill moved a resolution in the House of Commons condemning the holding of company directorships by members of the government and Mr C. Bannerman supported him. Thus spoke Mr Balfour in reply:

“I do not profess to know in what the right honourable gentleman has his money invested, but, if he has it invested in anything in this country, there is scarcely a piece of legislation passed through this house that does not affect his interests either directly or indirectly.”

But the Socialist is so extreme. He talks of capitalist government.

James Connolly. The Workers’ Republic, May 1901.

The Queen Visits And James Connolly Has Something to Say About It

The Queen, such is her title, is coming to Ireland in a visit aimed at placing a ribbon on the new normal that is the post-peace process Ireland. With the acquiescence of republican resistance in the north partition is assured for the foreseeable future and with the south again on rations history can be duly claimed by the winner. The bejeweled head of state of the winning side has decided to come to Dublin for a symbolic victory lap. I have no time for royalty of any kind, no matter how ‘constitutional’ the monarchy.

As individuals they are frauds, actors in a fraudulent play. As an institution monarchies legitimize the gross inequality inherent in a society based on class, a society in which the class you are born into is an accident of birth. They place a robe on the inbred accident and call it King. The whole business belongs on the funeral pyre.

One sincerely hopes her visit is given a severe rebuke by the decent people of Ireland. One befitting the head of the state that hounded, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and/or murdered the best of countless generations of Irish people, to say nothing of other crimes past and ongoing of which the British state is guilty of around the world. To list them all would take months.

The last time a British monarch visited Dublin was George V in 1911. James Connolly had just returned to Ireland from the United States the previous year where he was an organizer for the IWW and a leading member of Debs’ Socialist Party. He became Belfast organizer for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union and set about organizing a socialist party in Ireland that would give political voice to the union organizing then underway. He wrote this to his…

Fellow-Workers,

As you are aware from reading the daily and weekly newspapers, we are about to be blessed with a visit from King George V.

Knowing from previous experience of Royal Visits, as well as from the Coronation orgies of the past few weeks, that the occasion will be utilised to make propaganda on behalf of royalty and aristocracy against the oncoming forces of democracy and National freedom, we desire to place before you some few reasons why you should unanimously refuse to countenance this visit, or to recognise it by your presence at its attendant processions or demonstrations. We appeal to you as workers, speaking to workers, whether your work be that of the brain or of the hand – manual or mental toil – it is of you and your children we are thinking; it is your cause we wish to safeguard and foster.

The future of the working class requires that all political and social positions should be open to all men and women; that all privileges of birth or wealth be abolished, and that every man or woman born into this land should have an equal opportunity to attain to the proudest position in the land. The Socialist demands that the only birthright necessary to qualify for public office should be the birthright of our common humanity.

Believing as we do that there is nothing on earth more sacred than humanity, we deny all allegiance to this institution of royalty, and hence we can only regard the visit of the King as adding fresh fuel to the fire of hatred with which we regard the plundering institutions of which he is the representative. Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings – capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks. Thus coronation and king’s visits are by our astute neversleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy. But if our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our appeal to our fellows to maintain as publicly our belief in the dignity of our class – in the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour.

What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities.

Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has through some of its members contributed something to the elevation of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has befriended every oppressor. Eulogised today by misguided clerics, it has been notorious in history for the revolting nature of its crimes. Murder, treachery, adultery, incest, theft, perjury – every crime known to man has been committed by some one or other of the race of monarchs from whom King George is proud to trace his descent.

“His blood Has crept through scoundrels since the flood.”

We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.

Fellow-workers, stand by the dignity of your class. All these parading royalties, all this insolent aristocracy, all these grovelling, dirt-eating capitalist traitors, all these are but signs of disease in any social state – diseases which a royal visit brings to a head and spews in all its nastiness before our horrified eyes. But as the recognition of the disease is the first stage towards its cure, so that we may rid our social state of its political and social diseases, we must recognise the elements of corruption. Hence, in bringing them all together and exposing their unity, even a royal visit may help us to understand and understanding, help us to know how to destroy the royal, aristocratic and capitalistic classes who live upon our labour. Their workshops, their lands, their mills, their factories, their ships, their railways must be voted into our hands who alone use them, public ownership must take the place of capitalist ownership, social democracy replace political and social inequality, the sovereignty of labour must supersede and destroy the sovereignty of birth and the monarchy of capitalism.

Ours be the task to enlighten the ignorant among our class, to dissipate and destroy the political and social superstitions of the enslaved masses and to hasten the coming day when, in the words of Joseph Brenan, the fearless patriot of ’48, all the world will maintain

“The Right Divine of Labour
To be first of earthly things;
That the Thinker and the Worker
Are Manhood’s only Kings.”

‘Who then, who will lead the van?’

My new favorite version of Patrick Galvin’s iconic song.  It has a loss about it that none of the other versions I’ve heard before have.  It is a lament, but not of the fire-side type.  There’s no comfort in Connolly’s ghost invisibly guiding the Irish working class as it hovers in their consciousness here.   Here, Connolly’s ghost hovers as a reminder of loss and of failure.  Liam Weldon sings the song from the bottom of a grave, not atop a funeral pyre.  “Where, oh where is our James Connolly?”  Where oh where is our James Connolly?”  “Where, oh where, is our James Connolly?” “Who then who will lead the van?”

James Connolly: July The 12th, 1913

As this Saturday is the 12th of July, and as I am supposed to be writing about the North of Ireland in particular, it becomes imperative that I say something about this great and glorious festival.

The Anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne is celebrated in Belfast by what is locally known as an Orange Walk. The brethren turn out and take possession of the principal streets of the city, and for the space of some hours they pass in processional order before the eyes of the citizens, bearing their banners, wearing their regalia, carrying symbols emblematic of the gates of Derry, and to the accompaniment of a great many bands.

Viewing the procession as a mere ‘Teague’ (to use the name the brethren bestow on all of Catholic origin), I must confess that some parts of it are beautiful, some of it ludicrous, and some of it exceedingly disheartening.

The regalia is often beautiful; I have seen representations of the Gates of Derry that were really a pleasure to view as pieces of workmanship; and similar representations erected as Orange arches across dingy side streets that, if we could forget their symbolism, we would admire as real works of art.

The music (?) is a fearful and wonderful production, seemingly being based upon a desire to produce the maximum of sound in the minimum of space. Every Orange Lodge in the North of Ireland, and many from the South make it a point to walk, and as each Lodge desires to have a band without any regard to its numbers, the bands are often so near that even the most skilful manipulator cannot prevent a blending of sounds that can scarcely be called harmonious.

I have stood on the sidewalk listening to a band, whose instruments were rendering:

Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly.

Whilst another one about twenty yards off was splitting the air with:

Dolly’s Brae, O Dolly’s Brae, O, Dolly’s Brae no more; The song we sang was kick the Pope Right over Dolly’s Brae.

But the discord of sound allied to the discord of sentiment implied in a longing to fly to the bosom of Jesus, and at the same time to kick the Pope, did not appear to strike anyone but myself.

For that matter a sense of humour is not one of the strong points in an Orangeman’s nature. The dead walls of Belfast are decorated with a mixture of imprecations upon Fenians , and, the Pope, and invocations of the power and goodness of the Most High, interlarded with quotations from the New Testament. This produces some of the most incongruous results. What would the readers of Forward say to seeing written up on the side of a wall off one of the main streets, the attractive legend:

God is Love, Hell Roast the Pope.

Of course, the juxtaposition of such inscriptions on the walls appears absurd, and yet, the juxtaposition of sentiments as dissimilar is common enough in the minds of all of us, I suppose.

To anyone really conversant with the facts bearing upon the relations of the religious in Ireland, and the part played by them in advancing or retarding the principles of civil and religious liberty, the whole celebration appears to be foolish enough.

The belief sedulously cultivated by all the orators, lay and clerical, as well as by all the newspapers is, that the Defence of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne were great vindications of the principles of civil and religious liberty, which were menaced by the Catholics, and defended by the Protestants of all sects.

The belief we acquire from a more clear study of history in Ireland is somewhat different. Let me tell it briefly. In the reign of James I, the English Government essayed to solve the Irish problem, which then, as now, was their chief trouble, by settling Ireland with planters from Scotland and England. To do this, two million acres were confiscated, i.e., stolen from the Irish owners. Froude, the historian, says:

“Of these, a million and a half, bog-forest and mountain were restored to the Irish. The half a million of fertile acres were settled with families of Scottish and English Protestants.”

A friendly speaker, recently describing these planters before a meeting of the Belfast Liberal Association, spoke of them as:

“Hardy pioneers, born of a sturdy race, trained to adversity, when brought face to face with dangers of a new life in a hostile country, soon developed that steady, energetic, and powerful character which has made the name of Ulster respected all over the world.”

And a writer in the seventeenth century, the son of one of the ministers who came over with the first plantation, Mr. Stewart, is quoted by Lecky in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, as saying:

“From Scotland came many, and from England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who from debt, or breaking the law or fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, come hither, hoping to be without fear of man’s justice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of God … On all hands Atheism increased, and disregard of God, iniquity abounded, with contentious fighting, murder, adultery.”

The reader can take his choice of these descriptions. Probably the truth is that each is a fairly accurate description of a section of the planters, and that neither is accurate as a picture of the whole.

But while the Plantation succeeded from the point of view of the Government in placing in the heart of Ulster a body of people who, whatever their disaffection to that Government, were still bound by fears of their own safety to defend it against the natives, it did not bring either civil or religious liberty to the Presbyterian planters.

The Episcopalians were in power, and all the forces of government were used by them against their fellow-Protestants. The planters were continually harassed to make them adjure their religion, fines were multiplied upon fines, and imprisonment upon imprisonment. In 1640, the Presbyterians of Antrim, Down, and Tyrone, in a petition to the English House of Commons, declared that:

“Principally through the sway of the prelacy with their factions our souls are starved, our estates are undone, our families impoverished, and many lives among us cut off and destroyed … Our cruel taskmasters have made us who were once a people to become as it were no people, an astonishment to ourselves, the object of pittie and amazement to others.”

What might have been the result of this cruel, systematic persecution of Protestants by Protestants we can only conjecture, since, in the following year, 1641, the great Irish rebellion compelled the persecuting and persecuted Protestants to join hands in defence of their common plunder against the common enemy – the original Irish owners.

In all the demonstrations and meetings which take place in Ulster under Unionist Party auspices, all these persecutions are alluded to as if they had been the work of “Papists,” and even in the Presbyterian churches and conventions, the same distortion of the truth is continually practised.

But they are told

“all this persecution was ended when William of Orange, and our immortal forefathers overthrew the Pope and Popery at the Boyne. Then began the era of civil and religious liberty.”

So runs the legend implicitly believed in in Ulster. Yet it is far, very far, from the truth. In 1686 certain continental powers joined together in a league, known in history as the league of Augsburg, for the purpose of curbing the arrogant power of France. These powers were impartially Protestant and Catholic, including the Emperor of Germany, the King of Spain, William, Prince of Orange, and the Pope. The latter had but a small army, but possessed a good treasury and great influence. A few years before a French army had marched upon Rome to avenge a slight insult offered to France, and His Holiness was more than anxious to curb the Catholic power that had dared to violate the centre of Catholicity. Hence his alliance with William, Prince of Orange.

King James II, of England, being insecure upon his throne, sought alliance with the French monarch.

When, therefore, the war took place in Ireland, King William fought, aided by the arms, men, and treasures of his allies in the League of Augsburg, and part of his expenses at the Battle of the Boyne was paid for by His Holiness, the Pope. Moreover, when news of King William’s victory reached Rome, a Te Deum was sung in celebration of his victory over the Irish adherents of King James and King Louis.

Therefore, on Saturday the Orangemen of Ulster, led by King Carson, will be celebrating the same victory as the Pope celebrated 223 years ago.

Nor did the victory at the Boyne mean Civil and Religious Liberty. The Catholic Parliament of King James, meeting in Dublin in 1689, had passed a law that all religions were equal, and that each clergyman should be supported by his own congregation only, and that no tithes should be levied upon any man for the support of a church to which he did not belong. But this sublime conception was far from being entertained by the Williamites who overthrew King James and superseded his Parliament. The Episcopalian Church was immediately re-established, and all other religions put under the ban of the law. I need not refer to the Penal Laws against Catholics, they are well enough known. But sufficient to point out that England and Wales have not yet attained to that degree of religious equality established by Acts XIII and XV of the Catholic Parliament of 1689, and that that date was the last in which Catholics and Protestants sat together in Parliament until the former compelled an Emancipation Act in 1829.

For the Presbyterians the victory at the Boyne simply gave a freer hand to their Episcopalian persecutors. In 1704 Derry was rewarded for its heroic defence by being compelled to submit to a Test Act, which shut out of all offices in the Law, the Army, the Navy, the Customs and Excise, and Municipal employment, all who would not conform to the Episcopalian Church. The alderman and fourteen burgesses are said to have been disfranchised in the Maiden City by this iniquitous Act, which was also enforced all over Ireland. Thus, at one stroke, Presbyterians, Quakers, and all other dissenters were deprived of that which they had imagined they were fighting for at “Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne.” Presbyterians were forbidden to be married by their own clergymen, the Ecclesiastical Courts had power to fine and imprison offenders, and to compel them to appear in the Parish Church, and make public confession of fornication, if so married. At Lisburn and Tullylish, Presbyterians were actually punished for being married by their own ministers. Some years later, in 1712, a number of Presbyterians were arrestcd for attempting to establish a Presbyterian meeting house in Belturbet.

The marriage of a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian was declared illegal, and in fact, the ministers and congregations of the former church were treated as outlaws and rebels, to be fined, imprisoned, and harassed in every possible way. They had to pay tithes for the upkeep of the Episcopalian ministers, were fined for not going to the Episcopalian Church, and had to pay Church cess for buying sacramental bread, ringing the bell, and washing the surplices of the Episcopalian clergymen. All this, remember, in the generation immediately following the Battle of the Boyne.

The reader should remember what is generally slurred over in narrating this part of Irish history, that when we are told that Ulster was planted by Scottish Presbyterians, it does not mean that the land was given to them. On the contrary, the vital fact was, and is, that the land was given to the English noblemen and to certain London companies of merchants who had lent money to the Crown, and that the Scottish planters were only introduced as tenants of these landlords. The condition of their tenancy virtually was that they should keep Ireland for the English Crown, and till the land of Ireland for the benefit of the English landlord.

That is in essence the demand of the Unionist Party leaders upon their followers today. In the past, as the landlords were generally English and Episcopalian, they all, during the eighteenth century, continually inserted clauses in all their leases, forbidding the erection of Presbyterian meeting houses. As the uprise of democracy has contributed to make this impossible today in Ireland, the landlord and capitalist class now seek an alliance with these Protestants they persecuted for so long in order to prevent a union of the democracy of all religious faiths against their lords and masters.

To accomplish this they seek insidiously to pervert history, and to inflame the spirit of religious fanaticism. The best cure I know of for that evil is a correct understanding of the events they so distort in their speeches and sermons. To this end I have ever striven to contribute my mite, and while I know that the sight of the thousands who, on July 12, will march to proclaim their allegiance to principles of which their order is a negation, will be somewhat disheartening. I also know that even amongst the Orange hosts, the light of truth is penetrating.

In conclusion, the fundamental, historical facts to remember are that:

The Irish Catholic was despoiled by force, The Irish Protestant toiler was despoiled by fraud, The spoliation of both continues today under more insidious but more effective forms,

and the only hope lies in the latter combining with the former in overthrowing their common spoilers, and consenting to live in amity together in the common ownership of their common country – the country which the spirit of their ancestors or the devices of their rulers have made – the place of their origin, or the scene of their travail.

I have always held, despite the fanatics on both sides, that the movements of Ireland for freedom could not and cannot be divorced from the world-wide upward movements of the world’s democracy. The Irish question is a part of the social question, the desire of the Irish people to control their own destinies is a part of the desire of the workers to forge political weapons for their own enfranchisement as a class.

The Orange fanatic and the Capitalist-minded Home Ruler are alike in denying this truth; ere long, both of them will be but memories, while the army of those who believe in that truth will be marching and battling on its conquering way.

James Connolly

“We Fling Our Banner To The Breeze”

The Irish Flag by James Connolly.  8 April 1916.

The Council of the Irish Citizen Army has resolved, after grave and earnest deliberation, to hoist the green flag of Ireland over Liberty Hall, as over a fortress held for Ireland by the arms of Irishmen.

This is a momentous decision in the most serious crisis Ireland has witnessed in our day and generation. It will, we are sure, send a thrill through the hearts of every true Irish man and woman, and send the red blood coursing fiercely along the veins of every lover of the race.

It means that in the midst of and despite the treasons and backslidings of leaders and guides, in the midst of and despite all the weaknesses, corruption and moral cowardice of a section of the people, in the midst of and despite all this there still remains in Ireland a spot where a body of true men and women are ready to hoist, gather round, and to defend the flag made sacred by all the sufferings of all the martyrs of the past.

Since this unholy war first started we have seen every symbol of Irish freedom desecrated to the purposes of the enemy, we have witnessed the prostitution of every holy Irish tradition. That the young men of Ireland might be seduced into the service of the nation that denies every national power to their country, we have seen appeals made to our love of freedom, to our religious instincts, to our sympathy for the oppressed, to our kinship with suffering.

The power that for seven hundred years has waged bitter and unrelenting war upon the freedom of Ireland, and that still declares that the rights of Ireland must forever remain subordinate to the interests of the British empire, hypocritically appealed to our young men to enlist under her banner and shed their blood ‘in the interests of freedom’.

The power whose reign in Ireland has been one long carnival of corruption and debauchery of civic virtue, and which has rioted in the debasement and degradation of everything Irish men and women hold sacred, appealed to us in the name of religion to fight for her as the champion of christendom.

The power which holds in subjection more of the world’s population than any other power on the globe, and holds them in subjection as slaves without any guarantee of freedom or power of self-government, this power that sets Catholic against Protestant, the Hindu against the Mohammedan, the yellow man against the brown, and keeps them quarrelling with each other whilst she robs and murders them all – this power appeals to Ireland to send her sons to fight under England’s banner for the cause of the oppressed. The power whose rule in Ireland has made of Ireland a desert, and made the history of our race read like the records of a shambles, as she plans for the annihilation of another race appeals to our manhood to fight for her because of our sympathy for the suffering, and of our hatred of oppression.

For generations the shamrock was banned as a national emblem of Ireland, but in her extremity England uses the shamrock as a means for exciting in foolish Irishmen loyalty to England. For centuries the green flag of Ireland was a thing accurst and hated by the English garrison in Ireland, as it is still in their inmost hearts. But in India, in Egypt, in Flanders, in Gallipoli, the green flag is used by our rulers to encourage Irish soldiers of England to give up their lives for the power that denies their country the right of nationhood. Green flags wave over recruiting offices in Ireland and England as a bait to lure on poor fools to dishonourable deaths in England’s uniform.

The national press of Ireland, the true national press, uncorrupted and unterrified, has largely succeeded in turning back the tide of demoralization, and opening up the minds of the Irish public to a realization of the truth about the position of their country in the war. The national press of Ireland is a real flag of freedom flying for Ireland despite the enemy, but it is well that also there should fly in Dublin the green flag of this country as a rallying point of our forces and embodiment of all our hopes. Where better could that flag fly than over the unconquered citadel of the Irish working class, Liberty Hall, the fortress of the militant working class of Ireland.

We are out for Ireland for the Irish. But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman – the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.

The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour. They cannot be dissevered. Ireland seeks freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland free should be the sole mistress of her own destiny, supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil. Labour seeks to make the free Irish nation the guardian of the interests of the people of Ireland, and to secure that end would vest in that free Irish nation all property rights as against the claims of the individual, with the end in view that the individual may be enriched by the nation, and not by the spoiling of his fellows.

Having in view such a high and holy function for the nation to perform, is it not well and fitting that we of the working class should fight for the freedom of the nation from foreign rule, as the first requisite for the free development of the national powers needed for our class? It is so fitting. Therefore on Sunday, 16 April 1916 the green flag of Ireland will be solemnly hoisted over Liberty Hall as the symbol of our faith in freedom, and as a token to all the world that the working class of Dublin stands for the cause of Ireland, and the cause of Ireland is the cause of a separate and distinct nationality.

In these days of doubt, despair, and resurgent hope we fling our banner to the breeze, the flag of our fathers, the symbol of our national redemption, the sunburst shining over an Ireland re-born.

We Only Want the Earth!

Some men, faint-hearted, ever seek
Our programme to retouch,
And will insist, whene’er they speak
That we demand too much.
’Tis passing strange, yet I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.

“Be moderate,” the trimmers cry,
Who dread the tyrants’ thunder.
“You ask too much and people By
From you aghast in wonder.”
’Tis passing strange, for I declare
Such statements give me mirth,
For our demands most moderate are,
We only want the earth.

Our masters all a godly crew,
Whose hearts throb for the poor,
Their sympathies assure us, too,
If our demands were fewer.
Most generous souls! But please observe,
What they enjoy from birth
Is all we ever had the nerve
To ask, that is, the earth.

The “labour fakir” full of guile,
Base doctrine ever preaches,
And whilst he bleeds the rank and file
Tame moderation teaches.
Yet, in despite, we’ll see the day
When, with sword in its girth,
Labour shall march in war array
To realize its own, the earth.

For labour long, with sighs and tears,
To its oppressors knelt.
But never yet, to aught save fears,
Did the heart of tyrant melt.
We need not kneel, our cause no dearth
Of loyal soldiers’ needs
And our victorious rallying cry
Shall be we want the earth!

James Connolly 1907

Tommy McKearney Speaks on the Working Class, James Connolly and 1916

In a post on Connolly last week I mentioned that the reality of Easter 1916 was much different than the images we have made or had handed to us.  As luck would have it Tommy McKearney, currently an organizer for the Independent Workers Union, spoke at an event organized by eirigi and bringing out hundreds on the politics of 1916 at Conway Mill in Belfast recently on just that topic.

There Tommy presented The Rising in the context of an organized Dublin working class with revolutionary leadership and a rich tradition of struggle from which to draw lessons in a detailed and absorbing speech presented below.  The role of Connolly, Larkin and the organizations they led are given close attention as is the broader situation of the European socialist movement in the midst of the First World War.

Other speakers included Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh on the cultural revival that proceeded 1916, Damian Lawlor spoke on the the role of the youth organization Fianna Eireann before and during The Rising, Brendan Mac Cionnaith discussed the Fenian tradition, including its relationship to the First International and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.  A report of that meeting as well as videos of the other speakers can be found on the eirigi site here. Highly recommended viewing comrades. Vodpod videos no longer available.

Thinking About James Connolly; Singing About James Connolly

Intellectually I am averse to hero-worship.  There are no messiahs politically or spiritually.  We, all of us, have to participate in our own liberation or it is not really freedom at all.  Freedoms not taken are freedoms on loan; they belong to someone else and exist at their behest.  In Gillo Pontecorvo’s remarkable film Burn! William Walker (played by Marlon Brando) through his own white guilt attempts to free Jose Dolores (played by Evaristo Márquez), the leader of a slave revolt Walker has betrayed.  Dolores coolly refuses; preferring the gallows to a “freedom” granted from the oppressor. We, individually and collectively, are faced with such a terrible choice as well.  James Connolly, like Dolores, refused the bequest of an Empire’s “freedom”.

Heroism elevates the object above us as well.  The generalized frailties of what it means to be a human are apart of us all.  All of us are hypocrites, failing our own moral codes.  All of us do things for selfish reasons.  None of us, including Jesus, are Christ.  And thanks for that; “purity” is stagnant and allows no dynamism.  “Take no heroes, only inspiration” goes the song.   That said, I sometimes stand in awe confronted with the contributions and selflessness of those who participate and lead the daunting task of liberation.  It is no violation of the truth that only the working class can free itself to recognize exceptional participants of the class in that struggle.  James Connolly is one of those exceptional combatants.

Connolly based himself on a method, Marxism, and confronted the world with a searching flexibility that only those with real imagination can accomplish.  This is true in all the “sciences”.  Only an imagination bold enough to explore what it does not know can find anything out.  To simply rely on what others have learned conquers no new territory.  James Connolly wanted to conquer new territory.

Connolly may seem confused to some when one looks at his history.  A syndicalist of the IWW, a member of De Leon’s M-M-Marxist Socialist Labor Party then of Debs’ Socialist Party.  The Congress of Trade Unions and the Irish Socialist Republican Party and then of the Irish Citizens Army.   A trade union leader, a political leader and a military leader.  For much of the history of the workers’ movement the complexities of marrying the political and social struggles of the working class; how revolutionaries should organize and how those revolutionaries should apply themselves in those struggles were wholly unanswered questions.

It was Lenin’s imagination that delved so deeply into those problems along with the Bolshevik experience that clarified the question to many revolutionaries (both positively and negatively).  The authority of that vision was based on the Russian Revolution of October, 1917.  Very few of us  would have ever sought out Lenin or others of his generation if it had not been for the victory of October.  Sadly, Connolly was killed in May of 1916 and unable to integrate his own experiences with that of the Russian Communists.

Berating Connolly for not being a Bolshevik is a little silly.  Not just because his death predates the Russian Revolution and we now live long after it (all the actual Bolsheviks passed away many, many years ago), but because what Connolly was wrestling with are issues we still wrestle with.  The Bolshevik experience, while resolving some of perceived schisms between politics and action, hardly resolved the contradictions that exist in the real world that accentuate such schisms.  How to organize ourselves as revolutionaries and how to make revolutions are not wholly answered questions; nor can they be wholly answered.  The world keeps on turning.

Not all of us can say we genuinely participate in history; that we shift the ground beneath our own feet.  Connolly played a leading role in events that did change history.  We still live with those changes.  His gift is that of a revolutionary life well lived.  If you struggle for freedom, if you are a socialist it is impossible not to be drawn to him.  Nearly all of those who claim Marxism also claim Connolly.  Which is also not fair to the long dead comrade.

Perhaps it is the varieties Connolly’s own experiences that lend himself to so much falsification.  The sharpness of his mind and pen makes him eminently  quotable and quotes are without context.  What Connolly fought for was the socialist revolution, he was not content with the wish for one.  It is true that Connolly never solved the question that had so animated him: how to organize the class to fight for power.  Connolly, however, died a Marxist and a partisan of the socialist revolution.  The reality of Easter 1916 is very, very different from the popular image of a botched blood sacrifice by a self-ascribed vanguard led by failed nationalist poets.

The wholesale appropriation by Irish Republicans has done Connolly a great disservice as well.  Connolly had no illusions in the National Family; his aim was the international liberation of his class.  The resort to arms was a means and not an end.  For a Marxist internationalism means supporting the self determination of nations oppressed; and none more so than, if we are members of such a nation, our own.  Still false consciousness doesn’t necessarily prevent good songs, nor class consciousness mean good ones.  There are some good ones though.

The sheer number of different songs on Connolly is staggering; even for an Irish revolutionary.   Some showcase Connolly’s socialism and a few do not.  Here’s a few of the good ones.  I am sure there are many, many more out there but I limit myself to the easily accessible.  Connolly’s death, and not his life, is the subject of many of the songs.  May 12 is the day they tied him, wounded, to a chair and shot him.  He came from the womb of the class he fought for.  He shared in its oppression and lived his entire life as a member and servant of it.  James Connolly will always be with us, not because of the death he died, but because of the life he lived.

James McEvoy doing the traditional Wolfe Tones version:

Andy Irvine does “Where is Our James Connolly” better than anyone.  Beautiful song along with fine old images:

I take no responsibility for some of the whacked militarist images accompanying this song and I have a feeling Connolly wouldn’t either.  “Connolly Was There” sung by Ray McAreavey with the The Wolfhounds

Ray Collins sings “Citizens Army”

Black 47 does my favorite Connolly song.  If I had a dime for every time I sang along to this one:

We end with a nicely lubricated Brendan Behan talking and singing about Connolly, imperialism whatever else in the 1950’s

James Connolly, Presente!