Showing posts with label James Connolly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Connolly. Show all posts
Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ with the final piece in a three part series on the person he thinks might contend for The Complete Revolutionary Socialist. 

In 1910 James Connolly returned to Ireland and moved to Belfast in 1911, living on the Falls Road opposite the City Cemetery (the IRSP/INLA colour party at their annual Easter Commemoration lower the flags at this house as a tribute to one of their political mentors). 

The ITGWU had been trying to form a branch in Belfast, hitherto unsuccessfully. It is at this point that Connolly’s experience as an organiser - gained in the US through his involvement with the IWW - came in very useful. Connolly addressed numerous recruiting meetings of dockers in Belfast resulting in Jim Larkin, the unions founder in 1909, appointing him an organiser of the union in the city. He established an office of the union at 112 Corporation Street in 1911 which was to become the Belfast hub of the ITGWU.

In 1911 an incident involving the union in a big way occurred in Wexford. This could have been described as a precursor to the events which would take place in Dublin two years later and was known as the “Wexford Lockout.” Like its better documented Dublin counterpart, the Wexford Lockout was over a non-negotiable issue, trade union membership or, more accurately, the right to join a union of a person’s own choosing. Watching these events unfold was a certain W.M. Murphy, who would go on to lead the employer’s offensive against the ITGWU in Dublin during the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout. 

Jim Larkin's brand of syndicalist trade unionism, with its motto “an injury to one is a concern to all” frightened the employers and now he had James Connolly, who was like minded, on board, the likes of Murphy were determined to stop it in its tracks. However, this was for the future. One of Wexford towns largest employers, Philip Pierce, decided to pre-empt the ITGWU and imposed a lightening lockout of his workers, the bosses equivalent of a wildcat strike.

He decided to lockout his workers for no reason; he had not received any demands from his workforce but, not wanting to wait for any possible approach from the union, he put his employees on a weeks-notice. The way Pierce looked at the matter was the ITGWU and their leader, Jim Larkin, were prone to calling wildcat strikes so he decided, even if such a strike was not under consideration by the union, to get in first. This action advanced by Pierce was to be followed by other companies in Wexford in what was to become known as the “Wexford Lockout”.

Another company in the town, Doyle and CO, of the Selskar Ironworks, followed the example of Peirce. William Doyle admitted that the men had not presented any complaint, but they had joined the ITGWU and it was necessary for employers to know with whom they were dealing in a situation like the present. A third firm took the same pre-empted action leaving all 700 men on the street and some 2,000 others affected if dependents are included. (Striking Similarities - Kevin Morley - P.50).

Larkin summoned P.T. Daly to Liberty Hall and assigned him to deal with the situation. Daly went to Wexford and in January 1912 he was imprisoned on some trumped-up charge of “Incitement to Riot”. The employers were beginning to smell victory; enter James Connolly, who was less known in Wexford than Belfast. Connolly arrived on the scene in early February, staying with an activist called Richard Corish in William Street, Wexford. James Connolly was charged with finding a settlement without losing the credibility of the union. It is at this point his break, or semi-break, with ultraleftism would pay dividends. Within two weeks Connolly had found a settlement, very much in favour of the union. There had to be a sacrifice, and that was Richard Corish who was blacklisted and would never work in Wexford again. 

The settlement was far from perfect, settlements seldom are, but it did concede many of the men’s demands. It provided for the formation of the Irish Foundry Workers Union as an associate/affiliate of the ITGWU. The foundry men, skilled and unskilled, could return to work and combine under the IFWU banner. Richard Corish, the sacrificial lamb in the agreement, was given a job as secretary to the IFWU. The settlement was considered a victory because for the first time the men, skilled and unskilled (W.M. Murphy’s biggest fear) had the right to combine together which was recognised. The bosses considered it a victory for them, on the grounds, or so they thought, that they had kept out the ITGWU. They could not see, as could Connolly - the architect of the agreement - that the IFWU was in actual fact a trojan horse full of transport union troops! William Martin Murphy could see the settlement for exactly what it was, a defeat for the employers if they could only see it. He was determined that when he had his dispute in Dublin, no such settlement would be reached! A victory celebration was held on 17th February attracting over 5,000 people to cheer James Connolly and the determination of the locked-out workers involved.

In 1912 James Connolly was instrumental in the formation of the Irish Labour Party along with Jim Larkin, Richard O’Carroll and William O’Brien and many others. This was in sharp contrast to the view of William Walker, the Belfast trade unionist and Independent Labour Party organiser, a British based organisation. Walker opposed vehemently any formation of an Irish Labour Party believing the interests of the Irish working-class were best served by the British labour movement. This was a false assessment in my view because the British labour movement, including the TUC were generally imperialist. It was for this reason the TUC had a role at the Foreign Office, generally to quash any national independence aims within the working-class of the colonies using the argument, as did Walker, the interests of the colonised workers were best served by the labour movement of the “mother country”. This, of course, could never be as the interests of Britain and British capitalism at that would always take preference over the interests of the working-class and in particular the proletariat of the colonies. Ireland was no exception to this rule which was why an Irish Labour Party was needed. Connolly argued the Irish working-class needed an independent voice in any future Irish parliament, which was perhaps why William Walker, being a unionist, opposed the concept so vehemently. Perhaps he saw the formation of such a party as the thin end of the wedge towards an Irish independent parliament?

Although Connolly and Larkin were primarily syndicalists – a system which did not require a party at all and forged no alliances with political parties the feeling being such a party would inevitably try to substitute itself for the class, a very good argument even today, the formation of an Irish Labour Party was not necessarily a contradiction. Having a political voice, given that no revolutionary situation existed, therefore syndicalism as a means of overthrowing capitalism at that moment was not viable, having a political voice was an important second string to the bow. In any future event of a working-class upsurge and overthrow of the status quo then that party should subordinate itself to the proletariat and working-class interests. All theory and given in 1912 a revolutionary situation did not exist and Home Rule was the popular position of the people in Ireland and with Home Rule would have come a Home Rule Parliament in which labour needed to be represented. On 28th May 1912 in Clonmel, County Tipperary the Irish Labour Party was born.

August 1913 saw the outbreak of the Dublin Lockout orchestrated by the employer, William Martin Murphy. Murphy was determined none of his employees would join the ITGWU or be a member of any so-called affiliate, and there would be no repeat of the settlement brokered by Connolly in Wexford. Murphy demanded his workers sign a slip of paper promising never to join the ITGWU or face dismissal if they did and those who were members therefore had to denounce the ITGWU and leave forthwith. On 15th August 1913 W.M. Murphy, owner of the Dublin United Tramways Company and the Irish Independent newspaper, sacked forty men and boys in the papers despatch and delivery office. 

Murphy was determined to provoke the ITGWU and the leadership, Larkin and Connolly into a fight. They had little option but to take up the challenge. On 26th August, the first day of the Dublin Horse Show, Murphy’s trams came to a halt. At twenty to ten in the morning striking drivers and conductors pinned the red hand badge of the ITGWU to their lapels as they walked off the job. Murphy knew he would provoke a reaction to the sackings at his newspaper offices, and he was acutely aware the better off sections of the public would be up in arms because they would not be able to get to the horse show. Murphy would publish, through the Irish Independent a tirade of anti-transport union propaganda. The Irish Times, usually a rival paper, would show class solidarity with Mr Murphy by also printing terrible devil incarnate tales about the union. Murphy brought in scab labour and they, along with Murphy himself, were protected by the forces of so-called law and order. William Martin Murphy then set about in effect unionising the employers. He resurrected the Employers Federation – forerunner of today’s IBEC – which combined had 400 member employers. He was in effect using the very tactics he was trying to stop the ITGWU adopting, secondary action!

On Saturday 30th August Connolly and William Partridge were arrested at Liberty Hall, Dublin, and taken by the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) before the police magistrate, Mr E.G. Swifte, a friend of Murphy and fellow shareholder of Murphy’s Dublin United Tramways Company. They were charged with incitement to cause a breach of the peace at a previous meeting. Partridge agreed to be bound over, perhaps taking the view he would be of little use to the men in gaol, while James Connolly refused to be bound over. Connolly in effect refusing to recognise the court then informed Swifte; “I do not even recognise the King, except when I am compelled to do so” to which the magistrate replied to Connolly; ‘he was talking treason’ and gave him three months imprisonment. ’This, the magistrate thought, would give Connolly time to reflect on his folly!’ (Striking Similarities - Kevin Morley - 2017 - P67).

On 1st September the TUC held its conference in Manchester, England, and on the agenda were the events taking place in Dublin. The congress pledged support for the striking tramway men but equally refused to mobilise the workers in Britain, refusing to escalate the strike throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The TUC did organise food parcels without which the families of striking and locked out workers would have starved. What was needed, along with these rations, was secondary strike action which the TUC refused to sanction. Individual groups of workers took industrial action, railwaymen in Manchester, Dockers in Liverpool and the MFGB (Miners) organised weekly collections in hard cash for the beleaguered Dublin workers. In Dublin, the DUTC were raising their ante as were other employers like Jacob’s Biscuits. The biscuit company told their tradesmen there was no work due to the actions of the ITGWU and at the same time the DUTC locked out 250 engineering workers at its Inchicore works. On the 15th September and against TUC instructions ten thousand railwaymen in the English West Midlands took industrial action along with three thousand workers on Merseyside. Despite this encouraging secondary action by workers in Britain, James Connolly, despite being a revolutionary syndicalist, knew the odds were stacked against the workers. Again, showing his break with unconditional ultra-leftism on 21st September he told the press; ‘we are willing – anxious in fact – to have a conciliation board’ (Morley P.74). He could see the TUC were not going to call out workers across the UK or, for that matter, Ireland in support of the Dublin proletariat. The employers had the support of the police and army and in view of these circumstances perhaps a conciliation board was the best prospect. Connolly did this while he was deputising for the imprisoned Jim Larkin, Connolly himself now out of prison. This willingness by Connolly, despite his syndicalist views, to accept some kind of arbitration, even ask for it, could be perceived by the public as showing goodwill while at the same time demonising the employers if they refused. This was the thinking behind this strategy, as a by-product of getting a negotiated settlement. Had the balance of class forces been in favour of the Dublin workers – a general strike in support looming either official or otherwise – then Connolly could, and no doubt would, have taken a harder line more in common with ultra-leftism. The idea had the support of the Lord Mayor, Lorcan Sherlock who was in the process of setting up the arbitration board when the employers, on Murphy’s instruction, rejected the proposal. William Martin Murphy wanted all out victory and the humiliation of the starving workers and their union. He forced the strike at a time, the Dublin Horse Show, of his choosing to create maximum disruption with transport. He then blamed the ITGWU for the lack of transport to the show. He chose the terms of the lockout/strike, something non-negotiable  - the right of workers to join a union of their choice and recognition of that union - not pay as a settlement which could have been reached on this issue, something Murphy did not want. The employers formally rejected the proposal from Connolly on 22nd September and the British Army began strike breaking duties. This incident should show to anybody looking at the dispute through objective lenses which side were on the offensive, and whose side the authorities were on!

The employers were now arming the scabs and it was only a matter of time before somebody was shot dead by these gun totting blacklegs. This happened to a young girl, Alice Brady, a member of Delia Larkin's – Jim Larkin’s sister – Irish Women Workers Union. Alice was shot in the wrist by a trigger-happy scab called Patrick Traynor, who fired shots into a crowd possibly through fear. Alice’s wound developed complications resulting in her death. Traynor was arrested, charged first with murder which was reduced to manslaughter – in case murder left a stigma over the employer’s cause – which was in turn reduced to “causing a girl’s death as a result of a revolver shot”, no more mention of murder or manslaughter. The police spoke for the accused and the jury consisting of property owners found no bill against Traynor. Patrick Traynor walked free!

At Alice Brady’s funeral on 4th January 1914, she had succumbed to tetanus on New Year’s Day, attended in large numbers including the trade unions, James Connolly delivered the oration: ‘Every scab and every employer of scab labour in Dublin is morally responsible for the death of the young girl we have just buried.’ There was no outpouring of grief from the employers who provided many scabs (though in this instance not Traynor, he procured his own weapon) with guns to shoot irresponsibly which in this case resulted in the death of a young girl. The courts and jurors showed whose side they were on by their verdict. Then, as now, the state and their army and police are not neutral in class disputes, industrial conflicts, they are firmly on the side of the employers!

On 21st January 1914 the TUC Parliamentary Committee informed the leadership of the strike that no more material aid would be forthcoming from Britain. The TUC could not speak for other socialist organisations whose help, though important, was negligible without that of the TUC. On 31st January the United Building Labourers Union returned to work on the employer’s terms, signing the paper not to join or, if applicable, leave the ITGWU. For those of us who witnessed the return to work of Britain’s Coal Miners after the 1984/85 strike this must have been a bitter pill to swallow. The 1913/14 Dublin Lockout involved thirty-seven trade unions representing upwards of 25,000 workers, a large number relative to the times. The Employers Federation, hitherto almost redundant, was given an influx of life by Murphy consisting of 400 employers. It survives today as the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC). The last food ship to arrive in Dublin port was the SS Hare on 19th January, the following day huge crowds gathered at Liberty Hall for food tickets.

William Martin Murphy had tried and failed to obliterate the ITGWU, though it must be said the workers returned on his terms. The union’s membership increased after the lockout to a higher number of members than that of 1913.

In August 1914 the First World War began and Connolly had a banner draped over the balcony at the ITGWU headquarters, and HQ of the Irish Citizen Army reading, We Serve Neither King nor Kaiser, But Ireland. Connolly, with many other socialists opposed what he called ‘this cursed war’ with a vengeance. The war split the hitherto united Second International into two factions, those who opposed the war and those who, albeit reluctantly, supported their native bourgeoisie and monarchs in going to war. Connolly along with V.I. Lenin – though the two never met – were in the camp opposing the bloodshed. Alas James Connolly did not live long enough the witness the Russian Revolution of 1917, if he had Irish history may have been different.

James Connolly is perhaps best remembered for his role during the 1916 Easter Rising. Connolly, after Jim Larkin departed for the USA, assumed the leadership of the ITGWU and the Irish Citizen Army (formed in November 1913 as a workers defence force). He had not been on the first Army Council formed earlier in 1914, not because he was not interested, he certainly was, but he felt his energies in the aftermath of the lockout may be better spent elsewhere. Connolly had ideas about using the ICA as a revolutionary force and was planning some kind of insurrection using the armed wing of the proletariat alone. When the secret organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, heard of this they panicked. The IRB were in the process of planning a rising of their own and felt Connolly and the ICA may hinder their operations. The story goes, and that is all it is, a story, that the revolutionary IRB kidnapped Connolly to advise him of their plans and not to go ahead with his own. The truth was, according to Frank Robins of the Irish Citizen Army in his book Under the Starry Plough ‘the fact that he freely became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood from the date of the meeting is a clear indication that the story of his kidnapping was a myth’ (P.73/74). 

It is true enough that a meeting took place but by mutual agreement, and James Connolly was co-opted onto the revolutionary leadership of the IRB. There are those who, wrongly in my view, accuse James Connolly of betraying his socialist principles by throwing his lot in with the petty bourgeoisie represented by Padraig Pearce, Thomas Clarke, Thomas McDonagh, Joe Plunket, Sean McDermott and Eamon Ceannt, and taking part in the Easter Rising. He not only took part but commanded the combined allied Irish forces of the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers in Dublin. These two groups, though ideologically poles apart were allies for the duration of the rising. As if to emphasise his distrust of the Irish Volunteers, Connolly issued this order to the ICA prior to the rising:

In the event of victory hold on to your rifles, as those with who we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty.

Connolly was referring to the volunteer leadership whose long-term aims may have differed somewhat to those of the ICA. Connolly harboured hopes of the working-class, once hostilities had begun, coming out in support either through a general strike in Ireland or any other form of action, in favour of the insurrection. He saw it as perhaps another way of bringing about socialist revolution by way of the national rising.

Connolly held reservations as to the effectiveness as to the use of the rifle as a means of securing power for the working-class, however, and again strategies shift with circumstances. His statement in response to Victor Berger, who was a strong advocate of the rifle was such:

The rifle is, of course, a useful weapon under certain circumstances, but these circumstances are little likely to occur. This is an age of complicated machinery in war and industry, and confronted with machine guns, and artillery which kill at seven miles distance, rifles are not likely to be of much material value in assisting the solution of the labour question in a proletarian manner -  (James Connolly Collected Works volume 2 P.243). 

The Easter Rising obviously presented these “certain circumstances”. To Connolly’s critics I would remind them that with or without the Volunteers, Connolly had an insurrection in mind - they just provided perhaps a quicker avenue and greater numbers. The relationship between the Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers could be likened, in a smaller way, to that of the Soviet Red Army and their US allies in the Second World War. They came from two opposing ideological camps but for the duration of hostilities and the defeat of fascism were allies in common cause.

The Easter Rising took place between April 24th and 29th 1916 and resulted in a British military victory. There were many reasons as to why this happened which is not in the writ of this analysis of James Connolly. It is worthy of note to mention when Pearce issued the surrender, on behalf of the Irish insurgents, the Irish Citizen Army troops would not accept or follow the order until a separate surrender order was issued by Commandant General of the ICA, James Connolly. Of all the leaders of the Rising James Connolly was the man General Maxwell was most determined to have tried and executed. He showed more attention to Connolly than any other of the sixteen executed men. Perhaps, no certainly he saw in Connolly a threat far greater than anybody else he was to have shot! He was shot, strapped to a chair on 12th May 1916.

James Connolly must go down as one of the flawless revolutionary socialists (though not infallible) of all time. Yes, he got things wrong, as did his mentor, Karl Marx. One was that the USA would become the first socialist country: he was miles out. Another was during the Easter Rising when he stated; ‘capitalism will not use artillery against capital’: he was wrong, and they did. 

Connolly’s ability to analyse a situation and address it on merit was a great attribute. His breaking with the dogmatic ultra-leftist approach served him well, not least in securing as near victory in all but name in the Wexford dispute. He showed the same ability in the Dublin Lockout when he suggested arbitration, seeing the odds were stacked against the ITGWU and it was the intransigence of the employers, and in particular W.M Murphy which prevented this. Had the balance of class forces been more favourable then a more robust, even ultra-leftist position could have been taken. He had one last laugh over Murphy: at the outset of the Rising he had the flag of the ICA and Irish labour, the Starry Plough, hoisted over Murphy’s Imperial Hotel in Dublin’s O’Connell (then Sackville) Street. The flag of labour flying over the citadel of capitalism. Could that be likened to the Soviet Union flying the Hammer and Sickle, the flag of Soviet communism, over the Reichstag, once the office of Nazism, at the end of the Second World War?

One hundred and five years after Connolly’s death many of his policies and prophecies, such as his advice to the ICA before the rising “in the event of victory hold on to your rifles” still have relevance. Seventy five percent of Ireland achieved independence, of sorts from Britain in 1921-22, but this was not the independence Connolly had in mind. Perhaps a little more pressing in today’s world than rifles and rebellion (necessary as one day they surely will be needed) is the fact that employers, particularly in the private sector do not recognise trade unions. Even though this is a constitutional right of all citizens, most employers - if this right is exercised - will not give the unions recognition. In many ways this stance is even worse than the position of W.M. Murphy during the lockout who at least pretended to “have no problems with sensible trade unionism”. Roughly translated that means unions who cannot, or will not, show any backbone and working-class leadership. His problem, so he claimed, was with “Larkinism” and the ITGWU including James Connolly. 

Today, if working-class people want their unions recognised and if they want an improvement in pay and conditions, they will be forced to do what their forefathers did, fight, and fight for what is essentially a constitutional right: the right to form associations and trade unions. Failure to do this will result in further erosions in pay and conditions, already being done behind the mask of Covid-19. The twenty-six-county government have just introduced a Bill granting sick pay up to seventy percent of a worker’s full pay by 2025. This is not out of sympathy with the workers but moreover to stop people going to work when they are sick, and spreading illness which has happened during the pandemic. Unfortunately, we have not got a James Connolly around today to give a lead, but somebody, somewhere out there ... who knows?

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist


Connolly Returns To Ireland

Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ with the second in a three part series on the person he thinks might contend for The Complete Revolutionary Socialist. The focus of the piece is on James Connolly in the USA.  

In September 1903 James Connolly set sail for the USA where he had hoped to secure employment as a printer for the US Socialist Labour Party paper, edited by Daniel DeLeon, which unfortunately did not come about, though he still became a member and activist in the SLP. 

He then moved inland to Troy to his cousin’s home where he found work as an insurance collector. It took some time for him to save up enough funds to rent a house and send back shipping tickets to his family in Ireland. By the summer of 1904 Lillie and his six children were ready to join him.

Unfortunately, and tragically on the last day before departure his eldest daughter, Mona, and her sister Ina were sent to the house of a family friend, “Aunt Alice”, on the other side of Dublin. It was here the tragedy happened, as Mona decided to do the washing for Alice, noticing it had not been done, she filled the largest saucepan available with clothing and hot water and placed on the floor. She then removed the ring cover from the stove and stooped down to lift the saucepan, which she held with her apron. Unfortunately, the apron became caught under the saucepan and somehow caught fire from the now open heat. Mona was quickly engulfed in flames resulting in her death. Mona Connolly died on 4th August 1904 aged 13 years. The family still had to go to the USA and Lillie kept the news of their daughter’s death from James. On their arrival Connolly noticed that Mona was not with the party. On receiving the news, he was understandably devastated. It took all his socialist friends and comrades to console the heartbroken father, grief which hitherto Lillie had shouldered alone, and convince him to go on, which he did.

Not too long after their arrival in the United States Lillie Connolly gave birth to their seventh [sixth surviving] child which the couple called Fiona. A case of one door closing and another one opening? This may have eased their grief over Mona’s tragic early death, without in any way forgetting the little girl. The Connolly children were a genuine international group, being born in Scotland, Ireland and the USA.

It was the firm belief held by many Marxists including Marx himself that the USA would become the first socialist country in the world, a view echoed by James Connolly and many others. They all came to this conclusion based on the United States massive industrial lead over the rest of the world, including by that time Britain. And as we know the USA was/is a bastion of capitalist greed and exploitation, the opposite of Marx and Connolly’s predictions. 

In 1904, Daniel De-Leon, the leader of the socialist Labour Party of America, and at the time Connolly’s new mentor who he was later to disagree with profoundly, declared to delegates of the still unified Second International (which would later split over the issue of World War One), that “America was the theatre where the crest of capitalism would first be shorn by the falchion of socialism.” How wrong they all were! Two years later at an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) convention it was proclaimed (in similar language) "the prophesy of Marx will be fulfilled and America will ring the downfall of capitalism the world over.” This prophesy by so many eminent socialists has proved the greatest overstatement and misconception of thought possibly in the movement’s history. 

Connolly became an activist in the IWW becoming its New York Building Workers organiser, though the backbone of the union was the Western Federation of Miners. It was through the IWW that Connolly became a convinced syndicalist, something he would remain the rest of his life. The IWW or Wobblies as they were sometimes known faced many prejudices and not only from the bosses. The snobbery of the craft unions in the USA, as was the case in Britain often came to the surface. The IWW represented predominantly the unskilled workers and were considered revolutionary by both the employers and the state. Their motto of One Big Union (OBU) would later be adopted by Jim Larkin in Ireland when he formed the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909 on syndicalist lines. The Wobblies saw the strike as a means of achieving political as well as industrial power for the working-class and considered an “injury to one as a concern to all”. This was the kind of militant trade unionism which suited James Connolly’s political ideology. 

The craft unions considered it inappropriate for unskilled workers to be unionised at all, let alone consider themselves fit to replace the bosses as the dominant class. Similar to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) in Britain around the mid-nineteenth century who considered themselves an “aristocracy of labour” the craft unions of the USA held similar if not greater snobberies. The ASE had a motto; “defence not defiance” meaning defend what we have and do not antagonise the employers. Many members of the ASE considered themselves, and were thought of by some, as almost bosses themselves!

Not long after his arrival in the USA Connolly visited Newburgh in New Jersey, George Washington’s headquarters during the War of Independence.

Washington’s house there was stocked with mementoes of the war and of George Washington and his family. Connolly noticed one memento in particular: the will of Washington’s mother. Among the items of her will was a paragraph where she left to one of her children, a slave girl, sanctimoniously referred to as one of her children (whatever this child meant to the Washington’s it was not as a member of their family) – my negro wench, “Little Bit” and all her future increase’ (Striking Similarities, 2017; Kevin Morley P28-29). 

Connolly wrote to his colleague, Daniel O’Brien outlining the paradox of this ambiguous, to say the least, narrative: 

Here we have the family of the greatest patriot of revolutionary America – a patriot passionate with the love of freedom – consigning to perpetual servitude, not only the living Negro woman, but all her children yet unborn. It forms another illustration of the necessity for insisting upon a clear definition of the term freedom as of all other terms is glibly used in political warfare’ (James Connolly, A Full Life Donal Nevin P 197). 

As Connolly noted. freedom - according to Washington’s mother - was very much dependent on a person’s skin colour, views actually held by Washington himself who was a supporter of chattel slavery of the black population. The point Connolly was making is this form of freedom is in fact no freedom at all, it is merely the freedom to enslave others like the employers, through wage slavery, use to the keep workers in their place even in present times. “An injury to one is a concern to us all!”

On the same thorny issue of race and ethnicity Connolly often berated Irish/American workers over their treatment of Italian and Polish fellow workers. The Irish often taunted these workers, occasionally leading to physical assault which Connolly forcefully opposed. He remonstrated with those workers who engaged in this activity reminding them of the treatment meted out to themselves and their parents by the indigenous workers on their arrival in the US. He argued we are all workers, all part of the same class and exploited by the same system. By some of your actions, a minority, the employer’s hands are strengthened simply because there is disunity amongst us, disunity on such a meaningless issue as race or country of birth. If we are going to be strong in the face of oppression, was the theme of his argument, forget about where your brother is born, his or her skin colour, or any other irrelevances and concentrate on the class issue, the class which we all belong, the working-class.

On his arrival in the United States Connolly received a fantastic welcome as the acknowledged representative of the Irish working-class. While he was in New York he was introduced to a man with who he would have a turbulent relationship, Daniel DeLeon. The two men shared, at the time, much ideology both being what would later, around 1920, be described as “ultra-leftists” despite which they were at constant loggerheads (though many of Connolly’s later writings bore a remarkable similarity to some of those of Daniel DeLeon). Ultra-leftism is a term used to describe certain types or positions on the far-left that are extreme and uncompromising. There are times when this position should be taken and others when perhaps a more conciliatory note should be struck. For example, a group of workers are on strike for a pay increase of say 30% and a reduction in hours. Support among the wider proletariat (working-class) is tepid at best and the employers come across with an offer of 10% and a one hour per week reduction in working hours. To adamantly turn this offer down, sticking to the 30% demand with little chance of support from other workers would be pig headed and “ultra-leftist”. 

This was a lesson Connolly was to learn and he began, where circumstances demanded, to take a more conciliatory position. This stance would serve him well in years to come, particularly in 1911 Wexford, the “Wexford Lockout” a precursor to that in Dublin 1913/14. Women have been known to be affected by ultra-left ideas, being told to “wait for the revolution” and not accept any minor improvements in their status until such time, as it plays into the boss’s hands compromising the broader revolutionary position which is, of course, nonsense. To do so would undermine the revolutionary mood of others, usually men! The wait for the revolution comrades, then you will be liberated as part of the working-class as a whole, the revolution is just around the next corner, which alas, it never is! Connolly at this point was in the process of refining his ideas, the learning curve so to speak, and, like Marx, his mentor, he shifted ground here and reclaimed there. Late Connolly differed strategically from early Connolly but the aims remained the same, the establishment of socialism under working-class control.

Pay increases was another area Connolly differed from Daniel DeLeon. DeLeon maintained that any increases in wages were automatically cancelled out by a price increase in goods and services and therefore “an increase of wages through unionism is a barren victory, inasmuch as the men would have to pay for what they buy as much more than they get”. Put simply DeLeon appears to argue that wage increases are pointless as the employers would increase the prices of their goods over and above the rate of the pay increase afforded their workers, making any pay increase redundant. He appears to have forgot the role of the trade union is to maintain workers living standards, and any unions ability to fight and achieve a pay rise is a strong barometer of that union's capability. It also empowers the members to take on and defeat the employers and, who knows, go on to greater heights! It may be true that the prices of goods would increase so as the employer recoups his layout on the pay rise but this has more to do with who owns the means of production and as the employers do then the goods belong to them, produced by the workers, to decide the prices of. Some of the goods, luxury items - the workers who receive the criminalised (in DeLeon’s calculation) wage rise could never afford such goods in the first place irrespective of the pay increase. James Connolly argued that it was not pay increase which were responsible for price hikes but, moreover, the other way round. 

Pay increases are generally a response to price hikes not the cause of them. This principle applies as much today as it did then. Connolly added:

the shallow thinkers who fasten upon this theory do not stay to reflect that in the United States, for example, the workers only receive fifteen per cent of the total product of their labour, and that therefore the price of the other 85 per cent is a matter of indifference to them.

The other 85 percent is surplus value, profit for the employers which is the cornerstone of capitalism. Today it is profit on profit, year on year. In all likelihood the employers, owners of the means of production, would increase the price of their goods anyway irrespective of any pay increase the workers through their trade unions, often having to take industrial action, had achieved so it is price hikes which precede a rise in wages, not follow such rises. Wages and wage increases are a response to the higher profits, usually through price increases, and sometimes pay cuts, amassed by the employer. These arguments put forward by James Connolly are as relevant today as they were back then.

As the organiser of the building workers section of the Wobblies in New York Connolly travelled daily from his home in Newark to the state capital. He rapidly became an excellent organiser and was soon organising tramway workers, dockers and milkmen. These experiences gained by Connolly in the USA were to come in very useful in the future back in Ireland when he organised the men of Wexford during their dispute in 1911 and later deputised for Jim Larkin during the Dublin Lockout of 1913/14. Connolly recognised the importance of bringing out key workers in support of others, this is true OBU fashion. For example, during a metro strike in New York it failed because, although the strike was solid among drivers and ticket men the failure to bring out the power men, those who supplied the electricity which powered the trams, allowed scab labour to drive the vehicles. The power men were card carrying member of a trade union, a different union who were not perceived to be involved. Therefore, they continued to supply the power, had they been on strike not one tram could have operated, scab drivers of not! Again, this principle applies as much today as then, the Miner’s Strike in Britain, 1984/85 springs to mind and the case of NACODS (see Striking Similarities 2017 Kevin Morley P.183). James Connolly was involved in many trade disputes while in the USA as a representative of the IWW. He was involved in many political initiatives and, as has been pointed out, often locked horns with Daniel De Leon.

By 1910 Connolly had decided, after consultation with Lillie, that a return to Ireland was desirable. To this aim he strived and in the same year the move home was on. On his return he immediately involved himself with political and trade union work, as well as the national liberation question. This was to be James Connolly’s final chapter.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

James Connolly In The USA

Caoimhin O’Murailewith the first in a three part series on the person he thinks might contend for The Complete Revolutionary Socialist 

Much of these series of articles are taken from a three-stint lecture I did for the Independent Workers Union some years back about James Connolly. It is impossible to cover every aspect of Connolly’s life, as the lecture attempted to do, as it would be too voluminous and his life though short was very full. I have, therefore split this article into three parts, the first examines his early days in Scotland, his emigration to Ireland, the formation of the ISRP and the Wood Quay Municipal Election of 1903. The second part, continuation, looks at Connolly in the USA, and the third instalment looks at his return to Ireland, the Irish Labour Party, Dublin Lockout and Easter Week.

James Connolly came without the racist baggage of his contemporary’s James Keir Hardie racism (anti-Lithuanian), the anti-Semitism attached to Jim Larkin and Richard O’Carroll or the sectarian bigotry of William Walker, all four socialists of the same era. Of the these, three, Hardie, Larkin and O’Carroll, could be accused and possibly forgiven of falling for the odium and language of the time which though making their attitudes a little more understanding, does not excuse them. James Keir Hardie politically aware in all other aspects held racist views which, again were possibly a symptom of the times. Walker on the other hand, like many other Protestant trade unionists, later to becoming known as “rotten prods” who challenged sectarianism, should have known better. He was brought up in a sectarian environment and as a socialist should have done his best to counter such divisions, in much the same way he stood up for women workers. James Connolly had none of this contradictory baggage to carry, he opposed anti-Semitism and sectarianism, branding them both as the same. During his stay in the USA, he remonstrated with the Irish-American workers over their anti-Italian and Polish attitudes towards fellow workers, explaining that they themselves had suffered similar bigotry from the indigenous workers on their own arrival in the US. He also argued with the descendants of the USA's own father of freedom, George Washington, over their treatment of black servants. All in all, if Connolly were around today it could be fairly safe to say he would be in the anti-racist camp and opposing all forms of discrimination, sectarianism and anti-Semitism.

Connolly was born at 107 Cowgate Edinburgh on 5th June 1868, the third son of Irish immigrants, John Connolly and Mary (nee McGinn). Ironically this was the same year the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was formed in Manchester and the year Constance Markievicz (nee Gore Booth), one day to be a leading comrade of Connolly’s was born. Unlike his future colleague, Jim Larkin whose birthplace has being questioned in recent years, the whereabouts of James Connolly’s origins are clear. His older brother John went to join the army, as was James to do himself later and very little is known about Thomas. 

Cowgate was known as an Irish colony in Edinburgh, and James became interested in Irish history, a subject he was to study, after he leaned to read and write. He was very much a self-educated man and was greatly assisted in this field by his wife, whom he met in Dublin, Elizabeth (nee Reynolds) and his future friend and comrade, John Leslie. As a child James suffered with rickets leaving him slightly bowlegged, a common affliction among the children of the working-class at the time. His first job was as a “Printers-Devil” which was generally being a dogsbody for the adult workers. He had to leave this job because the factory inspectors turned up, a rarity in those days due to shortages of inspectors, and for once enforced the factory acts, which themselves were sketchy enough but designed to protect child labourers. His next job was in a bakery the duration of which is uncertain, probably about two years.

At the age of fourteen Connolly faced a dilemma common to the children of the day from the labouring classes. He must “take the shilling”, meaning join the army, or starve. He joined the Kings Liverpool Regiment, which was considered an Irish regiment, and with the British Army he moved to Cork in 1882, his first acquaintance with Irish soil! It was economic necessity which forced the young James Connolly to join the army and not any love of Queen (Victoria) and country. Neither was it as some romantics like to believe a move to gain weaponry training for future use, though this would come in useful. In 1885 his battalion was moved to Dublin and around late 1887 Connolly met his future wife, Elizabeth (Lillie) Reynolds, and they were married in Perth Scotland in 1890. Sometime in 1888 James Connolly deserted from the army, due to the fact they were being moved [Connolly wrongly thought to India, they were only going to Aldershot] and he did not wish to be parted from Lillie. The input which Lillie had in Connolly’s life must not be underestimated because as a Protestant she had all the advantages of education still in many instances denied to Catholics. Without her assistance in developing his grammar and understanding the English language it is difficult how he could have mastered fluently, German, French and Italian. Without Lillie, it may not have been possible for James Connolly to write such works we all enjoy and learn from today like Labour in Irish History and The Axe to the Root.

Between the years 1889 and 1896 James Connolly was involved with numerous socialist organisations before his move to Ireland, this time as a political activist, not a British soldier. Connolly was involved in the Socialist League, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation, the Scottish Labour Party where he would have been acquainted with Kier Hardie. What Connolly would have made of Hardie’s remarks about Lithuanians, reportedly claiming they carried the Black Death, if indeed he knew of them, is unknown.  He was also involved with the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Independent Labour Party, the same party ironically as was the man he would later lock horns with, William Walker! 

The leader and founder of the Social Democratic Federation H.M Hyndman, who was greatly influenced by Marx’s Communist Manifesto, wrote a pamphlet titled Socialism Made Easy which had a huge circulation amongst trade unionists in Britain and provided a basis for much of James Connolly’s political thinking. All Connolly’s works on economic and social issues were infused with the basic tenets of Marxism and the language used by Connolly until the end of his life was replete with Marxist phrases and mottoes. He never shifted from Marxist theories, unlike many who became revisionists and reformers.

Connolly was greatly inspired by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose fame came after his death, and whose poems and political writings became popular in radical political circles. Connolly was greatly influenced by another socialist, John Leslie, who was the first secretary to the Scottish Socialist Federation, founded in 1888 which was essentially the Scottish branch of the SDF. Connolly first met Leslie at a protest meeting Barrack Park, Dundee and Leslie would become Connolly’s friend and mentor. Leslie later wrote of his first contact with Connolly in Dundee:

I noticed the silent young man as a very interested and constant attendant at the open-air meetings. Once when a sustained and violent personal attack was being made upon myself and when I was almost succumbing to it, Connolly sprang upon the stool, and to say the least retrieved the situation. I never forgot it. the following week, he joined our organisation, and it is needless to say what an acquisition he was.

Throughout Britain in the late nineteenth century trade unionism and socialism was on the rise amongst the unskilled workers. In the years between 1880 and 1914 what became as “New Unionism” was in the ascendancy. Perhaps one of the striking points in history of the unskilled workers militancy was the 1888 women workers strike at the Bryant and May matchmaking factory (sometimes belittlingly called the Matchgirls Strike) which in turn inspired the Dockers to take strike action the following year, 1889. This was the trade union world Connolly was to launch himself into. Connolly was active, along with his brother, John, in the SSF which John Leslie was the secretary to, and in 1893 Keir Hardie set up the Independent Labour Party which James Connolly was also active within. Around this time Connolly lived at 21 South College Street, Edinburgh where the SSF and ILP regularly met, it was described as a “bee hive of socialist activity” due to all the comings and goings.

Connolly was the secretary of the Central Edinburgh Branch of the ILP and in this capacity he often wrote letters of complaint to Keir Hardie, one such letter was complaining about the short notice given to a delegate meeting of the party. Other letters of complaint to Hardie expressed anger at the failure of a colleague to attend to his administrative duties or to fulfil promises made, Connolly was a stickler to detail.

In the winter of 1892-93 John Leslie delivered a series of talks to the Edinburgh branch of the Scottish Socialist Federation on the Irish question which deeply impressed Connolly. Leslie’s socialist analysis of Irish history had a profound affect on Connolly’s thinking and his future writings would contain many echoes of Leslie’s pamphlet, The Present Position of the Irish Question. The similarities of writing style to that of Leslie would highlight John Leslie’s influence. A recurring theme of both Leslie and Connolly was the class betrayal of the working-class by the aristocracy and later, post 1832, the bourgeoisie. The motto was only, trust the working-class in any struggle as the master class will always betray. An example of such a betrayal would be the misleadingly termed “Great Reform Act” of 1832 when the middle-class, the industrialists, got the vote. They had campaigned, along with the working-class for the franchise and, when the industrialists got it, they dumped their erstwhile allies, the working-class like a hot potato. This became known in many circles as the “year of the great betrayal.” The betrayal of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie and not for the first time or the last. It would be John Leslie who would be greatly responsible for James Connolly’s move to Ireland in 1896 which would result in the formation of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP).

In Edinburgh Connolly and his family (he had six children at this time before he left for the USA late 1903) suffered immense poverty and he decided to try his hand at shoe repairs. In February 1895 he found a small shop at 73 Buccleuch Street where he set up as a cobbler. He had no experience of this kind of work, which would become apparent, but tried his hand anyway. Two young girls approached Connolly in his shop asking to join the SDF. ‘Does your father approve?’ enquired Connolly. Oddly enough their father, a professor of languages, did approve and it was he who ended up addressing Connolly’s election envelopes. One of the girls, Anna Munro who would later become a leading Suffragette, recalled the story when she took the family's shoes to be repaired by Connolly: ‘not a single pair could ever be worn again’! The shop was closed down within a couple of months, Connolly remarking when he locked the door for the last time, that he was ‘going out to buy a mirror to watch himself starve to death.’ Frankly the cobblers shop was never going to get started, not only because Connolly had no aptitude for the work but because he was more interested in politics than business. Advertising meetings at his shop took preference by some distance over ever mentioning he repaired shoes as well!

Connolly’s position was dire to say the least and John Leslie promised to write a special appeal in Justice, a socialist publication of the time, seeking employment from the labour movement. The advertisement began:

Here is a man among men. I am not much given to flattery, as those who know me are aware, yet I may say that very few men have I met deserving of greater love and respect than James Connolly. I know something of socialist propaganda and have done a little in that way myself, and also know the movement in Edinburgh to its centre, and I say that no man has done more for the movement than Connolly.

The advertisement continues at some length but this is the general theme.

There was a response to Leslie’s advert from a source which must have delighted Connolly. It came from Dublin – the city of his youthful enthusiasms and courtship with Lillie. It came from the Dublin Socialist Club inviting him to become its full-time organiser. This position Connolly accepted at a time of much activity for the Connolly family as a whole. Two months before his departure for Ireland Lillie gave birth to their third child, Aideen who was given the first specifically Irish name in the family. The expenses for the migration were met by a subscription raised by John Leslie and others. Connolly took with him his precious library of books on socialism and Irish history and a sheaf cutting of the 1889 London Dock Strike collected in Dundee.

Connolly arrived in Dublin in early May 1896, finding accommodation in a tenement, one room flat at 76 Charlemont Street. He immediately began discussions with the Dublin Socialist Club which were neither homogeneous or experienced. Connolly was moulded for the job of putting this small organisation back on track. He had a wealth of experience and a set of ideas which could be moulded into one, as he began to discuss the social conditions in Dublin, indeed Ireland, at the time. The Industrial Revolution had peaked by the late nineteenth-century and unrestricted British trade placed Ireland at an unfair disadvantage. The reason for this was due to the new machinery, brought about and into play by the Industrial Revolution needed motive power. The fuel for this power was firmly established as coal which Britain had an abundance of, it was an island of coal. Britain therefore had all the fuel to power these machines in needed, whereas Ireland had none and had to import the “black gold” of its day from Britain. 

Within Irish society at the time were those who were too illiterate or too lazy to examine the reason for Britain’s advantage and unrestricted competition. These people preferred to use such mundane excuses and reasons for this advantage possessed by Britain as; ‘if only we had our own parliament things would be different.’ By their own parliament they were referring to “Grattan’s Parliament” which was abolished as part of the 1800 Act of Union, making Ireland a full part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and governance from London. 

This excuse does not stand up to examination, because even if Grattan’s Parliament was still in place, it would have made no difference to the unfair state of affairs. Scotland had no parliament, her administrative body was dissolved as part of the 1707 Act of Union which had Scotland governed from London, not Edinburgh. The Scots were arguably coned into believing they would have fair representation in the new British Parliament, which they did not. All this however did not affect Scotland's ability to compete with England simply because they too had an abundance of coal.

The second of the circumstances pertaining in Ireland at the time Connolly took over the Dublin Socialist Club was the agrarian crisis which was taking place in rural Ireland. The events in the country, which had been ongoing since the early part of the century, culminating in the land War which was an intense period of agitation between 1879 and 1882, resulting in a stream of migrant workers streaming into the cities. This placed these rural workers in competition with their urban counterparts causing friction between the two groups, as competition for work intensified. Of course, this situation suited the employers perfectly, divide and rule, a tactic still used regularly today. Connolly intended the Dublin Socialist Club would address these problems and he began with a name change for the small organisation. They would from then on be called the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP), the name being agreed at a meeting on 29th May 1896 with James Connolly appointed Secretary on a salary of £1 per week, when he could get it.

The party’s inaugural manifesto was headed “Irish Socialist Republican Party” under which the immortal words of Camile Desmoulins were printed: "The Great Appear Great To Us, Because We Are On Our Knees – Let Us Rise." 

Then followed the main points of the manifesto:

The establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic based upon the public ownership by the Irish people of the land and instruments of production, distribution and exchange. Agriculture to be administered as a public function, under boards of management elected by the agricultural population and responsible to them and the nation at large. All other forms of labour necessary to the well-being of the community to be conducted on the same principle.
As a means of organising the forces of democracy in preparation for any struggle which may precede the realisation of our ideals, or paving the way for its realisation, or restricting the tide of migration by providing employment at home, and finally palliating the evils of our present social system, we work by political means to secure the following:
1) Nationalisation of the railways and canals.

2) Abolition of private banks and money-lending institutions and the establishment of state banks, under popularly elected boards of directors, issuing loans at cost.

3) Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.

4) Graduated income tax on all incomes over £400 per annum in order to provide funds for pensions to the aged, infirm and orphans.

5) Legislative restrictions of hours of labour to 48 per week and the establishment of a minimum wage.

6) Free maintenance for all children.

7) Gradual extension of the principle of public ownership and supply to all necessaries of life.

8) Public control and management of national schools by boards elected by popular ballot for that purpose alone.

9) Free education up to the highest university grades.

10) Universal suffrage.

The ISRP under Connolly’s guidance were advocating pensions long before Lloyd George and the liberals ever considered the concept after the First World War. The minimum wage was in the manifesto, something which today has only comparatively recently being introduced. The ISRP manifesto was much longer of course but this article is to provide a basic outline as Connolly did much more in his life. Connolly and the ISRP came under constant attack from reactionaries like the Ancient Order of Hibernians which were/are anything but socialist. He also came under attack from local people claiming he “was not Irish” as they tried to disrupt his ISRP meetings. Much was made by the politically illiterate of the time that because he was born in Scotland he was, therefore, Scottish and should keep his nose out of Irish affairs. These people were the tenement dwellers whose cause Connolly championed. If they could have only realised that fact. Both James Connolly’s parents were Irish so his being born in Scotland was, like all of us on this planet, an accident of birth. None of us choose where we are born, we are all victims of parental circumstances who, in turn were the same victims of their own parents circumstances. It is meaningless anyway where a person is born.

In January 1903 James Connolly stood as a socialist candidate in the Wood Quay municipal election, his first attempt in Ireland to secure election to a representative body. In December 1902 he wrote to the Social Democratic Federation Secretary in Edinburgh about his standing in this election. He informed his former comrades in Scotland that the United Labourers Union had agreed to form his committee and do the work which the ISRP pays for. His opponent was a United Irish League candidate, P.J. McCall who used the priesthood on his platform to intimidate Catholics not to vote for a socialist or become a socialist. They spread lies about Connolly telling the Catholics he was an Orangeman, a freethinker, a Jew. They told the Protestants he was a Catholic and the Jewish population he was anti-Semitic. All lies, but given credence by the support of the clergy. 

The claim Connolly was anti-Semitic was destroyed by the fact that he had his election leaflets printed in Yiddish so the Jewish voters could understand what he was saying. It is believed this was the only occasion in an Irish election that leaflets were printed in Yiddish, it has never been done since. The idea came from the East London branch of the Marxist SDF and was an appeal to Jewish workers to vote for Connolly, the socialist. James Connolly polled 437 votes compared to the lie spreading P.J. McCall who polled 1,434 and the third candidate, a home ruler, W.H. Beardwood polled 191. James Connolly was proud of the number of votes cast for him as they were gained on honesty and not, like those of P.J. McCall, lies and deceit. In September of that year James Connolly would set sail for the United States where his work and experience of socialist politics would continue and develop. Here he would enter his syndicalist stage. Here he would remain until his return to Ireland in 1910.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

James Connolly ➖ Revolutionary Marxist, Scotland, Ireland And The ISRP, Wood Quay

Caoimhin O’Muraile ✒ One of the most popular misconceptions in Irish history I regularly come across, and is annoying, is the popular story that James Connolly was the founder or a founder of the Irish Citizen Army in 1913. 

It is true the Citizen Army – later to become the Irish Citizen Army – was formed in November 1913 but James Connolly had little if anything to do with this formation. This was not because Connolly disagreed with the formation of a worker’s defence force, the initial purpose of the Citizen Army, but because generally he believed more important Irish Transport and General Union (ITGWU) work needed to be done. 

It was at the time of the Dublin Lockout and police violence against locked out and striking workers was brutal, so some defence was needed but Connolly believed other work more important at the time. Pickets needed to be organised, demonstrations planned, correspondence with the British unions for support needed to be drafted and men were needed for other work, which did not include drilling for the Citizen Army.

The Army’s drill instructor was Captain Jack White and Connolly often enraged him by taking men away for other union activities when he, White, wanted them drilling in Liberty Hall. White’s fists would often turn white as he clenched them in rage at Connolly for taking what he perceived as his men away on union business or a political meeting. Nora Connolly:

recalls White once in a terrible rage, his hands clenched and fairly gnashing his teeth at some misinterpretation of a command he had given and her father remonstrating with him, easy now Captain, remember, they’re volunteers - A Descriptive History of the Irish Citizen Army 2012, Kevin Morley P.20.

The formation of what would become the Irish Citizen Army from its inception through to fruition, though not full potential, could be described as a staggered process. 

On 12th November 1913 a meeting of the Industrial Peace Committee took place in the rooms of the Reverend R.M. Gwynn at 40 Trinity College. Here the idea of a worker’s defence force was discussed, having been ruled out of order at a previous meeting, and arrangements were made for a drilling scheme for the locked-out workers’ - ibid P 7). 

Funds were to be raised for the purchase of boots and staves and Professor David Houston of the Royal College of Science appointed treasurer. 

If this idea formulated by the Industrial Peace Committee, which also included Captain Jack White a former British army officer, had stopped at its initial intention of bringing discipline into the ranks of the locked-out workers and defending pickets from the excesses of the police then it is perhaps unlikely that it would have ever developed any further than this. (ibid).

It is perhaps reasonable to assume that when the industrial conflict ended in 1914 then so too would the Citizen Army. The last thing Reverend Gwynn and the Industrial Peace Committee had in mind was the formation of what has been described as the first Red Army of the 20th century, certainly in Western Europe. It could be argued the events in Wexford, 1911, a precursor to the Dublin Lockout when a worker’s police force was established predated the Citizen Army, but whether it this police force could be described as an army is questionable. Had more aggressive and progressive people, Jim Larkin and, almost a year later James Connolly - after the former’s departure for the USA - not taken the reins then the [by then] Irish Citizen Army would not have taken part in the Easter Rising of 1916. Larkin was the General Secretary of the ITGWU and Commandant of the ICA, the two posts appear to have complimented each other.

During the Dublin Lockout Jim Larkin was more than aware they were in the battle for their lives against the titans of capitalism. Larkin realised the workers must become disciplined and using the embryonic Citizen Army would be the perfect vehicle to bring about the discipline: they must be organised, made of one substance and loyal to each other. While addressing a gathering of early Citizen Army recruits, all of whom where practical had to be card carrying trade union members, he told them:

they must no longer be content to assemble in hopeless, haphazard crowds, in which a man does not know and cannot trust the man that stands next to him, but in all their future assemblies they must be so organised that there must be a special place for every man, and a particular duty for each man to do’ (James Connolly: A Full Life Donald Nevi ed: P254). 

These were some of the fighting words Larkin uttered that evening which would lead to the popularisation of the ideas which would form the Irish Citizen Army. The workers were to be given a military training, and their instructor would be Captain Jack White, which filled the men with a feeling of great optimism. In these early days uniforms and weaponry were non-existent but enthusiasm would more than compensate for this short fall. On one occasion the Aungier Street branch of the ITGWU had formed a band using instruments paid for by themselves. On this occasion they annoyed the police by playing the “Peeler and the Goat”, prompting the police to threaten to smash their instruments. The workers then formed a guard using Hurley sticks to defend their band and this was one of the first actions of the Citizen Army:

The first drilling sessions took place using Hurley sticks in place of rifles, and these same hurlies were carried on route marches and would carry a kick to match any policeman’s truncheon’ (Morley P. 20-21).


As 1913 gave way to 1914 the strikers and locked-out workers were beginning to feel the effects. Demoralisation was beginning to creep in and this affected the Citizen Army greatly. As Captain White was beginning to give up hope, Sean O’Casey came up with an idea. He proposed the army should have a constitution written [later the similarities between this constitution and the 1916 proclamation would be apparent] and an army council elected.

The council would be responsible, among other matters, for the revival of systematic drills, to open a fund in order to procure equipment, to arrange for public meetings, to form companies of the army wherever labour was at its strongest’ (Morley P. 29). 

A meeting was called and was attended by James Connolly, Constance Markievicz, William Partridge, P.T. Daly and was presided over by Captain White with Sean O’Casey as Secretary, and arrangements were made for a public meeting for 22nd March 1914 at Liberty Hall. At this meeting, presided over by Jim Larkin, who announced the army would have a standard uniform and a constitution to be drafted by Sean O’Casey. Larkin reiterated his demand that every member of the Citizen Army must be, where applicable, a member of a trade union. It was at this point an Army Council was elected consisting of; Chairman Captain White, Vice Chairman Jim Larkin, P.T. Daly, William Partridge, Thomas Foran, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and Honorary Secretary Sean O’Casey with Honorary Treasurers Richard Brannigan and Constance Markievicz. Noticeable to see James Connolly at this stage was not a member of the Army Council somewhat dispelling the myth he was a founder of the army. It was now five months into its existence and since the idea was first muted and early drilling In Liberty Hall took place, and Jim Larkin had given his oration about discipline and trust.

It should be pointed out at this stage the relationship between the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers, formed about ten days after the Citizen Army, was at very best cool, at worst freezing. The Irish Citizen Army once requested from the wealthier and larger volunteers the use of a hall for drilling one evening and were politely but firmly rebuffed. The Citizen Army emphasised victory of labour over capital while the volunteers, many of them employers, ridiculed this, claiming there was no room for trades disputes in the national question. Even though the two organisations were allies during the Easter Rising these ideological tensions continued.

On 25th October 1914 Jim Larkin left Ireland for the United States, at which point James Connolly took over as the General Secretary of the ITGWU, initially on a temporary basis until Larkin returned, and Commandant of the Irish Citizen Army. It was at this point the ICA entered its truly revolutionary stage of development under Connolly’s stewardship. Route marches became longer and harder as Connolly had in mind using the ICA as an instrument which far outreached defending picket lines, important though such work was. 

As any student of Irish history will be aware the ICA were one of the two armies which took part in the Easter Rising of 1916, the other organisation being the Irish Volunteers, or the revolutionary wing of them under Padraig Pearse. Connolly commanded the ICA during Easter week, in fact he was commander of all Irish forces during the rising. The ideological differences between the two allies alluded to earlier may be summed up by a short speech Connolly made to the ICA prior to the rebellion:

The odds are a thousand to one against us, but in the event of victory hold onto your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty. Hold onto your rifles he repeated - (Morley 2012 P. 56). 

This was in clear reference to Pearse and the Irish Volunteers, though some argue he was referring to Eoin MacNeill [nominal head of the Volunteers] who by this time had made it clear he was not prepared to sanction, let alone partake in the rising. Can any similarities be drawn with today’s variants of republicanism, for example Republican Socialism and main stream republicanism? That is in the eye of the reader to decide!

In three short years the Citizen Army, becoming the Irish Citizen Army, had gone from being primarily a picket and freedom of assembly defence force to becoming a revolutionary socialist army with its own political and economic agenda. That agenda was far longer reaching than merely defeating the occupying enemy, the British. Commandant James Connolly was executed on 12th May 1916 after the rising was defeated. He was succeeded as Commandant by James O’Neill, a Carpenter, who lacked all of his predecessor’s attributes and political knowledge of Marxism leading to a separate agenda to those of the volunteers. O’Neill left a lot to be desired and the words, “in for his own ends” come to mind, he was no James Connolly or for that matter, Jim Larkin.

James Connolly perhaps the ICAs most famous Commandant, and certainly the man who developed on the work of his predecessor after Larkin departed for the USA was not a founder of the army. He was not a member of the first Army Council and it was not until later on he took the reins carrying out sterling work in the development of the Irish Citizen Army. Perhaps certain historians who claim Connolly to have been a founder, as do the twenty-six-county state it would appear, find this false interpretation of history nice and convenient. 

What a great pity such an organisation does not exist today. Imagine if the British coal miners during the 1984/85 Miners Strike, lasting one year, could have called on a modern equivalent of the Irish Citizen Army!!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is a Dublin 
based Marxist and author. 

The Irish Citizen Army & James Connolly ➖ Revising History And Reality

For Sinn Fein to have real power and relevance in the post Brexit Ireland of 2021, there has to be a reconciliation between republicanism and the Catholic Church, according to political commentator and author, Dr John Coulter.

There is no doubt in my mind that republicans will try and put a dampener at the least, or rewrite history at the most, concerning the centenary of the foundation of Northern Ireland in 2021.

In doing so, Sinn Fein will be spinning the ‘results’ of an imaginary all-Ireland General Election and how it will emerge as the largest party on the island.

Sinn Fein will point to recent opinion polls which show growing support for the republican movement’s political wing south of the Irish border.

Shinner spin doctors will trot out the line it could have won more TDs in Leinster House had it run more candidates in last year’s Dail General Election.

Sinn Fein will boast that given its Dail representation, coupled with its support at Stormont, clearly makes the party heads on to be the biggest on the Emerald Isle in the event of Irish unity.

Historically, Sinn Fein could point to the outcome of the 1918 Westminster General Election when Sinn Fein won almost 80 of the 105 Commons allocated to Ireland seats when the island was still all under British rule.

But if Sinn Fein is to repeat its 1918 performance and be taken seriously as a truly democratic movement, it must make its peace with the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise, it must also engage in a massive political charm offensive with the liberal Protestant denominations.

Mention republicanism and religion in the sentence and you could be heading for an immediate political divorce.

However, just as the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland will have to seriously consider an all-island dimension, which I have outlined in an ideology I penned known as Revolutionary Unionism, so too, will republicanism have to face the potentially unpalatable reality that the post Brexit island of Ireland from January 2021 will necessitate an accommodation between the republican movement and the Irish Catholic Church.

As a ‘no deal’ Brexit sparking a hard border creeps up the political options ladder, this rekindling of republicanism and religion becomes ever more important.

Personally, I have been a life-long eurosceptic, so as well as developing the ideology of Revolutionary Unionism, the flip side of the political coin was to devise a new ideology for republicanism which sought to heal the rift between republicans and religion.

To this end, in 2014, two years before the European Referendum in the United Kingdom, I published an ebook entitled An Saise Glas (The Green Sash): The Road to National Republicanism.

The book focuses on a non-violent way forward for the republican movement in Ireland. This new ideology I have entitled National Republicanism. Chapter Two is entitled ‘Putting Christ Back Into Republicanism.’

National Republicanism needs to spark a revival of the concept of Holy Mother Ireland instead of becoming swamped in a secular sea of atheism, agnosticism, pluralism, humanism and especially Marxism.

Old-style republicanism has always enjoyed some sort of partnership with the Irish Catholic Church. This Church/State bond was at its most influential when Eamon de Valera was President of Ireland.

However, while the republicanism which led to the Treaty in the 1920s, and the republicans who ran the old Irish Free State, even the republicans who secured full status for the 26 Counties as a full-blown republic developed the concept of Holy Mother Ireland, the republican movements which emerged after the defeat of the IRA in the 1956-62 Border campaign seemed to want to permanently scrap the ethos of Church and State.

During the conflict known as the Troubles, the Official republican movement of the Official IRA and Workers’ Party, and the various factions of the republican socialist movement (such as the IRSP and INLA) had an exceptionally fractious relationship with the Irish Catholic Church and leadership.

The republican movements which evolved in the late Sixties onwards developed at a time when Left-wing revolutionary politics was becoming a world phenomenon.

The modern republican movements wanted to see themselves as part of a global revolutionary organization, rather than a sectarian anti-Protestant movement on a tiny island on the fringe of the European continent.

The root cause of how republicanism has got itself bogged down with the secular movement goes back to the failed Easter Rising of 1916. In the immediate aftermath, Britain had the high ground. The Irish Volunteers had been defeated, and even spat upon by some Dublin Catholics as they were marched into captivity.

If Britain had boxed clever in 1916, it would have given the leaders a jail term and told them to grow up politically. Instead, it allowed General ‘Bloody’ Maxwell to take charge of ‘mopping up’ the aftermath of the failed Rising.

It was Maxwell who insisted that the Rising leaders be executed. At that time, because Britain was bogged down in the an equally bloody trench campaign of the Great War, the British political leadership agreed to Maxwell’s assertion that the Rising leaders should be executed by firing squad.

By giving the leaders a soldier’s death, he immediately and substantially raised their status from troublesome rebels to international anti-colonial martyrs. James Connolly’s death was particularly gruesome. Although wounded in the Rising, he was strapped into a chair for his execution as he was unable to stand.

Until those British bullets dispatched him into eternity, Connolly was not a republican hero, but a largely insignificant Scottish communist dabbling in Irish politics. Connolly was first and foremost a Marxist, not a Catholic nationalist. His political vehicle was the Irish Socialist Republican Party, not to be confused with the IRSP, the INLA’s political wing.

But his execution elevated his writings, beliefs and actions to a new level in Irish nationalism. Connolly’s communism became a significant factor in the rapidly emerging Irish Republican Army which fought the War of Independence a few years after the doomed Rising.

The fallout from the Treaty meant that the Irish Catholic hierarchy largely supported the Free State forces rather than the anti-Treaty IRA. The images as portrayed in the hit 2006 film, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, of the priest hearing IRA confessions and blessing the terrorists before they left to attack the British in the War of Independence, had long since faded into mythology and folklore.

It should not be forgotten that more IRA prisoners were executed by the Free State forces during the Irish Civil War than killed by the Black and Tans during the War of Independence. When republican goes to war against republican, the ensuing bloodshed can be even more sadistic than republican terror campaigns against the British state.

The Free State victors and subsequent Dails for generations to come guaranteed the Irish Catholic hierarchy a central role in the political life of the 26 Counties.

Clerical sex abuse, whether by individuals or by institutions, went unchecked and unpunished. On this point, how much did the modern day Provisional republican movement know about the activities of paedophile priests? The Provisionals were very quick to expose – and punish – people it deemed to be ‘guilty’ of informing, or anti-social behaviour.

But is there any known record of the Provisionals ‘knee-capping’ a Catholic priest or nun suspected of known sexual abuse against children? Surely the Provisionals must have known about allegations of clerical abuse in their republican heartlands? If they did, why did the Provisionals remain silent over these generations?

Connolly’s atheistic Marxism within republicanism became a viable alternative to the sexual crimes of Irish Catholicism’s institutionalized religion. For many Catholics in Ireland, the Catholic Church came to symbolize Christianity.

Connolly’s atheistic Marxism became a vehicle to challenge the previously unquestionable power of the Catholic priests. This naturally led to friction between republicans loyal to the Connolly tradition and the Catholic hierarchy, especially during the Eamon de Valera years. It was he who maximized the concept of Church and State.

It has become a matter of some debate that Connolly recanted from his atheistic Marxism in the hours before his brutal execution.

The main ethos of my National Republicanism is to re-introduce true Biblical Christianity, especially the teachings of Jesus Christ Himself, back into republican ideology.

A major stereotype which National Republicanism will seek to eradicate is the false perception that Biblical Christianity is the institutionalized litany of the Catholic Church and bishops under another name.

Biblical Christianity is not the priests trying to shake off the stigma of the clerical abuse scandals. Biblical Christianity is precisely what its title states – the true Christian beliefs as stated by Jesus in the Bible.

National Republicanism will dismantle the structures of the Irish Catholic Church in Ireland and establish a Biblically-based Christian Church which is free of Vatican control. This new Church will be based on Biblical principals.

A perfect example of this type of new Church sweeping the 26 Counties is the Pentecostal denomination, which was founded in Co Monaghan in the early 1900s. In spite of a fall in attendances at mainstream Christian denominations throughout Ireland north and south, the Pentecostal movement is bucking the trend and is increasing in numbers, especially in the Dublin area.

This is not a case of Catholics converting to Protestantism, but a case of Catholics – disillusioned with their Church and the sexual abuse scandals – looking to a new expression of their Christian faith.

National Republicanism will revise the concept of Church and State in Ireland – north and south. Instead of the bond of Church and State, National Republicanism seeks a rebirth of the concept of Holy Mother Ireland through the strategy of Christ and State. National Republicanism wants to see a revival of Biblical Christianity – which our patron Saint, Patrick, introduced to the Emerald Isle – as our national personal faith.

I emphasise the term ‘personal faith in Christ’ as opposed to ‘institutionalized religion’, which the Catholic Church represented.

The modern republican movement, especially those who see themselves as republican socialists, want to see the development and expansion of a pluralist and secular society in Ireland under the supposed banner of a democratic socialist 32-county republic.

In reality, many modern republicans despise the Catholic Church hierarchy, seeing many clerics and nuns as the modern-day equivalents of the Biblical Pharisees.

National Republicanism seeks to restore republican confidence in the Biblical Christian faith. Ironically, the same crisis is facing modern loyalism. One of its most famous slogans is ‘For God And Ulster.’

Yet many loyalists were influenced in prison by the writing and words of the late Gusty Spence and David Ervine, who followed a progressive socialist path. Many loyalist prisoners found themselves in jail because they followed the ‘blood and thunder’ sermons of Protestant fundamentalism, a fundamentalism which largely deserted them once those loyalists found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Just as loyalism abandoned the Christian God in ‘For God And Ulster’ so too, many republicans turned their back on the Catholic concept of Holy Mother Ireland.

Modern loyalism and republicanism are – ironically – both trying to cut religion out of their respective ideologies. Both seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet that Marxism and extreme socialism hold the keys to the future development of the respective communities.

This is a huge error of judgment, especially for republicanism. Having read Karl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ from start to finish, I can only conclude there is a startling similarity between the type of ideal society which Marx is trying to create, and the Biblical Christian society which Jesus wished to create.

National Republicanism is seeking a return of Biblical Christianity as a central core of republican thinking by getting republicans to focus on the New Testament account of the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus Christ as told in St Matthew’s Gospel Chapter Five.

In this aspect, Christ outlines a series of attributes, commonly known as The Beatitudes. There is a school of ideological thinking – to which I personally belong – which maintains that Marx based ‘Das Capital’ on The Beatitudes and his overt criticism of religion was merely a tactic ploy to disguise the fact that he had pinched his ideas from the Bible, and the words of Jesus Himself.

In reality, Jesus Christ was the first real communist – not Karl Marx. National Republicanism’s Christ and State ideology is, therefore, based on St Matthew’s Gospel chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Many of the Beatitudes begin (using the Authorized King James translation) “Blessed are …”

However, when the words of Jesus are taken in a modern context, they make the basis for a realistic political agenda for National Republicanism. Here are the key points which the Beatitudes highlight:

The poor in spirit (verse 3) – the need to restore national pride in society;

Those who mourn (verse 4) – the need to remember and help the victims of the conflict in Ireland;

The meek (verse 5) – the need to help the working class, and for the rich to invest their wealth in helping those less well off in society;

They which do hunger (verse 6) – the need to combat growing poverty in society, and also provide a sound educational and health system for all;

The merciful (verse 7) – the need for a fair and accountable justice system;

Pure in heart (verse 8) – the need to restore the moral fabric of society, to encourage family values and implement the concept of society’s conscience;

Peacemakers (verse 9) – the need for compromise and respect of people’s views based on the concept of accommodation, not capitulation;

Persecuted (verse 10) – the need for National Republicans to have the courage to stand up for their beliefs;

When men shall revile you (verse 11) – the need for a free press with responsible regulation.

National Republicanism is about the creation of the concept of Christian citizenship. Under this concept, compulsory voting – as exists in the Commonwealth nation of Australia – would be introduced to Ireland.

A key emphasis of National Republicanism is Christian pride in the nation under the banner of ‘Ireland for the Irish’. National Republicanism wants to combat the so-called ‘Brain Drain’ where Ireland’s young people feel the need to leave the nation and not return.

National Republicanism would not only seek to keep this generation on the island, but to encourage those who have emigrated to return with their skills to the island.

In this respect, all Irish citizens would complete a two-year compulsory National Service in the nation’s armed forces, during which time they would also learn a vocational trade.

The Christian Churches would have a role in encouraging people of all ages to develop a community service role.

In conclusion, it must again be emphasised that National Republicanism is not seeking to re-establish the rule of the Catholic bishops. Readers of National Republicanism must not confuse having a personal faith with Jesus Christ with those who want to implement a draconian form of institutionalized, ritualistic worship. There is no role for a pope in National Republicanism.

There is a major difference between an all-island future as defined by my Revolutionary Unionist ideology, but it also requires my counter balancing ideology known as National Republicanism.

The two new ideologies must co-exist if Brexit is not to see a return to widespread violence from both dissident republicans and loyalists.

National Republicanism can lead to more positive relations with Ireland’s Unionists, Protestants, loyalists and Loyal Orders.

Slam National Republicanism if you want or must, but at least with the Taoiseach pushing his Shared Island model, I cannot be accused of not putting forward workable ideas.

An Saise Glas (The Green Sash) The Road to National Republicanism, by Dr John Coulter, is available on Amazon Kindle.
 

 Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter

 Listen to Dr John Coulter’s religious show, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning   around 9.30 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM, or listen online   at www.thisissunshine.com

Romanism And Republicanism Need To Bury The Hatchet!