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’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

2 comments:

  1. I read recently from a Russian affiliated paper that Jesus Christ was the first one ever.

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  2. If such a person existed that argument hold much water. Not the bastardised version as promotted by the various churches, but the proper one bits of which may be found in the Bible. However the ruling classes throughout cennturies have been careful to put contradictory arguments to dispell any hint of socialism. A fella may have existed by the name of Jesus, or Joshua, and was likely a thorn in the Romans side due to him promotting an early form of socialism. For this reason they had to get rid of him.
    James Connolly on the other hand definately existed and promotted the Marxist ideology, updated to suit the needs of the working class early 20th century. Similarly for this reason Maxwell had to get rid of him on behalf of the ruling class.

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