For Connolly the struggle of the working class would always be unfinished business

‘New book on great socialist marks anniversary of his birth’

It's the 150th anniversary of the birth of James Connolly the great socialist leader who was executed by the British in 1916. Connolly’s Citizens Army which had been established in 1913 to defend workers against the brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police was considered the most disciplined and well organised of the troops in the Easter Rising. But Connolly had no illusions about the outcome and is said to have remarked if the rising was successful ‘keep the guns’.

You could say that Connolly’s scepticism about any new Irish State was vindicated not least recently when balaclava clad police assisted the eviction of homeless protesters.

Shaun Harkin has produced a book on Connolly to mark the 150th anniversary and he was interviewed about it and Connolly by Rebel TV (Youtube link here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=JJ4uo8ClBJU

The publicity for the book says:

Considered by many Ireland's most important revolutionary, James Connolly devoted his life to struggles against exploitation, oppression, and imperialism. Active in workers' movements in the United States, Scotland , and Ireland, Connolly was a peerless organizer, sharp polemicist, and highly original thinker. His positions on the relationship between national liberation and socialism, revolution in colonized in colonized and underdeveloped economies, and women's liberation in particular were often decades ahead of their time. This collection seeks to return Connolly to his proper place in Irish and global history, and to inspire activists, students, and those interested in history today with his vision of an Ireland and world free from militarism, injustice, and deprivation.

Connolly along with fellow Irish Republican Socialist James Larkin were pivotal to the development of the Trade Union movement particularly in the West of these Islands. They both would have shunned a national identity appellation because they saw themselves as citizens of the world and the struggle of workers for them was a global one that goes on. Indeed Larkin in the United States at the time of the Easter Rising would later be jailed there as part of ‘The Red Scare’ (the persecution of socialists in the so called ‘Palmer Raids’ named after US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer) in 1920.

Larkin was sentenced to 5 to 10 years but released in 1923 and expelled from the US.

Their legacy lived on and indeed, via the Connolly Association, touched me when I spoke at a Connolly Conference in Liverpool in the mid 1980s.

My daughter Angela when she spoke (aged 21) at the Illiam Dhone commemoration in 1993 evoked the memory of Connolly as she castigated MHKs who take an oath of allegiance. Connolly’s HQ in Dublin as famously bedecked with the slogan.

‘WE SERVE NEITHER KING NOR KAISER BUT IRELAND’

For Connolly the struggle of the working class would always be unfinished business it was a struggle he gave his life for!

James Connolly Born Edinburgh 5 June 1868 - Died Dublin 12 May 1916 executed by the British Crown Forces

Image: rebel TV interview Shaun Harkin who reads extracts from his new work on Connolly.

Bernard Moffatt