Socialist Resistance : SR48 - October 2007

Our History

CONNOLLY: A BEACON TO GUIDE THE LEFT

“James Connolly: ‘a full life’” by Donal Nevin (Gill & MacMillan 2006) 16.99 Euros.
Piers Mostyn

NAME a revolutionary Marxist anywhere assassinated by imperialism but still celebrated in song almost a century later; who left school with little formal education but whose books were sold by the thousand in his own lifetime, and who debated with the great socialists of his era; who formed the world’s first full time workers’ militia, leading it in an insurrection; who was a national union leader but also a street corner agitator; and who has the main rail station of a western European capital city named after him? James Connolly of course.

Sadly his high status is primarily due to the co-option of his name by the Irish labourist and nationalist traditions which each claims him as their own, rather than a critical appreciation of his qualities.

Read this new 800 page biography (the first for 20 years) and you will not recognise the dewy-eyed republican version of the “martyr of 1916” or the bureaucrats ’ celebration of his role in the founding years of the Irish labour movement. Both airbrush his 20- year history as a professional revolutionary Marxist.

Even some left currents, attempting to fit an economistic brand of Marxist orthodoxy round his life have baulked at his embrace of the national liberation struggle, ignoring a long history of agitation and writing on the national question that preceded the 1916 rising. Not least this was apparent in his confrontations with loyalist workers in Belfast, where for several years prior to the First World War he was a union organiser. Connolly’s dire warnings of the perils of partitionism have yet to be heeded.

Edinburgh born and initially active in Scotland, he kept in contact with his Scottish comrades for over two decades. Connolly played a key role in the split of the Socialist Labour Party (which had a strong base in Scotland) from the dogmatic and stultified Social Democratic Federation led by Hyndman. His inheritance is surely vital to the unique flavour and strength of socialism in Scotland.

In the USA, he was an organiser of the International Workers of the World, continuously stressing the inter-relationship between political and industrial struggle – against syndicalists who opposed standing in elections or even building parties.

In the final years prior to the rising he synthesised this by simultaneously acting as general secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, founding and commanding the Irish Citizens Army, leading the Socialist Party of Ireland and editing a revolutionary Marxist weekly paper ( Workers Republic). He also polemicised against dogmatic and sectarian Marxism, developing a vision and practice of revolutionary Marxists organising within broader socialist parties – breaking from De Leon’s SLP to join Debs’ Socialist Party in the USA and then seeking to apply these lessons on his return to Ireland.

He served in the British army, possibly in India, for seven years in the 1880s, a seminal experience about which he spoke little but which must have informed both his internationalism and his military leadership. His military writings reflect thorough research into the lessons of a wide range of insurrectionary and guerrilla struggles including the 1905 revolution in Russia, the Paris Commune and France 1848.

Although he was the military brains behind the 1916 insurrection, Connolly’s fatal mistake was in theorising that it would not face artillery fire as a capitalist state would not cause widespread destruction to capitalist property.

He had a profound understanding of the potential for radical militancy among working class women and of the relationship between feminism and socialism. This was informed by experiences in organising women workers, but also his work with the great socialist feminists of the age – including Eleanor Marx (who joined his Irish Socialist Republican Party) and Sylvia Pankhurst and Charlotte Despard (with whom he shared a platform during a mass meeting in the 1913 Dublin Lock Out).

This is best exemplified in his famous quote from “The Reconquest of Ireland”: “None so fitted to break the chains as they who wear them, none so well-equipped to decide what is a fetter. In its march towards freedom the working class of Ireland must cheer on the efforts of those women who feeling on their souls and bodies the fetters of ages have arisen to strike them off, and cheer all the louder if in its hatred of thraldom and passion for freedom the women’s army forges ahead of the militant army of labour. But whosoever carries out the outworks of the citadel of oppression the working class alone can raze it to the ground”.

There have been few better socialist defences of self-organisation.

Connolly had his weaknesses. A headstrong personality, his habit of falling out with his comrades perhaps motivated his migrations from Scotland to Ireland to the USA and back to Ireland as much as his undoubted proletarian internationalism. Connolly was a life long Catholic, although not practising. And he regularly campaigned alongside priests There is some ambiguity as to whether this was an opportunistic pose to limit the ability of the clergy to drive a wedge between him and his working class audience. But he also made regular and ferocious attacks on the church hierarchy and was consistently secularist and non-sectarian. Standing for Dublin Council he distributed the first and only election address in Yiddish in Irish history. In New Jersey he learnt fluent Italian so that he could address the thousands of radicalising immigrants in his street corner meetings.

His relationship to religion leaves many questions unanswered and this was subject to some critical comment from his atheist comrades in the international socialist movement. But there is a lot to be learnt from his open and non-dogmatic approach to how Marxists should engage in united front work with an oppressed community with a strong religious adherence - an issue of contemporary relevance.

Similarly his “feminist” credentials are marred by his opposition to divorce, though motivated by an understanding of the family’s role as survival mechanism for the most deprived and oppressed more than by reactionary moralism.

And prior to the rising he joined the Military Council of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the provisional government as vice president despite his consistent and firm advocacy of class independence. But he also advised his ICA comrades to keep their arms after the rising – anticipating conflict with the nationalist bourgeoisie.

These points provide food for thought. But they shouldn’t obscure the fact that his Marxism was open minded and practical – at all times he had his eye on the crucial importance of broad unity in struggle. So he bent the stick and took risks but in doing so, but achieved much. In the process his uncompromised revolutionary socialism became relevant and accessible.

Don’t be put off by the author’s background as a former general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions – the type of person Connolly spent his life struggling against. Nevin lets Connolly speak for himself – drawing on a wealth of articles, letters, speeches and contemporary accounts.

However the book is short on context. The Lock Out seems to spring out of nowhere. And little is said of the cross-currents of international Marxism at the time, though Connolly shines like a beacon against the dry chauvinism that dominated much of the left.

Connolly comes across as incredibly modern. The issues he highlighted - like the relations between class, gender, nation, race and religion; and problems of party building, programme and unity - have a direct application today. This is a very rich and intense history. Revisiting it has a contemporary relevance with the demise of the Irish anti-imperialist struggle and the marginalisation of the left.

Piers Mostyn

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