One-hundred-and-eight years on from his execution in Kilmainham Gaol, we are now presented with newly unearthed writings from James Connolly, the most significant figure in the history of Irish socialism.
While letters (both personal and to the press), newspaper columns and fiction writings form the backbone of this important book, there is much for historians of Connolly and the labour movement more broadly to ponder in McCabe’s introduction, which gives an important timeline of publications around the life and output of the Edinburgh-born labour leader.
Historically, it would seem that the James Connolly put before a readership could often say as much of the publisher as the subject. When William O’Brien of the ITGWU published Socialism and Nationalism in 1948, McCabe notes that “most of the articles were clipped, with sentences and entire paragraphs deleted. Very few were presented as originally intended.” The volume also “surgically removed any complimentary remarks Connolly made towards Larkin”.
The bitterness that had so divided Irish labour in the years after James Larkin’s return from the United States has undoubtedly played a role in how Connolly has been presented in print. Little could anyone have imagined then that these omissions and edits would find their way into the Marxist Internet Archive, a popular online resource that many scholars have consulted for primary source materials. McCabe has gone back to the original sources, some of which are presented here unedited for the first time since their publication.
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The unearthed Connolly material takes many forms, including letters penned to the Edinburgh Evening News. Here we see the rhetorical flourish that would later come to the fore in the Workers’ Republic newspaper, printed and produced in Liberty Hall. In August 1894, Connolly writes that “freedom as a gift from above is valueless, but when won by the active rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor it becomes a boon more precious than life itself”. Personal letters to Keir Hardie demonstrate Connolly’s importance in the broader labour movement in Britain, while at home the collection reveals interesting new insights on the relationship between Connolly and Maud Gonne, with whom he would form alliances against the second Boer war and in opposing royal visits to Dublin.
Here is Connolly, practical and polemical, even before he would take up residence in Ireland as an activist or union official
In as much as the later Liberty Hall project of Larkin and Connolly was about industrial unionism, it was also a cultural project. To the Manchester Guardian, it was clear “no Labour headquarters in Europe has contributed so valuably to the brightening of the lives of the hard-driven workers around it”. Here we see the cultural dimension of the man reflected in his fiction. Set in Dublin, A Free Breakfast Table first appeared in print within Labour Leader in June 1895. Though Connolly was then living in Edinburgh, it is full of humour and observation of the city, noting that “there you have Christ Church and St Patrick’s Cathedral restored by the rival efforts of two dealers in strong drink”. Our protagonist wanders Dublin, his head full of thoughts of “the denizens of Montgomery Street rioting in the mansions of Merrion Square”. It is, as McCabe rightly notes, an almost Joycean ramble through the city.
An interesting appendix lists newspaper advertisements and reports for Connolly’s lectures as they appeared in the press. Sometimes, these things connect to later dimensions of his life. We find him speaking on the Paris Commune in Edinburgh in 1892, recalling to me how in numerous later statements to the Bureau of Military History, members of both the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army would recall Connolly lecturing them on urban warfare and the lessons of the Commune.
Newspaper notices also give insights into Connolly’s life beyond politics; we find him presiding over an inter-club billiard tournament at the Workingmen’s Club on Wellington Quay in 1896. A further source of interest is an appendix collection of articles penned by John Connolly, a brother and formative influence. John’s writing style immediately recalls that of James; we find a combative and confident propagandist insisting that “the enemies of progress may vent upon our heads all the malice, the meanness, and the calumny at the command of the supporters of a slowly-dying tyranny”.
At the time of his death, there were many obituaries penned to Connolly, but it was Padraic Colum who hit on something fundamental: “He knew history and he knew economics, but he knew, too, that the militant force that was necessary in the Irish cities could not be built around abstractions.” Here is Connolly, practical and polemical, even before he would take up residence in Ireland as an activist or union official. Credit is due to Iskra Books for making this publication freely available online as a downloadable PDF from their website, thus allowing complete versions of some of these writings to exist online for the first time.
Donal Fallon is the presenter of the Three Castles Burning podcast
