James Connolly & the Irish struggle

The following is adapted from a speech by Bryan G. Pfeifer, a contributing editor of Workers World, delivered at the May 13-14 Workers World Party conference titled, “Preparing for the Rebirth of the Global Struggle for Socialism” in New York City. The Boston branch of WWP is hosting a forum on “The 1916 Irish Rebellion, James Connolly, and the 1981 Hunger Strikers,” June 24, 1 to 4 p.m., at 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, Mass.

This year, the vibrant and unconquerable spirits of the leaders and participants of 1916 and 1981 are being commemorated internationally for their selfless sacrifices to free Ireland from colonialism, capitalism and other forms of imperialist oppression. The Irish masses have been imbued with this spirit for over 800 years.

Both the 1916 and 1981 actions of the Irish revolutionaries inspired the masses, thus widening the political and social space for propelling the social revolution for a free Ireland. These steadfast actions also revealed to the world the nakedly barbaric nature of British (and U.S.) colonialism in Ireland.

The 1916 Rising pushed the international socialist and communist movements forward by attempting to create the second socialist revolution after the Paris Commune. Its earth-shaking impact helped create and build the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and many socialist revolutions in the 20th century.

Bryan G. Pfeifer WW photo: Lal Roohk

The Rising, both its mistakes and advances, is studied closely by revolutionaries. It inspires socialist and anti-colonial people’s struggles, such as those of the Puerto Ricans and Palestinians, today.

James Connolly, a socialist labor organizer, Republican, and principal leader of the Rising, ranks as one of the most unique and important figures in Irish and all revolutionary history.

Bobby Sands in his prison writings hailed Connolly, a hunger striker at one time himself, as his most revered fighter for Irish freedom. May 5 was the 25th anniversary of the death of the gallant Sands after a 66-day hunger strike for political status. On March 1, 1981, nine of Sands’ comrades also died on the strike. The hunger strikers and many other republican prisoners carefully studied Connolly’s teachings.

The Rising—and Connolly’s contributions—were an inspiration and guide for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Mairead Farrell and many other working-class and oppressed revolutionary leaders internationally.

The road to ‘The Rising’

Ninety years ago, after the 1916 Rising begun April 24, Connolly was critically wounded on May 12, strapped to a chair in Kilmainham prison in Dublin, and barbarically assassinated by the British. Fourteen other leaders of the Rising were also murdered by the British in prison after surrendering. Over 1,300 were wounded or killed in battle and many more imprisoned.

Connolly had become politically conscious as a teenager in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was born to Irish immigrant parents. He later moved to Dublin and formed the Irish Socialist Republican Party.

As a socialist, Connolly advocated unity with nationalists, but maintained that workers needed an independent program and organization to achieve socialism.

“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle,” Connolly wrote in the pamphlet “Socialism and Nationalism,” “unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic, your efforts would be in vain. England will still rule you, through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers, and the blood of our martyrs.”

Added Connolly, “Nationalism without socialism—without a reorganization of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin [Ireland]—is only national recreancy.”

Connolly traveled to the United States in late 1902 for a Socialist Labor Party speaking tour, and stayed until 1910 when he returned to his homeland. As a member and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and as a member of the Socialist Party and SLP, he supported national-liberation struggles, self-determination for oppressed nationalities and socialism the world over.

Connolly—fluent in German, Gaelic, Italian and English —was an expert on united front strategy. He was a brilliant trade union tactician and strategist. He traveled throughout the United States during these years fighting for industrial unionism. He was involved in many working-class and theoretical battles, most notably with the SLP’s Daniel DeLeon, and worked to win all workers but particularly the Irish to socialism.

Connolly’s parting shot in the United States was against the U.S. Steel Trust in 1910, when he took over, temporarily before he left for Ireland, as managing editor of The Free Press. This Socialist Party newspaper in McKees Rock, Pa., published extensive coverage of the mine and tin and other workers’ strikes as well as other pitched battles against the robber barons. When the editorial staff was charged with violating the Alien and Sedition Act and imprisoned for supporting the strikers, Connolly ably guided the paper for a few issues, often giving lessons on various strike strategies.

In his first issue as Free Press editor, Connolly challenged a racist article in the previous issue and published an anti-racist British Socialist labor leader’s letter supporting the Black workers in the Rand Gold Mines in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Connolly the theorist

“Labor in Irish History,” Connolly’s major Marxist theoretical contribution, was first published in 1910 after his return to Ireland. It is a profound historical materialist analysis of Ireland’s development, specifically as Britain’s first colony. Connolly analyzed communalism in Ireland and traced the country’s stunted progress after its colonization by England in the latter half of the 12th century. He concluded with developments at the beginning of the 20th century.

Like Marx, Engels and Lenin, Connolly showed how Britain developed as a capitalist state and the world’s first imperialist power by forcefully under-developing Ireland’s economy and using this colonized country as an agricultural outpost, a source for cheap raw materials and labor as well as military recruits. That is, Ireland, the colony, was a key material resource for Britain’s ability to eventually colonize three-fifths of the globe by the most horrific means such as slavery.

Annihilating these vestiges of colonialism, capitalism and imperialism—whether of the British form or any other in his homeland—and ushering in an Irish Workers’ Republic was Connolly’s principal life’s work. For this he gave everything, including his life.

Ed Childs and Jan Cannavan contributed to this report.

Next: Connolly in Ireland (1910-1916), The Rising, and Ireland today.