Connolly on Emmet’s rebellion

In chapter IX of Labour in Irish History, Connolly deals with Emmet’s movement and their rebellion in 1803. Connolly records they were even more politically radical than the original United Irish movement. This is because all that was left after the crushing of the 1798 rebellion were the rank and file plebeian elements, whereas the UI had been an alliance of the more radical section of the Protestant middle class and the Catholic peasantry. But Emmet’s group was more specifically working class – it was also tiny, as was the working class at the time.

It was less able to be infiltrated by the state as Irish workers were well used to secrecy because of the anti-trade union laws. Workers at the time made good underground activists. The area with the best-organised trades (weavers, tanners, shoemakers) was also the best-organised in Emmet’s rebellion in Dublin. Wicklow rebels brought to Dublin by Dwyer were, Connolly records, sheltered by dock labourers.

In Waterford, Limerick and Tipperary, rebellion was also working class-centred.

Emmet’s rebellion was very much economically-focussed. It brought together a working class social base and the national question. The class and national questions were merged. Emmet’s group also were linked to English radicals democrats, 8 of whom were hung.

Robert Emmet, records James Connolly, was “the Irish apostle of a worldwide movement for liberty, equality and fraternity.”

The manifesto of his rebellion was very much anti-clerical. The very first article decrees taking over and nationalising church property (the established church in Ireland at the time was, of course, the Church of Ireland) and bans the transfer of land, bonds, etc until public will and independent government is established.

Robert Emmet was probably the first major republican figure to so clearly merge the national and socio-economic. He realised that the exploited class – the emerging working class – had no reason to rally to independence unless they were freed from social bondage as well as British rule.

Subsequently, of course, he was hung, drawn and quartered by the British ‘civilisers’ of Ireland. His body was never returned to his family and its whereabout remains unknown.

Connolly’s view on the defeat of the clans

These are my notes on Connolly’s Labour in Irish History, chapt 8.

The defeat of 1641, according to Connolly, ended the old clan system. The involvement if old Anglo-Irish noblemen, he says, weakened the Irish side as they mainly wanted to maintain their own class position, in turn based on earlier confiscations. These contradictions meant they were riddled with equivocation and treachery. This movement of clans was huge and powerful, but had this fatal weakness: its own class divisions (like the Republican Movement in the Tan War period, I might add.)

With the destruction of clan society came a mixture of feudalism and capitalism, says Connolly.

He is very insightful about how the Protestant landed gentry and capitalists used more fanatically Protestant types to drive down the Catholic masses while, at the same time, exploiting the Protestant lower orders. (This is what later came to be in a really concentrated form, of course, in the six counties statelet.)

Incipient Irish capitalism was stymied by British rule, as the British capitalists did not want competition. But it reproduced opposition in Ireland over and over.

Once the economic reason ceased to drive Irish landlords and capitalists into opposition the upper elements ceased championing independence. Meanwhile, common suffering opened the way to the unity of Protestant and Catholic masses, argues Connolly.

The United Irish movement, he notes, represented the coming together of a series of developments in Irish society, an exceptional person (Tone) – or generation! – and a galvanising event (the French revolution).

Connolly notes how the French revolution changed the consciousness of both Catholics and Protestants, helping bring them together. Tensions between Catholics and Protestants gave way to conflict between the ruling class and a new force, which Connolly class “the democracy”. He reflects that Tone was waging a class war. It is very important to grasp that class war was key.

Moreover, United Irish and the English could only unite when Ireland was independent (a point very reminiscent of what Engels said.)

Connolly recorded that the aristocracy was “anti-freedom”, the Irish fight was part of a global struggle and that Irish fighters were allied with British revolutionaries. (Of course, today it is quite hard to find these today!) The Irish struggle represented what in those days were called “the rights of man” in Ireland.

Tone had asserted that when the aristocracy go forward, the people fall backward, and we might say that when the Irish capitalist class today run things, the masses (in particular, the working class, goes backwards).

Connolly records the celebrations in Belfast over the fall of the Bastille.

Lastly, in this chapter, he records that Tone was combining the national and the socio-economic. He was for making a revolution.

Now, we resume

Well, a month has gone by and nothing. But today or tomorrow I will be getting up some notes on Connolly’s Labour In Irish History from a study/discussion group organised by Eirigi. It’s a couple of chapters where I led the discussion, chapters 8 and 9, in particular dealing with Emmet’s rebellion, which was even more radical than the main United Irish movement which had been crushed in 1798. Emmet was the kind of “last gasp” of the UI movement and especially proletarian.

On-line talk on Constance Markievicz, Wednesday, March 31, 8.30pm (Irish time)

The next in a series of on-line talks organised by Eirigi is a re-running of the talk on Constance Markievicz.

It’s being given again by myself, Philip Ferguson, a member of Eirigi and the person behind this blog.

I’ll be looking at Markievicz’s life, activities and her ideas, as she was a major socialist-republican figure during the revolutionary era.

There will be an Q & A afterwards.

The meeting will take place at 8.30pm on Wednesday the 31st of March (Irish time; check for time differences if are in the USA, Australia, NZ, continental Europe etc)

Contact eirigigeneralsecretary@gmail.com if you would like to attend.

 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email from Rúnaí Ginearálta Éirígí, Mickey Moran, containing information about joining the meeting.

 

100 years of partition – on-line talk/discussion

Online discussion hosted by Socialist Democracy

Garda and RUC officers at the Irish border 1920s
Ireland:
100 Years of Partition
Counter-revolution and reaction

Speaker: Philip Ferguson (Irish Revolution blog)

23 March 2021
19.00 London/Dublin
Zoom platform

Register
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkfu2rrDotE9b_EnzBHm4JSaET69Kf_sPn

Speaker
Philip Ferguson is a socialist activist based in New Zealand.  He runs the Irish Revolution blog.  A member of Sinn Fein in the 1980s and early 1990s; he is now a supporter of the socialist republican group Eirigi.

Summary
This year marks the 100 years since partition.  Over that period, it has had a profound influence on Irish politics and society.   It has been the foundation of imperialist rule in the north and of reaction across the whole of Ireland and has proved to be a severe impediment to the advance of the labour movement and to the development of socialist politics. The prediction of James Connolly that partition would usher in a “carnival of reaction” proved to be correct.

This discussion will examine the continuing legacy of partition and how it can be overcome.  It will also consider whether there is any validity to recent claims that the decline of unionism and the dynamics of Brexit are advancing the cause of a united Ireland.

James Connolly on Wolfe Tone

The following article by Connolly appeared in Workers Republic (August 13, 1898); this was the paper of the Irish Socialist Republican Party, which Connolly had established in Dublin in 1896.  The transcribing is by the James Connolly Society in 1997.  The piece is taken from the Marxist Internet Archive.

Apostles of Freedom are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when living. Universally true as this statement is, it applies with more than usual point to the revolutionary hero in whose memory the Irish people will, on Monday, 15th August, lay the foundation stone of a great memorial.

Accustomed, as we are, to accept without question the statements of platform oratory or political journalism as embodying the veriest truths of history, the real meaning and significance of the life and struggles of the high-soured organiser of the United Irish movement of 1798 is too often lost to the people of Ireland today. We think with pride and joy of Wolfe Tone and his struggle for Ireland, but when we think of his enemies, of those who thwarted him at every opportunity, who ceased not to revile him while alive and paused not in their calumnies even when he had passed beyond the grave, we are too apt to forget that the most virulent and unforgiving of those enemies were not the emissaries of the British Crown, but the men from whose lips the cant of

Connolly’s ‘Labour in Irish History’: study/discussion group

A study/discussion group based on Connolly’s Labour in Irish History started a couple of weeks ago.  With the lockdown across Ireland (and in other countries where socialist-republicans and supporters reside) many of us will have more time than we usually do for study, theory, political discussion, so let’s make use of it.

The studies have been initiated by Eirigi general-secretary Mickey Moran, but are open to any socialist-republican-minded people.  They take place on zoom and are very easy to access.  You can contact Mickey directly or, if you are shy, email me and I’ll put him onto you.  He’s: eirigigeneralsecretary@gmail.com

The sessions take place on Wednesday nights at 8.30 (Irish time, and British time).  If you’re elsewhere you will need to check what time that is wherever you are.

Last week we delved into two chapters where our political tradition begins to emerge, looking at the democratic and internationalist ideas of the United Irish movement of Wolfe Tone and at Emmet’s movement and the manifesto of the 1803 rebellion, which, if anything, was even more radical – for instance Emmet’s rebellion wanted to confiscate and nationalise Church property.

It was my privilege to do the introduction.

The next 2 chapters will be introduced by Fiona, as the sessions begin to move on from the great revolutionary democracy of the United Irishmen and Emmet, pre-runners of socialism, to the emergence of a more explicitly socialist politics in Ireland.  These chapters are:

Chapter 10 – The First Irish Socialist – A forerunner of Marx; this looks at the views and work of William Thompson in the late 1820s and early 1830s
Chapter 11 – An Irish Utopia; this looks at the Ralahine commune in Co. Clare in the 1830s

Anyone who doesn’t have a copy of the pamphlet/book can read it on the Marxist Internet Archive, here.

Veteran activist Diarmuid Breatnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign

Interview by Mick Healy with Diarmuid Breathnach on the Save Moore Street Campaign.

 

Mick also did an earlier interview with Diarmuid on his decades of political activism:

 

 

James Connolly on urban landlords

Land ownership was a key political question for the Irish masses throughout the hundreds of years of British rule.  For most of these centuries ‘the land question’ was essentially a rural/peasant issue.  But with industrialisation and urbanisation, the landlord class in towns and cities became as much a problem for the new working class as the big landholders were for the rural peasant masses.  In this 1899 article, James Connolly addresses the problems faced by Dublin workers due to private ownership by landlords of their homes.  (It appeared in the Workers Republic, November 18, 1899) and is highly relevant today as, although housing conditions have improved, rents and ownership remain critical problems.)

In an early issue of the Workers’ Republic we pointed out that the Corporation of Dublin had it in its power to sensibly mitigate the sufferings of the industrial population in the City by a wise and intelligent application of its many powers as a public board. Among the various directions we enumerated as immediately practical outlets for corporate enterprise, there were two allied measures which, were they applied, might do much to at once relieve the most odious and directly pressing evils arising from the congested state of our cities. Those two measures were:–

• Taxation of unlet houses,

and

• Erection at public expense of Artisans’ Dwellings, to be let at a rent covering cost of construction and maintenance alone. [1]

The wisdom of the proposal to increase the funds and utilise the borrowing powers of the Corporation in this manner cannot be questioned. The housing accommodation of the Dublin workers is a disgrace to the City; high rents and vile sanitary arrangements are the rule, and no one in the Corporation seems to possess courage enough to avow the truth, or to face

In Review: Jeffrey Leddin’s “The ‘Labour Hercules’: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism, 1913-23”

by Daniel Murray

“If you or anybody else expect that I’m going to waste my time talking ‘bosh’ to the crowds,” James Connolly was heard to say, “for the sake of hearing shouts, you’ll be sadly disappointed.” He preferred instead to “give my message to four serious men at any crossroads in Ireland and know that they carry it back to the places they came from.”

This would prove to be more than just ‘bosh’ on Connolly’s part. A stiffening of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was noted in October 1914, upon his assumption of its leadership, with the announcement of a mandatory parade for all members. Rifles were to be “thoroughly cleaned”, anyone absent would be noted and latecomers refused admittance.

Meanwhile, articles by Connolly started to appear in the Workers’ Republic, critiquing the. . .

continue reading here.