AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Showing posts with label james connolly. Show all posts

Sunday, April 23, 2023

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Click on title to link to "Workers Hammer" (International Communist League/Great Britain newspaper) critical appreciation of James Connolly, a hero of the Irish rebellion of Easter , 1916.

"James Connolly"

The man was all shot through that came to day into the Barrack Square

And a soldier I, I am not proud to say that we killed him there

They brought him from the prison hospital and to see him in that chair

I swear his smile would, would far more quickly call a man to prayer

Maybe, maybe I don't understand this thing that makes these rebels die

Yet all men love freedom and the spring clear in the sky

I wouldn't do this deed again for all that I hold by

As I gazed down my rifle at his breast but then, then a soldier I.

They say he was different, kindly too apart from all the rest.

A lover of the poor-his wounds ill dressed.

He faced us like a man who knew a greater pain

Than blows or bullets ere the world began: died he in vain

Ready, Present, and him just smiling, Christ I felt my rifle shake

His wounds all open and around his chair a pool of blood

And I swear his lips said, "fire" before my rifle shot that cursed lead

And I, I was picked to kill a man like that, James Connolly

A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainham

Their heads all uncovered, they knelt to the ground.

For inside that grim prison

Lay a great Irish soldier

His life for his country about to lay down.

He went to his death like a true son of Ireland

The firing party he bravely did face

Then the order rang out: Present arms and fire

James Connolly fell into a ready-made grave

The black flag was hoisted, the cruel deed was over

Gone was the man who loved Ireland so well

There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning

When they murdered James Connolly-. the Irish rebel

"James Connolly"

Marchin' down O'Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high
There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky
Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye
"My name is James Connolly - I didn't come here to die

But to fight for the rights of the working man
And the small farmer too
Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, and don't give up your dream
Of a Republic for the workin' class, economic liberty"

Then Jem yelled out "Oh Citizens, this system is a curse
An English boss is a monster, an Irish one even worse
They'll never lock us out again and here's the reason why
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die....."

And now we're in the GPO with the bullets whizzin' by
With Pearse and Sean McDermott biddin' each other goodbye
Up steps our citizen leader and roars out to the sky
"My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...

Oh Lily, I don't want to die, we've got so much to live for
And I know we're all goin' out to get slaughtered, but I just can't take any more
Just the sight of one more child screamin' from hunger in a Dublin slum
Or his mother slavin' 14 hours a day for the scum
Who exploit her and take her youth and throw it on a factory floor
Oh Lily, I just can't take any more

They've locked us out, they've banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us
No! It's far better to die like a man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly

But don't let them wrap any green flag around me
And for God's sake, don't let them bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks
And whatever you do, don't let them make a martyr out of me
No! Rather raise the Starry Plough on high, sing a song of freedom
Here's to you, Lily, the rights of man and international revolution"

We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky
'Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight
They shot him in Kilmainham jail but they'll never stop his cry
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...."

Saturday, April 23, 2022

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wh/195/connolly.html

Click on title to link to "Workers Hammer" (International Communist League/Great Britain newspaper) critical appreciation of James Connolly, a hero of the Irish rebellion of Easter , 1916.

"James Connolly"

The man was all shot through that came to day into the Barrack Square

And a soldier I, I am not proud to say that we killed him there

They brought him from the prison hospital and to see him in that chair

I swear his smile would, would far more quickly call a man to prayer

Maybe, maybe I don't understand this thing that makes these rebels die

Yet all men love freedom and the spring clear in the sky

I wouldn't do this deed again for all that I hold by

As I gazed down my rifle at his breast but then, then a soldier I.

They say he was different, kindly too apart from all the rest.

A lover of the poor-his wounds ill dressed.

He faced us like a man who knew a greater pain

Than blows or bullets ere the world began: died he in vain

Ready, Present, and him just smiling, Christ I felt my rifle shake

His wounds all open and around his chair a pool of blood

And I swear his lips said, "fire" before my rifle shot that cursed lead

And I, I was picked to kill a man like that, James Connolly

A great crowd had gathered outside of Kilmainham

Their heads all uncovered, they knelt to the ground.

For inside that grim prison

Lay a great Irish soldier

His life for his country about to lay down.

He went to his death like a true son of Ireland

The firing party he bravely did face

Then the order rang out: Present arms and fire

James Connolly fell into a ready-made grave

The black flag was hoisted, the cruel deed was over

Gone was the man who loved Ireland so well

There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning

When they murdered James Connolly-. the Irish rebel

"James Connolly"

Marchin' down O'Connell Street with the Starry Plough on high
There goes the Citizen Army with their fists raised in the sky
Leading them is a mighty man with a mad rage in his eye
"My name is James Connolly - I didn't come here to die

But to fight for the rights of the working man
And the small farmer too
Protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, and don't give up your dream
Of a Republic for the workin' class, economic liberty"

Then Jem yelled out "Oh Citizens, this system is a curse
An English boss is a monster, an Irish one even worse
They'll never lock us out again and here's the reason why
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die....."

And now we're in the GPO with the bullets whizzin' by
With Pearse and Sean McDermott biddin' each other goodbye
Up steps our citizen leader and roars out to the sky
"My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...

Oh Lily, I don't want to die, we've got so much to live for
And I know we're all goin' out to get slaughtered, but I just can't take any more
Just the sight of one more child screamin' from hunger in a Dublin slum
Or his mother slavin' 14 hours a day for the scum
Who exploit her and take her youth and throw it on a factory floor
Oh Lily, I just can't take any more

They've locked us out, they've banned our unions, they even treat their animals better than us
No! It's far better to die like a man on your feet than to live forever like some slave on your knees, Lilly

But don't let them wrap any green flag around me
And for God's sake, don't let them bury me in some field full of harps and shamrocks
And whatever you do, don't let them make a martyr out of me
No! Rather raise the Starry Plough on high, sing a song of freedom
Here's to you, Lily, the rights of man and international revolution"

We fought them to a standstill while the flames lit up the sky
'Til a bullet pierced our leader and we gave up the fight
They shot him in Kilmainham jail but they'll never stop his cry
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die...."

Friday, April 23, 2021

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Thursday, April 23, 2020

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Crtical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Easter I916 Irish Citizens Army Commandant James Connolly

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Easter 1916 leader, James Connolly

This is a repost of a January 2009 entry honoring Irish Citizens Army Commandant James Connolly as a labor militant and here as a fighter for Irish independence as well on the anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Markin comment:

James Connolly's name is a familiar in this space and we honor his memory every year on the anniversary of the Easter, 1916 Irish uprising against in the British in the middle of their World War I slaughter. Our day will come.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Irish And American Labor Leader James Larkin

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Irish and American labor leader James Larkin.

This is a repost of a January 2009 entry where James Larkin was honored as a communist militant. Here he is honored as an Irish socialist and anti-imperialist militant on the anniversary of the Easter 1916 uprising.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

* 'A TERRIBLE BEAUTY WAS BORN' -HONOR JAMES CONNOLLY AND THE EASTER RISING, 1916

*** 'A TERRIBLE BEAUTY WAS BORN' -HONOR JAMES CONNOLLY AND THE EASTER RISING, 1916

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Wolftones Performing The Song In Honor Of "James Connolly". There are also some very good photographs of the destruction of Dublin after the British shelled the downtown area of "their province" to kingdom come.

COMMENTARY

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY, COMMANDANT- IRISH CITIZEN ARMY- EXECUTED BY THE BLOODY BRITISH IMPERIALISTS MAY, 1916. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP AND THE 10 MARTYRED LONG KESH HUNGER STRIKERS. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE 90th ANNIVERSARY OF THE EASTER UPRISING, 1916. BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND TODAY (AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT OUT OF IRAQ).

A word. They tell a story about James Connolly that just before the start of action on Easter Monday, 1916 he told the members of the Irish Citizen’s Army (almost exclusively workers, by the way) that if the uprising was successful to keep their guns handy. More work with them might be necessary against the nationalist allies of the moment organized as the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers were mainly a petty bourgeois formation that had no intention of fighting for Connolly's vision of a Socialist Republic. True story or not, I think that gives a pretty good example of the strategy and tactics to be used in colonial and third world struggles by the working class. Would that the Chinese Communists in the 1920’s and other colonial and third world liberation fighters since then have paid heed to that strategic concept.

James Connolly, June 5, 1868-May 12, 1916, was of Scottish Irish stock. He was born in Edinburgh of immigrant parents. The explicit English colonial policy of trying to drive the Irish out of Ireland and thus created the Irish diaspora produced many such immigrants from benighted Ireland to England, America, Australia and the far flung parts of the world. Many of these immigrants left Ireland under compulsion of banishment. Deportation and executions were the standard English response in the history of the various “Troubles" from Cromwell’s time on.

Connolly, like many another Irish lad left school for a working life at age 11. The international working class has produced many such self-taught and motivated leaders. Despite the lack of formal education he became one of the preeminent left-wing theorists of his day in the pre- World War I international labor movement. In the class struggle we do not ask for diplomas, although they help, but commitment to the cause of the laboring masses. Again, like many an Irish lad Connolly joined the British Army, at the age of 14. In those days the British Army provided one of the few ways of advancement for an Irishman who had some abilities. As fate would have it Connolly was stationed in Dublin. I believe the English must rue the day they let Brother Connolly near weapons and near Dublin. As a line in an old Irish song goes- ‘ Won’t Old Mother England be Surprised’.

By 1892 Connolly was an important figure in the Scottish Socialist Federation which, by the way, tended to be more militant and more Celtic and less enamored of parliamentarianism than its English counterpart. Later, the failure to gather in the radical Celtic elements was a contributing factor in the early British Communist Party’s failure to break the working class from the Labor Party. Most of the great labor struggles of the period cam from the leadership in Scotland and Ireland. Connolly became the secretary of the Federation in 1895. In 1896 he left the army and established the Irish Socialist Republican Party. The name itself tells the program. Ireland at that time was essentially a classic English colony so to take the honored name Republican was to spit in the eye of the English. Even today the English have not been able to rise to the political level of a republic. Despite Cromwell’s valiant attempt in the 1600's and no thanks to today's British Labor Party’s policies this is still sadly the case. All militants, of whatever nation, can and must support this call- Abolish the British monarchy, House of Lords and the state Church of England.

In England Connolly was active in the Socialist Labor Party that split from the moribund, above-mentioned Social Democratic Federation in 1903. During the period before the Easter uprising he was heavily involved in the Irish labor movement and acted essentially as the right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913 when Larkin led a huge strike in Dublin but was forced to leave due to English reprisals Connolly took over. It was at that time that Connolly founded the Irish Citizens Army as a defense organization of armed and trained laboring men against the brutality of the dreaded Dublin Metropolitan Police. Although only numbering about 250 men at the time their political goal was to establish an independent and socialist Ireland.

Connolly stood aloof from the leadership of the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist formation based on the middle classes. He considered them too bourgeois and unconcerned with Ireland's economic independence. In 1916 thinking the Volunteers were merely posturing, and unwilling to take decisive action against England, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send his Irish Citizens Army against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the more militant faction -Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection as well. In order to talk Connolly out of any such action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year.

When the Easter Rising occurred on April 24, 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, and as the Dublin brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto Commander in Chief. Following the surrender he was executed by the British for his role in the uprising. Although he was so badly injured in the fighting that he was unable to stand for his execution and he was shot sitting in a chair. The Western labor movement, to its detriment, no longer produces enough such militants as Connolly (and Larkin, for that matter). Learn more about this important socialist thinker and fighter. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY.

A word on the Easter Uprising. The easy part of analyzing the Uprising is the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland and militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it and therefore doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the strategy and tactics of the action and of the various actors, particularly in underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations. The British (or fill in the name of whatever colonial power applies) were entirely committed to defeating the uprising, including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and all other militants today is the same as back then in 1916- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings I have come across a theory that the Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. Let poets rule the land, an old idea. As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. Some formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 or the Soviet Commune of 1917 did not figure in the political calculations at that time.

As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic. That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own revolutionary experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime merited support. This is based on the old socialist principle that the main enemy is a home. Chocky Ar La.

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN FROM MEMORY AND THUS SOME OF THE DATES AND ORGANIZATIONAL NAMES MAY BE INCORRECT. THE WRITER WOULD APPRECIATE ANY CORRECTIONS. NEEDLESS TO SAY, NOTWITHSTANDING SUCH ERRORS, THE WRITER STANDS BY HIS POLITICAL CONCLUSIONS.

Monday, April 06, 2020

*HONOR JAMES CONNOLLY-IRISH REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Wolftones Performing The Song In Honor Of "James Connolly". There are also some very good photographs of the destruction of Dublin after the British shelled the downtown area of "their province" to kingdom come.

COMMENTARY

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY, COMMANDANT- IRISH CITIZEN ARMY- EXECUTED BY THE BLOODY BRITISH IMPERIALISTS MAY, 1916. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP AND THE 10 MARTYRED LONG KESH HUNGER STRIKERS. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE 90th ANNIVERSARY OF THE EASTER UPRISING, 1916. BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND TODAY (AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT OUT OF IRAQ).

A word. They tell a story about James Connolly that just before the start of action on Easter Monday, 1916 he told the members of the Irish Citizen’s Army (almost exclusively workers, by the way) that if the uprising was successful to keep their guns handy. More work with them might be necessary against the nationalist allies of the moment organized as the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers were mainly a petty bourgeois formation and had no intention of fighting for Connolly's vision of a Socialist Republic. True story or not, I think that gives a pretty good example of the strategy and tactics to be used in colonial and third world struggles by the working class. Would that the Chinese Communists in the 1920’s and other colonial and third world liberation fighters since then had paid heed to that strategic concept. Here is sketch of the life of this Irish freedom fighter

James Connolly, June 5, 1868-May 12, 1916, was of Scottish Irish stock. He was born in Edinburgh of immigrant parents. The explicit English colonial policy of driving the Irish out of Ireland which thus created the Irish diaspora produced many such immigrants from benighted Ireland to England, America, Australia and the far flung parts of the world. Many of these immigrants left Ireland under compulsion of banishment. Deportation and execution was a standard English response in the history of the various “Troubles’ from Cromwell’s time on.

Connolly, like many another Irish lad left school for a working life at age 11. The international working class has produced many such self-taught and motivated leaders. Despite the lack of formal education he became one of the preeminent left-wing theorists of his day in the pre- World War I international labor movement. In the class struggle we do not ask for diplomas, although they help, but commitment to the cause of the laboring masses. Again, like many an Irish lad Connolly joined the British Army, at the age of 14. In those days the British Army provided one of the few ways of advancement for an Irishman who had some abilities. As fate would have it Connolly was stationed in Dublin. I believe the English must rue the day they let Brother Connolly near weapons and near Dublin. As the old Irish song goes- ‘ Won’t Old Mother England be Surprised’.

By 1892 Connolly was an important figure in the Scottish Socialist Federation which, by the way, tended to be more militant and more Celtic and less enamored of parliamentarianism than its English counterpart. Later, the failure to gather in the radical Celtic elements was a contributing factor to the early British Communist Party’s inability to break militants from the British Labor Party. Most of the great labor struggles of the period cam from the leadership in Scotland and Ireland. Connolly became the secretary of the Federation in 1895. In 1896 he left the army and established the Irish Socialist Republican Party. The name itself tells the program. Ireland at that time was essentially a classic English colony so to take the honored name Republican was to spit in the eye of the English. Even today the English have not been able to rise to the political level of a republic. Despite Cromwell’s valiant attempt in the 1600's and no thanks to the British Labor Party’s policies this is sadly the case today. All militants everywhere can and must support this call- Abolish the monarchy, House of Lords and the state Church of England.
In England Connolly was active in the Socialist Labor Party that split from the moribund, above-mentioned Social Democratic Federation in 1903. During the period before the Easter uprising he was heavily involved in the Irish labor movement and acted as the right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913 when Larkin led a huge strike in Dublin but was forced to leave due to English reprisals Connolly took over. It was at that time that Connolly founded the Irish Citizens Army as a defense organization of armed and trained laboring men against the brutality of the dreaded Dublin Metropolitan Police. Although only numbering about 250 men at the time their political goal was to establish an independent and socialist Ireland.

Connolly stood aloof from the leadership of the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist formation based on the middle classes. He considered them too bourgeois and unconcerned with Ireland's economic independence. In 1916 thinking they were merely posturing, and unwilling to take decisive action against England, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send his Irish Citizens Army against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the more militant faction- Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection as well. In order to talk Connolly out of any such action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Eastertime of that year.

When the Easter Rising occurred on April 24, 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, and as the Dublin brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto Commander in Chief. Following the surrender he was executed by the British for his role in the uprising. Although he was so badly injured in the fighting that he was unable to stand for his execution he was shot sitting in a chair. The Western labor movement, to its detriment no longer produces enough such militants as Connolly (and Larkin, for that matter). Learn more about this important socialist thinker and fighter. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY. Chocky Ar La (Our Day Will Come).

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN FROM MEMORY SO SOME OF THE DATES AND ORGANIZATIONS NAMES MAY BE INCORRECT. THE WRITER WOULD APPRECIATE ANY SUCH CORRECTIONS. NEEDLESS TO SAY, THE WRITER STANDS BY HIS POLITICAL CONCLUSIONS.

Sunday, August 11, 2019

*On The Anniversary Of The Beginning Of "The Troubles" In Northern Ireland

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "The Troubles In Northern Ireland".

Markin comment:

Be careful in using this source, or almost any source for that matter, on this subject. I have linked to it merely because there is some good information about "the troubles" for those who do not know, or remember, those struggles by the Catholic minority and their allies in the North.. I have commented on this situation in previously blogs and in commemorating the Easter Uprising of 1916 and related events so no one has to guess where I stand. I would only add one comment here as I have noticed media commentators, especially on the BBC, have fallen all over themselves congratulating and patting each other on the back for the "progress" made in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But tell me this, why is Northern Ireland, like Palestine and a goodly number of other places, heavily dotted with the ubiquitous "peace walls" that separate the two conflicted communities? Answering that question is only the beginning of political wisdom on starting to work on a real solution for bringing justice to these interpenetrated peoples.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

*In Honor Of James Connolly-Commandant Irish Citizens Army-Easter 1916

From The Archives Of "Workers Hammer"-Revolutionary Socialist And Easter 1916 Uprising Leader James Connolly on royalty

Workers Hammer No. 215
Summer 2011

Quote of the issue

James Connolly on royalty

As an antidote to the barrage of obsequious drivel we were subjected to by the bourgeois media during Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland in May, we reprint below an article by Irish socialist James Connolly on the occasion of the visit to Ireland by King George V in 1911. For his part in leading the 1916 Easter uprising against British rule in Ireland, Connolly was executed by his British captors.

Fellow-Workers,

As you are aware from reading the daily and weekly newspapers, we are about to be blessed with a visit from King George V.

Knowing from previous experience of Royal Visits, as well as from the Coronation orgies of the past few weeks, that the occasion will be utilised to make propaganda on behalf of royalty and aristocracy against the oncoming forces of democracy and National freedom, we desire to place before you some few reasons why you should unanimously refuse to countenance this visit, or to recognise it by your presence at its attendant processions or demonstrations. We appeal to you as workers, speaking to workers, whether your work be that of the brain or of the hand — manual or mental toil — it is of you and your children we are thinking; it is your cause we wish to safeguard and foster.

The future of the working class requires that all political and social positions should be open to all men and women; that all privileges of birth or wealth be abolished, and that every man or woman born into this land should have an equal opportunity to attain to the proudest position in the land. The Socialist demands that the only birthright necessary to qualify for public office should be the birthright of our common humanity.

Believing as we do that there is nothing on earth more sacred than humanity, we deny all allegiance to this institution of royalty, and hence we can only regard the visit of the King as adding fresh fuel to the fire of hatred with which we regard the plundering institutions of which he is the representative. Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom. The mind accustomed to political kings can easily be reconciled to social kings — capitalist kings of the workshop, the mill, the railway, the ships and the docks. Thus coronation and king’s visits are by our astute never-sleeping masters made into huge Imperialist propagandist campaigns in favour of political and social schemes against democracy. But if our masters and rulers are sleepless in their schemes against us, so we, rebels against their rule, must never sleep in our appeal to our fellows to maintain as publicly our belief in the dignity of our class — in the ultimate sovereignty of those who labour.

What is monarchy? From whence does it derive its sanction? What has been its gift to humanity? Monarchy is a survival of the tyranny imposed by the hand of greed and treachery upon the human race in the darkest and most ignorant days of our history. It derives its only sanction from the sword of the marauder, and the helplessness of the producer, and its gifts to humanity are unknown, save as they can be measured in the pernicious examples of triumphant and shameless iniquities.

Every class in society save royalty, and especially British royalty, has through some of its members contributed something to the elevation of the race. But neither in science, nor in art, nor in literature, nor in exploration, nor in mechanical invention, nor in humanising of laws, nor in any sphere of human activity has a representative of British royalty helped forward the moral, intellectual or material improvement of mankind. But that royal family has opposed every forward move, fought every reform, persecuted every patriot, and intrigued against every good cause. Slandering every friend of the people, it has befriended every oppressor. Eulogised to-day by misguided clerics, it has been notorious in history for the revolting nature of its crimes.

— James Connolly, “Visit of King George V, 1911”, printed in James Connolly, Collected Works, Volume One (New Books Publications, 1987)

Saturday, April 27, 2019

*The Anniversary Of The Irish Republican Hunger Strikers-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP- The Struggle Continues

Click on title to link to YouTube film clip on Bobby Sands and the Ten Irish Hunger Strikers of 1981

COMMENTARY

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the deaths of Bobby Sands and the 10 Irish Republican Freedom Fighters as a result of their hunger strikes against the British Occupation. Hunger strikes are a way, and justifiably so, of gaining the world’s attention to an injustice done to downtrodden and unequally matched people struggling against occupation. That was certainly the situation in the North at that time. Unfortunately there still is no peace in the North nor can there be until the bloody British Army gets out. That is the primary condition necessary before real peace will come. Nationalists, Republicans and Socialists may disagree on the political configurations of the future governments in Ireland but all can, and should, demand the end of the occupation. To really honor these heroes raise the demand- ALL BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND (and get the hell out of Iraq while we are at it). And to honor James Connolly, Commandant, Irish Citizens Army, an earlier Irish martyr, let us fight for socialist solutions to the “Troubles”. Chocky Ar la (Our Day Will Come).

"Easter, 1916"-William Butler Yeats

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- An Encore -James Connolly-Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Friday, April 26, 2019

*Honor The Memory of James Connolly-Revolutionary Socialist

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Wolftones Performing The Song In Honor Of "James Connolly". There are also some very good photographs of the destruction of Dublin after the British shelled the downtown area of "their province" to kingdom come.

This is a repost of a commentary from 2006 concerning Jame Connolly's role in the Easter 1916 uprising. The task that he set for himself then remain to be completed.

COMMENTARY

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY, COMMANDANT- IRISH CITIZEN ARMY- EXECUTED BY THE BLOODY BRITISH IMPERIALISTS MAY, 1916. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP AND THE 10 MARTYRED LONG KESH HUNGER STRIKERS. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE 92th ANNIVERSARY OF THE EASTER UPRISING, 1916. BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND TODAY (AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT OUT OF IRAQ).

A word. They tell a story about James Connolly that just before the start of action on Easter Monday, 1916 he told the members of the Irish Citizen’s Army (almost exclusively workers, by the way) that if the uprising was successful to keep their guns handy. More work with them might be necessary against the nationalist allies of the moment organized as the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers were mainly a petty bourgeois formation that had no intention of fighting for Connolly's vision of a Socialist Republic. True story or not, I think that gives a pretty good example of the strategy and tactics to be used in colonial and third world struggles by the working class. Would that the Chinese Communists in the 1920’s and other colonial and third world liberation fighters since then have paid heed to that strategic concept.

James Connolly, June 5, 1868-May 12, 1916, was of Scottish Irish stock. He was born in Edinburgh of immigrant parents. The explicit English colonial policy of trying to drive the Irish out of Ireland and thus created the Irish diaspora produced many such immigrants from benighted Ireland to England, America, Australia and the far flung parts of the world. Many of these immigrants left Ireland under compulsion of banishment. Deportation and executions were the standard English response in the history of the various “Troubles" from Cromwell’s time on.

Connolly, like many another Irish lad left school for a working life at age 11. The international working class has produced many such self-taught and motivated leaders. Despite the lack of formal education he became one of the preeminent left-wing theorists of his day in the pre- World War I international labor movement. In the class struggle we do not ask for diplomas, although they help, but commitment to the cause of the laboring masses. Again, like many an Irish lad Connolly joined the British Army, at the age of 14. In those days the British Army provided one of the few ways of advancement for an Irishman who had some abilities. As fate would have it Connolly was stationed in Dublin. I believe the English must rue the day they let Brother Connolly near weapons and near Dublin. As a line in an old Irish song goes- ‘ Won’t Old Mother England be Surprised’.

By 1892 Connolly was an important figure in the Scottish Socialist Federation which, by the way, tended to be more militant and more Celtic and less enamored of parliamentarianism than its English counterpart. Later, the failure to gather in the radical Celtic elements was a contributing factor in the early British Communist Party’s failure to break the working class from the Labor Party. Most of the great labor struggles of the period cam from the leadership in Scotland and Ireland. Connolly became the secretary of the Federation in 1895. In 1896 he left the army and established the Irish Socialist Republican Party. The name itself tells the program. Ireland at that time was essentially a classic English colony so to take the honored name Republican was to spit in the eye of the English. Even today the English have not been able to rise to the political level of a republic. Despite Cromwell’s valiant attempt in the 1600's and no thanks to today's British Labor Party’s policies this is still sadly the case. All militants, of whatever nation, can and must support this call- Abolish the British monarchy, House of Lords and the state Church of England.

In England Connolly was active in the Socialist Labor Party that split from the moribund, above-mentioned Social Democratic Federation in 1903. During the period before the Easter uprising he was heavily involved in the Irish labor movement and acted essentially as the right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913 when Larkin led a huge strike in Dublin but was forced to leave due to English reprisals Connolly took over. It was at that time that Connolly founded the Irish Citizens Army as a defense organization of armed and trained laboring men against the brutality of the dreaded Dublin Metropolitan Police. Although only numbering about 250 men at the time their political goal was to establish an independent and socialist Ireland.

Connolly stood aloof from the leadership of the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist formation based on the middle classes. He considered them too bourgeois and unconcerned with Ireland's economic independence. In 1916 thinking the Volunteers were merely posturing, and unwilling to take decisive action against England, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send his Irish Citizens Army against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the more militant faction -Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection as well. In order to talk Connolly out of any such action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year.

When the Easter Rising occurred on April 24, 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, and as the Dublin brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was de facto Commander in Chief. Following the surrender he was executed by the British for his role in the uprising. Although he was so badly injured in the fighting that he was unable to stand for his execution and he was shot sitting in a chair. The Western labor movement, to its detriment, no longer produces enough such militants as Connolly (and Larkin, for that matter). Learn more about this important socialist thinker and fighter. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY.

A word on the Easter Uprising. The easy part of analyzing the Uprising is the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland and militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it and therefore doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the strategy and tactics of the action and of the various actors, particularly in underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations. The British (or fill in the name of whatever colonial power applies) were entirely committed to defeating the uprising, including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and all other militants today is the same as back then in 1916- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings I have come across a theory that the Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders, only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. Let poets rule the land, an old idea. As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. Some formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 or the Soviet Commune of 1917 did not figure in the political calculations at that time.

As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic. That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today, is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own revolutionary experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime merited support. This is based on the old socialist principle that the main enemy is a home. Chocky Ar La.

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN FROM MEMORY AND THUS SOME OF THE DATES AND ORGANIZATIONAL NAMES MAY BE INCORRECT. THE WRITER WOULD APPRECIATE ANY CORRECTIONS. NEEDLESS TO SAY, NOTWITHSTANDING SUCH ERRORS, THE WRITER STANDS BY HIS POLITICAL CONCLUSIONS.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

*And Once Again, Making Joyful Irish Music- The Dubliners

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of The Dubliners Performing "The Irish Rover".

And Once Again, Making Joyful Irish Music

The Dubliners Collection, The Dubliners, BMG, 1999

I have mentioned elsewhere that every devotee of the modern Irish folk tradition owes a debt of gratitude for the work of the likes of Tommy Makem and The Clancy Brothers and the group under review here, The Dubliners, for keeping the tradition alive and for making it popular with the young on both sides of the Atlantic. Not only for the songs, but for the various reel and jig instrumentals from the old days that they have produced. Here The Dubliners produce a veritable what’s what of Irish music from the above-mentioned instrumentals to the fighting patriotic songs to the fighting barroom songs to the doggerel. Let’s sort it out a little on this CD.

In this CD The Dubliners do both modern and traditional pieces, some of them I have mentioned in other reviews of the work of The Dubliners. As for the instrumentals the “Queen Of The Fair” medley and “Doherty’s” medley stand out For songs of day to day Ireland in the old days “Donegal Danny”, “The Irish Rover”, “Farewell To Ireland” and “Danny Farrell” stick out (that last one about the plight of the ‘tinkers’ (travelling peoples). For those patriotically inclined “James Larkin” will touch a chord (in his leadership of the famous strike in 1913 and as the predecessor of James Connolly as leader of the Irish labor movement) as will “Johnson’s Motor Car” in a humorous way.

I have always been partial to “Ragland Road” and its theme of missed love and longing. For the culturati there is “The Aul’ Triangle”, the many times-covered Brendan Behan lyrics from his play "The Quare Fellow”. As a tip of the hat to the diaspora here there is a tribute to the much maligned “The Molly McGuires" (19th century Irish militant coalminers in Pennsylvania). As I always mention in discussing The Dubliners, if you are looking for some serious Irish music that goes beyond St. Patty’s Day but can still be appreciated then check out this well-done compilation. And you get Luke Kelly as a bonus. Nice, right?

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

From The Pen Of Early American Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs- Irish Easter Uprising Leader James Connolly’s Foul Murder (1916)

Click on the headline to link to the Eugene V. Debs Marxist Internet Archive website.

***********
Eugene V. Debs-James Connolly’s Foul Murder

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: The National Rip-Saw (New York) Vol. XXIV, July 1916
Online Version: E.V. Debs Internet Archive, 2006
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Robert Bills for the Socialist Labor Party of America and David Walters, May, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The British government has eternally disgraced and damned itself by the brutal and cowardly murder of the leaders of the Irish revolt. Granting all that can be justly charged against them their motive was of the purest and their attempt to establish a republic and liberate their people as brave and patriotic an act as ever sent heroes to martyrs’ graves.

The Sinn Fein movement consisted of liberty-loving Irishmen who were brave enough and grand enough to offer up their lives to speed the day of freedom and self-government for their long-suffering fellow-countrymen. The leaders may have miscalculated in the making of their plans and been precipitate in executing them but they set the example of heroic self-sacrifice and paid the penalty with their lives. Pearse, the provisional president, was one of the most cultured of men and one of the bravest that ever gave his life to the cause of freedom. Skeffington was eminent as a humanitarian and though he had not even an active part in the outbreak, he was shot like a dog without even the semblance of a trial.

But one of the commanding figures of the Sinn Feiners, and one of the most heroic was our Socialist comrade, James Connolly, whose fate will make Great Britain blush for a thousand years to come.

James Connolly was well known to the Socialists and working people of the United States. He addressed them by thousands and often they were stirred to enthusiasm by his eloquence and his inspiring appeals. He was a man of extraordinary ability and power, magnetic personality, and a natural leader of men, and his foul taking off, the eternal disgrace of his royal murderers, is an irreparable calamity to the labor movement.

In the first outbreak between the Irish rebels and the British soldiers Connolly was severely wounded and it was while he was in a semi-unconscious state as the result of his wounds that he was dragged forth to be shot. Limp and almost lifeless this heroic comrade of ours was propped up against a dead wall and while trying with glazed eyes to look his assassins in the face the firing squad riddled his great heart with bullets.

James Connolly is dead and yet does he live and speak to the oppressed and as he never lived and spoke before.

The seed that James Connolly sowed in the brains and hearts of his enslaved countrymen will germinate now that his precious blood has fertilized the soil and in due time the social revolution will accomplish what the Irish rebellion failed in, and sweep landlordism and capitalism and every other form of oppression from the Emerald Isle and from the face of the earth.

A Terrible Beauty Is Borne- And It's Not By William Butler Yeats-Ireland's Class Struggle Today- British Troops Out Of The North!

A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORNE

by BrianClarkeNUJ

Email: BrianClarkeNUJ (nospam) gmail.com (unverified!) 29 Dec 2010

In contemporary British Occupied Ireland, there is much revision and censorship of traditional Irish republicanism. Indeed there are ex-republicans such as Anthony McIntyre from Belfast who spent years imprisoned in Long Kesh concentration camp, who co-authored a book titled, Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism, in which Anthony, like many former republicans before him, has written prematurely of the death of Ireland's soul and the relevance in our modern world of the fight for Self-determination in small countries like Ireland. Rather than get involved in another of those many polemical squabbles, that are unfortunately all too frequent with revisionists, that divides resistance, I present an article by Chris Hedges demonstrating that the question of self-determination is certainly valid and relevant, along with being a matter of real urgency today. I also present some historical evidence as Mark Twain might have put it, that the rumour of the demise of Irish republicanism, has been greatly exaggerated, by persons who should know much better.

In contemporary British Occupied Ireland, there is much revision and censorship of traditional Irish republicanism. Indeed there are ex-republicans such as Anthony McIntyre from Belfast who spent years imprisoned in Long Kesh concentration camp, who co-authored a book titled, Good Friday, The Death of Irish Republicanism, in which Anthony, like many former republicans before him, has written prematurely of the death of Ireland's soul and the relevance in our modern world of the fight for Self-determination in small countries like Ireland. Rather than get involved in another of those many polemical squabbles, that are unfortunately all too frequent with revisionists, that divides resistance, I present an article by Chris Hedges demonstrating that the question of self-determination is certainly valid and relevant, along with being a matter of real urgency today. I also present some historical evidence as Mark Twain might have put it, that the rumour of the demise of Irish republicanism, has been greatly exaggerated, by persons who should know much better.

Achusla

Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the grave.

WB Yeats, "September 1913"

Read more...@ Rebels Yell blog below...

"We are going out to be slaughtered"

The fight in Ireland has been one for the soul of a race - that Irish race which with seven centuries of defeat behind it still battled for the sanctity of its dwelling place.

James Connolly, 1915

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

WB Yeats, "Easter 1916"

..read more @...Rebels YELL link below..

See also:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7741018-the-demise-of-revolutionary-irish-republicanism-is-greatly-exaggerated#edit_r
http://www.therebelsyell.com/

On The Anniversary Of Easter 1916-When The Harp Was Buried Beneath Crown- For James Connolly Commandant, Irish Citizens Army

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Machem performing a song of Irish national liberation, Easter 1916.

The Clancy Brothers, The Rising Of The Moon

The following review was used to comment on several of the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Machem recordings back in the day, the 1960s day anyway, when they performed many times in America and various members stayed here for stretches at a time. The obvious musical skills, sheer talent, and commitment to craftsmanship of this group during its history need no comment by me. Nor does their commitment to keeping the Irish folk tradition alive beyond the known and by now well-worn Saint Patrick’s Day “everybody is green” traditions Thus the criterion for my reviews was solely based only whether and how closely the works represented the political traditions associated with the historic struggle for independence from the English, the bloody eight hundred year oppression. The Yeatsian Easter 1916 “terrible beauty is born” saga

A word. As I developed a quasi- leftist political consciousness, frankly, nothing then really more than a studied left liberalism, red scare, cold war variant, tepid, very tepid and timid upon reflection, in my youth I also, in an unsystematic and for the most part then unconscious manner, developed an interest in what is today is called roots music. Initially this was reflected in my first love-the blues, music that spoke to that hard times growing up poor in a world, or rather a country, that was frowning on poorness. The old country blues of the Mississippi Delta sweat labor, share-cropping, hard-drinking, hard moaning, no electricity juke joint Saturday night where you got a woman or a knife, maybe both, maybe neither. Or up river, sweet home Chicago, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf cries in the great neon electric industrial night.

During the early sixties, under the influence of Dave Van Ronk, first heard on some local almost mythical folk hour, called hootenanny or some such name, singing out of some graveyard voice from those hills and hollows down Kentucky way, Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies I developed an interest in folk music, then at the height of its revival minute. Then, in turn, came Bob Dylan storming heaven or hell to be the voice of our generation, at least in song, Pete Seeger methodically keeping the “faith” alive against the rock influence that drove our generation to distraction, Woody Guthrie linking us back to dustbowl, hobo, tramp, road bumming wobblie days, and the rest. It is through this process that I, almost accidentally, came to appreciate the work of the artists under review.

This is an odd route, and I will explain why. I was actually reared on the material presented on this album by my maternal grandfather, a great supporter of the Irish Republican Army. I gained from him my own romantic attachment to the exploits of the IRA in 1916 and beyond that to independence and the continuing struggle in the north. Although my own political evolution since then has led me away from political support to the IRA I still love the old songs which represent the spirit of Irish national identity and aspirations for national liberation historically suppressed by the bloody English.

A word about the songs presented here. The liner notes included with the CD are very helpful. The songs range in subject from ‘The Rising of the Moon’ at the time of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishman, probably the last time that a united, independent, non-sectarian single Irish state was possible, to ‘Kevin Barry’ and ‘Sean Treacy’ just before the partition in 1921, creating the mess that still confronts us politically today. That said, as these lines are being written we are approaching the 96th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916. The vision that James Connolly, and the others, of a workers’ Social Republic as proclaimed at the General Post Office still waits. In short, there is still work to be done, North and South, united or as independent states. Listen to these songs to understand where we have come from and why we still need to fight.

On The Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising 1916- All Honor To James Connolly And Bobby Sands- A Word

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entyr for the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916.

ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES CONNOLLY, COMMANDANT- IRISH CITIZEN ARMY- EXECUTED BY THE BLOODY BRITISH IMPERIALISTS MAY, 1916. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP, AND THE 10 MARTYRED LONG KESH HUNGER STRIKERS. ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE 96th ANNIVERSARY OF THE EASTER UPRISING, 1916. BRITISH TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND TODAY (AND WHILE WE ARE AT IT OUT OF AFGHANISTAN).

A word on James Connolly. They tell a story about James Connolly that just before the start of action in Easter, 1916 he told the members of the Irish Citizen Army (almost exclusively workers, by the way) that if the uprising was successful to keep their guns handy. More work with them might be necessary against the nationalist allies of the moment organized as the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers were mainly a petty bourgeois formation and had no intention of fighting for a Socialist Republic. True story or not, I think that gives a pretty good example of the strategy and tactics to be used in colonial and third world struggles by the working class. Would that the Chinese Communists in the 1920’s and other colonial and third world liberation fighters since then have paid heed to that strategic concept.

James Connolly, June 5, 1868-May 12, 1916, was of Scottish Irish stock. He was born in Edinburgh of immigrant parents. The explicit English colonial policy which created the Irish diaspora produced many such immigrants from benighted Ireland to England, America, Australia and the far flung parts of the world. Many of these immigrants left Ireland under compulsion of banishment. Deportation was a standard English response in the history of the various “Troubles" from Cromwell’s time on.

Connolly, like many another Irish lad left school for a working life at age 11. The international working class has produced many such self-taught and motivated leaders. Despite the lack of formal education he became one of the preeminent left-wing theorists of his day in the pre- World War I international labor movement. In the class struggle we do not ask for diplomas, although they help, but commitment to the cause of the laboring masses. Again, like many an Irish lad Connolly joined the British Army, at the age of 14. In those days the British Army provided one of the few ways of advancement for an Irishman who had some abilities. As fate would have it he was stationed in Dublin. I believe the English must ruse the day they let Brother Connolly near weapons and near Dublin. As a phrase in an old Irish song goes- " Won’t Old Mother England be Surprised."

By 1892 Connolly was an important figure in the Scottish Socialist Federation which, by the way, tended to be more militant and more Celtic and less enamored of parliamentarianism than its English counterpart. The failure to gather in the radical Celtic elements was a contributing factor to the early British Communist Party’s sterility. Most of the great labor struggles of the period came from the leadership in Scotland and Ireland. Connolly became the secretary of the Federation in 1895. In 1896 he left the army and established the Irish Socialist Republican Party. The name itself tells the program. Ireland at that time was essentially a classic English colony so to take the name Republican was to spit in the eye of the English. Even today the English have not been able to rise to the political level of a republic. Despite Cromwell’s valiant attempt and no thanks to today's British Labor Party’s policies this is still sadly the case. All militants can and must support this call- Abolish the monarchy, House of Lords and the state Church of England.

In England Connolly was active in the Socialist Labor Party that split from the moribund, above-mentioned Social Democratic Federation in 1903. During the period before the Easter uprising he was heavily involved in the Irish labor movement and acted as the right hand man to James Larkin in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. In 1913 when Larkin led a huge strike in Dublin but was forced to leave due to English reprisals Connolly took over. It was at that time that Connolly founded the Irish Citizens Army as a defense organization of armed and trained laboring men against the brutality of the dreaded Dublin Metropolitan Police. Although only numbering about 250 men at the time their political goal also became to establish an independent and socialist Ireland.
Connolly stood aloof from the leadership of the Irish Volunteers, the nationalist formation based on the middle classes. He considered them too bourgeois and unconcerned with Ireland's economic independence. In 1916 thinking they "were merely posturing," and unwilling to take decisive action against England, he attempted to goad them into action by threatening to send his Irish Citizens Army against the British Empire alone, if necessary. This alarmed the members of the more militant Irish Republican Brotherhood, who had already infiltrated the Volunteers and had plans for an insurrection as well. In order to talk Connolly out of any such action, the IRB leaders, including Tom Clarke and Patrick Pearse, met with Connolly to see if an agreement could be reached. During the meeting the IRB and the ICA agreed to act together at Easter of that year.

When the Easter Rising occurred on April 24, 1916, Connolly was Commandant of the Dublin Brigade, and as the Dublin brigade had the most substantial role in the rising, he was dc facto Commander in Chief. Following the surrender he was executed by the British for his role in the uprising. Although he was so badly injured in the fighting that he was unable to stand for his execution he was shot sitting in a chair. The Western labor movement, to its detriment no longer produces enough such militants as Connolly (and Larkin, for that matter). Learn more about this important socialist thinker and fighter. ALL HONOR TO HIS MEMORY.

On The Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

***On The Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916.

A word on the Easter Uprising.

The easy part of analyzing the Uprising is the knowledge, in retrospect, that it was not widely supported by people in Ireland and militarily defeated by the British forces send in main force to crush it and therefore doomed to failure. Still easier is to criticize the strategy and tactics of the action and of the various actors, particularly in underestimating the British Empire’s frenzy to crush any opposition to its main task of victory in World War I. Although, I think that would be a point in the uprising’s favor under the theory that England’s (or fill in the blank) woes were Ireland’s (or fill in the blank) opportunities.

The hard part is to draw any positive lessons of that national liberation experience for the future. If nothing else remember this though, and unfortunately the Irish national liberation fighters (and other national liberation fighters later, including later Irish revolutionaries) failed to take this into account in their military calculations, the British (or fill in the blank) were entirely committed to defeating the uprising including burning that colonial country to the ground if need be in order to maintain control. In the final analysis, it was not their metropolitan homeland, so the hell with it. Needless to say, British Labor’s position was almost a carbon copy of His Imperial Majesty’s. Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson could barely contain himself when informed that James Connolly had been executed. That should, even today, make every British militant blush with shame. Unfortunately, the demand for British militants and others today is the same as then- All British Troops Out of Ireland.

In various readings I have come across a theory that the Uprising was the first socialist revolution in Europe, predating the Bolshevik Revolution by over a year. Unfortunately, there is little truth to that idea. Of the Uprising’s leaders only James Connolly was devoted to the socialist cause. Moreover, while the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army were prototypical models for urban- led national liberation forces such organizations, as we have witnessed in later history, are not inherently socialistic. The dominant mood among the leadership was in favor of political independence and/or fighting for a return to a separate traditional Irish cultural hegemony. (Let poets rule the land).

As outlined in the famous Proclamation of the Republic posted on the General Post Office in Dublin, Easter Monday, 1916 the goal of the leadership appeared to be something on the order of a society like those fought for in the European Revolutions of 1848, a left bourgeois republic. Some formation on the order of the Paris Commune of 1871 or the Soviet Commune of 1917 did not figure in the political calculations at that time.
As noted above, James Connolly clearly was skeptical of his erstwhile comrades on the subject of the nature of the future state and apparently was prepared for an ensuing class struggle following the establishment of a republic.

That does not mean that revolutionary socialists could not support such an uprising. On the contrary, Lenin, who was an admirer of Connolly for his anti-war stance in World War I, and Trotsky stoutly defended the uprising against those who derided the Easter Rising for involving bourgeois elements. Participation by bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements is in the nature of a national liberation struggle. The key, which must be learned by militants today is who leads the national liberation struggle and on what program. As both Lenin and Trotsky made clear later in their own revolutionary experiences in Russia revolutionary socialists have to lead other disaffected elements of society to overthrow the existing order. There is no other way in a heterogeneous class-divided society. Moreover, in Ireland, the anti-imperialist nature of the action against British imperialism during wartime on the socialist principle that the defeat of your own imperialist overlord as a way to open the road to the class, struggle merited support on that basis alone. Chocky Ar La.

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Sunday, April 23, 2023

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Saturday, April 23, 2022

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Friday, April 23, 2021

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Thursday, April 23, 2020

*James Connolly-Commandant- Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Easter I916 Irish Citizens Army Commandant James Connolly

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Irish And American Labor Leader James Larkin

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

* 'A TERRIBLE BEAUTY WAS BORN' -HONOR JAMES CONNOLLY AND THE EASTER RISING, 1916

Monday, April 06, 2020

*HONOR JAMES CONNOLLY-IRISH REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST

Sunday, August 11, 2019

*On The Anniversary Of The Beginning Of "The Troubles" In Northern Ireland

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

*In Honor Of James Connolly-Commandant Irish Citizens Army-Easter 1916

From The Archives Of "Workers Hammer"-Revolutionary Socialist And Easter 1916 Uprising Leader James Connolly on royalty

Saturday, April 27, 2019

*The Anniversary Of The Irish Republican Hunger Strikers-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF BOBBY SANDS, MP- The Struggle Continues

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- An Encore -James Connolly-Irish Citizens Army- A Critical Appreciation Of Easter, 1916

Friday, April 26, 2019

*Honor The Memory of James Connolly-Revolutionary Socialist

Thursday, April 25, 2019

*And Once Again, Making Joyful Irish Music- The Dubliners

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

From The Pen Of Early American Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs- Irish Easter Uprising Leader James Connolly’s Foul Murder (1916)

A Terrible Beauty Is Borne- And It's Not By William Butler Yeats-Ireland's Class Struggle Today- British Troops Out Of The North!

On The Anniversary Of Easter 1916-When The Harp Was Buried Beneath Crown- For James Connolly Commandant, Irish Citizens Army

On The Anniversary Of The Irish Easter Uprising 1916- All Honor To James Connolly And Bobby Sands- A Word

On The Anniversary Of Irish Easter Uprising 1916- A Word

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