Irish history has ever been written by the master class – in the interests of the master class.1

On 3 March 1896, a couple of months before the Connolly family moved to Ireland, a third child, Aideen, was born. The family rented a single room in a tenement at 75 Charlemont Street, near the Grand Canal, and close to Rathmines, where Lillie used to live.2 Connolly was in his element with the prospect of becoming a paid, full-time socialist organiser. His task would be difficult as Irish socialists tended to look towards Britain for guidance. It was up to the new organiser to persuade the Dublin comrades that the emancipation of Ireland and the emancipation of the Irish working class were common causes. Difficult as it would be to convert the socialists in Ireland, the real problem would be convincing the masses; nonetheless, Connolly was confident that he could succeed.

On 29 May 1896, in Ryan’s pub at number 50 Thomas Street, eight men disbanded the Dublin Socialist Club at Connolly’s behest and founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party. They must have been an interesting-looking cabal, huddled together in the snug, the majority of them drinking lemonade as five of them (including Connolly) were teetotal. Connolly was elected as ISRP organiser and his one-pound wage (a reasonable sum at the time) was to be raised through membership subscriptions or dues of a penny a week and through collections at meetings. The other socialists present at that meeting were Peter Kavanagh, Patrick Cushan, Robert Dorman, John Moore, Alex Kennedy and the two brothers Tom and Murtagh Lyng. The following is the text of the manifesto of the ISRP, drafted a few months after the members formed the party and ‘passed by a few lying on the grass in Stephen’s Green’, after Connolly had read it out to them. Some of these demands were considered radical for their time, but today they are basic rights we take for granted.

 

 IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN PARTY

‘The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees; LET US RISE.’

 

OBJECT: Establishment of AN IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC based upon the public ownership by the Irish people of the land, and instruments of production, distribution and exchange. Agriculture to be administered as a public function, under boards of management elected by the agricultural population and responsible to them and to the nation at large. All other forms of labour necessary to the well-being of the community to be conducted on the same principles.

 

PROGRAMME: As a means of organising the forces of the Democracy in preparation for any struggle which may precede the realisation of our ideal, of paving the way for its realisation, of restricting the tide of emigration by providing employment at home, and finally of palliating the evils of our present social system, we work by political means to secure the following measures:-

 

1. Nationalisation of railways and canals.

 

2. Abolition of private banks and money-lending institutions and establishments of state banks, under popularly elected boards of directors, issuing loans at cost.

 

3. Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.

 

4. Graduated income tax on all incomes over £400 per annum in order to provide funds for pensions to the aged, infirm and widows and orphans.

 

5. Legislative restriction of hours of labour to 48 per week and establishment of a minimum wage.

 

6. Free maintenance for all children.

 

7. Gradual extension of the principle of public ownership and supply to all the necessaries of life.

 

8. Public control and management of National schools by boards elected by popular ballot for that purpose alone.

 

9. Free education up to the highest university grades.

 

10. Universal suffrage.

 

THE IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN PARTY HOLDS: That the agricultural and industrial system of a free people, like their political system, ought to be an accurate reflex of the democratic principle by the people for the people, solely in the interests of the people.

That the private ownership, by a class, of the land and instruments of production, distribution and exchange, is opposed to this vital principle of justice, and is the fundamental basis of all oppression, national, political and social.

That the subjection of one nation to another, as of Ireland to the authority of the British Crown, is a barrier to the free political and economic development of the subjected nation, and can only serve the interests of the exploiting classes of both nations.

That, therefore, the national and economic freedom of the Irish people must be sought in the same direction, viz., the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic, and the consequent conversion of the means of production, distribution and exchange into the common property of society, to be held and controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community.

That the conquest by the Social Democracy of political power in Parliament, and on all public bodies in Ireland, is the readiest and most effective means whereby the revolutionary forces may be organised and disciplined to attain that end.

 

BRANCHES WANTED EVERYWHERE. ENQUIRIES INVITED. ENTRANCE FEE, 6d. MINIMUM WEEKLY SUBSCRIPTION 1d.

 

Offices: 67 MIDDLE ABBEY STREET, DUBLIN.

Wasting no time in launching their new party into the limelight, an open-air meeting ‘in favour of an Irish Socialist Republic’ was held on 7 June at the Custom House, near the docks on the northside of the Liffey. Further meetings, including a weekly Sunday congregation in the Phoenix Park, continued on into October. A typical meeting would see Tom Lyng as chairman with Connolly and Robert Dorman as the main speakers, endeavouring to stimulate the political consciousness of Dublin’s workers. They were often well received and a type of local celebrity was accorded to them. Their presence did not go unnoticed by the media, but typically it was negative reporting; one journalist wryly commented that the new party had more syllables than members.

As soon as a member paid his sixpence ‘entrance fee’ he (for the party did not attract any female members at this early juncture) would receive an emerald green membership card, imprinted with the stirring phrase, ‘The Great Appear Great Because We Are On Our Knees; Let Us Rise’, borrowed from Camille Desmoulins, the French revolutionary.

In a step towards convincing sceptics that socialist principles were held by some of Ireland’s revolutionary heroes, Connolly researched the works of James Fintan Lalor and published them in a pamphlet in September 1896. Desmond Ryan, Connolly’s first biographer, maintained that the reproduction of Lalor’s Rights of Ireland and The Faith of a Felon ‘beyond all doubt did much to rescue Lalor’s memory from neglect; as well as insisting upon the great ’48 man’s social views, then too little heeded.’3 Lalor wrote: ‘Any man who tells you that an act of armed resistance – even if offered by ten men only – even if offered by men armed only with stones – any man who tells you that such an act of resistance is premature, imprudent or dangerous – any and every such man should at once be spurned and spat at. For remark you this and recollect it, that somewhere, and somehow, and by somebody, a beginning must be made and that the first act of resistance is always, and must be ever, premature, imprudent and dangerous.’

James Fintan Lalor was born in Tonakill, County Laois, and as a young man he joined Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association. The more radical members of this association, including Lalor, joined the Young Ireland movement. Lalor held that the land of Ireland belonged to all the people of Ireland. In 1845 he founded the Tipperary Tenant League and later wrote pieces for Thomas Davis’s Nation newspaper. In 1848 Lalor’s new journal, the Irish Felon, asked, ‘Who will draw the first blood for Ireland? Who will win a wreath that shall be green forever?’ The French Revolution encouraged the Young Ireland demands for the removal of British rule in Ireland and the return of the land to the people. In a preemptive move by the British, the main leaders of the movement were arrested, including Lalor’s comrade John Mitchel (who later escaped from Van Diemen’s Land to the United States) and the pacifistic Charles Gavan Duffy (later knighted). Those who took part in the 1848 Rising on 23 July included William Smith O’Brien (transported for life, but later pardoned), Thomas Francis Meagher (also escaped to the US and is remembered as Meagher of the Sword) and Lalor, who was jailed and released due to illness, but engaged in a small rising in 1849 and was jailed again. Lalor died in prison. The legacy of the Young Ireland movement lies less in their revolutionary achievements than in their writings; books by Mitchel and Lalor were amongst Connolly’s most treasured items.

In the late summer of 1896, there was a serious strike in the building trade and, by September, Connolly, whose promised pound a week was rarely paid, was obliged to seek extra work. As an unskilled labourer he managed to eke out a few days’ work on the Grand Main Drainage Scheme. The Liffey was an open sewer and interceptor sewers were being laid along the quays to bring waste to Ringsend, where it would be pumped out to sea. Weak from the lack of a regular meal, Connolly was not physically able for the work, nor did he even possess decent attire for manual labour. His daughter Nora recalled that the night before he went to work he attempted to repair his footwear as there were two gaping holes in the soles. True to form, his poor cobbling skills resulted in a pair of ruined boots; they literally fell apart. Distraught at the prospect of missing the chance to work, Lillie came to the rescue:

October 1896 saw the publication of Connolly’s first major essay, ‘Ireland for the Irish’. Published in the ILP journal, the Labour Leader, over three weeks, he hypothesised that Home Rule was ‘simply a mockery of Irish National aspirations’. But Keir Hardie’s Labour Leader was not widely read in Ireland, and Connolly needed to reach as broad a section of the Irish populace as possible. The only republican journal in Ireland that would give Connolly some column inches was called Shan Van Vocht, a badly anglicised version of ‘Sean Bhean Bhocht’ or ‘Poor Old Woman’ – a symbolic name for Ireland. Alice Milligan, as editor of this Belfast-based paper, was sent a review copy of the Lalor pamphlet which she promoted in her journal. As a result of this, Milligan asked Connolly for a number of articles, the first of which posed the question, ‘Can Irish Republicans be Politicians?’ He followed up with more essays, one of which was ‘Nationalism and Socialism’, published in January 1897. In this article, Connolly called for a republic that would be a ‘beacon-light to the oppressed of every land’, as opposed to the capitalist systems of France and the United States:

Even if the editor and many of her readers did not necessarily agree with everything Connolly wrote, he was making a name for himself as an insightful political commentator and was already coming to the attention of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

A selection from the recorded minutes of the ISRP meetings provide an invaluable insight into the party and how they operated:6

31 December 1896 – Letter from Socialist Labour Party of America sending greetings to comrades in Ireland and enclosing £1 for 100 cards of membership and quantity of manifestoes [sic] and pamphlets.

 

7 January 1897 – Letter received from Miss Maud Gonne expressing her entire accord with the republican and socialist ideal of the party, but desiring an interview with the secretary before publicly identifying herself with us. Secretary was instructed to take such steps as were in his power to place Miss Gonne in possession of whatever information she desired … Secretary drew attention to proposed celebration of the rebellion of ’98 and the formation of a committee for the purpose and asked that the ISRP send a delegate to that committee. It was resolved to postpone consideration of the matter until next meeting.

 

21 January – It was unanimously resolved that the ISRP join in the proposed celebration of the ’98 rebellion. Secretary was instructed to write the secretary of Young Ireland League [sic], and apply for permission to send a delegate accordingly.

 

11 February – Letter from the Committee of the Young Ireland Society relative to the appointment of the ’98 celebration Committee. They asked for a list of names… Letter from Secretary Socialist Labour Party of USA expressing sympathy with the objects of the ISRP. It was decided to send 4 names viz. Connolly, Stewart, Power and O’Brien appointed.

 

18 February – Secretary proposed and it was adopted that we celebrate Commune of Paris on 18th March. Secretary gave motion that next Thursday we discuss the feasibility of starting of a paper.

 

25 February – Kennedy proposed that a committee be formed to make arrangements for the celebration of the Paris Commune. Seconded by Lyng – Passed. Secretary moved that the discussion as to the feasibility of starting a paper be postponed till more time be at our disposal – Passed.

 

3 March – Lyng proposed that the articles written by Connolly for Shan Van Vocht should be used as preface to our new pamphlet.

 

14 March – Connolly corrected the minutes by saying that it was the Asst. Sect. who was instructed to write to the various persons mentioned in the minutes. Boston Herald forwarded a copy of the paper containing an account of the ISRP. The Secretary proposed a motion against gambling in our Society Rooms. Kennedy proposed that a pamphlet or leaflet be issued by the Society on the forthcoming Queen’s Celebration.

 

25 March – It was resolved to keep refreshments and retail them to members. Secretary moved that assistant secretary be instructed to write to Miss Gonne asking her to speak on our behalf on May Day. It was also resolved to write to the Trades Council asking if they intended to hold a May Day demonstration and informing them of the intention of the ISRP to hold a meeting on that date.

 

1 April – Correspondence from Sect. Trades Council saying that owing to the small support given in previous years to the Labour Day Celebrations it is improbable that they will hold any meeting this year on Labour Day.

 

22 April – Lyng formed a branch in Cork and left 60 pamphlets.

 

29 April – Diamond Jubilee. Consideration of this matter was postponed for a week and the secretary was instructed to draw up a manifesto for the event.

 

3 May – The proposal that we form ourselves into a branch of the ’98 Executive Committee [was] unanimously adopted.

 

6 May – The secretary read a draft of the proposed manifesto by the Party on the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The manifesto was unanimously adopted as it stood and the secretary instructed to get 10,000 printed.

 

17 June – Letter of resignation from Mr. Dorman. Dorman resignation – Accepted. It was agreed to have 10 poles for black flags and flags, one coffin and one wagonette and D. O’Brien to make letters for coffin. Miss Maud Gonne was reported to be engaged in lettering for black flags. It was resolved to have an anti-jubilee meeting on Monday 21st. Miss Gonne to attend and address meeting.

Connolly’s writings from the Labour Leader and Shan Van Vocht were collected and republished in pamphlet form as Erin’s Hope: The End and the Means in March 1897. Levenson rightly maintained, ‘It was a proud moment for the self-educated, indigent agitator.’7 The main purpose of publishing the pamphlet was not to massage Connolly’s ego but to spread the gospel of republican socialism and to raise some cash for the upkeep of the party. That money would also be required to pay Connolly as his family was growing in number. In early 1897, Ina Mary Connolly, the fourth daughter of James and Lillie, was born.

Connolly spent a large amount of his spare time in the National Library on Kildare Street. He was meticulous when researching facts and figures for his articles and all this study would become the foundation for his greater works, which would be published later. As there was so much interest in 1798, due to the impending centenary, he researched and published half a dozen pamphlets, Ninety-Eight Readings, containing sixteen pages of prose, poetry and documents concerning the United Irishmen. The objective behind these was to remind people what Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen stood for: a separatist republic based on liberty, equality and fraternity − not Home Rule.

As can be seen from the extracted minutes of the ISRP meetings above, an invaluable contact was made in the person of Maud Gonne (1866–1953). One of the leading lights in the feminist and republican movements, she also published a periodical in Paris, L’Irlande Libre, to which Connolly would contribute a couple of articles. Maud Gonne, a great beauty and muse for the poet WB Yeats, was independently wealthy, but was more interested in revolutionaries (she later married John MacBride) and was enthusiastic in organising anti-jubilee demonstrations with Connolly and the ISRP.

Queen Victoria (1819–1901), who succeeded to the throne in 1837, presided over Britain as an imperial nation during the expansion of the British Empire. She also presided over Ireland during the Great Hunger and as a consequence is remembered as ‘The Famine Queen’. She had nine children, including the future King Edward VII. Her reign was lengthy and celebrations were to be held to mark her sixtieth year on the throne; thus, 22 June 1897 was earmarked as Diamond Jubilee Day.

Maud Gonne had prepared scores of black flags emblazoned with slogans and facts about the Great Hunger. Connolly had printed up his manifesto, which reminded people that during ‘… this glorious reign Ireland has seen 1,225,000 of her children die of famine; starved to death whilst the produce of her soil and of their labour was eaten up by a vulture aristocracy – enforcing their rents by the bayonets of a hired assassin army in the pay of the “best of the English Queens” …’ Gonne had organised a ‘magic lantern’ slide show; it projected images and phrases and entranced a small crowd on Parnell Square. A hand-cart, fashioned to resemble a hearse, and carrying a black coffin emblazoned with two words, ‘British Empire’, was wheeled down Dame Street in the company of Connolly. Following them came a workers’ band playing a funeral march. Maud Gonne, accompanied by Yeats, distributed the flags as they solemnly ‘buried’ the empire. Their route was blocked on O’Connell Bridge by the Dublin Metropolitan Police. During the confrontation that followed, Connolly dumped the coffin into the Liffey, shouting, ‘To Hell with the British Empire’. He was promptly arrested and spent the night in jail.

The police made their way up to Parnell Square where they attacked the crowd, mainly women and children fascinated by the ‘magic’ of the projector. An old woman was beaten so badly she later died of her injuries. As news of the police attacks spread, angry mobs broke every window in the city centre with jubilee decorations or images of Victoria. It seems that not every Dubliner was enthusiastic about the jubilee and the British Empire.

Maud Gonne, having paid the fine to release Connolly, wrote to congratulate him on his efforts:

Two months later, the Duke and Duchess of York visited Dublin. Again the Dublin Metropolitan Police attacked the demonstrations that had been arranged by Connolly and the ISRP. At one such meeting, a couple of banners were unfurled: one a red flag with a pike about to stab a crown with the Latin phrase ‘Finis Tyranniae’ (the end of the tyrant, ie the end of monarchy). The other flag was a sunburst on a green background with the phrase ‘Truth, Freedom and Justice in Ireland’. The protesters were beaten from Foster Place, off Dame Street, to the ISRP offices on Abbey Street, where they attempted to hold a second meeting but were prevented from doing so by the relentless assault of the DMP. Home Rule newspapers did nothing to report the brutality of the police.

John O’Leary (1830–1907), although he never took the IRB oath, represented Fenian sentiment and ‘Romantic Ireland’ and therefore made an ideal President of the Centenary Executive, who were charged with organising the celebrations due to be held in 1898. The IRB were involved at a high level and were intent on making some political gain from the renewed interest in republicanism. But the plethora of ’98 Clubs came to the attention of the more conservative Home Rule element, who feared that the rise of republicanism would undermine their ambitions and power. They scheduled a meeting of the ’98 Clubs in Belfast, away from the Centenary Executive in Dublin. The eventual result, as is usual in Irish life, was a split and the formation of a new Centennial Association, represented by the likes of Joe Devlin, Joseph Patrick Nannetti, William Martin Murphy and representatives of the Catholic Church. The ISRP’s wonderfully named Rank and File ’98 Club had tried to get a motion passed that the Centennial Association should only be open to those who approved of the aims and methods of the United Irishmen of 1798. This was blocked, thus proving that the association was a sham. The Rank and File Club refused to associate with such an organisation and held their own weekly assembly immediately after the weekly ISRP meetings. This cemented the link between the ISRP and the younger, radical nationalists who also saw through the platitudinous speeches of the Centennial Association.9

When the nationalist newspaper editor Alice Milligan’s young brother, Ernest, was on a visit to Dublin, he called upon Connolly on the urging of his sister. He was so impressed by a lecture and a few books he received that he founded a Belfast branch of the ISRP who called themselves the Belfast Socialist Society. Ernest Milligan remembered Connolly as being ‘of medium height, thick set in build’ and ‘endowed with a rich sense of humour’.10 Descriptions of Connolly left by those who were close to him are more impressive than the few posed portraits of the man. In his book on James Connolly, the author and IRA volunteer Desmond Ryan rather poetically recalled, ‘Two full and kindly keen grey eyes burned beneath dark bushy eyebrows; broad forehead crowned by black hair; medium in height; calm and imperturbable outwardly, but beneath invariably a sensitive and tense nervous system.’11 ‘Intimate friends have described Connolly as sensitive to an extreme degree, for all his calm exterior, with a tendency at times to the faults of that trait; a proneness to resent imaginary slights, to groundless suspicions and to fierce personal dislikes.’12 Tom Bell, a founding member of the Socialist Labour Party, left a fine description of Connolly from when he knew him in 1903:

A short, stocky man, with heavy auburn moustache, a roguish twinkle in his eye, and pleasant Irish brogue in his speech, Connolly made friends everywhere. His quiet, reticent disposition concealed the store of knowledge he had acquired from extensive reading and wide travel. But, provoked into discussion or debate, he would rout opponents with incisive and merciless logic.

As lecturer, propagandist and organiser, he was unique. A proletarian of proletarians, he had none of that snobbery and pretentiousness that mar so many of our leaders. He was a true son of the working class; devoted and self-sacrificing for the cause of the workers’ emancipation from capitalist slavery.13

Notes

1 Connolly, Labour in Irish History.

2 Greaves says 76 Charlemont Street, but a letter from Connolly in the NLI clearly states number 75.

3 Ryan, James Connolly, His Life, Work and Writings, p22.

4 Connolly O’Brien, Nora, Portrait of a Rebel Father, p24.

5 Shan Van Vocht, January 1897.

6 NLI Ms. 16,292.

7 Levenson, Samuel, James Connolly, London, Martin, Brian & O’Keefe, 1973, p51.

8 NLI Ms. 13,939.

9 Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, p99.

10 Ibid. p86.

11 Ryan, James Connolly, His Life, Work and Writings, p3.

12 Ibid. p122.

13 Bell, Thomas, Pioneering Days, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1941, p47.